Skot Waldron:
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Hi, and welcome to another episode of Unlocked. Today, I'm talking with Andrew Freedman, who is the managing partner at a performance consulting agency called Shift. This guy is passionate about team performance, and that is what they do there. In his new book called Thrive, he focuses all on that. What does a high-performance team look like? How do we get a high-performance team? I know we talk about that word a lot, high-performance teams and what it means and what it doesn't mean. Well, we actually talk about that in the interview. It's a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot. Andrew sheds some light on what a high-performance team actually is and what a high-performance team is not. So pay attention to that.
Thrive is out in bookstores. It's on Amazon... Bookstores, the online bookstore called Amazon. You can get it there. I hope you'll check it out. There's a lot of passion. He starts the whole interview with a story about writing the book. It's been a process, you could say, and I can tell there's a lot of passion inside Andrew when he talks about this book and about the principles inside it. So let's go ahead and get rolling with this.
Andrew, welcome to the show. This is awesome having you here, man.
Andrew Freedman:
I appreciate it, Skot. It's good to be here with you. I am excited. I've been looking forward to this conversation all week, truly.
SKOT WALDRON:
All week? Wow, that's awesome. I appreciate that. I'm excited. I love the premise of your book. You've got a new book coming out, and I want to talk about that first. And then I want to talk about the guts of that book and why it's so timely right now and why we need it and our organizations and our cultures and our leadership, and what we do with that. So let me just start off first and let me hear a little bit of the story behind the writing of this book, because this wasn't just a, "Poof, a book is made," right?
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
No, it definitely was not. I mean, from genesis through, and for those who decide that they're going to pick up a copy of the book, the intro really is the genesis of Thrive and I really start with how this came about. And it's a personal story for me, all the way back to growing up and my family history and what I saw my mom go through and my mom and my dad go through. I mean, we had some trials and tribulations.
But the short version of that part is I saw my mom unbelievably depleted. She was a hero and an idol for me. She was an elementary school teacher for 35 years. She taught me truly everything about what I know to be good, true, and right about the world, my integrity, my inner soul. Just stuff didn't go great between my mom and my dad, and I didn't know about it, but even so bad as we lost our home a couple of times. My dad was in jail. My dad got married to another woman while he was married to my mom, which is like, I still don't even understand how the heck that happens. I know, I see your eyes bugging out. It's crazy wackadoodle stuff.
And I was sitting down with my mom one time and she was reading me her journal entries. And she was telling me she went through all this stuff with my dad every time that something happened. And she was a part of the relationship too, so it's not like it's all him, but she kept saying to me, "Every time it happened, another piece of me died, and another piece of me died." And when she finally decided to divorce my dad, it was a life or death decision, really, because she felt like if she didn't make a move, she would be completely depleted and gone and she would not be anything of who she was.
And that was a pivotal moment for me because I was early in a marriage, about a year, year and a half. The kind of marriage where the day after you say, "I do," you knew it was the wrong decision. And when my mom and I had that conversation, I looked in the mirror and I said, "This is a gut-check moment for Andrew, and I have really got to remember who I am, what I stand for, why I'm on this journey." I soon thereafter filed for a divorce and I committed to myself that I was never going to play small again. I wasn't going to operate in fear. I wasn't going to operate being anything less than who I was. And so that was really the genesis of why I started thinking about Thrive.
Fast forward, and when I started writing the book with Paul, we had a good first draft of the book at the end of 2018. In 2019, our editors were asking, "Do you want to lock in the manuscript? Are you good to go? Are you ready to start to move to print and publishing and design and all that?" And I was like, "Ah, I don't think so. Something's just... Let me do one more edit, let me do one more edit." And I kept missing deadlines, which is not like me at all. And truly, Skot, every time I picked the book up in 2019, I almost got sick. I hated it. It just wasn't my story. It wasn't enough. It wasn't my voice. I didn't feel like people would be able to get out of the book what they needed.
