E32 – Building A Human Centered Team At Your Organization with Glenn Akramoff

E32 – Building A Human Centered Team At Your Organization with Glenn Akramoff

In this episode of the Pipelineology podcast, Gary interviews Glenn Akramoff, founder and CEO of Akramoff and author of ‘The Human-centered Team.’ Glenn shares insights from his 25-year career in local government, where he found his passion for revitalizing organizations and building effective teams. He discusses the six pillars of workplace health, the importance of aligning personal and organizational purpose, and the dynamics of performance flow within teams. Glenn also emphasizes the need for genuine celebrations of success and maintaining human connections in remote work environments. This episode is packed with practical tips for leaders looking to foster a more engaged and productive workplace.

Discover:

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:18 Glenn Akramoff’s Background and Journey

02:24 The Six Pillars of Workplace Health

03:57 Defining and Aligning Purpose

06:42 Building a Healthy Organizational Culture

12:47 Challenges in Government and Service Improvement

18:53 Building and Managing Remote Teams

22:55 Keys to Building a Successful Team

26:05 Performance Flow and Team Dynamics

29:08 Conclusion and Contact Information

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Gary Ruplinger: Hello and welcome everybody to the Pipelineology podcast. Today I’m excited to be joined by the founder and CEO of Akramoff and author of The Human-centered Team, Glenn Akramoff. Welcome to the show. Glad to have you here. 

[00:00:16] Glenn Akramoff: Glad to be here. Thank you, Gary. 

[00:00:18] Gary Ruplinger: So, for anybody, I guess, who’s not familiar with you or your organization or your book for that matter, can you just give us a, a quick, kind of background about who you are and what you do?

[00:00:28] Glenn Akramoff: Sure. So, I, I spent a lot of time, actually spent 25 year career in local government. What got me going on all of this was the fact that I worked with new cities. I actually worked with three new cities, which was basically like doing a startup within a government, environment, which was.

Very interesting and very exciting for me. So that’s got me into entrepreneurship, and I realized I was, I, I had a skill and, and really enjoyed building teams and, and rebuilding teams at times. So, I found that that’s what I like to do, and then I like to hand them off to someone who can keep them moving steadily down the road.

So that created the business model that we use and that’s what we do at Akramoff is we go in and revitalize organizations, sometimes parts of them, sometimes the whole organization, depending on what they need. And, I’m really passionate about it in that we, We find a lot of challenges with, with humans right now, especially after COVID.

And so, it’s really what really fires me up about it is being able to walk into an organization, see people with their heads down, you know, very dis, you know, disengaged and just not happy. And when we leave, 10, 9, 10 months later, seeing them take possession of their workplace and take possession of their own lives.

And, knowing that we’re a little bit a part of that is what keeps us going. 

[00:02:10] Gary Ruplinger: Telling us what, what makes a, a healthy organization or what you start to look for when you’re going in and you see those people with their heads down, what, what is going on? What led to that? And what do, what do we do about it?

[00:02:23] Glenn Akramoff: Sure. I think that the first thing is that we look at what we call the six pillars of workplace health. Those are, culture first, of course. Structure, it’s amazing how structure impacts culture a lot. We look at systems that you use to do your work, processes on how you do your work. External forces, which are things you can’t control.

But, but impact your business or your organization. And then of course we look at analytics. What do you, what tells you your success or not? It almost always starts with culture. A good culture can take you a long way and can help fix a lot of those other things. We do find a lot, we find, substance abuse is a, is a large problem in, in, especially in a toxic work environment. And there are signs on how that, you know, you, there are lots of things that tell you that. We do find some mental illness, in every workplace we go, and most of the time it’s untreated. So we work at focusing on that. But the big thing is, is, aligning people’s purpose with the business’s or the organization’s purpose is really where everything starts. That’s usually where there’s a breakdown, and so we start with that and a lot of times it’s because neither, neither purpose is defined very well. 

[00:03:57] Gary Ruplinger: Good. How, how do you kind of go about defining that purpose?

Because I, I think you, you know, you think as a leader of an organization, you just assume it’s understood by your employees. And it sounds like if that’s the number one thing, that it certainly is not the case. So how do you kind of, how can you walk us through that process? 

