In the Improve Work Podcast, host Daniela Tancau interviews entrepreneurial coach David Greer starting with his career journey, from software developer to CEO, and eventually transitioning into coaching. He emphasizes the importance of trust and accountability in leadership and explains how he helps clients set clear, measurable goals.
Daniela and David discuss people, trust, and accountability. He shares concrete examples of how to help employees create project plans, milestones, and buy in for the goals they are responsible for. He emphasizes how leaders must have a vision for where they are leading people, making sure that vision fits within the broader corporate goals that a company must achieve. One of the leaders most challenging tasks in making sure the right people are on the team and letting go of members who are not A Players.
David outlines his coaching methods, focusing on strategic planning frameworks like the One Page Strategic Plan and the value of having difficult conversations with team members. David also stresses the need to manage teams effectively and create an environment that fosters open dialogue.
Audio
Transcript
David (00:00):
There’s no point having the most expensive, smartest people in the company altogether
Daniela (00:05):
And tell them what to do.
David (00:06):
Yeah.
Daniela (00:08):
I’m sure that your clients, the entrepreneurs, which whom you work, have challenges in managing people. How often?
David (00:19):
Darn you. It’s this awful thing about companies. We have to have people in them and they’re human beings,
Daniela (00:28):
And how often do you help them with these kinds of challenges
David (00:35):
Every day. And if you’re not holding a person accountable, it’s not fair to them. It’s not fair to you and the business and it’s not fair to the individual. They’re underperforming. You need to let them know. I mean, the way I coach people around trust and accountability is give someone a certain length of rope and if they’re doing well, give them more rope. But then if they tie themselves up, you got to kind of pull it back in and you got to manage more tightly.
Daniela (01:12):
Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Improve Work Podcast. Today we have as a guest, David Greer. Did I pronounce it correctly?
David (01:22):
You did.
Daniela (01:23):
Okay. David is a coach for entrepreneurs. He helps them overcome their blockages and the periods of stagnation, accelerating their growth. He also helps them with strategic planning. I think this is one of your main services. And he has an impressive background in leadership roles, including as a CEO and in marketing and sales positions, particularly in tech companies. And he also supports entrepreneurs dealing with alcoholism and addiction issues. And more than this, he has a book, his book is titled, Wind In Your Sails: Vital Strategies That Accelerate Your Entrepreneurial Growth. This is impressive, David, and I would like to hear more about yourself and about your business. Can you give us more details please?
David (02:25):
Sure. Thanks for having me on. And hello to all of your listeners. It’s a privilege to be here today. I have a 45 plus year career as an entrepreneur, so it’s somewhat difficult to summarize it really fast, but I’ll do my best. When I was in grade eight or nine, I suddenly came up with a vision. I wanted to combine computers and business. And to that end, I pursued a computer science degree. I got a part-time job where I met a brilliant consultant who was rewriting an application system for the television cable company in our city, Vancouver. And in fourth year I joined that consultant. He had started a software company and I became the first employee after the two founders. I was named Robelle because it was Robert and Annabelle and the concatenation of those two names gets you Robelle. And I liked the place I stayed 20 years. I ended up buying out Annabelle and becoming partners with Bob, and we were in a very specific technical niche, a mini computer made by the American company, Hewlett Packard. But we were very well known in that niche. And my former partner, Bob Green, and I had a strategy that every year we wrote a new paper, either a technical paper or a managerial paper, and we traveled the planet giving presentations so that people would believe in this obscure little Canadian software company that they were going to trust their whole business to.
(04:11):
And they did. Yes. And we had thousands of customers around the planet, a lot of them big divisions like Fortune 500 companies and some smaller, but they’re typically a hundred million plus revenue companies because you couldn’t afford to buy this computer because computer cost half a million or a million dollars. And then our software was much cheaper than that, but it wasn’t like what you pay now 9.99 a month. It was more than that. Bob and I only had one disagreement in 20 years, but it was a doozy and it ended in divorce. We disagreed on the strategic direction of the company. He ended up buying me out in 2001, and someone smarter than me sat me down and said, David, your kids will never be 11, nine, and five again and do you need to work right away? And I’m like, no, I got a pretty good check in my jeans pocket and I’m not done for life, but I don’t need to work right away. And my wife and I hatched a plan to commission a sailboat in the south of France and take our three children and homeschool them for two years while sailing more than 10,000 kilometers in the Mediterranean.
Daniela (05:32):
Nice experience.
