209. Leadership in the Modern Age: Addressing Quiet Quitting with Ishan Galapathy

Unlock the true potential of your workforce with insights from operational excellence expert Ishan Galapathy.

From his personal journey of moving from Sri Lanka to Australia to transforming disengaged employees into change agents, Ishan shares a wealth of knowledge. You'll learn how his latest book, "Unlock," addresses the critical gap in manufacturing companies and offers solutions to enhance productivity and engagement at a global level. This episode promises to provide you with strategies to tackle common workplace challenges and make meaningful change.

Explore the pressures of modern work environments as we discuss the phenomenon of "quiet quitting" and the disconnect between leadership and the shop floor. The rapid pace of technological change has created overwhelming environments that can lead to employee burnout and disengagement. Ishan and I emphasize the importance of a thoughtful approach to change management, where reducing pressure can foster innovation and productivity. You'll discover how addressing these issues can transform workplace dynamics and improve operational efficiency.

In our conversation, we highlight compelling success stories like Julian the forklift driver, who demonstrated the untapped potential within every organization. By engaging employees who may seem disengaged, businesses can unlock hidden reserves of energy and passion. From practical strategies to foster a more engaged workforce to the importance of meaningful work aligned with company goals, this episode equips you with the tools to transform your workplace.

🌐 Connect with Ishan:
• Website: https://ishangalapathy.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishangalapathy/

📚 You can purchase Ishan's books on this link: https://ishangalapathy.com/books/

Business & Society with Senthil Nathan

Inspiring and thought-provoking conversations with eminent thinkers and...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Virtual Rockstar
Easily Hire A Virtual Assistant For Your Physical Therapy Practice.

Chapters

• 21:44 [Ad] Business & Society with Senthil Nathan
• 22:32 (Cont.) 209. Leadership in the Modern Age: Addressing Quiet Quitting with Ishan Galapathy
• 35:24 [Ad] Virtual Rockstar
• 36:15 (Cont.) 209. Leadership in the Modern Age: Addressing Quiet Quitting with Ishan Galapathy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Is quiet quitting real? Quiet quitting is a term that is, more often than not, completely misunderstood. In today's episode of the Leadership Project, I am joined by Ishan Galapathy, author of the book Unlock. We explore what quiet quitting really is, what causes it and what actions we can take. Is what causes it and what actions we can take? Ishan shares his vision for how we can convert our disengaged team members into passionate agents of change. There is something in this episode for everyone. Sit back and enjoy the show.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Ishan Galapathy. Ishan is an operational excellence expert and also an author and speaker, and I'm here to celebrate his latest book, which is called Unlock, and it's about how do we re-engage with our disengaged employees and convert them into change agents, which is exactly what I'm sure a lot of us are going to want to do. So the topic today is really going to be about quiet quitting we're going to start off with. Is this thing even real, and what do we need to do as leaders to redress this balance and get people back fully engaged and falling back in love with their jobs again? So, ishan, without any further ado. I'd love to know a bit more about your background and what inspired you to do the work that you do today, and specifically around this book called Unlock.

Speaker 2: 1:42

Mick, thank you very much for the opportunity and great to be on the show. If we were having this conversation 30 years ago, Mick, you'd find me transitioning, having grown up in Sri Lanka and settling in Australia. As a university student I was studying mechatronics at the University of New South Wales and that's how I came into Australia. Now, if you were having this conversation 20 years ago, you'd find me in a transition point again, from having worked for the first manufacturing business, having completed my first degree, and then moving into FMCG, the fast-moving consumer goods. For people who are not familiar with that, it's mainly the products that you find in the supermarket shelves. Now I was working for Arnott's. If anyone overseas listening to this, Arnott's is one of Australia's biggest food manufacturing businesses, makes wonderful biscuits that you might call cookies outside of Australia.

Speaker 2: 2:42

Mick, 10 years ago you'd find me transitioning from Kellogg, having worked as the global continuous improvement for the Center of Excellence for Continuous Improvement, having also been part of the global team, developed its supply chain excellence program, and starting my own business. The reason for that was two. One was that I had two little boys, 10 and 7 at the time, whom I was really missing because my role looking after Asia Pacific, for productivity, for Kellogg, and also being part of a global team, meant that I was spending a lot of time on hotels, planes and lounges. My 10-year-old boy would often ask me three questions when are you going? How long are you going for? Those were the first two questions that were easy to answer. Then came the third question Not often but sometimes, and it would just pierce right through my heart and the question was can you find a job that you don't have to travel? And right then and there, I knew that I had to do something. So it was on his 10th birthday. I was, unfortunately, uh, had to travel. I was waking up in a hotel room staring at a blank wall, and that was my moment of epiphany of no, I need to do something so that I can be more with my family. So 10 months later, an opportunity presented in form of a redundancy. So I grabbed it with both hands and started my own consulting practice.

Speaker 2: 4:14

The second reason how I fell into doing what I'm doing right now is as I traveled the world, I got to see some of the best of the best global manufacturing, world-class companies and these companies the reason why they are the best of the best in terms of productivity, in terms of engagement, in terms of how they contribute to the environment, everything right. The reason why they're best of the best is they have massive programs that are led from a global perspective, that are governed from a global perspective, and it takes a lot of effort. Now they're complex and complicated and there are only a few companies you know, like whether you're a Procter Gamble or a Unilever, you know, or the likes thereof. There's only a few who have the capacity and the bandwidth to do that. There's only a few who have the capacity and the bandwidth to do that. You take one step down from that global space. Most of the other companies don't have the bandwidth, don't have the capacity, don't have the patience to develop those programs and deploy and govern.

