Adam Larson: 00:05

Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson. Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Bruce Dittman, the chief growth officer at Trigger and managing partner of Chief Seconds. Bruce brings a unique and insightful perspective on sales and marketing rooted in a wealth of experience. In our conversation, Bruce challenges the myth of a secret sauce for success, emphasizing instead that success often lies in the execution of simple, well understood principles.

Adam Larson: 00:31

He delves into why we're drawn to complex solutions and offers practical strategies for making hard things easy. Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder, leading a team, or pursuing personal growth, this episode is packed with valuable insight and actionable advice. So sit back, relax, and join us as we embrace the straightforward path to success. Let's get started. Well, Bruce, I'm really excited to have you on the Count Me In podcast.

Adam Larson: 01:00

And one of the things that excited me about talking to you is you say something about there's no such thing as a secret sauce. And a lot of time people are searching for that secret sauce, that one thing that's gonna shoot them to the to the moon and back. And maybe you could talk a little bit about what you

Adam Larson: 01:13

mean when you say there is no secret sauce.

Bruce Ditman: 01:16

Yeah. Sure. Thanks. And thanks for having me on the podcast. I you know, listen, we we have an entire economy of secret sauces out there of of, secret knowledge, special tactics, recipes of this herb and that root to solve all of our problems.

Bruce Ditman: 01:31

Right? And, you know, I'm I'm just as guilty of it as everybody else. I I'm a sucker on social media for, for this or that or just general conversations. But the the truth is is that I think we all know most of the time, almost all of the time, especially without behavioral modification, doesn't work. Right?

Bruce Ditman: 01:48

So the that said, when I talk about there's no secret sauce, there's a funny story behind it because I I try to stay away from, like, I am a person who's prone to slogans to sloganing, but I am not prone to that type of metaphor. But the truth is is that I was a CMO for like 15 years in the accounting industry. But unlike many or nearly all CMOs in the accounting industry, I was in sales beforehand. I actually, like, never had any marketing training. Sales is something that I think most people on earth find terrifying and salespeople are just sort of perverse enough not to.

Bruce Ditman: 02:21

And, therefore, it's a great area. It's a great area for people to be selling snake oil in. Right? Yeah. Just like diet, just like exercise, just like all these other kind of things where and we'll get to this, but, like, where people actually know what they're supposed to do.

Bruce Ditman: 02:36

But there has to be an easier way. Right? But because I was a former salesperson sitting in a CMO chair, when I got the calls, I would I would I mean, I'm telling you just her rest for years. So one person particularly for more than a decade by someone who wanted to come in and sell their proprietary system, their secret knowledge, their secret sauce on how to drive sales and develop business at the accounting firm, which I knew to be just a sales pipeline. Like, you know, you don't get past day 1, lowest person on the totem pole at a sales organization without fully understanding that.

Bruce Ditman: 03:06

And it it would drive me mental. You know, and I was, you know, a pretty rigorous gatekeeper for these people. Now there's always an opportunity to learn from someone. Most of it, we learn from experiences like that, not from the person with whom we're sharing that experience. But anyway, so I was I was talking to a friend of mine, and I was ranting about this as usual.

Bruce Ditman: 03:25

As a consultant to the industry, it's very frustrating. And as someone who's actually done sales and had success in it, it's frustrating to then go out in the field and compete or you see other people spreading information that, you know, there should be no premium on. Like, you know, for example, I'm really focused on on excellence. Right? I'm sort of good to great.

Bruce Ditman: 03:42

Mhmm. Therefore, you should give away everything it takes to get to good. Mhmm. Right? I'm in service of your sort of higher mission.

Bruce Ditman: 03:48

I was talking to my friend. Now this friend and I travel around our state, which is Connecticut. He's also in the in the business talking about changing the world, talking about changing the business. And what we do is we try different buffaloing spots. Right?

Bruce Ditman: 03:59

We don't have a blog. We don't have a podcast. We just go and try different buffaloing sauces and rate buffaloing restaurants and rate them to each other. Like, sauces and rate buffaloing restaurants and rate them to each other. Like, that's where it ends.

