The Peering Podcast

TPP 2 - Ron Harrell
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[00:00:36] Mike Richardson: Hello everybody. Welcome to the first proper episode of the Peering Podcast. I'm delighted to have a special guest today, Ron Harrell. Uh, we are going to delve into and peer into the complexities of business leadership and in particular operations leadership. I'm so looking forward to that. Uh, we've known each other for a while.

We'll introduce Ron in a moment. But we've shared and compared notes about the fact that, you know, as an operations leader, as a business leader of an operationally intensive business, it's kind of like being masters of chaos. Do you somehow

[00:01:16] Ron Harrell: Yeah.

[00:01:17] Mike Richardson: the trains to run on time? In organized chaos, not disorganized chaos.

So that's what we're here to peer into today, everybody. Uh, Ron Harrell is a phenomenal business leader. He's an experienced operations leader and CEO leader his whole career, uh, not least of all. Now he is an EOS implementer. He'll tell us more about that for sure. And also, he is becoming a ref. Peer forum leader, uh, specifically for a peer forum for operations leaders.

So I'm excited to, uh, delve into all of that today. Ron, welcome.

[00:01:56] Ron Harrell: Thank you. Happy to be here. This is

[00:01:58] Mike Richardson: Yeah, you and I go way back, Ron. I was trying to figure it out. I don't know, at least maybe 15, maybe 20 years. Do you want to tell everybody how we first met?

[00:02:08] Ron Harrell: Yeah, I have to, I have somewhere in that range. Brought you into a company called My Office when we were scaling the business to try or to get a handle on the strategic planning and execution part of the business.

it was a crazy time. There's a lot

[00:02:25] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:02:25] Ron Harrell: on at that time.

[00:02:26] Mike Richardson: And tell us a little bit more, uh, 'cause you still have that business, right? My office.

[00:02:30] Ron Harrell: Yeah. Yeah. It's gone through a lot of changes throughout the, uh, the years.

[00:02:36] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:02:36] Ron Harrell: So I think at the time when we were working together, probably had close to 200 employees.

[00:02:41] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:02:42] Ron Harrell: today I have seven, it's, and it's great. It's way easier to operate by outsourcing a majority of the, the staff that we need out in the field.

[00:02:52] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:02:53] Ron Harrell: model has changed from a services oriented company to product oriented company

[00:02:59] Mike Richardson: And, and tell us a bit more. What does in, in its current form today, what does my office do?

[00:03:05] Ron Harrell: So my office, uh, helps companies create great space.

[00:03:08] Mike Richardson: Ah.

[00:03:08] Ron Harrell: are moving your office, we come in and, and we do design sales, project management and installation work of that furniture as well as the structured cabling part of the, the installation and audio that an AV component as well.

[00:03:25] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Yeah, and, and I remember, I remember back when we were starting working together, especially when you had all of those employees, we used to laugh about the fact that those kinds of projects that you do for your clients, those are just chaos waiting to happen if you are not on top of all the details and all the dynamics and all the logistics of, you know, getting out of that building over there and getting into that building over there.

There may be a mile away or maybe a hundred miles away, or maybe the other side of the, maybe even the other side of the country. So te, tell us a bit more. So now you've got seven employees, as you know. I think. Ron, I do this other podcast with some other colleagues around artificial intelligence. And of course as part of that, you know, there's this concept that we'll start to see more and more solo unicorns, you know, large.

Entrepreneurial businesses, you know, everybody, the definition of a unicorn is something that's worth more than a billion dollars run by in at the extreme, one person or maybe a handful of people plus ai. So you are running my office now with a handful of people. Tell us a bit more about how you do that.

[00:04:38] Ron Harrell: Yeah. You know, for, for years up until actually. June of this year,

[00:04:44] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Yep.

[00:04:44] Ron Harrell: self perform all of these labor services,

[00:04:48] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:04:49] Ron Harrell: operational expense. Included a big warehouse, a bunch of trucks, a bunch of technical skillset staff, and there's a lot of companies out there that have those people on staff.

And just switching the model to be able to sell product first and hire those folks to subcontract and install it. getting rid of the warehouse, the trucks, the guys, was a hard decision. turns out to be a, a great decision. We're doing the same volume at a higher margin with

[00:05:19] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:05:20] Ron Harrell: So

[00:05:20] Mike Richardson: Awesome.

