Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: You're listening to Home Health Revealed, where the business of home health comes to life. Hosted by Hannah Vail, each episode brings real conversations with the leaders, innovators and experts shaping the future of the industry. From reimbursement and technology to leadership and growth.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: This is Home Health Revealed.
I can't wait to dive into your new book. I just got a hold of a copy and have started reading it and we're going to talk about it.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: Wonderful. Yeah. So as Hannah said, Chris Taylor I, you know, really for the last 30 years of focus in the, in the complete healthcare industry. But my real joy has been the last 22 years where I moved from the hospital environment to the care at home space and have loved being in home health and hospice and home care.
And one of the things I realized in the book, it introduced you a little bit about my mom, is that I always find that you have people say, oh, I know about hospice. Yeah, you know, you study hospice, you study home health, you do that.
And then after my mom was a hospice patient and I was a family member of a hospice patient, I could physically see the change from I know about hospice to I know hospice. And that was really a big impactful thing in me to where I could then work closer with organizations, with the vendors that try to help the providers, the providers themselves. Having that actual walking in the shoes of is always takes it to that next level of feeling. So I've done that for the last 22 years. I've been blessed to work with amazing organizations in the technology Space, several different EMRs, also remote patient monitoring, to be able to see how we can really bring benefits to the patients. But really over the whole time, from the time I got my master's degree degree from Brigham Young University till today, I've really studied and looked at how I can help bring benefits to organizations that I work with and that the individuals that I work in conjunction to, whether we're selling a service or a product and the actual end users and trying to build those relationships and create trust in all of those individuals.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: And trust is a big topic now. I'll tell you, in the beginning, I loved the story about your mom. I feel like she is somebody that I just, I would have loved to have met. And she's, she was a teacher.
I was, I come from education. She taught high school English, I taught middle school, so also English and math for me. But I feel like I can, I can feel the person that she was through your book. I love the pictures that you put in your book as well.
And can't wait, because you took that experience and made it something to where you can apply this and bring in the knowledge, the experience that you've had professionally as well as your family and help organizations get rid of some of their own toxicity and grow in their own, you know, in their mission. Right. I think everybody, you can look at it an individual as being mission driven. You can look at your organization as being the same. So I have some questions for you.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: But I want you to start a little bit by telling a story about your mom and who she was.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So, I mean, it's interesting because Gene always was driven to higher levels. So before I even came into existence, when she was going to college and, and she ended up getting engaged, but she still had a desire that she wanted to get her bachelor's degree. She didn't want to stop and just be a stay at home mom and, and raise children, which, that was one of her top des.
But she still wanted to finish college. And so, you know, this is early 60s actually and even 50s, that, that wasn't for, you know, for women to go through and get their bachelor's degrees. It was some, you know, even after they got married.
But she even took it a step farther. She said, you know what, I'm gonna go back and get my master's degree. She got her master's in English and secondary ed. And again, if you look at the number of high school teachers, especially here in Utah, where, where we ended up, not a lot of high school English teachers that had a master's degree.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: And it was just how she was. And she always did that through her life. She raised four boys on her own. Unfortunately, my father was killed when I was only seven months old. And she again took that opportunity to still focus on her boys, to focus on education, to focus on teaching us integrity. I, I remember, you know, one time she got mad at me. A piece of toast at me. Well, you know, probably one of the only times she got mad at me was because it was based on integrity, you know, about the Taylor name and, and having trust. I mean, it goes all the way back to when I was a young teenager and, and she was always trying to teach us different things. I remember when I was 16 years old, I had a birthday party where I had some of my guy friends come over and back then for we had VHS tapes and she stopped to pick up a movie for us to watch at my 16th birthday party.
And she decided to pick up and bring home Joan of Arc.
And that's just I guess you just figured that us boys needed a lesson of women's strong leaders and just that that was her.
You know, she continued through her life and unfortunately early on, way before she should have, she ended up getting melanoma.
