In this episode of the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast, Dr. John Dentico interviews Corey Peck, a multi-award-winning entrepreneur, operational strategist, and founder of Fractional Ops. Corey shares his journey from a young entrepreneur in Toronto to leading global teams and founding Fractional Ops. He discusses the key areas CEOs need to operationalize for business success, the importance of a clear vision and structured systems, and how to leverage AI for operational improvements. The conversation also covers the significance of psychological safety, rapid prototyping, and aligning organizational values and mission statements to drive meaningful work. Corey offers insights into his ops transformation system and provides practical advice for reducing chaos and increasing profitability in small businesses.
00:00 Introduction to Throttle Up Leadership Podcast
01:55 Corey Peck's Entrepreneurial Journey
03:17 Scaling a Business: Key Mindset Shifts
03:32 Operationalizing Business Areas
05:44 Hiring in the Age of AI
09:42 The Ops Transformation System
12:46 Building a Resilient and Drama-Free Business
16:09 The Importance of Clear Mission Statements
21:48 Challenges for Early Stage CEOs
22:17 The Importance of Market Feedback
23:11 Seizing Sales Opportunities
25:12 Rapid Prototyping and Iterative Development
27:25 From Firefighting to Fire Prevention
30:06 The Journey of Change Management
35:07 Building a Trust-Based Organization
40:31 Final Thoughts and Farewell
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr John Dentico (00:05):
Welcome to the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast.
Our theme for 2025 is The Futureof Work: Meaning is the New Money!
In a world shaped by rapid innovation andconstant change the pursuit of purpose
and impact has never been more important.
I'm Dr John Dentico your host,bringing over 30 years of experience
(00:28):
in leadership, strategic thinkingand purpose-driven innovation.
Here we tackle the pressing challengesof our time-from the rise of
artificial intelligence to the growingneed for meaning in the workplace.
Together we'll uncover how leaderscan ethically integrate AI to enhance
decision-making and keep humanityat the heart of their organizations.
(00:51):
Remember amidst all thetechnological advancements in the
end, it's always about the people.
This podcast is your resource foractionable tools, thought provoking
discussions and inspiring stories.
It's time to go beyond leadershipdevelopment and focus on leadership
(01:11):
impact-creating workplaces where peoplethrive, innovation flourishes and
meaning truly becomes the new currency.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Now, let's Throttle Up anddive into today's episode.
Hello and welcome to theThrottle Up Leadership Podcast.
I am your host, Dr John Denticowith me today is Corey Peck.
(01:36):
a multi award-winning entrepreneur,operational strategist and fractional
executive who has built and ledteams from two to over 7,200 people.
As a former agency owner and globalCOO Cory understands the chaos and
complexity of scaling a business,and more importantly, how to fix it.
(01:57):
Today he is the founder of Fractional Ops.
Cory helps CEOs of B2B small businesses,increased profit in 90 days through
his ops transformation system, aproven framework designed to eliminate
operational chaos and replace it withclear structured drama free systems.
(02:18):
A top operational excellence voiceon LinkedIn Corey serves as a trusted
advisor to hundreds of founders ata world leading tech incubator where
he shares tactical tools that drivereliable growth across sales, marketing,
finance, and people operations.
Corey's mission is simple,free small business CEOs from
(02:39):
day-to-day grind so they can scalesustainably and lead with clarity.
Having experienced the stress,unpredictability, and burnout of
being a hands-on founder, he nowempowers others to build businesses.
That are resilient, profitable, and calmwithout sacrificing ambition or growth.
(03:01):
Whether he's speaking about scaling smart,systematizing success, or turning chaos
into control, Corey delivers practicalinsights that help leaders transform their
operations and their lives, I'm trulygrateful for him to be here this morning.
Good morning, Corey, how are you?
Corey Peck (03:19):
I am.
Great, John.
Thanks for having me.
that was a fantastic intro.
Dr John Dentico (03:22):
Corey, tell me a bit about yourself.
Where did you grow up and whatin your mind were some of the
fundamental influences in your life?
Corey Peck (03:31):
I grew up just outside of Toronto, Canada, in a small suburb.
I always tell the storywhen I'm doing speaking.
I was always very entrepreneurial asa kid, when most people were going
out and, just playing with theirfriends or going on bike rides.
I would be coming up with waysto, make these old businesses.
And my two favorite stories I alwaystell is, I once enlisted all the
(03:52):
neighbors on the street to go findrocks in people's gardens and parks.
Then we made a rock museum in mybackyard where we would charge
parents' admission to come in.
I had another one where there wasa, nicer end of town where all the
children were a bit more well offand they had all the better toys.
And so I went door to door and cut a dealto bring all their really good toys over
(04:14):
to my house, I would give them a cut ofthe, funds that I would charge all the
other kids on our street to play withthese toys that none of us could afford.
So ideas like this.
I've always been, doing things like thisand, having, businesses along the way with
this company now, it's great to be workingwith so many founders on these, new
ideas that I get to help bring to life.
Dr John Dentico (04:34):
That's great.
What a great story.
I've had the, pleasure of interviewinga number of people who have had similar
kinds of upbringings that brought themto this particular point in their lives.
So let me ask you this, you've grown teamsfrom a handful of people to over 7,000.
What's the biggest mindset shift a CEOneeds to make as their company scales?
Corey Peck (04:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
what I talk about often with foundersis, making sure that you're putting
in the systems and processes and,workflow automation and trying to
leverage artificial intelligence tooperationalize the seven key areas
that you need to in your business.
The first being customer and value,and so that's where everything starts.
You need to know really clearlywho is your customer and what
(05:20):
value you provide to them.
The next area that you operationalizeis what I refer to as strategy
and planning, and that couldbe your go to market strategy.
That could be pricingstrategy, overall positioning.
The next is your product and service.
So coming up with ways to operationalizethat, to making sure you're creating the
right product and service in the rightway for those customers to get the value
that you know you're going to from them.
(05:41):
The next is people and culture.
You need a team to bring this to life,and there's all sorts of HR operations.
That's everything from your talentacquisition process to, nurturing and
improving and upskilling your team alsomaking sure that people have upward
mobility, within the company, donein a structured and equitable way.
So that's another area.
The three others are yourmarketing and sales, which a
(06:02):
lot of people are familiar with.
Your operations and delivery.
And so that's gonna be your coreservice or product that people
are actually paying you for.
And then finally, finance and insights.
This is the other area in addition topeople in culture and marketing and sales.
The finance and insights is what we getthe most questions about, and it's really
about tying in the financials that existthrough that lifecycle, from prospecting
(06:25):
and finding leads making those sales andturning them into customers through your
delivery of that, whether it's a productor service, making sure you're doing it
profitably in a way that cash flows well.
What are the areas youshould double down on?
What should you maybe be cutting back on?
And ideally, you're connectingall these systems together so that
you're getting as close to real timedata as you need so that you can
(06:45):
make informed decisions as a CEO.
Dr John Dentico (06:48):
Yeah, it's interesting.
I think a lot, I'm a very process,practices, systems oriented person.
in fact, leadership to me is a process.
It's not so much about the inherenttraits that an individual has To me,
it's much more about following a process.
Anybody can be a leader if they understandthe practices in my perspective.
(07:10):
I want to ask you this.
In light of you're mentioningAI, which is revolutionary.
it's changing everything.
What would you say right now are theprinciples by which you would advise
an organization to hire people?
What should organizations, be looking forwhen hiring people in the world of today?
Corey Peck (07:31):
When you think of what AI is able to do very well, it's
able to complete tasks quickly.
A lot of what we're seeing the usecases are right now are any kind of, you
know, writing or creation of somethingbased on an input you're giving it.
When I am looking at buildingteams, either for myself or when I'm
working with clients I tell 'em tothink of it almost as a hybrid team.
(07:51):
So you have a hybrid human and AI teamand something you're going to start seeing
now if you have an already somethingcalled AI agents where these are now,
basically little bots that can fullyperform functions like a teammate would.
instead of giving a very specificprompt and it then outputs what
you've asked, you can now give ittasks or objectives and it can start
(08:14):
doing more of those types of outputs.
And so when you're buildingthe team of humans, you really
have to lean toward creativity.
You need to have people that have theideas and can do creative problem solving.
You need to have people that are,like in software you would call these
like solution architects, hearing abusiness problem and then coming up
with how to achieve that opportunityand overcome that challenge through
(08:37):
some sort of software or AI tool.
And so that's a skillset thatis already important, but it's
gonna become even more important.
And when you think of a hybrid AI humanteam, you really need to make sure
you're hiring people who can have theideas and give very clear instructions.
Whether it's to another human orto AI, and you also need to make
sure people can do that qualityassurance, quality control, because
(08:57):
AI is getting more powerful everyday, but it does still make mistakes.
We need to make sure that what we'regetting back, you have someone who
has the skillset and the know-how tocorrect the mistakes, and then tweak
those instructions for the next roundso that if it was 90% accurate, the next
time's gonna be 91% accurate, and so on.
Dr John Dentico (09:14):
Is there anything else?
in terms of the folks themselves,what do you look for in the
people besides the skillset?
Is there something more than justa skillset is important to make
sure there's a connection betweenthe organization and the person?
Corey Peck (09:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think in this day and age what'sgoing on in the world economy
and these new technologies there'sthis constant state of change.
When you work with small businesses,growing businesses, especially
startups there, that's already avery chaotic environment and there's
a lot of change happening anyways.
You really need to make sure people havethe resiliency to be able to be like
(09:50):
almost pivoting on a daily basis, not tooveruse that word, but it is changing.
When you look at what technology cando, you need people to be open-minded
to use AI in different use cases.
