LM Ep 91
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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be part of an employee-owned organization? Well, today's guest pulls back the curtain on one such company and insight into the world of education publishing. My guest is Jared Taylor, Jared's publisher and Chief people Officer at Gibbs Smith Education and Gibb Smith.
Jared brings a wealth of experience to the fields of education and publishing. He has served as a social studies teacher, high school principal, and editorial director. His passion lies in creating authentic and accurate social studies materials that can benefit students, teachers, and [00:03:00] communities alike.
I really enjoyed speaking with Jared and learning more about the education publishing industry as well as his compassion before rigor leadership approach. Enjoy.
Hello and welcome back to Talent Management Truths. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell, and today I'm joined by Jared Taylor. Jared is the Chief People Officer at Gibbs Smith Publishing. Welcome to the show, Jared. Good to have you. Thanks. Thanks, Lisa. I'm excited to be here. So please share with us a bit about your journey to where you are at Gibbs Smith now, and and what you do there.
Sure. I started out my professional career as a history teacher and did that for a couple years and loved social sciences and history. And quickly moved into administration where I helped build a charter school in northern Utah with some, you know, strong ideals around authentic [00:04:00] learning and getting kids to do things that You know, are, are authentic to the, to what they're teaching.
So if they're doing science, they're out doing science. If they're doing history, they're working on real history. And it, and it turned out to be a really, you know, wonderful experience. I was there for seven years and with two young kids and, and being an administrator, it was. Time to try and find something I could spend a little bit more time at home.
And I found Gibb Smith and was hired. Oh, go ahead. Oh yeah, I just wanted to touch, so first of all, I love that you were a history teacher cuz you know, I think I shared with you I was a teacher too way back in the day and my son's interested in history. Yeah. Just for our Canadian and European listeners, what is a charter school in the us?
I mean, I've heard on TV and movies, but I think it's like a private school that you develop yourself. Well, a charter school is actually a public entity. so in, in the US what happens is you have big, what we call school districts that are chartered by the state, and it's, it's a collection of multiple High schools and then a bunch more middle schools or, [00:05:00] or yeah.
Middle schools and then elementary schools, a charter school goes to the, to a different state organization within the Department of Education and they say, Hey, we want, we have, we want to follow all the rules. We want to do all the things that a normal public school do. We just wanna take a little bit of a different slant than maybe.
The big public schools around us take and that agency, you have to go through a whole bunch of accreditations and saying that, yeah, we have this, we have certified teachers, we have all that, and, and you get the same public funds per student. Oh, wow. Okay. It's just, it's like an alternative. Private schools are, are a totally different kind of entity, but charter schools in the US are public schools that follow the same rules as any Any nor like, well, not normal, but any like district or any kid can go to them, it's not.
Yes. I see. Okay. Yeah. And there may be like our school had an enrollment cap just because of the size of the building. Right. And so we would have like a lottery to get in and things like that. But yeah, it's, other than that, there's really no difference. [00:06:00] Awesome. Okay, thanks. Thanks for explaining that.
It's just, it's, it's to learn about, about other systems and so on. Okay. So yeah. So, so you came after about seven years, so you had the small mm-hmm. Small kids, and you're thinking, okay, yeah. Switch it up. And so you found Gibb Smith, or they found you? I found them. It was just kind of a, a lucky thing that I, I saw a job posting for an editorial director of a social studies textbook company.
And being a history nerd I thought, man, that's, and I love to write, I, I love to teach writing too. And, and so I applied and, and was lucky enough to, to find myself employed by Gibb Smith and, and was asked to build. Kind of a, not a new, new thing, but expand what was happening. And Gibb Smith has been in, in business for 50 plus years.
They've been around for a really long time, and they're, they're known in the education space as a state history. So they would do like the history of Utah or the history of [00:07:00] Kentucky or the history of Georgia. And that's usually taught. Like in fourth grade or seventh grade, you know, younger or middle school area.