But luckily she always was watching. She always could see little changes. She got early diagnosis, she got it dealt with, it got cured. She was able to progress years years later, after again touching thousands of people, she unfortunately got breast cancer. Again, luckily enough early diagnosis. The team that she had did great at treating the root causes, not just the symptoms. And because of that they were able to help healer and she was able to continue and grow and finally it had come back and metastasized and you know, again she was supposed to only live a few months, but because of the early diagnosis, the properly treating the root causes, she was able to be with us another nine months and. And the exciting thing in her life as she looked back, I remember sitting on her bed, sitting by her and having a conversation and hearing her tell me about her, her joys in life and some of the regrets. One regret was she never wrote a book. Which is one of the reasons I ended up finally sitting down and taking the time to write a book. But then she also talked about how she looked at the value of people and the importance of building that relationship with people and always being, having that integrity, always being upfront. And I remember May 25, 2010 and in Salt Lake, if none of you, if you don't know Utah, usually you don't get snow at the end of May. But one of her favorite things was a fresh snow and looking outside the window and seeing it snow and seeing back of her joy not only at that point of her life, but throughout is one of the motivating factors that I've taken away.
And she was my best friend and it was awesome to be able to spend even though her life was shorter than I would have wished, the that extra 184000 hours that I was able to spend with her and others were able to spend with her because of early diagnosis. Treating root causes and being healed is what drove me to, to look at her life and, and how it associates also with all types of organizations, not just businesses, family relationships. You know a lot it works in the concepts really fall in line from, from what Gene taught me.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: And your book is called the Corporate Cure C U R E and you've taken that and made it into an acronym to apply across business. So I love how that story pushed you to really critically think about her extraordinary life. It sounds like everybody she touched was positively impacted. And to have a life where so meaningful and you know, know that when you're on that side of hospice and then you sit at a kitchen table or wherever that was for me, that happened with my grandfather and they're sliding that noe over for signature and all of the things that you thought you knew about hospice turn into a completely different experience where you're feeling walking through hospice with somebody that you love and care about so deeply. I, I think it makes the work that you and I do so much more meaningful and relevant. We're able to approach it differently.
So I'm really excited to talk through this, this book with you and get it out to our listeners. And actually, I would love to do this book, I told you, with my own leadership team within our organization, just because I think there's such good stuff in here. But I'll start with some questions. Are you ready to start with some questions? And I'll preface this with I'm not all the way through the book, but you can. I'm, I'm messing with it over here. It's on my desk. I've got my highlighter out.
You've got quotes in there. You've got pictures. It's very interactive, especially for somebody like me who likes to doodle and, and draw and talking about all of the different points and great quotes in there too, from.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Yeah. What I would say to you and any other reader is I'm all about aha moments. And so I'm glad you have a highlighter there. I'm glad you have a book because I would say as you read it, you know, if you, if you have an aha moment maybe will trigger something that you remember from a previous experience or oh my gosh, I have this type of situation, I'm going to try this. Or an epiphany that you have while reading it, jot it down. And that way you can actually put those things into action, get a nice ROI from your experience. And I'd also ask that drop me a note at the back of the book. There's a QR code. You could drop me a note. I love hearing people's aha moments. I love people hearing people's epiphanies because that's, that's how we all grow together as a community. So if you'll do that for me, I love it.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I certainly will.
So you talk about the organizational cancer. I'm using that kind of air quotes over here. Being something that can exist beneath the surface of long before leaders really recognize it and relating it to that touching story of your mom. So what is the one symptom that leaders most often dismiss, overlook, that should really make them stop and investigate what's really going on here in my organization?
[00:11:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. Because a lot of times when people think, when leaders and organizations think of symptoms, they think about missing their annual growth number or missing their quarterly turnover rate or what's even their monthly, you know, missing a monthly KPI.
But you know, if you do that, the problem is do you really want to wait a year or a quarter or even a month to figure out what's really going on? So the one symptom that I think leaders dismiss most often is a change in behavior.
If you watch for changes in behavior, they will always come before that annual, that quarterly, that monthly issue. The connection is very, you know, personal to me because that's how my mom realized that she had cancer. She used to swim every morning at 4am she'd go down to the gym and swim laps.
And she could swim, you know, 40, 50, 60 laps and no problem.
One morning she goes to the pool, gets in the water. By the time she turn, makes her fourth turn of her lap, she's winded.
She doesn't know why she's able to swim 40, 50, 60 laps every day. But there was that little change.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: And luckily she realized it, she noticed it. She went to the doctor that day, got her blood work back, and that's how she figured out if she wouldn't have taken that, who knows how long it would, you know, progressed and then dealing with it would have been much more difficult. And so if we look at our organizations, if we look at the people that we work with, because organizations are really no different than the human body. They're living, breathing entities. Right?
And so when good people suddenly get quiet, when meetings lose their candor, when employees stop, you know, bringing leaders or problems, when departments stop blame, when they start blaming each other, when you hear things like why bother? Or that's just how we do it here or what? My, my one, my kids, if my kids were on there, they would tell me if I ever hear the word whatever.