Bruce Ditman: 04:08

It's real nerd stuff, I guess. But I'm sitting there reading wings. I'm sitting there, and I'm ranting about this. And I'm saying, you know, there just isn't a secret sauce. The secret to doing it is doing it.

Bruce Ditman: 04:16

Mhmm. As I'm holding a buffalo wing in my hand, and I'm like, oh, man. Sometimes it just hits you in the face. See, buffalo wing sauce only has 3 ingredients. Right?

Bruce Ditman: 04:25

It's butter, vinegar, and it's hot sauce.

Adam Larson: 04:27

Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 04:27

So like, I mean, I'll ask you, like, why do some of them rule and some of them suck?

Adam Larson: 04:33

It's all about how you cook it.

Bruce Ditman: 04:34

It's all about how you cook it, man. It's about execution.

Adam Larson: 04:36

Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 04:36

You know? Yeah. And knowledge and wisdom and experience and etcetera. But, really, it's about how you cook it just as you said it better than I do. Right?

Bruce Ditman: 04:43

So that became the foundation for this sort of focused piece of of education that I like to do, which is called no secret sauce. We can do this in one foot while rubbing our belly and patting our head. It is there are no secret sauces. The secret to doing it is doing it. But really, when you think about it, the the big picture is actually what is it about secret sauces that attracts us?

Bruce Ditman: 05:04

Right? Because very few of us who are prone to buying a skinny tea or a a supplement a muscle building supplement or or something else. Very few of us are 1 and doners. Mhmm. It's actually kinda like a type.

Bruce Ditman: 05:15

It's, again, it's most of us. Right? So after the first time we do it, nothing happens. And after the second time we do it, nothing happens or something bad happens or surely not the positive. Why do we keep doing it?

Bruce Ditman: 05:25

Right? What is the allure of that mystery? And and in business, I'm I'm calling it complexity. Because I think people who sell you a mystery cure are a proprietary system that is made up of totally free and available things. What they're doing is they are creating a lore and creating mystery and complexity.

Bruce Ditman: 05:44

And why are we attracted to that? We're attracted to that because it's unknowable. It feels unknowable. And that which is unknowable leaves us of the duty of having to know it. Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 05:53

Right? Yeah. It's not that it's hard. It's that it's unknowable. And that's what, in my mind, it makes us attracted to it.

Bruce Ditman: 05:59

It's that, like, well, listen, babe. I'm not responsible for for my success in my bicep growth. It's it's this unknowable mixture of roots and in herbs that I need to take in in in a particular sequence. The truth is that I know how to get bigger biceps. And so does everybody.

Bruce Ditman: 06:16

Go do go do curls. Okay? Yeah. Go do curls. Now is there a secret to getting this is silly about biceps, but whatever it is to becoming the world's best at something?

Bruce Ditman: 06:26

Maybe. Not a secret, but is there a combination of recipe? We'll talk about food again with recipe. Mhmm. Yeah.

Bruce Ditman: 06:30

Probably. But not to get good at it. Just go do curls. Yeah. So that's it.

Bruce Ditman: 06:34

So when I talk about it, what I'm looking at is, you know, no secret sauce means what is the allure of complexity? Mhmm. How do we fall out of love with it? Right? And how do we learn how do we learn to distill tasks and knowledge into simple, and I'll make a point here, not easy.

Bruce Ditman: 06:51

K? It's definitely not easy, but simple Mhmm. Chunks of information and or activity, right, that we can use to to design our success.

Adam Larson: 06:59

I like when you said that, you know, that it could be simple. That doesn't mean it's easy. Going back to your example of the curls, you know, doing the curls and doing the work to get the big biceps takes time. It's hard at times. Sometimes it hurts.

Adam Larson: 07:10

Sometimes you have to change your diet and eat certain things to make sure that you're getting the right proteins and all those things to make sure those biceps get large. But it's not an easy thing, but it's a very simple thing. You just have to do it over and over again.

Bruce Ditman: 07:20

It is.

Adam Larson: 07:20

And so Yeah. And I think it goes I think it's a larger larger task, a larger comment on society. You know, if you look back through history where there's different snake oil salesman, there's different, you know, self help books and different things if it rise at different industries throughout history, especially in the US. And you can see why people are attracted to those things. There's that get rich quick, that idea that if I can do this one thing that seems unknowable, I can get rich.

