Chasing Shiny Objects: Matt Ley's Leadership Journey

[INTRODUCTION]

Matt Ley: If you're doing everything by yourself, it's guaranteed you're doing some things that aren't great energy exchanges for you. To be able to let go of some of those and realize that not only is it getting done by someone else, but actually, they like it. That's the craziest part. They love this stuff, and that's because we're good partners. 

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina. 

Cristina Amigoni: Hello. The 5-3-2-1 thing on this new tool gives me anxiety. I know why. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a crash-landing intro for you. The countdown before we start recording, which no one will ever see or know about except for us. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's like I stop breathing until it's done counting. I'm like, "Okay, now I can breathe and talk." 

Alex Cullimore: We're going to have to unpack that at some point. Why am I counting and stopping breathing? We just finished up a great conversation with Matt Ley, who was introduced to us by Michael Fryer, a previous guest. We have a huge thanks to give to Michael, as well as to Matt for being on here. It's just a great conversation of all kinds of things to just tie over between the things that Matt does, the things that we do, the way he thinks about management, organizations, consulting itself, all the above. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Fulfilment, trust. 

Alex Cullimore: Math.

Cristina Amigoni: Math, acronyms. 

Alex Cullimore: Math and acronyms. 

Cristina Amigoni: Lots to listen to and hopefully somewhat linear, but I'm not quite sure. 

Alex Cullimore: I think we got there. We're going to find out or you're going to find out if you keep listening. 

Cristina Amigoni: We got somewhere. And there'll probably be more conversations because we just scratched the surface stuff. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. 

Cristina Amigoni: But lots of fun. 

Alex Cullimore: Please enjoy. 

Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives. 

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves. 

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni. 

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore. Let’s dive in.

Cristina Amigoni: Let’s dive in. 

“Authenticity means freedom.”

“Authenticity means going with your gut.”

“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.”

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.”

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.”

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.”

“It's transparency, relatability. No frills. No makeup. Just being.”

[INTERVIEW]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Cristina and I are joined today with our guest, Matt Ley. Welcome to the podcast, Matt. 

Matt Ley: Thanks. Pleasure to be here. 

Cristina Amigoni: Welcome. 

Alex Cullimore: We're excited to have you. Yeah, we had a great conversation when we just started talking, and we're very excited to get to do this. But to give everybody a little background on who you are, what's your story and what brought you here? 

Matt Ley: Relationships, man, that's what I'm all about. Kind of self-described lover of people and chaser of shiny things, and that's a pretty good summary of my life story. 22 addresses in 44 years, worked in tech startup, was a pastor for a while, worked in national disaster response, social justice work, corporate America and supply chain operations. Got an MBA. Love getting a piece of paper to put on the wall behind me just because I love to learn. I'm an assessment nerd and I'm just looking for different ways to understand how people are wired so that I could have better conversations with them and support them in their journey.

Cristina Amigoni: It sounds pretty awesome. I like the chaser of shiny things. 

Matt Ley: Yeah, I mean, I love it too because that's what I do. Sometimes it's a little bit more hectic for the spouses and people who are related. They give you a lot of grace. 

Cristina Amigoni: What's the latest shiny thing you've chased? 

Matt Ley: The latest shiny thing I've been chasing is building a business with others and being really intentional about – I've tried this before, and it was building a business with friends and didn't realize that that was different than building a business with partners. The shiny thing I'm looking at is how do you navigate those waters when you care deeply about everything it's going on, but recognize delegating, letting go and trusting other people to own their pieces. It's fascinating because that's also a microcosm of what our clients are experiencing. Being able to walk through it ourselves, it's been a ton of fun. 

And I mean, some days I'm way more confused than I've ever been before. And other days like, "Oh my gosh, it's so much better than what I had." And I'm a big fan of looking at trending, asking the question, "Is a bad day today better than a bad day six months ago?" Because things are going to go on good days, bad days. But are you trending in a direction? And yeah, we are. We still have bad days. We still have confusing situations. But from six months ago, it's a totally different game. It's way more fun. 

Alex Cullimore: That's right. How long have you guys been around? 

Matt Ley: About six months. 

Alex Cullimore: Hey, there you go. 

Cristina Amigoni: All right. All right. 

Matt Ley: Partnership. Bringing a ton of experience from different areas of supporting organizations. And we're figuring out how to make that all work together. I think that's probably the most exciting shiny thing is that there's all these concepts and things I get to play with now and sort of figure out how to put them together. I'm a creative dreamer, my assessment style. It's a great place to be to kind of do that work. 

Cristina Amigoni: That's awesome. Yeah. The balance between the delegation, letting go, and trust, and all of those things are definitely not easy. I was just talking to one of our team members who's taking over some of our podcast operations, actually, among other things. And it was a good moment. And one of those like kind of self-reflection moment when I was trying to do something with her that I actually had never done because we had two other people take care of it. And it started with like, "Hey, we have this idea. Go make it happen." 

And so when I had to explain to this new team member, like, "Oh, this is what we do." And some of the instructions which were left for her were excellent. But some of them are like, "Oh, work with Cristina on this." And I'm like, "Okay. You can". 

Alex Cullimore: I didn't know I was part of the process. 

Cristina Amigoni: I have no idea how this happened in the past. And so we were doing it together. And I had that sense of like, "Wow, that's actually a really nice feeling to know that there was something that worked out really well, and was flawless for two years." And I have zero idea what was actually happening. It was just happening. 

Matt Ley: Yeah. It's a strange feeling. Because it's something new to me. Because I've been doing consulting since 2019. And so, so much of it I had to do by myself and a lot of it wasn't a great energy exchange. I mean, that's one of the few things. If you're doing everything by yourself, it's guaranteed you're doing some things that aren't great energy exchanges for you. To be able to let go of some of those and realize not only is it getting done by someone else, but actually, they like it. That's the craziest part. They love this stuff. And that's because we're good partners, because we're wired. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. And they do it better. 

