We talk about the role of leadership and training within organizations of all sizes. From the deck of a Navy ship to the corridors of Ivystone (an entrepreneurial multiline sales agency), Andy Bjork, a Navy-Captain-turned-Chief-Sales-Officer, shares methodologies and real life examples that nurture effective growth. Learn how the Navy's allowance for mistakes in high-stakes situations shapes leaders, and how this hands-on experience contrasts with the innovative strides being made in the entrepreneurial world, where traditional ROI is not the only benchmark of success.
In company cultures and structures, these elements evolve together as a business expands. We talk about Andy's journey from the regimented world of the Navy to the nimble environment of Ivystone, examining the blending of autonomy and structure. Clear expectations and the quest for guidance help teams to flourish in both large and small organizations.
The power and importance of diverse voices in decision-making keeps coming up throughout our discussion. Andy and I discuss nurturing the next generation of leaders, taking cues from corporate trailblazers like IKEA, and how fostering employee growth is tantamount to retention. Join us as we piece together the mosaic of leadership, growth, and the pathways to securing an organization's legacy.
We talk about the role of leadership and training within organizations of all sizes. From the deck of a Navy ship to the corridors of Ivystone (an entrepreneurial multiline sales agency), Andy Bjork, a Navy-Captain-turned-Chief-Sales-Officer, shares methodologies and real life examples that nurture effective growth. Learn how the Navy's allowance for mistakes in high-stakes situations shapes leaders, and how this hands-on experience contrasts with the innovative strides being made in the entrepreneurial world, where traditional ROI is not the only benchmark of success.
In company cultures and structures, these elements evolve together as a business expands. We talk about Andy's journey from the regimented world of the Navy to the nimble environment of Ivystone, examining the blending of autonomy and structure. Clear expectations and the quest for guidance help teams to flourish in both large and small organizations.
The power and importance of diverse voices in decision-making keeps coming up throughout our discussion. Andy and I discuss nurturing the next generation of leaders, taking cues from corporate trailblazers like IKEA, and how fostering employee growth is tantamount to retention. Join us as we piece together the mosaic of leadership, growth, and the pathways to securing an organization's legacy.
Welcome to the third growth option podcast, where we talk with business leaders and innovators hungry to drive growth that can be faster than internal organic growth and less risky than acquisition. Your moderator is Bernal Dunke-Schpuller, chief Sherpa and CEO at Realign, who has led private equity owned distributors through turnarounds and growth. With battle proven leaders from all frontiers, we want to provoke thinking about business growth beyond conventional wisdom and binary choices.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm Bernal, your host today, talking with Andy Bjork, a captain, former Navy officer for 30 years, both active duty and reserve service, and, for the last decade or so, chief Sales Officer at Ivy Stone, which is a multi-line sales agency in the consumer product segment. Andy and I both volunteer in a trade association, so you're also our resident parliamentarian and board leader at GHTA, and we both happen to graduate from the same wonderful Cornell University but didn't meet until a couple of decades after that. Anyway, andy, welcome to the third growth option. Podcast.
Speaker 3:I know it's great to be here and today is Veterans Day or tomorrow is, so that's kind of fitting as well.
Speaker 2:Besides both of us having studied at this pretty awesome university, we also spent formative years of our career with big organizations before we moved to work with smaller, more mid-sized entrepreneurial firms. You're a retired captain, so you learn in the US military, which is probably one of the biggest and the best funded organizations. One of my alma mater is IKEA, which is big, but not US government big. So I kind of want to toggle back and forth today between what big organizations can teach smaller ones and vice versa, also what smaller entrepreneurial perspectives can teach all of us. So I want to start with training. I shared a wonderful story the other day where you talked about in the Navy. They let you make scratches and chips, what I called seven or eight or nine figure scratches. Talk a little bit about how, in the US military, you approached training.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean first just to tell the story. I repeat the story that we shared the other day because I tell it to my kids and I remember being a young officer first assigned to a ship a destroyer. A destroyer is 8,000 tons, 560-some-odd feet long, and one of our opportunities as a young officer were to drive the ship, basically to give the rudder orders and the speed orders and so forth, and we all wanted to do that and that was exciting. That's probably why everybody joined the Navy, or one of the main reasons. And a commanding officer would well, you guys need to step back and wait your turn and watch how I do it.
