Building a Culture of Accountability in Education: A Conversation with Jared Paget

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My guest today is the supply chain and operations leader who excels at transforming business complexity into growth opportunities. Today is here to bring some politics, not political. You're gonna try that.

Do you

know how to pronounce my name?

Well, now that you say that, was going to go French and say it's Paget. Paget. That's what I was going to go with. But since you said it, I wasn't sure. All right, let's try that one more time. Take two.

It's Padgett.

Okay.

My guest today is a supply chain lead and operations leader who excels at transforming business complexity into growth opportunities. Today is here to bring some practical insights on how technology is reshaping modern business practices and how we can create cultures of accountability in the workspace. He's the vice president of operations at ClearOne. It is my pleasure to bring on Mr. Padgett. Jared, how are you today? Welcome to TeacherCast.

I'm doing

great. Well, thank you, Jeffrey. I'm doing great. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

It is so great to have you here. We've had a lot of time to catch up before the show. You are out there doing some amazing things. And I'm excited to learn not only how technology is shaping the world around you, but also how educational leaders and business leaders can start to use, you know, modern technology AI to help make that business going. Before we get into our conversation today, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing these days a clear one.

Good.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm

a 20 year veteran in the supply chain and operations industry. I've built a couple factories around the world doing electronics. I've worked in a myriad of different industries from baby products to electronics to dairy equipment. Lived in South America, lived here across the United States and different places and have a very rich experience in operations. I focus on transformation, so making changes.

And that's always kind of the big challenge in a business is how do you change and grow with what's new in the industry, in your industry or whatever industry it may be. ⁓ I love what I do and I've been out, I do some consulting on the side as well as my full-time gig and I ⁓ love reaching out and talking to people. So looking forward to talk to people if they're interested in love.

You know, I'm excited to have you on the show today. We have a lot of entrepreneurs who listen to this. We have a lot of educational leaders who are sitting here as, ⁓ you know, new education leaders. And one of the questions that often comes up is how do you start right? You have this new position. I remember being a new administrator, a new middle school teacher, new instructional coach, new dad, how do you start to plan this job career? ⁓

Yeah.

When you first take on a role, Jared, what advice do you have? ⁓

Yeah, so I've actually

started a couple of businesses and I should say they were very unsuccessful. So probably not a great person to ask for. On the entrepreneurial side, I learned early that I'm really poor at sales. I just don't sell well. So that was that's kind of a challenge for an entrepreneur. But I've had a lot of different roles. And when you come into roles, especially as kind of someone coming in as someone that is expected to make changes and positive changes.

⁓ There's a formula that I that I use to do that and kind of look at the first 90 days and break it up into 30-day blocks and say okay What does first 30 days look like? What does the second 30 days look like? What is the third 30 days look like and it once you hear it it makes sense, know, because you'll start with Really just starting to learn and you know a lot of people I think Are reluctant, you know If you have a new boss that comes in most people are gonna react a little bit hesitantly and they're gonna say especially one that's

You know, the company isn't doing well and they're expected to make changes, right? And ⁓ the biggest thing you can do super especially at beginning is learn, right? And if you come in, know, pulling the china shop and start knocking over things and trying to rebuild things immediately, it's probably not going to work very well. you know, my goal as the first couple days even is really understand the people, ⁓ build relationships. And that's not going to happen in the first day. It's going to happen over

months, right? But really, have to start with, I don't know anything, almost coming in is, I don't know anything, please teach me what you're doing, who you are, why you're doing it this way, and really understand ⁓ what the environment is and what's been happening in environment. That's kind of the initial steps in that.

I think when you walk into any business, and we talked a lot about this on our instructional coaching show, just being silent, just walking in and seeing things, don't ask too many questions, just kind of, you know, see where you are. I mean, I, I remember being in my first coaching position and I didn't know that trick and first couple of weeks was crazy. And then I just kind of shut up a little bit and you run with it, but that seems to be

Yeah.

you know, it could be easy for some and it could be easy for others. When you're putting together this 90 day plan, is that something that you post on your wall? Or is that just something that you have in your back pocket?

No, no, that's certainly, that's something you'd probably build together with whomever hired you. You know, they want to understand what the expectations are and what your plan is. Because when you look at the plan, it makes sense. But when you see somebody do it, you're going to look at them for the first 30 days and say, you haven't done anything. When really you have. You've done the most important things and really laid the groundwork for those relationships. So yeah, definitely I would not.

post on the wall that for the first 30 days I'm going to be going around and learning because it would seem almost disingenuous to say, this is what I'm doing. When you actually do it, it seems very meaningful.

