0:01

The power of data is undeniable

0:03

and unharnessed. It's nothing but

0:05

chaos. The amount of data.

0:07

It was crazy. Can I trust

0:09

it? You will waste money held together with duct

0:11

tape. I'm going to defy you. This season,

0:13

we're solving problems in real time to

0:16

reveal the art of the possible, making

0:18

data your ally, using it to lead

0:20

with confidence and clarity, helping

0:22

communities and people thrive. This

0:25

is Data Driven Leadership, a show by

0:28

resultant. Hey

0:31

guys, you are about to hear from Preston

0:33

Howell and he is a client success lead

0:35

at Resultant. He really helped

0:37

us design and implement our great

0:39

game of business, which is a

0:41

approach to running a business that

0:44

is, it's called open book management.

0:47

It's a way to walk your whole

0:49

company through your P&L and

0:52

tie their individual

0:54

performance to the company's performance. It's

0:57

been a incredible journey for us.

0:59

I just started understanding and participating

1:01

in GGOB in 2023. So

1:04

I'm only about three quarters in myself,

1:06

but it has been so exciting to

1:08

see how it has connected our people

1:10

to our business and our mission to

1:13

our business performance in a very real

1:15

way. That is

1:17

tricky and hard to do, and Preston really

1:19

explains well in this

1:21

episode, how we went about doing

1:23

that. He played a major role in designing

1:25

it and facilitating and supporting that. And so

1:27

I hope you really enjoy this episode as

1:29

you think about transparency. How do

1:32

you better, well, I'd say transparency and

1:34

incentives. How do you better relay the

1:36

business performance to the individuals in it

1:39

and also help them appreciate the role

1:41

they play in that performance? Hope

1:43

you enjoy this one. Welcome

1:46

Preston. Thank

1:51

you Jess, good to be here. Thank you, well,

1:53

let's get into it. So you've been

1:55

a good sport about this, but it's

1:57

kind of fun to catch you on the back

1:59

half. of a year for me of

2:01

learning about great game of business.

2:03

So we're going to unpack this a bit.

2:06

Um, but let's start with the concept of

2:08

what it is. As I, as I, as

2:10

I researched a bit, it's, it's just a,

2:12

one of the many approaches to open book

2:14

management. Is that right? That's

2:16

right. Okay. So if you

2:19

were explaining to like my favorite examples are like,

2:21

uh, your parents or like a friend that has

2:23

nothing to do with any of any of the

2:25

things we do all day, how do you explain

2:27

what GDOB is? Yeah.

2:29

So the

2:32

reason we do GDOB is

2:34

to empower the individual employee

2:36

within the organization, the,

2:38

you know, it's open book management, but there's

2:40

so much more to it than that. The

2:43

reason we do that is so that the

2:46

people in the organization, whether they're

2:48

an intern, an entry level, a

2:50

senior level and executive are each

2:53

collectively thinking together about the business,

2:55

they understand the business. They can think intelligently

2:57

about the business and strategically about the business,

2:59

right? Like that's what

3:01

we're doing. So the way that

3:03

we do that is by proactively

3:06

sharing information about the company, how

3:08

the company is doing and

3:10

how the company will do moving forward.

3:12

Right. Because, you know,

3:15

anybody leading a business is looking

3:17

and saying, how have the first six months of the year

3:19

been and how are the next six months going to be?

3:22

We're bringing every single person into the

3:24

business or into that thought process and

3:26

saying, Hey, we hired

3:29

you because you're intelligent. We want to work with you because

3:31

you're intelligent and you've got good things to add. So

3:33

let's collectively think about it. Let's look at

3:35

the good and the bad and

3:38

together work to drive the organization

3:40

forward. I absolutely love it. Right.

