Visionary Insights: Fostering a Human-Centric Culture in the Face of Relentless Change with Ryan McShane

Intro: 0:17

Welcome to Unfazed Under Fire, a podcast that supports executives to deepen their impact in resiliency in an increasingly chaotic and uncertain world. Your mission facilitates the growth of enlightened leaders who build empowering, high-performing cultures that unify great talent and turn profound visions into reality. Now, tuning into your needs, here's your host and moderator, seasoned executive coach and the resilient leadership guy, David Kreguts.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 0:48

So welcome back to Unfazed Under Fire. I'm David Kreguts, the resilient leadership guy, your host and moderator for the show. This show aims to support executives and strengthen their impact and resilience in today's uncertain, disruptive and chaotic world. Our stand on this show is that human beings have all the resourcefulness they need within them to rise above and address the biggest challenges we are facing, and to be able to do so with grace. The first step to tapping into this inner resourcefulness comes from recognizing that what we have within all of us are vast and natural capabilities of clarity, energy centeredness, creativity, confidence and resilience that are ours to discover and engage. In fact, the ability to embrace this inner resourcefulness is your birthright. You simply have to understand the path to claim it. Ultimately, following this path leads to what I call self-leadership or self-mastery, and once we achieve such mastery or self-leadership, the stage is then set for you to powerfully and effectively lead others. Without such self-mastery, attempting to lead others will be at least confusing and, at most, more failure than you'll have success. In other words, we have to have the competence to lead ourselves in order to lead others. Again, the goal of this show is to help leaders recognize this truth and realize ways to be more effective and impactful as leaders in today's world.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 2:11

Now, on today's show, I'm really pleased to be joined by good friend and colleague, ryan McShane.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 2:17

Ryan is the founder and president of HR Evolution, and HR Evolution is dedicated in enhancing organizational and individual performance, to mindful leadership and a more conscious approach to workforce management and operations, ensuring that organizations are balancing the needs of the people, the planet and profit, of course. Over the decade at HR Evolution, ryan's committed to transforming workplaces through services like leadership training, hr consulting and career development. And Ryan's extensive professional background includes over 20 years in HR across various sectors and teaching roles at Towson University and York College, holding degrees from Penn State and Central Michigan University. He's also involved in a number of professional organizations, such as Conscious Capitalism, hunt Valley, maryland Business Forum and the Chesapeake Human Resource Association, to name a few. He enjoys his life in your PA with his wife, sarah, and their two sons and, of course, they're a labradoral ginger. I have to bring her into the table, into the conversation. So, ryan, it's great to have you. I look forward to diving into today to explore the future of leadership and its development.

Ryan McShane: 3:31

Thank you so much for having me, david. It's such a pleasure to join you and I always walk away from our conversations with an expanded kind of understanding of something, and you just have that great ability to kind of tap into something that's deeper in the people that you talk to, and I'm delighted to have that kind of friendship and relationship with you that we get to have those kind of conversations on a regular basis. So to be able to do it in a podcast format for your audience is just a great experience. So I'm looking forward to it.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 4:04

Yeah, we had to do this because we do have some great, profound conversations. I feel the same way about you and as I do with all my guests. I want to start off with Lerly talking about your personal journey, because this is what it's all about. So, please, I'd love you to share a little bit what led you to ultimately start HR evolution with your passion to engage more conscious organizational and leadership practices. So if you could just talk a little bit about how you want to share about your journey.

Ryan McShane: 4:36

Well, I think it's probably appropriate to just start with my career. I was a young, idealistic kid coming out of Penn State wanting to change the world. And where did I go to work for my very first career? The most bureaucratic environment that exists. I went to work for the Department of Defense, and what an interesting experience that was. I did job classification and staffing with them, and I heard things, david, that just astounded me. You know, I, as I mentioned, I was a young, idealistic kid wanting to change the world, and a part of that idealism came with this concept that supervisors and managers and leaders are going to be like mom and dad they have our best interest in mind. Wow, did I figure that one out pretty quickly.

Ryan McShane: 5:26

I heard things like slow down, kid, you're making us look mad. Meanwhile, I had a cubicle that sat right next to this lady who fell asleep at her desk every single day. But the fact that she was hired two years prior to me, she had greater seniority and so, consequently, she received thousands of dollars more annually in her pay than I did, despite the fact that I would produce nine times in a day which she produced, and so that didn't sit well with me. I just couldn't wrap my head around that. I also heard things like you're not in control of your career, we're in control of your career and once again I had. You know that was a shattering of the glass. The cognitive dissonance was starting to break in me. You know hearing these kind of things.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 6:17

I forbid you step out of that box, righ!

Ryan McShane: 6:19

Right, right, exactly, exactly. So after two years, 28 days and six hours not that anybody was counting or anything I left my job in the car. I thought, you know what I want? To be in control of my own career? And they've emphatically told me that I'm not. They're in control of my career.

Ryan McShane: 6:38

So I went to the complete opposite end of the career workforce spectrum, you know, from a large, you know, public sector environment of the DoD, where their motto is we've got a form for that, to an environment where it was the dot com world, where we were literally, you know, building the plane as we were flying it. So it was such a you know this polar experiences really kind of whipsawed me in terms of, you know, my experience interacting with those environments and what a learning environment was it was for me too. I had to adjust quickly there. I was the central point of contact for a little under 30 clients throughout the mid Atlantic region, as well as LA Vegas and Chicago, and so what that meant to say is, you know, these were companies from high tech firms to insurance companies, to even, you know, veterinary clinics, so really a diverse clientele, and that kept, really kept me on my toes and enabled me to develop my skills in order to best service each one of those clientele and consistent with their culture as well. So that that was a very interesting experience. And unfortunately the dot com bubble burst and that world kind of went away.

