Why Fast-Growing Companies Blame People for Structural Problems

0:00I support leaders and teams in all facets of business and I'm helping people design their life and design their leadership. They have to build the architecture to make the company work, to have their people be happy. That's what I'm coming in to do. It's to give you the kind of insights that you need to move forward. Christopher McCormick is a visionary business leader, executive strategist, and the founder and CEO of Visionary Consulting. Drawing from more than 25 years of experience, he helps leaders navigate AI and organizational change by strengthening the conversations that drive meaningful transformation. The opportunity we ever show up as an opportunity, it shows up as a problem. It shows up in many different ways, but really if you step back and remove yourself from labeling it a people problem. Or an employee issue. Yeah. And you start to look at what are the things that we've built as an organization that are allowing that behavior to happen. You're only hiring people like you and only hiring leaders that fit your mold. That's problematic. Your employees should look like your customers and then you're going to have better ideas and know how to innovate.

1:02So whenever I get the culture question or culture fit, the first thing I ask is why? It spans the globe like a super high school. Internet Elvis. Ready? I am. Today Apple is going to reinvent the ball. It's not over until I win. The Living Your Legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. That's exciting. It's awesome. Oh, that is sensational. Open. She covered with the way you said. Ball is the box is not on the planet. You can live your dream. Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy podcast. I'm your host again, Jay Slangin. And yeah, we have the privilege to talk to some of the greatest entrepreneurs from around the country, the disruptors. And yeah, like today we have the legacy makers. And yeah, we have a special guest with us here.

2:04What's your name? Where are you from? And what's your business? Sure. Christopher McCormick. I am from San Francisco, California. And my business is visionary consulting, which is an HR consultancy. I support leaders and teams in all facets of business and corporations and help them show up with leadership, change management and with culture. Sure. Yeah. Before we dive into all that, right? You are all swagged out, man. You got a great look. You got a super awesome jacket. Yeah. That's really cool. Where does fashion fit into all this? Oh, I just, I've always loved fashion. I've always loved. Well, and I would also say one of the things about my business is architecture and structure and figuring out how things work and how they become that way or how they're created in that way. Yeah. So fashion sort of fits in there as well as like architecture and design and just sort of as I think about my business, I'm helping people design their life and design their leadership.

3:05Yeah. And, you know, they have to build the architecture to make the company work, to have their people be happy. And so all of that sort of fits in in some way, shape or form. Yeah. I do just, I love fashion. You guys just look good, feel good. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, consultant for a building HR teams for top companies, right? So, I guess, you know, when people are talking about HR, we're talking about culture, right? We're talking about staffing. Yep. So, what should we talk about first? Let's talk about the culture first, right? Sure. You got a company out there and, you know, how do you get the team to fit that company culture? First off, I wouldn't have them fit it. I would have them be added to it. Okay. When we talk about culture fit, I think that can get us into a lot of trouble with, then you just want to have a room of people that are in sort of a echo chamber. Okay. So, if you're only hiring people like you and only hiring leaders that fit your mold,

4:07yeah. That's problematic. You want to have somebody who's going to come in and actually ask different questions, different challenges, potentially come from a different demographic. Got it. So, that they're, they're, they should, your employees should look like your customers. And then you're going to have better ideas and know how to innovate. So whenever I get the culture question or a culture fit, the first thing I ask is, why? What's going on? And what is that? How does that support your business? Yeah. So, maybe let's rewind it back, right? Sure. You know, what kind of companies are finding you? You know, I, I support everyone from early startups that are funded, adventure capitalist funded startups to Fortune 100 companies. So it runs the gamut. I do a lot of work with small to medium sized businesses as well. Yeah. I'd say my sweet spot at the moment is early startups. Again, I'm in San Francisco. Yeah. A lot of AI stuff going on. Right now. It's crazy over there with AI. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's in my backyard. And so I have a lot of those clients. I do a lot of executive coaching in that space.

5:09I work with a lot of teams in that space. And then on more of the Fortune 100 side, I spent 25 years of my career in Fortune 100 companies. So I have clients that I pulled in and worked with projects that they come to me for because I'm a trusted person and I've been in their life for a long time. And yeah, they know what I do and what I can provide. Gotcha. And so these, these, all these companies, right? Yeah. They're coming to you with the problem of we need staff, right? We need people. Okay. Tell me, tell me like, because it's not just general. It's, it's also very specialized. Yeah. Do you have a specialization that, you know, is your kind of thing or you just generally like any staffing problems? I can do, I mean, from a staffing perspective and just an HR in general experience. My background, I have a background in life sciences. So pharmaceuticals, healthcare, I spent years in technology and then also several years

6:11in financial services. So inside of all of those, those are sort of what I would say are the verticals that I know really well and can come into that with. I'm coaching a lot of people in the techs and AI space right now. And that is really, that tech background has helped even when I was in financial services, the last few projects I worked on in that, in that company were all tech related. So it's sort of, I kind of know what their day to day challenges are or what's keeping them up at night. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. And so what's the toughest part of your, you know, of your job and your, not your job, but your business and kind of matching people to companies. So I don't necessarily do talent acquisition as a general function of my consulting business. So I will help with your staffing teams and help coach them on how they can do things differently. The first thing that I would ask if you're coming to me is, show me your P&L.

