Prime for Growth Episode 3 - How Innovating your Culture becomes a Superpower

Is your culture dysfunctional and full of blaming and shaming, or does your organization foster a caring, safe environment where people can thrive? Are your team striving for excellence and succeeding through great collaboration and trust, or are your team stuck and you have a revolving door of talent?

This is the story about how a construction company, working in an industry plagued with dysfunction, dissatisfied workers, stakeholders and owners with billions of cost directly due to disputes and irreconcilable differences, turned its fortunes around through cultural transformation. 

Simon Sinek describes purpose driven organizations and says that "Purpose-led organizations put purpose before the metrics, and that over time, purpose-driven organizations are more profitable, have better tenure, and more loyal clients."  

If you're curious enough to see your company with the veils pulled off, and honestly face the challenges that may be simmering under the surface, you might want to listen to this episode about how a rough and tumble construction company found its purpose, and became a magnet for great relationships, people and results. 

Glenise Harvey's family owned a construction business, and 40 years along that journey as a second generation family member she became an owner.  Her passion, from her years as an educator, was helping people thrive and be their very best.  Glenise's journey of taking a rough and tumble culture of construction and transforming its awareness from blame and shame all the way through to identifying its culture as a SuperPower, was a six year (and counting) odyssey of commitment, hard work, iteration and methodically working it all the way from the boardroom to the field lunch room.  

Join us and learn how to transform your own organization, focus on a values based approach  and develop an aware leadership and an engaged team, on Prime for Growth's third episode.

Transcript

Angela Armstrong  0:00  
Welcome to prime for growth, a podcast about the journey possibility that entrepreneurs live every day. Our conversations with these everyday innovators explore why, when and how they implement change in their businesses and sometimes what happens when they don't? 

I'm your host, Angela. I've been working with entrepreneurs while growing a financial services company for more than two decades. I've learned a lot from our clients over the years and I hope you will too. Thanks for joining us on Prime crime for Growth. Today on Prime for Growth, we meet Glenise Harvey.  Glenise was an educator who found herself challenged by a family reality during a founder transition, she chose to become deeply involved in the curation of organizational culture, inside her family's 40 plus year old construction business. This involvement resulted in pushing her own and the organization's boundaries in significant ways, and to significantly fulfilling ends as they have achieved some amazing transformation.

Glenise Harvey  1:10  
I think in terms of intentionality, you know, like I never, I never set out at any one given point to to become principal of A&H Steel, which was really odd because it had been in my life since I was 12. My stepfather founded the company, my mum became a partner A year later, and, you know, it was it was part of life. And at some point, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher, I didn't want to be involved in family business, my step brother was working in the business, but I went off and, and pursued my passion in education. And then it it was just kind of this strange transition where I realized that I, I think maybe the, the turning point was to as watching, you know, as I watched her parents age, and they could no longer be the decision makers and just see Craig in here by himself, it's like, I, I really do have a responsibility here. So that's when I decided to step in. And there were some other things going on that, you know, I just needed to ensure that everybody here was being taken care of, and that the environment was respectful, and that people were honored, and taken care of that was something that mom and dad always always stood for was the importance of their employees to them. And not like anything bad or wrong was happening. I just knew I and I think maybe this is where the educator and me came out was. I just knew what it meant to provide people with an environment where they grow and thrive. Also, there was this piece of I was gifted with this, Craig and I became owners in 2006. And I continued to teach - he was in the business. So it was given this gift, and it's theirs. I just spoke up to the responsibility of having all of these employees that I I needed to ensure that they were taken care of, and that I needed to be a good steward of this.

Angela Armstrong  3:47  
So you, you and Craig became the founder inheritors of this business, this is not a small business, by the time you stepped into it, the organization, how many employees did you have in the organization? 

Glenise Harvey  4:03  
At that time, it was close to 200. 

