Business owners have ever seen anything like this.
And while a small number of industries are actually thriving in our Brave New World, most are facing huge drops in revenue, uncertainty about the future, and tough decisions about staffing and just keeping the lights on.
We need advice, direction, and leadership.
That’s why I asked David Belden of ExecuVision International to join me on Radio Free Enterprise this week. David has consulted to hundreds of companies as well as thousands of individual founders and executives over the past 30+ years.
He has helped them survive previous disruptions like 9/11, the global financial crisis of 2008, and the resulting Great Recession. We’re all in this together folks. And we WILL make it through to the other side.
More Info: https://iexecuvision.com/
What follows is a computerized transcription of our entire conversation. Please excuse any typos!
My guest today is David Belden of ExecuVision International. David, welcome to the program.
Glad to be here.
You know you and I have known each other for a long time and we’ve had a number of laughs here and there. We’ve had a couple of cries together as well, but in today’s interview we’re going to be talking about a very serious subject, so we may have a little bit of a hard time trying to keep the atmosphere light. Probably we can throw in a couple of stories, war stories from the past that will help with the levity level, but.
The reason I’ve asked you to come here today is because I think you’re the perfect person to speak to how businesses can get through the crisis we’re in the midst of right now, the pandemic. The resulting economic dislocation and depression, or who knows exactly what’s coming, because of all the experience that you’ve had working with businesses over the years.
Now I normally do not start out asking my guests to talk about their back story, but I think it’s important in this case so that people understand the experience that you’ve had and, for lack of a better phrase, why they ought to listen to what you have to say today. So if you would talk a little bit about your background prior to becoming a business coach and executive coach and consultant and then up through the many years you’ve had and all the companies you’ve worked with please.
Well, to begin with, I am a child of the 50s and I at a very young age 17. I started University an.
Got bored with it and six months later dropped out and actually hitchhiked around United States for awhile and then while I was still 18, decided to go to Europe.
So I moved.
To Copenhagen, Denmark. When I was 18.
My first job was as a dishwasher in a luxury hotel restaurant.
Well, $0.85 an hour.
And somehow ended up running companies.
It was not my plan or intention. It’s simply something that happened.
I seem to have a.
Innate disability or inability to do say no.
So when people ask me if I could do something, I always said yes and then trying to figure out how to do it.
During that time, I eventually went to work for a very large.
International Company and Global Company based in France.
And through them had the opportunity to do.
Several international startups.
And three major international turn around.
So I got to travel and live all over the world. I spent 30 years abroad altogether and lived in three companies countries in Europe and two in Asia.
And then you worked in another 25 or 26 countries altogether.
So my role is always going to.
Unify.
Problem no one ever asked me to turn around.
Interpolative doing well.
There’s always crisis situation an.
I had to get in and figure out on an layout a plan with the team and get out of there again as quickly as possible. It would turn around and typically take anywhere from over two to three years.
RX will take anywhere from six months to a year.
And it was just an amazing opportunity and challenge and watch the fun along the way. Different languages in different cultures and identifying some of the commonality.
That are universally true in organization.
And once identified on their move and I were able to move that same model to help other companies. No development and restructure.
I came back to the states after 30 years abroad and any distance chair.
And from there I got to work individually with a lot of companies I worked with, about 400 companies over the last 22 years.
And that’s where you and I first met when you were a vistage chair and I was one of your CEOs in the group peer group and also the direct counseling and consulting that you did to me as I was trying to get a startup off the ground.
Around the year 2000 duringthe.com era.
Now that was the net.
Next step, I wanted to move to which is you and I happen to be having breakfast together on the morning of 911 and prior to me having a meeting with the venture capitalist who had put a couple of $1,000,000 into the.com that I was CEO of an. You know we had our breakfast and I was crying in my cereal.
Overall, the Troubles I was having and then you and I stood up and we went to pay for our breakfast. And as I recall, we walked up to the cash.
This year and they had television monitors on the on the wall above the cash register. An my recollection is I looked up and saw the first tower smoking and on fire and just as we walked up the second plane hit the second tower and from that moment forward everyone’s lives. Everyone remembers where they were.
At that time.
Everyone’s life was changed and certainly it had a dramatically negative impact on business.
What you and I have talked about is trying to take lessons from the experience of 911 and you told me in a pre interview meeting that you believe a more apt analogy. Apt analogy is the financial crisis of 2008. Can you tell us about?
As you said, you’ve worked with over 400 companies. What exactly were you up to at that time? Let’s say 911. How many companies were you working with? What types of companies and that type of thing?
Right, so I had two.
This is the.