I think what I look to our clientsthat we support, the ones who are
getting further ahead are the CEOs whoare extremely open-minded, what this
technology could do, even though they'rein legacy businesses in many cases,
(10:14):
and the team members who are puttingup their hand, even though they're not
experts at it, but they're saying, Iam looking to add this as a skillset.
I'm looking to explore how this can makemy job easier so that the human roles
can focus on their high payoff activitiesinstead of the more administrative
or, hands on keyboard activities.
And I think that mindset, thatgrowth mindset is something that's
(10:35):
very important for any new hire.
Dr John Dentico (10:37):
Yeah.
I think, one of the things I've beentalking about lately is, hire for values.
There needs to be a connection betweenthat person and the organization in
terms of basic value systems becauseespecially in the world today.
Even though I've seen some articlestalking about people needing to stay in an
organization longer, you may get a personfor five years and then they'll move on.
(11:00):
Not because they dislike you,just because they figure it's time
for a change or time to move on.
So I think it's important that,values are a connecting point.
Let me ask you this question.
You created the ops transformationsystem to help CEOs eliminate
chaos and increase profits.
Can you walk us through what makesthis system different and why it
(11:20):
works so well for small businesses?
Corey Peck (11:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think the magic in this system ishow it subdivides down to what is most
important for the CEO at any given time.
Every business is different.
Every business has different levelsof operational maturity within
those seven areas that I talked to.
We call those seven areas the sevenops accelerators, and within those
seven ops accelerators you havethree levels of operational maturity.
(11:46):
You may not actually be startedyet, so you might have no level,
but assuming you get to the firstone, we call that framework.
These are the guidelines,the behavioral norms.
It might be sheets, templates, justbasic instructions so people can
know when this type of task comesin on any one of those seven areas.
They at least have, away to approach that.
when you take it from a frameworkto the next stage of operational
(12:08):
maturity, we call that flow.
And flow is when processes start going in.
And when you think of a process, it'sa group of tasks that are done in
sequence to get you to a desired outcome.
And that's very important tomap what the steps are in order,
but also who does what steps.
if you've ever seen, a swim lane diagram,you have, all the roles in different rows,
and you have the task moving between.
(12:30):
The different people from start to finish.
that's key to make sure you can dothings consistently, that you can
understand where the process isbreaking down, where it can be improved.
And then finally we move to fusion, thehighest level of operational maturity.
This is when you're taking that processthat you made in the flow stage, and now
you're putting in workflow automation.
Now you're putting in AI and you'realso connecting the different
(12:53):
seven ops accelerators together.
So this is where you may have an automatedway of collecting customer feedback.
That is being sent to your strategyand product team so they can update
their marketing so that they can hirethe right people in their pipeline.
And it's putting all that together.
And that's really where the powerof this comes from and where you
can create leverage as a CEO.
(13:14):
All this starts with what we callour operational maturity assessment.
I'm happy to give your listenersa copy of this as well based
on what your priorities are.
It will do an assessment of all the areasof your business based on the answers
you give, and it will then give youwhat we call our 90 day ROI action plan.
And so it's going to give you veryspecific objectives, key results, and
tasks that you and your leadershipteam should be doing to help move
(13:38):
the right areas of your business upone level of operational maturity.
It's less rigid than other systems,and something that I created
just over my years of runningbusinesses and helping other CEOs.
Dr John Dentico (13:52):
Great.
I'm glad to hear it.
Yeah, I think systems are important.
People need structure butwithin that, there has to be
a level of creativity as well.
I mean, you may see something inthe process that's doesn't work, and
somebody's gotta be able to voice thatand say, Hey, we need a change here
'cause we just can't keep going along.
Systems are important without a doubt.
(14:15):
You emphasize building a businessthat's resilient and drama free.
What operational systems orpractices have the biggest impact
on reducing stress while increasingprofitability, in your opinion?
Corey Peck (14:31):
I think there's a few that have the biggest impact
when we come into an organizationsometimes you can feel the tension.
People are unclear even onsome of the basic points of
information about the company.
part of it is making sure you havea very clear and compelling vision
for the future, that it's documented.
And there's different frameworks for this.
(14:52):
You know, people, sometimespeople use, scaling up or EOS.
But, the common thread is theteam has to know where you're
going 'cause you need a direction.
So I think that's one.
And often people just don't, it'snot even documented like they, they
think they know, but if I were towalk around the office and ask each
person, what's this company tryto achieve in the next three years?
Most time, no one either hasan answer, or if they do, they
(15:13):
definitely don't have the same answer.
So the people that can just reinforcethat consistently as CEOs are the ones
that, you can see just that alignment.
At least everyone's clear on that.
So I think that's number one.
Number two is having veryclear and defined roles.
I think where this fall down formost people is it, it shows up
like teamwork on the surface, butwhat's actually happening is, you're
(15:35):
just like reducing your leverage.
'Cause now you have multiple peopleall trying to do the same task while
other tasks aren't getting done.
And then what also happens is youdon't have that clear accountability.
And so that's where thefinger pointing happens.
if your culture isn't as good that'swhere, you see a lot of work getting
like 5% done instead of anythinggetting a hundred percent done.
And so a lot of that has to do withpeople not having clear priorities.
(15:56):
When everything's a priority,nothing's a priority.
I remember we walked into this businessonce, with the CEO and they had 168
key priorities across the business.
And it was a larger, 50million or so revenue company.
Everything was like 1% or 2% done.
so we put in, the OKR framework, calledobjectives and key results, and we helped
them clarify what is that overall themeof the objective that they have to achieve
(16:21):
as a business, and then what would haveto be true for them to achieve that.
And so that's where thekey results came in.
We were able to quantifythem set them out.
I challenged the leadershipteam to, pick three.
You get no more than three,it's very hard to take a list of
almost 200 down to, a few dozen.
But once we did that,everything started getting done.
Now you had focused effort movingforward on a few key tasks.
(16:43):
And, that's helped that businessgrow, that's helped that business
navigate what's happening in the world.
And they continue to do so.
Now that muscle's built into thebusiness and so you talk about,
accountability, the culture and reducingthe drama when they have the meetings.
And I think that's where a lotof this falls down for people.
People will set objectives.
They might set what's priorities,but they forget to meet on it.
That could be forgetting to meet in a townhall format, once a month that could be
(17:05):
forgetting to meet quarterly to plan thatcould be forgetting to meet weekly with
the departments or their direct reports.
And that's where this falls down.
I've seen a lot of people do a reallygood job documenting it, but then
they forget to actively manage it.
The ones that I see succeed will makesure those meetings are just in the
calendars repeated, same time, sameday, on these different initiatives.
(17:27):
And that consistency in of itselfcreates accountability 'cause no one
wants to show up to that meeting,without their numbers hit or without
an update in front of their peers.
Dr John Dentico (17:36):
I am a big believer in , strategic thinking and a huge
believer in an organization having a verycogent one sentence mission statement.
As the alignment, as the beginning of thealignment for people to understand this
is what this company's about, this is whatthey do, and this is where they're going.
(17:58):
And I think it's so important.
I think too often organizations crafta mission statement for everything
outside of the organization.
They wanna show the world this is,oh, this is who we are, aren't we?
Great, love us.
And, okay, that's fine.
You know, it has a lot to do.
(18:19):
Has, has an impactcertainly on brand strategy.
I get it.
But a lot, for me.
The importance of a missionstatement is really for the
people inside the organization.
What is the alignment?
Why are we here?
What are we doing?
What is our value system, if you will?
How do you expect?
In fact, I, I'll tell you, I did apresentation a couple of weeks ago and
(18:42):
I was talking about finding meaning.
That's my theme this year.
You know, the future of work,meaning is the new money.
Okay, so how does an organizationexemplify that a, a person who hires on
with them is gonna find meaning well,they have to, in their mission statement.
They have to really express their values.
(19:02):
But there's the other side of the,there's the other side of the equation
for me, and that is how does a personwho's a job seeker, or who's looking to
hire on with the company, how do theyknow that this company will give them
the opportunity to find meaning, to dosomething meaningful, to have impact.
And I told this group of people thatif you run into an organization that
(19:27):
has a mission statement that's sevenparagraphs long, move on, find.
If you have the ability to doit, find another company because
they don't know who they are.
It's just like you said, wouldyou say 116 different priorities?
No, you can't have that.
You have to be very firm and very direct.
(19:48):
Too often those companies, in my opinion,are trying to make everybody happy.
They're trying to check every box,if you will, and yet in the end they
wind up, as you said, checking noboxes, checking, no important boxes.
So I'd love to get yourreflection on that idea.
Corey Peck (20:06):
Yeah, no, I, I fully agree.
So, I mean, just to, to share ours, right?
Our, they're both one sentence.
So our mission is to free small businessCEOs from day-to-day operations.
That's what we're here to do.
That's what's in our job postings.
That's what's part ofthe interview process.
That's what is part of the onboarding.
That's what everyone here onour team needs to be able to do.
Whether you're an employee or acontractor or a supplier to us.
(20:29):
Our vision is to be the numberone business resources . Our
vision is to be the number onebusiness operations resource for
CEOs of growing small businesses.
So there's so many placesthat when people are.
Are growing , a small businessand I'm talking about under
a hundred million in revenue.
So it, could include startups, but it'sreally people that are well on their way.
There's so many challengesthat will happen as you keep
(20:50):
hitting those other layers.
And there's so many places to go andwhat we're really on a mission to do
is to free them from the operations.
We then have to be the number one.
And so across those seven areas, inthose seven ops accelerators, that's
really what we're leaning into.
And we do that by constantly improvingour own ops transformation system,
but also making sure that we're hiringthe best people in all those areas.
(21:12):
So on our team, for example, likewe have fractional COOs, which is
primarily the business that we're in.