Angela Armstrong  4:06  
That's not an insignificant leap of faith. And when you were in the education space, what were the rules that you were performing? Obviously, you started out in the in the teaching world, but what other things were you doing in that career path?

Glenise Harvey  4:21  
Well, I had, I was interested in leadership from the perspective I never wanted to be an administrator, but leadership in my area of expertise, which was teaching children how to read that was my question. So I am a lifelong learner. I love taking courses. I love learning. I love developing myself personally, professionally. So I had that was that was sort of my that was my niche. So as I was transitioning into the company and out of education, I actually took on a role where I that was all I was doing is I was working with children that were struggling with reading. Yeah, I was I was the president. In some ways, I don't want to say expert, but I'd already had so many years of experience and knowledge and so like, it's Yeah. It felt really, you know, when you reach that level of mastery in your career, it's not a struggle anymore. You're just in your flow. And that's where it was an education.

Angela Armstrong  5:28  
When Glenise uses the word mastery it isn't random. given her passion for education, In education, there's an objective of mastery that goes way beyond mere recital of correct answers. Mastery is another way of saying that you have wrestled with an idea, challenged your known information, gathered new information, and constructed a new idea based on this effort. In mastery during the process of confronting contradictory ideas or information, you generate new skills, including the ability to reflect and synergize old and new information into a brand new, more useful framework. That's particularly powerful about this idea is that in the context of changing career, Glenise took her old information into a brand new environment and enabled the transformation there.

Functionally being an educator, there must have been some moments where you said, How are these actually transferable beyond having this kind of fundamental passion for people? Were you worried about the the type of transferable skills that you were taking into a fairly traditional kind of environment in the construction space?

Glenise Harvey  6:39  
Yeah, it was. There were many times where I felt like I have no idea what I'm doing here. I, you know, in terms of the technical aspects of business, and even financial, that just was not my world wasn't my forte. And so there were many times that a question, what am I going to bring? What do I bring to the table? It revealed itself over time. And what what emerged was, I owe people, I, you know, I understood, I mean, majored in psychology, I understood, you know, I had a lot of background in brain research, and, and then also things like coaching, because really, as a teacher, you're side by side, you coaching your students, I also had the experience of providing feedback, what what motivation is, and so it revealed, though, that I have a lot to bring to the table, because I understand how people work and how they work together, and how do we get them to work together in such a way that they feel fulfilled and empowered and respected. And one of the things that I really remember thinking to myself, are our guys out in the field, for example, that are in their trade, tradesmen, and they work really hard, and it's not a it's a tough environment. And I really wanted them to get that they're professional. They know their craft, and they're really good at what they do. And so how do we build them up? And that's it. I didn't, I actually didn't come up with their purpose statement, my leadership team did. And what was so beautiful was they came up with "we elevate others"

Angela Armstrong  8:28  
 purpose, statement doesn't sound like it's something that all construction companies spend time on. 

Glenise Harvey  8:34  
I have the wonderful opportunity of meeting Bea Benkova. And Bea and her sister, Tatiana, who had founded an organization called the Global Institute for evolving women.

Angela Armstrong  8:51  
The Global Institute for evolving women is an organization that offers mentorship for female CEOs and leaders with a single purpose statement, a commitment to making a difference, and producing extraordinary results. They're engaged in global training and conversations with women in all walks of life, from politics, to business, to academics, and science. 

Glenise Harvey  9:14  
And I had to I was, I was taking a course with them. One of the books that Bea had recommended that I read was by Richard Barrett. Actually, there were two books that I read by Richard Barrett one was what my soul told me. And the other one was purpose driven, values driven organization. I don't know that that's the exact title. And I remember opening it and, and reading it, and this is, you know, this would have been in like 2014 2015. So I'm still teaching and I'm, I'm coming into the office and I'm working with boys and boardroom and it's such a different world. And I reading this book and I was like, that's it. This is what I want for a new age, I want us to have a strong purpose. And I want us to have a set of core values. And I want those to become our North Star. And then everything I do I get chills when I talk about this because then everything just aligns right when you when you got a clear sense of what those are, your decision making your everything, how you how you operate as an organization all go back to your purpose in your values.