Peer groups for CEOs. An altogether had 30 two members of two groups of 16.
And they were.
Very, very diverse group. Very diverse companies both in terms of age of wiki. No types of business, gender diversity.
Ethnic diversity only groups wrong is just a composite of the entire business community.
So some of them were large corporations, somewhere. Small startups just a wide range representing.
Everything in American business.
OK, and what would you say in general? Was the impact of 911 on this on these individual companies.
You know the immediate.
Impact was completely the shock and denial and the.
Unbelievable.
Effect that it had.
Nationally, political companies to 20. The people were really confused and is no longer felt safe. No longer felt that there was the security that they always come to expect.
And that shock. That was one of the first times we really started talking about leadership and the role of leadership in any kind of crisis.
And one of the 1st and major.
Responsibilities at End Leader unit time of crisis is to reduce anxiety.
Even though we is, leaders are feeling anxious, we cannot allow that anxiety to permeate the organization.
So that that’s always a challenge.
Or or any any major in a crisis situation.
What might you suggest to business leaders who are faced with this task of trying to reduce anxiety as far as any steps that they can take during this crisis?
Well, the first thing is that we have to admit we’re enterprise.
You know the original meaning.
Of word crisis is turning point.
So in any crisis we have the choice of either attempting to return to what was.
Or turning toward a new future.
And people need to know that the leader has a plan.
I’m not suggesting that we say that anything from paid in order just trust it, but I’m saying is that we acknowledge either. Yes, this is a very serious crisis.
And we have a plan.
We are working towards something new and we need your help figuring out exactly how we’re going to do.
That’s great, that’s great advice, and something that I think although difficult, can be done very quickly by a leader who chooses to do that, chooses to make that choice. If you will, of stepping up to the plate and providing some direction.
Often times so people decide they’re not going to step up to the plate, and unfortunately we’ve seen a number of examples of that recently.
Now you had said, you know, I had really thought that we could have this great comparison and contrast between 9:11 and the current situation. But in our discussion as I mentioned, you said that you think there’s a more direct analogy.
Between what’s going on right now with the financial crisis of 2008, let’s start with why you believe that’s the case.
Well.
Yeah, little was a very American event. It was very specific to America it had.
Devastating impact for a short time.
And we recovered quickly from it. There was some leadership.
There was some direction forward and people felt that things were being taken care of.
The economic collapse 2008 was global, with the entire world economy that collapsed. It was an incredibly serious situation.
An you know the stock market was held.
In one day.
And suddenly we had to adjust to.
This new reality.
It required that every company immediately began to look at their foundations.
I had at that time I had 30.
26 members we all.
Got together and started talking about what needed to be done. Every company did the same thing with a reduced snap.
Actually got rid of people they didn’t mean because when times were good we always keep people on. It’s easier to keep you on, inspire the people who aren’t really producing. So every company had menus people.
Got rid of them, got really.
Backed or is this guy really focused on what business are we really meant? What is it we actually do? What service that we provide that people still need?
And then we consciously made an effort route to transfer all X cost to variant variable.
So for example, one of the companies in my group add and eat people in their marketing Department.
At the end of 2008.
When we really started getting serious about this, he reduced that to just one person in the company managing outsource.
Marketing.
So one person to manage outside resources, which then became a variable cost savings, only paying for what he was actually receiving.
All companies did that in 2008 and 2009. That’s why we had a jobless recovery when the economy started to improve and we realized they didn’t mean anything in your organization. And that is exactly what is going to happen now.
Well, let me mention.
Jobs are such an important topic in the mix here.
It’s so difficult to let somebody go, whether it’s good times or bad. It’s a human connection or disconnection and breaking. You and I both know how difficult it is to let somebody go, whether it’s a layoff or firing or what have you.
That’s something as you mentioned. This is something that leaders today business leaders have to face up to. They may have to make job cuts on a large scale. It’s so hard. What sort of advice would you offer to someone who is facing a decision like that?
So the first thing to recognize is that profit covers a wealth of standing, so when we are doing well, every organization keeps people on who don’t really belong to organization.
And it’s simply easier to keep them then to have any serious conversations and to to.
Let people go.
So the first thing that happens in a crisis is.
We look at all the people know they really belong in the organization. They’re not really contributing and we let them go.
And then we have to look seriously at people we can actually do without.
You know your high producers. They are loyal and everything else.
And we have to make a really serious decision.
I believe that’s been my my unbelief about organization.
Is that the leader of an organization?
Has more responsibility to the organization and to any individual.
So we have to be really honest with ourselves.
And say who can do what we need?
To survive.
Who are the people that we can at least temporarily but yeah?
