The Talent Forge: Shaping the Future of Training and Development with Jay Johnson

Transforming Vision into Action: Emma Rainville's Guide to Operations

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 35

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Dive into an insightful conversation with Emma Rainville, dubbed the Wizard of Ops, as she shares her unparalleled wisdom on the intersection of operations and talent development. With an incredible journey from managing one of the largest HVAC companies in Texas to becoming a fractional COO, Emma unveils the secret ingredients for operational success. 


Join us as we explore the fundamentals of effective operations in talent development. This discussion serves as an invaluable resource for anyone looking to enhance their organizational effectiveness and drive meaningful change. 

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of training and development. Today we have a special guest who is known as the Wizard of Ops, emma Rainville. Welcome to the show, emma. Thank you so much for having me, jay. Yeah, emma, I'm really excited about this conversation because I think it is something that in talent development and learning development, we often see kind of a failure to really think about long-term operations or how to structure our operations. But before we do that, let's get you acclimated to the audience. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this space.

Emma Rainville:

Sure. So I am a fractional COO. I work with multiple people in direct response coaching mastermind spaces. I stumbled upon it on accident. I was a COO of a large service company, an HVAC company, the largest HVAC company in Texas and life happened and I needed a remote job. So I started doing SOPs for direct response marketers. Then I became the COO of a company, then I grew that company, then I grew it some more, Then I started a fractional COO service, then I started a customer service agency, then I started a media agency and it just kind of exploded from there. Life just did it for me. But, um, I found that I have a true passion for operations and I have a true passion to help visionary leaders who are trying to impact the world in a positive way. I really enjoy helping them make money doing it, um, and helping them help as many people and touch as many lives as we can, because I have no ability to do that, so I have to somehow I love it, you know.

Jay Johnson:

so I do want to dig into that COO experience because, from a talent development perspective, oftentimes you know it's the operations officer that's really got their finger on the pulse of the entirety of the business. And when something is brought down to L&D or to the talent development space, oftentimes they're told we need a training on blank and the COO or the executive team. They may have a bigger vision, but that doesn't mean that that's always translated. So if we're in talent development and the COO or the CEO or whomever brings that sort of directive down, how might we be able to get more information? Or how might we be able to establish a conversation to better understand, okay, what's the real need here and how do we operate forward to make sure that we're hitting the business objectives? Can you comment on that?

Emma Rainville:

Absolutely. I'm going to bring it back a little bit, though, jay, because I think a lot of people in the space don't have COOs, they don't find it important enough to spend money on, which obviously I feel is a mistake. But let's just go with that, because I think that what you'll find is either the COO isn't a true COO, they're more like a project manager, or a product creator named COO isn't a true COO, they're more like a project manager or a product creator named COO. Very few people in our space are true and real COOs that know how to run a COO role. So I just want to put that out there Now. That makes a lot of sense.

Emma Rainville:

I also believe that in the space of helping people, believe that in the space of helping people, it isn't actually that hard to run operations because the business is so simplified. So let's go back to your question on what if there's a new course? What if there's a new initiative? What if there's a new training that needs to happen, a workshop, whatever? I think that the easiest and best path for anyone ever, whether they have a CEO or not, is to start with a foundational framework. What is your vision? Who exactly is your avatar that you're trying to help, what are you trying to provide them today and what are you going to provide them tomorrow? Because that allows us to strategically plan how we position everything from our members area that may not be able to support future products to our merchant area that may not be able to support future products, to our merchant accounts that may not be able to support future initiatives and products and coaching, and it just really sets what we're doing, why we're doing it and who we're doing it with.

Jay Johnson:

Sure. Yeah, Outlining getting that up front seems to make a lot of sense, right, because then we know what our employees have to do to provide that promise of value.

