February 24, 2025 • 41 mins
Join us as we welcome Garrett Delph, the visionary founder and CEO of Clarity Ops, who reveals the secrets behind transforming chaotic growth phases into structured success stories. Garrett's journey of building internationally scaled businesses highlights the critical role of leadership in fostering a culture of accountability. He shares how Clarity Ops offers frameworks and tools to tackle the confusion that often accompanies scaling, emphasizing the power of a clear vision to reverse negative spirals. Discover how focusing on people, processes, and performance outcomes can transform your organization into a thriving, resilient entity.
Our conversation takes a deeper dive into the alignment of company actions with core values and the practical application of these values through leadership playbooks and frameworks like "PIE and TEA." Garrett explains how consistency and congruence in leadership can enhance employee engagement, ensuring everyone feels seen, heard, and valued. Listen in as we explore the delicate balance between delegation and empowerment versus the pitfalls of micromanagement, shedding light on how leaders can cultivate a positive workplace culture that thrives on trust and growth.
Prepare to be inspired by the "autonomy freedom matrix" and the "quad core leadership framework," which Garrett introduces to skillfully navigate the dynamics of empowerment and control. These models offer insights into when to grant autonomy and when to enforce guidelines, all while improving organizational effectiveness. Wrapping up, Garrett shares his philosophy of prioritizing people over profit, inspired by leadership principles from his favorite book, "It's Your Ship" by Michael Abershoff. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone looking to scale their business with clarity and a focus on sustainable success.
🌐 Connect with Garrett:
• Website: https://clarityops.co/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrettdelph/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garrett_delph/
✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!
📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here: https://linktr.ee/mickspiers
📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV
If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to sei@mickspiers.com and we can arrange it for you too.
If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:
👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891
Create forms easily with Jotform! Sign up with my link: https://www.jotform.com/?referral=AkWimLxOBz
Get extra Dropbox space—sign up with my link: Dropbox Referral Link
Wise Referral link: https://wise.com/invite/dic/michaels11434
...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mick Spiers (00:01):
What does it truly take to scale a business, not
just in size, but in impact? Theanswer isn't just strategy, it's
leadership. Today we dive deepinto the art and science of
scaling leadership with someonewho knows it firsthand, Garrett
Delph, founder and CEO ofclarity ops. In this episode,
(00:23):
we'll uncover the essentialelements of building an
unstoppable culture whereaccountability isn't about
blame, but about empowerment. Ifyou're a leader striving to
elevate your team, scale yourbusiness and build a culture
that fuels success, this episodeis for you.
Hey everyone, and welcome backto The Leadership Project. I'm
(00:44):
greatly honored today to bejoined by Garrett Delph. Garrett
is the founder and CEO of anorganization called Clarity ops,
a boutique organization thathelps organizations scale and
grow. And today we're going tobe talking a specific theme of
that, which is about scalingleadership, the role of
(01:05):
leadership in helping anorganization grow and scale. But
what do you need to do with thepeople along the way? How do you
transform the people? How do youtransform the business and make
it something that builds uponitself? That's going to be our
clear focus today. We're goingto be talking about building an
unstoppable culture, and onethat's built on accountability.
(01:27):
So Garrett, without any furtherado, I'd love to hear from you
tell us a little bit more aboutyour very interesting
background. What inspired you tostart clarity ops and to help
organizations the way you thatyou do today?
Garrett Delph (01:40):
Well, Mick, excited to be here. Thank you
for having me, and I'mdefinitely looking forward to
the conversation and hopefullybringing some value. You know,
the journey to launching clarityops was through my building of,
you know, multiple businessesthat scaled internationally. You
(02:01):
know, over that the course ofthose businesses, my businesses
have hired nearly 600 people,and have probably interviewed
10s of 1000s to get there. And,you know, sort of like life is
often, and there are notplaybooks, you know. And for me,
I've always been growth centric,and, you know, been pretty,
(02:24):
almost militant about winning inbusiness, which propelled, you
know, sort of pretty cyclicalgrowth phases. And in doing
that, you get into this topiccalled a scale and every time we
would go through a growthinitiative. It came with just a
ton of stress and pain andfirefighting and delays and
(02:49):
confusion and chaos. And after agood, you know, eight years of
this, I began to think, surely,this is not the path like
surely, there's got to be a wayto scale business with these
great people you hire and investin without all of the chaotic
(03:11):
Fallout and pain to the peoplein order to win in business. And
so I begin my own experiments,both personally and with my
teams in, you know, evaluatingwhy these things happen and what
we could do to fix them. And atthe end of the day, the term
that came about, which is, youknow, why I named my business
(03:34):
that I did, is, I don't think itboiled down to clarity,
vertically and horizontally inthe business in a whole host of
different ways. And I determinedthat when any organization
profit, nonprofit, business orphilanthropic, when people are
clear and when they're wellorganized, you get this cascade
(03:58):
of benefits. Which are, youknow, you get better outcomes.
You get there faster. Stress islower, happiness is higher.
Profits increase, bloat andwaste decreases in the business.
And in general, you beat theodds, which are nine and 10,
businesses go out of business.
This is just a thing, and sothat's why clarity ops. Clarity
(04:20):
Ops is a system of frameworks,assessment systems, tools and
techniques that are all prebuilt and designed to drop into
any organization so that theydon't have to continue to live
in chaos, but in a very fast ina fast iteration, they can get
reorganized, bring clarity totheir leaders, empower their
(04:44):
leaders with great systems sothat they can achieve the things
they want to achieve and not gothrough all the pain and
frustration that comes withoutthem.
Mick Spiers (04:55):
Yeah. Really good, Garrett. There's some scary
thoughts there. Nine out of 10,I'm. Not completely surprised,
by the way, but it seems to begetting worse over time. We do
have a lot of business failing.
It is stressful to try to scalea business, and it's very
confusing, which the opposite ofthe word clarity is confusion
that does seem to happen. Sowhat do you think is the
(05:17):
breakdown? So we we have theleader, usually, in their mind,
at least, has a clarity of wherethey're trying to take the
business, what kind of businessthey want to go. They don't want
to grow the business in a waythat's bad for the people, which
is one of the threads thatyou're throwing in there. But we
seem to have this disconnect. Weend up having this confusion.
And we also end up havingsituations where the people feel
(05:40):
like potentially that thebusiness is growing in a way
that they're not happy. Theythey have the opposite of that
happiness curve that you'retalking about, and the more
unhappy they get, the more itturns into a spiral. How do we
reverse that spiral into avirtuous cycle and bring that
clarity?
Garrett Delph (06:00):
Well, I think it is the magic question, right?
How do you do that? How do youdo all of these things that you
mentioned? And I have todisclose, there's not a magic
bullet that said I have evidencebased proof that when, at the
very least, the frameworks thatI've built, that we use at
(06:22):
clarity ops for our customers.
When you implement them, theywork, and you actually see the
achieved results of these thingsthat we're talking about. And I
would say, you know, to answeryour question and to simplify
it, I think there's just a fewbasic steps. Number one, you
have to want it. And there's noamount of great solutions that
(06:43):
will help a business if thedecision makers, the
stakeholders in the business,cannot stand and do not want
chaos and confusion. So that isthe first step. Like, if you
don't want it, it won't happenthat said, if you get a business
that says, I hate our people andI hate my business living in
(07:06):
chaos and confusion, I want todo something about it, the first
place to start, or maybe that'sthe second step now is I like to
just bucket the business intoThree Pillars. Look at your
people, look at your process,and then look at your
performance outcomes andintegrate them strategically.
And so an example of people, forexample, would be caring for
(07:30):
them in a few different ways.
Number one, get clear about whatyou value and then take these
core values and publish them tothe team. Weiner, who is the ex
CEO of LinkedIn, he said hisprimary job, his primary role at
LinkedIn, is to be the chiefreminder officer about what they
(07:53):
believe and where they're going.
