Jody Holland (00:09.581)
Hey guys, Jody Holland here. We got Mike Grigsby, Megan Slaughter, Malia Grigsby on here. We are going to have a fun conversation today about the art of the handoff. And kind of what we're talking about here is whether you're talking about bringing an employee on for the first time and handing them their job, or somebody moved up and you're you're moving over as well. Mike is all sideways now. that that did not convert well. Whatever that was. We're leaving that one in the show. That was awesome.
Mike Grigsby (00:39.392)
Perfect.
Jody Holland (00:39.693)
Or if you're passing on to the next generation, how do you make sure that you set them up for success? yesterday evening I spoke to a group of nurses and I said, You guys have heard the phrase, right? They eat their young. That's exactly what happens with nurses on a regular basis, is that the experienced nurses look at the new nurses they call baby nurses and they're like, we should destroy them.
Meghan Slaughter (01:06.03)
Mm.
Jody Holland (01:06.113)
Because somebody destroyed them when they started. So they're just passing on the hazing and the the meanness instead of saying, Hey, that wasn't fun for us. Maybe let's do something better in the future. So I'm gonna just kinda open it up. Mike, I know you had a thought, we'll let you kick it off here.
Mike Grigsby (01:21.652)
I I definitely wanna tie into this because it's this is happening and has happened for a really, really long time. And I will say that there are some groups out there, I'll use the military, that do really, really good jobs of handing things off to the person coming behind them. We used to call it a continuity folder. There's probably a digital version of that now, but you used to have this paper folder that said here's all the stuff you need to know. you know, I I'm leaving, I'm going to a different country.
have fun, you know, God bless, Godspeed, kind thing. but this also touches on onboarding. And as companies think about this, right, it's not just handing off to the to the person coming behind you, but if you're the company and the organization that is bringing somebody on, what's your plan for success? And the last thing I'll say and hopefully we can tie into this is we've talked about and heard about this silver tsunami as our baby boomer generation begins to retire in in waves.
That tribal knowledge is walking out of the door and most people don't know how to capture, most organizations don't know how to how to capture that, you know? If your maintenance guy, Frank, knows that the the the air chiller in the West Wing wobbles every Tuesday because it's just wonky, how do you pass that information along to the next person? Because likely they won't have the depth of knowledge or troubleshooting skills that the next person, you know, that that the the person leaving did. So
This is a really important topic and we're seeing it in many, many different facets. So hopefully we'll get to touch on a few of these.
Jody Holland (02:53.949)
yeah, and I like the silver tsunami, but the wonky wobble, that one got me. I like that one. That is a very technical term. That's pretty good. So I know Megan, you have helped design several onboarding systems. Kind of chime in on what Mike was saying there with the idea of we don't always have a continuity folder or a prep folder for the person. What should people be doing?
Mike Grigsby (02:57.424)
The wonky wobble. Yeah, it's a technical term.
Meghan Slaughter (03:17.272)
think it's difficult to pass along that information at times because one, you're not always thinking about it or writing it down. Like once you learn the job, you just do it and it becomes muscle memory. And so you're not thinking about who's coming after you or who's going to be joining the team. So you don't have a formal plan and you kind of just throw them into the fire and see if they burn. And it's I mean everybody goes through that. So like you said with the nurses
Well, that's what you experienced, so why should they have it easier than you had it? but really we should be wanting to help each other and prepare for that. And so a simple thing you can do is throughout the day just track your daily tasks, write down a brief description of each of them, and each of those essential responsibilities will become the basis for your onboarding template. So your key skill areas, what needs to be done for them.
Who the subject matter expert is, and just write out an informal plan and you can formalize it later, but you need to know what needs to go in the document before you can get started. So something I really like to do when I'm learning a new task is I will take screenshots of my computer screen of what I'm doing, and I'll write notes and I will describe each step I took to get to a certain place and what it accomplishes.
And this actually helps me going back later if I forget how to do something. I can look at my own documentation, but also if anybody else comes on board or if I'm out of town on vacation, then I can pass that along to somebody else and they can follow that plan step by step and it makes it so much easier for everybody on the team.
Jody Holland (05:02.029)
That's a really good thing. So I want to shift a little direction a little bit. Malia, you work with a lot of volunteers. So how do you think about that from a volunteer standpoint? These people are not getting paid. How do you make sure they succeed as a volunteer so that they want to stay involved with the projects and the programs?
