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Episode #268
Gustavo Razzetti

How Consultants Build A Fearless Culture

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Summary

The workplace is never fixed, especially after the pandemic; it forces individuals to shift and adapt. Businesses that refuse to adapt are left behind. This episode with Gustavo Razzetti, the author of Remote Not Distant, enlightens us on how consultants build a fearless culture. He addresses the areas of culture to connect you with your team through remote collaboration. Gustavo also lays the roadmap to allow businesses to succeed in a hybrid workplace. Your options are to thrive in this new workplace or be left behind. If you want to scale your business forward, tune in to this episode now!

On this episode, I’m joined by and very excited to have Gustavo Razzetti. It’s wonderful to have you with us.

Thank you, Michael. I’m very excited about the conversation and looking forward to it.

Gustavo, you are an Author. We will talk about your book. You are a speaker. You are also the CEO of Fearless Culture, where you help your clients develop purposeful cultures. Your clients include organizations like the American Medical Association, the Federal Aviation Administration, Continental, and a whole bunch of others as part of your previous life, which we will touch on. You’ve worked with many brands of all different shapes, sizes, and so forth.

Your work has also been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, and BBC News. Your book is called Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace. I like to start more in your earlier years before you got to where you are now. You had quite a history in advertising and media before you started your current business, which we will talk a lot more about.

I’m wondering. When you look at the different agencies that you worked at, different media companies, and so forth, do you feel that helped you as you started your current consulting business, where I know you have workshops? What was the impact of that previous work experience on your business now and when you started that business?

There are two aspects to it. One was, what was the trigger? What triggered me to say, “Now I’m going to go solo and start my own business.” The other is, how was I able to leverage everything that I learned through my practice in a different discipline and put it into the service of my new business? I have worked for many years in marketing, advertising, and innovation. One of the things that basically clients paid us for was to help them come up with new ideas.

The marketing campaign, advertising campaign, or new products or new solutions. At some point, I realized that companies have much more ideas than they think they need but what they lack is the right culture. Most of the ideas that the company has never seen the light of day. They are dead before arrival because there’s politics before there’s fear, people don’t want to fight battles to make things happen, and so forth.

That was what created me to say, “Let’s focus on a different side, which is the cultural aspect.” That’s how we decided to start my consulting firm years ago. The other part of the question is, “What did I learn?” I learned the things that I wanted to keep when I work in large firms like consulting firms, which are quality, standards, being very aggressive, and always making sure that large clients are looking for great ideas.

CSP Gustavo Razzetti | Fearless Culture

 

On the other hand, when you work in a large firm, you work with any client. In my case, I decided that from day one, I was going to be very truthful about the type of clients that I wanted to work with. I don’t want to work with a******s. I want to work with clients that are into it, that want to do the hard work, and that are open to changing the culture. They are only looking for silver bullets. They know that change, and especially culture change is not easy. Those were some of the parameters that I built. As I always said that everything we do in life, we can turn in something else later. The more we do, the better prepared we are for whatever the future takes us.

Your answer now hit on several of my follow-up questions or ones that I was planning on asking about. What I heard you say is one of the reasons why you started your own consulting business and getting to this new venture was that if you stayed inside of the corporate world or inside of a larger organization, you wouldn’t have the ability to necessarily pick and choose which projects to work on. Was that something that was bubbling up inside of you for a long time or happened over a matter of months or a year? Give us a sense of how long you had this idea of starting your own thing in the more recent years.

We need to be honest with ourselves. One thing is the eureka moment when we realize and see things with clarity. The suffering is the moment that things start to bubble, prepare, and turn into something different. Usually, it’s a lot. In my case, it was many years, to be honest. It wasn’t like one month, I woke up and said, “I’m going to change the world,” which I haven’t but you know the point.

