Adam Torres and Glenn Akramoff discuss leadership in the workplace.
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Show Notes:
New book alert! In this episode, Adam Torres and Glenn Akramoff, Founder & CEO at AKRAMOFF, explore leadership in the workplace and Glenn’s new book, The Human-Centered Team.
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About Glenn Akramoff
Glenn Akramoff is the founder and CEO of Akramoff LLC. His expertise is rehabilitating and revitalizing municipal government workplaces and has developed a program that will improve any organization by returning humanity to the center of focus. Glenn’s life experiences and core values are the center of his purpose. Having worked from seasonal maintenance to City Manager and now consultant and business owner over a 30-year career, he’s observed a connection between fulfillment at work and happiness at home. He has an intense desire to improve the lives of everyone he works with. Glenn creates environments that are innovative, inclusive, growing, and rich in communication and respect. His Human Centered program empowers teams and leaders to overcome and succeed together.
About Akramoff LLC
Akramoff offers a new paradigm, founded on the idea that workplaces should be sanctuaries of positivity and productivity. Introducing simple changes to processes, systems, and workplace culture changes to make sure employees and management are happy and productive at work.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today I have Glenn Akramoff on the line and he is CEO over at Akramoff.
Glenn, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. All right, Glenn. So we got, we got a lot to talk about today. You got a book out new book, first book. Really except for all my long term listeners, they know I love, love, love promoting other authors, other entrepreneurs, but specifically authors, because I think it takes a whole lot to put together a book and get it out there.
And I really respect the process. So we’re going to get into your book. And then the overall topic today to leadership in today’s workplace from theory to results. So we’ll get into this and and explore, but before we do all of that, we’ll start this episode, the way that we start them all with what we call our mission matters minute.
So Glenn, we at mission matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Glenn, what mission matters to you? At Akramov, our, our mission is to change the world by changing the workplace. We know that most of us well, we know as human beings, we need a purpose. And when we serve a purpose and we serve other people we tend to thrive.
So our focus is always on the workplace. I found that with my, my personal life is always tied to my work. And they can say what they want about self worth, but that’s, that’s the reality of America. Yeah. So at Akramov that, we take a seam we take a human centered approach. Hmm. And we do that by allowing people to explore who they are, who they want to be, what their purpose is, and then refitting them into a workplace that’s appropriate.
Hmm, fantastic. And, and great to have you on today. And I guess just get us kicked off here, like this idea of entrepreneurship being an entrepreneur. Like were you always an entrepreneur? Like did you, when, when did you get the bug? Recently? Actually, I, I worked in local government for 25 years and I was getting to a point where I was, I’ve done what I thought I could do at that point and I was looking for something else to do.
I got a call to do some consultant work. I knew nothing about that. So I hooked up with another company and as once we did, they’d kind of taught me the ropes and I realized I really want to go out on my own and I really want to get involved in and serve my, my purpose and, and create this purpose for a company.
And so I went and did it and. It took me a couple of fits and starts as it usually does. And then once I got going I was like, okay, this is the way I like to do it. I love the fast pace. I love the opportunity to impact people and do it in a lot of different venues. So yeah, I would say I’ve had the bug about six, seven years now.
Wow. You got, I got to ask you, do you remember the old government days and the like, you know, in and out or, or was it like that? I don’t know. I don’t want to stereotype, but I just feel like that’s a big juxtapose in terms of like schedule in terms of lifestyle and even conversations, or am I wrong? Like, correct me if I’m wrong, please.
Yeah. I think. I think yes and, and no, I, I work in government and most of my clients are, but I would say that I worked in new cities. So the cities I worked in for three or my last three or four were all less than 20 years old. So they have more of the corporate fast paced piece. So it wasn’t kind of like an entrepreneur almost in these systems, right?
Like, yeah, for sure. Okay. Great term. Great term. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I’m just always curious when I get into somebody’s back story. And I’m like, wow, that’s interesting. So what was it for me? I was a super like corporate corporate America guy. And I think I’m straight nine to five, right? And I was in that in that kind of environment for I don’t know, solid.
