The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham | with guest David Hunt

14:58David Hunt:It's a very good book, but again, as you've read from that, it's very difficult to do. Perhaps the biggest challenge of a business, from my perspective, a good business needs a good product or solution or service. It needs financial capability to operate and it needs people, the right people doing the right things. Those are three fundamentals of a business. And if you get the people bit wrong, everything else, doesn't matter how much money you've got or doesn't matter how great your vision is, if you haven't got the right people, you're not going to execute on that. That's certainly from my perspective, the key within the things the CEO should not delegate is people and hiring the right people.

15:30David Hunt:Once they're in the delegate management, HR has a function in that, but actually bringing the right people through the door is critical to the culture and it's critical to success.

15:41Keith Cunningham:Another one of these that I'd like to dig in on a little bit is setting the company culture. I think this is one maybe that CEOs don't automatically think that it falls on their shoulders. Can you talk a little bit more about setting the behavioral standards within the company and why company culture is one of these seven pillars that you should never delegate?

16:00David Hunt:There are two areas or things fall down in this regard. One of which is a founder who doesn't, or a CEO who doesn't set from the very early stages or think to set the values and the culture that they want to create. They just get into doing the business. The other is people who often have in mind and create the culture amongst the founding team or the early team or the small team that they want to have. But as they scale and hire people, they're not very good at communicating that message. So sometimes, particularly in fast growth companies, you'll have a core team who will buy into the culture and the values and the mission of the business.

16:36David Hunt:But very soon, they could be in the minority of people in terms of hires. You're hiring quite at a pace, and suddenly you're not communicating it very well, and suddenly the culture changes. Do you think, in your mind, as the founder, we've set the values? The people I talk to on a day-to-day basis most often are buying into that. But actually, does everybody buy into that?

16:55Keith Cunningham:So there's that phrase in there, culture is what people say about you when you're not in the room. Imagine I'm a founder, I've realized that my company culture has transitioned away from what I originally set it as, it's become lazy or maybe toxic. What are the steps that I should take having realized that this is a problem? How would I change things?

17:12David Hunt:Again, back to the solar business, we grew people-wise very rapidly. And there came a point where I was in the kitchen of our premises. We were up to 52 employees by that point, but it had grown very, very quickly. And there were four people in the kitchen. Firstly, I didn't know them, didn't know their names, which is not a good thing. But equally, then they were talking and overhearing what they were talking, I thought, those are not the values that I want in my business. They are obviously not living the culture and values that I assumed the business had. Can you share what they were saying?

17:41David Hunt:Something about a customer and just a bit derogatory. It was like, that's not who we are as a business. They were installers, so they were having really important frontline interaction with the customer base. I didn't jump in or say anything at the time because it wasn't anything overtly bad in itself. It was just the culture of thinking of customers in a derogatory or in an unimportant way. And for me, as a business, your customers are everything. So it just took me time to first think, actually, that's not what I want within the business or I want my customers to see. So then it's a case of, well, how do we address that?

18:13David Hunt:What we did is we instigated an on-site meeting that was a lack of communication. Each person didn't know what they were doing or how important they were in the function of things. I think the installers just felt they were workers, they were laborers, which they clearly were to a degree in terms of physically what they were doing. But actually, they were fundamentally important to the business because they were the frontline of the business. We organized a day where I could sit there and myself and the other leaders of the business and talk about the vision, going back to the point A, point B.

18:39David Hunt:This is where we are. This is where we want to go. This is the vision. This is the culture that we want to set. These are the values that we believe in. But then we gave the opportunity to each sort of section of the business to stand up in front of everybody or say hi, introduce themselves individually, and say what they did within the business and why it was important. So there's a much better understanding of who was doing what and why, and therefore much more of a passion for helping and supporting everybody and communicating better. And it worked. Again, not everybody buys into these things.

19:07David Hunt:Going back to not drinking the culé, but making some errors. Obviously, we'd hired not necessarily every single person as an A player because we were hiring so fast. You make a few compromises, we did that. You need to essentially apologize if need be. I've seen founders in the past and worked with founders who've gone in front of everyone and said, look, I'm really sorry, it's my buck stops with me, but the culture here isn't what the culture needs to be. It's not your fault, it's mine.

19:28Keith Cunningham:Wow, that's a tough conversation to have, a tough meeting to hold.

19:32David Hunt:Exactly. But what's the consequence? You can go in and say, you're not doing it right, you're not following my plan, you're finger pointing, which doesn't solve any problem. And ultimately, the reason why it is something not to delegate and why it's in this lesson is because it's something you should delegate, it is your responsibility to sort of have control over and guide the culture in the business. And most of the businesses that I've been involved with, we've had off-sites and workshops where people have all inputted into the conversation. But ultimately, it's your job as a CEO to say, okay, this is the culture we've all agreed on.

