Proactive Patience: The Leadership Skill Scaling CEOs Can’t Afford to Ignore

Summary

00:00 Introduction to Scaling Organizations

02:52 The Journey of a Scaling Organization

05:33 Executive Education and Consulting

08:21 Identifying Inflection Points in Growth

11:15 Transitioning from Product to People

14:23 Building Relationships in Scaling Organizations

17:04 Different Organizational Cultures and Leadership Styles

19:53 The Role of Complementary Leadership

22:46 Visionary and Integrator Dynamics

25:30 The Aha Moments: Insights from Leadership Conversations

29:27Proactive Patience: The Key to Exponential Growth

33:07 Change as a Team Sport: Navigating Organizational Growth

36:47 The Power of Patience in Leadership

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Transcript

Jeff Holman (00:01.017)

Welcome back to the Breakout CEO Podcast. I'm Jeff Holman, your host today, and I guess every day that we do this, I'm super excited to be here again with you guys and talk and learn and share and get to know a few more of these insights and secrets that we hear on the podcast with our guests. Today we have, I think, a special guest again, another guest from coming all the way from Europe. He set aside time in his evening to be with us today while we record.

David Sluss (00:01.71)

Welcome back to the breakout CEO podcast. I'm Jeff Holman, host for today and I guess every day that we do this. I'm super excited to be here again with you guys and talk and learn and share and get to know a few more of these insights and secrets.

David Sluss (00:20.142)

Today we have, I think, special guest again, another guest from coming all the way from Europe. set aside time this evening to be with us today while we report. This is David Sluss. He's, let me, you can correct this after I say it wrong, but I think what I'm supposed to say is you're the leading at scale, chair professor at Essex Business School in Paris, France. Exactly right, yep, perfect.

Jeff Holman (00:30.831)

This is David Sluss. He's, let me, you can correct this after I say it wrong, but I think what I'm supposed to say is you're the leading at scale, chaired professor at Essex Business School in Paris, France.

I did it. I did it. I usually don't get those right. The academia stuff kind of throws me off. I'm super casual. But you have a really extensive background and you let me get away with a very short intro for now because I want to ask about your background and hear a little bit more about what you do. I think when we first talked, you might have been in Saudi Arabia or somewhere like that, maybe UAE.

David Sluss (00:53.852)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David Sluss (01:09.262)

Sure.

David Sluss (01:15.182)

Maybe so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Holman (01:16.749)

Yeah. what, what, tell us a little bit about what you do, what takes you traveling so much and, you know, give us a little background.

David Sluss (01:23.128)

Sure.

Sure, yeah, so as you mentioned, part of what I do at a sec business school as a professor is I focus on how organizations scale, right? So this idea of scaling. And so I've been doing this for a long time, just to give you a sense of my background. way before academia, when I graduated from a master's in organizational behavior at Bering Young University, I was working as a management training consultant and...

our clients were all within the high tech and pharmaceutical industry and they just happened to be always in this great inflection point of scaling, of growing. So Cisco Systems, for example, was a client that we worked with. They had 900 employees at the time. They grew to 40,000 over five years. So that dates me a little bit, but from that very early onset of my career, I was always very interested and intrigued with how these organizations scaled up on the people side of things.

So many times in the entrepreneurial journey, we think about how we get product market fit and get funding and so forth. then, okay, then magically we just scale to this large, amazing Google, Amazon type organization. And this muddy middle that goes from that startup phase to the seasoned organization, the skillet phase, there's a lot to be learned there, right? So how people deal with those issues. So.

After several years of consulting, went back for a PhD to dig deeper into those issues, mainly focusing on how these organizations integrate their employees so fast, how they help their leaders develop themselves and sort of, you you're constantly hiring new people and you constantly need to promote people from within. And so there's ever expanding talent pool and how they deal with those issues, which is sometimes quite messy and chaotic. And so as I,

Jeff Holman (02:58.011)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (03:17.304)

Came out of my PhD, went to two universities within the US, University of South Carolina and Georgia Tech. Continued to work with lots of organizations that were growing fast. When I came to ESSEC, we have a system here in France where you, instead of a family investing in, can never say that word correctly, invest, there you go, investing in the university. Here you have organizations.

Jeff Holman (03:39.717)

philanthropic.

David Sluss (03:46.402)

companies, they're very interested in these types of topics. So this particular chair that focuses on research and education for executives within how to scale organizations. So this is again, after the product market fit's been established, after capital's coming in, and now they're really growing, how do they deal with that growth and how they do that effectively and execute? So do that both with executive education here in France, but also

through executive education going to different companies throughout the world and helping them deal with hyper growth issues. From one of the fastest growing telecommunications companies in the Middle East to working with organizations in Singapore to working organizations in Silicon slopes to look at how they scale culture and those types of issues.