Ryan McShane: 8:01

The organization I was working for was subsumed by a much larger PEO professional employment organization and I found myself looking for a new opportunity. And that's when I went into the long term care environment. And you know I was one of those kids that if I walked by the hospital I'd feel queasy. You know I never thought I'd be a care setting in an environment. I'm a little too sensitive for that kind of, you know, being exposed to that on a regular basis. But I worked in their corporate office and I was their HR manager for education and programs and what that meant to say is I provided corporate HR management support for the corporate entity and then I also provided soft skills training across the 800 plus employee company and so in long term care we were working with people of all different shifts. So there was a day shift after noon shift and overnight shift and I tell you, if you want to delight nurses, go in at midnight and provide them training. They're just so elated that someone has actually come in to attend to them from the corporate office because they feel like the forgotten workforce of the forgotten crew. What a great experience. This is an organization that walked the talk. They had a core value that I will remember probably for the rest of my life, and it was learning for the purpose of teaching and that really just resonated with my life and exactly who I wanted to be and the way I saw myself as well, and so I was thriving in that environment. I had an exceptional supervisor, unlike some of the prior experiences that I had, both in the dot com world and the Department of Defense.

Ryan McShane: 9:50

Unfortunately, right around 2004, 2005 timeframe, if you recall David, the height of conversation and the collective consciousness was the insolvency of Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security.

Ryan McShane: 10:03

And so, while we once thought there's gold in the old and go in the long term care industry and the senior industry, we had a CFO that over invested in capital products projects and that caused too much of a detriment and risk for the organization. So they fired that CFO, hired a new CFO and what's that CFO supposed to do but find money? And that CFO saw HR as a cost center rather than an operational center, and as a consequence of that, our HR team was reduced significantly. So it was one of those last in, first out, highest paid kind of situations. I found myself, you know, once again looking for a new opportunity. And you know, I also learned during this experience never say never, because when I left the public sector after the DOD, I said I would never go back to the public sector. Well, having now been downsized a couple of times being an HR, you appreciate it a little bit of the more stability of that.

Ryan McShane: 11:03

Yeah, job security is a pretty good thing and I should also. My wife was eight months pregnant at the time that I was down A little bit of stress there. So I had an offer on the table from one of the big four accounting firms in downtown Baltimore willing to throw a good bit of money at me, and then I also had this offer on the table from local Baltimore County government and commensurate level positions. One was willing to pay a lot more but I thought that the security of working for the public sector was exactly what I needed given my family situation at that point in time. So I spent the next 12 years as the director of human resources for Baltimore County Department of Aging and I came in under a gentleman who really saw the bigger picture, kind of cut my strings and enabled me to really fly and insert a lot of the practices that I picked up in the private industry and apply them in the public sector. And what a great experience that was.

Ryan McShane: 12:08

Well, unfortunately, as is true for most things, they continue to change and that gentleman retired. Well, his successor. Unfortunately, her modus operandi was don't stick out your head for fear it'll be chopped off. So, as a natural change agent that flew in the face of everything I believed in. So it wasn't long before I started to hear things like slow down, ryan, just focus on the basics of work. You know, don't? You know?

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 12:36

I brought some PTSD back from the Department of Defense.

Ryan McShane: 12:40

Yeah, exactly right, I got triggered.

Ryan McShane: 12:42

you know, I was like oh my gosh you did it you all over again and it also tells you that who's who's at the leadership of the helm of an organization makes all the difference in how that organization is run and, you know, operationalized and the culture of the organization. So I could see the kind of writing on the wall, so to speak, as to you know, the leadership is no longer in alignment with my ideals and values and while this is a great environment, a great work environment, great colleagues, and I really enjoyed the work that I did, I could not, I could no longer see myself doing it under the leadership that was at the helm at that point in time. It was too stifling. Once again, I kept being told you know, slow down, don't do this, don't do that. Meanwhile, it's not like they were paying me anymore for these things. I was just doing that because it was a recognized need and I started to hear things like training is a luxury we could no longer afford. Well, that didn't make any sense to me because I'm the one that does all the training and you don't pay me anymore for the training on salary. That just didn't add up to me and basically I Surmise that I was kind of being told to sit down and zip it, and that obviously didn't fly well with me, and so I was.

Ryan McShane: 13:59

While I was there, I started building this organization that I'm running and leading right now called HR evolution, and I always had a passion for leadership development and training for the for the exact reasons I just mentioned, because I recognize the impact that they have on the culture of the organization and culture is downstream from all leadership and so I saw that the leader made the entire difference for the organization depending on who was at the helm of those organizations, and so I started Planning some seeds to provide leadership development training to other companies. I had been writing resumes already professionally for people on the side. It was something that I had a passion for some people like crossword puzzle puzzles, you know, and games. You're not writing resumes.

Ryan McShane: 14:47

I like writing resumes. I'm a sick guy. I don't know what it is, the wordsmithing is a lot of fun for me, and so I thought you know what? Let me see if I can make a go of this. As I mentioned, I started doing it on the side and seeing that this is starting to create some traction, there's more interest for this, and I even recognize and fortunately I had a very supportive wife who said I want you to do what's gonna fulfill you and I was given the support I needed to get out of my own.