When you're having those gallery walks, as we sometimes call it, what happens after you leave? Do you go home and write everything down? Are you taking notes in your phone as you, know, whenever I walked into a classroom, when I left into the hallway, I would jot a couple things down. I kind of keep my mind together. What is that? And even so, what technology are you using? Are you using a form or something? How are you keeping track of all the new that's hitting you?

That really depends on where your environment is, I would think. I do a lot of work in factories. And so I would go out to the factory floor and kind of just get to know folks. Say, who are you? What are you doing? I had an opportunity years ago to open a ⁓ battery manufacturing plant in Brazil. And so my wife and I went down. was seven months pregnant when she got on the planes. had our first child in Brazil. And ⁓ my job was to open this battery factory. We hired a bunch of people and taught them based on the

the documents we had how to do the role. And after a couple of weeks, I started going around with the employees as they're learning to do this. I sat with them, talked to them, learned about who they were, asked about their family, what they're doing, and build relationships. And then over time, ⁓ those relationships allowed me to go out and have a seat with them and say, okay, show me what you're doing. Teach me the process of how you are doing what you're doing.

And they would explain the process and I would ask them, okay, that's great. How do I make this easier for you? How do I, how does, cause I know you've got frustrations. Everybody has a frustration in their job. And most people can tell you my job is difficult because of A, B and C. And I found that asking it that way made a very big difference. And I would, I would approach them very informally. So it wasn't like,

I came out with a piece of paper and a notepad and or, you know, a clipboard or something and I'm checking off boxes. It wasn't anything like that. I'd say, hey, show me how to do this. And can I try doing it? You know, people never want like the boss never wants to come out and do the manufacturing, right? That's crazy. But you, you know, you look at the actual steps of what you're doing. And then take their ideas and say, okay, well, let's look into that and let's, let's actually react and engage and understand that. then

At that point, you go back and you document what you're doing. I would call a meeting with engineers and say, hey, engineers, some person at the station says that this product coming down the line from the previous spot is, they have to do this, this, and this to it before they can actually do their process. So what can we do to change the process ahead of the conveyor belt or whatever it was to make the process better? And and kind of tying that into an educational space, as you go and sit in a classroom and

say, hey, I want to understand what you're doing. I want to understand what your challenges are with your students, right? I want to understand what you're doing and how your classroom is run, what your approach is. And then ask them, what are the challenges you're facing? What is it that makes your job hard? And what can we do as an administration or as a manager, whoever it is, to make that a better space?

How do you know if your first 30, 60, 90 days are being successful?

Well, I think you have to set benchmark for yourself, right? And so ⁓ there and there's background things that you should be doing as well. Besides just the get to know you how or nice to see you thing. You should be really making assessments of your the people who work for you understand what their talents are, what their deficiencies are, what training they need or what they don't need. ⁓ And then from a manufacturing standpoint or business standpoint, we look at a lot of data and I'm not an educator, so I can't speak to data and education. So but

⁓ we look at data and see, okay, what is happening and where are there challenges in the processes? And that is generally, if you're collecting the right information, it's really easy to see in a process what that looks like. And so you're beginning to make those assessments as well that are not just a relationship building space, it's an information gathering space as well. And so at the end of the first 30 days,

From a business standpoint, you should have not only built a relationship or started to build relationships with people, but you're also looking into numbers and understanding, digesting the numbers and being able to take those numbers and create a vision of what's happening and what could be improved.

You know, I thinking back to when I had my administrator position and you were introduced to everybody, you were walked around the school district, you were getting a chance to meet everybody. There were times where I did that on my own. And there were times where I was being walked around by the superintendent. And people, of course, were introducing themselves differently when the superintendent was next to you.

I

bet.

And it was until I decided to go out on my own and you realize, okay, this is, this is the real world now, not this is the, the guy standing next to you. What recommendations do you have? Because I would imagine as a leader, as somebody who's going into a leadership role, there are times where you're going to be meeting people with your superiors and there's going to be times where you're out on your own and you are the one that's trying to help steer the ship and learn as much. How do you treat each of those situations differently?