And so that's why I tend toagree with him, and I think
these core values are soimportant because what we value
is what we think about. What wethink about is how we make
plans. What we plan is what wedo. Think some other really
great things in terms of settingthe stage for empowering people
(08:14):
to be great is doing a couplethings like getting clear on job
descriptions. Job descriptions,literally are the DNA inside of
the fruit tree, and they arethese very well constructed
instructions that telleverything inside of the seed
what to do and where to go onceit begins to grow, and that's
(08:38):
what job descriptions are. Soget your job descriptions well
aligned with the vision and themission of the business. Another
thing is give your great peoplea career path like you want to
lower your employment churn. Oneof the best ways you can do that
is demonstrate to them you careso much about them that you have
(08:59):
a vested interest in a plan thatshows them how to get a better
title, how to make more money,how to develop, how to become a
better leader, right? Anothergreat thing for the business is
invest in a succession plan. I'dsay, you know that is basically
fire insurance for the business,which leads into knowledge
(09:21):
transfer systems, which we mayor may not talk about. So
there's, you know, at clarityops. We have, I think we have 18
different, you know, tools youcan use to reset and reorganize
caring for people. Once you dothat, that parlays into, all
right, people are set up.
(09:42):
They're ready to go. They'reclear about the mission. They're
clear about the goals andoutcomes. Now we have to give
them instructions literally,which is process. And you know,
Jeff Bezos said in a reallygreat interview, said, You know,
there's a lot of moving parts ina business, but there's only.
You really one or two primaryroles in the business that don't
(10:04):
need copious, well manicuredinstructions, and that is at the
strategy level, where you reallyare paid to think outside of the
box and explore and really godown rabbit holes and so that
you can kind of arrive at astrategy they need the freedom
and autonomy to be free. Therest of us, we need
instructions. You know, one ofthe biggest lies, I think, in
(10:27):
this current generation I'veheard in business is hire great
people and set them free. If youwant a recipe to crash your
business, take that advice,because it will not work and it
will backfire. Instead, giveyour great people rails for the
business roller coaster. You'reputting a lot of valuable
(10:48):
customers and a lot of valuableteammates inside of that roller
coaster. And if you don't giveit rails, it's going to go
flying off and crash. So givepeople instructions that that
really is the nature of process.
And then the third bucket is nowthat you've cared for the people
and you've given them process toachieve the results that you
want, which is basicallyinstructions. Now what you set
up is performanceaccountability, and where this
(11:12):
gets really great. Mick is onthe front side, if the business
values, for example,accountability, and they value
measuring outcomes because theywant to make sure they get to
the destination that they want.
Well, they've already cared forthe people and told the people,
(11:34):
this is what we do, and sopeople will not be surprised
when a leader or a manager says,All right, let's measure your
outcomes and make sure thatwe're going the right direction.
So now you have already preplanned for accountability in
place. People expect it. They'vecome to appreciate it and even
value it. And then one otherthing about this performance
(11:57):
bucket, which I think is reallygreat as it integrates with
values is when great leadershave systems that are rooted in
accountability, which is valued.
Then when there are difficulttimes, when there's, you know,
missed KPIs, when there's missedbenchmarks, when outcomes varied
(12:18):
and were not consistent. Aleader can go to a person they
lead, and rather than point afinger at the person, they can
lock arms, and they can bothlook at the process, and they
can both evaluate the processand see what went wrong. That is
a transformational approach tomanagement that is not used
(12:40):
mostly, but will change cultureand change the direction of a
business when you can managelead and grow that way.
Mick Spiers (12:52):
Yeah, really great, Garrett, you've given us a lot
to think about already. So forthe audience, we've got three
pillars. We've got the people,we've got the process, we've got
the performance accountability.
I'm going to unpack the three ofthose as we go, the two words
that are screaming in my head asI hear you talk. And funnily
enough, one's the name of yourbusiness. Clarity and alignment.
So clarity of the vision of thebusiness, clarity of the values
(13:16):
of the business, clarity to thepeople that we see you as part
of that vision. It's not just avision for the business. We're
going to give you a career path.
You're along this journey withus. We care about you. Our
values show that we care aboutyou, and that vision includes
you. It's not at the expense ofyou. It actually includes you,
(13:38):
then on the clarity of processside and the job description
part as well, both both goingtogether, clarity of
expectation. So here's somethingthat I've found a lot recently
Garrett, which is that feelingthat people get when they're
going home from work at the endof the day and they're
scratching their head not surewhether they did a good job or
(13:59):
not. They're wondering, did Imake my boss happy today? Did I
do a good job? If there's notclarity of expectation, it's
very hard for them to know, am Ion the right path or not? And
then the alignment, then to theperformance accountability, to
make sure that the performanceaccountability is aligned to the
things that we said wereimportant to us. Are they
(14:19):
aligned to our values? Are theyaligned to the vision of where
the business is going? So I cansee how this thread is
connecting people, peopleprocess and then the performance
accountability. Let's get alittle deeper into each one. So
on the people pillar, showingpeople that they care and
showing that the values aremeaningful. This is one where I
(14:43):
think a lot of businesses do goa little bit off the Rouse.
They'll have values. They mightput them on the office wall
plaque, but their actions don'talways in the perception of the
people match those values. Sohow do we how do we demonstrate
in lifting? Experience that ourvalues are our most important
element of this journey.
Garrett Delph (15:04):
Yeah, it's a great question. Again. I want to
preface with there's not a magicpill here that said, this is
where I think the power ofplaybooks and frameworks become
essential to succeeding in thisarea, and so remember Jeff
Weiner, ex CEO of LinkedIn,Chief reminder officer. So in
(15:27):
order to remind people aboutthings that you value, you have
to document them. So we're goingto assume that's done. So one of
the ways to make sure thishappen is happens is you have to
have advocates, ambassadorsinside of the business that are
reminding one another andreminding the teams about these
things. You know, what we value,where we're going, how we're
(15:48):
going to get there. That iscritical. You know, next when it
comes to caring for people, Ithink three things come to mind.
Mick, number one, leadershipagreements. So if you have
reminder ambassadors, there'sthis other framework, which we
call leadership agreements, andthis helps leaders calibrate and
(16:11):
define how they're going to worktogether and what their
expectations are of one another.
Found that to be also extremely,extremely powerful. A couple of
other frameworks. We use thatagain, because I think
simplification is is reallycritical path to achieving these
results. We have a little sayingwe call leadership. Should eat a
(16:31):
slice of pie and drink tea everysingle day, and it's really easy
to remember, and it's just anice calibrator. Pi is an
acronym and T is an acronym. Pistands for be professional, have
integrity and have a Q oremotional intelligence, and
probably not enough time to getin the podcast today to break
(16:54):
down the components of pi, butagain, really easy to remember,
professional integrity, empathy,EQ, and then T, te, A stands for
time, energy and attention. Weknow that where the energy goes,
the attention flows, and so forprofessional leaders to be
(17:16):
mindful about their resourcesand the demand on them to at the
end of the day, being doing whatis most important, and those
should be tied to the company'soutcomes and what we call a
chain of goals, vertically andhorizontally throughout the work
chart. So the short answer is,eat pie, drink tea daily and
(17:37):
remind everybody about it.
Mick Spiers (17:43):
Yeah, I love that.
And there's an element ofconsistency, I think there
that's coming through and thecongruence. So, so when, when
we're out there, we're talkingabout these values, we have the
rituals that allow us to remindpeople and to live the values.
It's the live value. People pickup more of what they see than
what they hear. So you can talkabout the values all day, and
that will help somewhat, but ifyou live the values, eat pie and
(18:06):
drink tea, be professional. Haveintegrity, have the emotional
intelligence. Give people time,give people time, give people
the energy, give peopleattention. That's what people
want in the workplace. They wantto feel seen, they want to feel
heard, they want to feel valued,and that's when they feel like
they're going to be on thejourney that the business growth
is not at their expense. It'sit's the growth with them.
(18:30):
They're growing with thebusiness, and they're going on
the journey together. Yeah.
Garrett Delph (18:37):
That is so powerful. Mick, the idea that
people would be paid to go homestressed out and then carry that
stress into their personal life.
Like, right? We don't want that.
You don't want that for your thepeople that you invest so much
into.
Mick Spiers (18:56):
Yeah. So I like this. I'm growing with the
business. It's the businessisn't growing at my expense, and
I'm not going home stressed atthe end of the day. I'm going
home happy that I feel like Icontributed, I feel like I was
seen, I feel like I was heard, Ifeel like I was valued, and what
I did mattered and it wasaligned with the values of the
(19:17):
group. And where are we goingand how we're going to get
there?
Garrett Delph (19:20):
Yes. And Mick, all of those are the results of
managing leaders, leading well.