And so the end of 2019, Joanne and I took a trip to the Philippines, which is a pretty long trip coming from Baltimore. It's about 22 hours there and back. We were there for a couple of weeks visiting her family. And I said to myself, before I got on a plane, "You've got to make this book what you want. Use this time. You have no excuse. You're unplugged. Make it your book." And that's what I did. With Paul's approval, I rewrote the book, and now it is everything that I wanted it to be and then some.
I am unbelievably proud. I glow when I think about this book. I shine from the inside out because it's the story I wanted to tell, the way I wanted to tell it, in a way where any leader who picks up this book, or aspiring leader, will immediately be able to understand that I understand what's going on for them in their business and that they can automatically use the insights from this book to build a higher-performing culture. And to me, that's everything. And since the book came out, it's not even been a month as we're recording this, the number of texts and emails and Facebook messages and LinkedIn messages and calls that I'm getting about how people are immediately using what they get from this book, it's incredible. It's everything to me, man. It's exactly what I wanted.
SKOT WALDRON:
Immediate impact.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Yep.
SKOT WALDRON:
That is so cool. Thanks for sharing that and being open to sharing that too. I mean, a lot of people don't want to say, "Yeah, what I wrote wasn't right. I didn't work for an entire year because it just wasn't right. I kept avoiding it because it wasn't right. And then I picked it back up and it is me now." Right? So I appreciate that vulnerability. That's really cool. Because I think it tells a lot about you and the passion behind what's inside. Give us a preview. What can we expect when we pick up this book?
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Well, really the main premise here, when you think about the role of a leadership, what readers will get is, the role of the leader is to create a barrier-free work environment. A barrier-free work environment. One in fact, where people, when they come to work every day, they're unencumbered by things like processes that don't take into account the people who are doing the work. They take into account things like eliminating politics and turf wars and silos, eliminating things like people not being really clear on what's expected of them in their role, or getting vague and ambiguous, not helpful feedback. And so what people are going to get here from a premise standpoint is, what is it that leaders can do to automatically transform workforce engagement and performance? That's the whole purpose of this book. It is truly a leader's guide. Leaders will read this book and go, "I get it. He gets me and I get it, and I can start using this stuff," as you said earlier, immediately. That's the premise and the purpose.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. So you talk about developing a high-performance culture.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
What does that even mean? I mean, we hear these buzz words all over the place, right. And I'm not saying you're throwing around buzzwords, Andrew, I'm just saying we hear these terms, but to you, you've thought a lot about this. You work in this environment and this world. What does that actually mean? And what doesn't it mean? Let's say that too.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Well, I mean, both parts of that coin are important. I'm sure we're going to talk about this a little bit later, too, but it starts with being really clear, leaders having clarity on, what's the organization's vision, what are the core strategies, goals, and tactics needed to move towards that vision? And then making sure that the organizational structure, the initiatives, the focal areas all line up to that. So when you have a high-performance culture, it's one where individuals, teams and a broader organization consistently meet or exceed the targets, those goals, those strategies, those tactics, in alignment with the overall definition of success or the vision of the organization.
What it isn't, and this is super important right now, again, as we're recording this, we're still in a pandemic. We're not on the other side of that. I don't even know what the other side of that would even mean. I think we're going to be in this for quite some time, but where you're in a work-from-anywhere environment, and in this work-from-anywhere environment, all the research that we've done and what we've seen, Skot, says that most people are working on average four more hours a day than they did pre-COVID. Four more hours a day. They're getting up earlier.
And the reality is these little gizmos... For those of you that are listening but maybe aren't seeing this, I'm holding up my phone. Most people sleep with their phone near their bed. It's their alarm clock. It's somewhere in the bedroom. And within five minutes of waking up, most people are checking their device. So they're on social or they're on email or they're checking text messages. And the reality is you can't get your head right when you're tethered to technology that early in the day. It's just not healthy. And so people are working longer.
