Welcome to this episode of The Manager Track podcast. In today’s conversation, I’m speaking with Lawrence, who is a speaker, an author, an artist, but also the former CEO and chairman of WARE Malcomb, an international design firm. Now he has expensive experience leading in the trenches

And leading a company. I appreciate bringing voices like his to The Manager Track podcast to hear, not just from, you know, leadership coaches or trainers who work with leaders day in and day out, or people who are on the academic side who do a lot of research and studies, but also to have the people represented here.

Who have developed their own leadership philosophies, their own leadership principles through trial and error, through their own personal and professional growth as leaders. And Larry definitely struck me as someone who’s very thoughtful. Creative, deliberate in his approach and is eager to adapt, learn, and make the best of any situation.

And so in this conversation we talk about what it takes for an organization to be deliberate and consistent with their leadership philosophy. What it takes for. Leaders to both navigate sort of the creativity, but also the accountability side, how they’re creating vulnerability and trust in the organization so that problems rise to the surface, that the team feels engaged and bonds and actually shows up united and aligned.

He was using this analogy of not being. He may not have used that word, but I’m calling it a cruise ship, but being a fleet of ships and the goal is to align the fleet of ships to move in the same direction. It’s not one at the helm who’s staring the cores, but the leader’s job is to create alignment amongst that fleet and how to do that is not easy.

He learned some of his lessons, the, the harder way too. And he talks about this in his recent book, layered Leadership, which he takes a bit of that creative and architectural approach to how to build leaders, how to build organizations similarly to how they design and build, buildings and that unique perspective is what I found really compelling and why I was thrilled to have him on the show.

I hope you will enjoy this conversation and leave with a lot of new ideas and food for thought as much as I did. And with that said, let’s dive in and welcome Larry to the show.

Here are the two questions. This podcast answers. One, how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role? And two, how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted, 

although the competition and the expectations get bigger. This show with The Manager Track podcast will provide the answers. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. 

I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection and personal fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead. So everyone wins and gross. In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate and act as a confident and competent leader. 

You know, you can be. 

Larry, thanks so much for joining us in The Manager Track podcast. It’s a treat to have you on and I can’t wait for this conversation, which I know you will spark some, you know, food for thought for all of us to really think about how we see leadership in organizations and how we contribute to a culture of effective leadership.

The way that I’d like to kick off this conversation is actually to talk a little bit more about your views on leadership, particularly those that you find are controversial or maybe even unpopular compared to sort of the traditional views that most of us have on leadership in organizations.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate that. Well I guess, you know, in from the book and, and some of the feedback I’ve had, I think the most controversial thing I’ve got in there about leadership has to do with the commitment of the top leadership to share their personal financial statement annually with each other and kind of open the personal books up.

People have asked me about that. It’s a practice we’ve done here. Just at the top for many, many years. And it’s a way to keep each other accountable. And because if one of us is in having financial stress personally, it affects how, how they can do their job. And so we’ve made a commitment at the board level.

To share that information with each other once a year or sort of our personal financial statements. And it takes some getting used to for new members, but it’s worked very, very well for us and avoided situations we don’t want to get into. So. So this is really interesting. I’ve definitely had the conversation on the podcast before where Lee just said, you know, I recommend, and what they do or practice is to share their performance reviews, like the unfiltered, unedited, uncentered performance reviews with the entire team or the entire company so everyone can see the feedback.

Now you’re taking this kind of a, to the next level where it’s a lot more personal. Yeah. And there is vulnerability involved, I imagine for some people. Yes, and I can understand on one point you’re saying it’s important because how we do personally and especially the finances, will impact our decision making and organizations, how we show up and so forth.