There were also a couple of triggers. One of them is that I was invited to attend a program at Stanford, Change Leadership. I spent three months there. I was still running an agency remotely but I was mostly focused on there. I went through a lot of challenges, activities, and questions. I was working with students that were 20 or 30 years younger than me. They were starting, and I was in the, “What’s the good future going to look like for me?”

I realized that I wasn’t giving my clients a service, to be honest. I wasn’t giving them my best. No client complaints. They were super happy but I realized, “If I look into the past, I did much better work.” What happened is that I became good at doing my work easily, and clients were happy but I wasn’t challenging myself. I thought I could provide something. I realized that and said, “I need to do something about it.” I was turning 50 or something like that. I said, “This is a moment to take another leap,” and I did.

The second thing that you mentioned is that you set some clear criteria that you would use to qualify or/and, therefore, accept or “deny potential clients.” You didn’t want to work with anybody. You want to work with a very specific select group of clients. Now, looking back over the last five years or so of running your company, Fearless Culture, how successful would you say that you have been in only accepting the best types of clients or the ones that you feel would be most appropriate? Is that something that you have been able to be very strict with? Have you found yourself that, at times, you open up that funnel maybe a little bit wider than you would’ve liked to and end up working with some clients that maybe aren’t the best fit or you look back on thinking like, “That wasn’t ideal for us?”

I wouldn’t say that all the clients I worked with were perfect, non-error but I’m still very strict with that criteria. Let me tell you a different side of the story. I was in California with a client. We are talking and saying, “You now have your book, and you are doing great. You have lots of clients.” Looking at the result of years of work with my team.

We started talking about how I’m mindful of the types of clients I want to work with. He said, “Now you have the luxury because you are doing great, so you can do it.” I said, “No, I did this since I started,” and he said, “No, that can’t be.” I said, “Yes.” It was painful. I said no to a lot of contracts and a lot of nice fees and opportunities but in the end, it paid off. If you are able to stick to your guns and be consistent, it pays off. There were moments that I was, “I need money,” or was stuck, afraid or worried. I say, “You made a choice. Stick to it.”

It pays off if you can stick to your guns and be consistent. Click To Tweet

Gustavo, you are taking me to the place that I’m putting myself in the position of probably many people joining us now, who some have been consulting and building their businesses for many years. They still are not as strict as they probably want to be with who they work. They say yes to a project because the revenue is there. They take it along in the neck and say to themselves, “Maybe going forward, I will say no to those projects.” The next project comes along, and it’s lucrative. They say yes to it again or others who are earlier stage and feel like they need to say yes to the projects because they need that cashflow. They need the experience and build their business.

I’m very interested in your mindset. When you were presented back in the day and maybe even still now with opportunities that you didn’t feel were the right fit for the type of client that you wanted or the work that you were focusing on but they were lucrative. They would’ve paid you handsomely to say yes to but you said no. A lot of people in that situation would say yes to it because, again, it’s a lucrative opportunity. Walk us through the rationale and mindset you had at that time or maybe you still have now. How do you make those decisions?

First of all, I want to make sure that no one feels bad if you say no to a lucrative business like flex your approach. I’m not here to preach or make you feel bad about it. One thing that I realized is that there are thousands of consulting firms out there. Consistency is hard to find. It’s important that we basically walk the talk and that we are able to present something different to our clients. That was part also of the year. Not only it’s a decision but also a way of positioning yourself in front of our clients.

To jump in because you are making an interesting point there. How important was that aspect or is that aspect for you that positioning when you have people approaching you, and you say, “No, we only can work with this group of clients?” Looking back over the years of experience now of building this consulting business, do you think that had a big impact, or was that a side outcome or a result?

It was fundamental, and why? It helped me stay true to who I am, how I want to work, and how my team works. The way we show up in front of clients is super authentic and genuine. Also, on their hand, we have a lot of flexibility to be more honest with our clients because I tell them upfront. First of all, people will say, “Do you have more space to take another client?” I say, “It all depends.” My point is the same way. You are screening me, and you are probably talking to our consultants. We are going to look exactly the same.

