Jay Bousada, CEO, Thrillworks

Jay Bousada, is never one to shy away from breaking things down and finding smarter, more effective ways to do them, Jay founded Thrillworks in 1999 to help organizations take full advantage of the potential of digital. 

He’s a born problem solver, beginning his career as an Engineer before turning his attention to technology. 

Now, as CEO, he’s driven by a passion to solve problems others may fail to even see. It’s this courage that’s at the core of who he is and the driving force behind everything Thrillworks creates.

We discuss:

• The bumpy road to success
• Only being good at problem-solving isn’t enough
• You knowing, isn’t the same as everyone else knowing
• The power of 'curiosity'
• The path to Jay reinventing himself
• Looking to the outside world for what good looks like
• Getting out of your own way
• Exposing yourself to blind spots
• Being intentional 
• The power of vulnerability
• Creating a world-class team
• Compassionate Conflict
• Rebooting the company
• The Challenge Chip approach
• Values that guide decisions
• It's hard enough to win with A players, so why tolerate B players
• "You are the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most"
• "Instead of pressing harder on the gas, take your foot off the brake"

To find out more about Guy Bloom and his award winning work in Team Coaching, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching click below.

The link to everything CLICK HERE
UK: 07827 953814
Email: guybloom@livingbrave.com
Web: www.livingbrave.com

Transcript

Guy Bloom    00:00 

Welcome to leadership bites with myself, your host, guy bloom. This is a leadership podcast where I have conversations with colleagues, I chat with guests, and sometimes they'll be just me talking. You can connect with me at livingbrave.com and when you enjoy the episode, subscribe and please tell everyone. Sir Jay, it is fantastic to have you on this episode of Leadership Bites. Thank you and welcome.
 
 

Jay Bousada    00:26 

Thank you so much for having me today.
 
 

Guy Bloom    00:28 

Well, you know what, I'm super pleased you're here. We've got lots to talk about and we've been chatting before we've got going. But just for me, Jay, if you would introduce yourself to the audience, just to give them a sense of who you are and your context.
 
 

Jay Bousada    00:44 

I'm Jay Bousada, the founder and CEO of a company called Thrill Works. I I currently live in Ontario, Canada, but I grew up in Quebec in the seventies, right around the time when English was outlawed, which was kind of tough on a family of English speakers. My mom was an emergency room nurse, so you kind of need to know the language if you're going to do that job. And my dad is an entrepreneur. Likewise, it makes the job kind of hard if if English is outlawed, but that. Entrepreneurship kind of rubbed off because two of my three brothers and I all went on to start their own businesses, mostly in my case, you know, I've just been fascinated with finding ways to make this stuff around me in the world work better. And so, not surprisingly, I went on to become an engineer and in that process discovered this new thing called the Internet, which ultimately let me, you know, start a glorious 23 career in the Internet business. And you know. Many lessons have been learned along the way, but I I, you know, really have been fortunate to to have, you know, gotten to where I am and and love sharing the things that I've learned along the way.
 
 

Guy Bloom    01:55 

We're gonna pick up on those, but before you do, you have just thrown something in there that I've got to ask a question about. I'd thought that English had been. Ordered to be at the the business language. But you could talk it, but it's saying actually outlawed.
 
 

Jay Bousada    02:12 

Well, for all intents and purposes you couldn't really greet anybody in English. All business and legal transactions had to be done exclusively in French, and if you would exhausted all French possibilities then you could resort to English. But it was a last resort. So you know, it was kind of an extreme, an extreme law and you know it, it was done for good purposes, but it just ended up producing a bad, a bunch of bad results. And so it was, it was really challenging, you know, there my parents couldn't speak. You know, we went to French school. My, my 4 three brothers and I went to French school. But as a result of not being able to speak, there was a lot of persecution. My mom was, you know, physically attacked a couple of times in our house by people that were angry, you know, that my dad was an English business person. My dad's brakes were cut, his, his, his business was ultimately burned to the ground by arsonists. So it was a challenging time, but, you know, so many of of my life lessons today. And resilience come from the lessons that my parents taught and the lessons that I learned growing up and in that environment and that family. So you know, in a in a weird way I can appreciate some of the resilience that the entire family got. And I think like I said with with a father, a grandfather and two brothers at all own you know, different businesses, you know, I think resilience is a is a really important aspect to have or really important attribute to have if you're going to start your own company.
 
 

Guy Bloom    03:37 

So just bring to life for people thrill works. What is it? What does it do? Where's its market? What does it focus on?
 
 

Jay Bousada    03:45 

Well, we're what you call a digital acceleration partner. So what that means in its simplest form is we help companies create and deliver their digital products faster and more successfully than they could on their own. So we have a process that we've been refining over 23 years to help customers get their products, their digital products. So it could be a website, could be an app, could be an online service of some kind and we usually do this for enterprise level clients because what we build. Has to be evolved overtime, so you know maintenance has to be performed. So you have to be a relatively large organization to be able to afford to build large scale software and then support it after it's been built. So if all you want to do is build yourself a website and say great, my job's done for the next five years, we're definitely not, you know, the right company for you. But you know we have this process that uses a build measure, learn approach where you know it comes very much from the agile form of thinking. Build something, put it into market as fast as you can, measure the results that you're having. Take the input that you're getting from the market. You know, tweak it, put it back there as quickly as you can and iterate that process over and over and over. So lots of companies do that, you know are superhuman trick, if you will, is exposing and exploiting that overlooked opportunity that exists in every business because we think you know that is where you're really going to start accelerating your results. It's easy to go and add a new feature to your app, or add more whiz bang, or drive more traffic to your website thinking that you're gonna get better results. But that's rarely the case, right? Like everywhere in life, your success is really limited by the most friction point in your life. So instead of just going and adding more speed to things, what we try to do is remove friction first.
 