And we started to expand into like national and international history. So in the US it's called national or US history and then world Civilizations. And so we've built up a team over the last. I guess four years looking at, at doing that in as many places as we can and you know, just starting to see a little bit of success and, and enjoying that.
So, yeah. So I, I remember when you and I first met and you were talking about that, you know, you, you, you experienced some substantial growth there because when you first came in, there were just a few of you, and now there's something like 60 and the number of books per year has Yeah. Has expanded. What, what does that look like?
Goodness. We went from, you know, one book a year, maybe two. Last year we released 13. And when you consider it takes, you know, nine to 14 months to put out a single book, you know, the year Labor [00:08:00] Force needs to grow substantially. And, and it, it was a, it's a steep, it was a steep climb, but it was exciting and we were lucky enough to find, you know, amazing people and along the way it, it was an interesting thing I, I took over as the publisher, meaning I.
I'm over all of the production, so looking at everything from creation all the way through the book to being ready to print. But I'm also over all the sales. And so I, you know, I took a step up in, in that and then eventually Was made the chief people officer too. So I look over, we have two sides of our company.
I'm over the education side. We have a really amazing trade publisher too, who does, you know, award-winning and long time selling children's books and cookbooks and design books. They're just beautiful work. And, and so I got a, a chance to expand my skillset into helping. The people across the company too.
So I, I kind of wear two hats. I have this interesting hat of, you know, I generate income, but I also am trying to look after the people and, and HR and, [00:09:00] and all sorts of interesting things that chief people officers do. Okay. So, so incredible growth. You know, just in terms of output and the number of staff, what was your hiring model for that, to do that ramp up?
Is it, you know, full-time? Is it contractors? I'm just curious. It was full-time. You know, we, we kind of, the, the ask was to grow what we were doing. And so we kinda had to put our heads up and say, Hey, we we're really good at state history, we're known about for this. What else could we do? And it was really quickly, apparently there were opportunities to take and, and we had to take them quickly if we wanted to, to be able to grow.
And it just takes a lot of, to, to write a textbook. The right way, what I, what we would call the right way where we're, we're waiting for specific learning standards that state legislatures approve governing bodies in the, in the state, say, yep. Those are the standards that every teacher has to teach to in the state.
We write exactly to those standards. We, we produce the most highly [00:10:00] aligned social studies textbooks in the country, and it takes a lot of work and a lot of expertise. So we have. Professional historians with PhDs. We have ex teachers. We have really amazing curriculum writers that have experienced both in doing that, but in other types of learning that we were able to teach how to write just to social studies.
But, you know, kind of a natural fit. And so our model is more about the people than about the skillset's important. You know, you can't discount the skillset that people have and, and the experience, but I. The, I think the very first thing we look for when we're looking to hire someone is are they teachable?
Are they interested in working on a, on a, an exceptional team? What is their, what does workplace culture look like to them and is that something we feel like they can maintain and then positively contribute to? You know, I've been around enough to know that if the culture isn't right, things are hard.
Things are really hard. Everything's [00:11:00] more difficult. And so, if we find that right person that said that we can say, Hey, they're gonna work great with their supervisor, they're gonna work great with the team, and they have the skillset. That's kind of the, the trifecta, I guess is the way to say it for us.
Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. It, It's interesting. There's a whole bunch of stuff that's bubbling up for me. So just one of the things that I'm curious about, as you mentioned to me before, that you're a Certified Benefit corporation and it's fully employee owned, so I wonder how that factored into your attraction and hiring.
Sure. Yeah, those are two things that we completed. This year and last year. We, we had a, a wonderful founder, Gibb Smith. It's not two people. It is a guy, one person, one person. Everyone thinks it's two people. Simon and Schuster and everything, but no, it is Gibb Smith was a, a person. Who guided our company for many, many years, and I think it was right before I started, it was about seven years ago.