[00:05:21] Ron Harrell: that.

Yeah,

[00:05:22] Mike Richardson: Awesome. So then that's one hat that you wear. You wear multiple hats. So let's talk about the second big hat that you wear. You are an EOS implementer. Tell us what that is and how did you get into that line of work? Yep.

[00:05:35] Ron Harrell: So EOS. It's based out a book, traction Created by Jane Wickman. It's the entrepreneurial operating system, and it's really an execution system to put in the business. I like to say every company has a way that they execute. There's a system in place. It's either intentional or non-intentional. at my office, we had a very good non-intentional system, and the problem with that, it's hard to get everybody on the same page.

So grew the business. And my partner, Sean, who you know,

grew it, I think from $5 million to $20 million in revenue in about two and a half, three years. And Sean and I are both, you know, primarily visionary personalities I like

[00:06:21] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:06:21] Ron Harrell: it, which, which means we're a little bit crazy and, and shiny object. I was always. in that integrator seat in the EOS language we call that, and that's the person that's running the day-to-day operations, the leadership manage and, and hold the leadership team accountable. And that company blew up. It was, it was, we scaled it too fast without the infrastructure, without really somebody great in the op, the operation seat.

So I'm

[00:06:48] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:06:49] Ron Harrell: in that seat, but

[00:06:50] Mike Richardson: Yeah,

[00:06:50] Ron Harrell: gonna be great. And it's because I learned over time, I don't like to manage people. I'm just not, it's not a passion

[00:06:56] Mike Richardson: right.

[00:06:57] Ron Harrell: I'm not, I can do it. It just takes a lot of work to do it. So after the company blew up and, and Sean left the business, I had to do a turnaround. Successfully got through all of that and things are going really well, and I'm sitting at my desk and I'm like, I'm just not enjoying what I'm doing because it seems like that everything that is going to be moving, that was moving forward in the business. It was coming from me. And I had to pull my team along and if I took my eye off the ball, things would just kind of fall apart.

[00:07:27] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:07:28] Ron Harrell: I went to an EOS seminar about the difference. You know, originally I had my name in the CEO Box on the org chart.

[00:07:37] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:07:38] Ron Harrell: And in the EOS we do a, what we'll call an accountability chart exercise. It's like, really? What are you doing every day?

[00:07:44] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:07:45] Ron Harrell: do you sit in and what do you own? I thought I discovered I'm really sitting in nine different seats on that accountability chart. Doing about two. Oh yeah. Doing

[00:07:54] Mike Richardson: Do after lunch.

[00:07:55] Ron Harrell: doing about 200 things every week. There's no way, you know, there's no, there's no surprise why I was stressed out, enjoying it, felt like it was all on my shoulders. So EOS is a, was a, is a tool to go in and create a system and a language. The entire company gets engaged with. So really build out the leadership team, truly understand what people are accountable for,

[00:08:23] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:08:24] Ron Harrell: elevate and delegate to the highest best use of what your time and treasure,

which for me was the

[00:08:30] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:08:31] Ron Harrell: seat at the time. And let people do a great job. And when we are able to share where we're going, how we're gonna get there, what their role is in it. Create the systems for the metrics, for the scorecards and the right systems in place. Get people trained on that, let 'em go. They, they surprised the heck outta me

[00:08:50] Mike Richardson: Beautiful.

[00:08:51] Ron Harrell: things and I

[00:08:51] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:08:52] Ron Harrell: of the volume. So

[00:08:53] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:08:54] Ron Harrell: I felt like I wasn't enjoying what I was doing. Put EEO S to work. In about a year and a half into self implementation of EOS, I realized I wanted to go out and teach this 'cause it was having a

[00:09:05] Mike Richardson: Uh, that's great. Yeah.

[00:09:07] Ron Harrell: six months later, I was able to quit working at my office leadership team took it over. spent about 40 to 50 hours a year in that business, I spent about 85% of my time helping other entrepreneurs get unstuck from their business. know, the things I see, people are not making enough money.

They're stressed out, tired of dealing with people issues, can't seem to break through that ceiling of complexity

[00:09:34] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:09:35] Ron Harrell: the

[00:09:35] Mike Richardson: Huh.

