Creating Real Engagement: Dave Garrison on The Buy-In Advantage I Growth Elevated

Podcast Introduction (00:00:02)
Julian Castelli introduces the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast and its focus on tech leadership stories and insights.

Guest Introduction & Background (00:01:13)
Dave Garrison’s background, career journey, and passion for leadership and employee engagement.

Early Career & Lessons Learned (00:02:17)
Dave’s start in the hotel business, transition to internet services, and key leadership lessons.

Netcom & The Internet Era (00:03:18)
Stories from the early days of the internet, raising capital, and explaining the internet to investors.

The Buy-In Crisis & Employee Engagement (00:05:00)
Discussion of low employee engagement, Gallup data, and the need for buy-in in organizations.

Reflections on Leadership & Team Empowerment (00:07:00)
Julian and Dave discuss the impact of employee engagement and empowering teams.

Founding Garrison Growth & The Shaman Story (00:07:53)
Dave’s transition from corporate to entrepreneurship, inspired by a shaman’s life-changing question.

Learning Leadership Practices Over Time (00:09:38)
How Dave developed leadership practices through experience and workshops with global leaders.

Three Key Leadership Practices (00:10:36)
Recognizing employees as people, giving them a voice, and defining a compelling purpose.

Challenges in Leadership Practice (00:13:46)
Why leaders struggle to implement these practices and how to measure alignment and buy-in.

Auditing Buy-In & Team Alignment (00:14:44)
How Garrison Growth assesses company buy-in and alignment through interviews and assessments.

Leaders’ Reactions to Buy-In Audits (00:16:46)
Typical leader responses to buy-in assessments and the gap between perception and reality.

Metrics vs. Purpose in Leadership (00:17:45)
The pitfalls of focusing solely on metrics and the importance of inspiring purpose.

Personal Reflection on Leadership Scores (00:18:34)
Dave reflects on how he would have scored as a CEO using his own buy-in framework.

Case Study: Transforming a Construction Company (00:19:30)
Example of a company achieving record results through alignment and buy-in.

Collective Genius Framework (00:20:26)
Introduction to the “collective genius” concept—leveraging group intelligence for better decisions.

Decision-Making Without Drama (00:21:23)
The process of aligning on problems, criteria, and generating solutions without debate.

The Wisdom of Crowds & Voting (00:23:24)
Stories illustrating the power of group decision-making and the “OKs” voting method.

Prioritizing the Few Over the Many (00:25:43)
The rule of “three is greater than seven” for prioritizing and focusing teams.

Defining Purpose and Values in Hiring (00:27:30)
Screening for values and purpose in hiring to ensure cultural fit and long-term engagement.

Measuring Buy-In Impact (00:29:19)
How buy-in improvements lead to higher profits, lower turnover, and better customer service.

Writing The Buy-In Advantage Book (00:31:24)
Dave’s journey writing the book, its purpose, and the process of publishing.

Where to Find the Book & Connect (00:33:12)
Information on where to find the book, take the buy-in assessment, and connect with Dave.

Closing Remarks & Podcast Outro (00:34:22)
Final thoughts, mutual appreciation, and encouragement to subscribe and visit Growth Elevated.

Julian Castelli 00:00:02 Welcome to the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast with Julian Castelli. Each week, we talk with senior tech leaders to explore stories and insights about the challenges involved with growing technology companies. We hope that these stories can help you become a better leader and help you navigate your own growth journey.

Dave Garrison 00:00:27 Hello, this is Julian Castelli. I’m the host of the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast, where each week we talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders in the tech industry and beyond. Past guests have included CEOs and CSOs of great companies like Work Front, CHG healthcare, Pathology Watch and Moment, canopy, the San Francisco 40 Niners, and many more. This episode is brought to you by growth Elevated growth elevated as a community of tech founders, CEOs, and CSOs who are committed to working together to share best practices and learnings in an effort to help all of us become better leaders. We do this through educational program like this podcast as well as our blog, and of course, our annual Ski and Tech Summit, where we bring tech leaders to beautiful Park City, Utah to enjoy camaraderie, collaboration, and some wonderful skiing in the mountains.