14 years. And then I became an entrepreneur last eight years. I’ve been in media and I’m like, Oh my gosh, what do you mean? Like everything doesn’t just shut down for a holiday or this. I still have to, okay. I don’t know. I didn’t know exactly what I signed up for. So I just throw that out there and I share my story for any of the entrepreneurs that are going through it out there too, as well.
Yeah, it is. It is crazy. I, yeah. I mean, there are weeks where you work 16 hours a day you know, five, six days a week, and then you put in a half day, an eight hour day on a Sunday. But I also allow the, I love the flexibility and allows me to do a lot of other things. So that’s been a fun journey. So let’s get into this book.
So the human centered team what inspired the book? Actually me creating this program over my career. I had had it on my list, like many of us do for a long time. I do annual goals and it’d been on my, there for 25 years. I went, okay, let’s, Let’s check that one off. Wait, the book. So write a book was on your list for 25 years.
Amazing. That’s amazing. But I realized I got to a point where I realized I had the themes. I had the program that I wanted to do. And then as the book evolved and when they tell you it takes a year, it took me exactly a year to write it and release it. So it was an amazing journey, but I think the inspiration was I wanted people to know that the theories out there.
But I wanted him to know how I learned how to implement the theory, so it’s, it’s got stories tied to, to how I implemented the theory, and then that’s how our our program began at Aquamos. Hmm, so what, what do you hope, and obviously there’s much, but what, what do you hope that the readers get out of this book?
Couple things. One is that if I can do it, they can do it. That you can learn from anyone. And I certainly did. There’s lots of different stories about people who taught me and not people that you would assume, right? It’s not people that were in corporate or a CEO or anything. It was down to earth people who just were living their lives.
I mean, taught me valuable lessons. I also, I also think that. I want people to know that they can take action. It doesn’t matter what their position is. They can change their attitude, their life, their workplace, just by changing their mind and working on it. Now, I definitely want people to pick up a copy of the book and just for everybody watching, we’ll have a link in the show notes and all that good stuff.
So you can but I do want to give them a follow up. of what’s inside the books. I know you go through some pillars. I know some keys to winning. So maybe give us a flavor of what the readers can expect. Sure. There are six pillars that we’ve identified it for a healthy and happy workplace, and I won’t go through them all, but I think the biggest one is culture.
We talk about it a lot. Certainly in, in our culture today, it’s become a buzzword. But there’s a lot of interesting pieces to that. And so the other one that I’ll highlight is, is external forces in that we all have those, and those are things that we can’t control, but we have to have a strategy for, and most companies and most governments don’t.
That they just try to deal with them and having a strategy really helps you move forward. Move through things. The other are the eight keys to a winning team, and there are sports stories in here. It’s not a sports book by any means, but there are sports stories because it relates. I like stories.
Stories are relatable. I feel like books without stories are a little hard for me to get through. Yeah, and that was what we wanted. I want frontline employees to read this. Yeah, right. I want the young Glenn, who was a frontline employee to want to read this and be able to jump in. It’s a quick read. It’s meant to be.
It’s meant to flow fast and and and challenge your thought processes. But the eight keys are about what is important to. To creating a winning team. And one of the things that I talk about in there is, is defining winning. We def, we define winning, you know, sports team can do that. Our record is whatever, right?
But when you’re in corporate or when you’re in a local government, how do you define what a win is and what winning looks like? And you can’t do it by the bottom line. Bottom line’s part of it. Of course, but that doesn’t motivate people to, Work the 16 hour days and do the extras at the frontline level.
So you got to define what that is. And then you got to celebrate it when you reach it. I mean, I, I, I talk a lot about it, creating a championship workplace in the eight, the eight keys are focused on doing that. One of them is celebrating your success. Don’t just check it off the list, celebrate it. Oh, I love that one because that’s what entrepreneurs do.