Matt Ley: Yeah. If I'm doing it, I'm looking for what's the bare minimum of level of success I can do to check this offline list of things? It's fun. For them, they're like, "How can I dig deeper into this and make it the point of excellence that everyone looks at?" 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: I noticed you mentioned yourself as a creative dreamer, which I believe, is that working genius language? 

Cristina Amigoni: It sounds like working genius language, yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: I think when we talked about this, Matt, and I think you and I are almost exactly the same on all of the working geniuses, all the way from genius to frustration. 

Matt Ley: I keep this question all the time just to keep myself clear on where I'm at. 

Alex Cullimore: I think that is exactly it, except maybe my I and W are backwards. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I agree on that, because there's so much of that shiny object than getting that delegation. And multiple times, just in the last few months alone, we've got a few more people on board and just had that experience of, "Oh, you like doing this? Oh, that's great. I thought I was torturing both of us by asking you to do this." 

Matt Ley: My book, actually, I don't think I leverage it and call it the working genius concept, but I talk about like two different types of burnout. One of the types of burnout called golden rule burnout, which is we, golden rule, treat other people the way you want to be treated. It's just like that with projects. I'm a wonder inventive. I love doing creative design. I like being the detail tasky, check the box. If I had two activities come to me, one is a lot of creative design, one of them is checking the box. And I have an employee, I'm like, "You know what? They've been really rocking it. I'm going to give them the good project." And I give them  the wonder inventive one because it's what I like. That's golden rule burnout because now I've taken on the project I don't like. I didn't know it. I might be handing them a project that they're like, "This is terrible." But with assessments, practicing the planning rule was treat other people the way they want to be treated. And all of a sudden, it's like, I give you the project you love, which I would not be really great at. I get to keep the project I love. And all of a sudden, I multiply the amount of joy that we're getting. That's way better. That's just way better. 

Alex Cullimore: I've got two projects done way better all at the same time. Nobody's tired. Yeah, golden rule burnout. I like that idea. 

Cristina Amigoni: That is a good idea, yes.

Alex Cullimore: I've heard about myself in that, the idea of projection we constantly do. We're constantly like, "Hey, this is how I feel about this. This is supposed to be how everybody feels about this." And no. 

Matt Ley: Well, because a lot of my space is for new leaders, particularly as they step into management. And I, for one, love to help them separate what is management from leadership, because those are different concepts. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, very different things. 

Matt Ley: But when you're still dealing with all the emotional stuff and you haven't calmed yourself down because you haven't been trained or given the space, because I equate the first time you step in the management or leadership, kind of the first time you become a parent. You get a PhD in child psychology. But the first time that child is screaming at 2am and you can't figure out how to get them to go back to sleep, that's a totally different game. Theory and practice play out very differently. And management is the same. 

And so we think we put people through management training and say, "Okay, here are all the concepts of the things that you're going to do. Great, you got the roadmap. Boom. Go be awesome." And that's not it. We have to give them the space to do the growth, to process the emotions. And when we don't do that, that's when they show up and start delegating out like, "I don't want anyone to hate me. So I'm going to give them all the stuff that I would love to do." And you get caught up in those because you're not being responsive, which is consciously reflecting you're being reactive. And that's what's causing the issues, is you're just not adding the consciousness into the process. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that's a very good distinction. And yes, yeah, all the parenting books and all the parenting advice go out the window. And it's 3am and you've been trying to get the baby to sleep for two hours. And you want to just toss him out the window or drop him off at the nearest fire station. 

Matt Ley: Or go for an hour and a half in the car and not getting to sleep is a logical choice right now because I know they're going to sleep there. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes. 

Matt Ley: Oh, good times. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. And managing people sometimes feels like you want to toss them out the window. 

Matt Ley: Yeah. The first iteration of my coach training program, I actually had two things. It's like how managing is like parenting and how managing is not like parenting. And the like parenting was the theory of practice. And the not like parenting is paternalism. Our job as parents is first and foremost to keep our kids safe. It's not to solve their problems. It's to keep them safe. When we step into management, we try and do the same thing. And what we're actually doing is we're reducing the psychological safety because we don't have enough respect for the individuals to be adults in the process. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Matt Ley: And that's where micromanagement becomes kind of the rule. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Only you like go completely and you're not keeping them safe or supporting them. You're an adult, figure it out. 

Matt Ley: Yeah, that's the other thing you can fall into where you give them all of the authority but you don't have any of the respect, and that's just exploitation. 

Alex Cullimore: How do you help people make that transition and then get into that mindset of like, "Hey, I don't have to be paternalistic, but I do have to be supportive. I am here to solve some problems, but not take away their autonomy?" 

Matt Ley: Yeah. I mean, I think first and foremost is getting clear on like why do we even have managers? What's the point of this role? What are we doing? Why do we keep having it? We don't have LinkedIn posts going out there, like, "Everyone could be a manager. Come on, let's rally the managers. Come on, get your manager hat on." It's like, "No, everyone could be a leader." Okay, great. So we're putting people all the way up front, or we're the value creators of the contributors. 

Management hasn't been given its due and that's why I call the book – subtitle is Reclaiming the Awesomeness of Management. And so it's first and foremost helping them understand and articulate that management actually brings immense value to your organization. And just because you have a manager title doesn't mean you stop doing contribution work or you can't engage in leadership. Because leadership, I do believe as an activity, can be at every level of the organization it should be. There's space for it. But what a manager does is they help multiply the value of their people. 

