IDL66 Season 2: Lead with Style and Transform Your Organization with Rob Hoskins — Part 1
How do you create true change and transformation? What is the science of transformation? How does effective transformation depend on trust and values?
Rob Hoskins is a leadership thinker and the co-author with John C. Maxwell of Change Your World. In this episode, he and Tyler reflect on the different styles of leadership as well as the process of transformation within organizations. Rob is currently in the process of writing a book about the different types of leadership styles: the inspirational, the active, and the strategic — all of which you can incorporate into your own leadership ethos to help you transform your business.
Rob Hoskins is a global development leader whose publishing and distribution organization has partnered him with leaders around the world. Called “a leader of leaders” by John C. Maxwell, with whom Rob co-wrote Change Your World: How Anyone Anywhere Can Make a Difference, Rob has committed his life to building young leaders and serving great ones.
Rob is passionate about overseeing startups, spearheading sustainable local and global transformation initiatives, and advising NGO’s or higher education institutions.
In relentlessly applying research, data, and metrics to accelerate results, the organization Rob leads, OneHope, has brought value to more than 1.8 billion young people around the world. He writes about how to develop sustainable infrastructure that will bring about lasting transformational change in Hope Delivered: Affecting Destiny Through the Power of God's Word.
Visit robhoskins.com to learn more. Connect with Rob on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
Rob’s five S’s for smoothly run and effective organizations (04:20)
The science of transformation (06:54)
Robs five Ds for effective transformation (09:28)
Rob’s five S’s for smoothly run and effective organizations
These are required in organizations if they wish to help transform their clients and their staff:
1 – Strategy
2 – Structure
3 – Systems
4 – Skills
5 – Staff
The science of transformation
Transformation is a complex, shifting process.
It is never an instance of going from A to B. Transformation is a holistic, fully enveloping process that can take time and can be difficult to measure because it is not a singular change.
It is the shifting and developing of a multitude of aspects within a person which in turn allows them to transform.
Therefore, the process of transformation needs to be done incrementally.
Rob’s five Ds for effective transformation
1 – Discovery
2 – Design
3 – Do
4 – Document
5 – Dream
The cycle of transformation needs to be based on a strong foundation of shared values. Otherwise, it will not work, or it can be damaging. Healthy and uplifting transformation is only possible when it is based on values.
Remember that the speed of transformation depends on the amount of trust that is present.
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
BOOK | Rob Hoskins – Change Your World: How Anyone, Anywhere Can Make a Difference
BOOK | Jim Collins – Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
BOOK | Michael S. Hyatt – The Vision Driven Leader: 10 Questions to Focus Your Efforts, Energize Your Team, and Scale Your Business
Visit robhoskins.com to learn more about Rob
Connect with Rob on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn
Join the Impact Driven Leader Community
Check out the Impact Driven Leader Youtube Channel
Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn
Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com
About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast
The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.
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The reason transformation is so hard to measure is because transformation … is not singular.
Rob Hoskins
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof, glad you're here, listening in, watching in if you're on YouTube, super excited to share this conversation with one of my friends. I got to know Rob Hoskins a couple years ago. Now it's actually the summer of 2020, I believe we are in COVID. He is co-author of Change Your World with John C. Maxwell and it was actually, he refers to the time we met one of our conversations here. I was always just enamored by how different he was than John yet there was this great relationship. We're going to talk a lot about that in this conversation. I think what's imperative in this is that we learn from different styles of leadership in finding our own. Rob's actually in the process of writing a book, talking about the different types of leaders, he describes it as an inspirational leader, an activating leader or strategic leader.
You'll find that I think probably one of those resonates with you and he lists off a few examples. I'm excited to share this episode and this conversation with Rob, because again, we just sharpen each other. That's what I've learned from mentors like John. Rob has as well, because he talks about his dad and his experience with Peter Drucker. So we'll talk about that. We'll talk about a few things, but I really want to share this first interview. Yes, Rob and I got into such a long conversation that we're going to have two interviews. This one will be released today. Obviously, you're listening into it. There'll be another one in a few more weeks. It has a totally different topic. That's why I split it up. My hope and desire is that you can take from this conversation, some type of learning, some type of growth and understand that man, I can adopt some of those ideas into my leadership style. Because I think that's, what's important is.