And then in addition to working longer, I mean, gosh, I was talking to a senior executive the other day who said by noon he had already had 10 Zoom meetings. By noon. I was doing that. I'm like, "Is that even possible? What time did you get up and have your first Zoom meeting?" But my point is, people are equating how many hours you're working, or how many Zoom meetings you had, or how responsive you are to email, to high performance.
In fact, I had one leader say to me, "Oh, I don't know. The book is all cute, and it's all good and everything, but I already have a high-performance culture. I don't need any more high-performance work." I said, "Well, what do you need? He said, "Well, what I really need is my people need better balance. They're working too hard. My managers don't really know how to have great one-on-ones or performance reviews." And in my mind, I'm going, "Are we not talking about high... You just said you have a high-performance culture, yet your people are out of balance and your managers don't know how to lead performance-based conversations effectively." That's it. The equation is all wrong.
So what high-performance is not is: it's not how many hours you work. It's not how responsive you are to emails. It's not what time you get on email. It's not what time you get off email. It's really defined by the value creation in alignment with the goals and strategies of the company, period. That's it.
SKOT WALDRON:
So good. I'm so glad to hear that. I know that there are a lot of people that tend to gravitate towards metrics, right? Performance metrics and the widgets and the task lists. And while those things are important, we do need to measure, data tells a beautiful story, it's measuring the right things at the right times and understanding what that story tells. Because I think that as we've come into the 21st century, right, and we're developing teams and organizations, one of the principals, especially now we've been kick-started into this, or pushed full force into it, of remote work. With remote work comes this idea of, "No longer am I just going to measure your performance based on the number of hours you work or the widgets you produce or whatever." Right? "Now it's, "Are you getting things done?" Right?
And we've seen this slow trickle into that culture and that mindset. But I think we're being pushed into that a little bit. First, because we can't see everybody every day. What are they doing every minute of every day? I don't know. Right? So the trust factor has to go up. Measuring the right things at the right times has to go up. So I love hearing that. And do you know Jim Kwik?
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
I don't.
SKOT WALDRON:
Jim Kwik, he's brilliant, you should look him up, wrote a brilliant book. And he talks about that device mentality of when we wake up in the morning and we pick up our devices. It immediately causes stress triggers, because we're throwing into our brain that we have to fix problems. I mean, that's the culture we're living in now is that when I wake up, 30 seconds into me waking up, I'm already putting out fires and my stress level's up, which is inevitably going to decrease my performance, I would believe, over time. Okay. Let me dive into this principle of role excellence. You talk about this in the book, and I wanted to understand what that means to you, and explain that. Unpack that for the audience.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Yeah. The role excellence process is one of the core frameworks and methodologies that we use in the high-performance work that we do. And it really starts like this. Many leaders think they know what high performance is in a role, but they don't. So there's the punchline. They think they do, but they don't. And so this role excellence process works like this. I'll just walk you through it briefly for you and the listeners. First, it starts with thinking about how is the organization defining success. So back to vision, goals, strategies, that, right? So define success at the macro level first. Then from an input standpoint, you want to think about what are the roles that are most critical in powering that strategy forward.
So let's just say, for example, I know you've got good heritage in the sales world, as do I. And so sales is an easy one to play with. So you might say there's this sales role, and if I said to you, "Tell me about the best people in your sales organization. Who does the best?" Oftentimes leaders will say, "Oh, well, it's Skot. He produces the most revenue. He puts in the most sales. He generates the most..." And while that lagging indicator is certainly an important thing, it's not the definition of excellence.
And so what we do is we spend a lot of time with leaders, and oftentimes just to get senior leaders aligned on the qualitative and quantitative metrics that define success in any given role, even a sales one, it takes two or three hours, sometimes multiple conversations, because in fact it isn't just about revenue. That is an important lagging indicator. But when we start to unpack it, we often see things like, are they strategically planning? Are they building a certain kind of relationship? Are they retaining customers? In some cases, in some organizations, that's important.
