The first thing I'd like to say is if you do have questions for this workshop, please use the Zoom chat feature. You'll notice there is no longer a Q&A function. Also for the best experience we think that you'll have, you're going to get that if you keep your video on. We've also muted all the microphones just to minimize noise and distractions. We also recommend turning off all apps aside from Zoom so you get an optimal experience as well as having a strong internet connection. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsor for today's workshop, Sycor. Joining us today from Sycor is Larry Miller. Larry. Hello and welcome to the AAD Leadership Conference session. SICOR is proud to be a sponsor of today's session. SICOR, if you're not familiar with us, we're a global implementer of SAP, Microsoft Business Solutions. For business equipment distributors, we focus on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. We have built our solution, SICOR Rental, for rental, dealership, and fleet management businesses. SICOR Rental is embedded inside of Dynamics 365 to provide a complete cloud solution running on Microsoft Azure. We offer finance, inventory, sales service, rental, and more through the Microsoft Azure platform. We are both a software developer and implementer, and we get involved in a variety of projects. We can provide the rental management functionality and expertise to work shoulder-on-shoulder with an existing Microsoft partner you might work with, but we're also a complete implementer. We can handle the entire project cradle-to-grave and be, I guess what some people call that one throat to choke. During this last year, we were in the midst of a very large deployment at Red D'Arc. They rent welders and sell welder and equipment. The project got hijacked with the COVID-19 pandemic, and since most of our team was in Pittsburgh and their headquarters was in Canada, it made things a little more challenging. We decided to do the second half of the project complete remote, 100% remote. Over a year ago, we would have said this was not possible just due to the size and complexity of Red D'Arc. Well, we went live two months ago. We went ahead of our budget and below our budget, and it was really the most successful go-live we have ever had. We were very, very pleased with the outcome. Thank you again for joining. I'm pleased to introduce our next speaker, Dirk Beveridge. Dirk is well-known in the AED audiences and joins us today to provide a series of tools and framework that you can use immediately to center yourself in your dealerships to secure the present, as well as identifying opportunities of innovation for tomorrow. Please welcome Dirk Beveridge. Hello, Larry. Thank you for that. And hello, everybody. I am absolutely thrilled to be joining you today. I had a chance to jump in to the two sessions this morning and just thought they were absolutely fantastic. And I look forward to contributing to this first virtual digital conference here. So I'm really pleased, pleased, pleased to be here. Hey, Kristen, thanks for putting in the chat. Guys, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna introduce myself real quick to those of you who don't know me. In chat, would you just let me know where you're joining us from? I'd love to hear the company that's from or the state. Yeah, I love the state. So Adam's from Kentucky. Kentucky, Adam, good to see you. Everybody else put them in. And as you're doing that, let me just introduce myself for those of you who don't know me. I am Dirk Beveridge. I am the founder of Unleash WD. We're a design and innovation strategy firm that really is committed to transforming legacy distributors and dealers into nimble and innovative market leaders. And I absolutely love what I'm seeing here. We got Cleveland, we got Florida, St. Louis, Edmonton. Edmonton, you guys, you broke my heart. My Blackhawks are out of the bubble in Edmonton as of last night. We got Iowa and Florida, PA, did I say that? Los Angeles, Montreal, love it. Edmonton again, Bay Area, suburban Philly, Twin Cities keep coming in, love it, man. We got a great, great group here. So in addition to this consulting group, guys, years ago, I did the first research study for the National Association of Wholesalers Institute for Distribution Excellence on the state of innovation throughout distribution. And that ended up in this book that you see on the screen titled, How Successful Distributors Lead Change in Disruptive Times. And it's about innovation. In addition to that, until March 13th, until this COVID craziness happened, I was on airplanes every day of my life, out in the field working with distributors and dealers of all different lines of trade, from heavy equipment to plumbing to electrical. And we also work with manufacturers and have the opportunity to work with associations and buying groups throughout the year. And so what I'd love to share is the topic today, this calling of leadership during unprecedented uncertainty. And I really hope to not only share some ideas about the research that we've been doing and seeing, but then also give you some tactical, some real how-to things that you can start doing this afternoon. This is going to be a workshop format. So I'm gonna share some information with you. You do have the opportunity to download this PDF that was sent to you this morning and was also available to you for download. And I provide this for you for each of the four hours we're gonna be together, two hours today, two hours tomorrow and there's four different pages for that. So if you had the opportunity to print this one out, it's titled, The Calling of Leadership During Unprecedented Uncertainty, you can take some notes there. I'm gonna ask you to think about the key takeaways and you're gonna use this when we go into breakout groups in just a little bit, okay? So that's all there for you. Hey, I see Brian's from Chicago and Yara from Florida. Ronnie's from Massachusetts. Juan is from Santa Maria, California. Great, and Liz, thanks for putting in that link. So guys, if you don't mind, we're gonna get going, all right? So you've got the handout there for you. So here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to start with my conclusion. And my conclusion is this. Keep leading. I believe the world, I believe your world, your team, your company, your customers, your suppliers, your family, your friends, your community, your industry. I believe your world needs you more than ever right now. So if there's any takeaway from today, probably tomorrow as well, here's my conclusion. Keep leading, find it within yourself to keep leading. You guys, it was on March 13th, 158 days ago, I believe it was, 10 a.m. sitting right here at this desk, that's when I came to the conclusion that the world was going to change overnight, that this virus, this pandemic, this coronavirus, COVID-19, right? Was absolutely going to change our world, change society, change how we live, how we work, how we play, and we all know what's happened. Thus, we're not in Disney right now. We're meeting together virtually. And this pandemic is what's called a black swan event. A black swan event is something that is so rare, so extreme that nobody could have expected it. It's really outside of the realm of regular strategy, regular planning, regular consideration. And a black swan event like this carries just an extreme impact on ourselves, on our team, on our company, on our profits, on everything, on the industry. And the thing is, is we are not immune to black swan events, and we have been through black swan events, right? I mean, just think about, in the last several months, I mean, just think about, in the last several decades, right, the fall of the Soviet Union was absolutely a black swan event that changed the world. 2008, the global financial crisis was a black swan event. Certainly, September 11th, 9-11 was a black swan event. And here we are with this coronavirus pandemic. And just each one of these adds a layer, an unbelievable layer of change and uncertainty into our businesses. And when I think about this pandemic, when I think about where we're at today, I think of the word crisis. Certainly, in the early stages, we were in crisis. And so I started thinking about, as leaders, what does the word crisis mean? How do we perform in uncertainty and in moments of crisis? And to me, crisis developed an acronym that you see on the bottom of your screen. And the acronym to me, what crisis means to leaders, it suggests calm, resolve, inspires service, introspection, and strategic action. And you think about great leaders in history. Winston Churchill, World War II, crisis and uncertainty among crisis and uncertainty. And you think about how he led. And I think about calm, resolve, inspires service, introspection, and strategic action. I think about George Bush. After those World Trade Towers came tumbling down several days later, he made it up to New York City. You'll remember this. Standing on that rubble with that fire chief, the world's eyes were on him. And I think about that moment. I think about that leadership. Calm, resolve, inspires service, introspection, and strategic action. Does that make sense? Guys, as I'm thinking about this, I didn't know I was gonna ask, are any leaders jumping into your mind? In terms of how they led during crisis with calm, resolve, they were inspired to serve. And then when they looked internally, it drove strategic action. If you think of any leaders, go ahead, put it in. I'd love to hear your thinking. Put it in the chat there. Another leader I think about, Churchill, I see, yeah. Another leader that I think about is all these frontline first responders. My heart bleeds out to these first responders in cities like Portland and Seattle and Chicago. They're responding to this crisis and the uncertainty that's going on, but they do it. They do it. I think about firefighters, and I think about in Southern California right now, the firefighters, it's fire season, and they're starting to explode. And I think about the firefighters out in Australia at the end of last year when the country was ablaze. But what did these individuals do as leaders, these first responders? They ran to it. Calm, resolve, inspire service, introspection, and strategic action. Jerry, I love it. FDR, Paul, I love it. Abraham Lincoln, yeah. And then of course today, right? All of our healthcare workers, everyone from the receptionist in the ER room to the nurses, to the technicians, to the docs themselves, to the janitors in those. I mean, everybody on that frontline with this, right? Calm, resolve, inspires