Is Your Company Missing Out on Efficiency with Traditional Management?

If you’re scaling your business, chances are the real bottleneck isn’t strategy—it’s misalignment.

In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, host David W. Carr sits down with Ron Higgs, Fractional COO and trusted advisor to founder-led businesses navigating rapid growth. With a background in aerospace engineering, military leadership, and C-suite roles, Ron brings a rare ability to diagnose operational dysfunction and rebuild trust across teams.

Together, Ron and David explore the often overlooked gap between visionary leadership and practical execution, where most companies stall out or lose momentum.

This conversation cuts through the noise and gets to the heart of leadership: trust, systems, and aligned people.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why most leadership teams talk at each other, not with each other
• How to identify (and fix) your leadership blind spots
• The cost of misalignment in founder-led companies
• The traits of high-trust, execution-ready teams
• Why leadership development is a business necessity, not a luxury
• How a Fractional COO complements—not competes with—other leadership experts

Ron and David also discuss how collaborative coaching creates lasting transformation and why great companies are built by leaders who are willing to be challenged.

If you’re leading a company, building a team, or preparing to scale, this episode is your blueprint.

Connect with Ron Higgs
🌐 https://www.wolfmanagementsolutions.com/ 
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-higgs/


Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-roundtable--6049255/support.

Watch more episodes on YouTube and subscribe here:
https://www.youtube.com/@steward_your_business

Connect with Steward Your Business:
Website: https://stewardyourbusiness.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwcarr

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Welcome back to the Business Roundtable podcast. I'm your host
David Carr, bringing great guests here to our podcast, and
we've got another one, Ron Higgs here. I've titled this
episode of the podcast. You guys ever seen this from
fighter Jets to Founders. You're gonna hear some great background
on Ron. We're gonna talk about leadership lessons at the

(00:53):
intersection of systems and stewardship. And I'm super excited Ron
to have you here on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Thank you. I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Absolutely Now, Ron and I you guys might hear this
and say, you guys seem similar, but we actually are
very complimentary to one and I both work with founders,
business owners and senior leaders in growing firms. And one
of the things I really loved Ron is his expertise
as an engineer. And you're gonna hear some background him
on there about how to get your company operating in

(01:25):
a healthy, strong capacity where there may be operational drag
or leadership gaps. And we're going to talk a little
bit about how we look at leadership together and collaborate.
And so Ron, I want to just say thanks again
for coming on here. I love to give folks a
little bit of a background in what got you to
where you're at with Wolf Management Solutions. You've got just

(01:46):
a robust background. You guys are going to check out
wrong He's connected with me on LinkedIn and you can also,
of course go to his website. But we want you
to share. You can, you know, talk a little bit
about yourself. It's okay to brag on yourself a little
bit because you've got a lot of great credentials. And
I want folks to learn a little bit about your
back room from being a Navy officer to the back

(02:07):
exact and now you know advisor. So just can you
walk us through a little bit about your story.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, I mean it takes a while because old, but
I've done a lot of different things. I started in
the Navy. I went to the Naval Academy, I went
to I was a Naval flight officer in the Navy.
So if you remember top Gun Maverick Goose, you know
I was a youth and I'm a graduate of the
US Naval Test Pilot School. I so I worked on aircraft,

(02:37):
aircraft systems, aircraft weapons, sensor systems, and satellite systems during
my time in the NAVYES. So I was what they
call an aerospace engineering duty officer as well. So I
sort of came off the front line as a war
fighter and did that. That gave me a lot of
exposure to engineering, engineering teams, defence contractors, those sorts of things.
So when I got out in the Navy, just like

(02:57):
most good military people do, is that left the military,
went and started working for defense contractors. I worked for
a couple of defense contractors for a few years after
I got out of the Navy. I did sales and
business development. I worked as a flight crew for one
large aircraft manufacturer. And then I decided that aerospace and

(03:23):
defense wasn't where I wanted to spend the rest of
my career. It was sort of a calling. It's like
you're meant to do something else. Yeah, And I got
involved with a few startups, and as a military guy,
the guy who spent my career in the military and
didn't have a real job until I was forty one
years old, right, there's gaps in my knowledge gaps, and