So whatever the key metric areas are qualitatively and quantitatively, that's important to get to so that we can then say, "Now, who are your people that are the best at that?" Because if we just say, "Who are your best?" it's going to be the same short-list, and oftentimes what leaders miss is the real richness and the robust expertise that lives in other places. So once you understand who they are, then it's about doing case-based analysis, Skot, and really studying the best people, interviewing them, shadowing them.
And even in these times of remote work, as you said, I can sit on a Zoom call with a person for 60 or 90 minutes and have them walk me through, let's use the sales example again, a particular sales pursuit or a particular client, and have them talk me through from how they got the lead all the way through to how they built a relationship, how they managed the opportunity through the pipeline, how that existing customer relationship has continued to mature. And what I'll get at is the mental model, the cognitive expertise, the way that that individual thinks about success, thinks about relationship-building, thinks about creating value. And that's where the real gold is.
And so when you take this case-based analysis by studying people who truly are the best, you get these really, really rich models that can be distilled down into what we call a role excellence profile, that then becomes the design point for the organization to hire, to train, to develop, to career-plan, to manage performance. It is one of the most robust parts of this book. It's only one part, but it is one of the most robust parts that I would say if readers took anything away from it, if they can get down with the concept around role excellence and how to do it right, it will unlock and unleash so much value for the firm. And I use the word unlock specifically because that is what happens, and in fact, that's what you're trying to do for your listeners is really help them unlock ways that they can deliver more value, create more value for their clients and their companies.
SKOT WALDRON:
Man, check's in the mail. Thank you. Tying that in. Well done. I see what you did there. That's good. That is really smart, but it sounds like a lot of work, Andrew. It sounds like you're going to make me do a lot of work. Do I really need to do a lot of work? Yeah. So there's all kinds of barriers that stick out to that. But what do you say to that? What do you say to "No, no, no, no, no, Andrew, it's good. Skot produces. We're making money. I don't need to do that."
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Yeah, well where we try to get leaders focused is on upside potential. And what I will say is not every business... Every business can benefit from what's in Thrive and the work that we do, period, hard stop, but that doesn't make every business a great client for us, because in fact, not everybody is ready to actually put in the work. Business transformation takes time. It does. The good news is when companies use outside parties like us at Shift, we take most of the work for the folks.
But if they really, really want to capture and create the kind of value that they're talking about, if they really want to capture upside potential, if they really value their people and want to build a high-performance culture, then this is a business imperative. It's not a nice-to-have. They must do it. If they're not that serious about it, if good is good enough, if the revenue and profit numbers that they're hitting is okay, if the way that they're attracting, retaining people and the way that they're feeling about the culture that they have and how the people are expressing it is okay with them, then that's totally cool. It just means we probably shouldn't be working together because we have a different vision of what is possible.
SKOT WALDRON:
I always tell people, just because it ain't broke doesn't mean it can't be better.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
Right? Your bicycle, it can roll around on octagon wheels, sure, but I've got round ones that could probably make it go faster and be smoother. But you'll eventually get to your destination.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Whether you're a sports fan or a music fan or a dance fan, I love all those things, but an easy one, because of timing here, we can talk about sports. Whether you love Tom Brady or not, gosh, you got to respect his game and his performance. Right? He won how many Super Bowls with New England, and people were saying things like, "Well, what else could he accomplish there? He and Belichick have already broken records. He's already the goat.
And so what does he do to take his game up another level, to sharpen his proverbial ax? He goes somewhere else, to a team that wasn't a perennial contender, that wasn't in the playoffs for a number of years. That was a way that he continued to get his edge. And he brought his style, his preparation, his mental models, his cognitive expertise. And he lifted that team up on his shoulders. And now they're Super Bowl champs, and there's all the talk about he's going to probably come back and try to do it again. Everybody who truly is at the best of their game, they always want better. Back to your the bike analogy, it can always be better, always. And the minute that you lose that edge, I'm here to tell all the listeners, as soon as you lose that edge, you are starting to die.