Emma Rainville:

Right, and we're also using a lot of vendors a lot of times. So being able to say I help people lose weight or I help people build businesses or I help people grow their portfolios, that's just not enough. We need a true vision, a true mission, a true purpose, a true cause, a true avatar and true uniques that we can articulate easily for vendors and employees that are on our behalf, serving our clients. And so that's like the first and foremost, and I can tell you that every single person listening goes yep, I have that. Go ask five people that you've worked with over the past year what your vision is and none of them will say the same thing. I'll guarantee it. I've worked with a lot of clients over the years over a thousand and I've never one time had everyone be able to articulate it that didn't go through my WAVE program prior to coming on. So we have a program called WAVE where it's written vision, absolute focus, values-driven future and execution plan. You come for three days and do that.

Jay Johnson:

So some of our clients had been through that and and they could articulate it, but outside of that, never, ever sunny weather so well and I love that you bring that up, because I do think that it is a huge challenge across organizations where you don't have a solidified mission, vision, value, set of values or things that are kind of determining your future decision making or how you're going to operate or how you're going to show up in a time of a crisis or those types of things, and while everybody has it on their website as a marketing tool, it's not being used as an organizational tool. That's not it.

Emma Rainville:

And that's not it anyway. That's never. Anyway. A true vision has where you're going to be in a year. What are your commitments to getting done this year? What milestones have you hit at years three and five and what is the big picture on year 10? What services we're providing, what offers do we have, what products are we selling? What's my involvement in the business? Is the visionary leader or owner spokesperson, coach, ceo, like where do I live here 10 years from now?

Emma Rainville:

And so a vision is far bigger than a three line mission statement or marketing strategy Right, and so really sitting down and creating that generally takes about three days, and once you have that, though, it gives you so much insight into how to make decisions for the business, because you know exactly what you're trying to accomplish. And then the second component is creating an operational framework. So what's the framework that we live and breathe by in the business that allows us to reach the vision? And the reason why that's important is you've said it twice now reacting. You've used the word reacting twice, and a lot of times. As business owners, we're reacting. I don't react.

Emma Rainville:

I respond because I have a plan, and my plan is very strategic. I know what I'm doing, I know what my purpose is, I know what my focus is. I also know what things I need to be signaled to, to pay attention to, and when those things are out of place. Because I've created that plan, I don't need to wait until there's a burning fire that messes up my entire day. I can see that things are starting to smoke a little bit and I can get that under control long before it turns into flames.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and that reaction is oftentimes where L& D feels because it's getting a directive put down. So my friend Jess Almey talks about this all the time, about moving from being an order taker in L and D to being a strategic partner. Right now, I know what might be going through the head of some of the people that are on here. Okay, emma, I hear you, but I don't. I'm not at that table. I don't get to make those decisions on vision. I don't get to make those decisions on what the direction of the company is. Basically, all I'm getting is from either COO, ceo or whomever down. This is what we need. End of story. Let's move forward. Is there a way to approach having a better dialogue with maybe some of those decision makers or people that are setting up the frameworks for us?

Emma Rainville:

Yeah, I love this question as well, because if you're responsible for the product you're responsible for, or if you're responsible for the outcome and you're not responsible for the vision, you have to make sure that you've checked your boxes in order to deliver what is expected of you, and if you don't, it's very unlikely that you'll meet expectations. I don't know a person that knows how to anticipate expectations that they haven't been given.

Jay Johnson:

Right.

Emma Rainville:

Including myself, after years and years and years of working.

Jay Johnson:

I've tried, it hasn't worked.

Emma Rainville:

It absolutely doesn't work, and so, but here's the easiest path forward to having a sustainable relationship with the hierarchy that doesn't understand that you need more direction and that's I don't know a company that doesn't have or wouldn't. Upon request, get you a project management tool, okay, and you build out what you believe the offer that doesn't have or wouldn't. Upon request, get you a project management tool Okay, and you build out what you believe the offer, the product, the course, whatever it is that they're asking you to create Is it a workshop, like, what are you creating for people? And you build that out in a project management tool as a project complete, in full, okay, so that it isn't just because generally when you get a directive from a higher up, it's a pretend it's a fitness company. Go, create a seven day journey of metabolic eating that will help burn fat, with seven minute workouts each day accompanying them for weight loss and energy.

