IAM937- Author Leads Change and Transforms Businesses

Josh Rovner is the author of the Amazon #1 best-selling business book Unbreak the System: Diagnosing and Curing the Ten Critical Flaws in Your Company. Josh has more than twenty years of experience as a leader and consultant, working with all levels of small to large corporations to grow their revenues and improve their performance. He leads change and transforms businesses by communicating clearly about complex subjects, designing effective processes, and developing and coaching people. Josh received his Bachelor of Science in Communications, summa cum laude, from Boston University, and his Masters of Management in Hospitality from Cornell University. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

• CEO Hack: Taking a walk outside
• CEO Nugget: Focus first on the system, situation, and environment before you look at the people
• CEO Defined: Being a responsible leader

Website: https://joshrovner.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-rovner/

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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[00:00:09.19] – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

[00:00:37.10] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Josh Rovner. Josh, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:44.29] – Josh Rovner

Great to be here, Gresh. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:46.20] – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Josh so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Josh is the author of the Amazon number one best-selling business book, Unbreak the System, Diagnosis diagnosing and curing the ten critical flaws in your company.

Josh has more than twenty years of experience as a leader and consultant, working with all levels of small to large companies to grow their revenues and improve their performance. He leads, changes, and transforms businesses by communicating clearly about complex subjects, designing effective processes, in developing and coaching people. Josh received his bachelor's of science in communications and summa cum laude from Boston University and his master's of management in hospitality from Cornell University. He now lives in Dallas, Texas. Josh, it's great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:34.00] – Josh Rovner

Let's do it.

[00:01:34.79] – Gresham Harkless

Let's do it. So to kinda kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit, and hear a little bit more about how you got started. Could you take us through your CEO story? We'll let you get started with all the awesome work you're doing.

[00:01:43.29] – Josh Rovner

Sure. Yeah. So, like you said in in the bio, I've been a leader and a consultant for more than twenty years. I work with a lot of different corporations, small, medium, and large, and in a lot of different capacities. And throughout my career and, research and reading and collaboration that I've done, I started to notice that every time an organization was struggling, whether that was financially or with other culture or employee issues, things like that, there were common themes that I kept encountering.

And I realized that there wasn't anything out there that spoke to these common themes that I was seeing and helped executives and leaders to recognize them and solve them. And so, you know, my undergraduate degree is in communication. So I've always loved writing and I thought there, I think, might be a book here. And so I went ahead and wrote the book and here we are.

And I just wanted to do that to help executives and leaders in companies solve their challenges based on the things that I've seen that are the real root causes underneath all those financial or cultural challenges that everybody is always talking about, but they aren't necessarily addressing or even aware of what the real root causes are. So that's really how I got into this.

[00:02:56.19] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I appreciate that. In true entrepreneurial form, if you see something that seems to be a gap in an opportunity, most people say, why don't you create it or or why doesn't somebody else create it, but you decided to create it yourself. And I think it it impacts, obviously, you for being able to kind of, help so many organizations, but I think it also impacts the organization and the people within them as well too. So definitely appreciate you for doing that. And so I know you touched on it a little bit. I want to drill a little little bit deeper here, a little bit more on the services you provide, how you help these organizations, and also more about your book as well

[00:03:25.80] – Josh Rovner

too. Sure. Yeah. So, I do customized consulting services. And again, it can be short-term, medium-term, long term consulting. Again, small, medium, or large organizations. Any organization that is having financial difficulties, that is having organizational difficulties, whether that's you think you've got a bad culture or you think that you've got, some customer service issues or you've got clients leaving you, you've got employee challenges, those types of things. Those are all issues that I help companies deal with.

And, one of the things that I'm actually pretty excited about, which is unique that I provide, and it's relatively new, is what I call my company symptom questionnaire. And that's something that, I'm looking to to get going here. And if you think about it, a lot of companies do employee engagement surveys. Right? There are a lot of companies that do those and a lot of companies that create employee engagement surveys. What I found throughout my career and my work is that those employee engagement surveys or typical employee engagement surveys don't help leaders and executives diagnose what real issues are in their companies.