introspection and strategic action. Boy, I love it. And you talk about the Chilean mine rescuers. Yeah, God, remember that story. David, you talk about parents at home working and teaching their kids. My goodness, I agree with you. David, I'm an empty nester, man. And my heart goes out to every one of you with kids at home, right? And wow, talk about leadership. Talk about the need to be calm, the need to be resolved, the need to be inspired, to find a way to serve our kids in new ways, right? And then to look internally to continually improve ourselves and then strategically move to help our kids and learn along the way. And Scott, you talk about Norman Schwarzkopf. Absolutely. Operation Desert Storm. So yeah, I think keep leading because in times of crisis, this is when we are needed. We're needed always as leaders, but maybe more than ever, huh? Would you agree? And here's my thought. I thought, I think that each of these individuals, each of these individuals found themselves in a moment of time where they were called to lead. Would you do me a favor in the chat, you guys? Just let me know your titles. What's your title? Can somebody just put in there, what are you leading? What are you the manager of? Or even if you're not a manager, go ahead. I'd love to see the title because it's relevant to what we're talking about right here. Every single one of these individuals found themselves in a position to lead. Now, here's the thing. I don't think any one of these individuals asked to be at that moment in time, except for maybe Churchill, okay? But nobody asked to be in that moment at that time. But this Black Swan event happened. They were there. They had a chance to retreat or to run to the crisis and lead. And every one of these individuals decided to lead. And look at the mix of individuals that we have in the room. We've got shop foreman's, George. We've got Derek, a service manager. We got Heather, a treasurer. And Paul is with you, the parts manager. I love it. Leticia is the financial reporting manager. Barry's the branch manager. Susan's the HR director. Lisa is the marketing manager. Warranty administrator. Chuck is the rental coordinator. Dan is the area product support manager. William's a service manager. Alberto is the global sales manager, the branch manager. Chad is the president and CEO. So just think about the different titles and responsibilities and roles that we all have here right now. And here's my point. I believe everyone that you see on the screen right now was called to lead. And maybe more importantly, I believe no matter what your title is that we just go through, and thank you for putting those up, by the way, every one of you, from the parts supervisor to the territory manager, to the president, the branch manager, global sales manager, training and development manager, service manager, rental coordinator, every one of you, here's what I believe. I believe every one of us found ourselves in this position, in this role, in this company, in this industry, in this geography for a reason. And I believe that reason is that you are and have been called to lead. So please keep leading your team, your organization, your world needs you, I believe more than ever. Would you agree? If you guys agree with that general statement, just give me a yes, if you don't mind, all right? Do you agree with that statement that you find yourself in this position, you didn't necessarily call for it, but here we are, and you know what? The role of leadership, all eyes are looking where? Yeah, every eye is on you, every, there's a hell of a responsibility. Every eye is on you. And this is our moment, I believe. We've been called to be here right now. Definitely yes, yes, yes, absolutely yes, yes, yes. I appreciate that. So I think we're like-minded. So here's what I have found, guys. On March 13th, when I decided at 10 a.m. at this desk that the world was going to change, my VP of design, Bethany Hepler and I, we were remote-shutting ourselves, Bethany Hepler and I, we were remote, she's in Sioux Falls, I'm in the Chicago area. We got together and we said, what are we gonna do? I know you talked about pivoting this morning. We said, what is our pivot going to be? And we said, we're gonna do four things. And this is all we've been focused on for the last 158 days. We said, what we're going to do is we're gonna reach out to our industry, to our tribe. We're gonna reach out, we're gonna hug. We're gonna try to provide some inspiration. We're gonna provide some insight. And we're going to try to connect people together, all of us who are in this position to lead. And in these last 158 days, I've identified what I believe to be, what I believe to be three pillars, three pillars, as we accept this calling of leadership, three pillars to lead during these moments of uncertainty. And what I'd love to do in the first hour so that we have together is to walk through each of these at kind of a high level. And then the second hour that we have together, we're gonna drill down deeper into values. And then when we come back tomorrow, we'll drill down deeper into the tomorrow and the people aspect as well, all right? So that's our agenda. We're gonna go into breakout groups for each one of these as well, because we want you guys thinking and learning together in a workshop format. And by the way, if you have any questions, they're monitoring it, put it in the questions or the chat, all right? So are you ready to go? If you are, give me a hell yes. Are you wanna go on? Give me a hell yes on the chat. If you're ready, I'm waiting. I'm waiting. You wanna go? All right, yes, yeah, rock on, hell yes. All right, giddy up, all right. Only because Richard said, you guys can stop. Richard said giddy up, I'm ready. All right, so here we go. All right, thank you guys. So three pillars of leading during unprecedented uncertainty. The first pillar that I believe is so important for us as leaders to absolutely embrace, lean into, are the core values of our organization. As I say, I really believe that the core values of our organization, this is the moment in time for you to define or to determine, are those simply words on the wall or do they mean something? Do they define who you are as an individual, as a company, as a team? And to lead during uncertainty, this is the moment in time for us to really lean into our core values. Harvard Business Review, right as this was all taken off, they wrote this article, When Work Has Meaning. And what they suggest is often an organization discovers its purpose and value when things are going badly. Think about that. In moments of crisis, in times of challenge, that's when we revert back to who are we? Why are we here? What do we value? And that it's true nature is revealed. A company's true nature is revealed by what its leaders do in difficult times. The true, just hold on to that concept for a second. The true nature of your organization is going to be defined and reveal who we really are as an organization, as leaders right now. And the case study that I think just drives this home more than any other case study is some of you are probably old enough like me to remember back in 1985. I know for some of you, that seems like forever ago. For me, it was like yesterday. And in 1985, some of you recall that here in the Chicagoland area, five individuals died after taking Tylenol that they had bought off the shelf. They found out that those Tylenol capsules were filled with cyanide. And my God, it just, this story, this crisis, not only captured Johnson & Johnson, not only Chicago, it captured the world, it captured the country, it captured Washington, D.C. Nothing like this had ever happened before. So think about being in the position as the CEO, as the leader of Tylenol. Johnson & Johnson, when all of a sudden the five of your customers died because they took your product, what does that mean? Talk about crisis and uncertainty. Now, here's, I think, a key part of the story is Johnson & Johnson didn't have a crisis management plan. So the chairman, James Burke, went back to the company's founding credo. He said, what do we do? How do we act? How do we behave? What are the filters when so much is unknown? What are the filters we're going to use to make our decisions going forward? Does that make sense to you? What are the filters when there's so much uncertainty, when there's so much pressure, when all eyes are on you, when you have to make decisions and the entire picture is not known? What is the filter that we're going to utilize to make our decisions? And James Burke said, well, that filter are our values. That filter, I use the word, are our guiding ideas. Our filter at Johnson & Johnson, they use the word credo. And so, by the way, it's interesting how things happen for a reason sometimes. Burke realized that his company was getting further and further away from living what that credo said. And just two months before this Tylenol crisis, he called a global meeting of leaders from Johnson & Johnson and they spent two days doing nothing else but reviewing the credo and what it means to them as a company, departments, divisions, and individual leaders. It's amazing how that happened in my mind. Two months before this happened, he saw them moving away from the values and said, we gotta get back to them. And thank God he did it because two months later, five people died when they took Tylenol. Can I ask a quick question? Do any of you feel that sometimes your values, your mission statement, your vision, your purpose sometimes get dissipated like James Burke thought his were? Do you sometimes feel that that happens? If so, just let me know. Give me a yes or something in there. I'd like to see. Yeah. And so he called people back. But he said, this is where we're going to be making our decisions from. So their credo is actually posted. Just like if I went into your organization, their credo is your mission, your values. It's posted somewhere on the wall. They have it posted on the wall. And just take a look at what their credo said. Now, think about the situation that they're in. What they said was that the values that guide our decision, the values that guide our decision-making are spelled out in our credo. Now, hold on to that. Leading during times of uncertainty. Now is the time to lean into the values. The values that guide our decision-making are spelled out in our credo. Put simply, our credo challenges us to put the needs and the wellbeing of the people we serve first. It's carved in stone. It defines how we're going to make decisions in moments of uncertainty. So if you look