Loved this - although I come from a pure consulting/ professional background so much of what Mitch says aligns with my own lived experience. One thing that really resonated: my early days as an auditor were long enough ago that I was thrown into client meetings with senior execs at the age of 22. I remember going on my own to speak with the CFO of a huge manufacturing plant that employed 5,000 people less than 6 months after I started.
The most person lesson here for me is: decide, do, learn, iterate. My question: If you don't already have this continuous learning loop embedded in your culture, how do you re-engineer the culture to live and breathe this way?
Ah, a similar story happened to me too in my first consulting job.
The client (who was a very nice guy) told me something along the lines of "You sent me this long document which is a summary of what I told you in the past 2 days!" 😂
Rebuild roles and reporting around continuous improvement, including KPIs and remove reporting from all management meetings and focus them on problem solving instead.
Start with the idea, like including holistic company problem solving in your management meetings and work from there. Refine the idea of continuous improvement over time (iteration), incentive it, and you'll get exactly what you want.
I have a good model for meeting structure and cadence if to do this if you'd like.
Eventually it will be embedded in your hiring process. I hope this helps. And happy to answer anything further.
Thanks Mitch - interesting that it starts in meeting, would definitely be interested in see the structure. Oddly, I come from a background of a culture where we had meetings with little or no agenda, kept no meeting notes and no record of agreed actions.
Really good insights here. I really appreciate the point about avoid so many re-orgs. In my experience, re-orgs are often a massive drain on the org and productivity and ultimately counterproductive. I’m curious where he thought an HR/People function would report.
The People function would report to the Operations lead. You can see the org design here: A Simple Business Organizational Model for SMB Growth https://share.google/mP4pngzBzD8Fd2m9X
Loved this - although I come from a pure consulting/ professional background so much of what Mitch says aligns with my own lived experience. One thing that really resonated: my early days as an auditor were long enough ago that I was thrown into client meetings with senior execs at the age of 22. I remember going on my own to speak with the CFO of a huge manufacturing plant that employed 5,000 people less than 6 months after I started.
The most person lesson here for me is: decide, do, learn, iterate. My question: If you don't already have this continuous learning loop embedded in your culture, how do you re-engineer the culture to live and breathe this way?
Ah, a similar story happened to me too in my first consulting job.
The client (who was a very nice guy) told me something along the lines of "You sent me this long document which is a summary of what I told you in the past 2 days!" 😂
You were obviously a natural!
Kenny,
It starts in the organization management process.
Rebuild roles and reporting around continuous improvement, including KPIs and remove reporting from all management meetings and focus them on problem solving instead.
Start with the idea, like including holistic company problem solving in your management meetings and work from there. Refine the idea of continuous improvement over time (iteration), incentive it, and you'll get exactly what you want.
I have a good model for meeting structure and cadence if to do this if you'd like.
Eventually it will be embedded in your hiring process. I hope this helps. And happy to answer anything further.
Thanks Mitch - interesting that it starts in meeting, would definitely be interested in see the structure. Oddly, I come from a background of a culture where we had meetings with little or no agenda, kept no meeting notes and no record of agreed actions.
IMO change an organization you have to change the way it communicates and its value structure.
I have also sat through plenty of those meetings, but never ran one 😁
It worked for us! And I agree communications is vital - in a lot of dysfunctional orgs meetings are performance not communication
Really good insights here. I really appreciate the point about avoid so many re-orgs. In my experience, re-orgs are often a massive drain on the org and productivity and ultimately counterproductive. I’m curious where he thought an HR/People function would report.
Thanks so much for this one!
Maurizio, this is a fantastic write-up of our conversation. Congratulations on launching Edge! Thank you for letting me be a part of it. 👊
Huge thanks for being the first guest! 🙏
The People function would report to the Operations lead. You can see the org design here: A Simple Business Organizational Model for SMB Growth https://share.google/mP4pngzBzD8Fd2m9X
@Kevin Ertell - this is your answer I believe 😃