Fractional HR and Leadership Insights

Phil Wilson, Michael Vandervort, Tim Fatum & Dana Wood.

 Phil Wilson: [00:00:11]

Hey, everyone, we’ve got another Left of Boom Show. Today, Michael and I are joined by Dana Wood and Tim Fatum of Envision Strategic Solutions. It’s a fractional HR consulting firm. We talk a little bit about what fractional HR is all about. Some great leadership tips. Dana’s got a new book coming out, From The Mailroom to The Boardroom, and then we also talk about our dream concerts. So, hope you enjoy this week’s episode.

Michael Vandervort: [00:00:39]

All right. Hey everyone, this is Michael Vandervort. We’re back with another episode of The Left of Boom show. Good morning Phil. We’re going to introduce our guests in just a second. Today we’re going to touch on a few topics- one of our classic evergreen topics, which is leadership, and some specific ideas around that that our guests will share. We’re also going to talk a bit about the food service industry and the state of affairs there, and also a bit about what seems to be an emerging and trendy topic, which is the use of fractional HR services to help support business and industry.

[00:01:16]

And then we’ll close with hopefully a fun little exercise. So, I want to welcome our guests. Our guests today are Dana Wood and Tim Fadem from Envision Strategies Strategic Solutions. Good morning and welcome to The Left of Boom Show. How are you guys doing today?

Tim Fatum: [00:01:31]

We’re doing great. Good morning. Great.

Dana Wood: [00:01:34]

Doing well. Thank you.

Michael Vandervort: [00:01:35]

I should also mention that my co-host Phil Wilson is with us. As you can see, I always forget to introduce Phil. Let’s start with Dana. And just for the benefit of our listeners, quick introduction of who you are and what you do.

Dana Wood: [00:01:56]

Okay. Good morning everybody. I’ve got 30 years of experience in leadership in human resources is the main focus of my career. Those years were mostly spent with a large food service distributor and in the food service industry with Gordon Food Service. I started from the ground floor up. I started as a front-line supervisor. I spent many years doing that in a mailroom, which we had mail rooms back in those days. I’m dating myself here. And then I worked my way up into human resources, which we’ll talk more about later, was a general attrition into the HR field. And I’m just passionate about leadership.

[00:02:42]

I think in today’s environment- and I’ve dealt with in my career, unfortunately, leaders who just need a lot of help in understanding the human aspect of leading. I think we as leaders get the financial aspects and having to do that, but I’m just passionate about teaching from the HR perspective and the people focus of HR. And then today, now I work in HR consulting with that theme, staying with that theme of helping leaders learn to consider people and love their people, so to speak.

 Michael Vandervort: [00:03:16]

Cool. And we’ll touch on it in a little bit later. But you’re also a published author of a book or two, right?

Dana Wood: [00:03:23]

Yes.

Phil Wilson: [00:03:25]

Speaking of starting from the mailroom.

Dana Wood: [00:03:28]

Yes.

Michael Vandervort: [00:03:30]

I was a letter carrier for the US Postal Service in the late 70s and early 80s for six years, and that was back in the day before you had anything like FedEx or whatever. So, I was reading some of the intro to your book this morning, Dana. You’re talking about stamps and sorting papers and stapling things. It’s a whole different world today, right?

Dana Wood: [00:03:53]

Yeah, it was. To your point, Michael, we didn’t have email or intranets or anything like that. We had voicemail though. But that was about it. And it was unique. Gordon Foodservice was unique in that we sent all of our intercompany mail on our own trucks. We didn’t US mail a lot of stuff. It all had to be packaged up. We probably had 120 boxes, so to speak, each day that went out. If you were a salesman in Kalamazoo, Michigan, you would get your invoices, you would get your benefit checks, paychecks, and that was before direct deposit. You’d get everything via our trucks. So, it was a pretty big operation.

Phil Wilson: [00:04:37]

I’m imagining the mailroom from Elf where they have all the tubes coming in.

Dana Wood: [00:04:43]

Absolutely, yes.

Michael Vandervort: [00:04:46]

So, Tim, I don’t know what your origin story is with your first job. But why don’t you go ahead and share the same info? Tell us who you are and what you do.

Tim Fatum: [00:04:57]

I’d like to thank you and welcome- thanks for having us today. But I like to start out that I guess first and foremost, I’m a husband to Jill and a father of three kids and just became a grandfather.

Phil Wilson: [00:05:10]

Nice. Congratulations.