[00:09:36] Ron Harrell: helps people do that.

[00:09:38] Mike Richardson: Really cool. Let's join up some dots right there. So Ron knows this, everybody, I published a book back in 2011 and you know, it takes a couple of years to finish off a book and, and get into the publishing process. And so I was in the process of, of trying to decide upon a title and the subtitle for the book, and I.

I've been speaking about traction and traction planning for years and years and years. So I, I think about the word traction and I start Googling and I discover, hang on a minute, who's this guy called? Gino Wickman, who's already published a book called Traction, and I think the subtitle is something like, how to Get a Grip on Your Business or something like that.

[00:10:22] Ron Harrell: Yep.

[00:10:23] Mike Richardson: So I'm thinking, oh, okay. Uh, and I read a bit about him and, uh, his story I suppose is similar to yours in that he. By the sound of it, you know it so much better than I do. You know, he discovered he cracked the code for himself in the business he ran, and then decided to sort of codify that and publish it into a book.

So anyway, um, you know, I wanted to publish my book, so I decided to go to the dark side. And rather than call my book Traction, I called it wheel spin. And the question I asked in the book is why Despite all of our investments in strategic planning and business process, re re-engineering and execution and leadership development and all that kind of stuff, why is it that we still experience a lot more wheel spin?

We're not getting as much traction. As we should. And, and as you know, of course the answer is agility or rather a lack of agility. Uh, my book sold a few copies. Gino Wickman's traction book sold goodness knows how many copies

[00:11:32] Ron Harrell: Millions

[00:11:32] Mike Richardson: and. And, and it went really big, didn't it? And, and it really has become kind of one of, there are others, but it really has become one of possibly the leading, uh, s system to get organized and master chaos.

Everything from strategy and execution and leadership for entrepreneurial small to medium sized businesses. Correct. Ron? It's become, it's become one of the standards, correct.

[00:12:03] Ron Harrell: Yeah, it is. And I tell you, one of the things that Gino got right that just clicked is that visionary integrator seat, because I heard C-E-O-C-O-O. Right. And it seemed like that was a great structure for a large company. But when you have an entrepreneur company and you put your name in the president seat or CEO seat, then you

[00:12:27] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:12:27] Ron Harrell: people, there's, there's really two seats there.

[00:12:30] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:12:31] Ron Harrell: And the problem mostly, and I sat in a lot of peer-to-peer meetings where they said, you know, the most of the problem is the guy at the top or person at the top and can't get out of our way. And there's so, it's so true, and it's because we. Are a visionary person or often there's a visionary personality stuck in the integrator seat,

[00:12:50] Mike Richardson: Right.

[00:12:50] Ron Harrell: which we also call COO seat, operationally focused.

Um, and

[00:12:56] Mike Richardson: Chief, chief of staff, VP of Operations, yeah.

[00:12:59] Ron Harrell: manager

[00:13:00] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:13:01] Ron Harrell: So that just gave me an aha moment. I mean, you were trying to teach me a lot of the stuff that was in the book back when we met and. Some of it clicked and some of it

[00:13:12] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:14] Ron Harrell: yeah, I

[00:13:14] Mike Richardson: Yeah. I,

[00:13:15] Ron Harrell: up with a couple things that were unique in that, in,

[00:13:18] Mike Richardson: yeah, I love, I love that distinction, everybody that, that, that Ron is speaking to. It's one of the biggest. Haz that I think he touched upon in the original book Traction and then really went deep on it in the next book,

[00:13:33] Ron Harrell: yeah.

[00:13:33] Mike Richardson: was, was that called Rocket Fuel or something like that.

[00:13:36] Ron Harrell: yep. Yep.

[00:13:37] Mike Richardson: And it's this concept, everybody that.

At the, at the top of a business, you've, you've, you know, for a, for a business that's really getting traction on a good trajectory and scaling well, you've gotta have this complimentary combination of a visionary who's your classic entrepreneur, uh, phenomenal at relationship building and biz dev and all of that, but needs to be complimented by.

What's called an integrator, and I love the use of that term, Ron, because it picks up the idea of systems integration. Everybody do. We have an integrated system with all the platforms and processes and software and systems that we need to become a well-oiled machine. and as we scale, things don't break back down into chaos again, where we're just hanging on by our fingertips.