Angela Armstrong  10:41  
Richard Barrett is an mechanical engineer by training. But through his work at the World Bank and decades of leadership study, he's generated a leadership framework that shows people's evolution on a continuum, from viability through to contribution, His  Barrett values center believes in value focused perspective to leadership, recognizing that organizational culture is a key to transforming society. And that leaders using fear driven energy known as personal entropy, actually create cultural entropy in their organizations. In other words, energy used in unproductive work inside the organization. Interestingly, traits of entropy laden organizations are things like they're detail oriented, they're authoritarian, they're analytical, they're goals oriented, they're committed, and they may even be very knowledgeable in their industry. This compares with leaders in what are classified as low entropy organizations, and their key characteristics revolve more around descriptors such as accessible and positive attitude.

Glenise Harvey  11:48  
And so at the same time, I had met, through you I had met Bea Bohn Meyer, which I mean, she's just been such an  - I'm thrilled to work with her as well, in the whole world of culture, because she helped me make the invisible visible. And there's just challenges too, because I see things differently than the boys do. Right? And so coming into their world and saying, Hey, guys, we're gonna like, we're gonna come up with purpose and values, and we can like, like, Who's the weird kid on the playground?

Angela Armstrong  12:27  
I was gonna ask you, what was that first board meeting Like,  where you said, I know, let's all sit around. And we don't have to actually hold hands. But we have to feel like we're holding hands. Because we're all in this together, guys. And we're gonna, we're gonna forge this purpose driven. And they were like, Can we just install rebar? What, what was that first conversation like,

Glenise Harvey  12:49  
Oh, my gosh, there were many conversations that I really did feel like the weird kid that showed up on the playground, you know, that was I sort of I have this visual Pippi Longstocking? And it's like, Where did she come from. And these are just crazy ideas. Um, and with time and with bringing in people like beta, Vic Miraj has done just a lot of work with us when it comes to operate or teaching our values to develop your people and in living our values. Slowly, these things started to have validity and they started to make sense. But it was one of those things where I had to say to them, just believe it and trust that this is this is a thing, and it will work. And one of the great things that I have to say about Craig, who's my step brother, my business partner, is he thought it was all a little strange. But he never got in the way. And, you know, he wasn't necessarily cheering me on because it was really it really is kind of a strange thing to bring into construct a rebar company. But he he did. He did take that attitude of Okay, I'll believe it. And maybe we'll see it.

Angela Armstrong  14:12  
What was the current state? What was the status quo in the business?

Glenise Harvey  14:16  
I just think it's the way the way construction in the construction industry itself. There's this essence I guess, I call it blame and shame. And basically, how it you know, kind of how it wound up being is when things go wrong, and things will go wrong. When you're, especially when you're building big stuff, right? mega projects mega mega problems. But as soon as something goes wrong, there is this like knee jerk reaction to Okay, who do we blame for this? Like, where do we point the finger? Who do we shame for having this happen? It was, you know, I call it old school. Like, there's this way of being that, you know, it's okay to speak a certain way it's okay to say certain things. There's right there's that. It was a world, there's a world here that's a little bit different from the world I came from teaching. And nothing wrong with the way it was. It just maybe the way I looked at it was maybe there's a, there's a different way to make this work. Like it's working, you're getting things done, there's no question about it, and the company is making money. So that's all good. And perhaps there's a different way of doing that, where we don't have that element of blame and shame.

Angela Armstrong  15:51  
In today's construction climate, it's reported that 80% of contractors have difficulty attracting talent. in researching what some of the dominant challenges are, across the industry, I came across some interesting data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists construction workers as a group suffering from some of the highest suicide rates, nearly four times the national average compared with any other occupational group in America. And that's not just limited to North America. In Australia, a study recognized a culture of blame is one of the biggest impediments to productivity and worker satisfaction in the sector. It's often characterized as a tough guy culture thing. And construction is in the top three occupations for work related illness and traumatic injury. 