But I can also sense there is more to that. There’s sort of the psychological aspect of creating a culture where there’s so much vulnerability maybe demonstrated or where we feel this then creates a room of safety or it strengthens relationships

tell me a bit about that. Yeah, all of those things really. I mean, I think it’s, first and foremost, it’s it’s a trust issue, right? And so we build a very strong level of trust, confidentiality within that group because yeah, it, it does create vulnerability, but I think vulnerability is good, you know in a culture you know, it’s

one subject, sharing your financials, but if you’re able to be vulnerable with each other. On a subject like that, then you can be more vulnerable on other issues too, as you’re trying to work things out and go through building the company and what’s working and what’s not. And so it kind of has a vast, cultural impact, I think to all of those kinds of issues. And also there’s so much accountability and, and sort of as you prepare to come into a meeting like that you know, it, it forces a behavior, a good behavior during the year because you don’t wanna show up at that meeting with a messed up financial statement, you know, so it’s, it’s it’s worked pretty well.

I would have to say is there a specific example that you can share where you would say the reason why we have this type of conversation or the reason why something was brought up that we would’ve otherwise have missed was likely because of that trust that we’ve built at that higher leadership level?

Yeah, many times one of our people, well even me, have been willing to bring up an issue that’s bothering ’em, or maybe it’s something distracting from our personal life. So we need some help for a while, you know, from our partners. You know, just being. Able to talk about other things openly that will affect the company I think has been a big, kind of a deal.

Big deal. And you know, it also when you are willing to do that, everyone, you know, because of the trust is willing to step in and help you, and whatever the issue is, and for however long it might take everybody pitches in and helps each other, which is great to have in a culture, right?

We all have a help each other kind of an attitude all the time. Lemme take a step back. As you were building your company and you started to think about some of these leadership practices, what was the point where you thought, Hmm, interesting.

Like, I realize how we do things slightly differently and I should write a book about this. Yeah. Back to that. I, well, you know, it’s, it’s many, many years of trial and error and putting in, building a culture and putting in different aspects of what we call our leadership academy here at Ware Malcolm.

Because we’ve worked very hard on all of those things. The idea, you know, that. Because I was CEO for 28 years, now I’m chairman and as I transitioned to chairman first of all, you have a little bit more time and you have time to think about all these things that, you know, we’ve accomplished and are still accomplishing.

And so the idea to kind of document it and hopefully it’ll help. People. That’s really the reason I wrote the book. You know, there are any kind of a business or leadership book, if you can take one thing out of it and adapt it to your own situation and it helps you, it’s a big, it’s a big deal.

And that’s happened to me many, many times. It, so I wanted to share what we’ve been able to do in the hopes that it’ll help people that are trying to build their organizations. What type of leadership principles have you evolved over time and maybe you really wanted to make sure they make it in the book and are the things that may stand out to the, the readers?

Yeah. I think well first of all, building leaders is a, is a very specific kind of a program. It doesn’t happen by itself and depending on what business you’re in, you know, usually people. Don’t go to school to figure out how to be a leader, right. You, you, you’re in a, like, we’re architects here.

You know, we learned how to be an architect and a designer. And so, you know, you do a good job and all of a sudden you get promoted and now you’re managing and leading people, which you didn’t go to school for really. So, you know, that’s pretty common I think, to any industry. So. We decided to, you know sort of define The issues and the attributes that are important to us inside our company and our culture, and spend some time really specifically training up our people to with different. Leadership attributes that we expect here at where Malcolm. And so we’ve put lots of programs into place, you know, our mentoring program, we have a coaching program, we have a program for emerging leaders and, and then our top leaders, we have, meetings three times a year with our top leaders to make sure the culture is consistent and, you know, we’re growing as leaders together and helping each other. And so, this sort of one team aspect is very important to our company. And then just learning from each other, you know, because different leaders have different.

They’re great at different aspects of this, and we all wanna round out our leadership abilities over time. So, we learn from each other. One of the things that you just mentioned was the consistency. And I think in many organizations that isn’t really top of mind. Leaders are either not even trained much and if trained.

Not with this idea of creating consistency and creating a very deliberate culture in mind what would you say if someone’s in an organization where they feel like they’re, it’s a little bit left to your own devices. We obviously all wanna try to be good leaders, but there isn’t a clear message of what good leadership looks like in the organization.