So I really love that distinction.

[00:14:39] Ron Harrell: Yeah. And, and the challenge, and I went through this for years, when we try to do that and we don't do it with the right foundation or a. A way to teach it to everybody else to create clarity. It doesn't work.

[00:14:51] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:52] Ron Harrell: what I call the command and control stage where we have to take things over and fix it ourselves.

And that just over time, it just wears you down. It

[00:15:00] Mike Richardson: Yeah, because, because when that's happening, what we don't realize everybody is, is we are also becoming a bottleneck. We are also becoming a glass ceiling on, on the future growth of that business. 'cause there's only one way to grow everybody. And that is to, is to scale The system. Is to scale. The culture is to scale the empowerment.

Of the team and to get all that energy and traction coming bottom up as it were, uh, through the business. I, I, I, I can't remember if we've spoken about this much, Ron, but, I went back and ran a, a global company again for three years where I went in as the global president. To compliment the founding entrepreneur.

The business was already in its 20th or even 25th year. It, it scaled enormously. It was, it was global and they really needed that integrator type of person to sort of lift the lid on the next phase of, of scalability globally. And so I decided, I ran into this opportunity and I decided to, to go in as that and they revealed me at one of the, um, annual conferences and I made a keynote speech.

And one of the ways I expressed it was I said to the audience, there were a thousand people in the room. 'cause it was a big, you know, global system. I said to the audience, I said, you know what we want of the founder. Who's, who's brilliant. He's a genius. We want the founder to be able to focus on anything with anybody at any time because he's really, really, really good at it.

And what he needs to know is that I'm in the other seat focused on everything with everybody. All the time

[00:16:52] Ron Harrell: Yeah.

[00:16:54] Mike Richardson: we've got to be bringing the whole system along for the journey and along for the ride. And so that's really at least my definition of an integrator role, right? We're focused on everything with everybody all the time and making sure that it's clicking.

Does that resonate with you, Ron?

[00:17:11] Ron Harrell: Yeah, no question Mike and, and I, I described that as, I want to take the noise away from the visionary seat

personality, the person that's sitting in that, and the noise I'm referring to is all the worry and stress that everything's gonna go to. Crap if I don't keep my eye on it. imagine when you, and when I would imagine you saw this, when you did that for that person, much energy gets transformed back into the business Because those, you know, that entrepreneurial person is generally

[00:17:40] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:17:41] Ron Harrell: Chief Energizer person.

[00:17:43] Mike Richardson: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:44] Ron Harrell: time to go and be creative, build big relationships, and, and really

[00:17:49] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:17:50] Ron Harrell: champion and enthusiasm, uh, starts

[00:17:52] Mike Richardson: Yeah,

[00:17:53] Ron Harrell: it's, it's like,

[00:17:55] Mike Richardson: yeah.

[00:17:56] Ron Harrell: Yeah.

[00:17:57] Mike Richardson: And let's just join up a couple, a couple of other dots. So you little shout out here to Sean Alger indeed your, your previous, partner in, in my office. Um, Sean is also, uh, one of our forum leaders, uh, of peer groups in in ref. Uh, he co-leads a sales leadership forum with me, another of our forums that, uh, specializes in, you know, the, one of the functional areas of, in this case, sales leadership.

And so now, Ron, the, the, the next hat that you are about to wear is you are becoming a forum leader. Of a peer forum specifically for operations leaders to help them grapple with some of these aspects and dimensions and challenges that we've begun to articulate. What? What's the why, Ron? What's the why behind wanting to get into this field of.

running a peer forum for operations leaders, you know, peer forums. Well, because you've been part of EO for many, many, many years. But tell us more, Ron, about what's brought you to this moment of why you want to now launch this operations leadership peer forum with us.

[00:19:08] Ron Harrell: So let's start with the peer-to-peer group experience. Uh, 30 years, uh, and

[00:19:14] Mike Richardson: Is it really 30 years? Wow.