To me, those are early behavioral changes that as a leader, my antenna go up and I'm like, something else is going on.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Right?
[00:13:44] Speaker A: One of the biggest mistakes is that leaders don't look at that and then, and don't ask that follow up question, what's causing this? What's the root cause? Why is this team now, not sharing with other teams. What. Why are they saying, whatever, you know, what is going on? And if engagement is, you know, most companies have engagements down, let's launch an engagement initiative. Or if sales are down, let's push the sales reps harder, turnovers up, let's increase recruiting.
But that's just, you know, treating the symptom, not really looking at, hey, let's diagnose what's really going on. Let's ask the question, what changed?
What's underneath these. These behavioral changes?
I tell leaders all the time, when your best people get quiet, don't celebrate the lack of complaints.
Start investigating.
Because if your best people aren't saying anything, something's going on. They're either looking for another job or they're like coasting. They're sitting at home eating bonbons like, I'm gonna do whatever I can.
So you got to look at those things. And that's really, you know, where the corporate cure begins. It begins in before the concept of diagnosing. I always, when I do book signings, one of the first things I write, I try to write at the end of every signing is diagnose what's broken. That's step one. You got to get into it. And that's where it begins. Because before you prescribe a cure, you have to make that right diagnosis.
And so that's always step one. And I think, again, the symptom, if you look at slight behavioral changes and what changes in these behaviors are out there, so you can really have conversations about it.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: And I think you have to have leaders that care enough to take that pause and notice, and it may end up being nothing. You may have an off day, but taking the time to notice something that's off and then follow up with getting your blood work done, let's just dive in a little bit, make sure we're good. I think that's also a key within your organization.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it is.
If the leader, if you don't care enough about your people, I mean, one of the things that when I work with organizations, I talk to them about, you know, at least once a week, do a 15 minute check in with your people.
You know, doesn't have to be. You're not following up on them. You're not just check in with them.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: If you do that, you know them better. And as you know them better and you care about them, these changes in behavior percolate to the top a lot easier for you. So you can see them earlier. So you're not waiting until that annual number isn't hit. And now you're. Now you're way behind.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Yeah. You're already looking in the rearview mirror. Yeah, Truly.
Of the five areas that you talk about in your cure, so it's C U R E S for people who are listening, and it's a framework that you've built. So it's clarity, unity, readiness, execution, and sustainability.
Which one do you think leaders most consistently underestimate and why?
[00:17:07] Speaker A: I mean, the interesting thing is, is that what I find is that they all. One leads to the other. But if I had to choose one, that where most organizations are most vulnerable for sure would probably be unity.
Leaders understand the strategy, it's more objective. Leaders understand goals, leaders understand KPIs. But I think the dramatically underestimated area where leaders miss it and organizations miss it is how much organizational performance is dependent on trust, is dependent on unity. And if you miss that and you just focus on these objective measurements of all the other things, the underlying force that makes those things happen, if it breaks down, is where you're in trouble. I mean, I've seen executive teams with extremely smart people, with very successful people who individually are top of the charts, but collectively aren't nearly as effective as they should be. In fact, I was just doing a presentation, working with a group of amazing people, wonderful leaders.
And in that, we. I. I showed a video that talked about Belgian horses and how an individual Belgian horse by itself can pull £4,000.
But if you team two horses together that work together, that have this unity, that trusts each other, on average, those two horses don't only pull 8,004 plus 4. Right. Normal math. Right. But actually, on average, when you put two Belgian horses together, they can carry up to 32,000 four times more. In fact, the world record is for. I think it's £53,000 that two individual horses working together could pull. And so if you look at the unity in an organization, that same thing can happen. One plus one can equal seven in an organization when it's done right. Because if. If they don't trust each other, if they operate in silos, they protect information. They compete instead of collaborate. You know, they avoid difficult conversations.
None of those things are good for growth. None of those things are good for strength. All of those things are tearing away.
And that's why inside of unity, I talk so much about brat. Brat's my favorite thing. If you've ever worked for me, if you've ever worked for an organization that I've consulted for, you'll know, be right building Relationships of trust. It to me is the foundational rock that organizations have to be built upon. Because that, you know, trust isn't a soft leadership concept. To me, it's an operating system.
