The Wize Way

Episode 67: What is The "No Triangles" Policy and Why Should you Start Implementing in Your Firm?

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 1 • Episode 68

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In this week's episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, we're delving deep into the transformative power of our 'No Triangles' policy—a groundbreaking approach that reshapes workplace dynamics, fostering personal integrity within your team and igniting leadership from every desk.

Join us as we uncover the secrets of this conversation starter that promotes transparency and eliminates backbiting, creating a culture of openness and trust. Learn how this policy can be a game-changer, driving your team towards greater collaboration and productivity.

Tune in now to embark on this transformative journey of leadership and team empowerment.  Don't miss it!

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Ed Chan:

You've got to master leading yourself. So that's about self-discipline, that's about experience, that's about controlling your feelings. So you've got to lead yourself.

Wize Mentoring:

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time-pull practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

Brenton Ward:

Talk to me about the no triangles policy, because this is a really important one, one that can kind of be overlooked, but, in terms of part of the leadership journey, something that definitely has to be implemented when to come from and talk us through how to implement it.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, look, Brenton, I first come across this by another leadership consultant, actually Rachel Robinson, and one. I've seen Rachel present at XeroCon in one year. But in a nutshell, the no bypass policy means really just having, I guess, personal integrity and not talking about other people on your team about a problem or an issue behind their back. Now, that might sound really simple. However, it does happen, and when it does happen, you've got to have this tool or leadership policy to educate to the people involved that you're always better off not creating triangles. Just go direct to the person. If you've got an issue or a matter to sort out, then go direct to the person. Don't create a triangle, because I think we've all worked in different places over the years that we might see people having a bit of a chatter in a corner. It may not always be healthy chatter about oh, do you know what happened here? Someone said this and she said he said it's the top of the thing. So I think, as a leader and the leaders that you develop, leading your teams, it's really important that lead from where you are. Each person has to be the leader. So if someone comes to me and says, hey, Joe said this about me, I'd say well, you need to go and talk to Joe about that face to face and sit down and have a chat. Don't send an email. We know what emails are like. If something sensitive, do not send an email. I've lost count over the years how many bad emails I've seen sent to clients, and sent internally as well. So it's always not what but how you do it. In a nutshell, with the no triangles policy, there's some points there, brent. You've raised it. It increases the respect and increases productivity. Ed and I have seen Ed's even been coaching me for years More of your little issue pop up that the mail's been sent to the wrong client or something. We've probably all seen that happen. But then all of a sudden, 10 people are involved about this issue. There's a blame mentality, or that person did it or she said so. You got to cut all that out. That's probably a good point.

Jamie Johns:

I'm about to say that none of these policies stand alone in isolation. You've got to have each of these policies in place to create a fantastic culture. Yeah, absolutely. Again, leadership is creating a fantastic culture, and I think I just put a post recently that for some years now we've been tracking our internal culture and goes up and down, up and down and finally it's up, the highest it's ever been. So there's low points, so another policy just to implement and again this is in the wise vol, at that step to really delve into the detail. But I think everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about. There's those triangle conversations that don't need to be hard to say hey, joe, just go and talk to him, don't talk to me about it, I'm here to help. Let's focus on the solution.

Brenton Ward:

Absolutely. The last policy that we are going to cover off is specifically videoed and documented in the vault in any case. So just touching on the point raised regarding managing your team and being friendly, I've been that guy for 10 odd years. I hate conflict and I know I need to get a bit tougher, but how do you turn a new leaf and reset expectations when I've been super hands off etc. For all the years up until now? So who wants to lead with that one, ed?

Ed Chan:

I can do that. I don't want anybody to be confused about what I said about being too friendly. You can be friendly but you have to be able to be in a position where, if you have to sack somebody or reprimand somebody, that your friendship doesn't make it difficult for you to make that kind of decision. So you're friendly, but you can't be best mates. So I'm friendly with everybody here. They all like me.

Ed Chan:

We don't have any, you know, meanness between us and if you go and ask the 160 staff they'll say that Ed's a decent guy and so forth. I don't think I'm their best friend because I think that I'm able to have that hard conversation with all of them if I needed to. And I don't think that I'm in such a position where I couldn't have that hard conversation when, if and when the time occurs. So I guess you've got to be at that point where you've had to say to yourself if I had to have this difficult conversation, can I have that with this person? And if you can't have that conversation, you may have a look at how friendly or how close you are to them.

Ed Chan:

I had a guy here who worked for us and were really good friends from primary school all the way through, and he said to me when I asked him to come work for me, he said to me oh, we're really good friends. Do you think that's a good idea? If I needed to, I would have been able to have that conversation with him. That's the defining point. Can you have that conversation? And if you say you can't, then you're too close. But if you say you can be friends, like we go out to dinner together, you know our wives are friendly, but if I needed to have that conversation, I could have that without any question.

Brenton Ward:

That makes perfect sense. That clears it up and I hope that helps. In a similar vein, you mentioned being too friendly with staff, but can you also be too friendly with clients, and I think you pretty much box this off with what you just said. A lot of people build businesses within friendship networks, so I think that answer that you've just provided clarifies that and clears that up. Anything else to add on that one? Are you happy enough with that being covered off?

Ed Chan:

Yeah, I am, but Jamie might want to contribute here.

Jamie Johns:

Just a quick couple of points.

Jamie Johns:

Brenton, there's a lot of family businesses in Australia and around the world and if those family businesses just scale in and grow, those family businesses have to develop communication policies, KPIs and respectful lines of communication and they have to have the hard conversations, whether it's family or otherwise.

Jamie Johns:

So I support it in what says you must be able to have the hard conversations but at the same time, in conjunction with that, you must have KPIs or goals around that person's performance to run the business properly. And one thing that we run at Sky is quarterly catch up. I have a 15 minute quarterly catch up with the senior client managers and each of those is just in tiny pulse and it's just a system that has 12 questions how are we going in these different areas? And it's a totally different conversation, brenton, about day to day work versus are we hitting the targets. So it forces you inadvertently to have the more difficult conversations system at all is a conversations, you know, because if you don't like having those conversations you can almost bet your bottom dollar you're not going to book it in your calendar to do it.

Brenton Ward:

Absolutely Easy. Not to, that's for sure. And in a similar vein to that, I guess Brett's asked someone does make a mistake and, as you suggest, you don't blame them but rather focus on fixing that mistake. Then how do you deal with that person thereafter? That is to say, do you leave it as is, problem fixed, move on, or do you have a one on one meeting to discuss what happened with that person?

Ed Chan:

Obviously, you don't reprimand people in front of others. Got to make it known that problem occurred, otherwise it will occur again. But you don't do that in front of others and then you might have a one on one, but it's. But all comes back to the language that you use, because you know if you said you've made a mistake or that's cutting to some, you could say that to me. It wouldn't matter to me, but it could matter to somebody else. So you've got to be focused on a leader.

Ed Chan:

A leader is about getting the best productivity out of that person. And if you say something to upset them and they couldn't produce anymore and they had to go home because they were so upset, then you, as a leader, whose job is to get the best productivity out of someone, has failed because you either shout at them or you upset them or, like I said, everybody's different. You know some people like me. You could shout at me, it wouldn't make any difference to me, I wouldn't get upset. I just focus on the mistake, and some other people are a lot more sensitive. So you've got to address your managing. Okay makes perfect sense.

Wize Mentoring:

Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, please remember to subscribe and leave us a five star review For more practical Wize tips on how to build a business that runs without you, head over to wizementoring. com/ podcast to download a free copy of the accountants 20 hour workweek playbook. We've included a link in the show notes below. See you on the next episode!