Uh, we also have what we call ops experts.
And so these are like highly specializedpeople in all of those seven areas.
So, you know, if you're puttingin A CRM, we have a whole team
that is, are experts at that.
If you're trying to do go tomarket with AI or cold outbound
email, we have experts in that.
(21:32):
If you are in HR we have experts inpeople who stand up, uh, you know, HRIS
systems, or put in your, structured raisematrixes or build career ladders for you.
All this stuff, and then obviouslyon the finance end controllers,
CFOs, things like this.
And so, for us to do that,it drives everything.
And so why I give that example of if Ineed to free small business CEOs from
day-today operations, that means thatwe need to have the process and team to
(21:57):
help them do so, and it makes it veryclear then when I'm posting new roles
or when I'm talking to my team, internalmeetings or when we're making content
for our marketing if it's not in supportof that, it's just a filter, right?
Like it will, we'll throw it out ifit's not supporting that directly.
And I think that there's anopportunity for a lot of CEOs to
get very clear on what their missionis and also what their vision is.
(22:17):
And to lift up your earlier point,if you can't do it in one sentence,
you probably just haven't done thework to distill it down enough.
And so I, I agree, like coming into aplace where they know their mission, they
know their vision, they know their corevalues, they know where they're going.
They have goals, there's numbers,they're measuring it on some sort of
dashboard or scorecard every week.
That's how you know that company'sreally dialed in and that CEO is laser
(22:39):
focused on where they need to go.
Dr John Dentico (22:41):
I agree.
I agree a hundred percent.
I mean, and there's somuch confusion today.
You know, I, I'm sure you've walkedinto organizations where the, they have
a mission statement, but it's hangingon the wall and they never use it.
They, they don't breatheit, they don't live it.
They don't, in a sense do it every day.
And, and all that does isdefeat the purpose, as you said.
Defeat the purpose of clarity forthe people and for the organization.
(23:04):
And I'm sure the people who work with youon your team know what you're all about.
This is who we are.
This is what we do, andthis is where we're going.
And that's, that's justabsolutely commendable.
So thank you for that.
I appreciate that very much.
You've advised founders at aworld leading tech incubator.
What patterns do you see among earlystage or growth stage CEOs that hold
(23:29):
them back from scaling with confidence?
Let me ask you that question.
Corey Peck (23:33):
Yeah, and this is, I'm definitely painting this a
broad brush, but I think a themeI would say that emerges, with
very early stage tech founders,especially in like startup, is that.
'cause a lot of 'em aretechnical founders, right?
And a lot of them have a product ledgrowth strategy that they're intending
on putting out when they go to market.
And, uh, a challenge that I see often isthat, they, one, they don't test enough.
(23:57):
So they're not getting it in thehands of enough potential users.
They're not out in the real world, evenif it's not built, like just pitching
it like, Hey, if I were to build thistool, would that be of use to you?
Like just trying to get feedback.
So a lot of what I see it's veryinward looking and so, you know,
the, the saying that goes around isyou can spend 10 years building the
(24:17):
perfect product that no one wants.
And that's what I try to helppeople avoid in those situations.
Like you do need to getthat market feedback.
You do have to test and learn.
One of the advantages of being a startupis that you're super small and you can
change direction, on a dime, right?
And so I think spending way toomuch time, developing without
any real world feedback, uh, issomething that can hold people back.
(24:38):
I think the other thing I've seen, andthis is more in my direct experience,
but like sales is so important, inany business, and I've seen founders
have these opportunities that arecoming to them, whether it's because,
they're in these big incubators or justbecause of, uh, where they're networked.
But they will turn down the opportunitiesbecause they don't think they're ready.
(25:00):
And I think that's somethingthat I've seen hold people back.
Like I've even brought opportunitiesto people where I say, I meet them,
I say, Hey, actually I have a clientthat absolutely needs this right now.
And they have money and, andbecause they're so small, a lot of
times, like the annual recurringrevenue of these startups.
Like if I bring them one job froma client that like 10 x is their
revenue right away, because these areenterprise clients or larger clients
(25:23):
and they'll just turn it down 'causethey just are like, ah, I think I just
don't wanna do more product updates.
Or I want, and I'm trying toexplain like, th they're already
gonna get value from what you have.
Take the opportunity and then growit from there and I've had time and
time again, uh, people just shutthat down and then some of them,
they don't exist the next year.
They just, the whole company wentunder due to lack of cash flow.
And so I, I think it's one of thosethings that you don't wanna, of course
(25:45):
agree to, something you can't deliver on.
That's not what I'm saying.
But you have to be able tostart getting out there and
trying to provide real value.
There's a great salestrainer, Jack Dailey.
Who always talks about perceivedvalue versus actual value.
And he's saying before you've boughtsomething from anyone, all you
can do is buy off perceived value.
And so that's gonna be, you know,their brand, their reputation,
(26:05):
what you know about 'em.
Testimonials, uh, but once.
You start working with them, it's nowreal value from that point onward forever.
And I, that's a scary jump I thinkfor a lot of early stage founders.
'cause they have a lot of hypeand there's a lot of excitement.
They're in these like really safe,incubator supportive environments.
But once you go out and someone's gonnagive you a large check to perform a
(26:25):
service or user product, I like that's,I've seen that unnerve people at times.
Because it is, you're vulnerable,you're putting yourself out there.
And that's where stuff can also go wrong.
So, those are the two things I see in thevery early stage that hold people back.
Dr John Dentico (26:41):
Yeah, I, I am absolutely a great believer in rapid prototyping.
In other words, minimize your risk,minimize uh, the things that you feel
are going to, hurt you in a sense.
But you have to be able to developand test, develop something.
Test it with the notion that inrapid prototyping, you are not
(27:01):
gonna get it perfect the first time.
You're not gonna get it right, but youkeep iterate, iterative process, keep
moving forward, changing things movingalong, and different things like that.
And in the end, youwill develop you faster.
You'll get to market faster with aproduct or a service that matters and
(27:22):
you'll learn so much along the way.
And so I'm a great believer thatthe future holds or the future will
be owned, let me put it that way,by people who are not afraid to do
rapid prototyping pilot programs.
You could use that terminology as well.
Try something.
Try it.
Okay, sure.
It may not work, but you're gonnalearn so much from it and be able
(27:43):
to really develop your products andservices at a much faster rate rather
than, as you say, trying to get itperfect, uh, working on it for 10 years.
There's a, there's a, uh, anaccounting term they use the cost
of perfect information, right?
The cost of perfect information.
You want perfect information,but by the time you get it
(28:05):
everything's been overcome by events.
So in the end you, you windup losing in the long term.
Corey Peck (28:12):
Is the enemy of great, or whatever that
Dr John Dentico (28:14):
that's right.
Yeah.
Perfect enemy of good enough, Ithink it is or something like that.
Yeah.
So, yeah, and you just gotta tryand jump in and don't be afraid.
You'll learn a lot and people,I, I. Corey, I, I just have his
feeling sometimes that peopleare afraid to make a mistake.
They're just feel asthough there'll be there.
(28:34):
There's some vulnerability therethat they feel deep down inside
that if I make a mistake, what isthe world gonna think about me?
That kind of a thing.
The answer is no.
Forget about what theworld thinks about you.
Care about what you think aboutand, and try to move you and
your organization forward.
So I really appreciate that comment.
You talk about chaos beinga choice of business.
(28:56):
There's a, that's a powerful idea.
How can leaders start replacingdaily firefighting with
calm structured operations?
We may be a little bit redundanthere, but I think I wanna peel
that onion back a little bit,maybe from a different perspective.
Go ahead.
Corey Peck (29:15):
Yeah, for sure.
So I, uh, a phrase I useoften is you wanna move from
firefighting to fire prevention.
And how you are doing that inthe world of business operations
is just creating that clarity.
I. Across all parts of the business.
So again, vision goals, key results,what you're tracking every week.
Like that has to be documented.
(29:36):
You have to meet on it more importantly.
And you have to bedoing that consistently.
The what the roles are and who does what.
The better you can onboard a team memberwith that is, is gonna reduce that chaos.
I actually have in our businessfull, like they're like 72 page long.
Like full 90 day onboarding plansfor every single role, and it
(29:57):
tells them why this role exists.
How it supports our mission and vision,how it supports me in the CEO role.
And then I have basically like a 90 daybootcamp where I said, week one, these
are all the things you're gonna learn.
Here's all the links to where that is.
Here's all the videotraining I've already done.
Here are the tasks you're going to do.
Week two, you're gonna dothis, and so forth and so on.
And it's so specific.
And there's also, so theseinterdepartmental connections between
(30:21):
it, where on week three they meetthis role and they work on that.
And so it, it just makes it veryclear, like what they're supposed to
do, why that role even is here, whatthey're accountable for, what their
numbers are and that alone helpsreduce the chaos because they know
what to do and then it's more just,is that the right person for the role?
And that's, that's a differentassessment, but at least they
know what they need to do.
(30:41):
I find a lot of times when the chaoscomes in, it's 'cause people are
filling in the blanks and there'sthat saying, nature abhors a vacuum.
And when you have an absence ofinformation and clarity and instructions.
People just start filling it in withtheir own ideas and then that's where
that missed expectations comes from.
That's where, , you getinconsistent results.
(31:03):
And really, when we use that opstransformation system, it's designed
to just provide clarity all acrossthe business, not just at the high
level, at the leadership level,but down into the day-to-day.
And it, it's a massive lift.
Like you're not gonna do awholesale, change management
across the business in one shot.
But by starting to get a little morestructured and being a little more
(31:24):
purposeful about how you set goals andhow you work with your team and making
sure that your day to day reflects thatthat alone reduces a lot of the chaos.
