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David K. Williams
Great Leaders Choose to be in the People Business!
Business today is driven by weekly, monthly and quarterly results. What will ‘The Street’ say? But living by those standards isn’t creating an environment of profitable business or productive employees. It’s just the opposite. When we commit to a culture that supports people and helps them to grow, magic happens. Year after year improved profitability may also result. Listen to this episode of the Manager Mojo podcast if you’d like to learn how one man’s choice to live in a fishbowl and build a culture that uplifts people and creates improved results has been successful year after year. Business needs to pay attention! If you’re in management or simply employed (at any level) that means YOU!
Transcript: Why Leaders Choose the People Business over Mission Statements
Steve: Hello and welcome everyone to the Manager Mojo Podcast, Steve Caldwell here and I’m really excited to introduce our guest to you. Our guest is Mr. David K. Williams, the CEO of Fishbowl located in Orem, Utah. They’re the number one provider of manufacturing warehouse software for QuickBooks users and provide asset tracking solutions for large enterprises. Now, under David’s leadership, Fishbowl has achieved numerous awards for fast growth and he’s keynoted events for Utah’s NWCN. He writes a popular column for Forbes magazine. I’m really thrilled to have David on the podcast today, because I know he has a passion for entrepreneurs and leadership and I can’t wait to hear some of his ideas and share them with the Manager Mojo audience. So, David, I just want to welcome you to the Manager Mojo Podcast.
David: Well, thank you. I’m so honored to be here and to be with you.
Steve: Thank you for taking your valuable time to share your wisdom with everyone. Why don’t you share a little bit about Fishbowl, how you got it started and talk about your leadership side, as well. I’ll just turn that over to you for a minute.
David: Okay, well, Fishbowl is as you mentioned, Steve, a software producer and supporter. We support our own software and we sell and program it. We do all the work right here in Orem, Utah. We don’t outsource anything other than to some key partners who have built actual add-ons to Fishbowl. Over the last decade I’ve wanted to build a culture that puts our resources where our mouth is. In other words, I want to be in the people business. I’ve said it from the beginning, we are in the people business, we just happen to make killer software. I really believe that we could take our people and go build homes or go dig ditches. It doesn’t matter. It’s my feeling and my philosophy, and it’s proving to be true over the years. If you truly invest in your people and they see that it’s a long lasting, heartfelt, strategic direction that you pursue as a leader, you then have people that will follow you and want to be like that. It’s going back to just putting a good foot forward. If you continue to do that, you have a lot of people that want to join in. There are some people that don’t like that. Maybe they want to be their own type of person in a different way, so occasionally some people get spun out of our culture. But I think if you just net everything down that we do, it is that we are in the people business. I don’t speak a lot about numbers. I don’t speak a lot about tenure, roles, or titles. We have a no-meeting policy. You can meet briefly with individuals as you need to but we never have weekly or monthly standard meetings. I felt like those were a waste of time. If you have something, you take it to the individual, if you need another individual, go to that office and have a stand-up meeting and get a result.
Steve: David, I’ve got to stop you there and just say ‘well done!’ Well done because you know these never ending meetings are driving managers and leaders crazy across the world. So congratulations for taking the initiative to stop that foolishness and meet when you need to. That’s the way it should be done.
David: Well, thank you, and I’m sorry for just going on a rampage there…
Steve: No, I love it. I absolutely love it! I want to share with our leaders and our listeners today that you also have another website, other than Fishbowl, another interest where you are talking about leadership. It’s a website I’m going to link to in this podcast, so it will be in the show notes below, but the website for those of you that are listening is www.7nns.com. And what that stands for is the 7 Non-Negotiables. David, tell us a little bit about these Non-Negotiables. Tell us how you came to value people in such a powerful way.
David: Thank you, Steve. Well, going back to what I said earlier, if I was truly being in the people business, than I really have to then nurture and provide an environment that actually helps people become a better person. So, I created these with the other leaders. Anybody had an opportunity to create these non-negotiables, which are characteristics that we value, from respect to belief to commitment, loyalty, courage, etc.