Well, I think being with the leader gives you some authority, let's call it, right? It gives you that gravitas and this air mystique of being in charge when that may not be at all the case at the moment, right? ⁓ But I think it's critical really to have those engagements outside of that space as well. If that's the only time you talk to somebody is with your boss, there's something seriously wrong. And I'm talking not just...

So.

to the people who work for you, but the people all the way down the chain. You should have a relationship with every single person as best you can under your umbrella. And sometimes that's really challenging. have a thousand people work for you, that's not gonna happen, but you can be there and walk the floor, talk to people, engage, even if you have hundreds of people that are on your staff and try to understand what they're doing.

When it comes to working and meeting everybody, there were times I remember going through where I met with the principals and said, I'm going to go walk your hallways. And then there was times where just due to the scheduling, I didn't get a chance to talk to the principals until after I met four or five people. And you knew that your conversations had already gone up the ladder a little bit. What is the proper protocol on this? Let's say that you are coming into middle management and you're trying to meet people. Do you always start at the top of whatever ladder you happen to be?

walking into or go around and see whatever time

Well, that's an interesting question because I'm interested to hear like how do those principals react to you walking into their school and starting to engage their staff because from a business standpoint, if you have a hierarchy, it's not a big deal, right? I can go in and talk to whoever I need to and if somebody has an issue with it, then we talk about it. But I've never had anybody come to me and say, why did you talk to so and so?

Again, that's because we have a relationship. I have relationship with that leader already and they understand where I'm coming from, what my goals are, what I'm doing. They're not threatened, right? But I can see people, I can see a principle being threatened. Did you see that where they would give you negative feedback or they would come and like kind of weasel their way into it?

I've had the experience.

Well, I've had the experience in two different worlds as an instructional coach. You're essentially a glorified teacher. So walking into a building and doing the coaching role where you're trying to meet people and do things. That's one thing you're under the administration. As an administrator, I was a cabinet level position and I was above the principals and it was, and I brought the coaching hat on where let's go talk about this. Some of the principals saw me as being above them and some of the principals just didn't know me and

didn't get because it was a new position. They brought me in in February. So suddenly who's this new person? yeah. So I wasn't even introduced to the district yet. And I wasn't even introduced to district level leaders yet. It's just who is this person talking? And I'm going, I'm above in so many words, right? Like, this, this is the position, right?

⁓

Yeah.

How can I help you? So I've seen this from both being above and below ⁓ the middle management, the principal level of things. And both times, you know, you the principal walks that building, you like that's the one thing I always take with me is no matter where you are, the principal owns that building. And I would imagine going down to Brazil, whoever is the plant manager or whatever the right title is like, that is their building, you, you go through them first, I would imagine.

Yeah. And again, this depends on your position on the individual. Some leaders, you know, a lot of people are just pretty okay with everything, right? And they're they don't get their feathers in a ruffle, but there are folks who really they feel like they need to control things. They feel like they need to be a part of whatever is happening. And that's fine. And you're welcome to include them if that's what they need. However,

your fact-finding missions, your understanding of what's going on, you can announce yourself, but I generally had a casual enough relationship with folks that you're walking out onto the production floor, didn't ruffle any feathers. And it was such a regular occurrence as well. That was something that I did from day one. So they expected me to be out there, right? I would try to spend an hour or two a day in the environment just so I could absorb all of the information that

So let's talk.

Take take me through the politics of all of this, right? You're going to walk into a situation and you're meeting all of the people in the factory. And they're telling you all the good they're telling you all the bad and you need to then go back and process it all. But you're still new.

At what point do you sit down with the leadership and say, this is what I'm hearing? Is that a right away thing? Is that a few months down the road when you can finally process? When do you start to really, I don't want to say do the job, but when do you really start to dig in and make some changes?

Yeah. Yeah.

So after the first 30 days, you should start looking at things. So there's, there's quick wins and I can tell you a quick story. had a great friend who was a, an ER doctor in Houston and he worked at a hospital, they downtown Houston. There's a lot of stabbings, a lot of shootings and all sorts of crazy things that kept in there. And one morning I asked him, he had worked the night before I said, Hey, I heard on the news that there was this, you know, a of shots.

Did you treat any of them? And he says, well, I'm not allowed to tell you that, but it was a busy night. said, well, that must be really hard because you're treating all these gunshot wounds. He's like, no, those are easy. said, what? I said, I thought those would be the most challenging. says, no, that's really easy. Person comes in with a gunshot wound, you know exactly what's wrong. There's a hole in their body, right? And you know exactly what to do to treat it. He says, the challenging ones are when an 80 year old person comes in and says, I have chest pains.