Tim Fatum: [00:05:12]

That’s been extremely exciting. But, yeah, my career has mostly been with the same organization as Dana. We worked together for 25, probably 30 years. And I started in sales when I was 21 years old. A lot of those mail packages I got came probably from you, Dana, and came down to us. But I spent a number of years in sales. About eight years in sales. In 99, the head of HR wanted to see me in his office, and I thought, “Oh, boy, what did I do? Am I going to be fired here today?” And they brought me in and said, “Hey, I’d like you to, you know, be a leader in the human resources area”.

[00:05:55]

And it took a totally different turn than I anticipated early in my career. And I spent the next 20-plus years in human resources. And then in 2019, I left and semi-retired from GFS and started Envision Strategic Solutions. And that’s where Dana and I are working together today. And we have a couple of other partners we work with. But over the years, we’ve had the chance and pleasure to work with Phil, and Phil’s been a trusted advisor and help for us. And that’s how we connected years ago, Phil.

[00:06:34]

And we appreciate the support and what you guys are about. I think we aligned a lot on how we view people and how a company should be run and you know what produces a better company. And a lot of that’s around relationships. And I think that’s where our focus at Envision is- how do we improve employer-employee relationships so that the company can function as effectively as possible? And so, that’s what we’re doing today. And yeah, it’s been fun. We’ve been really enjoying it. And it’s something that we look forward to doing for a lot of years to come.

Phil Wilson: [00:07:13]

Yeah. It’s been cool to work with you on the company side. And now you’re on this new adventure together. And it’s not even that new now, but yeah, it’s great just continuing the work that you were doing in-house now for others.

Tim Fatum: [00:07:32]

Exactly. Yeah.

Michael Vandervort: [00:07:34]

So, that was one of the first things I wanted to ask you about because it probably happens all the time. Phil hired me a couple of years ago, and we’ve known each other for years, so it’s certainly not unusual that you partner up with people that you’ve worked with. But you have four people that all work together, and that speaks to like either a very good relationship over a long time or some complementaries. So, how did you decide to take that step? And how did you guys find yourselves working together? I’m curious about that.

Tim Fatum: [00:08:11]

Yeah, that’s a good question. And after working so many years together, you develop some pretty good working relationships and friendships. And Dana was one of those. And the other two are part of Envision, Dave and Barry, we’ve got wonderful relationships and have worked through a lot of different situations and implemented a lot of different things. We’ve done acquisitions and downsizings and tried to respond to union threats and so on. But we just really enjoyed working together.

[00:08:47]

And as we stepped away from our day job so to speak, we wanted to stay active. We like to keep our minds fresh. We like to engage with companies- is there a way we can give back? When you start out with your first job- when I was first starting, I was just happy to make $20,000 a year and have a company car. And hopefully, I got what it takes. And am I going to be able to pay the bills? We’re in a different stage now where it’s what can we do to share some of the things we’ve learned with organizations that are going through growing pains or dealing with issues that maybe we can be of help.

[00:09:26]

And so, we partner together on different things. Depending on the client, we’ll decide who’s going to work on what. But it’s been a good relationship. I think one of the challenges is that we’ve done so much over the years. We’ve worked on so many different projects. It’s like, could you do this? And the answer is, yeah, we probably could. Do we want to? That might be another question. The other day or a couple of months ago, somebody asked, “Hey, would you do a compensation project for us?” And could I do it? I probably could.

[00:09:59]

Do I want to? No, I don’t think so. But we know somebody. [crosstalk 00:10:04] saying no to the things that just aren’t in our wheelhouse or where we want to be. I think we have to be careful about that. But there are a number of areas where we can come alongside an organization and help them improve.

Phil Wilson: [00:10:15]

I would say one of the big keys to being successful in consulting is fighting that urge to say yes to everything that comes across your desk and focusing on what are you great at. What can you be the best at? And do more of that. And don’t say yes to everything that you could do.

Michael Vandervort: [00:10:43]

Yeah. Like in our case, I haven’t been around for a lot of this ride, but we’ve developed specific partnerships with people who are experts. To your point, like you said, you know, somebody that could do a comp project, so it becomes a referral where maybe then you get something back someday. But to Phil’s point, it lets you practice what you want to practice. How about how about you, Dana? What’s your perspective on this?