Adam Larson: 07:44

Mhmm. Then you pay $3,000 for a seminar, and you realize, wait, they're not really telling me anything new.

Bruce Ditman: 07:50

One person gets rich in that environment. Yes. It's the person selling it. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Larson: 07:53

So how do we, like, break out of this idea of complexity and kind of get more to and embrace the idea of the power of simplicity instead of just continuing on that same cycle over and over again?

Bruce Ditman: 08:03

Well, for 1, forgive yourself for being attracted to complexity. Okay? It it is our nature. Yeah. And if if we weren't, there would be no social media.

Bruce Ditman: 08:11

If we weren't, there'd be no self help book category. I mean, it's okay. Right? But just be aware of it. And when we look at it, don't accept that something's unknowable.

Bruce Ditman: 08:19

Okay? And and demand that anyone who's trying to pedal something that appears mysterious or unknowable or proprietary to you, demand that they explain it to you in the simplest of terms. Break it down into simple achievable goals for me with the caveat that I understand that this won't be easy. It will just be simple. Yeah.

Bruce Ditman: 08:35

Have to this is not my, necessarily my IP, but we have to focus on behaviors. Right? Mhmm. And, you know, a behavior that we can adopt is is that type of it's not cynicism. Right?

Bruce Ditman: 08:47

But I think we can take a skeptical eye to a lot of this. And, you know, the of course, the the difference between cynicism and skepticism. Cynicism is is presupposing a, a negative outlook on something. A skepticism is that I would like to be I'd like you to demonstrate what you're talking about. Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 09:04

You know, if you look at the Skeptics Society, for example, the National Organization of Skeptics Society, that's a society entirely devoted to the scientific method. Nothing more. Absolutely nothing more. So you can both hope that UFOs are real, but reject the evidence that you've seen of them. Because you're not a cynic.

Bruce Ditman: 09:21

You don't think that people who believe in UFOs are dumb, but you are a skeptic in that you have they have yet to meet the standard of the scientific method in order to demonstrate the evidence of them. So can we be be a little more skeptical when someone says, I have a system that's gonna work. You've never seen it before. But what you're doing is wrong. What I do is right.

Bruce Ditman: 09:39

Let's be skeptical and say, okay. Show me. Mhmm. Let's talk about it. Explain to me.

Bruce Ditman: 09:42

Oh, this is a sales pipeline. Okay. Other than changing the vocabulary of what you of what I'm currently using, what other meaningful additions have you made? Or have you changed the vocabulary to make things complex? Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 09:53

Right? The irony of ironies in my space is in marketing is that complexity in in extremis, which is confusion, is the enemy of good communication. Right? Mhmm. So imagine frame it this way in your head.

Bruce Ditman: 10:06

Someone comes to you and says, I'm gonna help you sell more or have better relationships with your clients or with anyone, with your wife, with your kids, whatever it is. In order to do that, I'm about to confuse you. Has that ever led to better communication? Right?

Adam Larson: 10:20

No. No. That's when you respond. That's been clear as mud.

Bruce Ditman: 10:22

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, like, we, you know, we wanna learn. So this is not against you don't know everything.

Bruce Ditman: 10:30

I don't know everything. Yes. We know how to do pearls, but we don't know everything.

Adam Larson: 10:33

Yeah.

Bruce Ditman: 10:33

But is there a secret knowledge? No. So be a lifelong learner. Can I tell you an interesting side note?

Adam Larson: 10:39

Yeah. Of course.

Bruce Ditman: 10:39

I'm reading this book about habituation and dishabituation. I forget the title of it right now. I can look it up. We can footnote it. It's with a neuroscientist and a and a scholar.

Bruce Ditman: 10:50

And basically, habituation is your ability to get used to anything, you know, and, good or bad. Dishabituation is when you no longer are used to it when you have been used to it, which is different than Okay. Not being used to something. Right? Yeah.

Bruce Ditman: 11:01

Oh, it showed up here. I'm from I'm from the West Coast. It's freezing in Connecticut. I will become habituated to the cold. K?