There's a battery of tests you have to run. takes hours to the diagnosis. It's a long, challenging process. And so I tell people, and I use this story a lot in engaging people, and I'll go into a factory and say, look, I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna see gunshot wounds. Things that are really obvious that this is what's wrong, this is what needs to be fixed. And we're gonna fix those really easy. It's not gonna be painful for anybody, except the victim, not really, but ⁓ like this is something we're gonna treat immediately.

And then there's the other things that we're going to see the evidence of, but it's going to take us a while to figure out. And it's going to be painful, right? To get through that process. Sometimes not always, but transformation can be challenging at sometimes. And so after the first 30 days, should, and 30 days is a very, you know, it's kind of an arbitrary thing. Sometimes it's three weeks. Sometimes it's five weeks or whatever it may be, but you should have a really good idea of where the bullet holes are. You should be ready to start triaging those and saying, okay, look,

I'm seeing severe bottlenecks or I'm seeing for a teacher you have a severe discipline problem during this period and what's going on like there is a problem here the other students aren't learning what is it we need triage what do we need to do immediately to fix this and take care of that and then you start plan and at that point you should also have kind of a good idea of these are the other things that are going to need to be addressed you may not have a solution for them but you at least understand what the challenges should be.

what happens when you need to sit down with those leaders and you realize very quickly that the problem is them.

Well, that's an interesting challenge, right? And typically, there are, in my experience, I shouldn't say this is always the case, but there is going to be a very large percentage of employees in a department, if they have a bad leader, they're going to all agree that the leader is bad, that they're not doing their job. And I've walked into places where I've gone in and there's a department that's underperforming. And I said,

sorry supervisor, you're not the supervisor anymore. I am now until we get this figured out. And I am going to micromanage your department until we get all of our ducks in a row and all the processes are right, everybody's okay. And then you may or may not be made the supervisor again. And it's a challenging conversation to have, but at the end of the day, I'm not there to be people's friends. I'm there to make the best choices on behalf of the business.

And how does that work? mean, you need to talk to your supervisor before you make that call. You don't just walk in and say, Hey, I'm this isn't like the cops, right? I'm taking over here, right? Like, how do you suddenly take a boss out of his boss? Right? What does that look like on your back end?

Well,

Well, it depends again, what the organizational structure looks like, right? So if you are an executive leader and an organization and your operations leader, that's an appropriate step to take, right? I have the authority to go in and say, sorry, you go in and coordinate with HR, you're not going in lone gun. And there's a process through that. you say, okay, we're having, whoever my boss is, my leader is, say, hey, the Earth's department is having problems.

this is what I'm doing about it. I'm going to take responsibility for the supervisory role in that department for now until we get things coordinated or figure out what the problems, what needs to be fixed. And then we're going to make some leadership changes. And typically they're a good manager. They know that they're problems and you coming in and giving them this kind of roadmap, but this is how we're going to fix it. There's no reason they should oppose you unless they're their cousin or something that's running that department. Who knows, right?

When you're walking into all these different positions, and you said you've done this a number of times, is there a difference between culture, procedure, systems? How do you determine where this lies? mean, this could be, you know, in my world, this could be central office versus the way that the buildings work. This could be the way that the union works versus the way that central office runs. This could be more cooks in the kitchen. How do you know if the issue is

Yeah.

personnel one or if it's a systems based one when and I know you said it's it's arbitrary but 30 days 60 days I mean it's not a lot of time to figure out one versus the other and I'm sure there's situations where it's very clear as day

No, I

think generally it is pretty easy. And I'll be honest, like in my experience and I've got a lot of experience. So it helps that I know what to look for. I know how to approach things and I am good at understanding systems and how those work. So I have a little bit of an edge not to toot my own horn there, but yeah. So. ⁓

If there's so and again, I dropped back into a manufacturing background. If there is a proper procedure in place and the procedures being followed, something should occur in the proper way. And if it's not occurring in the proper way, it's either because somebody isn't following the procedure or the procedure is bad. Right. And so that's why I will sometimes sit with the person and say, can I try it? Can I try to do this? And I will guarantee you I will fail miserably.

at the process, but it helps me understand what tools are available to the operator. What are they doing? What, you know, do they have the right size wrench, you know, things like that, or they have the right tools. Do they have the right documentation that shows them how to do it? Are all the operators doing it the same way? Because maybe somebody's doing, you know, this way and somebody's doing it a different way, and then you're creating different outcomes. And so that creates challenges. So you either have a lack of

input that is good input, so I don't have the tools that I need to do it, or I don't care enough to do it and nobody's correcting me. Right? So if I, again, you know, if I have all the materials to provide the, educational experience for a child and they're not getting that educational experience, well, that's kind of...

