#69 Engineering leadership that works with Chris Hutchinson

TRANSCRIPT: THE bizval PODCAST
Guest: Chris Hutchinson, Founder — Trebuchet Group
Host: Graham Stephen, CEO and Co-Founder, bizval

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[00:00:21] Graham Stephen: Alright. Welcome back to the bizval Podcast. I’m your host, Graham Stephen, CEO of bizvalglobal.com.

[00:00:32] Graham Stephen: We help founders understand, grow, and realize the true value of their companies.

[00:00:38] Graham Stephen: Today, I’m thrilled to speak with someone who’s shaped leadership inside hundreds of organizations over the past two decades. He’s an ex-Air Force officer turned mechanical engineer turned leadership founder, the CEO of Trebuchet Group, I think I got that right, and the author of

[00:00:56] Graham Stephen: Ripple, a field menu for leaders, leadership that works. Chris Hutchinson, welcome to the show.

[00:01:01] Chris Hutchinson: I’m so glad to be here, Graham. Thanks for inviting me.

[00:01:04] Graham Stephen: Fantastic, and I think, pre-show, we were just chatting a little bit, it’s 10 degrees Celsius, or what’s that? 10… probably also about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, that’s… No, mine 40 Fahrenheit, yeah.

[00:01:18] Chris Hutchinson: 12, 12 Fahrenheit here.

[00:01:20] Graham Stephen: Yeah, and I’m sitting here at 30 degrees Celsius, or probably, like, 85, so opposite ends of the world, but, Chris, let’s dive right in. We’re going to have a bit of a chat about your background. You know, I think one of the common things that drew us together, we met at,

[00:01:37] Graham Stephen: your small giants conference out in Texas a little while ago, and both my dad and brother are engineers, and you talk about being a recovering engineer, so I think that’s one of the things that actually really struck out when we first connected. So, we’re going to talk a little bit about your background, some of those early lessons from engineering.

[00:01:55] Graham Stephen: And then what you’re doing today. So, you know, there’s no real agenda other than just sharing your story and, you know, giving our guests an opportunity to learn a little bit about who you are and what you do, so…

[00:02:06] Graham Stephen: I’m going to dive right in, and what I like to do is start at the beginning. So, you began your career in the Air Force, then you moved into engineering, and as I said, I grew up in an engineering-heavy family myself, so…

[00:02:20] Graham Stephen: I know the mindset well. I was sort of the black sheep of the family going into finance and all of those things, but what drew you into engineering and the Air Force initially?

[00:02:31] Chris Hutchinson: Well, I would say it had to be… I had a dream of being an astronaut, and I knew my eyes weren’t good enough for me to be the pilot.

[00:02:39] Chris Hutchinson: But I figured I could be, you know, one of those payload specialists, engineer people. And so, unfortunately, right as I entered airspace engineering, the Challenger space shuttle blew up, and CU Boulder was where Ellison Onizuka, one of the crew members, was from, and he was from my ROTC detachment, and so… and a lot of the teachers that I was with actually had work on the plane… on the shuttle, and so it was a really sad time, and I thought, you know, I’m not… I’m not

[00:03:06] Chris Hutchinson: totally thrown off, but what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna broaden from aerospace to mechanical engineering in my Air Force ROTC scholarship.

[00:03:14] Chris Hutchinson: And then, that I would go do that. And so that’s… that’s what I did, and graduated with a mechanical engineering degree when I went into the Air Force.

[00:03:23] Graham Stephen: Wow, so, I mean, it was a mixture of, sort of, like, ambition, but then also circumstance, I guess, tragic circumstance, what kind of forced you to redirect, and, you know, I mean, it’s actually, I guess, we’re giving away our age, because, you know, I remember that well. I mean, I remember sitting and seeing that on TV, and it was a tragic event.

[00:03:42] Graham Stephen: But, you know, you talk about being a recovering engineer, and as I say, I love that phase, but what do you mean by that?

[00:03:49] Chris Hutchinson: Well, it’s a takeoff of… and I’ve been sort of chastised for it, too, so I use it gently now, but like a recovering alcoholic or something. Basically, you’re always going to be an alcoholic, you’re just recovering, and I’m always going to be an engineer, I’m just recovering. And the recovering part was,

[00:04:06] Chris Hutchinson: Essentially, that it wasn’t just a computer in… fractions and, you know, spreadsheets and things like that. It wasn’t just math.

[00:04:15] Chris Hutchinson: It was the real world, and that real-world connection of people, which there were a lot of folks that, when I worked with them, they’re like, you know, Chris, you’re kind of weird. You talk with people, and you listen to them, so why don’t you just go over there?

[00:04:27] Chris Hutchinson: So, I think really quickly I learned, and I can share this story at some point, that, it, really, my engineering didn’t matter when I was in a crappy team.

[00:04:38] Chris Hutchinson: with a crappy leader, I couldn’t apply it, it was… life wasn’t very much fun. It was not a lot… it wasn’t a good time. So, when I was in a team where everybody was working well together, and the leader was clear, and it was collaborative, and there was… every idea counted, and…

[00:04:52] Chris Hutchinson: you know, people could pick each other’s kryptonite up and run with it. It was a great time. So, I shifted from engineering be the answer to, that’s just a tool.

[00:05:01] Chris Hutchinson: It’s around how do we work together. Effectively is the most important thing for any organization.

[00:05:08] Graham Stephen: Absolutely. I mean, I guess I’m a recovering accountant, you know?

[00:05:11] Chris Hutchinson: So you can…

[00:05:12] Graham Stephen: You can never take that qualification away, but, you know, much like you, I realized it’s just what you study at university doesn’t define, necessarily, how you go about business and building business, and at the end of the day, it is about people, you know, and it’s something that, from a bizval perspective, we…

[00:05:30] Graham Stephen: you know, we really press on about is, you know, you can use tools, you can use systems, you can create all of those things, but unless you can engage the founder or business owner at an emotional level and meet them where they’re at, you know, you’ve got a lot of work to do, so…

[00:05:45] Chris Hutchinson: Korea.

[00:05:45] Graham Stephen: You found that in your career as well. So, let’s go back to those first, sort of, 13-year chapter, and you politely corrected me on that. You know, being the engineer, you picked out the detail. I think in my prep notes, I said 15 years, and you very kindly said 13, not 15. We won’t say why, it’s because you didn’t want to give away your real age, so anyway…

[00:06:08] Chris Hutchinson: It’s okay. I just turned 59, it’s a great year.

[00:06:11] Graham Stephen: But jokes aside, what are some of the biggest leadership lessons? I mean, you touched on the sort of the people aspect, but from that first 13-year chapter of your career, the Air Force, the mechanical engineering, that you still take with you today, you know, so the stuff that you haven’t recovered from.

[00:06:30] Chris Hutchinson: Oh, yeah. Well, there’s many scars that have taught me, and I think it’s… I look at my children, and I can see that, you know, I don’t understand why they don’t just take all my wisdom and all the things that I’ve done, and the way that I’m trying to advance the species by just handing them the best answer, and they look at that and they go.

[00:06:47] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah, that’s obedience. Everything else is free will and exploration. I will do that last. And so, you know, I learned pretty quickly that there’s a factor of, well, here’s a phrase we use a lot, unasked for help often isn’t.

[00:07:02] Chris Hutchinson: And that’s when you walk in and say, hey, let me help you with that. And that may or may not be helpful, especially if I’m not open to it. And who are you, and what are you doing? And I’m trying to figure this out.

[00:07:12] Graham Stephen: at him.

[00:07:12] Chris Hutchinson: One of the biggest lessons that I got was, pretty early on in my Air Force career. So, I went into the Air Force actually because, it was something bigger than myself.