Ryan McShane: 15:20

And so, as you mentioned, it's been almost 10 years now that I've been out on my own operating hr evolution and you know, certainly you know, with any kind of startup you have hiccups and challenges and things Of course, but I'm really proud to say that I'm still standing and still here and delivering value for my clients, and I think that the biggest impetus is I've always felt I remember sitting around the dinner table growing up and mom and dad would come home and talk about work and they give these stories about, you know, all the challenges that they were dealing with and things like that, and the kids are just kind of sitting there listening to this. You know I'm very fun. Is this what I'm being prepared for? And I just always thought, you know, it doesn't have to be that way, and that's one of my favorites, it just doesn't have to be that way. Well, you know, one environment is like this. You've seen, I had a taste of great environments where you're supported to thrive and grow and develop and and the ripple effect of that, that eventually impact your clientele and the services that you provide. So I could see that it could be done. It was just a matter of who was doing it and did they have the competencies and skills and know how to be able to operationalize their ideologies and tactics around leadership and workforce management, and so I want to be a part of that and really drive that, because I think that there were people that were longing for that kind of experience in the work environment. And I use that term longing because I think it's a very, very much an emotional kind of response. You know, a lot of people think baseball is our favorite pastime, but I think complaining about our work is oftentimes right up there with it, you know, in terms of our favorite time, and I thought you know what a shame it just doesn't have to be that way. What can I do to make sure that it's not always that way? And how can I make, make change and effectuate A different way of operating in a work environment? And that's why I have a solution came, came about.

Ryan McShane: 17:29

My tagline for the organization is evolving the why and the way we work. And I think that really speaks to it. Because the why, you know, I think that you talk to different people. They might have, you know, hey, well, I've got bills, that's why I work. You know, type of. But I think that the younger generation and I think we'll get into this in our conversation is much more. You know, it's no mistake that we call the millennial generation the why generation, like the letter why, because they ask why about everything but the why is what's important to them, because it creates meaning and purpose for them, and I think anybody has meaning and purpose in the work that they do. They can overcome just about any challenge, and so that's why I say the why and the way we work. And the way obviously has to change, because old, antiquated ways of command and control with authoritarian leadership Just don't resonate with most people, let alone the largest workforce that exists in our history, the millennial generation.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 18:33

Yeah, I mean yeah. It works for the people that are at the top. It doesn't work for the rest of the organization, which ended up hurting the people at the top in the long run because they lose people Alt-Millionaire exactly right, it's a ripple.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 18:45

Yeah, I was also thinking back. You know how long we've known each other and I think you just kind of nailed it in your. I think it was around the time you were thinking of leaving Baltimore County. We were sitting in the Towson Diner talking about it and you're in the process of getting HR evolution going and here we are over 10 years later. It's crazy, isn't it? It's really neat to think about.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 19:04

Yeah, another thing I'd like to ask you about you know, riffing off your introduction is the role of the senior HR executive in an organization and what is HR's purpose in an organization. Because I think if you look at across the spectrum, there's all different kinds of senior HR leaders and I would say that there are strategic, visionary ones and there are ones that are more kind of managing the HR function. How do you view the HR function and the senior, the primary purpose of the senior leader of the HR function, their primary purpose in an organization?

Ryan McShane: 19:47

I think I can simply summarize it with the point that every HR professional, their more star, must be that we are creating an opportunity to bring out the best in our talent, no matter what.

Ryan McShane: 20:04

And so, whether you're doing job classification, whether you're doing recruiting, whether you're doing organizational development, whether you're doing payroll, these are various HR functions that typically fall under that big HR umbrella. No matter what you're doing under those HR functions, it should all be for that purpose to bring out the best in our talent, whether that's. You know, our talent never has to worry about being paid on time because our payroll is accurate and correct, you know, and timely. You know that they're going to be treated fairly and given promotional opportunities. You know, through job class classification and standards, organizational development, they're going to be given opportunities to continue to learn and grow and apply those skills for the benefit of not only their own career but the benefit of the organization and the customers that they serve. So you can see the alignment of that ideology of bringing out the best that we can for our talent. Everyone wins as a result of that. The old added being tied raises all ships, and that's the way I view it.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 21:07

Yeah, that's great. I love what you just said. Well, let's talk. Let's talk about the world we live in today and the challenges we're facing and the business disruptions we're facing, and this is impacting organizations in so many different ways. How do you think that's the current environment has reshaped, what organizations must attend to, and why the conscious development of leadership in organizational culture is so important today. I mean, it's obvious, but I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Ryan McShane: 21:41

So I think what's really shaping the future of the workforce and some of the challenges that we're facing today is we've had a significant demographic shift, and so, to briefly touch on that for your audience once upon a time, the largest generation in workforce history are the baby boomers. It's 78 million strong. Well, the next generation to secede the boomers are called Gen Xers, and Gen Xers are only 36 million strong, so you can see that there's a significant gap in population numbers between the two generations, and so, consequently, we don't have enough in Generation X to replace all the vacated positions by the boomer generation. And so, thank goodness for the millennials I bet you never thought I'd say that, but thank goodness for the millennials, no, seriously, we they're saving grace for our workforce because they come in at the largest generation in our workforce history. They have now eclipsed the boomer generation at 78 million strong to now being 81 million strong. And so, thank goodness we have the millennials coming on the heels of the Gen Xers, because they are the ones that are going to help us replace many of the vacated positions by the baby boomer generation.

Ryan McShane: 22:58

And I think what we're seeing is, as with numbers, numbers have a great deal of influence, and so the boomers, who created the work environment and culture that we have today, based on their sheer numbers and influence. We are going to see the same thing happen with the millennial generation, and we are now in the chaos phase of that change. It's not yet forming what will be, but we are getting on the precipice of making that sea change, and so, by 2025, 75% of our workforce will be from the millennial generation. So obviously, with that predominance in the workforce makeup, they're going to have a large influence in how we work. And I remember, even many years ago in my generation, thinking why is it that I have to travel an hour one way to sit at a desk from nine to five to prove that I'm working and contributing value? And I've had these thoughts for many, many years, long before COVID. It only took us a global pandemic to realize that we could do something about this right.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 24:06

Exactly.