Speaker 3:And it was always sort of that idea of when. When does it my turn? When do I? When do I get to do this? I've learned, I've been to the classroom part, but when do I get to do it? And and that one point, the admiral who was over all the ship sent a memo out to all the captains of the ships and make sure everybody that was working. All the officers knew it. That he said I want my junior officers to learn how to drive the ship there, the future of the navy, let them drive the ships, I don't care if they make a few scratches, and I was quite a telling story and I remember that and I think about that always and I hope that I probably retell it too many times. But it does speak to A lot of things you know, big and small organizations about just A little bit about training and hands on training and the need for, also for the continuity of people and skill sets. So Please set the start on that.
Speaker 2:It's a great example because it's so sort of exaggerated in the sense of scratches A multi million dollar piece of equipment.
Speaker 3:it's pretty risky, right and, of course, that that probably never happened, because, while we do drive ships in the navy in close proximity to other ships, nobody wanted to put a scratch in anything. No is no, that wasn't gonna happen. But I think you know when, when I think of training with in the navy and I was part of my time would be came a training specialist to teach other people and learn both in the classroom and in ship driving. You know, one of the things we always learn was you learn.
Speaker 3:Everybody learns in different ways and part of training is sort of Be able to read and learn it, book knowledge and read about it and to have a training leader explain it verbally and then to be able to be an individual and to watch somebody else do it. You know, observe that what you've learned, but then the third step always is to actually get out and do it and then do it yourself and probably make some mistakes, and but I think all those elements of training are are common, whether it's a big organization like the navy or ikea, or small entrepreneurial organization like I be stone or others. You know, all those people learn in different ways, but they learn through all those process and all those steps, so that that's something that I think we gotta remember and find opportunities in training and in personal growth To make sure those are all available what are some training examples, sort of looking, that you have seen small organizations use?
Speaker 3:well, yeah, smaller organizations are a little more nimble. They were able to, I guess. I use the word experiment so we can use the concept of experiment To test ideas and to do things with limited concern on results, you know. So it's big organization. Sometimes everything is driven on an roi. We do it how we're gonna spend money on it? We spend time on it, are we gonna get a return on it?
Speaker 3:Small organizations can be a little more experimental and just throw things to the wind. I mean that's part of the concept of being entrepreneurial. You do things Without trying to measure an roi, without trying to measure too much, and just see what happens. So I think that's something that small organizations do better than large organizations. Any time large organization we hear about people out to do that is a lot of red tape or take a long time, is a lot of inertia. That can be true. Small organizations can move quicker, try things. Training is sort of large organization concept. Sometimes you know, just, let's just go out. Use the Nike word, let's just go do it. So I think there are some differences there.
Speaker 2:You had a challenge in developing a person that had not been to a certain type of trade show. We were talking about high point the other day, I point furniture market. Talk me through the way you saw that challenge of having a person Sort of work a trade show that had not worked Any trade show, certainly not that trade show before, and how you decided to just let them figure it out. I think you guided them. If I think you didn't just give him a kick in the butt.
Speaker 3:No, I think it's the same. It's bringing to life the same story is going out and denting ships on the high seas and I was at some point. People are trained there ready. They've got the skills, they have the talent, they're willing to do it, and then they just need to go do it and have others step back. You know it's kicking your kids out of the house and letting them fly on their own, and that's true in business to their times, when you have to have the confidence and the respect to you know, ask people to go do a job that they're trained and skilled to do and just again it's a step back and have that confidence that it can be done. It's a hard thing to do, but there's success in that and there may be failure too, but that's all part of the learning, training, evolution we will never be a hundred percent ready for anything.
Speaker 2:Right, it'll take us, you know, we'll be dead before we're a hundred percent ready for anything, and I feel like that is one of the things that I love about being an entrepreneur myself and working with other you know, small, mid-sized companies that there isn't that sort of Stifling fear that can be present in big board rooms big, you know, fortune 50 companies. We just have to put one foot in front of the other and, except that we're human and we're not, you know, sometimes we're gonna stumble and we just have to keep going.