[00:07:22] Chris Hutchinson: My dad had been in the Air Force, and I could see, just, he was in intelligence, so he was locked in vaults. He couldn’t tell me what he did. But when we got together for picnics and things like that with people, I could just see they were all about, we’re in this together, it’s not about me, and I really liked that. I thought that was really powerful.

[00:07:38] Chris Hutchinson: foreshadowing my team-building career here. And I was… I was on a team, you know, so I joined the Air Force, hooray, I’m on a team, and it really wasn’t very good. There was… it was sort of the classic corporate…

[00:07:52] Chris Hutchinson: toxicity. So it was, cover your ass, don’t put your head up, stay in the tall grass, you know, don’t speak up, you know, speak when you’re spoken to, you know, stay out of… just… it was just really… I mean, I was depressed, actually. I didn’t really realize it until later. I was like, oh, that was depression, that I was in this deep hole.

[00:08:11] Chris Hutchinson: And luckily for me, the Air Force has rotational things. They rotate people a lot. So, actually, I got rotated into a different team.

[00:08:18] Chris Hutchinson: And if that team was night, this was day. It was exciting. The leader was like, hey, how can we do things? Let’s figure out what can happen here. People would say, as I hinted, the kryptonite thing, you know, you’re not that great at this. I am. Let me do that for you, and here’s something you can do for me. And we just built on each other, and it was fun, and I loved coming to work, and I felt like a great engineer.

[00:08:38] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:08:39] Chris Hutchinson: The reality of those two situations is that only one person changed between those teams. It wasn’t me. Who’s the leader.

[00:08:46] Chris Hutchinson: The leader changed, and every single person on that team, within a couple weeks, was totally different with each other. I mean, it was so stark, I was like, what is this magic?

[00:08:56] Chris Hutchinson: And I also wanted to say, I wanted to learn not to be the leader to tell people what to do, but I wanted to be a person that would help that kind of environment exist. Whether it was a leader or a team player, I wanted to be in that kind of environment. I did not want to be in the other one.

[00:09:08] Chris Hutchinson: And so that was a very deep learning lesson for me, of what kind of team I wanted to be on, what kind of… the way I wanted to show up, and what I thought really enabled not only me, but everybody’s talents.

[00:09:19] Chris Hutchinson: And it was just… it was so clear. So, that definitely carried through To this day.

[00:09:25] Graham Stephen: I guess it was that realization, just what a multiplier effect good leadership could have, and what good leadership looked like, you know? It’s not just what you read in the textbooks.

[00:09:36] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah.

[00:09:37] Graham Stephen: seeing it in action actually just brings it to light. It’s almost got this, like, you talk about that X factor, and you see somebody who’s got that ability just to, you know, in the US, it’s not a big sport, but I look at, you know, I’m South African by birth, the South African rugby team, and you look at what the

[00:09:54] Graham Stephen: leadership has done with that. You know, you look at one of the… look at the great football teams. Having the right coach and the right captain makes, you know, all the difference. The skill set amongst the players is literally, you know, you’re an engineer, so you’ll know what Six Sigma is, you know.

[00:10:09] Chris Hutchinson: Well, oh yeah, well, you know, even…

[00:10:11] Graham Stephen: It’s all within .01%, but it’s that… it’s that leadership that makes a difference.

[00:10:17] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah, I think it’s leadership and systems both together. I mean, I think that it’s both pieces. It’s not just the people. I’ve been in organizations that had beautiful, monolithic systems that were honed to perfection, right? But nobody used them, and they didn’t work. And then I’d have other organizations I was in where there was no system besides we’re making it up as we go.

[00:10:36] Chris Hutchinson: And that worked pretty amazingly well, but if somebody was out, oh my god, it was gonna be rough. And essentially, what I decided early on, while I was still in the Air Force, actually, I said, I want to figure out how we can get the people involved and get that connectivity, and have them build the system that they’re gonna honor and use and make better. I mean, it sounds so simple.

[00:10:55] Chris Hutchinson: And I actually had a couple of situations where My boss let me go to a different division at one point. I was in Oklahoma City, and I’m with this group of people, and we’re doing work orders to repair things all over the base, including the hospital and other important places. Because I was in civil engineering. We, like, took care of the base and all the things that were there.

[00:11:14] Chris Hutchinson: And I don’t ever remember the numbers exactly, but we had some certain number of work orders a day that we were putting together.

[00:11:20] Chris Hutchinson: And after a couple weeks, I got the team together, 40 people, and I said, okay, so, what do you think’s getting in our way from doing more work? From doing better work, from doing what we can do? And we ended up coming up with a system where, ahead of time.

[00:11:33] Chris Hutchinson: Instead of going out for this work order, I’m like, oh, we don’t have that part, going back to the shop, and back and forth, and you know, all that wasted time and energy. Went out to the building owner and said, here’s the stuff we know needs to be done, what’s most important, and is there anything else?

[00:11:46] Chris Hutchinson: And we ended up… I mean, I thought, you know, 50% improvement would be pretty amazing.

[00:11:52] Chris Hutchinson: Any guess on how much improvement we got in productivity?

[00:11:55] Graham Stephen: I’m gonna take a flyer, 500%.

[00:11:57] Chris Hutchinson: It was 400% improvement, and I was like, this is a fluke, this is crazy, this can’t be true. And anyways, you know, that… there was a lot of other things we did, but then went to another division and did something similar, and it was also in the 350-400% improvement, and that was even…

[00:12:13] Chris Hutchinson: Remember all those work orders? It was consolidating them down so they actually did fewer, but they did more of those fewer, even though they were more consolidated. And it was just enabling people to do great work, with the system.

[00:12:25] Chris Hutchinson: Makes it repeatable, and people can put their effort into it and push hard.

[00:12:30] Graham Stephen: And I think that’s what people don’t always appreciate, you know, I mean, you’re an engineer, so you can triangulate, things, you know, that’s what you’re designed to do, but now triangulating two different fields.

[00:12:40] Chris Hutchinson: And that.

[00:12:41] Graham Stephen: that sort of, let’s call it that exponential effect comes from sometimes. And I think us as humans, often we find it hard to kind of really understand, oh, I can do 5% more, but it’s 5%, you know, 5% times by 5%.

[00:12:54] Graham Stephen: can lead to a 400% improvement if it’s directed in the right way. I mean, the maths doesn’t really add up right, you know, and I think that’s the superpower, so…

[00:13:03] Graham Stephen: It kind of leads us, I guess, into the next section, and you’ve probably answered the question already, so, you know, a little bit about you being in the Air Force and engineering for 13 years, and then you founded the Trebachet Group. So, you know, why take that leap? You know, you…

[00:13:19] Graham Stephen: You’re working on an effective team, you’re doing what you love, by all means. did you see a gap in the market? Did you just get to a point where you felt like, okay, I want to do something different? What was that… what was that sort of seed that… that led you to where you are today?

[00:13:36] Chris Hutchinson: Well, there was a couple things. After my 8 years in the Air Force, I got into Motorola, another large organization, and had had several different jobs there. And there was a nice nudge of the… this is around 2001, 2002, people were around then, they had… the tech bubble burst.

[00:13:50] Graham Stephen: And so a lot of… there was a lot of pullback in terms of demand.

[00:13:54] Chris Hutchinson: The other thing was, I was in a… I was in a quality job. So, yeah, it was all Six Sigma and everything, and at the same time, I was saying, hey, what do our customers need? You know, yes, these are numbers, but what do our customers need? And I had people who would knock on the door and say… they’d look both ways down the hallway, and shut the door and come in and go.

