Your Company’s Genius featuring Matthew Lencioni

Whatever your type is as a company, recognize you do not want to expel the people that don't have those because you need them. And you could have a real bias toward treating those people like a virus to be expelled rather than something you need. Let's think about what our company tends to live in and make sure that we're filling in the gaps. And you might need to think about working in an environment where there is gonna be more demand for what you love to do. Welcome to the Working Genius podcast where we discuss anything and everything having to do with the six types of working genius and how it impacts your work and your life. I'm Pat Lynn Choney, your host with Cody Thompson, my co-host and we love doing this. Cody, we get to just explore this with our audience. We don't feel like we have to have it all ironed out or doing some real R&D here together, looking for people to see what they resonate with. And today, what are we gonna talk about? - Your company's genius. It's gonna be a fun one. - Yes. And I love this came about when I wasn't in a meeting the other day and you guys were like, I bet we could apply working genius to a company. - Yeah. - To an organization. And so we're gonna do that for the first time, live and on the air. Don't try this at home. Or do try this at home and let us know what you think. So we're gonna just try to understand if an organization tends toward a certain working genius type. And I think they do. It has a lot to do with their personality, their culture. It kind of connects to the strategic anchors that we talk about, has to do with the founder and all that kind of stuff. - Well, and I think it's interesting, some of the conversation we had around it was like, when you can see that kind of teased out in the experience you have with a company, that's really fascinating, right? Like you walk into a place and we'll talk, we'll give a few examples. And I started thinking about this as like, well, is there a dominant letter? Is it just one, you know, like if you could just pick one letter for a company, what kind of represents that? And it was a little more nuanced in that. So we actually did pairings. - Yeah. - It was more about reflecting on us, like what type of company are we, but to prove the theory out, we sort of tested it against three or four or five companies. And it started to become clear that yeah, there is a working genius type that you can experience in companies. And then it gives you some clarity about knowing whether you work in that environment or your patron of that environment that gives you some clarity going into that, going like, oh, this is what I can expect. - Yeah. Hey, Matt, can you join us on this? I want to ask you a question. Because Cody reminded me of something here. Remember when we were developing working genius five years ago, and we were like, at first we thought it was just the letters. We were like, are you an E, are you a T, and all that stuff? And help me understand what it was like. And I just thought about this in real time of understanding that the pairings were actually exponentially more important, the combination than the individual letters. 'Cause I think that's what's going on right now. - Yeah, I think the first time that we realized that was because you were describing something, we were talking about discernment and you described something and the rest of us in the room were also discerners. Cody, Tracy and I, and all three of us said, yeah, we don't think that way at all. And then that's when we realized, oh, you're describing the other part of your genius pairing, which is invention. And I mean, that still happens pretty often. I think we were talking about one of the other podcast episodes that we're preparing for, and that happened just the other day. You said something, you were like, yeah, well, we all, we all feel like this. We're like, nope. - Actually, we don't. - That second letter makes a huge difference. - Absolutely. - Even when we apply it to an organization, which we've never done, right? So hang with us here, Matt, 'cause I think it would be interesting to get different perspectives here. So Cody, let's try this. Let's pick an organization and see if we can't come up with a working genius type. - Here's the first one I threw out to our staff was in and out. - In and out burger. - Here's some of the ways I think through, okay, how would we identify their type? - And just to let people know, if you don't live in the western part of the United States, you might not know, but most people do know about it by now and they've just landed in Tennessee, they're kind of moving their operations here and they're growing all over the country. But we've grown up eating in and out, Cody, you and I both went to college in Southern California and even back in the old days of the horse and buggy in and out was in Southern California. - That's right. - And so it's an institution. - Yeah, so maybe it is helpful to paint like a little bit of a picture there, which is the name itself is about getting in and getting out. Like the drive through is relatively fast. In some areas, it gets pretty