David (05:35):
That was an amazing lifetime experience and a legacy that we still draw from as a family. And when I came back, I did three years of angel investing. Angel investors are investors who invest very early stage companies, usually high tech companies looking for a big return. And I did a lot of work, a director working for options. And as an angel, you typically look at like a hundred deals and then go invest and put your time and energy in one. I looked at a lot of business plans. I looked at over 300 business plans in three years. So business models, revenue models, all sorts of things. I saw a lot of different things. Then as you mentioned in your intro, I did a series of executive gigs, typically senior marketing and sales type of roles, but I was working with directly with an entrepreneur friend of mine. And behind the scenes I was usually helping with strategy and strategic planning
Daniela (06:41):
And what is your main service?
David (06:44):
So nine years ago after I came, so in my mid fifties I did a three-year gig as a VP of marketing for this Vancouver base telematics company. Those are companies that have devices that you bolt to your car or your truck and track you in real time and then have software to improve the utilization of fleets and know where people are and what’s going on. But I had worked harder at that company that I’d worked in my entire career, and I decided I didn’t have to prove to anyone that I could work hard.
(07:16):
Also, when I turned 50, I’d hired an amazing coach. He was the first person I admitted, first person ever. I admitted that I had a drinking problem to, and he coached me to go to 12 step recovery. It was coach Kevin Lawrence and I wanted to give to other entrepreneurs the gifts that Kevin had given to me. So then I decided to become an entrepreneurial coach at my practice area. I have two principal practice areas. So the first is one-on-one coaching, which is typically structured as two one hour calls a month. It might be slightly different. I work that out with you when we first get to know each other, and I just help the entrepreneur get clearer on their business. Sometimes people get burned out, they’ve had a lot of success. And one of the questions I often ask is, why did you start your business?
(08:07):
And people start their business and then it gets very successful, but then they get wrapped up in the operation and all this stuff about the business and they lose sight of what it was that actually got them excited in the first place. Sometimes they need to go back to that and back to what really excited them at the beginning. I helped them with that, with their goals, both personal and business. And then the other practice area is I facilitate strategic planning for entrepreneurs and their senior leadership team. And so that’s a very different, and we meet two days to do an annual plan once a year, and then we meet one day offsite every quarter.
(08:52):
And I use a particular framework and a methodology from a guy called Verne Harnish. He has two books called The Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up and Verne’s claim to fame. Why I came to know about him was in the early 2000s, I had so many entrepreneurial friends and they swore by this thing called the One Page Strategic Plan. And that’s the beauty of this methodology is that you kind of boil everything like your culture, your purpose, your brand promises, your three to five year goals, your one year goal, your quarterly goals, your key productivity indicators you’re going to focus on, you get it into one page. It’s a relatively big page. You want to print it on two sheets of A4, not one, but strategic plans that are a thousand pages and go in a binder like they’re useless. But a one page plan that everyone can line around and sits up in front of everyone’s desk, that one can be very powerful.
(09:53):
I have a lot of expertise in that framework and that plan, and that’s what I use and work with, as I say, entrepreneurs and their teams to figure out where to go. Before our call today, I was listening to your interview with Chris Dyer on how to handle tough conversations. And a lot of my coaching in strategic planning is when we get together for these offsites, I want you to disagree. You have the smartest people in the company. You don’t want to want to get your point of view out there. Now, when we leave the room, at the end of the day, we have to agree for the next 13 weeks, we’re all going to pull for these goals and then we’re going to get back together and we can have another fight about what the goals need to be for the next 13 weeks. But there’s no point having the most expensive, smartest people in the company altogether
Daniela (10:53):
And tell them what to do.
David (10:54):
Yeah. They need to have these vigorous discussions. I mean, I am very careful to help coach them and not make it personal. “I think that’s a really bad idea,” is an okay thing to say. You can’t say, “I think you’re a bad person because you had that idea.” And there’s many subtle ways that people say that. They rarely say it quite so bluntly, but I’m very careful to separate the, you can’t make it personal, but you can vigorously disagree.
Daniela (11:24):
Yes. Separated the idea from the person.
David (11:27):
Correct.
Daniela (11:28):
So we judge the idea but not the person.
David (11:32):
Correct.
Daniela (11:33):
So speaking about this, I’m sure that your clients, the entrepreneurs with whom you work have challenges in managing people. How often do
David (11:49):
You, darn, it’s this awful thing about companies. We have to have people in and they’re human beings. And
Daniela (11:58):
How often do you help them with these kinds of challenges?
David (12:05):
Every day.
Daniela (12:06):
Every day. Wow.
David (12:08):
Just about, I was drawn to that podcast interview you did about difficult conversations because I do a lot of coaching around difficult conversations. I mean, each of us has a different tolerance to what our ability to have difficult conversations like I’m a people pleaser, so it’s really hard for me to have a difficult conversation and be in conflict. I’m a conflict avoidance person, but I’ve had to learn that that’s not helpful.
