Fixable
The key to successful promotions
March 25, 2024
[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
Hello listeners, welcome to your week.
[00:00:09] Frances Frei:
Welcome to your week.
[00:00:11] Anne Morriss:
Some of you are going into a workplace with an increasing percentage of Gen Z colleagues and the world is gaining deeper and deeper insight into what our Gen Z colleagues want from work. At the top of the list, we're learning, is clarity around how they are going to develop in that workplace, what career mobility looks like for them, what gaining new skills looks like for them.
And, my sense of it is that organizations are lagging in responding thoughtfully and proactively to this need that is being very clearly articulated.
[00:00:59] Frances Frei:
And, not only clearly articulated, but fairly like requested. I mean, they just got out of college where you, you know what you did at college? You went from a freshman to a sophomore to a junior, to a senior, and you like went through your major and your minor, and a lot of people made different choices, but there was clarity and you understood the implications of all of them.
And, I look back at, we didn't ask for any of this clarity?
[00:01:23] Anne Morriss:
No. No.
[00:01:24] Frances Frei:
And it was, what were we thinking? It's not, what are they thinking? It's what were we thinking?
[00:01:30] Anne Morriss:
Yes. And, what we see happening in some organizations is they're saying, “I hear you, and here are some better snacks for when you get hungry.” And, people are saying, “Thank you.
You know, the snacks are delicious, but the core need that I have articulated is not being met.”
[00:01:50] Frances Frei:
Yeah, I love that they want to be better versions of themselves tomorrow than they are today, and they're looking to partner with organizations to do it. So, the quicker we see this as a feature and not a bug, the better off it will be for everyone.
[00:02:07] Anne Morriss:
Beautiful. Couldn't agree more.
I am Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.
[00:02:16] Frances Frei:
I'm Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School and I'm also Anne's wife.
[00:02:21] Anne Morriss:
And, this is Fixable from the Ted Audio Collective. On this show, we believe that meaningful change happens fast, anything is fixable, and good solutions are usually just a single brave conversation away.
[00:02:34] Frances Frei:
Who do we have today?
[00:02:35] Anne Morriss:
Oh, Frances. We have a very special caller today and he takes us to an unexpected workplace. Let's listen to his voicemail.
[00:02:44] Larry:
Hello Anne and Francis. My name is Larry and I'm a pastor here in Philadelphia. I need help in how to make transitions from volunteers to paid staff, and when is it a good time to proceed with promotions?
If you can help me with that, I'd greatly appreciate it.
[00:03:04] Anne Morriss:
Wow, that's a high quality problem.
[00:03:06] Frances Frei:
I hope we're worthy.
[00:03:07] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. I hope we're worthy and that it's a sign that things are going well that this is the question.
[00:03:14] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:03:15] Anne Morriss:
Well, let's get into it.
[00:03:16] Frances Frei:
I look forward to it.
[00:04:02] Anne Morriss:
Oh, Larry, welcome to Fixable.
[00:04:05] Larry:
Thank you for having me.
[00:04:06] Anne Morriss:
We've been really looking forward to this.
[00:04:08] Larry:
That's great.
[00:04:08] Anne Morriss:
You're the pastor of a church. How did you figure out that this was what you wanted to do with your life?
[00:04:17] Larry:
Yeah, so the short of the very long story is when I met my wife, she invited me, uh, to come to her church and then I started going and the route to becoming a pastor was what I was finding in the Bible, wasn't the same thing that I was hearing from the pulpit. And, so that made me investigate the claims of Christ and the Bible and everything to see if it was really something I wanted to give my life to.
And, when I did that, that took me away from that church, and I remember praying and, um, saying to God, if you want me to stay here, then you're gonna have to change what I'm listening to.
And, I remember I felt like he was telling me, you stay because you know the truth, but there's others that don't know and I'm gonna use you in there to help them to know. And, then I got really upset 'cause that wasn't the answer I was looking for. I was hoping he would tell me I could just leave and go somewhere else.
And, um, at the time I spoke back to him and I, I said I, I've been here now and I, I've tried to make some inroads without being divisive, and that's when he, um, really released me and I felt like I was released to go and start a church.
