Summary:

In this episode, Dr. Jim interviews Josh Mueller, the Managing Director of Infrastructure Services at Millennial Specialty Insurance. They discuss the importance of letting go as a leader and building high-performance teams. Josh shares his experiences and insights on transitioning from an individual contributor to a leader, the challenges of balancing pace and execution in a hyper-growth organization, and the value of asking questions and empowering team members. He also emphasizes the significance of celebrating small wins and fostering a culture of innovation.

Key Takeaways:

Letting go as a leader and allowing team members to take ownership and grow is essential for building high-performance teams.

Balancing pace and execution in a hyper-growth organization requires prioritization, consistent communication, and capacity management.

Asking questions and guiding team members instead of providing solutions helps develop their problem-solving skills and fosters innovation.

Celebrating small wins and acknowledging notable achievements along the way boosts team morale and motivation.

Embracing failure as a learning opportunity and encouraging experimentation can lead to breakthroughs and continuous improvement.

Chapters:

00:02:00 The importance of letting go as a leader and focusing on the team

00:05:00 Using structured approaches like establishing three courses of action to resolve disagreements

00:08:00 Leading in a hyper-growth organization compared to a stable growth organization

00:11:00 Reprioritizing and having capacity conversations with the team

00:14:00 Creating opportunities for team growth and development

00:17:00 Celebrating small wins and acknowledging innovation

00:22:00 Emphasizing the importance of learning from both success and failure

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Josh Mueller: linkedin.com/in/josh-mueller

Music Credit: winning elevation - Hot_Dope



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That's what Josh Mueller has to say. Who is Josh Mueller? That is a great question. He's currently the Managing Director of Infrastructure Services at Millennial Specialty Insurance.

He's an experienced IT leader focused on generating business value. That's been one of the hallmarks of his career. And he's had a significant track record of being able to connect those dots across all levels of the organization, both technical and functional. And that's actually one of his strengths.

Josh Mueller: Thank you. Appreciate you having me.

Dr. Jim: I really want to dig into your background and some of the things that you've accomplished. So I know that the bio was pretty skinny. Why don't you connect the dots and get our listeners with that. Up to speed with some of the things that you've been involved with and are passionate about, and how that relates to the conversation that we're about to have.

I

Josh Mueller: think one of the biggest challenges I have, you say, like talking about myself and whatnot, it's a bit of my my communication style. Everything that I do is accomplished as a leader is accomplished through the team. And when I go and I try to talk about achievements and accomplishments and many of those things, I think what is really tough for me is it's not always acknowledging that, it's the team who really did it.

And through that to, to your point, a lot of success can happen. I'd argue one of the biggest things that's been a differentiator for me and has really helped me achieve, where I've gotten in my career is asking a lot of questions, trying to understand why. Working with the different business groups to understand what exactly it is that they're doing, what exactly they're trying to achieve and then trying to get technology to work with that.

So that's where I feel I'm definitely been a bridge and between it and the business.

Because a lot of early career leaders. Want to get back in the game, so I'd like you to share with us a little bit about how you were able to fight against that tendency.

Josh Mueller: When I first got into leadership. That tendency was definitely there. That's natural. Often, especially with somebody who who's an individual contributor that is doing really well at what it is that got them to that opportunity to become a leader, a manager. You tend to want to see things done a certain way.

And I had to get to a breaking point and to give the control and not have control, so to speak. It's focused on the outcomes really work with a team. There was a situation that I really remember very well because it felt so uncomfortable.

I wound up getting into an argument with somebody who was who was on my team over how they were going to do something. It definitely wasn't a good look as a leader. Definitely. Maybe take pause and reflect after that that argument that

And over time, I became more of the coach. And in IT it's actually a little bit maybe easier because technology moves so fast. There are a lot of concepts I can definitely talk with the team about. And there are a lot of things we can do with planning and capacity management and all that.

Those are things that can definitely help and coach the team on, but you should not give me admin access anymore. I don't know what I'm doing. Technology has definitely moved on.

Dr. Jim: I'd like you to tell us a little bit. More about when you look back, you kept talking about discomfort. There was a situation that occurred and you weren't really comfortable with the situation and, or how you responded in that situation.

Josh Mueller: I think one of the biggest things was realizing that there are multiple ways to do things. I had somebody who I worked with that was very made a big impression on me that really drove that home for me and gave me it's just a concept or a tool of establishing three courses of action.

If you don't understand you know what the best path forward is, or if you have people who have differing ideas on your team, and it's been a really great tool for me to use over the years where let's say you have two people who have differing ideas you can advert action that we don't do anything.

So we do. Option one, two or three. And what are the pros, cons and risks? Get people to talk through it. And it actually was a tool that I started using for myself, but also for my team to really dig into. There are multiple ways we could do it in any of these ways have an outcome and something that we can definitely use.

And that's been helpful and having something a little bit structured helps with the discomfort. The other thing I do, thinking back on some of those different times where there've been debates over how to do something as a leader. I ask questions rather than trying to say so and so is right or this is the best approach.