We all know that if the friction of status quo is really hard to overcome, like any kind of friction or an inertia really um we understand how this environment works. And you might be talking about something that sounds good, but we don't know how that works. And so it's kind of uncomfortable, like seriously do I make a decision in the boardroom and do Kumbaya with you? I don't think so. I really want to talk about the facts, I want to talk about the project. And we know how to deal with the problems, the way we've always dealt with them, you're introducing something that might actually put us off side with our stakeholders might interrupt our relationship with our clients, because they maybe they're not acting in that way? Or were you seeing other changes in the market where your competitors and the stakeholders and the project developers, were starting to insist on a different type of conversation in terms of the development framework and how you solve problems? Is that something that was happening?

Glenise Harvey  17:45  
We're still having those hard conversations. And there isn't the and there was definitely a fear on behalf of the people that I was dealing with that, yeah, we don't want to sit around hold hands and sing Kumbaya, like we've got, we've got work to do. And like, I get that, we can do that. And we can do it with a different kind of conversation. And that's where I'm going to point to the resource that we discovered in Vic Mirage, who has a company called unstoppable conversation. And he came into the organization and trained and developed in how to have conversations from place that were not classified as blame and shame, but really looking at Okay, what what is ours to own here? How do we, how do we, how do we communicate what what the impact is on you on us? How do we move forward? And so we've spent the last five, six years like really going after training and developing our people in having what we call extraordinary conversations. They've made a significant difference in on so many levels, like how internally how people relate to one another, and how they relate with people externally. And just the work that the workability of it. It's hard to describe without actually giving, you know, an example of what that sounds like. 

But, okay, a really good example, one of the things that we bump up against is getting information, do detailing drafting, so we get drawings from engineers, and then we use those drawings to detail the rebar that goes into the project. And what we've been experiencing is that sometimes we need x, you know, we need questions answered, we need more information. And so we're asking the contractors, we're asking the engineers and sometimes they're delays in getting those responses. So we had a situation like that. And I said, You know what, let's, let's give this a go and have it have an extraordinary conversation. So we, we got the contractor on a call, and we got the engineer and manager detailing myself. And I started off the conversation with, I'm not here as a business owner. I am here as the leader of people development engagement. And one of the things that we're very committed to at A&H is integrity. Integrity is one of our values, meaning we do what we say we're going to do and the time that we said we would do it. And in order to be in integrity with this project and fulfill on our commitments to you, we need certain information, and it hasn't come to us. And so we just want to have, we just want to talk about what we're dealing with, what the impacts are on us so that you really understand our world. And we want to get curious about what are you dealing with? What is going on over there with you that is making it a challenge for you to get that information to us. During this and we got into this world during this conversation, it's discovered that they had sent us some drawings post tender that got lost in our system, and didn't get to the detailer. And we were like, Oh, that's part of the problem. Okay, so we'll look for those. Thank you very much. Isn't it great that we're having this conversation? And at no point, are we finger pointing? Are we blaming or shaming, we're just like, we need to make this work. At the end of the conversation, the engineers that this is one of the most refreshing and amazing conversations that I've had in a long time.

Angela Armstrong  21:56  
Beyond simply worker health and safety, the complexity of projects keeps increasing. And hand in hand with that the number of disputes on projects is also rising. Costs of resolving these disputes range from four to 12 billion per year in the US alone. 

So I had a conversation with another leader, whose name is Jody, and she talks about one of their core values, which I think will resonate for me with you based on what you've said, and they're one of their core values is trust in best intentions. In other words, you have to assume that whoever's on the other side of the conversation you're about to have meant to do the right thing, the appropriate thing, the timely thing. And the question you have to ask is closing the gap on information you might not have, which is exactly what you did, with leading with integrity and saying, we have a gap and I want to close the gap. And and you It was so opposite of blame and shame. How did you feel that what changed in your relationship with that? That stakeholder in that moment?