(03:47):
you know, I didn't know anything about let's say, nonprofits.
I didn't know anything about how people start companies, and
that was fascinating to me. So he dove into the
startup world, became involved in a few startups, learned some
pain full lessons as far as that goes, started figuring
out where I could add the most value in that

(04:07):
value was in leadership, executive leadership, things like that. So
I started doing random consulting things through my network. I
found a job as a COO of a company. I
was like, this is great, and I have a background
in systems engineering, and I actually applied a lot of
my systems engineering knowledge in my COO role. Unfortunately, that

(04:29):
was in twenty twenty. So I got that job, it
was great, and promptly got laid off due to COVID
and I'm sure everybody has similar COVID stories. Went back,
restructured my business as a fractional COO business. I did
fractional COO as a fractional EOS integrator, and throughout all

(04:50):
that I found myself doing a lot of coaching. I
did a lot of coaching in a military but as
a fractional COO, I did a lot of coaching, you know,
coach the CEO, a little coach to member of the
executive team individually and as a whole. And I and
I gravitated towards that. It's like, you know what, I
like this a lot more so. A little while ago,
about a year ago, I decided to move full time

(05:12):
into coaching. I decided to choose my niche of engineers.
So I transformed data and processes driven engineers into effective
executive leaders because I'm an engineer and I dealt with
the challenges that engineers have into moving into leadership roles,
and I was able to help a lot of engineers

(05:33):
that I worked with throughout my career make that transition.
So that is how I arrived at the specialty and
what I'm.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Doing now, well, I love that ron And you know
from my background too, I'm not an engineer, but I
have worked with many and that's why I love having
you on the podcast, because you know what I found
is it's different voices and different folks of different experience,
like yourself. You've been in the trenches and now you're
coming on the other side and your helping those and
there's such a need right now. I've seen in the

(06:04):
in our i'll say, the industry, if you will, architecture, engineering, construction,
environmental consulting, whatever, you know that professional services industry of
technical specialists and getting them across the line to being
incoming leaders like you've gone through. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Absolutely, you know. Funny, just yesterday I went out yesterday, Uh,
I went to a brewery to have a beer and
I and there are a group of people behind me
and they were talking about how horrible their managers were.
And they were they were engineers talking about how horrible
their engineering managers were and the management of their companies

(06:41):
and things. And I didn't I didn't inter up, but
I just I just listened. So real, just like you said,
there's a real need out there because you have people
out there. There's a group of four people at the
table behind me having a conversation about how horrible there
you know, their bosses are and so things are in
their company. So this is something definitely that's needed.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
It it's real, it's real and and and I think
you know people particularly, I would say I'm seeing it
more in the millennials and the gen zs. They're not
going to stick around in a company very long if
they don't feel part of the greater vision. They feel
like you started something, you have a business and business
and are like, oh, this is amazing. They want to
create this, but then they lose you know, they're trying

(07:19):
to you know, they're busy, they're building the business, but
then the team in the structure don't keep up with it. Right,
That's what I'm hearing you say, run like you're going forward.
You're kind of like your team doesn't feel a part
of this.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
That That is essentially what happens. But it but it
really all depends on the size of the team and
you and I know, depending on where you start. You
start with a really small group of people. So you
have a founder, and the founder finds maybe a co founder,
and then once they get their idea off the ground
and they get the company going, they find a few
people and so they start off and maybe they have

(07:53):
five people in a group of five people or you know,
let's say less than ten people. It's very easy to
make decision and implement decisions. Yes, Why because the people
who are making the decisions and the people that are
doing the work are the same people. Right, So as
you grow, as the company grows, you have to start
working through other people. So now the people who make

(08:14):
decisions are the same. They can make decisions very quickly,
but they can't implement the decisions as quickly now because
they're working through other people, and so that starts to
get lost as the company grows, they now not sure
how to lead, not sure really how to communicate, how
to work through other people, how to get buy in
from other people, those sorts.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Of things right right, Well, And it's the question I
have for you or you know, if I dealve deeper
into that point. Ron is growing, But why don't they
Why do they delay kind of addressing some of these
leadership or team issues and both Actually is really painful,
like what is it that you're what is the experience?

(08:54):
Why do you see that founder is delaying them?