Ryan McShane: 24:07

So 2020 was a huge shift in how we view work and how we view the approach to work. So a lot of people are working remotely or hybridized schedules. There's much more flexibility around the arrangement of how we go about work, and I think that's also contributed to what we're facing and experiencing today. You mentioned before that I serve people in career transition and do a lot of resume writing. You may or may not be surprised at how many people come to me that are mid to senior level in their career and say I only want to work remotely from now on.

Ryan McShane: 24:42

Ryan, Can you help me find a remote job? And so I think that has implications on both sides of the coin, not only from the job applicant standpoint how do you market yourself when you're not always in front of the influencers and decision makers but also from an employer perspective is how do you continue to attract the best and brightest talent out there without having a traditional work environment where they feel integrated and engaged, in an environment where they're constantly seeing and interacting with their coworkers? I think it just poses some new challenges. We still can make sure that we have those quality interactions and engagement and team building and things of that nature. It's just the how and how we go about doing that's going to change and pivot a little bit and I think that we have the technology to support that change and we have the ideology and the impetus in terms of interest from the millennial generation to go down that path.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 25:42

Yeah, I want to just come in here because I think a lot of my senior executives are feeling a bit of the pain of not having people in the office that there is the other side of this experience, that the train has left the station. We're never going to go back to 100% in unperson. That's never going to happen. But how do you strike about? I mean, this is something that my senior executives are struggling with right now. How do we get people back in for some time, so that you know, because connectivity in person is more powerful than connectivity through Zoom. They're just. We can feel the difference when we're with other human beings and we are such a species of connection. That is critical. And I'm not saying you can't connect over those technologies, but there is something to be said about bringing people together. So how do you help clients strike that balance and deal with that concern?

Ryan McShane: 26:40

So I think we have to make it meaningful, make our interactions meaningful to folks. We don't just call people in for a meeting. People don't like meetings. All right, yeah, yeah, that's for sure. And whether it's in person or over Zoom, people are not big fans of meetings. So if you're going to ask them to come into an office, make it worth their while and make sure that that experience is something that continues to perpetuate the idea of engagement and team building and fellowship. Those kinds of things attract people instead of it's the old carrot and the stick. We don't want to use the stick constantly for that purpose. People are going to rebel from that standpoint, that's for sure.

Ryan McShane: 27:23

If you create an attractive environment where, hey, I can't wait to go down the hall and see David, because he and I have such great conversations and they're just not the same over the Zoom, I want to see him, I want to see his body language, I want to have that energy that you talked about. As a trainer, I certainly can echo that sentiment that I much rather do training in person. I don't care if I have to travel in order to do it in person, because of the experience is so much richer being in person for the energetic standpoint of it. You just don't get that virtually. So to answer your question in a pointed way, I think we have to make our interactions more meaningful. They have to be deeper, they have to really resonate with who we are as people, and I think that that's where we have to set aside work for a moment and we have to honor the being in order to get the kind of doing that we're looking for. That's well said that is well said.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 28:20

I mean, that's what we're honoring with the connectivity, it's not the doing.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 28:25

If we're bringing people together to do and that's the only reason we're bringing together we're not acknowledging that beingness that is resonating with meaning and resonating with connection and resonating with, you know, having an impact. Yeah, but if we do that and it can lead to people wanting to be, as you say, in physical proximity with others for a period of time, to ignite that and help fill the tank for when they're remote, so to speak, that's exactly right. Yeah. So, stepping it over, you and I have been fans of conscious capitalism to various degrees, and I want to talk about, you know that's one, that's one framework of key guiding principles that you can put in place for a high functioning, high performing organization. But you know, whether you riff off that or you speak about that in general, what do you think today are the guiding principles that have to be in place to create a high-functioning, high-performing, highly engaged organization in today's world? You start speaking a little bit to it just with the being and the doing piece, but you say a little bit more about that.

Ryan McShane: 29:34

Well and I think it further emphasizes that point of being overdoing we have to focus on the human-centric component of this. And so I think if we predicate our decision-making based on what is best for our employees rather than what is financially in the best interests of the organization because oftentimes that's the binary that we continue to face is, this is a financial decision and we predicate every decision based on the almighty dollar, well, we know that that's a deleterious kind of notion and it's diminishing to the people that ultimately produce your revenue as you compromise people's salaries, your compensation, their benefits, things of that nature, because that's better for the finances. But ultimately, what does that do to your talent? Does that encourage them? Does that motivate them or does that send them running out the door? And are you constantly looking for talent because you can't keep them, because you don't treat them fairly? You know that's a very basic dynamic that I think a lot of organizations are starting to lift their head and realize, hey, you mean we can do this differently. Absolutely we can do this differently. So a lot of it is breaking down the paradigms of very entrenched and conditioned thinking around how an organization operates.

Ryan McShane: 30:55

The system is recognized to be very flawed and I think all too often we hear the old adage don't hate the player, hate the game. Well, I definitely hate the game and I think the game needs to change in order for the players to thrive, and that's obviously the workforce. So you mentioned about some of those principles and what leads us in that direction Conscious capitalism. I remember, you know, encountering that philosophy and it was like the angels were singing when I encountered it, because it put two words what I felt in my heart of hearts that organizations should operate in this manner. And you know, one book, the book called Conscious Capitalism, written by John Mackey and Raj de Soudia, talks about this very fact where they did a longitudinal study I don't remember, I don't know if you remember this longitudinal study that was done comparing conscious capitalism run in lead organizations to the S&P 500. And I sometimes jokingly say, well, just when you think I'm going to ask everybody to hold hands and sing kumbaya, here are the hard results in the return on investment. So they did this longitudinal study comparing conscious capitalism led organizations to the S&P 500, realizing that the revenue generated from conscious capitalism organizations over the revenue generated from the S&P 500 was a difference of 1,025%.