[00:05:35] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And, your current church is the church that you started, is that right?
[00:05:39] Larry:
That's correct, yes.
[00:05:41] Anne Morriss:
Wow. Let me ask you this. What has surprised you the most? About this experience, the experience of starting your own thing.
[00:05:49] Larry:
Yeah. How hard it is. How hard it is, you know, um, every week you're almost passing judgment of whether or not that was a good sermon. And, then now I'm in that position where every week I'm preparing a sermon and I'm counseling people and, and there's so many other hats.
I mean, only a third of what I do is on Sundays. But, then I think my final thing that really surprised me is that systems and structures of how important they are, I, I, I really didn't know it. I just thought that you, hey, you just do it. And, but I am pleasantly surprised that with the right systems and structures, it helps so much.
[00:06:27] Anne Morriss:
You're talking to an operations professor, not me.
[00:06:29] Frances Frei:
That's me.
[00:06:29] Anne Morriss:
But, this lady…
[00:06:30] Frances Frei:
That's my love language, Larry. My love language is systems and structures.
[00:06:35] Larry:
Well, when I heard you all that one day I was outside in my backyard, just raking leaves and I just, I was like, this is it. This will help so much. So, yeah. I so appreciate what you all do.
[00:06:46] Anne Morriss:
And, how are things going with the church as an organization?
[00:06:50] Larry:
Yeah, it's, it's, I would say it's going well. You know, we, uh, when people ask me, I, I tell 'em what I really feel, and that is, I feel like we're all sitting on the edge of our seats over there. It's called Crossroads and just this past Sunday, five people got baptized and there was no more…
[00:07:05] Anne Morriss:
It's pretty good for a Sunday, an average Sunday. Yeah.
[00:07:09] Larry:
Yeah. You know, and, but we, we baptize people every month. There's always someone, and this week there was no room. Like, I actually invited people to sit up on the pulpit with me. That doesn't usually sit up there because it, I wanted to make room for the guests. So, we're running outta room.
And, um..
[00:07:26] Anne Morriss:
Another good sign: standing room only.
[00:07:28] Larry:
Yeah, that's a good problem to have. So, that's, it's going well.
[00:07:32] Anne Morriss:
That's fantastic. So, let's talk about what brought you on the show today. In, in your voicemail, you said you were thinking about making some promotions, another good sign. So, what's the tension you're feeling around those decisions?
[00:07:45] Larry:
Yeah, so, um, the tension is, you know, I, I guess I never want to give titles out. I don't, I don't want it to be a, a title driven thing, and I'm, I'm somewhat afraid that when I give certain titles out, I trust these people a whole lot, but I, I, I don't know what steps to give them first. I don't wanna be chasing behind them to, to do what I just promoted them to do.
[00:08:14] Anne Morriss:
Are you hesitating around the individual decision? Are you hesitating about the whole class of promotion here?
[00:08:22] Larry:
The individuals.
[00:08:24] Anne Morriss:
Okay, so you're not feeling tension about the structure and we're talking about the people you're actually gonna give more responsibility to.
[00:08:31] Larry:
Yes. Yes.
[00:08:33] Anne Morriss:
How many people?
[00:08:34] Larry:
Um, five.
[00:08:36] Anne Morriss:
Okay. So, there's five decisions you have to make.
[00:08:38] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:08:40] Anne Morriss:
Right?
[00:08:40] Larry:
Yes.
[00:08:41] Anne Morriss:
Um, and then, now tell me again what your hesitation is.
[00:08:46] Larry:
Yeah. My hesitation is, am I moving too fast?
[00:08:52] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:08:53] Larry:
Or, as I was listening to you all before, or am I moving too slow? Right.
[00:09:01] Frances Frei:
Come to the right place.
[00:09:02] Larry:
Right. You're right, exactly.
[00:09:04] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:09:05] Larry:
But, really it leans more towards, and, and, and this could have a lot to do with my background, but, um, but am I moving too fast? Yeah.
[00:09:14] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Great. So, how will these promotions help the church or help the congregation or help the mission of what you're doing.
