Curiosity as Currency, with Javan Lapp
"The shop floor is a reflection of how management thinks." ⤵️
If so, then what does your floor, clinic, or office environment say about you as a leader?
Ever walk through your workplace and feel the energy shift from area to area? That's no accident.
That's a mirror 🪞 (with no filter) held up to your leadership.
This and other powerful insights were part of my interview with Javan Lapp CEO of Keylink on the most recent episode of the Executive Hustle Podcast.
Javan has had a lightning fast career - moving him to the top of a local manufacturing company, including a successful business sale, and he shares his journey and the many valuable leadership lessons he's learned along the way.
Three key takeaways from our conversation:
▶️ Curiosity is an undervalued leadership skill. "Your leadership success hinges more on your ability to ask the right questions than in knowing the right answers," Javan explained. Great leaders are inquisitive and constantly learning.
▶️ Cross-functional communication requires translation. Early in his career, Javan realized that "everybody speaks a different language" across departments. His learned to translate between sales, operations, engineering, and finance.
▶️ Leadership is about character first. "Leadership is ultimately more about the character of the leader than about what we do," he emphasized. The actions follow from who we are.
When you are done looking 👀 at your shop floor....and reflecting. 🪞
Take a listen to this latest episode (link in the comments).
It is a #masterclass in leadership and management packed into 35 minutes of storytelling!
JAVAN LAPP BIO:
Javan Lapp is the Chief Executive Officer of Keylink, a premium aluminum railing systems manufacturer with a commitment to continuous improvement. With over a dozen years of experience across various leadership roles in manufacturing, Javan has progressed from Product Manager to COO and now CEO. A systems thinker and student of organizational development, he's passionate about creating healthy organizational teams that foster personal growth while improving scalability and delivering results. His expertise spans product development, operations, and implementing frameworks like the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and Working Genius. Alongside his primary role, Javan is an entrepreneur and partner at Lancaster Sewing Company and serves as a board member for Mennonite Life.
For more info on Javan:
The following is an AI generated transcript (errors will occur).
@5:51 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Welcome to the executive hustle podcast with me today is Java Lapp from Keylink.
He is the CEO and they offer premium aluminum railing systems with a strong commitment to their clients, distributors, focus on continuous improvement.
Javan, welcome.
@6:16 - Javan
Thank you here. It's great to be here.
@6:17 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Oh, happy to have you here. And I have to tell you that I think about you often because as I go out and sit on my deck, I'm looking at a Keylink product almost on a daily basis.
@6:28 - Javan
Yeah, railings, one of those things you don't think about until you're in the industry and you see it everywhere.
@6:34 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah.
@6:35 - Javan
Everything about railing is supposed to blend in because especially when you think about deck out the living space, it's all about enjoying the time you have there, whether you're being by yourself or whether you're enjoying it with your loved ones, friends.
That's the great thing about the outdoor living industry. I always say railing is like either a transition space. can think of it as a boundary being sort of home space.
space and maybe wild or untamed space, but a boundary might be seen also as something of an intersection between two different types of space, kind of maybe bounded space and unbounded space, but that's waxing a little philosophical about architecture, so.
@7:18 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Well, I can tell you take your product very seriously, and I know you take your role very seriously. That brings me to my first question, which is did you see yourself in aluminum railing?
Did you see yourself as a CEO? Where did you see yourself as a child? this where you thought you'd end up?
@7:35 - Javan
No, a business was not really something that was on my mind as a child. I will say I'm somebody who couldn't wait to grow up.
I thought childhood was something that had to be endured to get to being an adult, and it wasn't a bad thing.
I had a great childhood, a great family, but I definitely didn't think about business a lot and I definitely didn't think it was something that I would enjoy as much as I do.
What I didn't think about was how to make sense of the world, how to discover things, how to have an impact.
Growing up, one of the ways that happened for me was I spent a lot of reading, so I loved books.
@8:14 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Very easy to think of myself as an author.
@8:18 - Javan
I enjoyed teachers in school. I felt like they helped explain and break open the world to me in different ways.
could see myself as a teacher and an educator, and it really wasn't until I got into work environments and actually kind of by accident ended up in a manufacturing floor after college that I suddenly saw the world in a different way and realized there's all kinds of exciting things you get to learn and do and then teach others and have an impact on other people and there's lot of ways to help make the world a better place in a lot of different situations and lot of places and life.