Maleah Grigsby (05:20.365)
Absolutely. As a whole, this is really important for project management and something to to keep in mind. What Megan was saying is not only just keeping track of kind of what your tasks are, but tracking your work and tracking kind of the the milestones in your work as well. When it comes to volunteers specifically, I think it's if you are keeping track of all of your work, you're able to see kind of the easier pieces that are easier to hand off in like a a two to four hour whatever.
The specific project is, or if they're on for a couple weeks, or whatever that thing is, you're able to see the things that you don't need as much training behind. You're able to see the things that you don't need as much context to understand because you already have that documentation. And then I also think, like, just as a whole, and when it comes to the project management and keeping track of your work, this is also what makes you a really, really competitive employee. And when you go for your annual report with your boss or whatever, and you're trying to ask for a raise and then
they ask you, well why why should I give you the race? You're able to go back and you have all of this receipts saying the exact work that you've done.
Jody Holland (06:27.489)
Yeah, that's good. That was kinda quiet, but I think we got you. but that if you do think about that, and I wanna kinda touch on the last thing that you said there about if you are trying to move up in an organization, a lot of people are really driven and they want to move up. Being able to show what you have done and the amount of work that you're doing is important. I had a a friend of mine, friend of mine and Mike's that he got called in and his boss is like, Hey, I'm just
I'm really disappointed in what you're getting done. It's you're not really succeeding. And he looked at his boss, he goes, You realize you gave me three full time jobs. Mine that I had, then somebody left, and you're like, Well, you'll just absorb that. Then somebody else left. so now I'm doing three full time jobs. Of course I'm not doing any of them that well, but I'm keeping things floating. That was the goal until you'd hired somebody else, but that was two years ago. And you haven't replaced them.
Nor did you pay me more money for the two extra jobs. So I do think having kind of what Megan and Leah kind of blend those things together, if you know what you are doing on a regular basis and you've been tracking that, and then you can show this is my 40 hour work week, and then here's the other things you've asked for, and here's the other things you've asked for, you can justify this this is not a good setup when you're setting people up for failure. And as businesses, I
I think our job as leaders is to transform the potential, to unlock that potential of people. And we only do that when we're really paying attention to all of the work that they're doing, which means I bring a person on and I don't know what they're supposed to be doing. I'm gonna do like most other people do, and I think probably eighty percent of companies are doing this now. I'm gonna go, hey, like hang out with those people over there, see what they do and kind of try to do it better.
Mike Grigsby (08:21.29)
Listen, I I I wanna I wanna jump in here because you're saying something that it it it's not the core part of what we're talking about, but it is absolutely an adjacent topic. And it when you were talking about Jody, you know, and Malia said this too, right? It was you start writing the information down. One of the reasons
Jody Holland (08:21.847)
But they don't.
Mike Grigsby (08:40.978)
Or one of the things people do is they hoard information. They make it very proprietary, almost clandestine. No, I'm not gonna tell you about how I get this thing done or this task done or or thing over here. The reality is the more you are able to share that with the rest of the organization, the more you create space to move up into other opportunities.
You don't actually preserve and protect your job. You're creating more fragility in your job when you make it kind of you hoard that information. And you really pigeonhole yourself. If you're the only one with that information at an entry level position, you that's where you're going to stay. You will become the best entry level person person out there. You have to start giving that information away. And the more you're able to capture it, then you can do it in a very meaningful way.
Jody Holland (09:33.589)
One of one of the guys that I coached early on is out in Louisiana. He kept telling me, I'm irreplaceable. I'm irreplaceable. I finally got really frustrated. And he's like at an executive level and he wanted to move up to a regional level in this hospital group. And I said, Okay, let me make sure I understand. You are irreplaceable He goes, That's right, I am. I said, That makes you unpromotable.
Mike Grigsby (09:57.704)
That's right.
Jody Holland (09:57.707)
He goes, Pete, wait, what? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I I want to move up. You go, you can't move up. You're irreplaceable. You have nobody that can do your job. So you have no handoff plan. Why would we set ourselves up for that kind of pain and put you in another position up since nobody is ready to handle your job? And that was like a light bulb moment for him. And we ended up, he ended up kind of cooperating much better after that.