Mick Spiers (19:29):
Yeah, really good.
Okay, all right, excellent. NowI want to go under the process
one. I think you're definitelyonto something here. Garrett,
and this is a lesson I've beenlearning a bit recently, I'm
going to talk to you about acontinuum. And I'm going to talk
about delegation, delegationempowerment as a as the
continuum here, and thecontinuum from micro management,
(19:50):
which people, apart from veryunique situations, people do not
like micromanagement, there's atime and a place for. It. It's a
very, very rare time and aplace, all the way through to
abdication and full empowermentand trust, and go, yeah, just
get on with it. And you saidsomething interesting before,
because that is a bit of amindset. Pay really smart people
(20:11):
and then let them free. Was thewords that you said. And you can
develop this mindset of, I'mgoing to going to empower and
trust my people. I've employedthe right people, and I'm going
to let them go. But before youknow it, they're all going in
all kinds of directions, etc.
That's right. And on thisprocess, if you're going to
scale a business and you'regoing to scale it repeatably,
(20:35):
giving people those guardrailsabout what's important, etc,
etc, how do we balance that?
That's like, that's where myquestion is going. How do we
balance it so the processdoesn't become a level of micro
management where people don'tget to bring themselves to work
and bring their own thoughts andtheir own innovations, etc,
through to full empowerment andtrust, through to abdication,
(20:57):
where your professional get onwith it, and now they don't have
the clarity of expectation thatwe spoke about before. Now
they're paid good money, butthey're so confused as to what
good looks like anymore. How dowe get that balance right,
Garrett?
Garrett Delph (21:12):
Yeah, so we use a thing called an autonomy freedom
matrix. And I put this togetherbecause the very question you're
asking Mick is super common andvery relevant, and it's tricky,
right? Because, in my opinion,the truth is there is not an all
(21:34):
in one answer. And havingthought through it, this is how
I created the matrix. You know,you have total control, no
elasticity for freedom at all onthe bottom left of the matrix.
And you know, in that scenario,a perfect example is somebody
(21:55):
who is in the genba, veryvalued, very important. But you
know, imagine they're the personon the assembly line that is
responsible for attaching lugnuts to the front tire or the
front rim, and they have abenchmark. It has to be done in
so much time. There is zeroelasticity to have autonomy or
(22:17):
freedom in that activity likeand there's no quorums about
that's what you were hired todo. You knew you were being
hired to do that. And if anygiven time in your job, you go,
Yeah, but you're controllingwhat I do, and I don't like
that. I want freedom to put thelug nuts on any way I want.
Otherwise, you're amicromanager. I think all of us
(22:39):
would agree that's silly, right?
That's silly. Yeah, that's good.
But as you work your way up thematrix, what I recommend a
business do is understand andarchitect where there should be
autonomy and freedom for thingslike continuous improvement and
innovation and feedback andthese sorts of things, right?
(23:02):
And there should be autonomiesand freedom built into creative
thinking because it requires it.
And so in my opinion, you knowthe answer here is, know your
roles. Know how those roles werebuilt. Know how they value chain
to the rest of the crossfunctional departments, teams
and goals, and then give freedomand autonomy where it should be
(23:26):
given and don't give it where itshouldn't be given for the
ultimate success and health ofthe business.
Mick Spiers (23:35):
Yeah, it's really good, Garrett, so a freedom and
autonomy matrix, and reallythinking about situational and
adaptive leadership, to go whenis it going to be appropriate,
when it's going to be not. Sonow we can have our process
rigid where it needs to be, andthen have some elasticity, where
there is some freedom, wherethis is where we can start
(23:56):
making some some differenceshere, spot on. I want to throw
something to you, because thisis, this is one that I've
embraced in in my career. I'mgoing to then bring it back to
the empowerment and trust of thepeople and to tap into their
knowledge and their experiences.
So yes, okay, we have theseprocesses, and we have them for
a reason. They're the they'rethe guard rails, and they're
(24:17):
that what drive ourrepeatability. So instead of one
person knowing how to dosomething, we can now have 2200
or 2000 people that can do thisthing in a repeatable way.
That's right. But where thecontinuous improvement and the
empowerment and the engagementcomes in the statement I have is
you hold the pen. So when youget these people and they look
(24:40):
at the process and they go, thisprocess is driving me insane.
It's the most inefficientprocess I've ever seen. Why? Why
are we doing it like this? Whywouldn't we do it like that? If
you've got a great idea and youthink the process is broken, you
hold the pen. Help us improvethe process. We still need the
process, but help us coarchitect the process. How does
(25:02):
that sit with you?
Garrett Delph (25:05):
It syncs very well with me. I love it, and I
would add to it again. Thereneeds to be a process to manage
this idea of holding the pen,because otherwise, what you end
up with is 1000 voices saying, Ihave good ideas and I have
better ideas, right? And youcan't manage that. So in the
(25:28):
name of this very good ideayou're suggesting, I also built
a framework to facilitate andempower that kind of thinking in
a business. I call it a quadcore leadership framework. And
what it does is it empowersmanagers and leaders to
bifurcate focus. So you take,you know, because here's what we
(25:50):
do. Mick, yeah, I think you knowthis, especially for, you know,
leaders that have B hags, big,hairy, audacious goals and
they're ambitious. We tend tofind great people, and then we
load them up and we ask them towear 17 hats. And that's
destructive to the business.
It's destructive to leadership.
It's destructive to momentum. Weknow this. So if you can
(26:12):
bifurcate focus by saying, ifyou're in a strategy role, I'm
going to protect you by designand not allow you to participate
in people management, right? Sothe four quads are strategy,
maintaining and supportingpeople process, be it building
or updating or managing, andthen project management. And the
(26:36):
reason I bring this up is if wego to the process component,
when a business harnesses quadcore and they identify and
assign a person or people to bein charge of process cross
functionally, then what you haveis somebody dedicated or
(26:57):
multiple people dedicated togoing around and meeting with
teams and meeting with peopleand collecting, collecting,
collecting, validating and thenshortlisting prioritized needs
for change and innovation. Nowwhat you've done is what would
have been total chaos. Youcontrolled it. You brought
(27:20):
clarity to it. You distilled itinto a focused, bite sized
chunks that you can now innovateand change, manage all of these
processes that really needed tobe changed, that were, you know,
in a really great way, collectedfrom all of your smart people,
and now you did something withit, too. And I found that to be
(27:42):
great for both sides thebusiness and the people. The
people feel valued, and theyalso value and respect that you
have a process to deal with it,and then the business gets the
value too.
Mick Spiers (27:54):
All right, really good. So we are covering really
good ground here, that you canhave a process in a way that
doesn't endanger empowerment andtrust that you can have
continuous improvement of thoseprocesses. But now we're also
putting the guard rails on thatprocess improvement, because
another funny thing that happensGarrett with people that have
lots of great ideas about how toimprove things, some of them can
(28:17):
also think at 1000 thoughts aminute and they haven't finished
the last change before they wantto do the next change. So now
we're getting a bit moremethodical and rhythmic with it.
Also love what you said aboutthe bifurcation between
strategy, people process,project management and then
bringing that together. I thinkyou'll need a very clear
(28:39):
decision making process to bringthose people together. I've seen
this a lot in business, that youget your most talented people,
and you keep on just loadingextra things on on their list,
and before you know it, they'retrying to do 17 things. And we
all know that if you try to do17 things, you'll do a very bad
job of 17 things so.
Garrett Delph (28:59):
You're spot on your spot. You know, unlike
computers, we our RAM is notupgradable.
Mick Spiers (29:04):
Not at all.
Terrible multi taskers. Whatwill happen? Coming back to
clarity of expectation again,that person's that's got 17
things in their job description,they go home frustrated, going,
I didn't get anything donetoday. I didn't get anything
done.
Garrett Delph (29:20):
Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.
Mick Spiers (29:22):
Yeah, really good.
Which leads us nicely toperformance and accountability.
So we've looked after ourpeople, we've started to put
some process frames in place,and we've got some good ways of
doing that now, how do we thenget the performance culture
that's aligned withaccountability, to the values
that we put in place to theprocesses we put in place.
