Why Fast-Growing Companies Blame People for Structural Problems

life and design their leadership. They have to build the architecture to make the company work

“to have their people be happy. That's what I'm coming in to do. It gives you the kind of insights”

that you need to move forward. Christopher McCormick is a visionary business leader executive strategist and the founder and CEO of visionary consulting. Drawing for more than 25 years of experience, he helps leaders navigate AI and organizational change by strengthening the conversations that drive meaningful transformation. Opportunity any ever shows up as opportunity shows up as a problem. It shows up in many different ways but really if you step back and remove yourself

from labeling it a people problem or an employee issue and you start to look at what are the things that we built as an organization that are allowing not behavior to happen. You're only hiring people like you and only hiring leaders that fit your mold. That's problematic. Your employees should look like your customers and then you're going to have better ideas and know how to innovate.

“So whenever I get the culture question or culture fit, the first thing I ask is why?”

The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy podcast. I'm your host again, Jason Langen and yeah we have the privilege to talk to some of the greatest entrepreneurs from around the country, the disruptors and yeah like today we have the legacy makers and yeah we have a special guest with us here. What's your name, where you from and what's your business?

Sure, Christopher McCormick. I am from San Francisco, California and my business is visionary consulting which is an HR consultancy. I support leaders and teams in all facets of business and corporations and help them show up with leadership, change management and with culture. Sure. Before we dive into all that, you are all swagged out, man. I mean you got a great look,

“you got a super awesome jacket. Sure. That's really cool. Where does fashion fit into all this?”

Oh, I just I've always loved fashion. I've always loved well and I would also say

one of the things about my business is architecture and structure and figuring out how things work and how they become that way or how they're created in that way. Yeah. So fashion sort of fits in there as well as like architecture and design and just sort of as I think about my business I'm helping people design their life and design their leadership and you know they have to build the architecture to make the company work to have their people be happy and so all of that

sort of fits in in some way shape or form but I do just I love fashion. You got to just look good feel good. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, consulted for a building HR teams for top companies. Yeah. So I guess you know when people are talking about HR, we're talking about culture, right? We're talking about staffing. Yep. So what should we talk about

first? Let's talk about the culture first, right? Sure. You got a company out there and you know

how do you get the team to fit that company culture? First off, I wouldn't have them fit it. I would have them be edited to it. Okay. When we talk about culture fit, I think that can get us into a lot of trouble with then you just want to have a room of people that are in sort of a echo chamber. So if you're only hiring people like you and only hiring leaders that fit your mold, yeah, that's problematic. You want to have some people who's going to come in and actually ask

different questions, different challenges, potentially come from a different demographic. So that they're they should your employees should look like your customers and then you're going to have better ideas and know how to innovate. So whenever I get the culture question or culture fit,

the first thing I ask is why? What's going on? And what is that? How does that support your business?

Yeah. So maybe let's rewind it back, right? Sure. You know, what kind of companies are finding you? Yeah. I support everyone from early startups that are funded adventure capitalists funded startups to Fortune 100 companies. So it runs the gamut. I do a lot of work with small to medium size businesses as well. Yeah. I'd say my sweet spot at the moment is early startups. Again, I'm in San Francisco. Yeah. A lot of AI stuff going on. Oh, it's crazy. Yeah. It's in my backyard. And so I have a lot of

and then on more of the Fortune 100 side, I spent 25 years of my career in Fortune 100 companies.

“So I have clients that I pulled in and worked with projects that they come to me for because”

I'm a trusted person and I've been in their life for a long time. And yeah, they know what I do and what I can provide. Gotcha. And so these all these companies, right? Yeah. The coming to you with the problem of we need staff, right? We need people. Okay. Tell me tell me like, because it's not just general. It's also very specialized. Yeah. Right. Now, do you have a specialization that you know is your kind of thing or you just generally like any staffing problems? I can do,

I mean, from a staffing perspective and just an HR in general experience, my background, I have a background in life sciences. So pharmaceuticals held care. I spent years in technology and then also several years in financial services. So inside of all of those, those are sort of what I would say are the verticals that I know really well and can come into that with I'm coaching a lot of people

“in the techs and AI space right now. And that is really that tech background has helped even when”