Speaker 3:Thinking of another way to look at it. I know, going back to the big organization boardroom or whatever, we would think of planning as being a huge element of Leadership and and planning and would come in three different buckets. It was sort of traditional planning. You know, you're gonna plan your fiscal year, you're gonna plan, and it's done with some routine and done well, and then, at the same organization, would then have Contingency plans laid out for the. What if the economy goes bad? What if we have, you know, a weather crisis or a climate crisis? What if you PS goes on strike?
Speaker 3:You know there's all kinds of what if for contingency plans that you can think about Ahead of time and develop a plan that sits on the shelf and ready to be pulled off the shelf when and if that Situation happens. And then there's a third type of planning, which is crisis planning, and that is you had no idea that it was gonna happen, you couldn't have planned for it, and the crisis happens and you're kind of just jump into it and it's very fast. And, and you know, big organizations sometimes have the luxury of all that planning and contingency planning and so forth, and small organizations Don't always do that. They either don't take the time. Their day-to-day Battle rhythm, to use the military term, their day-to-day cadence is Move so quickly. That's not that much time to pause and plan. And yet you kind of do need to think about those things because there's some healthy ideas in planning, at least in some limited capacity, even for small companies.
Speaker 2:Another way of planning is Organization building, which I know. When you started with with Ivy stone, you and Doug, the owner, ceo of Ivy stone, talked a lot about Putting processes in place, or, you know, work charts, communication structures. Talk a little bit about how you did that, again coming from a big organization and putting Structure and order in place of a smaller organization.
Speaker 3:Small organizations very small, can run on a committee style. You know this. People come in a room and talk about. You can imagine the start on a Monday talk about what we're gonna accomplish that week, and on Friday Maybe we gather around a beer in the afternoon and talk about what we accomplished. And you know Small companies can run with a lot of fun and very healthy on that. You know kind of way of operating. As the company scales, as it grows, more people are involved and it gets harder to do that as you even get into the number let's say you had 20 people in the company or more and it's harder to gather in small groups and committee style and be effective.
Speaker 3:There are some large you know large company organization tools that start to layer in as makes sense. One of them is just general organizations, sort of divide and conquer. You know if set your company up with departments and you break the company back down into smaller groups again, you know, using departments or department, somebody's a department leader or and and there's a team, you know there's a team and then there's an organization structure that connects, connects them all together. You know pretty common concept but one that a lot of smaller companies have to step into in order to grow, and then figuring out the communication, communication across the different departments. How does that work, you know, so that people aren't Confusing each other with what the tasking at hand is.
Speaker 3:So I think there's something there that that we, you know, at Ivy stone, we, we evolved that way. I think that that was a big step for us and other companies, to us. Not unique to anything, we didn't do anything unique. It's just a natural step in the growth. Evolution is to bring structure and and you know how you're gonna communicate weekly, monthly, daily.
Speaker 2:I remember working with a client several years ago by home and gift industry standards, a sizable company north of 100, closer to $200 million revenue business and I was amazed at how little structure there was and how little sort of formal organizational disciplines and cadences they utilized. But they did a very, very good job, ceo on down to have a few almost silly sayings that got them through the day and made them very successful. And some of those silly sayings were work hard, play hard. So they had lots of team dinners together and when they traveled together they definitely celebrated each other.
Speaker 2:The CEO's one of his sayings was everybody has to do chores. So that meant that everybody had this sort of spirit that well, yeah, of course I got to do chores. I saw the CEO doing chores this morning, so I've got to do it. I think those sort of simple cultural guideposts maybe I would call this work hard, play hard, be happy or be gone, do your chores I think can be effectively utilized in small organizations to sort of build this spirit. Core disprey, I think it's called. Do you agree?
Speaker 3:I definitely think that the concept of a company culture, what the company culture is, is very powerful and very important in the health of a company. I would go and then say that I think the company culture and the company structure are two different things. But a company culture and the company structure could be the same, could flow together. If you have a very flat company structure, the open door policy, walk into the CEO's office and talk about the football game on the weekend, this could be a very healthy dynamic in some company structures and those things go together. But there is some part where they are different.
Speaker 3:There are some efficiencies to structure. There are sort of skill sets get siloed and they get organized in different buckets and people within the company, as the company grows, find their niche or their expertise in certain, again, departments, certain areas. Sales goes into one area and accounting goes somewhere else. Maybe there is warehouse or operation somewhere else. So those two things can be blended. So the structure that separates, the efficiencies, the skill sets and the leadership of each of those departments can be blended back together in a good company culture and whether it's a fun company culture or very, as you said, parties or events and travel together and things like that. So they definitely work together, but I think they're kind of married at the hip company culture and company structure.