Dana Wood: [00:11:09]

Yeah, I agree with what Tim said, but an interesting note is that with Tim and the other two partners in Envision, have all at one point been my boss at some point. But it’s been great. As Tim mentioned, it’s been the relationships. And because we know each other so well. And I think the thing that really works too is we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Like Tim said, a comp project. Now, that’s not in our wheelhouse. Tim’s the analytical one and Tim’s the good business planner. I’m more of the big picture.

[00:11:41]

I like employee engagement, employee relations. I like leadership development. That’s my thing. Our other business partner is in the benefits area. So, we all bring something different to that. And we all know each other’s, like I mentioned, strengths and weaknesses. So, that’s been great.

Michael Vandervort: [00:12:00]

Cool. You guys came out of the food service side, the warehousing and delivery side, and I know that when we did pre-call a while back, you were providing some fractional services in the restaurant industry. I don’t know where this will take us exactly but that’s a volatile industry right now. The 800-pound gorilla in the room is Starbucks, which Phil and I have talked with other guests about the union organizing they’re experiencing and some of the business difficulties that they’ve had with the corporate campaign. Red Lobster, Mod Pizza, and a number of other chains are going out.

[00:12:40]

It’s always volatile, but it seems this is more challenging now than ever. And I think the pandemic drove a lot of people out of the industry because restaurants were closed for a long time. And I don’t know if they’ve not been able to recover from the talent drain that they experienced or whatever. But you guys provide some fractional services to franchisees and other things. And I was curious if you could give us a maybe an overview of the challenges and the kind of things that you deal with in that industry. It’s one that is a huge employer in the US. And I just like to learn more about it.

Tim Fatum: [00:13:19]

Well, absolutely. Just out of curiosity, have either one of you served at a restaurant before growing up or in your career?

Dana Wood: [00:13:27]

I was a short-order cook, not a server, but I was back of the house. Dishwasher, busboy then cook for a long time through high school and college. So, that is where I learned a lot.

Phil Wilson: [00:13:37]

The only job I’ve ever been fired from.

 Tim Fatum: [00:13:42]

Well, I just asked because there’s a large percentage of people in the US and probably other countries as well that have started a career or have been in the restaurant industry. And you’re right, Michael, it’s pretty volatile right now. It’s been challenging. I think one of the headwinds that have been just hitting them hard for the last couple of years. Obviously, COVID-19 was tragic. And those that made it through that probably were stronger after that if you made it through it.

[00:14:15]

But inflation has just been a really tough thing. Restaurants usually look at what they call prime cost. And so, it’s labor and food costs or supply costs. And boy, that’s just gone up substantially. You’ve seen it on, on billboards, right? You’re going down the road and you look up and McDonald’s is hiring a cook for a number that’s 30%, 40% higher than a couple of years ago. And you’re thinking, “Man, that’s amazing.” And the food cost has gone crazy.

[00:14:49]

And prime cost generally is probably 60 to 70% of your sales. And I don’t have the exact numbers, but I think that number has had to drift up unless people have adjusted price. And I think part of the answer is in the restaurant industry, you can make portions smaller, and you can lower the quality of your cost. You can raise your price to try to adjust for this inflation thing going on. But what’s happening is a recent survey just said about 60% of people are either spending less when they go out or trading down, going to a different [unintelligible 00:15:35] cost less.

[00:15:36]

So, that’s been tough. And if organizations can’t figure out how to control that- and you can’t lose money forever, right? How long do you lose money on a week-to-week, month-to-month basis before you have to say, hey, I’m out? I think the other big thing is the workforce. It’s been a challenge there. I would say, though, it’s better- during the pandemic, we looked around and said, ‘Where did everybody go? Where are all the workers?” We couldn’t get enough and we had all these jobs we’re trying to fill.

[00:16:04]

I think that’s gotten substantially better. But I do think that … Do we have the right people and the right seats? Do we have the same level of engagement that we had back when … And I think then the other thing is how is the workforce responding to these things? So, companies try to save money, maybe they don’t have as many employees on staff or they’re raising prices. And the workforce I think is oftentimes not happy with how companies are handling those situations. So, it may mean checking how you do things.

[00:16:45]

They may they may leave and go somewhere else. Or they might try to form a union. They do different things because they don’t feel heard. They don’t feel important. And what we try to really coach people we work with is you got to pay attention to your financials and your PNL, and you got to make sure that you got some money on the bottom line. But at the same way, you got to make sure that you’re doing so in a way that continues to engage and communicate well with your people and make sure they understand as much as possible why.