3:42

I started my career here as an intern

3:44

and it's like, as an

3:46

intern, we're telling these kids that are in

3:48

college, like, Hey, here's how you run a

3:51

successful consulting firm, here are the types of

3:53

things you look at. Here's how you run

3:55

a successful business that sets them

3:57

up in such a cool way, even, even above

3:59

and beyond. what we do in the rest of our

4:01

internship. Yeah. So, you know, I

4:04

think it's neat. I mean, so that's part

4:06

of our story too, right? I was

4:09

here when there were about 20 or

4:11

30 of us and we didn't have open

4:13

book management. We had a whole bunch of data, but

4:15

then as we scaled, it was almost

4:17

like the data got kind of fell behind

4:19

a curtain. And I feel like open

4:21

book management or DGOB kind of helped pull it back out

4:23

in front of everyone. And so for

4:25

me, it's been really empowering to your point

4:27

to say, Hey, we actually all

4:30

participate in the business's performance. So why

4:32

not call it out and let's see

4:34

how she doing instead of

4:36

guessing or hoping by the end of the year

4:38

that we know how it went, being able to

4:40

read a P&L and having hundreds of people who

4:43

know how to read a P&L seems cool. And

4:46

so there's been these different, you

4:48

know, now I think you guys applying,

4:50

you kind of brought it to our business press and

4:52

you guys were doing this at the Dallas office and

4:54

helped teach the rest of the company how to do

4:56

it. Were there some, I don't

4:59

know, slippery slopes? Were there some tricks to it?

5:01

Like what was, what was that journey like? Yeah,

5:05

the, when we were thinking about

5:07

starting it in Dallas, one

5:10

of the big concerns of our

5:12

leadership, which are, I think concerns

5:14

shared across other leaders thing, you

5:16

know, doing it is like, Whoa, whoa, whoa,

5:18

what happens if this information gets out?

5:21

And what happens if I suddenly show

5:23

my P&L and people start

5:25

misinterpreting what it is? Like, well, I

5:27

don't want to do that. Right. And

5:30

so the big aha for us was

5:32

the importance of education and training in

5:34

it. Right. We can't, you

5:37

can't just roll out your P&L willy nilly

5:39

without teaching people how to read it. You

5:42

can't, you know, you

5:44

have to have informed conversations about what

5:46

is EBITDA? How does EBITDA compared to

5:48

profit? How does that compare to our

5:51

revenue? Right. You need to be teaching

5:53

people about the business, teaching people about

5:55

the finances of a business because that's

5:58

how you make it successful. So

6:00

that was like my big aha was when

6:02

I was talking to our leadership and they're

6:04

like honestly we were terrified of doing this

6:07

until we realized education was a part of

6:09

it and We're not just

6:11

gonna start showing all of our numbers to

6:14

everybody We're gonna like educate as we do

6:16

it and we can start in year one

6:18

with this and then we can gradually get

6:20

bigger and bigger as people learn about business,

6:23

that's awesome. So you're having to design

6:25

how this works for The

6:28

people that are going to consume the information There's some

6:30

level of data literacy and maturity that you have to

6:33

consider when you're rolling it out. Is that fair?

6:35

Absolutely Yeah data literacy and maturity

6:37

business literacy and maturity like yes

6:41

It's easy for people to see big numbers

6:43

that are way larger than their salary and

6:45

think oh my gosh What are

6:47

we doing and it's like well you got to

6:49

educate on this is how we're successful in our

6:52

line of business This is the type of margin

6:54

that we need to be able to sustain in

6:56

our business This is how that compares to others

6:58

in our industry All of

7:00

that education is what then sets people

7:02

up to think strategically about okay now

7:05

that I understand our market as a

7:07

professional services business and How

7:09

we're doing I can start thinking about what

7:11

levers we can pull to grow

7:13

this year and in future years so

7:19

For those who've never been part of it Can

7:21

we talk about what it feels like so like we

7:23

have like the fact about like the huddles or the

7:25

minigame Can you kind of walk people through if they've

7:28

never been part of this? What is it feel like

7:30

to be part of it? Yeah, absolutely.

7:32

So Before starting great

7:34

game of business. There's a design team. So I

7:36

think I'm just gonna start there So what

7:39

we did is we pulled a cross

7:41

functional set of people from our business.

7:43

We had relatively new people We had

7:46

very senior people we had

7:48

consultants. We had People in

7:50

back offs. We brought them all together to

7:52

design the game So the purpose

7:54

of that chunk before you're even officially

7:56

playing is to practice playing to

7:58

build out a score board to begin

8:01

educating the business. That design

8:03

team process is super critical, right? Because

8:05

that's where you get to pilot anything

8:07

and everything related to the game. You

8:09

get to figure out what you're monitoring,

8:12

if people understand that. If not, how

8:14

do you train them to understand it?

8:16

And that becomes a really good blueprint for rolling it out

8:18

to the rest of the organization. Now,

8:21

once we rolled it out, we

8:23

have a cadence where every week,

8:25

our entire business gets together and

8:27

we hunt. The huddle

8:29

is centered around the P&M because

8:32

in the business world, the way that

8:34

you consistently measure the health of the

8:36

business is a P&M. So we teach

8:38

people how to read that. We review that every week.