 

Guy Bloom    05:38 

Ok, so easily said, but when you say 23 years. As an organization that's now thriving that this is rhetorical because I know where we're going. But the reality is this. It's not a it's not a straight road right the zigs and zags and ups and downs. So be great it would be great to kind of get a sense of almost maybe I'd be interested from that moment of inception where you went right. I think what I'm going to do is and and maybe what you thought the journey was going to be and then the reality of ohh. Righty ho then. This may not be as straight forward as I thought it might be. I don't know. I wasn't there. But you know, let let's start at that point of view, having a kernel of an idea and boom, off we go.
 
 

Jay Bousada    06:26 

Well, backing up, when I was getting my engineering degree, that's when I stumbled across the Internet. I think I mentioned that earlier and it just fascinated me. And what I think fascinated me is I saw the Internet. You know, similar to the way you know, the analogy that I might use would be the Internet. To me it's kind of like the operating system on a computer. So if you use a Mac, mum have a Mac OS or windows. I see the Internet as an operating system. And so, you know, unlike a computer that you got to change out or constantly upgrade the software on, I saw this like, massive superpower that was just sitting out there for somebody to be able to build on. So I just got fascinated with it from the moment that I first saw it in the early nineties, and you know, always kind of like kept it on the side. And it was almost a hobby for me to like, learn about and play with. But after doing the engineering thing for, you know, three or four years, I just couldn't ignore the passion that I had for it anymore. So I put myself in tonight. School, learn how to program and then started building applications for whoever would let me back in the time. And then one day just, you know, got up and quit my engineering job and my timing could have been a lot better. I went home and told my wife at the time, who was nine months pregnant, that I just quit my job. So that didn't go over very well.
 
 

Guy Bloom    07:42 

She love.
 
 

Jay Bousada    07:43 

And nine months later, the.com boom hit because it was around 2000 But thankfully, like is like so many businesses, you know, luck plays a really big part in the journey. And so we had enough success and momentum in that first year to carry usthroughthe.com boom and then, you know, we started. Applying a really different way of looking at the world. When I started, the company had never worked inside anything similar before, and so I invented everything the way I thought it should be invented now a lot of that involved reinventing the wheel, which was a waste of time, but a lot of the stuff about, you know, how we treat customers and how we go about thinking about the solutions was really different. So that that gave us almost a straight line of growth for the 1st 12 years. And then of course after 12 straight years of success, I think I have it all figured out. So the next thing you do is graduate yourself into a management role and away from the project work. And from year 12 through 17, it got incredibly difficult to keep clients as happy as they were before, to have success, to make profit.
 
 

Guy Bloom    08:48 

And just to jump in there, is this a point of being going for 12 years, yes, we've had growth, but now I'm looking to scale. Is that, is that the segue point?
 
 

Jay Bousada    08:57 

Well, I I wish I could say it was conscious, you know, one of the things that was a disadvantage to getting an engineering. Degree is you get really good at you know development and process for solving problems but you have no business sense. And So what I knew was that we were too big for me to ignore the management responsibilities of the company. So I just did what I thought came next and that is start managing and stop doing the work. So it was less conscious and and as a result of that I wasn't conscious about making sure that I passed along the vision as clearly as I could to the rest of the company passed along the values that. I was making decisions based on and the thinking that I was using to make some of the project decisions because the team was amazing. You know, they were just kind of roll up their sleeves and, you know, get behind me and, you know, we would tackle the world. But when you back away and you don't give anybody the formula that you're using, you know, they're doing their best to just, you know, do what they think that you would do when you're not there. And um and projects just became harder to have success with and profits you know, started to to dwindle and. Like I say, one day in 2017 I walked into the company and I just didn't love what I saw anymore. It wasn't the company that I I wanted to create. We had kind of stalled out and I decided I had three choices. Sell it, shut it down, or reinvent it. And reinventing just required taking us back to our our core values, which like, was literally like rebooting a company, which, you know, is exactly what I did. So in 2017 I started reinventing myself by figuring out what a leader really had to be, and that was the first time that I started to become conscious of. How leadership needs to play a big part in my company. Don't just do what you think comes next, but get serious about being intentional. And so we were very fortunate to last until 2017 and got away with it for that long, you know, just acting on instinct. But what a difference it's made and what a journey it's been the last five years have been. Um, probably as tumultuous as all 17 years previous combined.
 
 

Guy Bloom    11:00 

So point of reinvention. So I work with senior leaders, people who are an executive teams and very often. They have a way, they have a, a habit of of being and sometimes it's really working. So hey, you know, keep going and calibrate it and flipping fantastic and for others it's not. But reinvention can feel scary for them because I've defined my brand. People have a sense of who and what I am. I'd have to probably look in the mirror etcetera. So you say you went on that sort of point of reinvention, maybe even transformation. Um, easy to say as a throw away. What was the reality of that journey for you?
 