Speaker 2:Are there any universal or maybe guiding principles that you took for granted in your early years in the military, that you no longer take for granted, having worked in smaller organizations? Was there a universal truth that the entrepreneurial world shattered for you?
Speaker 3:I think there's an idea in the entrepreneurial world that I'm going to do everything by myself. I'm very I've got, I'm self-structured and I'm kind of self-motivated and I'm going to go out and do stuff and I have my own direction. And I think that's kind of part of the concept and the definition of being entrepreneurial. Military side would say that doesn't play that well unless you're on some kind of solo mission on some exotic, in an exotic movie, with a SEAL team and you're all by yourself. Maybe that's entrepreneurial. But most of the military operates in sort of clear direction and guidance, which I still use today. But everybody's getting some kind of direction and a little bit softer than direction is sort of like tasking and guidance is a little softer. So I'm going to like, well, here are some guardrails, but stay within these guardrails and go do it.
Speaker 3:So I wouldn't say the entrepreneurial world shattered that. But there's definitely a blend there's in the entrepreneurial world. There's less direction and more guidance, because you got to respect that. We're hiring entrepreneurs to be in the front, to be out working with customers, and that's how we see it, and so we don't want to dampen the entrepreneurial spirit by being too directional, if that makes sense. And yet I would say there are always people that show up who want to be entrepreneurs but then appreciate when somebody's giving them some direction. So I think that all of us kind of appreciate it. Somebody, please tell me what we're doing here.
Speaker 2:It's funny I'm listening to you describe from a military perspective you approach training, organizational building, and it takes me back to things that I've learned from mentors in the early days of my career when I worked for these bigger companies. I'll give you one example One. He was executive vice president at the time and I was a buyer at the time and he had the saying that we were in meetings and he would ask questions, try to get input from people, and half the room would not say anything and the other half the room would try to say whatever they thought he wanted to hear and he would get really annoyed and he would say guys, ladies and gentlemen, I am not paying you to keep your opinions to yourself. You're getting paid to bring opinions to work. Please share them with us.
Speaker 2:I mean, that to me is kind of a leadership principle that I think about a lot and whenever I have, you know, I'm with a client and I see people sort of kowtowing to an authority figure, I bring up that story. I'm like, hey, nobody should kowtow to anybody. You should share your opinions. That's why you're here. Are there any lessons like that that you remember from the early days?
Speaker 3:You know the military side of many people's thought process and we, the military, hires very young, you know inexperienced people and makes and shapes them. You know young men, many times by young women too, in when they're 17, 18, 19 years old, and those early and formative years that conversation you just had probably doesn't exist. Young men and young women I'd like to hear your ideas. They're probably more like the boot camp world that you might see in a movie or things and that there's a reason for that. You know there's.
Speaker 3:But, as in them, on the military side, as people grow in their career, yeah, their expertise, their opinions, that's true and in the military, it's also true in business. So, as people develop, all of us develop as individuals, our knowledge base, our personal experience, and that's good leadership, whether it's military or business. To extract that from, from the people that are working with you, because that's the most valuable part of people. It's not, they're not all. We're not just going to tell people things to do when they go, do them and come back to get the next day's direction. As we grow as individuals, we grow as leaders and we develop our teams, yeah, that's a skill that any manager needs to learn and the leader needs to learn, regardless of where, what company you're in.
Speaker 2:Any other thoughts on your mind in terms of things maybe you wish you had known 20 years ago, or stuff that you've learned as an entrepreneur?
Speaker 3:You know, I think one thing that comes to mind is just this idea of developing management and developing leadership and the parallel that companies and that are Small and large, like IKEA, and the military all need to kind of embrace, but do it different ways. It's just, you know, growing your company with the leadership and management that's going to evolve, that makes your company live Into the next generation. So sometimes we think of a pure entrepreneurial play as hey, I, I started something, I started a business and and the end game is when I'm done doing it, I'm going to close the doors and I'm going to go walk away. But many times companies Grow up from entrepreneurial into something beyond, whether that's because there's family beyond or it just grows big enough. I'm gonna I'm not gonna walk away from this. This is too good a thing. I've got had a great idea and I've Expanded my great idea and I want to see it go further. And when you start thinking that way, there needs to be people to come behind you to take it to that next step, that next generation and years in the future.