Speaker 2: 5:18

So when I saw that gap, along with my personal need, I knew the work that I could do and the way that I could help the manufacturing industry, particularly in Australia. So I've developed programs by simplifying, on how we can shift both productivity and engagement. In a nutshell, I've just released my third book. They're all some shape or form identifying opportunities to improve, how to improve and how to engage our people. And that brings me to why we're having this conversation right now, Mick.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Yeah, brilliant Ishan. Thank you for sharing that. Congratulations on your success, on your success in your career. I'm going to say congratulations on your success, on your success in your career. I'm going to say congratulations on your prioritization and putting your family first and finding something that works for both finding a rewarding career, but also listening to your son. I think that's really a beautiful story.

Speaker 1: 6:17

The other part I fully agree with you that multinational companies often have the bandwidth or the capacity to do quite good leadership programs and productivity programs and things that take their workforce to the next level, but it's very difficult in that messy middle for people to be able to do it. So you are filling a gap there for sure. What I'm curious about is you spoke about that journey in a journey of 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and here you are today. What I'd love to know is what have you seen in the workplace in that time? We're talking generational changes. In that time, what have you personally learned and seen in the way the workforce and the workplace is so different today than what it was 30 years ago, 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. The world is changing so fast. What are your thoughts there?

Speaker 2: 7:12

Absolutely, mika. I'm going to talk through the lens from the manufacturing industry, because that's the sector that I'm close to and supply chain. So people are wondering what does that mean? So you're either making something or moving something in simple terms. So I'll talk through that lens, but I'm sure this applies to other sectors as well.

Speaker 2: 7:35

Certainly, 30 years ago, computing were coming into workplaces, you know. So, technology wasn't a primary focus back then as it is today. But what's been common, I guess, is we've had people in workplaces and we still do. Right, there are only a very few companies who are operating with lights out distribution centers or lights out factories. We are so far away from being that. There may be, you know, a handful, but the changes are that, along with the changes in general that we see in life, you know, with technology, and you know we tend to operate with this little device in our palm right, you know whether we are ordering uber foods or whether we are ordering click and collect or that's the convenience lifestyle that we have got used to somehow now. But along with that, that means somebody has to deliver that in the background, somebody has to make that in the background, somebody has to carry that stock in the background Now, as much as from a consumer perspective.

Speaker 2: 8:42

Things have been embraced, things have got adopted very quickly. Companies don't change that quickly, but they want to. So what's happened is the need to change, the need to do more with less, has become more significant, has become a primary concern for most businesses. It's not a secret. The cost of doing business has gone up. We talk about energy costs, we talk about the high labor cost here in Australia. So that means business leaders are pressured to drive the cost of business quite significantly, and particularly in the last 10 years. I'll say 10 years because post-GFC we've had this thing called smart industries, industry 4.0, right, you know, there was a phrase that's been coined by the German government post the GFC and that means we are driving in this space of computing, networking. How do we connect everything to anything that can be connected through the cloud and how do we drive productivity through that?

Speaker 2: 9:52

Here's the biggest gap. 30 years ago, I think, we had a little bit more patience. We had a little bit more buffer, because the world wasn't as crazy and fast as it is today to deal with inefficiencies in businesses. We had time to catch up. But what's happening now is that gap had closed up and businesses haven't kept up and therefore they're all struggling to keep up. Therefore, they're all struggling to keep up. Business leaders are quick to look at technological solutions as a way of a silver bullet, perhaps to cover those gaps, but what I see is, if the fundamentals aren't in place, you're not going to be able to cover that with a silver bullet technological app. So yeah, the trend is, as the world is speeding up, people are pressured to keep up. But we can't just continue to, you know, crack the whip and say like, yeah, work faster, but we are very poor at improving productivity in a practical and in a real way.

Speaker 1: 11:06

Really interesting, ishan. Let me reflect back on a few of the takeaways that I'm taking there, and my industrial experience echoes what you're talking about, and in the industries I've worked in we've had exact examples of what I'm about to talk about, which is that technological change is happening at a faster speed than we could ever have imagined. People, at the end of the day, tend to fear change and it's quite difficult. So people management is far more difficult than technological change. And what I'm talking about here is in my industry. We've seen examples of projects where solving the technological problem was the easy part, but solving the people problem and I'm going to add the business model problem, because sometimes the business model didn't catch up with what the new technology, the emerging emergent properties of the new technology, enabled to happen. The people and the business model didn't catch up at the same speed, which is going to create a two-speed approach where people start getting frustrated because they know that it's possible but it's just not getting there and the people aren't catching up at the same speed as what the technology is. Then I'm also seeing that that's also crescendoed and you can call this through competitive tension, always the need to do things faster and cheaper. So the same people are being put in the pressure to do things faster and cheaper to keep up with either technological change or the fear that the competitor down the road is somehow ahead of us and we need to go faster.