Jeff Holman (04:39.32)

That's fantastic. Excuse me. That's amazing. Remind me, I think we talked about this a little bit on an earlier call, but how often are you traveling? Just for some context for people out there.

David Sluss (04:51.092)

Yeah, so a little bit too much right now. So in fact, yeah, this I think is very rare. So I was looking at it from October 15th to December 6th. I'm spending, I think, eight total nights in my own bed, which is really, really rare. Usually I'm home a lot more than that as a professor here, you're teaching classes here and continue to do research. But this just happens to be a really busy season and things just uptick.

Jeff Holman (05:06.11)

wow.

David Sluss (05:19.982)

for these issues. But traditionally, I think on the average, I'm traveling once a month somewhere for a couple days, but then the rest of the month home, working with students here and working with my own research projects.

Jeff Holman (05:34.328)

Well, and I'm always curious when professors go out and they're consulting or teaching or these executive education classes. I think there's a mix of things you can do, right? Is this schedule out very far in advance? they ask you what topic to speak on? What does that look like? Because I think there are some CEOs who kind of wish they were on those same speaker circuits.

David Sluss (05:43.608)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (05:54.734)

right, right. Yeah, so, you know, there's with executive education, there are workshops, right? So we're working with groups of managers, high potential leaders within the organization, usually a growing organization. That's why they are needing this this sort of educational intervention. So, you know, it depends. It's usually it's planned out pretty far in advance. You know, there's pretty programmatic where we're setting up a program with them through

you know, whatever business school might be attached with at the time. here at a sec and we're consulting with them to fill out the whole program. I'm usually one particular component in a multiple day program where some of them are MBA in a box, if you will type, know, programs, especially appropriate for scaling organizations. have professionals that have sort of grown with the company have gone from startup to scale up and they've never done an MBA.

Jeff Holman (06:37.978)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (06:52.62)

yet they need that MBA type training. So within a couple of weeks of modules, they're getting sort of the basics around finance and accounting and marketing and so forth. And then hyper growth leadership, how to build culture, how to build your team, those types of issues.

Jeff Holman (07:10.574)

Yeah, I love that. And you mentioned scaling people and inflection moments in companies. I want to get into maybe a couple of those moments that you've seen, for some additional context here, because you probably come in...

David Sluss (07:20.302)

for some additional.

Jeff Holman (07:25.646)

I don't know if you're kind of a standard place to come in or if it varies by company, but you could be coming in really early on in the planning process, like, hey, we're going to acquire or we're going to be acquired. You come in right in the middle of it, in the heat of the moment, hey, we've tried to integrate and there's these things that aren't working well. You could come in after the fact. Where do you kind of see that you fit in typically?

David Sluss (07:36.75)

and

are working well.

Jeff Holman (07:53.455)

And this is going to vary probably depending on if you're there for executive education or something else, right?

David Sluss (07:54.638)

very probably depending on if you're there for executive education or something else. Right, right. Well, I mean, usually I am, you know, we're through the chair, we're engaging with organizations through our learning community that and this is mainly in Europe, right? So we have a strong French tech sector that we have one of the largest incubators in the Europe and what's called a station F, which was a old train station that's been

Jeff Holman (08:11.61)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (08:23.558)

revamped and restored into this really, really cool incubator. And so some of our the scale ups that we work with are there. And so in a sense, we're right at that inflection point, right? So or from your perspective, right? So this idea that usually it's right when the pain is starting where they've been so focused on product market fit, again, they've been so focused on getting capital or building revenue. So this is

Jeff Holman (08:23.961)

Very cool.

Jeff Holman (08:35.994)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (08:52.332)

This is, let's say, growth not by acquisition or mergers. It's just growth from their own product. And as soon as they start inflecting up, they realize, wait a minute, we have to hire people. We have to train them. We have to sort of also transition ourselves as the founder team, right, from having this passion for a product to having passion for people.

Jeff Holman (08:56.057)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (09:17.571)

Yes.

David Sluss (09:17.614)

Right, so that's one of the biggest transitions I see in the leaders. So usually it's in that sort of right at the beginning or a little bit after where their pain is really starting to get acute for them. Like we need some help, we need some advice. And so that's where I would usually be engaging with them if you will, right? So it can be in simple doing master classes, just giving some coaching and counseling to the leaders.

those types of things.

Jeff Holman (09:48.249)

Yeah, that makes sense. had another episode that should be out now. It is out actually with Earl Foote. He talked very much. He's in a business here in Utah where they're at the point where he's been around 27 years and now they're starting to acquire some other managed service providers. That's the business they're in. But he really talked about kind of transitioning from the business to the culture of the people. And that was a lot of what we talked about. I was super impressed with

David Sluss (09:59.362)

Mm-hmm

David Sluss (10:11.086)

transitioning from the business to the culture of the people. That's a lot of what we talked about. I was super impressed with how connected.