Well, I guess it's a two-way street with the kid because the kid's trying to, you know, it's up to them to learn. But at the same time, if I'm not presenting those materials properly, it doesn't matter how great the materials are or how great the principle is. If I'm not doing that, we're not going to have a good result. And it's up to the principle, theoretically, to be responsible for that and then use the tools that may become from outside to correct those.

which is the easiest to change a personnel issue a systems issue procedures issue a policy issue is one more easier than the other.

I think the tools like providing somebody with better tools and better processes. That's way easier because they typically I don't know anybody who wants to go to work to fail. I don't know anybody who and there are people I shouldn't say I don't know anybody, but ⁓ they don't last very long under me. If you're not here to be successful, then you shouldn't be here. It's kind of how I view that. ⁓ But if I give you the proper if I don't give you the proper tools, you can't do a good job. And so and that's why listening

understanding, asking them, how do I make this easier for you? Because a lot of times it's about the tools. And I'll give you an example of that. And this is kind of an odd example, but I worked in a factory managing operations. And one of the operations was making wire harnesses. So these are, you know, sent a bunch of wires you put together and you crimp ends on them. You got to cut the wire and strip it and put an end on it. And we had

quality issues. And we went and sat down with the operators and said, Okay, show me what you're doing to build these. And said, Okay, well, first to get out the wire, I measure it and I cut it. And then I strip the stripper and I strip it on this end, I strip it on this end, and then I get the crimper out. And I crimp the end, I put a connector on it, and I crimp it and they go into this process. I said, Okay, I said, Well, what are the challenges? He said, Well, my hand hurts. Like, it's hard to do this. Like, I'm doing this all day long for 10 hours or eight hours a day or whatever it is.

That's exhausting and my arm hurts and I can't always crimp it 100 % just because I don't have the physical strength. Well, okay, well, are there machines that do this? Well, yeah, there are. We went out and bought a $900 machine that did the work. It was probably 20 times faster than a person doing it. Just cutting it would, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, strip and cut these wires.

And then we bought crimping machines that would crimp ends on the things. And so now there's zero of this, right? I gave them the tools and we were infinitely faster at doing this and we didn't have defects because the machine goes bam, bam, bam, and it crimps it hard. It's a complete and consistent thing. So in that scenario, we had people that wanted to do a good job, but physically it was just so demanding that they couldn't.

Hmm.

but

nobody had explored what other tools are available to make this an easier process.

And a story like that, I'm sure you could duplicate over and over again for every job, where there's something that people just don't see. And when you're saying tools, I would imagine a tool could be a physical machine, or it could be a technology upgrade or a database system or anything like that. Let's talk a little bit about training. This is a this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I've been given the assignment for the last two decades, go train my teachers. And usually my first answer is on what?

Yeah.

And some and more often or not, Jared, the answer is, well, just go show them Google Docs or go show them this thing. I'm like, great. What do you want them to be able to do? And the answer is, well, you have an hour. Just just go like teach my son. My favorite one is always.

We want you to come in and do and forgive me on the terms, secretary training. Just go teach them office or Google Street. I'm going, but what do they need to be able to do? That's what I'll actually and mostly they don't have an answer for this.

And so,

no, and see, here's how you ask the question. Ask them, how do I make your job easier? What is it that slows you down? And you say, okay, now I know what the problem is. Now we say, we have a set of tools. Which is the tool to fix that?

Right?

Well, I and oftentimes that's a difficult one because they don't know and they don't know because they don't trust their people and they don't trust their people because their people don't do what they're being asked to do. But then they're not being asked to do things. So my only answer is I get them in a room and I have them talk about their bosses. And then that goes to the question of, what are they asking you to do? we're doing board minutes. ⁓ great. Well, did you know that you can do paragraph headers and did you know that you can do budgets? And and then they're asking for two or three sessions.

And that's a marketing technique. What happens oftentimes is, is then I get asked by the superintendent to go into the leadership meetings. And then the same conversation happens. Well, if you're putting little me in front of all the principals and the cabinet, what do you want them to be able to do? And the answer is usually the same. Just go teach them Google stuff. And I'm going

So I'm going to turn the question over to you because I know one of your favorite things is training leadership.

