“Developing The Right Mindset In Your Employees” with Dan & Eric Hoffend, The Gets It Guys

Jonathan (0s):
Welcome back to Radio Entrepreneurs. I’m Jonathan Freedman and our next guest up we get two for one. We’ve got Dan and Eric Hoffend, co founders of the Gets It Guys, welcome to Radio Entrepreneurs.

Eric (13s):
Thanks John

Jonathan (13s):
So, so tell me, tell our listeners all about that Gets It Guys.

Dan (17s):
Well, it gets it guys. It’s all based upon our book who gets it. And we S we started in the trade show in vet industry years ago, and Eric and I would find ourselves in a new city, a new place have to move in a big trade show and we’d have a hundred union guy staring us in the face. Like, how are we going to separate these people? We don’t know into groups, find a leader, put this thing together, get this all set up in five or six days, and then run it for three and I’d take it all down. It was like a concert or, you know, and so we were, how are we going to do this? And so we discovered cues and ways of, of not only in this situation, but in many others to our lives about how do we find people that get it, people that understand what they have to do in order to make things happen.

Jonathan (60s):
So you guys, the mother of invention, you, you, you saw an opportunity, you were working with people and said, there’s gotta, there’s gotta be a theme here. There’s gotta be a, you know, some sort of system in place here, or at least some sort of personality type. So, so tell us about that. Tell us about, you know, what you discovered and what the system entails. You know, give us a little pieces of it. At least

Dan (1m 21s):
We developed performance, bell curve and it’s, and you’ve seen them before, but ours is a little bit different in the fact that it’s not a num numeric system. And also that there’s constant movement up and down our bell curve. So let’s start with the, with the least desirable, the people that don’t get it, there are the fodder and bottom and the now

Eric (1m 44s):
10%, but that’s good to know. Depends on where you go.

Dan (1m 46s):
Depends on which company you, you work with. Doesn’t get it people bottom 10%. One up from that is people that don’t care little bit better than doesn’t get it. At least they’re consciously not getting it don’t care. And then up from that, the center, the majority of the group, 60 to 80% of your team is the comfort zone. And those are people that are coming to work and going home, or just doing good things, but they’re not raising the bar. They’re not problem solvers, not really making a difference, continue up the performance curve to better performance. There’s energized. The energized level is the employee that starts a job for the first time. They want to go, just take on the world. They come out of college and they want to take on.

Dan (2m 29s):
It’s amazing when you talk to someone who’s about to start a new job capture that essence, that energy that they have, it’s really remarkable. And as we, we go through our theories of our book, who gets it, we constantly talk about, bring back that energy, where that energy that they were when they first came to the company and then model it and tap it, bottle it, and tap it, find out how to dig for where to dig for it and giggle, get it for sure. And then the top of the scale is, gets it, problem solvers, people that are resilient, people that take risks, people are taking your company forward.

Jonathan (3m 7s):
So I’d imagine there’s an evolution when you guys are involved with the company or you’re talking about, you know, your, your, the model and how that works. You know, obviously there’s the, the information gathering and then figuring out what buckets people fall into the companies move along a continuum of moving people towards it gets it, gets the people. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan (3m 28s):
Th that’s really the job that I think that’s the key to a lot of this is moving. You’re never going to have all your talent being gets at mode at all times would be too hard to handle, manage them all. I’ll come up with ideas, let’s do this let’s but it really, we found that this was more of a curve about how you feel. And we, we found that a lot of people, what they would do is they, they would start off at a high performance or energize, and then something would happen. They’d lose a big account or, or they would get a new boss, didn’t understand their philosophy. And they slowly drift down the curve. And when they get into a, a don’t care mode, they literally just don’t care. They’re going in when they get there. And they come back where they, and they may have been talented people, but the feeling that they have on their job is that nobody cares.