Emma Rainville:

Okay, that can mean so many things, a lot of things, and so if I go and I create a complete project on where I'm going to start a whole checklist of, I'm going to hire a nutritionist, they're going to give me recipes, I'm going to have a shopping list, I'm going to create the meal plan. I'm going to create the workouts. We're going to book a studio so we can film the you know, film the workouts If you have it all there. And then I say to you hey, jay, you wanted this done. Would you mind taking five minutes to look it over and make sure that I've understood your direction well and correct me where I may have made a mistake? When you take responsibility and ownership over I don't want to use the word failure, but over the failure to understand the actual mission of the task, then your hierarchy is going to be not only way more likely to look at it, but also way more forgiving when you didn't get it right because you didn't build it yet.

Jay Johnson:

Yep Well, and that's a powerful lesson. That also comes even from design thinking. I know we've talked about design thinking on this, of get the prototype together and that doesn't have to be a final product. That could be a cardboard prototype for as far as that goes, so that way we can at least kind of test it, get an idea Is this hitting the mark? Is this helping us hit our objectives? And, you know, are we on the right pathway? So I really really like that.

Jay Johnson:

The other thing that I heard you say and I think is is really is really powerful is putting together the project plan. So from a from a learning development background, or from a learning development or even HR, you know, when we're putting some kind of an initiative together, it's almost like we start with. We start with putting the content together rather than putting the organizational structure together. So this really does encourage us to really think about, go back to the basics, get the objectives down, get the resources needed down, get the research and timing down and all of those things, before you actually start putting the content together. So I really really love that project management focus Now, yeah, go ahead. Nama.

Emma Rainville:

I was just gonna say. One of my favorite parts about that is I can eliminate 20% of projects just by the first thing they open is the budget, Because they didn't realize they didn't even like. It just seems so easy. And a visionary entrepreneur, someone who's trying to truly help people, that understands what needs to happen, doesn't necessarily understand what goes into making the products that help them, make that happen for them, if that makes sense at all. And so, yeah, once you start seeing, you know production costs and everything else. I'm not even joking when I say 20% of the time I'll be told let's pause on this when they realize the resources that are involved, Rather than all the executives and management or ownership being upset because you're halfway through a product so they have to go through it with it because you've already spent half the money and they didn't even think it was going to cost a quarter of it.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. So, and and it's so true, because there are a lot of these different moving parts and some of them are absolute barriers, and I can imagine where budget would be a major one. So let's, let's shift gears here for just a moment. And now I know that you've been working with as a fractional COO and you've been helping organizations set up operations, but I'm going to put us into the context of all. Right, I am in the L&D department, or I'm a trainer inside of that space, or hell, I'm even in the HR department. How can I use concepts of strong operations to really help myself in navigating, because everyone, every HR person I've talked to, every L&D person that I've talked to, is overwhelmed, burned out, doesn't know which project to start, which project to close, how to prioritize, etc. Could you maybe talk about what are some best practices from the operation side of things that we could be thinking about to incorporate into our talent development space?

Emma Rainville:

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but it really is going through and creating that foundational and operational framework within an operational framework, just so we can be I. I I'm going to go backwards just a little bit and shamelessly self-promote. I wrote a book called scope, which is a foundational and operational framework. It walks you through it, and so scope is setting your vision, creating processes, operational excellence, people, development and execution. No business works without all five of those. No business works fluently, profitably and and um and and within operational excellence without those five components. So the execution plan is the most important part for what you're talking about. So when I have the vision, I know where I'm going, I know what I'm doing and I created my initiative for the next 10 years and it's a picture right Like things are going to change drastically as the world changes. Ai changed everything, robotics is changing everything and we're going to continue to grow and those things will shift.

