Recommended Reading: November 2020

In keeping with our commitment to providing resources to leaders in our business community, our November reading list has this book:

Love is Free. Guac is Extra.: How Vulnerability, Empowerment, and Curiosity Built an Unstoppable Team - Monty Moran

In this book, former Co-CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill Monty Moran explores how vulnerability, love, curiosity, and a unique understanding of empowerment builds an extraordinary and effective culture. Moran discusses the shaping experiences he had that led him to scaling Chipotle from a regional chain to a Fortune 500 Business, including befriending the homeless as a teenager, navigating the ever-challenging Co-CEO relationship, and personally interviewing 20,000 employees to understand their experiences. This is a book that showcases Monty’s humility as a a leader, and it helps us better understand servant leadership in a business context. Further, Moran also shows us how we can both be loving leaders and have a culture of excellence. At PFD, we can’t recommend this book enough for its insight to leadership development as a catalyst in creating amazing companies.

Diversity & Inclusion: An Interview with Kenneth Morris

An Attitude of Gratitude: Finding Meaning and Empowerment During Times of Difficulty

Dr. Viktor Frankl

With a world that seems so extraordinarily out of our control, it is easy to feel stressed and hopeless. Granted, there are many reasons to feel that way, but we believe that it is extraordinarily important to recognize our own agency and to intentionally shape our attitudes accordingly. This is not to minimize the impacts of the stressors people are feeling right now, rather, it is to provide a source of empowerment. There is a renowned and prolific psychologist that we would like to acknowledge when making this assertion – Dr. Viktor Frankl. Dr. Frankl is best known for creating logotherapy, a form of psychotherapy, after being the sole surviving member of his family from the Holocaust. During this time, he showed extraordinary resiliency, experiencing four different Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. In his creation of logotherapy, Dr. Frankl asserted that humans are motivated by a “will to meaning”, which means that humans have an innate desire to find some meaning in life, and that they can endure the most challenging of circumstances if they are motivated by their meaning.  Frankl wrote:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

Even if we cannot change a single thing about our circumstances, we can change our attitude to those circumstances. At PFD, we recognize the challenges that face leaders today, and we know they are numerous and difficult. This being said, we encourage leaders to take action to change their attitudes and to find meaning and empowerment despite this particular season.

One of the ways that we have found changes our attitudes is by simply introducing gratefulness into our day-to-day routine. Amie Gordon, PhD, a research scientist at the University of California, has said “gratitude is a powerful way to boost well-being”, and we have found that to be the case. Studies have shown gratefulness to be linked to improved quality of sleep, self-control, relational harmony, happiness, and generosity. Gratitude has also been shown to reduce depression and have lasting neurological positive impacts on the brain.

At PFD, November has kicked-off a month-long celebration of gratefulness. For us, per a logotherapeutic lens, we have been thankful for the relationships that we have in our lives. We are also grateful for the opportunity to continue supporting our clients in doing great work throughout this pandemic. The chance to focus on others has helped tremendously helpful when we have felt stressed, as it has taken our focus away from our challenges, and towards helping others. We are grateful that we have meaning and purpose for our business, to aid in stewarding a movement that creates world, no matter where you are born, anything is possible. We are grateful that we are able to safely get outside to the mountains in Colorado, and that the wildfires have greatly slowed with the snowfalls in the past few weeks. Finally, we are grateful to be a part of a network of leaders who, despite the outside circumstances, are relentless in their fight to make the world a better place.

In the midst of this extraordinarily challenging season, we remind you that you have control over your attitude, and it is important that you take action to positively shape your attitude. At PFD, we have found that gratefulness to be an important first step.

A session with one of our clients - Hometrends - that has shown great resiliency and commitment throughout this pandemic

Actions You Can Take:

1.     Commit to a daily gratefulness practice: write down five things every day that you are grateful for.

2.     Verbally express your gratitude each day. Saying “thank you” can be a knee-jerk reaction, so try changing the words you say to be more intentional about expressions of gratitude. For example, instead of saying “thanks for helping Jack with his homework today”, try saying, “I am very grateful that you helped Jack with his homework – it reduced my stress and it was really helpful to him”

3.     When you hear negative news, actively remind yourself of the positives in your life as well as actions that you can take that are within your control.

Recommended Reading: October 2020

As a part of our continued commitment to providing the best resources for leaders to better themselves and thrive, for our October Reading List, we recommend these three books: The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni, Titan by Ron Chernow, and How I Built This by Guy Raz. These books provide diverse perspectives about entrepreneurship and self-improvement through the lens of effective narrative structures.