Dave Garrison 00:01:13 So if that sounds interesting, please check us out at Elevated Comm and please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to yours. Today I’m super excited to introduce or to. Welcome to the podcast, Dave Garrison. Dave is the co-founder and Chief Navigation Officer of Garrison Growth and the author of a great new book called The Buy in Advantage. Dave has over 25 years of experience as a CEO, a public company board member, and an advisor to high growth companies. Dave’s passion is equipping leaders to generate, buy in and unlock the full potential of their teams. Dave is a sought after speaker and a top rated workshop facilitator. He has led hundreds of sessions for both profit and non-profit companies across the globe, and we are lucky to have his insights. And for him joining us this morning. Welcome, Dave. Jillian thanks. Glad to be here. So I am excited. I just just finished reading your book. I really enjoyed it. I think I told you it made me want to be a CEO again, because that was the it talks about really engaging with with the team members and getting them to really love the company and all rowing the right direction.

Dave Garrison 00:02:17 And that was I’m also a football coach, as you know, and I’m I’m passionate about those type of things. And so I am I’m really excited about sharing some of the secrets that you, you outlined so well in the book with the group here. tell us a little bit about your your background. Yeah. How did you get started? It started in business. Yeah. So I actually started in business working as a bellhop, and I learned about the hotel business. And it was interesting because 15 years later, I ended up. 20 years later, I ended up offering weekly services and internet services in a business to hotels. So it almost came full circle. And I’ve had the opportunity to be a multinational company CEO in public and private settings, been PE backed, had never done a startup until Garrison Growth. And so this is an entirely different learning experience beginning ten years ago, which has been fascinating. But the part of business I love is seeing people achieve things they didn’t think they could achieve, seeing things they didn’t think they could achieve.

Dave Garrison 00:03:18 And that’s what gives me huge satisfaction. And that’s what garrison growth is really about. We’ve got a team of people dedicated to providing tools and skill sets and most importantly, a mindset in order to be a great leader, because that art in our world, that art of being a great leader has been lost. And people get confused and they think, oh, well, if I just rah rah, rah rah, or if I browbeat people, then I’m a great leader. And that’s not our experience. Yeah. No, that, that can that can go wrong in so many ways. So tell us about your your experience with Netcom providing internet service. That was back in the 90s. Yeah, that was back in the beginning days of the internet. And what was interesting was moving from the communications business, from the world of cellular and data communications to the world of the internet, when it was brand new and very slow and raising money. Goldman Sachs had us going a roadshow and so that we could get practice.

Dave Garrison 00:04:14 They start us in Germany, where nobody will buy any of your shares, but you get practice and they get to see you in play. Then we go to Paris. In Paris we were doing a dinner. I’ll never forget. And I was explaining what the internet is. And they said, you know, what is this internet? And I said, well, it’s a network of networks. And that concept was totally new. And somebody said, I have to stop you. Could you please tell me who is the president of the internet? And I said, well, you know, networks. So actually there is no president. And they said, no, no, no, I don’t think you’ve understood the question. And they asked again, who is the president of the internet? And I see the Goldman bankers rolling in the back of the room in this Parisian wonderful restaurant. And I finally said, I am the president of the internet. And I said, okay, that’s our headline. That’s going to be the headline, headline of the podcast.

Dave Garrison 00:05:00 The president of the internet. I said it well before al Gore, but I said it so I can go on with the presentation. And we went on to raise money very successfully, but it was explaining what is the internet and how it will change the future. The other day, I saw an article I wrote for Financial Times talking about how the internet will allow us to create new communities of heretofore unconnected people. And so a very exciting time. Learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes. Boy, I’ll tell you what, Julian. I so wish I had this book when public company CEO or private company CEO. These are lessons I learned from Hard way, right? Yeah, the hard way. But these are my lessons. These are lessons from leaders who I admire most, of whom you’ve never heard about, but they do amazing things to inspire their people, to give it their all because we’re in a buy in crisis right now. Gallup just released new data that shows in the US, for example, most employees don’t care.