Bruce Ditman: 11:07

When I go back home and I think it's really hot, I've become dis habituated to what was normal for me. But here's the interesting about interesting thing about learning. I'm just telling everybody this because I thought it was so insightful. There's a they did an experiment where they gave a they made a video game for a set of people. Again, this is a scientific method.

Bruce Ditman: 11:24

Right? To get a fixed set of people and give them a video game and told them exactly how to play. It. Right? Then they played it.

Bruce Ditman: 11:29

And, of course, every day or every time you play it, you become more habituated to the pleasure of it, and it becomes less and less pleasurable. Then they took another set of people and give them a video game, but they only taught them how to play it level by level. Mhmm. Okay? So they had to learn the whole time.

Bruce Ditman: 11:43

And because they had to learn the whole time, the level of pleasure stayed, you know, did not diminish as it did when it was the same. Yeah. So the the the deduction from that, the assumption from that is that learning causes or maintains pleasure level. Learning is change. All learning is change because you're learning something new.

Adam Larson: 11:59

Yeah.

Bruce Ditman: 12:00

Change is the enemy of habituation. So a life full of learning should be a life full of pleasure, or at least less habituated insensitivity towards the your pleasure and your joy. So long way of saying you don't know everything. But we need to know in the in the secret.

Adam Larson: 12:16

Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot that you said there, and I I would love to get into that book. And that's a whole another conversation. But there's always a gap between knowing something and actually doing it.

Adam Larson: 12:25

Because, you know, when you first said it was, like, just doing it as opposed to getting complex. So how do you bridge how do you bridge that gap to from knowing something and actually doing it? Because a lot of times, you may learn something new, but then applying it on every day is a that's a there's it's not so easy.

Bruce Ditman: 12:40

Yeah. Just a quick footnote. The book is called Look Again by Tali Sherot and Cas Sunstein. Alright. Look Again.

Bruce Ditman: 12:47

Yeah. No. Really good point. Right? Because okay.

Bruce Ditman: 12:49

Good. So now many of us are, like, for sure, you could ask anyone in my life, an armchair expert. Right? Mhmm. And we can now know stuff.

Bruce Ditman: 12:58

What we need to do to ask is, you know, I know this stuff. What's the best way to do this? Very little of that will help you until you start doing it. And there's no other way around it. So how do we find a way where what we don't we do what we want to do.

Bruce Ditman: 13:12

Like, in the world of sales, you know, we talk about sales reporting, and people don't wanna talk about people don't wanna bend yourself at CRM. Good salespeople never don't tell you about their wins. Okay? Someone who's doing the work never hides their work. Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 13:26

They may even say, oh, I don't even care about that. I just go and do my thing. They never hide their work. Okay. So how but but for those of us who aren't driven to be, in this case, let's say a salesperson or an outgoing person, a networker.

Bruce Ditman: 13:38

We're shy in public. We're not confident about our our expertise. Whatever the case is. Okay? Whatever the hard things that you don't wanna do.

Bruce Ditman: 13:45

What I tell people is to try and engineer the close try and get as close to it as possible. Okay? There is no guarantee. And again, run away from anyone who tells you I can make this easy, that you're gonna love this. Okay?

Bruce Ditman: 13:56

This is going to be hard. Let's make it as as little as less hard as possible. Right? And then you gotta bite down and and and do it. Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 14:06

So, you know, for example, I used to tell people, you know, we wanted we always wanted people to be on boards and committees, terrible boards and, local boards and things like that. I had a rule which was the 2 rules, and then I offered a guarantee to get them on the board. 1 was it had to be about the board or the organization that you're involved with had to you had to care about it in someone. Mhmm. Even if it wasn't a charity.

Bruce Ditman: 14:28

K? You had to be personally invested. It was a country club board. You had to be care about it. It was a library.

Bruce Ditman: 14:34

It was a charity. Whatever it was. Okay? Number 1, you had to give a you know what, right, to about it. Number 2 is it had to be between the office and your house.

Bruce Ditman: 14:41

Mhmm. Alright? It's just a behavioral thing. If you have to drive past your house when you're exhausted, you ain't gonna do it. You're not gonna do it.

Bruce Ditman: 14:50

Right? Yeah. So make the hard things easy and the easy things hard. So this is another, like, behavioral sort of trick. You know, if you don't wanna eat so much chips and candy, put it on the high shelf.