We check it off. We moved to the next page. Problem. We want to solve something else. And it’s like, no, just pause for a minute. Celebrate that one. It’s okay. Like take a breath. At least I’m guilty myself, by the way. I’ve only, I’ve been working on this the last couple of years, actually. Yeah. And I think your team, when you have a team and you, as you and I both know, you can’t do this alone, you have to.
It’s not a lonely thing. It’s a, we’re all a team and we get moving forward. Everybody has their role. And when someone in your team wins, that’s one of the philosophies that I teach is, is when one of us wins, we all win. And that creates that positive culture that you’re looking for as a, as a pillar. The other one that I talk about a lot is knowing that your performance cycle, that’s one of the keys.
And now we all as human beings have a general performance cycle. And. I have found it’s around six weeks, give or take a little bit. And we, we go up and down in that cycle. So we, we climb up to what I call a performance plateau for about two weeks. And that’s about the max that we can really do and concentrate and really thrive.
And then you need to go down and rest and kind of re energize and then you kind of hit the bottom trough and you bounce back up and you can ramp up. Most people will notice, and this is. I think this is important distinction. You will notice that, Hey, I can do one thing and I’m doing it really well. And it’s, and then two weeks later, you can’t do it.
You’re struggling with it. Maybe it’s tech, maybe it’s typing, whatever it is. And it, it will tell you that that’s the fact you’re, you’re not on your performance plateau anymore. You’re coming down and you want to learn it. Put your prime presentations and prime things in your plateau. If you can schedule them and you can, and then take your downtime, be okay with, Hey, I’m just not going to be on top of my game like I was two weeks ago.
And so you stop beating yourself up. And as a leader, you realize your people are not going to be able to keep a steady flow. If they do, then they’re performing less than their, than their best. How did you develop this methodology? Like this, I feel like this took a lot of reflection. This took a lot of like, how did this methodology come about?
It’s a great story. My wife who is a stepmother to my son, the three of us were living together and just started. And she said to me, you know, your son can do anything for six weeks saying it, and that he can, you know, bluff his way through pretty much anything. So I said, wow, that’s interesting. So I watched and she was right.
I watched this cycle form in him. And then I’m like, I wonder if that’s true of me. I watched me and I’m like, Wow. There it is. So I started to, I watched my team at work. I was a manager at the time. I’m like, wow, they all do it too. You were a bit of a sleuth in here. Observational right there. Okay. Einstein is amazing.
It was, it was, it was very interesting. And I stumbled on it and I just kept going with it. And eventually developed it a strategy to make sure my team is functioning at the highest level. And what it does, what it requires of a leader though, is you have to really know your people and you have to pay attention.
And that actually made me a better leader to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Talk, talk to me a little bit more about what you’re seeing overall. Cause I mean, you work with a lot of companies. So what, what, what does it take to really create a healthy work And in today’s market, I mean, for everybody, for context, for anybody that’s watching this, you know, years into the future we’re doing this in 2024, you know, post pandemic post, like where there’s a lot, all this change happening specifically in the workplace, well, in the world, but in the workplace, especially like, what do you think it takes today to, to create a healthy workplace environment?
I think the first thing is, is connection. And that takes a couple of different pieces. One is connection to the purpose. You need to connect the individual’s purpose because our younger generations are very purpose driven, which I applaud them for, and they want that purpose. So you have to have that in your company and you have to help help connect them with their individual purpose.
Many people don’t haven’t identified it. And so as a leader, you got to help them do it and then help them help show them how it connects with. With the company’s purpose. Yeah. So that’s the first, that’s one of the first pieces of connection. The next one is the human connection. We learned in the pandemic, we need it.
It’s something that’s required for us to, to survive and thrive and, and do magic things and innovate. And so I’ve always been a fan of remote work. I, I was talking about it long before the pandemic, but you still need to have some sort of connection individual place. So when you’re, when you bring your staff in, you need to be purposeful about that connection for each of your human beings.
And I think that’s the other part is a lot of the industrialization of. Of America and the world created tried to create humans into machines and we’re not, and it, and did it produce some magic and some incredible results? Yes, but long term, it had, it had a detrimental effect to us as human beings.