[00:04:15] Glenn Akramoff: Absolutely. So, so the, I think there’s two parts to it, of course, because, each individual, we all have our purpose.

Some of us have found that, some of us haven’t. Some of us know what it is, but haven’t really identified or cleared it up. Like you said, we assume that it’s known. And then there’s the organizational part. The organizational part is actually the easier one of the two. and so one of the things we go to work on right away is talking with the leadership and the people who do put that vision out there and, and condense it to something that’s meaningful.

That’s the first test of a real, a real vision or a, or any change process as a leader is, can, can, and that’s this question I ask when I go in, can I talk to the management team? And talk to the receptionist and get the same answer about the vision. And most of the time the answer’s no. It’s been interpreted as, you know, that whole thing where you, you tell a person, they tell a person and it gets interpreted.

So it’s important to be able to, to interact at every level to make sure that that goes all the way through The second part, and I, I think this is important as a personally as a leader, and it’s, it’s something that’s led to my success as a leader is it’s important that you help. All your team develop their own purpose and, and find it.

And again, it’s not mine as the leader, it’s just, Hey, what are you, what’s, what are you passionate about? What do you enjoy doing? What, what is important to you? And you help them develop it. And then, you know, for me, I help them write it down and, and reform it or refine it to a point where they’re like, yeah, this is me.

And, and, and the magic that happens when you connect the two, you know, when they realize, wait a minute, my personal. My personal purpose is really in line with what the company’s trying to do, and their energy goes up, they produce more. the opposite is true. When they find out they don’t match the company, then they know, okay, I gotta go find a place that, that I can use this passion, which in our work is totally fine with, with us.

We want them to find that passion. And so that’s, that’s kinda a quick way on how you do it. It sounds simple, not a simple process. 

[00:06:40] Gary Ruplinger: No. So I, I’m, I’m curious. Like I, I know like a lot of companies will have like, here’s my company here, company mission or statement or something like that up on the wall. And I’ve certainly been at companies like that where you say, that is some PR person or somebody just made that up and used some fancy words, 

[00:06:59] Glenn Akramoff: right? 

[00:06:59] Gary Ruplinger: and your, your day-to-day experience at all levels is, is not that. So I guess how, how do you kind of operate where you say, all right, what is each person’s. How does each person find their purpose and what, you know, where it actually is meaningful to them and actually reflects what you know they’re doing and, you know, things like that.

[00:07:20] Glenn Akramoff: Sure. I, I think we, it’s kind of both for the organization and the individual. You, you focus on three things that are really, that, that really create you as a, as a person in many ways. One is the gifts you’ve been given, and we all have gifts that we don’t know why we can do things, but we just know how to do things.

the second is your skillset. What is the skillset you’ve built? A lot of times your skillset says what you’ve pointed you, where, what you like or what you’re good at. and so you kind of develop those skills. And on a side note, I’m not a big believer in overdeveloping your. You’ve been given your strengths for a reason, so let’s build on those.

and then the, the third one is, is your passions. All of us have passion for, for multiple things. And what we, what we find a lot, I find a lot in our work is that people don’t bring all their passions to work with them or even all their skills. and so they’re being underutilized in that kind of. Can eat at them.

And so once you figure out all of those, that’s, that’s where you start. Once they identify those, and, and most of us know what those are, all of those things, right? Yeah. You know, what really gets me happy and feeling good and what I really like to spend my time doing well that’s, those are passions. and so you don’t have to be overly, self-aware to figure those things out.

Right. That, that, you know those. And so we identify them, then we build a purpose statement and, and our purpose statement is not that thing on the wall, right? It’s a few words that tells the world a little bit who you are, but reminds you of what’s important to you. And we do the same thing with the company.

And so when you put those two together, it’s again, if you can’t remember it, then it’s not very useful. 

[00:09:23] Gary Ruplinger: Gotcha. So once we’ve got our purpose, then where do we go from there? 

[00:09:30] Glenn Akramoff: Then, then we start identifying how we put the puzzle pieces together to serve that purpose. So now we have a, we have, we have a meaningful purpose that we really, you know, from a company standard that we will really want to go after.