And so when they start to see that that's why the position exists and that's what they get to help do, that's the first thing. And then the second thing is saying kind of like an 80/20 rule, 80% of management is transferable skills. They'll work wherever you go. 20% of them are contextual, which is understanding what you're actually doing in this space and this time. Most managers got moved into management because they excelled at the 20%. And so what they start to do is double down on the 20%. 

And if you already got an A in the 20%, getting more extra credit in the 20% isn't going to give you a passing grade. You've really got to develop an 80%. That's what I help them do is say it's really the difference between – well, I used to call them hard skills and soft skills. I just call them contextual and transferable skills now. Your contextual skills are your hard skills. That's going to help you do the job here. Your soft skills, a.k.a. transferable skills, are the skills that are going to help you do the job anywhere. We help you develop those. One, getting clear on articulating what management actually does and why managers do this, why they're awesome. And then two, getting good at the 80%, which are the transferable skills of management. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: Before we dig into that too much, you've hinted at the subtitle of the book. What's the title of the book? 

Matt Ley: Manage Your Gaps: Reclaiming the Awesomeness of Management. 

Alex Cullimore: Excellent. Okay, cool. Just wanted everybody to be able to know that. 

Cristina Amigoni: Which I know you sent to us, and it's probably stuck in my mailbox because I haven't been to my mailbox in two weeks, making my mailman really happy. 

Matt Ley: On the back shelf? [inaudible 0:13:52]. 

Cristina Amigoni: I thought about it. I had been waiting for the book to appear, and I'm like, "I know he sent it. He said it was going to arrive last week. I wonder why it's not on my desk." And I'm like, "Oh, I may actually have to physically go get it at the mailbox for it to be on my desk." 

Cristina Amigoni: I know. I will go today. 

Matt Ley: Let me know, if it did come through. 

Cristina Amigoni: I assume it has. Yes. I'm waiting for the phone call to say like your mailbox is overflowing. Can you please, please stop by and check it? 

Alex Cullimore: If you wanted to give people a pitch on why management is awesome, why this is like that excellent and very necessary portion of an organization, what would you say? 

Matt Ley: Yeah, it's kind of like there's three things going on in the organization, you're working in the business, which is creating that. And one of the first things I'll say is contributors are the only people who create in the organization. It's not contributors, but the act of contribution, because that is the value of the organization. Then you have work on the future. That's what leaders do. That's visioning. That's figuring out where do we go from here. The act of working on the business is why managers exist. That's why they're awesome. And I would say they're actually the culture champions in your organization. Because you need culture as a formula of understanding the values plus the human touch. Managers are magnitudes more engaged than leaders are. 

Leaders are focusing on the future. They're focusing out. And like I call it the X factor of value. Leaders are looking up and out, managers are looking down in it. And so they've got that touch. Their ability to transfer the culture into the organization and maintain it is one of the big values that they bring, plus multiplying the value of the people in the organization. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a great way of describing it. And also, that implies exactly why it's such a hard thing to step into. Yes, you might not be doing all of the leadership work, but you better be on top of what the leaders are doing so that you can be able to translate that down and you better be on top of what everybody else is doing. This is going from individual contributed manager is an enormous step. The way you've described it is pretty good. When you're a leader, it's almost less, at least, responsibility. There's kind of this whole huge translation portion you're going to have to do in the management in the middle, and it's not easy. 

Matt Ley: Yeah, one of the analogies I use for this, and I'll be throwing analogies around from now until the end of this conversation, but tubing. Are you familiar with the concept of a tube being dragged behind in a boat? Yeah. That's actually one of my favorites. If you think of it, leaders are driving the boat. If we can kind of get past the absurdity and the logic, all the individual contributors are riding in the tube. The manager is this really crucial part of tubing, which is called the spotter. Their job is to sit at the back of the boat and look for is the tube in the wake or is it across the wake wall? Because when you cross the wake wall, you get some really bumpy waters. And if you're making lots of moves like this, lots of shifting, pivoting, the chances of you ending up outside the wake wall are really high. And worst case, you go wake to wake or wall to wall, where you just go all the way across, which is a ton of fun if you're just looking for like craziness in the back of a boat. 

Organizationally, it's exhausting because all you're doing is holding on for your dear life. But if our leader is constantly looking at their shoulder to see, "Is everyone okay? Is everyone okay?" That boat's still going real fast in the direction they're not looking, that's not real safe. Leaders need to be looking forward. But that manager role, think of that head. It's on a swivel. Where are they at? Communicating to the leader. Looking back. Where are they at? Communicating to the leader. And if they're just like, "Man, I really wish I was back in the tube with everyone else," and they just jump in the water, I mean, you lose the spotter. But that's what a lot of managers essentially do. They either want to get up in the driver's seat and be the leader and get out on spotters. They want to jump back in the tube because it's either more fun or where they see the value being created. And so we just need to help them understand how valuable that position is. But you're right, they're the go-between. They have to keep that head on a swivel. 

Alex Cullimore: For a second, I thought you were going to say they're the rope, but I like the spotter metaphor better. 

Cristina Amigoni: I know. That's where I was going to go. They're the rope. 

Alex Cullimore: Spotter is way better. 

Matt Ley: It's a lot more fun, yeah. 

Cristina Amigoni: It sounds better. But yeah, a lot of that. Like you said, the tendency to want to get back into the boat, because that's where the value is. Because, like you said, it's tangible. Clearly, there's value in being the manager. It's absolutely necessary. And there's value in being the leader. Otherwise, you're just doing and everybody's doing whatever, and there's no direction, and there's no way of figuring out what support is needed and all of the things in between that are missing. 