at the Johnson & Johnson credo, take a look at this. They say, we believe our first responsibility is to the patients, doctors, nurses, to mothers and fathers, and all others who use our products and services. Now, why is that important? You see, this crisis of five people dying was limited to the Chicagoland area. The FBI got involved. Washington, D.C. got involved. Public relations teams got involved. And what everybody was saying was that as you make decisions, J&J, limit your decisions to the Chicagoland area, because that's only where the problem is. Five people died, but they're all in Chicago. If you do anything bigger than focus on the Chicago area, they talked about, A, the cost to you, Johnson & Johnson, is gonna be over $100 million, and B, it could drive panic throughout the entire country rather than just Chicago. Does that make sense? So everybody is telling J&J to limit their thinking to Chicago. But they go to their credo, and nowhere does their credo say Chicago. It says our priority and responsibility is to everyone who uses our products and services, not just in Chicago. So what Burke and his team decided to do was to remove Tylenol from the shelves, not just in Chicago, but across the entire country, at a cost of over $100 million in 1985 dollars. Think about that. Everyone around them said, if you remove the product, do it only in Chicago. The FBI said that, Washington said that, the press people, public relations people said it, but they went back to their values, and they said, who are we? And some suggest that their decision to go back to the credo is what actually saved the company. And I know with Dick, those of you that were on with Dick just a little bit ago, talked about innovation and business, and what we wanna get better at. I saw that graph. And that decision then drove all types of innovation. How are we going to prevent this from ever happening again? And you know, these childproof and sealed package, all of that came as a result. Before this Tylenol crisis, you wanted aspirin, you could go to the shelf, you could just open up, put something in. Does it make sense? And it drove all types of innovation going forward. So what's the lesson? What's the lesson? I think the lessons that we can take from that story is number one, the work that you have put into defining what is important to you can and should be done now. The work that you've put into defining what is important to you can and should serve you now. In all this uncertainty, how do you make decisions? How do you prioritize? Go back to your values, go back to your mission, go back to your vision, go back to your purpose. That will inform and filter the decision. Lean into your values and your guiding ideas and use your values and guiding ideas as a filter for the decisions you're going to make going forward, especially the tough decisions. Does that make sense, you guys? So the first pillar is to lean into the values. Let me know if this is making sense to you. Would you just put yes, no, or question mark? Let me just get a feel on where's everybody at. So the first pillar is we have to lean in to the guiding values. Cool, yeah, yeah, yeah. Derek, yeah, thanks. Chuck, yes. Thanks. Yara, yes. Marty, yes. Jessica, yes. All right, cool. And we're gonna drill down into that. I've got some how to do that after our first breakout session, all right? But let me give you an overview of the other two as you will, all right? John, yes. Alberto, sure. I love it, thank you. Yes. I love what Lisa said. Yes, vision plus values equals success. In moments of uncertainty as well. Absolutely, Lisa, I appreciate it. John, you say a solid yes. I appreciate that. All right, so let's look at the second pillar, if you don't mind, all right? In these moments of uncertainty, three pillars to accept that calling of leadership. A, let's lean into our values. Number two, I call it tomorrow. In times of crisis, it's easy to put our heads down and simply look at what we need to do today to get through the crisis of today. And I get it. We have to do that. But as leaders, you and I are responsible, not just for our today, but as leaders, you and I are responsible for our tomorrow as well. And we have to ensure that the decisions we are making today not only serve us today, but they help us innovate for the other side of this crisis to help us drive the necessary change that Sean and Dick talked about this morning, that our company is going to need for that growth that Dick said is leadership's responsibility, not just today, but for tomorrow as well. So guys, for the last 100 days, my entire thought process has been, how do I help dealerships like you, service managers like you, HR managers like you? How do I help you lift your head towards the horizon? When all this is swirling around us today, how do we lift our head to the horizon and have our eyes towards not just making decisions for today, but are they gonna serve us going forward as well? Because when you think about it, we've been through black swan events before, and this one is different on so many scales. We won't go into that. But what happened after the financial crisis of 08? What happened? Well, what happened is growth returned. And there was a 10-year bull market of unbelievable, unprecedented growth. And so as leaders, even when we can't answer when, our mindset must be, has got to be around that this too is going to pass. The world's gonna be different, our customers are gonna be different, we're gonna be different, hopefully we're gonna be different because everything else is. But the mindset is that this too shall pass. And we have to have our heads towards that horizon and this is our moment to drive the change, transformation, innovation that's required for going forward as well. And so some beliefs in doing things, the right things for today that build for the future as well. So a couple of, I think I got five thoughts for you to consider here, right? As leaders, what we have to acknowledge is that there's no model for this, absolutely not. Does anybody remember back in the middle of March when they said, you know what, social distance, lockdown in place, remote work for the next two, three weeks so that this passes? Does anybody remember that? Yeah, right. Well, here we are five plus months into this, right? There's absolutely no model for what we're going through. And the mindset of a leader is we will figure this out together. Not me as a leader, we, our team, we'll figure this out together. The next, I think mindset is that, you know what I really believe is that we are all leaders. No matter what title you had, we are all leaders. Every one of us is being looked at by our spouses, by our children, by our boss, by our peers, by our customers, by our suppliers. And I believe down to my core, it's time for every one of us to lead. Number three, I think now is the time in the swirl of uncertainty to be more strategic than ever before. We've got to think deeper. We've got to think harder. We've got to, again, I got a note here from Dick. I think I'll talk about it tomorrow as well. But as Dick was talking about leaders needing to drive growth, one of my notes that he sat down is, you know what, as leaders, we need to understand reality and lead adaptation of the organization. Man, I highlighted those words from Dick. And what that means is, if we are going to understand reality, Jack Welch, by the way, the former CEO of General Electric, he said, you know, what leadership really is, is facing reality straight in the eye and acting on it with as much speed as possible. Dick said something similar. What I believe is that's all telling us we have to be more strategic than ever before. We have to think deeper. We have to find time to get away from the day-to-day crisis to think, to observe, start connecting the dots, to make some decisions about where things are going. How is the nature of work changing? How are our customers changing? Where are they moving away from? What are they moving towards? Where are the new profit opportunities going to be as a result of this uncertainty? That requires thinking. That requires strategy. And we need to be more strategic than ever before. And I know you all are doing this, but we need to seek out and create opportunity. If we simply sat back and said, man, let this thing pass and then we'll start, we'll just ride this tide. I think we're setting ourselves up for failure. There are opportunities out there. Just take a look at how we learn what we're doing here today, rather than being in Disney. Is there anybody, I'd like to see this, yes or no, or maybe, here's a thought. Does anybody believe that remote learning like this is going to become more important even on the other side of this pandemic? I'm curious, right? Yes, no, question mark. And in my mind, for sure, yes, yes, yes, yep. And so there's opportunities. I could sit back and say, Dan, you know what? We need to be in Disney for this. Nope, there's opportunities now. We need to figure that out. Same thing with service on your end, sales on your end, and everything. Everybody's saying yes. So as leaders, that's our job, that's our role. We have to have that mindset to seek out and create opportunity. If we wait for the opportunities, it's gonna pass us by. Cool, thanks for your input, you guys. And then I think the other mindset about this, as we're thinking about building for tomorrow, is we need action, that's it. If we wait to be able to connect every dot, if we're waiting for the perfect solution, we're dead in the water. Because the truth is, in most of the decisions we're gonna make going forward, we don't know totally if it's the right decision. But we need to take action, we need to experiment, we need to monitor, we need to pivot. I love this morning's session from Sean, we need to pivot. But we need that action over perfection, okay? So our eyes are up as leaders towards that horizon, as leaders towards that horizon as well. And I think this is something that I've seen some great organizations doing. Here's another mindset of our eyes towards tomorrow. The mindset says, as others exit or retreat, look for opportunities. Look, there are organizations that are still shell-shocked as a result of this uncertainty. They haven't been able to move. They haven't been able to figure out how the sales process is done virtually now, right? So they are going to exit, if you will, some form of that. Well, as they exit, that's our opportunity to move and seize these types of opportunities that expose themselves. For example, think about, this is, okay, this is a picture from March, but