Emma Rainville:

But my year one commitments. I don't need to figure out what my priorities are three months into my year or four months into the year, because I already created them. I have an execution plan of what I'm going to do this year. I have commitments of what I'm going to accomplish and then priorities are already set for me. So, as there's always going to be issues within businesses and fires that need to be put out, but there'll be a lot less because I planned be put out, but there'll be a lot less because I planned and as they come in I'll be able to look at them and prioritize based off of consequence of them, existing right, their mere existence. But overall, new projects, new products, new initiatives, new events, new whatever we're doing in our business is already planned out, so I don't need to figure out where the pieces go, getting nothing done because I'm spending so much time trying to figure out where the pieces go because I took the time to strategically plan over here. Does that make sense?

Jay Johnson:

Yeah. So setting up that sort of guardrails in the very beginning, how would one go about starting that process? What does that look like in actual application or implementation?

Emma Rainville:

Sure. So we generally do like a three-day, just completely shut off of everything. I like to do a Friday to a Sunday only because as business owners, we really just completely shut everything off. For three days in our business usually isn't unless you've got a massive organization. Usually isn't possible. So I like to do a friday, because a friday isn't that big of a deal to take off to a sunday and I sit down and the first thing I do is I look at my personal life and my professional life, and I look at both, because you'll build your business to ruin your life.

Emma Rainville:

People do it all the time. You dream big but you didn't think about I have two kids, or I wanted to have kids, or I have a spouse that I didn't write into the daily plans. I'm 10x-ing my business every year, but I forgot that I need to go on date nights and I forgot that I need to go to soccer games. Right, so I take and I put them side by side. What do I want for my personal life over the next 10 years and what do I want for my business life? And I look at that part really, really quickly. It's like if the ghost of Christmas future came and got me in the middle of the night and brought me to my bedroom window. What would my life look like? And then he brought me to my office window. What would my business look like? It's that simple on 10 years, because you can't go too deep there and I always work backwards In order to get there and have those things. What do I need to have done in five years, both personally and professional? And then I do the same thing for three years, and then my one-year commitments are really easy, because I know in three years I got to do this. In five years, I got to do this In five years. I want to have this. So what do I need to do this year to get marked off the list? So I'm on track for my ultimate goals and where I want to be.

Emma Rainville:

So that's the first thing. So that's written vision. The next thing is what am I absolutely focused on If you don't have an absolute focus? You're throwing wrenches all the time, you're seeing shiny objects all the time and you're never focusing on the thing that truly makes impact for the people that you want to serve. So an absolute focus looks like I'll make one up. We are. It's going to be a purpose or cause. So our purpose is to help anyone who's willing down a path of complete mind, body and spirit health. I don't know, that wasn't great, but you get the idea and that would probably be somebody who's making products for people to have mind, alliance, chakras, whatever Right. So that's what I'm absolutely focused on. So when something comes into my sphere, I'm asking myself does that align with my absolute focus? So if there's a building for rent or a building for sale and it's a great price and I can make a bunch of money on real estate, does that align with my focus?

Jay Johnson:

Probably not.

Emma Rainville:

No, so I get to start a new LLC or throw it in the trash. I don't get to bring it into this ecosphere. I keep it safe from that because it's not what I'm absolutely focused on. Then we're going to do values-driven future. We spend so much time understanding our customer avatar. How come we don't spend time on the avatar that is our employees and our vendors that are serving our customers?

Emma Rainville:

So you're going to sit down and you're going to spend time really understanding the values that are important to you, for the people that work for you, work with you to serve your clientele, and that's anywhere from four to six attributes. So mine you have to be a proactive problem solver to work with me. If you see that a problem is going to happen and you do nothing about it, you're probably not going to be with me very long. Integrity is really big for me. It's really important to me. People who have a we over me mentality, who want to serve the group rather than just themselves, is important to me, and so you'll come up with four to six of those, and that's the values that everybody who is in your organization both vendors and employees, and you and your executive staff have to maintain and hold value to 365 days a year, okay.

