Hello and welcome to This Is Not What I Signed Up For, a podcast for first time managers preventing you from sinking by teaching you how to swim. Today I am joined by Rob Rudy and I'm really, really excited to have him with us. Rob's had the privilege of growing several companies. He started in the textile business where he moved a family business from $3 million up to$20 million in sales. That's quite an achievement, Rob. And then the company was acquired and you became the COO for the parent company valued at$200 million. That's quite a jump. Well done. Since then, Rob's worked in various roles from COO to president. And he now advises companies on building next level leaders, actionable strategies, and then embracing change in the business. So I'm really excited to have him with us and to talk to us about today's topic. Rob, welcome. Thank you, Ross. Pleasure to be here. Great. Rob, I always go into a icebreaker right at the beginning and I want to find out from you what is the worst piece of advice you've ever received in terms of management or what's the worst mistake you've made along the way. I would probably have several to choose from it's not just one and I think that's the history of most leaders if they deny the fact that they've made they haven't made mistakes they're probably they're not telling you the truth I will tell you the worst advice I had was when I did move into a more senior role in a fast -growing company I was told by several people a few a few rungs higher you know what Rob the company's really not ready for any change so just Keep your head down. You know, just work with the flow of the company. Don't try and speed it up. I think we're fine. Now to, to the listeners and viewers of this podcast, we all know change has always been upon us. may be faster now and it may be deeper now, but it's always been there. in my gut, honestly, Ross, I felt like, well, I don't know, is this a major signal they're sending me that they don't want me to come in? And they really did originally say, We need you to help build and change some of the culture. We need you to actually go deeper into the org. And then once I got there, I don't think we really want to go that fast. It wasn't the best advice. Yeah. And the really the other leaders, they were waiting for that change. They were hungry for that change. So although the advice was there and I certainly took it at first because I wanted to make sure I understood the landscape was pretty clear. I had to make some moves. Uncomfortable as it was. but sometimes your gut is often quite right. yeah, that sounds like a bit of a recipe for stagnation as well, not bringing that change. Cool. Well, one of the things we're going to talk about today is part of that. But what our main overarching topic is going to be is leading and doing. And like I said in the book and in the different aspects around that, there's a balance that has to be struck. when leading and doing, and especially if you're coming in as a new leader, you've been a solo contributor for a while, you've been used to doing your own thing and getting that in place, and now you've been promoted up into a leadership role, it's very rare that you suddenly stop doing all the stuff that you've been doing previously and just jump into leadership and bang your leader. So, Rob, with this kind of thing, how do you balance... being or doing the leading as well as doing the doing as a new manager. It's such a great question. And I know, at least in my history, it's been when a promotion was forthcoming and the job was now provided to me, typically the expectations were, you know, we really want you to do what you were just doing, now take on this new additional work as a leader. And I can recall that early in my career. Well, I'm not really quite sure what you mean. I guess I'll figure it out along the way. But... pretty quickly you realize that you don't want to actually ever drop the ball on the expected goals that have been set. So there's really not a lot of leeway in most companies. Like people would say, look, these are the goals. These are the timelines. We really want you to get them done and keep going along the way and build up your other skills. And what I found was I spent a lot more time than I expected with my direct boss on really understanding truthfully where they wanted me to swim, which lanes they wanted me to be in. Because if I had that alignment, I knew I could then probably ask for a little bit more leeway in so many other areas or support or help. But if I didn't keep that person pretty much well up to date, I had much less leeway. And I don't blame them. I no one really wants to be surprised. So the first thing is really understand what your boss wants. You can also, we're always in a period of influence. Every one of us, even if we don't think we are, we are. And it may be sometimes a pretty great opportunity or a smaller one, but I would use those and I, is really a proper way to describe it, to be able to shed light on the issues I'm dealing with. So keep your boss very well informed. It'll be a lot easier to navigate those change waters. Yeah, and I think that that's incredibly valuable and keeping that communication channel open. You build a rapport, you start showing value because there's an ongoing conversation. It really helps in balancing kind of and having the conversation of what should I be doing now versus what was I doing? Can I offload stuff? And it's very important. I can't agree more on that. You mentioned as you were speaking there the word alignment. Yes. Speak to us a bit more about how alignment fits into this. What do you mean when you say alignment in your space? so over the years, and I probably, if you would have asked me that question 25 years ago, I would have had a very different answer than I do