Glenise Harvey  23:05  
I think what what occurred during that conversation, perhaps in that moment, but even right from the beginning, when I set the stage for the conversation, saying this isn't this isn't a conversation that sometimes we're used to having this is different. This is where we're committed to integrity, I also pointed to relationships are really important to us, we're in a relationship, or we're working on a project together, we both want to get this done on time and on budget. So we're committed. So let's work well together on this. And I think what we all walked away from at the end of that conversation was a relationship. Like a feeling, I'm hoping for me anyways, it felt like side by side. It's all about relationship. And that's one of the things that sort of fell out of my mouth in a conversation with an employee one day was what his work if not a whole bunch of relationships, trying to get stuff done. Like it's people working together in a relationship trying to get things done. And if those relationships aren't working, then how does the work get done effectively? 

Unknown Speaker  24:14  
Right, and you if you're, if you're stuck in blame and shame, you end up with a downward spiral of catastrophe. Like, honestly, you can't come back from "Well, I'm going to point the finger at you"  because you know what, you're just creating a future vindictive situation where somebody is going to vigilante their way back into your world.   There's no productivity and you certainly not in relationship because now you're feeling guarded and skeptical. The people that feel safe within your organization, not just safe to fail, but safe to be vulnerable, safe to be wrong or to to comment when maybe they feel something as being something's out of alignment with maybe your core values with how you say you're going to do things and then you're doing them out of alignment with that. So I think that sense of using integrity as your leading point in that conversation must have been really informing of everyone in that project. So I'm curious now, when you are following up with the team that were at that meeting with you, I'm assuming there were a few people in the meeting. What was that conversation like with the team in terms of that their observation of what was the impact? And how did that the shift in the intentionality of the conversation go? And maybe in the outcome of the project,

Glenise Harvey  25:33  
I think, maybe the shift and I love what Jodi said, you know,  trust in best intentions.... 

Angela Armstrong  25:41  
Yeah, it's such a good one. I know I love it 

Glenise Harvey  25:43  
It's so good, because it really did shift the whole team from Okay, let's look over here instead of, you know, we call it already always listening, like, we're already always listening for the blame to happen. We're already always listening for, they don't know what they're doing. And to, to notice that you have that already always listening, which I also think another way to describe that would be unconscious bias. And to shift that to something more intentional, let me just get kind of curious here. What was intended. And, and I think it's a whole new way of being with people, and listening,  

Angela Armstrong  26:40  
You know and if I'm blaming, it's because I'm, maybe I'm hoping that elevates my game a little bit, not in the good way that you guys elevate people, but in the bad way that I elevate myself by pushing someone else down, which is obviously very diminishing, and diminishing returns in a relationship framework. But if you look at the stakeholder and partner relationships you had, in that traditional blame and shame style, to what's transformational happening with your team now, with this elevating people in the sense of every project is merely a series of relational moments, I think I mean, inferring that, from what you're saying, it's not a project where we're putting a steel rod into some kind of infrastructure, that's actually a series of relationships between people doing things. Can you Can you observe the change? And could you describe what that changes in terms of an example?

Glenise Harvey  27:41  
Probably, I would look to what is happening with our, our site superintendents, our construction manager, our our foremen, where they are really starting to listen and I they're the frontline workers, right? So stuff is happening all over the place, and it's going sideways. And so one of our values is responsibility. And it it's, it's owning it is how we call it I own. So what is there that I can possibly, instead of scanning back and say, Well, if you give them enough rope to hang themselves, how can I pull the rope away, and support them and do what I can to be on their team? Even though I don't have to? That's not part of my response, my responsibility, but it's my choice, because I want this project to go well. So instead of standing back and crossing my arms and waiting for, you know, them to go sideways, and me to blame and maybe feel better about myself, like you were pointing at is how can I get in there and get in the muck with them and figure this out and and work together? And so I hear more of that kind of conversation, seeing them being that way more? Oh, I love this example. So we had a, there would have been an error in the detailing department. And our site Superintendent came into the office, walked up to the detailer and he said, we have a problem, and I'm going to help you solve it.