backed up. You can go inside the restaurant and order pretty quickly and then a really unique sort of key part of In-N-Out is their menu is maybe the most curated, limited menu of any burger joint that's out there. So there's really only five menu options. - Yeah, in fact, I spoke at an In-N-Out event years ago and I said to the executives, like, "Hey, you know, I'm trying to cut back on beef." And you think you guys love to add a turkey burger? And they're like, nope. (laughing) - And by the way, you're fired from speaking at the event. - Exactly, exactly. And they have not changed their menu in 15 years. - So when you think about that, you think like, okay, either that means that it's not invention. They're not coming, like, I imagine pitching a turkey burger or a chili bowl to the In-N-Out team. They're gonna laugh you out of the room, right? We're not coming up with new menu items, we're not doing it. So we're like, okay, it's not invention. You could say discernment, maybe they curated the offerings, but it's not really that either because it's like, here's what they are. And so we were kind of playing with this conversation and having people weigh in. And here's two really, you know, at least one hallmark of In-N-Out is everybody there is so kind and wants to serve you, you know, like the way they hire. And so that's kind of a hallmark of enablement, right? They're there to serve you, they're there to serve each other. That felt like a pretty good guess that that was one of their letters. - But kind in a very efficient way. - Right. - And I thought like, hey, let's stop and talk. - Yeah, exactly. - How you doing? What can I get for you? They're super wholesome, but they're really focused. And the thing about In-N-Out, many people listening know this, you'll drive by their restaurants and the line in the drive-through is ridiculous. My wife loves In-N-Out. It's like, that's too long. She goes, no, nope, just drive in there. And you're out faster than you would be in some other places, only have four cars. They can get through 30 cars in a drive-through lane because they have their kids out there, taking your order, they don't have very many things on the menu, it goes very fast. Matt, what is their working genius in an Out ET? - So the T speaks to what you just said Pat, which is they can get you through the drive-in. But everybody, if you go in and you look behind the counter when you're ordering, it's sort of an open kitchen. You can kind of see through the whole thing. And people are just flying around, cutting potatoes, loading orders. There is not a, like, everybody there is a busy body. It's all about getting it, you know, across the finish line. Super friendly. You're gonna eat in the car or not? Here you go, here you go, really nice. But they know what they're doing, very organized, very specific. I do think it's an ET company. - And what's interesting about that is not just like, okay, so what is that, you know, we're trying to identify their letters. It also could mean, hey, if you're somebody, you have to know that environment because they're probably, if you're an inventor and you're coming up with ideas, that's not as valuable there, you know, like, hey, what if we change the way we made lemonade? It's like, nope, we kind of figured that part out. We're about delivering the lemonade as kindly and as quickly as we can, you know? And so if you're in that environment, it's good to know that that's like a part of the culture of the organization. - And imagine if you were an executive going to work there and thinking like, oh, I love coming up with new ideas. And I got a job offer from in and out to be the vice president of products. It's like, if you have invention, the one thing they've changed, I heard recently is when they came out with the red dye and the lemonade they've taken it out because it's not healthy. That is the only thing I've heard them change since I've been going to in and out. - Yeah. - So it's a great thing to think about. Does that working genius allow for me to exercise mine? And that's a, I think that's a great example. Now we contrasted that with Chick-fil-A, who has long lines and they try to get people through fast as well, but their menu is changing a lot more. What did we decide there working genius West Cody? - Very similar. I think this is what's so fun about it is two almost identical, you know, in the same industry. But we thought, oh, so E, enablement felt like another, you can't go to a Chick-fil-A without feeling welcome and they're encouraging and kind and it's their pleasure. They're also very quick at getting people through the line. So that's, so this is what's sort of interesting is the nuance around this. But it felt like we thought galvanizing an enablement was more of the combination for in and out as opposed to, or sorry, for Chick-fil-A as opposed to in and out. - Yeah, and think about what ET is the loyal finisher. That feels like, and it's so funny because you think about it, people that eat it in and out are so loyal. They're like, this is it and I get through and I get what I want. At Chick-fil-A, there's a little bit more of that. Come on in and bring your