So we can no longer follow those, those premises we need to be. And that’s why I, I focus on the humans because we all have reasons to be here and S and gifts and skills and passions that we really want to fulfill. And it shows up in our work. And I’m a believer that the reason, and I’ve talked about this, it is a matter of life and death.
You can push it off, but I’ve watched people self medicate and And die because a workplace ate them alive. And we just can’t do that anymore. And and so I, I think that’s when you go back to the purpose piece, when you connect, connect those purposes, I’ve seen some incredible things happen. Yeah, I think about that often.
And I think about the the concept of, you know, industrial, you know, the industrial revolution, right. And some of the things that maybe my grandparents or great grandparents had to go through to build the infrastructure so that we have the luxury to have these type of conversations and to increase our quality of living.
And when I say increase our quality of living, I don’t, I think in the past, even pre pandemic, that that concept was always just tied to like money. type monetarily when we think about the quote unquote American dream or the version of it that was sold for many years. I mean, there’s a lot of variations of it, of course.
But when we think about that versus now that evolution being that, you know, part of, you know, increasing the quality of living and life and means of life. Things like, you know, family, family time, like all these other, like, not, not letting your work eat you alive or, and literally dropping dead from it.
Whereas like, I was blessed that my grandparents lived to be, you know, very old in their nineties or very mature. But that being said, like not everybody else likes a lot, a lot, a lot of people that went before us to build this infrastructure didn’t necessarily have those choices. So or if they did not necessarily we, we, we needed infrastructure.
So the sacrifices they made that we now get to benefit from, to me, for the leaders out there, it’s, it’s a, it’s a big responsibility to figure out how to make the current workplace work and to make it a healthy prop profitable, of course, but a healthy proposition as well. Yeah. I think as leaders, we have to own that.
We have to own the culture. We have to own that we impact our people’s lives and, and we can do it negatively or positively. And so every word we say, every action we take needs to be. Put through that prism and a lot of times it’s not, and it’s unfortunate, but I think that’s when I get the call and we, our company gets the call when that’s not being done and for whatever reason, and it’s not always a bad manager.
I want to be clear about that. The whole thing mean well, I think generally people mean well, like nobody’s out there trying to do, you know, bad work. I don’t feel, no, I think they’re not, they don’t have the tool, the toolkit. Yeah. We do not train. One of the statistics that I use that I talk about a lot is 60 percent of the managers that will be hired this year will fail because they don’t have the proper training and And understanding of what their role really is.
Interestingly enough, only about 20 percent of them will lose their jobs. Where’s everybody else hanging out, silent quitting? I don’t know. What is that new term we have nowadays? I forget them. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what it’s quiet. Not silent. I said it wrong. I knew it. However, to, to, you know, when you talk about that, yeah, that’s been going on for years.
And when you talk about, and I’ve seen it a lot in government, that’s what happens in government. You get to 15, 20 years. And, and you watch people just be defeated. They just give up. They keep getting beat up. They try, they try, they try to get beat up from internal and external. Yeah. And they go, you know.
I just don’t have any more and they don’t see any, any hope to move to somewhere else. And so they just stay and they, they grind and they come to work and sometimes, and, you know, they just fill the chair. I had a friend of mine who said those people come to work to have lunch and that’s unfortunate. I see that as a sad thing, not a.
Not something to be angry about. Why are they feel they got to do that? That’s, that’s the question that I like to ask. And, and you work, correct me if I’m wrong. You work currently still with a Chrome off with, with government. Right. I know you’re working as founders as well, but like you work in government still, right?
Yeah. I currently have five clients and actually our company has six clients and four of them are local government. And then another one of your specialties is founders, family based businesses that are also in the, you know, experiencing and or I’m working on scaling and expanding, right? Yep. We have a consultant that is an expert in that.
