George Jagodzinski (00:00):

Today, we dive deep into the real barriers to transformation. Not just typical people, process, technology dysfunctions, but the invisible organizational archetypes that sabotage progress. This week I'm joined by Scott Wozniak, CEO of Swoz Consulting, a trusted advisor to leaders on six continents. He grew up on the stage and now he leads transformation at some of the highest levels. He's worked with everyone from Silicon Valley unicorns to the executive team at Chick-fil-A.

(00:24):

We put one of my GPTs to the test and explore what it came up with, the eight organizational archetypes that might not sound too familiar, they might sound very familiar and hopefully make you realize that you aren't alone. From the fortress to the franken-org, Scott and I talk about real world examples and tactics to escape and avoid these pitfalls. If you're a leader staring at a talented team and wondering, "Why is this still so hard? What are we doing wrong?" This conversation is for you. Please welcome Scott.

(00:49):

Welcome to Evolving Industry, a no BS podcast about business leaders who are successfully weaving technology into their company's DNA to forge a better path forward. If you're looking to actually move the ball forward rather than spinning around in a tornado of buzzwords, you're in the right place. I'm your host, George Jagodzinski. Scott, thanks so much for being here.

Scott Wozniak (01:27):

Yeah, man. Been looking forward to this.

George Jagodzinski (01:29):

Yeah, I'm excited. I have thought a fun place to start would be with my own duality. So I always talk about how we're human first. I treat each individual as their own special human individual, but then as a consultant, I love to put people in boxes. And organizations and boxes because that's how you come up with repeatable playbooks. You and I last we were talking about the common dysfunctions and personas within organizations. You've had the gift of being within some of the most successful organizations out there. So the question I have for you that we could explore here is, are there patterns of dysfunction and baggage and things within an organization?

(02:09):

I'll use an example because you talk a lot, and I'm sure we'll get into this about you have a set of systems that put in place the right engine at an organization. But if I'm buying a car, you want to know, is this the one that was driven to church on weekends and nothing else, or is this the one that got modded and raced on weekends? And so there's these general archetypes, and I'll give it to you. Is each organization truly unique or are there general archetypes that you've come across from this function?

Scott Wozniak (02:39):

I think your intro is a perfect way to answer this. If you want to be really, really precise, then every organization is just as unique as every human being, right? Nobody is exactly the same, but if you want to get functional, then just like you can do with people and you can group, "Hey, you guys tend to be more extroverted. You tend to be more introverted." And this is where the word tend comes in, right? Well, I mean except in this situation, I'm more talkative and this one I'm not. All the nuances that make human means nobody is a perfect match.

(03:17):

But come on. It's also, I think, disingenuous to pretend that there's not clusters. Come on. Some of us love Star Wars and some of us don't want to watch another minute of Star Wars. Please don't make me, right?

George Jagodzinski (03:30):

Mm-hmm.

Scott Wozniak (03:30):

There are clusters of patterns where people respond and don't respond. And then all the common challenges that come with being of this type or that, I think you framed it well. If you want to do kind of systemic stuff, then it's useful to artificially group people. With that frame in mind, then absolutely there are types in organizations. Why? Because all the dysfunctions and systems and all this stuff that make up organizational types is because it's people. And so guess what? If you can type people functionally knowing that they're not exactly the same. Everybody has got a little quirk, but you can do the same thing because guess what organizations are? They are people.

(04:13):

Now, here's where it gets a little more complex. There's also industries. And industries will have their own swings, and you're like, "We're a totally unique manufacturing company." Sort of. But there are things in manufacturing that are the same with all other manufacturers, right? Oh wait, we're a service group. No, we're a software group. We're retail. Then you're going to know... Let's put it this bluntly, if you're retail, guess what? The holiday season, especially US retail, that Thanksgiving to Christmas window, that's going to be your wildest shopping season of the year. I don't care what kind of retail you are, you need to bake that into your annual strategy.

(04:51):

You're like, "Well, we also have this summer spike." Great, great. But you're retail. You need to plan. You need to know that so that you plan well for the holidays. So totally. Because just like people, you can cluster them... But then the layer. It's a two layer. What type of personality do we have here? Because we have humans. So the humans bring their own wiring. And what kind of industry are we in? And when you layer those on top of each other, absolutely you can find certain patterns.

George Jagodzinski (05:23):

And I'll be interested to explore what some of those are, but I'll throw out some examples is regulated industries. In an ideal world, you're putting in place processes to create a great customer experience, but in pharma or healthcare, pretty much every process was just put in place as a response to legislation, right?

Scott Wozniak (05:42):

Right. Whether it should have been or not. And you don't get to like, "No, we don't want to follow that process." So we work in a lot of these regulated spaces. And I'll tell you a lot of the work in that category, that stuff we brought in to do... In fact, I was part of a three year... It's DMS innovation grant. So the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services, CMS brought in... And here was the whole point of this, is we already figured out the processes we want these folks to follow, and we can't get them to do it.

(06:13):

How do you get staff to actually follow a process that's annoying and they don't like or they don't see the benefit of because they're supposed to. And we already know what gets the best outcomes. How do you do that? And so in my particular case, we worked in hospitals and long-term care and we dove into those two verticals and said, "How do you actually get the staff engaged, bought in, and figure this out?" That's why I clarify, I'm not a medical professional.