Emma Rainville:

And then, finally, is the execution plan. So I have my one-year commitments. We talked about that earlier, remember? So I've got my one-year commitments. Great. What happens when you tell a bunch of people to do a bunch of things and bring it back to you in a year? Okay.

Jay Johnson:

Well, in a lot of cases they come back and do it about a week before it's due. Right If they get it done at all.

Emma Rainville:

If they get it done at all. It's I forgot, I didn't realize, I didn't know. So we create an execution plan. The way that we do that is we're going to break down the first quarter, we're going to look at what we need to accomplish the first year, and I want to know what I need to get done the first quarter. And what I'm always thinking about is I need to get all of these done by October, because, I promise you, things are going to come up and things are going to happen and resources are going to be needed that we didn't think about and it's going to get pushed back. So if I have it set to be done in October, I'm definitely going to get it done by the end of the year, right? So what do I need to get done in Q1 by March 31st 2025, what do I need to have accomplished of my quarter one goals? And if I'm coming out with new products, maybe it's the research and development. If I need to build a new members area, because I really want an interactive members area that's proprietary to me and I'm having built, maybe it's you know, hire the developers and create the development plan. So I'm going to have all my Q1 goals.

Emma Rainville:

But now what? What happens when you go and you hand people things and three months later come back they're not done. So we set up, depending on the company, weekly or bi-weekly what I call breakers. It's a break from working in the business to working on the business, and all of your key players that are responsible for those quarterly goals. They're going to sit with you and they're going to go over each one of their goals where they're at, what they accomplished this week, what resources they need, where they're struggling, what they're worried about Is it on track? Is it off track? What's going on? You're going to know everything about it every week or every other week. The odds of them not completing that task when you do that every week or every other week are slim to none, as long as you've given them the resources they need.

Jay Johnson:

Sure, it sounds like I mean this is that principle of execution, the concept of being able to see, being able to track, being able to look, is no different than, you know, taking a trip and being like how far have I gotten this day of driving, how far have I gotten this day of driving? It's not like you're just going to one day, you're going to drive for six days and then all of a sudden be like where am I, you know? So that makes a lot of sense. Now, again from the learning and development perspective. Without being the CEO, without being the person responsible for, per se, growing the business, or 10 timings the business, can, an individual in an organization, or maybe the leader of the L&D team, the leader of HR, could they do this process or think about this process from their own position? Even if it's not the full company perspective, it seems like you could probably adapt this at the divisional level as well. Would that be fair, or is that something?

Emma Rainville:

I have customer service agents that go through this and customer service agents okay this and create this so frontline actual like, if you're, if your executive team is not providing it for you and they're paying you, why wouldn't you?

Jay Johnson:

Solve the problem.

Emma Rainville:

Solve the problem. And when you can display true leadership, what happens to your career anyway?

Jay Johnson:

Generally it accelerates.

Emma Rainville:

I hear all the time oh, that's not my job. Well, that's probably why you'll always have a job.

Jay Johnson:

Or not have a job soon.

Emma Rainville:

Right, right, right. You have an opportunity to take control and be a leader, and so why not? And if you're not going in the right direction, you just make sure that the person you directly report to can see like hey, I don't have any initiatives, I'm just, you know, kind of working every day. It seems like you know we should have some initiatives. Here's what I created for myself. Would you give me feedback on that? And if they don't like that, go work somewhere else.

Jay Johnson:

Sure, Well, and I like that because that's essentially if the guardrails aren't being put out for you, set your own and then you know, get the permission.

Emma Rainville:

You're responsible for your own life.

Jay Johnson:

You're responsible for your own life. You're responsible for your own life. If someone's paying you and you don't feel fulfilled, go make yourself fulfilled. That's your responsibility, nobody else's cases. L&d doesn't end up having, or HR doesn't end up having, a voice at the big executive table, so we don't get to make those decisions, we don't get to push those decisions or anything else. Then we're somewhere in between that executive table and the frontline employees having to both serve the employees and serve the organization. But without some of this knowledge at that top executive level it is. It becomes a guessing game, it becomes okay, you want to say-.