think about the 30, is it 30 or 40 million right now, unemployed. Think about the furloughs that were taking place, have taken place. Think about the reduction of personnel in some businesses throughout the AED community. And you know what? That makes sense. Business is gonna do, it makes sense. But we have two ways of looking at that. We could see that as a challenge or we can see it as an opportunity as well. Here's just one of the greatest sales leaders I've had a chance to meet and know. His name is Rick Brandt, the Chief Revenue Officer for Berlin Packaging. I do a lot of work, have worked with them over the years. And this was as soon as everybody started talking about layoffs, what did Rick Brandt do? He says, if people are exiting, we're going to enter. And so they have put on a full court press to hire sales while others are reducing. It's a way to see an opportunity and jump on it. Why? Because they really believe they have a noble mission to create jobs, not just sell products, but truly in the culture, in the purpose of Berlin Packaging. Remember those values we talked about, lean into them? Well, they leaned into their values because they believe part of the reason they're in business is to create jobs. And there's a whole story behind that and it's amazing. So we can lean into moving into these types of opportunities as others are exiting. Does that make sense? Yeah, I wanna make sure I was clear. Give me a yes, no question mark and all that. And Scott, I loved what you thought. Virtual learning was already trending upwards. Agreed, I could talk a lot about that. Maybe I will tomorrow, okay? Not about virtual learning, but identifying trends and the like. So, cool. All right, so look for those opportunities. Okay, next. All right, this is, I wasn't gonna talk about this, but as I mentioned, I was on with you guys as I was watching Sean a little bit this morning. Boy, just what great insight and learnings from him. And I saw at the very end this question, and honestly, I didn't hear the context of it, but I saw this poll that you all took part of. And it said, where will pivoting make the biggest difference in our businesses? And down at the bottom is more relevant training. Next up at 18%, or tied with that, I guess, is setting better business goals. Okay, cool. At 24%, by not keeping solutions a secret. Cool. And then 40, I can imagine Marines don't do this, right? 40% of you said, by not sidestepping problems. And when I saw that, it had me think about, do we as leaders sometimes sidestep problems or hard issues? You guys, I'm working with a group of about 30 different distributors on their strategy during this pandemic right now. And in one of the conversations that I've had with them, this question came up. And again, I'm gonna ask you yes, no, can you relate to this statement you see on the screen? Somebody said to me, he said, Dirk, I don't think we, in our company, in my team, I don't think we, in our company, in my team, in our company, in my team, I don't think we have regular, deep, and strategic thinking. Here's a thought. He said, the depth of thought necessary proves difficult. And as a result of that difficulty, seems to be unintentionally avoided. One more time. I don't think we have regular, deep, and strategic thinking. The depth of thought necessary proves difficult and seems to be unintentionally avoided. Can you relate to that in any way? Give me yes, no. If you don't mind, I'd love to see it. Now, that statement that I heard from a leader just recently ties into what I heard Sean talking to you about, about the importance of not sidestepping problems. This quote to me says, you know what? We sometimes unintentionally sidestep problems, unintentionally avoid the problem. And I love what you say, and is it any? Takes effort, but also time, yeah. So, I put some thought into this, and I see that it is resonating with a number of you. And so, to me, the question became, when I first heard that quote, how do we align our team, how do we align our leadership team, or the team that reports to me, when we have diverse thoughts, diverse ideas in these times of uncertainty? All right, so, here's the thinking. Okay, you ready? A couple of mindsets. Okay, how do we not sidestep problems? Well, to me, number one, I call this, how do we power ahead during uncertainty? And number one is, I think we have to have the mindset as leaders to embrace the hard. Write that down, would you please? To embrace the hard. And here's the secret, most don't, shh. One more time, most don't. As soon as it gets hard, what do most do? Go back to what Sean was saying. Go back to this statement. Most unintentionally avoid it because it gets hard, because there's too many unknowns, because it requires deeper thought, because it requires me to get out of our comfort zone, whatever it happens to be, right? So I think if we're gonna listen to Sean, to me, my first recommendation is, embrace the hard. And just by doing that, you're gonna set yourself apart from all other teams, because, would you agree with me, most don't. The second thing that it gets me thinking about is as we talked about earlier, now is the time to lean into our North Star. I won't go into it. But if I were to look at your value statements, your mission, I know you have words like teamwork, innovation, creative, problem-solving. Well, again, as we said earlier, now is the time to lean into it. Do you really want to act as a team? Do you really want to be a problem solver? Lean into your North Star. Number three, as these problems occur, don't sidestep problems, don't sidestep problems. We need the mindset that gut is good, but it's not sufficient. Guys, I'm an intuitive guy. I'm not a data-rich guy. I should be. But I am not as data-rich as Dick Stort, man. I'll tell you that. And I love that about Dick. But you know what? Intuition alone is not enough. So as people are arguing, bringing statements, bringing thoughts to the table, we have to have the license in our team. Our team has to have the license to question you and ask for anecdotal examples, to ask for data, to ask for facts if we're not going to sidestep the problems. Next, check as you're working on these problems and the discussion seems to be going sideways, what I find is that a hard issue is on the table. All of a sudden it gets difficult. Somebody brings in some type of comment, some type of topic, some type of discussion that is tangentially related. But if we go down that rabbit hole, we're going to be on a whole different problems. Make sense? Yeah, so I love this quote from Albert Einstein when he says, "'The rigor with which a problem is defined "'is the most important factor "'in finding suitable solutions.'" So if we're not going to sidestep the problem, make damn sure we've really defined what that problem is that we're talking about. Number three, or number three, what am I talking about? Number whatever, all right? Trust the holistic nature of the strategy process that you have in place. I know you've got some strategy process in place, it's all tied together, trust it. And then the last thing is this, the key is this, I believe ultimately a decision needs to be made and you have to ask yourself who owns this issue, right? If you're simply, you know, talking around the issue, talking around the problem, I can only imagine when Sean and the Marine, you know, sitting around, everything's blowing up around them and everybody has an idea. All right, listen to the idea. And I can only imagine, they're not going to act until everybody agrees. No, somebody, that leader is going to make the decision and get the entire team moving forward. So I loved what you talked about with Sean today. I see it all the time. And I think we don't have these regular deep strategic thinking in most of our organizations, most of our departments, because as this one leader said to me, the depth of thought is necessary proves difficult and we seem to unintentionally avoid it. So hopefully that shares some ideas with you of how to not sidestep it. So some lessons about looking towards tomorrow. Define your guiding beliefs that rally the team around today's reality, that aligns the team around today's reality and tomorrow's possibilities. That's what we need to do as a leader. Know that there's opportunities in every crisis. Seek them out and act and act. And then use this moment to innovate for what the market's going to provide and value on the other side of this pandemic. Okay, guys, so does that make sense to you? Give me a yes, no, question mark if you don't mind. The second pillar. Three pillars of leading during uncertainty, right? We gotta lean into our values, what we just talked about today. So we have to get away from the swirl of just today and we've gotta ensure that our decisions are focused on the horizon and the opportunities of tomorrow as well. Love it, 10-4, Juan. Hey, Juan, 10-4. I gotta tell you, I used to be a CB guy when I was a kid. The handle was Hubcap. So if anybody wants to call me Hubcap from now on, I'll know who you're talking about, all right? All right, so 10-4, that's what brought me back. All right, so yes, yes, yes, yes. Copy that, all right, love it. Okay, guys, good. All right, if you don't mind, let's go to the third, if you don't mind. And the third is leading during unprecedented times, unprecedented uncertainty. I think we'll all agree, well done, Hubcap. All right, Lisa, all right. I think number three, the third pillar is without question, this time to absolutely focus on our people. And I know that you have been. If you wanna read a great article, or just a grounding article, not a lot of how-to in it, but the importance of people at this point in time, this article from the Harvard Business Review, A Time to Lead with Purpose and Humanity, is written by the former CEO of Best Buy. And what they did about bringing purpose and humanity, focusing on people, it's enlightening. And I encourage you to go and look that up. But when I think about leading during uncertainty, times of uncertainty, and to focus on our people, I think about this gentleman that you see on the screen with me. I had a 30-minute conversation with him, Keith Northerly. Now, Keith Northerly is a Western regional manager, has eight branches underneath him of APR supply on the plumbing side of things. And I asked Keith to be in, to have a 30-minute conversation with me in my shift tomorrow meetings that I had back in March, April, May, and June. And here's what prompted it. Here is a screenshot of Keith's LinkedIn post. This was a week into the coronavirus issue. And look what he said. Here's