What do you suggest for them to do? Yeah, I think define, I mean, I think define it. What, what’s important to your company and your culture for your leaders to develop, you know, we did that, we defined it, you know, with our culture. Some pretty specific things and, you know, we, talk about it all the time, we repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and work with our leaders on individual mentoring on where, what some aspects they might be struggling with or not maybe as naturally good at.

You know, and we spend a lot of time figuring out, okay, what’s people, what are people’s strengths? Because you always want to go with your strengths, but you know, when you’re a leader, you have to be pretty well-rounded. So you also have to work on the things that maybe you’re not as strong at. And so, you know, once you kind of define those things that you want for your leaders then you can go about figuring out, okay, what does each person need to work on and how can we help them?

And in that way we do become very consistent across the platform, which is important because when we’re delivering services to our clients we have a lot of national clients and they, you know, ideally we are very consistent with our services across the, the platform. So if I imagine, you know, being a leader in an organization right now, and I, I am not the one who’s at the top and who’s initiating something like this, or I’m not in hr, with that strategic objective, then I might think, okay, breaking this down, if I have managers on my teams, I’m a manager of managers, then I can take that leadership aspect of like, how do we within our team or our department, how do we wanna lead? But, but I’m also realizing like, the red thread kind of goes all the way through where a manager who has a team of, let’s say five individual contributors.

They together can also talk about what’s the culture we wanna define here or live by, and what are the norms that we are going to abide by. Yeah. Because every business unit or department or office, wherever it is geographically, you know, typically there’s, a culture unto itself. But you wanna have consistency across the, you know, your company.

And so. If you’re a manager of one of those smaller groups, you know, I think it’s kind of important to say, okay, what, what are the parameters the company leaders are laying out? What are we trying to do? How can we make sure that we’re consistent with those values and that culture within our team?

And then how do we adapt those things to the current situation that we’re in? Because, you know, maybe. For us, you know, we have offices all over the place and, you know, cultures are a little bit different across the country and the way people work and the way people communicate and you have to adapt to whatever that is.

So it’s kind of being able to, you know, be in, make sure you’re in line with the company itself. Then adapting that to your own situation. And so there’s some nuance there. With leaders growing through the different ranks and adapting to the needs of the organization, what have you seen?

Leaders struggle with the most when they’re trying to move from a mid-level to a senior position? Like where do you find the challenges happen there? Yeah, so one of the biggest things I talk about in the is that leaders need to identify sort of their number two, the person that they can work with to develop.

And this is such a big part of leadership developing. Your people. And so when somebody’s trying to make a leap to get to their next position in their career you know, they need to get there by developing their own people so that they’ve got a strong team working with them and that also are motivated to grow in their careers.

And that can. Step up to their next level. So, which will allow the leader some freedom to step up to the next level as well. And so having this number two, is a big deal that people struggle with. People struggle with giving up control with empowerment delegation. These are all things we work on.

Delegation is a pretty tough thing for a lot of people to learn. You know, I always say, don’t abdicate. You have to delegate. So, you know, there’s this spectrum people, leaders can get too far into the weeds and stay there and justify it because it has to be done and then other people over delegate and don’t check in and what I call abdicate.

So you gotta find that right. Place to be where you’re empowering your people, you’re encouraging them to develop and grow allowing them to make decisions, but you’re checking in with them, right? Consistent, on a consistent basis, not micromanaging to help them grow and, and develop your team so that it becomes a better team so that you can grow yourself and you can’t, you know, that’s where I find most people get stuck.

Isn’t struggling with those kind of ideas. I’ve seen this more times than I can count where someone was pretty directly told that the reason they weren’t promoted or the reason they didn’t get this big a role and someone else did was because the thought of them leaving their current position would be too much of a risk.

Hmm. That people would quit, that it would turn into a chaos, that the team wouldn’t run smoothly, that there was, you know, a fallout in some sort. And so there is always the, either the perception. The perception created that was inaccurate. Maybe the way that they talked about the stress level or the responsibilities or the problems on that team created this perception.

