PeopleStar_Bill Goodwin: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
PeopleStar Intro:
Welcome to the PeopleStar Podcast. We deliver leadership perspectives from industry experts on their people, architecture, routines, and culture as they solve HR's newest challenges. And now your host, Julie Rieken.
Julie Rieken:
Hello podcast listeners. Julie Rieken, host of the PeopleStar Podcast. And today I'm super thrilled, I've got Bill Goodwin. He is the chief executive officer of MeMD, a national telehealth company. Bill transformed the company, accelerated its growth, and led the successful acquisition of MeMD by Walmart Health, so that's kind of a big deal. And Bill, you have a pretty cool background of helping companies think about different ways to grow. I'm going to let you embellish a little bit on that and just tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got here.
Bill Goodwin:
Well, great, thanks, Julie. Thanks, thanks for having me on. So, yeah, I mean, most recently, was leading, still in leading MeMD, the national telehealth company that was acquired by Walmart about a year ago, so that's exciting. And before that, Julie, really, as I look back for the last 20-25 years, my background has really been going into organizations, typically as the CEO or president along those lines and try to transform the company. Most of these organizations, which have been across different industries, we're not growing at the rate that they should be or were declining and something needed to change. So these organizations would bring me in, be just with them for three, four or five years, turn the organization around, get it growing to a very healthy rate, and then exit at that point, so it's been, it's been a great experience over the last 20 years. And I've been everything from e-commerce to industrial chemicals, to training to healthcare tech, you name it, lots of different industries, and that's, that's been a lot of fun.
Julie Rieken:
So that's, there's two things on that. Number one, taking companies that are declining or underperforming is a big task. And it seems like you've had a really broad array of experiences with company sizes and industries, and one of the things that we talked about, so those were the two points. And then I guess one of the things we talked about was when you think about helping these organizations turn back to a place of growth, one of the things that you and I have talked about was the foundational elements of organizational change and how important culture is to that. And I'm just wondering, can we talk a little bit more about that? And why do you believe that culture is the place that you turn and not the tweaking, tweaking metrics? Can we talk about that? What have you learned?
Bill Goodwin:
Yes, sure, absolutely. So typically when I've gone into a company, there's really three main aspects of any company. There's are people aspect, right? They are the lifeblood of your organization. There is the process aspect, how to think, how do things get done, how do things work. It's not just in terms of what you manufacture, it's also in terms of your operating norms with people and within the organization. And then you have the product component, what are you selling? Is it targeted to the market? Is it, does it align with what the market needs? When you look at people, process, and product, there is an underlying ingredient in each one of those, which is the culture of the organization. Does your culture align, do you have the right people in there, that match the culture you need to grow the organization? And I'd say, Julie, a lot of times, and I have peers who when they go into organizations, they tend to change out a lot of the personnel, that hasn't been my process. Typically when I go in, you have a tendency to have a lot of the right people, just not the right norms of operating so that you can achieve what you need to do. And in process, most processes in the organization are people-driven. How you communicate, how you connect, where the new ideas come from, how do you handle issues or business constraints? Those are all people-related too. So your culture does impact your processes and how will those execute? And then your culture does also impact your product. If people aren't performing at their best, if they aren't fully engaged, if they aren't part of a relatedness to what you're trying to do, how can you expect to have the best product that's timed with the market. So when you look at all those, I think sometimes there's an error to think that people is just one component. The culture, then, that those people drive impacts every aspect of an organization's ability to achieve, so …, Julie, what I've learned to do is come in and really try to evaluate the culture first. I assume we have pretty good people, nobody goes into an organization typically wanting to do a bad job. They're there, they want to do a good job, they want to feel fulfilled, that's number one, you have to go with that assumption. And then the other two, you've got to go in and say does the culture of what we're trying to do, does it actually align with where the organization needs to go? And depending on the degree of difference between those two really determines the amount of work you have to do to kind of reset the culture. So that can be a key foundational element of your organizational change and growth. So culture to me is everything. So many people talk about culture, but I think most people really define what that means for an organization. It has to align with where the organization needs to go.
Julie Rieken:
So interesting. So, Bill, I'm going to put you on the spot and let's go tactical here. Let's just talk about it, could you, if you have an example at the ready of when you found that, and you don't have to name a company or anything, but when you found something, when you go into an organization and you find a disconnect, what does that look like? What are some examples of where people, process or product maybe didn't align? And you had to think about it so that I can envision like if you were to come doing a treasure hunt in our organization or somebody's organization, what are the things you might find where you say, oh, look, here's a disconnect, we can solve that. What are the things that you might see? What's the evidence?