Garrett Delph (29:44):
Well, you assign definitive values to the
outcomes for each role. It'sreally that simple. Well, in
concept that simple. It takessome time to get. There. But
listen, at the end of the day,this is a journey of
expectations management, and sothe business needs to know that
(30:10):
it's investment in the peopleand the process is going to pay
off through performed processthat that gives the outcome that
like that's what the businessneeds, and so the people need
clarity about what their successlooks like, which typically we
call OKRs or KPIs, clarity ops.
We call them SKORS, spelled S,K, O, R, because we score goals
(30:33):
so and the S stands forsuccessful. The K is key, the O
is objective, and r is results,successful key, objective
results. And so you know nowthat we've to your point, now
that we've established afoundation of core values,
(30:54):
leadership principles,leadership agreements, we've
demonstrated care. We've givenrails. Part of the rails are
benchmarks, and so at theprocess level, in which we
didn't get into but part ofprocess building is benchmarking
turnaround times and qualitymetrics. It doesn't matter what
business you're in, there'salways a turnaround time and
(31:15):
there's always a quality metric,and that gets communicated to
the executor. And so whether I'mputting on lug nuts or I'm
building bridges, we all havethose metrics to adhere to. And
so that's your performance. Yougo by that. And maybe it's a
single one per day, maybe it's400 per day, but these are your
(31:37):
KPIs or your scores. And then Ithink also, one other tag to add
to a scorecard is culture, youknow, and we always encourage
simple, simple scorecards. Youknow, if the strategy of the
business is measuring both macroand micro, they're going to know
(31:57):
if the 1000 employeescollectively are achieving their
KPIs, and you can always backinto those. But I think at a
personal level, just go having areally rudimentary scorecard for
every employee that says, youknow, are you a benefit to the
business? Is this person abenefit to the business? Yes or
(32:19):
No, are they hitting theirquality? Yes or No, are they
hitting their speed? Yes or no.
That is a real fast and easy wayto do on the monthly that will
allow functional leaders of afunctional department, it,
sales, marketing, HR, whatever,to just have do a quick scan or
a pulse check on how theirpeople are doing. And then, of
(32:42):
course, we're always going tofind out, hopefully, if the
business is measuring theiroutcomes, the outcomes will be
the final determinator. Yeah.
Mick Spiers (32:50):
Yeah. Really good.
Okay, so in the performancemeasure, what I'm hearing now is
yes, once again, aligned toclarity of expectation, but now
I'm getting clarity of what goodlooks like. I'm getting clarity
of how my my performance isgoing to be measured. And I
heard two things there. One is,yeah, it's my output, but the
other one is my behaviors to theculture part are my behaviors
(33:11):
congruent with those values thatwe said all the way back at the
start of this conversation? Sonot only is my output being
measured against some kind ofquality measure and and metric,
but I'm also getting measured.
Am I congruent with the valuesof the group? That brings
(33:32):
clarity too.
Garrett Delph (33:34):
I'm with you.
Yeah, and it works. And by theway, it is bi directional. So,
you know, everybody getsmeasured. You know, this isn't
so like, leaders don't get apass here.
Mick Spiers (33:46):
Yes, very nice.
Okay, all right, Garrett, thishas been a really interesting
conversation. I want to breakdown a few things so, so we've
got the people process andperformance pillars, but the
underlying thread along the waywas clarity and alignment. So
the clarity of who we are, whatare our values? Where are we
going? How are we going to getthere? And the people element
(34:06):
is, we're going on this journeytogether. So giving you clarity
of your expectations, of yourcareer path, how are you going
to grow with this business? Notat the business is not going to
grow at the expense of you.
You're coming for this journey,and we see you in that vision of
the future, then we're going tohave clarity of process in a way
(34:29):
that enables the business toscale and grow repeatedly, but
also has that continuousimprovement element. So we're
bringing in the empowerment andtrust. And I loved your your
freedom matrix there about whereit needs no elasticity, and
where it needs some someelasticity and flexibility. And
then we're going to have theclarity on the performance
(34:51):
framework. What does good looklike? What does great look like?
How are we going to measure ouroutputs, our outcomes? Are we on
track towards the vision that weset? It, and how are we going to
measure our congruence with thevalues that we told the people
were important to us so peopleprocess performance. I think
it's really good, Garrett, and Ithink everyone listening to the
(35:12):
show, you can be thinking aboutthe way that you can follow that
thread and give that clarity.
And I said before, you know,people want to be seen, they
want to feel heard, they want tofeel valued. But the other thing
they want is they want clarityof expectation. They want to
know what's expected of them. AmI on track or am I not on track,
and can I go home at the end ofthe day proud that I did
(35:33):
something that mattered and thatI did a good job. All right,
Garrett, thank you so much forsharing your wisdom for with us
today, I want to go to our finalfour questions. These are the
same questions we ask all of ourguests. So what's the one thing
you know now? Garrett Delph,that you wish you knew when
you're 20?
Garrett Delph (35:53):
My my context here will be business, but I
wish I knew about how to carefor people in the business
through organization, I didn'tknow how, and all I knew was,
all I knew is I knew how to beaggressive, and I knew how to
try to make the business win.
But unfortunately, for manyyears, that was at the expense
(36:14):
of people's hearts and minds,because that's, that's what
chaos, confusion does to you,you know.
Mick Spiers (36:22):
I think it takes a long time for a lot of us to
learn this. And you saidsomething interesting all the
way back at the start of ourdiscussion, and that is about
the congruence of the of theperformance of the business
compared to whether people are ahappy, engaged it keeps on
coming time and time again thatif we make decisions that, on
(36:42):
paper, look good for thebusiness but are at the expense
of the people, it never endswell. We make decisions that are
balanced, decisions that aregood for the business and good
for the people, and the peoplefeel that they know that we care
about them. All of a sudden, thepeople care about the results,
and the results look afterthemselves. So we're not leaving
it to chance, but we're doing itin congruence. Yeah, yeah.
(37:05):
Really good,
Garrett Delph (37:06):
Yeah, that's right. I just realized, as you
were sharing, maybe a quick wayto say that is, I wish I would
have learned people first, notprofit first.
Mick Spiers (37:18):
Yeah, good. I can nail it all right. Perfect.
What's your favorite book?
Garrett Delph (37:22):
So I have so many, but if I had to choose
one, I think it would be, it'scalled, it's your ship by
Michael abershop. Oh, and he wasa decorated Navy captain and
transformed, literally, the USNavy in terms of their approach
to leading people, powerful,powerful.
Mick Spiers (37:44):
Okay, I don't know that one. I'm gonna have to look
into that. That sounds reallygood, yeah, very good. What's
your favorite quote?
Garrett Delph (37:51):
My favorite quote, If you don't know where
you're going, you will neverknow if you get there,
Mick Spiers (37:58):
Yeah? Very good.
Okay, there's more clarity thereagain. Well done. That's right.
And finally, there's going to bepeople listening for the show
going, Yeah, this is the gonnasay simple framework, but, but
one that can help me scale andgrow my business, scale my
leadership. Bring people alongfor the journey and give them
the clarity that they desire.
(38:20):
How do people find you if they'dlike to know more?
Garrett Delph (38:23):
Oh, thank you, Mick, I appreciate that. I'm on
LinkedIn. So my, my handle isGarrett Delph, and then, of
course, my website isclarityops.co, if you, if you go
to.com you won't find me that. Ithink they wanted $50,000 for
that, something absurd. So.co Itis, yeah.
Mick Spiers (38:46):
All right, brilliant. We'll put those links
in the show notes as well.
Garrett, thank you so much forsharing your wisdom. For me,
everything resonated with me. Iwas thinking about mistakes I've
made in my career, by the way,and and thinking about how some
of the frameworks you're talkingabout would have corrected those
but also resonated strongly withwhat I believe about business
and people today. So thank youso much for sharing your wisdom
(39:06):
with us today.
Garrett Delph (39:09):
Thank you so much for having me on your show,
Mick, it's been a conference hasbeen really great.
Mick Spiers (39:14):
Wow, some really game changing insights there
with Garrett Delph, from thepower of scaling leadership to
the role of accountability inbuilding an unstoppable culture.
If there's one thing that standsout, it's this growth isn't just
about the business, it's aboutthe people who drive it. We
succeed through our people, notat the expense of our people.