Or actually they were too interwoven and created too many dependencies and didn’t have that. Number two, that they could promote. And then you know, yeah. For everyone else, that the team will continue to run smoothly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly, and really I think that’s a good way to say what I was talking about.

You know, if the team is too dependent on you and therefore the company is too dependent on you for a specific role, then either that’s your role and you. If you’re happy with that, if you’re not happy with that and you want to keep growing, then it’s incumbent upon the leader to really understand what the issue is there and to learn how to do some of the things I’m talking about.

Because what you just described is probably the person that’s in the weeds eids and taking, you know. Too much responsibility and not delegating enough responsibility and not empowering their people. And that’s how you get stuck, you know? I sometimes say you just gotta get your head up and look and step back a little bit and look and see,

why aren’t you developing your people? Or maybe do you need a another person? Maybe you have the wrong people, you know, but you need a person that’s motivated that you can bring along and delegate to and train and, and then. You know? Yeah. It’s a mindset shift. If this is what I want to grow, then I have to do the things.

I can’t just get promoted because I want to be promoted. I want wanna get promoted because I’ve trained my people to take over. We always say, train your replacement. People. That’s scary to people, right? That is a scary thought sometimes. But that’s how you get there.

You have to train your replacement, bring them up, make them. Understand that you know what they need to do and help them get there and trust them, empower them. Let ’em make a mistake. Let ’em make a, make a decision. And that that’s how they learn. And then that naturally elevates.

People are afraid to take that step sometimes. That’s, that’s a risk. Yeah. And how valid is that risk? Because I can hear people think, you know, in their head the thought is Sure. Larry, you can say that as the CEO and you seem to have pretty, or even as a founder, you could say you have the job security, no one’s gonna fire you.

Or very unlikely that that’s gonna happen. But for someone else who is just another hire who joined the team a couple years ago, is now trying to elevate and for them to say, I am gonna make myself redundant by training someone who is more junior, possibly, and maybe even cheaper, possibly with the hope that I will then be able to elevate as well.

That does seem like a reasonable risk. So what’s your response to that? Well for most CEOs they got there somehow. Mm-hmm. By going through this process, you know, they didn’t magically become a CEO. So it also depends on the company culture, right? If somebody feels. Overly threatened that they cannot take this risk that, oh gosh, yeah.

Is I’m training somebody, so, and they’re younger and cheaper, so they’re just gonna take my job and I won’t have a job anymore. You know, if that’s the culture, the culture has to be there, obviously in the company to give you the trust and assurance that, you know, there’s a reason for this because we need you, you know, we tell our people all the time, I need you to get to the next level.

You know, the company needs you to get to the next level. This is how you do it. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, giving people the, an understanding of how, how you see their career path and what you trust in them you know, the CEO has to set the example of how the trust and the, and the need for the company to have a person grow sets the stage for, okay.

To do that, I need you to go train your replacement. You know, it’s not an isolated abstract idea. It’s part of, it’s an integral part of the culture of the company to make that happen. I think that’s a really good point to look at what’s the company culture, but also what phase are, is this company in?

Is this is the company in a, in a phase where we’re consolidating? Is it in a phase where we’re expanding? And then what’s the direct message personally that they receive about their future potential in the organization. But I think to highlight again what you said, just which I think is so important, there simply isn’t a way.

To elevate. If the company’s contracting and you feel like you need to protect yourself, then you know that’s you’re gonna protect and stay stagnant. If you actually wanna grow, then letting go and like changing that mindset to elevate others so that you can elevate. That’s the, I just got off a coaching call this morning.

That’s, that was the conversation we had and I said, I’ve yet to see someone who doesn’t go through that process. It, it does not happen. It is always that way. Yeah. So, you know. Our company does from time to time contract because we’re, you know, somehow somewhat vulnerable to economic shocks and, you know, recessions.