And those are.
Gut wrenching and horrible decisions to have to make. That’s what keeps us awake at night, that’s.
What they are.
Makes leadership so difficult.
The true leadership is making sure that the organizations die.
That makes a lot of sense. Your commitment, your responsibility is to the organization first.
I know there’s a lot of layers to that onion of human resources and legalities and so forth of letting somebody go, but is there anything in particular that somebody, a boss, a leader, should keep in mind when they’re having that human transaction with somebody they’re letting go?
So the tone of voice they should use the approach trying to be fair, what? What is just one thing or whatever you got that can make it a little bit easier for both people on either side of that conversation.
Well, one of the things it depends of course on the situation, But if this is a situation where you actually doing a reduction in force and you were actually letting several people go. When I had to do that in turnarounds, I did I brought all of those people together.
And that might be 10 people.
And I would explain to them why they all it was not about them individually is not. They’re good people and that they weren’t commented. It was simply organization could no longer over to have them on board.
And that was never easy.
Is it so?
The worst thing that we do is leader.
And it was necessary.
And I actually found that most people expected that quite well make. It would ask why me, why not someone else. And I was honest with him.
And said in the other.
People, people working absolute skill.
And experience that we don’t care.
And we need them in the organization right now and at the moment we simply can’t afford happy neighbor.
That’s great advice. Another point you brought up is getting the leader to and through their organization to focus more. Finally on what is their actual mission? What is this business do? And so forth.
Paint a picture for us. What does that mean? If you could give an example, you don’t have to name names of a certain company or a certain industry that might have strayed a little bit from the straight line of what they’re supposed to be doing.
And then how they got that turned around and got themselves better focused?
Yeah, what happens. Typically in organizations and a lot of the companies that I work with are found their own organization or family business.
And originally people understood completely the founders that the family interested why they were in the business they were in.
And then overtime as an organization grows, we forget to tell people.
We forget what we’re actually in business and what business we’re actually.
So in a crisis situation, we have to go back and look at that and we actually in in my Mystic group almost annually did a review, which is oh, what was this? Are we really in?
And then we had to talk about.
What are the mean?
Value ads that we have in this company. What are the differentiators in this company?
That would inspire people to.
Buy our product or service.
And then trying to identify exactly how that becomes important when people are saving money and then no longer finding all kinds of frivolous things.
Why would they still buy from him?
And that’s a really, really hard exercise to go through. Is everyone sort of has a myth in the back of their mind about what the company is all about and they’ve forgotten.
That this will.
I haven’t really defined it for.
Family other people in the company.
Have no idea that that may exist.
Now can you explain I understand what you just said, but how does that help during a time of crisis? How is that beneficial for the organization at that time?
The most important thing in any company at anytime.
Is that people have clarity of vision. What is this company about?
Why does this company unique this?
And once I had clarity and vision.
Then I as an individual as a member of the organization, have to have role clarity, clarity of my own role.
I have to have a line of sight from.
What I do every day.
To the actual video companies trying to accomplish.
Otherwise, I know that I’m busy.
And I’m doing a lot. I don’t know that had any effect.
In times of crisis when we get really specific about the mission that we’re on, this is what we’re trying to accomplish, and this is this is your role in the publishing. This we in list people with enthusiasm.
By by getting that clarity.
It’s amazing the 400 companies I work with.
Several thousand executives. It is amazing how many of them don’t know what is expected.
And that is the main complaint. At most an organization.
I’m not sure exactly what we’re trying to do here. I work really hard every day and 1/4 as any other effect on the company or not.
I especially in family owned and family founded business. I’ve seen that time and time again. I understand exactly what you mean.
I want to come back to the idea of downsizing an outsourcing, or specifically outsourcing. I love the expression you used, which was converting as many fixed costs as possible to variable costs, and I just want to make it clear that fiscal fixed costs is something you’re going to have to pay every month, no matter whether you sell dollar one worth of goods or services.
And variable costs go up and down in alignment with sales, generally speaking. So clearly. If you outsource marketing. For example, if you’re having a really hard time, well, you just stop. You know those contracts or whatever it is you’re outsourcing.
What are other areas where somebody could reduce overhead, fixed costs and so forth?
Something, let’s say like their plan and equipment or overhead insurance. Is there any other area where you can find low hanging fruit where you can cut costs?
Yes, absolutely everywhere. Thanks.
So I’ve looked at at organizations.
And I I say that there are only two things we ever have.
To think about.
One thing is process. Do we have a good process?
Every company has a process, whether it’s conscious or not. Every process will deliver exactly the results it was designed to deliver.