[00:17:21]

And have a plan to approach that because you won’t exist tomorrow by performing like yesterday. You just can’t. If you think you’re just going to do it like you did pre-COVID or even a year or two ago and make it, I don’t think you’re going to make it. You got to you got to perform differently today so you’ll be here tomorrow. And I think that’s what we’re trying to say. And there’s no cookie-cutter approach to that either. I think that what is good for one organization might be totally different than the other. So, you got to assess and look at that.

Phil Wilson: [00:18:01]

I was just going to say, Dana, I’m curious. You go into a restaurant or food business that’s got some employee relations issues. What are some of your go-to tips to do what Tim says? You can’t just focus on the bottom line. What do you do to really engage what are really challenging jobs, very, very difficult jobs?

Dana Wood: [00:18:28]

Yep. I think a couple of things. So, first of all, is listening to the employees. We go in and sometimes we’ll just walk around and talk. What’s going on? What do you like here? What’s not going well? And then really focus with leadership and try to figure out their concerns. What are they facing and how can we help them become the better leader to meet their employee needs?  Going back to your book too Phil, approachability. How can we help them be more approachable? Because that’s what our workers want today, right?

[00:19:00]

Our new workforce of the day today. Does that leader care about me? Is that meeting my needs? The other thing big I think Tim, you mentioned the workforce. And yeah, it tends to be a transient type workforce. There’s no commitment. I can work here until, oh, they’re going to offer me $0.50 more. I’m going to leave tomorrow. They’ll Probably just ghost their employer and never, never come back. And I think one thing about that is to help them with the schedule. Scheduling is a big thing in the restaurant industry. It’s a weekend, late-night job.

[00:19:37]

And I think the key thing, too, is to look at is that employer being flexible with that. And there’s a new tool. In fact, I just saw something come across my computer this morning about a tool that will help employers do that and give employees the ability to change schedules. “Oh, I can’t work. Sunday, I got Johnny’s birthday party. Oh you know Theresa. Theresa, can you trade with me?” And so, I think that’s a big thing too, is helping restaurants, you know, meet kind of that flexibility portion that they’re that their workforce wants today.

Tim Fatum: [00:20:09]

One thing I would just add to that too, Dana. Does the employer understand what their people are thinking and understand the risk of what’s going on? I think sometimes they’re trying to address these issues that are real issues, but they don’t know that there’s a union risk looming or they don’t know what the real issues are and they aren’t asking the questions. And one of the tools and things that we do is conduct roundtable discussions where we sit with employee groups face to face, not electronic, filling out the 67-page survey online to who knows where it goes. Right.

[00:20:52]

And we ask the question how are things going and how are they doing? And that face-to-face interaction. One of the times we did it, one of the managers sat in the back and he was just shocked at all the information that they heard or we heard just by asking that question and taking the time to do that. But then also taking that information and trying to how do you take that and quantify it and make it actionable so that you can actually do something with it?

Phil Wilson: [00:21:22]

With all of this AI and all the analytics and all the stuff that you can do, it really boils down to a face-to-face conversation and being able to get across the fact that I care about you, I want you to have a great day at work. If you’re struggling with something, let me see what I can do to try to help overcome that. These are very, very basic and simple. They’re simple to do that. It’s not easy during the rough and tumble day at a restaurant or retail, pretty much any business to actually take that time.

[00:22:05]

Anybody can do a round table, right? That’s not that’s not some magic thing, but it’s just taking the time to actually do it and have that conversation. A lot of times it’s just difficult to get there.

Tim Fatum: [00:22:20]

Agreed.

Michael Vandervort: [00:22:22]

So, I’m curious. If you work with a franchisee, it’s presumably an owner. It could be corporate but presumably, there’s a person, a guy, or whatever. And you guys are a vendor to that person. And then you also have to act in the traditional HR role, which is a quasi-advocate, quasi-policy cop kind of thing. How does that work in a fractional role? And how are you effective in doing that? Because that has to be challenging.

Tim Fatum: [00:22:51]

Yeah. I think the reason we feel it’s an effective way to approach HR is that regardless of what size you are, if you got more than one employee, you probably got some HR people things that you got to pay attention to. In fact, I always joke, go to a typical meeting of a department or a team and I think they spend 60 or 70% of their time talking about people things. It just is. But the fact is a lot of organizations can’t afford an HR director or manager even. They need help and they have to deal with those issues.