Jeff Holman (10:18.106)

how connected he was with what his people seemed to need and how important that was to him. What's the mindset that you find of the people that you come and talk to maybe before they understand the essential nature of people in the organization? What are the normal things they're doing and thinking about? And you've probably heard it a lot of times and you're like, yeah, I've seen this, I've seen this. We gotta get you transitioned over to the people side.

David Sluss (10:24.782)

What's the mindset that you find of the people that you come and talk to before they understand the essential nature of people in the organization? are the normal things they're doing and taking them out? And you've probably heard it a lot of times, you're like, yeah, I've seen this, I've seen this. We gotta keep it transitional. Yeah, yeah. So I think there are sort of two things. So it depends where they're coming from.

When I'm coming into an organization, usually at the scaling stage, the number varies. It's gonna be 75 employees, 100 employees, maybe 200 employees or so. It depends how fast that inflection point happened for them. And if the leader is from within, so they've grown with the organization, so it's usually that transition from...

Jeff Holman (11:06.415)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (11:18.786)

Hey, I've been so focused on the product. We've had this small team. We're all focused on what the product is and getting it out the door or whatever that service is and get, know, making sure it's, it's, it's just top rate and world-class. And all of a we've, we're growing. I remember one talking with one founder of an ed tech in Tel Aviv, Israel. And so we were just talking over zoom as to his growth and what was happening there, et cetera. said, you know, I realized that

Jeff Holman (11:40.526)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (11:48.11)

I sort of needed transition when I walked into the building and I saw at least six people that I didn't know their name, right? So just this fact of we were right around 100 people and I realized, okay, I don't know everybody. And you know, it's this very, for most of us that have worked in large organizations, it's sort of a no brainer where, oh yeah, like you actually have to be a leader. It's not just knowing each individual person,

Jeff Holman (11:56.058)

you

David Sluss (12:17.78)

as an individual, but it's knowing the personas that you have within the organization, right? So you're moving from, again, this passion for a product to thinking about the people overall. And there's two things, you know, I've been doing a lot of research around is around how leaders create those relationships with people. And we did this one large, it's called meta-analysis, where you take all the studies has been done around particular topics.

Jeff Holman (12:45.624)

Yeah.

David Sluss (12:45.902)

So we looked at all the studies that have been done around a particular topic, which is relational identification, which is how do you build this belonging-based relationship with your follower? And what we found very interesting is comparing it to, let's say, a more exchange-based relationship, where I do something for you, you do something for me, more transactional, is that the belonging-based relationship has a much bigger impact on performance and commitment than the transaction, right?

based relationships. So how that impacts, you know, a leader in a scaling organization is they need to come in and now move to, I really need to know for my C suite for the people that are closest to me, even like you're mentioning with with with what was his first name foot, Earl foot, I wouldn't say Eric, but Earl foot, where he knows his people well, more than likely that's his close circle where

Jeff Holman (13:15.993)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (13:33.602)

Earl foot. Yeah.

David Sluss (13:43.79)

you're having one-on-ones and talking about careers. One particular scale up I was working with, the founder and I were talking. He said, you know, it's really interesting. We realized we needed to move to a product organization structure as we grew. There are about 50 employees and they're moving up to 75, almost 100 now, you know, within the past year. That's, you know, quite a bit of movement for a small company that's scaling. And his CTO would have been a

Jeff Holman (14:09.881)

Yeah.

David Sluss (14:13.038)

perfect fit to be the new chief product officer. But because he was having these one-on-ones with a C-suite, where he was checking in with them and not just on their projects, but what do you want to do with your career, checking in on the career identity issues, again, belonging-based sort of conversation, the CTO finally said, look, I really like the product, but I like it from the technical side.

everything else that goes along with product management, I'd rather have someone else do. And so there was this, you know, instead of the CTO being jealous that the founder hired someone else to be the CPO, the CTO was perfectly fine with staying where he was and the founder hiring the CPO externally. Where if the founder wouldn't have had that conversation, it would have been very, you know, it would have been

Jeff Holman (14:43.957)

David Sluss (15:08.608)

knowing this founder, he probably would have tried to promote the CTO from within because he wants to do that. He wants to develop his people. if, yeah, but since he had that conversation, he was able to say, okay, well then this is a better fit to hire from external, right? From without. Then the other thing that, you as I mentioned, this founder walking in and realizing, hey, I don't know everybody's name, is you have to move from, this individualized, personalized relationship,

Jeff Holman (15:13.87)

Yeah.

Felt like the right thing probably.

David Sluss (15:38.924)

to allowing everyone in the organization know who you are. So, and that's sometimes hard for a founder to do is your, yeah, it really is where you move from, okay, I have this small team to I need to embody the organization for the people around me, right? For these folks that I know most of the engineers, but I don't know everyone by name, but I need to be able to have them know me and know that I,

Jeff Holman (15:43.738)

Mm.

That sounds like a role reversal.

