Empowering Decision-Making in Leadership with Chris Seifert of Enabling Empowerment
TLC 10.23.24 Chris Seifert - SD 480p
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Layci Nelson: [00:01:00] Hello friends and welcome back to confessions of a terrible leader I'm your host and former absolutely terrible leader Layci nelson
Layci Nelson: Chris Seifert is joining us today. Welcome Chris
Layci Nelson: Thank you.
Layci Nelson: Great to be here.
Layci Nelson: You're the founder of enabling empowerment You are a manufacturing executive advisor as well as an author. Did I nail it?
Layci Nelson: You did.
Layci Nelson: Okay. So
Layci Nelson: I'm a member of women in manufacturing, the group, we are manufacturing adjacent work with a lot of manufacturing organizations here in our area, as well as beyond. So I am so excited to have this conversation with you today and just talk shop while people listen in.
Layci Nelson: But first, tell me a little bit about what led you to, I'm assuming you didn't start here. How did you get to that right now?
Chris Seifert: Yeah,
Chris Seifert: absolutely. Yeah, I have, , over 25 years combined, , leadership and consulting experience. About a [00:02:00] third of that was On active duty in the Navy in the submarine force.
Chris Seifert: So I spent my first eight years of my career doing that. Got out of the Navy, transitioned into manufacturing operations. Was a plant manager for a couple of different Georgia Pacific plants. I know it's Corning plant. Then a detour into. Consulting where I was a partner in a consulting firm for about six years.
Chris Seifert: And then my last operational role, I was vice president of operations for a biomass fuel manufacturer. And during that time, , we grew that business. When I joined, it was about 350 people, about 400 million revenue for plants. And then the six years I was there, we grew it to 1. 3 billion, 14 facilities and about 1500 people.
Chris Seifert: So
Chris Seifert: ton of growth. I left that role
Chris Seifert: Having found over the course of my career a very specific problem There are really two but one that I thought was not being solved very well those are that first every team i've led [00:03:00] Over my career. I have found Struggles with two things one root cause analysis and two decision making And in both cases, I think You know, the human brain isn't really very good at either one.
Chris Seifert: We tend to be very good at correlation, not causation, right? And we tend to be very impulsive as humans in our decision making, right? And neither of which is very good in a manufacturing environment, right?
Layci Nelson: All things you have said are true. Yes.
Chris Seifert: And I had found that there are quite a few vendors that I actually think do help with the root cause analysis there's been ones i've migrated to over the years that have used but there was never anybody that was helping with the decision making And over the years I had developed a training for my team on how to make decisions.
Layci Nelson: Yeah
Chris Seifert: And I felt , this is an area that I can step in, right? Nobody else seems to be solving this problem well. And how can I help out with that? And so started enabling empowerment, the company, I wrote a book by the same name, [00:04:00] enabling empowerment. And really the gist is exactly what it sounds like.
Chris Seifert: It's about the intent is to enable leaders to empower their teams, to make decisions.
Layci Nelson: Question. ? Why did you need to write a book? What specifically is getting in the way of decision making?
Layci Nelson: What are the main blocks or the root causes where do people get stuck? Why is it so hard?
Chris Seifert: So the two things the decision making and the micromanagement are interrelated, right? So first off, let's start with the premise that most people are not good at making decisions in complex and uncertain environments, right?
Layci Nelson: Correct.
Chris Seifert: Our thinking processes are not adapted for that, right? And so I spend a lot of time in my book talking about cognitive biases and the things that cause us to make bad decisions. But the problem is that , when we are elevating people into leadership roles. One of the things we're asking them to do is make more decisions, right?
Chris Seifert: Be accountable for more decisions.
Chris Seifert: My experience has been the vast majority of organizations are not investing in the leadership skills of those people. Because [00:05:00] decision making is a skill, right? You can get better at it by training and by practicing. And so it only makes sense if we're going to start elevating people into roles of leadership, we should be developing that skill in them, right?
Chris Seifert: Oh,
Layci Nelson: yeah, 100%.