I was in financial services. The last few projects I worked on in that in that company were all tech related. So it's sort of I kind of know what their day-to-day challenges are or what's keeping them up at night. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. And so what's what's the toughest part of your job and you're not in your job but your business and kind of matching people to companies? So I don't necessarily do talent acquisition as a general function of my consulting business. So I will help with your staffing

teams and help coach them on how they can do things differently. The first thing that I would ask

if you're coming to me is show me your piano. I want to look at what's your business doing because a lot of people will come to me with a culture problem and they'll be like well here's our employee handbook. Why aren't people following the rules? Gotcha. Why aren't they doing what we're telling them to do? And typically it's because you're you haven't built so going back to the architecture or fashion piece. You haven't built the rights structures for the growth that you're

going through. So if you're a 100-person company and you're planning to grow another 100 people in the next year, are your structures sufficient because where you'll see the breakdown is it's not about the structure. It's about the fact that Jay gets to come in as a new employee and he gets to kind of go about and do whatever he wants. So he's bringing a lot of stuff in because we don't have clear ways of working or clear decision rights or clear things. It's almost like okay so

I just got brand new funding. Yeah, a couple of million just came. Yeah and we're just like okay

we want to triple our sales team and then you're going to say well you can't just triple the sales team without having all the other things supported. That's right. So you've got to have your supporting functions, your finance functions, your HR functions, your operations functions. They've got to be as staffed as your sales because if you have all those sales coming in the door, if those people can't get all that stuff done behind the scenes, they become the bottleneck and they become the

problem. And then it's pointing fingers back and forth and that's not solving anything. And then the business still wants you to run and your investors still want you to make the return as quickly as you say you're going to do. So a lot of people get caught in the trap of it's a culture or a people problem when I would say it's actually a structural problem within how you've set up the ways

of working within your organization. So let's look there first and then maybe. So I totally get it out.

Yeah, yeah, totally get it out. Because there's a lot of issue like you're like okay,

“I can solve major headaches in the future. If you set this up, right? That's right, right?”

Yeah, because like there's those bottlenecks, right? Where are the bottlenecks coming from? Yeah, where is the headache going to like put you? I mean, yeah, I mean, there's so many ways. Like it's almost like those good problems to have, you know, great. You're getting in more sales. You're hiring more salespeople. It's going to be a great problem because you're having all this new revenue coming in, right? Yeah, but it's not a great problem. Yeah. It's all going to come

tumble and down. Well, opportunity, any ever shows up as opportunity. It shows up as a problem. It shows up as an issue. It shows up as an employee upset. It shows up in many different ways, but really if you step back and remove yourself from labeling it a people problem or an employee issue. Yeah. And you start to look at what are the things that we've built as an organization that are allowing that behavior to happen? Like, our people who's the first two gets to say no

or push back on an decision and what happens to them after? Do they get talk to? Do they get

watching those kind of things. Like who gets to tell the truth first? And if you tell the truth,

“you get in trouble. Yeah. And if I can tell the truth first and I don't get in trouble,”

then you really do want my ideas. You want my innovation. You've hired me to get my perspective. You trust me as I should trust you. So that's just to show up in a very dynamic way that people are paying attention to. Gotcha. Also, who's throwing the fireballs? Yeah. Are there trickled down fireballs? Yeah. One, and again, a lot of companies in this place are in what we would call firefighting mode, right? But if all you do is put out fires all day long and that's all you're up to and all you're

doing, you're breeding arsonist. Because the minute they don't have a fire to put out, they'll set one. Because that's all you have trained them to do. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So what when do you step back and

take the time to pause and think about our business says we're want to be here in five years,

or three years, or whatever you say? How do we build what's your business strategy to get you there? I'll help you come in and build a people strategy that will, will run in Coralel to your business strategy. It shouldn't be separate or disparate or bespoke. And then you think about AI, people are like, well, what's our AI strategy? You can't have a business strategy. People

“strategy and AI strategy. They all have to come together and be one strategy. Yeah. And you have to”

make sure that everyone in that company is very clear on what their role is. Yeah. And where they have decision rights and where they don't. And where input is valued and treated and how it's treated throughout that, that dynamic of working. Yeah. Gotcha. Because you're from San Francisco. You're from the place where it was, you know, move fast and break things. Yeah. Yeah, but it's like, okay, you're moving fast and things are breaking. But that's an expensive thing to break. So before

you break that, let's talk. Yeah. It wasn't move fast and break things in my own company. Right. Right. Yeah. So yeah. That's when you come in. So what, what are like big problems that you see? I do see the one of the biggest problems I see is people companies growing at a rate that they haven't built the structures for. That's one of the biggest things. Yeah. I don't, um, um, 10 common. Very common. Very common. Because they come founders and they have that mentality of the

move fast break things. Just ruptures. Right. Disruptors. And, you know, they were want to build their own legacy. They're own legacy makers, right? Yes. problematic in when you become the bottleneck. As the founder, Jay is the founder of this organization. Yeah. Every employee knows Jay. You know, all of their names. You know what their family does. You know everything about them. And I can't manage that person if every time I'm trying to get them to tweak performance or do something