Dave Garrison 00:05:57 The net percentage of engaged employees at a ten year low. And the question that they ask that the gold standard question is, would you recommend this as a place to work? And most people are either a or no. And so as leaders what a low bar. If we just tried some different stuff, we could have the world eating out of our hand. When employees are fired up and you know, you live in Park City, Utah, and you see the local high school football team on Friday, when there’s a home game, there’s huge energy. The adults are fired up, the kids are fired up, the community’s fired up. Where does all that spirit go on Mondays? When people go back to work and they’re doing what they’re told and they say thank you for the paycheck. What a waste of human time. What a waste of potential. So this book is about providing leaders with a playbook, if you will use a football analogy on how to allow people to give it their all. So I’m curious to know what struck you.

Dave Garrison 00:07:00 What were some lessons you heard that made you say, wow, I wish I was a CEO again? Yeah, well, I liked I’d like I’d liked how it was all about engaging the employees, making sure that they’re a part of both decision making and leading. And I liked, I like the spirit of compounding winds that happen when when you do that. Right. Because I think you have several experiences and stories in the book where, you know, those kind of things surprise you and you get wind in your sail that maybe you didn’t even expect. Right? Yeah. And I think back to my CEO days, those are my most rewarding moments when, you know, we empowered teams and they they would surprise to the upside. And it was just so great to see them excelling. And of course, you know, that’s that’s when when you have buy in and that’s when the, when the team really likes their job to. And so it’s like being part of a winning team right. It’s hard to turn around teams.

Dave Garrison 00:07:53 But you know it when you’re on a winning team. And and that’s kind of the culture you have. So it’s all about, you know, a lot about culture, a lot about leadership, a lot about practices. you know, you share with me earlier that, you know, you decided to leave the corporate world and start your own, your own business, garrison growth because you were passionate about, you know, you, you, you had a calling or something. Almost reshare that story with the group, please. Yeah. So you and I are both members of Young Presidents Organization. And my wife, you know, forum basically kicked me in the butt and said, you don’t seem terribly happy doing what you’re doing. Now. Why don’t you go see this shaman and shaman? I don’t have time for shaman. I don’t even know what a shaman is. I don’t know what a shaman does. And so they badgered me, and I went to see the shaman, and I said, I apologize.

Dave Garrison 00:08:37 I don’t know what a shaman does and I don’t have much time. And this shaman said, can I work this in in 30 minutes between my readings, I see the shaman said, hey, I’ve just got one question. I said, good, I got time for one question. And she said to me, if time and money and resources are unlimited, draw your ideal life with your non-dominant hand. And I said what? She said, if time and money and resources are unlimited, meaning you got no excuses, no barriers, draw your ideal life in symbols with your non-dominant hand. That one question took me six months to answer, and I realized I had been defining myself around the amount of money I made, not around how I was impacting the world, or what my gifts were or what brought me joy. And so that really helped me rebalance my life. And I’m grateful to the forum. And that was the launch of the original Garrison Growth. And then our daughter Emma came to me with a contract and said, I’m going to join this business and we’re going to do things differently.

Dave Garrison 00:09:38 And I said, well, I wasn’t really looking for a partner. And she said, no, no, no, no, no, this is important. And so she became co-founder of what today is garrison growth. And we’re out to to to work with leaders to reframe what leadership looks like, how leaders up, and how aware leaders are of the impact they’re making every single day. And so great leaders ask questions they don’t tell people. Sure. So you started this practice. I love the shaman’s story. It sounds like it was worthwhile. It was a six month effort. More than a month. How you know? And now you’ve wrote a book to summarize some of these best practices. How many of these practices did you know when you started the practice and how many did you kind of learn over time? Most were learned over time from meeting with thousands of leaders. So I’ve had the opportunity to mention Waco earlier. I’ve had the opportunity to conduct workshops for IPO around the world, both at the annual global conference and also at the chapter level.