7:12I want to look at what's your, how's your business doing? Because a lot of people will come to me with a culture problem. They'll be like, well, here's our employee handbook, why aren't people following the rules? Gotcha. Why aren't they doing what we're telling them to do? And typically it's because you're, you haven't built so going back to the architecture or fashion piece. You haven't built the rights, structures for the growth that you're going through. So if you're a 100 person company and you're planning to grow another 100 people in the next year, are your structures sufficient? Because where you'll see the breakdown is it's not about the structure. It's about the fact that Jay gets to come in as a new employee and he gets to kind of go about and do whatever he wants. So he's bringing a lot of stuff in because we don't have clear ways of working or clear decision rights or clear things. So much like, okay, so I just got brand new funding. Yeah, a couple of millions just came. Yeah. And we're just like, okay, we want to triple our sales team and then you're going to say, well, you can't just triple the sales team without having all the other things supported.

8:14That's right. So you've got to have your supporting functions, your finance functions, your HR functions, your operations functions. They've got to be as staffed as your sales because if you have all those sales coming in the door, if those people can't get all that stuff done behind the scenes, they become the bottleneck and they become the problem. And then it's pointing fingers back and forth and that's not solving anything. And that's the business still wants you to run and your investor still wants you to make the return as quickly as you say you're going to do. So a lot of people get caught in the trap of it's a culture or a people problem when I would say it's actually a structural problem within how you've set up the ways of working within your organization. Gotcha. So let's look there first. Okay. And then maybe, so I totally get it out. Yeah, yeah, I totally get it now because there's a lot of issues like you're like, okay, I can solve major headaches in the future if you set this up, right? That's right. Yeah. Because like there's those bottlenecks, right? Where the bottlenecks coming from? Yeah. Where is the headache going to like put you?

9:14I mean, yeah, I mean, there's so many ways. Like it's almost like those good problems to have. You know, great. You're getting in more sales. You're hiring more sales people. It's going to be a great problem because you're having all this new revenue coming in, right? Yeah. But it's not a great problem. It's all going to come tumbling down. Well, opportunity, the other shows up as opportunity. It shows up as a problem. It shows up as an issue. It shows up as an employee upset. It shows up in many different ways. But really, if you step back and remove yourself from labeling it a people problem or an employee issue, and you start to look at what are the things that we've built as an organization that are allowing that behavior to happen. Like who's the first two gets to say no or push back on a decision and what happens to them after? Do they get talked to? Do they get disappeared in six months? Do they get like what? And people are watching that. They're watching those kind of things like who gets to tell the truth first.

10:16And if you tell the truth, you get in trouble. Yeah. And if I can tell the truth first and I don't get in trouble, then you really do want my ideas. You want my innovation. You've hired me to get my perspective. You trust me as I should trust you. So that starts to show up in a very dynamic way that people are paying attention to. Gotcha. Also, who's throwing the fireballs, right? Yeah. Are there trickle down fireballs? Yeah. Well, and again, a lot of companies in this place are in what we call firefighting mode, right? But if all you do is put out fires all day long and that's all you're up to and all you're doing, you're breeding arsonists. Because the minute they don't have a fire to put out, they'll set one because that's all you've trained them to do. Yeah. Right. So when do you step back and take the time to pause and think about our business says we're want to be here in five years or three years or whatever you say? How do we build what's your business strategy to get you there? I'll help you come in and build a people strategy that will will run in Coralel to your

11:20business strategy. It shouldn't be separate or disparate or bespoke. And then you think about AI, people are like, well, what's our AI strategy? You can't have a business strategy, people strategy and AI strategy. They all have to come together and be one strategy. Yeah. And you have to make sure that everyone in that company is very clear on what their role is. Yeah. And where they have decision rights and where they don't. And where input is valued and treated and how it's treated throughout that, that dynamic of working. And I gotcha because you're from San Francisco. You're from the place where it was, you know, move fast and break things. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like, okay, you're moving fast and things are breaking. But that's an expensive thing to break. So before you break that, let's talk. Yeah. It wasn't move fast and break things in my own company. Right. Right. Yeah. So yeah, that's when you come in. So what are like big problems that you see? I do see the one of the biggest problems I see is people, companies growing at a rate