Emma Rainville:

I mean, you can implement this into anything.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah.

Emma Rainville:

You can implement this into anything. Everybody has a job that they have to do every day. If you're responsible for a marketing department, make your goals and your initiative, reviewing all the SOPs and figuring out where you can eliminate, elevate, automate, kill and delegate. So there's something that everyone can do here.

Jay Johnson:

Well, and I really like the absolute focus because I think once a L&D team or an HR team can establish even their internalized what is our absolute focus? Because a lot of the fires that you're talking about is extra work that's handed down ad hoc because we just happen to be there.

Emma Rainville:

I call it throwing wrenches that are actually shiny objects.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and sometimes that work can be rewarding, but other times it detracts us from the rewarding work that we were doing in the first place. So being able to say hey is my focus on engaging and empowering our employees, or is it really on doing X, y and Z that you've just asked me to, and even challenging? That is, I think, part of that process of being able to be a strategic partner rather than an order taker than an order taker. So, emma, from your experience and let me put you into the context of you are the operations officer. You're this fractional COO for a company and we're just going to say maybe a small to medium-sized company, maybe 50 to 150 employees, but they bring you in as the fractional COO and you're having to work with the HR team on, you know, making sure that the processes and systems are in place and under HR is usually talent development. What are some of the ways that you would engage those teams as a leader and what would you expect from those teams as a COO?

Emma Rainville:

That's a really hard question, mainly because I think that, if you notice, there was a P in scope and that's people development.

Emma Rainville:

It's so important to develop your people. Often, business owners really do forget that, and so your team that has tribal knowledge. If they elevate and grow with the business, the business will grow faster than having to replace them. And so you really want to. You really really want to develop your people.

Emma Rainville:

But back to your question. You have to meet people where they're at. No one is met in the middle and you created great change or great influence. You have to meet people where they're at. No one is met in the middle and you created great change or great influence. You have to meet people where they're at and then help them, walk them to where you want them to be, and they have to be willing, right? So the first thing I like to do is assess the team. That's the very first thing I need to do, because I'm going to do something different with almost every team. Are they super motivated? Is the morale good? Is it not so good? Like, where do I start here to make them a trust me, to build rapport and then to make them raving fans of their own products, because that's so important?

Jay Johnson:

That trust makes a lot of sense because I can imagine some scenarios where, hey, we're bringing in a fractional COO.

Emma Rainville:

Everyone's getting fired. That's what everybody thinks oh my. God, Everybody immediately, everybody immediately thinks they're getting fired. And so the next thing I really I am a big, big, big advocate of team building. Companies that don't spend time and money on team building are costing themselves a ton of money, actually. So I always like to start with five dysfunctions of a team with any work Yep, absolutely.

Jay Johnson:

So, hey, I'm pausing audience. Listen to that Cut that cut that sentence out that Emma just said play it for your leadership and get the funding you need for team building. Because it's absolutely true If your team's not connected, you're going to have a toxic culture. If they're not working together, they're going to be working against each other. There is no middle ground there.

Emma Rainville:

There's no way around that. Yeah, absolutely.

Jay Johnson:

I didn't mean to interrupt. No, that's okay, it's so important. And it's one of those things where I think it sometimes gets turned to oh, team building, that's a luxury, We'll do that if we have time, energy, effort, budget, resources, and it's like no, actually just like a relationship that you are in. You can't just give it attention here and there and assume that everything's going to be okay. You've got to be investing into that relationship and that is organizational-wide. You've got to be investing into that relationship and that is organizational wide. So I'm so glad you brought that up, Thank you.

Emma Rainville:

No, thank you. And team building doesn't have to be expensive. It also doesn't have to be time consuming. One of the first things I did when I didn't have any money was starting out my company and I realized like we were going a little bit faster than I had spent on the team. Except, team building has always been a big aspect of my career prior to having my own business. I simply bought the book and sent it to everybody, and then everybody read it and came and talked about it for an hour.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah.