Chris Seifert: But then when we don't do that, what ends up happening is the leader above them ends up having to continue to make the decisions for them, right? Or step in and micromanage, right? Yep. If you go on LinkedIn and you just go out in the social media universe,
Chris Seifert: the trope is that most micromanagers are micromanagers because they're narcissists They think they're better than everybody. They're smarter than everybody They're control free bottom line is they have some personality defect,
Layci Nelson: right? There's a lot of that out there Yes, that's
Chris Seifert: what the conventional wisdom is, My experience is that most leaders who are micromanaging are doing it because I had to
Layci Nelson: They
Chris Seifert: don't want to do it who wants to do that who wants to be like, you know I mean my first few manufacturing plants when I took them over from a micromanager I mean [00:06:00] my wife literally asked me to sleep on the couch, right?
Chris Seifert: Because she said if the phone is gonna ring all night, right? I don't
Layci Nelson: want to hear it I can't
Chris Seifert: sleep right? Yep, because they could not make a decision without calling me and asking me You know running it by me,
Layci Nelson: And they had been trained to do that, whether or not
Chris Seifert: a hundred percent, they weren't even thinking about it.
Chris Seifert: It was just, Oh, this happened. I got a call. The plant manager. Yeah.
Chris Seifert: And what I've come to realize was that if you want to reverse that pattern if you've fallen into that pattern, the only way out of that is to upskill The decision making capabilities of the team. The problem is, how do we tell the leaders to do that?
Chris Seifert: You need to start coaching people, right? You need to coach them on how to make better decisions. But if I'm already having to make all the decisions, how am I going to have time to coach people? I don't have time for this, right? I'm just stuck in this trap. I also
Layci Nelson: will say teaching what's happening in your brain to another person is not easy.
Chris Seifert: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So that is where. [00:07:00] Where I developed the decision making framework that I teach people, right? Excellent, and it quite literally came from like that first plant I was at this shift leader came up to me and said hey the plywood press when the openings broke What do you want me to do?
Chris Seifert: And i'm like i'd like you to make a recommendation. That's let's start with that Let's start with you not asking me what to do and it was an hour long conversation and it was great But I was like, holy crap. I can't do this with 500 people. It's not gonna work, right? You So what I did was started bringing people in and said, Hey, when we make a decision, this is how we should do it.
Chris Seifert: First step is frame the problem. , second step, identify alternative solutions. Third step, understand the key drivers, right? And I taught them that. And the two things it did was one, it allowed me to upskill a bunch of people at one time, right? So that instead of coaching them for an hour now, I only needed to coach them for 20 minutes.
Chris Seifert: But the other thing to your point, Lacey, is now that we're all using the same decision making framework, it's much easier for me to coach [00:08:00] because I can go straight to, Hey, I think step three is why this recommendation you're making to me is not making sense, right? Absolutely. Or I don't think you frame that problem correctly, or I don't think you brainstormed the alternatives well, right?
Chris Seifert: Go brainstorm some more alternatives. And so by having a framework and a common language to pinpoint why is this person's recommendation so crazy I can be much more efficient in coaching and training them, right?
Layci Nelson: Absolutely and Also, I would add they're going to be more efficient with each other before they even come to you
Chris Seifert: Yeah, 100 percent.
Layci Nelson: Did you see that happening with that fruit of oh, they've already worked it out And haven't even talked to me
Chris Seifert: Yeah, absolutely. That's the power of any time you're using a common framework, right? The learning between people is just amplified, right? The velocity of learning because you're all using the same language, right?
Chris Seifert: You know what step three is in step four is in your process, then it's easier for you to share knowledge.
Layci Nelson: Yes. The power of a shared [00:09:00] lexicon. And eventually like you had cited, , your teams develop, you develop a shorthand. That takes hours out of your day in the best way. It gives you hours back I should say it takes hours out of what you were doing, you know with having to really break it down To just yeah, go back rerun step three.