Jeff Holman (15:55.482)

you

David Sluss (16:08.536)

personify or I'm a prototypical example of the organization. So one other particular, another founder in a deep tech scaling company, they're building the next quantum chip that's going, you know, and they, they, they've had several tape outs and they're doing very well. They said, you know, every time I go and speak in public, I realized that whatever I save is it's written up and it's published within our internal communications.

that I have to make sure I'm embodying the values of the organization and reinforcing the messages of what our organization is all about so that people know me and know where I'm coming from. So again, it's sort of knowing your people that are closest to you and from the career, then also embodying the organization for everybody else.

Jeff Holman (16:49.828)

That makes sense.

Jeff Holman (16:57.754)

That makes sense. We've seen at least one very in the U.S. here, one very public display of a CEO who once showing up on camera didn't necessarily embody what the rest of organization thought it should be, right? So.

David Sluss (17:13.868)

Yes, yes. I assume what you're referring to, yes, definitely. Yeah, Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Jeff Holman (17:17.656)

Some CEO at a concert somewhere or something like that. Yeah. Well, I'm curious, you find some organizations this is easier to implement than others? Because I've, you know, I'm thinking I live my own like separate identities sometimes, because I have my engineering background, my MBA, my law. And I think about organizations that might be largely engineer-based, you know, ITs, and I hope I'm okay to do it.

David Sluss (17:44.032)

engineer based. I tease and I hope I'm okay to do it. As an engineer, my engineering personality is way different than my business or my law personality, right? And I would expect very different.

Jeff Holman (17:47.628)

As an engineer, my engineering personality is way different than my business or my law personality, right? And I would expect for very different reasons. Engineers maybe have this introverted persona or stereotype at least, whereas lawyers might be outspoken, but they're very lone wolf in a lot of ways. And business people might be the easiest of the three to say, hey, let's go in and we'll...

David Sluss (18:00.622)

introverted persona or stereotype of these. Whereas lawyers might be outspoken, but they're very vulnerable.

David Sluss (18:10.734)

gonna be the easiest.

Jeff Holman (18:13.602)

you know, scale people will implement these things. Do you see that in organizations?

David Sluss (18:17.198)

Yeah, definitely. mean, I think, you know, it's a really good question. mean, you know, as I think about different organizations I've worked with, there's a little bit of they usually get to the same place. But. You know how they get there is different and when they realize, OK, we need to start transitioning how we lead right and how we scale people. So I think.

Jeff Holman (18:31.915)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (18:46.87)

the engineers on the whole, let's say if we're gonna take your, sort of your, you know, the categories, yeah, your categories that you're giving, right? So this idea of an engineering sort of organization on the whole, you know, I see them want to make things much more procedural quicker without

Jeff Holman (18:54.498)

You can use my stereotype. We'll assume it's a little bit true.

David Sluss (19:14.222)

sort of the procedures and it's the what versus the who, right? And then those that let's say are more on the marketing side. maybe you wouldn't say lawyers are unique occupation, but the marketing side, then it's really about the who and getting there quicker, but still losing some of that what side of processes. And then if it's a pure financial sort of leader, right?

Jeff Holman (19:17.594)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (19:27.674)

Yeah.

David Sluss (19:43.374)

And then here actually, they're usually the last ones to really start including and thinking about the hoop. Yeah. Because they're thinking about it from a purely financial standpoint. And sometimes, sometimes that lends them to be more short term, right? They're thinking about the exit more than the growth, right?

Jeff Holman (19:49.168)

really?

Jeff Holman (20:04.345)

They're thinking about this quarter's results.

David Sluss (20:09.39)

this quarter's results, also, you if it's a founder that's more financially oriented, then they're focused more on when's my exit, right? So one of the things that we talk about with the organizations that we're, you know, either assisting doing research with or doing exec ed with, et cetera, on scaling is even if you have an exit plan, you want to have, you want to grow in a sustainable way. You want it to be sustained. That's going to give you the most value.

Jeff Holman (20:17.483)

Mmm.

David Sluss (20:37.71)

long term and also for whatever exit that you might have, right? And so, yeah, I I think that's really an intriguing question. Something I hadn't really, really thought about before if there's big differences. I mean, usually it's the founder, you have a founder team, there's usually a complementarity between them. So what I see a lot of times is, you know, it's...

Jeff Holman (20:59.929)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (21:05.614)

who the CEO and then as they scale who they bring in or they've brought in from within as the COO, right? That second hand. There's one COO that I know, he's based in Barcelona and his whole career, he's really been sort of the CEO whisperer. And so what he's done over time is he's found this place where you can come in as the organization scaling when the CEO really needs someone to come in.

Jeff Holman (21:14.371)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (21:25.1)

Okay.

David Sluss (21:34.808)

formalize things and help formalize the people processes and so forth. And he does a good job at sort of figuring out, okay, what makes the CEO tick and what does he really wanna be doing? He or she wants to wanna be doing. And the CEO then finds the complementarity role to play, right? So, you I was talking with him about three different companies he's helped scale.