[00:09:24] Larry:
So, we say a win is when we have more disciples and more disciple makers. And, so I think right now we have, we need more disciple makers. So, what we get back in return is that, um, people are then released to do what we've been doing, to really serve and using their gifts. And, I think by that not happening, it's stifling others' growth as well.
[00:09:49] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And, so is it too simplistic to think about it as you get to be of service to more people, you get to reach more people, you get to grow faster or become a bigger church?
[00:10:03] Larry:
Yeah. You just broke it down. That's exactly right.
[00:10:06] Anne Morriss:
That's directionally the right list.
[00:10:07] Larry:
Yes, ma'am.
[00:10:09] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. All right. That seems like a real payoff.
[00:10:12] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:10:13] Anne Morriss:
What's the downside of not doing this?
[00:10:15] Larry:
Yeah, just the opposite, right? So, we become a-almost a mom-and-pop shop and um.
[00:10:20] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:10:21] Larry:
And everyone else just follows and we can't reach as many people and I'm really concerned about people not living out their God-given purposes as well.
I think they have something to add and not just come in receive.
[00:10:34] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, that's a pretty powerful list too.
[00:10:36] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:10:37] Anne Morriss:
Alright, can, let's go deep on one. On this list of five, who is like the standout performer? Let's call this person Larry Junior. What's the role you're thinking of giving Larry Junior because Larry Junior's got potential
?
[00:10:52] Larry:
Yes, he does. Um, yeah, the role that, uh, we are looking to, uh, give him is eldership. That is overseeing.
[00:11:00] Anne Morriss:
Like, administratively? Like, the operations of the church.
[00:11:03] Larry:
The operations of the church, correct. Yes.
[00:11:06] Anne Morriss:
Okay. So, that sounds like an important job. Larry Junior probably has some aptitude for that stuff, which is why he is the top of the list for promotion.
Why haven't you given Larry Junior this job yet?
[00:11:20] Larry:
There's just things that I saw or see that, um, once given some assignments and then finding out that those assignments weren't done and having to follow up too often, um, certainly not all the time, but too often for me, that would probably be the one.
[00:11:38] Anne Morriss:
Okay.
All right. So, Larry Junior needs some hands-on management, which has given you pause.
[00:11:44] Larry:
Yes.
[00:11:45] Anne Morriss:
Okay. That's a helpful example. Frances, do you have any other diagnostic questions?
[00:11:50] Frances Frei:
No, I, may I summarize
where…
[00:11:52] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, please.
[00:11:52] Frances Frei:
Where we are, which is that you have a high-quality problem, which is that your attempts at building a church have been successful and it has outpaced the ability of you as the sole entrepreneur of this, and so it makes sense that you need partners.
What I like about what I'm hearing from you is you're, you're gonna take radical responsibility for their success, which is exactly what we recommend. And, to take radical responsibility for someone else's success, you have to give them a pace at which they can absorb. So, you don't wanna give them too much too soon, but you also don't wanna give them too little, too late, right?
So, it's finding that that delicate balance of how can I increase what you're doing at a pace that I can develop you along the way. And I, I like Anne, I'm very optimistic that we're going to get there. In the corporate world, this would be called career pathing.
[00:12:53] Larry:
Okay.
[00:12:53] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And I, I wanna say two things before I get into it is one, this whole category of career pathing, it's sometimes called internal mobility, this is a really big question for the most sophisticated private sector organizations in the world right now. So, you are in, you are in very good company and that this is a question that is on the minds, I think, of almost every…
[00:13:21] Frances Frei:
Every organization.
[00:13:22] Anne Morriss:
Every leader that we work with right now. They're trying to figure out what you're trying to figure out in a different context, in a different scale. But, really similar questions.
And, I just wanna say before we go on that what you've done is really difficult. So, you've taken this idea for an organization from this amorphous…
[00:13:43] Frances Frei:
From discontent, let us call it what it is. You've taken this idea from its origins of discontent.