(06:38):

CMS did not come to me to get that answer. They already had those people figure that out. But totally different than in an industry like say SaaS, where you're making up a software that doesn't exist maybe in a category that didn't exist before you. You can make any process you want. Good luck, buddy. Whether it's a good process or not, you can go make it up. And you're right, it's a totally different problem to solve because the industry creates that problem.

George Jagodzinski (07:05):

I think that there's comfort as an executive and a leader knowing what kind of box you fit in. So while I think it could be looked at negatively like, "Sure, I am my own unique human and individual," but at the same time, it might... You know what? My AI just started talking to me.

Scott Wozniak (07:23):

Talk about unique individual. Tell me how unique it is.

George Jagodzinski (07:26):

Well, because sneak peek, I was about to just pull up some of the things that came back to me with, but knowing that, hey, you're an executive, you're sitting there, your customer experience isn't what you wanted. You're looking around at a team that is... They're all very talented and you're like, "Man, why is this so complicated? Why can't we do this?" And then just knowing that you do fit an archetype and other companies do. And guess what? There's kind of proven ways out of this and onto better fields.

Scott Wozniak (07:56):

And that's the experience. I think if anyone is listening, if you've done any of those personality types, sometimes there's the initial pushback. You can't pin me down, but if you're willing to go through the, "Okay, okay. It's close enough," the backside of that, when you read that report, it actually is an empowering experience. Because you're like, "Oh." That explains why I keep having this fight reoccurring. It is because me and that other person have this different type. No wonder we keep hitting our heads. It's not because they're a bad human being or I'm fundamentally broken and can't figure this out. This is a normal problem and there's a normal solution to that problem.

(08:35):

And I think that's potentially really good news for the leader listening. It's like, "Hey, yes, there are unique things." Just like a human, there's sometimes a unique situation, but there are some things you're dealing with that might not be. They might be normal fundamental problems for your type as a person and your industry. The good news of that is if that's one of those cases, well, you just got to get the normal tools. It's not magic.

George Jagodzinski (09:02):

Yeah, absolutely. So like I said earlier, I had my GPT come up with one of these archetypes. It came up with eight of them. I want to do a speed round maybe with you, and we'll see if it's hallucinating or if this resonates.

Scott Wozniak (09:16):

Let's do it.

George Jagodzinski (09:16):

The first one is the fortress. So their core dysfunction is that their risk aversion, rigid hierarchy, insular decision-making. Sound familiar?

Scott Wozniak (09:25):

A hundred percent. Yes. I've seen this. And it's a cost of change is big. Usually, they're in an industry with a lot of entrenched things where shifting materials or physical stuff is going to be expensive. And so then you stack on that a personality type that is caution and detail and precision. We don't take... I'll give you one. So one time I was going through some of this stuff. This is years ago now, but one of the books and processes I went through talked about your certainty quotient. How certain do you have to be before you make a decision?

(09:59):

So I'll be curious. So I was processing what's your certainty quotient generally as a person? Where's your default, right? And so I don't know. What's your certainty quotient, George? I put you on the spot. What's your gut? How sure? A hundred percent I know everything. I know it's going to work. 50 is like, ah, 50-50, man. It could go either way. And how sure do you have to be to pull the trigger?

George Jagodzinski (10:21):

Ah, geez. Maybe 51%.

Scott Wozniak (10:24):

Okay, yeah. Classic entrepreneur, by the way is like... Otherwise we wouldn't have done this because who wasn't sure where we started? So I brought my wife to this. We talked about the fortress, and I was like, "Oh, this is interesting. What's your certainty quotient?" And she's like, "I don't understand. What are you talking about?" And I explained it all again. Now, just for context, my wife spent 15 years as a college professor and now is an analyst in my company.

(10:49):

She's a brilliant woman. So I know you know the words I'm saying. So I'm re-saying it. Did I mess this up? And she's like, "Hold on, hold on. Are you telling me that you make decisions without being a hundred percent sure they're the correct decision?" And I was like, "All the time. Wait, are you telling me that you have to be a hundred percent sure?" She's like, "Don't you know me?" And I was like, "Oh, this explains so much of our marriage right now." For context, my wife, when we had our first child, she spent literally... We stopped counting at a hundred hours of research on the baby monitor.

George Jagodzinski (11:27):

Wow.

Scott Wozniak (11:27):

Not the other features, just which baby monitor. Now, you've got the first time mama nesting. I mean, that's a serious drive, right? She's going to protect her baby. But then you throw my wife's personality on top of this... If you put my wife as a CEO in an industry where change is physically expensive, guess what you get?

George Jagodzinski (11:49):

You got the fortress and you're not going-

Scott Wozniak (11:51):

You've got the fortress.

George Jagodzinski (11:51):

... to do well during changing tariffs and things like that.

Scott Wozniak (11:54):

Yes. And there are pros and cons to the fortress like all of these. I won't name them, but I can think of some of my clients that were fortress companies. That's-

George Jagodzinski (12:04):

Oh, for sure.

Scott Wozniak (12:05):

... heck yeah, man.