We want to have a conversation with you. Usually, there’s someone from HR reaching out and saying, “We want to talk to your CEO.” If your CEO is not available for a talk before we kick off a project, that’s a red flag. Is this so important? The other thing that we ask people is, “Are you willing to basically put in the effort?” Imagine that we, as consultants, are like a trainer. You go to the gym. You say, “I want to lose some pounds. I want to get fitter,” whatever it is. Your trainer can define whatever activity and eat like a diet, whatever they want to give you but in the end, if you are not willing to put in the effort yourself, then the consultant work goes nowhere. Those things are important.

I can tell you because it’s not easy. There were many moments I would say, “What the heck have I done?” Now looking in retrospect, there was a great decision. Once I was like, “Help me,” and it made me a tree. When we are building our business, we sometimes have self-doubt. “Are we good enough? Are we better than the others?” Those questions that we ask ourselves as humans. In my case, it helped me get rid of those questions because I was consistent.

I didn’t have that doubt because of sticking to my plan. To wrap up, I’m going to the next question, the one thing you asked before. “Why did it work?” Usually, when it comes to making decisions, we define our criteria when we are confronted with our decision by defining the type of clients we want to work with. When I started, every time I faced a client, I was ready. I didn’t hesitate. I say, “Does this client follow the criteria or does it not?” It was more like yes or no.

CSP Gustavo Razzetti | Fearless Culture

 

How about the money question? For a lot of people, money is what sways them to say yes to a client or a project that is less than ideal. How did you deal with that?

At some point, it was tough financially but the money question is you don’t talk money to the client until you filter them. You talk money. You already have an estimate or a fee there. When you are talking, and there’s no any fee attached to the conversation, it feels less painful. You don’t feel, “I’m losing $100,000.” No. It’s just another guy who called me.

I was going to clarify there. What I’m hearing you say is that because of your conversations, you had that filter set right at the beginning. Before you even talk to a prospective client and buyer, you would know whether they meet the criteria or not. If they did, in that early conversation or even from that initial touchpoint, then you might go further. You wouldn’t know what you stand to “lose” from a financial perspective because you wouldn’t even go that far in a conversation with somebody if you didn’t feel like they were matching the criteria that you set out as somebody being a true ideal client.

In that sense, emotionally and psychologically, you don’t feel all. When you write a proposal, you think that you are going to win it but when you never put an estimate to that proposal, there’s no money that’s lost. On the other hand, time is limited. We can make more time but you are going to work more. The moment you get into a client that’s going to be a pain in the butt.

The guns are going to steal time that you don’t have. It’s going to make you feel unworthy, unhappy or whatever worth comes to your mind. That’s the time that you are stealing or taking away from other opportunities. When you remove the noise, you make time and space for the real clients that you want. That’s the end there.

One that we’ve talked to many clients about is where they start growing their businesses. In almost every situation, when you take on a client, deep down inside, you have some hesitation. There’s that gut feeling that this is probably not the best scenario we are set up with. Anytime a consultant takes on that client, even though you might be making money, you almost always regret it.

You think to yourself, “The money is not even worth it at that point.” The point that you are making is such an important one, which is getting very clear about the criteria of what is the client that you want, what engagements you want, and using that as a filter early on. Shifting now to your business, when you opened the doors years ago or so.

I would imagine that with your track record and your career of working with many different organizations, and many of them were agencies or had access to lots of different types of clients, vendors, partners, and so forth that you would have a network that you could call upon to get the business started. I’m wondering. Where did your first clients come from? Was it the result of your network? What do you do to get the first few clients into the new business?

So when you remove the noise, you make time and space for the real clients you want. Click To Tweet

I hope it was, but it wasn’t.

Tell me. What happened?