Bruce Ditman: 15:01

Right? Put the apples on the low shelf. That's what we need to do with our behaviors around these tasks, which now made simple, are still difficult. Let's make them as easy as possible. Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 15:11

When and, again, in the world of sales, people would tell me partners, very successful people would say, well, listen. That guy likes to go out to drink 5 days a week. You know, he's out of cocktails 5 days a week or that, you know, that person has tons of contacts already or or that person's a great talker. You know, to which I'd always answer, there has to be something that you care about. Right?

Bruce Ditman: 15:27

Do you eat breakfast? Lunch? Right? You you wanna be home for dinner with your family? I commend that.

Bruce Ditman: 15:32

Do you eat breakfast? You know, do you eat lunch? No. I'm eating at my desk. Well, that's the problem.

Bruce Ditman: 15:37

Or do you play pickleball? Do you knit? Do you like book groups? Do you care about civic matters? There's something you care about, and and so make it easy.

Bruce Ditman: 15:44

Mhmm. You know, because I'm sure we've all had the experience where you've been over volunteered, and that sucks.

Adam Larson: 15:50

Yeah. It does. It really does. It really does. And when you overbalance here, then you're suddenly extending yourself over more, and then it just it snowballs into your work until you just don't care about any of it.

Adam Larson: 16:01

You have too much to care about.

Bruce Ditman: 16:02

That's right. And you end up resenting it more. Right? You're not making it Mhmm. Make it easy on yourself as easy as possible to do hard things.

Bruce Ditman: 16:10

Yeah. You don't wanna do those bicep curls, you know, reward yourself. I don't know. Like, for me, I cannot work out in the morning. I can't.

Bruce Ditman: 16:17

I I have. I don't like it. I'm better right around dinner time. And so let me make it I can do that. So I'm going to do that.

Bruce Ditman: 16:23

I don't need to torture myself the way it's torture enough.

Adam Larson: 16:26

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were our own worst enemy sometimes. Oh, yeah.

Adam Larson: 16:30

Yeah. I think that's what it it's coming down to. Because sometimes you're like, well, if I do this, then I have to do that, then I have to do that. And you're making either make it too hard for yourself, or you're just that one step away from just doing it. Like you said, make sure that place that you're volunteering is between your the office and home so that you can just stop there on the way, get it done, and move on.

Adam Larson: 16:46

Otherwise, it's just gonna be another burden, and it's too much.

Bruce Ditman: 16:50

It's too much. Life is hard. Yeah. You know, life is beautiful, but life is hard. And so and you're gonna have to do hard stuff, and that's why we fall for these things.

Bruce Ditman: 16:59

Yeah. You know? That's why. You know? Someone came and said, I'm gonna teach you everything I know.

Bruce Ditman: 17:04

We're talking about sales, and it could be about anything, by the way. K? Yeah. I'm gonna teach you everything I know about nutrition. I'm gonna teach you everything I know about sales.

Bruce Ditman: 17:10

That's different than saying, I know all there is to know about nutrition. I know all there is to know about sales. And if you pay me, you will then benefit from it. Because what they've left out is you need to eat different. You need to do other things.

Bruce Ditman: 17:23

Right?

Adam Larson: 17:24

Yeah.

Bruce Ditman: 17:24

So it is not actually the knowledge that does it most often. It's the behaviors. And the behavior is the hard part.

Adam Larson: 17:30

Yeah. So just thinking about, you know, leaders of teams, and if you have a team that you're working with, what are different communication styles, ways that you can help make things simple and help break down complex processes? Just, you know, even like in a business and you're trying to make things more simple for people to get their jobs done because everybody's tightening their belt. There's, you know, there's a lot of downsizing happening. Teams are more strapped than ever.

Adam Larson: 17:50

How can we put these things that we've been talking about to practice?

Bruce Ditman: 17:53

Sure. So let's do I mean, let's start at the very beginning. Everyone on your team should have an accurate job description. Not for the job that they got hired on at this point, for the job that they currently have. Yeah.

Bruce Ditman: 18:03

Right? Number 1, because that is how we've agreed we actually signed something that this is the definition of success. Mhmm. Alright. So we've now agreed that oftentimes, things are hard even when they're simple.