Speaker 3:And I I Think this is where things like the military and companies like IKEA that have grown, you know, they start to have systems and process in place to develop people and and to do the next, to do the next thing, and I think that's that's a key, key learning and and something that we're trying to practice as well as just Train the next group of leaders, and if I'm doing my job Well, it's that's my main priority.
Speaker 3:Number one is to train the person that's gonna come after me to do my job when I'm not here and probably to do my job while I am here, so I can still be here to advise as I step backwards and they step forwards. You know it takes a lot of forethought to do that and and you know the company itself needs to think about that and and and support that. And I guess I've been lucky. You've been lucky that we've been in environments where, that's, other people in the company support that and say, yeah, that's the right thing, let's do that. It's what allows people to drive the ship and make dents and scratches.
Speaker 2:You called growth of retention strategy the other day. I thought that was interesting. Why did you call growth of retention strategy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did say that I. I think again you. Ikea and the Navy has growth, built into a large organization of Career with their probably this, probably a ladder. I can remember looking at a chart and the Navy saying, well, here's what my career path looks like in the Navy, I do this, then I do that, then I do this. Maybe there was a Overseas tour, there was something, and you probably remember Ikea had may have had something similar. You go from a buyer to a merchandise manager. You know, you know it better.
Speaker 3:Smaller companies don't enunciate the career path that well. It's like well, we're gonna do whatever needs to be done. So as people come into the organization there At some point they're asking themselves Well, I'm ready to do more, I've learned all the skills I need to do this job and I'm ready to do more. And if, if the company can't provide an opportunity to do the next thing, people leave. And Then in some ways, they should. You know, if you're a good manager, you're encouraging them to do more. You might even encourage them to leave if your company can't offer that. So I think, going back to a Good retention strategy, if you want to keep good people, they, they need to be able to step up In the organization and to do the next thing. So, yeah, they're connected there.
Speaker 2:Retaining people has something to do with growth within the organization, so I that they are connected and I thought of it also in terms of Growth being a retention strategy is that if you bring in good people, they're gonna get bored if you're stagnant, if you're not growing right, and they're gonna get excited and engaged if you say hey, you know what we're, you know $10 million business, I think you know. Here's how we can get to $50 million. That engages people.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I and in a smaller entrepreneurial company or just smaller companies, it doesn't all have to be about title. I think you know, sometimes a Big organization has the rungs in the career ladder are sort of is how you move your title and how, though, how, where you you move your Office? You know you move from the inter cubicle to the outer wall and then to the corner office, and smaller companies don't have that. But there are the things that you creatively need to think about it that gives growth for those people to stay and feel they're growing within the company. It has to do with responsibilities and project management and maybe people management and maybe even education. You know I'm giving people the opportunity to continue to expand the you know, sharpen their saw in different ways and those. So those are all ideas of around growth, but also that that keep people you know part of the organization and you know I think they're super important can't be overlooked, and If folks wanted to reach out to you one-on-one, where might they find you?
Speaker 3:email is probably my best tool, so my email at At Ivy stones. Good, it's just a b York at Ivy stone calm.
Speaker 2:I think I've referred to you and me as being somewhat square pegs and round holds in the gift and home industry because, you know, maybe it's this combination of big company to entrepreneurial sized. I really enjoyed this conversation because I think there are there's so much that big can learn from small and small can learn from big, and I think what I have learned from small companies is just I don't know that the I think there's real power in combining Structure and agility. Thank you so much, andy. This was a great conversation.
Speaker 3:Ben, I really enjoyed it myself. I look forward to the next project we do together terrific, all right.
Speaker 2:Hey, if folks wanted to explore other growth topics, you can find me on our website, realign for results comm, or you can just email me Ben, oh, be and and oh at realign for results calm.
Speaker 1:Thanks, and keep growing you can listen to more episodes on Apple, spotify or Google. We would love for you to subscribe, rate and review it. Share it with your friends or colleagues if you enjoyed the content always growing.