Dan (4m 11s):
And so they don’t care. And then, then you’re, you’re going to lose talent because somebody’s gonna come along and pick

Jonathan (4m 16s):
Them off. So it seemed to me that there’s an incredible amount of leadership responsibility. If you will, in this, in terms of identifying when people are going through the various phases and for lack of a better term, picking them up, you know, and getting them up along the continuum, up along the curve,

Dan (4m 31s):
We have an entire chapter devoted, devoted to gets it leadership and also gets it management and there’s, and there’s a difference there. We believe that the management side is, is, is sometimes little tactical is the, the processes in, in managing people in the, in the right way and short period of time, but really focused attention is a good example. And then we have leadership, the visionaries, you know, where are we going with this company? How are we, how are we going to execute? I think that’s a super important part of, of, of solid leadership and being able to recognize when your team is falling down the curve. We found that over 50%, sometimes 60% of the people that get it are looking for new jobs and in a lot of leaders just, oh, that person, they get it.

Dan (5m 17s):
Or they’re my high performer. I’m just going to leave them alone. Wow. What a mistake. They need recognition. They need the metrics to help measure them. They need motivation. You know, that’s a big part of our, of our book.

Jonathan (5m 28s):
So it’s really interesting because in some other realms and some other models, if you will, of employee engagement and hiring, I’ve, I’ve heard features of, you know, depending on what you want to call it, let’s call them ABC buckets of employees where we’ll say, you know, too many managers and leaders spend time on that C bucket that are never going to let’s call it in near term terminology, get it. And you know, those A-players, or those people at the top of the chain are the people that you want to invest your time and your energy. And, and, and perhaps those in the middle, because they have potential to get into that top tier. But I, I hear you guys saying something a little bit different is that, you know, you can work with the people at the less desirable end of the spectrum, if you will, and bring them towards that, get it.

Jonathan (6m 11s):
And the key is to harness it and continue to foster it. Right. Is that what I’m hearing?

Dan (6m 16s):
Yeah. You are, you really are looking at is the way people feel in the organization. So this is a high emotional intelligence level or high authenticity. So as a leader, and so you’re looking at those, those, the talent, and you’re looking at saying, well, this person was our star performer at one time, what has happened? And when you talk with them and have a good conversation with them, you’ll find out that they’re worth saving. Now, someone in don’t care could be, needs to get out of there. So, you know, some people just don’t care and they need to be released. However, we found that more often because the movement you’re never, and I would look at your own career, Jonathan, my own career, I’ve been in every category, even though we consider ourselves, gets a guys and the whole deal, but I’ve been in a place where I just wasn’t good.

Dan (7m 4s):
And I was coming in late, leaving early. Cause I just didn’t want to be there. I still talented person. So you got to recognize that now. And that’s an, Eric mentioned it a lot of attention, short period of time. You can, if you give full attention, you get a lot from it. But if you try to multitask work, looking on your cell phone while you’re talking to somebody which is so common, put that cell phone away, get it in your drawer and lock it up because this person needs your attention. If you’re gonna save them or you’re gonna improve their, their high-performance.

Jonathan (7m 32s):
Well, along with technology is coming a whole generation, if you will, or multi-generations of, of losing focus. You know, I always like to say, you know, technology has created add than all of us because, you know, even though we platforms are built, you know, you got X number of characters to get your message out. You know, it’s foreign to people to think in small bites. So what are organizations well-performing organizations doing? Are they, it sounds to me a lot of what you’re talking about is establishing a culture within the organization. And one that recognizes what motivates people. What are some of the best practices that you see that you feel organizations need to pull to be able to move people on that continuum towards becoming gets it gets it people I I’m, I’m trying to be politically correct here does not just get you the gets at guys.

Jonathan (8m 19s):
But when you get some people on our team, right,

Eric (8m 21s):
We took the guests. It’s a, girl’s a URL as well. Soon as

Dan (8m 25s):
We have them high power and gets the girls join our organization, we’re going to, we’re going to launch that too. But the CPL diagram is, is foundational in our book. Also the culture policy and in logic and at the center of our CPL diagram is your core values in your, in your culture and what you believe in. And then the outer ring is the policies that you create, what are you doing to reflect those core values? And then the final ring of the CPL diagram is the logic. And that’s the community pushing back against it. Some of the rules that you may have do do your, does your culture truly reflect in the policies that you have? And we believe strongly that the flux frontline workers often should be calling policy, not the folks up in the ivory tower that are touching the customer.