[00:14:11] Chris Hutchinson: I… I don’t… I just heard that, like, if people have discussions with you, that, like, they figure out what they need to do, and I don’t know if this is okay for me to have a discussion, because I’m in X department.

[00:14:21] Chris Hutchinson: At the time, I’m like, well, I… this is quality, it’s everywhere, so sure, let’s go. And I didn’t realize I was coaching at the time. I was just coaching inside the company. However, we went from…

[00:14:31] Chris Hutchinson: 3,500 people to 20 in 18 months. I mean, not 20,000, to zero, right? So it was like, cool. And I wasn’t in the last 20, so that was a nudge as well.

[00:14:41] Graham Stephen: But…

[00:14:42] Chris Hutchinson: But it really… it was one of those big lessons I learned that, yeah, anybody has a right to fail at any time, and you can’t do anything about it.

[00:14:50] Graham Stephen: If people want to exercise the right to fail, they can do it. I thought, I’m there, things are gonna be good, we have good people.

[00:14:56] Chris Hutchinson: Boom. So at that point, I said, I want to do the same stuff. But not limited to one company. And thank you, Severance, so it helped me figure out how the heck to go talk with people about this and partner with them and figure out what we could do together. So that’s the launching thing, to sort of get the company going.

[00:15:14] Graham Stephen: there was a bit of circumstance, you know, I mean, again, a bit of misfortune, and and then you kind of having to decide what next.

[00:15:22] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah, it’s a pattern of, like, I have this thing that doesn’t happen great, and then something good that happens, and I’m like, oh, I’ll go that way.

[00:15:28] Graham Stephen: Yeah, so let’s talk about the name. I mean, for our listeners, I mean, I’ve obviously done a bit of research, but Trebachet, I love the name. So, for those of you who don’t know, it’s a medieval, let’s call it catapult, I guess, if you want to call it.

[00:15:43] Chris Hutchinson: That’s true.

[00:15:44] Graham Stephen: So what’s… what’s the story behind the name? How did you… how did you come up with that?

[00:15:48] Chris Hutchinson: So, this’ll be… so there’s a couple things that happen, and it’s like a catapult. However, when they showed up, they were sort of the stealth bomber of the medieval age, because it’s just a super simple system. It has a long arm, it has a weight.

[00:16:02] Chris Hutchinson: It does a pivot, and then it has kind of a sling action. And that sling action, when you align those correctly, you could send a boulder or a…

[00:16:11] Chris Hutchinson: Dead cow or an opponent over the walls that used to protect people.

[00:16:17] Chris Hutchinson: And so…

[00:16:18] Graham Stephen: I’m flying over the wall at the.

[00:16:19] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah, those were, you know, they weren’t always really nice, and they were incredibly powerful, right? And when those showed up, he kind of was like, okay, we need to stop. And I… and I was telling a client about this, and I said, you know, it’s about this simple system, if it’s done in the right way, it has tremendously outsized impact, you know, your multiplier.

[00:16:35] Graham Stephen: Yeah. And he stopped me and said, no, Chris.

[00:16:37] Chris Hutchinson: That’s not why you were called trebuchet. And I went. Okay, tell me more. And he said, I was a medieval history major.

[00:16:45] Chris Hutchinson: And I know when the trebuchet showed up as an innovation, essentially the walled city, the one person, the feudal system, broke down, because the feudal system, the guy in the keep, couldn’t keep you safe anymore, and so they had to take the walls down, and they built partnerships and collaborations. He goes, that’s what you are helping people do inside organizations.

[00:17:06] Chris Hutchinson: Wow. Damn. Okay, I’ll take it. You know, I didn’t set it up that way, but I’ll take it. So it’s multiple meanings, but it’s also kind of cool. And then, when we were picking fonts, it was fun. I said, you know, I like that one, and my graphic designer said, of course you would, that’s trebuchet. I’m like, what? The trebuchet is a font that’s, like.

[00:17:22] Chris Hutchinson: All over the world.

[00:17:22] Graham Stephen: I didn’t even know this.

[00:17:24] Chris Hutchinson: Yep, it is! It’s a website font, you know, so…

[00:17:27] Graham Stephen: We can make our website with impunity. Wow. So, I mean, let’s talk about that. It’s not just about, you know, we’ve spoken already, it’s not about coaching, per se, it’s not just about systems, it’s about process, but it’s really deeply team-focused, it’s leadership-focused, it’s systems-focused, it’s bringing these things

[00:17:46] Graham Stephen: Altogether. And, you know, I think one of the areas that you and I are both passionate about is the idea that many businesses are kind of either held back, so it means they, you know, they never realize their value, they can’t sell, whatever, because they… they overly, let’s call it owner-dependent, okay?

[00:18:03] Graham Stephen: That is, you know, in terms of the valuation work we do, probably the single biggest reason that suppresses valuation.

[00:18:09] Graham Stephen: And I guess what you’ve done is almost built to fix that. You know, there’s a lot of systems out there, you know, I’m not going to name them all, but what makes your approach different to some of, let’s call it, the frameworks that are out there to deal with owner dependency?

[00:18:27] Chris Hutchinson: Well, I think… That’s a really good question, because there’s many facets to owner dependency. There’s a lot of hidden… in any, I would say, leadership management dependency, and a lot of people are like, well, those leaders are managers, you know, they just can’t give it up, they’re just so greedy, and they just have to have that control.

[00:18:46] Chris Hutchinson: It could be a factor. But most often, it’s not that at all. It’s because I don’t want to let people down. I want to do a good job, and I got here because I was technically good at something, or because I was managing something. And so, let’s see, you know, I know I can change the oil. I’ve worked with smaller companies where, like, I can do an oil change faster than anybody in here, and it’ll never be a problem.

[00:19:07] Chris Hutchinson: Let’s see, what’s the satisfaction of that? It’s huge, and it’s instant, and you know it’s good, and you can basically show somebody how to do it. So the likelihood of me being attracted to that is very high. Let’s go to the other side over here. Strategy of the company. You know, where are we going as an organization? And, how often have I done that? Never, right? How often have I really figured this stuff out? And by the way, if I make a mistake over here.

[00:19:30] Chris Hutchinson: Oh, bad, bad things are gonna happen. And, You know, in terms of my expertise, almost nothing applies. So, let’s see, which way am I gonna go? So, there’s a lot of incentives, unfortunately, that have people kind of working the job that they came from.

[00:19:46] Chris Hutchinson: And so, trying to help people get out of that is a part of it. So, that’s the situation.

[00:19:53] Chris Hutchinson: I probably build on what I would say, the fragile male ego. I’m trying to protect, I’m trying to do good things, you know, it’s not always a male in charge, there’s females too. And at the same time, there’s an ego problem that says, well, I need to have control of all this stuff. So a lot of times, what we’ll do is kind of sidle up to folks and say.

[00:20:12] Chris Hutchinson: What’s the… what’s the… where would you really love to be? Like, if you could just, you know, wave the magic wand within some practical reason, and I want to be at some place over here, and get them to describe that pretty well. Awesome. What are things you’re doing that are already getting you there? Great. And then, how do you actually, plan to do that better? And where are the holes? What are you doing about that? And might we help?

[00:20:35] Chris Hutchinson: So, that’s the approach of how we show up with people. But really, it’s about coming alongside them, not being the expert, like, I will tell you, I know, and just follow the rules, or you must have a religious conversion and throw out everything you’ve done up to now, and take on this new religion called X.

[00:20:49] Chris Hutchinson: And then, I think that’s not effective. So, building on what works, where they’re trying to go, and supporting them to do the things that they need to do, I think is the most respectful thing for anybody to do. When I have leaders who did that with me, I really liked that. I was challenged, I did good stuff.