Layci Nelson: Tell me what you come up with
Chris Seifert: Yeah, and Just teaching them the common decision making framework then they knew Look, it's okay. If you need help, I mean call me. I want you to call me I just want you to feel like you have to call me, right?
Layci Nelson: Right
Chris Seifert: But when you do call me, I want you to use the framework to communicate your recommendation to me
Layci Nelson: exactly
Chris Seifert: That way, when I get through it, I can be like, look, you're great at you thought through this clearly, you don't need my help go.
Chris Seifert: And and then, and slowly over time I was in, I, the term I like to cause decision rights, to give people the rights to make decisions. And my experience has been that most organizations , assign decision rights based on roles. So everybody with the same role will have the same level of decision rights,
Layci Nelson: right?
Chris Seifert: If you think about it, what does that mean? [00:10:00] That means i'm probably giving some plant manager authority to make a decision that he probably shouldn't have there's another one that probably should have more authority that i'm not giving it to right? That's the only thing I know I probably not right.
Chris Seifert: So what I should be doing no
Layci Nelson: label at all Who has massive expertise in an area?
Chris Seifert: Yes. Yes So another thing I did with the group was say what are the common things we're making decisions about right? So one you're asking me to spend money Two you're asking me to take a machine down or start up a different machine or reconfigure the way we're running the plant
Layci Nelson: yeah
Chris Seifert: what we need to do is start saying hey based on your past decisions You're going to get assigned a level of decision rights within that space, right?
Layci Nelson: And
Chris Seifert: then as you come to me with your recommendations and make better and better decision rights, you're going to earn more and more decision rights, right?
Chris Seifert: So maybe you're maybe permission to spend money goes from 1, 000 to 10, 000, right? Or you can make changes to the operation as long as it doesn't impact more [00:11:00] than two hours of production or whatever. And then people can begin to earn those and feel like, Hey, I have more.
Chris Seifert: Autonomy here. And now I do my work.
Layci Nelson: Yes, I love it. And it creates empowerment and back to the title of your book. So one of the things I would love to know, it can be a big challenge to convince anyone in manufacturing to slow down enough to front load the skills.
Chris Seifert: Yeah,
Layci Nelson: you have to go slow to go fast, right?
Layci Nelson: You're going to have a cost up front whether it's in Production output something's going to slow down in order to impart these skills and then take the time in the space to actually start Practicing them. What do you tell the manufacturer who clearly needs this help the plant manager the ops director?
Layci Nelson: They need these skills, but they're really struggling with The ah, but do I shut down a line for this or I don't know how to make this work how do you have that conversation if they're listening now? What do you want to tell them?
Chris Seifert: I would tell you first off that Most organizations already [00:12:00] have some leadership development training program, right?
Layci Nelson: I
Chris Seifert: mean if you're of any size and consequence, right you get more than one facility You got some kind of common leadership training, My question would be where is decision making in that? And if it's not at the top, at the very least, you need to find something to take out and put it in because at the end of the day the performance of your organization is a function of the quality of the decisions your team makes and your ability to execute those decisions, That's it. And so you better make good decisions and you better be better at making decisions than your competitors are. Yes, and if you have not made that a deliberate hey I'm going to be better at making decisions than my competitors are Then you're leaving it to chance, right?
Chris Seifert: And so I would say you already have some type of leadership training, right? What's in it? And if decision making isn't that's the first place I would start is asking why not? I mean look I get we need to talk to our new leaders about how to better communicate with people how to give them performance feedback how to do that kind of stuff But we're [00:13:00] spending tons of time on soft skills And we're not spending time on the thing that we just promoted the person into
Layci Nelson: And
Chris Seifert: That seems like we're not allocating our resources,
Layci Nelson: So in your mind, quick question, what differentiates a soft skill from a hard skill?
Chris Seifert: , that's a great question. I don't know. I'm not certainly not the expert on that. But I guess I just would say, we spend a lot of time on the relationship stuff, which is important, right? We are when we are promoting people into roles, then yes, they're how their relationships with their peers are going to be is different,
Layci Nelson: right?
