Building a Future-Fit Organization - Jay Weiser

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Behind the Numbers. My name is Dave Bookbinder, and welcome to the program. There's an old axiom in business that you can't manage what you can't measure. And while business performance and certainly valuation are ultimately reflected in the numbers, every experienced leader knows that the real story, the strategic pivots, leadership dynamics, and the true drivers of enterprise value happen beyond the financial statements.

This is a show where we dig beneath the surface to really uncover what builds long-term organizational worth. My guest today is Jay Weiser, and he's the founder of Jay Weiser Consulting. Jay is a strategy consultant, performance architect who helps mid-market and Fortune 500 leadership teams navigate disruption, build capability, and become what he calls future fit. Jay, welcome to Behind the Numbers.

Happy to be here. Thank you. I'm happy to have you here, too, after the tech glitches we've had, so I'm glad you could join us. Anything that I didn't cover in the brief introduction of yourself that you want to share with the audience?

I would just extend what you said to boards and board governance. So the idea of being future ready starts with the board, how the board works with the leadership team, how the leadership team works with the organization to drive the numbers and ultimately drive value. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that.

So let's kick it off then piggybacking on what you just said. So when you talk about an organization being future fit, what does that really mean in plain English? And why does the CFO or investor care? So when I think about future fit, if we go back 10, 15 years, things were much stapler.

There was some semblance of predictability. All of that is gone. You know, it started before COVID. It certainly happened with COVID.

And folks who thought things were going to calm down after COVID, that hasn't happened. If anything, stuff is accelerated. So the world is changing. The pressure is constant.

The uncertainty is high. Things are more interconnected and complex. So when I talk about being future fit, it's are you not just fit for purpose, fit for today, but are you fit for tomorrow? Are you able to sense what's going on around you, pick up signals, see trends?

Are you able to interpret that information, evaluate it, make decisions, and actually act on those decisions, keeping in mind that things are constantly changing? So that adaptability, that ability to flex to pivot is so crucial, and that takes capabilities. So in the same way, when we think about personal fitness, you just don't all of a sudden say, hey, I'm fit. You have to do the work to get fit and you have to keep on doing the work to stay fit.

Same thing for future fitness. Yeah, the only thing that's certain is change and more uncertainty. And as we're recording this, uncertainty is the buzzword that comes up in every meeting and conversation that I'm having today. So, Jay, you've said that value is either created or destroyed at the intersection of strategy, organization, and operations.

Explain that, please. Walk us through maybe a real world example of how a misalignment at one of those intersections can destroy enterprise value before anybody even notices it. So if you think about it, it's in those intersections. So if you look at the intersection of strategy and organization, that's looking at do you have the right capabilities or do you have the right leadership team?

Is the leadership team aligned? Do they have a process for making decisions and criteria to do that? Are they developing people for the future? All of those things impact value creation.

If you're not doing those things, you end up destroying or leaking value because you're not capable of doing the things you need to do. If we think about the intersection of strategy and operations, My background is around strategy, execution, ballot scorecard, performance management, that if we think about that intersection, strategy and operations, you have to convert, translate strategy to what you're going to do. What actions will you take? What will you not do?

What kind of initiatives will you undertake? How will you manage those and measure those? That either creates value or if there's misalignment, if there's friction, value gets lost. And if you think about where all those pieces come together, strategy, organization, and operations, If you think about a Venn diagram right there in the center, it's recognizing that all of that is integrated.

Leadership and capabilities impact operations and strategy, so it has to work as a cohesive system. Yeah. And leaders have to work together and be of the same mindset. And as you're talking about strategy, I'm reminding myself of the Mike Tyson quote, right?

Everybody has a strategy until they get punched in the face. So in this inevitable world of business and the speed of business, things change and it's easy to get distracted from strategy while you're putting out a fire in the current moment. And I think the term is presency bias or something like that, where people are focused on the current situation this month or this quarter's numbers. How do you get the leadership team to shift that mindset, to start thinking longer term?

Excuse me. So I think part of this, if all you do is focus on today, when tomorrow comes, you're unprepared. You know, I talk about being fit for purpose and fit for the future. You know, if I go back a couple of years and I remember talking to companies about future fitness, and I would have CEOs or chairs say to me, this is great.

No, you're right. We really need to work on this. But we're fighting fires. We're dealing with these operational issues.

We just don't have the bandwidth. Followed by, when things calm down, then we can talk about future fitness. Well, the thing is, things aren't coming down. Firefighting, hanging on by your fingernails, is not long-term sustainable.