[00:21:05] Chris Hutchinson: And I see us doing the same thing alongside our clients. So we have very long relationships with short engagements.

[00:21:12] Graham Stephen: Hmm. I love that, you know, it’s going… as you say, it’s not just taking about taking a blueprint, and just going and dumping it there, and training somebody on the how. It’s actually working alongside them, scrumming down with them, but as you say, it’s not about… it’s not about a retainer client, per se, it’s about.

[00:21:32] Graham Stephen: you know, it’s almost like they’re teaching a man to fish, you know, you work with them, you don’t just say, yeah, this is a rod, and off you go. It’s actually, you go, you show them, you tell them where the good fishing spots are. They might even have some great fishing spots where all the big, you know, 10, 15-pound bass hide, and you say, great, you know, how do you get more of that?

[00:21:49] Chris Hutchinson: I even like a little step above that, and that’s, like, I like helping people struggle to learn how to fish.

[00:21:55] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:21:56] Chris Hutchinson: Because if I teach them to fish, then they’re gonna go, okay, there’s a bear, teach me to hit the bear, teach me to do this. And I’m like, I want them to struggle to learn to where they go, huh, I got this fishing thing down, I probably need this hunting thing. It’s just a land fish, I’ll figure it out.

[00:22:08] Graham Stephen: Yeah, and that struggle is part of the learning, right? I mean, that’s what builds resilience and builds, you know, that you can do it again, you know?

[00:22:17] Chris Hutchinson: That’s the hardest part, I think, is holding people… holding people in that struggle to let them know that’s okay, in fact, it’s needed. Like, just exactly what you said. It’s part of the learning, and our growth isn’t going to happen in our comfort, so…

[00:22:29] Chris Hutchinson: What do you want.

[00:22:30] Graham Stephen: It reminds me a little bit, not quite the same, but my high school motto was, labor, which means, you know, nothing worthwhile is achieved without hard work, which means

[00:22:39] Graham Stephen: technically, you have to… you have to grind, and you have to figure stuff out. It’s not just going to be handed to you on a silver platter. I want to shift direction a little bit, you know, and as I said earlier in the show, we met at the Small Giants conference, and what I love about the whole Small Giants community is just

[00:22:56] Graham Stephen: how deeply seated it is in sort of values. It’s not necessarily about building the biggest business possible, but it’s about building, you know, a values-led business, it’s about building.

[00:23:08] Graham Stephen: a great business rather than necessarily a big business. You talk about some of that stuff on your website.

[00:23:16] Graham Stephen: What are some of the values that… that guide you and the Trebachet Group?

[00:23:21] Chris Hutchinson: Well, over the 23 years we’ve been together, we have, you know, like, scraped off the pieces that aren’t David on the marble, right? We’ve been, like, honing it down.

[00:23:29] Graham Stephen: Perfect.

[00:23:30] Chris Hutchinson: But we just have a handful, and one of them, the first one is being transparent and vulnerable. And that might sound wishy-washy, but actually it means that, like, my salary’s on a line item in the budget, and my contributions are a line item in the P&L.

[00:23:42] Chris Hutchinson: And so were everybody else’s. So we can very see… we can see what’s happening, and we know what’s up. It takes about… our team says… they’ve made up this word, indoctrination. It takes about 2 years of working with us till they’re undoctrinated.

[00:23:54] Chris Hutchinson: To where they can actually be transparent and vulnerable in the way that really serves each other. It’s not gush on people, it’s meaning, I’m gonna be, hey, I made a mistake there, or, Graham, that idea’s way better.

[00:24:04] Graham Stephen: Or… Yeah.

[00:24:05] Chris Hutchinson: I need help, you know, rather than just letting it break and then go, well, you know, what can you do?

[00:24:11] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:24:12] Chris Hutchinson: We have another one called Commit to Better. And that’s for us and our clients. It’s like, we’re gonna not just say, hey, we could do better, but like… and it doesn’t mean toxic positivity, where, oh, it’s gonna be better. It means that we’re gonna say, what is better, and let’s commit to that and see what we can do. And so we’re continuing to struggle and work to be better in whatever we’re doing.

[00:24:33] Graham Stephen: And that also breaks down ego, I guess, you know, so, you know, if you… if you acknowledge that things can always be done better, even if it’s 1% better, as an engineer, you’re chasing those incremental gains, is it… it means don’t rest on your laurels, right? You know, you can…

[00:24:49] Chris Hutchinson: Exactly. Yeah, there’s no such thing as a status quo. It’s like, we gotta get better, or we’re not gonna do it as well.

[00:24:54] Graham Stephen: Yeah, anyway.

[00:24:54] Chris Hutchinson: Another one is See the Best. And see the best to us means I’m gonna see the best in you, and I’m gonna see the best in our clients. And I’ve actually had a guy who was working here for a while, he was a great guy, and at one point, he just started talking about the clients that they were broken and stupid, and, you know, admittedly, they’re having challenges, and they’re not doing great.

[00:25:12] Chris Hutchinson: But it was more… it sounded more personal. And I kind of went to him, and I said, hey, I’m just hearing this… I’m gonna reflect back to you what I’m hearing, I’m wondering what’s up, and he goes, yeah, I don’t see them as good enough, I’m seeing them as broken, but they don’t know that.

[00:25:25] Chris Hutchinson: Like, actually, it’s coming through all the time, so we need to shift or something, and I want to help support you, and eventually he stepped away and does his own thing.

[00:25:33] Chris Hutchinson: Which is fine, but that seeing the best is so important, because if you don’t believe that I think you’re the best you can be right now, even though we could commit to better, you’re gonna feel like I’m seeing you as less than. And that’s not okay.

[00:25:45] Chris Hutchinson: People get those messages all the time. That’s not what they should do when they work with us.

[00:25:49] Graham Stephen: as my wife says, if I’m not giving my best, she can tell straight away in my body language.

[00:25:56] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah. Well, there you go. Here’s the next one that builds right on that. It’s embrace discomfort.

[00:26:00] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:26:01] Chris Hutchinson: This is just all that stuff we talked about, it’s not gonna be comfortable, it’s gonna be, that’s but if we can be transparent, and all these work together, like, I’m gonna brief discomfort and say, I’m gonna go into something I haven’t done, I’m gonna ask some questions, and I may not succeed. That’s okay. I’m gonna do my best.

[00:26:19] Graham Stephen: If you’re gonna love that, Chris, Nick, next time we do a podcast, I expect to see you in shorts and a t-shirt in 10 degree weather, so…

[00:26:28] Chris Hutchinson: Oh, yeah, well, normally I can go pretty cool, but, you know, it’s not too bad. Embrace discomfort, right? Yeah, that’s good. Well, I did work out this morning, and my coach, really pushed me, so I’m a bit tired at the moment.

[00:26:41] Chris Hutchinson: I did good, I got my numbers up. Embrace that. So, another one, this is unusual, be brave and love.

[00:26:49] Chris Hutchinson: it is really hard to care for someone like we really need to as humans. And so, I mean, people are like, wait a minute, you’re talking about improvements, and numbers, and what this… what’s this love stuff?

[00:27:00] Chris Hutchinson: I think when you really deeply care about somebody, you, you love them. You care about them enough that you would do what you needed to do, and you believe… I mean, the hardest thing for me when I’m loving my kids is let them fail.

[00:27:11] Graham Stephen: And be there to pick up the pieces and just say, you know, I believe in you, you can keep going. So being brave in love means there’s a lot of things that we do that are hard.

[00:27:20] Graham Stephen: It’s not the romantic notion of love, it’s actually the.

[00:27:22] Chris Hutchinson: No, Troy.