So if we’re not efficient if we’re not getting result one, we have to look at process first.
And in times of crisis we could look at.
Every single process in the company and say, is this necessary? Is it productive? Are we doing it in the most efficient way could be outsourced? This. Could we have someone else do it? Created artificial intelligence offers machine learning, help us between Mechanical Turk?
Have some other company do it for us at that level.
Could we hire A contractor rather than having employee do it?
So that’s the first pizza in the loop, constantly. At every single step in your process, workflow, analysis, and eliminate all of the recruiting work done.
And I did that in in turn around that. One quick thing we always had to do. So the first thing is to really get back. Hope it down to our we only search for.
And then we find that OK, we ask people here that we can actually like we. Only we can hire them.
We have the metal fixed. Cost will be longer.
Now with this then?
Lowe’s out too. Is is real estate.
Having many people, we don’t need a.
Part of the office.
As we’ve said.
Is there anything we can do with?
As we have.
Do we actually need a company like one of the things that made the crisis is that people are now working remotely.
For years, companies have said we could.
Have people work remotely because we’ve been in the office removing meeting to check on what they’re doing.
We actually trust they will.
Put in eight hours today. They’re not here.
Right now we’re finding that it doesn’t matter if they’re working or day, as long as we deliver.
Product and they know me.
So we start looking again at what do we actually mean in the office?
Do we need this much office state?
And it magazine just did a survey.
Of people who have.
Been working remotely and 72% of them that they did not want to come back to the office the way they had done before.
This is going to again have far reaching effects on the real estate market. Being restaurants in the coffee shops, the.
You know everything, and I’m.
Interested in what they give me?
And cleaners and actually all of those tools and story businesses that support people working in offices.
Is simply going to disappear.
And this is going to have a very far reaching long-term effect on the entire economy.
And it’s very painful to think about.
Now you are just trying.
To send the jobs that are not coming back.
Right, 42% jobs that are our last moment are not going to be.
Just simply not knowing exist. That’s a big number are here now. Better ways of doing things?
You are in terms of people working remotely and trusting whether or not they’re getting any work done. I love the expression. Don’t confuse activity with production.
You know, just because somebody’s at the office and they’re staring into their computer screen doesn’t mean that they’re doing anything productive.
Uh.
But you you brought up the big word, the T word trust in a previous conversation we’re having an. You told me about how important trust is in this period of time.
Just rather than me trying to synopsize what you’ve said, why don’t you say it? You can say it a lot better than me.
A friend of mine, Dan Pink, is written some really wonderful books about leadership and an organizational structure. Talks about the results only work environment.
Where we no longer care where or when.
People do their job.
We only care about the results that they produce.
And his emphasis is that we have to be very, very careful to clearly explain the expectation.
And once we have those expectations clear with the employee, this is what you need to deliver this quality. This quantity at this time.
Then we have to figure out how do we measure that.
If I give you.
A project is going to take six months.
I can’t wait.
For month #5
Find out that you’re going to actually deliberately.
So I have to have as a manager I have to have a metric and I can see that you’re actually hitting milestones on what?
So very clear expectation, very clear measurement.
So that I can tell.
Remotely, whether or not you are living up, can we agree with it tonight?
If we don’t have those things, the area is.
Going to be ancient.
So what it requires an item is that once we have established those metrics and move expectation.
Then you actually live up to it. I have to trust you to do that.
And one of the.
Major challenges, especially inbound growing business.
Is learning to track.
Learning to delegate meeting in less you have our own businesses. Have our own businesses because we didn’t trust you.
We’re really doing what we do.
Doing that.
We have a really hard time to delegate. One other reason founder owned businesses. The road we don’t know a date so this all ties into doing. We are now being forced.
Against our will we are being forced to have much more trust in individuals.
To get work done.
In their own way on their own.
Without us looking over their shoulder.
And we as leaders.
Figure out a way to measure that.
I used to actually ask people.
And tell me how they want to be measured.
Oh, I like the discussion.
And we need and the outcome we want to deliver. And I would ask them, how will I be comfortable?
You know what things I should be measuring.
Between so that I would be comfortable that you actually product.
That’s great advice. I really like that now. You had told me about an organization called Trust across America. Is this something that could be helpful to business leaders who are trying to find their way through this crisis?
Yes, trust across America is focus on primarily on.
Internal trust, not mine.
When companies talk about trust, they often talk about do our customers trust that that’s more public relations and branding and then actual trust?
When I talk about trust and trust across America.
Focuses on trust.
It’s injured, does the organization that people in the organization trust other people in the organization?
And they have developed an excellent, very, very quick survey.
Let the entire company and taken per pay and.