When we adopt different elements into our leadership style, we can grow into the leader that we're really meant to be again. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening in. I'm going to shoot you over to the conversation. You're going to listen into the conversation that I had with Rob, but just again, remember if somebody shared this with you, I'd love for you to subscribe, subscribe to the YouTube channel where you can not only get these videos, but you can see my thoughts of the day, other content that are released regularly. Here it is, conversation with Rob Hoskins.
[TYLER]
Let's take a, yes, I want to take at least a few minutes to discuss this because one thing that you mentioned earlier, we talk about Change Your World in values and transformation and measuring transformation, as you did, is you can't have transformation without the outcome. I want to talk about the transformation process as you see it, as One Hope sees it, because I think that's so important to go back to again, that self-awareness. Like, you can be self-aware, but if you don't have that humility and then that process of understanding, how do I transform into something else that you're lost and say, okay, I'm aware. Well, what do I do with it now? I know you guys have done so much work. One Hope has transformed billions again, that's with B, billions of lives in the world. So I'd love for you to talk about that process.
[ROB HOSKINS]
Sure. I call it the science of transformation and I've developed it over the last 30 years of working with One Hope. So we have right now, I mean, I can measure them. We have 316, what we would call transformational programs around the world, everything from sports programs to after-school programs, to the program I built with John called lead the day, which is a leadership program for public schools. That's in 82 countries right now. We've been able to reach over 12 million kids in public school systems around the world with our lead the day programs. So we got 316 of those. So there's a science to creating those types of programs. I'll go back to that real quick and say that the type of organization we are is a direct organization that follows what we call five S's. So those five S's, and I'll give them to you quickly, this is not the answer to your question, but I don't think you can implement my science of transformation if you don't have an organization that has these five S's. Again, John would be critiquing me right now and saying way too much content, not enough inspiration.
[TYLER]
Well, the great thing is you could just push pause. I will do the same. I'm going to try my best to get these S's. We'll just hit pause. It's all good.
[ROB]
So start with strategy. You got to start with strategy and then once you've developed your strategy, and so we're going to come back to strategy because that's what the science of transformation begins with, so strategy number one. Then after you have a strategy, what type of structure do you need to implement that strategy then what type of systems do you need within your structure to implement that strategy? Then what type of skills do you need to run those systems? Then what staff do you need? So it runs upside down. Most people start with, I got to find the right staff. I got to find the right people. He's saying, no, you're doing it backwards. You got to have the right strategy. Then you got to know what structure, you got to know what systems, you got to know what skills. Now you can build a job description for the ideal person for this role.
[TYLER]
I'm going to put it time off and say, that's what Bill Belichick has done with the football team.
[ROB]
Oh really? I didn't know.
[TYLER]
Well, I mean, if you think about Bill Belichick is a football team, he's like, this is our structure. This is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to do it and we will get the players that fit within that.
[ROB]
Oh wow, makes sense. Yes.
[TYLER]
So I think when you look at different, again, I'm just going to take a tangent here, because I think it's easier to visualize, if you look at sports teams where they're just like, give me the best player out there and they're like, well, you bring this player in and all of a sudden the team's not better. John Wooden talks about that. You're the best player, but the team is not better with you. It's because you've jumped ahead. You put that staff in front. Whereas if you have, hey, this is what my strategy's going to be. This is the structure I want the team to be. This is the system that we're going to operate. By that I need this skill set from these people in order that that system works within that structure within the strategy.
[ROB]
Yes. That's so good because yes, when I think of Belichick, I think about, and Wooden, they are both called systems coaches. I mean they have these systems, but those systems sit in the middle of their strategy and their structure. On the other side, the skills they're going to teach. Excellent. I love that. So we've got that as sort of our framework. The other process I'm going to now lay out, which is the science of transformation really doesn't work if you don't have that sequencing within your organization. So for us, we have what we call our five Ds. These are actually in the book. I actually think in the book Chang Your World, I have to go back and read it because John was constantly editing as we were going through the book. That's what was hilarious about writing it.
[TYLER]
"No, no, no, no, it needs to be like this. No, no, no, it needs to be like this."