He decided him and his wife Kathy, who is still with us Gibbs unfortunately passed away, but Kathy's still with us and on our board and. [00:12:00] And they decided to sell half of the company to the employees, a 50% share, not a 49 51 or anything like that. And with some, in some foresight into saying, you know, we want this legacy to live past us and we trust the people.
And so they did that. And then last year we completed the a purchase. Of the second half of the company. And, and Kathy was amazing to work with, and we, we now a hundred percent employee owned. Kathy, like I said, luckily is still on our board and, and benefits us with her insight in 50 years, 50 plus years of publishing experience.
And then we, for us, and I think for Gibs and Kathy too it was important that we. We tried to reach beyond just us. The idea of of being controlled by venture capital or investors is really unappealing for us. And so we, we went down the road of trying to be a benefit corporation, which means that we, we specifically build our business model to give back, and we meet really stringent [00:13:00] criteria about sustainability and environ environmental impact, but also community impact, you know, and our education model is wonderful.
We can say. Our books are cheaper, they're better aligned to standards, and more kids get our books because they're more affordable and they get better instruction. You know, those are, those are really powerful things on the education side that we, they're, yeah. And did you, did you use the SDGs as a, like, as a, as a math, the sustainable development Go Goals from the un or tho that's part of.
We know that that exists, but the certification is put out by B Corp itself. Got it. And I'm not sure if that's part of it, but I do know that sustainability is a major part of the benefit to that isn't something I personally oversaw. Yep, fair enough. we're always, we, we kind of have a company model of people, planet profits, which was, you know, been popular for a long time.
But we try to take that actually seriously and, and say, you know, right now, and, and we're really proud of this, we're a hundred percent carbon offset. And we print paper textbooks, and we print paper [00:14:00] books and we ship things. And so it's not the end goal for us, but it's a step that we can accomplish as a small employee owned company knowing and building plans to move further and further down that road to say, you know, we're, we're really trying our best to take care of the environment as we do our people and, and our, yeah, it really, it's, it really Creates a, a picture of the, the value and the culture of, of the company.
So just some really interesting information in there for, for listeners, I think to take away, you know, how maybe if you're a smaller organization, how do you explore that ownership model, right? Similar to how you did it. Okay. So that loops us back to, you know, again, another conversation you and I had talked about, which was the motivation piece, right?
And the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic. What, what are your thoughts around motivation and, and how it shows up in your culture? Oh, goodness. For me, there's, that's really the base of how I think about, and I thought about this as a teacher a lot. I thought about this as a [00:15:00] principal a lot and, and somehow in my education, this concept came up of.
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and, and I started looking at, it, really started with students. You know, you can hand hand a student a, a textbook and a worksheet and say, you know, fill this out, and then I check a box and I say, yep, they know about. Whatever they know about, whatever they know about, or you can say, this is why this information's important to you.
You can, you can craft learning or you can craft goals around authenticity and making sure that it, it, it means something to somebody and it's harder. It's harder to do. Yeah, it takes more time. But the results are spectacular and, and, and they are so worth taking that extra time. So when I transferred that kind of orientation as a teacher and then as a principal doing that with my staff to what I do now I think a lot about everyone wants a good paycheck.
[00:16:00] Everyone, you know, wants stability. They want a good work life balance. They want benefits, they want, you know, all these things. And I, and that's all great, but in my mind, those are, To varying degrees, extrinsic motivators. But when you can sell a purpose and you can sell a culture that is shooting for more.
So in the case of Gibbs Smith education, we wanna put more accurate, historically accurate textbooks in front of kids at an ethical price point. So schools can afford it more. Hopefully that some of that trickles down into teacher pay and into classroom supplies than to all sorts of those things. You know, the, the, because I was an administrator, I know how those budgets work.
That ideal is really, really interesting to us and, and to not Gloss over the, the ugly parts of history, but to help kids appropriately contextualize it, you know, and, and writing a third grade textbook about something really difficult is different than writing a 10th grade textbook. But [00:17:00] allowing my employees to explore it and to get it right before we hit that print button has, has turned out into a really interesting intrinsic motivator.