 

Jay Bousada    11:46 

It was scary, as is a great word for it, I think, you know, I was pretending not to know that I needed to do this. And I think a lot of us who are avoiding doing what needs to be done just pretend not to know. And um, you know, I reached that point where I was more dissatisfied with the results that I was getting than I was scared of making a change, whatever that change was. And so, you know, the first thing that I did is take a look around and. Ask myself like what a successful people do, like wildly successful people who remain successful. So, you know, I'm not, I don't know a lot about sports, admittedly, but I I do spend a lot of time, you know, researching the art of coaching. Like how coaches show up and all the best athletes in the world don't have fewer coaches or no coaches. They have more coaches than than most other high performing athletes. So I thought who the heck am I not to get myself a coach? So I went looking for somebody who would help reflect back to me how I was showing up in the world. Well, I could get out of my own way because I knew the the lack of results that I was getting, the lack of satisfaction and joy that I had was a product of who I was. And, you know, back on the coaching theme, you know, I think my personality was one more of a counselor than a coach a. Coach is going to, you know, drive you to get results, but they're never going to get on the field for you. And a counselor you know, really wants you to have success, but they'll stick around for as long as you need them to, typically regardless of how much progress you're making. So I ended up being that person who oftentimes saw potential in people and wanted it more for them than they wanted it for themselves. And, you know, you can't run a business that way and you can't run a world class life that way, right? So, you know, the first thing that I had to do was learn to get out of my own way. And change my own thinking. So I found myself a coach and I surrounded myself with other entrepreneurs by joining a couple of organizations. That were committed to reflecting back to me how I was showing up in the world. And that was the first step, right? You can't change what you're unaware of. Um, so I decided, let's like, lift the veil and get really clear on how I'm showing up in the world and then be intentional about who I want to be.
 
 

Guy Bloom    13:59 

Yeah, that's quite a lot in there. Being intentional is a very, you know that phrase, you know, conscious competence that the doing it on purpose.
 
 

Jay Bousada    14:08 

Yeah, yeah, we all.
 
 

Guy Bloom    14:09 

Know, you know, being unconsciously incompetent and those sort of stepping stones, but that I I think I found a word for this one, found a word for it. There's a word for this called craft and it's having that sort of sense of what does a sportsman have? You know, they have craft. What does somebody that creates ceramic pots to a very good level they have craft so it doesn't matter what it is, but anything good has a craft and everybody wants to be unconsciously competent, right? They just want to have that inverted commas flow state. But I'm pretty sure that comes from conscious competence, which is consciously getting good at it on purpose. So you then hit these moments of flow and everybody wants to jump to this kind of other space. But I think that's what I'm hearing in there, that intentional practice that putting exposing myself to other entrepreneurs people in my space. You can offer me my blind spots and you know reinforce the stuff. That's good. But there's a but then there's a relationship with vulnerability and and I wonder how easy that was for you to go yeah OK now I've thought about it. That's that's not a problem. I silly me for not having done it before or yeah intellectually I know what I'm asking myself to do. But ohh God no. I've gotta get feedback. And how was that for you that that vulnerability piece.
 
 

Jay Bousada    15:26 

Um, well, the the coach that I chose is um. He is. He's quite unique in that his approach to vulnerability is to just charge right at you. Now, I've been exposed to this, this person in a couple group settings before as a facilitator, and I really like to style because it was a no nonsense approach. So we weren't tippy toeing into vulnerability at all. It was, it was, you know. Almost painfully awakening on the vulnerability side. But once I started seeing the benefits of being vulnerable, admitting that I didn't know, admitting that I was the one that was responsible for my own results. You know, admitting that the results that I was getting were perfect for the way I was showing up in the world, right. And if I wanted different results, I had to show up differently. You know, it's funny that you mentioned Flo. We, we actually talk a lot about those, you know, those those concepts because if we're going to be a good leader of our own life and if we're going to be a good leader. Others meaning not only show them proper leadership but help them become the best version of a leader they can. I think, you know, concepts like flow are really important because, you know, flow doesn't just happen, right. I, I think, you know, if we can riff on that for justice a second. You know, if you look at some of the, the research on flow, it's, you know, there's this, there's this beautiful little chart that's an oversimplified version of his work and I can never pronounce, you know, the researcher's name. But it's that skill versus, you know, challenge where. If you if you give somebody too much of a challenge that's too far beyond their skills, their way outside their flow zone, and if you give them too little challenge and they've got too much scale, you put them outside their flow zone. Both of those areas if taken to extremes. Are awful and demotivating. But if you actually kind of, you know, and this is where I went with my coaching first, like how do we get me just outside the flow zone so that, you know, we can build the skill and you keep climbing up that flow channel. You get better and better and better at doing the thing that you weren't even clearer existed. Just, you know, a short while ago, so. Vulnerability is definitely the most important part of this. It's it's a founding part of what? Of what? Of how we run the company, of how we show up for our customers. Once I discovered that, to your point, I've never looked back. We start with a concept that was first discussed I think by Patrick Lancioni and the five dysfunctions of a team where you know, he talks about what creates a dysfunctional team so he can help people understand what how to create a very high performing. Functional team and the very bottom of his model. The bottom of the pyramid is vulnerability based trust. If you don't have that, forget getting to goals. A team will never actually act like a team if they can't get to vulnerability based trust. And whether you're talking about an internal team or a team with, you know between us and our customer, without that you're going to limit your success and your ability to get anywhere.
 