[00:13:49] Anne Morriss:
Yes. This is one of our favorite current emotions, um, in, into something with momentum, with realness, with heart, and you are leading it in a really exciting standing room only direction. And, it can be really easy at this point in the entrepreneurial cycle to focus exclusively on what has to be done, and I just wanna, wanna pause and honor you for what you have accomplished so far, which is pretty special.
[00:14:20] Larry:
Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
[00:14:23] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. I think the opportunity at this phase of growth is that you can bring some partners onto this leadership team with you so that that burden is shared.
[00:14:36] Larry:
Yes. Yeah.
[00:14:38] Anne Morriss:
How does that sound?
[00:14:38] Larry:
That sounds great. That that sounds exactly what it is. And, I never did want to be the, the only guy, the only person.
I just feel like ministry is a shared thing and, uh…
[00:14:48] Anne Morriss:
Yes.
[00:14:49] Larry:
So, I, you know, I don't get any joy of they come to me.
[00:14:54] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Let's fix that.
[00:14:55] Larry:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:14:56] Anne Morriss:
Let's fix that. All right, Frances, kick us off. What's the door you wanna knock on first?
[00:15:01] Frances Frei:
So, the way to think about these roles is what would go wrong if we gave too much responsibility too quickly.
So, that's the first part. So, just characterize what bad looks like if this doesn't work out well.
[00:15:20] Larry:
Yeah, so the, what bad would look like is that I would still be wearing so many hats. So, I would eventually get burnt out and frustrated. And I, I would think that the men that are coming in by the droves, that those men would only have me to look to and to aspire to, so to speak.
And, then you also have the daily things that wouldn't, wouldn't happen, like, you know, like this Sunday when we did baptism really quick is that I, you know, I'm talking to 'em while they're sitting in the pool just before we about to baptize them, and they're all saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” to everything I was saying. I was wondering why they answering so quick. Come to find out because the water was cold. You know?
[00:16:06] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. That's gonna move things along.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:08] Larry:
Yeah. Let's get this thing over with, you know, and, and, and so those kinds of things, but you, you just. You know?
[00:16:14] Frances Frei:
But, it's a small details that matter.
[00:16:16] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:16:17] Frances Frei:
And, you have to, and the person who's in this role has to cherish the details.
[00:16:20] Larry:
Yeah. Yes.
[00:16:22] Frances Frei:
Um, and it sounds like you're not sure that the person you have is detail oriented enough. Is that a fair statement?
[00:16:30] Larry:
That is a fair statement.
[00:16:32] Frances Frei:
And, so you, the decision you have to make is, do you think you can pull out of them some hidden detail orientation, or do you have to search for another detail-oriented person?
What does your instincts tell you?
[00:16:49] Larry:
My instincts tells me that I can pull it out of him, if he didn't have so much, many things to do himself. So, because he's all over and that's my fault. I look myself in the mirror of that. But, he has so many things in that I think he's overlooking some important things.
So, maybe I haven't prioritized the things that I've given to him. And, and I'll say this with fairness yet, is that we went from 15 to 20 and this year alone we're, we're like 75. So, it was rapid growth before he was able to handle some things because we were so much smaller.
[00:17:29] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead Anne.
[00:17:30] Anne Morriss:
Okay, so let's, I think we're in, we're down the path of this might be our guy and how do we manage him in a way that sets him up for success?
[00:17:40] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:17:41] Anne Morriss:
And, is it fair to say there aren't any other candidates right now for this role?
[00:17:46] Larry:
Yes. That's fair to say.
[00:17:47] Anne Morriss:
There's one guy, it's kind of yes or no. Okay, so let's go down the path of, yes. There's a category of simplifying his job. Then there's the whole other list of how to set him up for success. There's a category where maybe he has an assistant or a deputy who helps him with the work, who's also in training as a future elder.
There's like the meeting schedule that you all have and your commitment to help him prioritize every week. Here are the most important things I need you to get right this week. Here's the three things I wanna think about. You know, there's, and then there's 15 other things on that list, list in the category of managing him.
But, it starts with the commitment that there is a scenario where this person is successful and I have a shared responsibility, indeed, even perhaps a radical responsibility to make sure this person is successful. And, I've got everything at my disposal because I'm the head of this organization.