[00:23:26]

And so, a fractional HR support role is there where somebody can call Dana and say, “Hey, I’m dealing with an issue,” or maybe it’s a regularly scheduled weekly meeting. And it’s a resource for you that organization to call and to talk through some of these very gray issues that can occur in a business. If they don’t do this, they could call legal, which our clients is saying, “Well, that’s that works but it’s expensive.” I don’t know, 4 or 500 bucks an hour maybe. And then or you maybe make the decision without the guidance, and then later on, you’re dealing with some consequences. The expensive and the attorney.

[00:24:14]

We set up an intake with clients, and get to know them. I think it’s really important to understand as much about the business as possible because, in the end, we got to help that business be successful. If that business doesn’t succeed, then nobody’s got jobs and we don’t have a client. And so, we have to make sure that we understand their business as best we can. And we set up the cadence. A lot of these things like, if it’s employee relations, I think that most of the time you can’t predict those things, right? They pop up and there’s an issue and you have to deal with that as quickly as you can.

Michael Vandervort: [00:24:56]

So Tim, assuming the role as a fractional HR person inside, how do you address that? In these meetings, you talked about doing focus groups or listening sessions. How do you address that with the employees and how do they receive it? And then also how do you deal with an on-site manager? You mentioned that you got a call from HR once and you were like, oh, I was in trouble.” You have a double thing, you’re HR, but you’re also to some extent technically an outsider. So, I’m curious how you guys bridge that gap, if there is one. And maybe there isn’t.

Tim Fatum: [00:25:34]

Well, I think it depends on the scenario, but the HR fractional oftentimes operates behind the scenes. And so, what we want to try to do is enable the current leadership team who should be leading the business. And they do. We want to come alongside them and say, okay what’s going on? What’s the best way to approach this? There are times when we say we need to talk to legal because this could be a pretty, pretty sticky situation. There are times when we just coach them on do we coach the employee? Do we warn them and maybe guide them through the process? And they do it. So, they don’t necessarily see Dana or me in a scenario like that.

[00:26:19]

If we’re conducting a roundtable discussion, then we set that up and we come in and we’re presented as an independent third party coming to help learn more about the business. The company wants to learn more and hear from you, so they’ve hired Envision to come in and ask you how things are going. And then we work through that process of asking questions and gathering the information. And we don’t record names. In fact, we wouldn’t probably in most cases know the names anyway. So, it’s anonymous. And then we provide that back to the, to the owners or the leaders.

[00:27:02]

The one benefit as the consultant is that sometimes the news, you get some really good things to share and sometimes they’re not so good. But we’re not so worried about losing our jobs because we’re going to tell them something that isn’t good. We’re just trying to make sure that they understand what the perception is from their team, from their employees, so they can address those. And we also provide recommendations on a way to move forward with those things.

Phil Wilson: [00:27:29]

I want to hear about Dana’s book.

Michael Vandervort: [00:27:33]

Yeah, I was going to say we’re going to switch to a couple of different areas, but that’s a great jump. So, the title of the book is From The Mailroom To The Boardroom. And I don’t think it’s your first book either. It was released in June, right? So tell us about it. Yeah. And your co-author, who’s not on the show.

Dana Wood: [00:27:53]

Correct. So, it’s From The Mailroom To The Boardroom. And my co-author Kirk Zell [SP]

was also one of my bosses. He started out in sales, similar to Tim and me. As I mentioned, I started in the mail room. And then he made it all the way up to the general manager of a multibillion-dollar division or organization within Gordon Food Service. And so, what we did is we collaborated on our stories of leading and people. I think we start out the book by saying, as I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation this morning, it’s not about the finances and all that.

[00:28:35]

Even though we stress that’s important, because if you’re not making money, you’re not paying attention to that, nobody’s going to have a job, right? But it’s about the thing that we’re passionate about, as we’ve talked about people and how leaders need to understand and truly, in the agape form, love their people and focus on understanding. One thing that was always amazing to me is how I led during that day and how I treated people didn’t stay at the workplace, that resonated into the dinner table at night of the staff that I was entrusted to lead.

[00:29:15]

And so, I tell it from the front-line perspective. And then working my way into HR. And then Kirk tells his way of starting in the back of the house in a restaurant. Only went in to work for a food service company because his restaurant went out of business that he was working at, and his salesperson at the time says, “Hey, why don’t you try sales?” And his initial thought was, well, okay, I’ll do that just to learn more about the food service, and I’ll go open my own restaurant. And he ended up staying as I did, for 30-plus years. And so, he worked his way up.