Angela Armstrong  29:32  
Wow. That is such a great way to start that conversation.

Glenise Harvey  29:38  
Yeah, no, that is that is a whole different way of being from you know, and I would I would sit in on Foreman's meeting sometimes and you know, errors happen, and they're the ones because you know how it flows. And again, they're on the front line, and they're dealing with those errors. And I said when you pick up the phone, You start yelling at the person and blaming them for making a mistake and ruining your day. I said, so here's my, I love this, because then I get to bring my teacher into the room and say, do you know what happens to brain when when you do that? Immediately, all the thinking parts of the brain shut down and your lizard brain is what gets activated. And so now you're either going to get fight or flight. So you're either going to get somebody who's going to argue with you, and push back, or you're going to get somebody who wants to run away from you. And I said, in either one of those situations, are you going to get your problem solved.

Angela Armstrong  30:41  
Which is exactly what the objective was, is to try to solve the problem, right, we've got a barrier we, we got to find to get away over it or the project is failing. And it since that's no one's intention is to make the project bill. But that's that sense of safety. Right? Going back to -  I have a sense of safety, I have a right to be human in this place, to be frail and faulty sometimes to deliver in an imperfect way. Because maybe I just didn't sleep well, last night, maybe something else is going on in my life. And I can't park it at the door, I bring my whole self to work with me every day that I come to work with you. So give me a chance to be imperfect and frail and faulty, without making me adopt that as who I am. That's not who I am. It's just some components of how I made, you know, Misperform from time to time. Tell us about the story of that, you know, you're sitting around the boardroom table. Then what was the next step? How did you expand the circle?

Glenise Harvey  31:46  
I guess we should back up a little bit. Because when I made the choice to to steer a nation, the direction becoming purpose driven, values driven, there was the development of the purpose statement with the leadership team. And then with the values I actually went to, not all of the employees, but office employees. And I said, Okay, great. I gave them a little questionnaire. And it's like, what, what do you think? Like, what should our values be basically. And so I got all of these words like a flood from, you know, 30 people. And, and I started categorizing them, putting them in buckets. And by this time, we started working with Vic. And Vic's work is is based on four pillars, which are integrity, responsibility, which you talked about authenticity. And in our language, we call it no BS. So integrity is the I say it, I mean it. Responsibility is I own it. Integrity, Authenticity is no BS, and the fourth one is being bigger than myself. So I'm out to make a difference in the world. And in each language, I call it, I give a shit about others. So it's about it's about community, whether it's a new age community, what we call the age, family, work, family, and, you know, outwards. And I took all of those words that the staff gave me, and I was like, well, this is kind of like this one in this one, but I was able to categorize them in under those four pillars. So when our people are trained and developed by Vic, is based on those four are basically our core values. And our fifth value is happiness, which I love. It's our latest and greatest. So how it all started was with the leadership team, and getting them really developed in in living those core values. So then I worked with Bea.  And we talked a lot about how do you operationalize them. So values are not words on the wall. It's like, now how do we live integrity? How do we live? owning it? How do we like? How does this actually look on the court? So once? So most of our leaders have gone through an intensive program called being a leader with Beck. I've done it five times, because every time you send somebody I like to be present in the course. And it's, it's pretty intensive. Then we had to get intentional, but how do we get it to everyone else? Right? So then it was, now we're going to skip this group up the next layer, and we're going to get down trained and developed and then and now we're actually on so this is six years later. And our final like, batch of people are going are spending time with him. So now everyone will and they they know the language we talk about like we point to our values all the time. And so this is getting Like, they're really getting a firm under, like a foundation of it. Something else I want to talk about that a little different too is I hired a gentleman two years ago. And I gave him the title, people development and engagement coordinator. And I created the position for so it's kind of an HRy role. So he does recruiting, and it all came from a conversation that I had with Aaron, who is now our general manager in Vancouver, but he started with us as corporate controller and morphed into other things. Anyways, he said to me one day,