George Jagodzinski (12:07):

Evolving Industries is brought to you by Intevity. We bring order to chaos wherever people, process and technology converge. Our culture drives our solutions and we are solution obsessed. We see every challenge as an opportunity, every partner as a collaborator and every project has a chance to share our values and commitment to excellence. Gives us a shout. We'd love to hear your challenges and turn them into opportunities. Find out more at intevity.com. Now back to the show.

(12:36):

And then number two is the franken-org. So a creature made of mismatched parts and wires and bolts. And the core dysfunction there is disconnected systems, siloed teams, and tool overload.

Scott Wozniak (12:49):

Yes. Especially in the larger companies, if you grow through acquisition, if you don't have a great strategy on the backside, I mean you've seen this, haven't you?

George Jagodzinski (12:58):

Oh, yeah.

Scott Wozniak (12:59):

That includes together technologies that-

George Jagodzinski (13:02):

The Frankenstein.

Scott Wozniak (13:03):

... everyone has got their own app and set up in lingo and it's like this isn't... None of these things actually feed each other.

George Jagodzinski (13:09):

And your move might be now you need to go private so you can make some of those changes that you need to make and then come back public again down the road. Right?

Scott Wozniak (13:16):

Right. Because that's expensive. I won't call them out. But we went through... Gosh, this is 20 years ago. I was just starting out and I didn't have a lot of the chops I had now to convince people you got to do this. And there was a major project with a massive Fortune 100 company. Everybody knows their name and they had done a ton of acquisitions and then it was like, "This is what you need to do to internally get everybody on the same page." And they're a public company and they looked at it and they were like, "Oh yeah, we're not doing that." It was like, "Look at all the loss and the friction that is causing you even before you keep growing." And they're like, "Yeah, but it'll kill us." Because it was going to be like a 12-month brutal process, be very expensive, no new products. It was all cost in the short term.

(14:03):

And they're like, "The markets will eat us alive. We're not doing it." So that's why I'm not shaming them now. But I did not have the ability to explain or convince to them that... And they just owned it. And to this day, they are still deeply in debt with their technology. Tech debt. Financially they're killing it, but this massive tech debt and they could be so much better.

George Jagodzinski (14:26):

You can get trapped by that, right?

Scott Wozniak (14:27):

Yeah. So my piece there is this, man, capture that early. The longer you wait in the franken-org, the more painful it is.

George Jagodzinski (14:37):

That's wood rot. That's just wood rot that's going to get worse and worse, yeah?

Scott Wozniak (14:40):

Yes.

George Jagodzinski (14:42):

So the third one is the cargo cult. So this is the superficial adoption of transformational trends.

Scott Wozniak (14:50):

Well, this is the flavor of the month, isn't it? Right?

George Jagodzinski (14:52):

Yeah. And we trained everyone on agile, but we don't really know what that means, right?

Scott Wozniak (14:57):

Right. And then the CEO checks the box because we had the training. And so they move on to their next shiny object chasing the next cool fad. They didn't actually become the new thing. Or you've probably seen this, where they'll set them up with the cool tool. "Hey, we're going to pay these experts to come in and build us a tool." We're not going to put in the work to make our team know how to use this or integrate it into the rest of their operations. But, boy, we got a shiny site now, don't we?

George Jagodzinski (15:25):

Yeah, and the software sales guy has a new boat and everyone is complaining about the systems. The CEO sets a goal for every department to do three AI things for the year, and what the heck does that really do?

Scott Wozniak (15:38):

No, exactly. I use ChatGPT three times. Does that count, right? Yeah.

George Jagodzinski (15:43):

The fourth is the shadow bureaucracy. So you've got real power, sits in informal networks hidden around the organization.

Scott Wozniak (15:53):

Yes, yes. I see this a lot. Probably have a disproportionate amount of family enterprises. I mean, we work, as you said, with Fortune 100 and other fun folks, startups, VC firms. But because my background comes from a lot of the family organizations, Chick-fil-A but also I'm third generation of a family business, so I grew up in seeing that world. Literally, my call right before this with a client was talking through the family dynamics. There's four children. One of them is the CEO. The other three have equal ownership, but not leadership roles, and the complexity of all that, which means the CEO doesn't really just get to make the decision that she wants.

(16:34):

There's an entirely other decision structure that's not on the books that Yeah, that stuff is real, man. You got your own internal Illuminati running things from behind the scenes, right?

George Jagodzinski (16:46):

Yeah. I mean, those are places where I like to create power maps rather than org charts, right? It's truly see where things align.

Scott Wozniak (16:54):

Yes, a hundred percent, man.

George Jagodzinski (16:56):

The next is the firefighting factory. So they're a crisis driven culture like full on operational burnout.

Scott Wozniak (17:03):

So we literally have a name for this type of organization. Internally we call it a culture of cortisol.

George Jagodzinski (17:09):

Interesting.

Scott Wozniak (17:10):

Cortisol is the stress hormone, right?

George Jagodzinski (17:11):

Yeah.