Daniela (12:39):
It’s not efficient.
David (12:40):
And if you’re not holding a person accountable, it’s not fair to them. It’s not fair to you in the business, and it’s not fair to the individual. They’re underperforming. You need to let them know they’re underperforming and then be curious about why. I mean, even if you think you know why, I still think it’s better to try and be curious and see if they know why.
Daniela (13:02):
Yes, sure. I saw one of your video about accountability. Can you share how can you make an employee to be accountable for his results?
David (13:15):
Well, if we take Patrick Lencioni and his book, the Five Dysfunctions of a Team,
Daniela (13:20):
Yes, I know, know the book.
David (13:21):
And if you look at his pyramid, accountability is not at the bottom. Trust is at the bottom.
(13:27):
Because if you don’t have a level of trust, then you can’t have that accountability which sits on top of that trust because the employee has to have enough trust in you and the vision and kind of the goals you’re setting. And you have to have some trust in them to go achieve the goals. I mean, the way I coach people around trust and accountability is give someone a certain length of rope and if they’re doing well, give them more rope. But then if they tie themselves up, you got to kind of pull it back in and you got to manage more tightly and help them be more because you can be accountable where someone reports to you once a month about what they’re doing. Or I’ve even had clients where I’ve said, okay, this is what you’ve agreed to do and I want every day you’re going to call five people a day. Good every day for the next week. I want you to email me at the end of the day how many people you called. Right? Because they’re really struggling with that. So the accountability piece needs to be that tight to start with. And of course the first day they probably don’t call anyone because the things that are bothering them and are preventing them from doing it. So then I’ll just send a little encouragement, remind them what we talked about in the call, remind them what they’ll get if they do what it is that they committed to doing. So again, I think there just to be the trust and the accountability.
The other thing that I do a lot of work with in goal setting is we, I think as managers and leaders tend to be very poor about setting finish lines. Like someone might say, okay, our goal for the quarter is to improve customer service. Well, how will we know if we’ve improved customer service in three months from now? We all get back together. How will we know it’s not a goal? Improve customer service, it’s an aspiration, it’s an intention, but it’s not a goal. A goal for the quarter might be by the end of the quarter we’ll have a system in place to get survey responses from every new customer and we’ll have launched it. We might not have any data yet. And then the goal in the next quarter might be to monitor and make sure how many responses we’re getting and to start collating the responses from our survey system and then in the next quarter, so now we’re like three quarters from where we started to actually improve from Q2, the results we got to the survey results we get in Q3, those are reasonable goals and goals that you can hold people accountable to,
(16:15):
But you can’t hold someone accountable to improve customer service. I think a lot of our challenges managers is to find these goals that are crystal clear and that the employee and you as the leader can be crystal clear in a given timeframe they got across the finish line, did they get there or not?
Daniela (16:40):
And if they don’t get there, if they’re not on the right track, how can a leader help them to obtain that goals before the end
David (16:54):
Time? Well, again, one of the things I became as a software developer and a product manager is really good at project management. I see the tools we use in projects. So if you have a big project, we’re going to launch a new version of our product a year from now. Well, you work backwards and you work out all the milestones that need to happen. When you set an accountability piece, maybe the pieces by the end of the quarter you need to have achieved X and we’re clear on what X is. But as a leader, you need to help the people who work for you understand the milestone. Do they understand the milestones to get to X? Which they might or they may not, depending on their skill level and what their abilities are.
I would again, get them to do a high level 50,000 foot, tell me what you think over the next 13 weeks are going to be your milestones to get there. And if they can’t do it verbally, immediately, I’d like you to go away and just send me an email with, again, super high level, what are your milestones for each week? So you get to your accountability piece. And then I would work with the individual to make sure they’re hitting their weekly milestones.
Daniela (18:12):
So you involve them in setting these milestones?
David (18:17):
I would try and get them, I mean, again, I would try and hold them accountable. Setting it. I prefer if they set the milestones because it’s their work, right? Yes. I may use my experience to suggest that those set of milestones aren’t going to get them to X, that they’ve agreed to do. And I might point out why I believe that’s the case, but they’re probably never going to have total [buy in] if I set the milestones or I might collaborate and co-create the milestones with them.
(18:55):
But again, it is very hard for an individual to be accountable if they don’t feel ownership, the setting of being part of setting the goals. I mean, again, as a leader I can say these are the three things we have to achieve in the quarter. That’s the what, but I try and stay, and this is very hard for me with a computer science background. I try and step back from the how and it’s my natural tendencies, put my fingers in and dictate how they’re going to get there. I have to restrict that natural tendency of mine because each person is an individual with their own skills and backgrounds and beliefs, and they may have a how that doesn’t look anything like mine and it’s 10 times better.