The key with reducing chaos is it youhave to be committed to it as a CEO.
I think a lot of people say,I wish things just, these are
things I hear all the time.
Like, I wish things just worked.
Why doesn't anyone do what I say?
(31:45):
Why is my, , my revenue's growing, butmy profit's shrinking all, I hear all
these soundbites when I'm meeting peoplefor the first time, and what I find is
that the ones who are able to commit.
Two, because it's gonna take, like,change takes like 18 months usually to
do like a massive change in a business.
So if you're able to commit and beconsistent and know there's gonna
be downs before there's ups that'swhere I see people have success.
(32:06):
I think those who just say it,it's more of like a wish, but
they don't wanna follow the plan.
Those are the ones who will likelycontinue to forever struggle.
'cause it, it is hard.
Like it's, if it was easy, every businesswould be running completely smoothly.
Dr John Dentico (32:22):
Yeah.
And I think, um, many times I thinkorganizations, people figure it's, it's
gonna be just, uh, one day it's thisway, and the next day it's another way.
It's not that way at all.
What happens is you gain certainpercentages of efficiency and
effectiveness as you go down theroad, and then hopefully people will
(32:43):
see that and they become believers.
So you can, you can build acritical mass and then eventually
when you get that critical massto a point it's falls downhill.
And it goes downhill and peopleare on board and everything's
starting to work and get better.
It's not perfect yet.
You'll never reach perfection perso to speak, but at least people
(33:04):
become real believers , in thesystemic change that's happening.
So I, I agree with you.
I, I think you, you institute the change.
I. You get down the road on thechange, you said 18 months, maybe
you get down 4, 5, 6 months.
And people are starting to realize thingsare changing and it's getting better.
And then people believe.
And once you got people to believeand they say, yeah, this is a
(33:25):
lot better than it used to be.
Uh, I think that becomes a, in a sense,it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That, that people just begin to say, Hey,yeah, this is the road we need to go down.
So, yeah, I absolutely agree.
Corey Peck (33:38):
As a CEO,
Dr John Dentico (33:40):
go ahead.
Corey Peck (33:41):
Yeah, , as a CEO, you have to think of change as
a journey, not a destination.
Like it's never going to be donebecause once you change one area of
the business, you've likely grown.
Now there's something else that hasbroken you need to address that, or
something else that's now not good enough.
You need the next level.
So very dangerous when people thinkthat they're going to complete the task
and then everything will just work.
(34:01):
Like all it's gonna do is open upanother challenge, but it's also
another opportunity for them to grow.
There's a great, , there's a greatpiece of, uh, information out
there called the change curve.
If people Google it, you'll seethere's a typical journey that a
company will go through in change.
And the same is true forthe people in it, right?
You have that initial, you know,a jumping in, initial optimism.
Then you have that slide where everythingsucks, and then you have the, rock bottom
(34:25):
and along this time, that's when everyonestarts quitting and leaving if they're
going to, it usually happens there, andthen you start getting little micro wins.
But as a leader, you haveto be able to look for them.
I think that's what's hard.
Like sometimes they're there,but you're not paying attention.
And so it's very important to, onceeverything's become bad, 'cause the
change is hard find those micro wins andjust like, almost over celebrate them.
Like in your town halls, inyour weekly meetings with your
(34:46):
team, say, Hey, we just got.
We just, so I'll give you an example.
People who do any kind of, cold emailmarketing or they're doing more outbound
when maybe they used to rely on inboundit's one of those things where just
setting that up is a massive change.
Putting in the systems process as aCRM, all, all the things to manage
that is also a massive change.
Changing the attitude towards sales isa massive change, but when you start
(35:09):
getting your first positive replies wheresomeone replies to an email outreach you
said and says, Hey, yeah, I'm interested.
Could you send more info?
On one hand, you might saylike, that's not even a sale.
That's nothing like, whyare you celebrating that?
And that's where, that's the mistake.
And yes, that is true.
The better way to do it is to starthigh fiving everyone that was involved
(35:29):
to say, Hey, we went from having noproactive outreach to now we have someone
saying they're interested on somethingthat we did and it didn't come to us.
High fives all around.
And then you want to go, small positivereplies to more positive replies,
then turn those into meetings, turnthose into sales, or downloads or
whatever your business does.
But that's the key.
So you have to be that cheerleadersometimes in that CEO seat.
(35:52):
Because change is hard and it'salready hard enough, and they
don't need you as a CEO makingpeople feel more stressed about it.
That's gonna work against you.
Dr John Dentico (36:01):
Yeah.
Little victories matter.
Little victories matter a lot.
It's all about raisingthe belief, you know?
And you gotta believe, peoplegotta say, you know, we.
This is the choice we made, andif we don't believe, we'll just
go back to where we were beforeand that's not where we wanna be.
So, I absolutely agree.
I'm gonna ask you my, we're getting closeto the end here, so I'm gonna ask you my
last question, which is, um, I've askedpeople all over the world, if you a magic
(36:24):
wand and you could wave it at anythingthat you see in the world of, in the work
world in which you deal with, what wouldthat issue be and why did you choose that?
Corey Peck (36:34):
Yeah, for sure.
I, I think something that I wishcould go away with a magic wand is
the lack of psychological safety thatexists in a lot of organizations.
Again, we help lots of businessesand we help businesses that are, just
idea, pre-revenue startups all the wayto, multi tens of millions getting
close to a hundred million in revenue.
(36:56):
And the ones who succeed regardless of thesize their CEO and their leadership team.
Are, very good leaders.
They're very good managers, which is alsolike almost more important, I would argue.
But they create an environment whereit's clear where they're trying to go.
So you think of it like a coach,like the, any kind of sport like you,
(37:16):
score more goals in the other team.
You want to win the games, win theplayoffs, win the championship, right?
Business is very similar.
And so if you've created that end goal.
And you know that people are gonnahave, a bad shift or a, bad period, bad
quarter whatever sport you're playing.
It's the ones who are able to reinforcewhat the expectation is, help the team
(37:38):
member believe in themselves and, sendthem back out there to achieve it.
And I, I find the ones that do thatovercome the external challenges
a lot quicker and they eliminatethose internal challenges.
On the flip side.
There's sometimes where we walk into abusiness where like objectively, we're
changing so much in the business for thebetter and things are measurably much
(37:59):
more efficient, they're much more clear.
But there's still at the top aculture where it's very fear-based.
It's very, you know, like blamecentric I heard was a term once, and
that's something I wish went awaybecause change business is hard.
Change is hard.
You don't need then a leader, whetherit's like a mid-level leader or at the top
(38:19):
just creating that environment for people.
'cause that's.
That's just where you start to spin.
And then people go into, they'retrying to, cover for each other.
You start hiding key information,things that are going wrong, stop
getting surfaced up so that you couldactually address 'em and solve them.
And so you get a lot ofsurprises all the time.
And, , these are things I see.
So my magic wand would be,uh, eliminate those behaviors
(38:42):
from all the organizations.
I think, uh, it would just bea better place to work overall.
Dr John Dentico (38:47):
I absolutely agree.
I think that is so absolutelyright on the money.
I mean, I, I talk about the leadershipmodel I started developing 30 years ago
that has one premise, and the premiseis the foundation is contribution.
I. We have an issue, we have a problem.
Has anybody got any ideas?
Anybody wanna help?
(39:07):
And the key element, one of the keyelements is a number of different.
Elements to it, but one ofthe key elements is safety.
People have got to feel safe thatthey can say whatever's on their
mind, whatever they feel, whateverthey think, because if you don't,
you'll never reach full collaboration.
You'll never bring them intoa collaborative spirit, a
(39:28):
collaborative organization.
If every time they say something they'reafraid somebody's gonna, , knock 'em
or put them down or anything like that.
I could go on for hours abouttalking about the fear-based
system we know as bureaucracy.
'cause that's what it was founded on Fear.
It was founded on fear, uh,by sociologist Max Weber in
the, in the early 19 hundreds.
(39:49):
And yet we're stilldealing with that today.
And now what we're trying todo is shift this fear-based
system to a trust-based system.
And because trust to me is thereal, the fuel that runs the
engine of every organization.
So it's a very, very difficult thingto do because you're, there's this.
(40:10):
Tension all the time between,Hey, we wanna trust people,
we wanna be collaborative.
And then you've got people, as yousay, who are the naysayers, who are
operating from a fear mentality.
And I think it's just so, it'sa, it's just, as you say, it's
very hard, it's very difficult.
And you've gotta have open-mindedpeople at the top who say, listen,
(40:32):
we've gotta put away this fear ideaand really work on a basis of trust.
I'll give you the final words on that.
Corey Peck (40:38):
Yeah, for sure.
So when you talk about trust,you know, trust is earned, right?
It's not a given.
And one of the ways to earntrust is a great thing.
My business coach used to say to me allthe time, which was, as leaders, we get
the behaviors we exhibit and tolerate.
And so as a CEO, you need toreally think of what behaviors
maybe are you not exhibiting thatyou could be exhibiting more of?
(40:59):
And what are the things that you'retolerating that you shouldn't be?
And the key to building that trust, Ifeel, is how you actually address these.
So you don't want to exhibit theright behaviors in a boastful
way or a why can't you do that?
I can do this.
I think that's the wrong way to do it.
Same with tolerating.
If someone's doing something wrong,you want to in the moment, again,
(41:21):
provide the correction to thebehavior and, and be soft on the
people, hard on the problem, right?
So this is what's happening.
I know you can do better.
I believe in you.
This is where we have to go.
What questions do you haveso we can make that happen.
So they need to get thefeedback as an employee.
But you just wanna do itin a very constructive way.
And so if you can exhibit behavior aswell and lead by example, and you can not
(41:44):
the bad ones, but do it in a respectful,constructive way, and do it in the moment.
