217: Marcia Daszko: I was not familiar with any of those terms

217: Marcia Daszko: I was not familiar with any of those terms

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Okay, Fast Leader Legion today I’m excited because we have somebody on the show today who is going to defy many of your conventional wisdoms. Marcia Dazko was born and raised in Iowa until she moved with her parents and three younger siblings to Los Gatos, California in the 1970s. She graduated from Santa Clara University with an English major focusing on journalism and later got her master’s degree in Mass communication from San Jose State University. Her dad’s career evolved from being a newspaper editor to sales to an entrepreneur of his own company for over 40 years and Marcia followed his path. With a natural interest in writing, reading and teaching after her college graduation Marcia held positions as a seventh grade teacher to a 10 year career in corporate communications and marketing in various industries. 

She began working to market the management consulting firm owned by Dr. Perry Glickman and his team of statisticians and consultants in the 1980s. Soon Perry asked her to do business development and she asked, what am I selling? He sent her to four day seminar about leadership taught by his friend the world-renowned Dr. W. Edwards Deming. After that experience Marcia asked Perry, what was that all about? Dr. Deming was in his 80s difficult to understand and used a different vocabulary than Marcia was used to. Perry said, I’ll teach you. For the next three months Marcia read, studied and had three to four-hour conversations about new leadership thinking. Marcia said to Perry, I want to hear Deming again. Off she went to learn at this four-day seminar. The conference organizer introduced her to Dr. Deming and he said, come to dinner tonight. She went and listened as the table full of senior fortune 500 executives, a colonel, and an admiral had a robust conversation, she observed and listened. After dinner Dr. Deming invited her to attend the four day as much as she wanted to learn. Over the next several years she attended more than 20 of these four-day seminars until his death in

After getting clients like Dow Chemical and Pepsi, Perry said, we need your help to consult, and her consulting career began. In 1993 both of her mentors died and Marcia wondered, now what? With major clients she continued her consulting work. In 1994 started Marcia Daszko & Associates. Now she speaks and teaches to executive teams and her MBA students a new way to think about leadership without the management fads and best practices. She begins every speech with, my aim is to provoke your thinking. Her bold red-hot leadership book, Pivot Disrupt Transform helps people to develop their natural leadership and lead with fewer struggles and failures. There is a better revolutionary way to experience the joy in learning and leading. Marcia currently resides in Silicon Valley not too far from her son Timothy and two wonderful grandchildren. Marcia Daszko, are you ready to help us get over the hump? 

Marcia Daszko:     Absolutely, let’s go for it. 

Jim Rembach:    I’m glad you’re here. Now I’ve given my legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better.

Marcia Daszko:     My current passion—learning, helping people learn and lead and together in ways that they never have done before and making sure that path is wide open for also children of all ages. Because I think we all have the child inside of us that continually needs to learn and develop and make a difference in this world. 

Jim Rembach:    I’m glad that you shared that part about the child part because we’re going to talk about that in a second. However, in order to talk about that new way of thinking that difference component and all of that I think it’s really appropriate for us to kind of start off with something that you have. At the front of the book which is a bunch of questions, because for me as I went through these questions when I got to the end I got a big shocker. So let’s do these real—I’m going to do these as quick as I can, so you guys hang with me okay. This is an assessment of your current thinking and your actions—do you believe it’s important to hold individuals accountable? These are all yes-or-no questions, do you believe that it’s important to hold individuals accountable? Do you believe it is crucial to motivate your employees? Do you make most of your decisions based on conversations and intuition? Do you set targets and numerical goals for individuals to achieve? Does the executive team have annual strategic planning meetings to create the vision, mission, strategies, numerical goals, objectives and deliverables? Does leadership create a lengthy mission paragraph for the company? Does the organization continually adopt best practices and benchmark with other companies? Is change management adopted in your company but not much changes? Is resistance to change common in your culture? Do you believe the company should hire the best recruits with the best GPAs from the best schools to achieve the best results? Does management focus on quotas results the bottom line and the stock price? Are reorganizations and restructuring common and frequent? When times are difficult do you quickly respond by cutting costs? Do you believe you should empower employees? Do you believe it’s important to conduct annual performance appraisals and rank and rate the employees? Do you score the appraisals and tie them to compensation and bonuses? Do you incentivize workers and rewards and have a quota system? Now I know it took a while for me to read those but I think it’s really important because at the end from your scoring you say that, if you’d answered yes to more than two of these you need this book. And so for me I’m like, I don’t see how anybody is going to answer less than yes to 80% of those. Is that not true? 