kids and we're gonna, you know, it's gonna be a little bit more, the GE is called the enthusiastic encourager. I think it'd be easy to look at both those places. I've eaten in all, both of them a lot and go, yeah, I can totally see how it differs. - It's interesting because, you know, we've said, I was probably on the app, the table podcast, but when we were doing discipline of market leaders, in and out, or sorry, Chick-fil-A, it's not that they have the best chicken sandwich. You know, that's not literally, you know, it's a great one. - They would argue with you about that, but I agree. I know what you mean, yeah. - And I think it's great. I'm not trying to do the chicken sandwich, but really people go there, they're drawn to this, like, customer intimacy, the service there, the enthusiastic encourager. I mean, when you say those words, I'm like, yeah, when I go to In and Out, I feel they're enthusiastic and I feel encouraged, you know, that's a very common experience, I think, for people there. - You mean at Chick-fil-A? Yes. - Chick-fil-A. Man, yeah, it's hard that we're doing both, these right next week tell it. Well, let's look at coffee. There's a place called Dutch Bros. We've talked about this before. And they are also, we decided they're a GE company, am I right? They're the same way. They're people will come out there and talk to you and get to know you. And they're super kind and encouraging. And there's that thing where the people prayed because that person came in and her husband had passed away. And they'd always come in there. And they're so friendly. They're not about efficiency as much as they are about the interaction of the people there. And their products are good too. But it's not so much about just the, it's really about come here, the culture, the encouragement. They're the enthusiastic encouraging. You're going to get that every time you go there. Yeah. It's wonderful. Yeah. And then we decided, what is Starbucks? And we think Starbucks is probably a tea company because when you have that many of them and they're all serving the same thing, it's operations and finishing and getting stuff done. But we thought they might have, we were trying to think, we don't think it's invention. We think it's discernment, right? Yeah, because they're not. They do change the menu, but they don't add 20 new things. They'll add like, oh, hey, in the fall, we do pumpkin spice latte or whatever. But they've sort of curated what their offerings are. But they really hang their hat on like this operational efficiency of like, we know what you need. We know the quickest way to get it to you. We've curated the things that people want most. And that's what we're going to market with. You know why I go there? My wife and I go there whenever we travel because they have egg bites. And it's like, okay, we're on a highway. We want to eat something healthy. And I can't tell you how many times I eat and egg bites from that place. And I think they curated that idea. I don't think they came up with it on their own. I'm pretty sure I think it was Shark Tank or something where somebody invented this thing. And they said, yeah, we'll take that. And probably more people eat those things at Starbucks and anywhere else in the world now. Well, you know, one other story, I've mentioned this before the acquired podcast where they go through and they tell like company history. They were talking about Starbucks. And when they first started serving coffee, Styrofoam cups were the only thing you could serve coffee. And they, because they knew it was like sort of ineffective and inefficient, they came up. They were the first ones to sort of come up with the paper cup. And then they were the first ones to put a lid on the paper cup to go serve it. And they didn't patent it. And what's interesting is like they discerned their way into a better product than that because people like the takeaway and the non spill part of it. And then they just were like, yeah, this is a more efficient way for us to get the coffee to people. So I think that is a very DT thing. Right. And you go through and you go, are they a W company? No, no, I don't think they're a W company. Yeah. You can't be that big and that effective and efficient and constantly questioning things. And they're not an E company. It's not like you go there and like, how? I mean, you can find very friendly people there, but you're not going to go there because they're the friendliest of all the places. And then the G thing, they're not necessarily encouraging anything. I think they're like, we think we've made a better decision about what to offer you. Here you go. We're going to get it to you. You're going to get the same thing in every store everywhere on the same day. And it's pretty impressive. I think they're a DT company. Well, and this is where you teased it out at the beginning that we think it's related in some way to their strategic anchors. If you go through the six questions of in the advantage and how will we succeed as one, there really is the operational excellence, which is definitely one of their strategic anchors. Yeah, and that's the judicious accomplisher. Yeah, yeah. The