8:41

And we're not reviewing just our history. We're

8:43

not saying, okay, last month we did this.

8:46

We're actually proactively as a

8:48

team forecasting the whole

8:50

month. And we're saying, what are we

8:52

going to do this month? How is that

8:55

going to compare to what our budget was

8:57

for this month? Are we

8:59

going to be over on revenue, but then

9:01

also over on costs? So our margin is

9:03

taking a hit even though we're growing, or

9:06

are we going to be under on

9:08

both? And we're actually probably okay from

9:10

a profitability standpoint. We do

9:12

that every month, because as any

9:14

good business leader knows, you

9:17

want to be looking forward, right? It's really

9:19

important. Like it's great to have a good

9:21

year, but you want to be

9:23

looking into the future such that you

9:25

don't like say, wow, 2022 is

9:28

amazing. And then you don't have anything to do in 2023. That's

9:31

not, you can't be successful when you do

9:33

that. So we look forward, that's a

9:35

really key part. And

9:37

then each month, after the month, after

9:39

the books have closed, we go back and

9:41

we say, how accurate was our forecasting? Where

9:43

did we do well? And most

9:45

importantly, in all of this, we're telling the

9:48

stories about it, right? So we're able to

9:50

say, this consultant on this project solved this

9:52

problem that impacted our P&L in this way.

9:54

And we're able to celebrate that consultant for

9:56

what they did, as we educate

9:58

about the business. So just

10:01

it brings everybody together. We do it every week. It's

10:03

so fun. It's fun.

10:05

It's actually fun. And I say that

10:07

because I'm legitimately – who has ever

10:09

been like, man, I can't wait to

10:11

read a P&L today. It's

10:14

really weird. Yeah. No, it's actually fun. And

10:16

people look forward to it, right? And it's

10:18

a chance to bring people together. And

10:21

it's a chance, like I said, to find

10:23

those opportunities to celebrate people in front of

10:26

their peers and the people above them. And

10:28

people get amped about it. I think

10:31

it's neat to see one. One of my

10:33

favorite parts of the Huddles is listening to

10:35

people ask questions about the business and say,

10:37

like, hey, this number is different than it's

10:39

been in the past. Why is that? And

10:41

there are times where the answer is like,

10:43

we're not sure. Let's go dig. But there

10:45

are speculations that you can tell help

10:48

be the high tide that raises all boats, where

10:50

people understand what might impact a number and what

10:52

might not. Or we have stories

10:54

about – everyone has sort

10:56

of anecdotal evidence about the business and

10:58

how it's doing, a big project that's going really well

11:00

or had a big milestone this month, and everyone was

11:02

working really hard. And you can

11:04

actually see it in the P&L. You

11:07

can actually see what everyone was feeling

11:09

kind of proved out in one way

11:11

or another. And it's been neat to

11:13

see how that has helped. I

11:16

think people feel really connected to the

11:18

performance of the business in a very

11:20

different way than I've seen in the

11:22

past. I think it's cool. Yeah. And something

11:24

I didn't mention before that I should have is

11:27

like we have a stake in the outcome, right?

11:30

So what we've done as a

11:32

business is we've shifted away from

11:34

individual bonus plans into a cooperative

11:36

bonus plan. We are winning together

11:39

as a team or we're losing together as a team.

11:41

And so it's like we're teaching people

11:43

to think like an owner and we're giving them

11:45

the same benefits that you will get in an

11:47

ownership role of you're getting

11:49

stuff. Like if we do really well, the

11:52

entire business gets a bigger bonus. And

11:55

that's like, I mean, that's a

11:57

cool way of retaining people. That's a cool way of educating

11:59

on the business. And a

12:01

big part of that is educating on like,

12:03

when can you afford to have a bonus

12:05

payout? Right? Because you're looking at the P&L.

12:07

So you know if you can afford to

12:09

have a bonus payout. Yeah, I love

12:12

that part of it. Well, hang on. Your

12:14

bonus payout comment, it almost made it sound

12:16

like we decide when we do the payouts

12:20

like throughout the year. But we have

12:23

them scheduled. Is that right? Yes.