I was like, “This is going to be easy.” Two things. First, people judge you by what they know about you. Many people work with me in one space. Now I mention I shift to culture, which is a different discipline and animal. You need to talk to different people. Most of my relationships were on the marketing side of companies. This is more HR, CEOs, and stuff but also people get to, “You are very good at this.” They don’t immediately think that you can also be very good at something else. It’s like you only have one talent, and that’s it.

Still, I have other relationships that weren’t necessarily clients that helped me get into other people. One thing that works a lot, at least in the short-term, is looking for partners that can help me get in front of clients. I started doing some open workshops. Now, I do very few workshops, let’s say for free. Those were more like a tester, inviting some clients to experience a one-hour workshop.

To confirm or clarify, when you say partners, can you describe what partner? Give us a sense and a bit more detail on that.

There were other people that were the same. For example, there was an innovation firm whose business was about setting solutions. They didn’t care about culture but they saw, “If I present notions about culture, it’s going to be added value to my clients.” That should be ended up doing some stuff. That was a nice way to get in front of clients.

The other area in which I continued to invest a lot of time and pay off but I’m not saying in the long run, was writing. I said, “Rather than go, I’m not good at knocking on doors, cold calls, and that stuff.” Also, cold calls are going to get you into the wrong line, at least from my perspective. I decided that one criterion to filter clients is writing. I started writing like hell. I found so far over 500 or 600 articles and some long 30,000 words.

Where were you publishing these? Were these all on your own blog? Were you publishing them in other publications? Walk us through that. What was the goal that you had in mind when you set off and decided, “I’m going to start writing?”

CSP Gustavo Razzetti | Fearless Culture

 

I started publishing in my own blog and then moved into Medium when Medium started being a thing. I was making a lot of money in Medium at some point until they changed their model. I got pissed off and stopped writing a medium but that helped me a lot. One person read one of my articles and introduced me to Psychology Today.

I have had a column there for the past few years. I started getting people like I wanted to republish some of my articles with some tweaks. I started doing that. Also, once I had consistency, that’s what paid off. When you stick to something and do it, people say, “You publish and hit the publish portal.” Probably 500 people read it or 100, and then at some point, it will get into the thousands and a hundred thousand. You start paying for that stuff because people are getting what you do.

You started writing on your own blog, and then you created more leverage by going after publications that would have access to your ideal clients. You write one article for them and reach hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. How long did it take from the time that you started writing to the time that you started having people reach out to you and say, “I read your article on fill-in-the-blank publication?” To a point where that didn’t just happen once but it happened over and over. There was some level of consistency to it. How long did that take for you to achieve that?

You are always going to have a moment of luck. Know that someone is going to call for whatever reason, “I want to interview or republish your article.” Consistency took over one year or a year and a half to get that results.

What were you telling yourself? I’ve seen this multiple times, Gustavo. I don’t know if this ever occurred to you or if you have a very strong mindset but a lot of people, they will get excited about, “I’m going to jump on social media. I’m going to write or try and present,” and they start but don’t see the result from it very quickly, and then they stop.

They look for the next shiny object or the next thing that people are talking about online. For you, you stuck to it for a year and a half, consistently writing. Did you ever have that mindset or that question come up like, “Should I continue doing this? I’m not getting any results from it?” If so, what kept you going?

Yes, I have the same questions that most of your audience is going to have because we are all human. We have suffered from the same problems. I would say that there are a couple of things. First, I was obsessed like anyone about the outcome. When I stopped being obsessed with the outcome, I started writing with more rhythm and energy. I wasn’t trying to play silence, so I used writing not to say, “I’m going to get a client,” and say, “I’m going to start sharing with the world what I think.”

By writing more, I was becoming better at thinking at presenting a different perspective about why I can help companies and how I help or how I can’t. Sometimes you need to tell a client, “That’s not what I do,” and that’s also part of being consistent and coherent. That’s a thing that helped me because I say, “I want people to read what I write,” but you need to understand. One person told me early on that, “The first blog that you published, no one is going to read them.”