[00:29:53]

I worked my way up from the mailroom to human resources executive. And he worked, like I mentioned, up until he would be a GM. And it’s all those steps in between and how we led.

Phil Wilson: [00:30:05]

Cool. Well, a lot of the best leaders are the leaders that started at the bottom and worked their way through, and you made the point, but can relate back to I used to have this job. I used to work in the back of a restaurant. I used to work in a mail room. I know what that day is like. And then to your point, that relationship with the leader, it’s not like, okay, it’s 5:00 and everyone goes home and you just erase what just happened. You know, what just happened is what you’re going to be talking about the rest of the day.

[00:30:41]

And even if it’s a tough day, even if not everything went right, which is most days, the feeling that you have about that leader, you can either be coming through that and feeling horrible or you can come through that and be like, “Wow, that was a tough day but we overcame a big challenge.” And that really is just in the hands of your leader.

Dana Wood: [00:31:06]

Right. And I think the big thing is that we learned. Kirk and I are telling our stories of our bumps and bruises along the way. I think I tell a story in there about pride and ego, which both Kirk and I felt that’s the downfall of many leaders. And I had one where I thought, boy, we won Department of the year in a mail room. And boy, I had arrived. And then the company did their first 360 feedback session and I got those results and I’m going, oh, no. Then, of course, I’m in denial. They just didn’t understand my job, so I’m going to tell them.

[00:31:48]

And then you get then I get to read the comments and it’s like, oh no. And so, my pride and ego were getting- it changed the way I was leading. And so, there are stories like that about the bumps and bruises and how we learned along the way about all these pitfalls that we did in leadership and how we learn from them.

Michael Vandervort: [00:32:08]

I read the sample intro on your Amazon page. In whatever portion of the book that came out of- I believe it is in your portion, you said you realized as a leader early on, and the words sound really dramatic, but that you held the lives of people in your hands. And it’s not like you’re like, ha, I can crush them like some evil supervillain, but more so what you said a minute ago about what you did and how you led them and how the experience that they had at work carried forward throughout their day.

[00:32:44]

And that really is an awesome responsibility. And it goes back to Phil, what you teach in approachability about how it can improve not just your leadership life at work, but make your life at home better. This is something that I feel like many leaders don’t understand and maybe take for granted. They don’t know how much what they say or do impacts someone.

Phil Wilson: [00:33:10]

The job of a leader is so hard. We didn’t really circle back to this, but it’s not just the economy and the labor market has been hammering first-line employees, but that first-line supervisor is stuck between the folks that are getting the work done day to day and then upper management, that’s like, “We got to make the numbers. Got to make the numbers.” That job is so hard. And they’re some of the least engaged folks in America just because it is such a challenging job and it’s very easy to talk yourself into “I’m stuck here. What I do doesn’t really matter. I don’t really have that big of an impact.”

[00:33:57]

It is so easy to talk yourself into that. And then, Michael, to your point, and then Dana and Tim, you know this too, you’re powerful beyond your imagination, actually. You have a massive impact. And the ripples of what you do during the day impact not just that employee, not just that employee’s family, their friends, wherever else they pour themselves into their community, their church, their hobbies. All of those relationships are really heavily impacted by that one extremely important relationship, which is your job.

[00:34:34]

That’s what pays for everything. You get a lot of your personal value out of it. And if that day-to-day is garbage, the rest of your life is. And leaders don’t really think about it that way very often.

Dana Wood: [00:34:52]

Yeah. I think Phil, to your point, leadership, especially as you mentioned that frontline leadership- there’s emails. Hundreds of emails today. Your boss is on you like you said. The bottom line. Your numbers. Your production numbers or whatever isn’t where it needs to be. You have people. Your office is a revolving door constantly. And I can relate. At the end of the day, the last thing I really wanted to do is go ten, 11 hours at it, and then I got a line outside my door.

[00:35:22]

But hey, that’s what we signed up as a leader. We need to make sure that we address that line outside the door and don’t put that other stuff as the major importance. Because it can be very easy to sit in front of this computer all day and answer your emails, do all your reporting you know, do all your meetings, that type of thing, and forget about, hey, those people, they’re entrusted to you. Take care of them.