[00:27:23] Graham Stephen: you make every single day to actually want the best for that person, and sometimes that means, as you say, being tough love, you know? Not always tough love, but I mean, yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:33] Chris Hutchinson: It could be something like, you know, you could tolerate somebody, you could accept them, you could appreciate them, or you could love them. And that’s what we’re trying to go to, is the love part, where we’re really embracing all the person so that they can be their best self.

[00:27:44] Chris Hutchinson: And that leads to the last one, which is stronger together. We are absolutely stronger together because of our differences, because of how we do… it’s not just 1 plus 1, it’s, you know, apples plus sardines. You know, it’s like, we just get something better when we put these differences together.

[00:28:00] Chris Hutchinson: And so this helps us lean in when things are tough, that we are stronger together, and we’re stronger with our clients, and they’re stronger together with our teams, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:28:08] Graham Stephen: I guess… I guess you could put an engineering angle on that, you know, it’s a bit like a polymer, or…

[00:28:12] Chris Hutchinson: Thank you.

[00:28:13] Graham Stephen: When you join titanium and carbon together, it, you know, gives you a better outcome.

[00:28:18] Chris Hutchinson: Exactly, right, you get some synergy. That’s what you’re looking for, not just an attitude.

[00:28:22] Graham Stephen: See, I’ve got engineering blood in the.

[00:28:24] Chris Hutchinson: You do, I can see it’s flowing in you, I can tell you, it’s right there.

[00:28:28] Graham Stephen: So, Chris, let’s talk, like, a real story, if you don’t mind, and obviously, you know, respect, time, confidentiality and that, but, you know, I like to get practical, I like stories, but…

[00:28:39] Graham Stephen: Can you perhaps share a client success story, you know, where, you know, your work really shifted the trajectory of a business? Maybe you went in and it, like, up front, you thought, this is going to be a… this is going to be a tough slog.

[00:28:53] Graham Stephen: Any stories you want to share with us?

[00:28:55] Chris Hutchinson: Well, it wasn’t necessarily a tough slog, because I had been through different things, but I think there was a real transformational experience that I’ve had with a client that’s been about, I think it’s 9 years now. So it’s been, again, long-term relationship, short-term engagements.

[00:29:11] Chris Hutchinson: So we started out… And this company had 3 founders, and 2 weren’t… one was kind of non-active, one was sort of going the wrong direction, and one was really trying to figure out how to grow the business.

[00:29:22] Chris Hutchinson: And so we did some work together, some founder coaching to support him as he figured out what he was going to do next, and that was essentially build a leadership team that would be working, and the two founders exited. So he was really the one that said, I want to make this happen.

[00:29:36] Chris Hutchinson: And so we did some work in team building, not in the, you know, sumo suits or pillow fights or whatever. It was, like, really…

[00:29:42] Graham Stephen: evil.

[00:29:43] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah, you asked about frameworks. I didn’t share that we use the Patrick Valencioni 5 Dysfunctions as a team framework for evaluating and for looking at it, and kind of walking up. So we had, like, a two-day thing to kick it off of, how are we going to be real with each other and vulnerable, and then how does that help us have real conflict?

[00:29:59] Chris Hutchinson: and healthy so that we can have real commitment and real accountability. So we did that, a number of, you know, quarterly off-sites and things to help really cement that team together and help them really lean on each other. The business grew, got to a certain point where… and I was, my team and I were coaching some of the folks as they were stepping into leadership positions they hadn’t had before.

[00:30:19] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:30:20] Chris Hutchinson: Got to the point where it grew enough so that he had sort of an executive leadership team that was smaller, and then a broader leadership team that really covered a lot of bases.

[00:30:29] Chris Hutchinson: And we continued to work on leadership development with them. They actually helped build,

[00:30:36] Chris Hutchinson: I would guess they were kind of the patron, one of the three companies that said, we want to have a cohort-based leadership development program for emerging leaders using your book as a structure. I was like…

[00:30:47] Chris Hutchinson: It’s a DIY book, guys. You don’t need this. And they’re like, nope, we need this. We want these folks to work with each other. They’re growing up in our companies, and they’re not realizing there are different ways to do things.

[00:30:56] Chris Hutchinson: And we need to know, they need to look at that and say, same values, different thing, I could try that. Anyway, so that’s been going pretty well, but at that time, we kicked that off with a number of companies in their company, continued to do these things.

[00:31:08] Chris Hutchinson: To the point where they actually have now a holdings company, and the central functions kind of went to the holdings company, and the leaders that had been developing, along with other leaders, came along and are building businesses, kind of divisions slash businesses underneath the business.

[00:31:22] Chris Hutchinson: And so, as we were doing that, right in the middle, we did some strategic work with them to say they had really great plans, but they didn’t really stretch. They were sort of today plus 30%. They weren’t, where do we really need to go? Where’s the pot gonna go?

[00:31:37] Chris Hutchinson: And so, did some work with them, just to help them think through those processes. They took it and ran with it. In fact, I think they took that senior executive leadership team, put them in a little house, and said, you have two days, here are the things that we came up with, build a plan.

[00:31:52] Graham Stephen: Wow.

[00:31:52] Chris Hutchinson: Then the OO and CEO just left. And so, a lot of ownership, a lot of development. It’s just been a beautiful thing to see them continuing to grow and scale in a way that, really, their purpose is to be a blessing to others and inspire others to do the same.

[00:32:07] Chris Hutchinson: And they’re a chemical distribution company.

[00:32:11] Graham Stephen: Wow.

[00:32:12] Chris Hutchinson: So you can see, they’re just really… the reason they’re there is different from what they do, but they do everything they do. It serves that purpose of what they’re going to do and how they’re going to grow opportunities for people. So it’s just an honor to work with them, really, and help them just here and there, along the way, as they were transforming their company.

[00:32:29] Graham Stephen: I mean, that’s such a powerful story, and I think very relatable to a lot of our listeners, you know, and I think when you see that, you can see that can happen, because often, I think, as founders and small leadership teams, as you’re growing a business, founders can get stuck, you know? You get stuck in that sort of, like, that almost… I don’t know what you call it, but it’s like…

[00:32:47] Graham Stephen: That desire to want to have control, but knowing you need to let go,

[00:32:53] Graham Stephen: It’s hard, you know, you don’t know what… you don’t know what good looks like, and as you say, you spoke a bit about the sort of incremental gains, but sometimes you need to step back and say, oh, let’s imagine… forget incremental gains, let’s imagine what this could look like if we could 100X it.

[00:33:07] Graham Stephen: Amy. create that sort of ripple. So we’ll talk about that in a moment, because I think you. sort of touching on a bit of the title… Foreshadowing, I like it. Yeah. I want to just kind of very quickly, before we move on to that, you know, and we’ve touched on it as we spoke, but the sort of link between engineering and leadership systems, you know, you’ve triangulated these, you bring them together. Often people…

[00:33:30] Graham Stephen: and I mean this in a nice way, I’ve been involved in leadership programs and building them, I’ve been a technical accountant, I’ve been all those things, but often people think, oh, the leadership stuff and the vision stuff, it’s airy-fairy, you know, it’s,

[00:33:41] Graham Stephen: you know, motherhood apple pie, blah blah blah, go read a book, you’re sorted. And then the technical side almost gets dil… you know, it almost gets ignored, because often it’s difficult, you know, it’s… it’s technical stuff. Most people are not…

[00:33:54] Graham Stephen: trained as engineers. But you’ve managed to bring this together. And you’ve done it in a way which I guess, is understandable, but let’s just talk a little bit about that, you know? So, how have you created this magic, so to speak?