We felt like there were these seven, if we could do a little bit better each day as individuals, we would have the outcomes that we were looking for in terms of success and in terms of hitting certain financial numbers, being profitable, being debt-free and being employee owned. So we measure everything that a person does not on their output, not on their tenure, not on their role. It’s how are they doing on these seven non-negotiables and are they improving in them? We allow people to pick two particularly that they want to work on within a given year, and if they can show that they have improved in the workplace in these two characteristics that they picked, two of the seven non-negotiables, and then they’re eligible for stock options. It has nothing to do with how well they did in anything else in terms of numbers or financially. It’s how they’re doing as an individual. By focusing on that, they really are serious that we are behind them and are supportive of them. Steve, everything else just takes care of itself — the things we typically get caught up with in managerial things and managing people.
No, I’m not in the management business. I’m in the leadership business. And if you want to lead, you need to be out in front of people who want to follow you. And those people that want to follow you are the ones that say ‘hey, this person actually has my best interest in mind.’ And that can take place in the workplace. Society often says ‘oh no, that just happens in families, or in communities, or in church or whatever other holy environment.’ But no, it can take place in the workplace and should take place in the workplace. My people go home happy because we’re in the people business.
I ask their significant others often when I see them ‘how is John when he comes home from work? Is he happy? Does he have energy?’ Yes. Nine out of ten, I’ll hear yes, very much, he loves it there. Once in awhile I’ll hear no. And I love those no’s because that means I have an opportunity to go to that individual and find out how they can be better in their role or better in another role. It’s usually in another role. Maybe they’re not being challenged enough or maybe they’re being overly challenged. So it’s just very interesting to me that if I could lift my finger up in the wind and feel one thing, it would be the happiness factor of my people. Happy people produce.
Steve: They certainly do.
David: Happy people want to work together. Happy people don’t want unhappy people around. Happy people cause unhappy people to either to be happy or to leave. So if you want to get down to basics, like talking to my grandchildren, that’s down to the workplace. And that’s our recipe for success at Fishbowl. I’ll write for Forbes and the seven non-negotiables are really what we do at Fishbowl. They’re really what we do, not what we think we’re going to do. People will send me an email after I write something for Forbes and say ‘well that sounds really nice, but okay, but what do you really do?’
Steve: I get it, totally. That’s very cool. Since our listeners can’t read these, I’m going to repeat those seven non-negotiables that you discussed and we’ll talk a little bit more about them. I am going to read them directly from David’s website, and they are Respect – seek to understand others before you seek to be understood. Now, that’s a great policy, David. Belief – if you believe in yourself, you can fail up and overcome anything. Trust – trust is the foundation of healthy relationships and it must be earned. Loyalty – promises must be more than words, even if they require sacrifice. Commitment – hold nothing back and work like this is your last job. Courage -never back down from a challenge and find the strength to soar. And Gratitude – seek opportunities to express kindness in word and deed.
I want to point out something, David, to our listeners that you live it at Fishbowl and it shows. A couple of things I intentionally held back because I wanted you to tell that you do in fact live this. Fishbowl has been on the fastest growing list of companies for a number of years now because this type of approach absolutely delivers results. So what I would like for you to talk about, David, is at some point in your past, I’m sure you saw different things than what you’re practicing today. Could you share with us what really turned your attitude toward this evolution of valuing people and being in the people business?
David: Well, thank you Steve. There definitely was a turning point in my professional career. And I’ve had leadership positions from CEO to managing director of two other well known leadership companies. They had great content and people were thrilled to hear anything and everything that these companies produced. But on the inside of the company, they were not living the very content that they were selling. And so that was one point. There was duplicity, not because people were saying I don’t want to do that, it’s just that the leadership didn’t know how to grow it within their own culture, the very content they were trying to teach other cultures to have.
I had two experiences like that were almost identical, back-to-back, and that caused me to say ‘you know what, if they only took their content and turned it inside, they would be an incredible company. They wouldn’t have all of this back-fighting, all this political stuff and all these things that take the energy out of everybody. They would be able to produce and be happy’. I would go home unhappy. It wasn’t because I wasn’t working hard and it wasn’t because I wasn’t around some good people. What it would come to was the stuff I wanted to wash off me every day. I really believed that something could be created if…… You know, we do boring stuff to most people. We build inventory management software. How exciting is that?
Steve: I get it.