THE IDEAL TEAM PLAYER - HOW TO RECOGNIZE AND CULTIVATE THREE ESSENTIAL VIRTUES - PATRICK LENCIONI

In his book The Ideal Team Player, Patrick Lencioni provides actionable tools on how you should invest in your current team and hire going forward. At PFD, we share Patrick Lencoini’s passion for having healthy work environments. Since becoming CAPA Pro members, we have been able to share Lencioni’s foundational tools with our clients, and we have found that the ideal team player exercise has been worked well during this time of continued uncertainty. The ideal team player is a compelling framework for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players, talking about that these people are happy, humble, and aware of their impact on other people. The applications of this framework span all areas of life, from how we better ourselves, how we hire and develop our current team, how we parent, etc. It is an insightful and useful book, and we can’t recommend it enough.

TITAN: THE LIFE OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, SR. - RON CHERNOW

Ron Chernow’s Titan creates a captivating portrait of an entrepreneurial giant - John Rockefeller. The biography details two sides of this imperfect but brilliant figure in history: one side being the businessman whose aggressive practices created an empire, and the other of a philanthropist who donated bountiful amounts of money and was committed to educating marginalized populations. We recommend this book during this time because we find that it is important to tell stories of really strong leaders of different times and draw from the lessons that they have to share. This book is relevant today, because it shows how one leader navigated a time of political uncertainty in US. Further, by reflecting on Rockefeller’s life, we can critically think about the legacy that we are leaving behind, incorporating Rockefeller’s brilliance and commitment to philanthropy into our legacy, but also taking heed to not repeat the more infamous parts of his history.

HOW I BUILT THIS: UNEXPECTED PATHS TO SUCCESS FROM THE WORLD’S MOST INSPIRING ENTREPRENEURS - GUY RAZ

This book from Guy Raz tells stories of entrepreneurial brilliance. Raz is the mind behind and the host of NPR’s podcast by the same name, and it tells stories of innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the movements they built. This book is based off of that podcast, which is the top business podcast on iTunes, with over 200 million downloads to date. By telling these stories, this book offers insight to entrepreneurs on wisdom on how to overcome every problem, and it inspires us to strive for the same level of determination. We at PFD recommend this to our readers to broaden their perspectives and learn lessons from professionals who spent years learning these lessons themselves.

The Talent Flywheel: The secret to creating a repeatable talent recruitment and development process

TRANSCRIPT:

One of the things that we have seen with a lot of CEOs in the marketplace these days, is that they have not developed a repeatable process to find, select, and develop great talent. As a result, their impact and their growth, while okay, is far less than it could be. One of the things that we've seen in our Scaling Up practice, and all the great clients that we get to coach, is leadership is key. It's all about finding, developing, growing, and retaining the absolute best players out there. 

So, we have put together a tool called the Talent Flywheel. Many of you may be familiar with the great work that Jim Collins has done on strategy flywheels to drive growth, and so we’ve found you can take the same core of that tool and apply it to the people in your team to drive incredible growth.  The purpose of this Talent flywheel is to get clear about the key steps on recruiting, selecting, developing and retaining the right leaders in the right roles, so it becomes a repeatable process for your organization. We want you to be able to get the best leaders into these roles that tie to their superpowers to drive your growth and fully realize your vision.

Step 1: CEO is accountable for stewarding culture and overcommunicating

The first step of a talent flywheel belongs to you as the CEO. It is so key that you steward your organization's culture. A key element of that includes: being very clear with your senior team what your organization’s core values are. They should understand the principles that guide every decision you and your team make. As you work to discover those, to reinforce them, and to cascade them down in the organization one of the key steps is to overcommunicate those core values. Repeat yourself so many times until your team is making fun of you -  that's how you know it's starting to set in.

Step 2: Learning and growth mindset and culture

The second step is stewarding and developing a learning and growth mindset and all of your people. It is key that when you're bringing new leaders into the company that they have a learning mindset. Any great scaling up company is a learning organization. We all constantly need to be growing and learning as the world is constantly changing all around us. All the information we need is out there is just a click or two away, but if we're not asking the right questions, if we're not using a learning mindset, our growth is going to be so much slower than it could be - and a lot less fun. 

Step 3: Unique and valuable employee experience

The third key element of the talent flywheel is making sure to create and reinforce a unique and valuable employee experience. If you think back to some of the key elements of your company strategy, we want to make sure we have a strategy that's unique and valuable to your core customer. The same logic applies to your employees. You will  want to make sure that you are selecting the best talent you possibly can that fits your culture, and once you got them you want them to stay. You want to go off for them things that are valuable to your employees that no one else. It's a key part of reinforcing the culture and thinking about your overall employee experience. What are your benefits? What is the work environment like? How are you investing in their growth? How are you making sure they've got a better future and they have today? As you look at these different things that you're doing for your employees, make sure you are offering them, individually and especially collectively, a set of benefits and opportunities that no one else can. If they are the right fit for your organization, this will help ensure employee retention, as they will never want to leave.