Mike Grigsby (10:09.745)
Yep.
Jody Holland (10:24.841)
Over the next year and a half I coached him on how we developed this next level of people. We did two or three people that could be good. We found one of them that was going to be great. And he ended up being a regional director for the group. But he had to have the handoff first. That means you you can't hand something off the you've got a death grip on, kinda what you were saying, Mike. Yeah. If you're not gonna let go, you're not gonna let go.
Mike Grigsby (10:38.609)
Nice.
Meghan Slaughter (10:48.078)
And I think that people n need to feel important and they really want to feel needed. And so that's why they keep that information close. And in a way, whether they mean to or not, they want people to suffer without them. And so when you leave an organization, you want them to miss you. And you can be missed, but you need to make sure that there is a succession plan for when you're gone.
Because you still want them to thrive. And I I think that's really difficult for people who have been with an organization for a long time because the organization has become a part of their identity. And you naturally want yourself to become a part of the organization's identity too. But the fact is the organization is going to carry on without you. So it's better and easier for everybody if you have a plan for passing it along to somebody else.
And so you have to kind of let go of that control and you have to think about what it is that you're doing and what everybody else needs to know in order to be successful. But on that note, you can't expect anybody to be an exact replica of you once you're gone. They're going to be their own person, have their own ideas, and they're going to approach things differently, and you have to be okay with that because once you're gone, you have no involvement.
So you can do the best to prepare them and set them up for success, but you also have to trust them to do that role in whatever way they see fit for the organization.
Maleah Grigsby (12:23.051)
I would add to that as well. This was a really big thing that I just learned in stepping into a new position of learning how to separate your personality from your work. Like your personality, your blood your s your blood, your sweat, your tears are gonna be influenced in your work and everything. But learning how to separate your personality from your work to be able to kind of strip it down to the bare bare bones as you're able to turn it over so that someone else gets to put their own
Mike Grigsby (12:47.224)
Okay.
Maleah Grigsby (12:53.005)
Spin on it and understand that that's actually what drives success, not holding on to old DNA.
Jody Holland (12:59.585)
Yeah, and that's the basis I think innovation. That's really good. So I wanna I want to hit one thing that that Megan said, talking about the identity thing, and that I went, Whoa, that's cool. I've always thought about, you know, the organization becomes a part of your identity, but I never thought about it the other way. You really want the organization to think of you as a part of the organizational identity. And I think that plays a lot into it. If that's the case, what do we remember people for?
Mike Grigsby (13:00.825)
Good.
Jody Holland (13:29.281)
They rem we remember people for how they left us. Did they leave us much better off than the way they found us or did they leave us worse off? So if you want your organization to remember you as a part of the identity and have that quote unquote legacy, you have to go out of your way to let make people better off. And I I looked up the number just a second ago, Mike. You were talking about the silver tsunami. I guess as to how many people turn sixty-five each year now?
Mike Grigsby (13:44.811)
Okay.
Mike Grigsby (13:52.983)
Yeah.
Mike Grigsby (13:59.442)
Gotta be staggering.
Jody Holland (14:00.621)
It's four million people. Four million people a year are turning 65 on the silver tsunami, and 10,000 baby boomers are retiring a day, five days a week. So that is two hundred thousand baby boomers leaving the active workforce every single month. So we're losing a lot of institutional knowledge and
Mike Grigsby (14:02.922)
Really.
Jody Holland (14:28.385)
We're not going to replace that. But what I have noticed is boomers have all of that knowledge up here and none of it out here for everybody else to see. So they have not, they were never prepped. Hey, let's put this on paper. Let's make this easy for the next group. So I do think go back to one of the things Megan said a minute ago. I think we've got to have a, hey, can you track for the next 30 working days? What are the five most important things you do each day?
And let's see how many of them repeat, how many are new, how many are different. And then let's create a training plan based on that. It's not like you you have to start from scratch when the new person gets there, unless you didn't have a game plan. Then all you're gonna do is start from scratch. That I think the handoff, number one, has to be I want people to win. I want the next level of leader to win. And then number two, and to have a plan for it.
Mike Grigsby (15:21.384)
you know, that goes Go ahead, Megan.
Meghan Slaughter (15:22.136)
Yeah, and I think it's important.