He actually is my son. So that’s a pretty cool thing. Oh, that is. Yeah. And he’s working with a company now. That’s your original case study. A. K. A. Your son. That’s exactly it. Exactly it. And like he tells everybody, you know, I’ve lived this my whole life. You’re just getting to see it now. So, but he’s doing one where there’s a company and they’ve, they’re four years old, they’ve been struggling to figure out how to meet their niche and everything.
And, and he’s in there working his butt off, just like I’m doing in government and helping them scale. So and that’s, you know, when you, we were taught, we started with the entrepreneur thing. I mean, when people are doing that and they’re a founder based business and they’ve got everything in it.
They’ve got their heart, their soul, their money, their house, you know, everything’s in their business. And when they look up and they’re not being as successful as they’d like to, or they’d want to grow, you know, the panic in their eyes. Is devastating for us, which is why we help them out in many ways. So so if you’re out there, there’s help out there.
Yeah. Well, Glenn you know, this has been great and I just have to ask, I mean, what’s next, I mean, what’s next for you, what’s next for the firm. One of the things we’re doing is starting a, a second business. And, and it goes right to what we were just talking about. We found that the founder based businesses get in a place where they can’t always get the financing that they need to get moving and we can, so we’re, we’re starting a holdings.
Firm to help at least buy portions of businesses, help them use our techniques and our process to get them flying and then sell it back to them or, you know, work some sort of deal. And, and yes, it’s a moneymaker. That’s what it’s supposed to be. But our, our deal is to create that workplace. It’s another way we can save workplaces and save businesses.
So we’re working on that right now. And we’re, you know, I’ve had a lot of people talk to me about another book. So we’ll see about that. And then, hold on, did this book just come out this year? Yeah. Yeah. And it’s. It’s you already got another one. Yeah. I love it. I have to know I’m excited about that because I’m thinking it was on the list for, you know, 20, 25 years, whatever you said it was, you checked it.
Now you’re like, now you’re like, Oh, I think I might have another one. Me, I’m a fan of that. That’s amazing. I think we call it the books, the human centered team and, and. What goes along with that is the human centered leader, how do you become a human centered leader? So it just flows into that. And I, everyone said, well, we want to hear a little bit more about your, your leadership techniques and how you make this happen.
So that’s common. And then we’re working on with a number of different partners on workshops and video training and things, things like that. However, I will say that. We are most effective. And I personally am a more effective when, when I’m working directly with people, I can do it through this video, but yeah, but it’s more when I’m doing that interaction and I, I love being in person and I’m much more effective that way.
So that’s where we’re, we’re headed. Yeah. Amazing. And Glenn, if somebody wants to follow up and they want to learn more what’s the best way for them to do that? We’ll start at a chrome off. com or website. There’s lots of things there. Tools Stuff like that. This, this podcast will end up there when you release it.
But I think the, the big thing is there’s tools there and if you can use them, use them, take them, use them. They’re yours to use. And if you need our help, call us. And we’re, we are on LinkedIn. We’re on all the social media pages. But, but that’s where you can find some tools. The, the book. We get, I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback about it makes you think, and it gives people good tools and people have used it.
So if you can use it, awesome. It’s a quick read and I hope everyone enjoys it. Perfect. And and we’ll put in for everybody watching this, we’ll put the links in the show notes that you can just click on the links and head right on over, pick up a copy and obviously connect with. With Glenn and his team and speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters and you’re new to the program, Hey, this is a daily show where we’re bringing on new entrepreneurs, business owners and executives each and every day.
So definitely hit that subscribe button because we have a lot more programming and content that we don’t want you to miss. And if you’re a long term listener, Hey, hit that subscribe button. Leave that review. Don’t forget. We sure do appreciate it. And Glenn, really, thank you so much for coming on. I’m wishing you much more continued success with your book and your business.
And especially that book. I’m a big fan of authors and congrats, congrats, congrats on getting that off the to do list. Anybody else out there that’s got that book idea on their to do list and want to check it off, get it done, figure out a way because you’ll, you’ll be happy on the other side of when you do become an author just like Glenn.
So again, Thank you for your time today. Thank you. Appreciate it.