People are getting burnt out. People are disengaging. The market is impatient. The market is saying, this is the way the world is.

You need to figure out how to be successful in this environment. And that means adopting. That means building those capabilities. And, you know, I talk a lot about, are you a captain or a captain?

If you think about a ship going through a storm, riding the waves, you can be a captain. You can step up to the helm. You can motivate the crew. You can provide a sense of direction.

Or you can be a captain. Go down to the belly of the boat, cover yourself with a blanket, hope for the best. And captains do much better than captives. It's about taking that agency.

It's about recognizing what you can control and what you can't and making sure you're acting on what you can't. That's a lot better than playing the victim and saying, I can't do anything about this. Everything is out of my control. Everything is not out of your control.

The choices you make influence and sometimes dictate how things turn out. Yeah, it's a great reminder. Sure. In my world as a valuation consultant, predictable and sustainable cash flow is king, right?

So when you're looking at a company's strategic plan, how are you able to stress test it to ensure that it's going to yield those predictable numbers three to five years down the road? Well, you know, I would challenge predictability. I think things are not linear. You know, if I do this, this will happen.

You know, it's become a series of bets that you're making. And as you make those bets, are you taking the steps to increase your odds of being successful? So I think about this from an expected value standpoint. If I act a particular way, if my culture is a particular way, I'm going to have a certain expected value.

If I work to eliminate that friction to be better prepared, I have a higher likelihood of realizing my potential. And what you need to do to pivot so you can achieve the valuation, the investment objective. I think that's what's happening in a lot of cases with P, portfolio companies, that a lot of these deals were predicated on a certain world, a certain investment hypothesis, a certain set of assumptions that, as you note, reality hits. And then the question is, how do you adapt?

It's just saying, we're going to stick to that plan. We're going to stick to that plan. If reality has changed, that very often is not very helpful. Yeah.

And in that PE world that you just described, when we talk about what we'll call short-term thinking or shorter-term thinking, they've got an exit horizon. So they're going to be in an investment for three to seven years, for example. And they've got to move on. They've got to monetize that asset so that they can put the capital to work somewhere else.

Well, and the thing is, when that happens, you have to make sure you have an asset that's sellable. That is an ongoing enemy that has potential for the next person to do whatever they plan to do with it. So if I think about this future fitness, it's important to test at the beginning of the deal. It's important to watch during the deal.

And it's important to get out of the deal. Yeah. So what's the biggest lie CEOs tell themselves when their financials are actually looking good and it appears that things are going well for them? I don't need to worry about anything.

We just need to keep on doing what we're doing. And the thing is, and I posted on this recently, the numbers can look great. What you're measuring can look great. But that can mask what's going on behind the numbers.

So if you think about an example, I'm a company, I sell koozies and drinks. I sell it to a certain market. I sell it to small restaurants. I sell it to chains.

Well, all of a sudden, my small customers are going someplace else. So the impact on sales is not big, it's small. But all of a sudden, my sales are now concentrated with these three or four big chains. Financials start to get impacted because the larger chains squeeze my margins well, it might be 6 12 18 months later before you see that in the financials in the meantime the board never got any of those signals that was never escalated, because the numbers look good nobody asked questions, what's changing in the market?

What do we need to know? What are you not telling us? The numbers look great. Let's dig behind it.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. And, whether it's the VP board asking the CEO, whether it's the CEO asking their direct reports, If it's an environment where it's safe to ask questions, it's an environment that is then safe to share information. Excuse me, and getting timely information allows you to make timely and informed decisions. So much to unpack there and really good information.

Part of me was thinking about the rising tide lifts all boats and it's easy to get disillusioned and fool yourself just by looking at the numbers. And you were kind enough to create some great sound bites. It could be commercials for the show called Behind the Numbers, of course. So I thank you for all of that.

I want to talk to you about the human element. And the regular listeners of this program know that my focus is on what I call the return on individuals. And you look closely at board CEO and CHRO relationships. And in many companies, unfortunately, I think the CHRO is still treated like an administrative role rather than a strategic one.

What are you seeing in that regard, Jay? And what are they missing if those organizations are not really recognizing that role as strategic? So I think about a couple of things. What is the role and how that role, how that person is perceived, the freedom they have to act, the support they're getting?

A CHRO or a chief people officer cannot do these things alone. That's number one. So very often when people say, oh, culture, that's an HR issue, leadership, that's an HR issue. No, that is an enterprise issue.