But the letting go of if, "I don't do, I'm not contributing. And I'm not measured on not doing. And so I'm going to keep doing. And therefore, I'm not going to manage because, well, that's extra." We just had a conversation about that, actually, on how do we change that mindset? Because then you tend to hold on to things, not delegate or not communicate because you're constantly in this like, "I have to prove that I'm doing." And doing is only measured in tangibles." And so where's that balance? 

That's one of the things that I had to learn and I learned through coaching was I needed to let go and let somebody else do and trust that, first of all, it would get done and it would get done probably better than I would. And also, that I was still contributing. I would not lose my identity in this. 

Matt Ley: Yeah, that's a great point. That's one of the biggest reasons for articulating what is it that managers and management actually bring to the organization so you can help see those activities as providing value, because it kind of is difficult to get the KPIs directly set on them, where it's like, "Okay, well, the team's doing marginally better." Let's say a 10% increase in their efficiency and doing the work or KPI, whatever it is. Would that have happened with the manager here or not? It's hard to be qualitative piece. That's the kind of things. How are people feeling? Do they have clarity? Do they have consistency? Do you feel like you’re communicated to – I call it the four C's is like what managers can – really, if anybody wants to help reduce anxiety and help their people be more efficient in what they're doing, they need to know they're cared for. They need clarity. They need consistency. And they just need communication. And then they need more communication. And then when you're done with that, you should probably communicate a little bit more. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, a little bit more. Indeed. How do you build that trust? We talked about trust last time, and it keeps coming up. What is trust? 

Matt Ley: I think trust, in part, one of the big things is track record. And so trust is not just something that's freely given. You can have a starting point. And that's, I think, being clear. That clarity and consistency, that's part of what builds trust. Because if people are wondering what's coming around the corner, they're putting energy into wondering. If people are not sure, "Is this person going to show up as Dr. Jekyll or Mr. and Mrs. Hyde?" That's not the kind of energy you want them putting in that space. And so it's being clear on what we're doing here. Giving people that clarity. And then track record, following through on the things that you say. That's what I think over time is what builds trust. But it's not a starting point. It's kind of the thing that you build, which over time makes the engine work that much better. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, that's exactly what you're describing it. And I think people will start to lose the empathy for what it – when you start to get measured on, like, is the team performing, is it producing, then it's either go back and try and do the production work so that they're producing. Or just try and be a task master so that they're producing and just run each little one. But exactly what you're saying is what kind of greases the wheels and allows the productivity to actually happen. Make sure they know exactly what's going on. They don't have to be worried about it. They're not worried about your mood. They're not worried about their place, their general safety. Suddenly, there can be a lot more productivity there. And to your point, Cristina, as well, it's just hard to measure that. It's hard to say that was the impact of this manager. If we hadn't had that manager, Steve would have done that. It's there. It is what's happening, but it's really hard to measure. 

Matt Ley: Yeah. And I think one of the other ones that it's like trust and psychological safety is what happens if people show up outside of your expectations or don't meet the goals that you set? Then what do you do? And I just have a general, apparently I love the letter C, but it's again, curiosity over critique. Just lead with curiosity. Kind of assume people showed up wanting to do the best job they could. The best job didn't get done. Something got in the way. Instead of being like, I'm going to critique you for the outcome, which can't be changed right now. I'm going to get curious about the process. How did we get here? Is there something we can do next time so that this becomes an opportunity for us to learn? We didn't get it today, but we want to get it tomorrow. Critiquing you on what went wrong today isn't going to help us get better. We still need to name it, but enter it with curiosity, not critique. 

Cristina Amigoni: I like that a lot. The curiosity piece is huge instead of the critique aspect of it. It's another thing that we started talking about, but we never really resolved. What happens when trust is broken? 

Matt Ley: You have to atone. You have to say trust was broken, I named it, and I have to apologize, and I have to own it. I have to attune, which is get back in line and say where can we go from here because basically it's almost like you have to start out with relationship 2.0. Say we have things from 1.0. we want to keep, but 1.0 is now kind of dead, to be blunt. You have to build a new relationship. It's actually harder to maintain a relationship that's broken than just say, "Look, that was a terrible attempt. Attempt one is no longer in play. We've atoned for it. I'm sorry. Now we need to attune. Or actually, we need to attach, which is to say we need to reconnect, attune and move forward from here." 

What's the new normal stepping out of this space? And then it's just back to trust like we built the first time. But frankly, from those lessons learned, and got a little more clarity. And to be honest, at some points in time, say, I don't have it in me to move forward with this. And we need to separate or change the nature of the relationship. I can't show up for you in the same way I did before, because the breach is too deep. And maybe I need some time to get through it. I come back in like six months or a year. Or an employee is like, we do need to sever this relationship or you need to move to a different department." But it's really those three steps. If you're going to rebuild trust at all, you have to go through those. Look at that different letter. Wasn't to C this time. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Lots of As, though. 

Alex Cullimore: That's what I think. You work in letters as well, Matt. That's another thing we kind of – I was thinking of that when you said like chaser of shiny things. That acronym is COST, which is interesting. Kind of goes back and forth. 

Cristina Amigoni: How am I surprised that you came up with an acronym? 

Alex Cullimore: I didn't. That's what was said. I'm just channeling. 

Cristina Amigoni: Let me know if I need to step away and you two can just be – 

Alex Cullimore: The rest of this conversation is going to be acronyms. Anybody who's not in for it, let's – 

Cristina Amigoni: Shiny chaser, creative, whatever your profile is. 

Alex Cullimore: One thing I'd be interested to know, Matt, from your end, is the journey to knowing these things. Like you said, we have to kind of set on an understanding of what management is. And there's bits and pieces where people have touched on this. One thing I will say is that I don't feel like a lot of organizations have that at the front of their minds. We have the idea of what a software developer is. We have a vague idea of what an executive is, and they tend to have their different quirks and personalities. We just kind of like let that be. And then we kind of throw managers all in the middle. But how did you come to this understanding of kind of what management is and can be? What was your journey? 