And sometimes it’s being the best, sometimes it’s being the best product, whatever it happens to be. And then, every now everyone knows their, their own personal purpose. And now the leader needs to put those puzzle pieces together to help make the organization’s purpose, happen by using all the individual purposes.

So you create roles. That’s why culture starts and then you end up going into structure. That’s why it connects, because now you might have some people who are in a position of, you know. A position where they’re not totally fitting and they’re not performing really well, but when you find out their purpose and all their gifts and skills and passions, you realize, and I had an example of that in one of our clients, we had a person who was she was doing admin.

She was at a, a remote site where only seven or eight people visited a day and she would talk their ear off. Everybody would complain about that. But when we looked at what she loved to do and what her skills were, she was a hostess and she was fabulous at it. They had another site that where everybody came that was their main office, right?

And so she, we, we identified that I convinced the people who oversaw the front desk at the main place to, to try her out for a couple of weeks, and they had people coming into their business just to say hi to her because she was such a great hostess and we put her in a wonderful place and she was so happy.

It made a difference in the, in the company’s demeanor and how they were seen by the public. It actually started to increase their reputation just by moving one person into the right space. So we changed the structure and, and so that’s, that’s how it starts to build. Then you realize, okay, there’s certain thing, tools, they need to do their job and we’re not doing these processes efficiently.

And then you get into that. But that, that’s how it, that’s how that purpose builds. 

[00:11:51] Gary Ruplinger: Do you find that that happens pretty frequently where people are not in the right position or for, for what their, their purpose is? 

[00:11:59] Glenn Akramoff: Yeah. I would say anywhere from 30 to 40% of the time. People are misassigned in their purpose, but they feel like I, they, you know, for whatever reason, a lot of times it’s, I work, I work with government a lot and a lot of people say, well, you know, that’s a steady job.

And, and that’s a good job to have. And so everyone in the world tells them they should stay there even though they’re miserable. So there’s a lot of that, for sure. And, and that’s part of what degrades a, a culture of any organization is, you know, you, one of the things I encourage leaders to do is be curious about why people are, are not performing and why they seem miserable.

A lot of times it’s not what you think it is.

[00:12:47] Gary Ruplinger: It’s, it’s really interesting you’ve worked so much in in government because I think government really has a reputation for kind of not, not having people in the right positions. Not offering any type of customer service. Right, think of all the DMV or type of 

[00:13:04] Glenn Akramoff: Yeah.

[00:13:04] Gary Ruplinger: you know, horror stories people have of anytime you need to communicate with the government. Whether it’s, you know, DMV, IRS, any of those.

Yeah. So, I’m, I’m curious how you kind of get buy-in at, at different levels there from, from leadership to actually even kind of make those changes. 

[00:13:22] Glenn Akramoff: Well, it, it’s interesting they have a bad reputation for that, but, government a lot is, they don’t have to make money. Right. That’s not what they’re doing.

But they’re so really, they’re in the service business. And it, it’s interesting because so many of the people who are in government at every level are there to serve. That’s why they wanna, that’s why they got into government business in the first place. Because a lot of times you can make more money on in the private sector, but you don’t have, you don’t always have that, that sense of purpose.

Right? So that’s why they got in there. And then they found there’s all these restrictions and all these regulations, all these things that get in the way. And then they, you know, at times they kind of go, I just don’t know what to do. And they just kind of start grinding through it. And that’s really what, how we get buy-in is to remind them, number one, that you are, you are there to serve and that’s why you got in here in the first place. And then for the higher ups who want to, you know, who wanna move forward, especially the elected officials, if you provide world class service as a government, your reputation climbs, especially in today’s environment where it’s not happening a lot.

So, It’s always, it, it’s always an interesting dynamic and then you gotta prove the results. I think that’s the key is that when you see happy people providing really good service and you get the feedback that that’s happening, that it just builds on itself and pretty soon you have an entire organization who’s doing well, has a great reputation, good people want to join.

People want to use their service. It’s not a drag to go to city Hall, right? It’s, it’s, hey, I get to see that receptionist. I get to do, you know, I know that I’m gonna be taken care of when I go in there and have my questions answered and not feel like I am, being run through the ringer. So it builds on itself.