Jeff Holman (21:35.821)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (21:55.034)

really?

David Sluss (22:01.286)

And it's really intriguing, almost he's a chameleon a little bit. So there is this role that scaling CEOs need to think about is, do I have a really good number two? And if we're a co-founder team, doesn't mean that one of the co-founders is that. It's usually having someone that's scaled organizations before, can you bring them in to help you be that sort of that other side of the coin, right? Whatever side you are.

Jeff Holman (22:28.557)

Yeah.

David Sluss (22:30.808)

that they're going to be the other side so that you have the full picture, right? Sometimes you, yeah, go ahead.

Jeff Holman (22:34.713)

Well, yeah. Oh no, this is intriguing because a lot of people, and I've talked to other guests on the show about traction and rocket fuel, you know, the concept of visionary and integrator. Does this align really well with that? Or I kind of feel like maybe you're saying that that's part of it, but this seems deeper. Somebody who comes in and really finds a way to compliment. But I'm curious, is it the same or is it different?

David Sluss (23:00.684)

Yeah, mean, I think visionary and integrators is a nice way to think about it. So traditionally, we would think, the CEO is the one with the vision and so forth. And then the COO, this person that's coming in and helping, is going to be the integrator, sort of the process generator and so forth. I think about it as crafters and connectors.

Jeff Holman (23:25.014)

Okay.

David Sluss (23:28.662)

So it does go a little bit deeper, but it's almost like an equalizer. So both need to be both crafters and connectors, but one might be more of the crafter. So it's the crafter of the vision, right? And then connecting people across the organization as it grows. So what happens is, you you're growing without a safety net. So something we talk about a lot in leadership is this idea of substitutes for leadership. It's an old concept, been around for a while.

Jeff Holman (23:39.555)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (23:45.1)

Mm.

Jeff Holman (23:49.209)

Yes.

David Sluss (23:58.456)

from a Harvard professor. And so this idea is that when you're in a large organization, you have all these structures and processes that in a sense are substitutes for leadership, where a manager can just say, hey, we need to have this goal. We're going to make it a KPI. And there's all these structures and processes that just, yeah, and you just go and do it, right? Where as you're building the plane as you fly it and you're adding passengers along the way, right?

Jeff Holman (24:16.307)

SOP is in place. So they just do what they're supposed to do. Got it.

David Sluss (24:26.764)

You don't have those SOPs, you don't have those processes, right? So you have to really connect people across organizations so they're figuring it out, right? So a lot of times we could say, the CEO is going to be the crafter, the crafter of the vision and so forth. And the COO is the connector. But what I found is it does go a little bit deeper, is that sometimes the CEO, the founder is more about the connecting

Jeff Holman (24:45.209)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (24:56.494)

has a pretty good vision, but maybe doesn't realize how good he has it. So this particular CEO whisperer that I'm talking about, one of his previous companies, he came in and said, the founder had a really great ambition, but he didn't realize how good his company already was, and really what the company could do. So what he found is he was sort of playing more of the crafter and letting the CEO be the good connector.

Jeff Holman (25:15.402)

really?

David Sluss (25:25.422)

So he was still allowing the CEO to message the vision, he was sort of helping the CEO craft it. So he sort of pumped up the crafting, right? And allowed the CEO connect. then the, yeah, offload. the next company he's currently in, the CEO is super visionary, super focused out there. So he's very much the crafter.

Jeff Holman (25:35.779)

So.

Jeff Holman (25:40.021)

offload a little bit.

David Sluss (25:52.726)

and he's trying to help the CEO be more of a connector while he gets the CEO to allow him to be a little bit more crafter, but still do all the connecting that the CEO needs to do. Hopefully that makes some sense. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (26:06.989)

Yeah, that does. I'm envisioning a movie coming out starring David Sluss somewhere and this mysterious CEO whisperer.

David Sluss (26:11.064)

Well.

David Sluss (26:20.846)

Yeah, okay. All right, sure. Well, we'll get the movie deal. No problem. I'll send you 10%. So, yeah.

Jeff Holman (26:24.793)

great. Great. I didn't have to work too hard for that. Hey, I'm curious though, because you mentioned, you know, the role of this COO who's been chameleon-like and coming in and really, he must be very perceptive to be able to say, hey, here's how I see things happening. Here's how we change it a bit to get to the next level to emphasize or to, you know, change or whatever, to grow it to where it wants to go, to get that inflection point.

I mean, that's really what the essence of a breakout is, is seeing something a little differently than maybe we're seeing it now, making some adjustments, whether large or small, and then seeing the benefits of that. I'm really curious when you go and talk to these CEOs or their teams or the people that you're with, what are some of the insights that you see them...