Marcia Daszko:     Definitely, that’s true that’s what the world we live in. 

Jim Rembach:    When you start thinking about—how do we turn this tide when it’s kind of like a  salmon swimming up river in a current like they’ve never met, how do we do that?

Jim Rembach:    I have so many answers for that but I don’t know where to start. We sometimes need a crisis it takes a crisis in order for things to drastically change and people to step up but that requires courage and that requires leadership. And the courage and the leadership I think that we used to see decades ago I’m not seeing that same level of courage and leadership or the knowledge that people need. So for example, when Japan was in a crisis situation after World War II that’s when Dr. Deming went to Japan at the invitation of General MacArthur and helped Japan turn around and become a global competitor. At that point they were in a crisis so they were open to learning they had no way to go but up. And so that’s what we need to address in all of our organizations it doesn’t matter if it’s corporate education our education system is an extreme crisis and it’s a disaster in America we can see that because we see the results. If we focused on education and transform the education system that would impact the issues that we have with drugs and with gangs and with the dropout level and the declining education level in the United States. 

Jim Rembach:    Oh, my goodness. As you’re talking I started thinking about these massive problems and if they’re already in crisis and you’re saying that we need a crisis for them to transform, how long can we continue to be in crisis before that happens?

Marcia Daszko:     Well, we have been in crisis and that continues we can continue to decline. Even if we look at the economy and we think that it’s doing well when it crashes it’s going to be pretty severe. So there are some systems that are hiding some of the problems but we’re seeing those results. Sometimes the good times are just camouflaging the realities of systems that are really in crisis. 

Jim Rembach:    Okay. Then as you’re saying that I just wanted to ask the question, what systems are you talking about Marcia? What systems are actually the ones? Are you talking about the total government system and the duopoly that they have with Democrats and Republicans, is that what has to change? Is it—what is it? 

Marcia Daszko:     Yes, I think it leads us to the questions that leaders have to ask and that’s, what are we trying to accomplish together? Or are we trying as a nation and as leaders to have a great education system? A great democracy? A great social system a government agency system that supports citizens when they are in need? For example, mental illness and things like that. Do we have a system supports those things? Corporations are they healthy? Are they growing in healthy ways or are they growing due to greed? How healthy are the people in these organizations? The culture in the organizations is a reflection of the CEOs and the executive team and the board of directors. So if there are organizations across any sector that have high turnover rates and a lot of toxic internal competition then those organizations are reflection of the people that lead them. 

Jim Rembach:    As you were talking I started thinking about—everybody talks about the Jim Collins book, Good to Great and how that is—a business annal that will live on forever. However, if you look at those organizations that were case studied in 2018 I think only one of them exists I think they’re all gone all the others are gone. 

Marcia Daszko:     That’s very common. We have about 6,000 startup companies in the Silicon Valley Bay Area now and we’ll expect about 90% of them to go out of business. And of the first Fortune 500 list that came out in about 1955 more than 60% of those Fortune 500 companies are gone. Some of them were acquired but many of them are gone. In the past decade we’ve seen many of them disappear. We’ve seen many airlines disappear we’ve seen Montgomery Ward, and Sears is doing poorly, Circuit City Blockbuster—we’ve seen declines in many industries so that’s when leaders really—it takes a lot of courage to not just accept what is but say, how do we want to serve our customers, our members, our students? And what does that look like in the future? What are our future markets? So the book is really about when I think about pivot disrupt transform it’s really about innovation and leadership thinking and courage. 