[ROB]
Yes. Who can argue with John Maxwell. So for me, the five Ds are very much a process and it's not a linear process. Transformation is not linear. I think people want transformation to be linear because that's so much easier for people to conceptualize of. I want to take us from here to there. That's the transformation I want to see. So they think of change being a linear process, but change is never linear. It's much more complicated than that. And the reason transformation is so hard to measure is because transformation is not singular. So it's not about change. You can change one thing, but that one thing might have changed, but you're not transforming everything around it that needs to support the change that you want. So change is very holistic and it has a lot of moving parts to it.
So because of that, transformation is a process and the process of transformation needs to be done incrementally. So think of this, when I lay out these five Ds, don't think of it as a linear process, but I call it these circles of transformation that you're going through and they start slow. So this goes back to Collins in his Good to Great in the process and him talking about the flywheel. I mean a flywheel begins at a very small level. Then as it gains centrifugal force, as it gains power, then eventually it starts moving the big parts of the engine so that now you have this big change that's taking place, but it starts as a very small process. So think of it that way.
So here we go, number one is discovery. You have to do discovery. This is basically research. It was before I understood what research was, so for me, the journey of transformation at a very personal level, started with my dad handing over the organization to me and asking me to become the CEO and the board asking me to do that. This vision for transformation was building up inside of me because I was already taking over an organization that was touching the lives of millions of kids around the world but we were very much of a product driven organization. I mean, we sort of, we're purely measuring by our influence by the volume of content we were getting out there.
So we would distribute a hundred thousand books in a country that we knew had great content and we would go win. We measured, and what we were doing is Tyler we were measuring our outputs. We weren't measuring our outcomes. So for me, transformation is about outcomes. What actually changed and how do you measure that? So product distribution was measuring our outputs. I began to run into situations where I actually said our outputs aren't producing outcomes. So we can't say that we're actually catalyzing transformation. We're not seeing the changes we want to see change, so I had to go back.
This really happened to me in a place called Swaziland, a country called Swaziland where we had incredible programs that on paper looked incredibly successful. We even had some amazing transformational testimonies, but they were anecdotal. This is the problem with being purely inspirational. I can tell a few stories and inspire people and our donors were excited, all of our stakeholders were excited and they were actually investing in us. I had to come in and say slow down. Those are great stories, but we're not changing the landscape. HIV and Aids continues to grow in Swaziland despite our programs.
In fact, if we measure the rate of HIV/Aids, it's actually continuing to grow even though we're doing more, our outputs are not producing outcomes. So I had to back up and my family and I actually moved to Swaziland and we began to, and I just began to ask a ton of questions. So when I talk about discovery, it's about being self-aware again. It's about being honest with yourself and with your team and say how do we know we're making a difference? Are we willing to stop, to slow down, to change, even when everybody else around us doesn't want us to? I mean, this is the height of leadership. This is the height of accountability in leadership to say, no, actually we're doing discovery and we're realizing that transformation is not happening or it's not happening to the degree that it needs to.
So discovery is so important and there's two key components to discovery that are instruments that we use. Number one is creating a needs assessment. So this whole process, the five Ds is all about beginning with the end in mind. That's what outcomes are. What is the vision of transformation that we have? If transformation happens, what will this look like? What would Swaziland look like if we were able to reduce HIV and Aids? Wow, now this is emotional. Now you're talking about the lives of families changing because fathers aren't dying. So what is the vision of the future we see?
That's actually the last D and so we'll come back to it because again, it's a circle, it's not linear. So even in the discovery process, you're dreaming and that's the fifth one. You're dreaming about an envisioned future that is different. You have to have a vision for what a transformed life, a transformed organization, a transformed nation looks like at the very beginning and begin with the end in mind. Now you start doing discovery and you create a needs assessment. So what is needed in order for that change to happen? What's missing here? What does this nation need? What does this company need? What do I personally need in my life? So we're talking about transformation. I'm just not talking about the space I'm in, which is an NBO and nonprofit organization.
This is something I apply to my own life as a father, as a husband. I want to transform marriage, Tyler. I want to be a transformed father. So what does that look like? So you do needs assessments, like what's missing from the picture? Then the second thing you do in the discovery process is you do an asset map. What resources are available, what are the needed resources? Here's my thing. It's never a lack of resources. I mean, I believe in a, I have an abundance mentality. God has created more than we need to have a thriving planet. The problem is not that there aren't resources, but that the resources aren't flowing to the right places at the right time with the right people. So those two elements are part of the discovery process and that's just research. I just want to demystify research, research is purely a discovery of the truth. That's all research is. So that's your discovery process.
