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Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Hi there, welcome to the best communication Show. I’m your host Bill Lampton the biz communication guy, once again hosting a guest, who will help us get winning words and ways, giving us strategies and tactics that will build our business. Today is a delightful privilege to welcome Walt Carter from Kennesaw Georgia. Walton I met nine years ago when I had the privilege of being the speaker at the Kettering executive network where he’s an active member. Recently, Walt has been named to the Constellation Research, business transformation 150, a global list, recognizing transformational leadership and his current role at Homestar. His first book on change leadership, we can’t stay here is an international best seller. And he is working on a new book on leadership systems titled, driving behind idiots. That’s pretty easy to identify with. And that book will be published later this year. Join me please in welcoming our biz communication show guest, Walt Carter. Hello, Walt. Hello, Bill.
Walt Carter
How are you today?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I am just so privileged to host you and our guest are privileged to hear you as well. To begin with, starting with your profession, information technology, if I were, let’s say to meet you at a networking event, and you tell me, that’s what you do. And then I say, well, walltime I’ve heard the term, but I’m not quite sure. What’s that all about? What? What is it? Why don’t you really do for companies? What What would your answer be?
Walt Carter
You know, the, the simple answer is we enable the business capabilities and capacities through, you know, the implementation of the correct technology stack. You know, and for every business that’s out there, ultimately, they they have all become more or less, you know, information technology driven. And within the last few years, I’ve heard companies like Hershey’s, for instance, say things like, well, you know, we’re really a technology company, although everybody thinks of us as a candy or chocolate company, Harley Davidsons, CEO said something very similar, right? You know, hey, we’re, we’re really a technology company, although everybody knows us for our motorcycles. But in my world, I support every part of the business, I support the executives, I support the operations team, I support the administration staff, and then I have to replicate each of those functions within my group in order to operationalize the vision of it from the executive of it, administrate that vision, and then serve that up through the technology tools that we deploy. And so that’s the, that’s the quick overview of what I do for a living is I just make that happen. And I try not to speak technology. You know, I learned from a good friend of mine named Bill went and many years ago that, you know, you have to be really careful about the words that you use, and, you know, like, like, a lot of disciplines, you know, it kind of has its own language. And yet, I find that when I use that language outside of it, people just look at me and go, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Right? And, you know, and then I feel like, in a lot of ways, the CIO job has become the chief translator job, right. You know, let me just translate what you think you’re trying to do from a business perspective into something that my teams can go explore from a solutions perspective, to figure out how to enable that, right. And actually, I was on a panel, just the other day bill, and I told people I said, you know, there’s a, there’s a couple of acronyms I’ve used over the years that have helped me enormously one, one of them is bit be it, right, which says business first. And then information. Second, you know, if I’ve got a business problem that I’m trying to solve, what information do I need to solve that? And do I have it? Or do I need to go find it? Second, the third, the third letter, there’s the T, right? You know, and it says, Okay, well, then, what technology do I need in order to solve that business problem? Do I have it? Or do I need to go find it? And if I saw it that way, business information and then technology, I usually come up with a pretty good solution. And then when I’m looking at solutions, I use another analogy called fuse, F U S, E, and I find that if I Don’t blow the fuse, I’m pretty solid on my solution. And fuse is an acronym that stands for functionality, usability, supportability, and extensibility. How far in the future can I ride this solution before I have to look for another one. And again, if I just kind of keep those things in the back of my mind, as I’m exploring this opportunity to enable my business partner that I win most of the time,
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I’m telling you, I give you an A plus. As a communications communications consultant, I know very well, exactly what you’re talking about, about every industry having its jargon, I started out in higher education, and oh, my gosh, it has a language all its own. And then I switched to healthcare, and it had a language on its own. And then, naturally, when I became a consultant, one of the things I found that I had to do in working with a variety of industries and companies and individual clients, was to find out what, what I did have to translate, and I commend you, for the acronyms, they’re acronyms for we’re very accustomed to acronyms. And that’s a good way to put in people’s mind the formula that that you’re going to be using. So this speechcraft Communication Consultant gives you an A plus on that, Walt.
Walt Carter
Well, thank you, sir, I appreciate that. They come from you, that means a lot, they’ll appreciate it.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Okay, I noticed in your, your writings and your speaking and your books, and your consulting, a phrase that really grabbed my attention, and I’m sure it will grab anybody else’s attention and needs a little bit of explanation. You say that, when you’re working with companies, you work with them with what you call full Turtle Power, full Turtle Power. What does that mean? And how does that go against what we’re maybe accustomed to?