That is a leadership team issue. So one is looking At the person Who's in that role How they're empowered How they're enabled, The second issue Does the board and the leadership team Recognize the human impact, And the impact of humans The impact of leadership The impact of culture Organizational effectiveness And how that impacts the numbers Because. If the board is focused on human capital, if the board is thinking about culture and the impact an unhealthy culture has on the value of the business, that puts the CEO on notice.

They're going to be asked questions about this, and they need people on their team who are capable of architecting people's solutions, who can bring those things to the table, who can represent those interests, but who at the same time can engage the rest of the C-suite, and can engage with the board. So it can't be a situation where the board says, ask the CEO, and the CEO says, let me find out. And they don't bring their C-chro to the board meeting. So you're getting filtered information where they don't trust or they don't feel The CHRO is capable of being in the board meeting.

The board is thinking, well, maybe we should be talking to the CHRO, but we don't want to upset the CEO. Having more openness and transparency is important. Whether it's the board, the CEO, or the CRO, somebody needs to start. If everybody's waiting for the other person, nothing's going to happen.

So a lot of times, it goes both ways. I've had CEOs who I've been in meetings with who have said, oh, I would never bring my CRO to the board meeting. And my question then is, do you have the right CRO? Have you been clear on what you need and what kind of capabilities and what you expect from that person?

Conversely, you have phenomenal citrares in you here, but nobody listens to me. I'm a second-class citizen when it comes to meetings. All they want to talk about is sales and the numbers. Unless there's a problem, they don't involve us.

It's also about the CHRO understanding the business impact. I did work with one fifth, sixth largest supermarket chains, and I was working on their scorecard. And talking to the HR leadership team, I said, you need some financial objectives. And they said, oh, well, we're a cost center.

I said, well, yes, you cost, but you also drive revenue. They're like, what do we have to do with revenue? We don't have anything to do with revenue. I said, who's hiring the store managers?

Who's hiring the department managers? Who's setting the standards, putting together the training program? If you're not tying what you do to what drives value and performance in the company, then you're not doing your job. So it's having that business acumen and talk about driving results.

And part of that, you talk about happy employees help you get happy customers, happy customers help you get the financial numbers. All of this is tied together. Yeah, it is. And I've spoken to and presented to groups of CHROs and they said one of the interesting things that I've been able to give them through this new ROI return on individuals work is a language that helps them communicate better.

Because to your point, a lot of them didn't feel like they were contributing to revenue, but they needed to understand that it's all connected and starts with leadership. That's what drives value. And look, the CEO and the CFO's love language is revenue and EBITDA. And if you're not able to have the conversation and speak their language, you're going to be relegated to the kiddie table, so to speak.

I think part of it, too, is the CEO and the CFO recognizing that in a lot of cases, that impact is not immediate or direct because it takes time. I mean, you don't just start doing some leadership development, and the next day people are amazing leaders. They still have to get back into the system, whether or not the system supports them. Same thing with IT and AI.

If you make this investment, well, does that change next quarter's numbers? Maybe a little, but the bigger impact is down the road. And it goes back to if you're only focused on the short term, then you're sacrificing the long term. So it's better relationships between the CFO and the rest of the people in the C-suite, understanding what each of them are doing, but also each of them understanding how in today's world, they have to be working across functions.

And that is what makes the difference. Yeah. And paradoxically, interestingly enough, that that's all predicated on a culture of trust where people can actually communicate. So it all goes full circle.

So, so Jay, you talk about leadership superpowers. Tell us about them. So the leadership superpowers is a framework that I developed, and it's really around what additional capabilities do leaders need to have. We've all been through leadership training.

Many of us have MBAs or undergraduate business degrees. What they taught us in school did not prepare us for the situations we're in now. And what I started looking at is leaders today need to manage tensions. And I really identified five that are crucial, hence the five leadership superpowers.

And instead of saying, making a binary call, I can do this or that, each of the superpowers is a paradox that you need to work on both sides. So the first superpower is being a present futurist. That's the very challenge we've been talking about. Am I only focused on the present?

Well, if you're only focused on the present, you won't be there tomorrow. If I'm only focused on the future, I'm not thinking about the present. I'm not going to get to tomorrow. You have to balance that and have discussions on both.

And part of that is listening to stakeholders, paying attention to market trends, watching signals, thinking through scenarios, integrating that information to make better decisions. Another one that I talk about is experienced learner. It used to be, I've got all this experience. A leader could say, I know it all.

I've been doing this for 20 or 30 years. That's another lie they tell. I know it all. But in today's world, that's not possible.