A culture always matters in any size, shape, or form. Click To Tweet

You are building a habit. You are building an audience, and if your blog has one post, no one is going to go there. You need to have a lot of content. On the other hand, it happened to me. I mentioned I was doing these workshops to try to generate leads. With this guy and at some point, a lot of people came but then we did 1 and there were only 4 people. We felt like, “All this content, all the energy, the preparation just for four people.” I said to myself, “Instead of focusing on those who didn’t show up, why don’t we put the energy into the people that care about what we do?”

Instead of thinking about the hundred or thousands of clients in the world, focus on those people that care about your business. The people that come and show up. Don’t write for the masses because unless you want to be a writer, I believe, from your writing. If you are trying to build a relationship, focus on the people that read. If they are a hundred and read you often. I have people that start reading my blog from day 1, and after 5 years, they are still there.

I have a couple of stories that come to mind from you. One is that we always try and track when people become clients. How long have they been in the world of consulting success? We had one client who told us that they had been reading our articles, checking out the show, books, and different stuff that we put into the world, much of it for free, for over ten years before they reached out and became a client.

Another told me that she was 11 or 12 years and we have been around both for 13 years. It’s interesting. In that long-term mindset, if you are not attached to converting people, you are not thinking transactional but you are thinking much more about relationships, then you don’t mind. You put your stuff out. You know those good things will come from that. I want to shift because there are a couple of things I want to make sure that we can fit in at the time that we have together.

If I look at your career, you spend a lot of time thinking about culture, change, and how culture has applied inside of the organization. When you think about smaller companies, so the company that has 5 or, let’s say, 10, 30, or 50 people, what distinctions or differences do you think about from a cultural perspective?

If you are a leader, Gustavo, at a company with five people, how do you think about culture, and what do you focus on? How does that compare to, let’s say, a leader in a company that has ten people and as opposed to that might have 50 or 100 people? What changes? What do people need to be thinking about, and what distinctions exist from a cultural perspective if you are the leader inside of these different sizes of organizations?

When you are a small business, culture is more transparent and obvious, and that’s good. Also, it’s more genius. If you have 5 or 10 people and 1 of them is an outlier, doesn’t necessarily accept the norms and how the team wants to operate or the vision for the company, then that person is not going to last too long.

In larger companies, we live, and clients live under the impression that culture can be homogenous. The culture of a large company is the result of lots of subcultures. To your point, we, as human beings, have a stronger sense of belonging to smaller groups. Let’s say your family, your friends or your sports, a club than to the country, the world or the company that has 15,000 employees.

CSP Gustavo Razzetti | Fearless Culture

 

What are the most common mistakes that you see people will make when it comes to culture? When I ask this question, I’m thinking about the owner of a small consulting firm. What are the most common blenders, errors or things that people aren’t paying attention to?

A culture matters in any size, shape or form. In a family of 4, the parents and 2 kids have already a culture. It has what’s accepted, what’s not accepted, and how we communicate with each other. Do we confront a conflict in the open? Do we avoid tough conversations? Do we get very emotional when something becomes personal or do we address conflict in a more civilized way?

The culture of your team, of your company’s 5 or 10 consultants, shapes the way, and people can see that from day one. The moment they talk to one of your team members, they are going to see if your culture is consistent or not. They talk to you as CEO because probably that’s the first contact when you are building a relationship but then when you have a coaching session or a workshop, and someone else from your company is there, they immediately got a sense, “Is this team aligned? Is this team happy? Is this team chaotic?” They are going to get those signs superfast. If you don’t take care of your culture, it’s going to backfire.

There’s a lot that you cover inside of your book and in your writings about the culture that we can’t fit in all in our short conversation here. For the consulting business owner that is recognized or has recognized the importance of culture inside of their company or maybe wants to make it a bigger part of their company, what are maybe 2 or 3 best practices, ideas or areas they should be focused on to strengthen the culture inside of their business?