The second D, and I don't know if you want to stop and pause at any level, just jump in, but that's your discovery and that's just doing an assessment of your business; where are we at? What's working? What isn't? Let's stop. Time out. Is this working? Is it not? Why is it, needs assessment? Asset maps? What do we have? What do we need that we don't have? Who do we find that can bring us that? So now you're moving into design. So now we're saying, wow, here's, here's, here's, what's needed. Where do we get those resources? What type of process do we need to begin to utilize all of these resources to meet the needs? This is what design is all about. So you begin design, you begin design products and programs and platforms and organizations and so you go through this whole design process.
And this is where you really need to be a transparent leader with great humility, because this is where the authoritarianism completely breaks down the design process. As an inspirational leader, I can move a room if I want to. Like, I have that gift, but then all I'm doing is talking and I'm not pulling stuff out of everybody. A great design process is very transparent. I think you were with us Tyler, when we did the design process for when we were building Change Your World ecosystem. So you have very strong leaders in the room. I mean, between John and I we can talk forever, but I loved how John ran that design session. Because it's very easy to be intimidated by a guy like John and say, look, he's the smartest guy in the room. Let's just all sit here and listen to what he has to say. He wouldn't let us do that.
[TYLER]
He is the last one to speak always.
[ROB]
Yep, yep. He wants to hear from you and he knows how to pull it out of you. He asks great questions. That's what a great design process is. It's asking the right questions, pulling it out. Now, you're also at the same time, looking at the research you've done because you can get in a design session and it can get very aspirational and it can get very theoretical if it's not grounded in good research. So you're constantly coming back to the research and saying, wait guys, time out. That's a great theoretical idea but it's not grounded in truth. Like you might want to do that but the reality on the ground is that that doesn't exist right now.
So I think the whole design process for me really changed, like if you look at the organization my dad had, the organization that I'm running now, the number one thing people would say that's different is that One Hope is a collaborative organization. So we have built these 316 programs that we have around the world around partnerships. Because when I go into design session, I'm always realizing who does stuff better than we do that we need in the design of this program that we want to see happen to create outcomes and transformation? What it begins to say is, hey One Hope's great at this. We're not great at that. Who do we need to partner with? Who do we need to collaborate with?
[TYLER]
Well, I think that's a, to me that's a very mature business that Drucker alluded to. Drucker alluded to that in the knowledge environment that we're at is like you become specialists and then you understand, we collaborate with other specialists.
[ROB]
Exactly, and he was ---
[TYLER]
Back on track here, number three, the third D
[ROB]
Number three is due. I mean, some people are measure, measure, measure, measure, never cut. And Drucker says at the end of the day, did the product sell on Monday in the grocery store? At the end of the day, you just got to get it out there. This is where designers where the perfect becomes the enemy of the good and this, yes good enough. I've always said, I'm a 70 to 80% guy. Now my activating leaders that are part of the, that love organization this is where I really have to push them to say, okay guys, good enough for now. Here's what gives them peace. The process isn't over. We're just going to, this is good enough for now. Let's go try it out in the market.
[TYLER]
It's good enough to start. Let's make a start.
[ROB]
Yep. This comes back to the fourth one, which is document. So while we're doing, we're also documenting, and this is where that research process comes back again and saying, what worked, what didn't, how can we make it better? What is the recipient? Are we adding value? What type of value are we adding? What's missing? So now we bring all that data back from our documenting in the transformation process. We come back together and we say, let's dream. Let's dream. Not now, theoretically, because our circle has gotten bigger. Because we're not perfect because transformation, by the way, is never perfect because things are always changing. We live in a dynamic world. Everything around us is constantly changing. So the transformation process, again, is not linear because everything's going to change. If you're doing your job, right, your actual interventions are changing the landscape of what's happening.