judicious accomplisher. Now, I mentioned Shark Tank. And you had a great point about this, Cody. Yeah, you mentioned Shark Tank and I was like, I wonder what Shark Tank's two letters are? Because it's a panel of people and they're presenting these business ideas to a group of people. They've already pre-vetted some and they're getting them on the show. And it felt a little bit like discernment. Obviously, is the most obvious one, right? Here's a list of all these opportunities. Which one do these sharks think have the most legs? Well, and what's interesting about this, Matt, is that I initially thought it was invention. But why is Shark Tank the show? Why are they not inventors? I mean, it depends whose perspective you're looking at it from. If you're looking at it from the people pitching their ideas, it's probably GT or IG. IG, I think. Yeah. But from the perspective of, like, if you look at the show altogether or you look at the sharks, they're probably a bunch of GTs. But I mean, in my opinion, it would be WD because it's completely responsive. Like, I don't think it would be enablement. I don't think it would be invention from their perspective. That's interesting. Oh, and they ask tons of questions. That's kind of what I was thinking. Yeah. I'm going to make a case for it being a DG thing. And you guys can argue, which is great. They're asking these questions. It's more of a discernment thing. Is this viable? They're not like, can you come up with a new thing? They're like, how viable? What is your sales like? And like, how much of you sold? And what's your product market fit? And then they're squarely in the activation thing. When we talk about the three stages of work, they're like, well, you have an idea. I know whether it will work or not. And I know how to get the momentum going. So discernment is like, I'm evaluating its fit and the potential. And then galvanizing is like, I think I know how to get this moving. I would agree now. I think it's lowercase W. Because they're not going all the way back to like, you know what would be really cool? They're more like, why did you do this? And how much money do I have to pay to get this from you? So I do think it's a DG. Yeah. And that makes sense. I think if you look at like, I don't know how many pitches there are per episode. But if a pitch gets eight minutes of time on screen, where the people pitching the idea are talking to the sharks, the first four minutes of that eight are probably going to be them asking questions, hearing the pitch, figuring out things about the business, and then the second four minutes is probably them trying to get a deal done. It isn't really like connecting the two as, you know, activation geniuses do. Yeah. That's interesting. And they're definitely not E. You know that because one, they do give people terrible deals. I mean, you watch that show and they're like, take the brain on these people's ignorance, which is why it's so annoying when they fake E things at the beginning, they go, oh, that's so great. You're so wonderful. Oh, look at you. And I hate that part. We're about to rip you off for half the value of your company. So I think it's a DG show, evaluate, figure out how to take action. That's like, I work with a DG every day. He's not very kind. Yeah, it's a DG show. You know, I did. I did think of that as I said that, but they are all about those things. You think about the negative words that we use to describe the DG, it's kind of what the sharks operate at on the show. That's true. That's true. I think we haven't used those words for like a year. So you have to be a real old listener to know what the dark term for the DG is. So-- Yeah, that's right. That's right. We like to tease each other about that. But DGs are awesome. But they take it to an extreme. They have negative E, I think, on that show. We're going to set these people up to take advantage of them. How about WI? Cody asked the question, Matt, do you remember what we decided? What kind of companies are WIs? We couldn't really come up with a big effective company that was a WI company. I don't remember. Well, what I decided was I thought of some, but they're not companies that most of the people here have ever heard of. There are a lot of think tanks and like theoretical. There's like an institute that I follow that makes-- they even make movies and videos and they put things out there. But they put them out there. And then they don't do anything to get people to hear it or to push it. They move on to the next thing. So all they do is-- and by the way, WIs are fantastic-- but a company that's a WI is probably not going to scale and probably not going to push people to understand their ideas because they're ready to move on to the next new innovation or ideation before they do that. So like there's these institutes. I don't even want to name them because I don't want to criticize them. But most of us have never heard of them. And they're brilliant. But almost nobody knows what they've done because they're not really that interested in activating and implementing their ideas. They stay in the world of pure ideation. I do think it's interesting because there's such value