Daniela (19:46):
Alright. Right. Did this happen to you situation in which the people with whom you work had the improvements on the initial plan?
David (20:01):
Yeah, I guess I work with a lot of clients where I don’t know anything about their business and so I don’t know how to do anything in their business. So all I can do is ask them good questions, which then help them to figure out the plan. Have I specific, I don’t think I’ve ever had a 10 x improvement. I probably had a two x improvement of someone’s plan being better than mine. I don’t have one to pull out of my hat and share with you right now, but as I’ve become more and more of a facilitator and a coach, but again, I don’t have answers. I just have questions,
Daniela (20:44):
Questions.
David (20:45):
I come with a lot of really good questions. Question. And of course, because of my background and who I am, I’m also, no matter the level of the entrepreneur, I’m prepared to challenge them. And that’s part of the trust level is that they’re willing to let me challenge them. Because when you start a business and you’re CEO, there is very few people who can challenge you.
Daniela (21:14):
Yes. Depending on which network you are.
David (21:18):
Yeah. I mean you may have a peer group and you may have a board, but even the board often won’t challenge you like the way a coach will.
Daniela (21:30):
How do you know that a person is on board with your plan or with your decision?
David (21:38):
Again, as a coach, I don’t make decisions and I try and coach people as leaders to be more coach. So again, it’s like there are certain things if I’m a senior leader and I go through, let’s say I work with David Greer and I work with the CEO and we come up with a plan for the quarter. So those goals are set, those are the corporate goals for what has to happen in the quarter. I’m going to let the people who work for me know that that’s the corporate goals. That’s not open for debate. That’s where we’re going. If you don’t think it’s right, I do want to hear about it, but it’s going to feed into the next setting of the next quarterly goals is not going to impact these quarterly goals. Most likely, unless there’s something really ag. But then what I coach people to do, if you’re like the vp, like down, if you’re the person that reports to the CEO E is to go offsite for half a day with your team and to brainstorm. And I have some process around how you do this to come up with what your goals as a group need to be for the quarter in order to support the corporate goals for the quarter.
(22:48):
And again, I look at a collaboration process to jointly set the goals and co-create the goals. Because again, at some point the group of people will be smarter. Like if you surround yourself with the right people, that group is going to be smarter about setting the right goals than I am individually.
Daniela (23:08):
Alright. What is the main difference between a coach and a team leader? So you have been a CEO, so you lead people and you had been in this role, but now as a coach you just guide them. What are the main differences and how was for you to be in a leading position as a CEO?
David (23:35):
Yeah, so I’ll tackle that a little bit in some of my VP of marketing and sales roles again. I’m part of working with the executive to try and set the goals for the quarter. Although oftentimes I wasn’t involved, so I just was given, this is the direction we’re going. So my leadership piece is to really understand those goals and be able to articulate it to my team and in a way they can understand, you may see a corporate goal and not really understand what it means or what it means to you. So there’s that piece. Then as the leader of marketing and sales, I had a vision for how to tackle the market, how to approach the market, where we’re going over the next year. So again, I see that as a coach, I don’t do that because it’s up to the clients to figure that out.
(24:32):
I help coach them to figure that out. But if I’m the leader, then I need to come up with that vision. I may do it with my coach, I may do it with my team, I may do it with my boss, but I have to have a clear vision for where we’re going and how that fits in with the broader goal of where the company’s going. I see that very much as part of that leadership. Also, my leadership is choosing the people who are going to be on my team and getting rid of the people who are not high performers. My belief is if A’s higher B’s and B’s, higher C’s, then pretty soon we have Z’s and nothing gets done.
Whereas If A’s higher double A’s, then double A’s higher AAA’s. And my belief is you should be trying to get all A’s in your company, and a lot of times you have a lot of B’s and C’s, but you’re not willing to do what’s necessary, which is to kindly let them go and find someplace else where maybe they could be an A, but it’s not with your organization. And then go find someone who has potential or is a or can be coached into being an A. That’s another very difficult and really important part of being a leader is choosing the people. Another part of leader is getting those people to cohesively work together as a team with their different personalities, with their different skill sets.