Ryan McShane: 32:29

And so I often ask my classes, when I talk about servant leadership and conscious capitalism, what do you think? You know, I'll, I'll, you know, I'll clarify and say we all know the conscious capitalism was more profitable based on the way I'm framing this. But how much more profitable do you think? And you know, I get 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 100% and people think that they're really reaching out to say 100%, and then I tell them 1,025% more profitable.

Ryan McShane: 33:01

So it's got some hard bottom line results and I think that's important for executives and senior leaders to really recognize, because I think that's one of their greatest fears when we talk about making this shift to a conscious led organization or a servant led organization is oh no, oh no. What about our profits? What about our revenues? Well, I'm sharing with you that if you want to be wildly more profitable than you ever have before, if you want your workforce to be a highly thriving, engaged and interactive culture, these are the things that you need to do. But first we need to go through the chaos and the change process and if you have the courage to do that, I can guide you through it, and that's exactly what I'm saying, yeah just yeah, just for for a lesser's sake.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 33:47

You know, conscious capitalism came out of the research done in firms of endearment, which is a book done previously. Rajasthani was part of the authors of that book and what they did is they went out and they looked at organizations and looked at these beloved brands like Southwest and Starbucks and you know Caterpillar and brands like that that really were sticky to their customers and said what are these people doing? They had no intention similar to good, to great, and no intention to kind of, you know, taint that data before they did a just dove in and what they discovered was, you know which eventually would cut galvanizing the conscious capitalism principles of four principles of custom. You know great companies, these conscious companies lead with clear purpose, or the clear power of why they conscious, they have conscious leaders, or what I call enlightened leaders or servant leaders at the highest level. They they manage and take care of all their stakeholders and, of course, they attend the culture consciously. So those principles are fundamental and you know, as you've, as you've helped your clients kind of deploy these principles.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 34:54

I think you know, and probably have been informed by others along the way, because conscious capitalism is one framework, there's other frameworks and fundamentally I think those pillars are pretty solid, although sometimes I feel that you can't have any of that without conscious leadership like who's going to create a purpose, who's going to really care about the culture, who's going to want to include all stakeholders, unless you have conscious leadership. You know there's many things, but what would you say as far as what are maybe the best way to think asses? If a company is looking at that, what are the first steps they have to take to begin to trick that transition to a more conscious approach to leading their organizations?

Ryan McShane: 35:34

I think we have to examine what we're measuring. I think that all too often, organizations put the cart before the horse, and my greatest example of that is there's a classic cult movie called Office Space.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 35:48

I don't know if you've heard of it, that's a great one.

Ryan McShane: 35:51

But you remember, good old Bill Lumberg comes around, makes his way around everybody's office with a coffee cup in his hand or their cubicles, I should say with coffee cup in hand, and making sure that everybody has a cover page on their TPS reports. And he spends the entire day making sure that everybody has a cover page on their TPS reports. Well, let me tell you that that doesn't determine the profitability of your company, that doesn't determine the culture of your company. We're spending way too much time on the things that just don't matter, for egoic reasons, for, to you know, self-sustainment reasons. There's a number of reasons that go in there, none of them really good, in alignment with our higher purpose, mission or vision. So I think that we have to really examine what do we measure and does that make a difference? And if we don't have measurements that are in alignment and coherence with our vision, our mission and our purpose, as well as our people, then we're constantly going to be inefficient and wasting time on things that don't help anybody in our stakeholder system. And so I think that would be the first approach is to really examine what we're doing and does that make sense? Does that have coherence with our mission and vision, and I think that in and of itself, david takes courage, because what we're doing is leading ourselves down the path of saying you know, what once was is no longer who we are and we've got to start imagining who we can be going forward. And that takes courage, that takes commitment, that takes vision as well, and I think that's an important thing to really remark on and have everyone at the leadership level really understand. So it takes a shift in paradigm shift in thinking across your executive leadership to recognize that most of what we've done up to this point has gotten us to where we need to be, but it's not going to continue as continuous continue to enable to sustain us in the long term.

Ryan McShane: 38:00

And we've got to start looking in the long term and speaking of long term. I think that that needs to be our focus, more so than the short term, and I think that that's a big part of why we experience the pains that we do right now. We recognize that what we do in the short term is not typically in alignment with what we would do in our decision making for the long term, and you can see that predicated based on the banking system. You know, quarter to quarter we got to make the profits and corporate America, we've got to make the numbers look good, so we will cut corners here and we'll cut here and just to inflate the numbers and then meanwhile we've compromised ourselves so we're basically cutting off our legs as we're trying to run. These are the kinds of things that we've got to step back from and say why are we doing this? This is not in benefit of anyone, but a few small minority folks at the very top of the organization, and those are kind of behaviors that are deal with areas to the organization as well as the people that run the organization.