 

Guy Bloom    18:27 

I'm fascinated by this idea of vulnerability, and so my hobby sport interest has always been martial arts all my life. And one of the things you very quickly observe is you have to be willing to fail and to lose consistently. Because that's the only way you're going to learn. And it's also the only way that people are going to be happy to coach you and teach you. If you're going to push back, if you're going to challenge all the time, if you're going to be argumentative, if you're going to try and validate why you did things instead of justice listening and shutting up and. You know making another move kind of thing then very people. You very quickly see people quite isolated. Nobody wants to kind of. Spend time with them and engage with them so that because they're not willing to be vulnerable and sometimes people give you observations and feedback that don't sit right with you, but that's the stuff of life. But if you if the majority of you is up, thank you for that. Yeah thanks for the insight and actually you see it in good training rooms where even the junior less kind of skilled. Practitioners can still see things that you can't even when you've been doing it for decades. So you can see the healthy where the vulnerability is all be vulnerable to the hierarchy, but the really healthy places are where everybody can comment regardless of the hierarchy and and that's, that's really special when you get that because then I think there's not just individual flow, there's like a team flow. Does that make sense? When I say that to you, you recognise that or does that not resonate?
 
 

Jay Bousada    19:59 

It completely resonates like one of the founding. You know edicts have throw works. Is is creating a world class team right? Like how we show up for our customers? Is one of our main differentiators. Anybody can actually, you know, build the thing that we do, but how we go about building it, the relationships that we build are really one of our unique differentiators. And you can't build a team like that without vulnerability at its core. And you know I found looking back through all of the work that I've done on my own growth and you know that the growth that I've tried to bring to the company, you know the the easy entry point to vulnerability I've often. Found to be curiosity. So you know it's a it's a little bit of a hack, but if you use curiosity it really kind of neuters the defensiveness that you can sometimes see in people. So you know really strong leaders listen twice as much as they speak and they know what questions to ask. They don't provide answers. And in the in that process, by asking questions, you're also giving people an opportunity to feel hurt and. You know, at least here in North America, you know, we're taught to read and write and speak, but we're never taught to listen. And so, you know, it's a lost art form, but until somebody actually, like, legitimately feels hurt. Then it's very difficult to get new ideas into their head until they feel like you've really understood them. Then they're prepared for you to influence them. And if you use a little bit of curiosity to actually like get them feel hurt, well, why do you think that and how does that work and where, how did you get to that conclusion? Somebody will reveal some of that and before they know it, you know they're being wildly vulnerable. We actually use the process similar to this. While we were uncovering our values, I mentioned that, you know, I rebooted the company in 2017 You know, one of the very early things that I had to go about doing was like getting clear on the values. And now I could go away, sit on a mountain top and come up with a bunch of values and bring them down on stone tablets and say, you know, these are our values, but that's not the way values of high performing teams work. So you know we use the process that I think was kind of first described by Tony Shea from Zappos and. And before you know it, you know, people who were very not vulnerable as a way of being in life would end the exercise by going, Oh my gosh, I can't believe I just said those things. I've never actually been that vulnerable before and they actually had a sense of pride about it. And so now they could actually see the benefits of starting to be vulnerable, and we got at it through curiosity.
 
 

Guy Bloom    22:45 

All of that and I there's a phrase true strength through true vulnerability. You cannot damage me if it's in the open space. If I'm okay with it, then you've got nowhere to go with it. So I think that's, I think that's a very powerful I think that's definitely what I'm hearing there now I love that curiosity. You know one of the things that I think I hear people saying corporate spaces, you know, and I don't know if I want to challenge you know them. You know like I also say well just why don't you start from a place of curiosity? You know, just go in curious. You can always build up to challenge, right yeah and that willingness to be curious as you say, hack and I and I think I know what you mean cause that's the parlance at the moment. But there's a vehicle too, as a, as a, as a an elegant migration into that topic without setting everybody's alarm. But can I just challenge you there for a moment? You know what you know I'm just can I, can I can you help me make sense of this or whatever that phraseology is I I think that's massively important. And you say reboot a company, give me a size of the organisation just so we can contextualise what that is. 5 people, 10 people, 100 people? Where are you size wise or where were you at the time?
 
 