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Well, a couple of things. One, I don't think they
know how a lot of times they are. And then
time they are focused on other things. They're focused on
getting their idea out the ground, they focused on getting funding,
They're focused on so many other things in the leadership portion,
and the things that they need to create a successful
business sort of take a back seat. So they get

(09:18):
to the point when they get all their funding. Now
they they find that they haven't put any thought or
any effort into the kind of company they're going to
build to deliver whatever product or service that they at. Yeah,
so maybe they just don't know how they don't prioritize it.
In the beginning, I tried to focus my leadership business

(09:40):
on teaching leadership to startup founders because it obviously is
very important. Yes, they're too busy focused on other things.
It's like, well, too busy, now try and you know,
dedicating some time to this sooner will really pay off
for you later. Absolutely, you're gonna be digging yourself out

(10:02):
of the hole later. And just add put a little
bit more into this. And the way I try to
sell it is that you're going out and asking people
for money and fundraising. I went out and asked a
whole bunch of people who write checks to startups what
qualities they look for in a startup founder and they
were all leadership qualities. So if you understand and know

(10:26):
and start to build your leadership skills early, it's going
to help you throughout.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yes. Well, and here's again why we have you on
the podcast Ron and our guests is that we want
those founders or those visitors to listen and say, hey,
I have an advocate as somebody that can help me.
Ron has been there and he's seen this across multiple companies.
You may have not experienced that. You may have been
in a company, but you haven't been able to experience
what it's like to be on the other side. Like

(10:52):
Ron is sharing here, and I think it's so important.
And Ron, one of your strengths is breaking down unclear
roles and the communication culture. Right, you're looking at those things.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yes, absolutely, excuse me.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
And I think you know the sooner, like you said that,
we can get in there where I like. I think
you and I've talked about this, but I like the
I like the analogy of a car. It's like you
can run a car. I don't do the loyal change,
don't do change the tires. It'll keep going for a while,
but eventually it will break down on you. And when
you break down, it could break down in a very
bad place, and you're in the middle of the desert.
You're somewhere where it's not easy, and it's like, oh

(11:30):
my goodness, no, if I did I did the preventive maintenance,
and I did these things, and I spent a little
bit of the you know, money and investment front end,
it makes it so much easier. You go further, You
you don't have those major blowouts if you will, or
you know they're minimized at least, And so spending the
time in the effort, like you said, Ron, doing that
early on is going to really help you. And so

(11:53):
you know, bring you're working with the business owners Ron
to then bring that actual structure, delegation and role clarity
in purpose. How do you tell me a little bit
about how when you're starting to work with a client,
how do you diagnose where what are their their pain points?
What are this They might even realize they're just like
I'm hurting Ron.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Well, in the beginning, I don't even think they have
a fully functional car. I mean they have something with
will it may not be a fully functional car. So
here's where I typically start. And you know, an ORG
chart or an accountability to chart, a functional accountability chart.
So a lot of places when they're small, especially in startups,
people just do what has to be done. I had

(12:34):
a title in startups, but I just did what needed
to be done. It's like, hey, there's something not being
done here, let me go in and do it. So
your jobs in the beginning seem to be based on
the person. So in other words, you go into a
small company and they'll say, well, this is what David does,
this is what Ron does, this is what so and

(12:56):
so does, and there may not be any order or
structure to it. First thing to do is to create
some sort of organizational structure that makes sense. So for them,
they're you know, things are working, they're working that way.
But in order to grow up and in order to
make the company be able to function and scale, you
have to create an organizational structure with different parts of

(13:21):
the business. So, in other words, you have to go, okay,
this is operations, this is sales and marketing, this is
business admin, this is financed you know, whatever you want
to call it, and you have to you have to
start separating people based on that structure. Then you have
to build. You have to build a structure first and
then put the right person in the right seat. And

(13:43):
sometimes the person currently doing the job isn't the person
that's right to continue the job. And the way I
like to frame this is that the people who build
the foundation aren't necessarily the people who build the house,
and so so you need different skill sets, you need
different people. But once you get that organizational structure, once