[00:34:11] Chris Hutchinson: I like to think of myself a little bit as a DJ. I know that that’s kind of old-fashioned, maybe. You know, how do you bring the.

[00:34:17] Graham Stephen: Now you’re giving away your age. Yeah, yeah, it’s a BJ, it could be a BJ. Yeah, I’m 25 now, you know, so…

[00:34:24] Chris Hutchinson: Actually, one of the things I discovered, as a little aside during COVID, when we all went online and everything, at least most of the people I worked with, there were still people in our companies that we served that were working out in the real world.

[00:34:37] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:34:38] Chris Hutchinson: But, there was something that actually ended up becoming like a digital DJ, because there’s nothing worse than a totally silent Zoom room when people are working. That’s like, it sounds like death. So, like, just kind of some music in the background. No words, so it doesn’t distract people, but let’s just… you know, what’s the mood we want here? Like, pences?

[00:34:54] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:34:55] Chris Hutchinson: whatever. Anyway, so I have tons of Spotify lists and actually use it in the real world, but… That’s just an outcome of thinking, like, what are the best things that we need to bring together in a philosophically aligned way that are going to make a difference?

[00:35:09] Chris Hutchinson: So, there’s lots and lots of ideas out there. Some are very tightly connected in philosophy or values, and some are not. Some are, like, you know, they may be really effective to just…

[00:35:19] Chris Hutchinson: like Jack Welch, you know, fire the bottom half of a percent. You can just do that. It’s effective in some ways. I don’t think in the long run it really adds up, because it causes a lot of other problems, but in the short term, you know, you’re gonna get some results.

[00:35:30] Chris Hutchinson: So, how do you want to get those results, and what are you doing? I think that’s part of what we’re trying to do, is think about that. So, it was, what’s the outcome you’re shooting for? And I’m gonna… I’m gonna spoil the alert a little bit. Numbers are usually not a good outcome.

[00:35:45] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:35:47] Chris Hutchinson: Because numbers are there for something else. Now, people will say we want more, or less, or better, or this, or there’s a lack of. All of those are solutions that somebody have that is… it’s a method that’s going to get you somewhere.

[00:35:59] Chris Hutchinson: Because, like you said.

[00:36:00] Graham Stephen: That could be freedom, or less stress, or whatever, there’s always something.

[00:36:04] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah, well, even less stress, you know, it could give you zero stress. Like, right now, I know there’s some pills that could give you zero stress forever.

[00:36:10] Chris Hutchinson: You don’t want one of those, right? So I can think of these stupid examples.

[00:36:13] Graham Stephen: Right, but it’s like, well…

[00:36:14] Chris Hutchinson: And what’s beautiful, one of our processes we use, and this is, I think, going to be handy for your listeners.

[00:36:21] Chris Hutchinson: Engineering. This is where I separated from engineering. Engineering is when you have something, you go to root cause, and you say, why?

[00:36:27] Chris Hutchinson: And Y is a very blamey word. especially if you’re a hardcore engineer, you know, okay, I’m trying to get to the root cause, then what caused this, and what caused this? You could say that instead, but if I had, at 5 years old, when I shattered the milk bottle on the floor, in the refrigerator, turned to my parents, and when they said, why did you drop the milk? Have I said, low coefficient of friction, condensation, and gravity?

[00:36:51] Chris Hutchinson: That’s not the answer they wanted, right? So we’re very trained to be like, why… it’s like, I was stupid. There was something I did wrong. Yeah. So really, I think that’s not a good approach. So I pushed that apart, the technical thing. The beautiful thing is you can give people permission.

[00:37:07] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:37:08] Chris Hutchinson: So if you said, let’s say, for instance, there’s something that, and we haven’t done this before, but we could do it, there’s something in your life that you want to get to, and tell me one that starts with a less or more, or something like that.

[00:37:21] Chris Hutchinson: So let’s play it out.

[00:37:22] Graham Stephen: More vacations! More vacations!

[00:37:24] Chris Hutchinson: More vacations. Okay, so I can think that’s, like, one more vacation every 14 years, or that could be a vacation every day. I don’t know what it is, right? So I’m gonna say, poof, grin.

[00:37:34] Chris Hutchinson: You have exactly the number of vacations you need. It’s exactly right. What’s different in your life?

[00:37:40] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:37:41] Chris Hutchinson: And what would you say? If it was good.

[00:37:44] Graham Stephen: If it was good. If I have too many vacations, it’s probably putting more…

[00:37:49] Chris Hutchinson: This is the exact right number.

[00:37:50] Graham Stephen: We’re around the waistline, particularly if it’s in Italy, yes.

[00:37:53] Chris Hutchinson: Okay, so that’s too much, right? So there’s this thing called Goldilocks Curve, where there’s too much or too little or just right. And what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to find the just right place by saying you have exactly the number of vacations. Imagine that’s happening, Graham. What’s different in your life?

[00:38:08] Graham Stephen: Sure, it’s a tough question. I mean, you’re putting me on the spot. Normally, I put my guests on the spot, but it’s actually something I haven’t thought about, you know, it’s something I’ve probably.

[00:38:16] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah, so you can make it up. So if it was, the more vacations…

[00:38:19] Graham Stephen: What’s different in my life? Yeah. My family’s happier because we get to spend more time and do fun things together.

[00:38:26] Chris Hutchinson: Right. Okay, so the fun things together, that’s a static thing, right? But the more fun, or more time together, every minute of every day, right? So, you’re spending exactly the round of time, the exact amount of fun… what was the first thing you said? I missed that. There was the…

[00:38:40] Graham Stephen: I can’t even remember!

[00:38:42] Chris Hutchinson: That’s okay. So you’re spending the right time amount, the right time, and having the right fun with your family, and what’s different as a result of that?

[00:38:50] Graham Stephen: I don’t know. That’s honest, that’s the honest answer.

[00:38:53] Chris Hutchinson: Maybe, say, you have a happy marriage, or you have a happy family, or something like that, right?

[00:38:57] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:38:57] Chris Hutchinson: But you’re not saying $4.7 million.

[00:39:00] Graham Stephen: I get it, yeah.

[00:39:02] Chris Hutchinson: Because $4.7 million, why not 4.8? Why not 17.2? Why not 14, you know, why 100X? Why not 102X? So, usually, the thing is, the good part is, if you give people permission for that.

[00:39:15] Chris Hutchinson: they’ll tell you the real outcome. And if we get the real outcome, is you want a happy family? There’s probably things you’re doing right now that are not helping. You could stop doing, right? It’s not all stuff you gotta do, it’s not vacations, maybe there’s other things you can let go of. Vacations might be part of it.

[00:39:28] Chris Hutchinson: But a lot of times, we think of, like, this is the solution, and there’s something in our minds we really desperately want, but until we get clear on that, we might even cause more problems by doing the things we want to do.

[00:39:39] Graham Stephen: And we become fixated on the wrong things, I guess, you know, so we forget to think of the system. We think on, like, one thing in the system, and almost block out the unintended consequences in many ways, right?

[00:39:51] Chris Hutchinson: And you said that, like, too many vacations, too much wasteline, right? So it’s not just vacations, there’s something else there. Anyway, thank you for playing with me, I know that was unprompted.

[00:39:59] Graham Stephen: Okay, so let’s move on. We’ve got a few more minutes left, and a couple of sections I want to cover, so I want to just quickly touch on your book, Ripple, a field manual for leadership that works.

[00:40:12] Graham Stephen: Let’s just talk a little bit about the book. Like, why did you write it, you know, what is the inspiration behind it? Was it just so that you could say, Amazon best-selling author, you know, LinkedIn… No.

[00:40:22] Graham Stephen: Yeah, not the latter part, I’ll tell you that. So, certainly not to make money if I know anything about, writing books, you know?