Yeah, well that's an interesting question.

Yeah, so and one of the challenges I guess there is you're gonna have a set of tools that are available and you're gonna have a set of people that have a wildly different need for tools, right? And so you're have somebody needs a wrench, somebody needs a hammer and somebody needs a screwdriver because they're wildly different things, right? And so maybe something that has been valuable in my experience is creating not just the tools but ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Right?

work instructions and understanding. So my goal as a operations leader is when we have a process, I have it documented so that if somebody leaves, I can put somebody back in that position. And my goal with this documentation is that I can sit down with somebody, we'll train them one time, we'll walk them through the entire process with the paperwork and with the actual thing they're going to be doing. And then the paperwork's good enough.

the documentation is good enough that if they get stuck, they have something they can go back and do. And the way I test that is I pull somebody who is from a different department who doesn't ever do this job. And I bribe them over and say, I need you to do this with me. I want you to learn how to do this with me or not with me or whoever's training. We'll go through the process, go through the documentation and I say, I need you to do it five more times. We're leaving and we'll walk away. And I say, if you get stuck, write down where you get stuck and we'll do that.

come back and say, did you get stuck? Yes, I got stuck. Where did you get stuck? Okay, here's where I got stuck. Okay, that means the documentation is insufficient in that step for whomever it is. And obviously you're gonna have different people, so there's different things. the more people you can do that with the better, but generally most of the processes, especially manufacturing are pretty simple. ⁓ So they're not a lot of steps. There's, you you do two or three things and then you pass the part on to someone else. So ⁓ anyway, so.

The goal there is to create a document and information database that's sufficient that you can go in and train somebody how to do something in a meeting. Maybe you go and present, know, here's a tool that you guys can use. ⁓ Here's some documentation on how to use it if you have questions, call me and leave it at that.

But the hard part is what do you, what do you do when they are two or three steps above you and you're walking in telling them what to do. Right. And, and of course at that level, everybody then has an opinion of how they want it done and you're going, well, I'm where do you go? And, to be, to be honest with you, and I'm just going to do the one plug. That's what's spurred me on to write the book.

What?

Yeah.

of how it's an operations book of how do you how do you do a school district and how do you do business stuff and you know I'm sure you've been in a situation where you've walked in and everybody has their own opinion to do what you're training them to do and you're going you know whether you're above them at that point or whether you're a colleague of them at the point or whether you're walking in as a consultant or whatever you're going but but I know this is the direction we're gonna go

Absolutely.

Well, let me give you an example. So we use ERPs, which are kind of the enterprise resource management systems, right? And ⁓ each of us in my executive level or C-suite level or VP level, whatever it may be, director level, has a different, it's the same system, but we all have different functions in that system, right? And so when we get trained, we get trained individually because going in and me seeing how they process the checks doesn't help anybody. That's a waste of time for me because I don't need, I don't have, I am.

not legally allowed in a publicly traded company to write a check ever. Right. So this is not a process I will ever need. And so any time I spend on it is waste. It's just wasted time. ⁓ So it's really I don't know that going into a a board meeting at a school or a leadership meeting at a school and presenting a piece of technology is a valuable thing to do. Right. Maybe that's maybe that's the issue is why would I spend it. What's that?

Jared, where

have you been for the last 20 years?

And it's neat to see what the system can do. And maybe that's the thing is look at all these bells and whistles. If you're interested in learning how to do your part, call me. And that's it. That's the end of it. And you're not trying to get them to repeat a process because that's not what that meeting's for. That would be my argument.

Let's turn the table a little bit. How did you get involved with all of this? Where did you pick up all this? How did you I mean, you just found yourself in Brazil one day? Like how did you become Jared?

Ha ha ha!

Oh, that's a terrible question. I warn people that as you go through college, be careful what you do to put yourself through college as terms of employment. I put my through college in a warehouse. Like that's where I worked. And when I finished college, I had a degree in international studies and warehouse experience. And my first job had nothing to do with international studies, not 100 % but.