Step 4: Clear strategic direction from the senior team 

The fourth step to the talent flywheel is ensuring you have a clear and focused strategic direction from the senior team. Right now with all the uncertainty out there, there's unlimited opportunities and possibility for growing your organization; however, if every senior leader has a different vision for where you're going and what success looks like, your growth will be slowed, it will be more political, and it will be a lot less fun. So it is really critical to spend the time with your senior team on your strategy. We recommend, either two days a quarter or at least a half day per month, that you spend the time to clarify and reinforce your culture, that you get so clear what mountain is it that we are climbing, and for the current quarter, how do we stay focused on those opportunities that will lead to our greatest growth. It is important that the senior team do this collectively. While the CEO can help guide this, this needs to be a collaborative effort, because the process that your senior team goes through to create this focused strategy is just as important as the outcome.  This is because this process creates buy-in to ensure good implementation of the strategic plan.

Step 5: Transparency: KPIs and brutal facts

 The fifth element of the Talent Flywheel really caters to what A-Players want. A-Players want to win, and they want to know the difference they're making individually and collectively. So this step is really important. Where the leadership team is focusing, those metrics must be very visible so that everyone can track the progress of what's working and what's not working.  If there are brutal facts (i.e. any material fact that could impact business operations) and there will always be brutal facts, it's so important they get raised. When brutal facts surface, we can deal with them. They may reflect great challenges and they capture huge opportunities in front of us - or both. As we surface the brutal facts, we can identify them, we can figure out what the plan is to take advantage of them, and we can be successful together. We can surface these facts to drive rigorous discussions  with the leadership team, and align to this strategic direction that we discuss the previous step, so that we never lose sight of where we're going and that we will prevail in the end.

Step 6: Videos and stories that reinforce the core values told with emotion

With all the work that you've done to steward and reinforce the culture, to set a clear strategy, to bring the right people into the organization, and to have that learning mindset, step number six is where it starts coming together. This is where we start having great stories of impact that allow future A-Players to find your team, and to want to join your team as they realize you have a very unique and valuable employee experience for them.  This step will also allow you to  leverage all this talent that you have internally, because your current A-Players will know who the other A-Players are out there. They know who their friends are, and they will recruit them because they want to be around other A-Players. Making sure you have a process for your A-Players to refer other A-Players to your organization is absolutely key, because this will help them to take ownership of the recruiting and selection process to make sure we are bringing the right people in the organization to fuel our growth.

Step 7: Repeatable, strong, applicant pools: Topgrading, Job Scorecard, and referrals

Step number seven is all about making this a repeatable process which is so key for our growth. Right now, we know we're going to go fishing every time that we need great talent that are also a good cultural fit, which takes time and energy. As we get the flywheel moving, we will spend less time and energy on each candidate. As the CEO, you should always be recruiting, and your senior team should always be recruiting. When you come across great talent, make sure to get their contact information - reach out to them and put them early on in the process to start seeing your core value videos and the other ways you will be able to signal to them what do you unique and valuable experience it would be for that applicant to join your organization. Having a  strong pool is critically important, and how we screen is just as important. We have had tremendous success both internally and with our clients using the Topgrading process. The Topgrading process brings a whole new level of rigor to hiring. Many companies tend to hire quickly and fire slowly - on average are getting a hire right about half of the time. This is not good for the company and it's not good for that applicant.  With Topgrading, we see our clients getting much closer to a 90% success rate in hiring, and with the cost of a bad hire at 10 to 14 times their salary, getting this right is critical. 

Using the Talent flywheel is so key for your future growth and success. The Talent Flywheel will give you a repeatable process to identify, select, develop, and retain the top talent that you will need to make the impact that you want to in the world.

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Leader Spotlight: Kenneth Morris, Aviation Community Foundation

Mr. Kenneth Morris

As a pilot, I am always quite attuned to the weather, so I would be remiss if I did not speak to the dark cloud that has settled over this country and our business community. We live in incredibly turbulent times. We as a nation are experiencing loss resulting from Covid-19, and we are also experiencing great racial turmoil. At PFD, we are most certainly grieving the losses of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, who are some of the most recent victims in a long list of men, women, and children to wrongly suffer terrible deaths. Much like a dark cloud, these events are obscuring a way forward, and they cast a shadow over the landscape of America. Given the circumstances, each of us are wondering how we can help create positive, lasting change. In the midst of this dark cloud, we would like to celebrate a leader that works tirelessly every day to create this change: Mr. Kenneth Morris.