Scott Wozniak (17:12):

Whatever fires you up like, "Oh, we got to go," and they live and die off of this high intensity firefighting. Whoever shouts the loudest gets the work done and nothing gets done until you become a crisis. So if you're not a crisis, you can't convince people. Here's the irony. Customer experience my jam. I love this stuff. These are often people who have a super high value for a great customer experience. And what they think is in the short term, man, the way we're going to do this is George complaint. We love George, so we're dropping everything to divert the whole team and we're going to solve George's problem brilliantly.

(17:52):

And then George gives you really high scores for customer service and response like, "Man, the customization and the personalized response. The CEO flew out and fixed it and we'd love this." What you did is you utterly wrecked the systematic stable life and all the other stuff we were doing. So now the roadmap of development you were working on or the new product timeline or all that other stuff you were doing, that's all off track, which you created a crisis in another category, but not yet because you solved that problem today to take care of George.

(18:27):

Sometimes there's a painful pullback to be like CEO. You got to promise less. You got to respond slower. I mean, it's totally backwards, right? You're like, "What? This is good service." Actually, this is why we call it the culture cortisol. You are addicted to being the hero who swoops in and saves the day. And you got to pull back and let your team solve it, maybe solve it less. You got to be able to say, "Customer, we care, but we're going to solve your problem next week on schedule. We're not going to give you a last second deal." You got to stop customizing.

(19:04):

By the way, I'm pointing fingers and I shouldn't be like it's one of those four are pointing back. I totally did this in my early days because I am the customer experience guy. I'm a creator. I love customizing every one of our projects with some sort of custom thing that for you will make a whole new and we'll flip it upside down. It caused massive chaos. And so I personally own the... I know what this is like, man. But that firefighter has got to not take satisfaction in solving the fire. And you got to go from a firefighter leader to a fire preventer where you build the systems at the metaphor. I actually gave a talk on this.

(19:43):

That's why you hit a hotspot here. I call them Firefighter Phil and the culture of cortisol. It's this whole talk I'll give to talk to leaders. And Firefighter Phil has got to go from the point where he takes satisfaction. Boy, I'm like, "How good am I at firefighting?" To where he eventually is a five stage process and by the end, he sets up heat detectors, smoke detectors, heat monitors, and then automatic fire systems. So firefighter Phil never grabs a hose and runs in anywhere.

George Jagodzinski (20:14):

Love it. That scales.

Scott Wozniak (20:17):

Exactly. That sucker scales, and then what do you know? There never was a fire, which in some leaders weirds them out. Because how do they know if I'm good at my job if I never ran in there with a fire hose and fixed anything?

George Jagodzinski (20:28):

Interesting.

Scott Wozniak (20:29):

So we don't get a lot of pats on the back for the fire that never happened.

George Jagodzinski (20:34):

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I feel like there's an opposite of that organization, which I don't think is in this list, which is the we know better than the customer. We're not going to listen to them whatsoever, and so there's an even middle ground in there somewhere, I would imagine.

Scott Wozniak (20:50):

Yeah, that's a good call. There's the complete disregard to your customer and then there's the complete overreaction to your customer, right?

George Jagodzinski (21:00):

Yeah.

Scott Wozniak (21:02):

That's a good call out. There's a balance there. I would put it this way. I think customers are really good at telling us their frustrations and pain points, and we ought to really listen honestly to those. However, I think they're really bad at telling us what are the right solutions because that's our expertise. We know how to solve that problem better than them or why did they pay us to bring their stuff in?

(21:24):

So we really need to be sensitive and humble around what do you actually want customer? But not what do you want outcome? What are your pains? What desires do you have? What are your hopes? And then we need to be really stubborn and almost arrogant around an extreme words, but around, "Let me come up with the best way to get you there," but really humble and subservient around what is actually important to you. I've seen that flip-flopped where we're like, "Hey, you don't have the right feelings. Let me tell you what to care about. Or you can tell me any solution you want you. You want us to make the software this way?"

(22:01):

You guys have probably seen this and you're like, it's not going to work. We know this is a bad structure, so I don't care how much money you throw at me, I can't in good conscience build it that way.

George Jagodzinski (22:13):

We see it all the time, and those are some of the best repeat clients that we've had is you build a lot of trust. And it's a real balancing act because you think about a Michelin starred chef. They might not even want to hear anything from... They're like, "You're stupid for your opinion."

Scott Wozniak (22:30):

"How dare you suggest?" Exactly.

George Jagodzinski (22:34):

Now, number six out of eight is the hollow matrix. There's just ambiguity in roles. No, true ownership. Just a realm real mess. I definitely see this all the time.

Scott Wozniak (22:44):

Yeah. We say when we talk to leadership teams, how do you know if you're a good healthy team? Right? On the one level of that is nasty conflict. You don't want that where it's like, "That Scott Guy, I hate all bald people. They're horrible humans." On the other end of the spectrum though, what's equally bad is no conflict. "I don't know. Maybe, and you. Let's not push each other. We actually want healthy debate. It's not personal conflict. I'm not saying you're a bad person, but I need freedom to say, "I don't think your idea is the right idea." And for you and me to throw down on ideas and really bring in data. Why do you say that and what? And really wrestle it to the ground.