Chris Seifert: I just think we're neglecting the this tool portion of their job, which is make decisions, right?
Layci Nelson: I mean
Chris Seifert: i'm now a supervisor i've got to decide, hey, I don't have enough people What choices do I make about what I do? These are the things that i'm going to be confronted with on a daily basis And if my only solution is pick up the phone and call my boss
Layci Nelson: you need a new solution.
Chris Seifert: Why did we promote you?
Layci Nelson: When you're going in and working with an organization and they're implementing this skill Where do you see it tend to fly off the rails they're starting to go back to old [00:14:00] habits Is there a common point that you see that and they have to?
Layci Nelson: Really get intentional and dial in
Chris Seifert: I
Chris Seifert: like to do A graphic analogy that I use with Teams where I say any kind of culture change, right? My question to you is, are you committed like the pig is committed to breakfast or the chicken is committed to breakfast? Okay. And what I mean by that is the chicken makes a donation to breakfast, right?
Chris Seifert: But the pigs all in, it's not coming back. There's no more, it went to breakfast. It's not, it's done. So what does that look like for leaders and when they're trying to change the culture, right? Leaders who are willing to, come to the training, put some time on their calendar, dedicate a meeting, send out an email.
Chris Seifert: Congratulations. You're the chicken, right? That's great. Those things are all important. You've made a donation, but to really change, you're going to have to change the way you behave. And so what that means is if you're going to teach these people how to use a decision making framework, you've got to use it to [00:15:00] give them feedback.
Layci Nelson: Yes,
Chris Seifert: you can't just nope, that's a dumb idea. We're not doing that. You're going to have to . Upskill the people to make decisions. They just start asking them to make more decisions. Recommendations are horrible The leader steps in is like this is stupid I can't like it goes right back to the way they were and things are worse off than they ever were before and that's the main thing when I work with people before we start focusing on changing the culture We upskill the team, right? Like we say, Hey, we need to change from this culture of call it codependent leadership, where we're dependent on the leader to make decisions.
Chris Seifert: We want to change that. That's great. But before we start telling you to make more decisions, we need to give you the training.
Layci Nelson: Then
Chris Seifert: once we've done the training, then we can tell you now we want to start changing the way we act.
Layci Nelson: Great. Yes. Buy in from the top and modeling the behavior.
Layci Nelson: Anything that we teach, anything that we do going into an organization, if they're not on board, it will fall apart. And by onboard, I love the analogy. They can't be chickens. They gotta be, [00:16:00] they gotta be pigs. They gotta be all in.
Chris Seifert: That's right.
Layci Nelson: So if you're ready, I will shift gears and invite you into the confessional for story you have to share with us today.
Layci Nelson: The dues you've paid, the mistakes you've made that hopefully can help someone listening, get the lesson without the scar tissue. sure.
Layci Nelson: This is another story that I talked about in the book that really, changed the way I, approach running, managing a team, leading a team in general, , When I was getting out of the Navy man, I would at the time, and I don't know if it was just where business culture was in general, but man, I was the most KPI driven results driven person.
Chris Seifert: On the planet. , by the way, I'm getting out of the Navy and I'm also getting my MBA and I read at the same time, Jack Welch's straight from the gut. And larry bossady's art of execution which are all about results, right? And that's all it is It's about results and look i'm being maybe a little bit facetious, but about beating people over the heads with results
Layci Nelson: Jack walsh is like A mixed review in [00:17:00] general for his style.
Layci Nelson: And yeah, absolutely. You came out of the gate hot i'm guessing.
Chris Seifert: Yeah, so we were I mean we were kpi and like That was the first thing I did like we turned everything. I mean we had daily kpi meetings weekly kpi I mean it was just one kpi after another right?
Layci Nelson: And
Chris Seifert: I joke now in hindsight that when it comes to the the continuous improvement cycle plan do check act I was just check like we're just gonna check all the time, right?