[00:19:16] Ron Harrell: 30 years NEL. It was, I think I'm number six in the world or something like that for the time. then another group for about 12 years

[00:19:26] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:19:27] Ron Harrell: the impact it's had on my world and still has today, is it just one of the smartest decisions I've ever made. Part of that is not only having a group of people who are in a similar situation as me, who

[00:19:43] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:19:43] Ron Harrell: what I'm going to say, but they wanna hear what I'm going to say. care about me. They learn from whatever I share. we realize when we're in a room with other peers like that, we're not alone. The stuff I'm dealing with really isn't that different than what you're dealing with.

It's sure it's a different industry. There's nuances to it, it comes down to a handful of the same crap, or opportunity. I shouldn't even say crap. Is it the opportunity to

[00:20:09] Mike Richardson: It's okay. It's okay. We're amongst friends here.

[00:20:11] Ron Harrell: Yeah. Yeah. So, I love. Still today, being able to know every month I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna kind of take stock of where I am at.

But nuts, not only just in my business, but personally profe and family oriented as well,

[00:20:27] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:20:27] Ron Harrell: that we're thinking about this stuff. I I'm thinking about this stuff once a month and I know I'm gonna go on a share in a, in an environment that's open, honest, vulnerable, trust based, that's a hundred percent confidential

[00:20:39] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:20:40] Ron Harrell: to talk about this stuff.

'cause like you. In most people's lives, there's nowhere else to do that. There's nobody else that can do that. Then they may have a mentor, and that's a great thing. might be a place, but short of being in a peer-to-peer group,

it's hard

[00:20:56] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

Confidential everybody and no competitors of course. Therefore, uh, as much diversity as, as we can get across, you know, different industries, different kinds of businesses. We want everything from high tech to low tech, local, global old economy, new pro economy, you know, manufacturing, software services, um, global supply chain.

You name it, we want it. Um, of course, uh, age, gender, ethnicity, tenure,

[00:21:29] Ron Harrell: Yeah.

[00:21:30] Mike Richardson: um, you know, personality type. The more diversity the better because it it, that's where the power of peers and collective intelligence comes from. Correct. Uh, Ron? Yeah.

[00:21:40] Ron Harrell: Absolutely. So then we look at why, you know, why operations, why ref, don't know if you know this, I did a FE 15 year deep dive in human behavior. development work and through that practice learned that I'm really passionate about entrepreneurship and, and I'm also passionate about helping people learn to grow, to be happy and healthy.

So those two things, when I'm doing my EOS work and also when I'm in a peer-to-peer group and facilitating that kinda work that feeds that, those, those two things I'm super passionate about. So

[00:22:14] Mike Richardson: not sure. I did know that you did 15 years of deep dive into, tell us more about that.

[00:22:20] Ron Harrell: program in spiritual psychology, which

[00:22:22] Mike Richardson: Oh,

[00:22:23] Ron Harrell: psychology, eastern philosophy, kind of mixed

[00:22:27] Mike Richardson: wow.

[00:22:28] Ron Harrell: Uh, and then another 10 years of kind of deep dive work and a bunch of other stuff. And

[00:22:35] Mike Richardson: You are a man of many talents and many experiences. Ron. Um,

[00:22:40] Ron Harrell: go

[00:22:40] Mike Richardson: Anybody that gets lucky enough to be in Ron's forum is, is number one, is gonna be blessed to be together with their peers. That's where the power comes from. Everybody is is the, the power of the peers in the room. 12, 15, 18 people.

When you have a catalyst like Ron as the forum leader, you know, lighting a fire and, and, and creating the conditions for the magic to happen with, with such a diverse perspective as of his own as, as, as a CEO, as an operations leader, as a deep thinker around, um, leadership and, and, um, human, you know, kinds of things that he was just talking about.

Uh, that becomes a very powerful equation. So, yeah, you're looking forward to taking this on Ron as part of the next chapter of your career.

[00:23:26] Ron Harrell: I, I, I love. able to, to have an impact and to be able to help people learn and grow and that operations part of the business. It's a hard seat and I, the reason I know it so well is 'cause I was a

[00:23:40] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:23:41] Ron Harrell: personality that got stuck in that seat. I say got sick. I chose to get stuck in that seat.

[00:23:47] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:23:48] Ron Harrell: Uh, because I, and here's was the trap for me. I was good at it, but I was never gonna be great because one of the biggest jobs of that seed is how to become a great leader and manager.