If you think about, you know, your computer, your computer only is as good as that operating system that drives it, no different. And to me, trust is that operating system. In, in an organization, when trust is high, communication gets faster, decisions get faster, people take appropriate risks, problems surface earlier, accountability gets easier. When trust is low, everything gets expensive because everything is the opposite.
And so having that as that operating system helps because if you don't have it, meetings will multiply, emails multiply, approvals multiply, everything gets longer, politics increases, Then you get into some of the fears like cancers we can maybe talk about later. But people start protecting themselves and they become, organizations become very vulnerable. And so you have to have clarity to get unity, but you have to have that unity. Because if you don't have unity, nobody buys into direction. As I said before, they all kind of lead one to the other.
Because then with unity, without readiness, you're not going to do anything without readiness and having readiness, but without execution, you're going to get a lot of activity without results.
And then again at the end you can execute, but if you don't have sustainability, great, you have a great six months, but you fall back, you know where you started. But at the end of the day, if you look at all of the five different areas, clarity, unity, readiness, execution and sustainability, for sure, to me, unity is the one that if you don't have, your organization is never going to achieve the potential again.
4,000 plus 4,000 equals 32,000.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: I like that. I really do like that. Because if you're pulling in the same direction, you're going to be able to go further faster if you're unified in that approach.
One of the organizational cancers that you identify is fear based leadership.
But fear can also sometimes produce short term results.
So how does a leader recognize when accountability has crossed the line into fear? And then what does healthy accountability look like?
[00:22:19] Speaker A: I mean that the crazy thing is that's why fear based leadership is so dangerous. It's why in the corporate care I listed as the number one cancer of the list of seven is because to me, you're exactly right, fear can produce great results.
You know, that's the dangerous thing about fear based leadership is that it can work at least temporarily.
And that's the issue that fear can make somebody hit a number. Fear can make somebody work on a Saturday, fear can make somebody stop Questioning the boss and just go along with everything.
But unfortunately, fear produces compliance, not commitment.
And, and compliance versus commitment never wins.
Eventually the organization pays for it. In the compliance, people stop telling the truth.
They hide their mistakes, they manipulate numbers. I mean, I don't know if anybody sales, anybody who manages a sales team has ever seen, you know, oh, I did 80 calls this week. And then when you dive into it, they really did 20.
And what you find out is they are too afraid. They're afraid if they said why they only did 20 that they'd lose their job.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Maybe there's an organizational underlying problem of why they could only do 20. Maybe CRM is not very good. Maybe, you know, there's a lot of different reasons, but they're too afraid to talk about it. So you couldn't get to the root cause. They avoid taking risks. You know, you're, here's one of the biggest downsides is that if you look at your team of employees and you, and you break them into thirds, you got your bottom third. It's like if they leave really, it's not going to really affect anything. It's probably healthy for the organization at your middle third and you got your top third. Unfortunately, the individuals that, that leave at a higher propensity when under a fear based leader are your strongest employees, the ones you don't want to leave. And the people who remain become more exceptionally good at managing what the leader is forcing instead of solving the real problems.
If your employees are afraid of telling you about the problem, look in the mirror, you might, you're probably the problem itself. You, you know, you have a leadership problem. So the question on accountability, what, how can we still be accountable without looking at fear?
And here's something.
When working with different leaders and mentoring and working with organizations, one of the questions I tell them, you know, a quick, easy question as a leader to ask is when you know, ask yourself, when someone on my team makes a mistake, is there first instinct to bring it to me or is it to hide it from me?
Because this tells me an enormous amount of my leadership style, the culture of the organization and all that. Because healthy accountability is actually very demanding and, and it does require a lot. But the expectations are clear, the ownership is clear, the standards are high, results matters, consequences exist. So all of those things are true also inside of building healthy accountability.
But the difference is that people can tell the truth. It all goes back to trust, unity and trust. Right? It's a circular thing. I can say, Chris, you missed the number. Let's understand why you know, what you own, what needs to change. You know, what are you going to do next to make this different? That's accountability. That's saying, chris, here's what happened. Here's what you're responsible for. You know, what are you going to do? What help do you need from me? What help do you need from the organization?
So you're not relieving them of their responsibility, but you're sitting down and helping, leading them to be able to look at, okay, what do I need?
If I ask that question, fear says, you know, instead of that sitting down and working, if I'm leading by fear, I sit Chris down and I say, chris, you better hit that number or else you're going on a pip. You're getting fired.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Right?
[00:26:45] Speaker A: And so exact same situation. Chris isn't hitting his number. Chris isn't doing what he's supposed to be doing.