SKOT WALDRON:
But isn't that where your journey was with this book, right. You could have been okay with... Well, I'm not saying you could have been okay, because you weren't okay. But you could have totally just said in 2019, "Sure. It's done. Just get it out. Let's just get it out there. I'll work on the next one." Right? Those would have been octagon-shaped bicycle tires, right? You always probably would've thought back, "Oh, what could I have done with that? What could I have done with that? Or how could I..." But you didn't settle for that, right? And I think that goes a little bit into what you also talk about in the book is mindset, resistance, resilience.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
Those three words are very, very critical for anybody developing a culture, anybody leading teams, employees that are a part of a team. Unpack those three words for me.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Yeah. Mindset is at the base of all of it, truly. There are results that every individual and every organization needs to produce, no doubt about it, and there are a number of supporting processes. So for example, if I am leading a customer service team, there's a number of processes that I might put in place to help that team get better. That could be a customer relationship management system. It could be some type of workforce planning software. It could be a lot of training that we do. It could be a lot of trackers that they use. All those are examples of processes. But results in processes alone will not build sustainable levels of success. People have to have a supporting mindset, a connection to why this is important.
An easy analogy or connection I like to make here is actually New Year's resolutions, also fairly timely, because we're in the middle of February and probably 70% of people who made a New Year's resolution already quit that resolution. And part of the reason that that happens is that they're not focused on why that resolution was important to them. In fact, weight gain or weight loss and stopping smoking are usually the top two most popular resolutions every year. And part of the reason that people don't succeed in those is they're not connected to why it's so important. Right. And so they go, "Ah, I'll just eat a piece of cake. Ah, I'll just order in. It's okay. Because it's too hard. I don't like working out. I'm not motivated, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff that happens." And so when people aren't connected to the why, and they don't have their head right, they don't align the way that they're thinking in their behaviors to what they say was most important. It's an automatic fail. 10 times out of 10, it's an automatic fail.
So what people need to understand is, now connecting to the resistance and the resilience, is, think of resistance as darkness and resilience as light. And as humans, we all have dark self and light self. And so dark self is things like doubt, fear, uncertainty, pain, stress, not feeling like I'm enough. Light self is, "I am enough." It's the good, it's the positivity. It's the faith. It's the gratitude. And by faith, I don't mean religion necessarily. I mean the faith that we're going to get through it.
And so for leaders who are trying to build a high-performance culture, back to, it starts with vision goals, strategies, it's then about embracing that we're going to have light and dark. Our people are going to struggle. We're going to meet resistance. We're going to need to have change management. We're going to have failures along the way. And those things don't mean give up. Those are opportunities to go, "Well, that was interesting. I didn't expect that. What can I learn from this? How can I work through this? How can I leverage the strength of my team? How can I find another gear?" That is fundamental to building a high-performance [inaudible 00:26:48] organization is understanding the productive relationship between resistance and resilience and using both of those to make individuals, teams, and organizations better. That is a critical component of the book. I'm glad you picked up on that.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. You said the biggest mistake that companies make when it comes to the company culture, you said not being intentional about the culture that they want. So that aligns with that vision piece, the why, right? They're just, "Hey, I just want a good culture," but they don't really understand the why. Right? So not being intentional about it. When we're not intentional, we're accidental, right? And that aligns with their strategies, goals, and visions. So creating a culture that aligns with those things, because what happens when they're not aligned, you said, is that this fosters a lack of clarity, alignment and focus.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
So that will, in essence, destroy an organization. They may be able to fake it for a little while, right? I always say, "Yeah, that's fine. You can fake it for a little bit, but eventually the cards will tumble."