Jay Bousada    23:59 

Back in 2017 there was about 42 of us and between then and now, um. You know unfortunately and there's there's a point to be made about what I'm about to say with with transitioning people in in relationships in in our lives when you do go through change. But most of those 42 are no longer with us. They've either chosen to leave or were asked to leave because they didn't share or believe in the values. Or the destination we were headed for. So you know, since then those 42 have come and gone and we've actually had probably another hundred and a hundred and ten people go through the company and we're about 75 people right now. But you know it's. It's a. It's an art as much as it is a skill to find people who do truly believe in the values. Because when somebody you know wants to be part of the team, they'll almost tell you anything. Like, oh, sure, I believe in those things. Or here's a story where that showed up in my life. And, you know, our job as leaders is to really discover whether or not those people have an alignment, like a goal match. Can they get to where they want to get to in their life by helping us get to where we want to get to? And so having open and transparent conversation is the only way to do that. Like, how are you feeling? About this. Like, you know, you didn't show up at your best there. Like, is that because you didn't believe in what we were doing? Were you holding back? And those conversations, I mean, something that you just did that I really liked is, you know, you prefaced the challenge by saying, hey, can I challenge you on that for a second? It's actually asking permission, and it's almost a dirty little trick that you can use. And I don't mean to call these things hacks and tricks because they're bad. I just mean they're not complicated, right? Like, the way to do this stuff isn't, you know, deep, dark and mysterious. It's quite obvious we do it in our everyday life, right? Like, hey, I've got a thought about that. Can I share my thought? And somebody's far more willing to listen when they give you permission. And so that's that's kind of how we try to go about everything inside, um. You know, I believe in the idea of challenge so much that I created a little challenge chip inside the company because a lot of people come to, you know, a company carrying all the baggage from their past careers. And I'm sure every job that, you know, preceded the career that they have here, somebody somewhere in authority said no, we'd love to hear your feedback. And at some point somebody gave feedback and they were told thanks, but keep your keep your opinions to yourself and don't do that again. So they're a little bit scarred. And I really wanted to convince them we actually mean that your feedback is valuable. So everybody gets a challenge chip when they start, it's basically a poker chip that say, you know, you know, what would they want? And what I want is for you to challenge us when you see a problem. And so first address it with your team. But if you really can't feel heard or if you don't think that you're warning signs are being acknowledged, you can play the chip and it stops the project cold in its tracks. And then we bring in some executives to help facilitate a conversation that just isn't happening and people love it. It's been used about, you know, on average about 8 to 10 times a year. It's not abused and people just love that you're sincere about it.
 
 

Guy Bloom    27:03 

Yeah, so use it wisely. Yeah, because there might be some conversation about why you used it unwisely, right? If you're gonna play, but you can play the chip. But you gotta be sure that it's from a place of transparency, integrity, you truly believe so if you're gonna play it. Yeah, and then there's no penalty, I guess, even if it turns out not in your favour, yeah, that would be the big thing. The car can't be a penalty as long as you did it the right way. The cannot be repercussions.
 
 

Jay Bousada    27:32 

Yeah, and you don't have a conversation in this scenario or whatever. If this idea is appealing. Like you don't have the conversation with the person who played the chip by themselves. Meaning, you know, you have the conversation with the whole team. This person played the chip. You're having the conversation in front of the entire team, meaning somebody's not gonna play the chip if they have an axe to grind with somebody. Just for political reasons, you know, like they don't like the look on their face, for example, because they know that they're gonna have to face A-Team conversation if they play the chip. But, you know, if they actually have a passion for the thing that they don't feel hurt about, they're going to play the chip and going to be, okay, having that conversation out in the open again, driving towards, you know, that trust, building transparency. Like, you know, we're going to explain why we're doing things so that everybody has the understanding that I might have because I want you to make the decisions. That I would make if I'm not there. And you can't do that if you don't have the information that I would have. So transparency is a really important thing to us and once you have that trust and people understand who want another are. Then they're far more willing to get into ideological conflict. Not, you know, argument over like, you know, political arguments inside an organization or opinion based arguments. But if I know you and we both agree that we're trying to get to this goal, you and I can debate on the best way to get there. And I don't get offended that you aren't agreeing with me because a, I know something about you and I trust you and B we're arguing about the best way to get to the goal. It's that ideological. So conflict, isn't it? Bad thing. Conflict actually creates a better outcome. And then when people actually get to that outcome and and have gone through conflict, they've all weighed in. Now people will commit. And once they like, explicitly commit. This is where accountability first shows up, because you can't hold people accountable to something that they haven't committed to. And how can you get them to commit if they don't actually, like weigh in? And weighing in is just a different way of saying. That they're going to have ideological conflict and they're doing all this, you know, to serve the goal that you're trying to achieve with the results that you're trying to get. And so there is this mechanic where teams do behave very similar to an individual right. You need to trust yourself to try new things. Teams need to trust one another to to push themselves.
 
 

Guy Bloom    29:53 

So I have this phrase which is compassionate conflict, which is we may enter into conflict, but we're going to do it with compassion. And you could say anybody phrase, but we've had two please and it sounded good when I said it, so I'll start with it. But the point being, I think that's right, isn't it? Because we we've gotta have tension, we've gotta have the ability to speak truth to power. However, there is this line of we can't let the tail wag the dog. And I think that balance is precarious. If it's not done well, I think if you let an adult really like your thoughts on this, the danger of this system becoming more powerful than the exec give team or the person that's driving it. Because we've now set and I've worked with some organizations where they wanted to live and breathe a certain set of values and they almost, I wouldn't say abdicated but pushed down ownership to the level where. The tame if I would call it that, but the the staff members almost took control of the company through challenge and holding people to account for almost an unrealistic set of behaviours that starts to damage and jam up. The ability to have a. Honest they got an honest became brutal. You know they ohh, you can't be that brutal. You can't be that. You can't talk like that. On the hold on, there's a difference between me being aggressive and forthright. There's a difference between me holding you to account and micromanaging you. But depending on where I if I want to take it, I can use certain vocabulary to make you look like the aggressor when actually what you're doing is you're driving hard. So I just kind of wonder how that sits with you as an observation of. Of what I've just said.
 