So one of the things that I've done personally, as an example, is what I call the Avondale project, which is where the Lord really opened up my eyes to the neighborhood right across the street from One Hope School headquarters. So this is a neighborhood across the street from where we are and one day I was just driving down the street and I was thinking, and I always like to pray, meditate on my way to work and just my time of peace before the storm comes. I was sitting at a light and I just heard inside just take a right turn. I thought, wow, take a right turn. I was thinking, take a right turn in my marriage, at One Hope, and it was no dummy, take a right turn at this light.
It was just like, okay. So I take a right turn and I find myself Tyler driving through a neighborhood I've never been through before. Man, I just got set up that day. I mean in a three-block radius, I saw a drug deal go down. I saw kids that should have been in school that weren't in school. I saw gang members on the street corner and a prostitute tried to proposition me. I mean, this was like, and I do work in every nation of the world just about, we're in 172 countries. I work in the poorest Barrios, the worst slums in the world and here across the street was a devastated neighborhood.
I just felt, it was like a knife went through me and said, you're helping kids around the world. You're not even helping those that are right across the street. Long story short. This was the avenue Avondale I've been working there for 15 years now. One Hope has been committed to that neighborhood and we've applied this five D process. So when we did it and we went and we did the original research, we found out that the greatest need for that for that neighborhood was safety. When we talked to the actual people that lived in that neighborhood, they weren't even thinking now about jobs and education and the future. They were thinking about survival. Two young men had been killed in that neighborhood within the last six months from that time I had that experience so safety was their greatest needs. So we're starting, we're starting with where we're at.
So after 15 years though, Tyler and our interventions in the design process, our circle of transformation in Avondale is so much bigger. That neighborhood has been transformed. You say, how do you know it's been transformed? Well, they went from a crime index of 752, which is 752 violent crimes committed per square mile per year within that neighborhood is down under 200 now. I mean, the graduation levels in that, third grade literacy, third grade literacy ---
[TYLER]
Key number, right?
[ROB]
Key number. So cyclical poverty, which is what that neighborhood was existing with now, cyclical generational poverty that existed in that neighborhood, number one determining if breaking a cycle of poverty is high school graduation rates. Number one predictor of high school graduation rates is third grade literacy. So you can get third grade literacy, you can get graduation rates higher. You get graduation rates higher, you break the chain of cyclical poverty in a neighborhood. So these are the outcomes I'm talking about. You're beginning with the end in mind, you're dreaming about a neighborhood like Avondale.
Now I'm talking now about a social impact transformation, but this is the same. This is the same process. Whether I'm working on a corporation in a building, whether I'm in a startup business, to me, I've applied this, and this is why John was attracted to me. He's like, Rob you're really have your hand in so many different things. And I'm entrepreneurial by nature. My dad's an entrepreneur, but I mean, I'm involved in the social sector. I'm involved in the education space. I've done startups, I've done tech startups that have been hugely successful. I mean, I took an idea of a 22-year-old intern and applied these principles to it in a text to give, we sold that company for $24 million two years later. I mean, so whether you're a business person or whether you're in the social impact or whether you're a pastor of a church, or whether you're starting your own marketing company to me, transformation is transformation. Transformation is change management.
[TYLER]
And I think that the process of it leads to an outcome, but it's really a vision sandwich. You have to start with a vision, then you go through the process to discovering what's reality, and then you start designing, well, I want to get to this vision that we have in the end. What's cool about that is eventually, as you mentioned, you get to the end number five and you're re-envisioning that. So you're constantly starting the loop again. So it's this constant process of moving forward, which I think is really a life of transformation. As we started this conversation as a leader, and you talked about in our conversation a little bit, just trying to figure out what leader you are, well, I think the great benefit for all of us is the leader I am today is not going to be the leader I am tomorrow, nor was it the leader that I was yesterday.
And my commitment, this has been influenced by John is I want to be better today than I was yesterday with the intention to be better tomorrow than I was today. To me, that is living out this circle of transformation. If you go through those processes, you can do that each day. In a way you're doing that each day. However, that segment that's how you can evolve forward and in the process that self-awareness that you talked about, that's how you start to identify and become, oh, this is really the vision of what I want and who I am and those things match up. That's when you feel more at peace, everyone around you is more at peace and all of a sudden that transformation process becomes way more effective.
[ROB]
So good. So well-articulated Tyler. I call it the virtuous cycle of transformation.
[TYLER]
Wonderful.
