Craig Andrews 00:03

You. Okay. Today I want to welcome Doug Thorpe. He is the founder and CEO of the Doug Thorpe group. He is also the host of the Leadership powered by Common Sense podcast. Doug is an executive coach and experienced business advisor of 20 plus years. He works with established small business owners to help them scale their business and grow their leaders. His mission is to provide you with a solid plan that helps you reach your goals quicker and easier. And it starts with Doug's unique business accelerator blueprint called Cover your Bases. One of the things that Doug told me was people join companies and quit bosses. And his mission is to make sure that bosses aren't that guy. Doug, welcome.

Doug Thorpe    00:59

Thanks, Greg. Pleasure to be here. This has been long in the making, and I'm glad we're finally doing.

Craig Andrews 01:06

So. You know, for a little bit, background for the audience. You had me on your podcast, and that was wonderful. And then we launched Leaders and Legacies, and I'm delighted to have you here. So one of the things we were talking about, we all had unique upbringings. You had a particularly unique upbringing.

Doug Thorpe    01:34

Yeah. What I was explaining was that I grew up the only child of a single mom. My father had passed away when I was two years old, and I never, for all intents and purposes, got to know him. But my dear mother had the wisdom to begin at a very early age surrounding me with mentors. And the notion of having a mentor in my life or several became just second nature. And it became a lifestyle that I embraced and enjoyed and pursued. That really my whole life. And as I was telling you in the green room, I just turned 70 earlier this year. And I still have a couple of guys that I count as mentors that I talk to and we share ideas. And sometimes I go seeking a mentor for a specific area, specific challenge on something. Other times, it's just general sounding board. But it's a way of life that I have found very valuable. And I encourage my clients to explore that if they've never really embraced the idea of asking a mentor or inviting someone to come into the circle and be that kind of help.

Craig Andrews 02:52

So I think there were some people that are probably surprised, 70 years old, you're the one that's supposed to be the mentor, but you still have mentors. So what do these folks look like and what do you learn from them?

Doug Thorpe    03:04

Well, the thing is, for me, I'm also and maybe it's directly part of that process. I consider myself a perpetual learner. I've been a lifelong adopter of technologies, an early adopter. I'm not afraid of the new things, and I'm always intrigued and curious. And part of that comes from these mentors. And the fellas that I'm relying on now, they both are two primarily, and a third one a little bit secondary. But they both are very accomplished businessmen that have built and sold and closed on multimillion dollar transactions, and they've got some great experience and stories and wisdom to share at this stage of life. To your point, we don't always agree on everything, but we have really good spirited and healthy debates about topics of the day and things that I should be thinking about. One of the things I find about mentor the psychologists warn us about unconscionable biases in the way we look at life and the way we make decisions, and we seek out information that may do nothing but affirm what we already believe. And we're not really objective, and we're not really curious about the other side of things. And I think that's one of the things my journey has taught me is that while I may construct an idea or a thought near to the point of making a decision, I want to allow the space to take in other views and other ideas that may be totally contrary to mine.

Craig Andrews 04:58

Yeah, well, I think a lot of the problems that we're having in society today is we're not slowing down enough to understand the other side.

Doug Thorpe    05:09

Right?

Doug Thorpe    05:13

No, I agree totally. I think that's such a challenge in the world today. Everybody gets real myopic of what they believe in and what they think the right answer is, but they will not engage in a healthy discussion about possibilities.

Craig Andrews 05:31

I heard somebody say once, and he was talking about religions he said, if you can make another religion look utterly ridiculous, a mainstream religion look utterly ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it. And I would say if you can make somebody that, let's say, has a different viewpoint of yours look utterly ridiculous and it's a mainstream viewpoint, maybe there's a chance you haven't understood it well.