Don't let it fester like you see it.
Say something right there.
what's going to help you movefar ahead as a, as a leader, much
further than you would've otherwise.
Dr John Dentico (41:57):
I agree.
Wonderful.
Listen, Corey, thank you sovery much today here on the
Throttle Up Leadership Podcast.
I really appreciate it.
You've done a great job and I thinkyou've brought forward things that
people really need to consider and,the institution of systems to help
organizations move along the path.
I appreciate your time today.
I wish you all the success in the future.
(42:18):
Thank you so very much.
Corey Peck (42:19):
Thank you, John.
Thanks for inviting me.
Appreciate it.
Welcome to the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast.
Our theme for 2025 is The Futureof Work: Meaning is the New Money!
In a world shaped by rapid innovation andconstant change the pursuit of purpose
and impact has never been more important.
I'm Dr John Dentico your host,bringing over 30 years of experience
(00:28):
in leadership, strategic thinkingand purpose-driven innovation.
Here we tackle the pressing challengesof our time-from the rise of
artificial intelligence to the growingneed for meaning in the workplace.
Together we'll uncover how leaderscan ethically integrate AI to enhance
decision-making and keep humanityat the heart of their organizations.
(00:51):
Remember amidst all thetechnological advancements in the
end, it's always about the people.
This podcast is your resource foractionable tools, thought provoking
discussions and inspiring stories.
It's time to go beyond leadershipdevelopment and focus on leadership
(01:11):
impact-creating workplaces where peoplethrive, innovation flourishes and
meaning truly becomes the new currency.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Now, let's Throttle Up anddive into today's episode.
Hello and welcome to theThrottle Up Leadership Podcast.
I am your host, Dr John Denticowith me today is Corey Peck.
(01:36):
a multi award-winning entrepreneur,operational strategist and fractional
executive who has built and ledteams from two to over 7,200 people.
As a former agency owner and globalCOO Cory understands the chaos and
complexity of scaling a business,and more importantly, how to fix it.
(01:57):
Today he is the founder of Fractional Ops.
Cory helps CEOs of B2B small businesses,increased profit in 90 days through
his ops transformation system, aproven framework designed to eliminate
operational chaos and replace it withclear structured drama free systems.
(02:18):
A top operational excellence voiceon LinkedIn Corey serves as a trusted
advisor to hundreds of founders ata world leading tech incubator where
he shares tactical tools that drivereliable growth across sales, marketing,
finance, and people operations.
Corey's mission is simple,free small business CEOs from
(02:39):
day-to-day grind so they can scalesustainably and lead with clarity.
Having experienced the stress,unpredictability, and burnout of
being a hands-on founder, he nowempowers others to build businesses.
That are resilient, profitable, and calmwithout sacrificing ambition or growth.
(03:01):
Whether he's speaking about scaling smart,systematizing success, or turning chaos
into control, Corey delivers practicalinsights that help leaders transform their
operations and their lives, I'm trulygrateful for him to be here this morning.
Good morning, Corey, how are you?
Corey Peck (03:19):
I am.
Great, John.
Thanks for having me.
that was a fantastic intro.
Dr John Dentico (03:22):
Corey, tell me a bit about yourself.
Where did you grow up and whatin your mind were some of the
fundamental influences in your life?
Corey Peck (03:31):
I grew up just outside of Toronto, Canada, in a small suburb.
I always tell the storywhen I'm doing speaking.
I was always very entrepreneurial asa kid, when most people were going
out and, just playing with theirfriends or going on bike rides.
I would be coming up with waysto, make these old businesses.
And my two favorite stories I alwaystell is, I once enlisted all the
(03:52):
neighbors on the street to go findrocks in people's gardens and parks.
Then we made a rock museum in mybackyard where we would charge
parents' admission to come in.
I had another one where there wasa, nicer end of town where all the
children were a bit more well offand they had all the better toys.
And so I went door to door and cut a dealto bring all their really good toys over
(04:14):
to my house, I would give them a cut ofthe, funds that I would charge all the
other kids on our street to play withthese toys that none of us could afford.
So ideas like this.
I've always been, doing things like thisand, having, businesses along the way with
this company now, it's great to be workingwith so many founders on these, new
ideas that I get to help bring to life.
Dr John Dentico (04:34):
That's great.
What a great story.
I've had the, pleasure of interviewinga number of people who have had similar
kinds of upbringings that brought themto this particular point in their lives.
So let me ask you this, you've grown teamsfrom a handful of people to over 7,000.
What's the biggest mindset shift a CEOneeds to make as their company scales?
Corey Peck (04:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
what I talk about often with foundersis, making sure that you're putting
in the systems and processes and,workflow automation and trying to
leverage artificial intelligence tooperationalize the seven key areas
that you need to in your business.
The first being customer and value,and so that's where everything starts.
You need to know really clearlywho is your customer and what
(05:20):
value you provide to them.
The next area that you operationalizeis what I refer to as strategy
and planning, and that couldbe your go to market strategy.
That could be pricingstrategy, overall positioning.
The next is your product and service.
So coming up with ways to operationalizethat, to making sure you're creating the
right product and service in the rightway for those customers to get the value
that you know you're going to from them.
(05:41):
The next is people and culture.
You need a team to bring this to life,and there's all sorts of HR operations.
That's everything from your talentacquisition process to, nurturing and
improving and upskilling your team alsomaking sure that people have upward
mobility, within the company, donein a structured and equitable way.
So that's another area.
The three others are yourmarketing and sales, which a
(06:02):
lot of people are familiar with.
Your operations and delivery.
And so that's gonna be your coreservice or product that people
are actually paying you for.
And then finally, finance and insights.
This is the other area in addition topeople in culture and marketing and sales.
The finance and insights is what we getthe most questions about, and it's really
about tying in the financials that existthrough that lifecycle, from prospecting
(06:25):
and finding leads making those sales andturning them into customers through your
delivery of that, whether it's a productor service, making sure you're doing it
profitably in a way that cash flows well.
What are the areas youshould double down on?
What should you maybe be cutting back on?
And ideally, you're connectingall these systems together so that
you're getting as close to real timedata as you need so that you can
(06:45):
make informed decisions as a CEO.
Dr John Dentico (06:48):
Yeah, it's interesting.
I think a lot, I'm a very process,practices, systems oriented person.
in fact, leadership to me is a process.
It's not so much about the inherenttraits that an individual has To me,
it's much more about following a process.
Anybody can be a leader if they understandthe practices in my perspective.
(07:10):
I want to ask you this.
In light of you're mentioningAI, which is revolutionary.
it's changing everything.
What would you say right now are theprinciples by which you would advise
an organization to hire people?
What should organizations, be looking forwhen hiring people in the world of today?
Corey Peck (07:31):
When you think of what AI is able to do very well, it's
able to complete tasks quickly.
A lot of what we're seeing the usecases are right now are any kind of, you
know, writing or creation of somethingbased on an input you're giving it.
When I am looking at buildingteams, either for myself or when I'm
working with clients I tell 'em tothink of it almost as a hybrid team.
(07:51):
So you have a hybrid human and AI teamand something you're going to start seeing
now if you have an already somethingcalled AI agents where these are now,
basically little bots that can fullyperform functions like a teammate would.
instead of giving a very specificprompt and it then outputs what
you've asked, you can now give ittasks or objectives and it can start
(08:14):
doing more of those types of outputs.
And so when you're buildingthe team of humans, you really
have to lean toward creativity.
You need to have people that have theideas and can do creative problem solving.
You need to have people that are,like in software you would call these
like solution architects, hearing abusiness problem and then coming up
with how to achieve that opportunityand overcome that challenge through
(08:37):
some sort of software or AI tool.
And so that's a skillset thatis already important, but it's
gonna become even more important.
And when you think of a hybrid AI humanteam, you really need to make sure
you're hiring people who can have theideas and give very clear instructions.
Whether it's to another human orto AI, and you also need to make
sure people can do that qualityassurance, quality control, because
(08:57):
AI is getting more powerful everyday, but it does still make mistakes.
We need to make sure that what we'regetting back, you have someone who
has the skillset and the know-how tocorrect the mistakes, and then tweak
those instructions for the next roundso that if it was 90% accurate, the next
time's gonna be 91% accurate, and so on.
Dr John Dentico (09:14):
Is there anything else?
in terms of the folks themselves,what do you look for in the
people besides the skillset?
Is there something more than justa skillset is important to make
sure there's a connection betweenthe organization and the person?
Corey Peck (09:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think in this day and age what'sgoing on in the world economy
and these new technologies there'sthis constant state of change.
When you work with small businesses,growing businesses, especially
startups there, that's already avery chaotic environment and there's
a lot of change happening anyways.
You really need to make sure people havethe resiliency to be able to be like
(09:50):
almost pivoting on a daily basis, not tooveruse that word, but it is changing.
When you look at what technology cando, you need people to be open-minded
to use AI in different use cases.
I think what I look to our clientsthat we support, the ones who are
getting further ahead are the CEOs whoare extremely open-minded, what this
technology could do, even though they'rein legacy businesses in many cases,
(10:14):
and the team members who are puttingup their hand, even though they're not
experts at it, but they're saying, Iam looking to add this as a skillset.
I'm looking to explore how this can makemy job easier so that the human roles
can focus on their high payoff activitiesinstead of the more administrative
or, hands on keyboard activities.
And I think that mindset, thatgrowth mindset is something that's
(10:35):
very important for any new hire.
Dr John Dentico (10:37):
Yeah.
I think, one of the things I've beentalking about lately is, hire for values.
There needs to be a connection betweenthat person and the organization in
terms of basic value systems becauseespecially in the world today.