One, how you lead and how you pose it is more of an accountability standpoint.
The other is just straight fear.
One develops a person, the other tries to control the person.
The overall goal is, as I look at fear versus accountability is accountability creates ownership in the individual.
Fear creates compliance.
I want to have a team full of owners, a team full of people that look at that company as they are owners. If this was my own company, I would do X.
Not I'm doing X because Chris told me I had to do X.
So I hope that answers and looks at fear versus accountability because it's not saying you have to be nice and everybody's best friend and you have to give in and all of that, you still need to be, have them accountable.
But how you present it and how they feel, how that trust, if they've seen activities that weaken their trust, people without cause get fired. I mean those type of things undermine helping individuals be accountable versus compliant.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: And I think maybe you implied this as well. But compliance versus commitment, to me, commitment also requires critical thinking because then your employee or your person that you're working with has to step up in a way of, okay, this is mine, what am I going to do? And they have the freedom and the ability to utilize because they're not acting out of fear. I think fear can also cloud critical thinking because then you're afraid to do something that might fail. And some of the best learning opportunities come from being allowed to fail.
Right?
[00:28:46] Speaker A: 100 and I mean, just when you said that, you created a new math with your comment in that situation where a leader takes away the, the responsible opportunity for their employee to use critical thinking. Now your math is One plus one equals one.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Because the employee is not doing their own thinking. They're not bringing anything to the table. All they're doing is doing what they're told to do, what the leader says. And so you're 100% right. I mean I, I can tell you that the times where I've actually been in an, on an executive team leading, one of the things that I always look at is if there were times where we had a deadline, it wasn't a normal thing and I started getting phone calls from team members saying hey, what can I do this weekend?
I'm you know, do we need to get up and do a, pull an all nighter then I, I, as a leader, like you know what, check the box. I'm doing something right.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: They, they respect me. They want all of us to succeed. They want that 4,000 plus 4,000 equal 32,000. They want that experience.
They, they have that ownership. They're committed.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: And you hit the nail on the head. If, if you don't allow that and you take that away from people, gets down to why have other people, they just become a cost instead of an investment.
Right.
It's interesting, listen to when you talk to people and they're talking about human resources, if the person and I, I, I, unfortunately it's now stuck in my head. So I do this all the time. If I hear an individual, a leader talking about their team, as you know, oh yeah, my, you know, they cost me X or you know it and it's all about a cost instead of an investment.
To me it helps me see where their mindset is on the value of the individuals, the value that they're bringing from their commitment from adding to the company versus it doesn't matter because I'm going to tell them what to do and they're going to do what I say.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it makes a difference in how that person feels when they're approached that way.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: Because then you want to be, you want it not only for yourself. I mean human nature is we want to be accepted.
We want to, when we look in the mirror, feel good, good about ourselves. We want accomplishments.
You know, that's why we love it. You know, when we win a race and we get that gold medal, that was something we wanted and we, we strive for. So it's, it's normal human nature. And so if we, if we don't allow that to take place in our teams because, because of fear based leadership, then we take all of those benefits away.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: Agree? Yeah. This is, I'M thinking through my own leadership and styles and things and I feel like I'm learning a lot through this book. And as a leader, a lot of times we can think about how we are and our self perception can be one thing.
I think there's a way and I know you're working, you work with organizations and I got the opportunity to listen to some of your presentation.
We were just at the Cantime conference together. So that was really cool for me to get to hear you as a speaker talk through some of these things with some Q and A and real life scenarios. Because this isn't just a book that you read and you feel good and you highlight and put on the shelf.
This is something that if you're really willing to be vulnerable as a leader and think through and then even taking that a step further, having you come in and I know you do this with organizations to really help almost it's work therapy, it's organizational therapy and identify even how employees feel about a leader. If, but it does take vulnerability as a leader, I think to go through something like that. So you've spent more than, I'll say 30 years in executive leadership being able to really see some of these from different angles.
If you could sit down with the younger version of yourself, let's say even 20 years ago, and tell, tell that Chris one thing about building an organization, building a sales, sales team that can actually sustain growth and can sustain success. What would you tell him?
[00:33:30] Speaker A: Oh yeah, I, I think I, I'd tell the younger Chris Taylor one to go to the gym more. No, no, I, I, I looking at that, I'd be like, you know what, you're going to spend a lot of your time in your career for focusing on results, focusing on, you know, that results absolutely matter.