Jim Rembach:    I think for me when you’re talking about that I’m seeing that at all levels of a particular organization because I know especially if I’m on the front line I see a lot of the mediocrity I see a lot of the exceptions and excellence that we have and I see a whole lot of things that we need to be eliminated. However, if I just keep going through the daily transaction on the frontline it’s never going to get fixed I’ve got to stand up. The book is part of an enablement tool for basically everybody within that organization to take what really is, I guess you’d say that, interruption before we have crisis isn’t it? 

Marcia Daszko:     Yes. The book is about developing everyone’s natural leadership. And the leaders the executives at the top of an organization it’s their job to develop all of their people not just their executive team but to develop all the people. When you think about—okay, if you have two different companies and one executive team believes in developing and investing in all of their employees and another company only invests in a select few like the management track or whatever which company is going to succeed? Because the one who has developed the skills and the knowledge and the systems thinking and focus on having everyone learn and work and improve together those are the companies that are going to make the difference and they’re going to disrupt and survive.

Jim Rembach:    That’s a really good point and I think for me then we start getting into discussion of learning quality because you could say that the learning industry, and you can categorize like one, but that’s probably a multitrillion-dollar type of industry, however, there’s a whole lot of different quality in learning that goes along there. More and more chief learning officers and people who are at the upper end of learning and development are talking more about the learner experience today than I’ve ever heard before and also about bent blended learning and having more journey paths for people’s development it’s the training used to be, sit in the classroom and it’s an event and I think that’s going when.

Marcia Daszko:     Yes, because it doesn’t engage people. Especially to millennials they don’t have that attention span to sit and be PowerPoint-ed to death and so those things need to go away. But my concern is that people with certain titles, whether it’s HR or chief learning officers or people in leadership and development in organizations, my concern is when they focus on systems such as performance management and performance appraisals and so forth they are just carrying on and trying to systematize bad practices best practices and management fads. It is the leadership oftentimes above them that has to say no. We have to stop these management fads and we have to challenge our current beliefs and assumptions and practices and start asking ourselves some tough questions. Only a few questions it’s not a lot of questions it’s not thousands of questions but it is challenging how they currently think what they’re trying to accomplish and always link what they’re trying to accomplish with the customer, with a member, with a student. Because if they’re not starting with their current market and a potential market they are just going to be like the hamster in the wheel and they’re going to focus on bad practices such as holding individuals accountable from the results of the system. The individuals didn’t create this system the executives did. So they need—if they don’t like the results they’re getting they need to change it. If they’re satisfied with the results that they’re getting even though they have all these best practices my question to them is, how much better could you be doing if you got rid of the best practices and management fads? 

Jim Rembach:    That’s a phrase that I’ve just actually over the years have begun to loathe which is best practices. To me that means they’re just common is really what it ends up being. One of the particular chapter that you have in the book really stood out to me out because I think it also addresses the issue that you’re referring to in regards to—hey, hey we need to take a step back and rethink question some of these fads and some of the things that we’ve been doing that we’ve been taught that we’re supposed to do and you talk about a child’s lens and new learning, what do you mean by that?

Marcia Daszko:     A child’s lens—the children see things simply and directly. Children ask the best questions we’ve heard that for years but when we talk about simply going back to the basic questions and asking, what are we trying to accomplish together? How will we do it? Who are we serving? And how will we measure progress not just success? Because success is after everything else has happened. So the child is able to cut through a lot of complexity and waste we’re adults, sorry, they just keep piling it on one layer on top of another until it’s so complex and people are so quote-unquote busy but they’re not productive. I can go into an organization have a few conversations and pretty quickly identify at least 50 to 80 percent waste of time, of efforts, of resources, when people are not asking the right questions. 

Jim Rembach:    I think that’s a great place to start is with that simple, innocence and the questions are a critical component and I think all of us probably need to do a better job of doing that. But when we’re talking about these particular issues, crisis, change, transformation, pivot and disruption all that it’s loaded with the emotion. One of the things that we like to do on the show is focus on that emotion in a better direction and we do that by looking at quotes. Is there a quote or two that you like that you can share?