I, I hope, at least for our employees, that. It's not a, I don't know how to say it, but it's a little bit of a higher purpose, right? Than just churning out textbooks for, I mean, that's our business, right? So churning out textbooks saying, yep, got it. It's, we want to do it cheaper, more accurate, better, more, you know, more art custom art.
We want it to be beautiful and engaging. All of those things, I think, resonate with our employees Well, and you know, you said two other adjectives earlier. Accurate and ethical. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think really. All of those things, and it's like a word, word cloud of all these beautiful things that do tie to you know, what, what we as humans attach to intrinsically.
Yes. What motivates us. You know, I, I as I, so I'm an executive coach and as well as a podcast host, and so, you know, I can tell you that mm-hmm. Every single one of my clients. You know, talks about, [00:18:00] looks for, thinks about purpose, right? Yes. You know, so if they feel like their work is not aligned to purpose, that they, they can't really like beyond, you know, beyond sort of make more money kind of thing.
Yeah. They struggle. It creates an impact. To the negative effect on motivation, right? Like where they're just Absolutely, oh God, it's just harder to get up every day and go in. Right? Whereas the folks that feel very aligned and feel like there's, there's purpose and that they're able to fulfill their personal purpose while helping the company with theirs.
There's, it's just easier, right? It is. And, and it kind of loops back. Not to, to take it back to, to the employee ownership, but you know, the more profits are important to us. We have to function. We wanna pay people, but the more money we make, the more our stock value goes up, which means our. Employees in, you know, long-term have better retirement prospects.
So there's this kind of really nice loop that goes on if you can, you know, slow down enough to, to, to think through that. It can be a really [00:19:00] powerful business practice. Absolutely. And you know, even if you got me thinking like in my own personal experience when I've been able to participate in. You know, I was always in management, so, you know, not everybody gets this, but in, you know, the stock purchase plan that, you know, cuz that's a, a sense of ownership to certain degree, yes.
I mean, it didn't always, you know, Make me feel that much more aligned with the company purpose. I don't know, but, but there is something around performance around, yeah. Right. And, and understanding how personal performance team performance connects to overall company. Same with, you know, I've been in organizations where it's been extremely clear in terms of how bonuses are created or How are they, how they're allocated based on how the company did that actually impacts Yeah.
How bo personal bonuses pay out. Yep. Yeah. All those things I think are it's just little pieces to, to moving, I think about motivation as a spectrum, right? And, and you can kind of slide this way and make some [00:20:00] decisions that slide you back and then slide this way again. But if you can kind of make regular, sustained progress to that intrinsic piece At least in my experience, outcomes are, they're easier to attain.
Yeah. And you know, and, and, and for listeners, we're not, I don't think we're trying to say here that it's all about the money and the benefits at all. This is just that they are pieces of the puzzle, right? Yeah. It's almost like you have a wheel of all of the different things that could or could motivate people that that could be on the table as far as, you know, things that create a, a, a culture and winning performance.
So, You know, that's maybe a great segue into as chief People Officer Yeah. What you've been doing to help your leaders lead and create the kind of culture apart from benefits and ownership that people wanna stay in. Yeah. We, we, last year we, one of my first things that I brought was a, a leadership training series.
We're we're lucky. In our company that we have [00:21:00] some people with lots and lots and lots of experience. We have an employee that's been with the company over four years. She's amazing. Wow. And she has seen it all. we have some people that are, they've been here for two years. It's their first management gig, and they're, they're, you know, they're supervising two people or four people.
And, you know, that jump into leadership can be really scary and it, it creates different problems, right? You have to give instructions and you have to build relationships in a different way, and you have to have boundaries in a different way. And you have to, you have to build culture in a different way because I, I'm, every little team has its own culture within maybe a, a different team and then within a broader team.