12:23that they haven't built the structures for. That's one of the biggest things. Yeah. I don't. I'm very common. Very common because they're founders and they have that mentality of the move fast break things. Just ruptures. Disruptors. And, you know, they were going to build their own legacy, their own legacy makers, right? Yes. Problematic in when you become the bottleneck as the founder, Jay's the founder of this organization. Yeah. And the employee knows Jay, you know, all their names, you know, what their family does, you know, everything about them. And I can't manage that person if every time I'm trying to get them to tweak performance or do something different in their day to day job because I'm the manager of that function. If they just run to you every time they have a problem, you become a problem for me to have to let go. You do. And mostly founders. Yes. A lot of, well, in any leader organization, they have to give up that they have to give up. They have to have all the answers. They have to solve everything for everybody and that they are the be all end all, they've

13:25got to be able to trust their people and farm those decision rights back out when people do come because you might have been in a hundred person company knowing able to say everyone's name, knowing what they do and all those things. When you get to 200, when you get to 500, that becomes impossible. Yeah. And so working with these founders, though, you know, because they're the ones that have done it. And so that's the reason that you have, you know, a lot of them can be narcissists as well, right? It's just that kind of character. Yeah. Personality trait does well in the startup world. Yeah. And there are the kinds of people that want to achieve that high success. So you must work with a lot of different, you know, CEO personality types. Yes. Very much. How does that come into play? I tell them what they don't want to hear. Yeah. I have to tell them the truth. My late mother always said, the truth will set you free. But first, it'll piss you off. Yeah. And it might piss you off. It doesn't necessarily have to piss you off. But telling the truth to power and people who have very big jobs and run very, very important

14:26companies, telling them the truth that nobody else in their organization wants them to hear or will tell them. Yeah. Because they could be fired if they tell them this stuff. That's right. You hired me to tell you that you're a jerk. So I'm coming in. J. Stopping a jerk. Yeah. Here's the thing you have done. You're like trying, it's like below you to do this. I promise you, if you had a client recently, they implemented some, it's healthcare client. They implemented something. They wanted to have this all work. Literally, the CEO came to me. It wasn't a people problem in an employee problem. It was that they had managed the change. It was literally a systems change and people resisting because it hadn't been managed very well about what the people who had done the legacy systems and taken care of those things, honoring what they brought to the table, seeing the evolution. So there were people kind of pulling back like, we're not going to go there. We're going to resist this change. When you can go acknowledge like the value that they created from what you, where you were

15:31and where you're headed to, then they'll start to come along that journey with you a little bit quicker. And with more trust of you and your leadership, but the leader has to be able to also tell the truth. They're in that kind of random shit. Yeah, right. Because today in today's world, everyone's battling for those top level positions. That's right. And how are they going to stay with you if you don't integrate these things that you're talking about, right? That's exactly right. And again, back to that point of who gets to tell the truth and what happens to them when they do. That's a huge thing to coach founders and CEOs around is where do you let problems show up? And the other thing I would point to is where do top performers get rewarded, even if their behavior doesn't sync up with the values that are on the lobby wall? Like they don't have to, they can have the how or they can have the what, they can have the results, but they don't have to do the how they have to have to be, they don't have to do it with integrity or with teamwork or trust or whatever's on that lobby wall that people pass by every day, pay no attention to.

16:33Yeah. And then they're going to dispose and the spouse, these are our values. Yeah. And yet at the end of the day, we're going to reward that top performer because they got all of the metrics. They've got the revenue, they were the top salesperson, blah, blah, blah, even if they cut out people and snake in the grass kind of behavior, if you're rewarding that, that's problematic to you. So you have to be willing to have that hard conversation. Yeah, you have to have that hard conversation. Everyone's walking on eggshells are watching their backs and yeah. So do most of your clients find you where it's too late, you know, because they're like, they find you like, you're the kind of guy where I feel like you should be, you know, at the beginning when people get the money, but actually these founders, I think they've done it all, they get the money or whatever company and they're just like, oh, we've hired the right people and we'll just keep on hiring or we've got the money and we've done it. So we'll just hire. So that's what I'm thinking. Do people call you when it's too late and that's the ship's already burning and you're coming in and you're saving them from people abandon ship, right?