Matt Ley: Oh, man. That's a fun personal question. A couple of points on my path. At one point, I was a pastor of a Lutheran church. I led a church. I was in charge of it. I did leadership. It was awesome. It felt like I was on vacation every day. It was actually one of my favorite jobs. Fast forward a few years, I've gone through a couple different chasing of shiny things, and I ended up in like a purchasing job. I'm working in corporate America. Trying something else out because I've never been there before. What the heck? Let's see what happens. 

And I love being an analyst. I love getting into details, and helping tell a story with data, and doing great contribution. I'm like I'm rocking contribution. I was on vacation when I was a leader. And, all of a sudden, they're like, "Hey, we just acquired another company. We need you to take over and be a supervisor for two people." Sweet. I mean, I'm a good contributor. I didn't have the language at the time, but as I was a good contributor, I was a good leader. This is management. It's just the middle. It's just something that's in between, right? Man, I've never been more wrong about anything corporate once in my life. I got my butt kicked. Guess who kicked it? It was me. 

It was so out of my element, out of my depths. Guys, I was coming, I was like, "I don't know if these people like me." Gosh. I really have said it that way. You know what? I need to go in at 5am tomorrow, so I can pick up some of the extra work that one of my people is doing, because I didn't explain it very well." I was just all up in my head. And I was like, "What the –" " It's like I have a bridge with two solid foundations, and I get to the middle of the bridge, and it's paved in paper, and I'm terrified in every step, fall through the icy waters below. That was like 12 years ago now. That was the point where I said, "I don't understand what's going on." I wouldn't have gotten an MBA because I was like, "I got to figure this out. This does not make good sense to me." 

I can't quite see them all, but I got a bunch of other pieces of paper on the wall like project management, Apex, which is supply chain management, Lean Six Sigma. There's my favorite one because it's an acronym within an acronym. It's called OCEB, which is Object Management Certified Expert in Business Process Management. 

Cristina Amigoni: That's a lot of words. 

Alex Cullimore: A lot of things happened right there. I don't know what – 

Cristina Amigoni: I don't know what's going on there. 

Matt Ley: but I had to figure this out. And so I've been uber curious and constantly looking for, "Where is this showing up?" And as I moved into consulting and start working with clients, a lot of my work was more towards organizational. It was the operational side of let's help you build your control documentation program. Let's help you do an org design so that you're making the best use of your people. 

And as I got into that, what I kept seeing is in all of these different spaces, it was how the manager showed up that was causing the majority of the issues that we were running into. If the managers would just tweak a little bit and how they understood what their role was, that's because it was like things were missing. And what it was, it was optimization and activation. 

Who's going to own getting these things done? And who's going to own making them work better? They weren't the leaders. And the contributors were just too busy doing the work. And it's like, "That was what managers." I really feel like they have to do. They're the activators and the optimizers. And then I just wrote 300 pages about that. Now you got it. 

Cristina Amigoni: Basically, the answer is read the book. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a good answer. 

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. It's curiosity, not a real question. Well, a real question, but not a real question. Do all the certifications, especially the one that I can't even repeat help you? 

Matt Ley: Yeah. And to be honest, almost all of the certifications were because they were in areas that I was just terrible at doing on my own. They were all like – back to the working genius, galvanizing and tenacity. Getting people excited about something and doing the detail work aren't really my strong suits. I got a project management certification because it's like, "I am not good at this. I need to help to figure out the most efficient way to do the thing I'm not good at." Business process management, same thing. Lean Six Sigma is how do I use all the tools to be efficient in the spaces that I'm having? I'm trying to just constantly learn how to do stuff that I wasn't good at as efficiently as possible? 

Cristina Amigoni: That makes sense. 

Alex Cullimore: Do you ever feel better about it? Or is it something you still want to like, "Hey, I don't want to do it. I just feel efficient."

Matt Ley: What I found is I really – actually, the certificates helped a ton with this. I love setting them up. I love being like, "Oh, what you're missing here is real project management. You're not going through all five phases. Here's what they're missing. I can help you design that." "Oh, you know what? You could use a 5S program or a 6S program. Let me help you implement that." Control documentation is a thing, and there's a fun thing called meta-processors with the processing process, which is what actually makes control documentation work. Let me help you understand how to do that. 

In a sense, I almost think of myself a lot of times like a Sherpa. I'm just like carrying everything in my bag, so no one else has to. And then we get to the natural location. I was like, "Oh, let me pull the exact thing you need right now." That's what those are, they give me the information to share with people when they need it. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's good metaphor. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, I like that. 

Cristina Amigoni: And I'm sure you've created your own custom way of pulling whatever tool is needed at the moment. 

Alex Cullimore: That's an acronym called Sherpa? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I can't come up with the words of that acronym. 

Matt Ley: I did come up with one recently that's close. It's not Sherpa. I'm still exploring it. It's a tool called What's Your Deal? And what I'm looking at is listening out – and this is more for solopreneurs or small business owners. You list out all the activities that you do or need to be done in your organization. And then you look at how much energy does it take me to do this? Scale of 1 to 5. How much value does this produce for me or the organization? Scale of 1 to 10. Because I think you can have more value than energy. And then what deal is, is looking at what do I delegate? What do I eliminate? What do I automate? And what do I do? And so you're trying to separate out your activities. And delegate are things that they can do 80% as well as I can do it. Or they can do 80% of the task. Either I can get it off and then hand it off, or they can get it started and I close it out. You delegate those. 