[ROB]
Like it needs to be virtuous. We talked about Putin, that's not virtuous.
[TYLER]
That's an end stop.
[ROB]
That's the opposite of virtuous.
[TYLER]
This is what perfect is. The reality is, well, that was perfect the day he started but now when you see the collateral human damage, you realize it's no longer virtuous.
[ROB]
Because he started with the wrong values. So that's why value, it always comes back to values. I mean, John's absolutely right. I mean, this is, it always comes back to values. Like if you're going to talk about transformation, it has to be built on the right values or else you're going to transform, but you could be transforming for evil. That's why I called the virtuous cycle of transformation if you have the right values. Drucker actually didn't say this. It was attributed to him. I don't know where it actually came from, but I still attribute it to, because he said stuff like it, but what's attributed to him is culture eats vision for breakfast.
This is why you have to start with your values first, like this process of transformation that I just like, the five Ds are useless to me if they're not built on a bedrock of the right values. So whatever I'm doing, whether it's building my marriage, raising my children, building businesses, building universities, which I'm super involved in, we haven't had time to talk about that but education is a huge space that I'm passionate about. And Kim and I have set the trajectory of the next 20 years of our life and education has a huge part to do with it. That's what Drucker did by the way. He spent the last years of his life building Claremont University and the school of leadership there. I think most great leaders end up at the university but it looks very different in the 21st century. Anyway, I'm getting off tangent, but what I'm talking about is you've got to start, whether it's your marriage, your family, your corporation, and university, what are the values? What is our culture? What is our DNA? Now let's get going with these virtuous cycles. But if you don't start with that, it's not going to be a virtuous cycle of transformation.
[TYLER]
I believe it's this, to put in encompass is that encompass it is, without a foundation of held values and as I've gone through the Change Your World processes, I hope a lot of listeners have gone through that book as we've been part of the book club, is you and I can be on different levels. You and I can be on different levels of a lot of different values but if we can hold and understand those and say, hey, which are more paramount, great. Maybe that isn't for me personally, but I understand it's value within this context. Then all of a sudden, you've created a bedrock foundation. If that is not established, that's not discovered, that's not even held well, then everything's sandy and it's just mushy.
It's just like, if you have this, well integrity is important to us. Honesty is important to us, but we never discuss it as an organization. What does that look like? How do I feel about how honest am I? Am I, as a struggle, understanding whatever it may be. If we never have that as an organization, then there's no firm foundation. Now you and I could be on, in my opinion, two different levels in regards to how important is honesty in business. I can guarantee we're probably not, but we could be and yet if we have that understanding, well, then we can move forward. If there is no understanding, I operate one way you operate another way, we don't understand why, but we're like, hey, honesty's number one to me. I am going to come to you and I'm going to tell you some hard, hard truth because honesty's important to me. You're like, man, you just killed me. You just broke me down but if you understood my value of honesty is more important than to be liked than you're going to say, oh, I can value that. We can build something from it.
[ROB]
There you go. Yes, and I think, it's not that organizations are cookie cutter. They take on the character of their leaders and their stakeholders. That's how you actually measure your relationships and it's very important for you to be really clear about what organization you want to be and what values are your core values. So I can go, and even in Change Your World, we've identified, I think we've landed on 26 great values that are important in the change ---
[TYLER]
Could have been 52
[ROB]
There could have been 52 and for One Hope I have seven core values. And it's not that all 26 or 52 are not good values. They are. But if you're part of the One Hope family, understand, this is who we are. This is what we hold as our core values that are most important and if you don't love those values, no need to apply, dude. I mean, there are a lot of other options that perhaps have your core values that you would be better suited for.
[TYLER]
The thing that I think is so interesting. I just got done reading the Vision Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt. We went through that in the book club and in that, Michael does a very good job, in my opinion, of defining mission and vision and clarifying that for people. As we're talking about this process of transformation, the science of transformation, as you've named it, and we're talking now about values, one of the things that hit me, if your core values are not easily identifiable in your mission or vision, they are not core values.