12:25

Good clarification. Yeah. So we, and

12:27

that's, this is not a requirement

12:29

for GGOB, but it's something I've

12:31

seen at other organizations. Instead

12:34

of just having the annual bonus payout,

12:36

we actually do a quarterly bonus payout

12:39

that's based upon how

12:41

you did thus far through the

12:43

year. Now, what's cool is

12:45

it's accelerated. So you're

12:48

not setting yourself up to

12:50

fail. So let's say you have an insane

12:52

Q1, and then just like it the

12:54

rest of the year, you paid out Q1, it was

12:56

insane. But you didn't pay out a full

12:58

25% of the

13:00

forecasted bonus. You paid

13:03

out a much smaller percentage of the

13:05

forecasted bonus, such that still you ramp

13:07

up, you protect the business in it,

13:09

but you're able to get cash in

13:11

people's hands earlier. So

13:13

it's good from a cash flow standpoint, because

13:15

you have it leaving consistently throughout the year.

13:17

It's good for the employee standpoint, because

13:20

you're a 90 day

13:23

goal, like that is, I can see

13:25

that. A 365 day goal, that's

13:28

not enough to really motivate me to behave

13:30

differently. And

13:32

it's all based on the schedule, which

13:34

you alluded to, right? So we have

13:36

an exact, here's our payout schedule, we

13:38

can look each week and say, okay,

13:40

here's how much contribution margin professional services

13:42

brought to the organization this month. That

13:44

is associated with this level, which means

13:46

everybody gets this percentage bonus, or they're

13:48

forecasted to at the end of the

13:50

year. What

13:53

about, so I can hear

13:55

a lot of people asking this, something

13:57

I wondered at first was, I love

13:59

that. the ownership. I was really

14:01

excited about getting my arms around sort of

14:04

the performance of the business again and understanding

14:06

the P&L. And it got real

14:10

numbers heavy. It got very

14:12

company performance heavy when

14:15

we have a really strong mission vision

14:17

and values. And so how, in your

14:19

opinion Preston, how do you maybe

14:22

balance or just integrate those two really powerful

14:24

concepts of like, hey I want you to

14:26

care about the business performance but I don't

14:29

want you to care about it so much

14:31

that you forfeit the mission vision at least.

14:35

That's where the storytelling side of it becomes

14:37

really important, right? When we can tell the

14:39

story about, you know, what we're doing in

14:41

the criminal justice world and we're saying, hey

14:44

like this is our project that we're doing.

14:46

These are the people on it. Here's how

14:48

that's impacting society and here's

14:50

how that's impacting our P&L. Because the

14:53

cool thing about it is it's a, it's

14:57

like a mutually beneficial loop when you're doing

14:59

it right, right? You're impacting your clients which

15:01

is allowing us to fulfill our mission. Your

15:04

consultants are doing cool work and learning

15:07

things which is impacting the people at

15:09

the business and

15:12

you're making money for it which you have

15:14

to do in a business setting. But if

15:16

you're doing it well that naturally

15:18

then can lead to more better

15:21

work. So it's finding

15:24

those opportunities where you can say, here's

15:26

where we fulfilled the mission. Here's

15:28

how that impacted our business and celebrate

15:32

the people responsible. That's

15:34

what we have to do. Now it's, it's a balance, right?

15:36

You've seen it. There are some weeks where we huddle and

15:38

it's like way too numbers focused

15:40

and then that's where people who leave the huddles

15:43

go up, get on teams and say, hey, we

15:46

just got to make sure we're celebrating people

15:48

more. We got to make sure that we're

15:50

highlighting client stories more. So it's not just

15:52

about the numbers, right? The numbers are the

15:54

means of measuring the health of the business.

15:57

But there's so much more, especially in

15:59

a professional services organization, right? We're

16:02

here to help people. We got to find ways where

16:04

we celebrate when we've helped people in a

16:06

cool way. And we're so

16:08

innately used to celebrating, right? All of us clearly

16:10

stopped and celebrate at the top of the mountain

16:12

and don't look for the next one to immediately

16:15

start climbing. And so it's like, it's work a

16:17

little bit for us to celebrate, but it's, I

16:19

think it's so important. Yeah. And

16:22

with that. And the, you

16:24

know, this is where I like

16:26

gamifying things, because it's

16:28

like, if you take yourself

16:30

and you put yourself in a sports

16:32

mindset, right? Like if you grew up playing

16:34

soccer or something, it's like, if

16:37

your team scores a goal, what

16:39

do you do? Everybody freaks out.

16:41

They're like, and you rush the field.

16:44

And in business, we're

16:46

like, oh, we just want to think cool. Let's

16:48

move on. And it's like, what? No,

16:51

like somebody just did something really cool.