Walt Carter
Well, it goes against the fail often fail fast kind of mentality that’s out there. You know, the bottom line is, I’m trying to do things in a smooth way, right, and smooth usually means I gotta go slow in order to get to smooth. The visual there, by the way, as if you’re pouring something out of the out of a pitcher, let’s say, right, if you pour too fast, you get a glug, glug glug, right? But if you pour just right, you get a smooth pour, right. And if you watch the professional bartenders, they really understand this because you don’t want liquid spilling all over the place that you’ve got to clean up. Well, a lot of times when you go too fast, that whole fail fast fail often kind of mentality. One, first of all my CFOs out there have just all told me, Well, we don’t want to pay for that failure. We only want to pay for the things that move us to value quickly. Right, we and we want that value drop as quickly as you can deliver it big boy, right? And so you know, this, this notion of paying for lots of failure, runs counter to good business practice, first and foremost. And then second, when you think about the tortoise and the hare story, right, you know, the hare is racing all over the place, but he didn’t win the race in that story. The turtle won. And the reason that turtle won is because he stayed steady all the way through the race, he didn’t stop and explore and take a nap and any of that stuff. So I actually have a watch. I’m not wearing it today. But my team, my team gave me a watch that’s engraved with full Turtle power. Now, you know, when you think about, again, I need to go slowly enough to become smooth at delivering whatever this is because it’s really about just a capability. And then a capacity, right? You know, if I if I have a capability that gives me a mechanism for delivering a good or a service to achieve, you know, some profitability in the marketplace, then then the next thing to explore is this scale. Can I scale on that? You know, I’d build more capacity around that capability. I just keep looking at it going, Okay, I want to do this right. I don’t want to do it over I don’t have time to do it over. I don’t want to do it again, because I failed the first time. Let me just be really deliberate about how we set the table and how we move forward into this race. And and that’s really all it means. Let’s just go full turtle out.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
When I first saw that, I thought of the turtle and the hare analogy. Now you certainly again know how to adapt your language so that we get the picture when you’re talking about bartenders. Very good analogy there. I got that one. No, I don’t want it spilled. I want it trickled as you say, and during my 20 years In management, Walt, I wish that the people around me, and especially the people that I worked for, could have understood that getting it done tomorrow might sound good, but it might not work. And you alluded to this when you said that so many times, if we go too fast, and we’re just meeting a deadline, then we’re going to have to pick up the pieces and picking up the pieces may expand the project much farther along than it needed to be. It reminded me to of how we’re obsessed with speed, I suppose. Our first experience is when we’re a teenager, we get our driver’s license, the first time we get in the car, we want to see how fast it can go. And some of us who are who are fans of all types of sports, remember, when the four minute mile was broken? You know, it was that four minute and interestingly enough, as we know, after it was broken, then more people did it. We want to know how how fast race cars can go. And yet, in our fast paced society and in business and in industry, are we making costly mistakes? So I commend you for that approach. And I would imagine, with each new client, you work with that you have to explain that. So they will understand the the turtle approach, correct? You
Walt Carter
do. And Bill, you know, one of the things that I’ve observed over the last, you know, I guess, 40 years of my career is just this notion that we drive here in America, you know, a quarterly type of view of the world, right? That’s why so many executives are focused on those short term goals, I’ve got to be able to move to the value as quickly as possible. I had this idea, why haven’t you delivered it for me? Right, without without going through that, that process to build a laminar flow or a smooth pour? Right, then then all of a sudden, what you see is the end result of that, right, which is all of the reporting bureaus out there that report on the effectiveness of projects in organizations, not just IT projects, although more and more any project is becoming an IT project or some component of it contains a major portion of an IT Bill, what you see is the failure rate is more than 70%. Right? And in this world of digital transformation, which is a kind of a new meaningless race, right? What does that mean? Well, it’s context specific, it means what it means for your company. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s going to be the same for every other company, you have to go slow to figure out what your unique context is, compared to the formulaic approach. When you start thinking about, again, a 70% project failure rate or higher, you start talking about the number of employees who are disengaged in organizations, which is interestingly now according to a recent Gallup poll, about 75% of your employees are disengaged, then why do you expect your projects to be successful, right? If you’re if your your people are not thinking with you, and trying to achieve that, that future that you’ve envisioned, and you’ve put stress on your smart people, right, and you’ll, by the way, there’s a rule, I think it’s called listers law that says smart people under pressure, don’t think any better or faster. They actually, you know, lose the oxygen in their, their brain is starting to get the resort to fight or flight and run away faster, do QA out, right? So so you know, if you really want to create a smooth pour for your projects, and you really want to create a vision that is achievable, then you have to allow for the time to build out that vision in detail, understand what all of those elements are, that are going to lead you to success. What is it that we’re doing, why are we doing it? And how are we going to know when we’re done? Those are the three questions that the executives have gotten to be able to answer for the whole team of stakeholders on that vision, whatever it is, whether it’s a digital transformation for the whole organization, or a tiny little marketing campaign that we’re about to go to the market with? How do we know when we’re done? How do we know whether it was successful or not? Are there leading indicators? Are they lagging indicators? And oh, by the way, I’d rather focus on the leading because if I wait for the lagging, I will probably have missed something major. If you get all of those elements, right, you can actually deliver transformations and marketing campaigns. If you if you short sheet your own bed, you shouldn’t be surprised to wake up with cold feet. Right and that’s that’s what happens over and over again. Unfortunately, because of that need for speed, right that desire to move fast. Let’s let’s just go fast. Well, we’ll figure it out. We got smart people. So yes, we have smart people but when you Give them goals that are not achievable, and or time boxes that they don’t feel are big enough or adequate to the task, and then they get stressed out. And then next thing you know, they’re not really as focused on solving the problem in the box as they are trying to figure out ways to get away from the box. And I think you could argue that the great resignation and the quiet quitting that we’re seeing, right, all of those are, are just symptoms that show the greater disease of you going too fast. Guys, you need to slow down and really figure some stuff out. Before you go at, you know, the seamstresses used to say measure 10 times and cut once. Not a bad way of thinking. Right?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Right. Short sheet your own bed I remember when I was a kid at camp and I first had my bed short sheet and what a you know, what a shock. It was what a short sheet my own bed wouldn’t do that. There’s there’s an analogy that I would like to make here as well, Walton, that is that what you’re saying, I believe is what destroys a number of sales careers, sales careers, where they think I’ve got to have it happen right now. I’ll give an example. From my own consulting experience. There was one wonderful company that I worked with, had a great day and a half with them as their, their communication consultant directing a seminar. And then I wanted to work with them again. So I call them a year or two later, and nothing happened. Now, what if what would have happened if I had kept calling them every day and saying, it must be now, what eventually happened while it is that nine years later, nine years later, they invited me back and we had a highly productive day and a half seminar again. So what you’re saying about going slow, and be the be the turtle instead of the hare, it has great merit, we’re going to be back in a few seconds and talk with you about your, your, your books, which I know, have great advice for us.
What an intriguing title of your first book, which has gained international attention. The book is titled, we can’t stay here. What’s the theme of that book? And what do you think people will, will gain by reading it?