And you can't just rely on your experience because conditions have changed. Being an experienced learner means you leverage experience where it's valuable, but you're open to it being challenged. You're curious. You foster debate.

You ask questions and you learn. So it can't be one or the other and you have to foster that learning environment. It doesn't mean you want to reinvent the wheel every time, but it needs to be that balance, that impact culture. The last one I'll mention, business really goes to the people side, is accountable collaborator.

How do you have accountability and collaboration? Very often, accountability is a bad word. It's called for who do I blame if something goes wrong? And that's why people are like, I don't want to be accountable.

But the thing is, if you have shared objectives, if you have that ownership, if the team is working towards the same goals, they have some level of autonomy, then the collaboration works. Think about a special forces team. Those are people pulled from different areas who come together for a purpose. They have shared objectives.

They have each other's backs. They know they can't individually be successful unless the team achieves its mission. That's where accountable collaboration comes in. So that, you know, we talked about working across function, across business line, across department.

There's very little that can be done today in one area alone. And that's why being an accountable collaborator is so important. So you have the five, the other two are prepared risk taker and strategic executor. The five, when they're all working together, have a multiplier effect on how your business performs.

And with the superpowers, you can look at individuals and say, you know, which ones do they have? Can they develop the others? But more importantly, when you look at a leadership team, do they have all five in the team? Because if they have all five in the team and they have a psychologically safe environment, they can have the discussions they need to have and the superpowers help eliminate blind spots so people aren't surprised and not caught off guard, they're not caught unprepared.

Yeah, Jay, is there any particular one of those five superpowers that people have a most difficult time wrapping their brain around? So it really depends on the organization. For a company that's operationally focused, micromanaged, down in the weeds, present futurist can be really tough. You know, if you're in an organization, it's very hierarchical.

The people at the top do the thinking. The people at the bottom do the doing. This idea of experienced learner can be a challenge. You know, the other one, this idea of being a prepared risk taker.

If your company by nature is risk averse, and I talk about prepared risk takers, about taking risks, smart risks. If you're risk-averse and all you're worried is about playing not to lose, you're not going to innovate, you're not going to grow, you're not going to make the investments you need. So there's not a magic silver bullet. I think it depends on the context or in the culture of the organization.

The point is the leadership team ultimately needs all five. Taking the superpowers into account starts to change the leadership conversation, the conversation in the boardroom. So the right questions get asked, the information gets synthesized, evaluated, decisions get made and actions get taken. So, Jay, we're just about to the end here, but I want to give you the opportunity to share with the audience some actionable advice that they can literally jump on tomorrow.

So for the business owners and the executives who are listening right now who are feeling the overwhelm and uncertainty and don't know what to do next, what would you recommend they do first thing tomorrow to protect their business value? I think the first question they need to ask is, what is it I am most concerned that I don't know enough about? So it's recognizing they don't know. And it's figuring out who are the people I need to ask, who are the people I need to engage.

So we collectively can figure out that problem and start to address them. So it's the elements of staying curious and collaborating and not being afraid to ask, and you don't have to do it alone. I mean, to me, curiosity is key. And for curiosity to work, you need to have trust.

It's got to be safe to ask the questions. And, you know, as we tie this together, I'd like to leave listeners with three questions. One, what value is your organization capable of creating? What is preventing you from realizing that value?

And which capability, if you were better at something, would most improve your odds for success? I think taking some time to ask those questions, that can start to expose where you have some weak spots, where you have a gap. And then you can start to address them. Yeah, absolutely.

Really, really good stuff, Jay. Thank you. And before I do let you go, tell the audience where they can find you, where they can connect with you, learn more about you, or if they need help in unpacking those questions you just dropped on them here at the end of the program, how can they find you? Sure.

So first place I would say is LinkedIn. Connect with me. I share a lot of content there. There's also a link that you can schedule a complimentary discovery call.

We can talk about your issues and figure out the next step. You can also email me at. Jayweiser.com.

Those are the two best ways. That's great, Jay. Hey, thank you so much for joining me today on Behind the Numbers. Really appreciate it.

My pleasure. I've really enjoyed the conversation. Likewise. And thank you out there for going Behind the Numbers with us today.

If this episode resonated, gave you a new perspective, please take 10 seconds, leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. It really is the best way to help the show grow. And do make sure you're subscribed so you're ready for the next one. And until next time, I am Dave Bookbinder, reminding you that the numbers tell the story, but the people bring it to life.

Take care, gang. and we'll see you next time on Behind the Numbers.