Jody Holland (15:25.724)
Okay. All right, Mike, you go.
Meghan Slaughter (15:26.146)
Go ahead, Mike.
Mike Grigsby (15:31.05)
I was gonna say is that, you know, we talk about doing exit interviews and the exit interviews usually don't yield the positive impact that we're we're hoping for. And one of the things that you could be doing, certainly, certainly leading up, I I say positive impact, I mean the positive insights that we're looking for. One of the things that you could do leading up to someone's, you know, if they've turned in their notice, take their current job description, give it back to them and say, Is this still valid?
Are you still doing the same things that we hired you to do? Get that person to confirm or refute or edit what the job description is. And you don't I mean, they're not having to do the the HR version of it, but
They can give you anecdotally what they're doing. The other thing too is ask them to break it down. If this is still valid, if you say, you know, attend certain meetings, get them to break it down. What are the certain meetings that you have attended? How what do you do on a regular basis and so forth? So that's a good way to you know, a very practical way to get and capture what the reality because one somebody said it just a second ago, right? When you step into a job, you're putting your fingerprint on it and the job automatically begins to evolve based on what you
you turned it into. So capture what that new reality is.
Jody Holland (16:47.046)
Megan but yeah.
Meghan Slaughter (16:47.192)
Yeah, I I think that's a really great idea, Mike, because you do transform the job so much when you're there. but something I was gonna say as far as tracking what you're doing, this works across all industries. So my example was online, I do a lot of work on my computer and so I take screenshots of things. But if you work with your hands, a really simple way to keep track of some of the things that you have learned on the job is just record yourself doing it.
Of course, if you have anything that needs to remain private, and of course, stick to confidentiality, but if you can record it and put it on camera, do that. Because I once had a conversation with someone where an entire department quit at the same time for different reasons. and so they had nobody who was able to train a new hire, and the people who were there were just administrative. So
they didn't know what went into that part of the job. And so if they had those videos of doing this piece, then they could have just shown that video to somebody else. And then once they learned it, they could actually create a formal training program. But that is so helpful of you never know what's gonna come up, especially if you're working with a small business and you are relying on just one or two people for something that's a a crucial piece of your business. Then
Having that documentation, having something in place can really save you in the end.
Jody Holland (18:20.939)
Mike, do you remember the long term care organization that you and I worked with that the entire leadership team quit on the same day?
Mike Grigsby (18:29.053)
On the same day. Yep. Yeah.
Meghan Slaughter (18:31.114)
No.
Jody Holland (18:32.605)
All on the same day, except for one person, but the one person that didn't quit is the reason everybody else quit. Yeah. She stayed, they all went. And it Yeah. It was chaos because they also did not have a game plan. Even though they had other campuses of their long-term care facilities, they did not have an actual game plan of how they were going to train people. They just kind of were like,
Mike Grigsby (18:37.789)
shouldn't have been. That's right. That's right.
I wish that I wish that was a made up story.
Jody Holland (19:00.085)
Hey, we'll send an administrator to work with the new administrator. Well, they didn't have an administrator. And so the the guy that they hired brought out of retirement, he had already experienced a silver tsunami. he came in and he called me because he had gone through some of my stuff, and he goes, Whatever you need to do. I go, Well, what's your budget? He goes, Don't let the campus fail. And so Mike and I spent a lot of time going back and forth, and that was when we got very familiar with Denny's.
Yeah, in that town. Every evening, I think. That was our dinner with Denny. But and we would talk to the day, like, okay, well, what are we gonna do tomorrow to try to make this one piece better? But I mean maintenance director, assistant CNO, the administrator, the executive director, the dietary director, the groundskeeper, the director of the grounds, like everybody quit on the same day.
Mike Grigsby (19:47.537)
Yep.
Jody Holland (19:56.951)
So just like your department example there, Megan, you think about it, if you had those videos and you had a game plan, it's still gonna be bad, but it's gonna be a lot less bad than what it would have been. So I'm gonna kind of pull it all together and then we're gonna do a round robin here. Number one, you've got to track what people are doing. That was Megan's thought is go track the skills and figure out what the key skills are. Number two, you have to have a desire for the next group of people to succeed.
Mike Grigsby (20:08.685)
Yeah.