a leader. He said, this week has been tough. Perhaps this is as much a cathartic, you know what, why can't I say it now? Cathartic, there you go. Perhaps it's as much of a cathartic experience for me as I hope it helps you. As leaders were presented with a unique set of circumstances that we didn't sign up for, but could galvanize our teams for success when this cloud lifts. And I had a chance to talk to Keith and what prompted him to post this on LinkedIn was that moment he was driving from one branch to another and he realized how things were going to change and the weight of responsibility he had for his employees across those eight branches and the families of those employees. And he told a story how just several years before this and certainly during the 08 crisis, he was a salesman for the company and all he had to be concerned about was himself. But now as a leader, he was feeling the weight of this responsibility. And as leaders, it is a weight, I believe. And we have to lean into that weight, that responsibility and focus in on our people. I love what Mark Cuban said. He said, how we treat our employees during this pandemic could define our brand for decades, could define our company for decades. And think about if you've ever had challenges attracting talent to your team, to your organization, think about how we come out of this, how we treat our people and how that's gonna impact our ability. Because our brand could be defined for decades coming out of this. And I believe, and do you guys agree with me here? I believe our people are worried. I believe they still are worried. Oh my gosh, schools are starting up right now. You know what? The worry factor is ratcheting it up again, right? And our people are worried. And across the last 158 days, here's some of the things that I've heard. They're worried about the uncertainty. We as leaders have uncertainty, but so do they. They're worried about, are they gonna have a job tomorrow, next week, next month? What's gonna happen after the election? What's gonna happen to the economy? They're worried about that. They're worried about their economic livelihood. They're worried about the health of themselves and their family and their friends. These are real worries. They're worried about learning a new way of working that we've all had to learn since this pandemic. They're worried about, do I fit into the company's plans? I know that my leaders are on this AED virtual leadership meeting. I know they're gonna be talking about strategy and that always leads to change. My God, with the change that's coming, am I gonna be part of the company's plans going forward? What's ownership's intent going forward? They've always told us that they're gonna be an acquirer and are they still gonna be owners of the company in two years from now? And I've heard them ask, am I good enough? Am I good enough to get through this? Am I good enough to learn what I need to learn in the way business has changed? So, and there's probably more, but these are seven that I have continually heard over the last 158 days. So what I did is I reached out to a great individual by the name of Jeannie Holbrook and Jeannie is a PhD. And the reason I reached out to her is I knew that she had done some research relative to how people, individuals were impacted by a black swan event like Hurricane Katrina. And this black swan event, now it's not Hurricane Katrina, but now it's the pandemic. And what she had done was she had surveyed and researched how Hurricane Katrina impacted individuals, you and me and those on our team and how they came out of that impact, if you don't mind. So let me share with you what she found out. And what she found out is she uses the term depressed mood. Now think about this, as leaders, we've got to take care of our people. So before and after Hurricane Katrina, what she had done is she researched what she called depressed mood. Now this is not clinical depression. She researched and asked individuals, did they feel at any time that they couldn't get going? Right, everything that's depressed mood, have they ever felt sad as a result? Have they had trouble sleeping? Have they felt everything was an effort to do anything, to get dressed in the morning, to get into work and stay focused for eight hours during the day, to get on that one more Zoom call, felt that everything was an effort, felt that they couldn't shake the blues, felt lonely, have trouble focusing on a task. So guys, just do me a favor. Do you think that as a result of this pandemic, those on your team have felt one or more of those items that Jeannie listed there, those seven things? Yes, no, just give me a yes for sure. Yep, go ahead. For sure, for sure, definitely, yes. On and off, yes, yes, yes, yes. Heck yes, there it says, yes. Yep, yes, surely, yes. Oh yeah, most definitely. Now think about it, these individuals are going through this and boy, my wife already told me that I need to talk to somebody, right? This is real. Has led well in calming them, yeah, so absolutely. And so here's the point, this is real. And as leaders, we need to be aware of this. Now, here's her findings, okay? Which I think are very important for us all, all right? What she found is that 18 months after Katrina, depressed mood still stood at twice pre-Katrina levels. Think about that. Now, what is that telling us? What that's telling us, to me, this is my interpretation after listening to Jeannie and talking to her about it, is even after the other side of this, right? Even after the other side of this, our people are still going to be struggling with those seven items and it's our job to lead. Number two, she says, but that wasn't true across the board. What she found was that 49% who said they had enough people to help them some of the time reported high levels of depressed mood post-Katrina. Think about that. So over half of your people who have enough people around them to help them some of the time, family, friends, people that they go talk to professionally, you, some of the time reported having levels of high levels of depressed mood 18 months after it. Hmm, 23% who had people to help them most of the time reported high levels and 19, 20%, one in five who had people around them all of the time, right? Had this levels of depressed mood. So guys, I'm not a psychiatrist. I am not Jeannie Holbrook, but leading, leading during times of uncertainty says this is going to be with us a long time. And just the way my mind thinks is, you know, I go back to what Bethany and I decided on March 13th as leaders. I don't know, but in leaders, I think now is a good time for us to figure out how do we reach out to our team and hug them? How do we continue to find inspiration? How do we continue to get them that knowledge and that insight that they need personally or for their job, for whatever? And how do we ensure that they stay absolutely connected? Absolutely connected. And I think a big part of that is communication and real quick, and guys, I'm gonna put you into breakout groups to talk about what's going through your minds here in just a second. And guys, here's Bill Condren, a great CEO. They've got about 50 different branches across this country. And with this pandemic, he understands the importance of a leader to communicate. And just some things I've learned from Bill Condren, you know, talks about define your message and tone as a leader. Now I talk about hug, inspire, insight and connectedness. Right, that's my message, that's my tone. It's all about caring, right? And we've got to lead with empathies. We have to determine how and if our communication needs to be nuanced with different people. Those that are experiencing depressed mood versus those that aren't. Those that are working remotely with those that are out in the field, right? Do we need to nuance it? The rule of seven. You know, as we communicate during these times, don't assume that communicating your message one time is enough. We have to assume they haven't heard it. The rule of seven, communicate, communicate, communicate, communicate, over communicate. Develop a rhythm for your communication. Develop a rhythm. Can they expect to hear from you by video every Monday morning, every Wednesday afternoon? I don't know. Develop a rhythm that they're gonna hear from you and what medium you're going to use for that. Multiple medium. Is it gonna be video? It is so easy to just pick this up and do that like Bill is doing there. Is it through email? Is it through Zoom calls? Is it whatever, right? Is it through text? Authentic and honest without question. And then number seven, be accessible. We have to be accessible to our people. So, leading during times of unprecedented uncertainty during this crisis, I think there's three pillars to lean into and the third one being we have to focus on our people maybe now more than ever before. And guys, I really do believe, I said it earlier, that you are at this moment in time, you are being called to lead. Might not have asked to have this responsibility, but here we are. And we go back to that acronym of crisis calm, resolve, inspire, service, introspection, and strategic action. So guys, I'm about ready to put you into a breakout group, but just real quick, would you tell me does this third pillar make sense to you as well? If so, give me a yes or no or question mark in there. And I'm gonna read what Lisa says. I'd love to hear some people, cool ideas that companies have done. Free lunches we typically do in the office, small gifts. Cool. So yeah, Lisa says that she'd love to hear some ideas, cool ideas that companies have done. Liz, that would be great to do maybe afterwards, right? Even, I don't know, let's talk about it. Sending care packages to their home. Free lunches, we typically do this in the office, now sent to home, cool. Small gifts sent in appreciation, personal note from the CEO. Cool, yeah. Lisa, I think that's great, let's put it out there, let's find a way to get those ideas flowing, okay? Cool, so yes, yes, yes. Brandy says, our team has a weekly virtual happy hour. I love it, we have had different topics each week. I love it, there's some topic to it, reason to get together, including sharing high school pictures. I love it, funny. Family pictures, sharing your biggest fears, biggest accomplishments, favorite recipes. Boy, I love that. We also had picnic lunch in the park, social distancing, of course. I love it, so there's some ideas from Brandy as well. So yes, and there's a bunch more, right? So there you go, you guys. So here's what I'd love to do, all right? What I'd love to do is we've got about another 