Ryan McShane: 39:05

And that's where I think the stakeholder orientation concept of conscious capitalism comes through loud and clear. Because that stakeholder orientation, as I understand it, david says we will do no one thing in benefit of one stakeholder group to the detriment of another stakeholder group. And that's precisely what we see happening in corporate America. Oftentimes we predicate most of our organizational decisions based on what's in our best interest in the short term, based on a quarter to quarter focus, whereas I think that the long term focus is always going to be in our better interest collectively. And the stakeholder orientation that's articulated in conscious capitalism comes from a concept that we will do no one thing in benefit of one stakeholder group to the detriment of another stakeholder group. And we see that oftentimes exhibited in organization where the executive leadership will design it so that they get bonuses at the top level. Well, the mid-level management doesn't get that and that also doesn't translate to benefiting the clients and customers that we serve as well. So we're creating those detriments to those other stakeholders while self-aggrandizing one stakeholder group, and that obviously creates internal competition.

Ryan McShane: 40:20

And I'm a strong believer that a house divided amongst itself will surely fall. And that's exactly what we do. Is we create this internal competition amongst our teams instead of competing outside of the organization with our competitors, and that's OK. I think Iron Sharpens Iron. You know, if there's someone down the street that is doing something a little bit better than we are, then we better get our stuff together and start looking at how we can be innovative. I think that's great, I think that's the fuel for innovation. But when you bring that competition internal to the organization, it's detrimental to the team and it creates an us against them mentality. And I can't tell you how many times, david, I go into organizations for consulting purposes and that's exactly what I see is there's a very clear demarcation of oh your management, oh your employees, and it's an us against them, and we work against each other instead of with and for each other. That needs to change.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 41:18

Right, and yeah, exactly, it's understanding the context, which goes back to the vision and what you're trying to create. To me, leadership is inherently creative and for many years we've had a strategy to lead by fear and division, as you said, and we're seeing that in the world in many ways. We won't go into that right now, but we're seeing a world that's being divided right now. We're not uniting around a common vision, a common identity, et cetera, and to me, that's what leaders are creating from a place of OK, what are we trying to impact longer term in the world? I like what you said about that as well. It's not that we're constantly looking at the long term, but we're using that long term to back into measurements and steps we have to take to create that new reality. And if you look at all the greatest leaders whether it's Herb Kelleher from Southwest or Nelson Mandela, or you look at whatever you call as a great leader they had a vision that led them to have the impact that they had. And we're in a world right now that I feel I'm not saying that visionary leadership is not available, but it's harder to see right now.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 42:30

It almost feels like even some of the organizations I am involved in, I'm starting to notice this is happening. It seems that leaders and executives and their teams are busier post-pandemic than they were pre-pandemic and here we have people not commuting, having more time in their day to actually get to work and do work, and they seem to be more overwhelmed by what they have to deal with. And it's almost like people are going into which. I love innovation, but it almost like CEO saying okay, we just got to innovate, everybody started innovating. So everybody's innovating and everybody's getting busy. And when I'm innovating, I'm affecting finance, because what I'm doing needs to finance, and it's also affecting HR and they're innovating and it's affecting everybody else. So to me, that is a method, not the means to an end. Right, the vision is the means. Then, what impact is our organization trying to have on the world? What do we have to create in order for us to do that and what are we stretching towards to have that impact in the world? Right? What are your thoughts on what I just said?

Ryan McShane: 43:42

Well, and once again, what you just described is just a different method of doing before being. And so, even though we're still, we're doing these things at home, we're still constantly doing, doing, doing, and we haven't paused for the cause to say why am I doing these things? Number one, number two how do I make, maintain a balance, how do I make sure that I'm taking care of myself? Because, as we all know, we can't pour from an empty cup. I can't be a good leader for you if I don't work on my leadership skills, and so I don't have it to share with you, if I don't constantly monitor that and grow and develop those competencies and skills within myself. And I think that's what we're doing. We've just shifted our notion of how we're going about doing something, but we haven't shifted our North Star, we haven't shifted our vision, and that is where I get into.

Ryan McShane: 44:38

The paradigm of thinking has to completely change and I might suggest it has to invert what it used to be before. Everything has always been predicated on the almighty dollar. What if we predicated everything on the almighty people, right? Well, how would that shift people in terms of how they think about work? And so how refreshing would it be for executives to come out and say, hey, listen, I want you guys, all of my employees, to start really thinking about how they can create better work-life balance, how they can make sure that they're taking care of themselves, how they're making sure that they're actually taking time for vacation.

Ryan McShane: 45:17

I can't tell you, we have an epidemic of people who have weeks and weeks of vacation on the books that they never take, just because, oh, I'm too busy, I just can't do it. They depend on me too much. We should never set up an environment where that's the case, where we are so dependent on this one person that they can never take any time for themselves, because, ultimately, we burn out our best employees. Who do you give the most work to? Well, the person that you can depend on getting it done. We need to make sure that we're developing the capabilities of the majority of our workforce, not the minority of our workforce, and consequently, burning them out and chasing them out the door.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 45:57

Yeah, I think this is a really important point because you have very smart people leading organizations. I mean some of the smartest people I've ever met. They can dance circles around me. I'm very, very honored and privileged to be working with At the same times.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 46:12

Sometimes our ideas can get ahead of us not our vision, but ideas.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 46:17

Oh, this could be improved. We have to now make sure that we have a clear idea of how we're generating and holding under revenue Important for an organization but if that's devoid and disconnected from the vision that we're trying to create now, we're, in a certain way, veering off in a direction on something that appears valuable and is valuable, and you can say well that of course that's valuable, but is it consistent with what we're trying to create? Is this the timing for doing that and the pressure we're currently putting on our staff that may have lost two people, two key leaders in their organization, and are just trying to manage a particular function, and now we have three special projects coming in on top of that and they're basically getting home at night 10 hours later, right? Or is their ending work 10 hours later and having to avoid the temptation of going back to the email because they know it's going to be piling up by the next day, right? So it is like this both and thing is what is again?