There's some of those aha moments and you're like, I talked to them, talked to them, we talked about this stuff, we give them all this information, but there's these two or three things when we talk about this or this, all of a sudden I see there like, they're like, that's how that works. Are there some of those moments, commonalities?

David Sluss (27:34.562)

Yeah, yeah, Yeah, and a lot of a lot of it is sort of helping them see how they can, in a sense, not to wax too poetic, be more powerful in their leadership. Right. So actually with some leaders today of a it's a very large old organization, but they're actually scaling now. Right. So even though they're already large and been around for over 100 years.

you know, they have a very odd audacious goal, to, to, really increase, the revenues and profits by many fold and in a short period of time. So they're trying to scale. but we were talking about growth, right? So, so I usually, one of the ahas is, you know, when we think about growth, okay, we're going to grow and here's our big goal out here that we have. We sort of, and we're here.

Jeff Holman (28:12.771)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (28:30.424)

We sort of look at that and go, okay, well, if we wanna get there in the next three years, so let's say we wanna, you know, I can do the hypothetical, we're gonna 10X in five years, right? Then we sort of see it as linear, right? Sort of as a human, we sort of say, okay, well, let's sort of map this out, right? And especially the engineers in the room, we're gonna go, okay, well then,

Jeff Holman (28:47.193)

Okay.

Jeff Holman (28:53.175)

Yeah. Yep.

David Sluss (28:56.43)

In a year, we should be here. In two years, we should be here. three, you know, and we're sort of and if if we're not tracking, then my goodness, you know, the the the world's coming to an end. But in reality, what growth happens is usually like this. And then it goes right. So there's all these things we have to do put in place to make a foundation for 10 X. So over time, we're going to 10 X in five years. But most of that growth comes

in the last 50 % right in the in the latter half. So exactly. And I think most of us know that. But until we really ask ourselves, how do we really see the growth happening? We want to see it more linear. We want to see it earlier. So we get so we get impatient. Right. So in fact, one of the things that I've been focusing a lot on with with the leaders that I work with is this idea of proactive patients.

Jeff Holman (29:29.569)

Yeah, it's an exponential rather than linear curve.

Jeff Holman (29:45.394)

yeah.

David Sluss (29:55.944)

is that you need a lot of patience to have exponential growth. And you need patience for both phases. So at the very beginning, right, when you're sort of ebbing and flowing and you're doing some growth, you have to have patience to know the things we're doing and the things we're not doing are strategically correct, right? And so it's not that you're just, know, hope isn't a strategy, right? But proactive patience is, right? Where we're going to be doing things

Jeff Holman (30:15.673)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (30:25.058)

We're not just hoping that, eventually we'll see that growth. We're manifesting it, right? All the self-help stuff, we're manifesting the growth. Instead, are we doing these things that are making a foundation so we start seeing these inflection points come in, right? And you may see them in different areas, right? Marketing may start inflecting before operations and those types of things. Then as you grow, as you go through the scaling, you still need lots of patience because now it becomes chaotic, right?

Jeff Holman (30:30.713)

Sure sure.

Jeff Holman (30:40.494)

Yeah.

David Sluss (30:54.984)

and your people and your processes aren't maybe keeping up with the growth that you so much wanted in the first place. So you have to be patient in that in that respect, too. So usually that's a big aha for people. Right. We need this proactive patience. We're not just waiting for good things to happen, but we're taking action. But knowing that there that there's there's a foundation we're building that we're going to see that inflection point, that it's not linear.

Jeff Holman (31:00.695)

Right.

Jeff Holman (31:19.673)

Yeah.

David Sluss (31:22.424)

We're going to see if it's exponential, doesn't mean it's linear and then goes this. It means it might be flat for a while, right? It might be up and down. The other big thing is quite honestly is, so, you know, change. So as we are scaling, I mean, it's all about change. So in large organizations, we talk about change leadership all the time, but

Jeff Holman (31:29.091)

Great.

Jeff Holman (31:42.851)

Mm-hmm.

David Sluss (31:52.616)

In scaling organizations, change is completely what you're doing all the time. So making sure everyone knows change is a team sport, right? That it's a, and we're always in constant double overtime, right? You know, we're always in overtime of, not overtime work, but like you're at a game and it's, you know, we're in double overtime all the time. Where it's always something new and,

Jeff Holman (32:03.127)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (32:15.618)

Right.

David Sluss (32:22.092)

That's just part and parcel to it. What I mean by this too is a lot of times I've worked with organizations and they're starting to scale. say, you know what? I know Google has these types of processes. We should implement these processes here. I'm like, great. Well, Google also has, I don't know, 200,000 employees. They've been around for many, many years. And yes, they're still like a startup, but they're not, they're huge.

Jeff Holman (32:41.145)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (32:48.803)

Right.

David Sluss (32:52.02)

in between processes they have to put in place. you know, we've been a lot of organizations have been working with agile for years. And I've worked with lot of organizations say we need to implement agile processes. you know, implement a process that works right now that is agile, that is expandable. So you get a minimally viable product. You want to design a minimally viable process.