Tim Fatum: [00:35:49]

Yeah. I think part of the fabric of an organization, if they have an open-door policy where I’m willing to talk to you anytime you have a need is servant leadership, that you’re leading with the servant’s heart and the attitude, and your ego is checked at the door. And the organizations that can make that part of their culture and values, I think, tend to do better in that area. And that’s the world we grew up in. If I’m sitting in my office working, my door is not closed. It just isn’t. It’s kind of figurative, but if you have an issue, “You got a minute?” Of course, I do. Come on in. Let’s talk.

[00:36:31]

And trying to do that, just that simple door closed. And I get it- sometimes if you’re on a call like this, you got a door closed. But I think there are subtle little things every day in your life. I think that we’re entrusted to the care of these people who work for us, and we’re impacting their lives. Is it for the positive, or are they at home talking about us at night saying, man, I can’t believe what happened today?

Phil Wilson: [00:36:53]

Right, you’re having an impact. Which kind is it?

Tim Fatum: [00:36:57]

Yeah, exactly.

Michael Vandervort: [00:36:58]

Yeah. It took me about a third of my career to learn that chasing money- I’d chase a salary. I get a raise. Oh, yeah, a new job, sure. But they weren’t always necessarily the best circumstances. It was bad culture or whatever. And I eventually realized that who you work with and who you work for makes a hell of a lot of difference, better long-term and the culture of the organization. And we have a question we like to ask on the podcast, which I’m going to ask both of you here. I’m going to jump to Dana first, just because apparently she’s worked for everybody that ever was her manager. I’m not sure how you’re going to single out [crosstalk 00:37:43].

Phil Wilson: [00:37:43]

[unintelligible 00:37:43] obviously the one who gets stuff done. All of her bosses are like, we got to have Dana, right?

Michael Vandervort: [00:37:53]

Yeah. She’s the GSD person. And Dana, this might be challenging for you. You may have to say, everybody. But the question is, who’s a leader who believed in you and helped you grow more than you thought you could?

Dana Wood: [00:38:12]

Okay, I well, I’d have to say Tim and the gentleman that I co-authored the book with Kirk Zell. And I’ll tell you why. Again, being in the mailroom, I didn’t have my college degree yet. And yet Tim and Kirk saw something in me, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, hey, do you want this director job at our $1 billion division in the company? It was this division that I was part of that was the profit center and helped build the other divisions. And again, frontline supervisor, no college degree yet, and they saw something in me and believed in me.

[00:38:57]

And I went from a front line to a director. That was a big jump. But with Tim and Kirk’s support, I was able to do that. And again, the support they gave me to keep going and keep learning, which I think is key to any leader. Leaders never arrive, right? You’ve always got to keep learning, because what we do as leaders today probably won’t work a month from now or a year from now. And with the encouragement of those two, I was able to learn, grow finish my college degree, and then move up even from a divisional director to a regional director because of Tim and Kirk’s faith.

[00:39:34]

And I want to tell this story that this is again about leadership. So, I had been in my divisional role for a while, and I finally got my degree. And we were in an HR director’s meeting that Tim was leading, and they gave me a plaque for my diploma for my degree. And that was back in 2009. I remember that day of Tim and his assistant at that time, Donna, coming to me (I didn’t even know they really realized I graduated), and recognizing me in front of my peers. So, little things like that that leaders do stick. Again since 2009. How many years later? 13-14 years later, I still remember that. So, it’s those little things that leaders do that will stay with people forever.

Michael Vandervort: [00:40:27]

Yeah for sure. How about you, Tim? Same question. Who believed in you?

Tim Fatum: [00:40:31]

I think that one reason maybe I looked at Dana and saw potential is because somebody did that for me. When I was in that sales role and I got that call to come to HR, I was still young. I had never managed before. I didn’t have an HR degree. There was just a lot I didn’t know. But the leader of HR at that time had worked with me. He knew that I had good relationships with my peers, with my boss, and with customers. And he saw that. And I think the other thing is that he knew that I understood the business and how it worked.

[00:41:12]

And I remember him saying, “I can teach you the HR stuff. We can get you up to speed on that. That’s just knowledge.” But he wanted the other stuff. And so, I remember he’d come in and then he let me present something on a new project or a kick-off a new initiative or something. I’m presenting and I, frankly, probably had no business doing that. But he let me go. But he was there as a safety net for me. It reminds me- Did you ever hear that story about the professor who’s given a speech to college students all over the country, and he’s given one speech after another, after another, and finally he’s just dead tired and he says to his assistant and he goes, “I can’t do it tonight. I’m just too tired.”