19:59David Hunt:The standards need to remain that. And it's for you to call out standards. And if the standards have dropped and the culture has shifted, you have to hold your hand up and say, it's my fault.

20:06Keith Cunningham:Do you think the CEO should get involved in the onboarding process as well, with regards to culture?

20:12David Hunt:To a degree, it's tough because going back to timing, that's why people delegate, A, because it's hard. Like you say, somebody else's problem, it's off your plate. But also because if you're hiring a lot of people, it does take up quite a bit of time. So I think they should certainly have an involvement. Jack Dorsey, who said every single employee on their first day in the business had breakfast with him. I'm fairly certain it was him. Even when they obviously became quite a sizable organization, every single employee up to when they were crazy big had breakfast with him on their first day. So to answer your question, I think, yes, they should certainly be present, but you have to delegate some of that because some of the onboarding is around H &R and health and safety.

20:49David Hunt:And there should be people to support on that to a degree or they're going to work in the department. It's much better that the head of that department has the most interaction with them. But certainly much like the first part of the interview process should be with the CEO. I think the first element of the person's onboarding should be within the first day or two sometime with the CEO.

21:07Keith Cunningham:Let's move on to lesson number three. The three pillars of success. You know a book's really good when they can distill a complex concept into three simple steps and something that makes you say, yes, that was obvious. And why wasn't I already thinking of it like this? Talk me through these three pillars.

21:24David Hunt:First one is write down your major outcomes every day. Second is plan your day before it starts. And the third is be accountable to someone for your plans, commitments and results. So listen much about the individual. So you as a founder, you as a CEO, you as a leader, your three pillars of success. And they're hugely simple. And for that reason, they're actually quite complex and quite often neglected. I'd be sure to find anyone out there who's been successful, who's not done these, but also who has fallen off the wagon, so to speak, and not done them consistently all the time. Because they're simple, they often get overlooked or they get sidelined because you're busy.

22:03David Hunt:and fundamentally, as Keith puts it, these are the difference between success and failure. There are three core pillars of success of your business.

22:12Keith Cunningham:Actually putting these into place and having a mechanism around putting them into place, I'd love for you to talk through your major outcomes for the day first. How do you come up with what they are first and how detailed do you go with this in your own practice?

22:25David Hunt:The point that Keith makes here is that particularly in today's society, everything is a goal. My goal is to be the number one at this. Our goal is to be the top in our region. It's more of a wish than anything else. And even if you write it down, the goal is quite often the wish. I wish we were going to be this, that and the other. At the end of this day, when I look back, what do I want to have achieved? What do I want to have happened? I always did threes. I think threes are great. So I always start them every day. If I do nothing else today, but I do three things, will I say I won the day?

22:54David Hunt:Those are outcomes rather than wishy-washy goals. It's very clear. today I want to speak to five new customers. I want to sit down with my team to go through this part of the strategy or whatever it might have to be. It's very clear what you want to achieve. You have to step back a little bit because all of this comes down to what is the vision of the business and what's your course. So I do quarterly, monthly, and then weekly. And then obviously then you break it down daily. It sounds like a lot, but it's not really. If you start at the quarter, saying right at the end of the quarter, this is where I want to be, then it's a case of, well, what do I need to do this month in order to achieve that?

23:25David Hunt:And then within the month, what do I need to do this week to achieve my months. And you just break it down quite simply. So at the start of every day, which is the second part, is actually writing down and actually planning your day in advance. It's amazing how many founders and people I've worked with who wing it. And I've done it myself in the past because you think, I'm in control of this. I know what's going on. I just need to keep the plates spinning. But before you're long, you're keeping a lot of plates spinning, but perhaps the one or two core ones are not spinning quite how they should be.

23:50David Hunt:Think about the outcomes on a daily basis that you want to achieve.

23:54Keith Cunningham:It's a great forcing function for prioritizing and making yourself say no to things, isn't it? Because to be honest, any working person who's not got a list of 20 things that they should be doing that day, but what are the three things that really matter that are going to move the needle?

24:09David Hunt:Exactly. It's very different from a to-do list, which again, to-do list is a second. So what's the core outcomes I want to achieve? And then what's the to-do I need to get to that point? But I always say to myself and to people that I've been working with or working for me is, win the day. So if you can get to the end of the day, I would like to have done all these things which I didn't get around to. I wish I could have ticked off more things off my to-do list. But at the start of the day, I wanted to do these three things and I did them. So I've won today.

24:33Keith Cunningham:Planning the day before, do you have like a shutdown routine at the end of the day that you plan the next day? What's your process?