(26:11):
And I’ve learned over time, there’s certain people who you are in a room and you challenge them and they come up with something right away and there’s other people really need some time to absorb it and think about it. And in my one day planning sessions, I can’t give them a couple days to think about it, but I can try. There’s certain people I don’t ask till near the end of a certain agenda item. I know they need all that time to kind of process what we’re talking about. You can tell they’re listening, they’re bringing it all in, but they don’t say anything until I kind of ask them quietly towards the end of say an hour section where we’re working on the agenda. And those people often have the biggest insights. And so that’s my job. So a lot of these are all just people skills. They’re soft skills.
(27:12):
I’m taking it as a given. You understand whatever you need to understand for your role. So you have the skills, I’m assuming a lot of givens. If you’re going to be a VP of marketing of a high tech company, then you need to understand the markets you’re serving, the channels of sales, how do you work with those channels? You have to have some fairly deep level of understanding of the technology and how it works and what makes it useful. Not as much as a technical person, but at a high level. You need to understand the technology and you need to understand how it’s differentiated from others, from other companies and their technologies and product offerings. So
(27:56):
That’s a lot of skill that you have to have. I’m taking all of that just as a given and now I’m talking about the stuff on top of that, these soft skills, being able to manage people, hold them accountable, have the difficult conversations and set up an environment for success. Again, I think that’s one of the leaders’ biggest roles is setting things up for people’s success. Do they have the right resources? Do they have the right tools? Do they have the right training? Do they have the right knowledge? And you as a leader need to much more so than the individuals, figure out where those gaps are and then do what you can to close the gaps. And here’s the truth in business, there’s never enough people, there’s never enough time, there’s never enough money ever.
Daniela (28:48):
I slowly disagree with this, but maybe you are right. I don’t know.
David (28:54):
Let’s say say there might be enough, but we always want more.
Daniela (28:58):
Yes.
David (29:00):
How about I phrase it, reframe it that way.
Daniela (29:03):
Yes.
David (29:04):
So there is always a scarcity of something and that’s part of being a leader, is figuring out how to manage through that scarcity. So you need to do your best though to set people up for success.
Daniela (29:18):
How did you develop your leadership skills? What helped you to learn what to do and how to approach different situations with the people you managed?
David (29:32):
So a lot of the people skills stuff, totally seat of the pants. I mean, I joined a young startup, we start building that the same month they hired Bob and Annabelle hired me. They hired one other person and the four of us for five years grew that company at 25% top line revenue growth a year. So we did that and made ourselves like that much more efficient that we could handle that many more people or many more clients over a four year period. But eventually we got big enough, we had to start hiring more people and eventually we were over 20 people. And so we had some hiring misfires, some of which looked after themselves and people moved on. My partner was conflict avoidant like me. And sometimes we move people into new roles. So a lot of it was just learning on the job.
(30:40):
But Bob and I did do quite a bit of reading. One of our most seminal early works that had a big impact on us was Tom Peters In Search of Excellence. I don’t know if you’ve read that book. It was a seminal book in the nineties. Tom is still a management guru. I mean he’s mostly retired now and he’s written other books since. And Hewlett Packard was one of the featured companies in that book as a case study and talked about Bob and Dave, the two founders that’s, I always get them mixed up. It’s Bob Hewlett and Dave Packard. And they had management by walking around and they were engineers, and they walk through the engineering parts of the company and they would at least once a week, and they would talk to people and not just listen to what their managers were telling them. They would go and actually talk to the actual employees who were doing the work. And then subsequently coach training my own coaching.
Daniela (31:47):
Yes. I think that after
David (31:48):
Lencioni’s work, it comes from a lot of areas. I don’t have a single source like this is, go read this, it’s everything you need. And I think it never ends because human beings are,
Daniela (32:05):
The learning never ends.
David (32:08):
Yeah, it truly doesn’t. Especially when it comes to people culture and team building, team leadership. Right.
Daniela (32:18):
David will have to close this discussion. I feel that there are many things to say, but the time end it. I will close it. Thank you very much for being a guest here and sharing your experiences. How can people learn more about your work and how can they reach you?
David (32:45):
Great. Thank you for asking me that. I want your listeners to know that I have a free offer of one hour of coaching for anyone that is stuck on something and want some help. And to take advantage of that, if you just visit my website, coachdjgreer.com, that’s coach D as in David, J as in James Greer.com. And on the top left corner of every page of my website is my phone number and my email address. So just send me an email and give me a brief outline of what you’re stuck on and we’ll find a way to have a call and my commitment to leaders and entrepreneurs, if you spend one hour with me, you’ll have three ideas to accelerate you, your career, and your business in the next 90 days.
Daniela (33:41):
So get in touch with David to help you. Thank you very much.
David (33:46):
Thank you. It’s been wonderful being with you today and I hope your listeners found this useful.
Daniela (33:53):
For sure.