Speaker4:
Yeah, so I'll give you a maybe a small microcosm of an example. So I took over a company and came in and recognized that we had a very good leadership team, very capable people, very smart, very much wanted the business to do well. But they weren't aligned, they weren't connecting, the level of collaboration and connection that, that wasn't happening. So that dysfunction, even though we had the right people in the organization that dysfunction was stunting the organization's growth. It was also stunting the ability for the organization to understand where that, where they need to go in the market. So one of the things, when you look at a team like that and a leadership team is kind of where it starts, right? You have to really kind of evaluate when you go in to the leadership team, what do you have here? And if that isn't operating extremely well. High levels of collaboration, high levels of relatedness, high levels of putting others first before you're part of the organization, a high level of actual just being present in the business. If that isn't happening, the rest of the organization will follow whatever dysfunction is on the leadership team, that's just the nature of an organization. So if your leadership team isn't highly functional, then it doesn't work well. So back to the example, when I came in to the organization, I actually realized we actually had core ingredients. We had a pretty good product, we were kind of the market at the right place at the right time. This organization was growing at a fraction of the rate of the competitors. Why? We couldn't get out of our own way. Simply due to just not having that type of strong leadership team culture that could then be filtered down through the organization. So one of the things I often say when I talk to people, when I speak on culture, when I work with organizations that I go into is I look really hard at the leadership team. And by the way, you can filter this down to other leadership teams within the organization, doesn't have to be the executive, that's where it starts. But when you look at the executive team, what level of connectedness is there? And if it's really strong, the organization can probably adapt to that, do really well. If it isn't, they're going to change that pretty quickly. It tends to be where I focus the main part of my time in the first 30 to 45 days is really trying to assess what do we have here, and can we get this team to work better together? By the way, Julie, every leadership team is dysfunctional.
Julie Rieken:
Sorry.
Bill Goodwin:
We are.
Julie Rieken:
I am having a moment right now.
Bill Goodwin:
… my team today, we're dysfunctional and I'm a contributor to that dysfunction, right? So that's a nature of it. But you've got to minimize that, you've got to know it's there, but you're got to minimize it so the team can operate well together. And then from there, good things can flow throughout the organization.
Julie Rieken:
Okay, thank you for saying that, because I'm thinking, gosh, none of us go in saying, hey, we want to have a dysfunctional leadership team today.
Bill Goodwin:
Right.
Julie Rieken:
Right? Okay, so you uncover it. There's some collaboration that isn't happening, there's a process that's people-related or the team isn't, isn't functioning as well, what were the elements that you saw that told you, hey, we've got good people, but they're not fully aligning and it's, they're not able to get out of the way. What are the things that you see so that we could recognize and say, hey, I, I see that in my org, here's something, an action I could take or way I could think about it in a new way. What are some things that you see that are signs of that?
Speaker4:
So I would call, there's there's quite a few which I think we all see. One is what I call surface level conflict. So there's conflict that really isn't about, you want to have conflict that's good, it's healthy for the business, it's something that can drive a better idea, it can drive a better process, but more of surface level conflict, it's conflict where people are more concerned about how it impacts their part of the business or them individually versus how it impacts the overall organization. So when you look at the conflict that happens within an organization, what is it? Is it the right type or is it the wrong type? That's one thing that you can look at. Two, I think it's another thing is, and we all talk about collaboration, how important it is, and I'm not talking about having lots of Zoom meetings with long collaboration forced sessions, but few members of the leadership team within the organization, do they collaborate? Do they say, do they really say, hey, let's get together and figure this out. I see your point, you see my point, I think we can figure it out. Are they are they oriented towards collaboration? Is the better model to try and solve it? Or is it more of my way or your way is the one that has to rule out? So those are just two examples. Do you have the right type of conflict and are you seeing the right type of collaboration? A lot of times when you come in as the leader, I think there's an expectation that that person, he or she, must have the ideas, they must know what we need to do, and we all know that's not true. If a leader comes in saying they know what to do, then they're not a very good leader. A leader has to come in and basically look at the organization, look at the people in the organization, foster an environment where the best ideas, the best collaboration, the best excitement about what you're trying to do can come out, because the power of that group is so much greater than any leader can bring. So if a leader can come in and get that conflict down to where it's healthy, drive the biggest business forward, best idea wins, awesome. And if they can even do more to drive that collaboration and connectedness to the other parts of the organization to come up with those better ideas, that's how the organization is going to win. And really, Juli, quite often we get into such norms and our … norms, we get into such habits with our organization, we have the same leadership meeting every Tuesday, we do our one on ones every Friday, it's kind of the same format, we have to be very cautious of realizing that our organization, because everybody loves comfort, comfort, can start happening. Well, are you really pushing the organization to drive the collaboration and healthy conflict that you need to? A lot of times it doesn't happen, because the organization kind of settles in and doesn't keep pushing for that next level than it needs to do.