I'll ask questions and I might have an opinion. I try to be as fair as I can when I ask the question to not show that any bias, but getting people to talk about things and work through some of those those disagreements is helpful. It's okay to disagree, but at some point we have to be able to work past it and get it get moving forward.

Tip the scales one direction or the other when a team is working through a path. So I think that's those are all really good insights that that you bring to the table. So let's let's dig in a little bit deeper now. To get everybody up to speed, Josh, you've been, you spent almost 16 years at a, another organization.

You rode through the ranks and now you're on this relatively new adventure where you're at millennial. So when you look at your current role, it's still pretty new. You haven't even really laid a strong foundation yet. And then you look forward into next year and the year after, what are those moonshot initiatives that you have on your radar that you want to get done and check off as you plan out your next 15 years at an organization.

The biggest thing for me next year, and this, I think, regardless of your it, HR, sales, marketing, et cetera, I think it all applies is making sure that we're going to. Under promise and over deliver in I. T. Especially one of the biggest challenges we have is people's capacity. How much we can work we can take on it.

In essence, we're promising the organization that we're going to deliver a certain amount of work, but being a shared. We tend to get a lot of work that we don't expect. And it's not because people don't necessarily plan. It's unplanned things happen. There could be things, we're publicly traded company.

Dr. Jim: You just mentioned you're in a hyper growth organization. Your previous organization was pretty stable growth. It probably went through a stage where it had high growth, but towards the latter half of your time there, it was a pretty stable organization.

When you look at the contrast between where you were. And where you are now, what are the lessons that you picked up that's specific to how you lead in a hyper growth organization versus a stable growth organization?

Josh Mueller: Yeah, it's certainly maybe a little less predictable. One of the biggest things is we have to understand what good looks like and what the expectations are.

And we've we've actually uncovered some things that Prior to me being at the organization we hadn't known about and we've had to pivot and do things a little bit differently. One of the biggest differences is when things do come up and I think in a larger organization, I felt like there was a little bit more buildup time.

It is different to your point. It's it's not a bad difference though. It's a company that frankly I think is going to do tremendous over the next several years here as they continue to grow. They're becoming an enterprise, shop, which is part of the reason why I came to the organization they're in a big state of transition and there, there's a lot of really great things going on.

And taking some of that larger organization knowledge and bringing it here is helpful. But right sizing is key.

Josh Mueller: I think one of the biggest challenges =with trying to balance what business is coming to us requesting as well as just called to keep the lights on activities or the business as usual is is just that, what are what are the table stakes, what do we have to focus on versus what capacity do we have my teams I work with them using a Kanban board.

So we have outside of like regular tickets for people who might have issues that we're helping from a support perspective, we have different efforts where we'll have a card in the combo on board that's going to, be ranked as far as like criticality goes some of the things that we're working on frankly, might end up in our backlog because we're things we should do, but, you Something we must do to support the business often comes into play and we have to reprioritize the biggest thing I really try to focus on with my team is making sure that they understand that we have to have a prioritization conversation when capacity gets challenged.

Dr. Jim: Really good stuff, Josh. I appreciate you sharing those insights.

Now I opened the show by talking about how you've got to be disciplined as a leader. To keep yourself out of the game, you have to know your role because the minute you start stepping in and trying to do stuff. You're likely going to break some things. So tie that together with what you realized was critical in your efforts in building high performance teams.

Josh Mueller: Let's talk a little bit about, breaking. I think one of the biggest things is it's really easy, especially if you get stressed to just feel like you need to roll your sleeves up and get into the weeds and help the team out while situationally that might be the right thing to do.

The best option is staying coach, working with people if need be being at their side to help guide them through things, but don't rob them of the opportunity. Beyond that, getting people more experience and a lot of times, it's just it's exposure situations that they can get into. Sometimes it's joining meetings to get an understanding and eventually being able to participate in those meetings in your absence or doing some some different work.

Those are things that help them grow as individuals and your team will get stronger. As a result, if you don't let them do that, and you take all those opportunities to just try to get things done, your team will not grow as strong as it possibly can be.

What were the devices or the talk tracks or. Systems processes that you leveraged. To keep from jumping into the fray,

Josh Mueller: Honestly, one of them was I told my team to help me. They are hired for a reason. They have a job for a reason. And me trying to do their job and going to be effective. Maybe some people don't feel comfortable doing that. I had a great team that during that transition, that time in my career, they really supported me and helped me grow tremendously.

But beyond that, at every, in every role that I've had, there are different times where I definitely do feel like I have a little bit of that urge to, especially if it's with doing some analytics with data or things like that, I want to jump back in, but I have to try to resist the urge. I'm not perfect.

There are times where I have done it because I thought it was the right thing. But I try not to as much as possible

Josh Mueller: I think the biggest difference. One, it's I have a daughter. When you teach a kid how to ride a bike, they're going to get skinned knees once in a while. And professionally, when you try to develop people and coach people, you have to be okay with the fact that they might not do everything exactly the way that you'd like to see them do.

