Phil Wilson (00:00)
Ted Glesener, welcome to the Left of Boom Show.

Ted Glesener (00:03)
Phil, good to be here.

Phil Wilson (00:04)
Yeah, great to see you.

This is your first time on the show. I was kind of surprised. You’ve been on board here for a while, but we haven’t had you on the show. So welcome.

Today, we’re going to cover, in our Next 52 Weeks series of episodes, probably the most important component: action planning. I’m really glad to have you on the show to discuss action planning, and how you actually execute all these great ideas we’ve been talking about across the series. How do you get down to execution?

So why don’t you start off. Tell listeners a little bit about your background. You have a very interesting background when it comes to executing project plans. Walk us through that.

Ted Glesener (00:49)
Yeah. Before this, I was a consultant. I was a labor relations consultant for a couple of years. I was able to see from pre-petition all the way up to and through elections, and see the full breadth of labor relations outside of collective bargaining.

But before that, as you mentioned, I have a more unique background. I was not a former organizer. I’m not an attorney. I used to be an Army officer.

I was an artillery officer in the U.S. Army for six years, in the 1st Cavalry Division. I was a fire direction officer and a fire support officer. I ended up as an assistant brigade targeting officer and assistant fire support officer at the brigade level right before I got out.

Action planning was about 95 percent of my job. Five percent was pulling a lanyard or calling for fire. That’s what I did for six years, and I loved it.

Phil Wilson (01:42)
Shooting stuff.

Ted Glesener (01:43)
Two seconds there.

Phil Wilson (01:46)
Well, I think that’s interesting. In employee relations, it’s kind of the same thing. There’s a lot of logistics and planning. If you’re going to do a good job in this area, you really have to have a plan, and then you have to have a plan to execute that plan. There are a lot of similarities.

So why don’t we start with one of the most important components of action planning: what are you going to take action on?

Talk a little bit about how you would prioritize things, whether that’s in the Army or in employee relations. How do you pick what’s the most important thing to work on?

Ted Glesener (02:28)
This is a matter of personal opinion, but the Army and employee relations have a lot of similarities. At the end of the day, people are the mission. If your soldiers, NCOs, and junior officers are not in the right state of mind, if they’re not well taken care of, if they’re not given what they need to succeed, then whatever mission you’re doing, you’re going to fail.

It’s the same thing with employee relations. No matter what the operational demands are, no matter what the demands are for time and execution, if your people aren’t being taken care of and they don’t have what they need to succeed, you’re going to fall flat on your face.

So the crossover is one-to-one. To your question, I think that has to be the number one priority at all times: people. The action plan has to be narrowly tailored. It can’t just be, “I want everybody to be happier.” But you find a tangible goal you can unify around, create a common operating picture, and work toward making people’s lives better.

Phil Wilson (03:37)
Yeah.

A big part of what I talk about in Left of Boom is there’s an unlimited universe of stuff you could work on in employee relations, and the target is always moving. So the important work is identifying what’s the most valuable thing we could work on. Then you also need to sequence it.

For example, we’ve talked about this in other episodes, but if your first-line supervisors are weak and they need to be upskilled, working on other things ahead of that probably won’t help much because they’re the ones who will help you implement those things. If they’re weak, the foundation is crumbling and you can’t really go further.

So there’s both what’s important and what should go first, second, third. What are your thoughts on that?

Ted Glesener (04:32)
I think you hit it. I’m correlating everything to the Army as well. The focus on supervisors and frontline supervisors, stuff always rolls downhill, and it stops not with soldiers, but with their first-line leader, which is usually the team leader or squad leader.

It’s said the hardest job in the Army is to be a good team leader because they manage people the closest and also deal with everything coming down from leadership, different priorities, and different tasks. The old saying is, if everything’s a priority, nothing is.

Most of the time, poor communication of what actually is a priority rolls downhill to the supervisor. They get caught in the middle because they have to turn and face their employees and give them an answer. The team leader has to turn and face soldiers and give them an answer. If there are competing interests with everything, they don’t have that clarity, which puts them in a precarious situation.

Phil Wilson (05:34)
Yeah. You’ve been involved in a lot of union campaigns, and this series is about companies that have gone through a campaign and are on the other side of it. They want to turn around their employee relations environment so they don’t go through that again.

What are the kinds of things you would do to figure out the priority items to work on?