Then eliminate are things that are not necessarily required and have what I'd call a low fulfillment ROI. So that energy to value is a less than one exchange. Just get rid of them because they're not providing value for you right now. And if they're not necessary for the business. Automate, like you should be looking to do that pretty much everywhere. Is it standardized? And is there a tool that can help me with this? Ideally, it's when you can have a conversation. And then lead is what is the thing that nobody else can do but you? That better be on your list. And so you go through, you figure out what's your deal. And it's just how to like separate all of your tasks. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's a good acronym. 

Matt Ley: I'm going to turn it into one someday. I got all the ideas out there. Now I just got to go find…If anyone listens to this and put it together and sends it to me after that – 

Cristina Amigoni: That won't be either of us, just in case you're waiting. And the working genius tenacity is both our frustration. There's a lot of ideas that Alex brings. There's a lot of discerning what the ideas are about and figuring out the enablement. What support and how do we get them done? And then there's just kind of like turning around and be like, "Why is nobody bringing this up?" 

Alex Cullimore: It's like the assembly line is put in a jar, then it seals, and then it just drops off a shelf. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, that. 

Matt Ley: Tenacity, because it's hard to maintain a business.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes. 

Matt Ley: Well, it's not like the first time we found someone who brings the tenacity. 

Cristina Amigoni: Well, we finally got a lot of things. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Suddenly, things started happening. We were like, "Oh my God. This was possible this whole time?" 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: This happened so much faster than the amount of griping and complaining we would have done before we got to this. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's faster, they're better. There's like way more than before. 

Alex Cullimore: But it was also that very tepid like golden rule, like, "I'm sorry to put this on your plate. But if you could look at this, that'd be great." Then they just like destroy it like half an hour and way better than we could have done it. We're like, "Oh, and you're okay? You're okay. Do you feel like – do you want to rest? Do you want a day of rest now that you've done that?" And they're like, "No, I love this." It was like, "Oh, okay." 

Cristina Amigoni: Please don't quit. 

Matt Ley: Yeah, it's so hard to break – because I've experienced that a couple of times. It's just like I could feel it. It's like, how the – it's like we were trying to fly the blanket without fuel. And that one thing comes in. For me, it's been this. I've seen this story with clients as well. When you finally figure out like, "Well, what is that missing?" And that's what I love about the working genius, as just a tool. The only assessment that says, "If you have too much or too little of any one of them, it will show up in a way that's harming your business."

Cristina Amigoni: Oh yeah. 

Matt Ley: And so like, also for us, us internally, my team, galvanizing is a frustration for everybody on my team. 

Cristina Amigoni: How's the business development going? 

Matt Ley: It's intentional. But also, discernment is my number three, it's my first competency, and it's the other two members of the team. And so that space between. I described the wonder invention. Discernment is like the wide open. That's what people want to do. Galvanizing, enablement, tenacity is the given. Do you want to keep it wide open or do you want to get it done? Right at that handoff point, we have all of this magnetic energy pulling us into the wide-open space. And that's showing up. 

And luckily, we have a tool to have the conversation, which means we just have to really be intentional about it, interview to a space where we can hire into cover. But now we know what it is we need to hire in a cover for. And that's the beauty of the tool, is it literally helps you figure out. It's like a roadmap for what the next steps are. Just cover all the basis and then figure out how to be clear and consistent in doing so, and it's going to help your business. 

Cristina Amigoni: Well, and then respect the basis. So don't get frustrated if you're an ideator and a discerner. Don't get frustrated when the get people want to get to do and they're not up here in the wide-open space with you and vice versa. And so respecting where everybody belongs, and how they're contributing and how their contribution is going to show up completely differently. Because the tenacity people are not going to be in all these idea conversations. That's not where their participation is going to go. Their participation is going to be like, "Okay, you had the ideas on getting it done." Respect that and respect that – that doesn't mean they don't have an opinion. That doesn't mean they're not part of the team. It doesn't mean that they're lacking anything or they're not that engaged. It's just their engagement shows up very differently. 

Matt Ley: Yeah, absolutely. To the point of which meetings we go to. There's one meeting, we call it dreaming and creating. Surprising. And so there's a WI meeting. The attendance for that meeting is required. Nobody else is. It's up to you. It'll just be a working space for them. That's great, because I'll just work on stuff that's like figuring out how to tweak this. We're trying to make everything have some action so that Matt doesn't get so totally untethered and flies away. No one else has to be there. 

Cristina Amigoni: Especially in a meeting alone. It was bringing you down. 

Matt Ley: Alex, I mean, you're always welcome to show up. 

Alex Cullimore: I'll be up there untethered. I'll be throwing shiny objects around. 

Cristina Amigoni: You'll be flying in the sky as two balloons that don't even meet. 

Alex Cullimore: It'll be trying to stay helpful for everybody. It'll be a blast, and I will have forgotten everything that happened five minutes upwards. It was fun.

Cristina Amigoni: Pun intended. 

Matt Ley: One of the other things too that's been really helpful is thinking about burnout within that space. Because, frankly, that meeting itself, because if it's just a place where I go and I have those conversations or I just explore something for now, that brings me joy. That itself is valuable. And what we have a tendency to do is – I say we flame out in our frustrations. We burn out in our competencies. And what we tend to do is say, "Oh, what people need is more space and more time." Usually, if we've been low energy at work, what we've been doing is ignoring all the things that we don't want to do at home. So, we send people home to all of the things that are still probably in their frustrations or competencies, instead of saying, "Hey, you know what? I'm going to fill your cup." What's something going on here that's kind of in your space? Matt, you're a wonder inventor. The other team is having an offsite. You're not on their team, but would you mind going and sitting with a conversation partner for the day? No tasks, no requirements. You could just sit and listen the whole time. And all of a sudden, I'm supporting the business and I'm feeling. Versus being at home and taking care of all the tasks that you've been going home because you're too tired doing things at work. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah, that's a very good point. And also, doubling down, like forcing people to double down on their frustration when they already are procrastinating on them and really struggling with them doesn't help at all. It's there in their frustration, help, bring somebody else in. Find somebody that's their geniuses who can help them out because that collaboration can get them out of being stuck. Otherwise, it becomes self-fulfilling, just like you said. Send somebody home to do the frustration part because the frustration part is burning them out at work. It's not going to help. And so same thing, it's like fueling, putting more fuel into the fire, burning out, it's not going to work either. 