And that's okay. It's part of the learning process, and there's a great opportunity for feedback and talking through things. The thing that I noticed that was different with this approach was, instead of people coming to me asking for what they should do, they were coming to me asking questions about what they were doing.

They're seeing a bigger picture. So I think the biggest difference is they're not being an order taker. They're trying to understand and they're looking for guidance.

Dr. Jim: 1 of the things that stands out about the answer that you just gave me is that we've often we often hear leaders say, don't come to me with problems come to me with solutions. And what's interesting is that whenever. I've encountered leaders that default to that statement. They're often the ones that actually get in and try to solve things themselves and not create or develop their people's ability to solve problems.

What are your thoughts about that sort of connection?

Josh Mueller: I think it's tied together. So I understand the bring solutions mentality. I'd rather see a team full of people who can really well define a problem. And help me understand what it is and why it's a problem as opposed to having one superstar that can give me a solution But they can't explain what it is actually solving So I think it is related now as people dig in and they start to understand and they interpret what they're working on they're naturally going to find big or small, problems things that have to be sorted out where they're going to need some of that guidance and I think questions are great.

Dr. Jim: What I hear from you, Josh, is that if you want to be an effective leader that really creates an innovation culture, really creates a culture where there's a heavy emphasis on problem solving, that's being bubbled up from the team.

You've got to be disciplined about asking questions. You've got to be disciplined about staying out of the way. So if there's somebody that wants to build this sort of culture in their organizations. What are the biggest pitfalls that you encountered that they need to have on their radar so they don't make the same mistakes and are actually speeding up the process.

Immediately. It's a great opportunity to just even just do a check in and ask Hey, how's this going? What are you working on with or thinking about with this? Tell me a little bit more about that. It's their time. They can bring a lot of things forward for you to hear about. And you can ask questions.

Sometimes they're guiding questions. Sometimes they're genuinely just because you're very intrigued. But Having that consistent dialogue and working with that individual or small group or team, it's huge. I also make sure that the team has a weekly meeting as a leadership team has a weekly meeting.

Because I have managers who report to me as well as some individual contributors that have leadership roles. And every month we try to do, we try to celebrate a bit. We do a monthly business review with my manager and soon an expanded audience. And we try to really call it notable achievements.

You finished a project. It's important to celebrate. Those things along the way, and it's important to acknowledge some of the innovation or different ideas that people have put forward to make something happen. I guess it all comes back down to make sure you're talking to your people on a regular basis.

Make sure that they have the space and the time. And even if you don't have something for them, it's their time. Make sure that you even if they're not bringing you updates, talk about career development, talk about aspirations that they have. Get to know them a little bit better. Those things will pay dividends.

Dr. Jim: 1 of the things that I like the best out of the answer that you gave was your emphasis on celebrating the small wins. And I think that's a really important point to highlight. Because, the world of work is so conditioned to pay attention to what I call the business porn.

I think that's an underrated concept that I think a lot more organizations need to pay attention to. A lot more leaders need to pay attention to when you're trying to build that high performance culture. Josh, really great conversation. I think even in the little bits and pieces where we went off on some rabbit trails, there's some really good lessons on leadership that that we've called out.

So when you think about this conversation that we've had and you think about all the different things that we've covered. What are the major things that you want listeners to pay attention to and actually operationalize if they're looking at building a high performance team?

Sometimes, especially with innovation and trying things for the first time, it's maybe a silver lining, looking Look at things, but it doesn't have the result that you're looking for, can help drive the team forward in a significant way and and be able to be supportive of people having quote a failure. And just going back at it, I think is really important. Just, talk with them, make sure that they're taking the right amount of risks and that they're not putting your operations significantly at risk when they're doing what they're doing.

Make sure they're doing things in a safe space. But I think that's going to be huge for anybody who wants to try to get their team to to start to innovate more and do more.

Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Josh. I appreciate how you've summarized that. If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Dr. Jim: Really appreciate you hanging out with us. When I think about this conversation that we've had, there's a couple of things that I want to highlight in the discussion. Obviously, One of the big themes is being disciplined and consistent about your role as a leader and making sure that you're asking a lot of questions when your team is bubbling up things that they want to either try or experiment with or directions that they're picking to potentially explore as a leader, it becomes really easy based on our experience to just pick a lane. I think the big thing that I take away from our conversation is that it's critical for you to ask the questions. That's going to. Spur discussion and move people in the direction that they want to go.

So don't lose sight of that and make sure you're celebrating those things so that you're keeping your team engaged and motivated and moving forward. So really great stuff, Josh. I appreciate you hanging out with us for those of you who have listened to the conversation. Make sure you leave us a review and let us know what you thought of the conversation and then tune in next time where we will have another leader joining us to share with us the game changing realizations that they had that helped them build a high performing team.