And so we wanted to start setting out some. Norms. Just norms and, and almost, you know, morays of, of our, of our of our company. And, you know, just, and, and we try to do it with kind of catchy phrases [00:22:00] like compassion before rigor. That's a great way to lead. Think about where someone's, you know, exercise empathy.
Where is someone coming from? What is the circumstance in which they're trying to perform their job? Are you asking to do something that you haven't given 'em the tools or the skillset to do? Then you probably don't have a right to be frustrated if it's not working. And, and just lay out some, I think what some people think are really basic things, but when you say it in a way that people can remember, ca, compassion Before Rigor.
Another one that we, we try to put out is, You know, if, if something's not happening, is it because an employee can't do it or because they won't do it? And if you go down that road of analysis of, okay, they can't do it, is this a skill thing? Is this a training thing? Is it a resources thing? Is it a me thing?
The supervisor, you can get to you, you know, you can assess it, and then you can help so much faster. They won't do it. Why? You need to know why. You can't just say, oh, they won't. And make an assumption because then, [00:23:00] then all of a sudden you're probably being unfair. Yeah. Making assumption. And so introducing some of these Yeah, these concepts that took me far too long to learn to our really young managers and some of our experience managers.
They're like, I've never heard it said that way. That's, that's kind of interesting. Has been really rewarding for me personally, but also I think his Has started to change how our young managers see their responsibility in, in that leadership role of, oh, I really do have to like, it's me first. I have to make sure everything's in place.
That's, that is my job. My, another one of our little catch phrases that folds in really nicely is it's your job to do their, it's your job to make sure they can do their job. Yes. Yeah. Right? That's the job of a leader. You have to make sure your people can do their job. And if you can't say that you did that, Be careful if you're passing judgment or criticism or, or whatever before you.
Yeah. And I think it's important to give leaders, you know, forums to be able to think through this, talk through this because, You [00:24:00] know, it's, it's one thing to say it's your job to make sure they could do their job and it's another for them to actually. Understand when they might have gotten in the way because, you know, is it the, the skill or the will.
So yeah, they do it or what will they do it? Mm-hmm. That's definitely one thing, but more often than not you know, in the 25 plus years that I spent in corporate, a lot of that supporting leaders who would come to me and be very frustrated with teams or individuals and, and you know what I'd say? Hmm, 70 to 80% of the time.
The problem was actually that clear expectations had not been set properly. Yep. Yeah. So it wasn't actually, you know, around the employee at all. They were responding to not, you know, lack of clarity. Maybe they didn't speak up enough, fair enough. But it always started with the leader getting more clear about what exactly is it you want and how are you describing that output?
How are you ensuring everybody's on the same page? So, and are you involved enough to know how they're gonna get there? Yeah. And, and are you involving them in figuring out [00:25:00] how they are gonna get there? They're such a better way of like, here's the problem, how are we gonna do this? Yes. Yeah. Game changer.
Right? It's so, it's no different. Yeah. So I, I, I also appreciate that you've, you know, you emphasized with leaders about watching out for assumptions and judgment because we all do it. Oh my God. As a young leader, when I think about some of the mistakes and the assumptions I made and, you know, and how that probably showed up you know, I, I, I just wanna shrink into the floor anyway, so I would love for you to tell us more about compassion before rigor, because I really.
The, so here's what, what the phrase that flew across my mind when you said that is, it's something that we say in coaching, which, especially team coaching, which I'm about to go play and do for three days with a team. So it's this idea of being tough on the problem. Soft person. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if there's a connection there.
Can you absolutely. Talk a bit about Yeah, absolutely. I, I [00:26:00] think. People that have worked for me or, or with me would say I set a very high bar. Very high bar. Because I do believe just basic humans want to want to succeed and they want to jump over those expectations. But I have also found that if I don't understand where the people are in their, not just, not to be nosy, but in their life in general, I.
But also in their work in what I'm giving them to, to be able to jump over this bar. If I don't understand all of that picture, all I'm doing is coming off as hard-nosed and unrealistic and then that, that motivation slider goes way back to, look, I just need a paycheck and I'm gonna deal with this crazy boss and I, whatever.