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 47:21

I think it's really. This is something I've become more passionate about with my clients is why are you creating what you're creating, as your to your point? What kind of experience are you trying to create for your employees so you get the most from them, and are you taking care of that and are you directing them in a way that that energy can have the most impact? Right?

Ryan McShane: 47:42

Yeah, I agree 100%. You know I often use the acronym with them what's in it for me? And as a leader, if you're not considering what's in it for the people that you're trying to lead and guide and develop, then you're going to lose them, and I think that's ultimately what it comes down to is what's in it for them, what's in it for you, what's in it for me? And if we don't predicate our decision making and be very strict about predicating our decision making on that capability of identifying what's in it for you, what's in it for me, then once again we're going to recreate a mirror image of the same system that we're trying to leave Right and it's creating complexity and problems that don't solve any, any issue. And I always say, from an HR standpoint be hard on the problem, be easy on the person. And I think that there's some relevance to that for what we're talking about and creating this new system. We've got to be hard on the old system and we've got to create a new system that is predicated on the human, the person at the center of that, because that's ultimately what drives everything. And you know, I think we can.

Ryan McShane: 48:58

Also, that flies in the face of some of the advancements of technology that we're seeing develop all around us with AI and chat, gpt and things of that nature, and I'm often asked about. You know what are your thoughts on that? And I said you know my concern is not on the AI itself. My concern is about who's programming the AI and what's their agenda and what's their mission. But I also say that as technology advances, we should we also have to have an equal advancement in our humanity as a people, because as technology continues to increase the interactions that we have become much more transactional instead of relational, and so that gives us a kind of measuring stick to say have we become more transactional or have we become more relational? And that goes back to the statement before about that longing for something different. People are longing for relationships.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 50:01

Yeah, yeah, and they're hungry. It goes back to that beingness, you know. Are we caring for the beingness? Do we understand that? Actually igniting the heart and passion and inspiration is part of that. But also giving people space to recuperate, recover, to enjoy life is also additive to when they come to work right, and it can be. I think highly driven leaders can lose touch with that in a certain way.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 50:33

Lose touch Because as you rise above in the organization, I always say your job gets easier Because you're further and further away from the work.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 50:42

But then you can get out of touch with the work and now the ideas that you have become more powerful than the connection to the actual work that's being done. Sometimes, because you are naturally at the CEO level, you really are out of touch with, a lot of times, what's going on within the organization at any level of detail, because you can't, you can't, you just don't have you're in a different stratosphere in a certain way overseeing that organization. So it really requires you to keep your hands in the cooking jar, if you will, or keep connected in some way. And it goes back to what you were saying about the ongoing need for leadership development. That gets sometimes lost in the journey. You know, we rise to a certain level in the organization because of our developed leadership, but then we stop, maybe developing it, and you know, as you and I both know, the depth and capacity to develop that is vast and deep, maybe infinite, yeah Right.

Ryan McShane: 51:39

No question, I think I shared with you before about nine times out of 10, when I go into a company to do training, I hear the same thing from organizations. Hey, Ryan, you know this is great, but you know who needs to hear this? My boss, and so to your point. We have middle level managers frontline all the way up to middle level managers that are attending these trainings, but the executive leadership is not attending these trainings. So the middle management comes away with all these tools and new ideas and great approaches to doing things, but they're not supported by their executive leaders because they're not aware of these things, because they didn't attend the training. So we're almost doing training for training's sake and perpetuating a frustration for mid-level management to say I know these are the right things to do and I could effectuate these changes, but they're not supported by my executive leader. So then we've got a problem.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 52:39

Yeah, and I'm a firm believer that organizations really have to, while giving leadership development throughout their organization is important.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 52:47

If the C-suite is not really thought about the leadership culture and I think that is an distinct aspect within a culture that we're trying to create and emulate and model ourselves If we're not holding ourselves accountable and looking at ourselves hard through assessing what that culture is, agreeing to it and then holding ourselves to account to what we expect to create, through measuring our own capacity to lead and looking at our own cells at the C-suite level, then if you're not doing that, it really makes.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 53:18

What you're pointing to is why it makes it hard to continue to do that training down in the organization, and I think the value of doing that training obviously is giving people skills, insights, understanding their abilities. That's going to certainly add to their life, add to their career, and they end up like they're not doing it. So I'm out of here, right, and that's what I learned from Ryan in my training is portable, so I can take it somewhere else. That's still positive, but I think if the organization is not doing that at the top, then they are actually wasting more money. If they're looking at an ROI, then they're making it, and if they do it from the top down, as much as it's not absolutely necessary, it is additive and more powerful, would you agree?

Ryan McShane: 54:06

with that Precisely. Yeah, I think you framed it very well. That's exactly right.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 54:13

So, as we bring this together a little bit in our conversation today, I know we all wish we could have a crystal ball for what the future holds. Right now, I think there's about a gazillion guesses about what could happen next and there's a myriad of ways that things that unfold within the world and within business. But if you as, or to guess, what trends are you hoping organizations attend to so that they stay relevant and begin to create this new world? What do you see has to happen for us to begin to? You know, chaos tends to eventually organize itself right. We're in a kind of a chaotic time and I think, in a certain way, it's an important time that will eventually hopefully, my vision lead to healthier ways of approaching organizational life, leadership and living in general. But what would you say to that?

