A “Washing Machine” sits in each company ready to toss you into a cycle of doing. If you let yourself and others enter it, you have shut the door on the full potential of the humans who have come alongside you to create something of value. These people have a conscious or unconscious need for meaning in their lives. If you are the leader: by title or by ownership, you have a choice to make. You can recognize that each person is searching for alignment and see your role as inviting them into your journey, or you can determine what you can extract, and mine it until it doesn’t produce the return you need.

What kind of builder are you?

This Great Conversation suggests that there is a way to build for value that does not subtract from another. And that ultimately this path can change you and our world.

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The Great Conversation

The world spins off wheels (models used by any human organization to achieve success in the market). But what if the wheel begins to slow or suddenly stops?

In this great conversation we face the existential question: Are we ready for the change that is upon us? This change is multi-faceted. The change is a wheel that can release the energy of the market, the organizations within a market, and the people that help push and pull it into significance. But it needs leaders who see the change and help others through it.

We want revolutions in the wheel, not a conflagration.

In this Great Conversation, we immerse ourselves in the variables and potential root cause of this change. A strategic "integrator" joins us. Someone who has spent time in the military, consulted with Fortune 500 companies, and consumes data that speaks to the evolving socio-economic road ahead.

Automation scares people. Always has. And it should if you are waiting to see what happens next.

As we conversed and I reflected on the technology transitions I have been through for the last 50 years, I realized this is the perfect time for every leader, including me, to lend a hand. The perfect question came to mind: Can I help others on this AI Path to Value™?

Read more: at The Great Conversation

“Isn’t it time to stop holding people accountable?”

You are a leader. You take on a role called owner, executive, or manager. Or you are part of a team. You are trying to get things done. And you have laggards among you. What is the common response"?

Hold them accountable!

This is a logical next step. Measures of performance. And if you aren’t measuring up, bad things happen. You have been there. It starts with a conversation. Then when that doesn’t work, talk with HR. Maybe they can help. After all, in this culture of litigation, it doesn’t hurt to document. And you find yourself and your company accelerating down the path of correction. After all, you need to “hold them accountable”. A Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) may follow. And it screams to the employee and to their peers, that you have now been given a path to exit, not a path to value. Someone has to pay for this lack of accountability.

And this is where a Great Conversation with Aaron Schmookler, the founder of The Yes Works, creates the foundation for a new idea.

Aaron has a company that promises to unleash your people from this death spiral. It seeks to provide agency to the worker and to the business. And the agency starts with the gift of clarity. Owners and leaders: Are you clear what your mission is? Have you articulated that to your people? Do they know how they contribute to your definition of success? Do they know what the reward for that success is? Do they understand it, want it, and have the skills / capacity to achieve it?

If so, then they are personally accountable to themselves! As Aaron might say: “The greatest kindness one can give another is agency over the consequences of their actions.” When we err, it is a learning. When learning is applied, we grow. When we grow, we have taken a step on a path to value.

This demands a great conversation with your leadership team. It just might be the beginning of a reformation in how you identify, onboard, and mentor your people until they are unstoppable.

In this Great Conversation podcast we excavate the human and organizational need for better. For organizations that employ people, this is about the alignment of people, purpose, and organization. We turn to one of the former leaders responsible for learning and development at Microsoft. We learn about the “data-informed” approach that transformed technology leaders that has been transcended with a significant developmental innovation at WiLD Leaders: the ability to measure personal, team, and organizational trust. Once measured a "Map to Better" can be realized.

Most of us have experienced the gnawing doubt of our purpose. Few have leaned into that doubt and set out on a journey of exploration, knowing they are seafarers navigating the risks and opportunities of the voyage.

This Great Conversation is with a woman who pursued formal education in business and economics at Harvard. It became her future core competency. She is now acknowledged as a thought leader in macroeconomic analysis and multi-asset capital allocation.

But before that she said the great “Yes” to a passion centered in music earning her Doctorate in Musical Arts from the Cleveland Institute of Music, as well as an Artist Diploma and a Master’s degree in vocal performance. She has won honors and accolades from international competitions and been featured as a soloist at the Kennedy Center.

Now Anna Rathbun, CFA, CAIA is the Chief Investment Officer of CBIZ, Inc. (NYSE:CBZ), a leading professional services advisor to middle market businesses and organizations nationwide.

Anna and I spend our time getting to the Yes of her journey which leads us to a discussion of the journey of the business owner. We agree it is a journey that transcends the P&L. It is a journey of the wants and needs of another through relationship and trust. (See the podcast “The Key Performance Indicator We Don’t Measure…But Should”.)

And trust, according to Anna, is fragile. It has a face, the other. It has a heart. And it has a mind. And this unique chemistry cannot be parsed or siloed. If we only focus on profit optimization, we will not build a sustainable and lasting relationship with our customers, suppliers, and employees.