Ted Glesener (06:02)
Every campaign is different. But in my experience, campaigns don’t just come out of thin air. There’s always underlying pressure building up, and eventually you get the boom.

A good place to start to tie campaigns together is what we talked about: supervisors. Following a campaign is a significant emotional event for supervisors because they’re the ones leaned on the most to say, “We want to maintain this relationship. Please give us another chance.” They just went through a three-to-five-week campaign going hard.

After the election, there needs to be a dedicated focus and look at supervisors. Translating that to the Army, focusing on training team leaders and squad leaders always took a backseat to bigger operational priorities coming down. But at the end of the day, the most important people to execute the mission are the team leaders and squad leaders.

Neglecting them leads to failure. On the corporate side, it means you could end up back in the same position in 365 days or 52 weeks with another petition.

So you need to hone in on them, provide support, provide the proper training on how to lead and communicate. You talk about Approachable Leadership. “How can I reduce your frustration?” That’s not just for employees. That’s also for your subordinate leaders. That’s a key extension of keeping a well-oiled machine running at that level of management.

Phil Wilson (07:58)
Yeah. As a practical matter, if I’m advising a client in this situation, the priority work is going to be dependent on what happened during the campaign. But ideally, you’re looking for not just support for leaders, but also some low-hanging fruit.

I like to prioritize projects based on how big an impact fixing this will have, and how hard it will be to do. Will it take a long time? Is it likely to succeed? Is it uncertain? Out of the universe of things you could work on, what has big impact but isn’t too hard to pull off?

Starting there also helps because you rely on leaders to implement high-impact, easy interventions, and they build reps and confidence. You’re training them while doing things.

If everything’s a priority, nothing’s a priority. You want to focus on what you can do in the next 30 days that will have an impact, then build on that the next 30 days. How does that relate to your experience?

Ted Glesener (09:43)
One-to-one. And the low-hanging fruit piece is like prioritizing 50, 100, 300 meter targets: easy targets you can knock down to build momentum and get people rolling in the same direction.

Following a campaign, a low-hanging target is asking: how did we get here? Where were the breakdowns of communication? Taking a critical look at yourself and saying, okay, let’s have a weekly stand-up between all the leaders.

This is something we used in the Army. When something was supposed to be a priority for the brigade or battalion, leaders would get out on the floor, out in the motor pool, out in the field, and talk to people.

We had Motor Pool Mondays. Brigade commanders would walk around during PMCS on our vehicles. You’d see a full bird colonel walking around and people would try to hide. It wasn’t a gotcha. He’d ask, “Do you know what my priorities are for preparing for NTC, the National Training Center, or preparing for the upcoming deployment? Do you know my priorities?”

He wouldn’t ask lieutenants or captains. He’d ask a specialist. If a specialist, who’s supposed to be a driver, understands the priorities, communication is making its way down where it needs to be.

That correlates to union campaigns. A symptom of finding yourself under a petition is breakdown of communication. Employees might be telling supervisors, submitting surveys, but they’re not getting feedback. Then from their perspective, it becomes dictation. Communication is a two-way street. Dictation is one-way. If they’re not getting feedback that they’re being listened to, their perception becomes skewed. That’s an easier low-hanging fix following an election.

Phil Wilson (12:29)
Yeah.

Another thing I would add: when you’ve just gone through a campaign, you’ve heard a lot of complaints. This should be fixed. This is wrong. You really don’t need to start from scratch. I’m not saying you couldn’t survey employees after a campaign, you can. I talk about that in the book. But you already have the list.

You should have a long list of things people said aren’t working and should be fixed. That’s a great place to start.

I’ve done this with clients where you literally take Post-it notes with each item. The microwave in the kitchen, where does that fit? Big impact? Yes. Everyone’s standing around because only one works. And it’s cheap. We can run to Walmart and fix it today. Easy to do, high impact, goes in that bucket.

Then the building isn’t air conditioned. Big impact, but not cheap. Sometimes impossible. That goes in a different bucket. Still needs attention, but different.

You Post-it the whole wall. Then you’ve got a cluster that’s important and not hard. Now you start peeling those off as you knock them out.

Ted Glesener (13:48)
Thank you.

Phil Wilson (14:10)
That’s super simple, but it’s a perfect way to map your project.

So let’s say we’ve done that. Now how do we actually execute? What tips do you have for following up and making sure it’s happening? You’ve talked about “Do you know my priorities?” What else would you suggest?