Doug Thorpe    05:59

And it's interesting you bring that up. That's another part of my story with my pretty amazing mom as a young child. A lot of us get influenced, and this is true in households of all world religions. You're born into a family that is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever, and that's what you're supposed to go do, and that's the faith you're supposed to pursue. My mom, on the other hand, was quite eclectic, and she pretty much told me as a young boy I was getting invited by friends to go to their churches or synagogues or wherever on weekends and visit. And Mom's answer was, why not? If you go learn, you'll figure it out. And one day, when you're at the right age, you'll make a choice and you'll be informed, and you'll be ready to do that. So I will admit, just for clarity's sake, I predominantly stayed on what is now popularly called the Christian side of things. And what I mean by that is I was born in a Baptist household, but I went to a Presbyterian church, a Lutheran church, a Methodist church. Let's see what else was there. I was actually a Mormon for three years. I did a number of things. I ended up marrying a Catholic girl out of college, and that honestly did not last. But nonetheless, I got a view, pretty intense view of each one of these families of faith. And my takeaway from it is similar to your point. If we understand what they're really about, what I discovered, every one of them had one really golden value that was powerful. And the challenge is, if you can bring all of those together in one place, I think that would be the modern church that we all should try to aspire to and what we call that or what we name that, I don't know. But the reality is there's truth in every one of those that needs to be considered.

Craig Andrews 08:18

Your mom sounds truly amazing to expose you to different worldviews, to expose you to different mentors. How did she figure that out? What prompted her to do that?

Doug Thorpe    08:33

Her story was one of those that a lot of people, when they are dealing with home life, there are some very staunch extreme behaviors that either cause a child to go that same way or take 180 deg opposite path. I think in terms of alcoholism, a lot of times if you grow up with an alcoholic parent, you either become one because it's somehow in your DNA and your genetic disposition is prone to that, or you're so appalled by it, you go 180 degrees opposite, you never touch a drop for the rest of your life. So there's some of that kind of thinking that happened to her on the religious front. Her father was a very staunch practitioner of his faith. I'm not even going to name it because I don't want to disparage anybody, but suffice it to say, he was just very dogmatic about his teaching and his leaning. And in her spirit, she believed there was a bigger picture out there than everything he insisted on forcing her to believe. So she, at an early age, started exploring and essentially went the 180 degrees opposite. She had an amazing faith, don't get me wrong. It did not diminish her desire to seek her relationship with her Lord, but it opened her lens to say, no, you got to go figure it out on your own.

Craig Andrews 10:11

So one of the things that you talked about with your current mentors, you said that you don't agree on everything.

Craig Andrews 10:21

As you coach people to get mentors in their lives, how do you handle the whole issue of disagreement?

Doug Thorpe    10:30

Well, I classify that in the category of learning. And again, I can go back to what I said earlier. It's very risky to get so far down a path of thought, belief, and practice that you're not willing to hear the other side of the story. One of my mentors in my early career life was a gentleman who taught me a principle that truth is in the middle. And in that case, we were always focused on some business challenges, and this was when I was in the banking world, and we were not without our own challenges in that business. But whether it was an employee dispute or a customer dispute or things like that, he was quick to always say, Wait a minute. I don't think we're hearing the other side, because I firmly believe the truth is in the middle, and I may not be 100% right and you're not 100% wrong. Somewhere lies the truth, and we need to be objective about it, and we need to peel that onion and find it.

Craig Andrews 11:49

Yeah. Well, I don't know if you've ever I think it was originally a poem or something. I've seen a painting that was a rendition of it, of the I think it was Seven blind Indians touching an elephant. They were all touching different parts of the elephant and describing it. One described it as a mighty tree. Another described, I think, as a big snake or something like that. And they're all looking at not looking, but touching the same thing, but their own unique perspective gave them a different understanding of what they saw.

Doug Thorpe    12:24

Exactly. Yeah. That's powerful.

Craig Andrews 12:27

Yeah. So what does it look like? So you're obviously encouraging businesses to business leaders to implement this. What does that look like in your day to day working with them?