50 minutes together, and what I wanna do is I wanna put you in a breakout group for about 10 minutes or so, and then we're gonna come back, have some conversation, see if we can pull out from what you guys talk about in your breakout groups, and then what I'd love to do is spend the last 40 minutes or so together, drilling down, maybe giving you some more ideas about leaning into your values, all right? So that's what we have left. So I'm gonna get some help from Liz, who's going to put you out into breakout groups, and here's what I want you to do. There's gonna be about five of you in each group, and what I'd love for you to do is to share a key takeaway from the last 60 minutes, all right? Hopefully, you've been taking some notes. Hopefully, one thing has stuck out more than the other, so be thinking about that right now, because you're about ready to be in a room with five people that you don't know. And go ahead and share a key takeaway, and then as you share that key takeaway from the last 60 minutes, if you can share its relevance to your leadership and or your business, I know that could help the other individuals in your breakout group, okay? So get in the group, about 10 minutes, that's about two minutes each, to share a key takeaway from the last 60 minutes, its relevance to your leadership and or business, and then we'll come back, and we'll ask some of you in the group, we'll see how that works, to share with us what you learned or heard from others in your group. Make sense, everybody? All right, so Liz, I'm gonna turn it over to you to put everybody into the breakout groups, okay? Hey, I really hope those conversations were good for you. I was in a group, I jumped into a group and I was with Gerald and Mark and Anna and Cole and Rowland and some others and it was pretty cool what I heard. The importance of the empathy amongst them all came out quite a bit. Embracing the hard, Mark talked about the importance of that as well. The humanization of leadership was talked about in our group which I thought was pretty cool and then I think we ended on the conversation of, you know, this is our moment. Anna brought this up to us that this is our moment as leaders. The word she used was to step up and to show up as leaders and boy, I couldn't agree more. So thank you for allowing me to sit in all and I hope those breakouts were good for you. All right, if you don't mind, what I'd love to do in the last 40 minutes or so that we have together is let's drill down a little bit on each of these three pillars and today the time we have we'll drill down on the first of the pillars of leading during unprecedented uncertainty and that is as we talked about the need to lean into our values. So you know, you have that PDF with a second PDF, second page to take notes on if you so choose and ultimately write down some key takeaways and action items and you'll recall that I shared this story with you about J&J and the Tylenol crisis, right, in that the values that guide our decision, you know, for them were spelled out in their values and it's really a challenge for them to make sure that they put in their case the needs and well-being of the people they serve first. So let's let's talk about this a little bit. So when I think about values, I was listening to both Sean and Dick talk a lot about culture and so I'm gonna circle back to that in this as well and you know, I think what we all can agree to certainly during this pandemic is this thought process of culture before strategy. Now strategy is critical, all right, we need it, we need to be working on it. We're working with 30 different companies right now. I know Dick said he said hopefully you're working on your strategy right now, right, but you know there's companies or articles like Harvard Business Review that says culture trumps strategy every time. Fast Company says culture eats strategy for lunch. In the amazing book Built to Last, Jim Collins, his research, listen to this, what he learned is that organizations driven by purpose and values outperform the general market 15 to 1. Think about that. Organizations with a culture that's driven by purpose and values outperform the general market 15 to 1. Dick put up this book by Cotter Leading Change and he talked about it from the eight steps or seven steps that he talked about from change management. One of the things that I pulled from that book says that firms with strong adaptive cultures, talking about needing to be adaptive right now, right, based on shared values significantly outperform firms with weak values or neutral cultures. Revenues grew four times faster, job creation was seven times faster. So values, let's talk about it in terms of culture, but what does that mean? What is culture? We talked about it a little bit this morning. I'm using the word right now culture. I'm trying to tie it into this term about leaning into values. What is culture? So as a service manager, think about the culture of your department. HR manager, think about the culture not just of the organization but within your HR team. Sales manager, regional managers, think about the culture within your team. What does that mean to you, right? What is the culture? What is a culture? Well to me it really comes down to three things. I'm gonna, to me it's called cultures three things. Culture says here's what we believe as a group, as a team, as a unit. Yes as an organization, but I think right now I'm speaking to you as a service manager. It says what do we in our service department believe? Number one, right? Number two, I think what it says is what are the behaviors that we are committed to? What are the behaviors that are gonna drive the results that we want as a service organization? As a sales organization? As a operations organization? As a rental organization? So yes I think we often think about the culture from an organizational perspective, but today I hope you're thinking about it from your unit, your team. To me it's the beliefs we believe in, the behaviors we believe in, and then it's the commitments that we're making to ourselves individually, to our unit, department, team, and ultimately yes to the company and the suppliers and the customers and expand that out. So to me culture is as a leader during times of uncertainty I believe, and again tell me if you think this is good, if you agree with me, I'd love to hear yes, no, question mark. I think right now, man, 158 days into this, especially maybe after what we just talked about with people, what's going through my mind right now, I didn't know I was gonna say this, I believe right now might be the absolute most ideal time as a leader to get my team around the table, virtually or not, and have a series of conversations to define our culture. Does that make sense? To as a unit, as a team, talk about what do we believe, what are the behaviors that will reward us, right, because it's gonna drive the end results that we're looking for, what are the commitments that we want to make to each other. I don't know, does that resonate? I'd love to hear yes, no, question mark in the in the chat box. I believe right now would be an absolute great time as a leader to sit down and and have that discussion to define the culture, the beliefs, behaviors, commitments, and the like. I love it. Yes, yes, I agree. Yes, makes sense. David, I love how you said, I don't know how you can proceed without having these discussions. Yes, it makes great sense. Cool, so that's what I want to help you do. It's what I want to help you do, okay. So to me, as leaders, as leaders, what we can, should, maybe must do as we lead during this uncertainty, as we have these conversations, is identify certain basic ideas that are gonna guide the work of everyone in the company, or by the way, I wish I could re-change its life. I want to say that, take out the word company right now and say in my unit, right, in my team, in my department. Kenneth, I love what you just said. I agree because we don't have a defined culture. Let's define it right now, right. This is your time as a leader to do that. So beliefs, behaviors, commitment, and so as leaders, what we want to do is we want to identify certain basic ideas that can guide the work of everyone in our unit. All right, well I love what Jessica said. I can learn from you. Jessica says, we have these conversations constantly in our work, in our organization. We treat each day-to-day as a draft. Boy, I love that. Okay, but let me keep going, all right. I call these basic ideas, guiding ideas. So to me, culture is defined by your guiding ideas, by your guiding ideas. And guiding ideas might look like four different components. Sometimes you go to organizations or units and they have a defined purpose. Sometimes you go and you have an organization that has a defined vision. Sometimes you go to organizations and they have a defined mission. Sometimes you go to an organization and they have defined values. Sometimes you go to organizations and they have all four. Sometimes they have two. I don't believe there's a magic answer. But it be a purpose, vision, mission, values, or combination of these, these are what I believe make up your guiding ideas to define your culture. So let's define each one of these. Your purpose defines why your unit exists. Why does rentals exist? Why does sales? Why does service? Why does parts? Why does the unit, why does the company exist? And it defines the fundamental reason why your unit is there. Make sense? The vision defines a future reality that you really believe is possible with committed effort. Tying specifically to this uncertainty, to this pandemic, to what I said earlier about picking our heads up looking towards the horizon towards tomorrow. What's that vision that you on your team, you led a conversation and your team has decided that this is what we are now as a unit, but this is what we're gonna become over time. Maybe on the other side of this. Does that make sense? It's a future reality. We're not there yet, but it's gonna guide us to where we want to be. We got to think about it, got to define it, got to write it out. Third, potential part of a guiding ideas is your mission. Your mission defines how you plan to win in the business. Look, there are competitive threats, there are challenges, you might not have the resources, the manpower, the dollars for your department, for your unit that you want. You might not have the technology, right? There are challenges, there are hurdles, yet we're still expected to win. We're gonna talk about that tomorrow. We're gonna talk about playing to win tomorrow. The mission defines if