now. And I think a lot of it is the nature of, of how we go through our, our, businesses and our opportunities. But I always found I was pretty early on really responsible for starting to build teams. And it could have been a very small team at one time. It was a global team and they all have the same expectations, even if they feel that they're quite different in scope. And that is we agree on the strategy. We of course agree on the vision and mission, by the way. That's pretty much given, but then we agree on the strategy, the rules of engagement, how we're going to work together, how do we resolve conflict? And then we of course agree on measuring our outcomes and holding each other accountable. So, and I found if we didn't agree on those concepts, even if we were really busy, we weren't hitting our goals. We had a lot of people that were really unhappy. and not very engaged in the organization. We probably had clients that were not really satisfied with the service. And that's always been my experience. So alignment is really understanding how we work together. And I would also say there's a contrast because over the years I've learned alignment is not always agreement. If I had to wait to agree with every single person's view around a table, and there could be five of us in a room and everybody has to be 100 % unanimous, we really wouldn't leave the room, right? And as much as I love my teams, we have to leave the room and we have to go and do what we just align to. So agreement, the way I see it is it really is a percentage of times I can look and go, I really do understand why the company is doing this or why my boss is asking me to do this or why I'm trying to get other people, my peers to see it a certain way and I'll see it their way. But if it's a hundred percent, Again, that just assumes we all have the same mindset and I'd like to have diversity of opinion. If I'm scoring about 70%, 80 % of the time I agree and 20 % I don't, I still align 100 % of the time. I don't pick and choose my battles and say, well, I didn't agree with that, so I'm not going to align. That's really not how a great company functions. Yeah, and I think in that disagreement, you can often find some innovation and someone may have a better idea than what's happening currently. So speaking of that meeting, if we're all in the room and getting that alignment, how do you sort of decide on that direction to go in when there are these differing? of stakeholders and expectations from the business and maybe the team and people have a different view. If you're leading these teams, how do you decide on that direction? And so typically, at least again, in my experiences, it's been that we really did always have a decision -making model and most companies do. Now the decision -making model, albeit it really needs to be very clear, it's never healthy if we have no idea who's supposed to make the decision, but really good leaders and ones who are growing into it, perhaps new managers, they're learning the power of collaboration. So we can go back a few decades. when somebody would come down from the mountaintop and it was probably the most senior person and say, is what we're doing, this is how we're doing it and you're all just here for the ride. You got it. And you know what? I'm very happy we could put that one in a box in the top shelf. We typically don't work in those environments today. It's proven that they don't really work well. As the new manager, I'd like you to be able to consider how you're gonna work with your own peers. on decision -making if it's not always so clear, perhaps it's only clear at the highest levels and you have to create your own, certainly even with your own team. How would you do that? So that's really the next opportunity for a new manager. If you collaborate, people want to be heard. That is the key, I think, to getting people to engage and align to you. If they feel that things were cut off too early or the decision was made before we walked in the room, that's not a recipe for a great aligned team. Yeah. And I think it comes back to what you said right in the beginning is that that communication line, that open communication line, you're managing sort of down as well as up or you're managing side to side. It's never, I think, a one way waterfall anymore. It's all over the place. So when you have these disagreements, There are going to be, I suppose, people with noses out of joint or management might be out of joint or something might happen there. How do you get the alignment when there's that disagreement in place there? Early on, we would expect that within any team, I mentioned earlier about the rules of engagement. So the rules of engagement would include, first of all, how do we come to agreement? In other words, is there a true decision maker at the end in that room? And perhaps there's four other people that have been asked to present or to give diverse opinions. So that's the first thing. If there's no clear decision maker, I would say it is actually very difficult and it falls upon us. even in middle management, it really falls upon us to say, okay, within the world I'm now asked to manage, does my team have clarity on that? So am I the final decision maker? A tool I've used for years that I, and it's really, it's been used for years, it came out of project management as RACI charts, responsible. I was thinking about that when you were talking about the decision making and things like that. I still use it today. I worked in companies for 30 some years. I advise companies today and I'm still yet to find tools that probably bring out the best conversation about who owns a decision. How do we of course hold each other accountable and a RACI chart (R A C I) it's also been extended. I think it's RASCI today as well. There's different