Emma Rainville:

Obviously that morphed over time and we got together and we did more things and we spent more time on exercises and stuff like that. But I mean, it doesn't have to be time consuming and it doesn't have to be expensive, but it is absolutely necessary because if your team can trust each other and your team can be vulnerable with each other and your team is okay of letting go of ego and everybody wants the best for everybody else, it's huge. It's huge because we win together, but guess what? We lose together. If one person wins and five people on the team lose, everybody lost.

Jay Johnson:

Yep.

Emma Rainville:

If two people on the team win and three people lost. But they all worked really really hard together, everybody won.

Jay Johnson:

Yep, and that's the thing too is we're more willing to do and put in extra effort for people that we like and people that we're connected to, and people that we can rely on as much as they rely on us, and we're willing to call them out.

Emma Rainville:

I don't have a problem calling anyone out. I cannot have ever met you, ever. I can get in a boardroom. I'm a different animal, though Most people won't say Jay, I hear your idea, but I think that it's going to be bad for the business because if they don't know you and they don't trust that you're going to be able to hear them and not hate them for it Like, how many times do you think a day that people hear things that they should speak up about but don't because they don't want to hurt someone's feelings?

Jay Johnson:

A lot feelings, a lot I generally am of the same cut and kind of lean into Brene Brown on that of clear is kind, clear is unkind. And if I'm not telling you that you have a booger on your nose, no matter how awkward that conversation is, you're going to hate me for it later, eventually more people are going to see it.

Jay Johnson:

That's right. That's right. So, yeah, continue on that pathway, though, because I think that this is the relationship between that executive function and L and D or talent development, that relationship. So we've got team building, we've gotten getting to know the team, getting to understand them, but that relationship is so essential and I think that you know, whether it started by the COO or whether it started by the CFO or the operations team or anybody else or the L&D team, somebody's got to start it. So what else would you recommend in sort of bridging that relationship gap between, we're going to say, I don't want to call it middle management, but you know.

Emma Rainville:

Let's call it middle management. It's often middle management, it know let's call it middle management.

Emma Rainville:

It's often middle management, yeah it's very, very often middle management, and so companies freak out about meetings um and I've heard some of what's supposed to be the greatest leaders of our time say that meetings are wasteful and useless. I think meetings are highly, highly important. I think connecting with each other and as a middle manager, you can take everyone that you're managing. There's no reason you can't get them even on a 30 minute powwow and just say, hey, I'm here to hold space for you. What are you working on? What are you frustrated about? That's all I want to hear about today. How can I, how can I, resolve some of that? How good does that feel when you're an entry-level person or a low-level person working your ass off?

Jay Johnson:

Yep, 20 years ago, 10, maybe even 10 years ago, I would have been an anti-meeting person Like this is a waste of my time. Why am I doing this and so on and so forth, and I would say that it was by learning like structured meeting protocols like Robert's rules, an agenda and making a start time in an end time and I make it has to be an end time.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and to your point, all of my meetings have built into it time for connection. But that's actually like hey, we're going to spend 15 minutes talking about this current event or we're going to spend 15 minutes learning about what just happened on blanks vacation, but it's structured. So then there's an expectation, kind of what you were saying earlier. There's an expectation, there's guard rails and the meetings finish on time and they move forward appropriately. So I think when people do lament meetings and correct me if I'm wrong or challenge me, if you usually when they lament meetings it's because they're not running their meetings in a structured or efficient manner.

Emma Rainville:

Would you agree with that? 100 hundred percent? I agree with that. That's exactly right. And you have to have a purpose. Yeah, and I will say this though the one time that there is no reason for a purpose and you really do need to have this. It does have a purpose, but not really really is. If you're in a situation where you're a leader, not a manager a leader and you're mentoring your people, you probably need to, at least once a quarter, have a no agenda 60 minute with them.