[00:23:58] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:23:58] Ron Harrell: I can manage people well. I don't enjoy it, so it was, I just didn't do it fully. So that seat, you've gotta main manage energy coming down from the owner, visionary board of directors, whoever that is, and you got all that stuff coming up at you and, and learning how to manage that, that relationship up and down, and create a great team of managers underneath you can help you execute on the, the business plan is a hard job.

[00:24:29] Mike Richardson: that's why everybody, I'm, I'm so excited about us adding this next forum into our portfolio of forums that we have in, in Ref San Diego. We already have, you know, uh, I think it's eight different forums already, and this is gonna be the ninth. And this kind of completes the full house because we've already got these specialty forums for HR leaders, for technology leaders, for sales leaders, for financial leaders.

Um, and now we're about to have one for operations leaders. And you know this already, Ron, but. This kind of is my career path as well. I started out, you know, working as a petroleum engineer on offshore oil and gas drilling rigs. I was on the ground floor of operations, leadership, you know, helicopter out, helicopter back, week on, week off.

When you're on, you're on 24 7. And, you know, doing really heavy engineering and in rough seas and bad weather and, and, you know, with a very,

[00:25:40] Ron Harrell: Yeah.

[00:25:41] Mike Richardson: with a very limited real estate of, of an offshore drilling rig and supply boats and all of that kind of stuff. So, you know, I realized how informative that was, when I then pivoted into the sort of general management track.

It's where, where I really learned how to to be an operations leader and how to have the agility required and all of those good things. And so that served me really well as I climbed the ladder in business and ended up becoming a CEO and then divisional CEO. And you know, I distinctly recall the times when I was running.

Business units as A CEO, where I had a strong COO, general manager, chief of staff, VP of operations, whatever they were called. If I had a strong one who could be that integrator, then it enabled me. To do what I needed to do, which was to be out and about, developing relationships, opening doors, closing deals, and all that kind of stuff.

If I didn't have a strong integrator, then I couldn't help but be more sucked into, you know, just trying to keep things ticking over from day to day to day. And invariably that meant, you know, I was working in. The business a lot more and working on it a lot less, and that's just not a good equation for sustained success these days.

Ron.

[00:27:15] Ron Harrell: Yeah. Yeah. And you learned a ton from that experience, right? I, you probably don't know this as well. I started my career opening, I opened six restaurants for a group of investors, and my job was to go open the restaurant, hire the staff, launch the restaurant, get the manager in place, and then go do the next one. invaluable lesson in operations and execution and

[00:27:36] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:27:37] Ron Harrell: and financial statements and, and recognizing good people, great people,

[00:27:44] Mike Richardson: Yeah,

[00:27:44] Ron Harrell: knowing

[00:27:45] Mike Richardson: yeah.

[00:27:45] Ron Harrell: time I had to learn how to, what to do if they're not. And because I, I had, I was onto the next project and I didn't have time to go back and take over the last one. So same, same experience that when I, you get it right, it's life changing.

[00:28:02] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:28:02] Ron Harrell: we need that in the business so that operations p you know, the peer-to-peer group for the operations folks, I'm, I'm super hopeful that they get to learn and grow and have a huge impact on companies. Run at the

[00:28:18] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:28:18] Ron Harrell: wanna run and get, get the things done they want to do.

[00:28:21] Mike Richardson: You know, one of my favorite ways to sort of articulate this, everybody is, you know, when we're looking for key talent, we're looking for pivotal roles. We might often think, well, we need a round peg and a round hole, right? We're looking for a well-rounded person that can, you know, be that, you know, fill that hole that we need.

I actually like to say no. Uh, actually what we need is a square peg and a square hole, because whether it's, uh, a sales function or. HR function, or in this case in particular, an operations leadership function. Yes. Inside that, that squareness, we need that rounded person of course, but in addition, we need these sharp corner pieces.

We need these acute. Angles and, and corner pieces to this person's presence, to their personality, to their mindset. 'cause if you put a, if you put a round peg in a square hole, you're missing those sharp corner pieces and you don't quite get that cutting edge that you need. We need this acute strategic orientation.

We need this acute people orientation. We need an acute goal orientation and an acute mindset orientation. And all of those things come together and they can really add up to someone that can really fill that, that hole fully. And I, I remember someone else speaking about this, Ron, and they were saying, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of hard to, to fully describe.

a high performing integrator, but you know it when you see it.