Dave Garrison 00:10:36 And I learned when people come up and share their stories and ask questions. And so what I’ve learned is leaders have a very challenging job right now because the workforce has changed significantly. The workforce has changed in three ways. One is Covid gave people a lot of time to think about the meaning of work and the role of work in their life and decide, am I really going to drive an hour each way to go sit in on meetings that don’t mean anything to me, and don’t help me with my job and ask tough questions like that? Two is that the world rate of uncertainty in the world has increased, and so there’s a demand on leaders to provide certainty in an age of uncertainty. And three, we have a new generation coming on strong as we have many generations. But this one is interested in the purpose of work. Why bother doing it as much as money. So what we’ve learned is those companies that that are committed to creating a competitive advantage. Have three practices for their leaders. One practice is recognizing people as human beings, not human doings.

Dave Garrison 00:11:48 It’s not an accounts receivable clerk. It’s somebody who has two children, who is celebrating their work in church or the PTA and is challenged by aging parents or whatever. They’re a real person, and they recognize real people before they say, hey, and would you do this? So recognizing human beings is one of the three traits. A second one is having an opportunity and a format by which people can share their experience. So first day on the job, people bring experience to the job. But in the old days leaders were taught, no, no, no. You sit up and you be in the corner and you be quiet for the first five years. And the client who has an intern in their first week on the job, they were struggling with a packaging problem. And this intern said, well, if I could, I’m an architecture student and I can tell you how to design the box to both provide padding and have a lighter weight box. And they were all in. This, in turn knew nothing about their business but brought experience to the job.

Dave Garrison 00:12:46 So having your voice be heard is the second thing. And the third is every business having a compelling purpose that describes why it’s worth doing. How are we impacting the world? Why is it worth doing in businesses that are competitively advantaged today? Every single employee can tell you why it’s worth doing. It is never about money. It is about purpose. Just like Walt Disney said, I’m creating happiness. He could have said, well, I’m going to build an amusement park, and then I’ll do movies and I’ll have a character that’s a mouse, but it’s no, how do I create happiness? And all of those things contribute. But they never lost sight of the fact that their compelling purpose was creating happiness. So I’d challenge every business leader to ask, if you go to a frontline employee, can they tell you what the purpose of the business is how do you use it in interviewing? How do you ask an interview question about your compelling purpose? How do you use it for evaluating employees? How do you use compelling purpose in deciding to do this? Not that.

Dave Garrison 00:13:46 So those three things are really important. So I don’t think anyone would argue with that. But in practice, it sounds like you don’t see them being practiced. So why why why do you think that is? I’m sure when you’re interviewing a CEO you think might work together. Oh, of course I believe in those things. Right. But then how do you measure whether they’re really following through on those? And then what’s kind of the overall scorecard of the companies that you see these days? Yeah, and that’s a great question. And frankly, if you look across all companies, you’re going to find the scorecard is leaders are more engaged than employees. Most employees are not engaged. That’s the data. It’s consistent. Leaders are more engaged. The rate of about X of the average employee. And so middle managers and the executive team are where we get a lot of information. So we’ll interview the executive team to say, hey, could you tell us what the 2 or 3 most important things are that the company is working on right now, and we listen for whether or not those answers line up and if they are expressed in the same way.

Dave Garrison 00:14:44 And so typically we’ll find that they’re not lining up or they’re single words like, yes, we’re about growth. But if every department interprets the word grows differently, we’ll never get to our full potential because the team has not had the conversation of creating that horizontal synergy to identify what do we mean by growth? And that’s where I said great leaders ask questions. They don’t tell. They listen. Got it. So when you start working with a company, do you do kind of an audit in that regard and give companies kind of a view as to how align they are and how engaged their team, how much buy in they have perhaps. Absolutely. What’s working and what’s not working are key questions. What values do you see and play? What’s most important for us to do? And we’re listening for how similar the how similar the answers are of the team we’re interviewing, and that tells us a lot about where to begin in the creation of buy in. We also give them an assessment. We ask them to assess buy in themselves and we have online a free assessment.