So but our mindset doesn’t change during those times. We’re still, still trying to develop our people. We’re still trying to grow for the long term. It’s like, okay, so we’re contracting unfortunately right now, and it’s tough, but this is temporary. We’re still on the same track. The culture has still has to be there.

We’re, our mindset is we’re growing, we’re gonna grow, and we have to be ready for that for the next growth spurt. And to do that, you have to be developing people all the time. Mm-hmm. And I think if you have that overriding, overarching philosophy in your company, then. You can, you know, mitigate some of that fear, you know?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think it’s that ongoing communication and consistent messaging that then builds trust that people, right. Enables people to act on it. You said earlier. It’s important for leaders to take a step back and really look at or assess, for example, their behavior when it comes to delegating.

Like to what degree that they’re in the weeds, to what degree they’re abdicating versus delegating or where do they create unnecessary dependencies. This kind of deeper reflection is something that you highlight in the book as a really important part. And you know, of course, the people that you know, work with an executive coach or invest in their training, they’re the ones who are naturally inclined to do this work.

They’re committing their time and their resources to a process like this. But I also know that there are, hundreds of thousands of leaders out there. Just in this country who wanna grow. Like we intellectually ask them, we say like, what do you want? And they know they wanna grow, they wanna be strong leaders, but they don’t make that time or that investment to deeply reflect on their leadership and how they show up.

Mm-hmm. And I can relate to it ’cause I know it’s. It’s hard to do and the trade off is real. When there is so much pressure that they live with and so many different things that, you know, pull on their attention and they have a family or maybe other commitments outside of work, then to add something else on top of that is hard.

This is, this is not the urgent stuff, but the really important stuff. What have you found helps leaders shift into this different mindset to prioritize? That type of work versus the urgent inflow of tasks on their desks. Yeah. This is a big one. And very important because you know, some people are more naturally motivated for this sort of thing to be able to look at themselves and allow, you know, ask for help, ask for mentoring or coaching, and then some.

You know they, I think really what it is, is they, they’re, it’s fear. It’s a, you know, once again, this is about vulnerability and so they make the argument that I’m too busy, you know, it’s, I’ve got too much going on. I don’t have time for this. But really, you know, if it’s important to you, you’ll make time for it and figure it out.

And, you know if, if there’s too much coming at you. You know, and we all go through phases where that’s true, but it’s not all the time constantly. And if it is, then maybe that’s a reason you need mentoring because you’re probably in the weeds, right? And, and so that, yeah, we, we cons constantly talk about this kind of stuff.

It’s like you have to get your head up, you’ve gotta get your head out of the weeds from time to time and look at what you’re doing every day and what you’re bringing to the team every day to help them. And you know, it some, it’s hard for some people, you know, there, there are, that’s really what happens is that there are people that, love mentoring and coaching and want to grow and, you know, understand that they need that feedback. And then there are others that, I think it’s just they’re afraid to be vulnerable and for whatever reason, and so we have to help them. And we do, we try to help them get over those things and try to be more open and commit to it and show them why.

You know, and I think that a, for a lot of our leaders and really any leader, I think there’s always somebody. That you can trust and reach out to and learn from. So it can be informal. In our organization, we always say, Hey, if you’re building a business, there’s somebody in this company already that’s building a business that maybe is a step ahead of you.

That the, you know, the, that business is a little older and been around a little longer and you can reach out and you know, proactively. Get some guidance. And that’s a way we sometimes help try to help our leaders who are maybe not as oriented towards mentoring but they have friends in the organization that they can reach out to and maybe get some guidance from.

So we try to create, you know, again, it’s that one team. Everybody’s helping each other building that trust in the organization. There’s definitely an effect, like a ripple effect in organizations where that’s, you know, the top layer lives by it. They openly talk about their mentoring relationships, their coaching relationships, their attendance of leadership programs.

And so forth, and then it turns into, it’s almost like, oh, this is part of the expectation. This is part of what leadership means in the organization, and not doing it would be sort of the, the ignorance. Yeah, a hundred percent. You know it’s, it is an expectation. So we set those expectations and, you know, people hear from us when we, when we see that maybe they’re not upholding those expectations.