Dan (9m 13s):
And there’s lots of different. You know, our, one of our favorite ones to pick on is 80 and T or American airline into these companies that are out there that are claiming these, that they’re customer service driven and all this stuff. And then you get there and you, every time you wink or, or go somewhere, they’re charging you for it. Like every time you move, that’s $25, that’s $10. That’s a hundred, that’s the change fee. Oh, you might as well just buy a new ticket. It’s cheaper to just to buy a new ticket. Are you really customer driven or is that really what you believe in? Because you’re, you’re, you’re, there’s a conflict there between the logic that, that doesn’t make sense for me to buy a brand new airline ticket.

Dan (9m 54s):
When I already have one, I just want to make a little change and it’s all computer driven, like, explain this to me. Those are the companies that,

Jonathan (10m 1s):
So, so it’s really interesting to me because what it seems as though you’re doing is you’re sort of holding that accountability card up for organizations and saying, you know, you need to walk the walk. You can’t just talk the talk. And we often see an inconsistency. I was going to say, you know, I’ve seen a lot where you have, you know, you talked about the core organizational culture and you establish a great mission and vision and you know, it’s all, you know, it sounds great on paper. And then, you know, the CEO is going to do things that are completely counter to it, right. And it’s kind of like, oh, it doesn’t apply to me. Well, now you’re telling the people to, to, to walk the walk yet. You’re not willing to do it yourself. So how important is it that that alignment exists within the organization and to make sure that it’s up and down the, the, the chart?

Dan (10m 44s):
Well, it’s, it’s vital. And here’s why if I am a talented person and at any level of an organization, and I have to constantly defend a policy over and over and over again, that I think is illogical and, and understand that the world, the, the, the world is so connected now. So you can’t get away with it anymore. In the old days, you could have a, a problem with the product and stay low on and say, oh, you’re the first one that’s ever called about this. And meanwhile, there’s a hundred guy privilege called you earlier. Now it’s out there. So as Eric said, the community is going to challenge those policies and the talent is not going to stay.

Dan (11m 25s):
If they are in a situation where they constantly have to defend an illogical policy that doesn’t match with it. So if that CEO is not following true, a is a, is a bad boss, per se. They’re not following through with what they sat in a room and said, here’s our core values. We’ll along with their talent, that is going to be a problem. You’re not going to keep the best people. Why would they stay?

Jonathan (11m 47s):
So how much of the work that you guys are doing, or is it across the organization versus in the, in the C-suite and, and really working to, to bring about change in the C-suite in terms of holding up that mirror and holding the accountability.

Dan (12m 1s):
I think that’s where it starts for sure. You know, there’s, it starts at the, at, at a high level, there has to be an understanding of what’s happening in all areas of the business. And that’s your job. As, as that CEO, no matter what size the company is, your job is to defend the vision, to push it forward, to recognize that our core values are this. And I have to defend those core values. I cannot allow a policy to deter on that. Now there can be policies that, that have situations, but they have to also be reflective of what you’re trying to accomplish in the organization. And so it’s extremely important. You will not keep people, they, they won’t stay there.

Dan (12m 40s):
They don’t stay there.

Jonathan (12m 41s):
Okay. And to your point, you know, with everything being essentially open book, you know, in terms of customer sharing, experiences, employees, sharing experiences, it would seem to me in today’s day and age, it’s all that much more important to have that transparency, because the information is out there, whether you like it or not. So you better, you better walk the walk. We have a vision and we have a goal. And the vision

Dan (13m 4s):
Is this create a world where everybody gets it. And can you imagine that world, when you walk away from a restaurant or something service related, and you say that person totally gets it, like, what does that mean? That person was helpful. That person didn’t get paid more because they way they treated that they were just like, gets it, implied problem solver, somebody who is fun to engage with, and they understood what you were going through. They walked in your, in your mock answers and understand, and the goal is the TV show. Right? Think about dirty jobs. That’s kind of a, a gets it sort of dove bar rescue, undercover boss. Those are all you watch undercover boss. You’re like that guy. Totally doesn’t get it. Why that guy? That’s what we’re about.

Dan (13m 45s):
We’re about, Hey, let’s either dismiss that person and give you the tools to do that. Or let’s pull that person back up because there probably are toxic behaviors, probably pulling good comfort zone people, or gets at people down the curve, so address it. So that’s the goal and the vision.