Doug Thorpe    12:42

Well, what we talk about, what I like to help business leaders, business owners, executives, et cetera, what I like to help them consider is, let's draw a line in the sand today. Let's talk about your capabilities, your experiences, and your level of performance as a leader. But let's look at the possibilities of what's the next iteration of leader you ought to be. And it's kind of like Leader 2.0. What would that look like, and what are the possibilities? And I think it was Marshall Goldsmith who wrote a book entitled what Got You Here, Won't Get You There. And that's a very profound thinking. I believe that, and I see it everywhere in businesses of all sizes, a lot of managers. And for the guys I'm getting ready to talk about, I won't even call them leaders. They're just managers by title. They've risen up in their career. They've had varying degrees of success, but in reality, they've sort of capped out. They've hit that plateau of what their real capability and understanding may be. They're trying to rinse and repeat and do whatever it was they used to do to create success, and they're finding it's not happening. It's not working. And expectations above them are different. Market conditions around them are different, and they are stuck in those old behaviors. So it's that challenge to look ahead and say, all right, given what you know about where you are, can you define the leader you think you need to be in that next iteration? And let's figure out where the gaps are and what the work is that needs to be done to get you to that next level.

Craig Andrews 14:41

Yeah. And you brought out a distinction between a manager and a leader. I think Jack Welsh used to talk a lot about that. They didn't want managers, he wanted leaders. If you were to give a definition of the difference, what would that be?

Doug Thorpe    14:56

Real simple. What I tell my clients is management is about process and leadership is about people.

Craig Andrews 15:03

I love that.

Doug Thorpe    15:06

And the point to elaborate, there are people that have made entire careers out of being what you would call a good managers. They got the work done, they hit the goals, they hit the numbers, they kept things working smoothly, they worked for process improvement, they did all of those things. But inevitably, in that scenario, if they were not sensitive to the demands of leadership, what you find is there was a lot of turnover, a lot of churn in the people side of the business. Business worked, it made the numbers. But people that had a turn working there did not give a good report. It wasn't a happy place to be. And therefore they were constantly having a revolving door going on with the people, constantly retraining. And sometimes you even scratch your head and go, it's amazing you could get it done, because there was no continuity in the workforce. Well, the post COVID events in the workforce, people are telling us all the people that do the great and amazing studies about workforce future are telling us that there's a seismic shift in the minds of the workforce today. And if you're sitting in some position of authority at an organization and you're not sensitive to what those shifts are, you're going to be missing the boat.

Craig Andrews 16:38

And what shifts are you seeing?

Doug Thorpe    16:40

Well, one of the areas that I talk about a lot with my clients is that before COVID we used to aspire to some notion of this thing people called work life balance. I wanted a little bit of flexibility, I wanted a little bit of opportunity. I needed to try to create this thing. And it was mystical. And a lot of people now agree you never got there. What I think COVID showed us with the lockdown in particular, life happens in continuity. I mean, your family life is going on while you're at work. We had to live that in the COVID lockdown. And people were at home trying to get their jobs done, but yet their kids were there trying to get schoolwork done and it was all going on simultaneously. So the ones that did it best figured out a way to create harmony of all of that, like something like a band or an orchestra would do and accomplish all the things. Everybody figured out how to play the right notes at the right time and make it all work, and they created that harmony. But in that mix, there were trade offs relative to work. Many stories that I heard from people saying, well, yeah, I got up at seven, I went to work, fired up my laptop, but then I had to quit at nine because my kid had to be online and I had to do classwork with him for 2 hours and then I went back to work. So there was this Ying and Yang going on and there were managers that did not suffer that well. They weren't trusting employees, they weren't believing employees. And the early returns during COVID said that general productivity in America actually went up. It did not go down. It went up because people kind of lost their sense of boundary. They knew they were taking time out for their family, so they would make up that time on their own volition. And laptop was still on at eight or 10:00 at night, but they were getting it done. And all those boundaries of the eight to five or nine to four or however you look at it, all of that kind of melted away.

Craig Andrews 18:59

One of the things I've wrestled with in this now, it affects me less, it affects a lot of other companies more is the whole return to work thing. And my biggest concern about having people remote is the ability to maintain culture, maintain company culture.

Doug Thorpe    19:20

Right.

Craig Andrews 19:21

How would you recommend that people manage that?