Layci Nelson: Yeah,
Chris Seifert: we're not planning and doing we're just checking You I think, it took a lot with that first team for me to realize , that there's a lot more to it. Results are important, but at the end of the day, it's about the processes and the systems and the culture that I create as a leader, and that I can get great results short term with the wrong systems and culture,
Layci Nelson: but
Chris Seifert: I won't longterm, and so that's been an important lesson for me Not just in my where I was running plants, but as an executive, right? Yeah, it taught me I would go into a plant and I learned to sniff out Hey, we're getting good [00:18:00] results, but the wrong way right here, right?
Chris Seifert: This isn't sustainable we're getting it because we're beating people over the head and
Layci Nelson: Right.
Chris Seifert: It's you know working now, but it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work
Layci Nelson: forever
Chris Seifert: yeah, so i'd say that's the biggest lesson For my career,
Layci Nelson: don't be satisfied with the quick win up front. If it's not an alignment with culture systems processes,
Chris Seifert: , we did a study. So when I was with the consulting company, we were doing a lot of benchmarking on what makes the nuclear Navy's culture so safe, right? Like, how are they so safe? In what is the most dangerous complex environment in the world,
Layci Nelson: right?
Layci Nelson: And
Chris Seifert: they have the best safety record. How do they do that? What is it about their culture?
Layci Nelson: I do not want to go on a submarine. No,
Chris Seifert: right? Yeah, so we did a lot of benchmarking with them with some submarines and then with some oil and gas companies Okay, and what struck out was? We had them rank 40 statements about their culture and force rank them And the submarines kept putting B results oriented in the middle and the executives kept putting it at number one.
Chris Seifert: [00:19:00] Yeah And we were at first we were like gosh, maybe the navy just doesn't translate Maybe there's nothing to learn here, because it's a government and there's results, you know So maybe that's why results don't matter but then it struck me that I've heard a leader who is probably the most successful leader in our time in the most competitive results driven industry on the planet.
Chris Seifert: And he says, and his exact quote is, I try not to pay attention to the results. I try and pay attention to the process and the stuff we need to do every day, right? That leader is Nick Saban of the Alabama Crimson Tide, ? And it dawned on me that like maybe he's right and everybody else is wrong, right?
Chris Seifert: Yeah. Here it is. He's learned If I want to win a championship every year, I can't pay attention to the results on the scoreboard right now in this game, right? . And we may win this game. We may win this game, but if we didn't do the right stuff today, I'm not going to win the game next year.
Layci Nelson: Absolutely.
Chris Seifert: Big mind shift, I think, from where a lot of leaders are.
Layci Nelson: Such a paradigm shift for them, but I'm sure you get the [00:20:00] joy of when they do make the shift you get to see. The fruit of that or at least you hear about it later. Because that's the fun part for us Right when we get to go.
Layci Nelson: Oh my gosh, I got to see that work it's working for these other organizations That's wonderful And their people benefit everybody benefits. Everybody Enjoys work a lot more when they're empowered.
Chris Seifert: the great thing about helping people make better decisions is I'm not just helping that you're right.
Chris Seifert: I'm not just helping them be better in their job. I'm helping them make hopefully better decisions about the house they buy, the car they buy, how they pay for the car, how they, it's all the same stuff, right? It's all the same.
Layci Nelson: Carries over and affects their life at home. And even when they move on, they're going to take that into the next setting.
Layci Nelson: And keep it with them for life. that's great. Chris, thank you for joining us today. Where can people find you? We're going to drop all of your stuff in the links and the show notes, but what's the best way to get ahold of you
Layci Nelson: how do they find you?
Chris Seifert: Sure. Absolutely. So www. enablingempowerment. com is the website. You'll find blog [00:21:00] articles. The book videos recorded webinars. We're doing webinars all the time Excellent all that kind of stuff's out there. I'm also Very active on linkedin and if you send me a dm happy to connect
Layci Nelson: excellent.
Layci Nelson: Thank you for sharing your wisdom your experience your hard earned lessons with us today And until next time friends go manage like a leader [00:22:00]