Julie Rieken:
Can I pull on that thread a little bit? Because I love that, Bill. One of the things that, that we talk about here on PeopleStar are people, architecture, routines, and culture. And I think you just touched on routines that we get into this routine. We have this Monday Zoom meeting, we always report on the same thing, and I do believe that it creates, it can create complacency and a lack of vision. How do you, how do you keep ideas fresh in an organization so that that collaboration is high and we are seeing new things? What do you recommend? How should we think about that?
Bill Goodwin:
It's a great question. I struggle with the same thing with some of the meetings that I have. Over time, if you step back, you're like, well, it's just a meeting, this is really helping me at this point.
Julie Rieken:
You help me, …. too?
Speaker4:
Yeah. Yeah, I do, I have a lot of them. And then sometimes it is your team members, right? You're the senior people, senior person on the meeting, they're not going to tell you that the meeting isn't valuable, you have to go ask the questions. So one of the things I like to try to do is about once every quarter is re-evaluating meetings, ask the team and say, is this a useful, is this a useful time for us? Is it not? If you could change anything about the meeting, what would you change? If you could eliminate anything about the meeting, what would you eliminate? That's one, is ask everybody, because I really think the meetings that just happen every week, people don't mentally prepare for it or they do the minimal amount of effort, yours truly as well. And it becomes maybe you cover one or two issues, but what do you really want that meeting to do? Why? Why did you even put that meeting together? Was it to provide updates? Was it to discuss issues? Was it to build on new ideas or bring those? What's the purpose of the meeting? Reevaluate every quarter and see if you can make it better. The other thing that I would argue that you do, actually two other things is change the time of it during the week, every quarter, move it, change it, change the routine, that's another one, that helps. And the third one is periodically, do it in a different location. So here's an example, when I'm really on my game, which isn't always, and I'm brilliant on my game, my one one-on-one with my team members, sometimes I'll go say, hey, let's, let's go, instead of being on Zoom or meaning the office, why don't I meet you for coffee somewhere near your house? Change of format, scenery. You wouldn't believe the great ideas that come out when you just, when you take people out of the work environment and meet them in a different location over, in a different environment. It just changes the dynamic of the meeting, so maybe we have to have, meetings are like a living, I mean, all these people are showing up for this meeting, it's like a living organism, right? How do you help that thing evolve, right? Keep asking how you can make it better, change the location, embrace, change the overall meeting structure, and I think that's how you keep a meeting alive. And I will say, Julie, most of us don't do that. I don't do that all the time. And even having this conversation reminded me that I haven't had enough offsite, one on one coffees in the last two months, I need to get back to doing that. But it does make a difference if you can do that because, people's time is valuable. Are you getting out of it? What are they getting out of it what they should get out of it?
Julie Rieken:
So, this has been fantastic. And I'm thinking about it like if culture is the foundation of organizational change and if we think about the kinds of conflicts that we have, surface level conflict, are they, are they good kinds or bad kinds and not just a bunch of Zoom collaboration, but the idea that we get together and figure it out, we, actually you've given us a phenomenal tactical thing that we can do today that I think influences every one of those levels from the ground up. So I'm just thinking about my Monday schedule, and I don't know if other listeners are out there thinking about their schedules, but I am doing that next week. We are going to change up our location, we're going to change the time of this meeting schedule that I've had, we're going to review the agenda and just see if we can infuse a few new things in there. And I think that will have a really positive effect on, on people. And I'm taking away some really good stuff here, and I hope our listeners are too.
Speaker4:
It'll be the best meeting you've ever had in your life.