Dave Garrison 00:15:44 Any one of your viewers or listeners can take its at buy in book. Take an individual assessment and see your buy in ranking. Then share with your team the team assessment and then get the team together and say, gee, our answers are different, which of course they are and understand where the opportunities are to start on beginning buy in. We wrote the book as a handbook, so wherever you think you should start, just open up that chapter and say, which of these practices can we do? What can we do better? How do we do it? It’s a handbook for leaders. It’s not a one size fits all. It’s a you choose the topic most important to you and dive in. Got it. So how surprised are leaders when you when you give them their audit and their scores. Maybe not as superlative as they’d like. Are they surprised that the delta between the buy in they think they have and what your empirical evidence shows? You know, sometimes there’s no surprise because they come to us saying, look, I’ve got a team of really great people, but I know we’re capable of more.

Dave Garrison 00:16:46 And so the data just helps them understand what where the gaps are between what they’re capable of and what they’re actually doing. So I would say most leaders are not surprised. They’ve got a nagging feeling it’s nothing they can point to except for maybe turnover or low engagement scores, but they know there’s something more out there. As hard as people were, there’s more. The impact that can be created, there’s more growth that be created. There’s more profit to be created. There’s more innovation to be created. They just don’t know how to get there. And our experience is companies that are really focused on the what. Here are the metrics. Here is what we need to hit. How are we going to increase sales 13%? Those are the companies that generally have low buy in because they’ve forgotten people as part of that equation. Well, those those metrics aren’t inspiring, like a compelling purpose, like you said. So those are those are the the mile per hour dots between the speedometer. Right. Right. And it’s not that it’s not important, but that’s a trailing indicator not a leading indicator.

Dave Garrison 00:17:45 So right now it’s budgeting season for a lot of companies a lot of companies say okay we’re going to create the budget. Smedley and the CFO will put a spreadsheet together, and then we’ll pass it out and tell us how you’re going to hit it. And that’s absolutely a way to kill potential. If you want to kill, buy in. Tell people what the results are and then ask them how they get there. Sure. Well, I want to get into some of those practices, but before I do, now that you’ve got this, this, this framework and this test, how do you think you would have scored back in your CEO days if you had that test? Bully. I think I would have gotten a very mixed score, depending on how well I connected with the leader of a given department or division overall. Okay. Not great. It’s kind of how I put myself. I don’t hold myself out to be some God’s gift to being CEO. I know a lot of things I could do better, and there are things I wish I’d done differently.

Dave Garrison 00:18:34 But hey, welcome to the human race. If you don’t recognize that, I’d say you don’t have a heartbeat. Sure. And sometimes you build your practice or write a book based on what you needed, right? I know, I know, share my lessons. It’s kind of it’s kind of a cruel twist of fate that you learned these lessons after afterwards, right? Yeah. And then you can pass them along, but you can’t reuse them and go back and use them at the same scenario. Right. That’s true. But, you know, our greatest satisfaction comes when we see people accomplishing things they didn’t think was possible. So there’s a team at a company that is in the business of construction, and this company has gone from being no agreement on what it is. It’s most important to get done, no prioritization, no alignment on measures and pretty mediocre results to achieving the largest sales in our company history and record results every single year. And they’re all in the spirit of we can do even more.

Dave Garrison 00:19:30 I mean, that’s what gives myself and our team satisfaction as to watch people kick butt and do it in a unified way, not because they yell at people, but because they’ve been thoughtful about treating human beings like human beings and saying, what is it we want to do together? What’s great look like? Who’s going to do what? When will it be done by, and how can I help you? Well, let’s get into some of the details. I enjoyed the book, and you have a number of techniques to tap the human potential and treat. Treat employees like human beings, right? Let’s talk about collective genius. That’s kind of probably one of the biggest three lines of the book. Please share, share, share. Collective genius. The framework for the audience. So, Julian, this is based on a belief that all of us are smarter than any of us. Meaning if we put our heads together, we can create much better product than if we’re working independently. And for leaders, this is particularly important.

Dave Garrison 00:20:26 We’ve been misled as leaders using the model that we learned in elementary school that there is one right answer and the teacher has the right answer. So it kind of transfers to, well, if you’re a CEO, if you’re a president, or if you’re executive vice president of something or another, people come to you for answers and you give them answers, and that’s what you do. And that feels good because it feels like you’re helping people. The problem is you are limited by your own experience and you are limited by your blind spots. And each one of us has a huge blind spot. You know, as a pilot, we refer to it as our six. You can’t see your six, you can’t see behind you, but other people can and they’ve got their own six. So here’s the deal for leaders. If you believe that all of us are smarter than any of us, the question is, how do I get the best thinking on any given situation in order to generate the most choices, because at the end of the day, as opposed to.