Marcia Daszko:     The first one that popped into my mind was one of Dr. Deming’s quote and that was, leaders asked for help and they don’t know what they don’t know so there is knowledge that they need that they don’t have. He would often ask at his four-day seminars how could they know? How could they know there’s anything to learn? And that’s a thing we always have to be learning. I’ve got to give credit to two leaders that they are searching there are leaders that are searching for solutions they’re searching for answers are searching for ways to solve their problems they’re searching for ways for customers to be served the issue is that what they need to know they are not taught in school, that’s one thing. One of my clients recently said to me, Marcia, I’ve been the president for ten years and I have been struggling with the same problems for ten years until you came and you’ve taught us a totally new way to think and you’ve given us new knowledge, knowledge about systems thinking knowledge about statistical thinking. Now we can attack those problems and issues and we’re already making a difference and it’s only been six months and he had struggled for so long. I think people try to learn, unfortunately, they read articles or books or go to seminars or watch videos that are giving them the same old manners fads and best practices. There are probably a hundred books out there about how to improve your performance appraisal that’s the wrong thinking and that’s the wrong book. What they need to do is pick up the book that says abolishing performance appraisals. Get rid of it because performance appraisals end up putting them in a position to judge, blame, criticize, rank and rate employees. Those things are all negative not helpful. Being a judge who likes to do that? When we think about the multi-millions maybe billions of dollars that organizations spend on doing performance appraisals. When you just take the time that managers spend in doing performance appraisals and then giving feedback and if people don’t like the feedback that demotivates them and they feel unappreciated and they go look for another job so the turnover rate goes up. 

Jim Rembach:    It’s so true and it gets repeated over and again. You’re even talking about the experience that you had that I read in your bio when you first went to Dr. Deming’s seminar and you didn’t understand the language and came back and there was a whole lot of adaptation and learning and humps that you had to get over. And so we learn a lot when guests get to share those stories, is there a time where you got over the hump that you can share?

Marcia Daszko:     There are so many humps. The first one was probably when—after Dr. Deming’s seminar I said, Perry what was that all about? Because four days of trying to listen to someone who is difficult to understand in his eighties using a totally different vocabulary of system and variation and control charts and new knowledge and systems thinking I was not familiar with any of those terms in  context of improving a business. When I went back to the office—and then Perry guided me. One day I was so excited I was in a bookstore in Palo Alto and I came back to the office and I had a whole armful of books they were about quality and learning and leadership and I didn’t know any better I was brand new. Perry looked at the books and he separated them into two piles, this is good this is good this is trash this is garbage take these back to the store. He had the ability with his knowledge to discern the difference between good leadership learning and the management fads that some people were gurus back then we’re pushing. That’s what it takes us to really learn but question and say, when you look at a system and you want to optimize a system and you want to look at the data over time to make better decisions how can you do that and where can you continue to learn so that it will be effective? If you’re learning and learning and reading and going to conferences and you’re not improving you’re improving you’re not feeling that things are improving and transforming you’re reading the wrong things you’re not getting the guidance from the right people. You need to disrupt what you’re doing and seek out other resources.

Jim Rembach:    As you were talking I started thinking about what I’ve mentioned many times is that you can’t be a leader and coach people if you also are not receiving that. Because like you said when it kind of when we started what Dr. Deming said they don’t know what they don’t know you’re asking them for support and questions there’s nothing in the well so you have to continue to find that and you need to have somebody as a coach to really do that. We talked about reading a book and things like that and that’s great because we all can absorb knowledge but I think the critical point from what I’ve picked up from what you said you need somebody to help, encourage you, and challenge you and that can only come from another individual it doesn’t come from a movie or a book. 