What is important to remember is that the tragedies and acts of violence we witnessed this week don’t exist in silos, they exist within complex social and economic systems of which we are all a part. One dimension of this social system that I will highlight is poverty, which disproportionately affects people of color. In 2017, 25.4% of Native Americans and Alaska Natives, 21.2% of African Americans, 18.3% of Latinxs, and 10% of Asians experienced poverty compared with 8.7% non-Hispanic Whites. This sort of hardship was exacerbated among women of color, as in 2017, women were 38% more likely to experience poverty than men, with Black, Native American and Alaska Native, and Latinx women experiencing double the rates of poverty as non-Hispanic White women. Further, studies in the United States have found that employers respond more favorably to white candidates than their African American and Latinx counterparts. In recent months, this situation has gotten worse, as the economic and health impacts of Covid-19 also disproportionately affect communities of color. Further, as another result of Covid-19, nonprofits that aim to provide services and resources to these underserved communities have seen their revenue streams dry up, which means less support is being delivered at a time when these communities need it most.

It is easy to get discouraged when we look at these complex social systems, as so many factors that exist are out of our control. Even if we have relatively little control over the acts of violence, Covid-19, and large-scale poverty, as leaders, we must ask ourselves, “what can we influence? What is something we can do to make a positive impact in our communities?” We all have spheres of influence and areas of passion, and we must leverage our opportunities to the people within our communities that we can support.

At PFD, we are passionate about using our business to contribute upward mobility, aviation, and helping great leaders to make an exceptional impact on their communities. Inspired by General Stanley McChrystal’s Team of Teams model, we have decided to identify and support strong leaders to collaborate and support the greater good. We are dealing with increasingly complex situations, and because of this no one person can do it alone - we have to collaborate. We are better together.

In keeping with these passions, we are highlighting a great leader who has dedicated his life to making an exceptional impact on his community: Kenneth Morris.

Kenneth is using his passion for aviation to create incredible opportunities for upward mobility for diverse students.

Kenneth Morris speaking after receiving the Educate Our Educators Grant

Kenneth Morris grew up in Houston’s fifth ward, which, during the time of his childhood, was notorious for being one of the poorest and most dangerous places to live in Texas. Three weeks after high school, Kenneth enrolled in the Navy, where he joined the aviation field as a Naval Aircrewman. He viewed aviation as a challenge, working diligently to better himself, and quickly rising to the top of his class. Kenneth made rank in three years, an accomplishment that normally takes seven years to complete. As a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kenneth is a recipient of the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, NATO Medal, Kosovo Air Campaign Medal, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Sea Service Deployment Medal and more. Further, Kenneth has a degree in Computer Information Systems from Seward County College. In 2018, Kenneth was selected as one of 11 U.S. military veterans and the only African American selected by the Department of Transportation to fly in the Forces to Flyers initiative. Upon completion, Kenneth will be a Certified Flight Instructor.

Kenneth’s impressive accomplishments don’t fully capture what an incredible human being he is. He is a humble leader who has the incredible gift to truly connect and mentor students from underserved communities to transform their lives. He has an empowering vision for a much better future – one of diversity, inclusion, and upward mobility - and he inspires students to see the same future for themselves.  These students can see themselves in him, and they are inspired by being exposed to opportunities that they never thought were possible.

Jet Blue & ACF 2017 New York Student Aviation Expedition Video, Featuring Kenneth Morris and the impact aviation education can have on students.

Within the next twenty years, there is expected to be large workforce shortages for pilots, maintainers, and cabin crew. While this is undoubtedly worrying to industry leaders, Kenneth’s love for and experience in the aviation industry has led him to see incredible opportunity. He knows how aviation has transformed his own life – and he engages students with little opportunity elsewhere to pursue careers in an industry where there is incredible opportunity for growth. Kenneth knows that many of his students don’t even realize that these opportunities are available to them, and he connects with them, mentors them, and provides additional means of support to them so that they can pursue these careers and break the cycle of poverty themselves. In fact, Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology was recognized as the #1 College for upward mobility in the nation, demonstrating how these careers in aviation can be transformational in the lives of students from underserved communities. He also connects with leaders of other great aviation programs, so they can share best practices and scale their impact. It is quite rare for a leader to be able to both have an incredible and futuristic vision that takes into account nation-wide trends but also be able to connect on an authentic and personal level with the students he is serving

Kenneth is making a real, tangible, and incredible difference in the lives of the students that he serves. In a world where poverty and lack of opportunity disproportionately affect people of color, leaders like Kenneth are making incredible strides to make lasting, structural changes that bring real, meaningful opportunities to students in underserved communities. Not only that, but Kenneth can truly connect with and mentor these students authentically and genuinely. To make lasting change and to provide opportunities to students and communities who need it most, we need to support and collaborate with amazing leaders like Kenneth Morris. We are incredibly humbled to be serving such an incredible leader.

If you want to support Kenneth in his mission of serving students, donate here: