#5 :: How Effective Feedback Can Transform Your Entire Company, with Nick Gallo - ComplianceLine
Plenty of leaders claim to have open door policies, but are you truly using feedback effectively in your business? Nick Gallo, Chief Servant and Co-CEO of ComplianceLine, gives an in-depth training on the ‘Six A Feedback Framework’ and reveals the many layers of complexity that so many of us bring to our professional interactions, which actually hurt us instead of protect us.
ComplianceLine: http://complianceline.com/
Ethics Experts Podcast: https://compliancepodcastnetwork.net/category/the-ethics-experts/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ngallo/
Recorded on 10.29.20
TRANSCRIPT
[Music & Intro]
Laurie Pillow: Welcome to the 100 CEO Project podcast.
Andrea Spirov: Welcome back, everyone to the 100 CEO Project. In this time of ESG-focus, cancel culture, impact-weighted accounts and a social movement that demands quite aggressively that government and corporations actually live into a vision of equity, stakeholder value and fair dealings with the people they impact, ethics has really become a focus point. Compliance is critical. Enter Nick Gallo, Chief Servant and Co-CEO of ComplianceLine, a compliance solutions company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and recognized as one of America's fastest growing private companies by the Inc 5000 at number 989. But they actually serve five continents in 200 languages and nearly every country in the world. This year, Nick launched the Ethics Experts Podcast, and he joins us today to give us training on feedback. One of the most difficult aspects of culture to cultivate within the company. But Nick, you're doing something right. So welcome.
Nick Gallo: Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
AS: Before you share this mini-training, can you help us create some working definitions? So how do you define compliance? And then how do you define feedback? And then what's the correlation between the two?
NG: Great, so I mean, compliance is a kind of a broad term, right? It generally means you know, doing the things that you're supposed to do. And those things can relate to regulations, they can relate to, you know, internal values or norms within your organization, they can really span a lot of different things. And so feedback kind of goes hand in hand with it, because feedback can kind of be those, those rumble strips on the side of the road to let you let the person driving know that they're kind of getting into the wrong lane or something like that. Right. So feedback, you know, feedback is the mechanism, you know, no pun intended, but the feedback mechanism to ensure that compliance for whatever it is, whether it's a speech, whether it's, you know, like I said as some kind of a regulation, is that feedback to let you know, how close you are to doing what you're supposed to do and what you need to change. Right.
AS: Got it. All right. Yep. The rumble strip. I like that analogy. Okay, I think we're ready, let's dive into your training.
NG: So, um, this is a, this feedback thing is a really hard thing. Right? It's, you know, so as I'm telling you about this, this does not mean that I'm like the expert at this, this is something that I, you know, I myself struggle with, and I think everybody kind of struggles with from time to time. And I think it's first, it's first important to kind of articulate why, right? Like, why is it hard for people. We all want to be professional, we want to be courteous to each other, we don't want to make people feel uncomfortable, right? Like, these are all things that go against our implied social contract that, you know, shows up in our workplaces, right. Um, so that's a piece of it. But I think if you tear that down, you tear down that reticence people have for feedback, it always kind of comes down to someone putting their own ego above the mission, above the purpose. Think about a football team, right? Imagine, you know, the guy on the offensive line misses his block, but the quarterback doesn't want to say anything to him, because he doesn't want to make him feel bad or something right? Like, that doesn't usually happen, because it's so clear. And the united goal of those people on that field is so tangible, right, we're trying to win the game, we're trying to score points in that kind of environment. Because that goal is so clear, it's easy to say, Hey, you got to block that guy, because I can't get the throw off, or whatever it is. So when we're inside of an organization, it seems to be a little bit different. Because that purpose is maybe less defined. It's more amorphous, it's less resonant with people, people view it as less real. And so as any of those things sort of come into the mix, that it's easier for that mission to sort of sink down in the priority list. And that ego, that self preservation, that sort of desire for your own, you know, to ensure your own psychological safety can kind of, you know, rise up above it, and then you lead to it which leads to these scenarios where someone is not willing to sort of quote unquote, call somebody out, because at the end of the day, they don't want to, you know, disrupt their social equity with them. Right.
So, I think the first you know, before we can start talking about feedback, my point is, we need to all get on the same page around what the goal is. And we all need to get on the same page that the goal, the mission, the purpose of whatever we're doing is bigger than any one of us. And for us to collectively achieve this broader thing, it takes us all putting this broader thing first and putting ourselves last and serving our team and all those kinds of things. Once that sort of tenant can be established. Now we can get into this little mini training, which is about well, how do you actually do this feedback? And part of it is sort of tactical, and part of it is sort of cultural. And so let's dive into it now.
So we borrowed this from Reed Hastings' new book, No Rules Rules, which is basically talking about his journey toward the really innovative, responsibility focused culture that has made Netflix what it is today, right? I mean, there's a lot of great anecdotes about his first, the first company that he ran, and what he got wrong with culture. And really, a big portion of the book is talking about this feedback thing. And they're really like a, you know, radically candid organization. They're what, you know, they've kind of gotten to the oasis in the desert that we're trying to get to, you know, they're a little bit more mature company than we are. But the point is that this, this speak-up culture or this, this feedback, culture is such an important element to get us to be that iron, that sharpening iron. The iron only sharpens iron when it's touching each other, right? Like, that's that feedback, that's us talking about this broader goal. If those connection points never happen, well, then we all just kind of dull out and we start to rust as the, as you know, as we begin to oxidize, I can keep carrying this analogy forward, but I think you get the point. So the feedback is, the feedback training is I'm going to give you a little rule of thumb or mnemonic to help remember it. And it's, you know, we call this the Six A Feedback Framework. So I want you to kind of this is gonna sound super silly and stupid. But I think if you go through this thought exercise with me, you will remember what the six A's mean.
So I want you to picture a tennis court. And on the tennis court, there are two people playing tennis and each of their hands are rackets for some reason, they're playing with two rackets each, right. And on each of those racquets you see an A, so the server has two As, and the person receiving the serve, they have two As. And then and then you climb up in the stands. And you see that man, there's two massive A's painted on the court, right? So those are the six A's of it. And each one corresponds to a different sort of aspect of the feedback. One is, two of the A’s correspond to the person giving the feedback, two correspond to the person receiving the feedback and two correspond to, you know, when/where should this occur?
So let's talk about the person giving the feedback. The first one is about actionability, right, there needs to be feedback that somebody can do something with, right? Um, many times we give feedback that just has a negative slant to it. And that actionability is really a critical piece of the equation. So they have to be able to do something with the feedback. And the feedback needs to have that positive slant, we need to be aiming to improve, right. So if I'm going to give you some feedback about something, you need to be able to do something with it. And there needs to be something tangible in it that I can do to get better. Now, what about the other person with the two Aa rackets on their hands, this is the person receiving the feedback. So they need to do two things they need to first of all, the first A is appreciate, right? I need to recognize that this is probably a socially uncomfortable thing for the person providing the feedback to me to go through. And I need to appreciate the fact that they were willing to put their ego below the mission, and that, hey, we're all united on this thing. So I need to appreciate that, that uncomfortability that they are likely going through and be able to accept that feedback, right. So appreciating the person. I mean, at the core of it, again, assuming that the feedback is positive, right, they're aiming to improve and it's actionable, then, you know, it's up to you to appreciate that, because they took steps to put it into that, you know, to serve you that plate that way, right. So it's easy to appreciate the feedback as hard as it may be, to hear kind of in your gut or to your ego. And then the other thing is to accept or decline. In a high responsibility organization where there's not a bunch of finger pointing, where it's not an organization where when you walk into a room, you have to quickly find the wall because you don't want to get stabbed in the back. If those things are not part of your organization, and you are a high responsibility organization, well then that accept or decline, you know, it's up to the person receiving the feedback if they want to accept it, or or decline it, because frankly, the person providing the feedback, even if they took those those steps of aiming to improve and, you know, actionability, they might not have all the context, they might not know all the nuance in the challenge that you are that you are facing. So at the end of the day, when somebody gives you feedback, you need to take that with some grace. You need to give them some grace because they're doing something uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, it's up to you whether you want to accept that and do something with it because you know, you're the captain of your own ship, right? You're Holding the steering wheel of the car of your life or whatever. Um, and then finally like, well, when should this happen? Right, we talked about what that interaction should look like both from the person giving it and the person receiving it, well, what's the proper forum for it? And in our organization, those last two A's are for anytime, anywhere. So anytime you want to give, give the feedback, give it any, you know, you want to give that anywhere, then give it. That is, again, only possible if the ego the individual egos are below and subservient to and subject to this broader purpose. Because if that's the case, then you can, you can grab your teammate by the facemask and be like, you got to block that guy on the way to the huddle, in the huddle at the line, you know what I'm saying? Anytime, anywhere, where it's most applicable, where it's going to be most impactful is the appropriate time to do it. But if we start, if we're in one of these normal organizations, where the individual is beyond everything else, and our social interaction is bigger than our mission, which doesn't really resonate with us, which we don't really get, and we don't agree with, and it seems fake, and it seems hollow and all those things, then that's when you get into these situations where you can't give the feedback, and I'm looking for the right time to give it and I got to catch them on a good day to tell them these things, all these things into creating a ton of inefficiencies that end up ultimately compromising that, that mission, which is why we're all coming to our place of work every day, right? So that's it. That's the Six A framework.
11:20
AS: So my reaction to this is, I love it. I can see a lot of friction. And even I wrote down the word conflict in getting this rolled out in an organization because I'm a firm believer that people are responding to things the way that the situation occurs to them. And we all have this different like idea of like, what collaboration means or what accountability means. How do you get everybody, they have to do that work within? Right? How do you get everybody on the same page to even be able to take that first step of actioning it? Much less anytime, anywhere to break down that barrier?
NG: Yeah. So I think it's kind of an iterative process, you're not going to kind of teleport to this oasis of high responsibility, sort of culture-first company. It's a journey, right? And your journey journeying through this wilderness where you're, you know, hitting up against your id and hitting up against the purpose. And are these things you know, where do these things really fall in my own hierarchy? So yeah, to your point, there's a lot of noise, and there's a ton of potential for conflict. I would argue that, like, if there's not conflict, then you're probably leaving a ton of value on the table. And I'm not just talking about dollars, I'm talking about development, I'm talking about people getting better and making a bigger impact in the world. So conflict is part of it. Like, if you're not getting sore going to the gym, and you're probably not lifting enough weights, right? Like, that's got to be a piece of it. And if you can incorporate, you know, which is kind of a next step thing, if you can incorporate this true idea of meritocracy, which is a great word. And it's a great concept. And what it means is that the best ideas should stand, whether that's coming from me, that's coming from you, whether it's coming from the janitor, whether it's coming from the guy dropping off the sandwiches for lunch, the source is irrelevant. What matters is the merit of that idea. So I think if you can incorporate an idea meritocracy to your general discussions, along with a push to say, Hey, you know what, we need to get better at feedback, and we need to elevate our purpose beyond ourselves, then you can start this process going. But to your point, there's a lot of, there's a lot of noise in a lot of these terms. And there's a lot of baggage that we all bring from our childhood and from other jobs that we've had, where we've been burned, or from a boss who has, you know, said all the right things, but they're really conniving or whatever. Like, we all bring those things to, to our jobs in our current circumstances. So I think our job as leaders, obviously is to set direction for the company, set vision and all those things. But I think one of the most important things that our job becomes, is to really, you know, be the model for the culture to articulate that culture and live that out on a day to day basis.
So what does that mean? Well, if you're trying to create psychological safety, where people are going to feel at home, and feel authentic, well, then you need to lead with your own authenticity, and there's no authenticity without vulnerability, right? And so what is the vulnerability usually show up like in a workplace scenario? Well, it's like fear of looking dumb fear of letting people know that I messed up feeling, you know, whatever, you know, all these kind of ego protection things. So a great way to model that is to give license to people to call you out on your own errors to incorporate an idea meritocracy, you know, you know, just try an idea meritocracy meeting where you can go and have a knockdown drag out, and that that's not insulting, that's just straight up authentic debate about a particular issue, and throw some stupid ideas in the mix and call people out if they don't call those out as stupid, you understand? I'm saying like, they need to see that it's real, and they're not going to really take their step. You know, it's like a frozen pond moving to a new culture is a frozen pond and people are scared to step out on it because they don't know how frozen through it is. So you got to step out onto it first and you got to jump on that pond a little bit and maybe build your little, you know, fishing hut on there. So they're like, Okay, well, this is a safe place to be. And it feels scary to do as a leader because I think especially in Western culture, leaders are kind of expected to have all the answers and all those kinds of things. But it's a really silly. It's a silly paradox that we ostensibly create for ourselves. Because, you know, any sort of collective that's pursuing a broader mission, which I'm basically describing a company - that can only occur if everyone's synergy is there, right? Like everyone bringing one plus one plus one is equal more than three. By that definition, one person can't do it all. And by that definition of a larger organization, like the synergy comes from getting people that have strengths, relative to my weaknesses, but if I am doing that, and then you can essentially counteract whatever magic potential you brought into your system by saying I don't have any weaknesses, I don't make any mistakes, I have all the answers. That kind of an undercurrent and communication posture from a leader totally like kills any idea of like authentic idea meritocracy, or, or a psychologically safe enough organization where you can engage in like authentic, candid feedback, you know what I mean?
AS: And Laurie, Laurie is about to jump in, I can't wait. We're always talking about this leadership and authenticity and vulnerability...
16:03
LP: Authenticity, vulnerability, of course, I'm about to blow a gasket over here in the absolute best way to dig into it a little bit more. I've read some of your stuff, for example, where you say, you know, we're in this bizarre time of business where we've got Baby Boomers and Gen Z, Gen X, and it's like, wow, how do we get everybody to work together and to create these environments where there is psychological safety, authenticity, vulnerability. So what are some of the issues, if you will, that are most difficult, around creating this environment of psychological safety, knowing that you've got these different parties, these, you know, involved different populations, demographics, what do you do with that?
NG: So we have an extremely diverse group of teammates here, not just from different races and sexes, and everything else, but also from different ages. So we deal with this on an ongoing basis. And I think so, so I don't know where to start here. So I'll start here, I think it first starts from leadership, articulating that these different groups have different things to bring to the table. Like a truly inclusive, or, you know, everybody's talking about diversity and inclusion. Like, great, I love it, let's not, let's not underscope what that means. And let's not be too particular about what that means, because a lot of people relegate that to, you know, physical characteristics. But a truly inclusive organization is going to be inclusive of people from different, you know, these things we're talking about different countries, different, whatever backgrounds, whatever, but it also needs to be inclusive of different personality types, it also needs to be inclusive of different generations, because all these generations have different things to bring to the table that are positives. And I think we need to have a little bit of grace for some of these, you know, older generations, because think about what they came up in. They didn't, they didn't grow up learning, learning what knowledge work is, like, we were learning about that in high school, like that, as a concept was starting to emerge in the 90s. That obviously wasn't happening in the 60s, nobody knew what knowledge work was where creativity supersedes and individual contributions supersede the sort of machine that you're a part of, those are all holdovers from like, not, you know, not even the Industrial Revolution, but from the Gilded Age when like these rock, you know, these, all of this revolution was happening, right, these big steel companies were the factors of production was really about sort of managing tolerance across these different sort of resource sets. And you had to have a tight tolerance on like the output because you're spitting out, you know, 1000 widgets, or 1000, you know, railroad ties, or whatever they were making back then. The nature of our work is so different now. Right? And so, along with this new work, you know, environment where it's really more about knowledge work than it is about, you know, manufacturing, right. Um, I don't want to say the rules of the game have changed, but what's needed from the collective into, you know, the collective group of individuals who are pursuing that goal in a knowledge work economy is something that's different, right? So the hierarchy, the hierarchical approach, the sort of military style approach, which of course again came out of that kind of late 1800's thing carried forward into the Industrial Revolution and carried forward into the military and carried forward into, you know, the all the MBAs that that were coming out in the 70s, and stuff like that. Well, there's no wonder why there's this conflict, essentially, between these newer generations, who again, are becoming an increasingly bigger part of our organization. They grew up differently, they had different truths, they have a different higher hierarchy of values. You know, a millennial is much more likely to go into the CEOs office on day one and say, Hey, I think our social media kind of stinks right? Like a baby boomer would be horrified that that's happening. Well, just the parent, the parental dynamics and the edutainment style education that we all came up with those all lead to different sort of life experiences. So to your your, your question, I am coming back to it like It starts with us recognizing that listen, um, the conscientiousness that might be, like relatively higher in some of these organizations, there's tons of value in that, right. But there's also a ton of value in the flexibility and this sort of collapsed, flatter organization, concentric circle style that's necessary for the knowledge work economy, to, to really make that magic happen, right? Like there's benefits in both. I think if we can, not only as leaders recognize those different benefits, find those different benefits, but also create opportunities to have discussions about them. Like, it's just like, I don't know, if there's an elephant in the room, let's talk about it, right? Like, if there's tension between generations, well great talk about it and say, Hey, listen, you guys look, look at things this way. You guys look at things this way, it is what it is, you're not going to change it up, you're not going to wave a magic wand, and then just have everybody thinking the same, right?
Our life experiences, our baggage, whatever all those things determine how we interact with our world. So I think just talking about it is a big one. And what I've seen some some success with is getting cross functional teams going where the mission is very clear. Again, it doesn't have to be about your broad company mission, it could be a task force on a particular project on an employee engagement thing or something like that. But getting a cross functional team going, that knocks down some of those generational walls, again, in the context of a very clear goal, you may have to come in there and help kind of, you know, build that bridge. But I think many times again, if that if the tailwinds of a good culture that is truly inclusive are behind it, if there's good modeling of what that means, both from a vulnerability and from an authenticity side, from you know, leadership, you know, at large, then the odds of thosee generational walls melting are a lot higher. And that cross pollination between those generations can actually have a massive impact on people on both sides of the fence. Because again, there's a ton of stuff that an older generation can learn from the newer generation who grew up already acclimated to this knowledge work thing. And there's a bunch that new folks can learn from older folks, in terms of how to navigate the politics of an organization, or what to say and what not to say, and how to, you know, I'm saying how to play the game, right, and, and things like that. So I hope I didn't talk around that issue too much, because it's really a complex one. But I think there's so much magic to unleash, because it's not like, there's a bad generation. You understand what I'm saying? It's just, they're just different. And they're inherently different for you know, some of the reasons I touched on but just the upbringing, think of the nature of those upbringings and what was going on in those times, and how those infiltrated into experiences that make us the mosaic of who we are today.
AS: Well, I was just thinking about sort of the headcount, how many people you have, and I know you work with companies, probably of all sizes all over, but I can see, you know, sometimes I hear about, you know, in my line of work people will, they'll bring in someone say, into like an innovation team to work because they're not innovating and they get - and the particular consulants I'm thinking of - they'll get in on those equity issues and things. But it's always in a small group.
NG: Right.
23:01
AS: When you talk about, you know, these companies that have 60,000 to 100,000 employees. So do you find that that's easier in sort of smaller, I mean, that being being like, you're at your generation, and, and this probably, I'm not sure what size your company is, but they're you know, they're, it's, it's just different when you're building that from the ground up, and then you take these organizations that are, you know, 100 years old, or even 50 years old, must be harder to implement. So how do you see that playing out?
NG: I think, I think it's a great question. You know, our organization, you know, we serve, you know, we have less than 100 people, so we're serving companies that are 1000 times bigger than us in many cases. So, you know, I just think about, like the boat analogy, right? Like, you can turn a cigarette boat real quick, it takes a long time to turn a battleship. And so a massive company, it may take longer for that thing to, to turn around. Um, but think about how change occurs, right? Like, think about your world, even if you work in a 100,000 person organization, your world is probably 15 or 20 people, like, that's who you spend 80% of your time with - this team, and so forth. So, you know, the macrocosm that is an organization is really just a bunch of sort of microcosms that all have their own individual sort of micro cultures. And so, for the thing to truly change it, you know, it's got to change from the top down and bottom up. But my point is, we can affect change, regardless of our organization size. And we can start in the small little garden that we're part of before we try to de-weed the whole forest, right? Start in your team, whether it's your 10 people that you work with, or the three people on your taskforce. Make that be a lighthouse of what the culture is supposed to be.
And I'm just telling you, like, people are so scared of this vulnerability thing. It's the basis of all of our actual relationships outside of work. Think about your closest friend, whether it's your sister or your best friend, like you're not like guarded, hiding vulnerability from them. No, that's the means of connection. But like when we step into an organization for some reason, we put on this carapace of professionalism that actually impedes any sort of authentic connection. Then impedes any of the pathways that we ultimately need to have those sort of candid authentic feedback discussions or whatever. So you can make a massive amount of difference in the, in the little piece of the world that you're a part of. And it just really starts to trickle out. And it really starts to cross-pollinate. So I think, you know, the way to attack it is, obviously push for that leadership, obviously, try to get those light bulbs at the top turned on. But irrespective, like you're the driver of, of your life, your hands are on the steering the steering wheel, so change what you can change, you know, model, what you can model, live out what you can live out, and start to see. Like, again, anybody is a leader, in my mind, anybody who's willing to do the right thing and set an example for somebody else is a leader. It's not necessarily just based on title. So I'm just saying, if we step out as leaders in our little, you know, in our little corner of the world, it many times can give the courage to other folks to do that same thing. And then pretty soon, you got a bunch of authenticity going and a bunch of those sort of walls are down and you can really, that's when it gets fun. But if you're constantly censoring who you are, because you're so scared of whatever, that you know, just like everything, right? Like, the thing that we think that is going to protect us is actually you know, shackling us with weights on our ankles as we try to swim across this channel. It's just it's, it's a crazy, it's so counterintuitive, but it's a it's actually very counterproductive, the way that we go about kind of dealing with each other, it's, you know, I'm a human, you're a human, why is this so tough? If we were neighbors, we wouldn't be having any of these issues. You know what I mean?
I think what I would say about that feedback thing is like, just start doing it. You can put a lot of words around it, to make sure that it lands, right, like the first time you do it, it's going to be awkward. And the other kind of perspective that I would share is that, for most people, they have a lot more equity, social equity in the bank than they think. We're all so scared to spend that social equity and then that person isn't going to like us, and they're going to hate us, and they're going to think we're a jerk, and so forth. Well, you've done a lot to build that up, you can spend a little of that and you can really actually deliver the feedback without ever even spending it, you can actually increase it if you can deliver it in a thoughtful like, way, you know, I'm saying like a thoughtful like, I care about your way I care about this broader thing. So again, this fear of us, you know, wrecking our reputation or wrecking our relationship with this person prevents us from doing the things that can actually increase the depth of the relationship, you know, what I mean?
27:34
LP: The work that you guys are doing is clearly improving, increasing the well being of organizations and the individuals within them right.
NG: Mm hmm.
LP: So I know you're a dad. And I'm just wondering, of all of the things that you teach people, help people learn within organizations, if you had to choose one of those things to impart to your children, so that they become better humans, what would that thing be?
NG: It might sound a little bit trite, but it's about like being real. Like, if you're feeling something, talk about it. Iif you're thinking something, let's talk about it, and let's talk through it. Maybe you're looking at it wrong, maybe I'm looking at it wrong. But part of it is like just the general safety that they can have in themselves that they can speak up when something is going on, or something's not working, or if they're frustrated by something. I think with the knock on effect of it...everything I'm talking about is like a muscle, you know what I'm saying? So like, if you can get into the habit at an early age of like speaking up, and again, that's not throwing a tantrum, or whatever. It's being able to articulate those things and understand that, hey, what I'm feeling right now, I'm going to talk about it. I'm not going to bury it down and so forth, I think gives them I hope we'll see. Talk to me, you know, 20 years or something. But like it hopefully will give them more agency to grab that steering wheel and move away from life is happening to me mode into life is happening by me mode, you know.
29:00
AS: So Nick, I'm seeing that you are participating in the 100 Book Challenge. And last time I checked you were up to book 82.