Marcia Daszko:     Yes, and that’s the key because great, I don’t want to go into that coaching name too much label because there’s so many thousands of coaches out there that don’t have knowledge, they can get certifications and they say, oh I’m a certified coach. And it’s like, what is your knowledge? Can you help leaders transform their personal leadership to help them transform their organization and make a difference in the world? And if they can do that, fantastic, but—most I don’t think they can. I think one of the most important traits of a great coach is, number one, they have to have that system statistical knowledge. Secondly, they have to be very provocative in their questions to really get their leaders to think to really challenge what they’re currently thinking, believing, assuming, doing what are they investing in. I don’t go into organizations and help them transform by being their best friends that’s not the aim. The aim is to make that difference with them by challenging them. There are times that when they are in reflection mode, they reflect back on things I used to do. I have had this happen to my surprise several times where I’m having a conversation with one of the executives and they start to cry. And I asked, are you okay? And they say, yes, I was just thinking about how I used to treat people how I used to lead how I used to make decisions and the impact that I had, I’m so sorry about that.  But that’s where Dr. Dimming’s quote comes in so powerfully how could they know? How could they know there was anything to learn? They were just doing their best. Best efforts and hard work and making decisions by consensus those are not helpful so we need to learn a different way to disrupt our own thinking and really believe that transforming ourselves and our organizations and our communities and our society it’s important it’s the right thing to do and there is a way. So for example in the book, there are three parts and the first part is things to stop doing because otherwise if just want to start doing new things well they have still in place a lot of bad things those management fads and I tell them it’s like trying to put fresh strawberry jam on moldy bread. You’ve still got the moldy bread and you’ve got to get rid of the moldy bread simultaneously that’s you’re learning how to make transformative change not merely change. Because if you change you can change back. Transformative change means it’s like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly, once you’re a butterfly you will never go back to be a caterpillar. Once you’ve learned new think new leadership thinking based on systems thinking and statistical thinking and strategic thinking about planning not just strategic planning in the traditional sense. Once you learn these new concepts and get help applying them then the sky is the limit. I often say then to my executive teams once they learn those concepts and how to apply them get out of the way of your people because they will take you where you’ve never been before that’s transformation. 

One of my clients was a 30 million dollars and wanted to take his company to 35 or 40 million and I said, okay, let’s not think about the numbers let’s do what we need to do. I began working with them and they went from 30 million to 300 million. But had he given them that arbitrary numerical goal of 40 million when they got to 39 to 40 million they would have slowed down or stopped and they wouldn’t have experienced what they got to experience together. 

Jim Rembach:    That’s a great story. I sure hope that more and more folks get exposed to your work and that we can start attacking those types of problems as well as some of those huge problems we talked about earlier. So the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

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Alright here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump day Hoedown. Okay Marcia, the Hump day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Marcia Daszko, are you ready to hoedown?

Marcia Daszko:     Definitely let’s go. 

Jim Rembach:    Alright. What is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Marcia Daszko:     Oh, enough hours in the day. There are so many things I want to do but sometimes I need to sleep. 

Jim Rembach:    So what is the best leadership advice you have ever received? 

Marcia Daszko:     Learn, listen and make a difference. 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Marcia Daszko:     I continually bring problems to the surface and then try to get people working together to solve those together with new ways to think about them. 

Jim Rembach:    What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Marcia Daszko:     Curiosity. 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book that you’d recommend to our legion, it could be from any genre of course we’re going to put a link to your book on your show notes page as well. 

Marcia Daszko:     Okay, first things that pop into mind first books are one is called, Profit Beyond Measure, it helps people think differently about results in the bottom line. And another one would be The Goal, it’s powerful it’s been around for decades. And another would be, Man’s search for Meaning.

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/marciadaszko. Okay, Marcia, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25. And you can take all the knowledge and skills that you have and take them back with you but you can’t take it all back you can just one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Marcia Daszko:     The ability to question based on systems thinking and statistical knowledge. And the reason I would take those questions is because the more that people think, question and explore the more they discover new opportunities and can make a difference. 

Jim Rembach:    Marcia, thank you for sharing your time with us. Can you tell the Fast Leader legion how they can connect with you? 

Marcia Daszko:     They can contact md@mdaszko.com or take a look at my website mdaszko.com and for sure take a look at my book there’s contact information in the book.

Jim Rembach:    Marcia Daszko, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can elp you move onward and upward faster.

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