Jonathan (14m 3s):
So you, you, you talked earlier that you’re not really, let’s call it quantitatively based. You know, you’re not trying to move people or against the number of metrics, but you do have very defined sort of buckets that people fall into. So is that sort of a pulse check at the front end to see, you know, what the composition of what the makeup of the organization is? And then on the back end, we’re looking to move that needle, getting more people to, to become gets it folks.

Dan (14m 25s):
Yeah, you can almost, after we do the, the interviews with several other key people or, or throughout the organization, you can start to see where the difficult policies are. It’s every company seems to have these policies that were instituted at some point in time. And no one really remembers why, but they constantly draw havoc through the organization. And so, as soon as you discover those, you start realize that this is more of a cancer that’s that’s throughout the organization and the spreading. And in order to stop, that is you have to redefine what are those core values? And are you going to stick by these, or are your core values stick at wherever you can, and just get up any kind of money you can and try to make that your core value, then at least acknowledge it, but that’s not a healthy place to be, and it’s not a healthy organization to have, and you won’t find the best talent.

Dan (15m 21s):
It just won’t.

Jonathan (15m 22s):
It’s fascinating. I always go back to, it seems like the seventies was a place, a time of creating really bad policy and organizations, because, you know, you can always tell when something was created back in the seventies, because you look at it and go, well, wait a minute, you got job classifications that make no sense. You got leave policies that are outdated, you know, and it’s always, it seems to me that that’s the era. Yeah. There was so much that was created in the seventies that just went bad. Well, it wasn’t

Dan (15m 45s):
A stick about it. There was no way of, of really coming back to the company that employees, or maybe they have a meeting with a few people, but they couldn’t really tap into thousands and hundreds of thousands like today’s environment, whether you’re employed or you’re a customer of theirs or a supplier of their suppliers, do they have a really important part of the chain? And that has to be recognized too. So we highlight a lot of engagement surveys also within the, gets it guys, organization, we look at engagement surveys, internal and external, and we get questions. A lot of people are like, oh, what does great questions to ask for internal surveys? It doesn’t matter what the questions are. I mean, it matters, but it doesn’t really matter what matters is what you do with the data.

Dan (16m 26s):
What do you do with the information that your, that your company gives back to you? Are you taking action on it? Because if you don’t do anything, it gets worse. Yeah. We did the survey. I spent 15 minutes in the survey and then nothing happened, you know, that’s what people’s reactions and polls people down the, down the curve. Yeah.

Jonathan (16m 42s):
And again, I guess it’s no surprise to your point of when you look at these, you know, large surveys about companies and where they rank in terms of customer service or customer experience. And you look over longitudinally, you know, a decade and you see, so few of them remained in those categories because they just don’t get it. No, they don’t.

Dan (16m 59s):
They, they are, they’re often the ones that are, that are sending you emails saying vote for us to be the best customer. So I was like, huh, if you have to go out there and pitch it, you’re not on the bus. It’s like, you’re not the best,

Jonathan (17m 12s):
Absolutely great stuff. But we’ve got to get to guys on radio entrepreneurs, Dan & Eric Hoffend. It’s great to have you on great to learn about your system. I should also say international bestsellers with your book. If people want to either get a copy of the book, how do they find that? How do they reach out to you? What’s the best way for, for people to get in touch, learn more about it and, and interact with you. Thanks,

Dan (17m 34s):
Jonathan. Yeah, the book is called, who gets it? It’s on Amazon and also gets a guys.com is our URL URL. And you can contact us through hello@getsitguys.com.

Jonathan (17m 46s):
Wonderful. It’s been a real pleasure. Learning about your system. Wish you guys continued. I don’t know where you go beyond international bestsellers, but there’s, there’s an X, there’s an X to come I’m sure. And the TV show. That’s

Dan (17m 60s):
Right. That’s the, that’s the goal.

Jonathan (18m 2s):
Well our guests on Radio Entrepreneurs have been Dan and Eric Hoffend, it’s been a pleasure having you on, learning about your system, learning about your organization. And we will be right back with another segment on radio entrepreneurs.