(14:05):
you get the right people in the right seats, then
you can start building something that can grow and scale.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Mm hmm, well that's a great you know, I love that,
h that analogy you had about building the foundation building
up from there. And I've seen that, Like you said,
sometimes there are people that started at a certain place
and sometimes they didn't move where the company needed to
move you will, and their or their identity was in

(14:33):
such a position like this is my position mind, and
it's like that isn't that's part of the things you do.
But you know, we have to we can't be, like
you said, tied to that. And some of the things
I work with is like getting people a little clearer
of that, like, okay, let's break away. That's something that
you do, but that isn't you. This is a part
of you. And so it's under understanding. Like you said,
where do we step into these roles? And some people

(14:55):
will naturally want to and they'll like, I'm willing to
step in the role. I just don't haven't been equipped yet.
I don't know how to do all this. That's understandable, right,
because you've never done it before.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Well, the biggest problem I see is that sort of
what you mentioned is that some people will have autonomy
in their current role, and then when you start to
grow up and make the changes that need to be made,
those folks lose their autonomy and they will fight tooth
and nail to keep that autonomy. And so sometimes they're

(15:26):
the ones holding back the business. And it's difficult because
I had a situation like this where it's, hey, this
person's holding you back, and as long as this person
is in that role, you're not going to be able
to grow like you want. Well, the CEO says, well,
he's my best friend and he helped me start the company. Well,

(15:47):
then then you're going to be stuck here in this
spot until you can get past it. That's really pay
for them to do that. And then for us, one
point that I didn't make earlier is for us as consultants,
our biggest value is that outside perspective, because we can
come in and look in. I have what I call

(16:08):
a dispassionate view of the company. I don't know who
helped start the company, I don't know who in a
relationship with who, who's best friends with who, and all that.
All I do is see it from the business aspect,
and it's like, hey, this person hold in your back, right,
So that is a lot of our value and just
being able to look in from the outside. Yeah maybe

(16:33):
that they can't see.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
Well yeah absolutely, Ron. I mean you can go read
a book or watch a video and can help you
become aware of some of these things, but actually implement it,
like you're saying, Ron, having somebody like you or I
come together and honestly we collaborate together of helping you
look at the systems, the processes type with all the
people being sure that we do this intentionally. And I've

(16:57):
seen exactly what you're talking about, Ron, where you have
a person and I was talking with and I was
I had an HR person on last week about this
on a podcast about like, hey, you only have one
person that they're not there's no redundancy. This only person
holds everything. Like you said, it gets you to a
certain point. And I think businesses like you said, they're
they're they're fearful like well what happens if you know

(17:18):
this is or or they're like oh I don't want
to pack this person. But I'm like, then you're kind
of self limiting yourself and you're putting yourself I think
at a new risk. You know if something ever happens
to that individual.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Well, you're right. And on the other side of that,
a lot of times that is the owner m or
the CEO. The principle they become that person because a
lot of folks space that they like being you know,
heroic leadership, right, they like being the person with all
the answers. They like being a person with everything. But
typically if there are situations where the owner is a

(17:51):
bottleneck or the CEO whichever we want to call, the
most senior executive is a bottleneck, and they're either bottleneck
for relationship sale you know, or technology m H.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
And they're really you know, you and I have some
shared colleagues in the M and A space and others,
and really they're they're hurting those ups in the long
run because the value of the business if that is
the case, it's not very valuable if it's built on
that in like individuals, right.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
You're correct, because they are the business. They can't sell that.
So again, colleagues, we both have colleagues in M and A,
and one specifically that I've worked with in the past
is that eighty percent of the deals that don't go
through in selling businesses are due to owner dependence, and

(18:39):
the owner is that bottleneck the owner owns, you know,
it's all here for the owner. They haven't built the
team or anything, and so that becomes an impediment to
making a good exit. So there's a lot of value
in building a team, in building a business that can
function without you or one specific person.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
And it takes time. I mean, everybody that I've talked about,
many of the advisors that I've talked to in that
you know, mergers, acquisition space run. It's a you know,
three to five year process. Get your company into a
place where it's truly humming and desirable and kind of
you know, and so that does you and I know, right,

(19:22):
I mean you can't just say, oh, it's just a
hire person like that. Takes time to introgate them and
the rest of the team.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Absolutely, and sometimes I mean sometimes that is recognized too late,
but recognizing it as the first step.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Right. So here's the question, So what would you wish
more leaders understood run? You know, when it comes to scaling,
especially especially when we're talking moving like I said, from
ten to twenty to thirty to fifty employees, because sometimes
that can happen very quickly. Whether it's full time employees,
part time employees, subcontractors, there's a lot of going on there.