Emma Rainville:

Check in you just check in and you let the conversation go wherever they want to take it.

Jay Johnson:

Yep, I start those.

Emma Rainville:

Those are the only ones, though. Those are the only ones, though Even me and my husband, he'll be like do you want to talk at six? And I'll be like can you send me an agenda? What will we be speaking about? What do I need to have prepared?

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, I do those with my team and I have one question that I kick it off with so what's on your mind? And then we go from there and that's it, and it starts with whatever's on their mind. Well, you know, I've been thinking a lot about X lately Tell me more about that and just really digging in and the conversation blossoms and of course we get to the 60 minute mark and they've talked for 45 minutes of it and they're excited to keep going on it. So you can have a really powerful meeting with no agenda, if the agenda is to just let's get people talking, connecting and exploring different ideas or innovating or whatever that might be.

Emma Rainville:

That should be. That should be when you're mentoring someone right. Shouldn't be the average meeting that you have with every single staff member ever. So yeah, I agree completely.

Jay Johnson:

So these are some great operational aspects. If I was to ask you you know, and I know one of the things, I know you've worked with entrepreneurs and I know you've worked with organizations If you had one big piece of advice, one thing to maybe even just think about to get started and I know we've talked about a lot of really great tools here. We've talked about having a project management plan, We've talked about the scope, we've talked about wave it, but we all got to start somewhere and sometimes, when we got all of the things, then none of them get done. If you were to guide me and say this is the first things, first and the most important thing, that if you do this you're going to have exponential returns, what would that one thing be, emma?

Emma Rainville:

You're going to hate this because I've already said it, but it's the foundational framework. It's the foundation. It's really, just before you do anything else, before you spend any money, before you start an LLC, before you do anything else, understand what you want to do and who you want to serve and who you want to have by your side to serve those people.

Jay Johnson:

I don't hate you and neither does the audience, because I'll tell you that consistency and being able to say this really is not only important, but it's essential, and it is the first things first that you should be doing, in addition to it being a really valuable tool for setting expectations, guidelines, guardrails and, essentially, where do you plan to be. If we don't have that plan of where we're going, well, then all the work that we're doing is just kind of questionably, are we getting to what we actually want? So I don't hate you for it, I actually admire you for it in really kind of focusing on that purpose. Emma, if our audience wanted to get in touch with you about operations, or about your best-selling book, scope, or the Wave, or any of these types of things, how would they connect with you?

Emma Rainville:

Sure. So I think the best way to do that would be specialopspodcastcom. We have a visionary vault there. My book is on there, but I have something called the Visionary Vault. It's my members area. You want to see how to run a members area? Go there, sign up. It's free. I never, ever, try to sell anyone anything on it, ever. It's every course, every stage. I've ever spoke on, every webinar I've ever done, every seminar I've ever done, every workshop I've ever done. Everything I've ever created is in there for free. Uh, operationally, I believe that goodwill brings, brings goodwill. So I have that for people. You can go sign up for it and just consume all of it and it's all yours.

Jay Johnson:

Love it and that was special ops podcastcom and we'll make sure that's in the show notes so people can get in touch with that members area. Pretty cool, emma, thank you. You know, talking about operations is not always something that L&D or HR does. You know, we really try to focus just on the people, which is obviously a part of it. Right, people development is part of the scope.

Jay Johnson:

But getting to that first things first, and maybe having that vision and understanding, where do we really want to take these people? What are our absolute focus? What are the values that we're bringing into the space that we share with our audience? How are we going to execute and really thinking about it in that project sort of focus I think is really powerful and it's something that L&D or HR may not necessarily do. So I think that the tips that you gave and the ideas that you gave really solid and definitely going to help the audience in crafting. I've even got some ideas for myself of like hey, maybe I had to revisit some of these things. So I want to say thank you for joining us here today on the show.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are together shaping the future of training and development.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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