⁓

I went into an international shipping company. That's where I went to work, right? And went to grad school, put myself to grad school, working at this international shipping company. Came out and became a buyer, learned how to purchase things. Then a crazy company out of Singapore hired me to go build this plant for them in Brazil. So I'd worked for Motorola. This was a Motorola production plant or a plant producing product from Motorola. And they took this crazy risk on me. I had an MBA, master's in international business. And they looked at me and said, well, this guy seems smart.

and worked with them before and I knew the processes, I knew what was going on in the plant and kind of what to do, but had no idea how to do this. Not at all. And I argue that what I focus on is called lean manufacturing and it's eliminating waste in a process essentially. And what I learned over the years is that lean is basically ⁓ common sense. It's just doing the thing that makes the most sense. You're trying to

not waste time, not waste material, not waste whatever it is in these processes. And that's really easy to do if you just approach it the right way. And they have really great tools. Don't let me kid you, it's not a simple thing. Lean is a very developed process and there are a lot of great tools in those processes. ⁓ But it really was me going out and asking questions and being open to learning from people. ⁓

I didn't go out to the production floor and ask people what we could do to make things better. Like, how do I make your job easier? Because somebody told me how to do that. It was because I had no idea what I was doing. And that was the only question I knew how to ask. I knew that when I asked people, how do I make this faster, they didn't give me any answers. And I saw that people were frustrated. And so being

servant leader and that's my approach to things and one of my Clifton five top five is responsibility and ⁓ and relationships those are two of mine in addition to strategy and some other things but I like to approach people I like to build a relationship with them and I I want to strategize about how do we do this and understand the processes and so a lot of it is kind of innate just who I am drives my wife nuts you know I

have an approach to everything we do and doesn't always make sense to her, makes sense to me. Like this is the easiest way for us to get from point A to point B. ⁓ So that's it, I guess. There's a ton of great books. Don't mind if I kind of poo poo with that idea. Like there's a lot of great education. I've been trained in Lean, I've been trained in Six Sigma. ⁓ There's a lot of great courses, a lot of great opportunities for learning and really getting all that.

those tools in your belt.

In education, we call them teachable moments. Those those times when you just kind of have that. Oh, do you have any good stories?

Yeah.

Yeah.

⁓ man, I have done a lot of stupid things. Like we all have. ⁓ man, it was a good teachable moment for me. I can't begin to tell you how many times I put my foot in my mouth or done something stupid or or anything. But ⁓ honestly, I think really just being humble enough to.

you

approach a situation, not think from the expert. I think that's really the key. ⁓ I look at, because my first experience in leading manufacturing and kind of leading a group, big group was, I don't know what's going on. So when I walked in the door, my goal was to learn along with them. This was a new plant. These were new employees who were all learning together. And when I went to my next role,

kind of 100 % know what was going on. So let me learn, let me understand what the situation is. Help me understand what's going on. And as you start to ask questions and really dig deep into the why of things, that for me has made all the difference.

Tell me a little bit about those who came before you. What were your mentors like? How did they help you on your way?

So I've had some really interesting bosses. I've had a lot of problematic people that I've worked for. I had one boss that told me the first day after he interviewed me, hired me the first day I met with him, says, I'm going to be a very challenging person to work for. I thought, well, you could have told me that before you hired me. have rethunk this a little bit. And he was not wrong. He was absolutely challenging to work with. But he really pushed me to the limits of what was possible.

I had at Motorola, started out, I had just an amazing manager who taught me the importance of digging deep into things. He was a commodity manager at Motorola for the battery division. he, like, we looked at stuff from like global markets and like really deep into capacities and technologies and supply chains and really understanding five, six steps down in the supply chain. Where is the cobalt that we're putting in a battery being mined and what's going on in that country?

And I just come out of this master's in international business program and I love that. It was really, really interesting. But aside from being really good at what he did, he was a really good human being as well. And that was a really critical thing for me to learn. know, I got every couple of months, I go come to him and say, I'm bored. What else can I do? And he'd give me more to do and he trusted me to do that. And so every couple of couple of months later, I okay, I got all that down. What's next? What's next? What's next? And then we got to a point where he said, okay, Jared,

We may be getting to the point where you need to find something else. And that may be within this organization and it may be at a different company. And either way, I got your back. And that is not normal. That's not something you'd normally hear from a boss. They're going to say, well, we need to keep you where you are because you're critical to this role, or I don't want to lose you. Let's see if we can get something in the company. He recognized that there is life outside of the organization that we were in. There are opportunities outside the organization that we were in.