So accountability’s a big piece of it, right? You, you have to, we all agree that this is what we’re gonna do, this is how we’re going, we’re all going the same direction. We’re a fleet of ships. I use that analogy, you know, we’re not a big giant ocean liner that takes time to change and can’t adapt.

We’re, we’re a fleet of ships and we’re all going the same direction. And if we all need to go right, we’re gonna go right or left, whatever we’re doing. And so there has to be accountability when somebody isn’t doing what we all agreed we were gonna do. Yeah. We gotta all wave the flax of like, Hey, you’re.

You’re off course. Yeah, exactly. Can’t have a little ship off course out there. Right. The last thing I wanna talk to you about that before we wrap up is creativity. ’cause that seems to be an important aspect that you highlight for leaders and, again, it’s a bit of this push and pull of how much creativity, creativity can, can we include?

How do we create the space to be creative? You know, thinking of all the leaders who have carry a deep emotional, heavy emotional load for the team, the, the pressure on delivering results. And then we saw this specifically with the introduction of a lot of AI tools. Even that was how do we even take a step back to think creatively, let’s say, how to leverage those.

And for many leaders that was. Not possible. They were so focused on just delivering results that that thing kind of fell to the back burner of like, well, at some point the company will tell me what to do, but it wasn’t coming. Sort of bottom up grassroots movements. I’m curious to hear more about how you try to instill this creativity and as you think about different organizations, what works and what doesn’t work.

Yeah. So I think you know, we’re, we happen to be in a creative business, but when it comes to leadership and, you know, hitting goals and str strategies, you know, it doesn’t really matter what business you’re in. I don’t think it’s, it’s really, but creativity is key to I think evolving as a company and as a leader.

And so. Every year when we’re building our strategic plan, you know, we involve all the leaders, first of all, and we involve the whole company in our mind mapping, and we encourage creative ideas to come from everywhere in the company. And I think, you know, and we’ve. We’ve had a lot of great ideas come through that we’ve implemented.

You can’t implement everything, but, you know, there are a lot of great ideas that come through and that encouragement of that I sort of idea culturally, sort of infuses a, a creative aspect. And I think that whenever we’re hitting roadblocks or a, you know, a tactic isn’t working, that’s what you need.

You need creativity. So I, I’ve always encouraged sort of this idea of during downtime, some sort of creative outlet, whatever that might be. Everyone’s got one. People think they’re not creative, but they are. Mm-hmm. You know, some people like listening to music. Some people like going out into nature and hiking.

Some people actually like having a sketchbook and, you know, sketching something. You know, whatever it happens to be. Travel. When, when you have downtime, it allows your brain to. Release a little bit, and that’s when creative thought shows up. And we like to encourage that because some of the best ideas, really all the best ideas that we’ve had as a company came from you know, some sort of creative inspiration that somebody had.

And I think encouraging this. You know, people talk about top down leadership and bottom up leadership, and really it’s both. You have to figure out a way to have both because great ideas come from anywhere and we wanna encourage that. And so once you sort of have this culture like this, and then you have a team approach to creativity, somebody might have an idea.

And then others might have input onto that idea that make it better and better and better. And you know, it’s a, and sort of as opposed to, no, it should be my way or this way or that way. It’s more of, I had a great idea, that is a great idea, let’s develop it together. And that sort of thought process.

Again, emphasizes and reinforces this idea of a team environment. And so it, and it encourages that creative thought. And so, yeah. So again, it’s not, it might, you know, when you’re in the thick of it on a, on a Tuesday trying to hit a deadline, it might not enter into it, but you know. If you’re encouraged to think of a creative idea when you’re having your downtime, wherever you might be, you will have a creative idea that might solve a problem, and that’s really important.