 

Jay Bousada    31:40 

Why I completely agree that is we've got ourselves into those situations and we got ourselves there because we were trying to. We stopped at the at the idea of values. So we put values in place and we're like, that's enough, right? It really isn't enough. I mean, there's a couple things that have to be in place. One, values are the context, almost the rules of the game, right? But what game are you playing? What are you trying to accomplish? So the way the values, you know, the way you keep values from kind of overrunning the system, if you will. Is to use values as context for a goal. So what are you trying to accomplish? So if everybody agrees that you're trying to accomplish this, everybody here wants to accomplish that. And if they all want to accomplish that, and the values of the rules that you're going to use to get there, the guideposts that you're going to use to get there, then the values will serve as context for making decisions they aren't. You know you're not making decisions to satisfy values. And so. I think, um. To your point, you know if you're going to try to do something you know that is worthwhile, something challenging, something big or something different, you know? I think I've learned that there's a few things that I did wrong for many, many years. The first of which was you've got to get skilled people, you know somebody and I wish I could credit them with this because I live by it is said it's hard enough to make it to to succeed with a players. Why would you try with b and c and? Most people are going to be in a player somewhere in their life. But a lot of people aren't going to be in a player as we defined a player. So they're not right for here. But find a players and a players are people that are skilled at what they do have the values that we're looking for have goals bigger than themselves, meaning they can't accomplish the goal by themselves. So by definition, they inherently believe in the concept of team because they need more people than themselves to get them to the goal. So you don't have to sell them on the idea of teamwork. Um, and if there are goals, if their life goals or career goals align with ours, you put those people into a system that really lives its values. And then you give ourselves a big enough goal and you can't really help but succeed. And then the system doesn't degrade into what you were describing, which is toxic as hell because that's kind of what we had become around 2017 i'm changing it. An organisation. You have people in a team that you know there's always a spectrum of highly competent wouldn't be without them and behaviourally they're awesome as well. My gosh, if they if this person left it would may not damage us but would be a real shame all the way through to. I don't know why this bug is still working for us, but they seem to still be and often it's because they're quite good at a very particular set of tasks. And actually, you know what? It's not that I couldn't go and get somebody else, but it would just be such a pain to do so. I mean, I'm, I'm overdoing the spectrum. And then there are saboteurs and then there are people that are on the fence and there's all these variables, but then the the the machine seems to be working. So when you reboot or you say, right, we're going to do something different. I think people intellectually, what they're really saying is we really want everybody that we've got working here to get on board because actually, and if one person leaves, fine, but we really don't want. Problems, because it's the the reality of dealing with an outflux of people and bringing new people in and and I and I do wonder. Where where you when you say, you know, over the years we've lost most of those 42 that could sound to some people like well, bloom, INEC, you know, did you manage that badly or no. I was. Well, maybe I could have done things differently, but no. What I what I did was I was willing to set a standard and I was willing to deal with the pain if basically everybody looked at it and went no, I'm not signing up to that all fine then in that case I'm going to start again. And I just wonder, you know, did you see it? Coming and we're prepared. Or did you go ohh hello. You know what? What kind of happened there?
 
 

Jay Bousada    35:51 

I love what you just said. I I think that's such an important message for your listeners. It is not something I saw coming, but it makes 100 % sense in hindsight. So you know, only after you know, I spent about a year just kind of in that self discovery like what up, what am I looking for, why am I unhappy about this? What results would actually like make me happy before I actually started working on a weekly basis. With my coach. So there was a little bit of runway between that day where I was like, OK, I gotta change something and the day where I got the coach. His process usually takes about 18 months. So we're about, in this case, two years into the change process and there's been a lot of turnover at the company at this point. And he said this, he said you could look at change, you know, these people leaving as some form of failure. Like boy, you're really doing this wrong or nobody was buying what you were selling, you know, and I don't mean customers. I mean that the staff really weren't, you know, buying in to what you were asking. But he said like you could hardly claim that you're changing and truly being somebody different if your world around you. Doesn't change. So if you actually went from being the company that you were to the company that you want, and all the same people were still there, you can hardly claim that anything's changed. Because to be the company that you were required you to be a very different person than the company that you than the person you have to become to get a different kind of company when you become a different person. Inevitably, what made you attractive to the first group isn't going to make you attractive or appealing to the second group. So that attrition is actually evidence of change. Now, there was a lot of deep friendships. A lot of the people that we had at the time had been with us for 10 years or more. And I wish that they had wanted what I wanted. I wish they had valued what I valued. But, you know, I could have done a better job as a leader leading up to 2017 making it clear what I wanted so that nobody was surprised when I started, like, you know, redirecting us back. Of our core founding purpose. And you know, it's unfortunate, but I do believe that the people that have left and I've stayed in touch with a lot of them, they've all gone on to find places where there is a value match and perhaps a goal match and the people that we have here. Absolutely love it on a regular basis. We hear from the staff how much they enjoy having a place where and they don't have the language for it necessarily, especially some of the newer team members. But they they really enjoy the experience because there is they feel like they belong, they feel like we're trying to get to where they want to go.
 
 

Guy Bloom    38:17 

Yeah, feels right. And I've noticed this where I was director of leadership in a consultancy some years ago and was one or two people that were let go for. Various reasons, underperformance and etcetera. And they went on and they thrived, they thrived and they got promoted. And I looked and I look back and I go, wow, in two or three years that I've just tracked them on LinkedIn and I've actually quite, you know, stayed in contact with them and sort of gone, hey, how are you? And the. And they're doing incredibly well. And for whatever reason, it just wasn't the right place, the right space, the dynamic wasn't quite right. Whatever it is. And yeah, so sometimes it's the wrong peg in the wrong hole, but very often it's not the wrong peg, it's just it does fit. But it, you know, like those shoes I'm wearing, they're alright. And then you wear a pair that really fit you well and you go ohh, but these are awesome, right? And that's what it is. It's not that they were a faulty pair, it just wasn't as good as it could be. And I think that's why people stay in organizations isn't it? Do I love it here? No but it pays the bills, you know. I've got a comfort with it. I know. The job. Unless I do something ridiculous, they probably wouldn't get rid of me. Do I love it? No and then, and we look at the person, they go, they great. Not really. Do they do a good job? Yes will I get rid of them? Well, it's not really worth it. So we're all living in this kind of quasi average. You know, I'm being an average leader because I'm not really dealing with it. You're being an average employee because you're not really moving on. When not for me, you should move on, but for yourself, you should do yeah if.
 