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
They will. And failure looks a lot of different ways. In some cases, the signs of failure that I would want your listeners to be looking out for are things like, is it harder to attract great people? Is it harder to get new people up to speed? Are people working longer and harder for diminishing returns? Is stress higher than it normally is? Is collaboration not as consistent as it could be? Are people holding on and hoarding information and knowledge because they view it as power, and if they give it up, they're going to potentially be put out to pasture or retired? Those are all signs of a culture that likely doesn't align with what the senior leaders would want. I don't know many senior leaders who say, "You know what's really important here? I want people to be miserable coming to work every day, and I want to shed all of our best people as fast as we can and spend a lot of money on turnover." I don't know many leaders who say that, but in fact, the way that their businesses are actually run suggests that maybe that actually was their design.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's so funny, isn't it? Well, funny, not funny. When you think about that aspect of things, right? It's like, "I know you don't want that, but your actions show something different," right? And that's when you get into this authentic leadership and this transparency and vulnerability with leaders. And the people that get it, the people that are going to be intentional... Because by default, we're all accidental in some way, shape or form, right? I can be accidental in a protective culture. I could be accidental in a dominating culture. But when we liberate people, we truly unlock them and liberate them, we are intentional about pushing that support and pushing that challenge to make sure that there we're developing the best culture possible. This has been fantastic, Andrew. I love hearing about this. Can't wait to get my hands on a copy. Where do people get access to the book? How can they get access to you? Let us know.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
The easy access to the book is on that platform that people may have heard of called Amazon. They can get it right on Amazon, but the website where there's a much more rich and robust set of information and resources is at thrive.shiftthework.com. That's the website we have for the book. There was a one-click that'll take you right to Amazon to buy the book. But there, there's also recordings of interviews that I've done. There's articles that we've written.
And in the book there's this bonus piece that we added that was really important to us, that we call Thrive Accelerators, and accelerators are downloadable tools, templates, examples of the exact things that we talk about in the book. So how do you develop a role excellence profile? There's an accelerator on how to do that. How do you interview better when you're trying to hire somebody? There's an accelerator for that. So if people go to that website, they can actually download those tools and templates and begin using them right away.
I'm super easy to find on all the social handles. My handle is AFreedmanThrive, and that's on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all the places. And I am happy to engage with any of your listeners who are passionate about the subject [inaudible 00:31:20], and they probably get a sense from this conversation that I'm geeked out about it too.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, just a little bit, which is a good thing, right? I hope you're geeked out about it. You deserve to be. Well, congratulations on the book launch. I know it's your first book. Hopefully there'll be many more and you'll be able to shed some more light on our people. I really appreciate you, Andrew, and good luck.
ANDREW FREEDMAN:
Thanks Skot. I appreciate it. It's a great dialogue, exactly what I was hoping for. I love how excited you are about this. It just makes for not only a natural conversation, but a high-value one. So thank you.
SKOT WALDRON:
Thank you, Andrew, for walking us through Thrive and what is contained in that. I can tell you're excited about it and truly wish you the best in the launch of this book. The role excellence piece was, I think, really important. I'm glad that that's going to be a focus of this book. I think it's really important to define what those success metrics are all about. It's not about the trailing stuff all the time, right? It's about what is needed to create that in the first place. So defining success is the one thing you mentioned. What roles do we need to succeed, and studying those roles to uncover the truths so that we can replicate that, right? How are we going to be able to replicate if we don't know what it is in the first place? So I love that insight. Thank you for sharing that.
And I love this principle, also, about what a leader's job is. It's to create a barrier-free work environment. How many leaders do we know that are creating the barriers? Too many. Thank you for that insight. I love that phrase and I'm probably going to steal it from you. Maybe not. Maybe I'll ask you permission first. Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate you. Good luck in the launch of your book. Remember, everybody, you can get that on Amazon right now. So go there, go visit those websites. It's more information.
If you want to find out more information and hear more episodes of Unlocked, you can visit my website at skotwaldron.com. You can also go to YouTube and subscribe there to hear these episodes. Also, any other coachings snippets I have, some extra valuable free information I put on there, you'll get access to that too. So like, subscribe, share, comment, all the cool stuff. So thank you again for attending this episode and we will see you next time.
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