(39:38):
Leadership isn't about control,it's about creating an
environment where people thrive,take ownership and build
something bigger thanthemselves. And as Garrett
shared, the most successfulleaders don't just lead, they
empower. In the next episode,I'll be going solo to share my
personal reflections and biggesttakeaways from this. Great
(40:00):
conversation with Garrett andshare my own real life
experiences about what it lookslike to scale leadership, but
also some tips on the veryopposite, what some of the
mistakes I've made in my careerwhere it's gone in the opposite
direction.
(40:20):
Thank you for listening to TheLeadership Project
mickspiers.com a huge call outto Faris Sedek for his video
editing of all of our videocontent and to all of the team
at TLP. Joan Gozon, GeraldCalibo and my amazing wife Sei
Spiers, I could not do this showwithout you. Don't forget to
subscribe to The LeadershipProject, YouTube channel, where
(40:42):
we bring you interesting videoseach and every week, and you can
follow us on social,particularly on LinkedIn,
Facebook and Instagram. Now, inthe meantime, please do take
care, look out for each otherand join us on this journey as
we learn together and leadtogether.
What does it truly take to scale a business, not
just in size, but in impact? Theanswer isn't just strategy, it's
leadership. Today we dive deepinto the art and science of
scaling leadership with someonewho knows it firsthand, Garrett
Delph, founder and CEO ofclarity ops. In this episode,
(00:23):
we'll uncover the essentialelements of building an
unstoppable culture whereaccountability isn't about
blame, but about empowerment. Ifyou're a leader striving to
elevate your team, scale yourbusiness and build a culture
that fuels success, this episodeis for you.
Hey everyone, and welcome backto The Leadership Project. I'm
(00:44):
greatly honored today to bejoined by Garrett Delph. Garrett
is the founder and CEO of anorganization called Clarity ops,
a boutique organization thathelps organizations scale and
grow. And today we're going tobe talking a specific theme of
that, which is about scalingleadership, the role of
(01:05):
leadership in helping anorganization grow and scale. But
what do you need to do with thepeople along the way? How do you
transform the people? How do youtransform the business and make
it something that builds uponitself? That's going to be our
clear focus today. We're goingto be talking about building an
unstoppable culture, and onethat's built on accountability.
(01:27):
So Garrett, without any furtherado, I'd love to hear from you
tell us a little bit more aboutyour very interesting
background. What inspired you tostart clarity ops and to help
organizations the way you thatyou do today?
Garrett Delph (01:40):
Well, Mick, excited to be here. Thank you
for having me, and I'mdefinitely looking forward to
the conversation and hopefullybringing some value. You know,
the journey to launching clarityops was through my building of,
you know, multiple businessesthat scaled internationally. You
(02:01):
know, over that the course ofthose businesses, my businesses
have hired nearly 600 people,and have probably interviewed
10s of 1000s to get there. And,you know, sort of like life is
often, and there are notplaybooks, you know. And for me,
I've always been growth centric,and, you know, been pretty,
(02:24):
almost militant about winning inbusiness, which propelled, you
know, sort of pretty cyclicalgrowth phases. And in doing
that, you get into this topiccalled a scale and every time we
would go through a growthinitiative. It came with just a
ton of stress and pain andfirefighting and delays and
(02:49):
confusion and chaos. And after agood, you know, eight years of
this, I began to think, surely,this is not the path like
surely, there's got to be a wayto scale business with these
great people you hire and investin without all of the chaotic
(03:11):
Fallout and pain to the peoplein order to win in business. And
so I begin my own experiments,both personally and with my
teams in, you know, evaluatingwhy these things happen and what
we could do to fix them. And atthe end of the day, the term
that came about, which is, youknow, why I named my business
(03:34):
that I did, is, I don't think itboiled down to clarity,
vertically and horizontally inthe business in a whole host of
different ways. And I determinedthat when any organization
profit, nonprofit, business orphilanthropic, when people are
clear and when they're wellorganized, you get this cascade
(03:58):
of benefits. Which are, youknow, you get better outcomes.
You get there faster. Stress islower, happiness is higher.
Profits increase, bloat andwaste decreases in the business.
And in general, you beat theodds, which are nine and 10,
businesses go out of business.
This is just a thing, and sothat's why clarity ops. Clarity
(04:20):
Ops is a system of frameworks,assessment systems, tools and
techniques that are all prebuilt and designed to drop into
any organization so that theydon't have to continue to live
in chaos, but in a very fast ina fast iteration, they can get
reorganized, bring clarity totheir leaders, empower their
(04:44):
leaders with great systems sothat they can achieve the things
they want to achieve and not gothrough all the pain and
frustration that comes withoutthem.
Mick Spiers (04:55):
Yeah. Really good, Garrett. There's some scary
thoughts there. Nine out of 10,I'm. Not completely surprised,
by the way, but it seems to begetting worse over time. We do
have a lot of business failing.
It is stressful to try to scalea business, and it's very
confusing, which the opposite ofthe word clarity is confusion
that does seem to happen. Sowhat do you think is the
(05:17):
breakdown? So we we have theleader, usually, in their mind,
at least, has a clarity of wherethey're trying to take the
business, what kind of businessthey want to go. They don't want
to grow the business in a waythat's bad for the people, which
is one of the threads thatyou're throwing in there. But we
seem to have this disconnect. Weend up having this confusion.
And we also end up havingsituations where the people feel
(05:40):
like potentially that thebusiness is growing in a way
that they're not happy. Theythey have the opposite of that
happiness curve that you'retalking about, and the more
unhappy they get, the more itturns into a spiral. How do we
reverse that spiral into avirtuous cycle and bring that
clarity?
Garrett Delph (06:00):
Well, I think it is the magic question, right?
How do you do that? How do youdo all of these things that you
mentioned? And I have todisclose, there's not a magic
bullet that said I have evidencebased proof that when, at the
very least, the frameworks thatI've built, that we use at
(06:22):
clarity ops for our customers.
When you implement them, theywork, and you actually see the
achieved results of these thingsthat we're talking about. And I
would say, you know, to answeryour question and to simplify
it, I think there's just a fewbasic steps. Number one, you
have to want it. And there's noamount of great solutions that
(06:43):
will help a business if thedecision makers, the
stakeholders in the business,cannot stand and do not want
chaos and confusion. So that isthe first step. Like, if you
don't want it, it won't happenthat said, if you get a business
that says, I hate our people andI hate my business living in
(07:06):
chaos and confusion, I want todo something about it, the first
place to start, or maybe that'sthe second step now is I like to
just bucket the business intoThree Pillars. Look at your
people, look at your process,and then look at your
performance outcomes andintegrate them strategically.
And so an example of people, forexample, would be caring for
(07:30):
them in a few different ways.
Number one, get clear about whatyou value and then take these
core values and publish them tothe team. Weiner, who is the ex
CEO of LinkedIn, he said hisprimary job, his primary role at
LinkedIn, is to be the chiefreminder officer about what they
(07:53):
believe and where they're going.
And so that's why I tend toagree with him, and I think
these core values are soimportant because what we value
is what we think about. What wethink about is how we make
plans. What we plan is what wedo. Think some other really
great things in terms of settingthe stage for empowering people
(08:14):
to be great is doing a couplethings like getting clear on job
descriptions. Job descriptions,literally are the DNA inside of
the fruit tree, and they arethese very well constructed
instructions that telleverything inside of the seed
what to do and where to go onceit begins to grow, and that's
(08:38):
what job descriptions are. Soget your job descriptions well
aligned with the vision and themission of the business. Another
thing is give your great peoplea career path like you want to
lower your employment churn. Oneof the best ways you can do that
is demonstrate to them you careso much about them that you have
(08:59):
a vested interest in a plan thatshows them how to get a better
title, how to make more money,how to develop, how to become a
better leader, right? Anothergreat thing for the business is
invest in a succession plan. I'dsay, you know that is basically
fire insurance for the business,which leads into knowledge
(09:21):
transfer systems, which we mayor may not talk about. So
there's, you know, at clarityops. We have, I think we have 18
different, you know, tools youcan use to reset and reorganize
caring for people. Once you dothat, that parlays into, all
right, people are set up.
(09:42):
They're ready to go. They'reclear about the mission. They're
clear about the goals andoutcomes. Now we have to give
them instructions literally,which is process. And you know,
Jeff Bezos said in a reallygreat interview, said, You know,
there's a lot of moving parts ina business, but there's only.