Matt Ley: Totally agree, yeah. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's like, so bring somebody else along. That's where collaboration starts. 

Alex Cullimore: You mentioned a good idea of how to consider this, and I have a feeling this comes from your math background maybe a little bit as well. But you talked about it being like an energy equation. What's the plus and what's the minus of this? And I think that's worth thinking about. It's helpful imagery for me about, "Hey, when have I reached a threshold? Is this actually adding energy? Is this subtracting energy?" And what can you do with that later? Because that idea of like, yeah, just go to this offsite. Even if you weren't invited to this, maybe that's going to be really filling. And now you have a whole bunch of energy to do other things instead of wearing out. And I'm curious to hear more about that idea of that energy equation. 

Matt Ley: I mentioned it earlier, like the concept I use, and it's both individual and organizationally. Actually, it's just called fulfillment ROI. Because I think that's what we're looking for, for energy. It's actually the same formula for sustainment and sustainability. It's the amount of energy we put into things and the amount of value they create for us. If that's a positive return, that's a fulfilling experience, which is to say it's also sustainable. 

I've used that for many years on the coaching side of my work. I've actually been very recently, in the last six months, transferring that over into the consulting organizational side of it. Because I'm like, "Well, one, organizations are just culminations of a bunch of people doing stuff." And so with this like work, you have a bunch of fulfillment ROIs and you add them all together, do you get like a mega fulfillment ROI? I said, yeah, you actually do. 

And the thing is we already have names for them. The energy side of things is what we call operational excellence. How easily can we get things done? Making things more operationally excellent is reducing the energy to get things done. It's efficiency. The value proposition is organizational health. Do people find value in the things they're doing? Do they see themselves reflected in their actions? Do they see their actions having value and impact on the mission of the organization? 

In between operational excellence and organizational health, if you can get those two things back in line, organizations that are just out of alignment, they're just not feeling fulfilled. And if you do that organizationally, I guarantee you that's going to filter down to your people. And then all of a sudden, people are more fulfilled. And that's my goal in life is because if we're fulfilled with the work we do, and work should be fulfilling, that means we go home with fuller cups to be better partners, better parents, better members of society. We can engage in the activities that continue to fill our cup. It becomes a positive feedback loop. And so that's the goal. That's my mission. 

Cristina Amigoni: Such a great concept. How do you get awareness on somebody else's fulfillment ROI and your own, and then combine those to actually find that formula?

Matt Ley: It's a great question. I would say it goes back to conversation and curiosity. Because we got to get to where people's intentions are coming from. And something happens in communication every time. There's an intention and then there's a perception. And all of our fears, shortcomings, the things we're not great at fall into the gap in between to become filters. 

Someone has an intention, it goes through all these filters before we get a perception. And what we need to do is close that perception-attention gap by asking a lot of questions. And we find out what it is that actually drives them. Assessments are another great tool to open up that conversation from that. Because I say assessments, they're descriptive, not prescriptive. They're the start of a conversation, not the end of a conversation. They're helping you have a conversation you probably didn't have the language for prior to assessment. You just start talking to people and get curious about them and be like, "Hey, you're showing up as a person. Tell me more about what that's like." 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. And talking to people. If only you could skip that in the workplace. 

Alex Cullimore: AI is working on it. 

Cristina Amigoni: Which takes us away from the doing, if we're talking to people. 

Matt Ley: Well, I think AI is kind of like any other tool that we put out there. There's some things that's way better than this. There's other things that it's not. And trying to stand in the way of it doing the stuff that it's better at, it's like almost every other technological revolution. It actually ends up creating more jobs in the backend. The thing that's interesting this time around, it's happening so fast.   

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, it's still hard to figure out. Like, what is the intent, what is the best value of the tool versus what we want it to do? And how do we keep with the advancements of it? How do we keep up with, "Oh, it works well for this. It doesn't work well for that. Okay, I need to tweak this. I need to tweak that," before making longer-lasting decisions. 

Matt Ley: I mean, I started leveraging a lot more AI in the last – probably two months. I'm a 1980s baby. I say I grew up in an analog world. And then now I’m living in a digital one, and I yet figured out how to like shift out of the analog mindset. And so a lot of people I've worked with are like that, you just need to find the easy button. Because I just want to find the interestingly creative way more difficult button. Do it the complicated way. Now that I've been using AI to do a lot of things I used to do, like brainstorming wise. You feed it a couple of documents of things that you've done. And, frankly, having written a book was a huge – I could throw in there and just be like, "Hey, from this, spit out six ideas of something that would be an interesting topic for me to explore talking about LinkedIn or something like that." It starts the conversation in a space that I might have gotten to, but like four hours into thinking through it. And so it's helped work a lot more, especially for people that were wonder and invention, isn't their default place to go. I think that's a huge value that it can add. 

Cristina Amigoni: I would agree. I do use it definitely daily in multiple times a day now because of that wonder and invention piece. It's like, okay, I get the wonder. It's in my competencies. Invention is in my frustration. It's like I have this big question. I know how to discern, but I need something to discern. The blank thing is just I can't. I can't do the blank thing. 

