92 – Hidden Dangers Facing Your Organization (Part 2)

In this episode, Peter and Sonny discuss the hidden dangers organizations face when they lose sight of their mission, values, and long-term vision. Building on the previous episode, they explore how leaders can identify internal and external threats, strengthen organizational culture, and avoid the complacency that often accompanies success. 

The conversation covers risk management, leadership development, workforce culture, business strategy, economic and political influences, and the importance of shared values in sustaining high-performing organizations. Using examples from companies like Costco and lessons from history, they explain why organizations that continually adapt, challenge assumptions, and stay focused on their mission are best positioned for long-term success.

Episode Highlights:

► Identifying internal and external organizational threats

► Why culture can outweigh strategy

► The role of shared values and mission alignment

► Long-term thinking versus short-term decision-making

► Leadership lessons from successful organizations

► Avoiding complacency and sustaining organizational success

The full audiovisual version of this episode is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZwzmBGM9cgM 

“The Obvious Podcast” is a production of ABC Florida East Coast Chapter. Unless otherwise stated, all content reflects the opinions of the guests and hosts.

If you like “The Obvious Podcast,” you can click here to listen to the audio version and subscribe on all the major podcast platforms, such as Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify. We encourage you to leave us a review so other listeners can find us. 

You may also follow “The Obvious Podcast” on Instagram, Truth Social, X/Twitter, and now on TikTok.

► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theobvious_podcast/

►X: https://x.com/TheObv_podcast/

►Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/TheObvious_Podcast/

► TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@the.obvious.podca 

►Email: theobvious@abceastflorida.com

Transcript

Speaker 0:09

Welcome to the Obvious Podcast, episode number 92. I'm Sonny Maken, COO at ABC Florida East Coast. And I'm Peter Dyga, president and CEO at the ABC Florida East Coast. You are watching or listening to the Obvious Podcast, where all opinions expressed are our own unless we say otherwise. Love the show, subscribe on any major podcast platform, or watch us in action on YouTube, follow the Obvious Podcast on Instagram at Truth Social and now on TikTok and X. So all the links you need are in the show notes. And you can reach out to us at any time at the Obvious at abceflorida.com. Help others find us by doing a review wherever you listen, uh and that would help us uh spread the word about the obvious podcast. Great show, as we're uh 92 episodes. So all right. So what's up this week? Our part two? Our part two. So we if you haven't listened to last Friday's episode, which is part one of the hidden uh dangers your organization faces, you really should listen to that because I think it'll give you the context for this show. So but what am I missing, or what did you want to add? So to your point about how do we correctly identify threats, right? I think you will never be able to correctly identify threats if you don't have a holistic understanding of what success is as an organization, right? That's interesting. So I think you have to kind of almost kind of go backwards. You have to do a really, really, really thoroughly. I'm reminded of uh past episodes about mission and clarity of mission and how we uh that our whole um series on communication, right? Yeah. The whole point, I think, is if you if you're able to, and it's not just you as leaders, but really your whole staff, um, your your uh executive board, your leadership board. Like if everybody sort of understands the the definition of success, I think us as as executives have a um responsibility and the ability to really analyze risks on how is that success going to be impacted by uh macro risks, micro risks, you kind of understand whether it's legislative, whether it's business, whether it's economic trends, whatever it is. I think the idea of accurately and like and there's obviously external risks and internal risks, right? You can also talk about that. Um culture, right? Your own people, um negativity, uh people who aren't uh think something as basic as fraud or something as basic as is as is I was listening to this podcast on Costco and I'm fascinated by Costco's business model. Costco has uh what they call it in retail, they call it shrinkage, which is their sort of loss rate, their thrift rate. Costco's loss rate is 0.15% of their uh gross sales. That sounds pretty impressive. The lowest industry. The lowest in the industry by like far, like huge um huge um difference than anybody else. That doesn't happen by chance. No, that doesn't happen by chance. Um one of the things on this podcast, it's a it's a really great podcast. It's called Acquired, and they did like pick a company and it's like a four-hour show on one. So somebody there has assessed um risk. Exactly. Um and identified that as you know hourly employees. What's the hour uh average hourly wage of a Walmart employee? $19 an hour. Average hourly wage of a Costco employee, $26 an hour. But it's not just an hourly wage issue. Costco, uh Costco employees who are hourly get a 401k with matching um matching um not grants, what's the word I'm looking at? Profit sharing or matching matching contributions. Matching contributions into the 401k. Okay. They also get some of the best healthcare in the industry. Uh even if you're an hourly employee, you get access to the healthcare, and obviously you like we subsidize um the premium, they also subsidize the premium. And it's apparently like amazing healthcare. So their average employee stays with them over um 12 years. Wow. Right? That's their sort of average. And people don't leave. And because they don't leave, and because they're so well taken care of, um, they have the lowest uh loss rate when it comes to theft and fraud in the in the retail business. And I think about that, and I think about how they have sort of removed an internal threat by having great macro policies, right? And and you and I talk about this all the time in terms of how we manage our people, and because we have 33 full-time employees, we have 66, 67 part-time instructors. There's a lot of people coming in and out of the organization. There's a lot of resources being used up, there's materials and tools and all sorts of things. And how do we, you know, um how do we protect that? How do we protect that investment that we make? And so there's this whole idea that you can um take care of your people. And I think Hostco really is a great example of that. That you can take care of your people and they will take care of your business. But so we in our role kind of have to worry about two, you know, is for the industry for one, right? And the kind of the way we evolve in terms of who we are as an organization and what we provide and what we do for our members and our industry. So assessing that risk. Yep. But then you also have internally as an organization. Yeah you know, so I mean we really have to do that. Yeah, so we got external risk, internal risk, macro, micro, you know, uh uh governmental risk, you know, policy risk. There's all sorts of risks that we have to analyze. And so that's why it's so important that we do it accurately, but then you really can't understand that if you if you don't understand how you're measuring your success. Right. So that was kind of my whole point. And I think this applies to any organization. You run a construction company, you run a cleaning business, whatever it is, you kind of have to get a really good handle on what your metrics of success are uh and how you measure your KPIs or your or your uh OKRs. So I talked about uh, you know, I don't know, a thing or two in terms of on the one side of the ledger on things to pursue to make sure that you're that you have in order to minimize that. What are the some of the things to avoid? Right. In your mind. As an organization? Yeah. Yeah. Either. You know, just to avoid these uh pitfalls, you know, to avoid these occasions where a smart guy like Tucker Carlson, you know, make makes the wrong conclusion. Right. I mean, what are the kind of things um, you know, to a how did that happen? What could you have avoided to actually minimize the chance of falling into that? I'm thinking of things like, I don't know, conflict of interest. You know, we talk a lot about conflict of interest. And it's not just as you say all the time, it's not just a financial uh element to it, right? Yeah. Um in most cases when we're talking about it, that's not what we're talking about. That's the that's the obvious thing, but not necessarily But really the whole idea, I think you can talk about um people, right? Okay. So you can have a you can have a culture that is focused on one thing. You can have a