16:53

So I rate that it

16:56

builds. I mean, it for the

16:58

retention side, like that just it gets people excited. We

17:00

want to get people excited so we can retain good

17:02

people. And what better way

17:05

than shouting out from the

17:07

rooftops when they do something really good. That's

17:09

awesome. That's so cool. It

17:11

makes me happy to hear you say that.

17:13

Well, and since I didn't

17:16

quite figure out how to give you a,

17:18

I don't even

17:21

know how to use the right language here.

17:23

Since I couldn't give you a curve ball

17:26

Thursday night when we played pickle ball together

17:28

in presence way better

17:30

than I am. Okay, here's maybe my

17:32

attempt at a curve ball in the conversation.

17:34

Is there anything about GGOB you don't love?

17:38

Yes. So the,

17:41

what we were just talking about. Okay. It's

17:46

not easy to

17:49

balance the constantly

17:51

sharing the financials with

17:54

reaffirming that like, Hey,

17:56

y'all, this is not the

17:58

most important thing. Right.

18:00

The something

18:03

that we've struggled with. So in a

18:05

professional services organization, you know this, but

18:07

the listeners may not. What

18:10

you're selling as your widget

18:12

is people's time. Right. Right.

18:14

And so that means me

18:17

getting sick for a week impacts

18:19

our revenue in a tangible way, in a

18:22

large way. Yeah. Right. And

18:24

so like one of

18:26

the things that I've I've had conversations with people

18:28

about is like, they're sick

18:31

and they're like, I feel bad

18:33

because I forecasted I was going

18:35

to work a whole week and

18:37

I'm not able to. Right. And

18:39

and that's a really delicate balance.

18:41

Right. It's not overcomeable, but

18:43

it's something that like if we weren't every

18:45

week saying each team, how much revenue

18:48

they're going to bring in people

18:50

won't have that guilt. So

18:53

just reminding people of like, this is built in.

18:55

We know this is going to happen. This is

18:57

in the budget. We have these

18:59

benefits like, you know, sick time, etc.,

19:01

such that when you're sick, you don't

19:03

have to work. And so

19:05

it's just reminding people like we know that's going to happen. And

19:08

then it's getting better at forecasting. Right.

19:11

Because we've delegated out this forecasting. So

19:13

somebody on our data engineering team forecasts

19:15

what the data engineering team is going

19:17

to do for the month. And

19:20

so getting better at that side where we say, hey,

19:22

week one of the month, we should probably

19:24

assume somebody's going to get sick over

19:27

the course of the month. Right. That's a fair assumption.

19:29

And so if we think we're going to be up

19:31

here, let's drop that by like 5%. Now

19:35

as you get into week four, you're only forecasting

19:37

two more business days. The odds that

19:39

the entire team gets sick and is out, that's really

19:41

low. Great point. You don't have to drop it by

19:44

as much. It's like

19:46

the flu season forecast is upon us.

19:48

That's right. Yes. Oh my gosh.

19:50

And PTO, I mean, that's been a recurring theme

19:52

since we rolled it out. But

19:55

like we're about to get into November, December,

19:57

which means we're going to have so. many

20:00

instances where it's like, well, this

20:02

person said they were going to take two days off, but

20:05

they forgot they were going to see family

20:07

and they actually are taking another week off.

20:10

And we didn't make that incorrectly. So now we

20:12

have to drop our forecast like that. We

20:15

know it's we know it's coming. Yep, yep.

20:17

Okay, so we need we can we get and this will

20:19

be our first time going through that as a full company.

20:22

So you guys you have some of those lessons learned that

20:24

we can hopefully steal and borrow and anticipate better.

20:27

Yes, it's it's shocking

20:29

how much PTO gets used

20:31

in the months of December

20:34

and July. Those

20:36

are huge spikes. Oh, yeah. What's

20:40

funny, I mean, being in being in professional

20:42

services for 10 years now, what I noticed

20:44

too, is like January always seems like

20:46

dark and weird, like Greer like you're always like I

20:48

don't it doesn't seem great. It's gray. It doesn't seem

20:50

like people are showing up. Maybe it's New Year's like

20:52

the beginning of it of a month. March

20:55

and April, there's always a spring break, where everyone

20:57

panics because it looks like nobody worked for two

20:59

weeks. July is get all

21:02

your vacation in August is always people hit it hard kids

21:04

are back at school, we're ready to go. And then it's

21:06

like fall breaks and then the rest

21:08

of the year. Yep, yep,

21:11

yep. It's, it's really interesting

21:13

seeing those spikes. And

21:15

this year, based on like where spring break fell,

21:18

it was like, April was heavier for PTO whereas

21:20

normally March is heavier for PTO for spring break.