Jody Holland (20:26.273)
without as much suffering as you went through. You want it to be better for them than it was for you. Number three, like Malia said, you've got to let go of some of your but this is my personality and that's the only reason it wins. It's it's systemized success with a personality twist. And then like some of the things that you said, Mike, you kinda pulled several of those things together, but talking about if you're gonna go out and develop your people, you have to have a consistent developmental plan.
Meaning it's not a two hour watch these videos, then good luck. You know, just turn them loose. It is a let's really go for this and on a weekly basis, let's talk to the subject matter experts, let's get this thing going the right way. So here's my round robin that I want to do. I would like for each of you to say, Okay, if you were about to take over as the CEO of the business, what are three things that you would need?
in order to make sure that you succeeded. So three things that you need from the existing CEO who's retiring. Let's assume it's a good thing, not a bad thing. And you're gonna be taking over. So Mike, you're up.
Mike Grigsby (21:38.156)
I think the first thing that I would ask is it it would it would be around the team, the l the rest of the leadership team. Give me a lay of the land, what the rest of the leadership team is. The other thing is I would ask what in practice is really urgent, really important versus what's really urgent. I'm gonna get inundated with a whole bunch of things right up front. and then lastly, I would need to know.
What are the relationships that I need external to the organization that will help help me accomplish what I need to do?
Jody Holland (22:16.011)
Excellent. All right, Megan, you ready? Three things you need. You're about to take over as CEO.
Meghan Slaughter (22:20.96)
I would need to know what the current cultural climate is and get a gauge for everybody's engagement and you know how they feel about leadership so I can step into it knowing that and be prepared ahead of time. I would also need to know what the mission is of the organization and are people following that and fulfilling that within each of their roles. And I think the third thing is.
Who is the person I need to go to in times of crisis or when things are going well? who do I need to speak to about certain things? So really just know who your subject matter expert is or just your friendly face to go to.
Jody Holland (23:04.331)
Excellent. Good job. All right, Malia, three things you need. You're about to be CEO.
Maleah Grigsby (23:09.114)
Mine be what are the main like friction points across the organization? what has success been defined as in the pr for the prior CEO? And is that in line with the organization or is that specific to the CEO? And then kind of in addition to the the culture, not just the in internal c culture of the organization, but also kind of the community viewpoint of the organization.
Jody Holland (23:37.823)
Excellent. And I think if I was about to take over an organization as a CEO, number one thing I would ask is, and this is probably a little weird here, but what are the things that you wish you never did? Because I it's a good time to cut out a bunch of stuff that is kind of pointless when you do that. Second thing I want to know kind of goes along with the culture of the thing that Megan talked about. I want to know the culture of the organization. I think everybody kind of hit that with just different wording.
Mike Grigsby (23:50.284)
Mm. Yeah.
Jody Holland (24:07.169)
And then the third thing I want to know is give me the layout of a typical week. Like what are you doing during the week that that is good and that is bad? So it kind of goes with the first question of what do you wish you had never done so that I could know what I could cut out. Because it's a good time to make change when you're taking over. But I want to wanna point out something that everybody talked about, is that we're we're talking about the handoff. Part of what we have to make sure is included beyond just the skill set and the training is
Mike Grigsby (24:25.736)
Yeah.
Jody Holland (24:36.631)
the relational connection. If you're handing this off, you've gotta make sure that the person is prepared and seen in the right light and that you're not doing kind of the thing that that Megan described that some people do where you go, Well I kinda want to suffer when I'm gone because I wanna know that I'm missed. So it has to be I don't want them to suffer. I wanna be missed because I was great, not missed because they're bad. And that makes it a a very different perspective.
Mike Grigsby (25:04.355)
Yeah.
Jody Holland (25:07.009)
So great conversation, guys. I I appreciate your input and your insight. I love these conversations every single week. So for those of you who have not subscribed yet, please go and do that. Please share this with a friend. also if you have some ideas or suggestions for shows, we'd love to hear that. Give us a rating, give us a shout out. We'll do anything that we can to try to make sure that we're delivering the right kind of value and keeping you engaged. Until then, you've got Jody, Mike, Megan, and Malia.
Mike Grigsby (25:09.597)
Yeah.
Jody Holland (25:34.625)
And we'll see you next time on the Become the Leader podcast.
Jody Holland (25:42.519)
Maybe.