Do you have any specific incentives or rituals that you’ve implemented or experimented with that foster this sense of creativity in organizations? Well, we, we definitely re have a lot of recognition programs in our company. You know, we have all kinds of awards. You know, we have extensive awards program and recognition programs for people who either, who are just doing a great job or they brought some great idea to the table that was implemented, or they crushed their goals, you know.

Or you know, there’s a variety of things. You know, and we’re always trying to have a culture of recognition in our company. Whether it’s a small or big or it’s a design competition or what, whatever it happens to be. You know, we’ve implemented a lot of those programs over time. Show people we appreciate their contribution, whatever that might be.

So yeah, there’s a lot of that go that goes on here. Because I think it’s easy to say like, yeah, we appreciate creativity and we want you to come with new ideas, but then when it boils down to the day to day, we’re sending these mixed signals and so sure. But do that on your own time because when you’re working that 8, 9, 10 hours a day, we need you to deliver and you know you need to

push out work and then it can get conflicting like what? It can, in my downtime, I have other things I need to do. Yeah. So I think there’s a bit of the struggle. Yeah. And, and leaders will then if, even if the, the question of like, why don’t you go on a longer walk? Like if you don’t have a meeting or take a meeting outside and, and talk while you walk, or just take along, it’s the guilt that comes up of like, but I can’t.

And, and especially for leaders. I can’t be the one who does that. Like I have to show and role model to the team. Hard work or disciplined or being present and being available. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s important to be present and available. No question about it. this is a nuanced kind of a thing, you know, no one’s asking, to think about work when you’re on your walk.

Really, it’s more about allowing that time for your. Brain to relax and creative thought comes to you, you know, and inspiration comes and it might not always be about work, it might be about something else you wanna do in your life. It is just creating that atmosphere, I think, where you encourage creative thought and problem solving.

And so, you know, I think that because we’ve created that environment, that’s why we’ve got. So many, I mean, we have this thing we call WM 3.0, which ended up being 4.0 and 5.0. And now WM evolved. But you know, every, every so often we actually ask, we say, okay, everybody, here are the categories we’re talking about.

This time we’d love input and ideas about these things, and we got like a thousand. Submittals. That’s amazing. Right. And then, you know, we figure out what we’re gonna implement out of those ideas. Some, some of ’em are repetitive, some of ’em are, Not really doable.

And a lot of ’em are, a lot of ’em are easy to implement and help the company and we do it. And some of ’em are bigger projects that we would help the company and we work on those until they’re implemented. So you know, people seeing their ideas valued and implemented is kind of a big deal, you know and has helped the company tremendously.

Yeah, I can see that the actual submissions you asking right? You should saying like, I really care about those creative ideas and your input, you celebrating the people who do contribute with the awards and otherwise, I think even like storytelling can be really powerful of how someone came up with the idea.

Mm-hmm. And connecting it back to maybe their creative outlet outside of work and how suddenly that’s. Started to fall into place and connect. Yeah. And that’s what sparked the idea can again, prompt people to think about this differently. Well, Larry, thanks so much for sharing your different approaches and ideas based on an massive amount of experience and success that you had as a leader.

In your professional career. Before we wrap, is there anything else that you feel strongly about that we haven’t yet talked about? Hmm. I think continuous learning is a great. Attitude to have in your life? Always be trying to figure out something new to learn. I, I use Leonardo da Vinci as the example.

continuous learning, building out different parts of your brain you know, all the time. And I think that’s a, a key concept for leaders. Just keep learning all the time. I think that’s ending our podcast on a great note ’cause everyone who’s listened is definitely invested in their ongoing learning and development as it relates to leadership.

But obviously not. Just to that. Larry, thanks so much for coming on the show. We will link to your book and to other resources in the show notes. Great. It’s always interesting to read from someone who’s gone through it and has been in the trenches. They have a very different perspective than someone who is on the outside or who studies leadership from a more academic perspective.

So I highly recommend checking that out. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you. Same here. 

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The second resource is my best-selling book, the confident and competent new manager, how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out at archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there. 

You can find all those links. In the show notes down below.