(19:59):
What do you what do you wish you know, kind
of leaders would understand, especially from the operation side, that
you are so well versed in that they, you know,
they could be prepared for that growth.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
This may actually sound a little odd, but a clear
mission and vision and how important that is along with
the values. And I'll give you an example. You know,
I'm a veteran, a military guy. We took an oath
to support defend the Constitution in the United States. And
one thing that the that the military does really really

(20:32):
well is that we're able to map everything that we
do to supporting and defending the Constitution in the United States.
So whatever I did, whatever role that I was in,
when I was flying off of aircraft carriers, every time
we launched off the end of the aircraft carrier, I
knew exactly how what I was doing and that airplane
contributed to supporting and defending the Constitution in the United

(20:56):
States of America. Right. So, again, if you have a
very clear mission and very clear vision, values that are
understood everybody, values that you actually use to select and
hire the people that are in the company. It's important
to have everybody aligned and knowing to what they're doing.
I wish more people did that and started with that

(21:17):
instead of considering the mission statements. You know, in vision
statements a bunch of fluff.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
M No, I agree with you, run I find most
it's it's fuzzy at best. Like you said, you kind
of throw something on the wall. Okay, yeah, check that box,
But now do you really mean it and believe it.
That makes a big difference in your engagement actually getting
the work done.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
And so man, it's that alignment that you have to
have through all of that. And again, if you don't
have a solid grasp on what your values are. And
I'll just give an example, say if you've got a
company where you're hiring a electrical engineers. Lots of electrical
engineers are coming out of college these days, so you

(22:05):
may find yourself where in a position where there's hundreds
of people that are qualified for the job that you
have out there. How do you determine who of those
hundreds of people are the right are the right fit
for your company? It's your values. So you have to
structure your hiring process, your questions all those things around

(22:27):
determining if those folks share the same values that you do.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Absolutely, Ron. I mean I worked with a company, you know,
where the leader brought in other leaders and they didn't
share the same philosophy of being coachable and teachable. And
in this particular individual is like, hey, I'm going to
hire you, and I had to come in and help
a coach and unfortunately many of them didn't be rejected.

(22:54):
They didn't take that, and so it will cause a
lot of challenges in the company. So you can try
to hirequte unquote superstars. They're like, oh my goodness, they're
so great, but are they a good fit with the culture,
And so if you don't clear on this, it could
really break your culture. Could really you know, it caused
a lot of problems in fighting if you're not intentional

(23:16):
like this, and I don't think sometimes business owners think
through all of that, I do. You mean, I even
talk with a lot of talent sources recruiters and they're like,
I'll get you people. You can tell me what the
criteria want, but you're not implementing Well, you haven't thought
through the rest of all of this. You and they
don't have to really have a plan long term to
integrate them into the team run and like really like,

(23:36):
how do we you know, leverage them? And did we
do we do this? Well? Did we do this thoughtful?
Like you said? Right?

Speaker 2 (23:43):
You gw all great points that you just made. Perfect
example is a great salesperson and everybody does this, and
I bet everybody can relate to this. You've got a
great salesperson out there. They're out there closing deals, but
they break all the r They've done some inappropriate things,
and they've gotten away with things that no one else

(24:05):
would be able to get away with. They're like, well,
this person, they're they're the top sales person, so we
let them get away with that. So pretty soon you
get what you tolerate and it really impacts your your culture,
which which is bad. So in the long run, is
that top salesperson really doing well for your company if

(24:27):
they don't share any of your values or if they're
in direct conflict with some of your values?