You really one or two primaryroles in the business that don't
(10:04):
need copious, well manicuredinstructions, and that is at the
strategy level, where you reallyare paid to think outside of the
box and explore and really godown rabbit holes and so that
you can kind of arrive at astrategy they need the freedom
and autonomy to be free. Therest of us, we need
instructions. You know, one ofthe biggest lies, I think, in
(10:27):
this current generation I'veheard in business is hire great
people and set them free. If youwant a recipe to crash your
business, take that advice,because it will not work and it
will backfire. Instead, giveyour great people rails for the
business roller coaster. You'reputting a lot of valuable
(10:48):
customers and a lot of valuableteammates inside of that roller
coaster. And if you don't giveit rails, it's going to go
flying off and crash. So givepeople instructions that that
really is the nature of process.
And then the third bucket is nowthat you've cared for the people
and you've given them process toachieve the results that you
want, which is basicallyinstructions. Now what you set
up is performanceaccountability, and where this
(11:12):
gets really great. Mick is onthe front side, if the business
values, for example,accountability, and they value
measuring outcomes because theywant to make sure they get to
the destination that they want.
Well, they've already cared forthe people and told the people,
(11:34):
this is what we do, and sopeople will not be surprised
when a leader or a manager says,All right, let's measure your
outcomes and make sure thatwe're going the right direction.
So now you have already preplanned for accountability in
place. People expect it. They'vecome to appreciate it and even
value it. And then one otherthing about this performance
(11:57):
bucket, which I think is reallygreat as it integrates with
values is when great leadershave systems that are rooted in
accountability, which is valued.
Then when there are difficulttimes, when there's, you know,
missed KPIs, when there's missedbenchmarks, when outcomes varied
(12:18):
and were not consistent. Aleader can go to a person they
lead, and rather than point afinger at the person, they can
lock arms, and they can bothlook at the process, and they
can both evaluate the processand see what went wrong. That is
a transformational approach tomanagement that is not used
(12:40):
mostly, but will change cultureand change the direction of a
business when you can managelead and grow that way.
Mick Spiers (12:52):
Yeah, really great, Garrett, you've given us a lot
to think about already. So forthe audience, we've got three
pillars. We've got the people,we've got the process, we've got
the performance accountability.
I'm going to unpack the three ofthose as we go, the two words
that are screaming in my head asI hear you talk. And funnily
enough, one's the name of yourbusiness. Clarity and alignment.
So clarity of the vision of thebusiness, clarity of the values
(13:16):
of the business, clarity to thepeople that we see you as part
of that vision. It's not just avision for the business. We're
going to give you a career path.
You're along this journey withus. We care about you. Our
values show that we care aboutyou, and that vision includes
you. It's not at the expense ofyou. It actually includes you,
(13:38):
then on the clarity of processside and the job description
part as well, both both goingtogether, clarity of
expectation. So here's somethingthat I've found a lot recently
Garrett, which is that feelingthat people get when they're
going home from work at the endof the day and they're
scratching their head not surewhether they did a good job or
(13:59):
not. They're wondering, did Imake my boss happy today? Did I
do a good job? If there's notclarity of expectation, it's
very hard for them to know, am Ion the right path or not? And
then the alignment, then to theperformance accountability, to
make sure that the performanceaccountability is aligned to the
things that we said wereimportant to us. Are they
(14:19):
aligned to our values? Are theyaligned to the vision of where
the business is going? So I cansee how this thread is
connecting people, peopleprocess and then the performance
accountability. Let's get alittle deeper into each one. So
on the people pillar, showingpeople that they care and
showing that the values aremeaningful. This is one where I
(14:43):
think a lot of businesses do goa little bit off the Rouse.
They'll have values. They mightput them on the office wall
plaque, but their actions don'talways in the perception of the
people match those values. Sohow do we how do we demonstrate
in lifting? Experience that ourvalues are our most important
element of this journey.
Garrett Delph (15:04):
Yeah, it's a great question. Again. I want to
preface with there's not a magicpill here that said, this is
where I think the power ofplaybooks and frameworks become
essential to succeeding in thisarea, and so remember Jeff
Weiner, ex CEO of LinkedIn,Chief reminder officer. So in
(15:27):
order to remind people aboutthings that you value, you have
to document them. So we're goingto assume that's done. So one of
the ways to make sure thishappen is happens is you have to
have advocates, ambassadorsinside of the business that are
reminding one another andreminding the teams about these
things. You know, what we value,where we're going, how we're
(15:48):
going to get there. That iscritical. You know, next when it
comes to caring for people, Ithink three things come to mind.
Mick, number one, leadershipagreements. So if you have
reminder ambassadors, there'sthis other framework, which we
call leadership agreements, andthis helps leaders calibrate and
(16:11):
define how they're going to worktogether and what their
expectations are of one another.
Found that to be also extremely,extremely powerful. A couple of
other frameworks. We use thatagain, because I think
simplification is is reallycritical path to achieving these
results. We have a little sayingwe call leadership. Should eat a
(16:31):
slice of pie and drink tea everysingle day, and it's really easy
to remember, and it's just anice calibrator. Pi is an
acronym and T is an acronym. Pistands for be professional, have
integrity and have a Q oremotional intelligence, and
probably not enough time to getin the podcast today to break
(16:54):
down the components of pi, butagain, really easy to remember,
professional integrity, empathy,EQ, and then T, te, A stands for
time, energy and attention. Weknow that where the energy goes,
the attention flows, and so forprofessional leaders to be
(17:16):
mindful about their resourcesand the demand on them to at the
end of the day, being doing whatis most important, and those
should be tied to the company'soutcomes and what we call a
chain of goals, vertically andhorizontally throughout the work
chart. So the short answer is,eat pie, drink tea daily and
(17:37):
remind everybody about it.
Mick Spiers (17:43):
Yeah, I love that.
And there's an element ofconsistency, I think there
that's coming through and thecongruence. So, so when, when
we're out there, we're talkingabout these values, we have the
rituals that allow us to remindpeople and to live the values.
It's the live value. People pickup more of what they see than
what they hear. So you can talkabout the values all day, and
that will help somewhat, but ifyou live the values, eat pie and
(18:06):
drink tea, be professional. Haveintegrity, have the emotional
intelligence. Give people time,give people time, give people
the energy, give peopleattention. That's what people
want in the workplace. They wantto feel seen, they want to feel
heard, they want to feel valued,and that's when they feel like
they're going to be on thejourney that the business growth
is not at their expense. It'sit's the growth with them.
(18:30):
They're growing with thebusiness, and they're going on
the journey together. Yeah.
Garrett Delph (18:37):
That is so powerful. Mick, the idea that
people would be paid to go homestressed out and then carry that
stress into their personal life.
Like, right? We don't want that.
You don't want that for your thepeople that you invest so much
into.
Mick Spiers (18:56):
Yeah. So I like this. I'm growing with the
business. It's the businessisn't growing at my expense, and
I'm not going home stressed atthe end of the day. I'm going
home happy that I feel like Icontributed, I feel like I was
seen, I feel like I was heard, Ifeel like I was valued, and what
I did mattered and it wasaligned with the values of the
(19:17):
group. And where are we goingand how we're going to get
there?
Garrett Delph (19:20):
Yes. And Mick, all of those are the results of
managing leaders, leading well.
Mick Spiers (19:29):
Yeah, really good.
Okay, all right, excellent. NowI want to go under the process
one. I think you're definitelyonto something here. Garrett,
and this is a lesson I've beenlearning a bit recently, I'm
going to talk to you about acontinuum. And I'm going to talk
about delegation, delegationempowerment as a as the
continuum here, and thecontinuum from micro management,
(19:50):
which people, apart from veryunique situations, people do not
like micromanagement, there's atime and a place for. It. It's a
very, very rare time and aplace, all the way through to
abdication and full empowermentand trust, and go, yeah, just
get on with it. And you saidsomething interesting before,
because that is a bit of amindset. Pay really smart people
(20:11):
and then let them free. Was thewords that you said. And you can
develop this mindset of, I'mgoing to going to empower and
trust my people. I've employedthe right people, and I'm going
to let them go. But before youknow it, they're all going in
all kinds of directions, etc.