They're sort of very general and sometimes they can be good for public relations pieces or they give you a good general idea of what people and your employees are thinking. But they aren't specific enough to help you deep dive into specific problems that are happening, that are holding your organization back that you don't know about. And so that's where my company symptom questionnaire comes in. I look at it as an employee disengagement survey where you're openly asking your employees what specifically are they disengaged about. And I call it my company symptom questionnaire because it comes from the medical world. You know, you've all been to the doctor before.

And when you go to the doctor and you're sitting in the waiting room, what's the first thing that you've gotta fill out? It's that patient symptom questionnaire that lists all the symptoms from all the different systems in your body and, you know, what are you feeling that day and how bad is it. And then it's from that questionnaire that the doctor can diagnose what's going on with you and help you get better. And it's no different in a company or an organization.

And there are several common but critical symptoms, I call them flaws, that hold company performance back. And usually, it always boils down to financial performance, but it manifests in other ways. Poor employee engagement scores, toxic work cultures, call you what it calls it what you want, and there are a lot of different names for it. But that's really what it's all about. So that's another product, that I'm particularly excited about getting out there in the world and helping people with that.

[00:06:21.10] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's huge. And, I appreciate you, you know, giving that kinda parallel to going to the doctor because that's what exactly what I was thinking of is, like, so many times you go to the doctor because, you know, you have pain here, you have pain there. You usually don't go there because you say, oh, I haven't been eating well. Usually, that comes out by doing the deep dive conversation and understanding. And if you look at organizations and businesses in the same way where we're not getting enough sales or we can't seem to attract the right people, whatever those symptoms are, you get to use your expertise to drill down and solve those, problems and create those solutions.

[00:06:52.30] – Josh Rovner

Yeah. And it's something that, executives and leaders can do for themselves. They can work with HR. They can work with me to work through those challenges, And they can even and this is a great way of doing it too. Give these questionnaires to the employees and help them have the employees be able to get the good form for them to speak their minds and layout in the open the issues that the executives and leaders need to solve for things to move forward in their companies and for them to grow and scale and overcome the challenges that they need to come to overcome.

[00:07:25.69] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself or your business or a combination of both. But what do you feel kinda sets you apart and

[00:07:36.10] – Josh Rovner

makes you unique? I think my secret sauce is really about how I approach things. I approach things first by looking at all of the elements of the work environment, and I call that the system. Hence, my book Unbreak the System. Organizations, and companies, like it or not, are all systems, and they're a whole bunch of different parts working together or not working together.

And I think that's what my strength is, and that's what sets my approach apart is that I look at a very systematic way of looking at all of the elements of the system so that everything comes out into the open. And, you know, we're able to solve challenges for a much longer term and avoid some of that issue where you saw you might solve one particular thing, but you create some other problem. I'm looking at things from a holistic system perspective.

[00:08:33.89] – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:08:44.39] – Josh Rovner

Yeah. So there are a lot of things that I could talk about, but I did come up with one thing that I think is just great for me and anybody else, and that is walking. And it sounds counterintuitive because, you know, we're CEOs and we're talking about business and so forth. But why am I talking about walking? Well, for me, walking serves four different great purposes. First of all, it's a great exercise. And it's a great exercise for which you don't need to join a gym. You don't need to use any equipment. You don't need to change it. You don't need to change your clothes.

You generally don't sweat and, you know, so you don't need to worry about taking a shower or something. You can easily incorporate walking into your busy executive day. And so that gives you great exercise on the one hand. The second thing that walking is great for is clearing your mind. You know, you always have a lot of things as a CEO on your mind or as any kind of a business leader, even as a person, you always have lots of things on your mind. I found that me there was no better way to clear my mind than to just take a walk.

And just the act of focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, paying attention to if you're walking outside, listening to the sounds that you hear and the sights that you see, and breathing and being in the moment. Great, great way to clear your mind, from stress and and other things that you're thinking about. And then the third thing is that walking is a great way to do strategic thinking. And many CEOs and executives, their day is so scheduled. Right?