David: You know, it’s pretty boring. So I thought it’s not about what we’re producing and it’s not about the products or services that we want to provide to people. We want them to be world-class, but they’ll be world-class if I help my people to be world-class people. World-class for them. I would say our people are blue-collar. They’re pretty basic, simple people. You would not look at our team and say ‘I’m going to pick all of those guys because they’re just superstars, I can just see it in them. You know, they stand out.’ Well, no, they’re really not. They come from maybe a broken background. They don’t have the education yet, so we have school. But you know, I just want to find an athlete and if an athlete has some characteristics like hard-work, they’re willing to listen, they’re willing to try new things, they’re willing to be coached and they’re willing to play on the team, I want them. There’s a great chance that they’ll do something special. It may take a year, it may take five, or it may take a month. They may produce in their first week something extraordinary. Just give them a chance. So our environment provides people a chance.
And back to the failing part, so what if you fail? We’ll help you get up if you need help and try again. We fail all the time. We produce some crappy stuff. And we have to step back and take out some of the bugs and reprogram things and reproduce it. And you know, it’s not the end of the world. Does it hurt and is it tough? Yeah, it’s tough. And do you want those things to happen? Of course not. But they happen. The thing I say to people is “Let’s just make sure we’re learning from our mistakes.” If we’re learning, then we’ll get better.
If you’re just doing better all the time, if you’re striving each day to do a little bit better, then that’s all I ask from my people. That’s all I ask, if you just try a little bit harder each day to build a little bit better. Here’s seven characteristics that we want you to work on because we believe that you’ll be happier, you’ll be a better parent, sibling, son or daughter, spouse, significant other if you’re happier. These characteristics transcend the workplace. There are a lot more important roles in life than work. If I can help a person become a better person outside of the workplace, man, I’m in. That makes my heart soar. Business is cool and hitting numbers is cool and receiving awards is cool, but the coolest thing for me, Steve, is to have a person come up and say ‘You know what, I’m happier.’
Steve: That’s a great compliment whenever you get it isn’t it, David?
David: It is.
Steve: Well, you mentioned an area that I hear a lot and I think we ought to dive into it a little deeper. It’s this political back-biting and duplicity that you see in business today. I see it, and a lot of times people will say ‘Well, look, I have my mission statement. We value people,’ but yet they don’t hold the leadership team accountable to valuing people because they don’t even value their team themselves. So, maybe one of our listeners is in a company right now where they’re not the CEO. They’re not going to change everything in that company today. But they’ve got a team of people. What would be your advice to that person who has that team of people, and what would you tell them that they could begin to do right now that would help them?
David: Well, that’s a great question and it’s one people often ask. Let’s even take it down to an individual basis. Let’s say it is somebody that works as an employee and has no stewardship over anyone. Well, you know what, they are their own franchise. You’ve heard it. It’s been written about. “Me, Inc.” is another name for that individual. Well, ‘Me Inc’ is capable of providing incredible influence. They may not have any type of title or official role but can they influence people? Can they be a little more respectful by showing some kind words throughout the day? Give somebody that may be hard to be around a compliment. Or maybe you need to talk about somebody behind their back in a positive way. Or maybe you step forward and say ‘I’ll do this’ and go the extra mile. Or maybe you go to somebody that’s a colleague that you don’t know very well and tell them something that you admire in them. It’s those little things that start to happen that you saw. That’s when magic happens. Magic takes place. A person can change an environment. You do not have to be a leader to change an environment.
Now, going back to your question, if you have a team of people, take any of the non-negotiables and work on it. Let’s see what commitment means to us as a team and then let’s decide two or three action items or behavioral things that we can do to improve our commitment to one another. How hard is that?
Steve: Great advice and not very difficult at all, is it?
David: No, it’s just doing it, bringing it up. So often people will say ‘Well that’s hard in the workplace.’ Why? Why is it hard in the workplace, I always say. Why should it be hard? If it’s hard, then there are other things that need to be discussed or need to be thought about first. If it’s hard for you, maybe you need to do it more in your personal life.
Steve: Absolutely. When people tell me that, David, I like to tell them, ‘Hey, it’s not that difficult to find somebody that’s doing something well.’ You can always find somebody that did a great job on something.
