Leadership Levers
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Leadership Levers
Family Business Lessons & EOS Principles for Leadership Success with Kyle Danner
Can lessons from a family business and EOS principles transform your leadership and drive organizational performance?
In this episode of Leadership Levers, Kyle Danner, CEO of Kyle Danner Consulting and a Professional EOS Implementer, shares his journey from managing the complexities of a family business to guiding organizations in building thriving cultures.
Drawing from his personal experience in the family business & succession planning sector, Kyle explores how family business dynamics shape leadership strategies and organizational success.
Kyle highlights the importance of aligning leadership teams with a clear vision and fostering open communication to overcome challenges and drive success. His practical advice, rooted in real-world examples, is valuable for leaders across multiple industries.
This episode reveals how intentional culture-building lays the foundation for sustained growth. Kyle’s insights offer actionable lessons for creating cohesive, high-performing teams.
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Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. At the Culture Think Tank, we empower leaders with metrics that strengthen culture, drive performance and return. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address organizational change. Our guest today is Kyle Danner, CEO of Kyle Danner Consulting and EOS Implementer. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
Kyle Danner:Thanks so much Will happy to be here with you today.
William Gladhart:Excellent. Let's start by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background and your organization.
Kyle Danner:Sure, I started my entrepreneurial journey in my family's business, joined full-time right out of college. At that point, the family business was a small print shop that my brother and sister owned together. We grew it to be the fifth largest printing company in Kansas City, growing it from about a couple million in revenue to over 18 million and from about 12 employees to over 80 employees. And so, first of all, I'm bragging about what we accomplished.
Kyle Danner:I'm really proud of what we did as a family and we also had a really great group of people helping us along the way. But that's a lot of growth and that's a lot of change, and one of the changes is that the family business and I we're no longer a fit. So, recognizing that, I sold my interest in 2010, struck out on my own, ended up going back to school for a degree in counseling. Now say whatever you want about 17 years in family business and decide you need to be a therapist afterwards. But along the way, I found I kind of discovered this area that the family business advisors, people who work, help both the family and the business work better together. And ended up talking to some really good friends and they said you should go do that. And I said you know you're right, I should go do it. I should go do that, not recognizing what go do that meant. So I went out, started working, coaching other advisors, facilitating family meetings, helping out wherever I could, and in so many cases, business owners were absolutely frustrated because there are all these people coming in from the outside telling them everything that was wrong with the business and you, being a business owner yourself, don't you appreciate that conversation? But they weren't really giving the tools to fix it. And so, recognizing that, I really went looking for a solution, because up to that point I'd really focused on the family and now I was being asked what could I do for the business, went looking for a solution and I found EOS, which is the Entrepreneurial Operating System. So if you're familiar with the book Traction, get a Grip on your Business by Gino Wickman, I became what's called an EOS implementer. So I joined a community there's we Are 800 Strong as of today.
Kyle Danner:Worldwide we help leadership teams get better at three things. We call vision, traction and healthy. Vision is getting the team 100% on the same page of where they're going and a plan to get there. Traction is about bringing that vision down to the ground and instilling that discipline and accountability so they're always executing towards it. And healthy is helping them make a more open, functional, cohesive, healthy leadership team, because most of the times they're not. And then from there the leadership team takes it and rolls out into the rest of the organization. So everybody's on the same page of the vision, everybody's executing on that vision and you've created a culture of people you really enjoy spending time with.
William Gladhart:Yeah, well, I love that you share that because, full disclosure, many years ago you and I sat down, I think, over a cocktail and this was as you were finishing your degree and talking about family business, talking about all the other pieces and, as you said, friends encouraged you to go do this. And going and doing this didn't really have any sort of model or what it was going to look like, and kudos to you for kind of blazing the path on that, taking what you learned from the family business, building that into the cultural element, but also the process, the other pieces. So, kyle, we'll be discussing three questions today as a warm-up to our conversation. Would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?