That's right. And on thisprocess, if you're going to
scale a business and you'regoing to scale it repeatably,
(20:35):
giving people those guardrailsabout what's important, etc,
etc, how do we balance that?
That's like, that's where myquestion is going. How do we
balance it so the processdoesn't become a level of micro
management where people don'tget to bring themselves to work
and bring their own thoughts andtheir own innovations, etc,
through to full empowerment andtrust, through to abdication,
(20:57):
where your professional get onwith it, and now they don't have
the clarity of expectation thatwe spoke about before. Now
they're paid good money, butthey're so confused as to what
good looks like anymore. How dowe get that balance right,
Garrett?
Garrett Delph (21:12):
Yeah, so we use a thing called an autonomy freedom
matrix. And I put this togetherbecause the very question you're
asking Mick is super common andvery relevant, and it's tricky,
right? Because, in my opinion,the truth is there is not an all
(21:34):
in one answer. And havingthought through it, this is how
I created the matrix. You know,you have total control, no
elasticity for freedom at all onthe bottom left of the matrix.
And you know, in that scenario,a perfect example is somebody
(21:55):
who is in the genba, veryvalued, very important. But you
know, imagine they're the personon the assembly line that is
responsible for attaching lugnuts to the front tire or the
front rim, and they have abenchmark. It has to be done in
so much time. There is zeroelasticity to have autonomy or
(22:17):
freedom in that activity likeand there's no quorums about
that's what you were hired todo. You knew you were being
hired to do that. And if anygiven time in your job, you go,
Yeah, but you're controllingwhat I do, and I don't like
that. I want freedom to put thelug nuts on any way I want.
Otherwise, you're amicromanager. I think all of us
(22:39):
would agree that's silly, right?
That's silly. Yeah, that's good.
But as you work your way up thematrix, what I recommend a
business do is understand andarchitect where there should be
autonomy and freedom for thingslike continuous improvement and
innovation and feedback andthese sorts of things, right?
(23:02):
And there should be autonomiesand freedom built into creative
thinking because it requires it.
And so in my opinion, you knowthe answer here is, know your
roles. Know how those roles werebuilt. Know how they value chain
to the rest of the crossfunctional departments, teams
and goals, and then give freedomand autonomy where it should be
(23:26):
given and don't give it where itshouldn't be given for the
ultimate success and health ofthe business.
Mick Spiers (23:35):
Yeah, it's really good, Garrett, so a freedom and
autonomy matrix, and reallythinking about situational and
adaptive leadership, to go whenis it going to be appropriate,
when it's going to be not. Sonow we can have our process
rigid where it needs to be, andthen have some elasticity, where
there is some freedom, wherethis is where we can start
(23:56):
making some some differenceshere, spot on. I want to throw
something to you, because thisis, this is one that I've
embraced in in my career. I'mgoing to then bring it back to
the empowerment and trust of thepeople and to tap into their
knowledge and their experiences.
So yes, okay, we have theseprocesses, and we have them for
a reason. They're the they'rethe guard rails, and they're
(24:17):
that what drive ourrepeatability. So instead of one
person knowing how to dosomething, we can now have 2200
or 2000 people that can do thisthing in a repeatable way.
That's right. But where thecontinuous improvement and the
empowerment and the engagementcomes in the statement I have is
you hold the pen. So when youget these people and they look
(24:40):
at the process and they go, thisprocess is driving me insane.
It's the most inefficientprocess I've ever seen. Why? Why
are we doing it like this? Whywouldn't we do it like that? If
you've got a great idea and youthink the process is broken, you
hold the pen. Help us improvethe process. We still need the
process, but help us coarchitect the process. How does
(25:02):
that sit with you?
Garrett Delph (25:05):
It syncs very well with me. I love it, and I
would add to it again. Thereneeds to be a process to manage
this idea of holding the pen,because otherwise, what you end
up with is 1000 voices saying, Ihave good ideas and I have
better ideas, right? And youcan't manage that. So in the
(25:28):
name of this very good ideayou're suggesting, I also built
a framework to facilitate andempower that kind of thinking in
a business. I call it a quadcore leadership framework. And
what it does is it empowersmanagers and leaders to
bifurcate focus. So you take,you know, because here's what we
(25:50):
do. Mick, yeah, I think you knowthis, especially for, you know,
leaders that have B hags, big,hairy, audacious goals and
they're ambitious. We tend tofind great people, and then we
load them up and we ask them towear 17 hats. And that's
destructive to the business.
It's destructive to leadership.
It's destructive to momentum. Weknow this. So if you can
(26:12):
bifurcate focus by saying, ifyou're in a strategy role, I'm
going to protect you by designand not allow you to participate
in people management, right? Sothe four quads are strategy,
maintaining and supportingpeople process, be it building
or updating or managing, andthen project management. And the
(26:36):
reason I bring this up is if wego to the process component,
when a business harnesses quadcore and they identify and
assign a person or people to bein charge of process cross
functionally, then what you haveis somebody dedicated or
(26:57):
multiple people dedicated togoing around and meeting with
teams and meeting with peopleand collecting, collecting,
collecting, validating and thenshortlisting prioritized needs
for change and innovation. Nowwhat you've done is what would
have been total chaos. Youcontrolled it. You brought
(27:20):
clarity to it. You distilled itinto a focused, bite sized
chunks that you can now innovateand change, manage all of these
processes that really needed tobe changed, that were, you know,
in a really great way, collectedfrom all of your smart people,
and now you did something withit, too. And I found that to be
(27:42):
great for both sides thebusiness and the people. The
people feel valued, and theyalso value and respect that you
have a process to deal with it,and then the business gets the
value too.
Mick Spiers (27:54):
All right, really good. So we are covering really
good ground here, that you canhave a process in a way that
doesn't endanger empowerment andtrust that you can have
continuous improvement of thoseprocesses. But now we're also
putting the guard rails on thatprocess improvement, because
another funny thing that happensGarrett with people that have
lots of great ideas about how toimprove things, some of them can
(28:17):
also think at 1000 thoughts aminute and they haven't finished
the last change before they wantto do the next change. So now
we're getting a bit moremethodical and rhythmic with it.
Also love what you said aboutthe bifurcation between
strategy, people process,project management and then
bringing that together. I thinkyou'll need a very clear
(28:39):
decision making process to bringthose people together. I've seen
this a lot in business, that youget your most talented people,
and you keep on just loadingextra things on on their list,
and before you know it, they'retrying to do 17 things. And we
all know that if you try to do17 things, you'll do a very bad
job of 17 things so.
Garrett Delph (28:59):
You're spot on your spot. You know, unlike
computers, we our RAM is notupgradable.
Mick Spiers (29:04):
Not at all.
Terrible multi taskers. Whatwill happen? Coming back to
clarity of expectation again,that person's that's got 17
things in their job description,they go home frustrated, going,
I didn't get anything donetoday. I didn't get anything
done.
Garrett Delph (29:20):
Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.
Mick Spiers (29:22):
Yeah, really good.
Which leads us nicely toperformance and accountability.
So we've looked after ourpeople, we've started to put
some process frames in place,and we've got some good ways of
doing that now, how do we thenget the performance culture
that's aligned withaccountability, to the values
that we put in place to theprocesses we put in place.
Garrett Delph (29:44):
Well, you assign definitive values to the
outcomes for each role. It'sreally that simple. Well, in
concept that simple. It takessome time to get. There. But
listen, at the end of the day,this is a journey of
expectations management, and sothe business needs to know that
(30:10):
it's investment in the peopleand the process is going to pay
off through performed processthat that gives the outcome that
like that's what the businessneeds, and so the people need
clarity about what their successlooks like, which typically we
call OKRs or KPIs, clarity ops.
