Built 2 Suit Podcast Test

Greg (00:00)

Accountability. It's a word we toss around in this business, and I'm talking about business in the global sense, in the architectural professional services business all the time. I think it's probably in three forces, the people's vision or mission statements or certainly, wrecks into their values in some point, and I see so little of it in the business, generally. I'm not saying our business, I'm saying in the business, generally. I think ego gets in the way of owning something, especially when you fail. It doesn't feel good to fail. But I've watched a lot of our generations, especially our younger generations, really struggle with the idea that they're not supposed to know everything now. So is there any advice you think that we could share with them about the best way to own something?

Nathan (01:09)

So you threw out the word accountability, and accountability has to start with yourself. So we can have mutual accountability, Greg, and I can hold you accountable and challenge you on things, and you can challenge me on things. But I think it's when we look in the mirror, Bill Mather's crazy, crazy brain on that guy And he just walks into my office the other day, and he holds up a mirror with the words we. He puts it on a mirror, and the reflection of we is me. And it was like, duh. But at the end of the day, If we can't hold ourselves accountable, and I think that's ultimately what was modeled to me through that whole fearlessly owning it, is I have to hold myself to a standard. That's how I respect the work of of all of the other people in the organization or even in the greater world, right? Bring communities to life, is when I bring the best me to the table and hold myself to the standard that in many ways, it should be way higher than what anybody else imposes on me. And when I do that, that enables me to have a little less fear because I've taken any power of of accountability that somebody else can impose on me.

Nathan (02:33)

It's not there because I've already placed it on myself. And so it really is looking in the mirror. When we want to have we accountability, we really do have to have me accountability first.

Greg (02:45)

So what role does being able to be an effective communicator have when you pair it up with accountability?

Nathan (02:55)

Man, there's so much there. Emotional intelligence, being able to read what somebody's intentions are, good, bad, or indifferent, figuring out how to... You can't impose like, your will on somebody. It doesn't work. I know that we could carry sticks, but that's not the environment that we're in. We're a professional organization, so we can't threaten. Words of threat that gets us nowhere. So we have to be able to communicate and get people to recognize this is your part of the ownership. There has to be an acceptance. There's this convincing over coercion. Our jobs are to communicate at a level where we can convince somebody that they recognize, Hey, okay, this really is mine. This is really what I can do for the good of the whole. This is really where my responsibility responsibility lives. Communicating roles and responsibilities, that is a big part of our strategic plan, is getting to a place where we know what our day-to-day roles are. But even in that context, We're creating guide rails because you can't identify every possible thing. You can maybe get 60% out and feel good about it and think, Man, that's a whole lot better than where we're at today.

Nathan (04:29)

But at the end of the day, that's why the values or the amount of accountability we place on ourselves, that's how you close the other 40% gap on that, where you say, I'm in this. I want us to be successful. So these are the other 40% that I'm going to do, whether it's written on a sheet of paper or an annual review document, or somehow associated with a scoreboard. I believe that that's what I need to do to make us successful.

Greg (04:59)

I'll throw a slider. I've been throwing you fastballs. In my kinda direct view, over the past several weeks, we've been talking about our ability to scale as an organization and what that really means with India and what we've been trying to do. I was shared by Bo. He shared with me that in terms of top-line investment, this includes obviously, for productive labor return, we've invested $10 million since early in '20 to help that process along. Obviously, we've hit that wall of hard where we want to get to that spot where we're actually producing completely, effectively producing work. I think two of the things we've just talked about are two of the big factors and what we're not being able to quite do yet, which one, having the accountability on each side, this side to share information in a nuanced and high level, and then the communication ability to extend that forward. If you were to look at our value set and try to help us understand, how do we approach that wall of hard just by looking at being able to communicate when somehow we're having problems communicating the people that are right beside us?

Nathan (06:31)

Well, I would be defying limits. We place limits on this thing. We set up in our mind what the limiting factors are, whether it's somebody's ability to receive the message. But as we've discussed, sometimes it's our inability even to communicate, like you said, to the person sitting next to us. We've missed a piece. Obviously, engineering is way out in front of where we're at with SPA and how they've established and worked through some of these things over time. And that's really, we're four years into this deal, so there's not a magic pill. But it's a mindset. But there is the burden on the architecture to be the overarching umbrella of coordination. And I think that is the fundamental key for us to unlock all of it. So as you talked about, we're trying to set up accountability on both sides. I think that is fundamental. Mike Lynchism, the golden thread, that is the architectural lead, where you have someone who knows just enough. They don't have to know everything, but just enough to be able to communicate with all of the parties. So having that here and having that there, I know that's part of the mindset we're approaching McDonald's a little bit differently with that concept, and we'll see how that works.

Nathan (08:05)

But we can't impose limits because we have a speed bump. Like, okay, this didn't work, and so it'll never work. That's a mindset. That's a limit. We've imposed a limit on it, whether that's a real limit or maybe just a bad experience. But we have to get past that factor or We'll give up. We'll give up. And I think that is the quintessential component of a wall of heart. It's there, we're facing it, we can try to knock it down, we can try to go around it, we can try to go over it. The wall is not going We're not going anywhere without some action on our part. So don't make an artificial limit just because maybe you had a bad experience.

Greg (08:54)

Let's talk about, obviously, inside our Our town hall we had recently, we set up six strategic themes. Actually, it's five. India is a strategic theme that permeates all the other strategic themes, which is why my mind always flows to six, not five. We've talked about some of these during main events here on the view, and cross-cut that also with some of the pre-recorded information that happened during the town hall event itself. If you were to look inside your current plan that obviously you've created in concert with team one, really, but you and Tina and Josh, especially, I think, have been somewhat connected to this. What would you view as something that people will see and can take action on here, probably in the next 2-3 months?