different in their day to day job. Because I'm the manager of that function. If they just run to you every time they have a problem. Yeah. Yeah. You become a problem for me. You do. Yeah. And mostly founders. Yes. A lot of, well, in any leader of the organization, they have to give up that they have to have all the answers. They have to solve everything for everybody. And that they are the be all end all. They've got to be able to trust their people and farm those decisions rights back out when people

do come. Because you might have been in a hundred person company, knowing able to say everyone's name, knowing what they do and all those things. When you get to 200, when you get to 500, that becomes impossible. Yeah. And so we're working with these founders. Because they're the ones that have done it. They're the ones that have, you know, a lot of them can be narcissists as well. Right. It's just that kind of character. Yeah. Personality trait does well in the start-up

“world. Yeah. And there are kinds of people that want to achieve that high success. So you must work”

with a lot of different, you know, CEO personality times. Yes. Very much. How does that come into play? I tell them what they don't want to hear. Yeah. I have to tell them the truth.

My late mother always said, "The truth will set you free." But first, it'll piss you off. Yeah.

And it might piss you off. It doesn't necessarily have to piss you off. But telling the truth to power and people who have very big jobs and run very, very important companies, telling them the truth that nobody else in their organization wants them to hear or we'll tell them. Yeah. Because they could be fired if they tell this stuff. That's right. You hired me to tell you that you're a jerk. So I'm coming in. Jay, stop being a jerk. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the thing

you have done. You're like trying it. It's like below you to do this. I promised you if you had a client recently, they implemented some, it's healthcare client. They implemented something. They wanted to have this all work. Literally, the CEO came to me. It wasn't a people problem in a play problem. It was that they had managed the change. It was literally a systems change. And people resisting because it hadn't been managed very well about what the people who had done

seeing the evolution. So there were people kind of pulling back like, we're not going to go there.

We're going to resist this change when you can go acknowledge like the value that they created from what you where you were and where you're headed to. Then they'll start to come along that journey with you a little bit quicker. And with more, with more trust of you and your leadership, but the leader has to be able to also tell the truth. Yeah. Right. Because exactly in today's world, everyone's battling for those top level positions. That's right. And how are they going to

stay with you if you don't integrate these things that you're talking about, right? Yep. That's exactly right. And again, back to that point of who gets to tell the truth. And what happens to them when they do? Yeah. That's a huge thing. Yeah. To coach founders and CEOs around is where do you let problem show up? The issue and the other thing I would point to is where do top performers get rewarded even if their behavior doesn't sync up with the values that are on the lobby wall. Like they don't

have to they can have the how or they can have the why they can have the results, but they don't have to do the how. They have to have to be they don't have to do it with integrity or with teamwork or trust or whatever's on that lobby wall that people pass by every day. Pay no attention to. Yeah. But we say we have sposed and espoused. These are our values. Yeah. And yet at the end of the day, we're going to reward that top performer because they got all of the metrics. They got the revenue, the top sales

person, blah, blah, blah, even if they cut out people and sneaking the grass kind of behavior,

“if you're rewarding that, that's problematic too. So you have to be willing to have that hard”

concert. Yeah. You have to have that hard company. Everyone's walking on eggshells or watching their backs and yeah. So to most of your clients find you where it's too late, you know, because there's like they find you like you're the kind of guy where I feel like you should be at the beginning when people get the money, but actually these founders, I think they've done it all, they get the money or whatever company and they're just like, oh, we've hired the right people

and we'll just keep on hiring or we've got the money and we've done it. So we'll just hire. So that's what I'm thinking. Do people call you when it's too late and that the ship's already burning and you're coming in and you're saving them from people of an ship, right? And talking

me about that. It's never too late. Yeah. It's never too late to tell the truth. We're looking

the mirror and turn things around. I think that people actually, when you've messed up or made mistakes in that realm for a founder or a leader to come in front of their team and be like, I have perhaps the bed on this one, right? You don't want to say that, but you know, that's what they need to say to their people and then also let them know what their development journey is. Like, I know I've not been doing these things really well. It's impacting all of you. It's impacting

the results. It's impacting the quarterly results. Here's some things I'm going to alter, shift or change, or I'm going to test. So you might see me testing new things that I'm going to try. Yeah. I'm going to start popping in to just regular everyone's team meetings like three or four or five times a week. I'm not on the agenda. You don't have to notice me. I'm just there to observe, to get away of the land, to hear what's happening in those rooms. Yeah. So I just kind of thought

to something. Is it, is it the board that finds you and they're just like, sometimes? Yeah. Yeah. Like our, look at our founder. He's the man, but, you know, S is hit in the fan, right? Yeah. Yeah.