to be had at Dubb Wunder and Invention. Like it's great. They recognize the need in the world. They see solutions to that need. But it actually makes sense that a company whose primary work in genius combination is Wunder and Invention doesn't get through the activation stage all the way to implementation. So you think of like think tanks or people that just write sort of white papers. Like they have a bunch of ideas and put it out in the world. And the activity of Wunder and Invention is so fulfilling to them that they don't feel they need to take it further all the time. And there's a place for that in the world. And hopefully they plug into organizations that have G and T and D and E because then they will activate that for them. It is kind of depressing sometimes when I see these organizations that are solving theoretically some big problems and Cody, you and I are working with some folks on this. And it's like we want to make sure that they're like simplify it, pick the things that matter the most, and then go out there and put there wood behind a few arrows that are going to actually change the world rather than make for a really nice white paper, Winning a win. award at an academic conference and not really get implemented. One thing I want to make clear, because actually just last week I got an email from a listener who is a wonder inventor and he works at a construction company. And he's like, man, I just, it's so operationally minded. Like, is there, what is out there for wonder and inventors? And I don't want it to sound like, hey, if you're a wonder and inventor, unfortunately, you have to work at a think tank or otherwise, there's no opportunity there. What it is is that all of these are necessary. And that's actually probably another practical application of this sort of episode. It's like, let's think about what ours is, what our company tends to, the space it tends to live in and make sure that we're filling in the gaps. Because wonder and invention is amazing as long as we can carry those ideas through the completion. And there's lots of environments that are innovative and require people at high levels to do, ask great questions and come up with new solutions, but they can't just end there. Right. And like, if I were to ask if my wife is in WI, and one of my best friends is a WI, I really have quite a few WI friends. And the thing to ask them is, do you get any outlet for that in your job? And at a construction company, there are some jobs that require WI. Certainly that can be used the lower case W and I. But if this guy's a construction foreman and he's a WI, I would say, you really want to think about this. And I hope you have a lot of outlets for your WI at home. And you might need to think about working in an environment where there's going to be more demand for what you love to do. Totally. I mean, my wife said WI and she does a lot of WI projects at home. She leads a very unstructured Bible study where she gets to WI things. And so we can all find outlets for that. But she did say to me, once, what kind of company do I work in? And it's going to be one that really places a lot of premium on ideation. Or you're the ideator in a company that doesn't do that well and they need you to do that. The last thing we want to talk about is the role of the founder. Because like Dave Ramsey's a friend of ours. He's been on our show. One of our two guests that we've had. Dave is a DT. In fact, Dave was involved in the original development, Matt, remember of this tool. Because we knew Dave and he took the assessment and was playing with us with it. We think his company might be a GT company, right? What was our thinking on that, Cody? It's pretty clear that he figured out the solution to get out of debt. That's a lot of discernment, right? Like he sort of did the baby steps and figured out exactly the plan. The debt snowball. We love all his stuff. And now our next step is we just got to tell people about it over and over and over again. And they do a radio show every day where they're just constantly banging the drum of you got to get out of debt. And here's how you do it. They do the debt-free screen so people come to their show and say, hey, we paid off this much debt. We're now debt-free. So their company being just galvanizing over and over and over again. This approach that they've already discerned. Now they've come up with some new things since then and they're really discerning about that. But it feels like on the other end of the Ramsey Solutions Company is a lot of galvanizing and a lot of just like practical. Let's get this over the finish line. And none of this is to say you don't have all the letters in play. Yeah. Are they innovative? Yes. Do they have discernment? Yes. There's some wondering that goes on there. Are they friendly? Yes, they are very friendly. But we think their secret sauce is we get people to take action that's going to produce results. Speaking of the non-official label for pairings, the GT, the galvanizer tenacity, we call the butt kicker. You know, like, that's not the formal term, but that's what they do. And in some ways, that's what Ramsey, Dave, and all of his constituents