Ted Glesener (14:34)
Every organization is different. What I’m used to is somebody taking ownership and accountability and becoming the owner of getting things right within the workplace. They’re given the latitude to assign tasks. “Hey Steve in accounting, please go get a new microwave and send me the receipt so we can expense it.”

They become the taskmaster. They take ownership of getting things done and moving the ship forward. It can’t just be one person’s priority. It has to be bought in by the entire organization.

The organization doesn’t want to end up back where it was for three to five weeks during the election campaign. Making this the priority immediately after is important. Don’t do a victory lap, don’t high five for a couple weeks. The second the election is certified, it’s time to get to work.

Phil Wilson (15:12)
Yeah. You’ve got to earn the privilege, and you have to earn it every day. You don’t just do one big thing and say, “Ta-da, we’re a great employer.” It’s work every day.

We’re getting close to time. Thinking about someone watching who just went through a union election and is trying to prioritize and get an action plan in place, what are two or three key things they should be working on?

Ted Glesener (16:07)
Being present, and those low-hanging fruits we talked about.

Being present isn’t just you. It’s you and members of the management staff being present with employees. I always told supervisors, managers, directors, CEOs, and the C-suite: be present and be available. Nobody wants to see someone sitting in an ivory tower giving directions 24/7. Get out and be present.

I had two brigade commanders. One was a great guy, very competent, but not present. The other was extremely present. He walked around the motor pool, checked on soldiers, saw how they were doing, remembered names, remembered family members’ names, and did spot checks to ensure priorities and mission were communicated down.

That breaks down perceptions and reduces frustrations employees may have. If they don’t see you at all, they build their own perception of you.

Then the low-hanging fruit: after the campaign, you hear everything that’s going on. You get the roster of “This is why I’m mad. This is what’s going on.” Take it seriously and provide feedback.

It’s not just about what you do for employees. It’s about what you tell employees you do for them. Keep the line of communication going: we hear you, we’re listening, and here’s what we’re doing to fix things.

Phil Wilson (17:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and we talked about this in the communications episode with Nick. That last point is really important. People talk themselves into, “I don’t want to brag about stuff I should have been doing anyway.” And, “We just had a campaign because we weren’t doing it. I got the message. I don’t need to run a victory lap.”

That’s thinking about it wrong. The project plan and commitment to turning around the employee relations environment needs to be talked about a lot.

You’re coming out of a point where most people, at some point, thought you don’t care about them. They thought you don’t care about having a great place to work. Just because they changed their mind about the solution they would pick does not mean they now think you’re awesome.

You have a short period of time to say: we got the message, we understand, and we’re committed to this. Communicate what you told us, what we did, what we’re planning to do. Then follow up: we did what we said we were going to do, here’s the next thing we’re working on.

Making sure they see you’re doing the basic steps, and that you got the message, matters.

Any final thoughts for our listeners?

Ted Glesener (19:15)
I have a funny example.

Sometimes I’d get asked, “Why is the company listening to us now? We’ve been telling them over and over again.” I’d say, sometimes I come home and my wife says, “Hey Ted, do the dishes, pick up your clothes.” And I say, “Babe, I got it.”

Then another time: “Do the dishes, pick up your clothes.” “I got it.” Over and over.

Then one day I come home and my wife’s bags are packed, and she’s ready to leave to go see a marriage counselor. And I’m like, no.

Unless you want your wife’s bags packed and ready to leave, do what you’re supposed to do, or you’re going to find yourself sitting with your wife in front of a marriage counselor. That’s the funny story I used to tell.

Phil Wilson (19:51)
Yeah, I guess I should have done the dishes and picked up my clothes.

Ted Glesener (20:02)
Exactly.

Phil Wilson (20:07)
Right. When people decide a union is a good idea, they’re basically saying, “I want to change the relationship.” They don’t do that for fun.

It’s really important to come out of that and learn the lesson. In marriages, some people learn the lesson and some people don’t. The steps are similar. What are we going to work on to get the relationship back, hopefully better than it ever was before? What are the steps and commitments we’re going to make?

Ted, I appreciate having you on the show. It’s been great. This is a very important topic because if you don’t get execution right, you can have the best plans in the world, but if you’re not executing them, it doesn’t matter.

Thank you for being on the show. Take care.

Ted Glesener (21:07)
Appreciate you having me. See you.