 

Guy Bloom    39:59 

You're not careful, you know, we get this kind of. Level of yeah, this level that really isn't serving anybody. So it's brave. If that individual goes, you know what, and you get it, you know I'm going to move on and sometimes there's a little panic or no, don't move on. And then I go, what? You know, why are you asking them not to move on? Can I have more budget to pay them more money? But you said you wish they didn't work here.
 
 

Jay Bousada    40:20 

What exactly what?
 
 

Guy Bloom    40:21 

You wanted him to keep them. What you mean is you don't wanna deal with the aggravation of them moving on, but you've been watching for it for the last two years.
 
 

Jay Bousada    40:30 

Yeah, you're afraid of the loss. I mean, here's the scarier part too. I mean we're we're applying this thinking to business and and and team members and maybe staff. But how many people are in a relationship, whether it's a primary relationship or a friend's relationship where you know, it's not healthy, but you're not getting rid of it and you're not getting the results that you want. You know, I, I have a thousand quotes that I live that I try to live by and you know, I harvest them and I store them away. And one of the ones that again kind of resonated with me and I wish I could give credit where it's due, but somebody said you're the average of the five people that you hang out with most. And when you think about that and you ask yourself, like look around your life and say, do you want to be the average of those people, right, and I hold. You know me and my executives to a standard that says would we be one of the five that they want to hang out with. Can we develop the best in people? Are we making them better human beings with the time that we have them here at thrill works or are we just trying to get some work out of them because that's unfulfilling both for us as a company for our customers and and for the the person in question. So you know, there's a standard that you can set that applies that cuts clear across your life, friends, primary relationship, you know and professional.
 
 

Guy Bloom    41:40 

I was watching a. Something on YouTube the other day and there's a, and again this would be so more impressive if I could remember the gentleman's name. But he's a magician and he's a keynote speaking magician on sort of behaviours and he does magic to prove some points and he tells the story of I think training to be, um, he was either an accountant or I think a lawyer. He said he was doing a really good job at it. He said I didn't really like it said but every night after work I would do magic for people and said and one day he said his boss comes down and he goes hey, can I have a word? And he went yeah. He said. If you're still here in a year, I'm gonna let you go.
 
 

Jay Bousada    42:17 

Good for him.
 
 

Guy Bloom    42:17 

You know why, why, why, why? I thought. I think I'm doing a great job now. You are doing a great job, but you're in the wrong job.
 
 

Jay Bousada    42:24 

Good for him. That's true leadership, right? Like that is good for him. Yeah, I I think, you know, it's our job as you know, to use the trust that people give us to help them understand if they're willing to help them understand how they're showing up in the world. And, you know, if this person in your story could see that the magician wasn't living up to their full potential, somebody has to say something to that person because otherwise you're really doing a disservice to that person. They might think they're living their best version of their life, but if you said to them, hey, you have more potential than you're living into, and I see the potential as XYZ Like hopefully that adds something to your life. They then have the choice to either, like explore that potential. But again, you can't achieve something that you're unaware of. And if you do, it's called an accident and you're probably not going to learn a lot from it, right? Because if you're not prone to reflecting on life, you're not going to learn a lot. We don't learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience. So I love that story. I love that somebody had the courage to go and say what needed to be said for that person's best interest.
 
 

Guy Bloom    43:28 

And when I hear you say that, I also recognise that. But if you're going to make those kind of observations and offer them to people, there's a difference between saying to somebody you're doing my head in, if you don't move on, I'll let you go, which is a completely different thing to hey, as much as I value you here, you're not doing the right thing, you're not in the right place, but they're there is then something about to make those kind of observations and to offer them, you've got to have your own. Stars aligned you, you've gotta be somebody that that message is OK to receive it from. I've got a feel that coming from you that's something I should listen to. So that's that's a key factor I think.
 
 

Jay Bousada    44:08 

I think that comes right full circle back to what we started with and that is trust, right? If, if you are somebody that demonstrates integrity and you know you have trust in that person's eyes, then you can share stuff like that with them and they know that it's coming from a good place for good reason if you walked up to somebody. You don't know and therefore have no trust with. And you said, hey, move along or else. Yes of course it comes across as more threatening, right, more manipulative. And so it's not going to be reflected on or learned from. But I really do think, you know, for the relationships that we that we count on in our life, it there needs to be a core foundation of trust. You need to show up with integrity and vulnerability. And I think it's it's the seed crystal for everything. Good that comes from life if you can actually form relationships rooted in that.
 