there, they kick people's buttons and say, hey, come on, let's go. Like, you don't have to live this way. You got to live differently for a little while so you can live differently for a long while. And it's amazing that so many people, like, we listened to his show for those moments where somebody goes, so Dave, I'm in debt and I've got this new pickup truck and we just love it when he's going to go, okay, go sell that pickup truck. Yeah. Don't be a dumbass, man. You know, he's nicer than that about everybody. He's like, sell that pickup truck, put the money in this, get this done, and get out of debt. It's so fun to watch when that moment comes because then we all go, yeah, we got to do that too. Yeah. And then our company, we think, is an ID company and I'm an ID because we are constantly coming up with new things, but what we're not great at is implementation, which is why we partner with so many people in the world. So many people listening to this podcast are out there implementing this. We have more than 5,000 people certified and working genius. We have consultants, we have our own 50 consultants around the world, but then there's thousands of others who use our stuff because I'm an ID, Cody, neither you or I have ET. So we depend on others to go out and actually implement our material. And I think maybe from the outside path people would think, oh man, well, you've written like close to 15 books. There's tons of invention and there is. There's lots of invention. But what people don't see is the months and years of discernment that go into making the model simpler and really making it easy for people to use. So by the time we put anything out in the world, it has been hyper discerned to where we hope it's simple. We hope it's super practical. And we're also not great at galvanizing our stuff. Like we don't, I don't know how many times we've been like, we are going to be a marketing company. And we're like, well, that's kind of tough when you're not a galvanizing company. We have 15 employees and we have one galvanizer in it, you know. We have 15 employees. We do have three inventors, one's half time. And I'm trying to say is we are first a discernment company with invention too. Yeah. I found this fun. Like interesting. I think we did it with our staff. I think there are some practical implications too about like, hey, if you knew this about your own company, it would help you know what they value. Sometimes what they, it's not to say, this is maybe my main point is like it's not to say, every company still needs representation of all geniuses. But it is really interesting to know that some of those companies will stay at a certain altitude or live in the, you know, the area that they love, the geniuses that they kind of embody. Yeah. And I love how you try to make all these practical, which is good. That's your G. And it's like, I think the first thing to do is whatever your type is as a company, recognize you do not want to expel the people that don't have those because you need them. The other thing is for those employees that work there who's working genius might not be very aligned with that one. They need to recognize, oh, so that's probably why it can be frustrating. And you might have to help people understand that while you might be slightly countercultural from a working genius standpoint, not core values, you might just need to present yourself and say, hey, I realized that the company is a pretty ET company, like even in an out burger if they're listening to this, it's like, oh my gosh, we have WI employees. How do we, how do we tap into their lowercase WI? Maybe they're not going to change the menu, but there's different things that we need to re-explore and innovate around that fit within our company. So it's just good to be aware of it. Yep, I think that's a great way of doing it. There's probably micro innovations or micro wonder that would help them get more efficient at what they're doing. So there's no, I like what you said, don't dismiss those people, find a way to activate them to utilize their genius. There's goodness all throughout all six letters. Yeah, it's so funny because, you know, St. Thomas Aquinas said the answer always lies in the middle, because on the one hand, you don't want to expel those people. But the other hand, you don't want to sacrifice your core because we love the ET's and DTs and anybody with T, we love them around here because they bring stuff that we don't have. But sometimes what happens in a company is they recognize they have a deficiency in that area and then they throw their baby out with the bath water. So know what's at the core of what you are. And if Dave Ramsey's company ever gets bad at reminding people about things that change their lives, that's not good. Now they can find a way to utilize those other things without throwing the baby out with the bath water. Alrighty, that's it today. Matt, thanks for jumping on. You're going to be doing that more on our work in Genius Podcasts. And Cody, thank you. It's good to see you all. Weez. And thank you everybody for listening to the Work in Genius Podcast. We'll talk to you next time. God bless everybody.