And the other piece that I think is really interesting, you know, you said be hard on the problem and soft on the person. I, I would extend that to. Be hard on the problem and support the teams that the people are on. I, I believe that rigor is always, not [00:27:00] always, but usually best applied to teams. Because then you're utilizing brain power of more than one person to solve, you know, a complex problem.
So we have to, you know, make this amount of stuff by X date. It seems impossible. How are we gonna do that instead of just going to, you know, the manager over the team that's supposed to do it and saying, get it done? Yeah, I'll probably call the manager, have a pre-meeting, then we'll talk to the whole team.
I'll be involved say what, what can we do? Hey, maybe there's some other resources around the, the company we can leverage really quickly to get over this. So for the benefit of the company, and all of a sudden the impossible becomes possible. People feel successful and that slider, oh yeah, we, we can do hard things.
It's kind of an organic growth, I guess. I don't know if I, I hate that word, but that's, that's kinda the Well, no, but it's, it's, it's, that's, I know there's so many words, but organic growth is one of the buzzwords. Right. It's actually really fit though. So, you know, I, what I'm hearing you say though is organic, so it's very natural.
It's a process over time.[00:28:00] You know, and really that's how trust gets built. Well, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You hit exactly what I was just about to say is the more regularly you do that, people know what to expect. So when the next rigorous act. Or, or thing comes hopefully over time. It isn't this giant anxiety causing thing for an individual or even a team.
It's, oh, I know how this is gonna go and we're gonna figure it out. And, you know, even as a leader you can say, we may not hit this deadline. You know, there we need to hit, we have to have it here. I'd like to have it here. How are we gonna do this? And, and have some. You know, you need to provide, it's my job to make sure they can do their job.
I've gotta provide that path. But you know, it, it's more minds the better, I think. You know, and, and you do that regularly. People know what to expect. They know that the ask is always gonna be up here. We're in academic publishing. We, you know, it's not a, and especially as a pri we're not McGraw Hill, you know, [00:29:00] especially as a private entity.
The asks are rigorous. All the time. But if they know what to expect, they know how it's going. You get there more often, which is nice. So, so how, how, I, I'm curious when you started talking about this within the organization, this compassion before rigor, cuz it's that human-centric. You know? Yeah. Human, human based leadership.
What, how did you kind of roll it out? How did you help people with the, the language to have the conversation so that yes, okay, we've got this big deadline and all this rigor that has to happen to roll this out and to meet that deadline with the accuracy and, you know, ethics that we are known for.
And how does, how did you help people figure out how to put compassion before that? What does that look like? So the two things that I think are critical when you're rolling out a new concept is lead by example. Show 'em, talk about it while you're doing it. Say, Hey, this is what my example of compassion before rigor would be.
If I'm talking to a [00:30:00] director or a manager, here's a way to employ that. But also as you're doing it, Because there's, there's always the philosophical and the practical, right? So the practical is talk through it as you're going through it. Show them what you're talking about. Model it. Have a pre-meeting.
I know people hate meetings, but if you can pull a, a leader aside and say, Hey, let's talk about this compassion before rigor. This is gonna be hard for your team. How are we gonna do this? It gives them a sense of ownership. I've got my arm around that leader saying, I'm gonna be here with you and we're gonna figure this out.
So that's the practical, the philosophical, I think you have to provide exemplars. These are, you know, pseudo made up scenarios, but we typed them right into our guiding documents of here's what an example of can't versus won't, or compassion before rigor would mean this is what it looks like. So, so you hope, you know, people can use their imaginations and take this kind of, you know, you make it, it's still book publishing for us in our little guys, but whatever your industry is, make it familiar.[00:31:00]
And then hopefully your leaders can make a jump and it inspires 'em to ask questions. Say, okay, this is a situation. How can I do that? So that's, that's how I rolled it out, was I tried to lead by example. I tried to apply rigor exactly like I had to my students and my teachers. And here high bars It also sound like you worked elbow to elbow, which is a phrase I love.