Dave Garrison 00:21:23 As opposed to the CEO saying, well, here’s what I. Here’s what I want done, it’s what are the choices of what we could do, and then choosing from among the best choices. So the collective genius process is simply that of using a model that says, look, when we do decisions, let’s do it without drama. I don’t need to debate with you my ideas better than your idea. It’s a waste of time. Let’s instead use a process that says, first, let’s agree on the problem we’re trying to solve. And generally when we have a challenge, it is 3 or 4 problems wrapped into one. Let’s unbundle and select one. Yeah that’s critical right. Yeah. And then the second piece is where most companies just jump to solutions I know what we could do. No I know what we could do. Those are all great. But you know your solution is the best because it meets the checklist in your head of what a great solution contains. However, most companies skipped over the let’s before we talk about solutions, let’s talk about what is on the checklist of what great looks like.

Dave Garrison 00:22:24 How do I know the criteria for a great solution? When you align on the problem, the specific problem to be solved, and what your checklist of what a great solution contains is, then you can say to every team member, all right, given this problem and this checklist, what are your thoughts? And allow them to create different options based on their experience from a common viewpoint and what you’ll find when you do that, when people share their ideas on what’s to be done and their solutions, they don’t need to defend it or justify it. It’s all mapped against their experience and the checklist. And so you end up with a table full of different ideas. And then the rest of collective genius is no discussion of the ideas, no discussion, no discussion at all, no debate, no debate. Save your breath, save your time. Is it just a voting framework? It’s a voting. It’s a way. The OKs it’s a everybody gets four votes. Explain the way the OKs, please. Yeah.

Dave Garrison 00:23:24 This is a story from England in the early 1900s, when a statistician lived in a rural town and there was an ox at the county fair. And he said, well, this would be kind of cool. Lets everybody guess the weight of the ox. So 800 and something, people come to the fair. Everybody guesses the weight of the ox. Everybody is wrong. But being a statistician, he couldn’t help himself. He averaged out all the weights and found it was within £2 of the actual weight of the ox. The average was. Yeah, it’s like amazing £1,474. So fast forward, the US Navy loses a submarine in the North Atlantic in the 1960s, and the area in which it had to search was so large they would take them months. So somebody got the idea, what if we went out to experts in different areas, in different fields? A meteorology expert, a metallurgical expert and oceanographer expert, and we gave them the data and asked them where our submarine is using algorithms. They basically took all the answers, and they found that the location, the pinpoint location, was within 200 yards of where their sub was, because all of us are smarter than any of us.

Dave Garrison 00:24:36 Fast forward again. I lead my section mates at business school in a quarterly call, and I asked before the US election, I said, who’s going to be elected president by how much? There was no discussion, no debate. Just drop it into the chat box. That was October, six weeks before the election. I forgot all about it. February’s call came around and said, oh, I better pull out those results. And I tallied up the results of what they said. And then I went to Pew Research to find out what the actual results were and their estimate of the results were within point 4% well of the final results with no discussion. So the point is, all of us are smarter than any of us because everybody brings different experience to the table. So great leaders who tap into collective genius have more choice and come up with better outcomes. And when you come up with an outcome, everybody feels like, hey, it’s my outcome. Not because, yeah, process. Yeah, because I was involved in the process.

Dave Garrison 00:25:43 And when people feel like they’re part of it, they’re more committed to it. And that’s where magic happens. That’s awesome. Talk to me a little bit about the prioritize. Few things versus everything. Yeah, a critical one. We got this crazy rule. I did not learn this when I got my BS in accounting. We got a crazy rule. Julian three is greater than seven. Three is greater than seven. Three is the magic number, three is the magic number. And the reason I say that is because people will push us to four, but three is the magic number. So here’s what we learned. I learned this from a group of managers at a company in New York, nationwide distributor of a premium product, and I interviewed them and I said, hey, tell us what’s most important. And they said, I’ll tell you, it’s whatever the CEO said last. And we got four new ideas a week. And so I’ve got many things on my list to get done. And God helped me.