Once you do that, then, and, and you make everybody’s job easier then it, it just kind of builds on itself, which is our business model. It may not be a great business model, but, but we, we always say, we don’t want to come back. If we come back, we failed. You need to be able to sustain this on your own, so. 

[00:15:39] Gary Ruplinger: One thing I’m, I’ve always kind of been curious about is how does one actually kind of go about building a good team from the beginning?

Because I know. Especially if it’s, you know, your, your company or you’re, you know, you’re the, you’re the face of it. You feel like everything’s good, you know, and you may not even get that day-to-day feedback or, or things like that. because you’re, you’re kind of out of the, the fray of it as the organization grows.

So, I’m, I’m curious how you kind of go about actually building, you know, getting that good culture build, putting these, structure and systems and things like. In place from the beginning, so that, you know, you, you, you, you don’t run into, you know, these issues where everybody’s kind of heads down in a toxic environment.

[00:16:25] Glenn Akramoff: Yeah. I, I think as the leader, that’s one of the things you have to remember is that your number one. Thing is, is making sure that culture is doing well. So you have to take the time to stay in tune with your people. And it does get difficult, right. As an entrepreneur and building a team myself, plus helping other people build it at the same time, it, it’s, you know, there’s those challenges.

But you, in my, in, in, what I’ve done in, in my business is I, I watch my team. Right. We, we do meetings and yes, we’re doing them on Zoom and all that, like everybody else is, but their cameras have to be on, and I’m paying attention to where they are. And then I, I, if I, I’ve gotten to know them and it’s important to know your team.

I think the first part, and, and I say this and it sounds a little corny, but I believe in it, is that you don’t always have to like your team every day, but you need to love them. If you do, then you get to know who they are and it’s important, you know who they are now and, and then you get to know what’s going on Now in a big company, right.

I’ve, I’ve worked in a company of where I was the, the leader of 150 people, and you don’t get to see them every minute. Right. That’s the challenge, but. You can get to know them. You need, you can teach your leaders of those smaller groups to do the same thing that you’re doing. So you stay in tune with your team.

They stay in tune with them. I will tell you that, I had a client, last year. I had 75, people on the team and I made a commitment to see and, and at least see, look in their eye every two weeks, all 75. And, I just saw that as a priority for me to do that. And they knew that I was gonna do that, right?

They, they, they, if, if they had a problem or if they had something going good, they, they knew I was gonna see them and they wanted to tell me. And, that helped me keep in tune, right? And then, so it can be done. But I think that’s your number one priority is culture. If the culture goes well, your other things will fall in line and the people will problem solve, they will do, do their best for you and for the organization.

And momentum continues. 

[00:18:53] Gary Ruplinger: I like that. So I liked your tip about, you know, having cameras on for Zoom, I guess for remote, cultures and workplaces because I think. It’s a lot more of us now. Yeah. we’re trying to build our teams that way. Do you have tips for, for that or, or ways to kind of manage that?

Because it’s, you know, in, in that case it’s not, you can’t kind of go walk around and just talk to everybody as easily. How do you kind of, how do you envision doing something like that? Or how do you kind of like to do it? 

[00:19:25] Glenn Akramoff: Yeah, so, so the team I was talking about. When I joined the team as their interim leader, we were on Zoom because of COVID.

So even though I was in the same building with all of them, I didn’t necessarily get to see them with masks off and all that stuff right away. So yes, it’s, it’s doing with the camera, it’s paying attention to them. It’s having smaller meetings, on Zoom, if that’s what you’ve gotta do. I, I encourage individual meetings as much as possible.

I’m a believer in the hybrid workplace rather than the just remote, if you can possibly do it. And, and we’ve worked with companies where you can’t, they’re working from other countries, right? So that’s always challenging. But, but it, it’s always the supervisor should be doing, the leader of whatever team you have should be doing individual meetings.

Where they’re in that and make sure you have the social piece. That’s what’s been eliminated is we get to Zoom and we come into the meeting and we get right down to business. We get on the agenda, but if we are in person, we, we would, before the meeting started, people would show up a minute or two early and talk about personal things and then, then that stops when the meeting starts.