Jeff Holman (33:20.76)

Okay.

David Sluss (33:21.102)

and then implement that process, run it as long as it works. And then when it doesn't work anymore, then you go to the next minimally viable process. So it minimizes, you're not putting the goal and making sure everybody, know, everyone starts thinking in your organization, oh, we're putting this new process in place. And once we get this in, we're golden, it's gonna just go with us forever. What scaling are your sales and the people

within your organization and hopefully your sales are scaling faster than the people you're bringing in, right? You can move that ratio that that's scaling, but your processes usually don't scale with you. You have to, how you scale your processes is changing them out as you move up, right? Then you get to a certain size and now you're sort of with the big boys or with the big girls and all the HR processes are like the Google or like the Amazons.

Jeff Holman (33:51.927)

Hmm.

Jeff Holman (34:08.567)

Yeah.

David Sluss (34:19.0)

But until you get there, you have to use this agile approach. So that's what I mean by change is a team sport and you're always in double overtime.

Jeff Holman (34:26.969)

No, I love that. These are fascinating concepts and they're really making me think, in addition to some of the things I'm doing in my own business, this concept of change, struck me as almost, I mean, know scaling has changed, but it struck me as almost counterintuitive because you say, well, we're scaling. Scaling means, in one sense, take the same thing you've got, just make it bigger and it should just work. And we know from experience it doesn't. And so there's this tension between

scale what you have versus scale into something different but better than what you have or maybe more of some of the more of the sales that you want but not necessarily the processes like you said.

David Sluss (35:08.342)

Right, and a lot of times your business model is gonna scale, right? That's what in a sense stays the same and your business model keeps scaling. A lot of times you are trying to find that the sales operations that continue to allow that growth, but on the people side, that's what we're talking about, right? The processes that go along with developing your people, bringing them in, all those types of reward.

Jeff Holman (35:15.437)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (35:30.137)

Yeah.

David Sluss (35:36.654)

compensation, those types of things. And then thinking about your financial processes too, thinking about your marketing processes, those are gonna scale through change, right? And whereas the sales operations, your product itself, right? That's what needs to be in your business model. Yes, that's scalable, right? But all the other processes that support it,

Jeff Holman (35:52.6)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (36:03.543)

Yeah.

David Sluss (36:06.648)

They're going to scale by constantly reinventing themselves as you move up in growth, if you will.

Jeff Holman (36:11.929)

I love that. I also just going back to that proactive patience comment you made, it struck me as there's maybe some connection, right? Where we hear the people I've been talking to on this podcast and clients and such, they often say to be successful as a startup, you just have to be persistent enough. You have to outlast enough, be resilient enough to...

outlast your failures, right? And eventually you'll find the model, you'll find the product, you'll find the product market fit. Like it's that persistence or that resilience. And I wonder, I haven't heard anybody talking about patience in connection with that resilience, but it really is the same thing. I mean, one leads to the other. You have to be patient to be resilient, right?

David Sluss (36:39.086)

to outlast your failures, right?

David Sluss (36:57.118)

Yeah.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, exactly right. And that's actually what we all talked about today with one particular group that I was working with. And you're exactly right. was resilience when you mentioned the startup founders where you have to just outlast your mistakes, right? There's this dogginess to it and so forth. And again, that's usually with a small startup team.

Jeff Holman (37:06.742)

Jeff Holman (37:17.645)

Yes, yes.

David Sluss (37:25.55)

And if you look inside the small startup teams, there are probably some blow ups and some arguments and so forth, but it's like a family. You forgive each other and you move on. As the organization scales and you're adding, again, you're building the planes, you fly it, and you're adding lots of passengers along the way. As you start moving from the product passion to the people, now the way you show your resilience,

is by being inter-personally patient, right? So we have all heard the stories about the founder that just imploded as the organization grew because he or she kept blowing up at other people, losing their patience, right? And nothing's going to destroy trust and destroy morale and motivation than leaders that destroy patient, that are impatient, right? And so...

Jeff Holman (38:03.886)

Ha

Jeff Holman (38:11.746)

Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Holman (38:21.111)

Yeah.

David Sluss (38:23.47)

You know, as an academic, we do study. So I did one particular study with 578 professionals working in large organizations and growing organizations and basically focused on this idea of patience. And is it an amplifier for good leadership behavior? So if you're being a good visionary, you're being a good participative leader, and you're also patient, then it should increase, you know, it should amplify if the professionals are, it should amplify the profession.

professionals reporting that they're more cooperative and productive and creative. But what I found actually was patience was a necessary component. So only when the leaders were seen, were perceived and they were rated as patient, were these effective leadership behaviors actually translating into productivity and collaboration and creativity, right? So patience is sort of the superpower, if you will.

that you need to have interpersonally. You're not getting annoyed when you're teaching people to do something new, right? You're being calm when things are sort of going awry. Those types of, you you're being calm in face of adversity, which is also resilience, but you're doing it interpersonally, right? Where resilience, we're thinking about it more as a psychological state and how we feel inside, right? And that we're gonna keep working at it.