Speaker 1: 12:38

So what I'm extrapolating here is it becomes a pressure cooker for the people in the industry that wants something that might have been I'm not going to say an easy job that would be dismissive but something that might have been a very manageable job all of a sudden is a pressure cooker job. And there was one more thread that I picked up there, ishan, that I don't want to lose is. You spoke about the devices. We're also now in a 24-7 connected world, and maybe we'll come to this later when we talk about some of the recent changes in legislation in Australia and in Europe about having the right to disconnect. It's very hard to disconnect from work right now. So, over this time, not keeping up with technological change, increased pressure in the workplace and now a 24-7 connected workplace how does that sit with you?

Speaker 2: 13:28

Very real, very real, and I think that pressure if I double-click on the pressure cooker part first particularly after the last three years of what the world has gone through that pressure has gone up exponentially. I'm working with major companies right now here in Australia and in the United States. These are well-known brands and companies that we all know of globally and locally. The pressure to deliver has been nothing like what I've seen before, and I talk to these business leaders and sometimes I joke saying like I don't envy your position. I'm glad that I'm not in corporate anymore and I don't know how business leaders keep up with this, because something's going to give and I know what's going to give it's their family life.

Speaker 2: 14:15

So I have a real soft spot for the leaders who are under the pump, under the pressure, because, no matter what the world situation is, whether it is environmental factors or whether it is political issues or whether it is lack of resources, guess what the boards actually hold the leadership teams to deliver a better future. Boards hold the leaders responsible for delivering a future-fit company. So it's almost like an impossible task, right? So the pressure is mounting and I guess the need to look for technological solutions is almost increasing because they think that there might be a shortcut here somewhere, because that's the only way I can get ahead. But nothing can be further from the truth, because we're dealing with people and when we're dealing with people, slow is generally fast. And the more technology we add into the business, the more complicated it gets. And you spoke about the generational gaps. The complication just compounds massively.

Speaker 1: 15:17

A really key thing that you said there is slow, is generally fast, or I like to say less haste, more speed. I do feel that in this pressure cooker environment in the workplace, that, under those stressful conditions, is not when we do our most innovative and efficient thinking. So if we did take a step back and we did take some of that pressure away, we'd potentially speed up anyway. So it's a bit counterproductive, this pressure that we keep on putting on ourselves and putting on others and it's grinding us to a halt rather than actually accelerating the way people think and the way people commit in the workplace. So I want to take that as a bit of a segue to what's happening now. So in the last five years, this term has emerged, this term quiet quitting that I mentioned in the intro. Where does quiet quitting come into all of this, ishan and I'm going to start with a really blunt question Is quiet quitting real?

Speaker 2: 16:19

Well, I can give you a very quick, short answer. It's absolutely real and here's the detailed answer. So the quiet quitting term is new, but it's always been there. So let me explain. If you take from the view of employees, you know when we have new employees joining the business. Now I have a fundamental view that we you know, most of us, in fact all of us we come to work wanting to do good day's work, you know being productive. Nobody turns up to work thinking I'm going to do the major interruption today, I'm going to be the one that's going to cause all the problems, right? I hate to think that if there are people like that if there are, you know, probably less than a 1% most people come to work wanting to do good work and what happens is, when people join businesses, they're full of enthusiasm, they're full of vigor, of here's how I can contribute, here's how I can be the best employee, here's what I see, the opportunities to improve or, based on my experience of working in other companies, here are some things that you guys may not have seen or thought of.

Speaker 2: 17:23

Now. What quickly happens is because, in that whirlwind that we are working in right now, we haven't got systems and processes to capture all these ideas and to deal with those in a constructive manner. This is where businesses fail as a way of improving productivity. So what happens is some of them get tractioned, some of them you know meaning actioned. Some of them in fact most of them just basically hit a dead end, ie the business. You know the business leaders would say great idea, you know that's great. And they just move on, not because they don't want to, but they haven't got the capacity and the bandwidth to deal with all the good ideas right. So for all the 10 ideas that I've got and that I'm so keen to share with the business, maybe one of them gets actioned. So what happens is then I get slightly discouraged. The same thing happens next day. The same thing happens the following week. Slightly discouraged, the same thing happens next day, the same thing happens the following week. And slowly but surely, what happens is I just zip up and I go well, perhaps I'll just do what I can. There's no point in me trying to help this business because there's surely not taking my ideas on. So that's one of the reasons, like people just basically say I'll just do the bare minimum because they don't care about me. They don't care. You know they don't want me to help them, so why should I and this continues for a long time, 10 years ago, make?

Speaker 2: 18:52

I was uh working with a major multinational company and uh, this was in south africa and they had a major concern with uh. They had a major constraint with their major constraints with their manufacturing processes. Sam was one of the best of the best operators they have in the business. The issue the leadership team had was that Sam wasn't using his experience and expertise to help improve the business. It was like well, sam knows so much, why doesn't Sam do this? Why doesn't Sam come up with solutions for these problems? Well, often what's spoken about at a leadership team level? Now I got involved in helping the business to improve and we do what we do in structured problem solving. One of the initial steps is that we speak to all the operators in a focus group kind of way. So here's Sam in that focus group and we're brainstorming all the issues as to what are the concerns or what are the reasons why we can't maintain the right speeds and the productivity, and I'm just observing from the back of the room.