Matt Ley: I love that blank page. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: That's like the most fun. It's the best thing. 

Matt Ley: Tell whatever I want. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. It's when I've already put stuff on the page, I'm like, "God, I've ruined this." Well, thanks so much, Matt. We appreciate all of your time and your thoughts on this. This is an interesting way of doing it. We, of course, wish you the best of luck in starting a business. The first six months are especially fun in lots of pivots and especially lots of invention. There's so many fun pieces that I'm guessing you're discovering. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Our last couple of questions, what's your definition of authenticity? 

Matt Ley: I think when you're being authentic, you don't have to think about it as much. I think it's going up in the space. I think one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes is, "A person doesn't have to remember anything." 

Cristina Amigoni: That's definitely one of my favorites. 

Matt Ley: Maybe the other side though. I use it a lot in coaching. Oh, in our life, there will be trouble. When we worry, you make it double. I think authenticity helps. Authenticity is lightening the energy level.

Cristina Amigoni: Talk about fulfillment ROI. Live authentically. 

Matt Ley: Yup. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a great way of describing it. And it sounds exactly like kind of the measurement of value of a good management team. You've got yours feeling better. You notice it when you just don't notice it hurting. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah.

Matt Ley: It's like it's the air we breathe. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. But you're breathing, and you're not passing out and coughing. It's working. And so where can people find you? 

Matt Ley: If you want to learn more about the book, you can even download the first three chapters for free.

Cristina Amigoni: Or go to my mailbox and just – 

Matt Ley: It's going to say to Cristina. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Matt Ley: Ipnadvisors.com is our website for the company. And then I'm active on LinkedIn. So I like to post a lot there. So if you want to get tidbits like this on a regular basis, I post findings each week. 

Alex Cullimore: And what does IPN say? 

Matt Ley: Inflection Point Nexus Advisors, which sounds like a bunch of fun jargony words, right? It's really like the inflection – 

Cristina Amigoni: It's an acronym. 

Matt Ley: Yeah. What gets you here isn't going to get you there. And then the nexus is that fulfillment ROI. It's the brackish waters between organizational health and operational excellence. That's where we like to work. 

Alex Cullimore: I appreciate the amount of math language you've worked into all of these things. I need to check out all of your stuff. 

Matt Ley: There's a story behind the story. 

Alex Cullimore: We're going to have a different one about tangents and inflection points. Cristina, you can join if you want. 

Cristina Amigoni: It sounds like this is one of those WI creative-only meetings that just – I'll watch the recording. 

Alex Cullimore: This is just math nerds. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: People who couldn't get their fill at college and haven't had to use it since and now want something – 

Cristina Amigoni: I'll watch afterwards and then I'll point out all the places where you guys made no sense. Because there was no discerner in the room. 

Alex Cullimore: But it totally makes sense. You just have to hybrid these two theories that don't make sense together. 

Cristina Amigoni: And then I'm going to ask you a question of like, "Why are we listening to this? And how is this actually helping anyone?? 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, that's the result of most of my alone WI meetings. And then I look back at the notes, I'm like, "Why would anybody do this?" 

Cristina Amigoni: We do have WI meetings in our company. Actually, we call them WI meetings. The rule for me is to shut up, unless I ask permission to ask a discerning question. First, I have to ask permission and if it's the right moment. Otherwise, not my meeting to be talking. 

Alex Cullimore: I'd like to know that this is a self-imposed rule. It's not like we're all just shouting down Cristina every time this meeting comes up. Cristina says this about herself. It's not like all of us being – it's just cruel. 

Matt Ley: It's a great internal culture. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we're famous for our culture. It's definitely platinum rule. It is self-imposed. Because I know myself and I'm going to go straight into discernment when the WI isn't finished. That's why I have to ask for permission before I discern. 

Alex Cullimore: It's also necessary at some point, because otherwise, we'll just WI in circles forever. 

Matt Ley: I always have a notebook next to me, because people will start describing. It's like, "Oh, that makes me think of this." And I have to write it out. Take in the plane from we're about to land to like it's just 30,000 feet. Everyone wants some turbulence. 

Cristina Amigoni: Hope you didn't eat lunch. 

Matt Ley: That's what the T stands for? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, take off. And the W is whoa. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. 

Cristina Amigoni: The colonizing is more like good Lord. Can we please get everybody on board before you go up and down? 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, GET. Lordy Gads and terrible. That's how I feel about the last time we saw it. 

Cristina Amigoni: It sounds like we have a whole new meaning of widget. All right. Well, now we can actually close this off. Thank you again. 

Alex Cullimore: Thank you so much for joining, Matt. We'll have you on again if you're willing, 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Let me know if I'm invited to that one or it's just a – 

Alex Cullimore: We're going to have many more. One of them will be math involved, and that will just be the one that we'll have to put like a disclaimer up front, like, "We get it if you don't want to listen to this." 

Cristina Amigoni: You should actually press the stop button. This may be many hours long. 

Alex Cullimore: We got only five listens, but they are all fervent fans. 

Cristina Amigoni: And thanks, everybody, for listening. 

[OUTRO]

Alex Cullimore: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Uncover the Human. Special thanks to Raechel Sherwood who helped produce our theme. And, of course, our production assistants, Carli and Nikki, for whom we could not do this or could not publish this. We get to do basically the fun parts. And thank you to We Edit Podcasts for editing our podcasts. 

Cristina Amigoni: You can find us at podcast@wearesiamo.com. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us at Uncover the Human on social media. Follow us. And We Are Siamo is wearesiamo.com. 

Alex Cullimore: Please feel free to reach out with questions, topics you'd like addressed. If you'd like to be on the show, reach out. We're around. Thank you, everybody, for listening. 

[END]