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Right? I mean, and I would say it's not just employees.
I think getting those those values around, it's like setting
up those relationships contractually with maybe subcontractors as well. I
was talking to a client. The employee was you know,
as like complaining or sharing their concerns with me about
this contractor subcontractor that they're working with. And like, I

(24:56):
don't know, I don't really think that they're behaving professionally
or in a way that you know, And I said, well,
what's the like you said, Ron, what's the values, what's
the what's the standards that you have in place? Well,
there really isn't any written down. Well, then how can
we hold them to relating? Have anything to point hang
your hat on, so to speak. Right, and this is
something you bring up, right, Ron, You.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
You're coming in your agreement? What's in your agreement? What's
I mean that's you know? And when you're determining again
when you're deciding on these contractors, so you're.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Run right, So when when listeners are feeling stock business owners,
or even in a leader within the company, Ron, what
is your kind of approach to you know, when you
when you're talking with a potential client, what's some of
the questions or some of the things you're asking or

(25:49):
they should be asking of you even like to know, hey,
this person gets it there, they know there they would
be helpful to me. Well, what's your kind of potential
client interaction. When you're first bringing or talking with somebody.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Well, you know, the big thing is to really determine
what their issues really are, what's going on, what's happening
or what is either happening or not happening in there,
and getting the best understanding I can of what pain
points they're experiencing. So if I do work with executive teams,

(26:25):
so one CEO may say my executive team is good,
what can I do to make them great? Or they
may say I've got an executive in the team who's
good at his or her job, but causing a lot
of issues doesn't play well with others. Maybe there's some
conflict within the executive executive team that's impacting the business.

(26:50):
So the idea is just to ask as many questions
as I can to figure out what is it that's
really going on? What are you doing? Am I a
spending a lot of time putting out fires? I don't
have any time to do strategic work right or I
don't have time to really develop my team. Where they

(27:11):
start complaining about their team, that says, hey, my team
does it. They're not proactive. You know, we're always in
this reactive mode and a lot of times in terms
of leadership, what I have to get them to do
is think It's like, okay, so you're the leader of
the team. So the first thing I do in a
leadership role is think about, Okay, what have I done
or not done to cause this? So again, every one

(27:35):
of those discussions is different, but I try my best
to understand what their pain points are and again, now
what is it that will happen if that pain point
is eliminated? And so now they're like, I feel like
I'm putting out fires every day. Okay, what would it
look like if you didn't have to put out fires
every day? What would you do? Because that's the end

(27:57):
state that we want to get them to, right right,
I help them see is see that in state. Boy,
if I didn't have to put out buyers every day,
I would have time to really get to know my
people better. I'd have time to really think about strategic
problems instead of just staying tactical all the time. I
would really have time to learn, you know something else,

(28:21):
Like I don't know I am the chief you know,
I'm the chief engineer, but I really don't understand marketing.
I would really love to spend some time with the
CMO and learn a little bit more about marketing things
like that, right, so lives and the things that you
can accomplish, you know, once those barriers are surmounted, not

(28:44):
all focused on dollars in revenue. I mean, that's what
we want, right way, we can make more money, we
can generate more. But sometimes people I want to go
in and I want to enjoy my job. And if
you look at some people and go what's more important
to you, you know, enjoying your job or making quite
as much money? And some people will make that trade off.

(29:07):
You have to let them decide what's more important.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Well, absolutely, I think you know, I mean we all
love to make more money, but I think I like
to use an acronym red of like what is your role?
What's the environment? How does the opportunity for development? And
I hear what you're saying, ron is you're looking at
You're removing some operational bottlenecks, road roadblocks, if you will,

(29:29):
you're looking at all those things. Because sometimes I feel
like everybody's saying, well everything, you kind of throw it
out there. Everything is important and nothing's important, Like how
are we evaluating things? Like what is really here, and
I hear you you're getting at asking those questions and
getting clarity but where they're at. And I love that
because I love to pair up with you and that

(29:50):
and like as we as you build, you know, helping
build the relational trust you mentioned and really breaking out
what's our core identity then what are our priorities? And
so you know, that's why I love having you know
the podcast, because you're helping that executive team. I love
that too. But I also love working on that next
level of leaders underneath them as well. And so it's
like there's a lot of work to be done here.
It's not an overnight thing, but together working together, it's

(30:14):
like we went out bringing out that full transformation from
a founder led chaiask to really team empowered clarity. Like
it's like they're actually working together, they're solving problems. They're like,
it's not just you coming in like the heroic like
you said, there hero has no other questions. They're like, oh,
well we should this when I talk with this, Oh
you're actually talking with them and coming with a solution.
You know, I didn't have to get involved, No, we