21:22

And so that I know that messed us up

21:24

a little bit on what we budgeted again. But

21:29

I think it's so cool that we're thinking about I mean,

21:31

it never before had I thought about, you

21:33

know, it's not bad because we are

21:35

humans first, but it's like how PTO

21:37

or the, you know, the aggregation

21:40

of PTO on a single week can

21:42

impact a business. It's not something

21:44

I deeply thought about in the past. I'd wondered how

21:46

that works. I didn't get to see how it worked.

21:48

And so I think it is really neat to start

21:50

to get, and I'm at a point now where when

21:53

I hear a number, I know whether

21:55

it seems awful. Or unexpected up or

21:57

down, and I'm curious before I even.

22:00

see or compare it to the other number. Right. And

22:02

that's, I think that's really cool. I think it's a

22:04

neat gift. It is. And

22:06

it's cool that you're doing that as a VP,

22:08

but I think it's even cooler that like random

22:12

person who's a year out of college

22:14

is thinking the same thing. And they're

22:16

saying like, whoa, what happened

22:18

to our utilization this month? Like, why

22:20

did that tank and look

22:22

at the impact that had on our

22:24

delivery resource costs that weren't on projects.

22:27

And like, look at what impact that had to

22:29

our margin. It's like your year

22:31

out of school, you're asking questions about

22:33

a 500 person

22:35

professional services organization. Like this is

22:38

crazy. Oh yeah. Well, and even, you know,

22:40

I used to, so I'd watch

22:42

some of the larger consulting firms that we competed

22:44

with. Um, yeah, I do some

22:46

independent verification validation. I'd kind of show up and

22:48

make sure that everyone's doing what they said they're

22:50

going to do. And there were moments

22:52

when they would negotiate a

22:54

contract for nine months, 10 months, and

22:56

I would watch and think like, but

22:58

the, but the impact the client wanted

23:00

was three months ago. Like they wanted

23:03

impacts by then. And so there was

23:05

this deep appreciation for me of, um,

23:07

or sorry, misunderstanding. I didn't have really

23:09

any empathy for the business, um,

23:12

the consulting firm. And so there's been

23:14

this really interesting growth for me to

23:16

also understand as we've scaled, um, some

23:19

of the reasons, I'm not saying I love that, that they

23:21

couldn't get to their outcomes in three months because they're still

23:23

negotiating contracts, but I appreciate more.

23:26

What that I can imagine what that does to

23:28

their P and L that they probably thought they

23:30

were going to start sooner too. And instead they're

23:32

still negotiating. And there's probably real reasons for that

23:35

in their language. So they're trying to protect themselves

23:37

and each other and their employees jobs. And so

23:39

it's also helped take the edge off

23:41

of my, my ease in which I

23:43

can villainize other firms and appreciate

23:45

that everybody has a P and L and they

23:48

run it differently, but these things are human things

23:50

and they impact every business. So

23:52

it's, it's almost helped the numbers somehow have helped

23:54

me Preston with like an empathy. Like I've, I'm

23:56

able to use those to be more empathetic,

23:58

not less. And I that's. been kind of cool

24:00

and surprising to me. Well, and that's,

24:03

it's the education behind the numbers, right?

24:05

And we see that with any data

24:07

project we do with any clients, it's

24:10

like, you can make the coolest dashboard

24:12

ever. But if people don't understand the numbers on

24:14

it, it's not going to make a dent. And

24:17

so now like so much of GGOB

24:19

for us this year has been educating

24:22

people and we've been showing

24:24

the numbers. So now we're seeing these numbers

24:26

for the first time and we have this

24:28

like framework to understand them that we didn't

24:30

have before. Yeah, no, that's right.

24:32

No, again, no, my

24:35

intrigue here is while you are

24:37

so, so smart and so, so inclined

24:39

to GGOB, I also heard you

24:41

say last week, I will work a full

24:43

day for a pizza and

24:47

so that is also so entertaining to

24:49

me because it brings the light heartedness of like, we're

24:51

just human beings like Preston, you know, the numbers and

24:53

you know that eight hours of your time is not

24:55

worth a pizza, but you just love it so much

24:57

that you'll do it. Yeah.

25:00

Yeah, absolutely. I, uh, I still

25:02

am far too motivated by food

25:04

or it's like, you know, the

25:07

friend moving like, Oh yeah, I'll feed you. Great.