Bruce Ditman: 18:16

One of the rewards we get for hard work is is success as we define it. Now you've already negotiated the contract. Right? The payment. And payment, as far as I'm concerned, payment you know, I let let's let's talk about this.

Bruce Ditman: 18:27

Employee pay salary is not reward.

Adam Larson: 18:29

No. It's compensation.

Bruce Ditman: 18:30

Yeah. Okay. It's it's it's goods it's money for services. It's not something that you give to your team every month. It's something that is theirs, that they've earned with their behavior.

Bruce Ditman: 18:42

And I think it's really important that we don't think that way, that we are that they owe us it's an exchange. Now above and beyond is a different story. So let's start let's go back to the job description. Employees' teammates want to know how to be successful. It is safe to assume if they don't fire them, but you don't let's assume most of them do.

Bruce Ditman: 19:02

Yeah. After you've hired a person, your job is to facilitate their success as a manager. Because as a manager, their your team's aggregate success is your success. That is, like, the best metric of your success to the company. You know, there are other metrics that I really care about, like longevity and people go outperforming you in their career when, you know, passing in your career.

Bruce Ditman: 19:22

I like to build careers, build. But if we start with accurate job description, now they know what a success look like. Now I know what I can do to help them with their goals. And whenever possible, be that translator and also sort of narrator to tell them what those simple hard things are that need to be done. Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 19:40

You know, in no way should you be doing the hard things for your people as insofar as that those hard things are a part of the scope of their job description. But be there to support them for it. Pump them up if you need to. Always back them up on it and and and celebrate them when they're successful at it. Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 19:56

That's what I tell you.

Adam Larson: 19:57

Yeah. It's funny. You make it sound so simple, and it is simple. It's not easy to do, though.

Bruce Ditman: 20:03

Oh, hard. It's super hard. Yeah.

Adam Larson: 20:07

But I appreciate the simplicity in which you explained that because that was such an easy simple breakdown. But then you think about it, like, okay, this is very hard to do, but it's not it's not difficult. Like, it's hard to do, but it's not complex. There you go. That's what I was looking for.

Bruce Ditman: 20:21

Not complex. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wish I had a different story.

Bruce Ditman: 20:24

If I did, I'd sell to you. But the truth is it's not what it it is. By the time you reach manager and above in your business, he has experience.

Adam Larson: 20:32

Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 20:33

I think people instinctively know this stuff. Yeah. You know, where they've intuited it over time. They've seen successful people and their behaviors. They may not have, like, a codex, or they may not have a way to understand what those successful behaviors actually mean Mhmm.

Bruce Ditman: 20:45

Into work. But you think about stories that people have heard about having great bosses and mentors. Yeah. This is how they behave.

Adam Larson: 20:53

Yeah. They do.

Bruce Ditman: 20:53

You know, they they gassy up before your big meeting. They let the steam out when there's, like, too much tension. They hold you accountable to their standards and to your own to, you know, they hold you accountable to your own success. Again, I wanna I cannot say this enough. I say it everywhere.

Bruce Ditman: 21:08

If a manager holds their teammate to their own to that teammate's success, you don't owe me anything. You know, this this is your definition of success. They don't need to do anything but their own success because that is it. Right? We are aligned.

Bruce Ditman: 21:20

Yeah. Every time an employee comes to a manager and says, I think you're trying to sabotage my career. I think you don't like me. I think you like Timmy more than Johnny, whatever the case is. And I have actually, this is something that I've done personally in my life.

Bruce Ditman: 21:33

I said, none of that is true. However, I understand you feel that way. Okay? But let me tell you something that would make it irrelevant. Your success is my success.

Bruce Ditman: 21:41

Why would I ever submarine you when I go to my betters and they say your team is garbage? They wouldn't you know, why would I set I'm shooting myself in the foot by submarining your efforts. Mhmm. Right? Now we could have communication issues.

Bruce Ditman: 21:54

We could have expectation issues, and we should iron all that out. But I suspect that it is very rarely the case when somebody feels that a manager's undermining their subordinate. It's something else. Mhmm. Or a very bad manager.