Kyle Danner:Well, it starts and ends with your people. If you don't have a healthy culture and typically the way that I look at defining a healthy culture is it's really having the right people, those people who share your core values which we'll talk a little bit later on in our conversation today that are really a culture fit and they're paired with the right job, jobs that they really want, they understand they can execute on. Without those two things together, you just you can get things done, but it turns into a slog and you have a never ending list of issues you've got to deal with. So either you can invest in the front end of really developing and growing and having a healthy culture or you can deal with it in the back end, with continual churn for employees, churn in customers, folks not following process, unclear, I mean. The list just goes on. So really a healthy culture is critical.
William Gladhart:Yeah, I think you touched on and I know you'll touch on this more about clarity of role understanding, communication within the organization and what's the approach? Is it really on the front end and tackling those before it gets to the back end and too far out of the process to be able to control? So you know, it's been our experience that leaders tend to struggle in three key areas people, process or profit. In your role, not only as a leader, but also in working with other CEOs and leaders, could you identify which one of these three areas represented a challenge of an organization that you worked with?
Kyle Danner:It's people, consistently it's people. Now, of course, I coach leadership teams, so I come in with that lens of really thinking about the people that not only are at the top, but the people throughout the rest of the organization. So for me, it's always the people.
William Gladhart:Yeah, so was there a specific challenge, either in your own family business or not to disclose any additional information, but in a leadership group or company that you worked with that negatively impacted the organization?
Kyle Danner:I'll give you my personal story. So you know folks, I gave you the nice little marketing version of helping grow a business. I joined the family business, like I said, right out of college. My plan was to stay one year. I ended up staying 17 years. So really a role in business, or at least a role in the family business, was never for me. It was a great entrepreneurial journey. I learned so much. I had more responsibility, more reward and I was at the head of the table helping make decisions. But ultimately it wasn't the best place for me. And my last position there Will and you know the story and, by the way, gang, for those of you listening today, will's actually the one who kind of told me to go really get into the succession planning for family businesses. So guilty as charged Will.
William Gladhart:Well, yeah, occasionally I make a really good mistake.
Kyle Danner:It was a really good mistake, but really it wasn't the place for me. In my last role, I was director of IT, or I think we called it the chief information officer. I know nothing about IT I'm a terrible project manager but I grew into this role. It just kind of is how it formed, and we were faced with a really exciting opportunity, the type of opportunity that challenges us to grow, and through that opportunity it became very clear I was the wrong person for this job. Through that opportunity, it became very clear I was the wrong person for this job. I had no interest in getting the skills needed. I didn't want to do the job and I didn't have the experience. And as I looked around the family business there was no other place for me. And as I look back on that time, it became really clear that I was the one who was in the way and it wasn't fair to myself. It wasn't fair to my family, our employees, our customers I mean, it just impacted everything. And so that's when I decided to leave the family business.
Kyle Danner:I see that over and over again, not just in a family business, for any business. Someone is in a position that they shouldn't be in and everybody's afraid to talk about it because they don't want to upset the other person, they don't want to upset the Apple car, whatever, or they just can't have that conversation because essentially, in my case, I needed to be fired. When I say fired, really exit the company and there are ways in which you can help people exit well, or maybe they're just not in the right seat, maybe you need to find another place for them in the organization. But it's this fear about having those really hard conversations. It's what Patrick Lencioni calls about entering the danger. And it's about entering the danger and having those hard conversations Because we think about firing somebody as kind of cruel. Well, what's more cruel? Keeping them in a position to where you know they're failing? They probably know they're failing and everybody around them knows that they're failing. How awful is that.
William Gladhart:Yeah, I mean what a detriment not only to the person but to the company and to everybody else.