25:09

Yeah, I'm there. I don't think that's too motivated

25:11

by food. I think that's cool. It's neat that you're motivated

25:14

by food and it makes you happy. And I think that

25:16

it's fun to be like, we can be, so then we

25:18

get into the mini games too, where we have these, I

25:20

don't know if we've explained those, but mini games are like,

25:22

you know, if you want a certain behavioral change that you

25:24

can sort of create this, um, smaller game

25:27

that runs, you know, shorter period of time, but

25:29

that tries to generate these different outcomes. Am I

25:31

getting that largely right? Preston. Yes. The,

25:33

well, we were told is if you have

25:35

a suggestion box, throw it away, do mini

25:37

games and stuff, right? So if

25:39

there's this process of your business where

25:41

right now you say, Hey, give us feedback

25:44

and then somebody in a room reads it

25:46

and decides what to do. It's like, no

25:48

scrap that. If you see something that's broken

25:50

in the business, get a group of people

25:52

who can fix that together to fix it,

25:55

understand what the out, like how that's going

25:57

to impact the business. And.

26:00

then go achieve it and celebrate it. Like find ways

26:02

to make it memorable and to

26:04

celebrate it. I

26:06

just found out we're doing a mini game together

26:09

Jess, and I just found out that part of

26:11

how you're motivating me is by putting things from

26:13

my desk in Jell-O, which

26:15

is really annoying, but it's

26:17

an Office themed mini game, so I don't

26:19

hate it. And the

26:22

reality Jess is this mini

26:24

game that updates contacts in our

26:26

CRM, which is not the most

26:28

exciting thing ever. I'm

26:30

gonna remember for the rest of my career,

26:32

because you had the audacity to steal my

26:35

nail clippers from my desk and put them

26:37

in Jell-O, right? And so

26:39

like you've now created a memory

26:41

from the most boring part

26:44

of our organization.

26:46

And it's like, I'm gonna remember that for the rest of my career.

26:49

I'm glad you outed me on the

26:51

podcast. I didn't tell you, I'm

26:53

glad you figured out that it was Jell-O, like between us

26:55

kicking. I didn't know if you really put that together until

26:58

right now. Absolutely, yeah, no, I knew that. I

27:00

was looking at all your trinkets on your desk. That's why

27:02

we didn't go to get dinner with you,

27:05

is Catherine and I had to go back to make Jell-O.

27:07

And I was like, what do I pick? And

27:12

I was looking at all your trinkets and you had these

27:14

really cool, you had like these little rock climbing rope trinkets.

27:16

Very cool, yeah. And we were nervous, we

27:18

were gonna ruin some of it. And

27:20

so I found your office nail clippers. I

27:25

couldn't help myself. Hey, I think it's great.

27:27

Yeah, I'm glad you didn't mess with my

27:29

coasters. I like these things. Yeah, those are, that's

27:31

what they're, they're coasters? They're coasters

27:34

from old climbing rope. Super cool. Yeah,

27:36

it's somebody on Etsy, they figured out

27:38

how to repurpose climbing rope to make

27:40

coasters. That is seriously awesome. Brad

27:42

will want those immediately. We will be ordering

27:44

those later. We'll see

27:46

if they'll sponsor the podcast. Maybe they will. You

27:50

never know. But you're right. Mini games have been,

27:52

and by the way, it has been a lot of work

27:55

to try and make contacts exciting. But

27:57

it's, it has also been really fun.

28:00

It has been the most memorable part of

28:02

my year has been trying to figure out how

28:04

to make it entertaining and fun and cool to

28:06

do when it's not something that's really exciting, but

28:08

it is important and we know that as a

28:10

company. So that is the mini game concept has

28:12

been, I mean, I think we've used, I

28:15

bet, I bet we've done 20 games as a company this

28:17

year, mini games of just how do we make improvements in

28:19

the business, see them say something and change it

28:21

and that's, that's been neat to to see people empowered to do

28:23

that. Yeah, and

28:25

it's, it, again, it's

28:27

educating people then, because you're saying, here's

28:29

this problem and it's not just, I

28:32

have a suggestion box of like, here's

28:34

my issue, somebody go solve it. It's like saying, I think,

28:38

in your position, you're like, I know

28:40

if we had more up to date

28:42

contact information, we could send out better

28:44

client satisfaction surveys, which lets us get

28:46

a better sense of how we're doing.

28:49

And more importantly, that lets us adjust faster.