[00:30:06] Ron Harrell: Yeah. And you know it when, when it's the opposite, you know, very

[00:30:10] Mike Richardson: Yes.

[00:30:10] Ron Harrell: not Right. Yeah. Yeah, there's no question. Yeah.

[00:30:13] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:30:14] Ron Harrell: it's really, do I, can I stop if, if I, if they report to me, I stop having to think about all this stuff? I've had multiple business owners come to me and say, I've got an integrator. I, they're compensated this level, and I just feel like I have to go back and, and pull them along and attention to all this stuff. What should I do? I go get, you gotta get rid of them. They're the wrong person. It's not gonna, you can't fix it.

[00:30:41] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Yeah. So.

[00:30:43] Ron Harrell: not nice people and they're great at, and maybe in a, in a role somewhere doing something, but just not that seat for that person.

[00:30:51] Mike Richardson: Yeah, everybody. So we're launching this, um, operations leadership forum. We actually had a, an orientation meeting with a fantastic speaker

[00:31:01] Ron Harrell: Yeah,

[00:31:02] Mike Richardson: couple of weeks ago around AI because of course, you know. Operations will be a key area in which we might get the earliest AI benefits, at least in the back office part of operations.

And who knows in, in some front office parts as well. Uh, we had a, we had a room full of people, didn't we, Ron, who were there? I think 20 something people,

[00:31:26] Ron Harrell: Yeah.

[00:31:27] Mike Richardson: of whom have subsequently raised their hand to join, uh, the forum when we kick it off in, in January this year. Next year, 2026, and then thereafter, everybody will be building it to sort of 15 plus or minus 15 people.

Again, very diverse, um, across industries and businesses and, and all kinds of other dimensions of diversity. And, and it'll all be about. The, the facilitated process that we do in ref, we have three components to our meetings. We have the speaker component, we have the round table sort of sharing and leadership development component, and then we have the, the third and most important component, which is the case where members bring real time.

Issues, challenges, problems, opportunities into the group. And we, we facilitate a particular methodology and a particular flow with which we process the case as a group for, you know, potentially a whole hour. And we really, really tear it apart, really understand the problem and then, and then give suggestions and ideas and inputs and stories and experiences.

It becomes a very powerful proposition. And, um, uh, we're really excited, Ron, about having a, a container for. Operations leaders to be in, uh, where they can really tackle some of these, you know, very complex, very nuanced, very multi-dimensional challenges of, of being that square peg in that square hole.

[00:33:05] Ron Harrell: Yeah, well, sure. Look, I'm very excited about getting this thing launched. It's gonna be fun.

[00:33:09] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Yeah. So, hey everybody, if you're listening to this and, and that sounds like you know, something intriguing, uh, something that you're curious about, something that you might be interested in, in being a part of, then, uh, you know, give us a call, as it were. We'd love to hear from you, and we'd love to explore that.

you know, Ron, you've, you've been in and around peer forums, peer groups, did you say, for 30 years,

[00:33:36] Ron Harrell: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:38] Mike Richardson: and so you beat me. I've been doing this for 23 years, everybody,

[00:33:42] Ron Harrell: I started

[00:33:42] Mike Richardson: and,

[00:33:43] Ron Harrell: 10.

[00:33:45] Mike Richardson: you know, amongst many other things that we both do, it is probably the most rewarding and enriching. Fulfilling lane of my career, certainly for the last 23 years of, of my career and my life.

I wish I'd known about it for the prior 20 years before that. Was that when I was in the corporate world because. I'd never heard of the concept of a peer group, a peer forum, or sometimes called a peer advisory board. You obviously did, you know, 30 years ago, Ron, but I certainly didn't. you know, back then and even today, right?

It's still somewhat of a well-kept secret, isn't it?

[00:34:31] Ron Harrell: It is crazy. I talk to business owners and I'm like, have you heard of, of, you know, the different peer groups? And they're like, no, what is that? And I'm just blown away that they've been running the business for 15 years in this market and we haven't heard of any of this

[00:34:44] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:34:44] Ron Harrell: for Wow.