William Gladhart:I appreciate you bring that up. We've had a handful of leaders share on the podcast specifically about that particular challenge of either the wrong fit, the wrong employee, a toxic employee and when that conversation was had, and either when that person was exited or found to be a better fit in another role in the company that people stepped up, people actually offered to help, there was a review of process, there was a review of people. There were all these things that, as you brought up very well said that nobody wanted to talk about, no one wanted to address, and as soon as that linchpin kind of popped out of the whole deal, all of a sudden all of these opportunities cascaded for the company and the profitability and performance skyrocketed within six to 12 months. So I think having those very critical conversations and being aware as leaders to have that conversation is absolutely critical. So you've shared a little bit about kind of that negative impact, but maybe what was the one thing you identified with either a client or in the organization that impacted the culture positively or in the organization?
Kyle Danner:that impacted the culture positively. Oh, I go back to thinking about a client I was working with as a professional services firm. The leader was very much a visionary entrepreneur, could think 10 to 20, 30 years ahead, but was absolutely frustrated because they had a couple of key hires that just weren't getting it running into all kinds of problems. And this is not a person who is patient, because it's never fast enough for them. And it's not that they were mean or rude or anything, it's just they couldn't get there fast enough. They had this vision, they wanted to see the vision, and they just couldn't get there fast enough. And so we're going through an EOS. We walk through core values exercise. I know this is recorded, but I can already hear the eyes roll about core values because it's unfortunately one of those things that's just been beaten to death in business. It means so much but it doesn't mean anything because everybody sees so much of the inauthenticity in core values.
Kyle Danner:Well, we walked through core values exercise to get really clear what are the characteristics that you're looking for? And halfway through this exercise, the leader realized why these two people weren't a fit and weren't a culture fit. And then, just once that unlocked, they now felt better about what they needed to look for, because they knew they had to hire a couple more replacements for these people because they were on their way out. But now they had a clearer picture of what they had to look for in terms of culture and that alone. And this was a professional service firm where salary started at the six-figure level. So you think about these folks were around for a year or two your level. So you think about these folks who were around for a year or two, what that did to the bottom line.
Kyle Danner:Well, once the leader discovered what the real issue was, was able to change their hiring process, and their next round of people that they hired were such a stronger fit, and so they were able to hit the ground running and they didn't feel like they had to babysit them that much, because one of the issues is they wanted people who were high in autonomy, like they could hit the ground running, that they didn't need a lot of handholding, and so then they were able to specifically look for and hire for that in this next round and they were able to grow because, as a result of it, yeah, I think that really speaks to helping the leader identify the type of personality, the type of individual, but also the fit for their company, because sometimes it's really difficult, especially for visionary leaders, to communicate that element either to hiring manager or to an outsourced firm that they're working with.
William Gladhart:So, again, that truly identifies the power of some of the EOS implementation, as well as helping those leaders being able to step back, take a moment, think around people and process and then start to put the right people on the right team. As you know, Jim Collins always said the right people on the bus going all the same directions. So is there anything else you'd like to share, Kyle, as an advice for fellow leaders?
Kyle Danner:You know the whole challenge with people. I mean it's the number one challenge for any business owner, especially now in today's environment. But I think we have to remember that people really they want to feel like the folks you have on your team. They have to know where you're going and they have to know what the meaning is like, what is the impact of their position. And so one and recently talking to a leadership team, it was really helping people understand what is the purpose of their position, what is the impact.
Kyle Danner:So I mean there's that People also want to be good at their job. They want to have the resources, the training, the development to really be awesome at what they do. And then they also want to be left alone so they can kind of do it. They want to be able to do it on their own, they don't want to be micromanaged and they just want to be trusted. And so I would say for leaders and it goes back to that, three, the three things mastery, autonomy and purpose they want to be great, they want to know it has impact and they want to be able to do it on their own but know they have support when they need it.
William Gladhart:Yeah, I think that's some really sage advice. So, Kyle, I've enjoyed having you on our Leadership Levers podcast. Thank you again for your insights.
Kyle Danner:I appreciate the time Will. Thanks so much.
William Gladhart:Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers podcast. Find all our Leadership Levers episodes on the Culture Think Tank website at www. theculturethinktank. com or listen on your favorite streaming platform. We'd love to hear from you about the challenges you have faced as a leader. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture and performance, one action at a time.