[00:18:52] Larry:
Yes.
[00:18:52] Anne Morriss:
So, let's imagine you're in that world.
[00:18:56] Larry:
Okay.
[00:18:57] Anne Morriss:
Of it's you were just like trying this on.
You're giving him the job. And, now I say to you, “Larry, you have to now do whatever it takes to set him up for success.” So, where does your beautiful mind go on what it's gonna take for this human being to be successful?
[00:19:13] Larry:
Yeah. My mind goes to, to thinking less is more.
[00:19:22] Anne Morriss:
Yep.
[00:19:23] Larry:
So, um, I think you alluded to it, thinking of what are the, the top three, the big three, so to speak. And, and finding those 15 other things and giving them to someone else.
[00:19:35] Anne Morriss:
Yes.
[00:19:35] Frances Frei:
Yes.
[00:19:36] Larry:
Spread them around. Yeah.
[00:19:38] Frances Frei:
Yeah. What's beautiful about that, Larry, is that Anne presented you with three alternatives. Job design, that is like scope of responsibility. Additional resources, they might have an assistant. Or, your guidance of them, your personal guidance of them.
And, your heart and, and your instinct immediately went to job design, which is in common with the most effective in general, which is you essentially ask the question, what might I take off your plate to increase the likelihood of your being successful and you're doing that before you give them the job, which is so smart.
People thrive in the presence of constraints and we wanna give them things at a pace that they can absorb. So, starting it by not giving you all of the day-to-day responsibilities for the church. It sounds like that would actually be too much.
[00:20:27] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:20:28] Frances Frei:
So, how can we phase giving you the responsibilities of the church, not time bound, but, competence bound by being able to do it as a general part of your operations here. So, I love that instinct of you're now gonna have, uh, the eldership isn't gonna be the person who's responsible for the daily operation of everything.
[00:20:51] Larry:
Right. Yeah.
[00:20:53] Frances Frei:
And, now you're gonna curate it for what's a reasonable bite-sized piece that will be both noble enough for them to do and that they can get good at that and then if you, perhaps, they graduate to more and then they graduate to more. But, let's start by giving them something that we can reasonably set them up for success with.
[00:21:16] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:21:16] Frances Frei:
So, as a result of our conversation today, what is off their list?
[00:21:20] Larry:
Yeah. So, um, he doesn't have to do the offering.
[00:21:26] Frances Frei:
Done.
[00:21:27] Larry:
Which is the financial part. Right? Um, he doesn't have to serve the communion.
[00:21:31] Anne Morriss:
Off the list.
[00:21:32] Larry:
Yeah. The one thing that I man would just blow my mind if, if he was on top of, are the men that's coming in.
[00:21:41] Frances Frei:
Okay. Okay.
[00:21:42] Anne Morriss:
What, what if that's his only job right now?
[00:21:43] Frances Frei:
What if that's his only job?
[00:21:45] Larry:
Yeah. Right. Exactly, right. Yes. Sure. Someone else can open the gate, open the doors.
[00:21:51] Frances Frei:
Yes.
[00:21:51] Larry:
Close.
[00:21:52] Frances Frei:
Yes.
[00:21:52] Larry:
Um…
[00:21:53] Frances Frei:
Yes. Yeah. Get the temperature of the water at the baptism, not on each list anymore.
[00:21:57] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. I think that's a job for the L&D team, but yeah, that's another conversation.
[00:22:02] Frances Frei:
Yeah, I, so if you wanted to blow it out of the water for men, then use that as the filter and have it a very fine filter. These are the things that matter for the men.
[00:22:16] Anne Morriss:
But, here's, this is the beautiful thing about running your own church, Larry, and your own operation, you can make these words mean anything you want.
[00:22:23] Frances Frei:
Anything you want.
[00:22:24] Anne Morriss:
In your church, this may be what the elder does.
[00:22:27] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:22:27] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:22:28] Anne Morriss:
What the elder does is the men ministry for now 'cause it's the most important engine for growth in this organization right now.