Speaker 2: 19:59

We finished the session and they all walk out, the team leader comes back in. She was quite excited and she came and just grabbed my hand. But sam spoke to me and I was like, yeah, what you know, unless unless it's one of those uh, forrest gump scenarios where you know forrest gump first broke silence. Uh, that he's actually not dumb. I was thinking like what's the what's the big problem or what's the big excitement about that Sam's making? Well, that's when I got to understand. He said well, sam's this kind of person, highly experienced, but hardly initiates a conversation unless you first speak to him.

Speaker 2: 20:37

I said what did Sam say? The team leader said Sam said no one for 17 years had asked for my opinion. No one for 17 years had asked for my opinion. No one for 17 years had asked for my opinion. So guess what? Sam was a brilliant operator. Sam knew exactly where to go and fix these issues. He probably tried 17 years ago when he first started sharing his ideas, but the business wasn't ready. The leadership team didn't have systems and concepts to capture those ideas and to deal with it in a meaningful way. So he just became a quiet quitter. And in fact that story is in one of the chapters titled it's Not Me, it's you because it is very real. In fact, when I go across to all these businesses and helping them, that comes out as a major roadblock or major issue as to why we are not moving fast enough is that we don't capture in a meaningful and helpful and purposeful way the ideas that people have use it to improve productivity. So it is quite real not me, Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 22:24

I fully agree with you. By the way, I put it as a provocative question on purpose, and I'll explain a little bit later where some of the naysayers are coming from, but I'd like to unpack a little bit of what you just said, because it's really important. So, what do people want in the workplace? They want to feel seen, they want to feel heard, they want to feel valued, they want to feel like they matter, that the work that they do matters and that they individually matter. So, to use your example of Sam, we have a situation where he's got things to say, but he's not being invited to say it.

Speaker 1: 22:59

I'm going to give some other examples that could be quite similar to this issue, and this is one of the dichotomies that I see today between leadership and the. I'll call it the shop floor, but you can interpret that in whatever way. You see. Leaders are sitting there, getting frustrated, going. Why aren't people stepping up and stepping in the SAM situation? But the people on the shop floor feel like they were never given the opportunity to step up and step in. They're either not empowered they were not enabled, they were not asked in the case of Sam or and this is where the or comes in and you were hinting towards this before. They might have tried in the past. They might have put 10 ideas in the past that got completely not listened to and passed over. Why would they have the energy to put an 11th idea up if their first 10 ideas were completely ignored?

Speaker 1: 23:51

So this it's not me, it's you situation. That's what the shop floor is trying to tell us. It was saying I give up. I've tried, I tried to step up, I tried to step in. You didn't listen to me, you didn't give me the chance or, in Sam's case, you didn't ask me. I've got wonderful ideas as to how we can transform this business, but you're not giving me the chance. So of course I'm going to quiet, quit, of course I'm going to disengage, of course I'm going to give up trying to change the place if every other time I've tried, I've been shut down. How does that sit with you, isha?

Speaker 2: 24:27

Couldn't agree more, and I resonate with the shop floor language because, yep, so they're the people that I mainly interact with and, of course, I'm helping the businesses. But this is exactly right, you know, and the reason why and this is why it's so unfortunate is the fact that it's not that the businesses don't want to capture these ideas and use them and improve them. It's not that the businesses don't want to capture these ideas and use them and improve them. It's just that the improvement machine, the processes of improving the business, is not where it needs to be right. Because this comes to the next point of capability.

Speaker 2: 25:01

There's only a handful of people who are the trained or, like the diligent, hardworking people, and the businesses tend to rely on these handful of people over and over and over again, whether it is for solving problems, or whether it is for coaching the shop floor, or whether it is for expediting the backlog problems and whether it is for identifying new issues.

Speaker 2: 25:24

And these handful of people are getting dragged from pillar to post, they are overwhelmed, they are stretched and they're burnt out. So you've got this issue of the people who are delivering, who are capable of improving the business. They're limited. Businesses haven't got the bandwidth, the capacity and the patience and the time to develop more people, although they want to. So now we're hitting a bottleneck of not only the business having to produce or deliver whatever it does as a way of the widgets they make or the service they deliver, but it's also got a bottleneck of how we improve. So now you've got two problems One is the actual business bottleneck and the other one is the improving bottleneck. There are so many ideas, there are so many things we can do. We try to do all of it, but we've only got a handful of people and we are spreading ourselves.

Speaker 1: 26:16

Oh, that's brilliant, Ishan. And this one becomes like a double whammy, or even a triple whammy. Bear with me on this one for a second. So let's say that you're a project manager and you've got a certain task that you want done. Everyone knows in the business who are the guns at that task and they keep on gravitating back to the same person all the time or the same small group of people that are really good at what they're doing. But of course, that makes sense from a leadership or a project management point of view, from a human nature point of view, because if I give this task to person X, it's going to take them 800 hours to get it done and they're going to do a great job. There's going to be little rework and my project is going to finish on budget, right. But then you get 27 project managers in the business all going to the same person every time.

Speaker 1: 27:04

Now we're going to end up with a situation where you've got one person who's completely over allocated and then you've got a bunch of other people, because the business has probably added resources somewhere along the line. Because this person's burnt out. You've got a bunch of other people that are under allocated, so you've got a bunch of people that are sitting there wanting interesting work to do and no one's talking to them, and then you've got a subset of people that are overworked so let's go to the quiet quitting. Then you've got a subset of people that are overworked so let's go to the quiet quitting. If I'm in one of those people that is under allocated and no one's giving me a chance and no one's giving me interesting work to do and giving me the opportunity to learn and grow, I'm going to start giving up.