One thing that’s very important is the alignment between what we say and what we do. For example, people talk a lot about values. Now, usually, when you talk about culture, people immediately respond to you with values as if it was the only element. Culture has many more elements than just values. The point is that having a list of values doesn’t build a strong culture. One thing that we do in activities is what are the behaviors that we reward, and where are the behaviors that we punish?

That helps you understand how people get hired, promoted, and get kudos and how people, in the end, should get fired if they don’t improve their behaviors. For example, I mentioned that a******s and Slack have rules, the same as Netflix. Basically, they don’t want to work with people regardless of how smart they are if they are not nice human beings. For example, I was working with a client for who we uncover a paradox of what we are going to reward and punish because sometimes we are rewarding and punishing the wrong things.

These people were giving low performers a pass. Basically, they were rewarding low performers by letting them stay in the company and not doing anything about it. On the other hand, they were punishing high performers because not only did they let these guys be part of the company but the high performers had to take over the task that the other people weren’t completed. They were punishing their best people by not taking care of the work.

Why were they doing that? Was it the attitudes of those high performers? Why did that punishment come into play?

When you trust people, people are going to return that trust exponentially. Click To Tweet

It’s a punishment because you give them more work. You increase the workload of the people who know, “Because you are a higher achiever, I give you more work. Team B is not doing their work, so I’m going to give it to team A.” In the end, this team is working 14 hours, and there are working 5 hours. That’s the point. They are not punishing them on purpose. They don’t realize. This is something that, first, leaders avoid conflict. They don’t want to talk to underperformers. Also, we tend to focus on the people that do great, and we think that giving them more work is a reward but at some point, it becomes a burden.

I would love to transition now. I’m on the same line. We are talking about culture and one thing that we have all been going through over the last several years is this transition to the hybrid workplace, and that’s what your new book is about, Remote Not Distant. I’m wondering. When we explore the culture, we’ve scratched the surface of a couple of things here. What are the big differences, if any, the consulting business owner needs to keep in mind because many of us now have remote teams? We are not in the same office space with our team on a regular basis.

For you, Gustavo, in your business as well as with clients, what are some of these best practices, ideas or things that people should be focused on in the hybrid workplace? What are the big distinctions between maybe the old model of everybody being in one location compared where we are now for many of us?

That’s a good point there when you said all in the one location because of what the pandemic cost at first. We moved from being all in the office to being everyone working mostly from home. Now people have the choice to work remotely, which doesn’t necessarily mean from home. It could be from a co-working space, from my family member’s house, from a coffee shop or whatever, and then I went to work in the office. People gained flexibility during the pandemic that they don’t want to let go.

Now people want to design their work day around their life and not the other way around. This is critical because if we fight back, we are only wasting time and learning all of the learning curves because this is not going to go away. People are fighting for this. There are many companies that we see that are offering flexibility and not from location but flexibility in terms of schedule, how we work, and anything in between.

That’s a benefit that people already have acquired, and they are not going to let go of it. However, with flexibility comes intentionality. You need to be more obsessive and disciplined in how you make that team work together. If you, for example, Michael says, “I’m going to work from 7:00 to 9:00 because I’m an early riser. Gustavo likes to work after 9:00 PM because he’s a night owl,” which is true. We also need to make sure that we find some shared time in which we can collaborate.

Let’s say from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. All team members are going to be available if anyone needs me for meetings, calls or whatever. That balance of giving people flexibility but also having a team contract that’s very disciplined is going to upset that. That’s the core. Many leaders are fighting the flexibility aspect because they see that employees are trying to take advantage of it like saying, “People are going to work around the system. They are going to slack off. They are not going to work.”

Through this, most of the people are not there, yet there are always going to be some people that want to abuse the system but the majority of people are driven by good intentions. The better we give and the more flexibility we give them, people are going to pay off in dividends because when you trust people, they are going to return that trust exponentially.