I took that. was interesting because I had a young man I hired, super smart guy, really, really talented. I brought him in. He had been a mechanic and I brought him in to help me with Excel because he'd been trained really well on Excel in high school and he was really good at it and he taught me a ton. And he got a year and a half into the role and he says, I got this really good job opportunity to do X, Y and Z. And I thought, that's actually a really good fit for you. Do you need a letter of recommendation? Like, what do you want me? What are you looking for from me?

And he was like looking for, you know, bumping pay, like looking to leverage this, but I came out at a totally different angle. was like, okay, this is a good thing for you. What do you want to do? How can I help you? Right. It wasn't about me protecting the company. was about me helping him. And that's kind of the approach I've tried to take with, with leadership is, and that was based on this first manager I had out of my grad school, my grad school program that

really taught me that there's a huge human side to what we do and that it's really, really important that we not only recognize it, but engage it and respect it.

That brings back so many memories of when I decided to leave a school district and go into administration and everybody was supportive and you were sitting there going, I'm nervous to have this conversation. But when you have somebody who's really supportive over top of you, they're just like, and what else can we do? Right? And so when you're working with somebody, when you are the boss, when you are the mentor, what do you hope somebody takes away from your relationships?

hope that they trust me. Honestly, I think that's probably the number one thing I want. Because I'm trying to convey this that you know, my hope is that I can push you to do your best at your job. And I can help you to grow and I recognize the limits of the organization and sometimes that the limits of the organization are incompatible with the limits of the individuals. Sometimes their limits are much greater. And I'm happy to keep people but happy for them to move on as well. ⁓

I hope I set a good example like my boss did that they want to go out and as they become leaders that they take a more human side because I've had bosses that were very much the opposite that were very. ⁓

did not look after the mental health or mental well-being or well-being of physical well-being of the people who work for them. was 24 seven, you are expected to be engaged in this task and recognize that people have limits and people can be stretched, but only so far. I think that's the thing that's missing a lot in leadership. just because I can work an absurd amount of hours, I mean, everybody that works under me can do that, right? And,

Seeing that human side, I had an interesting experience years ago where I had a group that worked for me and we were starting to do a hybrid model of work. And this is before COVID, before hybrid models were normal and people just didn't do that. And I had another leader in the organization come to me and says, well, your people are terrible. I was shocked. I said, what do mean they're terrible? says, well, they're never here. They're always goofing off. They're never here.

You know, they don't know what they're doing, but they're working, they're doing their jobs, they're getting the things done they need to. And I'm getting emails at eight and nine o'clock at night when I've checked out for the night, right? They're emailing me and saying, hey, I've got a question about this. So they're still going. And there's just a different approach sometimes. And so hopefully they see that there is a human side to leadership and that we can build and respect and support each other as we kind of work toward a shared goal.

Talking today to Jared Padgett all about leadership and Jared, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today. It has not only made me reflect, but I hope anybody out there listening has taken a little bit of time to reflect on themselves. I want you to look right into the camera and I'll give you the last words here. Talk to the person who's looking to get into leadership positions. What advice do you have for them? What advice would you give them? How do you go from where you are?

Thank you.

into that first leadership position.

boy, that's a big jump, isn't it? It's all about understanding the people and wanting to do it for the right reasons. If you're going into leadership, try it because you want to be the leader because it's about you. You're going to be less successful, let's call it. You're going to be more successful if your goals are to develop the people that are under you and to be successful through them and not through yourself.

That's beautiful. Where does somebody get a hold of you and how do they get in touch with you? you have any questions.

Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. pretty active there. J-A-R-E-D-P-A-G-E-T. You can Google me. ⁓ I'm on Twitter occasionally at JaredPaget.com. And I have my own website that is in need of some development work, but it's ⁓ www.jaredpaget.com. ⁓ And look forward to hearing from anyone.

And one more time, we want to say thank you to Jared for joining us today on our show. What an honor to have him on in a fantastic conversation. And for everybody listening, you can learn more about all the amazing work that Jared is doing by visiting his website at Jared Padgett dot com. That's J.A.R.E.D. P.A.G.E.T. dot com. I highly recommend you check it out and follow him on social media. And one last thing before we go.

This podcast is all about the people with big ideas and the stories behind their impact on their world around them. If you're looking for actionable playbooks and productivity systems to apply these ideas to your own brand, I invite you to subscribe to my weekly substack newsletter, Amplify by Jeff Bradbury. You can find it by going to teachercast.net forward slash amplify. And if you found this conversation to be valuable, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review.

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