David: Always. And how about the person who didn’t do well? How about doing something extra for them? They’re probably a little bit down. How about going up and saying ‘I believe in you’?
Steve: Beautiful. I know we’d have a much better workplace than we have today if more people did those things.
David: And it’s hard for some people to go say those things, Steve, but you know what, we’re in a texting, emailing world. How hard is it to send a short, one-sentence email by saying ‘you know, I admire your courage’? Or ‘way to go and try so hard.’ It’s nothing about achievement. It’s just those characteristics that we want to help people out with and if we just help one person out a day, or one person out a week or one person out a month, how beautiful the world would be.
Steve: It would be a beautiful world and we would not have businesses around the world with 87% of their employees disengaged. I mean, that is an abysmal statistic that everybody in the United States and around the world that’s in business should be ashamed of. When 87%, nearly nine out of ten employees don’t really want to be there, that is unacceptable to me and I think it should be unacceptable –
David: Wow, I did not know that. That is amazing.
Steve: Well, it’s a terrible statistic. You know, I know that you have a passion for leadership and you wrote an article in Forbes that you called ‘The Secrets to Becoming a Great Leader Revealed’. I talk about this a lot on Manager Mojo but I really get a lot of pushback on this topic of leadership because I tell them exactly what you said here. I’m going to quote this in the first paragraph of your article, it says, and I quote, “Leadership is a skill we can all learn and continue to refine throughout our lifetime.” So many people, David, don’t believe that they can be a leader. How do you respond to people who believe that, because you know it’s not something you are born with. How do you respond to them?
David: Well, I usually respond first with a question. I would ask, “Help me understand why you believe that. What caused you to believe that you’re not a leader or can’t be a leader?”
Steve: What if they say, ‘I’m quiet, I don’t have the gift of gab. I don’t like getting out in front of people.’
David: And many don’t. But what about what you do? Do you have to be heard to be seen? Do you have to say something to produce? No, you don’t. It’s about the way you carry yourself. You can be very quiet. I’m thinking of a couple of the programmers I have who are very shy. You would call them introverted. But, they are incredible in what they do and they’re very much leaders in our programming department because of what kind of results they yield day in and day out, and they don’t say hardly a word. I mean, you’re right; they’re scared to death if I were to ask them to stand up in front of anyone to say something. They would probably die. And so I don’t. But you know what, they lead in their quiet way, and so everyone can lead. They can lead in their own way, too, and they don’t have to be like somebody else to be a leader. They can be themselves.
It boils down to ‘What do I want to do? Do I just want to sit back and coast through life?’ Well, you probably won’t lead if you just do that and wait for every whim to blow you to and fro. But if you choose to make a difference, then there’s a lot of ways to be a leader and everyone can lead. I would hope everyone in my company feels like they’re a leader. Somebody would typically say ‘Well, what’s your title? I’m a programmer, tester, I’m support’. Well good, but who cares about titles? We’ve eliminated all of our titles. We have some outward titles just for the public to know who to contact, like me. I could care less about my title.
Steve: Well, a title, would you agree, the fact is most of the time a title just simply says what you do. It doesn’t really give you anything other than that’s just what I do.
David: Yeah, for the most part, but I think there are some perceptions, good and bad, around titles. And I wanted to eliminated titles and be as flat of an organization as I could in order for people to feel like we were one. It doesn’t matter what role or title you had, you did make a difference. So I also wanted to build an organization very flat. I do have two EVP’s, and that’s just used outwardly and they work as paired leaders and manage the day to day operations of the company. I have a paired partner in Mary Michelle Scott. She’s the president of the company. We work in pairs and nothing is done in isolation. We program and test in pairs. We sit side by side and we rotate people every six weeks so that they have a different opportunity to get to know somebody and learn each other’s styles. Every leader is paired. Two heads are better than one. A lot of people say, well that’s so expensive to do that. Why would you double up on a role? Well, it’s not doubling up. I mean, it’s dividing and actually the law of synergy prevails if you have good paired leaders that can actually complement each other and are opposite in a lot of ways. It’s great to have that.
So, getting back to everyone is a leader. Everyone can lead from where they are, no matter who they are, what their background is, what they think they can or cannot do. They have some type of capability of being an influence to somebody in some way. I’ve never met a person in my entire 56 years that could not influence somebody in some way.