Report back on their level of trust in the organization and then we can take that real time data and work with the executive team to say OK here result. It measures things like accountability, integrity, transparency, honesty.
And get some real time data.
Out the state of the company and I will tell you I’ve used it several times with several prominent and universally.
The person making it that we’ve seen. How are the executive team saying it can’t possibly be true?
Well, here’s the native people. Believe it or not, this is what people are saying at this moment, not.
Interesting, so yeah, being able to take a snapshot of where you are right now in terms of credit is critically important. I think more important now than ever before because.
And people are really worried.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it ties together with the leadership part. You know, each of the employees, everybody, whether they’re a leader or follower, what they do. We’re all scared. We don’t know what’s going on with the virus. We don’t know what’s coming economically. We don’t know what’s going to happen with our industry.
I mean, there’s just so many unknowns that bringing together leadership with trust, it’s just, if nothing else is going to help.
Will sleep better at night, which is bound to improve productivity. And yet, as you mentioned, trust is not something that comes naturally to most entrepreneurs and leadership is something that very few of us are born with inherently. But virtually anyone can step into that role.
And perhaps this level of crisis will be sufficient to motivate people to do that.
Yes, and it requires a different type of.
Leadership.
I mean, if you were running a stable company in manufacturing for example, and you’re doing that good process and you asked in an operating procedures and you have a very good organizational structure or everybody knows their place.
That works wonderfully in a stable environment.
We are no longer in staying with Garner.
It’s the equivalent to the military where you.
Yeah, the regular army and then you have a Green Beret flag behind me is for my son with a green beret.
The Green Berets go out and and and take on missions that everyone thinks were impossible because.
That’s their job.
They’re always looking around the corner. They’re always looking at what could happen. They’re looking at doing scenario planning constantly to say these are the contingencies we need.
To look at.
And every.
Anything they do. Small team totally dedicated people.
Everything they do.
Is based on absolute trust in everyone else on the team.
That’s a totally different type of organization then.
The standard organization where everything is command and control.
Now, David, we’re just about out of time. I think we could talk about this for a week probably, and I’m sure you certainly wouldn’t have enough information and wisdom.
Share with us to fill up that week, but with that in mind, if somebody wanted to learn more from you about you, perhaps contact you to work with you and have you help them. Their have you help their company. What’s the best way for them to reach out?
When I can contact me through my website?
The contact section there. The website gives ideas about the type of work we do and I would be happy to talk with people.
And for me, what is most important at this stage in my life is working with companies that are truly focused on transformation.
When they realize that something massive and important has to change, and helping them think through what that actually means, both for the senior executive team and for employees, I would be happy to talk with people who are interested in that.
And now let’s have a chat and see where it.
Goes from there.
I will put a link to your website and the show notes for viewers and listeners. Goodness only knows where you may be watching this or listening to this. I will place the link anywhere and everywhere that it’s available, but otherwise you can go to.
I executive vision.com to find David’s website. Now I’d like to I’d like to wrap up with this. You were a tremendous head.
To me as a CEO of a.com Venture backed company at during the crisis of 2001 and before 911 and many people could benefit from that as well. During this time we just mentioned working with you, but whatever, there’s a lot of people who may not.
Want to take that step but still could benefit from coaching and having being involved with the peer group and so forth. How could?
Did either coaching and or pure groupmembership help somebody during a crisis like this?
We all need people who are outside of our own sphere of influence and especially the higher up you are in the organization, the more important it is to have someone who is helping you.
Seeing what you’re doing.
I was a member of the peer group before I became a chair on and as a member of the most important thing that I ever learned from them was how I showed up to other.
I thought that I was making a certain type of impression and my peers told me that that’s not true.
And they help me understand.
That I was not communicating effectively as I could have been because I was, in their view, obituary write.
Up into what?
A bit too.
Aryan, oh, I see.
So you know.
Having someone actually hold premiere having someone.
Asking what if?
Having someone work with you around.
Not knowing what to do.
But helping you understand why you’re not doing almost all of the people that I work with know what they need to be doing. You’re just not doing it.
So having someone on the outside helping hold you accountable is a tremendous advantage.
Without a doubt, and I recall that accountability and that outside perspective I got in spades, not only from you, but also from my peers in the group. So I do think, and although it’s not generally free or even inexpensive to join a group like that.
It could well be the best money founder.
Leader in a business world could invest right now.
Yes, absolutely. David Belden. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Thanks Frank. I really enjoy having chat and.
Ask to talk with you.
Thanks again to David Belden and thank you for joining us until next time I’m Frank Felker’s and I’ll see you on the radio.