So making sure you, you replicate that. The process that you had in person is, is probably the biggest tip. Same thing at the end. You know, you had people, you have people mill around after a meeting, right? They mill around two or three will go in the corner and talk about a project they’re working on or maybe what they’re gonna do on the weekend or whatever.

I always keep our meeting, we always plan a few minutes at the end for that to happen. Where people can just talk about what’s going on or, or you know, get in the chat. That’s the other part. Use the chat, use every tool you have. but to me it’s that social part is missed and, and that is where magic happens.

That’s where ideas pop up. And, and so that’s, that’s why we’re having, I think we’re having some challenge with innovation because those over the cubicle conversations aren’t happening anymore. 

[00:21:44] Gary Ruplinger: I, I’m wondering if that’s why, I know it was in the news last week is that Zoom, you know, this, this particular platform said, you know, employees need to come back to the office.

Because sounds like they’re missing the same, same things even though they build the, the platform for remote, you know, interactions. 

[00:22:02] Glenn Akramoff: Yeah, that is a pretty ironic, isn’t it? I I also think we, you know, we, we talked at the beginning a little bit that I find mental illness and, and substance abuse. There are a lot of people that, you know, as many as 25%.

In my estimation, in my experience, that their main social, connection is their work. And so when you take them out of that, then they become really isolated and that can cause some challenges for them. And so I think that’s why hybrid is another important part. And as a leader, when I see them in person, I can, you know, you, you can start to understand when you know them.

They’re, they’re not doing well. I, I need to talk to them. And you can then be proactive about it. So I think that’s the other part that’s missed sometimes is that, that human connection is important. Gotcha. 

[00:22:53] Gary Ruplinger: I know this is something you, you touch on in your book. I guess, what would you call the, the keys to building a successful team?

If you had to, you know, distill it down into a, you know, a few bullet points, how would you, what would you say the, the keys to, to that are? 

[00:23:07] Glenn Akramoff: Well, we went over one of them. I is the, is aligning purpose. That’s, that’s a big one. having a vision, which we talked about too. having a, having an inspirational vision, ev every company and, An an organization serves human beings in some way. So, so being able to, to have people understand what that vision is so they can get behind it, is, is another part. Using the give skills, finding roles is another. Right. We’ve talked, already talked about that. I also think something that, that is almost always missed that, that we do talk about in the book is celebrating your success.

It’s one of the questions I ask when I first go in an organization, how do you celebrate? Most of the time it’s, well, we check it off the list and move on to the next thing, right? But truly celebrating what you’re doing, what you’ve accomplished as a team, that what that inspiring vision has brought you.

you know. Celebrating other human beings in, in, in what they’re doing and what they’re accomplishing is always an important part of the process. It helps you, it helps you connect with each other. It, it provides positive reinforcement to what you’re actually trying to accomplish. and it, I, we, we just did an assessment in a, in a company, and one of the things they said as well.

We think we have cell, celebrate our success, but it’s usually just a, you know, a pizza party or something. And so some, it’s more than that, right? It, it’s, it’s truly, you know, celebrating and, and it’s not always a big recognition program. sometimes it’s, it’s just having fun together. You know, there are a lot of companies will go on a, on an excursion or something, like a ball game or something.

Sometimes it’s just being together and, and recognizing everybody’s effort, and that doesn’t always have to be the leader who does that. Actually. I think it’s, it’s as important and maybe more powerful if the team directs that. the most, the most rewarding awards that I’ve gotten in my career, that meant the most to me have been when someone from the team or a group gets together and says, we really appreciate what you did.

You know, not as the boss is great, right? But. But the people who are standing next to you doing the work recognize you, that means an awful lot. So I think that’s kind of a, a, a quick summary of the keys. There, there are eight of them that we talk about, but, those are, well, I do have one that I do want to, that I should bring up.

it, it, it’s called the performance flow. This is something that a lot of people don’t think about, but I’ve noticed some athletic coaches have figured it out over the years, is that each, in my opinion, and this is what I’ve noticed, is that each of us have a, a flow of how we perform, and it’s generally on a six week cycle.