28:52

If we have delivery that's slipping anywhere. And it's

28:54

like that the impact that will have to the

28:57

business is massive. And

28:59

if by cleaning up our contacts, we can get

29:02

a 50% higher response rate. And if

29:04

one of the hundred people we send it to has

29:07

a some sort of feedback that

29:09

we would not have gotten otherwise. We just

29:12

paid for all of the work and for the dumb

29:14

Jello that you bought. It

29:18

was like $45 and Jello Catherine thought we needed so much. That's a lot of

29:20

Jello. I know. Ask

29:22

her where it is. I think we left some of the office if you guys want that

29:24

you make something. Oh my. I'm good. Okay, so then

29:26

maybe my, my, my last question I have is for, I would have never known

29:28

that this was an opportunity

29:31

that we could take on to JUJIOB. I'd never heard of it.

29:33

So like, thank goodness for you guys. What

29:42

about people who want to learn more about JUJIOB? What

29:44

about like where to get started if you really are serious

29:46

about it? Yeah, so we got into it initially because somebody

29:49

on our leadership team read the book. There's

30:00

a book called The Great Game of Business and

30:03

it tells the story of SRC

30:06

Corporation. Jack Stack wrote it

30:08

and he goes into

30:10

this organization that he

30:13

helped buy with some other people

30:17

with a, that was not performing well and

30:20

how they used this idea of

30:22

open book management and gamification to

30:24

turn it around, get people excited

30:26

and create like generational

30:28

wealth through it. And

30:31

so our, the guy on our leadership team

30:33

read that and he was like, dang,

30:35

that's a pretty cool concept. Like I want to learn more.

30:37

I want to talk about this more. So

30:41

that book is great. I read

30:43

it on a canoe in the Boundary Waters

30:46

the summer of 2020 and it was a great

30:48

read and I was on a canoe. It

30:50

was great. So if you want to

30:52

read it on a canoe, that makes it more memorable.

30:56

Especially if you're on like a multi-day backpacking trip,

30:58

it's like, it makes it a lot more memorable.

31:02

So yeah, I recommend that too. And

31:05

then, I mean, I'll throw this out

31:07

there, but feel free to reach out to me. It's

31:10

been one of the pleasures of my career

31:12

over the last three, four years has been

31:15

doing GGOB in Dallas

31:17

and I kind of got bold and told to

31:19

do it there. And then as

31:21

we rolled it out to the rest of the organization, I

31:23

was able to help train and

31:26

educate and now we have this like new group of

31:28

people leading it and each week I get to join

31:30

and like I just watch. And

31:33

so it's been really cool of like seeing

31:35

this grow and seeing people like you who

31:37

had no clue about it, get excited about

31:39

it and see the impact on it. So

31:42

yeah, people can reach out to me. I'm

31:44

sure my contact info is somewhere and

31:46

I would love to have a chat about

31:49

GGOB. And you

31:51

are best place to find you would be

31:53

like on LinkedIn, Preston Howell on LinkedIn. Yeah,

31:55

Preston Howell on LinkedIn. Awesome. Well,

31:58

thank you for hanging out with me. talking about

32:00

GGOB precedent. Yeah, thank

32:02

you, Jess. Is there anything we

32:04

have we talk about? We haven't? Not

32:08

something we haven't talked about, but just as

32:11

like, bringing it back to the beginning. The

32:13

reason we do this open book thing

32:15

is like for our employees. And

32:17

I just think that's if there are any business

32:19

leaders listening to this who are intrigued by this

32:22

idea of open book management and like what it

32:24

can do to the business. You

32:26

do this for the employee. You

32:28

do this as a means of

32:30

educating and affirming. You do

32:32

this so that everybody in the business gets

32:34

to think strategically about the business because everybody

32:36

in the business you hired for a reason,

32:39

their person, they're smart, they've got a

32:41

good brain. So like have them think

32:43

strategically, instead of just you thinking strategically,

32:46

you'll do way better things as a

32:48

business and the people will be happier

32:51

because they aren't just a widget that's

32:53

there to make you money. They are

32:55

there to actually think strategically and drive the

32:57

business forward. Right. So like that's you

33:00

do it for the employee. You

33:03

there are certainly great side effects

33:05

of better business

33:07

performance. But like, you're doing

33:09

it for your people. More than

33:12

anything else. It's for your people. Love

33:14

it. Thank you, Preston. Thank you for listening.

33:16

I'm your host, Jess Carter. And don't forget

33:18

to follow the data driven leadership wherever you

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know how these data topics are transforming your

33:26

We can't wait for you to join us on the next