How does a leadership team stop telling the truth about actually how that shows up in numbers?

The difficulty with numbers, with financial statements, is that they tell us what... that something's wrong, but they don't tell us exactly what is wrong or even more why it's wrong.

And what we need to do is learn how to get ahead of the numbers, address the problems that exist in every organization.

And they are linked to how much can we scale? How well can we execute? How capable are we of growth? And how well can people work together so that they actually want to come and stay? And if we don't have those all covered, we're not going to reach our potential.

In The Imperfect CEO, I map those four risks to four peaks in what I call the ascent model, ascending to organizational health.

so that we get a collaborative culture, we get leadership accountability, we get a strategic momentum and ultimately talent magnetism.

And if leaders recognize the connection, then they can start investing.

But then what?

Yeah.

And let's just get-- be clear, what does that really mean? It means we've got people connecting.

It-- They don't just show up for work, put their head down, and do their job.

No, they actually show up for work, and that can be in person or remotely now, and they engage with each other so that there's a, a level of collaboration that means each person's effort is being supported by and multiplied by other people's effort.

It's like the sum is greater than the, just the parts coming together, right? The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

So the truth is, when we have a healthy organization, it can adapt faster, and we are in times of rapid change.

So the big separating factor, I believe, is that the healthy organizations will adapt faster in these changing times.

And when we have an organization that telegraphs and demonstrates this kind of behavior where we show that we care about people, is the ones that are gonna do so much better.

What's something that you've seen that's small and almost invisible, a behavior change that ends up really having an outsized impact on the organization's health or culture, whether that's a good behavior or a bad behavior or maybe both?

So I was working with a woman, entrepreneur leading this business and in a meeting with their leadership team, just as an observer.

And I saw something curious keep happening.

Every time somebody raised an issue, everyone in the room turned and looked at her, the founder.

It's like everybody was waiting for her to decide or for her to weigh in.

So after the meeting, I sat with her and I said, "Did you see what was happening in your meeting?" And she laughed.

She said, "Ah, apparently I have the answer for everything." And I helped her recognize that, well, that seems like a helpful thing.

Why are we humans, when we organize and try to get work done, why are we so lousy at working together and collaborating and having productive discussions en masse?

So can you talk a little bit about when you see this working well, what happens to human connection with the leader who becomes and embraces that imperfection as a CEO?

First, I want to affirm what you're saying.

Yes, I think there's still many people are convinced that if they admit their weaknesses, if they show vulnerability, it will disqualify them from the role that they have or they wish to have.

And the opposite is true.

And it's a little bit beyond full comprehension.

It's like it's counterintuitive that we would be less aware And that would be endearing as opposed to repulsive for people.

Yeah.

It's gorgeous.

Is that helping or hurting the bottom

line? Yeah.

Let's go a little bit deeper here.

We need to recognize that if we're leading something, our job is leadership.

And that means it's all about people.

we used to allow ourselves to think that it's all about results.

We're just interested in the outcomes and the people just have to do what needs to be done.

Like, how do we do that? And how does the imperfection, how do we capitalize on this idea that we're not going to do it perfect and speak that almost to ourselves? What