we do this, we consider that winning in the marketplace. And then the fourth component part of guiding ideas potentially, it's the word we've been using today and that's the values. And the values actually define the behaviors to live by day in day out. I mean, have you and your team sat down and talked about the values, the behaviors of how you want to live your life when you're on the clock? Here's what we're gonna be doing, all right? So, culture to me is a series of beliefs, behaviors, and commitments. And we can define that culture utilizing these tools, these components, four component parts of a guy idea. And I'm not telling you, you got to have all four. I'm not telling you, you need three. You need to determine which right for you. But those are four alternatives. Make sense? Okay, let me just, any questions? Does it make sense? Can I just see anything? Yes? No? Question mark? Let me quick check. Okay, so four component parts of guiding ideas to define the culture, purpose, vision, mission, values. Okay, I'm seeing some yeses come in. Cool. Thank you. Okay, cool. Yes, yes, yes. Thanks, Neil, Mark, Chuck, Roland, others. Thank you. Okay, cool. All right, so here's the thing. Guys, I go into our businesses, your business, every day of my life, and I see these guiding ideas on the wall. They're on plaques. Maybe they're painted. Maybe they've got some graphic element to them. And I see them all the time. And as leaders, our job is to get these guiding ideas off the wall. Most of your companies have mission, vision, values, or purpose defined. But if I go and I really ask that technician, if I ask that counter salesman, if I ask that accountant, if I ask that administrator, A, what is our purpose? A, what is our mission? A, do they, they might know we have one because they pass it every day, but have they thought about it? Our job is to get these guiding ideas off the wall. This is the time to do it during times of uncertainty. And then it's our job to help our team connect what they do in their day-to-day work to these guiding ideas. As leaders, we help our team connect these guiding ideas to what they do day in and day out. And as leaders, we help our people apply the guiding ideas to the work. And too often, I don't think there's anybody that'll disagree, maybe not in your, but too often, in too many organizations, we don't connect what it is we do at the counter, what it is we do when we're servicing the equipment. Connect what it is we do as we're doing the books at the end of the quarter to our guiding ideas. And so we must lean into our guiding ideas. And this is our moment. And, and when we have, you know, why is it important to have these guiding ideas for your unit and internalize them? Well, when you go through a process to have these types of conversations that I'm recommending, I'm gonna give you a four-step process. It's going to provide focus for you and the team and the unit. It's going to provide direction, daily direction for you, your team, your unit. It's gonna provide meaning as to why we're even doing this. Because man, it's getting old. Working at home and, and Anna, you were so, I loved you jumping in on our breakout group and your children were, you know, were talking and laughing and playing in the background and you apologized for it. I said, no, don't. You're right, that's reality right now. And, and while all this circling around, it provides meaning for us being together and doing what it is we're doing. It provides a vivid image of what you want to do and what you want to become and what you want to achieve as a unit. These guiding ideas provide an ideal standard of excellence, right? What you're striving for, what you want to become. You sit back every day and, I don't know if Sean talked about after-action reports, and you sit back and say, man, are we moving towards that standard of excellence of who we say we want to be as a unit? And, and it provides that future orientation, right? Not just for today, not just to solve the crisis of today, we'll talk about that tomorrow too, but provides that future orientation about what we want to become and all that. So, to lean into the guiding ideas, the process to do that is what I call localizing, localizing the guiding ideas. As leaders, what you have an opportunity to do is to localize the guiding ideas of your company. As I've suggested, each one of your companies probably has some form of purpose, vision, mission, values, and or values, right? You, you have some, our job is to localize those guiding ideas that the company has for our department, for our unit, for our team, all right? So, what happens is these guiding ideas that are truly important to the culture of the organization that we heard all day about, they're typically strong with the executive leaders, but as you go down the organization, they lose strength. Would you agree with that? Yes or no? Do you agree with that number one statement? In most organizations, you know, the, the, the CEO can talk about the purpose, the, the VP of operations can talk about the mission, the HR director can talk about the HR, but as we get down to the employees throughout the organization, it loses strength and loses importance. It doesn't become the guiding idea anymore. It becomes something that we walk past every day and I see it, yeah, yeah, yeah, hell yeah. So, that's our job. Our job is to ensure it doesn't happen and we do that by localizing, okay you guys? So, leaders in close proximity to the frontline people make the difference between the guiding ideas fading away and being activated. Wow, I'm sorry. You know, earlier I talked about the weight of responsibility of leadership during unprecedented uncertainty. I'm just gonna throw more weight of responsibility on to you, right? And, and, and that weight is that it's our job at being closer to those frontline people having a team that we lead and that we manage. We're the difference. You are the difference between those guiding ideas actually helping lead the organization or just simply fading away. I love what Lisa says here. She says, I love that our CEO asks us as employees how they should change. Mind-blowing. Boom, Lisa, right? Yeah. And then number three, localizing customizes the guiding idea to your local opportunities or your functional responsibilities. Look, if corporate is, is over in City A, your regional manager with branches over here, man, you know what? I guarantee you, the people in the branch are saying, you know, all that stuff might make sense for those in that corporate. It might make sense for those in that big city, but we're out here in the rural area, man. It's different. I guarantee you, that's what they're saying. Or somebody in, in, in sales or in service might say, you know, that, that might make sense for those guys in parts, but we're, you know, that really, we don't have the same custom. We don't do the same thing they do. I can hear those words. And it's your job to ensure that that meaning is brought to your local, regional areas, your, and your unit, your team, your functional responsibilities. Okay, you guys? Now, by doing this, real quick, the benefit to you doing this, it's gonna help you define what you want your team to accomplish. This is going to help you clearly communicate a shared purpose of those on your team within your unit, and it's going to be there to guide decision-making actions that's prior, not just for yourself, but your employees are making decisions every single day, every single minute. These guiding ideas are what should be guiding the decisions every day. So that's benefit to the leader. The benefits to your employees of going through this process of localizing the guiding ideas, it's going to clarify how their work gets into the big picture. They're asking, why do I have to do this? What, how does it contribute to the big picture? It's going to serve as the foundation for common goals and expectations that we can all rally around, and it's going to clarify the behaviors that bring the results that you want and that you value for your employees. They want to contribute. Your employees want to contribute. Not just on the tactical to get this done today, but for the big picture as well. Let's give them that opportunity. Okay, you guys? Make sense? All right, and yeah, number four, it provides purpose, provides purpose beyond jobs. And I think, I think purpose has always been important, right? People wanted something more than a job, and I think with this COVID, it's just enhanced that more. I don't know if you agree or not, but I think our people want that purpose, and as leaders, we can give that to them. And so I think it'll do that, all right? So a couple quick examples. I've done a lot of work with Graybar. Some of you might know them. And Graybar has their guiding ideas, and this is how their guiding ideas were defined. They had a strategic purpose. Four pillars are valued. You see them there, right? And then the mission statement. They've got hundreds of branches around this country, right? They're based in St. Louis, Clayton, Missouri. As far as, as soon as you get out of the corporate offices of Clayton, right? And you go out to all these different branches across the country. Hundreds of them. Thousands, tens of thousands of employees. You know what? This tends to get lost. This tends to get lost. So we worked with them to, quote-unquote, go through a process of localizing the guiding ideas. So here is what the branch at Baton Rouge, Louisiana did. They looked at the guiding ideas and said, all right, what do all of those guiding ideas mean to us as a team, as a unit, in the branch in Baton Rouge? And what they say, it doesn't matter, but what they did say is they said every day, by our commitment to setting the standard for distributors in the Baton Rouge market, we'll differentiate ourselves by providing quality products, superior service, and innovative value-added solutions that exceed our customers' expectations, while being a critical partner for our suppliers, ensuring long-term growth and profitability. All of that is Baton Rouge saying, sorry, let me go back, is Baton Rouge saying, here's the guiding ideas of Graybar. Does it make sense? But they got together as a team and said, let's interpret, let's interpret those guiding ideas and let's localize them for us at Baton Rouge. All right? Another distributor that we've worked with over the years, Tucker, Tucker Rocky. They had their vision, their mission, and it was spelled out. And we worked with their sales team, their sales units across the country, their regional managers, and we said, all