[00:22:36] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:22:37] Anne Morriss:
And, five years from now, that might be a different job. And, when you find someone else's the job, the role might change.
[00:22:41] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Anne is famous for, she has a loose affiliation with title. She changes them to whatever is needed at the moment.
[00:22:47] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And let me create some more tension here. I, I think this was a beautiful example of how we set this individual up for success.
Larry, I think you should promote all of these people. I think that the risk of the status quo, which is that this, the momentum, the beautiful momentum that you have built stagnates, is higher than the risk that somebody will go into this role and not perform the way you want them to perform.
Because here's the safety net. You take them out of the role. That's it. You take them outta the role.
Yeah. So, the game plan is everybody gets promoted. You figure out the right scope. You, you co-produce it with them. So, you have this conversation directly. This is not just Larry's burden. You say, “I'm giving you this job, I want you to succeed. Tell me what you need to hit it outta the park.”
And, then you see what happens, and then you respond to whatever happens next. Because there's never a scenario where we give someone a new role with a hundred percent conviction in what's gonna happen next.
[00:24:00] Larry:
That's true.
[00:24:01] Anne Morriss:
You're never gonna have that. And, so if that's the bar to giving them the job, then you're never gonna give anyone a job.
[00:24:08] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:24:09] Anne Morriss:
Part of what you're doing, and this is what I loved about team building, is creating a context where people can realize the potential that they're not able to realize in the current role they're playing.
[00:24:21] Larry:
Hmm. Yeah.
[00:24:23] Anne Morriss:
Right, so it's worth this risk for the potential upside to the organization being able to advance the mission.
That beautiful list. Being able to share the leadership of this org and your safety net, if it doesn't work out, is filled with lots of options. You take them out of the role, you change the job responsibility. You work with them to come up with a better role, you move them somewhere else in the organization, but you are loosen in this game and running experiments on how to grow your church.
You don't know the right answer. It's impossible. Nobody knows the right answer.
[00:24:57] Frances Frei:
It's, it's unknowable.
[00:24:59] Anne Morriss:
So, your job is not to try to figure out the right answer now from where you're sitting, it's to be in motion and then learn from whatever happens next.
[00:25:08] Larry:
You just gave me some freedom there. Um, I never thought of it that way.
I, I just always thought, man, I would hate to put someone there only to have to remove them.
But, you know, as you were speaking about, not, it's not just that's not the only option. There's relocating, there's redoing the whole job thing. So, there's options and, and I, I did, I think I was stuck on e-either it is or it won't be.
[00:25:36] Anne Morriss:
And here's, yeah, that's, that's the framework I wanna, I wanna blow up for you.
[00:25:39] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:25:41] Frances Frei:
And, and to Anne’s point, even those of us that come up with beautiful designs of where everyone should go.
[00:25:46] Larry:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:25:47] Frances Frei:
The likelihood that that will be 100% right is zero.
[00:25:50] Larry:
Right?
[00:25:51] Frances Frei:
It's, it's never right. And, so what the current best practice thinking is, let's experiment.
So, you're doing this as an experiment. What I like very much about Anne’s provocative idea of promoting all five is it's a cohort.
[00:26:07] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:26:08] Frances Frei:
So, there's five people that are elevated at once. They're their own community. They have each other to rely on. Beautiful things happen in teams that can't happen in isolation.
So, that has a, that has a beautiful aspect of it. And, I think what you begin with is, this is what I, needs to be done. Which parts of this do you wanna begin with?
[00:26:33] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, and then you're not standing at the front of the room like the guy with all the answers. You're saying, okay, like good news everyone. This organization has outgrown its current structure, so we gotta add some structure and I wanna add that structure with you.
So, here's my idea for how we start. Help me make this plan better, and then let's go and learn and adjust as we go. Now, my suspicion is one of these five will step forward and be really good at systems and structure.
[00:27:04] Frances Frei:
Yes.
[00:27:04] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:27:05] Anne Morriss:
But, you don't know which five, which of the five it's gonna be yet.
[00:27:06] Frances Frei:
Nope.
[00:27:09] Anne Morriss:
Right?
Yeah. And so..