Those values have to be identified some way somehow, explicitly within your mission and vision for it to be a core value, because that is the world that you're on mission to build and that's what that vision looks like. So to your point, you said, if you have those core values and I believe this too, if you have a mission and vision and someone's sitting there and if we go back through those five S's, we get to that last one, the staff one, we're building staff, and they don't hold that same type of mission and vision and values they're not the right player. That's okay. I may love you, I may care about you, but you're not the right player. I think what's important about that is again, if you hold onto it, so this is our mission, this is our vision, these are our values that fit within that construct, well, then the staffing part gets really, really, really easy.
[ROB]
Yes.
[TYLER]
It also keeps you, and I want to test this out, it also keeps you from being myopic to, well, only this person will work for us because I think you'll find that the people that hold the same values and mission and vision that are able to have the skills and to fit into that system look very, very different than what you would expect.
[ROB]
Yes, that's so good. When you lay it out that way, it's sort of helps me understand even why I've done some things intuitively, I think, but you put some language around it for me. So even when I do my reviews of my leaders, of my cabinet leaders we go through our values as a starting point we don't just go through their objectives and their outcomes and what strategies they've laid out and how they performed. I mean, that is part of the performance review, but the most important part of that review that we always begin with is an assessment of their values and whether they live the mountain and how they live the mountain. It's been interesting for me.
I mean like of our, out of our 16 VPs 70% of them started with me in their twenties. Now most of them are in their forties. So we've been on a long journey with them and I would say, and constantly every year going through and assessing their values and force ranking their values. What I've seen is it's exactly what you said, like there, I'm going to actually probably include this now in my objective reviews for this year, which is to sort of go back and analyze their different force rankings from year to year, the different parts of their values but now I'm going to lay it over what I just talked about, their typology of leadership. Because I think you're right. I mean, you don't want a cookie cutter organization. So I've done a good job of sort of assessing like, which one of my leaders is primarily an activator or inspirer or a strategist, but I think, and I'm going to test this out, I think that sort of the makeup of an activator is going to rate certain values consistently with other activators.
[TYLER]
That's very interesting.
[ROB]
The same way because I think there is something here about our natural sweet spot of leadership that we were talking about. Certain ones of the values that we have at One Hope are very easy to me and others of them I will work on until the day I die. Because just the makeup of who I am as a personality is really, so one of our values at One Hope is hardworking and we define that and we teach these values. This has been very interesting to define what hard work means for millennials. I don't mean to be flipping here.
[TYLER]
No, that is, to me and alright, let me give my context, my context from a point of hard work. I grew up on a farm. There is no end. You just okay, well, we shut it down for today. Guess what? Tomorrow we're going to do it all over again. So to me, that idea of endurance through hard work and perseverance is key and important. I think that is a defining it's like, well, what's hard work. It's like, well, do I just work hard for a few moments and then just relax? It's like, no, it's a mindset of I'm going to do hard things to me.
[ROB]
Yes, yes. So really each one of the values we have is, you can lay out words and I can say a word, like one of our values is pure. So if I said that to you and just said, define purity, you're going to come up with a whole list of, I'm going to come up with mine, we pull a third person in the conversation, they're going to have a different one. So words are meaningless if they don't have, there there's no text without context. So I think it's really key and important within the organization to say, let's unpack these words and how do we define them back to what you said as a group of people, on mission together with a similar vision, how do we interpret these values together and really define them and teach them?
Kim and I spend the majority of our time on these values with our leaders, particularly our young leaders. So I talked about, we've set a new course two years ago. We went on a sabbatical and we came out. We said the next 20 years of our life, where Kim and I are going to be about building great leaders, serving great leaders in building young leaders, serving great leaders and building young leaders. So that's what we spend the majority of our time doing. So it very much so part of what I do is I serve John and right now in their transition. That to me is serving great leaders. I mean, these are phenomenal, great leaders. I have some value that they've asked for. I'm going to spend my time and my energy giving it to those people and building young leaders. When I'm building young leaders, man, I'll spend 80% of my time on these values.
[TYLER]
Foundational.