We call them SKORS, spelled S,K, O, R, because we score goals
(30:33):
so and the S stands forsuccessful. The K is key, the O
is objective, and r is results,successful key, objective
results. And so you know nowthat we've to your point, now
that we've established afoundation of core values,
(30:54):
leadership principles,leadership agreements, we've
demonstrated care. We've givenrails. Part of the rails are
benchmarks, and so at theprocess level, in which we
didn't get into but part ofprocess building is benchmarking
turnaround times and qualitymetrics. It doesn't matter what
business you're in, there'salways a turnaround time and
(31:15):
there's always a quality metric,and that gets communicated to
the executor. And so whether I'mputting on lug nuts or I'm
building bridges, we all havethose metrics to adhere to. And
so that's your performance. Yougo by that. And maybe it's a
single one per day, maybe it's400 per day, but these are your
(31:37):
KPIs or your scores. And then Ithink also, one other tag to add
to a scorecard is culture, youknow, and we always encourage
simple, simple scorecards. Youknow, if the strategy of the
business is measuring both macroand micro, they're going to know
(31:57):
if the 1000 employeescollectively are achieving their
KPIs, and you can always backinto those. But I think at a
personal level, just go having areally rudimentary scorecard for
every employee that says, youknow, are you a benefit to the
business? Is this person abenefit to the business? Yes or
(32:19):
No, are they hitting theirquality? Yes or No, are they
hitting their speed? Yes or no.
That is a real fast and easy wayto do on the monthly that will
allow functional leaders of afunctional department, it,
sales, marketing, HR, whatever,to just have do a quick scan or
a pulse check on how theirpeople are doing. And then, of
(32:42):
course, we're always going tofind out, hopefully, if the
business is measuring theiroutcomes, the outcomes will be
the final determinator. Yeah.
Mick Spiers (32:50):
Yeah. Really good.
Okay, so in the performancemeasure, what I'm hearing now is
yes, once again, aligned toclarity of expectation, but now
I'm getting clarity of what goodlooks like. I'm getting clarity
of how my my performance isgoing to be measured. And I
heard two things there. One is,yeah, it's my output, but the
other one is my behaviors to theculture part are my behaviors
(33:11):
congruent with those values thatwe said all the way back at the
start of this conversation? Sonot only is my output being
measured against some kind ofquality measure and and metric,
but I'm also getting measured.
Am I congruent with the valuesof the group? That brings
(33:32):
clarity too.
Garrett Delph (33:34):
I'm with you.
Yeah, and it works. And by theway, it is bi directional. So,
you know, everybody getsmeasured. You know, this isn't
so like, leaders don't get apass here.
Mick Spiers (33:46):
Yes, very nice.
Okay, all right, Garrett, thishas been a really interesting
conversation. I want to breakdown a few things so, so we've
got the people process andperformance pillars, but the
underlying thread along the waywas clarity and alignment. So
the clarity of who we are, whatare our values? Where are we
going? How are we going to getthere? And the people element
(34:06):
is, we're going on this journeytogether. So giving you clarity
of your expectations, of yourcareer path, how are you going
to grow with this business? Notat the business is not going to
grow at the expense of you.
You're coming for this journey,and we see you in that vision of
the future, then we're going tohave clarity of process in a way
(34:29):
that enables the business toscale and grow repeatedly, but
also has that continuousimprovement element. So we're
bringing in the empowerment andtrust. And I loved your your
freedom matrix there about whereit needs no elasticity, and
where it needs some someelasticity and flexibility. And
then we're going to have theclarity on the performance
(34:51):
framework. What does good looklike? What does great look like?
How are we going to measure ouroutputs, our outcomes? Are we on
track towards the vision that weset? It, and how are we going to
measure our congruence with thevalues that we told the people
were important to us so peopleprocess performance. I think
it's really good, Garrett, and Ithink everyone listening to the
(35:12):
show, you can be thinking aboutthe way that you can follow that
thread and give that clarity.
And I said before, you know,people want to be seen, they
want to feel heard, they want tofeel valued. But the other thing
they want is they want clarityof expectation. They want to
know what's expected of them. AmI on track or am I not on track,
and can I go home at the end ofthe day proud that I did
(35:33):
something that mattered and thatI did a good job. All right,
Garrett, thank you so much forsharing your wisdom for with us
today, I want to go to our finalfour questions. These are the
same questions we ask all of ourguests. So what's the one thing
you know now? Garrett Delph,that you wish you knew when
you're 20?
Garrett Delph (35:53):
My my context here will be business, but I
wish I knew about how to carefor people in the business
through organization, I didn'tknow how, and all I knew was,
all I knew is I knew how to beaggressive, and I knew how to
try to make the business win.
But unfortunately, for manyyears, that was at the expense
(36:14):
of people's hearts and minds,because that's, that's what
chaos, confusion does to you,you know.
Mick Spiers (36:22):
I think it takes a long time for a lot of us to
learn this. And you saidsomething interesting all the
way back at the start of ourdiscussion, and that is about
the congruence of the of theperformance of the business
compared to whether people are ahappy, engaged it keeps on
coming time and time again thatif we make decisions that, on
(36:42):
paper, look good for thebusiness but are at the expense
of the people, it never endswell. We make decisions that are
balanced, decisions that aregood for the business and good
for the people, and the peoplefeel that they know that we care
about them. All of a sudden, thepeople care about the results,
and the results look afterthemselves. So we're not leaving
it to chance, but we're doing itin congruence. Yeah, yeah.
(37:05):
Really good,
Garrett Delph (37:06):
Yeah, that's right. I just realized, as you
were sharing, maybe a quick wayto say that is, I wish I would
have learned people first, notprofit first.
Mick Spiers (37:18):
Yeah, good. I can nail it all right. Perfect.
What's your favorite book?
Garrett Delph (37:22):
So I have so many, but if I had to choose
one, I think it would be, it'scalled, it's your ship by
Michael abershop. Oh, and he wasa decorated Navy captain and
transformed, literally, the USNavy in terms of their approach
to leading people, powerful,powerful.
Mick Spiers (37:44):
Okay, I don't know that one. I'm gonna have to look
into that. That sounds reallygood, yeah, very good. What's
your favorite quote?
Garrett Delph (37:51):
My favorite quote, If you don't know where
you're going, you will neverknow if you get there,
Mick Spiers (37:58):
Yeah? Very good.
Okay, there's more clarity thereagain. Well done. That's right.
And finally, there's going to bepeople listening for the show
going, Yeah, this is the gonnasay simple framework, but, but
one that can help me scale andgrow my business, scale my
leadership. Bring people alongfor the journey and give them
the clarity that they desire.
(38:20):
How do people find you if they'dlike to know more?
Garrett Delph (38:23):
Oh, thank you, Mick, I appreciate that. I'm on
LinkedIn. So my, my handle isGarrett Delph, and then, of
course, my website isclarityops.co, if you, if you go
to.com you won't find me that. Ithink they wanted $50,000 for
that, something absurd. So.co Itis, yeah.
Mick Spiers (38:46):
All right, brilliant. We'll put those links
in the show notes as well.
Garrett, thank you so much forsharing your wisdom. For me,
everything resonated with me. Iwas thinking about mistakes I've
made in my career, by the way,and and thinking about how some
of the frameworks you're talkingabout would have corrected those
but also resonated strongly withwhat I believe about business
and people today. So thank youso much for sharing your wisdom
(39:06):
with us today.
Garrett Delph (39:09):
Thank you so much for having me on your show,
Mick, it's been a conference hasbeen really great.
Mick Spiers (39:14):
Wow, some really game changing insights there
with Garrett Delph, from thepower of scaling leadership to
the role of accountability inbuilding an unstoppable culture.
If there's one thing that standsout, it's this growth isn't just
about the business, it's aboutthe people who drive it. We
succeed through our people, notat the expense of our people.
(39:38):
Leadership isn't about control,it's about creating an
environment where people thrive,take ownership and build
something bigger thanthemselves. And as Garrett
shared, the most successfulleaders don't just lead, they
empower. In the next episode,I'll be going solo to share my
personal reflections and biggesttakeaways from this. Great
(40:00):
conversation with Garrett andshare my own real life
experiences about what it lookslike to scale leadership, but
also some tips on the veryopposite, what some of the
mistakes I've made in my careerwhere it's gone in the opposite
direction.
(40:20):
Thank you for listening to TheLeadership Project
mickspiers.com a huge call outto Faris Sedek for his video
editing of all of our videocontent and to all of the team
at TLP. Joan Gozon, GeraldCalibo and my amazing wife Sei
Spiers, I could not do this showwithout you. Don't forget to
subscribe to The LeadershipProject, YouTube channel, where
(40:42):
we bring you interesting videoseach and every week, and you can
follow us on social,particularly on LinkedIn,
Facebook and Instagram. Now, inthe meantime, please do take
care, look out for each otherand join us on this journey as
we learn together and leadtogether.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.