I do, you know, sort of in partnership with leaders to help them anticipate how they might do this as best I could. I, you know, that, that part can always be better, right? It always be better, but I, I'm very lucky in that. For Gibbs Smith Ed, I was able to hire a couple of my ex teachers who already knew the, the system and so they were able to, that helped us a lot in our growth.
They were able to be like, got it, do do this with you for years, and they were just able to push it way down into the organization and did a do the fantastic job too. So. Yeah, cuz you had that, that, you know, basis of trust already built with Yeah, exactly. Coming in from, from the school system. Okay. Yeah, exactly.
[00:32:00] That's, that's really neat. So I appreciate you kind of telling us more about that and giving us a peek behind the curtains. And I, I bet you there's some listeners that are gonna steal that phrase. Oh yeah, it's. It's been a good one. You know, and it, the other thing too is, is talk to your teams about it never being perfect.
rigor doesn't mean perfection, it means exceptional results or exceptional production or whatever it is. But also, you know, be patient enough to know like something's not gonna go exactly how you need it to. So debrief it and be better the next time. Right. Like it's just a cycle. Yeah.
And that's why I need the compassion in there, right? Because there's just no expectation of all the way through. All the way through. Perfect. Right. It's an iterative, we're evolving as we learning as we go. Yeah. Yep. Beautiful. Well, so we're, we're nearing the end of our conversation, so I'd love to know what you're excited about in, in your, in your role as C P O specifically for the next year.
I'm really excited. We're, we're looking at some just part of the, what I would consider the [00:33:00] extrinsic stuff. Just some you know, 401k retirement improvements and, and new handbooks and, and rolling out. We, we just adopted an unlimited time off policy and so we're, we're roll. We, you know, Push that through at the beginning of the year and, and we're just kind of working out.
We actually haven't had any kinks. We're just trying to see how that feels for us. Where we say to our employees, get the job done, and we're okay with that. And if you need to take a minute off, that's why I work it out with your teams, be professional enough to push it out to your supervisors and other teams that affects.
But wow. You know, unlimited time off, positive, unlimited time off. I had I guess come on recently, we talked about they rolled out a, a four day work week. Yeah. Ryan May is the episode if anybody's interested to look it up. I can't remember the number at the time at this time, but so with an unlimited time off policy, just remind me, how many employees do you have there?
About a hundred. So about a hundred employees. Okay. So it's not insignificant, you know, this isn't like, you know, there's 10 of you that have agreed that you know, you're not gonna this policy and you [00:34:00] know that you're gonna get your work done. This is much more complicated. So hat's off to you, Jared. This is interesting.
Could you tell us a little bit about I. You know, I don't know what, what you had to put in place to, to help but not be too bumpy. Yeah. So first thing we put in place was you have to request your time off, just like in any organization. Just so not as a, an, and. I really appreciate that our culture was good enough at the company that we could say, this isn't a gotcha.
We're not gonna come back and say, well you're taking, you know, it wasn't that. It was, we just wanna know how much time people have taken off. Actually, the thing that I was concerned about and a lot of research shows when you go to an unlimited time off policy, people take less time off. And so a lot of our conversation was around managers, you need to watch burnout.
We may need to have conversations about having people take time off and, and we're six months in, we're still figuring all of that out. We're not, we're not the area yet, but what we have seen is we kind of got our first data set last month, I think it was last month, and just a good [00:35:00] spread. You know, there's some people that have taken very little, some people have taken some more, and we have.
Very conscientious employees who, you know, I think the benefit corporation, the employee ownership, the way that Gibbs, Kathy and, and the rest of the executive team that was doing that job well before I came on, I'm definitely the new guy to the block. Have set up some. Some cultural pieces that everyone does really care about what we're doing, so they're conscientious about time off.