strategy that's focused on one thing, but your people bring a different culture and again, and I say this all the time, culture will eat strategy for breakfast, right? Not my saying heard it in grad school. Um so you have to, or we have to, and we do this all the time. We're we're particularly focused on um people who might be hitting their metrics, might have great numbers, might be successful in their role, but are bad for the culture. And there's a there's a big price to pay for that. Those are the ones that are usually shocked. Right. Because they yeah, and that's happened to us twice now. Where we've we've taken people that were sort of hitting hitting the metrics, but we're bad for the culture. And they're not only shocked, but sometimes even your leadership is shocked because the culture um sometimes can be very subtle. Right. You know, or you're trying to you're trying to uh you're trying to be uh take action, you know, before the the the you know the fruit or the vegetable is rotten, you know, or the culture is long-term, short-term thinking, right? Again, there's a lot of short-term thinking and and uh any organ and it's and I get it, the temptation is great to to think short-term. But you know, ABC is in its 58th year because it has engaged in long-term thinking for a long, long time. Most organizations never make it past 42 years. That's the life if you if you survive the first five years in business, 42 years. And uh that's a stat I hear from one of my professors. Most organizations last 42 years. There's uh it's popular in a lot of management, grad school, I don't know, wherever you might learn these type of things to focus on uh even in nonprofit management, you know, about uh a lot of organizations want you when you're out there seeking uh additional leadership or developing leadership that you you know where your um uh your gaps are. Yeah. Right? It could be the personality type or the leadership type, these different assessments, you know. Um some people will just make it simple fact of diversity of thought. Well, thoughts rarely ever. You know, diversity of thought is usually not the focus. Right. So it's people that think just a diversity of where you come from or your skin color or tone or whatnot is somehow going to automatically impart some kind of uh you know value to the diversity in terms of your your approach or your experiences or whatnot. Yeah. If that's what we really want and that's what's really advantageous, then let's let's ask about that, you know. So but any then, I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on that. You know, that a lot of attention is paid to that. You know, be mindful of what type what type of personality uh lead leaders you have. You know, or you don't want all C's and you don't want all you know, whatever. You know, you want our diversity on your board. And is this one of the ways to help avoid this? That's a really good thing. I I think I think you and I have been are around long enough to realize that diversity is and and I mean diversity in sort of the capital D sense of the word, right? Diversity is to me subservient to shared values. If the staff and the leadership and the executive team doesn't share the values, and remember our episode on uh means uh do the uh do the means justify the ends? That whole episode we were really related to that because if you don't share the values, the means are gonna be all over the place. Yeah. This also ties into our conversation about immigration in my book. You know, you can have tremendous diversity in terms of this country, which is why we've traditionally been a great melting pot. But it's because we did have a shared value in terms of uh the things that Marco Rubio clip and others about having a shared purpose of the R. I mean you guys can't see this, but there's children of immigrants from different countries in this room right now that are sitting around this table. Right? Our staff is made up of all sorts of uh first generation, second generation immigrants from all sorts of countries. Like there is a huge diversity of racially and and socioeconomic and and um national origin and ABC. But I can tell you what, the thing that motivates all of us is our passion for the mission and the fact that we share the values as to how to pursue those, right? And I think that is what's led ABC to be around for 58 years, and that's what's gonna lead ABC to be around for the next 58 years, is because there is an understanding that we exist to serve a mission, and that mission and the values that are sort of wrapped up around that mission, we all agree on. So if you had to summarize for Tucker, you know, what would you say? What are the what are the reasons what are the ways, the most important ways in which as an individual and as an organization that we want to avoid? I would tell Tucker. What was Tucker's mistake? That's a great question. I think Tucker's mistake is that he is so and I say this hesitatingly because I really don't know Tucker's real motivations. So let's put those aside. And his motivations could contribute and be a part of all sorts of issues to this. But I think Tucker's huge mistake. That's an important point though. Motivation matters. Right. Motivation matters. And I and I can't and now obviously I don't know Tucker's motivation, but and I think motivation is so is profoundly related to um shared values as an or as people who work uh towards a shared mission. And I think this really applies to for-profit, nonprofit, any of that. I think for a bunch of people to come together, right, and I hate using this word, but as a to form a collective to go be successful at something, right? Why I mean, why do companies hire people? Companies hire people because together they can achieve more than a part. That's um so I don't want to really, but I'm fascinated by this whole um how we are divided as a country, as a world over what's currently happening in Iran. So for 47, because is is that at its uh core what what we're looking at is the fact that we don't sh have shared values or shared mission. Aaron Powell So because from my perspective, I don't I don't understand how I've lived a life of 47 years of death to America, of you know, holding hostages, of executing people, of exporting jihad and and pol and global instability and proxy wars. Yeah. And and now we're seeing it in holding uh free navigation hostage. Um we've seen it in terms of development of a nuclear weapon from somebody that I mean, let's face it, there are differences. There are people that might have a nuclear weapon that understand the uh the weight, you know, versus people that just if they had it, they would be like if it if it helped pursue their their political objectives or their their global objectives of instability and jihad, they'd use it in a heartbeat. And I just don't understand how we don't how how somebody smart like Tucker Carlson can cannot see, you know. I'm hoping, for example, you know, Marco Rubio recently had a meeting with the Pope, and I get, you know, as a Catholic in particular, that the church is always going to be a voice for peace. But we also have a long-standing tradition of justifiable war. And I'm hoping that Marco Rubio laid out very strongly to the Pope the fact that we were weeks, in