[ROB]
Foundational values and interpreting them and really digging deep. Because what happens is when you start getting into a knowledge economy, as Drucker says, specialization becomes more and more important. I mean, when we were, if you talk, look at the three phases of history, you start with agrarian, you talked about it being a farmer. Then we moved into manufacturing. Now we're in the third phase of a knowledge economy. So you talk about those three phases. Well, what Drucker prophesied was that in the knowledge economy, specialization becomes more important. I mean, when you're a farmer, yes, I mean, there are specialties, but at the end of the day you've got yes, you're a farmer. If you're manufacturing, it's like you know what you're going to be able to build. The factory is established there and everybody, but with knowledge economy, I mean, you suddenly have these skills that become highly, highly specialized. So what happened ---
[TYLER]
It's really a move from a tangibility spectrum. You go from extremely tangible to measured tangibility to almost intangible.
[ROB]
There you go. It's so ambiguous. So to really get clear on if you got your strategy right in a knowledge economy, and at the end of the day, you have to staff it. it comes back to those five S's. So the staffing becomes much more specialized and what I found is this is really just very practically right now, as a leader, like in the digital age of the knowledge economy. I mean, everybody needs more engineers. Everybody needs more code writers. I mean, this is the great demand in the market right now for that skillset, for that specialty. It becomes very easy for me at times like this, to compromise my values, if I can go out there and find a great code writer, because I so desperately need that specialty right now. So I'm warning my leaders, like I'd rather wait, outsource the coding before we fill this position if that coder doesn't have, and people are you sort of get some pushback and go, what difference does it make? The dude is writing code.
[TYLER]
Makes a lot of difference.
[ROB]
I mean ---
[TYLER]
It's all the difference. It's like, anything else. It's like how did Solomon end up, excuse me, how did Sampson end up where he ended up one small step at a time? If it's, if you bring in someone who doesn't fit your culture, who doesn't fit those values, who doesn't fit the vision and mission, all of a sudden, then it's really, really hard to get buy in across the entire organization. So that goes back to what you said earlier about Drucker, as far as strategy and culture is, if you don't have that downright, it doesn't matter. If you let your culture slide, because you're like, oh, my strategy is more important, it's this tension, man, you got to have it. We've seen so many organizations that get that wrong.
[ROB]
That goes back to, I like to say transformation moves at the speed of trust.
[TYLER]
Oh, that's good stuff.
[ROB]
So if you're talking about transformation, people want transformation to happen really fast. It doesn't happen real fast because it's what we talked about, it's a process and it's not linear. But here's what I do know, it moves at the speed of trust. If you have people that are in this process of discovery and design and do, and document and dreaming, and there's high trust within the community, which comes out of mission, vision, values, you're going to be able, I mean, people go, how do you build 316 programs, outcome-based programs. I said, you follow this process, but you also have a lot of trust between your partners and you build that trust around your values and the more you do together, the more you trust each other and the more you trust each other, the faster decisions can be made. So this is very practical. I mean, some people think of values, oh, they're so ethereal. It's just to make feel good. No, it is about good business. I mean, it's about being able to move fast and build great things that are going to last. It's built around this trust.
[TYLER]
I think that is a great spot to put a bow on this. Rob, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.
I was going into this conversation with Rob, I was really excited to learn about his process of transformation. What I found is not only being seated in a lot of the information he shared about Peter Drucker, which we'll talk more about Peter Drucker in the later episode I have with Rob, but really when we dug into the five Ds, the discovery, design, do, document and dreaming. As I shared it's a sandwich of vision. Previous episodes, previous book club, we talked about the Vision Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt. Even more after this conversation, I am absolutely convinced that vision, mission, values are the tool belt kit, everything that a leader needs to have.
Now it's their empathy. It's the way they act, the way they care about people that really matters. But if you don't have your identified mission, vision, and values, everyone's lost, and it does take going through that process of discovering it to get everyone on the same page.
Two of the things that I saw in this episode, this conversation is that transformation moves at the speed of trust. A leader's ability to gain trust from others is to have integrity, so your words and your actions match. We talk about that. But then as well understand it's not linear. It's a process. Getting healthy as a leader is a process, helping others become comfortable and build trust within your organization is a process. It can't be mic-waved. It can only be nurtured. I hope you got value from this episode today. I'd love for you to check out what this episode, other videos on YouTube. I know you get tremendous value from it as well. Thank you for being here, subscribing being a listener to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. I'm so thankful for you and this opportunity for me to share what I learn and grow. I hope you're learning and growing too until next time have a good one. We'll make sure that you get the rest of that conversation with Rob. You'll absolutely love it.