Glenice. Wouldn't it be great if we had somebody who would recruit people,  onboard them? And take them through their entire life cycle? With A&H and I'm like, Oh, yeah, that would be cool. Because there was also this other piece where I wanted to develop a program where we could bring guys in from the field or from the shop that, you know, had spent many years out working hard physically, and they retired, and they just needed to do something else. So many positions in the office for them. And so wanted, you know, wanted to develop that transitional program. So I needed some, I couldn't do it all myself. So I hired Brad. And what's beautiful about him is, first of all, he's a mechanic. So he's Red Seal mechanic works, you know, for a number of years on vehicles and doing that as a tradesman. And he decided that he, so he did a lot of personal development work, and was got to the point where he was actually facilitating courses in personal development, had started his own coaching company life coach. And so he had this beautiful combination of, I got guys, and I know how to coach people. And brought him in. And he also was really instrumental in helping to develop people in our values, but he also helps to facilitate those authentic conversations that are really, really challenging for people. So he will either coach them on how to have one of those conversations, or he will sit in the room with them. And I can't tell you, Angela, what an incredible difference that has made for our people to be able to live, particularly the authenticity value, because authenticity, those those, you know, those conversations

Angela Armstrong  37:39  
are so hard, they're extremely hard to have, even when you practice them, because you're always tripping over your own humanity, your, your, your fear, your, you know, gee, I don't want to expose my dark underbelly and my my weaknesses and my own biases, the ones I'm aware of, and then the unconscious wins, as you mentioned, it's extremely difficult to be authentic and be consistent about it. Because we want to protect ourselves too

Glenise Harvey  38:08  
Of course, and we still need to own it when we mess up. And that's hard, like you think and like, I've got it. Yeah, show my underbelly. That's not real. 

Angela Armstrong  38:20  
It's very uncomfortable. 

Glenise Harvey  38:24  
Yeah, like building near plane while you're flying. And not even knowing what you're ahead of I. 

Angela Armstrong  38:32  
By the way,

every entrepreneur I've ever talked to uses that analogy. Well, I'm kind of building the airplane while we're down the runway. And even while we have lift off, I'm not really sure that I've got the angle of the wings, right. So there's always the risk of crashing, we have these terrible catastrophic analogies for what we're doing. Because sometimes it feels like you're in peril because you're putting everything into it. You You went into this organization and brought your authentic self with your passion for people, your love of finding the the rounding of those people's self confidence and their sense of self worth and purposefulness. But if it hadn't worked out, you know, there there's, I guess probably a fear a little bit. Am I gonna end up with my tail between my legs and go in the other direction. Did you have some hard conversations in your leadership team and how did you reconcile like, what resources did you dig into, to be able to get through those tough moments?

Glenise Harvey  39:34  
First of all I have well go back to Vic. He's also my business coach. And so there he was on speed dial. If he had a dime for every time, he got to hear me say, I am done. I am so done. Done and I made it this time. You know, so great to have that space to listen and and really You know, always get me to what's so great. Like what? So like, you've got all this drama going on inside your head, but really what's anyways, he would coach me, I always I say, like, pick me up, dust me off and throw me back in the saddle. And off I go. I would say, you know what the universe brought me here like this, I was on this path of being a teacher, and I loved it. And then I ended up on this other path. And so I basically would look at it and go, I'm here because they need to be here. There is something for me to do here. And if not me, then who? And if not, now, then when. So this is mine to do. I'll figure it out. I hate that term.

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