Even though I've seen some articlestalking about people needing to stay in an
organization longer, you may get a personfor five years and then they'll move on.
(11:00):
Not because they dislike you,just because they figure it's time
for a change or time to move on.
So I think it's important that,values are a connecting point.
Let me ask you this question.
You created the ops transformationsystem to help CEOs eliminate
chaos and increase profits.
Can you walk us through what makesthis system different and why it
(11:20):
works so well for small businesses?
Corey Peck (11:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think the magic in this system ishow it subdivides down to what is most
important for the CEO at any given time.
Every business is different.
Every business has different levelsof operational maturity within
those seven areas that I talked to.
We call those seven areas the sevenops accelerators, and within those
seven ops accelerators you havethree levels of operational maturity.
(11:46):
You may not actually be startedyet, so you might have no level,
but assuming you get to the firstone, we call that framework.
These are the guidelines,the behavioral norms.
It might be sheets, templates, justbasic instructions so people can
know when this type of task comesin on any one of those seven areas.
They at least have, away to approach that.
when you take it from a frameworkto the next stage of operational
(12:08):
maturity, we call that flow.
And flow is when processes start going in.
And when you think of a process, it'sa group of tasks that are done in
sequence to get you to a desired outcome.
And that's very important tomap what the steps are in order,
but also who does what steps.
if you've ever seen, a swim lane diagram,you have, all the roles in different rows,
and you have the task moving between.
(12:30):
The different people from start to finish.
that's key to make sure you can dothings consistently, that you can
understand where the process isbreaking down, where it can be improved.
And then finally we move to fusion, thehighest level of operational maturity.
This is when you're taking that processthat you made in the flow stage, and now
you're putting in workflow automation.
Now you're putting in AI and you'realso connecting the different
(12:53):
seven ops accelerators together.
So this is where you may have an automatedway of collecting customer feedback.
That is being sent to your strategyand product team so they can update
their marketing so that they can hirethe right people in their pipeline.
And it's putting all that together.
And that's really where the powerof this comes from and where you
can create leverage as a CEO.
(13:14):
All this starts with what we callour operational maturity assessment.
I'm happy to give your listenersa copy of this as well based
on what your priorities are.
It will do an assessment of all the areasof your business based on the answers
you give, and it will then give youwhat we call our 90 day ROI action plan.
And so it's going to give you veryspecific objectives, key results, and
tasks that you and your leadershipteam should be doing to help move
(13:38):
the right areas of your business upone level of operational maturity.
It's less rigid than other systems,and something that I created
just over my years of runningbusinesses and helping other CEOs.
Dr John Dentico (13:52):
Great.
I'm glad to hear it.
Yeah, I think systems are important.
People need structure butwithin that, there has to be
a level of creativity as well.
I mean, you may see something inthe process that's doesn't work, and
somebody's gotta be able to voice thatand say, Hey, we need a change here
'cause we just can't keep going along.
Systems are important without a doubt.
(14:15):
You emphasize building a businessthat's resilient and drama free.
What operational systems orpractices have the biggest impact
on reducing stress while increasingprofitability, in your opinion?
Corey Peck (14:31):
I think there's a few that have the biggest impact
when we come into an organizationsometimes you can feel the tension.
People are unclear even onsome of the basic points of
information about the company.
part of it is making sure you havea very clear and compelling vision
for the future, that it's documented.
And there's different frameworks for this.
(14:52):
You know, people, sometimespeople use, scaling up or EOS.
But, the common thread is theteam has to know where you're
going 'cause you need a direction.
So I think that's one.
And often people just don't, it'snot even documented like they, they
think they know, but if I were towalk around the office and ask each
person, what's this company tryto achieve in the next three years?
Most time, no one either hasan answer, or if they do, they
(15:13):
definitely don't have the same answer.
So the people that can just reinforcethat consistently as CEOs are the ones
that, you can see just that alignment.
At least everyone's clear on that.
So I think that's number one.
Number two is having veryclear and defined roles.
I think where this fall down formost people is it, it shows up
like teamwork on the surface, butwhat's actually happening is, you're
(15:35):
just like reducing your leverage.
'Cause now you have multiple peopleall trying to do the same task while
other tasks aren't getting done.
And then what also happens is youdon't have that clear accountability.
And so that's where thefinger pointing happens.
if your culture isn't as good that'swhere, you see a lot of work getting
like 5% done instead of anythinggetting a hundred percent done.
And so a lot of that has to do withpeople not having clear priorities.
(15:56):
When everything's a priority,nothing's a priority.
I remember we walked into this businessonce, with the CEO and they had 168
key priorities across the business.
And it was a larger, 50million or so revenue company.
Everything was like 1% or 2% done.
so we put in, the OKR framework, calledobjectives and key results, and we helped
them clarify what is that overall themeof the objective that they have to achieve
(16:21):
as a business, and then what would haveto be true for them to achieve that.
And so that's where thekey results came in.
We were able to quantifythem set them out.
I challenged the leadershipteam to, pick three.
You get no more than three,it's very hard to take a list of
almost 200 down to, a few dozen.
But once we did that,everything started getting done.
Now you had focused effort movingforward on a few key tasks.
(16:43):
And, that's helped that businessgrow, that's helped that business
navigate what's happening in the world.
And they continue to do so.
Now that muscle's built into thebusiness and so you talk about,
accountability, the culture and reducingthe drama when they have the meetings.
And I think that's where a lotof this falls down for people.
People will set objectives.
They might set what's priorities,but they forget to meet on it.
That could be forgetting to meet in a townhall format, once a month that could be
(17:05):
forgetting to meet quarterly to plan thatcould be forgetting to meet weekly with
the departments or their direct reports.
And that's where this falls down.
I've seen a lot of people do a reallygood job documenting it, but then
they forget to actively manage it.
The ones that I see succeed will makesure those meetings are just in the
calendars repeated, same time, sameday, on these different initiatives.
(17:27):
And that consistency in of itselfcreates accountability 'cause no one
wants to show up to that meeting,without their numbers hit or without
an update in front of their peers.
Dr John Dentico (17:36):
I am a big believer in , strategic thinking and a huge
believer in an organization having a verycogent one sentence mission statement.
As the alignment, as the beginning of thealignment for people to understand this
is what this company's about, this is whatthey do, and this is where they're going.
(17:58):
And I think it's so important.
I think too often organizations crafta mission statement for everything
outside of the organization.
They wanna show the world this is,oh, this is who we are, aren't we?
Great, love us.
And, okay, that's fine.
You know, it has a lot to do.
(18:19):
Has, has an impactcertainly on brand strategy.
I get it.
But a lot, for me.
The importance of a missionstatement is really for the
people inside the organization.
What is the alignment?
Why are we here?
What are we doing?
What is our value system, if you will?
How do you expect?
In fact, I, I'll tell you, I did apresentation a couple of weeks ago and
(18:42):
I was talking about finding meaning.
That's my theme this year.
You know, the future of work,meaning is the new money.
Okay, so how does an organizationexemplify that a, a person who hires on
with them is gonna find meaning well,they have to, in their mission statement.
They have to really express their values.
(19:02):
But there's the other side of the,there's the other side of the equation
for me, and that is how does a personwho's a job seeker, or who's looking to
hire on with the company, how do theyknow that this company will give them
the opportunity to find meaning, to dosomething meaningful, to have impact.
And I told this group of people thatif you run into an organization that
(19:27):
has a mission statement that's sevenparagraphs long, move on, find.
If you have the ability to doit, find another company because
they don't know who they are.
It's just like you said, wouldyou say 116 different priorities?
No, you can't have that.
You have to be very firm and very direct.
(19:48):
Too often those companies, in my opinion,are trying to make everybody happy.
They're trying to check every box,if you will, and yet in the end they
wind up, as you said, checking noboxes, checking, no important boxes.
So I'd love to get yourreflection on that idea.
Corey Peck (20:06):
Yeah, no, I, I fully agree.
So, I mean, just to, to share ours, right?
Our, they're both one sentence.
So our mission is to free small businessCEOs from day-to-day operations.
That's what we're here to do.
That's what's in our job postings.
That's what's part ofthe interview process.
That's what is part of the onboarding.
That's what everyone here onour team needs to be able to do.
Whether you're an employee or acontractor or a supplier to us.
(20:29):
Our vision is to be the numberone business resources . Our
vision is to be the number onebusiness operations resource for
CEOs of growing small businesses.
So there's so many placesthat when people are.
Are growing , a small businessand I'm talking about under
a hundred million in revenue.
So it, could include startups, but it'sreally people that are well on their way.
There's so many challengesthat will happen as you keep
(20:50):
hitting those other layers.
And there's so many places to go andwhat we're really on a mission to do
is to free them from the operations.
We then have to be the number one.
And so across those seven areas, inthose seven ops accelerators, that's
really what we're leaning into.
And we do that by constantly improvingour own ops transformation system,
but also making sure that we're hiringthe best people in all those areas.
(21:12):
So on our team, for example, likewe have fractional COOs, which is
primarily the business that we're in.
Uh, we also have what we call ops experts.
And so these are like highly specializedpeople in all of those seven areas.
So, you know, if you're puttingin A CRM, we have a whole team
that is, are experts at that.
If you're trying to do go tomarket with AI or cold outbound
email, we have experts in that.
(21:32):
If you are in HR we have experts inpeople who stand up, uh, you know, HRIS
systems, or put in your, structured raisematrixes or build career ladders for you.
All this stuff, and then obviouslyon the finance end controllers,
CFOs, things like this.
And so, for us to do that,it drives everything.