Ryan McShane: 55:08

Yeah, I think we've talked on a few of them, and I think it starts with recognizing and understanding the multi-generational workforce. I'm still astounded to this day, and I've been delivering that topical training of the multi-generational workforce for 10 to 15 years. My audience has changed over that 10 to 15 years. I could be talking to a room full of boomers and saying, okay, millennials, I know, I know, but we need to start embracing them. Now I'm talking to a room full of millennials going, okay, boomers, I know, I know, but we still need to learn from them, you know. And so the audience has shifted, but the understanding of one another and our preferences across those generations still lost on many people. They haven't gained to seek to understand the other generation and I think that that's to our detriment. So I think that we need to really understand each other as a multi-generational workforce and the implications that that has for how we interact with one another, how our teams are assembled, how we collaborate. I think the tech or AI component of this to the extent that we have expanded our technical capabilities we also must deepen our humanity and compassion to counterbalance that transactional notion of how we've interacted and make sure that it's relational in nature. I also think that we have to be very flexible in our approach. We have recognized, as a result of COVID, that we can work almost anywhere at any time and still deliver based on the results that we need. So let's keep that in mind in terms of how we approach the employment relationship.

Ryan McShane: 56:54

I think that's going to attract the kind of talent that you're interested in garnering for your organization and it's also going to help you keep the talent that you have within your organization. I also think that we have a demand for human-centered leaders. Once again, I think most leaders have elevated in their roles due to the results that they were able to accumulate from a financial basis. Well, once again, I think that's a short-term result. I think that if you're taking care of the people and predicating your decision-making based on your workforce and your talent, you're going to have exponentially larger results for an almost infinite amount of time afterwards, not just a short-lived experience.

Ryan McShane: 57:41

And finally, I think a culture that puts people first is going to enable all the results that we just talked about. That 1,025% more profitable than other organizations in the same industry and in their competition is going to be exactly the kind of experiences that they have Before I mentioned, and I continue to reemphasize, it takes a shift in our mindset to start us down that pathway and starting to see a vision of what could be and starting to get some buy-in and engagement from our colleagues to bring them on and into this concept of hey, we know that what we've been doing up to this point is not necessarily resonating with who we are as a society any longer. Who could we make it be? And I think that that questioning of itself is so exciting to attend to.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 58:37

Yeah, that's a great question. That's really a great question. And again I want to go back to this. I love this being and doing thing distinction you made today, because it is our beingness that leads our doingness.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 58:49

As I say, at the top of this show, we have this vast inner resourcefulness and I think we've made thinking itself a false God. To be quite honest, thinking is an aspect that's a step before doing so. To me it's in the doing realm, it's creative at some level, but it's also it's always constantly. How am I going to act? And if we're living out of our heads and not our hearts, which really are the true guidepost of it? And again, research is beginning to neuroscience all this research is coming out about the heart and we have three brains, not one brain the head, heart and gut, and that they communicate with each other and that if you're operating from the neck up, you're missing those two other resources. And that's a leap of faith.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 59:39

Sometimes, for somebody that's been living in another head for a long time, it takes a while. What do you mean you're talking about? That doesn't make any sense because there's a defense against that, but that's the truth. You're actually cutting off two thirds of your and much more of your resources by not doing that. So I really appreciate, yeah, and I really appreciate the conversation, as I always do with you. Ryan, you know I really want to thank you for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom and your insights, which are very profound. I can tell you reflect on this quite a bit and it's been churning around in you for many, many, many years and you're a great contributor to your clients and they're lucky to have you and you know I will make sure that people have access to your website and you're contacting information so they can contact you if they were equally moved in the show, so they can reach out and talk to you. Any final words for you as we close out the show.

Ryan McShane: 1:00:33

You know, david, I just want to applaud you and what you're doing to really give a forum for this kind of message to come across, because, as I mentioned before, I think people are really longing for this but don't know how to necessarily create a foothold to create the futures that they're looking for. And there's people like you out there that say, hey, you know, I've got some ideas about that vision and, even more so, I've got some tools and methodologies and mechanisms to create that shift for your organization, that you can realize exactly what you're longing for and be fulfilled in that way. And I think that's what we're all looking for is fulfillment, to know that we've made a difference. I don't know who you talk to these days, but no matter who you do talk to, they want to make a difference. Every one of us and that's consistent across every single generation we all want to make a difference.

Ryan McShane: 1:01:27

It's the how we go about that that's very different, and what we need to do is transcend some of those hows and make sure that we're all in alignment towards making that difference and then collaborate with one another to achieve that in a way that makes sense to the players that are involved and the clients and customers that we serve. So I want to applaud you and making a forum and enabling that message to get out, because I think that's where we are today is we need to shift people's minds and hearts right now and that, as a natural result of that, people will start investing their energy and doing something different and creating the future of the workforce.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:02:06

Thank you and well said. And you know, I think you know not to end on a heavy note, but I know that anybody that's in their last moments of life are not going to be thinking about what they did. They may have, what they might think about the impact they had, but what they really care about is the meaningfulness of their life and how they connected with and how they spent time with things that were that were most important to them. And I think, if you know, it's sometimes good to keep the end in mind. You know, as they say, you know and recognize that.

David Craig Utts, The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:02:36

You know we have a short time on this planet to have an impact and I think people and organizations I'm speaking, you know want to thank you again, ryan, and I'm now speaking in my audience. I want to thank you for attending these conversations. Our audience is growing. I thank you for showing up and listening to these podcasts. Please, you know, as I say, if you have a network, please share the connection to this podcast so that you can, you can connect people to conversations like I have with Ryan, because they are important conversations. We have to, at this time, get into what we deeply care about and have that moving us forward rather than what we are afraid of or what we think is going to fall apart. We have to start engaging vision. So again I thank you, my audience, for showing up for Unfazed Under Fire. I look forward to seeing you back next time on the show and thank you for joining Unfazed Under Fire. Have a great rest of your day. This is David Kregats, the Brazilian leadership guy, signing off.