Speaker 1: 27:41

I'm going to start giving up and get very frustrated when the double whammy comes in. We've just artificially capped the capacity of the business because now we're only reliant on that small number of people, and you're right, they're eventually going to get burned out. But regardless they only have 24 hours in a day. And here's all these other people that wanted to go that you didn't give a chance to go. So to me it comes to the same story. I'm going to disengage if people don't give me interesting work to do and don't give me opportunities to learn and grow, and you're really hurting your own business because you're taking away that opportunity to multiply the number of people that know how to do this task.

Speaker 2: 28:23

Exactly, and I said something a while ago saying that this is not something new. So let me just go back to that point and give you an example of exactly how to fix this issue as well, because there are some easy tips. It's not hard, as we think it is, to actually come out of this vicious cycle. Quiet quitting label is new, but quiet quitters the fence-sitters isn't anything new. Now I look at Gallup. Gallup is a global organization that measures everything relating to employee engagement. I love Gallup because it's easily accessible for anyone. You just need to Google it and we can look at data for any part of the world, et cetera. Now I've been looking at this data from year 2000,. But the global data is available for the last 15 years Now.

Speaker 2: 29:13

Gallup says that there are three types of people in our workplaces. There are the diligent, hardworking people, and these are the ones that we just spoke of. You know the handful that we always rely to get things done. The latest data suggests that there's about 25%. I'm rounding up the numbers. So one in four is the number of people that we have who are diligent, hardworking, and you might want to just do a check if that's true in your business as well In your team. How many people in your team? And it's 25%. Does that ring true? Now, on the opposite extreme, we have extremely unhappy, disgruntled employees. In case you're wondering who these people are, these are the people if you sat next to in the canteen for 10 minutes or a cup of coffee. You just can't quickly get away quickly because you feel like for these people, nothing's going right. They all want to do is just complain. Sadly, there's about 15 percent of these people in our workplaces.

Speaker 2: 30:10

Now, if you've done your math, there's 60% left and the 60% are what Gallup defines well, used to define as disengaged, now labeled as quiet quitters. Nevertheless, that's the number that's basically not hardworking, nor the extremely disenchanted. And it's not just about the 2024 data that we need to be worried about. It's the trend of the last 15 years. If you look at the happy percentage, that number is going up over the last 15 years. If you look at the disenchanted, the disgruntled, unhappy that number is coming down. And if you just look at those two numbers alone, mick, you're going to be asking me what's the problem? Isn't that a good thing? And I would say, yeah, absolutely it's a good thing. It's not. Until you look at the third number the disengaged or the defensive or the quiet quitters that you see. The problem. That number, the 60%, has stayed flat more or less for the last 15 years. So there was a little blip, I think around 2014. I don't know what went on in the world back then Slightly moved up or down, but it's more or less stayed flat.

Speaker 2: 31:20

So in my book I call this out We've been looking at this the wrong way, in that the business leaders, the PNC or the HR community have been going about moving up engagement. Of course that's what we do, but we've actually been spending so much effort and time working on the really difficult people. My experience is that it's so easy to work with the quiet quitters because they're not disengaged, they're seemingly disengaged. So the subtitle of Unlock, my latest book, is Engage. The Seemingly Disengaged is because of exactly that. I know they won't get involved. They are the likes of Sam. So what we need to do is find a mechanism, find a way of how to tap in. Leave the unhappy people as they are. You know nothing can be done to please those individuals, but there's 60% latent capacity. It's just sitting under your. You know the diamonds under your feet that you haven't tapped into Julian.

Speaker 2: 32:21

A couple of years ago I was working for again a major multinational business, industrial manufacturing. Julian, you could say that he was a quite good. He was a forklift driver, still is a forklift driver. He would load the trucks rain, hail or shine in the yard. This factory had a manufacturing line that did a lot of the significantly value-add products and that was the bottleneck. So they asked me okay, Ishan, you know, let's start with that area of the factory. How do we improve productivity? Let's say they made a hundred widgets in a shift, eight hour shift. You know that was the pace. They made a hundred widgets in an eight hour shift.

Speaker 2: 33:02

So what do we do? So we grabbed one of the few diligent, hardworking people and I said right, we're going to create a little problem solving team under my guidance, under my coaching, we're going to fix this area. So we got one of the good soldiers to lead the project and we infused. We infused with a few people like Julian because they want to get involved. We just haven't given them the structure. So he said hey, we want about four or five people to join this team. Julian, you're part of that process. We want you to be part of it, mick. Within 10 weeks we had shifted from 100 widgets a shift to 135 widgets a shift. We haven't put in any new equipment, we haven't added any new people. All we did was we did a little bit of TLC. People came in on the weekends, we fixed the little things all just sundry expenses right Over time would have been the biggest expense they would have had to incur to get through that 35% in 10 weeks.

Speaker 2: 34:01

I went to that business two weeks ago, caught up with the business leader how are things? And I said hey, how's that line doing 154 widgets a shift? They have incremented in the last 18 months from 135. And Julian is now leading projects. He's still on the forklift and he's leading projects. And I had a chat with Julian and I said hey, what do you think? He went through some training with me as well so that he could lead the projects.