Walt Carter
The theme has changed leadership. And it’s kind of the same vein that we’ve been mining in our conversation today. You know, I about, I guess, five years ago, I first had the inclination, the write down some of my secrets. I’ve done a lot of packaged software implementations, or big companies with global footprints. And, and then, you know, more recently, as a CIO for the last 1012 years, you know, trying to implement software and solutions for companies here in the US. What, what I found was that the problems were not technology related, the problems were really all about alignment of people and alignment, to kind of a degree, the phrase I use a lot is tuning, right, just keeping everybody in the band tune. So that we’re all playing in the same key, you know, but Right. The other thought was, you know, I guess I’ll say it this way, I built a slide deck, I felt like it was inadequate. I hired a guy to build some slides. For me, first time I’ve done that in my whole career. Turns out the guy I hired was a operational performance consultant by day and a slide master builder by night. And so I walked him through the context of the book and kind of the seven C’s of change leadership. And, and his, his feedback to me was interesting. He said, what I have been doing this kind of work for 25 years. And yet most of what you have presented I was not aware of, but I can use what you’ve given me in this simple mind map. And I can go to my client tomorrow, which is McDonald’s Corporation in Chicago. And I can I can actually use most of what I’ve learned from you just in this quick slide deck. And I said, That’s exactly why I wanted to write the book and I wanted to put this material out there. I’ve learned a lot of this by going off the path and trying to figure out how to solve that alignment and tuning problem in innovative ways because the curriculums and the various programs that I had been provided as a product manager, project manager, Team Leader all Well, that stuff wasn’t working to really solve that tuning problem. And so I wrote a book that said, here’s how I do it. And oh, by the way, here’s all the things that go wrong, if you don’t think your way through these kinds of things, and so So Bill, that’s, that was the whole point of the first book. And I am really grateful that people have been picking it up all around the world, which is great. And, you know, it’s got some, some traction in some categories that I’d never expected, like business quality control, for instance, I was in the top 10, and business quality control last time I look. And so again, just thinking your way through, what is the vision? How do I get the right people on the team? How do I get the right resources on the team? How do I align the incentives? How do I get consensus from the stakeholders? And then how do I have an action plan that gets me all the way through that? And how do I tune all the way through? How do I get the right crew? How do I cast off that turns out to be pretty important that the ceremonies that are that are available? You know, the the ability to use language, you know, the things that you spoke, spoke about, and speak about constantly? Language is the the core toolset of leadership. And I think that’s one of the other things that we’ve got to really focus in on as leaders is, are we using the right words, to get our teams tuned into the the journey that’s ahead of us in this this March. And then celebration is a key C word as well. But I think is really important, not just at the end, when you you successfully come in and deliver the value. But along the way, when you discover things, and you find out the things that you didn’t know, at the beginning, that should be a celebration, because it creates the opportunity for you to solve those problems and keep moving and stay steady. So that’s a lot, you know, and again, I’m very passionate about this particular topic. So, you know, I feel like the book has some things in it that no other book that I’ve ever read on this topic, really covers, there’s some really interesting stuff from a Chilean behavioral scientist named Manfred Max Neef. That, you know, basically said, I don’t think hierarchy of human needs from Maslow really works. Once you add another person or to the small group, I think it works perfectly for an individual in isolation. But humans actually work in small groups or tribes or squads best, we need to understand that group dynamic more than we needed to understand the individual path to self actualization. And I learned so much from his approach that just really helped me with teams. And, and then, one of the other things, I spent a lot of time in the book talking about polarity. Because it turns out, most humans have a natural polarity, they either spend positive, or they spend negative, and then they’re both very valuable to move me toward division. But you got to understand that they they have to be operated with in a different way. The ones that are easiest, are actually the positive spinners. Because they want to see the good in everybody and the good and everything in there. They’ll become great cheerleaders for you, but the ones that see the world by what’s not right and what’s wrong here. They can be real challenging. And they can keep you from achieving the smooth poor by introducing Glug, glug, along the way. And that’s that’s another factor that I think, you know, you got to understand. Who are you bringing onto your team, who in your stakeholder group or decision makers are naturally polarized to the positive or polarized to the negative?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
X excellent overview there. It reminds me so many people think that writing a book is it’s not that difficult. I, I heard a quip one time about somebody at a cocktail party said to another person, I hear you’re writing a book and they said, Oh, yes, I’ve numbered all the pages. It’s not that easy. And the thing that I respect about your book, as you know, I’m a former academic, I taught Communication at the University of Georgia and I could have written books then however, anything I would write after that would have much more validity because it would come not from just what I’ve studied, but from what I experienced, and that’s your case. In other words, this could this could almost be entitled lessons from Walt goodness.
Walt Carter
It could it you know, and it might it might should be be honest with you, because I spent a lot more time on the negatives here than some of the other books in the in the leadership world. Right. You know, there’s, there’s a lot of books out there that kind of have the checklist that say, you know, if you just do these things, you’ll be a great leader. Right? And I’m like that That’s not been my experience my
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
days. Not that easy.