17:35Talk to me about that. It's never too late. Yeah. It's never too late to tell the truth or look in the mirror and turn things around. I think that people actually, when you've messed up or made mistakes in that realm for a founder or a leader to come in front of their team and be like, I have. Crafts the bed on this one. Right. Like, you don't want to say that, but you know, that's what they need to say to their people and then also let them know what their development journey is. Like, I know I've not been doing these things really well. It's impacting all of you. It's impacting the results. It's impacting the quarterly results. Here's some things I'm going to alter, shift or change or I'm going to test. So you might see me testing new things that I'm going to try. Yeah. So I'm just popping in to just regular, everyone's team meetings like three or four or five times a week. I'm not on the agenda. You don't have to notice me. I'm just there to observe to get a lay of the land to hear what's happening in those

18:38rooms. Yeah. So I just kind of thought of something. Is it the board that finds you and they're just like, sometimes, yeah, like our, look at our founder. He's the man. But, you know, S is hitting the fan, right? Yeah. Yeah. He needs to bring in someone that can kind of, you know, take this bird's nest and make the architecture. Yeah. And nobody sees the mess before they see the masterpiece. Yeah. There you go. That's the thing you have to think. If you go to St. Louis and look at that arch, no one ever knows about the misdeadlines, the over budget prices. Well, we got six artists. And, you know, they're kind of over budget and everyone's knowing about what's going down with the Miami watches. Yeah. So it's getting delayed. But always the St. Louis. The 95 is always delayed too. It's been like 30 years of incoming here. It's like it always under construction. But nobody wants to think about that. They want to know how smooth the ride. They want to see the skyline, not the scaffolding.

19:41Yes. And that's hard to do when you're in it and you're trying to get everything done and you can't have an outside person. It's a being on a dance floor. You have to go up on that balcony and be able to look at what's going on down there to be able to see it all. Sometimes I'm brought in to see it all where the founder or the CEO or the senior leadership team can't do that. That's why I'm there. That's what I'm coming in to do. It's amazing. It gives you the kind of insights that you need to move forward. Gotcha. No, no, it's amazing. And I completely had the wrong vision when we started this podcast. And now I'm on board and I'm like, oh my God. Yeah, you know, this guy's visionary consulting. Yes. You might have started with the wrong vision, but this is where vision meets reality. It's very fashion. Yeah, there you go. So I asked everyone, what are you most excited about? You know, what's on the horizon? What you got cooking? There's a lot that I'm excited about. I've been on an advisory board for a women's technology nonprofit that I've been about

20:47for 10 plus years. There annual conference is coming up. It's called Tech Futures in New York. So very excited to go be there, be around really smart women who are in technology, who've been in STEM careers who have been the only female in a room full of engineers. Have been the only black person in a room full of white people. They've only been the only gay person who's out and been in a room full of all straight co-workers. It's those marginalized communities that all sort of come together and those group of people who have had those hardships and dealt with those challenges to go and be there with them is sort of like plugging back in and getting energy where you don't get to work with that every single day. So I'm very excited for that. And then I'm just joined the board of an AI company that's starting up. So that taking on that role along with running my business. AI, there's lots of different AI roles.

21:48I would say this is more about AI with integrity, being coherent to what it needs to be doing. And so from a compliance, and we've talked about the wild wild wild west of AI and everybody sort of off doing their own thing, this is about how do you integrate it in a way that is coherent to your culture, that's a coherent to your company that is coherent to what you're up to in the world. And the mantra of that organization, and I can't quite say what it is just yet, but it's do more good than harm. And part of that model is to make sure that companies are writing the wrongs of the past, that they're doing the work that they need to be doing to make sure the world works for everybody. Yeah. So yeah, right now there's kind of like the AI arms race, right? And there it is. It's like the wild west, as you say. And what all these people are raising a flag of like, hey, we should integrate these kind of rules, right?

22:49That's right. And then so maybe your company is trying to say, well, while they're doing the arms race, what happens when we integrate these things so that when they're all saying that their arms race is gone too far, they're going to look to us because we've already seen what AI looks like when you integrate all the things at the time. And what, you know, if you do stuff with integrity and you do things that are breakthrough, you'll see that you don't necessarily need to build a ton of data centers with water and pull all that as resources from the environment. Yeah. When you're in coherence, it actually operates differently. It doesn't get hot. It doesn't need all the cooling agents. It doesn't need all that water. We don't need all those data centers. Gotcha. It actually when you become more coherent with what you're trying to do requires less energy because you're in a flow, you're in a state, and you're in a place in a space that's actually serving the purpose and the community of what you're trying to do.

23:49It's not just about making money and being the only, that whole, whatever you called it, the race to whatever. Yeah, the arms race. The AI arms race. Good luck. That's been everybody since, you know, the dawn of time wants to be like on front of it and in front of it. How about we do it well? Yeah. I'd rather do something well and sustainable than be the first. Perfect. And sometimes that takes time to step back, reflect, do the work. And again, that architecting, that construction, that plan and start to build what you know is the right thing versus the quickest thing or the first thing. Gotcha. Perfect. Well, you got a lot of great projects on the horizon, right? Your project. Yeah. It looks bright and great for our future, right? So yeah, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show and joining me here and kind of educating me on the HR architecture and everything. You bet. But yeah, I mean, if you guys want to come back to his legacy makers show and, you know,

24:53do the deep dive into, you know, how we got there and more into what he does than, yeah, tune in. And thank you guys for joining us and we'll see you again. Cheers, everyone.