Doug Thorpe    19:24

Well, the runaway winner in that category to answer that question is communication. And I was really surprised as the whole COVID event unfolded and I continued to have the opportunity to coach with executives that were struggling through this, I was amazed by one of the big questions people said is, I don't know how to communicate to my people. And I would say what? What do you mean you don't know how to communicate? And their point was, we are remote. We have to intentionally schedule something. We don't get the door jam conversation at the office or the coffee bar chat or the water cooler chat. I don't know how to replace that in this virtual world. And I said, well, how about you have discussions, either one on one or small group? Ask your people how much communication they need, because I guarantee that you're going to have people on your team. Some need a little bit of touch every day. They need that stroke, they need that vibe. Others are going to say, I'm good, boss, just tell me what you need. I'll deliver, I'm good. And until you really crystallize and understand that you will not have effective communication and you will not get the opportunity to perpetuate the culture you're trying to maintain.

Craig Andrews 20:56

Yeah. Well, let me ask you about a challenge you may have faced. Was there a time in your leadership career where you were faced with a choice? It was a tough decision. It was a little bit of a white knuckled moment, and you had to make a decision you weren't sure how it was going to work out. What was it and how did it go?

Doug Thorpe    21:22

For me, there was a time it goes back to my banking days. I was asked to we had gone through my bank, had merged with one of the New York money center banks, and a decision had been made to close one of their facilities in Buffalo, New York, and consolidated into my facility in Texas. And as the owner of that line of business, I was the head guy in the migration process. So we orchestrated everything, figured out all the personnel announcements and everything, and then I started commuting to Buffalo. Every week I'd go to my office on Monday, spend the day, and then I'd get a 05:00 flight out to Buffalo for the rest of the week and go work up there with those guys. Well, one of the objectives, one of the necessary steps of that for success was to convince all of the Buffalo customers that nothing was going to change, they were going to get served and the move would be good for them. And it was a large portfolio, multi million dollar book of business. So I and the team up there, we were making house calls and talking to people and doing everything. Well, we got down to the final countdown for pulling the trigger on moving everything. And one of the things we were doing, we were asking these customers to sign a letter of consent. It wasn't binding per se, but we just needed to know, are you in or are you out? Because that was going to direct our level of effort in my Houston office. And we got down within days of the final deadline for that and nobody had sent in their letters.

Craig Andrews 23:08

Oh, wow.

Doug Thorpe    23:10

And I was feeling a sense of dread that, okay, my career is over. I've failed in this mission. Everything I've tried is not working. We're going to lose this whole book of business and this migration and it's all going to fall on me. And I literally sat in my office in Houston and I said a prayer. I said, okay, God, you put me in this bind. And I've tried to faithfully perform as best I know how, but I'm feeling now it's on you. You need to influence some of this in one way or another, because I don't know how to do anything different. So I made my last round of phone calls to everybody, and I didn't have a particularly warm feeling after those calls. But in the next 48 hours, letters started coming in one by one by one. And we had a 95% conversion rate. 95% of the book agreed to make the move and come with us. And I'll never forget vice chairman of the bank, I called him to give him the report when I had this handful of letters and had run the numbers on it. And he said, my God, how did that happen? I said, well, I said, you and I have a disagreement on the notion of how faith works in business. But it was a prayer moment for me, and it obviously worked, so you make of it what you will.

Craig Andrews 24:44

That's an incredible story. Thanks for sharing that. And, Doug, this has been such a neat discussion and just appreciate how your mom set so many great things in motion by some wise decisions at your young age. And I hope people will tap into some of your knowledge and resources. How can people reach you?

Doug Thorpe    25:09

The best thing to do, Craig, is just hop over to my website at Dougthorpe Thorpe.com. All of the resources, all of the links, there are tabs there for my blog, my podcast. You can sign up to get newsletters from me. I only send out a weekly newsletter on both channels to let you know about new releases, new content that's available. There are opportunities. If you want to hop on a quick discovery call, I'm happy to talk with people. No obligation, no heavy, hard handed sales pitch. I just want to hear your story about what you're doing with your work. And as we said in the lead in people join companies and quit bosses. I want to help everybody, not be that guy.