 

Guy Bloom    44:58 

One thing I'm interested in, Jay, is the it's it's often the role of the manager to take to reinforce and calibrate and challenge. I love what you're doing. More of it, that's good. But if you just moved left instead of right, that would be even better. And hey you know what the scooby-doo you're doing there. We need to have a chat about that, right. So those are the three things I wonder how much within thrill works. And one of the things I try and encourage is that actually how much? And the team, I was gonna say self police, that is completely the wrong word. But be its own Learning Council to be able to say, listen, I observed this in you at peer level. I'm going to offer you my account. So, so actually it's not up to, it's not the manager having to offer all the observations and all the coaching. Peer group teams are owning their own development. And I wonder how that it sounds as if I think I know where your answer is going to go, but I'd just like to hear your kind of thoughts around that.
 
 

Jay Bousada    45:55 

I think it's fundamental. I think, again, if you're hiring skilled people that have goals and a lot of those goals require development, otherwise they'd already have the goal they're after. They take to the idea of um, of coaching beautifully, meaning our managers and our team leaders are taught. We try to have a cascading approach to this where like I, as the leader of the executive team, will ask, you know, questions that help my team get to the answers. Now they have skills I don't. So it's not just a dirty little trick to ask a question because I have the answer. I'm trying to get you there, but like I oftentimes. Know what the right question is? I just don't have the answer. But that's why you surround yourself with skilled people and that is quite addictive. So it cascades through the organization because we ask our managers to behave this way. This is one of our values, the curiosity and the leadership. So ask questions of your team and once they actually start experiencing that, hey, we're skilled, we know what the goal is and as a community on this project we can actually ask each other these on a regular basis. We don't actually have to wait for the manager. Be here. So it almost becomes a flywheel effect where the team itself will start policing using the values as you know, you know their framework, using the values as the rule set that they make decisions with, but they know what the goal is. So with goals and values and permission to be curious and and vulnerable with one another, people can say, I'm not very good at this, can I do what you're doing? Because I'm really good at that and you do what I'm doing. And we'll get to the goal faster because you know, as I mentioned, like our intention here is instead of pressing harder on the gas pedal, why don't you take your foot off the brake right, once we're sure that we like figured out where we can get rid of the friction in the system. Then we're allowed to really speed up because otherwise you know you're just making the whole system work harder for like mediocre results. And I think a team thrives in this and and has a while and it's addictive. I mean our our customers turned out to be fanatical when they when they get to experience this and this is what I was saying like for the 1st 12 years our customers loved how we showed up for them and yes they were very pleased with the outcome of our work, but it's how we show up not what we do that makes a real difference. And I think that's not just a throw works thing, that's what I would share with any leader. Like be clear on how you're doing things, not just what you're doing, because the delivery is, you know, equally as important.
 
 

Guy Bloom    48:30 

I'm just making a note of something you said there, which is instead of taking, instead of pressing hard on the gas pedal, take your foot off the brake. I think that's, it's the balance of those sometimes, you know, let's just let's just go, right. But then sometimes let's just not let's get out of our own way. Yeah, exactly. That's a great phrase. Look, I'm, I'm super alert to time. And I just want to say, first of all, you've been an absolute joy in terms of a conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed this. So thank you so much, Jay. Any you know, guy, somebody said anything I should read, anything I should pay attention to, any podcasts I should tune into. You know what? What's what's in your buffet of? I would probably suggest you take a look at or read or pay attention to just because it will add value value what would you offer?
 
 

Jay Bousada    49:20 

Well, leadership by its podcast, for sure.
 
 

Guy Bloom    49:24 

Well done, so, well done, yeah.
 
 

Jay Bousada    49:28 

But I I think a lot of the material from Jim Collins, I'm a really, really, really big fan of Patrick Minchiona, uses a very, very different style. He is more narrative style. He tells a lot of fables to get his point across amazing it's it's amazing work. His, his five dysfunctions of a team taught me so much. And then I would say, you know, try to find yourself a peer group that is willing to hold you accountable to your goals and hold the mirror up to show you how you're showing up. So there's a lot of great literature out there. I actually have like a preferred reading list and it's about, you know, 20 books long. And I go back through those books because every time you read them you find something new because you're a little bit smarter than you were the last time you read them. But I think the the, the best way of getting out of your own way is to surround yourself with people that will help you understand exactly how you're getting in your way. And that that only happens in a live relationship. So we don't learn or grow outside of a relationship because. You need that to reflect back to you how you're showing up. So I would say find yourself a trustworthy peer group. And then, you know, find some reliable sources that aren't just opinion based. That's why I like Jim Collins and Patrick Lancioni. They've done a lot of research that backs up some of their publishing.
 
 

Guy Bloom    50:45 

And they're very digestible.
 
 

Jay Bousada    50:47 

As well, agreed.
 
 

Guy Bloom    50:48 

Very easy to read, so I would totally buy into that okay so jam gonna wrap us up. I'm going to get you to stay on for a few moments so everything loads up. So I'll make sure that we don't have to do this again because nobody's gonna wanna do that in the nicest possible way. So for me, from everybody that's listening. Just thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast. Thank you.
 
 

Jay Bousada    51:10 

I'm flattered to have been on the podcast. Thanks very much for having me. It's been like an absolute pleasure.
 
 

Guy Bloom    51:15 

That's it. So I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please share so others get to hear about us and subscribe so you keep up to date on new episodes. Also visit living bbrave.com if you want to connect with me and find out more about executive coaching, team effectiveness and changing culture ohh and of course you can buy my book living Brave leadership on Amazon. So on that note, see you soon.