Steve: Absolutely. I completely concur with that. As a matter of fact, you are influencing other people, whether you know it or not, either positive or negative, aren’t you?
David: Yes.
Steve: It’s not that you don’t influence people, it’s that you may not be aware of what your influence is.
David: That’s right. That’s a better way to say it, Steve. Dead on.
Steve: So, I know that you have an interest not just in your company, but you’re also a venture capitalist and involved with other companies. I would like for you to share, if you would. These are revolutionary ideas, and the things you’re doing in your company right now, Fishbowl, are really unique. So how do other leaders respond when they find out some of these things that you’re doing? Are they afraid or do they say ‘Well I don’t know if I could ever do that.’ What do they think?
David: Yes and yes. Most are so entrenched in how business, or how they perceive business to be on a quarterly, monthly, annual, semi-annual, P & L basis that they’re fearful basically of paying the price and investing in the people long enough for the behaviors to be seen and to manifest themselves in ways that are successful. So most leaders will say ‘Yeah, I want to do that.’ Then one month they’ll go ‘Well, nothing’s really happened.’ And then after the quarter ‘Actually, our numbers went down’. So, when I hear stuff like that, I say, and let’s just use the name Bob, I say ‘Bob, what did you do? What did you do over these last few weeks or months? You said you wanted everyone to be more respectful to one another. How did you show that? What did you do? What happened through the course of these last three months?’ ‘Well, we had a great meeting and everyone was excited and I think people were more respectful.’ Well, what do you mean think? Did you see it? Did you feel it? Are people being more respectful? How is it manifesting? ‘Well, I don’t know. I should ask, right?’
So it’s back to people. You can’t do this stuff just half-way. It’s back to your comment about the mission statement on the wall. Big deal you’ve got a mission statement. So what? Maybe it took you a whole week to come up with it and now you printed it and now somehow magic happens because you’ve got a mission statement or a vision statement or you have some values that are hung up on the wall. They don’t mean a thing and in fact they will hurt you if you do not behave according to that which you put up and what you announce to be your standard. It will actually really hurt you, because your people won’t believe you. And at other times you come up with something great, and they’ll go ‘Yeah, I remember that mission statement thing. That was really a success. Wow.’
Steve: I can’t tell you how many people really don’t understand that they do these mission statements and they think it’s for their customer but the reality is that the only way their customer can see it is if their own people experience it and believe it themselves. A customer is never going to see it if their team doesn’t do it.
David: Right on!
Steve: And so, you’re absolutely right. They just don’t believe it so it doesn’t change. This has been a really cool discussion, David! I’ve really enjoyed hearing your perspective today. Tell our listeners a few ways that they can connect with you, maybe on Twitter or LinkedIn. How would you like people to stay in touch with you? What would you encourage them to do?
David: I’m happy for anyone to email me and they can go to the Fishbowl, http://www.fishbowlinventory.com/vip/and they can connect to me there. All of our Forbes and HBR articles are there. The seven non-negotiables are there, and there’s a little e-book that anyone can have for free. We welcome that.
You can follow me on Twitter. I put a lot up on Twitter and LinkedIn, I’m David K. Williams on Twitter and on LinkedIn, David K. Williams. So, I would love for anyone to share their thoughts about leadership or ways that I can improve based on what they heard today. Maybe there are some things they say ‘Well, if he knew this, he could do something even better.’
I love to learn and I know I don’t have it all dialed in but we do have something special going on at Fishbowl and it’s come down to seven pillars that we really believe in. We see the evidence of how that helps a human become a better human. And fortunately, they become a better employee as a result. So, I welcome anyone who’s listening to this to contact me if they’ve got further questions. I’ve given you a couple of sites to go to and that gives you direct access to me and I’ll respond to everybody. There’s not one, out of all the articles and I don’t know, tens of thousands of comments on forums that I haven’t responded to. So I will respond.
Steve: David, thank you so much for your time today and for joining us on Manager Mojo. I’ve really enjoyed your perspective. We wish you the absolute and most success possible in every endeavor that you take up and thank you again for joining us.
David: Thank you, I’ve had a blast.
Steve: Awesome. I’m certain that all of us have a better understanding as leaders why we must choose to be in the people business!