Jeff Holman (39:25.934)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (39:40.142)

Yeah.

David Sluss (39:52.77)

where patience is more resilience, interpersonally, if you will.

Jeff Holman (39:56.983)

Yeah, it's probably probably one of the one of the primary markers of psychological safety too. I would have to guess. So, well, this is fascinating. This has been this has been an interesting, very interesting conversation. There's I love I love talking to people like you and Spencer Harrison and other people who are really studying how these things work and sharing them at a such a high. I don't know. I don't know if at the higher low level I get these mixed up, but sharing them at such a level where you see the connections.

David Sluss (40:02.912)

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

David Sluss (40:24.142)

Okay.

Jeff Holman (40:26.646)

better than maybe when you're in the midst of change and chaos, right, all the time. So, well, I have a feeling there's some of our listeners would love to follow you and read more about what you're doing. Maybe if they have the chance, get into one of these programs that you're at at some point, or maybe hire you to come in and do a program at their place. Where would they find you? What's the best way to connect and follow along?

David Sluss (40:31.632)

Right, Great.

David Sluss (40:40.654)

Maybe if they.

David Sluss (40:48.574)

Mm-hmm

Yeah, so I think the best way is through LinkedIn. So David M for Matthew Sluss. Also, there is a website, so www.davidmsluss.com. But LinkedIn is best. LinkedIn is the best way.

Jeff Holman (41:07.874)

But LinkedIn doesn't have as good a pictures of you as your website does. Those are some good pictures.

David Sluss (41:12.014)

Okay, well thanks, thanks. Trying to repeat some of them on LinkedIn, but anyway, yeah. But yeah, so I love engaging on LinkedIn, and actually I really do prefer connections. mean, of course followers are great, but I like connections, is that way they can message me no problem with questions and comments and so forth. So I welcome connections on LinkedIn.

Jeff Holman (41:39.469)

Well, what is the, I'm just thinking off the here, what is the number one question you'd love to hear from somebody if they reached out? A new connection, ask you anything in the world, and they said, you know David, I'm glad we connected. I've been meaning to ask somebody like you this question. What would be a great question?

David Sluss (41:59.382)

Yeah, so I don't want to, again, wax too poetic, but quite honestly, I mean, for me, it's if it's within the realm of leadership and leading a scaling, growing organization, it's whatever is actually the most nearest and dearest to their heart and what's really waking them up at two and three in the morning, asking a question like that and if I can help them in some way. mean, that's that is more than fulfilling. Right.

Jeff Holman (42:04.811)

It's okay.

Jeff Holman (42:20.856)

Hmm.

David Sluss (42:29.006)

Because what that means is, especially if they're leading an organization and I've helped them move the needle a little bit, not only am I helping them, but more than likely, hopefully, that trickles down, right? know, water rolls downhill, but hopefully I'm not gonna be too crass, but crap does too, right? And so when a leader is being able to lead better,

Jeff Holman (42:51.736)

you

David Sluss (42:57.082)

That's not only making their own life better, but it's making the life of the people they lead a lot better. And we don't only live at work, we live at home. And things that happen at work spill over to home. And so if I can make a leader's life better that makes their direct reports and their team's lives better, which makes whoever their family's lives is better, mean, that's what it's all about.

Jeff Holman (43:27.562)

I love that. I love that so much. You're making me think of levers and the power of the lever. If you can help one CEO, that leverages probably across multiple facets of their life. So I love that. Well, has been, time has gone by quickly for me and it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. I know, and I love that you offer the 2 a.m. if you wake up at 2 a.m. because it's probably...

David Sluss (43:40.408)

Yeah, yeah, definitely, It has been time has gone by quickly for me. Okay.

Jeff Holman (43:54.924)

Well, I don't know, depends if you're in Paris or some other part of the world. Maybe it won't be 2 a.m. when a U.S. executive emails you at 2 a.m. But no, it's really been a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing some of these points of wisdom with the audience here today.

David Sluss (44:04.322)

Yeah.

David Sluss (44:11.288)

Thank you for the invitation. It was an honor to chat with you and hopefully shed some light on these issues.

Jeff Holman (44:17.132)

Definitely, definitely. You definitely have. I've got lots of things to think about from our conversation. I'm sure our audience too. And on that note, I want to thank our audience for joining us this week. It's been fun chatting again and we look forward to hearing from you and seeing you and leave us a rating if you want to. But until then, we'll see you next week on The Breakout CEO.

David Sluss (44:37.134)

All right, thank you.

Jeff Holman (44:39.713)

Okay, I will get this stopped here.