Walt Carter
It’s not that easy and and working with people. It’s not that easy. I gave a I gave a talk a few years ago to the local project management institute chapter here in Atlanta. And I think there were about 355 project managers in the room for the lunch meeting is pretty good sized group. And my topic that day was PMO. Salvage why why project management offices fail a lot of times. And I asked the audience this question, though, I said, you know, how many of you raise your hands high, have had projects failed because of insurmountable technology problems? And their 350 some odd people in the room, two hands went up just two, which is about what I expected. And then I said, Okay, here’s a different question. How many of you project managers have ever had a project fail because of insurmountable alignment problems with the team that was leading the project? And I think, you know, they all put up two hands. So there’s probably 700 hands that went up on that one. That was a big, big, you know, kind of aha moment for me, even though I sort of knew that answer, right. And over the years, I started writing code, literally 40, little over 42 years ago, I guess, was the first big application that I worked on. And when when I think back, I’m going, you know, if you give us enough time and enough space, usually, you know, and enough resource, the technology teams will figure out how to build the right tool set. You know, it’s just trying to get to what is the real problem that we’re solving? And then how do I stay focused on that problem, and that solve all the other problems that I see unfolding, or mushrooming out from from that first one? You know, so again, this notion of containment, and focus, scope management, those are all real problems for the teams. But you’ve got to just kind of backup for steps. Sometimes I take a look at that big picture, go, Okay, how do I get the people to agree that this is the problem. And these are the potential solutions. This is the one that has the most promise for us. That’s what we’re going to build and try to deploy to get into the marketplace. It’s it, it feels like, and I gotta imagine that some of the great thinkers in the areas of quality management like Dr. Deming, and Duran, Crosby, you know, all of those guys, essentially, I allow you gold wrap from the goal. Also the Theory of Constraints guy, they were all basically trying to say, look, common sense is not so common. But there is an approach that will work for you, if you are willing to do the hard work upfront. There’s another great expression that that I’ve borrowed from a lot, which is the devils in the details. And I tell people all the time, so is the angel, but you’ve got to be bold enough to go down there and face that devil.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Walt, this has been fascinating, highly informative, and fortunately, entertaining to appreciate your being with us so much. I know there are viewers and our podcast listeners who will want to contact you. So please give us your contact information.
Walt Carter
Below. The easiest way to get ahold of me is is at my website, Walt carter.com. If you’re interested in finding out more about the book, the book has its own website called We can’t stay here dotnet. And on Twitter, I am at Walt seven, four. So if you’ve got a comment that you’d like to drop on this podcast, I know Bill and I would both love to hear it and see it and and if it’s a really positive one will publicize it. So again, it’s at Walt seven, four, it’s email, big dog at Walt carter.com.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, it’s Carter, thank you so much for that contact information. And I encourage people, business leaders, corporations to get in touch with this guy. He has been an expert for a very long time and he’s eager to help your company. And since Walt has given his contact information, I’m happy to get mine Bill Lambton, the biz communication guy, and so go to my YouTube channel and the way to do that, of course is go to the search bar on YouTube. Type in my YouTube handle, which is Bill Lampton PhD, you’ll find this interview there not only that, you’ll find interviews with many other business communication leaders and also since 2004 I I have been posting instructional videos here that you will benefit from. Certainly I invite you to go to my website since I’m the biz communication guide, it’s quite logical that my website is biz BZ biz communication guide.com.com. And when you’ve done that, please give me a phone call, I’d love to talk with you about your communication problems and challenges, and how I can assist you with them. And that number is 678-316-4300. Wall to any closing remarks to sort of pull together this theme for us?
Walt Carter
You know, but I think two things that come to mind one first, first and foremost is the notion of just the fundamental challenge of, of doing the kind of work that I do. And and I think for most of us in any kind of organization where there’s more than one person is communications. And so being deliberate and thoughtful about not just what you transmit, but how it will be received, right, you know, the communication is not complete until you know that the receiver has actually gotten the message from the transmitter. And, and then second, you know, change is not hard, it is inevitable. And, and so, if you’re gonna dig in your heels and try to fight change, you’re going to be in a hard fight for your whole life. But if you can, if you can get to a place mentally, where you go, change is going to happen, no matter what I do or say, then how can I make sure that that change is a positive change and not a negative one. And there are tools and techniques out there for that. And again, I encourage everybody to just think differently about one communication and to change. Thank you very much for having me today, Bill. By the way, I highly encourage anybody that’s watching the day, go to Bill and get help with your communication bill is a master of this art of communicating. And so I highly encourage you to access his materials on the YouTube channel and reach out directly to Billy I don’t know a better expert in town.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Thank you so much for that endorsement. That’s that’s very meaningful. I really appreciate that. Thanks for those of you who joined us on the video portion of the biz communication show, and those who were with us on the podcast as well. We know that you have learned tips and strategies that will boost your business and we know as well that you have learned winning words and ways. So be with us for the next edition of the biz communication show.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