And so, no, I fell into it by accident. I never really aspired to be a C. So I even got promoted very young.
I wasn't even looking to become a CEO. never saw a career path. had an internal organization saying, I'm going to start at the bottom and work my way up to the top.
I did my way of thinking. It kind of felt like it happened by accident. So no, definitely not something those are my sites growing up.
But a lot of twists and turns in my journey along the way. And I love it. So you're here now.
@9:30 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
You say you got promoted quickly. What was that like? Was that all within the same organization?
@9:37 - Javan
Yeah, so most of my career was in one organization. I left briefly and then actually kind of learned a little bit about sales and marketing in a startup organization, very small organization.
then things slowed down in the business cycle there. And I became a boomerang employee and came back to where I hadn't before, just a few years later.
So yeah, kind of bounced around a lot. and myself kind of pursuing opportunities that came up in a business that was growing very quickly.
And so I was given a lot of support and a lot of green lights to hey that thing needs to be done.
Why don't you why don't you be the person to go do it. So that's kind of how that happened.
@10:21 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, so it sounds like you took a lot of initiative in order to kind of rise through the ranks.
@10:29 - Javan
I did. I took initiative. don't know that rising through the ranks was exactly what it looked like at the time.
I took a lot of use. I took on projects. Other people didn't want to take on or didn't really have the resources dedicated to.
And I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about my title. Something need to be done. I did it.
I didn't sort of ask how much more will you pay me to do this?
@10:54 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, you know, what's my new title going to be?
@10:57 - Javan
I just jumped in the data and then we kind of figured it out as we want.
@11:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
So take the job. No one wants.
@11:02 - Javan
That ended up working for me. Yeah. Yeah.
@11:05 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
What's something that you learned along the way that's still serving you now?
@11:12 - Javan
I think the biggest thing for me was learning what makes other people tick, learning what's important to different people, because a lot of my work ended up being in cross functional spaces, ended up being at the intersection between different departments, learning how to translate, whether sales operations, engineering, finance, everybody speaks a different language.
And very often between departments, it's easy for people to kind of get very defensive, not understand kind of what's behind the language that people use, what they're trying to accomplish, just kind of react to what they think is being said, especially they feel like available Barb is coming their way.
So like learning to translate, learning to ask, what has been a lot of time early in my career going to peers.
and asking, what do you think should happen in the organization and that kind of helped break down silos so that kind of getting a picture of the bigger hole and not being afraid to ask questions.
know, I quickly found myself having direct reports, most of whom were older than me, most of my jobs throughout my career, most of my direct reports were older than And so not, you know, learning how to manage people that are 10, 20, 30 years, my senior, I can rely on being more knowledgeable than them.
I couldn't rely on knowing more than they did. I had to learn how to ask the right questions, how to get things done that way.
So influence, impact, asking questions, not being afraid to kind of ask the things that I don't know, but also kind of just ask people what's important and what do you really think should happen here.
@13:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Helps kind of break through the defensive barriers Yeah, so I'd love the focus on those relationships, right? it sounds like you started from a relationship focus first and Then built You know the goal or the task and that around after starting the relationship with people across these different teams Yeah, I think that's true.
@13:24 - Javan
I would say I'm not The person whose personality comes across is warm and fuzzy. So when you say relationship that probably giving me, you know We're credit that I deserve Definitely it was relationships, but it's relationships with the purpose and intent.
@13:40 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, yeah, and I tend to understand right so listening You know go appreciate and then figuring out how to build something with that, right?
@13:50 - Javan
um and every organization, right? There's negotiated trade-offs, you know Not everybody's perspective is going to win At the end of the day any healthy organization
and any organization that people enjoy being part of, those trails are working for them, right? It's, we don't just work because we add value to the organization, it's adding value to also adds value to our personal lives and our situations as well.
learning what makes people tick, yeah, it's a huge cheat code.
@14:22 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Well, and it seems one way to be a cheat code, you figured it out early, you implemented it, but you implemented it in an industry that's known, you know, more so for command and control type of management.
And so how, you know, did that really differentiate you as a different type of manager, leader, or just an individual in this company?
Was it hard to sort of infiltrate with that mindset? it catch on?
@14:50 - Javan
Yeah, I think I was lucky a little bit, I was fortunate in that the organization I was in, was a family owned business.
I scaled very quickly and was very kind of, to open a new ideas. And so that sort of command and control, old school approach to manufacturing that you kind of think of when you think of a plant floor wasn't really the culture there.