[00:40:29] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah. There were several things that came together at once. In a very prag… I mean, just to be very clear, there… I had a really cool die-cut folder that was getting put together, and they ended up… they were gonna cost me, like, $7 each to get these cool folders that would hold some papers that people would probably throw in the trash.

[00:40:46] Graham Stephen: So that was one input. I was like, hmm…

[00:40:49] Chris Hutchinson: Is that really where I want to invest my money? Turns out printing a book’s about, you know, depending on $7, so I’d much rather give them a book. I also saw clients that were trying, as I hinted before, they would try this technique, and that technique, and this technique, and they were actually fighting each other.

[00:41:04] Chris Hutchinson: And I would say, well, what are you doing? And they’re like, well, that’s a book, and somebody wanted that, and Jack Welch got rich at this, and, you know, that kind of stuff. And I’m like, these don’t align. And it doesn’t have to be the way I’m aligning them, but I want to show you what alignment could look like.

[00:41:16] Chris Hutchinson: And so I really… I had a bunch of articles, I thought, this’ll take me 6 months, I just gotta put them in the right order.

[00:41:22] Chris Hutchinson: Six years later. I was done with the book, it is a big undertaking. And I ended up coming and putting together pieces like, how do you know yourself, and how are you in action as a leader, is the first chunk.

[00:41:34] Chris Hutchinson: And the middle chunk is really, how do you really build relationships that are trust-built, built on trust.

[00:41:41] Chris Hutchinson: And you positively enable others, you know, equip them for what they need. That’s the other part. And then, once you have those two pieces, then you go work on the organization, because then you design it, and you refine it, right? You just figure out what you’re gonna do, and that’s the parts of leadership that I think are really important. Most organizations start at the end. Oh, we’re inefficient.

[00:41:59] Chris Hutchinson: Let’s do something about that. That’s not working. Oh, oh, let’s reorg, because our structure’s wrong. Well, that’s not working. Oh, because we’re not equipping people for the right things.

[00:42:09] Chris Hutchinson: Well, why is that not working? Because I saw you use a cog, not as a person, you know, where you have different strings from me, and we should have different stuff to go do these things. And if that’s not working.

[00:42:18] Chris Hutchinson: Now it gets personal. Am I in action around the right things as a leader, the hard conversations, the choices I have to make, the things that I have to do to take care of myself?

[00:42:26] Chris Hutchinson: And if that’s not working, do I know who I am? Do I know where my strengths are? So, I believe you need to start on one side to go the other, but…

[00:42:33] Chris Hutchinson: Anyway, I wanted to just put that out and make very pragmatic, simple, my little exercises in there, I was going to have them 10 minutes or less, and my editor gave me a hard time because she said, well, that one took me 20 minutes. So I was like, okay, briefly done. But I wanted it to be… it’s not… it’s not complicated. It’s difficult.

[00:42:52] Chris Hutchinson: But it’s not complicated, and I think people could go and grab a piece and go, I could work on this. And I can work on that. And that’s why I wrote the book, so people could go do that for themselves.

[00:43:01] Graham Stephen: I love that. It’s about… it’s about the practicality and the pragmatism. It’s not about trying to say how smart you are, and all of those.

[00:43:07] Chris Hutchinson: Oh, I get so turned off by those books.

[00:43:09] Graham Stephen: It’s a field manual, you know. Exactly. I mean, there’s some great books out there, but, you know, you read through page three, and you need a master’s degree in English just to kind of…

[00:43:19] Chris Hutchinson: I think those are ridiculous. I think those are self-aggrandizing, you know? And so, yeah, when those people approached me and said, we want you to make a class, I’m like, it’s DIY, you know? And I succumbed, because having a cohort of people talking about and applying as you go… well, okay, that fits.

[00:43:34] Graham Stephen: I love that, and also, you know, I think about writing, and I think it’s becoming a bit of a lost art. People just go and put a prompt into GBT nowadays, but they forget that the process of writing, and even pen to paper, and the thought process that took you 6 years, is actually distilling your thoughts and figuring this stuff out. It’s not just about getting something that

[00:43:52] Graham Stephen: reads well and looks impressive. It’s…

[00:43:54] Chris Hutchinson: Are you writing a book, Graham?

[00:43:56] Graham Stephen: I’m not, actually.

[00:43:58] Chris Hutchinson: You should, you know it, that’s it! You said the truth right there, there’s… yeah.

[00:44:01] Graham Stephen: I doodle, I do drawings, which, maybe one day I’ll photograph them and put them all into an online journal.

[00:44:09] Chris Hutchinson: Oh, that’s better. Manga books are, like, super popular, you know, for business and leadership stuff, yeah.

[00:44:14] Graham Stephen: So, a couple more questions. I mean, we touched on it earlier, but, small giants and purpose-driven business, so we’re both involved in the community, and it’s one of, you know, my favorite groups for purpose-driven, values-first entrepreneurship. Just very briefly, what drew you into that community, Chris?

[00:44:33] Chris Hutchinson: I read the book. I happened to get an email that said, hey, they’re doing this adjunct to an Inc. conference, it sounded like a good thing, and when I got there, people were so genuine and open and vulnerable. Almost all these values I talked about, they were just living those out across companies, and that was powerful.

[00:44:48] Chris Hutchinson: And so, I’ve been involved for a long time. It’s continued to evolve and change, you know, as time goes on. I think it’s… I love the way you introduced it before.

[00:44:57] Chris Hutchinson: You don’t have to be big to be great. I think if you really know what you’re doing, and you believe in what you’re trying to do, and your purposes aren’t just to make more money or drive up share price at everything at all costs, but that leave a positive impact on the world and people.

[00:45:12] Graham Stephen: And maybe the industry?

[00:45:14] Chris Hutchinson: And your clients? I mean, that’s… You’re doing great. So, I love that aspect of it.

[00:45:20] Graham Stephen: Fantastic, and yeah, obviously it brought us together, I mean, and I think what’s great about now is it’s become quite a global reach at the last Passport event we were at. I mean, there were guys from…

[00:45:30] Graham Stephen: you know, from Europe, from Germany, all over North America, you know, so it was a… it was a really great event. And as you say, it’s organic. It’s, you know, what the organization or…

[00:45:41] Graham Stephen: community looked like 18 months ago was very different to what it looks like now, you know? So,

[00:45:47] Graham Stephen: I love that about it, and just, you know, having the opportunity to share and bring that humanness into it. I’m going to flip things around a little bit. One of the things we do with all our guests is we have a quick rapid-fire section, so it’s literally.

[00:45:59] Chris Hutchinson: Okay.

[00:46:00] Graham Stephen: you know, stream of consciousness questions, and then I’m going to end just with, you know, one last question around, you know, top advice for anybody listening to the show. So, let’s go to Rapid Fire quickly. Five questions. What’s the best leadership book, obviously besides your own, that you’ve read?

[00:46:19] Chris Hutchinson: The one that changed my life the most, First Things First by Marilyn Covey. It completely changed how I used energy and time.

[00:46:25] Graham Stephen: Is any relation to Stephen Covey, or is it.

[00:46:27] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah, it was Stephen Covey and Rebecca and Roger Merrill, they were a couple… I think probably Covey kind of got along with it, but it was around the second habit from the seven habits of Highly Effective People.

[00:46:37] Graham Stephen: Okay, fantastic. Yeah, I’m also a big… I’m a big fan of Covey. I think, 7 Habits, the 8th Habit is another great one, so…

[00:46:44] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah.

[00:46:45] Graham Stephen: Let’s go on to the next one. One habit that keeps you grounded.