[00:41:55]

And the assistant says, “Well, I’ve watched you do this hundreds of times now. I can do it. Let me do it.” So, he let him do it. So, he presents to the next group. And it was flawless. He went through the presentation and the points and everything. He was asked questions and he answered every question to a t. Once the small guy in the back raised his hand and asked him a question he had never heard of before and he didn’t know what to do. He kind of panicked and he says, “That is the dumbest question I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe you’re asking me that question. In fact, that’s so dumb, I’m going to have my assistant answer it for.”

[00:42:36]

And the assistant was the professor, right? But Dave was the guy that knew, and I’m up there presenting and saying things. But that was development, and that was investing time. And he knew that I could do it. I had to do it. In fact, Dave’s one of the guys you see in our team here. He’s been just a great mentor and had a lot of faith in me even when I didn’t. And Dana comes along and you’re right, she’s a worker. She gets it done. And so, a lot of potential there. And so begins another journey there, which I think was wonderful and created another good opportunity for her.

Michael Vandervort: [00:43:22]

Awesome. Well, I’m going to ask you a closing question, and it’s two parts. But first of all, thanks for being our guest today. I really appreciate the discussion and the chance to sit down with you guys. And I’m going to lead with Phil because we do like a we always try to do a fun wrap-up. Not really pertinent to leadership or any of the more tough topics. So, when your turns come, though, you’ll get a chance to add any final thoughts and then share your perfect concert. So, Phil, if you could pick two artists that you would pair together and it can be in a performing in concert or on one song, who would you like to see as your dream combo for a musical performance?

Phil Wilson: [00:44:07]

This is a tough one. Well, one of them, they already did it, which is The Raconteurs, which is you know, Jack White and Brendan Benson, which is an amazing band. I like both of those guys. I would probably do Neil Young and Matthew Sweet. Matthew Sweet is my desert island. He’s a little off the beaten path of if I can only bring one artist, but it’s because he plays a lot of Neil Young songs. He plays a bunch of other stuff that I really. Anyway, those two would be really cool to see together. And Dana and Tim, thanks so much for joining us. I’m anxious to hear your dream concert.

Michael Vandervort: [00:44:52]

Go ahead, Dana.

Dana Wood: [00:44:54]

Okay. So, being from Michigan, I had to think about this because I was more probably Rock back in my younger days. And then the last 20 years, probably been more country. So, I chose a combination of both, which today they would both be considered country. And that is Kid Rock and Bob Seger.

Phil Wilson: [00:45:17]

I like it.

Dana Wood: [00:45:19]

Yeah. Remember the live album? When I was growing up, Live Bullet, it was called. And then Turn The Page.

Michael Vandervort: [00:45:26]

Yeah. Get out of Denver. I was at two of those shows back in the day. So, how about you, Tim?

Tim Fatum: [00:45:37]

Yeah. It’s a tough one because I have such an eclectic music taste. I like almost every type of genre. And this probably isn’t possible because one of them is dead. But Nat King Cole, who I remember my mom and dad, just that smooth voice and easygoing style. And Ed Sheeran, the singer-songwriter. That’s very eclectic. Yeah, it would be. I wonder what they would do, just what would come out of that

Phil Wilson: [00:46:10]

Yeah. What about you, Michael?

Michael Vandervort: [00:46:12]

It’s funny, I saw a TikTok video about the David Bowie Queen song, Under Pressure, where they were saying Bowie sang all the lyrics and all Freddie ever did was go di-di-di-bop. But  I love that song. And I would love to have seen them do an album or a concert. That would have been cool. I’ve always been a huge Bowie fan. And Freddie Mercury, of course, got lost way too early. And I’ve seen two shows, Billy Joel and Elton John, which is the classic example that helped me think up this idea.

[00:46:46]

And I also saw Sting and Peter Gabriel, which was maybe the best concert I’ve ever seen, and one of the most humorous in that you had to see Peter Gabriel, who at this stage of his life looks like an old English plumber dancing and performing that Sting song, The English gentleman, whatever that is called. Peter was dancing, if you can call it that. It was hysterical. Anyway, thanks a lot. We’re going to go ahead and end the show, and we’ll chat with you again down the road. Thanks for being here.

Phil Wilson: [00:47:22]

Thanks, Dana. Thanks, Tim.

Dana Wood: [00:47:24]

Thanks for having us.

Tim Fatum: [00:47:25]

We appreciate it. Take care.

Dana Wood: [00:47:27]

Thanks. Bye-bye.

END OF TRANSCRIPT [00:47:37].