24:39David Hunt:I think best advice is to do it the night before, but I'm always at the end of every day I'm gone. So I tend to get up early and do it in advance of the day. So over a coffee, over breakfast, look at what other outcomes I want to achieve and then follow that in, okay, so what are the to-dos, what are the specific things I want to get done today? But again, writing them down. It needs to be more clear than just a to-do list because the to-do list, there's a million things to do and you can very quickly run up 20, 30 things that need to get done. It's that prioritization thing of the quadrants, which are urgent, which are important, which are essential, which are time-wasting because it's very easy to be busy, very, very easy to be busy and a busy fool at that.

25:13David Hunt:So writing down the specifics of what are the outcomes, What are the key and for the things which are the to-dos which get to those outcomes? Having clarity on that at the start of every day, I think is really important. And it's really easy to fall off of that bandwagon, to forget or to stop or to get out of the habit of doing it.

25:30Keith Cunningham:The final one here is be accountable or find an accountability partner. This is maybe somewhat easier, lower down the org chart, where the manager should be the accountability partner for the individual. But if you're at the top of the pyramid, who's your accountability partner at that point? How do you go about finding them?

25:47David Hunt:I've always found that the most difficult part, and I don't quite know why. But having a mentor and or an accountability partner just to hold you true has to be someone you clearly respect and you wouldn't want to fudge or lie to. Because it's very easy to do, you know, did you do this? I didn't say because of this. And you can find a very plausible excuse. Oh, we had this little crisis, so I didn't get around to doing those things I thought I was going to do. But someone who is tough on you, not tough to the point of being a sergeant major in the army kind of thing, but someone who is honest with you.

26:16David Hunt:we'll let that wash. Okay, fair enough. Or someone who doesn't understand a little bit of business, perhaps we'll let that wash. There are some things accountability-wise that your partner or your friends might help you to, you know, going to the gym, having a run, and those sorts of things are important. And your friends can pull you up on that and say, why aren't you doing it? You said you would. In business sometimes, particularly higher up the chain, probably someone needs to have an understanding a little bit of how business is run. So finding a mentor who either could be one of your board members, if you have a board, if you don't, then perhaps consider one, or a mentor or a peer from another successful business that you know, where you can just have this arrangement.

26:49David Hunt:Often it's a nice duality that say, let's be each other's accountability partners. But I think it needs to be someone who understands some of the challenges of running a business because they'll spot when you're fudging and they'll spot when something's generally detracted you from what you said you were going to do. Because at times crisis has happened, you have to go through that. But it is easy to convince someone there was something happened when a more experienced mentor or support or accountability, a partner might say, actually, that's not really a good excuse because you still could have done X, Y, and Z.

27:17David Hunt:It's tough, but finding someone who's a more experienced, not necessarily older, more experienced, that helps, but someone who knows a bit about how it is in your shoes. So someone that's either a leader in a business or has formerly been a leader in a business.

27:31Keith Cunningham:I found in the past that joining founder community or what worked really well for me, running an agency was joining a couple of agency networks. I was lucky I had a co-founder and I was a great accountability partner, but it can be quite a lonely position being the CEO, being the person in charge where the book stops with you. Often you need somebody kind of external to the company to be bouncing ideas off properly.

27:52David Hunt:And that's why I'm a great advocate for having a board. When I started Hyperion Business, I knew a very small business, two or three of us in the business. Well, me to start with, but very soon just a few of us, but I still constructed a board. It wasn't overly intense. Nobody was getting massive salaries or anything, but I managed to find some partners or people that I knew and respected who would give some of their time just to be those advisors. And initially they were being paid nothing. And after a while we paid them something, but by no means what they were worth. But their insight and their counsel was hugely invaluable.

28:22Keith Cunningham:And I think a lot of people like to be in that position and kind of like to give back when they've made it. Definitely worth asking the question and reaching out to those people.

28:30David Hunt:Yeah, I would do that. I think that's another thing about you feeling that it's either are unimportant or that you're unimportant potentially, but actually go to the point, people do like to help people. I generally think that even in this crazy world, people generally help people where they can. And people who've got a lot of wealth and experience do like to share that. That's the reason why a lot of people like myself, a lot of people when they come to a point in their executive career, don't want to retire even if they can afford to, but want to go on and be a board director or a chair and advisor and support businesses and mentor, it keeps them fresh and engaged, able to give something back.

29:06David Hunt:So if you have someone aspirational that you think would be a great mentor for you, you've got nothing to lose by asking them.

29:13Keith Cunningham:Yeah. And I suppose it's the reason why people such as yourself come on podcasts such as this. So I massively appreciate you coming on. Thanks so much. It's been great digging into the book and hearing your wisdom and how you apply it to your own life. For everyone listening, David also hosts the Leaders in Clean Tech Podcasts, where he speaks with founders and operators shaping the future of the space. So if you're interested in clean tech, definitely well worth a listen.

29:37David Hunt:Also, if you want to buy The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham, there's a link in the show notes.

29:43Keith Cunningham:And thank you very much for listening. I will see you on the next one.