(23:25):

If you're not having that, everyone is loose and fuzzy and we all own it in a culture. So you talked earlier, you mentioned that systems for customer experience. It's not magical hype stuff. There are some really creative messaging and tools we've got, but let me tell you, usually the first low-hanging fruit we grab... I'll give you one of our easy wins. It's like who owns it? If you want it to improve, put a leader on it. And what we found is there's two problems here.

(23:52):

Either everyone owns it and if everyone owns it's not going to get done consistently. Just it's not. The extreme example of this, you say, "Hey, if you want to starve a dog, assign five people to feed it, right?"

George Jagodzinski (24:04):

Oh, Jesus. Poor dog.

Scott Wozniak (24:05):

I know. Exactly. It's horrible.

George Jagodzinski (24:07):

I feel like the dog ends up fat in that situation though. I feel like everyone feeds the dog in that situation.

Scott Wozniak (24:11):

Well, you have a really nice family then, George. I think it says wonderful things about you and your kids. Sadly, there's plenty of other families where the dog dies. So it's bad, which is why it's so memorable and such an awful example. But this happens in organizations. If it's everybody's job, then I assume George is going to get it done. In psychology, we call this the diffusion of responsibility. Everyone, it's just so spread out. Nobody feels like I have to make sure this gets done so it doesn't happen.

(24:42):

There is another problem with this. When all of it is put on the heads of the CEO or COO, they have too many hats they're wearing, right? All the roles are each as a hat and they're wearing like 20 hats or even 10 hats. And the problem is sometimes it's the lower priority hat, and so it only gets their leftover time. And some months there's no leftover time, so you're just going to struggle to be excellent if you're either putting it all in one person because, man, she's awesome and she gets it done or everybody does it. The most extreme example of this is Amazon. Amazon is adamant about single threaded leadership. Have you heard them talk about this?

George Jagodzinski (25:19):

Oh, yeah.

Scott Wozniak (25:21):

They're like, if it's a major project, you can have tasks, but if it's a major project, you can have one owner and that owner cannot have ownership of any other major projects. I will say Amazon is extreme about this as they are on lots of things.

George Jagodzinski (25:35):

for sure.

Scott Wozniak (25:36):

I don't subscribe to the single threaded rule hardcore every time, but I would say it's like the pure archetype that you should get as close as you can to. Some projects are not so large that you can say, "Listen, I've got time and capacity. We're working on, I'd say usually around three." I don't care how big the project is, it just starts breaking down. So two to three maybe the bigger the project is, the more critical, the more, I would say you got to go back to maybe a single owner, but you don't have clarity on who owns what.

(26:09):

I'm going to give you tactics. This is what I love to do. I'm a big fan of a RACI chart as a way to help explain this. Because here's the problem with the hollow matrix, right? I don't care how smart Scott is, he can't do it all himself. He needs a team. We're a flat organization with high collaboration. And I say that with this tone in my voice, but that's literally one of our company core values is collaboration. I love collaboration as a working method, but we use RACI to spell out how we collaborate because if we're all equally collaborating, we're stuck in a swamp. So if you guys don't know RACI... By the way, I'm going to give you the Scott Wozniak version of RACI. You've probably seen this before, George. Okay.

George Jagodzinski (26:49):

I'm deep in RACI. It's consult in blood.

Scott Wozniak (26:53):

Yes, it is. It's one of the fundamentals. I've renamed a little bit of it. So normal is responsible, accountable, consulted and informed, and you can throw an S in there. Some of the people have made their own. But then everyone has asked, "What's the difference between responsible and accountable?" And I have all these explanations, and I finally realized it's just too fuzzy of words. So I renamed them and I now do responsible, active, consulted and informed.

(27:17):

So feel free to use your own version, but now responsible and active is more clear, right? Responsible is the person who owns it, which this is different than the original version. But hey, I'm going to put the owner, the ultimate buck stops with me as the responsible person. Active are people who are going to actively contribute on the project. Consulted means you got to check with me before big decisions are at certain stage gates. Informed is you don't have to check with me before, but I want to know after what you decided to do so I'm still in the loop. Here's the key. You can't have six people responsible. That's where it gets way one name in there.

(27:53):

And then you're going to have key consultants like, "This George is the big dog CEO. He can't drive this, so Scott is going to drive it, but George has to sign off on these certain points." And that allows George still to be our advisor without everything bottlenecking on George. So something simple and tactical. This isn't rocket science. As you said, George, this is like consultant fundamentals. It moves you out of this zone of like, "Well, we want to collaborate. Me too." But I'm telling you six project leaders, man, you're not going to get anywhere fast. It's going to [inaudible 00:28:30]

George Jagodzinski (28:30):

Sometimes it's not just that wishy-washy collaborate thing, it's just we're moving fast. We don't have time. There's just a million reasons, and one of my favorite things is, first of all, bringing RACI into a place that's never heard of it. They're like, "Oh my God, this is the best thing ever." But then also the inevitable moments, and it'll happen repeatedly, and I know it's about to happen when you say, "All right, who's going to be responsible for this one?"

(28:53):

And someone will say their name and then someone else will be like, "You should put my name in there also." It's like, "No, there's one name." It happens at least three times during a session.