The bad news: we are in a time of shifting business models and shifting value systems for world markets. And that will impact the business owner here at home.

The good news: if we harness what we know about ourselves and others, we can navigate these times to advantage both.

Anna will be speaking on Thursday, January 30, 2025 at The Economic Update Breakfast at the Madison Centre Building Conference Center in Seattle, Washington. I will be there to meet her, physically, for the first time.

Anna oversees a team conducting global economic research. She also produces the CBIZ Small Business Employment Index and the CBIZ Main Street Index, which are proprietary indices that keep a pulse on the small business employment conditions and other Main Street trends in the United States. Anna’s opinions on global economic and market trends as well as monetary and fiscal policies are sought after by media outlets, and she is a regular guest contributor on Fox Business, CNN Money, Bloomberg, Reuters, Wall Street Journal and others. Anna is also an experienced professional in alternative investments, focusing on private equity, private credit and private real asset investing for institutional clients. With a unique background that embraces both finance and the arts, Anna is dedicated to the issue of financial sustainability for organizations serving a mission.

Enjoy this conversation with this master of the “Yes” in Life.

If you are a data driven organization and measures of performance are important to you, it might be helpful to understand the measure that influences all other measures…. This great conversation is about cracking the code in creating a persistent measure of organizational trust that impacts the engagement and performance of your people.

To paraphrase our guest:

Leadership=Trust.

Now you can measure it.

Now you can build it.

I have often said that worldview is a predictor of behavior. What is a worldview?

A worldview is the narrative you absorbed through your family, education, and experience that act as a toolbox of beliefs, assumptions, and values elements. by which you interact with the world. It is the story of you and your place in the world.

The Great Conversation is really about worldview creating the soil for ideas and actions that change the world.

This great conversation starts with a young man who was seeking his place in the world from humble beginnings, oldest of seven kids in a lower middle class family that often struggled. This formed the foundation of responsibility and the agency that life could be better.

He could have gone into professional baseball after his junior year in college, but had the foresight to see the lure of the game was not going to pay off.

He finished school, and like many of us, took a job to pay the bills. The first one was with a general contractor. The second one was in sales. Each of them was formative. However, he was a voracious learner. He dove into books by Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger about value investing. He quizzed his father-in-law about commercial real estate. This created the foundation for his venture into commercial real estate.

And the rest is a fable you must listen to because he went from a net worth of $50,000 to a portfolio of business interests between $15-$20M in 14 years.

Along the way he left his mind and spirit open creating the opportunity for mentorship and learning.

And now he is giving back by seeking to upgrade others as he himself was upgraded by his mindset and fortuitous connections along the way. Operation Upgrade is all about him identifying the learners and providing tools and a hand as they strive to see the possible upgrades in themselves. ..

This was a great conversation with a man with a worldview that is upgrading the world around him.

In 2022, 39% of 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States were enrolled in college or graduate school.

The total cost of attendance for a four-year degree includes tuition and fees, room and board, books, supplies, and other expenses. In 2022-2023, the average annual cost of attendance for first-time, full-time undergraduate students was:

• Private nonprofit institutions: $58,600+

• Private for-profit institutions: $33,600+

• Public institutions: $27,100+

Most students borrow money to attend college, with the average federal student loan debt being $37,850. The standard repayment plan for federal student loans lasts 10 years, but the average student borrower spends closer to 20 years paying off their loans.

The median annual salary for a college graduate with a bachelor's degree is around $77,636.. (after 4 years and an average debt of $38K)

This is the context for a discussion with a retired tradesman, Dennis Hamon. Dennis successfully sold his plumbing business a few years back and since that time has been serving his industry through the Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, Contractors Association. (PHCC).

He himself was that 18 year old kid who was always dreaming and always learning, but was not attracted to formal education. He was one of the 61% who did not go to college.

Instead he was mentored and apprenticed by tradespeople that helped shape his character and work ethic. And it eventually led him to building a successful practice.

Now he has a podcast, “Dennis the Apprentice” that is intended to be one of the vehicles that allows him to keep investing in the next generation of plumbers. He is also on the board of directors of the national PHCC and is helping shape the growth trajectory of the PHCC Academy, a comprehensive contractor life cycle education model beginning with workforce development.

Through the great conversation, he helps us understand the risks and opportunities in the plumbing industry. These will serve the next generation of plumbers represented by those 18 year old kids who have been taught to believe the only way to a quality life, a $100,000 annual salary and professional career development is through a 4 year degree.

If you love to learn, are accountable, love to help people, and fix problems that are important to them, then this might be the profession for you. And you get paid to learn it with many companies offering compensation based on your performance.

Plumbing services professionals are the doctors of the home. Educated, certified, professionally licensed, and well compensated. And they don’t spend 4 years to get a $50,000 job with a $50,000 debt hanging over them.

Enjoy this discussion with a great entrepreneur, and statesman.