Dave Garrison 00:26:33 If he asks about the one that I’m not working on. So I have to choose the one to work on because I can’t get them all done. And then I feel like a loser because I’m working 60 hours a week and I can’t get all this stuff done. And then there are three more new ideas. So that’s that’s setting your team up to fail, right? That’s got to be a terrible feeling for for anybody. Absolutely. But the CEO or the president or the vice president of whatever is doing it with the best of intention and is sharing those ideas. But if you do not prioritize the ideas and have a process to put them someplace like a parking lot. Then you flood the team and guarantee mediocrity. Mediocre results. Yeah, well, three is greater than seven means pick three things. Be consistent in the three things until they are completed. And there’ll be three more after that. There will always be more. Right. Terrific. how about defining purpose and values? Where does that come in to the overall playbook.

Dave Garrison 00:27:30 Yeah. So it’s interesting when we go to hire people, often we’re led down this path of must have three years experience in that and have managed at least X number of people. And those are all great qualities, but they don’t help us predict how well a person will fit in our organization. So what about if we flip that around? And what if we started screening for values and compelling purpose that we talked about before, so that here’s what that might look like. If integrity is one of the core values in your organization, and you have some couple of word definition of what it means. Ask someone in the interview process Assess about their experience with integrity. Here’s what that might look like. You can either say, hey, integrity is one of our values. Is integrity important to you? The answer is going to be oh, so yes. No is you know what the answer is yet. However, if you say, hey, I’d like to know about a time in your business career when your integrity has been challenged.

Dave Garrison 00:28:26 What happened? How did you handle it and learn how they deal with the value that will help you identify much more quickly. Who are people like us, which prevents people checking out 18 months later because there’s a myth that money is most important. If money is the reason people come to you, money is the reason they leave, and you’ve got an army of mercenaries that will just turn over for the next better job. Yeah, and you can’t win that game because there’s always someone who’s got more money, who can pay more. Absolutely. Now, that makes that makes great sense. So. So when you run people through this program, do you test the buy in later on and what kind of impact does it have and how do you how do you see the difference between, you know, before and after? Yeah. so the gold standard question again is would you recommend this as a place to work? And we see a promoter score, right. And promoter score and it’s same one you’d use for customers.

Dave Garrison 00:29:19 Would you recommend you know, the service to other people. And we find where organizations, the larger they are, if organizations really pay attention to this and dedicate themselves, they can achieve ten point lifts in a year. And as importantly, they’re going to find turnover goes down. So they save time and money in hiring and training. And that goes right to the bottom line. Customer service goes up. We had a company where the the general manager came up to me and he said, I have to come up with another million dollars and I’ve cut all the expenses I can and we’re pushing on sales as hard as we can. What do I do? I said, what’s your turnover? And it was north of 50%. And I said, let’s focus on people and buy in and cut your turnover. He came back a year later to me and said, hey, you know what we did? Our profit was up well over $1 million. And I said, what was the biggest impact of the focusing on people? He said, are people who have more experience, can come up with better innovations and serve customers better because they know more, because newbies don’t know as much.

Dave Garrison 00:30:27 So there’s more than just buy in. There’s more profit. Gallup says over 20% higher profit where you have higher buy in. So who wouldn’t want that? But it takes time because you got to slow down, include people, prioritize and get people involved in what great looks like. Yeah, that that makes perfect sense. And what a great ROI that could be. So you’re you’re running garrison growth. You’re perfecting these these playbooks. You’re you’re seeing impacts. You’re smiling because you know, you’re having an impact with people and you’re you’re aligned with kind of your personal values and mission, and then you decide to write a book. Tell us about the process of writing a book. Why did you do it? And what were some of the surprises for you? Yeah, Julian, I’d say in all it was probably an eight year journey. It was an eight year journey, and it had lots of twists and turns. But the book was written because I realized that my true purpose is about working with people to unlock potential.