“And you need to bring in someone. That's right. It kind of, you know, take this bird's nest”

and make the architecture. Yeah. And nobody sees the mess before they see the masterpiece. Yeah. There you go. That's the thing you have to think. If you go to St. Louis and look at that arch, no one ever knows about the misdead lines, the overbudget prices. Well, we've got six or six. And, you know, they're kind of overbudget and everyone's no one about what's going

down with the Miami beaches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's getting delayed. But always the same Louis

sides. The 95 is always delayed, too. It's been like 30 years of income in here. Oh, I can get always under construction. But nobody wants to think about that. They want to know how smooth the ride. They want to see the skyline, not the scaffolding. Yes. And that's hard to do when you're in it and you're trying to get everything done. And you can't have an outside person. It's is a

“being on a dance floor. You have to go up on that balcony and be able to look at what's going on”

down there to be able to see it all. Yeah. Sometimes I'm brought in to see it all where the founder or the CEO or the senior leadership team can't do that. That's why I'm there. That's what I'm coming into do is to give you the kind of insights that you need to move forward. Gotcha. No, no,

on board and I'm like, oh my god. Yeah, you know, this guy. That's why it's visionary consulting. Yes,

“there you go. You might have started with the wrong vision. But this is where vision meets reality.”

Yeah, there you go. So I asked everyone, yeah, what are you most excited about? You know, what's on the horizon? What's your got cooking? There's a lot that I'm excited about. I've been on an advisory board for women's technology nonprofit that I've been about for 10 plus years. There are annual conferences coming up. It's called Tech Futures in New York. So very excited to go be there, be around really smart women who are in technology who've been in STEM

careers who, you know, have been the only female in a room full of engineers, have been the only black person in a room full of white people. The only been the only gay person who's out and been in a room full of all straight coworkers. So it's those marginalized communities that all sort of

“come together and those group of people who who've had those hardships and dealt with those”

challenges to go and be there with them is sort of like plugging back in and getting energy where you don't get to work with that every single day. So I'm very excited for that. Yeah. And then I'm I just joined the board of an AI company that's starting up. So that taking on that role along with running businesses, AI, there's that's different AI. I would say this is more about AI with integrity, being coherent to what it needs to be doing. And so from a compliance and that we've

talked about the wild wild west of AI and everybody sort of often in their own thing. This is about how do you integrate it in a way that is coherent to your culture that's a coherent to your company that is coherent to what you're up to in the world. And the mantra of that

“organization, and I can't quite say what it is just yet, but it's do more good than harm. And part”

of that model is to make sure that companies are writing the wrongs of the past, that they're doing the work that they need to be doing to make sure the world works for everybody. Yeah. Yeah, right now this kind of like the AI arms race, right? And there it's like the wild west, as you say. Yeah. And but all these people are raising the flag of like, hey, we should integrate these kind of rules, right? Right. And then so maybe your companies trying to say, well,

while they're doing the arms race, what happens when we integrate these these things so that when they're all saying that their arms race is, you know, I'm gone too far. They're going to look to us, because we've already seen what AI looks like when you integrate all the things. Yeah. And what you know, if you do stuff with integrity, and you do things that are

breakthrough, you'll see that you don't necessarily need to build a ton of data centers with

water and pull all that resources from the environment. Yeah. When you're in coherence, it actually operates differently. It doesn't get hot. It doesn't need all the cooling agents. It doesn't need all that water. We don't need all those data centers. It actually, when you become more coherent with what you're trying to do requires less energy, because you're in a flow. You're in a state, and you're in a place in a space that's actually serving the purpose and the community

of what you're trying to do. It's not just about making money and being the only that that whole whatever you called it, the race to whatever. Yeah, the arms race. Good luck. That that's been everybody since, you know, the dawn of time wants to be like on front of it and in front of it.

How about we do it well? Yeah. I'd rather do something of it. Well, and sustainable, then be the first

perfect. And sometimes that takes time to step back, reflect, do the work. And again, that architecting, that construction, that plan, and start to build what you know is the right thing. Yeah. Versus the quickest thing or the first thing. Gotcha. Perfect. Well, you got a lot of great projects on the horizon, right? You're project. Yeah. Who your horizon looks bright and great for our future, right? Yeah. So yeah, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show and joining me here

and kind of educating me on the HR architecture and everything. You bet. But yeah, I mean, if you guys want to come back to his legacy makers show and, you know, do the deep dive into, you know, how we got there and more into what he does than, yeah, tune in. And thank you guys for joining us. And we'll see you again. Cheers, everyone.