And so you kind of ramp up and you have what I call a performance plateau. And then you ramp down and, and you can think about in your, in your. You know, last couple of months where you, you’re pounding out emails, you’re doing your work and everything’s going smoothly, and then a week later you can’t type and you can’t figure, you know, you’re like, why is this so hard?

And that’s, that’s your performance flow at work. And, what I, when I, once I figured it out, what I started doing was. I try to schedule my high performance times, like if I’m gonna do a speaking engagement or, or I’m gonna make a big presentation. Or when I was writing the book, I, I did all of that on what, on my performance flow at two weeks, where I was on, where I knew I could produce a lot of work and it was gonna be good work.

As soon as I started to get the signs that I was starting to fall off of that, then I relaxed. I let whatever happen and I did less intense things. And and, and it works. It works with a team. And one of the mistakes I made early when I tried, started to figure this out was I tried to put everybody on the same cycle and, and of course the whole team goes, woo down up.

But what I realized was you want the team to be able to skip across the performance plateau, but people are going up and down, inside. And a lot of times we don’t believe in that. We believe consistency is the most important thing, and I, I have found that not to be true. And so for anybody who, who, who’s listening and wants to try it, just watch yourself for six weeks at and start to see how those things happen.

How certain, certain things frustrate you. One week and the next week things are going really smoothly and kind of document it and figure it out and then you can start watching your team. 

[00:28:24] Gary Ruplinger: That’s, that’s a really interesting one. I’m, I’m gonna have to watch that in my, you know, in my own organization and in myself.

Especially because now that you say it, it sounds, it sounds about right, but boy, I’ve never, I’ve never really paid attention to it. Yeah. 

[00:28:39] Glenn Akramoff: Then you can stop beating yourself up when you’re not perfect. That’s the other part of it that it does, is it let, I let myself off the hook if I’m performing well and I make a mistake different, but, And it just, it just has worked for me over the years and worked for the teams that I work with and, and we teach it and it works for those who we teach it to. 

[00:29:04] Gary Ruplinger: Well, great. Well, this, this is some really good stuff, Glenn. So I guess for people who are, you know, wanna kind of go further into this, you know, in this re-imagining workplaces, type of things, where, where can they learn more about you or where should we send them?

[00:29:20] Glenn Akramoff: Okay, so, we have a website. It’s akramoff.com. You can look in there. The pillars are there. The keys are there, there’s a lot of stuff about what we do and how we do it. The, you can find the book on Amazon and also at, thehuman-centered book.com. And, and check those out. Love to hear from you and, and if you do get into it, about.

You know what you think of it, you know how you can utilize those things. Our, my big thing has always been, yes, I have a business built on this, and you know that that’s part of the process, but. I want to impact as many workplaces as possible, which is why I became a consultant and why I wrote a book.

I don’t, I’m, I know I can’t get to them all. So if I can help impact them and help people empower themselves to do the work. That’s awesome. So whatever you find, however I can help, that’s what we’re here for. 

[00:30:22] Gary Ruplinger: If you’re interested in Glenn’s book, you said the human centered book.com, or it’s available on Amazon.

 And if your organization does need some help, they should get in touch with you directly at, akramoff.com. Did I get that right? Yep. Okay. 

[00:30:35] Glenn Akramoff: Absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:30:37] Gary Ruplinger: Glenn, thanks so much for being on the show today. Thanks for sharing, all these tips. I, I know building a, building a team is, is always, you know, kind of one of those challenges that often gets overlooked probably, and you probably noticed that.

So really appreciate you sharing your tips today. Any other parting wisdom before we go? 

[00:30:55] Glenn Akramoff: I, I, I don’t think so. I would just say, you know. One of the things I would say is, is it’s so busy right now and as a leader you’re very busy. You’ve got a thousand things pulling at you if you need help, whether it’s us, whether it’s somebody else, if you need help to get your team running right and running the way you want to invest in it, it’s a good investment for you to do that, so. 

[00:31:20] Gary Ruplinger: And that’s, that’s perfect. Well, thanks Glenn so much and, appreciate you hopping on the show. 

[00:31:25] Glenn Akramoff: Thanks for having me, Gary. I really appreciate it.

[00:31:30] Gary Ruplinger: Thanks for listening to the Pipelineology podcast. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode and look forward to seeing you on the next one. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.