I started off my first job out of college was working for Michelin Tire Corporation at their corporate office in Greenville, South Carolina.
It was in a sales area.
And so, you know, starting out on a sales executive, everything was numbers, numbers, numbers.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: And so that's kind of the mindset that I got on, you know, how do you sell more product? How do you do more X? But it's more chasing results.
But what I've realized since and what I would tell the younger Chris Taylor is don't focus on chasing results.
Obviously results matter. They absolutely matter.
But sustainable results are almost always, and now that I've seen over the last 30 plus years, sustainable results are almost always the byproduct of relationships.
Spend less time, you know, building transactions.
Spend less time doing that, and spend more time building trust, building those relationships of trust. As you're in that process of selling or whatever your job is taking care of a patient. You know, you're, you're a nurse, you're a clinician, you're a cfo, taking care of the books.
Obviously those items are important. Those actual tasks are important.
Hitting those results are important.
But we want sustainability.
The, the s and cures.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Right?
[00:35:36] Speaker A: If you want that, I would tell my younger self, spend less time focusing on the transaction and more time on building trust. Because, you know, I always thought that, you know, a great sales person, you know, sold products.
I don't believe that anymore. To me, great salespeople, great employees, great team members build relationships of trust.
I probably thought the, that great leaders had all the answers.
I don't believe that anymore. I, I think that great leaders create environments where people are willing to tell the truth. And then because they're willing to tell the truth, the great answers percolate to the top. And the leader and their team and the whole group then go together. There's something I, I teach and I talk about. I'm a scuba diver, so I love being in the water. And with scuba diving, buoyancy is a, is a huge part of scuba diving. You want to be neutrally buoyant, so you're not going up, you're not going down. You're just cruising where you want to be.
And so I look at, in organizations, there's a buoyancy issue.
You think about a buoy on top of the water where it floats.
And unfortunately, if you're in an organization where everybody else is pushing down on the buoy so they can be up higher and drowning, whoever, that buoy is not a good situation if everybody and the great leaders create this environment where nobody's trying to push the buoy down so they can be higher, but they're all arm in arm buoying themselves up. So they're all buoyant and all safe and all growing and all, you know, progressing.
That's what you want. And I, and I probably thought building a successful organization was primarily about hiring the right people, setting the right goals, driving the execution. You know, that's, you know, adding. Back to my bit. Look, Brigham Young University, shout out to you, great Marriott School of Management, great program.
But as I think back to some of the classes there, they're focused on, you know, in your HR class, it's about hiring the right people. Here are the questions to ask. Here's how you hire the right people. Okay? And this, you know, in your strategy class is about here's how you set your strategic goals and driving execution.
There really wasn't a lot I can't remember the B rot, you know, 300, 303. Yeah, I need to go back and create that and become a professor. But that's what it is. I mean obviously those things matter. Hiring great people, setting goals, driving execution, obviously those matter. But what I've learned is that if you don't build the trust beneath it, success becomes incredibly fragile. If you don't have that trust, the great people you have will leave. If you don't have that trust, that respect with the team, the goals that have been set won't matter because everybody's at 50 anyways.
You can try to drive execution. It's not going to happen. So again, to me, that rock, you know, the wise man builds his house upon a rock.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: To me a wise organization builds his house upon the trust rock.
And if they do that, that's where we'll be. And that's why in the corporate cure, in my unity, in the unity section, so much of that is spent on brat is spent on building relationships with trust. We talked about it earlier. Talked about again. I was just at a conference and one of the great speakers there was talking about strong successful organizations and I watched his entire presentation and at the end I sent them a note and said, do you know what one word that was most used in all of your slides throughout your entire piece?
And he said, yeah, trust. And so to me it was like, okay.
He and I didn't talk, you know, we didn't like do our presentations together, but it all came back to that. So it helped me realize that that's what you know, everything's about. Because whether you're talking about leadership, employees, customers, partnerships, sales, people buy from people they trust. People want to work with people they trust. People want to make people they trust look better and help them grow.
People follow people they trust. How many times have you seen an organization where a great leader leaves and then over the next six months there's this exiting of people to go where they're at maybe a year after their non compete's gone or you know, not solicitation.
People follow people they trust and people will go.
And this is one thing I learned early, is that people will go through incredible difficult changes if they have a leader they trust.
If your organization is going to be going through an M and A, if an organization is going through a big thing like an emr, new emr, implementation it's going to change your entire life at work, you know, whatever that difficult thing is.