[00:27:10] Frances Frei:
So, learning by doing observation.
Yeah.
[00:27:11] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And, so one of them will emerge, I think, as a candidate to be that COO role that you're envisioning and then eventually that person's responsibility is gonna, gonna come up with kind of where we started, what's, what's a mobility pathway through this organization?
And, you're gonna, like, lock it down and you're gonna describe it. And, this is what a deaconess does, and this is what an elder does, but you're not there yet.
[00:27:33] Larry:
Yeah.
[00:27:34] Anne Morriss:
Because you're still defining all of these roles. What those words are gonna mean today are very different from what they're gonna mean in a year anyway. So, I would take that off your list of feeling like you have to lock this down right now.
[00:27:47] Larry:
Okay.
[00:27:48] Anne Morriss:
How are you feeling, Larry, being a part of this conversation? What are you feeling right now?
[00:27:50] Larry:
Well, I’m so grateful. Um, I, I can't tell you thank you enough. I, I, um, I just didn't think of it on those angles and I know that there's, even after this meeting, there's still some praying I gotta do and some digging I have to do, and, but I, I feel like I have different angles now. I, I, I only saw it one way and now we have different paths and I didn't think of it that way. Yeah. So, I'm feeling relieved.
[00:28:16] Anne Morriss:
And, that was my measure of success for this conversation.
What I think is astonishing to me about this conversation is how many people we, how many leaders we know that are thinking about these issues in a very different context.
[00:29:23] Frances Frei:
So many different sizes, or some with thousands of employees, some with very few employees.
[00:29:30] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, and I think part of it is that this new generation coming into the workforce really has made it clear that this issue of advancement and internal mobility is im-, is important to them and the, the organizations who are thinking about it, I think, are seeing real returns in terms of retention, performance. And, so, first of all, it was a delight to be in conversation with him. Um, and there's something here that's really, that's really important for anyone building any organization right now.
[00:30:04] Frances Frei:
You know, the going from 10 people to 75 people, um, that rate, we would call it hypergrowth.
[00:30:11] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:30:12] Frances Frei:
It's just hypergrowth at a very…
[00:30:13] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:30:14] Frances Frei:
Small in a, in a smaller organization, in an unusual, but it's hypergrowth. And, I can feel the ambition is to create the systems and structure the operations to go to whatever the natural conclusion of that is.
So, I regularly am with organizations where somebody's doing a good job, they give him increased responsibility, usually orthogonal, they don't do a good job there. And, then they fire them. Right? And, that is the wrong way to do it.
[00:30:46] Anne Morriss:
So, put language to the right way.
[00:30:49] Frances Frei:
The right way is what we were just talking about with Larry, which is instead of these predefined roles, if you have the luxury to do it the right way, is to give you increased responsibility at a rate, at a pace that you can absorb, so that we can learn. Instead of taking the whole bite of all of these new things, let's give you some of it and, and a little bit more mentorship and guidance.
[00:31:13] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:31:14] Frances Frei:
Along the way so that we can get early warning signs as opposed to this spectacular flame out.
[00:31:21] Anne Morriss:
Right.
[00:31:24] Frances Frei:
Thanks for listening, everyone. If you wanna figure out your workplace problem together, be like Larry. Listen to us, and then call in. It's that simple.
Email fixable@ted.com. Call us 234-fixable. That's 2343492253. We're so grateful to everyone who has written, called, texted, sent in voice memos any way you want to. We're multimodal. We couldn't make the show without you. Our team looks at every submission. The ones that don't turn into full episodes, we're still gonna engage with you, and they help us uncover the issues that are most pressing in the workforce today. So, thank you so much for being a part of the show and of our conversations.
[00:32:17] Anne Morriss:
Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss.
[00:32:23] Frances Frei:
And, me Frances Frei.
[00:32:25] Anne Morriss:
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, and Roxanne High-Lash.
This episode was mixed by Louis at Story Yard.
[00:32:40] Frances Frei:
If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out.
[00:32:47] Anne Morriss:
And, one more thing, if you can please take a second to leave us a review, it really helps us make a great show.