[00:34:46] Mike Richardson: Yeah. So we often get asked everybody, you know, what is a peer group? And you know, will that be asked? Is it, is it coaching? And, and we'll say, no, not really. Well, is it training then? Uh, no, not really. Well, is it. Consulting then, is it listening to speakers? Is it networking? And we'll say, no, not really.

And when, when people ask me those questions, every time I give them an answer, I start drawing a Venn diagram of all of those circles. It's not really that, it's not really that, it's not really that. It's not really that. It's not really that. And so this Venn diagram has emerged, you know, uh, on paper in front of us.

And somewhat, you know, with a little bit of exasperation towards the end, that person may say, well then, then what is it? And I'll point at the middle of that Venn diagram and I'll say, well, it's, it's, it's likely a category of leadership development you've never experienced before. It's right here in the middle.

And it's called a peer forum, a peer group, a peer advisory board, which has aspects of all these other things. It has aspects of coaching, it has aspects of training, it has aspects of networking and listening to speakers and, and, um, consulting and all of that kind of stuff because the peer members become consultants to each other in many ways.

[00:36:13] Ron Harrell: Yeah.

[00:36:13] Mike Richardson: But it's a unique assemblage of those things, probably unlike anything else you've experienced before. Everybody and, and what I always ask people, some people will say, well, I'm part of this peer community over here. I'm part of this peer thing over there. I'm part of this other thing over here. And I'll typically ask them, great, I'm glad you are.

Don't stop doing that. The question is what happens there? And if you're not doing case issue processing, I would say to people, then it's not a true peer form. Don't stop doing it. You know, if you find it valuable, don't stop doing it. But my definition, every body of a true peer form underlined the T of true is that it gets down.

To the, to the depths gets down almost, if you like, Ron, to the bottom of the iceberg, as we say. And it gets down to those deep seated mindsets, beliefs, behaviors, and really starts to unlock, uh, uh, those such that someone can take their game to an whole nother level. You're, you're, you're looking forward to sort of facilitating that process, Ron.

[00:37:26] Ron Harrell: It, gonna be great. I learn a ton just sitting in folks. Know, it's, it's blessed to be able to have an impact on people's world and learn and just hang out with some great people at the same

[00:37:41] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:37:42] Ron Harrell: excited about it.

[00:37:43] Mike Richardson: So there we have it everybody. Um, I, I, I'm so excited about this operations leadership forum that we're, that we're launching. Uh, I'm so excited that we're blessed to have Ron Harrell, who's becoming the forum leader. With a little help from me as the, as the ref partner in Tan that's taking a deep interest in this, partly because of the passion that you've heard me expressing here for it.

Um, I think it's gonna be a very profound, it's gonna be a very practical, it's gonna be a very powerful experience because as you can tell, uh, from, from Ron's. Career path from Ron's experiences, from Ron's deep inquiry, uh, into leadership and, and, and all the human stuff that he talked about. He's just gonna be a great catalyst and he is gonna light a big fire.

And, uh, it's gonna be a very powerful and rewarding and valuable, uh, experience that, uh, you know, typically everybody, our members stay for a long time. Uh, because, uh, they, they find it so, you know, invaluable and so irreplaceable unlike anything else that they've, uh, that they experience in their lives. Uh, final thoughts, uh, Ron, and then we'll, uh, we'll land this plane.

What, uh, what else do you wanna leave everybody with?

[00:39:07] Ron Harrell: Just, uh, share that. I'm, uh, thankful through the opportunity, Mike. I'm really passionate about the stuff as well, and excited to get the, the group launched and, uh, appreciate the opportunity and, and the opportunity to talk more about it.

[00:39:21] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Yeah, we could, we could talk all day here, everybody. And maybe we, maybe we'll get Ron back, you know, uh, once this thing is up and running and we'll, we'll, we'll check in with it. But, uh, there we are everybody. Uh, our first episode of the Peering podcast, uh, recorded and, uh, we've been peering into the complexities of being an operations leader, uh, the chaos that can ensue when you get it wrong.

And the mastery of chaos that can ensue when you get it right. Uh, we look forward to having you back at future episodes of The Peering Podcast, everybody, thanks for being here and most importantly, thanks to you, Ron, for being a great guest and, uh, sharing your story. We'll see you next time everybody.

Thanks again. Goodbye.