[00:46:50] Chris Hutchinson: I meditate every morning and evening. I meditate in a little manifestation and a gratitude practice. 18 minutes.

[00:46:57] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. I think that’s so important, you know, saying being grateful is something, and we’ve just come off the back of Thanksgiving, you know, so, you know, it’s about not once a year having Thanksgiving, it’s daily being thankful and grateful for what we have.

[00:47:11] Chris Hutchinson: Damn.

[00:47:12] Graham Stephen: What’s the hardest leadership lesson you’ve learnt?

[00:47:15] Chris Hutchinson: Oh, I said it before, it was the, everybody has the right to fail, it doesn’t matter if you’re there or not, and they can exercise it at any time. It was so painful, because I thought, well, I’m there, and there’s good teams, and…

[00:47:27] Chris Hutchinson: There was a leader who was really determined to do things a certain way, and it failed pretty badly. So, that was painful to learn, and I try to use that myself to think about, am I exercising my right to fail here?

[00:47:38] Graham Stephen: Yeah, no, that’s… I mean, it’s hard, but as you say, you have the right to fail.

[00:47:44] Graham Stephen: what’s one thing you believed early on in your career that you no longer believe? You know, and I think one of the things I say about somebody who thinks is you’re prepared to change your mind on stuff, but

[00:47:54] Graham Stephen: A dogma that you’ve shifted on.

[00:47:57] Chris Hutchinson: Yeah, it’s interesting, because, you know, of course, back then I didn’t know, but I thought, a while back that all the problems were out there.

[00:48:05] Chris Hutchinson: All the problems were out there, and that I needed to solve them, and what I have come to learn and understand is that those are indicators of things that I need to work on.

[00:48:14] Graham Stephen: In here.

[00:48:15] Chris Hutchinson: And that’s… it’s really… it’s like, it sounds so airy-fairy, like you said. But even when I’m pissed off at something, it’s almost always my subconscious slapping my conscious, look, I don’t like this about… you don’t like this about you, but I can’t get your attention here, so let me put it out there.

[00:48:28] Chris Hutchinson: And see if you can get, you know, let me put some light on that shadow, and see if you’re gonna do anything about it. So that’s been a big change in my life.

[00:48:36] Graham Stephen: Cool. And then, lastly, if you weren’t doing trebuchet right now, what would you be doing?

[00:48:43] Chris Hutchinson: Well, I’d probably finish remodeling my… I have a school bus that is slowly being changed into a recreational vehicle for the family, and I have sort of a little… it’s a… I mean, as much as I can, a little compound, I’ve got chickens and bees and a garden, and I would… I would just be plunking around there.

[00:49:00] Chris Hutchinson: And probably mentoring kids from the neighborhood and other people, like, how to fix stuff, and how to build things, and how to sort of… not self-sufficiency in itself, but sort of interconnected sufficiency. You know, how do we together do things, rather than…

[00:49:14] Chris Hutchinson: I’m all by myself. But how do I add my value to it?

[00:49:17] Graham Stephen: That’s the engineer in it. I mean, I remember the one thing I… you know, my dad’s still alive, but the one thing, he can fix anything, you know? It’s like, I wish I could do that. If my car breaks down, or, you know, I’m gonna take it off to the mechanic, he’ll just, like.

[00:49:29] Chris Hutchinson: hey, figure it out himself, you know, so… YouTube videos are pretty handy, too, so…

[00:49:33] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I tell you, they didn’t have that back in the day, right?

[00:49:37] Chris Hutchinson: They didn’t, no, but they’re really helpful, yeah.

[00:49:40] Graham Stephen: So, Chris, as we draw to a close, I mean, I think, you know, just hearing your story, your journey, it’s really just been such an inspirational chat, you know? It’s different to our usual conversation around, okay, how do we build value and levers and all of those things, but…

[00:49:56] Graham Stephen: I think… I think we really need to lean into this aspect, like, recognizing it’s about an ecosystem, it’s not just about numbers, it’s not just about people, it’s not just about systems, it’s about bringing these things

[00:50:07] Graham Stephen: just as a close, you know, if you could give, you know, originally I was going to say give 3 pieces of advice to a founder who’s building a company, but if you had to pick

[00:50:17] Graham Stephen: you know, one thing to anybody listening today. Somebody who’s a founder, and maybe they just.

[00:50:25] Graham Stephen: become disillusioned with their own company. Maybe they’re feeling stuck. I don’t know, what… what is that sort of one piece of advice that you want somebody to hear today?

[00:50:36] Chris Hutchinson: Hmm, that was a good challenge to make it to one.

[00:50:39] Graham Stephen: You’re in the sponge.

[00:50:41] Chris Hutchinson: Good. I like it. I like it. Embrace discomfort, remember? Well, one of the mantras that we sort of used, and this is… it’s an inside-out thing, I think, in terms of great accomplishments require great teams.

[00:50:56] Chris Hutchinson: And there’s a lot of founders that get caught up with, he’s brilliant, or she’s good at this, we’ll just throw them together, and it’s just gonna work. And I think investing in making sure that that can be an actual team that can lean on each other when things are hard.

[00:51:09] Chris Hutchinson: But that also comes back to me. I’m not just watching it from afar. I am part of this team, and so I need to make sure I’m equipped well, and taking my part that…

[00:51:19] Chris Hutchinson: I frequently say to people, what can you do that nobody else on this team can do? And believe it or not, that’s not where they’re focused. They’re like, oh, I need to help tell them how we’re going to get to this place, or I need to shine the light on it, or I need to get these two people sitting in my office and working with each other, even though I kind of don’t want to do that.

[00:51:36] Chris Hutchinson: So it’s… it’s making sure that you’re being… you’re helping create a great team. For your great accomplishments, and your being part of a great team.

[00:51:45] Chris Hutchinson: You’ve got health.

[00:51:46] Graham Stephen: Absolutely love that. So, you know, like, this notion is not you leadership on the outside telling people what to… you… you… you… it sounds very philosophical, but you… you… working on the system, but you’re also part of the system.

[00:52:00] Chris Hutchinson: 100%.

[00:52:00] Graham Stephen: Same time, you know, so…

[00:52:02] Chris Hutchinson: Right, and getting help. You’re helping your team, you need to get help. Like, so I, you know, I’ve got help with people that work with me, and I think that the best thing a founder can do is get some outside support for doing what needs to be done.

[00:52:14] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. Well, listen to Chris, I really appreciate your time. I think… I think we’re going to need to have a follow-up at some point in time.

[00:52:21] Chris Hutchinson: This is great, I really enjoyed it. Thank you for letting me put you on the spot.

[00:52:25] Graham Stephen: Yeah, maybe my next trip to the US, we go and find a cool spot where we can record in the same room, but for those of you listening…

[00:52:32] Graham Stephen: You can learn more about the Trebachet Group, go to trebuchetGroup.com. Chris Hutchinson, you can follow him on LinkedIn, and grab a copy of his book, Ripple, A Field Manual for Leadership That Works. Chris, I’m sure it’s available on Amazon Books, or…

[00:52:46] Chris Hutchinson: Yes, or if you go to RippleLeader.com, I can sign a copy for you. We’ll send it to you.

[00:52:51] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. It’s a brilliant, it’s a practical read. I’m Graham Stephen from bizvalglobal.com, helping founders understand, grow, and realize the value of their business. So until next time, keep building, and see you soon. Ciao, everyone.

[00:53:06] Chris Hutchinson: Thank you, Graham, that was awesome.

[00:53:09] Graham Stephen: Right, let me just…

[00:53:10] Chris Hutchinson: You handled… you handled my reverse pretty well there. I didn’t have that as an intention.

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