Or people people's day gets booked up with meetings. They get put on your calendar no matter what level you are in in an organization, but especially at the top level. And so by scheduling walking, that's a way for you to build strategic thinking into your day, which you need to do, particularly as a CEO, or else you're gonna get derailed by the day-to-day of what's coming at you urgently, but that isn't necessarily the most important thing that you need to focus on as a CEO for moving your organization forward into the future.

And then really the fourth benefit from walking is that it's one of the one thing it's one of the very few things that I think you can multitask with. I find that walking is a great way to get certain tasks that you know you need to get done, like checking your email or responding to emails. You can do that while you're walking.

You can make a phone call whether that's to a colleague another business associate another leader, or a family member, or a friend. And so it's a great activity that allows you to multitask and be productive. And then when you are doing that, if you check your email while you're walking and you triage your email to the point where you respond to what you need to respond to while you're taking a walk, you know, it's a great element of productivity and helps you be more productive. So to me, walking is like the perfect hack for a lot of different things. And I try to schedule, you know, usually, four walks a day.

You know, I'd recommend everybody try to schedule four walks a day, especially if you do 10:20 minutes at a time. You'll get good exercise. You'll clear your mind. You know, you'll you'll think strategically much better and work through the problems that you gotta solve much better, and you'll be more productive. And, you know, I try to continue with that medical theme. I treat it like medicine. Right? If a doctor tells you you need to take medicine four times a day, you do it. So I really look at walking as medicine in that regard, and that's really my hack for helping myself and, certainly other CEOs and executives and leaders be much more effective.

[00:12:44.00] – Gresham Harkless

I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happened to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business

[00:12:54.50] – Josh Rovner

self. Okay. Yeah. So this is something that I tell my clients all the time, and that is to focus first on the situation. Look at the system. Look at the situation. Look at the environment before you look at the people. I can't tell you how many times I get clients and leaders and executives telling me, you know, I think we got a problem with our people. I'm not sure we get the right people for the job.

You know, my people are not performing the way they should. I need help with that. And, you know, I think there's something wrong and, you know, I think we've gotta do a deep dive into our people. And I say, no. That's the last thing you should be worried about. You gotta focus first on the system. Focus first on the situation in the environment and on the inputs that are contributing to what the people are doing. That's where you're gonna find the root causes of what you're looking for. So that's my nugget it always starts with the situation. Always assume that if you've got a problem, the root cause is situational much more likely to be situational than it is to be related to people as individuals.

[00:14:08.50] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I appreciate that. And so I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO, and we're hoping to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Josh, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:14:20.29] – Josh Rovner

So I think to me, being a CEO means being responsible, being a responsible leader. But I think that one word responsible is what sums it all up. You're responsible, of course, for the performance of your company, and for the performance of your team. You're responsible for balancing the needs of all of the different stakeholders of your business. You're responsible for providing your customers and clients with phenomenal products and services that they love. And you are responsible for leading responsibly.

[00:15:03.29] – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate that, Josh, and I appreciate your time even more. What I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you, get a copy of the book, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

[00:15:16.50] – Josh Rovner

Thanks. Yeah. I think we covered a lot of great ground, and, really happy to have been able to be on the show. It's great. And, everybody can reach out to me. You can get in contact with me on my website, which is just Josh Rovner dot com. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, and, my book is available on Amazon. So, if you wanna buy it, you can download it and, or buy it in paperback, whichever you prefer. And, that's the best way to get in touch with me.

[00:15:48.20] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Josh. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too for people to get a copy of the book and connect with you and see, your website and all the awesome work that you're doing.

And I think one of the things that I always kinda kept in mind is that to be successful, sometimes the most successful people stand on the shoulders of giants, so to speak. So I appreciate you for not just providing so much, you know, value and information for the organizations you work with, but also having that in the book as well so that we can learn how to be better leaders and have that positive ripple effect in our businesses, our lives, and so much more. So definitely appreciate you again, Josh, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:20.70] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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