Adam Larson: 22:08

Yeah.

Bruce Ditman: 22:09

Yeah. You know, someone who doesn't understand what it means to be a manager and a and the responsibility that you have. I mean, isn't isn't that kind of the greatest to be a leader, isn't that kind of the greatest job in the world? My job is to help people create success for themselves, and for that, I'm successful. It's amazing.

Adam Larson: 22:23

Yeah. And I think sometimes these high octane work environments create this competitiveness against each other, and we forget to lift each other up. Some of the greatest leaders in the world, their their greatest advice is, hey. Lift everyone else up around you.

Bruce Ditman: 22:35

It lifts you up.

Adam Larson: 22:36

Oh. And it's it's a very simple concept, but because we're always trying to fight against and it's always trying to, especially high octane, like, certain types of work environments, it's very difficult to to lift each other up because then, oh, I'm gonna undercut this person because they're acting weak or whatever it is.

Bruce Ditman: 22:50

I think, you know, you're totally right. Here's the best I can do. I've worked I've worked in the entertainment industry. I worked in the sales industry. I've worked in some tough shops.

Bruce Ditman: 22:58

Actually, yeah, you know, the the talent agency business, some tough shops. If you feel that way about your business, leave. Okay. First of all, you have agency in this world. Okay.

Bruce Ditman: 23:08

Now this is simple, but it's hard. Right? And a lot of us don't do it in I don't fall to anyone who who hung in a job that they didn't love longer because of their it didn't meet the risk tolerances for their ability to support their family. I've done it.

Adam Larson: 23:20

Of course.

Bruce Ditman: 23:21

Okay?

Adam Larson: 23:21

Yeah.

Bruce Ditman: 23:22

I don't. But I'm not gonna pretend like we don't know what to do. Right? So the, I'll tell you the way that I I think about this is, you know, the job of a boss, a leader, is to give credit and take blame. If you can just tattoo that out on your chest.

Bruce Ditman: 23:37

Right. And do that every day, your team will not just adore you, but they will they will feel at their core that they are protected and appreciated, and that frees them up to go and be the best version of themselves. Scared people don't do their best work. It's a myth that people in crisis do better work, that people under insane time crunches do better work without, hey, I work better under pressure. No.

Bruce Ditman: 23:58

You don't. Okay. No. You don't. There's I'm I'm not a scientist, but I'm I'm putting my money on the table that they've not studied any set of people that actually work better under pressure.

Bruce Ditman: 24:08

K? That all of that is a myth. So how do we create comfort for people? 1 is praise is free. Okay?

Bruce Ditman: 24:14

Please and thank yous are free, by the way, to every boss out in the world. Okay? They are totally free and encourage you to use them. Raise your team. Their success is your success.

Bruce Ditman: 24:22

Okay? Take the blame because ultimately, it does stop with you. And when you are consistent in this behavior, not random acts of, generosity with with praise or blame are really destructive. Okay? But when you are consistent in this, your team will go out of its way not to make you eat their shame.

Bruce Ditman: 24:38

Mhmm. Okay? And that is the highest functioning team that they will they will do whatever, not whatever, because you don't want people staying up all night working or whatever. But they will go out of their way. They'll take extra special care because they know that when this works, you're gonna praise the hell out of them.

Bruce Ditman: 24:53

And and if it doesn't because of them, then you're going to go and take a shellacking. And it will be their fault because they decided to knock off an hour early to go to cocktails. And they won't do that. Yeah. And you don't have to do anything but the right thing.

Bruce Ditman: 25:05

It's cool.

Adam Larson: 25:06

That is really cool. Yeah. Bruce, we could chat probably chat about this for, like, another hour and or if not more. I love chatting with you, but I really appreciate you sharing your expertise with our audience today with coming on and just being open with us. And and I think it's really important.

Adam Larson: 25:20

I encourage people to connect with you on LinkedIn and and just continue the conversation going.

Bruce Ditman: 25:25

Thank you so much for having me. It's been wonderful. It's a I also have the feeling, like, we could do this for 4 hours, but, but maybe another time. Thank you so much, and thanks to everybody who took time of their day to listen. And please do feel free to reach out.

Announcer: 25:38

This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.ima net.org.