And so why I give that example of if Ineed to free small business CEOs from
day-today operations, that means thatwe need to have the process and team to
(21:57):
help them do so, and it makes it veryclear then when I'm posting new roles
or when I'm talking to my team, internalmeetings or when we're making content
for our marketing if it's not in supportof that, it's just a filter, right?
Like it will, we'll throw it out ifit's not supporting that directly.
And I think that there's anopportunity for a lot of CEOs to
get very clear on what their missionis and also what their vision is.
(22:17):
And to lift up your earlier point,if you can't do it in one sentence,
you probably just haven't done thework to distill it down enough.
And so I, I agree, like coming into aplace where they know their mission, they
know their vision, they know their corevalues, they know where they're going.
They have goals, there's numbers,they're measuring it on some sort of
dashboard or scorecard every week.
That's how you know that company'sreally dialed in and that CEO is laser
(22:39):
focused on where they need to go.
Dr John Dentico (22:41):
I agree.
I agree a hundred percent.
I mean, and there's somuch confusion today.
You know, I, I'm sure you've walkedinto organizations where the, they have
a mission statement, but it's hangingon the wall and they never use it.
They, they don't breatheit, they don't live it.
They don't, in a sense do it every day.
And, and all that does isdefeat the purpose, as you said.
Defeat the purpose of clarity forthe people and for the organization.
(23:04):
And I'm sure the people who work with youon your team know what you're all about.
This is who we are.
This is what we do, andthis is where we're going.
And that's, that's justabsolutely commendable.
So thank you for that.
I appreciate that very much.
You've advised founders at aworld leading tech incubator.
What patterns do you see among earlystage or growth stage CEOs that hold
(23:29):
them back from scaling with confidence?
Let me ask you that question.
Corey Peck (23:33):
Yeah, and this is, I'm definitely painting this a
broad brush, but I think a themeI would say that emerges, with
very early stage tech founders,especially in like startup, is that.
'cause a lot of 'em aretechnical founders, right?
And a lot of them have a product ledgrowth strategy that they're intending
on putting out when they go to market.
And, uh, a challenge that I see often isthat, they, one, they don't test enough.
(23:57):
So they're not getting it in thehands of enough potential users.
They're not out in the real world, evenif it's not built, like just pitching
it like, Hey, if I were to build thistool, would that be of use to you?
Like just trying to get feedback.
So a lot of what I see it's veryinward looking and so, you know,
the, the saying that goes around isyou can spend 10 years building the
(24:17):
perfect product that no one wants.
And that's what I try to helppeople avoid in those situations.
Like you do need to getthat market feedback.
You do have to test and learn.
One of the advantages of being a startupis that you're super small and you can
change direction, on a dime, right?
And so I think spending way toomuch time, developing without
any real world feedback, uh, issomething that can hold people back.
(24:38):
I think the other thing I've seen, andthis is more in my direct experience,
but like sales is so important, inany business, and I've seen founders
have these opportunities that arecoming to them, whether it's because,
they're in these big incubators or justbecause of, uh, where they're networked.
But they will turn down the opportunitiesbecause they don't think they're ready.
(25:00):
And I think that's somethingthat I've seen hold people back.
Like I've even brought opportunitiesto people where I say, I meet them,
I say, Hey, actually I have a clientthat absolutely needs this right now.
And they have money and, andbecause they're so small, a lot of
times, like the annual recurringrevenue of these startups.
Like if I bring them one job froma client that like 10 x is their
revenue right away, because these areenterprise clients or larger clients
(25:23):
and they'll just turn it down 'causethey just are like, ah, I think I just
don't wanna do more product updates.
Or I want, and I'm trying toexplain like, th they're already
gonna get value from what you have.
Take the opportunity and then growit from there and I've had time and
time again, uh, people just shutthat down and then some of them,
they don't exist the next year.
They just, the whole company wentunder due to lack of cash flow.
And so I, I think it's one of thosethings that you don't wanna, of course
(25:45):
agree to, something you can't deliver on.
That's not what I'm saying.
But you have to be able tostart getting out there and
trying to provide real value.
There's a great salestrainer, Jack Dailey.
Who always talks about perceivedvalue versus actual value.
And he's saying before you've boughtsomething from anyone, all you
can do is buy off perceived value.
And so that's gonna be, you know,their brand, their reputation,
(26:05):
what you know about 'em.
Testimonials, uh, but once.
You start working with them, it's nowreal value from that point onward forever.
And I, that's a scary jump I thinkfor a lot of early stage founders.
'cause they have a lot of hypeand there's a lot of excitement.
They're in these like really safe,incubator supportive environments.
But once you go out and someone's gonnagive you a large check to perform a
(26:25):
service or user product, I like that's,I've seen that unnerve people at times.
Because it is, you're vulnerable,you're putting yourself out there.
And that's where stuff can also go wrong.
So, those are the two things I see in thevery early stage that hold people back.
Dr John Dentico (26:41):
Yeah, I, I am absolutely a great believer in rapid prototyping.
In other words, minimize your risk,minimize uh, the things that you feel
are going to, hurt you in a sense.
But you have to be able to developand test, develop something.
Test it with the notion that inrapid prototyping, you are not
(27:01):
gonna get it perfect the first time.
You're not gonna get it right, but youkeep iterate, iterative process, keep
moving forward, changing things movingalong, and different things like that.
And in the end, youwill develop you faster.
You'll get to market faster with aproduct or a service that matters and
(27:22):
you'll learn so much along the way.
And so I'm a great believer thatthe future holds or the future will
be owned, let me put it that way,by people who are not afraid to do
rapid prototyping pilot programs.
You could use that terminology as well.
Try something.
Try it.
Okay, sure.
It may not work, but you're gonnalearn so much from it and be able
(27:43):
to really develop your products andservices at a much faster rate rather
than, as you say, trying to get itperfect, uh, working on it for 10 years.
There's a, there's a, uh, anaccounting term they use the cost
of perfect information, right?
The cost of perfect information.
You want perfect information,but by the time you get it
(28:05):
everything's been overcome by events.
So in the end you, you windup losing in the long term.
Corey Peck (28:12):
Is the enemy of great, or whatever that
Dr John Dentico (28:14):
that's right.
Yeah.
Perfect enemy of good enough, Ithink it is or something like that.
Yeah.
So, yeah, and you just gotta tryand jump in and don't be afraid.
You'll learn a lot and people,I, I. Corey, I, I just have his
feeling sometimes that peopleare afraid to make a mistake.
They're just feel asthough there'll be there.
(28:34):
There's some vulnerability therethat they feel deep down inside
that if I make a mistake, what isthe world gonna think about me?
That kind of a thing.
The answer is no.
Forget about what theworld thinks about you.
Care about what you think aboutand, and try to move you and
your organization forward.
So I really appreciate that comment.
You talk about chaos beinga choice of business.
(28:56):
There's a, that's a powerful idea.
How can leaders start replacingdaily firefighting with
calm structured operations?
We may be a little bit redundanthere, but I think I wanna peel
that onion back a little bit,maybe from a different perspective.
Go ahead.
Corey Peck (29:15):
Yeah, for sure.
So I, uh, a phrase I useoften is you wanna move from
firefighting to fire prevention.
And how you are doing that inthe world of business operations
is just creating that clarity.
I. Across all parts of the business.
So again, vision goals, key results,what you're tracking every week.
Like that has to be documented.
(29:36):
You have to meet on it more importantly.
And you have to bedoing that consistently.
The what the roles are and who does what.
The better you can onboard a team memberwith that is, is gonna reduce that chaos.
I actually have in our businessfull, like they're like 72 page long.
Like full 90 day onboarding plansfor every single role, and it
(29:57):
tells them why this role exists.
How it supports our mission and vision,how it supports me in the CEO role.
And then I have basically like a 90 daybootcamp where I said, week one, these
are all the things you're gonna learn.
Here's all the links to where that is.
Here's all the videotraining I've already done.
Here are the tasks you're going to do.
Week two, you're gonna dothis, and so forth and so on.
And it's so specific.
And there's also, so theseinterdepartmental connections between
(30:21):
it, where on week three they meetthis role and they work on that.
And so it, it just makes it veryclear, like what they're supposed to
do, why that role even is here, whatthey're accountable for, what their
numbers are and that alone helpsreduce the chaos because they know
what to do and then it's more just,is that the right person for the role?
And that's, that's a differentassessment, but at least they
know what they need to do.
(30:41):
I find a lot of times when the chaoscomes in, it's 'cause people are
filling in the blanks and there'sthat saying, nature abhors a vacuum.
And when you have an absence ofinformation and clarity and instructions.
People just start filling it in withtheir own ideas and then that's where
that missed expectations comes from.
That's where, , you getinconsistent results.
(31:03):
And really, when we use that opstransformation system, it's designed
to just provide clarity all acrossthe business, not just at the high
level, at the leadership level,but down into the day-to-day.
And it, it's a massive lift.
Like you're not gonna do awholesale, change management
across the business in one shot.
But by starting to get a little morestructured and being a little more
(31:24):
purposeful about how you set goals andhow you work with your team and making
sure that your day to day reflects thatthat alone reduces a lot of the chaos.
The key with reducing chaos is it youhave to be committed to it as a CEO.
I think a lot of people say,I wish things just, these are
things I hear all the time.
Like, I wish things just worked.
Why doesn't anyone do what I say?
(31:45):
Why is my, , my revenue's growing, butmy profit's shrinking all, I hear all
these soundbites when I'm meeting peoplefor the first time, and what I find is
that the ones who are able to commit.
Two, because it's gonna take, like,change takes like 18 months usually to
do like a massive change in a business.
So if you're able to commit and beconsistent and know there's gonna
be downs before there's ups that'swhere I see people have success.
(32:06):
I think those who just say it,it's more of like a wish, but
they don't wanna follow the plan.