When you don’t trust when you try to control people, they are going to build the system still, even if it’s very rigid. Usually, when there are more rules in the workplace is when people are worse. The best cultures, for example, are the ones that are very flexible but also have fewer rules because they show that they trust people. Going back to your question, “What changed?” Trust was an issue before the pandemic, and it’s become even more evident that managers and leaders don’t trust their teams. If you don’t trust your team more than ever, you are going to have a lot of problems.

Let’s explore that for a moment and go a little bit further together. Take the consulting business owner who has distributed team and people are working virtually. Maybe in different places around the world and maybe even in the same city but are not in the same location on a regular and consistent basis. They want to provide flexibility for their team members but maybe deep down inside. They have concerns if they can’t see that person.

If they are not sending messages on Skype or Slack all the time, which hopefully people aren’t, then you don’t know how much they are necessarily accomplishing or you are wondering, “Are they productive or working on the most important thing.” In your mind, what’s the best practice? Is it about getting very clear and setting outcomes that everybody is in alignment and agreement with? Is there some other approach that you find to be more effective to ensure that, for a leader, they know their team is moving in the right direction and getting the right things done even though they can’t see that person physically?

You nailed it. It’s about having clear outcomes. When you agree on the outcomes, I always said, “With three outcomes of accountability, I’m going to give you freedom. You can work on whatever but by Friday, we need to have this part ready.” Don’t wait until the end of a six-month project to check in with your team about what’s going on. You don’t need to check on them daily. That’s the thing. That’s a huge difference. We jump from, “I don’t know what’s going on,” to total control, and none works. In most consulting firms, you have more than one person involved per project. There’s the leader or the owner of the shop but also peer-to-peer accountability.

If I’m worth taking care of one part of the project, you are taking care of another. At some point, Michael and Gustavo need to touch base to see how it’s doing. The most important thing is clear communication. They also discuss with the team, so don’t try to figure it all out. I was talking to, no names mentioned, a large retailer from Minneapolis. One of the things that they are struggling with and working on is changing the leader’s mindset. Leaders don’t need to have all the solutions. This workplace, the hybrid environment, is new for everyone.

Accept that you don’t have the answers, and involve your team and tell them. Be honest. “I want to trust you. I want to give flexibility but also need you to deliver the goods. I don’t want to be controlling but I want to realize three months from now that you are way behind it. How can we do it?” Invite them, and people are going to come with it because, at that point, it’s at stake.

They don’t want to lose flexibility. One of them says, “Give me some way of keeping you accountable. Let’s do it.” Having either daily or weekly one-on-ones with your team not to check, “How are we doing?” but basically, “What’s going on? Are you stuck? Are you having many problems? Do you need my help? Do you need resources?” You have that meeting on the calendar, and if there’s nothing to discuss, “Nothing to discuss. No update. Perfect. See you tomorrow or next week.”

That’s a great point, Gustavo. That’s what we try and do here internally. We have weekly one-on-one meetings with core team members. As you said, nobody wants to be micromanaged, and nobody wants to have too many meetings. If you are very clear and you establish what are the outcomes that we are working towards, and everybody knows that, then you can allow people the freedom.

As long as they are getting those things done, then you don’t need to be worried about how they are necessarily getting done as long as the outcome is being achieved. It’s the one that you both agreed on. That’s fantastic. Before we wrap up, I want to make sure people can learn more about your new book and your work and find out everything that you have going on.

I would like to know. You run your business, which you are very successful at. You have your book. What are 1 or 2 things that you do on a regular basis, Gustavo, that you feel are key to your performance and to your ability to make progress, have energy when you show up, and achieve the success that you have? Any habits or things that you are doing on a regular basis that you feel are key?

I’m very intentional about how we designed my work week.

Tell me about that.