Dave Garrison 00:31:24 And I’m not going to touch more than a couple of thousand people. Right. And I wanted these ideas to be out in the public for anybody can pick up the book, read it, and put them to work. And so really, the book was about creating a reference document that would be used over time by leaders, and it could be tailored to the situation they face at that particular moment. And it really pleases me to see books that pages are thumbed back and chapters are highlighted or underlined is where great is. But I started writing it eight years ago. went through a couple of different drafts. I decided to go the self-publishing route and was accepted by a self publisher. and who I really respect. And they started to work on the artwork and my coach called and said, hey, look, you’ve written a really good book here, but it’s five books, not one book. So call the publisher, pull it back, let’s do it again. And that took about two years. And this book, the buy an advantage, is the result.

Dave Garrison 00:32:22 It’s so much better than what I started with. Thank you. I’ve got a team of 13 people at Matt Holt Publishing and Simon and Schuster are the distributors, and they have done an amazing job in ways that I didn’t even know existed in the publishing industry. They are so much so, they’re so professional and so good. I’m grateful to them. So just for everybody who can’t see, I’m holding up the book I just enjoyed. I actually listened to it on audible, but it’s the buy in advantage. It says why Employees stop caring and how great leaders inspire everyone to give their all. By Dave Garrison where can people find this Dave? You can find it, as you said on audible. You can find it on Kindle. You can find it on Amazon. You can find it at Barnes and Noble. You can find it at your independent booksellers in the US, the UK, Australia. And you can find it worldwide through Amazon. And I would encourage you if you’re just wondering what it’s like.

Dave Garrison 00:33:12 Take five minutes and take your own assessment and rank yourself on buy in at Buy in Booking.com Baen Books. Is there a dash or just buy in? Just buy in book, no dash. Buy in Booking.com so you can start. You can see some of these frameworks. You can take a test and if you’re curious.

Multiple Speakers 00:33:30 You can you can read the full book. And then if you want want help with your company, how do how do they find you and garrison growth?

Dave Garrison 00:33:35 Dave. Yeah, they can find if you go to LinkedIn, you’ll find me. There’s also a contact information at buy in Booking.com. Our website is Garrison Growth Comm. And it’s it’s a team of people that are passionate about working with other people. And so it’s really a team effort. I happen to be a front person but I’ve got people way better than me. Working on creating strategic alignment and accountability systems, on creating leadership development, on how leaders show up. And we’d be delighted to understand both your objectives and provide you feedback.

Dave Garrison 00:34:09 And it’s working with us. Great. If it’s not, we’ll just give you some direction and push you on your way and say, check in. But we love to hear about stories about people who succeed and accomplish things they didn’t think were possible.

Multiple Speakers 00:34:22 Well, that’s got to be so satisfying. And I’m so, so impressed and proud that you’re able to pursue your passion of of unlocking human potential both with your practice, with your book, with your family and your clients. Dave, you’re a lucky man, and I’m glad you spent time sharing all these stories with us this morning.

Dave Garrison 00:34:39 Thank you. Gillian, thank you. And congratulations on Growth Elevated. I know you’ve gotten a number of accolades. It is an amazing, purpose driven organization you’ve created with a collection of people who are like minded. And that’s very special, that the energy that exists at your seminars, as well as the feedback you get, makes it all worth doing. So congratulations.

Multiple Speakers 00:35:00 Well thank you. It’s it’s very similar to your story.

Multiple Speakers 00:35:03 I’m looking to give back and try to provide kind of the mentorship and peer group that, you know, I wish I had when I was in the seat. And so we’re both in parallel like that. It’s like you just said it’s very rewarding. So, we look forward to collaborating with you. Dave, and thanks for joining us today on Growth Elevated.

Dave Garrison 00:35:21 Thanks, Julian.

Julian Castelli 00:35:25 Thank you for listening to the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, would you please follow us and subscribe on your favorite podcast player and we’d be grateful if you recommend it to a friend. If you’d like more resources on how to become a better leader in business, we invite you to visit us at Growth Elevated. We’ll be back next week with more insight from another great tech leader. Thank you.