Speaker 2: 34:25

And what Julian said is Is, do you think you know? He went through some training with me as well so that he could lead the projects. And what Julian said is Ishan, I never thought that we can do this, because whenever the business had to be improved, it was always them who improved. You know, like meaning that it was the engineers, or it had to be the people who had gone to university. You know, it never relied on us. And he said what you has shown is that we can actually there's a lot that we can fix from within. Um and said how do you feel? And he said something really profound. He said I feel valued and I feel like I'm adding value. Now julian's story is also in in unlock, but that's how easy it is to unlock and that's how easy it is to get more done with the same resources and that's how we break this cycle of involving the quitters, improving productivity and improving engagement.

Speaker 1: 35:57

I feel valued and I feel like I'm adding value. That's a beautiful summary of everything you just said. That really hit hard on at least four different channels there, ishan. So let me unpack that a little bit. In the industry I work in, which is urban mobility we often talk about do we need more infrastructure or do we need to make more of the infrastructure we already have? Are we unlocking the full capacity of our roads, our railways, our modes of mobility? The answer is generally no.

Speaker 1: 36:28

What I'm hearing here, ishan, is so many companies that keep on adding people going. Oh, we just need more people. We just need more people. You're not actually getting the full utilization and capacity and energy of the people that you've already got is the key thing that I'm taking here.

Speaker 1: 36:45

Then, when you said about where are we spending our time, and think about from a Pareto point of view 80-20, I'm going to challenge you, ishan, and anyone listening you speak to any HR professional right now and ask them where they spend their time. They spend their time on those 15%, the problem, the troublemakers. They spend most of their time dealing with those people instead of engaging the people in the middle that just want to feel valued, that just want to feel seen, that just want to feel heard. Then, when you're talking about Julian, when someone's on the shop floor and they're passionate and they're keen about their work, quite often, whatever problems you're having in the business, they understand the problem better than anyone else and they will have ideas how to solve that problem. You just need to give them the space, give them the opportunity, give them the tools to let them get involved.

Speaker 1: 37:40

And part of this around change management, ishan, is there's a common misconception that people don't like change, but the truth is they don't like being changed. So if you give Julian the pen and say, hey, julian, what do you think we need to do differently, all of a sudden, instead of feeling like change was imposed upon him by others, he feels excited. Oh oh, he shan't ask me what I would like to do. Oh well, this is what we should do. And all of a sudden, the energy comes to and you call it out in your book they become change agents because someone took the time to listen to them. How does that sit with you?

Speaker 2: 38:20

Exactly right. And the sad thing, mick, is when the business leaders are trying to do everything they can, they take the whole weight of fixing the place onto their shoulders. So the business you know the business leaders want to do good as well. Right, it's not that they don't want to get these people involved, it's just that they're in such a hurry and they want to get so much done. So they feel like, no, I'll just deal with the few people that I've got right. So, or most often they're like, no, I'll just deal with the few people that I've got right so. Or most often they're like, no, I'll get it done right. So I talk to the business leaders and saying, hey, you don't need to fix it for the people, fix it with the people. And that distinction between you trying to fix everything versus delegate and get it done with the people is where you can actually get faster results.

Speaker 2: 39:08

Now the trick to this is there needs to be a structured approach and there comes the capability of structured problem solving, because there are some issues that are well, we'll just move it from being from the left corner to the right corner, because that was just obstructing and that helps us. There are those kind of pretty obvious stuff that most people can fix within the shift or within the team itself. But then there are problems that are a little bit more complex. You know you need to understand how to analyze a process, looking at the overall line or the overall process. And if it's not a line, you might be working in kind of a work-sell environment where your team is doing part of it and then handing over to another team in some shape or form. So you need people with capability to solve problems in a structured way. There are many methods out there, so pick one, stick to one.

Speaker 2: 40:04

One of the other problems is that businesses keep changing the, the process of improving thinking. It's that. It's not that, it's just that you haven't been consistent. That's the problem. But if you get your hard work, intelligent people trained and you give them the opportunity and be patient because the first problem they solve might not give, you know, the best results, but that's all in the learning curve. But you give them another problem to solve and another problem, but soon enough. And if you give them a small enough problem but it's going to contribute to the business in a significant way and you do enough of those, it'll start to snowball and you start building momentum.

Speaker 2: 40:47

And then, all of a sudden, you know when you find more people like Julian, who are stepping up, who are now being trained as well to lead initiatives. You've got more bandwidth and you've got more capability and all of a sudden, you, as a leader, can now actually do the part you're supposed to do lead. And that means you better have a plan in place on how to shift the business from where it is today in 12 months to three years, and what you're doing is you're converting more of the fence-sitters to becoming change agents. The bandwidth is shifting, the place is becoming happier and engaged engaged and people feel like we're making progress. And all of a sudden, the vicious cycle becomes a virtual cycle, and I have seen these workplaces, so it's not just a utopian blue sky. Yeah, ishan, you know it's good, you know it's theoretical. No, there are these workplaces. So that's how you go about working slowly, patiently, and start leveraging people like Julian.