Scott Wozniak (29:02):

All the time. All the time, yes. That's the critical moment. In fact, I'm giving you... This doesn't have to do with types, but maybe one of the most powerful tools, we have these grand strategy days. I used to say, "Man, my favorite day is me and a team and a whiteboard for eight hours. Man, sticky notes and colors, and we're going to chart and graph and circle things." And then eventually I realized, "Yeah, that's a great pre-work step. If you don't turn that into a tactical action plan and people don't move forward..." The way I say it now is every great idea eventually degenerates into hard work.

(29:37):

And so the simple plan like who will do what by when, and we just make a little chart. And at the end of all your grand strategy, that's awesome. Who is going to do what by when? And I can tell you how many times I will think... Even last month, I'm like, "That was a great conversation. Wait, we got to fill this out." And I had missed one. Yeah, it's either like, "We should get that done." And everybody's nodding at the royal we like, "Yes, we should totally do that." What they mean is everybody else. "I'm not doing it, but we should do it."

George Jagodzinski (30:07):

Sounds like a great idea.

Scott Wozniak (30:10):

Is it really a great idea when you have to take two weeks out of your year to make that? I don't know. Maybe. Or by when is the other thing. I'm usually pretty clear on what, but, "Yeah, George, get that done. Okay, I'm going to get that done. By when?" And if not, the assumption is like, "Oh, you're doing it today." And you're like, "Well, I was thinking by the end of the month. I'm not doing it today. Wait a minute." So many of these things, the fancy stuff is not what holds us back.

(30:37):

Yeah, there's cool stuff to talk about. There's some fundamentals, some human fundamentals, right? If you don't get those right, good luck. Your cool fancy tool on top of that doesn't fix the fundamental problem below.

George Jagodzinski (30:49):

Totally, totally. And then last two here, the number seven is the zombie enterprise. So there's no belief in change and there's cultural disengagement.

Scott Wozniak (30:58):

Yeah, they've given up, but it's the quiet quitting that we talked about that a few years ago is a big phrase, right? I'm here but I don't believe in it. I'm out, right? I'm doing the bare minimum. You can't quite fire me, but I'm not actually going to try here. That's sad. That's sad.

George Jagodzinski (31:15):

I'm curious if you've seen this, but I'm seeing more and trying to do more is you get the entire culture on board with the fact that we're going to be making at least one big change every 12 to 14 months or whatever it might be.

Scott Wozniak (31:32):

Sadly, when I came, some of those early healthcare groups were the zombies, but you eventually wake them up. I always say this, "I don't think anyone wants to be there." In that state, they're just jaded because they've seen the spike in crash so many times it becomes a self-protection. So when you show them, it's actually possible, some folks... Okay, there's some humans who will never particularly enjoy change, but slow, steady, measured change, that actually is I think the best working environment for all of us.

(32:01):

We thrive when we see growth, steady progress. It's not chaos. If you can't figure out how to change your organization or you're not in the seat to do that, man, that quiet quitting is not good for you. Go find a place where you can be alive. You're wasting too much of your life.

George Jagodzinski (32:19):

Because the change is going to have to come from the top down and you're going to have to show the company that this change can be for the positive and get them comfortable with it.

Scott Wozniak (32:29):

Yeah. We won't do a project if the CEO doesn't have a certain minimum engagement. Even if they're willing to pay for it and sign off, but if they then disengage, you can't build the kind of operational stuff we're talking about without the CEO's active support.

George Jagodzinski (32:43):

Totally agree. And the final one, which I think might actually cover the opposite of firefighter a little bit that we were talking about. This is the ivory tower. The strategy is disconnected from execution or the customer reality.

Scott Wozniak (32:56):

Yes. No, they've got this thing figured out and they don't need to test. They don't need to validate. The problem with this is oftentimes... Tech is a great example of this. They raise a bunch of money and they go, "We'll climb up into their ivory tower and spend two years building the perfect fill in the blank." Or I know people who are working on their side gig that someday they maybe will launch, but they're not willing to put it out in the market and test it because a real world feedback is way more valuable than anything we've seen.

George Jagodzinski (33:27):

Or you have too much success too fast and then you can ride that out for a while.

Scott Wozniak (33:32):

I'll throw a couple other real examples from clients that we've worked with. There is the over-entrepreneur. I'm making up my terms right now.

George Jagodzinski (33:41):

Love it.

Scott Wozniak (33:42):

But the over-entrepreneur is a leader and team who are constantly taking on new things. They're launching new products, new divisions, new zones, new stuff, and they're never staying with it long enough to get it to great excellence. And so they love the process of launch and they don't refine or systematize what they've currently got. And they might even enjoy it, but they're leaving so much on the table because I can relate to this. That's me in my early days. At one point I literally had my team had an intervention with me and we're like, "Scott, Scott, can we please not launch a new product this year? We need to finish excellence with the old products."

(34:20):

And I had this like, "Okay, I'm going to give you six months where I won't launch any new projects. Nothing new, not a single tweak." Those were a long six months for me, George, but...

George Jagodzinski (34:31):

You got to let the cake bake sometimes.