There's, you know, we don't have anyone saying I'm out and we see 'em in a month. Yeah. It's not that, you know, and I think that's what people are scared of, but if you can set up a situation where, you know, managers feel like, you know, I can coach this if this is a problem, I, I have the right to say you're causing the rest of the team to miss the rigor.
To, you know, or, or whatever. We need to coach that. You know, and in six months, I, I'm not aware at least of a situation where we've had to do that is, is there a minimum amount of time that people need to take, like, to make, we haven't got to that part of the [00:36:00] maturity yet. I, I feel like some point we will get to that because I said my, my bigger fear and, and a lot of the stuff I read was people don't take enough and, yeah.
Yeah. And, and, That's not healthy, right? No, it's not healthy. That's about work-life balance. And we're, and we're just like any organization, I know this is a, and probably as a, as a private consultant, right? That balance is ever elusive. I always think about it like balancing a plate on like a, you know, on a pole.
It's always doing this maneuver, you know, rocking. We're just getting better. We, we want it to be as stable as possible. Yeah. Yeah. It's inter Well, I just, cuz this is why I'm like, oh boy. Because I see the same research that people often are taking their full vacation. Mm-hmm. Some do and some are, are great about it.
I know that at different points in my career I didn't take it all and then I learned had to, cuz my body would break down if I didn't and I needed to, to take it all. But, you know, in a lot of my clients this, you know, there's, I have conversations with them about how many vacation days do you have and [00:37:00] maybe you need to take some, right.
Yeah. It's tough for people, especially high performers and where Yes. Where, you know, they, you know, for. I mean, you've got a great culture there, so people might be enjoying it. At the same time, we need space away to refuel, refuel to regroup and come back and be, be more productive. It just, it just is, we've gotta put gas in the, in the tank.
It is, and, and we really encouraged all the way down to our, our brand new, you know, one year managers to Yeah. Get to know your teams enough to know. You know, when you probably need to, to nudge someone to say, Hey, why don't you take a couple days off? It might be good. And, and of course this is brand new for us, and, and it'll take I'm sure several years to really, you know, it's, yeah.
But motivation wise and, and also the idea that corporations own people's time, I think is really toxic. You know, I feel like if you can have that, that idea that like what you, you're buying their expertise, they don't owe you, you know, like yeah, it's their time that they're giving you. So let's see if we can [00:38:00] strike a balance between our expectations of what we're paying you for and your need to.
Be with your kids or take care of a parent or go on vacation or just unplug and read a book if that's your thing. You know, I think we're evolving. We're evolving. Yeah. It's so interesting cuz you know, as an entrepreneur I work for myself. And I don't have to ask anybody or you know, but I will tell you that I actually place monetary value on that.
Like, sure. Time is freedom. So I really, I really appreciate what, what you're trying to do there with this policy. I think it's really intriguing cuz you know, For me, I take more vacation than I did when I was in corporate, and that's partly why I went on aisle. Right. Because I want, I wanted to, and I had a good chunk of vacation too.
Sure. As an executive. But, but it's really, really, I think it makes me far more effective when I am Yeah. On the job. Yeah. Well, for me personally, I'm still trying to work that out. You know, I'm, I, I was that person. I don't, I've never, I'm pretty sure this is accurate. I don't think I've ever taken all my vacation days ever which, you know, my family.
[00:39:00] Probably wishes I would. And so I'm still trying to strike that balance too. Yeah. Of, of work and not work. And, and for me, I'm, I'm learning as we go too. And so it's a journey. It is a journey. You, that's so accurate. Yeah. It's a journey. Well, so delightful to chat with you today and I appreciate you sharing, you know, some of the really neat things that you're doing at Gibb Smith and about your role.
It's really, really been a pleasure. Thank you very much. Thanks, Lisa. This has been amazing and good luck. I, I've, I listened to a bunch of your podcasts and I'm, I'm gonna be a regular subscriber for now. That's wonderful. I'm glad that you're enjoying it. Thank you so much, Jared. [00:40:00]