What I've seen over and over and over again is that people will go through these incredible difficult times of change with leaders they trust. So if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be don't just build the business, build the relationships that make the business sustainable. Because most organizations, most organizations don't have a people problem.
They have an environment problem.
Good people are placed inside of unhealthy systems, eventually begun producing unhealthy behaviors.
Trust is a cure of, of several of the cancers. Again in the book, you know, seven are laid out that I've commonly seen the most. There's unfortunately there's more than seven out there.
But to look at the top seven and throughout, trust is a, is a key piece. And one of the things I in, in putting all of this together is not only to, to diagnose as I said, you know, if we can diagnose what's broken. So that's the first step.
Two, look at aligning what matters and figuring out the root causes so we can build something that lasts. Sustainability. And so in, in there, as I look at each of the seven cancers, I look at, okay, let's diagnose first and then at the end we look at the treatments. What can we do to treat and fix what are some of the underlying easy, low hanging fruits that we can do that will help fix these root causes of these, of these cancers?
[00:42:51] Speaker B: And you, you talked about how some of them are quick fixes, they're easy, but for some you really do have to kind of put together that treatment plan and go through hard things. And you really mentioned change management as a big idea if you're walking through an emr. And I always like the picture of it's actually a grief model where you talk about change management. And I have a copy of one that I've used in several different conversations. It kind of looks like a dragon in the way that it's drawn out and in the belly of the dragon when there's indigestion as you're going through change, leaders who have trust built up within their organization can actually get through that hard part of the change more successfully and faster. You can get through it quicker to get up to your new status quo. That's better than the old status quo implementation if you have that trust. And so as a leader that's a superpower that you have, but it's not one that you can develop quickly. And it a It's a character, a character trait really.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: No, I, I, I love that I can, I'm gonna have to have you send me the, the picture of the, of the dragon. The dragon, yeah, send me the dragon.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: Dragon.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: Yes. I would love to see that. I always, I'm a, I'm a, I love learning again. Goes back to Gene, you know, 360 degrees, goes back to dream. The interesting thing is if you think about, and I don't know, maybe you thought this out because you're that smart, but as I was thinking about the questions that you thought about asking, it really fits. I mean the first question, you know, is all about diagnosing, you know, something isn't right. You know, don't ignore the symptoms. You know, that first question like dove into diagnosis. Your second question, looking at asking about how do you use a cures framework.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: So you're identifying those root causes.
And then your question three was about fear, accountability, you know, how do you treat it?
[00:44:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: That's what we talked about with number three. And then your last one was looking at sustainability. What would you tell that 20 year old self? Right. So without even. I don't. Maybe you set it up like that on purpose, but it perfectly fits into, you know, diagnosing what's broken, treating the root causes, healing the organization.
Because that's really what it's all about. If you can do those things no matter what, they're in every organization there's like you said, those low hanging fruits, there's things that are there like my mom's melanoma, that easily can be done. Maybe it's that one toxic employee.
And if you don't get rid of that toxic employee, I promise you that toxic employee will turn into a toxic culture. They will start talk when you're having an important meeting. They're the ones that are on their phones texting other team members. Oh, this is so dumb. Yeah, whatever, you know, they're the ones that use that whatever and it gives me ptsd. But, but yeah, it's, those are the things that every organization have going on. And the good news is, is that a lot of them, if, if the time is taken and the focus is put on it, you can find them. You can see those slight behavioral changes that we talked about at the very beginning and look at how we can do those early diagnoses and, and treat. And again, that to me is why I got Gene for an extra 21 years and is why, you know, again to come full circle, why I decided to write this book. There's more to come.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I want to hear about what's next because I think I overheard you talking about maybe a next book and I'm curious as to where your mind is as an author for what you want to write next.
[00:46:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, so for sure there's more to come.
What I've realized as I look at the framework that and again, this was a four year process of putting this book together. Many flights on airplanes, many notes on delta napkins that became, that became Cures. You know, if you think of clarity, unity, readiness, execution and sustainability, it really that framework fits into several things. So two different projects I'm working on right now is one is expanding the corporate cure into the Cures series.
So for example, the Family Cure.