Julie Rieken:
I can't wait!
Bill Goodwin:
Or maybe not, maybe not. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, look, I think, I think the culture is something, if you aren't working on it all the time, it will slip away from you. And as leaders, I struggle with this, too, but if I think back on a week, how much time did I spend proactively working on the culture? By doing something like we just talked about, by doing a one on one offsite or, or meeting people for lunch at a restaurant or changing the meeting time. I think, I think as leaders, as HR professionals, as anyone, we have to ask, what did we do in the last week to work on the culture? Well, how do you work on the culture? You have to be present to work on the culture, you have to be engaged to look at that, and if you don't make this a focal point, how can you expect it to improve, right? Things don't change unless you're really engaged in trying to make them change and that's what you have to do. So I think the one thing I've tried to do is be very mindful of working on culture. And it will slip some weeks, but there has to be effort on it and work on it. It's like, just like hitting your numbers each month to plan the business you're in or your headcount members of your HR or whatever it might be, did you hit your objectives in terms of time, at least time, spent on culture? Because if you can do that, then you start seeing that culture continue to evolve. Culture isn't stagnant, it's evolving one way or another, it's evolving up, it's evolving down, it's going backwards, you name it. But if you weren't paying attention to it and working with it and getting people involved, how can you expect it to evolve? You just simply can't. You know, there was a book that came out a few years ago called The Passion Paradox. I don't know if you if you read it, it's fantastic book and it brought something. It talks about self-determination theory, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with self-determination theory, it's actually been around for a while, at one time I even stole a few of those ideas and wrote a LinkedIn article on it, but it really talked about, if you want your organization to be passionate about the direction, you have to build a culture that allows you to do three things, right It has to be able to be one where your people feel competent in what they're doing, right? If they don't feel competent in what they're doing, then how can they do a good job? And you have to have all three of these ingredients to do it. So does your culture embrace raising their competency, right? Do you train people? Do you hire people that bring in the right skill sets that you maybe or backgrounds that you may be missing, right? Are you addressing the competency issue? The other one is autonomy. So are you allowing your people the ability to do their job and do it well? So I work with a lot of entrepreneurs. And sometimes founders tend to come in or they build, they built their business and they don't give their own lot of people autonomy. That works very early on when they have a very defined vision and direction on where they want to go. If you want to sustain and keep people long term, you have to kind of give them the tools to do their job, and get out of their way and let them do that, and what is autonomy mean? I can do it, I can move forward and do it without fear of failing, because failure is an integral part of making a business better. And I know that I'm going to be rewarded for actually being autonomous. The last one, which is kind of the, equally, so between competency, autonomy and the third one, which is relatedness. Do I relate to two things, the mission of the organization, the vision of where we're going, right? Is it something that I want to be involved in? And here's the biggest one from a cultural standpoint, do I relate to the people? Do I have that type of component? So when you think about culture and self-determination theory, it's really kind of fascinating because at the right culture, people feel like they relate to others within the organization, the right culture, we're training and developing people so they have the firepower to do the job and the right culture allows them to be autonomous. And Julie, that mix of those elements could be very different for different company at different stages of its lifecycle, in a different part of the country and whether it's also a startup or whether it's a company that's been around for 50 years, but they all have to be there. You cannot have a good culture. Rephrase that. You will only have a good culture if you pay attention to autonomy, competency, and obviously relatedness. And I think as leaders, if we ask those tough questions every now and then in the organization, as HR leaders, if we do the same and say, hey, I wonder how we're doing on these things. When I look at, over here in this group, or this division, or this team or this individual, how are we scoring on these three things? So we're scoring pretty well or are we not? And use that as kind of foundation for looking at how to impact culture, we're going long ways by doing that.
Julie Rieken:
The Passion Paradox. And Bill Goodwin, this has been fascinating. I'm going to read that book, I think that might be an interesting thing for us to even ask here in our own organization, and I've learned a lot today. This has been a really awesome conversation. I've enjoyed it a ton and I'm going to share it not only internally but with, with other leaders that I know will be interested in thinking about how we can impact culture in our org, so this has been great, thank you!
Bill Goodwin:
Yes, thank you. Thanks for having me on.
PeopleStar Outro:
Thanks for listening to the PeopleStar Podcast. For the show notes, transcript, resources, and more ways to get a seat at the table, visit us at TrakStar.com/Podcast.
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