Scott Wozniak (34:34):

Dang it. It made one of the biggest changes. I came at the end of that and saw how much growth my team had and how much excellence in the lives we were able to impact because I slowed down. I was like, "But more products is more impact with more lives." Actually an excellent product is better than five half-baked products. So that over entrepreneur I sometimes see as well. And I mean I had to say this probably three months ago to a client who was like, "That other thing you're doing, you probably need to stop doing it."

George Jagodzinski (35:03):

A hundred percent.

Scott Wozniak (35:03):

It's even making you money technically, but it's pulling attention away from your real big opportunity. And we said to this client, "Hey, you want to know what good strategy is for you right now?" Anything that distracts you from this is bad strategy. Anything that makes this healthier, stronger is good strategy. That's your strategy razor for the next six months.

George Jagodzinski (35:26):

That makes sense.

Scott Wozniak (35:26):

And that is not fun conversation, but man, that comes from the type of people... And they're in an industry where it's easy to make changes and swap things around as a services category. So we'll put a new team on it. We'll offer a new service. Okay. So the industry allows it, the personality went and they were 80% excellent in everything.

George Jagodzinski (35:49):

Yeah, that's great. I don't know about you. That list feels pretty representative and accurate. I want to sit down... Maybe I should have done this prior, but it was a last minute idea and think about what gaps exist there. But I know even from a digital perspective, I could look at each one of those archetypes and I could probably explain exactly what all the systems look like from a technical perspective.

Scott Wozniak (36:10):

Totally. I could do the same from the human side. But you're right. Just like if you know your personality archetype, right? I'm not exactly that way all the time, but when I am in that mode, it's good to know. Yeah, it does make sense. And let me zoom out because that would be a fun conversation and maybe we should have that, George, but here's what I would say. When we talk to organization, the first thing we always do is say, "Hey, when is the last time you did a deep dive assessment?" 90% of the time their answer is never.

(36:41):

We don't need to do deep, thoughtful, intentional evaluation of our current state because we're all here. We're doing it all day every day. We know what's going on and every time we're like, "What if we just pause before we go down your strategy? What if we pause and we do this assessment process and go dig deep into all your divisions, your teams down to the front line, not just your leaders?" Talk to your actual customers. Don't like, "No, our customers love this."

(37:09):

Go ask them what they love. Get the actual input, bring it all back together and summarize it for them. I've never failed to do this. And I've done hundreds, maybe a thousand plus of assessments, more than a thousand of these over the years, and dude, it literally blows. I've never had a time where they didn't come back going. Some of it is like we knew that. It's good to know that, but there's always at least one if not a half dozen times where there's a mind-blowing insight where they're like, "We had no idea."

(37:38):

Yeah, because you were assuming to borrow from the medical practice. We now say this way is prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. I can't tell you how many leaders are just jumping to prescription because we assume we know what the diagnosis is. Like, "Oh, I could tell George came in here. His face is all splotchy. He must have a fever. It must be the flu. Okay, got it." Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why don't you actually find out what's going on before you jump the gun? Get self-aware. Just like these personality tests. I'm like, "What? Are you telling me I do this?" And then you ask all your people. Yeah, you do that.

George Jagodzinski (38:19):

Yeah, you kind of do.

Scott Wozniak (38:20):

So same for your organization.

George Jagodzinski (38:21):

It's annoying. None of us wanted to tell you about it.

Scott Wozniak (38:25):

Well, and then it feels bad because you're like, "I don't want everyone tell me I'm an idiot." Right? Let me be blunt with you. Everybody else knows. You're the only one who doesn't know that this is how you roll because you think this feels normal to you because it's your habit. Find out. It's not doing you any good to be the only one who doesn't know that you have this particular pattern. Once you know can manage it, you don't have to totally change who you are, you just manage it. You put boundaries around it. You catch yourself when you're doing it.

(38:56):

The goal is not necessarily for you to be a totally different kind of person. And maybe the only one I would throw in there that we totally want to eliminate is the zombie. I don't know if there's any benefit from the zombie, but all the others I can think of off the top of my head, I'm like, "I can think of some benefits." The very responsive firefighters, we don't want to lose your total response or fortress honestly. There's wisdom sometimes in going carefully when it's going to be a big expensive thing. Maybe you shouldn't be wild and crazy. So you don't have to lose who you are. You just need to be the mature version of who you are.

George Jagodzinski (39:32):

Yeah, absolutely. And if I just bring this all the way back to the human level, all of those archetypes, they actually closely align with the different parts of a human psychology. And to your point, you never want to get rid of them. They were put there for a purpose. Maybe you're not using them in the right way now, but they were put there for a purpose. Let's understand why that is and use it. It's interesting you talk about how many organizations haven't had a deep dive assessment.

(40:04):

I see the same thing from a digital perspective. There's sometimes resistance for multiple reasons. One is there's probably a flood of garbage assessments out there and things like that. But heck, if you're going to go drive across the country, I think you should probably get your car into the shop and have a really good engineer, take a look at it, make sure everything is humming along and good to go, right?

Scott Wozniak (40:25):

A hundred percent.

George Jagodzinski (40:27):

If there's a problem, there's a set of things to fix it and to put it into place so that you can accomplish that journey that you're about to head out on.

Scott Wozniak (40:35):

Yeah. That's just good leadership.