I would say either you manage your time or someone is going to manage or steal it for. I protect my morning. Every Monday, I never have meetings. It doesn’t matter who call me. From 7:00 to 11:00 or 11;30, that’s writing time. That’s the moment I use it because usually, I jot some outlines during the weekend. I start my Monday writing, and there’s no interruption. No emails. I don’t check anything else than that. The same way, Friday PM unless I have a large workshop with the client. I always block all my afternoons, and that’s winding downtime.

I can choose to work, go somewhere else, organize, wrap up or whatever needs to happen next week. That’s very important. The other thing that has helped me a lot is using Calendly for scheduling. Not only is the back-and-forth unproductive but also, I define the different types of engagements if they are going to be 5, 15 or 20 minutes. Not only I’m showing that person how much where I’m available but also, I’m giving them like, “This is a fifteen-minute meeting. No more.” It’s, “Can we have an hour?” If you don’t set boundaries. People are going to book long meetings because that’s the default.

Also, having blocks in between. I never have backlogs. I always have cushions in between meetings if some meeting goes longer. I want to switch like grab a coffee and take notes from the meeting that ended before I jump into the next one. The sign is basically the most important thing that I can share as a tip. The consistency, as I mentioned earlier. I have a plan and say, “Every week, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that, and I do it.” Sometimes I fail because I’m not perfect but I stick to my plan most of the weeks.

If not, when I don’t, I don’t hit myself. Sometimes I don’t have anything to say. I cannot write. I’m in a block, and I learn to say, “I need to give myself some permission, ‘Today, I skip my weekly routine, and the world is not going to collapse.’” The world collapse when you start giving away your routine every day, and you create a routine of not showing up. Not showing up once is not always to be tender to yourself. Don’t beat yourself too hard.

Finally, in the last six months or so, if you were to recommend a book. It could be fiction or nonfiction. Something that you read or listened to could be completely out of the realm of business but anything that you’ve enjoyed, what comes to mind for you?

I like, Think Again by Adam Grant. I read probably a little bit over that but still, it’s one of my most recent books there somewhere.

Why would you say it’s one of your favorites?

It’s because it’s business or not. I don’t know. It has a little bit of business but for me, it’s because of our thinking. We talk a lot about people having to think but we don’t think a lot about how we think. We are so busy jumping from one thing to another. We lost the art of thinking, to be honest. People are doing stuff. If you see most decisions that leaders make on a radio agency, what’s going on? People don’t stop to think. They don’t basically make that space.

I have a very similar schedule to you in that my Mondays and Fridays are different from core days “work” are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday but Mondays and Fridays tend to be days more for strategy, planning, and thinking. I’m a big believer in carving that time out. Especially if you are in a role where you are leading people, and you need to make important decisions. Having that time to be thoughtful is so critical. That’s a great recommendation. We will have that linked up. Finally, Gustavo, I want to make sure that people can learn more about you, your work, and your book. Where’s the one place that we should send them?

I would say LinkedIn is easier because there are no other @GustavoRazzetti. If you spell my name correctly, then you are going to find me. If not, you can go to our company website, which is FearlessCulture.design, and you are going to find this.

There we go. Gustavo, thank you so much for coming here, and I appreciate you sharing your experience and talking through this. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you for the invitation. I enjoyed the call, and it went super fast.

 

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About Gustavo Razzetti

CSP Gustavo Razzetti | Fearless CultureAfter two decades in the corporate world, helping companies build purpose-driven brands and become more innovative, I was hungry for something more impactful. I realized that most organizations don’t lack ideas but a conducive culture.

I created the Culture Design Canvas to help design future-proof teams and organizations. I’m an avid writer and contributor to Psychology Today, Forbes, Thrive Global, Medium, and many more.

Before Fearless Culture, I was EVP Leo Burnett Chicago, CEO Euro RSCG New York and Argentina, among other executive positions in the innovation and marketing field.

 

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