(30:36):
we knew we had to talk. We understand our roles
and we understand the mission right, we're going to get.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
It doing when we're solving solving their own problems. And
I'm so glad you mentioned priorities because that's one of
the things that I get a lot of blank stares.
Sometimes there are too many blank stares when I ask
what are your priorities? And I have to think about that,
and they should be consistent. They can't change. And I'll

(31:05):
give you an example. One of the things from my
days in aviation. One of the first things they taught
us in flight school were your priorities AB eight Navigate,
communicate AB eight, keep the airplane in the air, do
what you need to do, you know, navigate, don't fly
it into a mountain, you know, keep going from point
A to point B or whatever the near wherever you
need to get to to make a safe planning, and

(31:26):
then communicate. Right, So those are your priorities in order.
And so for me, I always I've taken that philosophy
and always ask what are the priorities? And some companies
will go well, cash flow people, you know, stewardship, whatever
it is, it should be constant and everyone should be
clear on it. That way, people will make the same

(31:49):
decision or you know, every time, or at least be
able to justify in the decision they make based on
those priorities.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Absolutely, and I think there's a there is drift. I
think everybody has some kind of drifting. It's like, like
you said, then we've got to get back in alignment.
Because what I found is that people, especially as you
grow it may be you and the business owner are
certain people like, well, we know the priorities, but it
gets lost, it's diffused and it doesn't quite get clear.
And then people start picking and choosing their priorities but

(32:19):
work because they're like, oh, I like doing this more
and this better, right, and then I want to do
this better. Before you know it once was you were
kind of laser focused and oh my goodness, and now
you're diffused and it's like, what's our actual impact? Now?
What are we actually doing here?

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Well, the thing about priorities is have they actually been communicated?
Because I'm sure you've run into this problem too with process.
Something happens with someone and they look around and go,
you didn't follow the process, And sometimes they go, there's
a process. So there could be a process out there
that wasn't communicated or somebody created it and without any

(32:57):
input whatsoever from the people who are so suposed to
follow the process.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Right, So, if.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
You've got people out there who are involved in a
process and you're not taking any input from them, I mean,
there's lots of reasons, but the point of this one
was to say, sometimes you could have something be very clear,
but if it's not communicated, then you're gonna have issues.
So not only do you need to have the priorities,
but they need to be clearly communicated absolutely.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
I know we're getting close to end of the podcast.
You're run because we could definitely go on. There's so
much more, and I love, I love hopeful guys are
getting a lot of value out of this because ron
and I are super excited about this. We want to
help you as a business leader, executive, founder, really rise
above the cast, rise by the noise and know and
get it to before before you crash. I want to

(33:46):
help you. But ron As was wrapping up here. You know,
you know, if there was you know, one thing a
founder executive could take away from this conversation, what would
you want that to be? Here? Chare with them today?

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Well again just in terms of consultants and some of
the things that we do, one outside perspective can really
change things. And so again for us as consultants, I
think our primary value is in just having that just
having that outside perspective. Talk to someone, get another perspective,

(34:25):
lay out your problems. It could even be a peer. Yes, anything,
just get another perspective. And sometimes that will either sort
of confirm confirm some of your worst fears or make
you aware of something that you hadn't thought of. And
I know I'm asking the right questions when I'm doing
great when somebody says, wow, I hadn't thought about that.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
There you go. I thought that that could be huge, right. Yeah, Ron,
we so appreciate you being here. Like I mentioned earlier,
you're going to your link. Thanks show notes on there.

(35:09):
Thank you Ron for being back. We'll have to have
you back again because this is just a fun, engaging conversations.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Anytime, and thank you so much. Really enjoyed the conversation.
As you said, I could go on about this for
a long time. Yeah, maybe you can. I've in this
up a bit more specific or or unpack a couple
of the things that we we we skirt it on.
But yeah, this has been great. Thank you again for
having us.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
Absolutely everybody, thanks for joining us. Of course, we appreciate
you liking and subscribing. If you're watching us on YouTube,
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If you enjoyed it, follow along, and we look forward
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round Table podcast. Be while everybody, thanks for listening. M