George Jagodzinski (40:38):

Yeah. Scott, I'm not surprised that this went long. Every time that you and I talk, we run out of time and we-

Scott Wozniak (40:43):

I was just going to say that.

George Jagodzinski (40:44):

... we uncover more nuggets

Scott Wozniak (40:46):

If there's an archetype for us, it's the lots more ideas and we always get excited and talk too much. I don't know what you call that, but that's us.

George Jagodzinski (40:54):

Well, maybe we can plant the teaser for part two at some point where maybe we dig more into those archetypes. I want to hear about your video game that you created at Chick-fil-A because that sounded really cool.

Scott Wozniak (41:03):

Dude, it was a cool learning experience. Not for the public, just so you know. Internally, we made a video game to train some of our leaders. Heck yeah, that's a fun conversation, man.

George Jagodzinski (41:16):

Well, especially now in the age of AI, it's going to be easier for people to build your own custom versions of that within your organization.

Scott Wozniak (41:23):

Oh, yeah. This was way before that. I need to go back and talk to the team now. That'll be good prompts, George. Good.

George Jagodzinski (41:32):

All right. Well, Scott, I always like to finish with a fun one on this is what's the best advice you've ever received in life?

Scott Wozniak (41:39):

Man, I've gotten so much good advice. So much of my life has been great mentors. The president now retired, he just retired, president of Chick-fil-A, a mentor of mine, just one of the best leaders I know is a guy named Tim Tassopoulos. The way they typically, they've done this, it's not a rule, but it's a pattern they've done for the last 60 years, and the Chick-fil-A is the Cathy family owns it, and they've had a Cathy family as the CEO. And they've had a non-family member as the COO, as their right hand helping them manage stuff.

(42:09):

So Tim was the right hand to Dan Cathy. And Dan retired and Tim retired, and now the next gen is running it. But Tim led massively top dog in Chick-fil-A. A big part of why Chick-fil-A is awesome is because Tim is an awesome leader. So I got to work directly with him and do a lot of this cool stuff. And Tim, I never forget, I was there a month. I mean, very brief, less than a month. I'd been only there a few weeks and Tim sat down to talk about philosophy and strategy, and the whole process. And part of my interview process was with Tim, but now I'm on the job. We're doing the deals. He's giving me guidance and he said, "One thing that's really important as we do this is that we pursue excellence, not success." I'm like, "Well, what do you mean?" "Excellence is my performance compared to my potential," he said, "where success is my performance compared to others."

George Jagodzinski (43:01):

Interesting.

Scott Wozniak (43:02):

And he said, "Well, we've had a lot of success." And that could work either way, whether you're unsuccessful or very successful, you can be frustrated, discouraged. If you're chasing success, "Hey, look, we're better than everyone else. Right now we're getting the best numbers in our industry, or man, those guys are getting better numbers. It's not fair." All that stuff. He's like, "Forget that. We pursue excellence. How am I doing against my potential. Whether I'm better than everyone else or not? What's my potential?" And that shaped me profoundly because a lot of my life, I had had very big success and had been called out for my peers and can get extra attention and extra opportunities. And a huge part of my story is like, you saw, I'm like as a child actor and my early story called out young and put on big stages and on big screens.

(43:46):

And so people made a big deal out of me, but my identity when I was a young man was wrapped up in, "Well, I'm successful." And really getting free of that, I'd gone through a process, I don't know the decade or so before Chick-fil-A, figuring out who am I, whether I'm getting awards for it or not, but I'd say it carried over to my work. It carried over to my kids. Man, I've got four kids. We were talking just before the call about our kids and the fun season we're in with our children. And really coming to each of them I'm like, "I don't care what your siblings have done. I don't care what awards you get. The question is, was this your potential?"

(44:18):

So like grades in school. Did you get an A? Well, do we reward for A's or not in my family? No, there's no standard. The question is what was actually a realistic goal for you? You really struggle in this category. Maybe a B or even a C was like, "Man, you gave it your really best shot. If that was your potential, we're going to be good with that." You got an A minus and your potential is you should have a plus this, I'm like, "Dude, I don't care what the letter grade is. What I care is did you show up and give it your best to reach your potential?"

(44:51):

I no longer care about success as a metric. It's a very dangerous metric. I really love excellence. So Tim Tassopoulos said, "Pursue excellence, not success." And it impacted me big time.

George Jagodzinski (45:06):

That's a great one because you can really run into problems if you just rest on your success, but I don't think you'd ever run into problems if you just rest on your excellence.

Scott Wozniak (45:15):

That's legit. That's excellent.

George Jagodzinski (45:18):

I love it. Scott, thanks so much for being here. I really enjoyed it.

Scott Wozniak (45:21):

Thanks, brother.

George Jagodzinski (45:23):

Thanks for listening to Evolving Industry. For more, subscribe and follow us on your favorite podcast platform and pretty please drop us a review. We'd really appreciate it. If you're watching or listening on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and smash the bell button for notifications. If you know someone who's pushing the limits to evolve their business, reach out to the show at evolvingindustry@intevity.com. Reach out to me, George Jagodzinski on LinkedIn. I love speaking with people, getting the hard work done. The business environment is always changing, and you're either keeping up or going extinct. We'll catch you next time. And until then, keep evolving.