versions. Right. And so also very powerful. But I will tell you those tools, really help in clarifying our decision -making model. At that point, if we're following it, and I believe we all, it's all part, it's within all of us to follow a predetermined model that we've agreed to, the accountable and responsible, chances are quite high you're gonna come to the alignment that you expected. And sometimes our noses are a little bit of, we're humans, but you know what? The 80 -20 rule, if I believe, pretty much in the vision of the company, I don't have to agree with every decision to know that I'm in the right place. Yeah, I think just for our listeners, just in case you're interested and you haven't heard this RACI term before, RASCI term before, just so you know, it details the different roles that we have within any sort of decision where there is who is responsible, so who is actually taking care of it, who's accountable, so who's heads on the chopping block for this. It's the... Supporting role, which is one of the ones we use the S that's in there. So who supports the initiative there's Consulted who gets consulted when something happens and then informed who gets informed about the decision that's made as well So just so everyone is on the same page with that one Rob you when we were talking before this you mentioned a really cool phrase Being comfortable with being uncomfortable and I think that that ties in very much to this disagreement. think as we're wrapping up on a bit of time, tell me a bit more about being comfortable with being uncomfortable in this space. I have to thank you for that. have to give kudos to, I had three mentors in my life. And one of them I want to speak of was a lady by the name of Judith Glazer. I was a member of a business group. It's called Vistage in the US and Tech in Canada, TEC. And it's really devoted to helping CEOs build their businesses. And as a member, we would get guest speakers. And one day around 2008, this lady, by the name of Judith Glazer comes in and speaks to our group. And for three hours in a workshop mode, she speaks to us about ways we can build our better communication in the company. At the end of the session, I went up to her and I said, Judith, I have to tell you, I really kind of felt you were just speaking to me because almost every point that you brought up, I actually acknowledged and said, yeah, I think we have work to do on this. And after three hours, it's a lot of points. Do you think you'd be willing to work with myself and my team? And she said, let's talk more about it. And there began a association over five years. She, she was a trusted advisor. was an incredibly, wise person on, the areas of communication and conflict resolution. And I came to her one time, several years into the mandate and I said, you know what? This is really difficult with, with my team right now. There's really a lot of conflict. They're not, some of them aren't even acknowledging or don't want to attend the other one's meeting. There's, it's getting a little, a little nasty there. And I kind of made it all about me. And she said, you know, Rob, this has nothing to do with you except you have, you have accountability here, but you've, you've got to be prepared to be comfortable being uncomfortable because all I'm hearing is about your uncomfortable. And that's what leadership is. It is going to be a journey. It's never a promise that we're going to be comfortable all the time, but it's an expectation that we're going to learn and grow. And we always hear that we grow in our comfort zone. But when she told me that it, it triggered something in me, a positive trigger to say, you know what? I I've been looking at this with the wrong set of lenses. And so I'm forever grateful to Judith did pass away a few years ago, missed greatly, incredibly wise person, but that, that one quote. really helped me really reverse course or change course I should say in a much more positive way. Fantastic. That's great. I love that. That was awesome. Thank you. Rob, as we wrap up here, tell the listeners a little about what you're working on on your side of things. Great. So today, as an advisor and a speaker, I speak on the leadership journey and I speak on building strategies that really get executed. So one phrase that I use, and again, it was something I picked up 20 years ago. To me, it's an unknown author of the phrase. I wish I did know. I did hear it from a friend of mine, but I'm not sure he's the one who invented it. And the phrase is, have to, let's build a company. that would put our business, sorry, let's build a business that would put our business out of business. And it's a, it is really a call to action to embrace change. So I do, I do work with clients that are prepared to say, you know what, Rob, I'm not going to tell you you're moving, you're moving too fast, slow down as my opening story was instead let's build this so that we were continuously renewing. don't want to, we don't want to break our core, but we really want to understand how to move to the next. the next generation. And I think that's really where I work today and helping leaders embrace that and helping them build strategies so that they work that way. Fantastic. Such a nice work through and loop back with that advice you gave, or the worst advice you were given, and how that's changed. So that's awesome. Rob, thanks so much for joining us today. For anyone who wants to out more about Rob, Rob's details are in the show notes. So you can hop in there, take a look, jump on over to Rob's website, and take a look there. I want to thank you, Rob, for joining us. This has been a fantastic conversation. And I want to thank the listeners for listening to us today and we will see you next time. Rob, thank you so much. Thank you, Ross. All the best. Take care. Ciao.