Those are the ones who will likelycontinue to forever struggle.
'cause it, it is hard.
Like it's, if it was easy, every businesswould be running completely smoothly.
Dr John Dentico (32:22):
Yeah.
And I think, um, many times I thinkorganizations, people figure it's, it's
gonna be just, uh, one day it's thisway, and the next day it's another way.
It's not that way at all.
What happens is you gain certainpercentages of efficiency and
effectiveness as you go down theroad, and then hopefully people will
(32:43):
see that and they become believers.
So you can, you can build acritical mass and then eventually
when you get that critical massto a point it's falls downhill.
And it goes downhill and peopleare on board and everything's
starting to work and get better.
It's not perfect yet.
You'll never reach perfection perso to speak, but at least people
(33:04):
become real believers , in thesystemic change that's happening.
So I, I agree with you.
I, I think you, you institute the change.
I. You get down the road on thechange, you said 18 months, maybe
you get down 4, 5, 6 months.
And people are starting to realize thingsare changing and it's getting better.
And then people believe.
And once you got people to believeand they say, yeah, this is a
(33:25):
lot better than it used to be.
Uh, I think that becomes a, in a sense,it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That, that people just begin to say, Hey,yeah, this is the road we need to go down.
So, yeah, I absolutely agree.
Corey Peck (33:38):
As a CEO,
Dr John Dentico (33:40):
go ahead.
Corey Peck (33:41):
Yeah, , as a CEO, you have to think of change as
a journey, not a destination.
Like it's never going to be donebecause once you change one area of
the business, you've likely grown.
Now there's something else that hasbroken you need to address that, or
something else that's now not good enough.
You need the next level.
So very dangerous when people thinkthat they're going to complete the task
and then everything will just work.
(34:01):
Like all it's gonna do is open upanother challenge, but it's also
another opportunity for them to grow.
There's a great, , there's a greatpiece of, uh, information out
there called the change curve.
If people Google it, you'll seethere's a typical journey that a
company will go through in change.
And the same is true forthe people in it, right?
You have that initial, you know,a jumping in, initial optimism.
Then you have that slide where everythingsucks, and then you have the, rock bottom
(34:25):
and along this time, that's when everyonestarts quitting and leaving if they're
going to, it usually happens there, andthen you start getting little micro wins.
But as a leader, you haveto be able to look for them.
I think that's what's hard.
Like sometimes they're there,but you're not paying attention.
And so it's very important to, onceeverything's become bad, 'cause the
change is hard find those micro wins andjust like, almost over celebrate them.
Like in your town halls, inyour weekly meetings with your
(34:46):
team, say, Hey, we just got.
We just, so I'll give you an example.
People who do any kind of, cold emailmarketing or they're doing more outbound
when maybe they used to rely on inboundit's one of those things where just
setting that up is a massive change.
Putting in the systems process as aCRM, all, all the things to manage
that is also a massive change.
Changing the attitude towards sales isa massive change, but when you start
(35:09):
getting your first positive replies wheresomeone replies to an email outreach you
said and says, Hey, yeah, I'm interested.
Could you send more info?
On one hand, you might saylike, that's not even a sale.
That's nothing like, whyare you celebrating that?
And that's where, that's the mistake.
And yes, that is true.
The better way to do it is to starthigh fiving everyone that was involved
(35:29):
to say, Hey, we went from having noproactive outreach to now we have someone
saying they're interested on somethingthat we did and it didn't come to us.
High fives all around.
And then you want to go, small positivereplies to more positive replies,
then turn those into meetings, turnthose into sales, or downloads or
whatever your business does.
But that's the key.
So you have to be that cheerleadersometimes in that CEO seat.
(35:52):
Because change is hard and it'salready hard enough, and they
don't need you as a CEO makingpeople feel more stressed about it.
That's gonna work against you.
Dr John Dentico (36:01):
Yeah.
Little victories matter.
Little victories matter a lot.
It's all about raisingthe belief, you know?
And you gotta believe, peoplegotta say, you know, we.
This is the choice we made, andif we don't believe, we'll just
go back to where we were beforeand that's not where we wanna be.
So, I absolutely agree.
I'm gonna ask you my, we're getting closeto the end here, so I'm gonna ask you my
last question, which is, um, I've askedpeople all over the world, if you a magic
(36:24):
wand and you could wave it at anythingthat you see in the world of, in the work
world in which you deal with, what wouldthat issue be and why did you choose that?
Corey Peck (36:34):
Yeah, for sure.
I, I think something that I wishcould go away with a magic wand is
the lack of psychological safety thatexists in a lot of organizations.
Again, we help lots of businessesand we help businesses that are, just
idea, pre-revenue startups all the wayto, multi tens of millions getting
close to a hundred million in revenue.
(36:56):
And the ones who succeed regardless of thesize their CEO and their leadership team.
Are, very good leaders.
They're very good managers, which is alsolike almost more important, I would argue.
But they create an environment whereit's clear where they're trying to go.
So you think of it like a coach,like the, any kind of sport like you,
(37:16):
score more goals in the other team.
You want to win the games, win theplayoffs, win the championship, right?
Business is very similar.
And so if you've created that end goal.
And you know that people are gonnahave, a bad shift or a, bad period, bad
quarter whatever sport you're playing.
It's the ones who are able to reinforcewhat the expectation is, help the team
(37:38):
member believe in themselves and, sendthem back out there to achieve it.
And I, I find the ones that do thatovercome the external challenges
a lot quicker and they eliminatethose internal challenges.
On the flip side.
There's sometimes where we walk into abusiness where like objectively, we're
changing so much in the business for thebetter and things are measurably much
(37:59):
more efficient, they're much more clear.
But there's still at the top aculture where it's very fear-based.
It's very, you know, like blamecentric I heard was a term once, and
that's something I wish went awaybecause change business is hard.
Change is hard.
You don't need then a leader, whetherit's like a mid-level leader or at the top
(38:19):
just creating that environment for people.
'cause that's.
That's just where you start to spin.
And then people go into, they'retrying to, cover for each other.
You start hiding key information,things that are going wrong, stop
getting surfaced up so that you couldactually address 'em and solve them.
And so you get a lot ofsurprises all the time.
And, , these are things I see.
So my magic wand would be,uh, eliminate those behaviors
(38:42):
from all the organizations.
I think, uh, it would just bea better place to work overall.
Dr John Dentico (38:47):
I absolutely agree.
I think that is so absolutelyright on the money.
I mean, I, I talk about the leadershipmodel I started developing 30 years ago
that has one premise, and the premiseis the foundation is contribution.
I. We have an issue, we have a problem.
Has anybody got any ideas?
Anybody wanna help?
(39:07):
And the key element, one of the keyelements is a number of different.
Elements to it, but one ofthe key elements is safety.
People have got to feel safe thatthey can say whatever's on their
mind, whatever they feel, whateverthey think, because if you don't,
you'll never reach full collaboration.
You'll never bring them intoa collaborative spirit, a
(39:28):
collaborative organization.
If every time they say something they'reafraid somebody's gonna, , knock 'em
or put them down or anything like that.
I could go on for hours abouttalking about the fear-based
system we know as bureaucracy.
'cause that's what it was founded on Fear.
It was founded on fear, uh,by sociologist Max Weber in
the, in the early 19 hundreds.
(39:49):
And yet we're stilldealing with that today.
And now what we're trying todo is shift this fear-based
system to a trust-based system.
And because trust to me is thereal, the fuel that runs the
engine of every organization.
So it's a very, very difficult thingto do because you're, there's this.
(40:10):
Tension all the time between,Hey, we wanna trust people,
we wanna be collaborative.
And then you've got people, as yousay, who are the naysayers, who are
operating from a fear mentality.
And I think it's just so, it'sa, it's just, as you say, it's
very hard, it's very difficult.
And you've gotta have open-mindedpeople at the top who say, listen,
(40:32):
we've gotta put away this fear ideaand really work on a basis of trust.
I'll give you the final words on that.
Corey Peck (40:38):
Yeah, for sure.
So when you talk about trust,you know, trust is earned, right?
It's not a given.
And one of the ways to earntrust is a great thing.
My business coach used to say to me allthe time, which was, as leaders, we get
the behaviors we exhibit and tolerate.
And so as a CEO, you need toreally think of what behaviors
maybe are you not exhibiting thatyou could be exhibiting more of?
(40:59):
And what are the things that you'retolerating that you shouldn't be?
And the key to building that trust, Ifeel, is how you actually address these.
So you don't want to exhibit theright behaviors in a boastful
way or a why can't you do that?
I can do this.
I think that's the wrong way to do it.
Same with tolerating.
If someone's doing something wrong,you want to in the moment, again,
(41:21):
provide the correction to thebehavior and, and be soft on the
people, hard on the problem, right?
So this is what's happening.
I know you can do better.
I believe in you.
This is where we have to go.
What questions do you haveso we can make that happen.
So they need to get thefeedback as an employee.
But you just wanna do itin a very constructive way.
And so if you can exhibit behavior aswell and lead by example, and you can not
(41:44):
the bad ones, but do it in a respectful,constructive way, and do it in the moment.
Don't let it fester like you see it.
Say something right there.
what's going to help you movefar ahead as a, as a leader, much
further than you would've otherwise.
Dr John Dentico (41:57):
I agree.
Wonderful.
Listen, Corey, thank you sovery much today here on the
Throttle Up Leadership Podcast.
I really appreciate it.
You've done a great job and I thinkyou've brought forward things that
people really need to consider and,the institution of systems to help
organizations move along the path.
I appreciate your time today.
I wish you all the success in the future.
(42:18):
Thank you so very much.
Corey Peck (42:19):
Thank you, John.
Thanks for inviting me.
Appreciate it.
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