right, we need to localize this. And I love what they did down in Region 7. And they got together, the regional manager got together with the sales team, and they said, all right, what does that mean to us? And again, the words don't mean that much right now, it's the fact that they did it. They got unity behind it. And they said, Region 7 is committed to be the most productive and profitable region for Tucker Rocky. Our commitment to our dealers is to become the leader in the power sports business by providing excellence customer service through product knowledge, technology, strategic partnership, planning with our valued customers. By achieving our region's goals, Region 7 will be the power sports distributor of choice in our territory. Right? And then I loved what they did. They all committed to it. They went through the process, thought about it deep, and then you see it. I love it. It's over there on my shelf over there. They sent me what they all have sitting on their desk in their office. Their localized vision, each of them went through the process, and each of them signed off on it. I absolutely love that they did that. Okay, so that's that's leaning in to our values and localizing it. Okay, so real quick again guys, would you give me yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, yes, question mark, is this making sense to you? And then I've got one more thing for you to show you how to do this. Make sense? Yes, yes, yes, absolutely, yes, sir, all right, yes, yes, yes, all right, cool guys. All right, so if you are interested in doing this, all right, here are four steps that you can go through with your team now, virtually, or if you're together, to localize the guiding ideas. Four steps. One, review. Two, connect. Three, envision. And four, capture. Okay, review, connect, envision, capture. The first thing as a team you need to do is you need to pull your company's guiding ideas off the wall, you need to print them out, you need to look at them, study them, and have conversations and ask what stands out? What seems to be important here? What is the mission trying to tell us? What does the purpose mean? And you review those and have conversations around that, and you ask what stands out? What's important? What is this trying to tell us? And just have around, there's no right, there's no wrong, just have that conversation. Boy, if you can capture it on a whiteboard, if you can take notes and capture all that, that's even better yet, all right? And don't rush it, don't rush that. The second thing you do is you connect. And here is a great question, and you can write this question down, capture it. It says, how do each of the components of the guiding ideas mandate we perform on the job? Guys, if I was facilitating this with you, as I did at Tucker and Graybar, what we would do is we would take each of those mission statements, let's say, and we would highlight each segment. One part of the mission, you know, is talking about profitability. Another part is talking about customers. Another part is talking about adding value. And we would dissect those. Does that make sense? And actually pull those out so that they stand alone. The one that talks about customer, the one that talks about profitability, the one that talks about adding value. And then we ask the question, when the mission talks about adding value, the question is, how does that mandate we in service, we in finance, we in equipment sales, we in rental, we in administration, how does it mandate that we perform on the job? And you have your team write that out. When it talks about profitability, same question. What are the four words? You've got those pulled out that says we're going to be profitable. All right. How do those four words mandate that we perform in our unit on the job? Make sense? Because this is a powerful, powerful exercise that as a leader, you can bring to your team right now. Then after you do that, now the third thing we're going to do is we're going to envision what's the standard of excellence? What's the overall result? By the way, what's the identity we want to be known for? Think about that last statement of Tucker Rocky, region seven, best known in the industry, something like that. So now we're going to envision not what we are today, but man, what we want to become. And what's that standard of excellence, that overall result that we would be wowed by and the like. And then what you want to do, and by the way, don't rush it, have conversations, go back and forth. And then what we want to do is we want to capture, we want to write out your team's guiding idea statement. I gave you two examples from Graybar-Bratton-Rouge and Tucker Rocky regional seven, and you write it out in some form of a statement or outline. I don't care what it looks like. If it's bullets, state paragraphs, I really don't care. I care that you had a conversation, that you've gotten some agreement into how guiding ideas mandate you perform on the job and what you're striving for as an organization. And then you got to ensure that it connects back to the organization as a whole. Okay, you guys. So four steps that you can take to begin localizing your guiding ideas. And when you do this, you're going to find that it provides this focus, direction, meaning, this vivid image for your team, the ideal standard of excellence, future orientation, and the like. Okay, guys. So man, I'm up on time. Lisa, do you mind if we send everybody in the group? Let's cut it back from 10 to five minutes. Is that all right? And I know we don't have time to go through it in depth, but I'd hate to just quit. So guys, would you do me a favor? Go into your breakout groups right now. Okay. And we're going to give you about five, six minutes. We're going to be a couple minutes over. I apologize for that. But go into your breakout groups and ask yourself and share how strongly do your company guiding ideas live in your company or department? Go ahead and share that. Share a key takeaway of what we've talked about here and its relevance to your leaders. And then we'll come back in about five, six minutes and wrap things up. Okay, you guys go to it and we'll see in about five or six minutes. Thanks. Derek, I think you have everybody back at this point. Super cool. Thanks, Phil. Appreciate it. Breakout group. I hope it was good for you. I got to tell you, I love the group that I was in. The first individual started off by saying, I'm looking for our mission statement. I've never read it. And I appreciated that honesty. And another said, I've read it, but I can't quote it. I'm pretty sure that those around me, they walk past it every day and don't really understand it as well. And they suggested that this process of having this conversation is important. So guys, thank you. I've got just a couple of closing remarks. Would you do me a favor? I'd be real interested. If you have one word to describe what's going through your mind as a result of the two hours or so that we spent together, what's that one word that you'd use to describe the last two hours of our time together? Would you just go ahead and put that in? And I'd love to see that. So thank you. Guys, we are certainly, we know it in unprecedented times. We've been called to lead. To me, we could go to the firefighters, we can go to the Churchill's and think about this crisis. Calm, resolve, inspires, service, introspection, and strategic action. And we've been called to lead in this environment. Three pillars that we highlighted to lean into our values, to pick our head up and think about tomorrow as well. And then certainly to focus on our people is absolutely critical. Then we drilled down a little bit in terms of the value. And we gave you a process to localize your guiding ideas, to take this concept of culture that we've talked about probably three times today. But how do we actually define it and bring it to our organization as a leader? And I really believe right now, this is the time to have that conversation with your team if you have not had it before, as you lead throughout this unprecedented uncertainty. And tomorrow, what we'll do is we'll come back at one o'clock and we'll continue on. And we'll look at the last two pillars. We'll drill down like I did on values. We'll drill down on second and third pillars tomorrow and people. And Phil, I'll turn it over to you to any closing remarks. But guys, I appreciate it. I'll just share with you some of the words. Gerald, you said today was productive, cool, refreshing. David, Brenda talked about growth. Lisa said refreshing as well. And he says culture, Kenneth, enlightening, rich, value. Joshua, stimulated, engaged, helpful. Others, team, exclamation point, exclamation point, Curtis. Heather said productive. Mark, hopeful. God, I love that. Good value in training. Tomorrow, focus on tomorrow. I love it. And they keep coming in. So thank you. Eye-opening, defining the culture. So guys, thanks for joining this part. This has been a great meeting. But Phil, I'm looking forward to tomorrow. I'll turn it over to you, Phil, to close it up. Hey, thank you, Dirk. And thanks again to our sponsor for today's workshop, PSYCOR. Thanks again to Larry Miller for joining us today. Just a few reminders as we close this thing out. The conference will begin tomorrow at 10 a.m. Central time. Please follow the link for the session, which we will start with The Brave New World of Selling by Troy Harrison. Please have your microphones and webcams ready for part two of Dirk's workshop. And then also tomorrow, we are going to close the conference out with three separate Zoom rooms, networking receptions that will immediately follow the end of Dirk's workshop. Each room has its own topic and theme. We've went with employee engagement during COVID, Wanderlust, where we will just kind of talk about maybe some of your favorite vacations or where you plan to travel to once this is all over. The third room, we'll talk about sales success stories or horror stories and maybe some of your best stories from the trenches. So for that, how that's going to work is attendees can come and go from those rooms as they please. And we hope that you'll join us for the first of our virtual networking receptions. And with that, thank you for joining us today. And we'll see you back here tomorrow at 10 a.m. Central.

leadership workshop

leading during uncertainty

core values

decision-making

Johnson & Johnson

aligning decisions with values

strategic opportunities

prioritizing well-being

leading with purpose

employee well-being

embrace challenges

localizing guiding ideas

communication

empathy