Speaker 1: 41:51

Really good, ishan. What hit home really hard was we've got to stop solving for people and solve with people and to co-create the solution together. That hit home really hard. Then I'm also hearing this discipline to make sure that we follow through that change initiative until it has some effect and to only pick, let's say, one to three problems at a time, and then when you solve problem X and you have the focus to see that project through to the end, instead of chopping and changing halfway through. Once you've solved problem X, you have the increased capacity to work on problem Y. Instead of trying to solve 36 problems at once and failing, we focus on a few at a time and make them building blocks. That give you the capacity. The ability gives you back some time that you can focus on the next set of projects.

Speaker 1: 42:43

Now I want to go to something important here, ishan, because I promised this earlier and we've only danced around it a little bit. There are some people out there that are naysayers. I'm going to just go out there and put my own opinion on this one, ishan. I just want you to react to it. So one of the naysayers says but they pull their own data and say but people are not working any less hours. They'll pull timesheet data and say, well, no, no, people are still working the same hours, or sometimes even more than what they used to. This quiet quitting, it doesn't really exist.

Speaker 1: 43:14

And I just want to say to everyone it's never been about the work hours, it's never been about the work hours.

Speaker 1: 43:21

It's been about the energy that they bring, the engagement they bring Are they excited about when they do their work? And I'm going to ask you all this question If someone gives you a job that you're excited about, you know that you put more energy in it, you put more passion, you want to do your very best work and when you're not seen and you're not valued and your opinions are not appreciated, of course you're going to put less energy. You're still turning up to work. You're just going to put less energy. You're still turning up to work. You're just going to put less energy into, whether it's writing that report, doing that PowerPoint presentation, whatever it is that you do in your job, when you're excited about it and you understand why you're doing it, you always put more energy into it. So the first thing I want to say to you, ishan, or the one I want you to challenge me on if you disagree. It's not about work hours, it's about energy and passion.

Speaker 2: 44:10

Totally agree. And there's one more the output, which can be measured. Right, because you can say energy and passion cannot be measured, although you can, but not in a quantifiable way, but output you can. So for the people who challenge, saying, well, quiet, quitting isn't real and it's never been. About the work hours. You're absolutely right. My counter question would be are you improving productivity or are you improving output for the same number of hours? Is your P&L, the profit and loss statement, the profitability, improving with the same number of work hours? If not, then you've got a problem.

Speaker 2: 44:53

Who's solving the problems in your business? Is it always the two or three people? Do you take home the projects as a business leader to fix the issue? Are you always looking at there must be technological solutions to fix this. Are you looking for the silver bullets? If you said yes to any of these things, that means you're running your business in the third gear, you're not leveraging all the people in the business and you're stuck in a cycle of fixed hours and you're looking. You're stuck in a cycle of, yeah, fixed hours and you're looking for technological solutions as a way of cutting those hours because you're pressured to bring the cost of delivering that service. So, yeah, it's never been about the hours, it's about the output.

Speaker 1: 45:32

Never the output, the productivity, absolutely, and the energy and input that goes into it. Really good, all right. The second one and we have touched on this one a little bit, ishan there's a small subset out there in social media that feel like every time someone like you or I talks about quite quitting that we're blaming the staff, we're blaming the people on the shop front, and I just want to correct this right now. When we talk about this, it's not the staff's problem, this is a leadership problem. It's on the leader to create the environment where the staff are energized, inspired, motivated. It's not about the staff members.

Speaker 2: 46:14

Reflections, please, isha the staff members reflections place, they show 100, 100 and when I go through, you know all 12 chapters of my book. Um, in each of the chapters I reflect a personal experience, but there's also a global case study, all those. I don't know how many there are. There's well, theoretically there should be 24, but I know there's more than that. All of of those are exactly on that and my view is that the businesses aren't geared to get the best of the people. It's not the people's issues. There might be the extreme minority, but 98%, 99% of the people. It's not their issue. It's just that the businesses aren't geared to get the best of them.

Speaker 2: 46:53

Just to go back to the previous point, meg, about the work hours and productivity, people feel like we're being busy, right, because oh, I've got so much to do, right? No, I feel busy, but you're like, what are you busy about? Because sometimes you find again in my line of work there's always somebody with a clipboard walking around in a factory or in a warehouse looking for something. Either it's something that, oh, we're still trying to close this work order for last week there's meant to be a pallet of something. I can't find it, so they're looking for that missing pallet right, or we're looking for some part that's meant to be here because we need to quickly expedite it because somebody is screaming at the other end. So, yes, we are filling in the work hours, but how are we doing?

Speaker 2: 47:39

It is sometimes, I hate to say, comical, but I shudder when I walk into some of the businesses in Australia, thinking how did you even become so successful as you are today? Because these are well-known companies, going like you're, operating like the 30-year-old business that you started in a garage with you and dad, but you've just scaled up the same chaos and the same mindset without adopting, you know, these best practices. I guess Really good.

Speaker 1: 48:11

Isha, I'm going to put that down to this.

Speaker 1: 48:13

I say are you busy being busy or are you busy being productive? And being productive is me working on something that actually matters. So, did you fill in the time? And there's a funny movie that I'm thinking of here. Are you spending all your time doing your TPS reports or are you it's a reference there to an old movie but are you busy just doing reports or actually doing something? Are you out there doing something that moves the needle towards the ultimate goal and vision and purpose of the team and the company? Yeah, really good.