fact, months away, and you either believe this or you don't, which is getting back to the shared values and shared mission. So we either share the value of the fact that they were imminent or very imminent to being able to, even if it was low-level sophistication, it wouldn't take much. You know, and we couldn't let that happen. And somehow we don't we're not seeing eye to eye on that. I mean, you can't even get the UN, we've talked about this before, and the world to see eye to eye on the fact that freedom of navigation is actually in the UN charter. It's actually a world it's actually you know, and yet the the globe can't come together on on opening up that Strait of Hormoons. Right. Well, you you we could do a whole episode on UN hypocrisy and incompetency. That's a whole different uh let's you know. We should we could come back to that. But I think you the problem we have as a country right now is significant. It's not a shared mission. It kind of drives home the point that if you don't have that shared values and shared mission. And maybe maybe every difference or whatever boils down to that. I don't know. When you were when you were 40 years old, what percentage of this country you did you think believed that America was an inherently evil country that needed to be brought to its knees? That lived in this country and were U.S. citizens who believed that. Five percent. Five percent. Yeah. I mean, I would have even thought less than loonies. That I never my whole life growing up as a son of as a as a son of immigrants. Now they actually leaders of one of our major Democrats or major political parties, actually. Trevor Burrus, Jr. You're listening to Democrats on on TV talking about how they believe the Ayatollah over the president. Yeah. And I get it. Like, listen, I listen to this guy rant and rave on social media. I'm like, please, dude, just stop, right? Stop talking about this stuff. This has no impact. Your obsession with celebrity and all of that. I get it. Like, this is not nobody's pretending that we have the perfect president. But like this whole idea that America needs to be brought to its knees, it has taken off in a way. And I and I know why. It's taken off because our educ we, you know, we gave up a long time ago on our education system. We really did. We were like, forget it. It belongs to the left, the left can have it. And this is the impact of that. There's a whole generation of people who are like, yep, America's a colonialist, white supremacists, this, that, blah, blah, blah. Needs to be brought to its knees. And it doesn't matter what the means are because the ends justify it. Right? I mean, the Germans used to face this in the 70s. There's been groups of radicals for a long, long, long time that have been like, it's my country, it's my whatever, but it needs to be brought down a notch because it has destroyed the rest of the world. And that's an absurd um calculation. If you had any understanding of history, you could argue that point, but most people don't. Most people don't understand how the world works, most people don't understand uh the impact quality of life has. Most people don't understand lifespan and how people live longer now than they ever have. And there's all sorts of um uh misunderstandings on it. And again, this always happens, right? This always happens when you yourself don't have to worry about food, shelter, and clothing. When, you know, this is like Maslaw's hierarchy of needs. When your basic necessities are met, this is the kind of nonsense you can indulge your brain in. And this is the kind of nonsense you can't. That's a really important point, right? Because you don't have to worry about it, but the rest of the world is still worried about um how to get their next meal, how to get shelter, how to, you know, how to get their clothes. And and you live in a country where you don't have to worry about any of that. Yep. And then you go down this path, and this is the crap you come up with. And I'm just so is it inevitable that successful societies are kind of I mean, yeah, they decline. This this happens every time. The Romans did it, the Greeks did it, the Egyptians did it. Every time you had peak prosperity, yeah. This is a answer the question, though, about how to avoid this. How to avoid how to how to help avoid this? Yeah. You can as an organization, don't ever get comfortable in your success. Don't ever beautiful. All right. Don't ever get comfortable like we have this figured out, we have the problem solved. Because nobody just start to worry about silly, superfluous. Absolutely. There was a huge um, there was a I think it was a Forbes magazine or Fortune magazine. I can't remember. It was one of those two magazines. In 2007, summer, it had the CEO of Nokia on it. And the head and the magazine uh article was titled, Will anybody take down Nokia? And that September or that October, the iPhone came out, right? And decimated Nokia. I've I've used this in our internal staff meetings. Don't ever get comfortable in your success. Don't ever think this has been solved. We uh what a great way to end part series on this. So don't ever W'd'd you say it again? Don't ever get comfortable in your success uh success and don't ever assume you have it all figured out because you've got new problems coming at you every day. And because we s I I mean I've seen it a lot over my years. It's uh it's a lot easier to just don't rock the boat. Right. Don't rock the boat. Just steady as you go. Yeah. You know? I mean, instead of trying to constantly figure out ways of um improving. So it's not just about new opportunities, because we're always looking for new opportunities. Okay. It's also about new threats. It's also not it's also more than new ways to leverage our success, right? I mean we you and I have nine hours ago. Right. You and I have had multiple conversations about ideas and things that we are in the process of ex executing now that will make ABC a unique defender of our not just of our values, but of our industry, right? And all of the things that we're executing on now, that we're planning on now, that we're negotiating now, are meant to allow us to fulfill our mission in a way we've never done before. And that's sort of what this organization has a history of doing for 58 years. Right? 58 years. People came in, people took risks, people executed in a way and defended our industry in a way that nobody else could. And have hats, and it's it hasn't been all pizzas and cream. It's all that's not all land of milk and honey. There's been failures, there's been setbacks, things happen. But you gotta understand one, shared values, and two, shared mission, and three, never ever, ever believing that you have figured it all out. I think that's how you succeed as an organization. Mic drop. Excellent way to bring it full circle. All right. Thank you. That was uh part two of our uh two-part series, Hidden Dangers Your Organization Facing, but it's a lot deeper than that. So uh, you know, if you didn't hear the previous part, uh make sure you check it out. Um have a great weekend. Thank you for joining us and for listening to our show. We will be back next Friday with a new episode. And for comments, send us an email at theobbyus at abceflorida.com. Until next time. Ciao.