NG: Yeah
AS: So can you share your favorite so far?
NG: Wow. Um, so I've been pretty lucky this year. This was one of those things where I was like, yeah, how hard could that be? And then like, it's like, yeah, it's kind of a lot. Okay. But it's very public. So I need to make it happen. But I've been really lucky because I've gotten so many great recommendations that it's hard to pick, like, my favorite. So I bet if you asked me this question again next week, I'd probably give you a different list of, of my favorites. So maybe I'll work backwards. Because that's how my memory works. I'll give you a few that I think are phenomenal. So the No Rules Rules is amazing. It really articulates this culture thing in a good way and it has a lot of great actionable steps to get that implemented. And it also shares the journey to this thing. You know, he's kind of, it's maybe ironic, maybe not but like in him sharing his vulnerability and the mistakes that he made, not only helps the story resonate a little bit more. But it also just opens your eyes to the fact that listen, you're going to make mistakes over time. And that this is really a journey, you're never going to arrive at a great culture destination. It's a project that you're on. It's a journey. I love that book.
This other book called, This Could Be Our Future, which was written by the founder of Kickstarter. This is kind of a manifesto about what an organization should do or could do. As we sort of ascend from the myopic profit-only, our only job is to serve our shareholders, and taking more of a stakeholder, more holistic view. Because, you know, capitalism obviously has a bad name right now. But I am like this author, I think, like, look, we live in a capitalistic economy, there's a huge opportunity for businesses to do good in the world, especially when they can move away from like, the god of their company being money, and their god should then be something like something for the good of the world or making things better. And I think if you do that right, and you can take that sort of output mentality, instead of sort of myopically focusing on dollars and recognizing that dollars, profit, whatever, those are all the outputs of like a good well functioning system, well, then all those things are going to happen. Just focus on running that engine right. So I love that book. I read this book called Never Split the Difference, which I thought was super interesting. That's kind of a negotiation book, this guy wrote, you know, you did ask here. So I'm gonna, I will wrap this up quick.
AS: I've actually read this one.
NG: You have? Phenomenal book. So interesting, super actionable. I was halfway through the book, I used some of the techniques, and I got a free upgrade on a flight. This is before COVID, obviously. So like, it works, okay, so that that's a great book. Um, and I just finished this really, really interesting book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. And it's really a, almost like a position paper or like a philosophical book about kind of the role that TV has played in its ascension from, you know, not existing to now being like, essentially, the only form of entertainment, and how that, you know, that as a pillar piece of media conveyance has infiltrated all of our ways of thinking, other ways that, you know, we interact with other media, how you know, how its influenced education, and how it's influenced, like, the political discourse and all these things. And it's a, it sounds like my grandma was right, that TV is a bad thing. So that was a really good, really good book, as well. I'm sure I'm forgetting probably a dozen other great ones. But those are the ones that really popped out most recently.
AS: We could talk for hours here, I think, but we do have to wrap it up. So Nick, where can they find you?
NG: You can find me on LinkedIn. Nick Gallo at LinkedIn or you can find me at Compliance line.com that's where we, you know, that's our shingle that we've hung out onto the internet.
LP: Awesome, Nick Gallo thank you so very much. ComplianceLine, you guys check it out, check out his new show, the Ethics Experts Podcast, and we'll see you next time.
NG: Bye, everybody.
LP: Hey, guys, we hope you've enjoyed today's episode. And if you did, please share it with your friends and colleagues who also have to navigate this leadership stuff. As you can see, this project is about to be a mini masterclass in every episode. Best part. It's free. So if you like it, please do us a favor and take a screenshot, share it on social with the hashtag #100CEO. That way we can say thanks and share it in our stories. And finally, if you've got some insights you'd like to share and you're a CEO, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at 100CEOProject.com, on LinkedIn at the 100 CEO Project. Until next time, keep leading by example.
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Hosted by: Andrea Spirov, Laurie Pillow
Writing and research: Andrea Spirov, Laurie Pillow
Edited by: Laurie Pillow
Produced by: Laurie Pillow, Andrea Spirov