Speaker 1: 48:43

All right, ashant, I'm going to bring a short little summary and then take us to our rapid round at the end. So for the audience and there's things that you can do here quiet quitting is very real. It's not about hours, it's about unlocking discretionary energy and passion where people want to put in their absolute best on every single task that they do. That we can unlock the full capacity of our business if we focus on these seemingly disengaged people in the middle that don't feel that they are fully engaged in the workplace. Because of these reasons, because they want to feel like they're seen, they want to feel heard. They want to feel like they're valued. They want to feel like they matter. So, if we spend the time working on creating an environment where everyone feels seen, where everyone feels heard, where everyone feels valued, where they feel like they individually matter, where they feel like they collectively matter, where they feel like the work that the company do has meaning, you're going to unlock all of this passion and energy from people that really understand the business, the problems and potentially have great solutions to whatever problems that you're going to do. So you're going to unlock productivity. You're going to unlock change management. You're going to unlock new ideas on how to bring the business forward. If we give them the time, we listen to them, we give them the platforms, we give them the environment where they can do their very best work.

Speaker 1: 50:12

As Ishan said at the very start of this interview, no one turns up to work going. I'm going to be a jerk today. I'm going to be disruptive. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. Everyone wants to do their very best work, but we let things get in the way. We let things get in the way from them doing their very best work. So, as a leader, take this message away. Ask yourself this question how much time are you spending with those seemingly disengaged, or are you spending all your time dealing with troublemakers at one end or the small subset of highly productive individuals at the other end? How much time are you spending with those people in the seemingly disengaged middle, and what actions are you going to take to make them feel seen, heard and valued, so that you can co-create a new business together? All right, ishan. I'd like to take us now to our rapid round. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. So what's the one thing you know now, ishan Gallopathy, that you wish you knew when you're 20?.

Speaker 2: 51:17

That our frontline leaders in any business. So these are the leaders all the way from the bottom. You know the shop floor in manufacturing. So one level up so it could be different in your business, but these frontline leaders are the linchpins in businesses that either make or break, and they are also the unsung heroes in businesses. They're probably the most underdeveloped from point of view of giving them the skills and capabilities to be effective. So the one thing I know is that if businesses actually spend time to build capabilities, spend a little bit more time in coaching these individuals, you're going to fast track results.

Speaker 1: 52:00

Yeah, spot on, I love it. Ishan Now, as an author yourself, what is your favorite book?

Speaker 2: 52:05

Good to Great comes to mind from Jim Collins because it resonates with what I do and how I see you know of businesses improving, closely followed by Switch by Dan and Chip Heath. It's all about change management, and who doesn't like Simon Sinek's? Start With why, okay.

Speaker 1: 52:27

All right, good answers, I love it. Thanks, sishan. And what's your favorite quote?

Speaker 2: 52:32

It's an old Somalian proverb If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. I love that, and if there's one thing that I always share with businesses is stop starting start finishing.

Speaker 1: 52:56

Oh, nice one, I like both of those. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. That's one of my favorites, ishan, and it sums up beautifully the things that we've been talking about about being a multiplier, and being a multiplier means everyone, not just the high performers, at one end being a multiplier. Create an environment where everyone has a multiplication effect on each other. All right, finally, ishan, people are going to be very interested in your work around this, unlocking the seemingly disengaged and addressing some of these issues. How do people find you? How do they find a copy of the book? How do they engage with you if they'd like to know more?

Speaker 2: 53:29

Absolutely. Before I say that, as soon as you just said multiply, I'd say like that's a great book as well. Multiplies. They can always go. People want to get hold of me. Linkedin if you Google my name, you can connect. Please do If you want to get onto my fortnightly newsletter. If you go into ishangalapathycom, you can find me there and if you download what's on the homepage you get onto my newsletter. But you're probably listening to this while driving or while walking, so you're probably going like, yeah, I don't know who it is and you said something and your name's not the easiest to remember. All you need to remember is go to unlockbookcomau unlockbookcomau and that'll take you straight to the book that we were talking about and that obviously on my my website, so you can backtrack to who I am and what I do and connect with me from there brilliant.

Speaker 1: 54:29

All right, thank you, shannon. We'll put those links in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for your time today and for sharing your wisdom and insights with us today. It was a great conversation, lots of value and things that people listening can start thinking about. How you apply these principles in your workplace today. You can start today to engage with the seemingly disengaged and turn them into change agents. Thank you so much, ishan.

Speaker 2: 54:55

Thank you for the opportunity again, Mick.

Speaker 1: 54:57

You've been listening to the Leadership Project. In the next episode, it'll be a solo cast where I share my reflections from the interview with Ishan Galapathy. I'll also be sharing my personal views about quiet quitting and what can be done, and I'll be digging into some of the latest data from Gallup in their reports about engagement in the workplace and the impact on profitability. If you've been getting great value from our content, we would love it if you would leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast service. You can also subscribe to the YouTube channel where we bring you weekly live streams, video podcasts and curated videos, all about leadership, to help you become the leader that you wish you always had.

Speaker 1: 55:50

Thank you for listening to the Leadership Project at mickspearscom. A huge call out to Faris Sadek for his video editing of all of our video content, and to all of the team at TLP Joanne Goes On, gerald Calabo and my amazing wife, say Spears. I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to the Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey, as we learn together and lead together.