Every family is basically an organization with its within itself. Whether you're in early stages in a relationship, maybe that's moved to a marriage, maybe that's moved to having kids in a family. But if you look at a family and using those areas, it really, the book, you know, will explore how, you know, couples and families create clarity around the expectations, values and roles. Finances, parenting, those areas inside of a family, how they can develop unity together, how their relationships can be stronger, how that trust, everything we talked about, building relationships of trust should happen between partner, should happen between spouses, should happen between parent, child and child, parent bi directionally it's not again, fear based parenting doesn't work just like fear based leadership doesn't work.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:48:31] Speaker A: So a lot of those same things. So the central idea about being healthy families don't happen by accident.
They're built intentionally similar to healthy businesses. So that's one.
The Campus Cure is kind of a prequel to the corporate Cure. Helping individuals and colleges and universities before you get that first job. I asked myself a question. Where was Chris Taylor before he took that job with Michelin Tire Corporation?
How could I have been in a better position if I looked at clarity, unity, readiness, execution and sustainability in what I was doing when I was in, in college? You know, again, learning about building relationships. My mentors. Do you know how many college students really search and ask for people to be their mentors? How many are, you know, are spending time learning with different people, addressing knowing my career preparation a lot of times and what I've seen and as I've talked to individuals in college is they take their classes and then they just go to like a job fair and they'll interview with anybody.
[00:49:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:49:41] Speaker A: And, and they're not, they haven't done anything to prepare themselves to be more ready for the job or the career that they really want to be doing.
So Cures works perfectly with that group.
And so that's one of the, you know, areas that I've already started working on, expanding using the framework in different areas before we move into our careers in corporate life.
While we're in our careers in corporate life, we have this other whole life with another whole organization that we're with, whether it be relationships, marriage, family.
And then the other last is that I've been so moved by the conversations and the commit and the comments that people have made after they've read and after I've worked with organizations on the UNITY section and especially B rot, There will be a deeper dive into B ROT and, and B ROT being that that rock to build organizations upon, you know, building that rock that then everything again, whether the organization be a business, whether organization be your family, whether the organization be a community that you live in, that building relationships, trust. That trust needs to be that rock that's built. So those are some of the projects I'm already working on and we'll see how they come about. And I'm looking forward to continuing to help organizations again. I think that the genetics that were passed on for Gene was, you know, how can I help people? When she created that first women's center at Brigham Young University, a place for women to go, whether they had grades, that they were struggling, maybe they were just homesick. First time they moved away from home, they were freshmen at a campus of 40 plus thousand people. You can get lost. And her creating this place, or maybe it was, you know, somebody more tragic than a victim of sexual assault. Whatever the case was, she wanted to create a safe place, a place that individuals could go so she could help them get help.
And that's one of the reasons that I've loved of leaving corporate world and starting tailored growth. Writing the book, it allows me to do exactly that, more laser guided.
So it really brings joy.
[00:52:05] Speaker B: I don't want to get us too off course. I know we're about done. But while I was thinking about what you were saying your mom created at Brigham Young, side note, I think you should, once you get the campus cure, that'll be your intro course at Brigham Young that you can teach. But what your mom created was a place of trust. And what trust does is it creates belonging and it's human nature to want to belong. So when you're going somewhere new life has changed, season of life has changed, new job, whatever that looks like in where you're at in your life. Today you are looking for people you
[00:52:41] Speaker A: can trust 1 million percent.
[00:52:43] Speaker B: And you're looking because we want to belong. And when we trust someone or an organization, we know we belong there because we feel safe there. Always seeking that safety.
Okay, before I let you go though, where can somebody find you or find information about you? If you have an organization, if you want to reach out to Chris to get more information, if you want to find the book, where can we do all those things?
[00:53:08] Speaker A: Awesome. So the book is being sold currently on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Walmart, all of the places where you'd want to find a book.
Go to any of those pages. Search the corporate cure. Chris Taylor will pop right up. Order it after you do, after you read it. I'd love everybody that has an opportunity to look at it, go back to that source and Amazon wherever and. And leave a review. Be honest, I'm not saying only leave good ones. Do all that define me again. You can go to my website that has information more on the book, has more information on the services I do. Whether it be keynote speaking, coming out and doing leadership retreats, whatever it is.
Tailored Growth. T A Y L O R D Growth.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:54:01] Speaker A: My last name, Taylor. But I wanted to make it very individual to what individuals need. So it's tailored but. T-A Y L O R D growth.com or you can send me an email. Ctaylor Taylor growth.com and I love hearing what people are doing, how I can help.
It's all about working together to. To elevate everybody around us.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: Yes. Thank you so much, Chris. This has been amazing.
[00:54:32] Speaker A: Thank you, Hannah.
[00:54:35] Speaker B: Okay.