Culture, if anything suffered more from being very reactive, very unsystematic. So being thinking about process and building things more cohesively was something that was kind of missing and welcomed.
It wasn't something that was seen as a bad thing. It was just that in general, most roles were set up as very kind of narrowly defined and having authority in that area, but not really having great ways to work cross-functionally.
@15:52 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
And then you're wondering if you were bumping up against each other and having challenges?
@15:57 - Javan
Yeah, and certainly there was that.
@16:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was some siloed like that, but everybody wanted to do the right thing. At least that was my experience.
@16:07 - Javan
didn't run into lot of people who worked intentionally kind of sabotaged things.
@16:10 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
right.
@16:12 - Javan
And so, you know, believing the best in people, believing in positive intent, just realizing that sometimes the system, the structure, the roles, the processes might not have set them up to succeed.
It was also an early part of my learning as well.
@16:26 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
But it sounds like the right people, but they didn't have the right solutions, and that's kind of what you started bringing to the table.
And so, you had the environment that was right for these solutions, and it just started to click.
@16:37 - Javan
Yeah, and fortunately, there were enough of good people around and folks that influenced me, you know, and helped give me perspective that I still, you know, respect in the market today.
I think about the way they helped give me a leg up just by being free with their perspectives and saying, hey, you know, I think if we did this, it would really work, even if wasn't really their job.
And, and then and encourage me to try things and.
@17:03 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
One of the things I really like about the way you think is you do think about systems. know a recent post you had out there, was a Deming quote, which is, every system is perfectly designed to get the result it gets.
And that's not a way that a lot of the, a lot of leaders think and I'm curious, you know, how did you get to that level of understanding and how does that influence the way that you lead?
@17:30 - Javan
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, a lot of people find that sort of approach to systems thinking and personal like accountability to be at odds.
And I don't find that to be the case. Uh, I think that sometimes people, you know, good people are defeated by bad systems.
I think that you need to pay attention to that. Um, to me, that made for a whole lot more sense.
then to look at every failure in an organization or in a person that's saying they didn't have what it took or they weren't hard enough or they didn't work hard enough and that's really not how I look at my own experience.
have a lot of self doubt, I do a lot I've made a lot of mistakes. I've learned from those mistakes.
Sometimes the learning from those is learning how to evaluate the context, learning how to read the room, read the timing.
Sometimes you're the right solution but the wrong timing. Sometimes you have what would have worked but you're misapplying in the wrong context and so I tend not to think of the world as sort of a fixed world where the most successful success somehow just aren't smart enough or don't work hard enough.
I think that everybody has ways to be successful. Or I think we often define success differently. And so what I find in an organization is that when you bring a collective of people together, you're going to be most successful.
If you're very clear about defining that success, if everybody has a different definition of success, it's very hard to win, right?
It's very hard to be healthy as an organization. very hard to feel like people are valued and appreciated for what they bring to it.
And so I find these, you know, ideas, these principles of systems thinking as very helpful in understanding those sorts of things and what happens in organizations.
I also, to me as a leader, it's also very challenging because systems thinking requires me to take more responsibility.
It requires me to say that when something isn't working, the first thing I ask is, did I set my people up to succeed or did I succeed?
them up to fail. I asked that question first. Yes, every person has a responsibility. Every one of us has to choose to not respond as though we're victimized by the situation as though we have agency and choice and we get to create something with what we're given.
Like every person has that choice and that responsibility. But as leaders, we have to take extra responsibility to ask the question, did I set people up to succeed or did I set fail?
We have to take responsibility for the environment we create and to me that's a big part of it. One of the things I always find convicting is there's a quote I heard.
I believe it's a change. One of the lead manufacturing thinkers says that the shop floor is a reflection of how management thinks.
And I often tell our managers, you know, when I walk the plant floor, sometimes I'm embarrassed because I see
things on the shop floor that look chaotic. I see things that don't look clear. I see people struggling to do their job because they don't have adequate tools, resources, information about how to succeed or know what to make next.
And I don't look at it say they're being wasteful.
@21:17 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
They're wasting time.
@21:18 - Javan
I don't say this is a reflection of my thinking. I did not make things clear enough. There's clarity lacking here.
And I think if we lead with that approach, it encourages everybody else to take more responsibility. It doesn't create an excuses for people to be more lazy.
Which I think is sometimes the fear leaders have of kind of embracing that way of thinking.
@21:44 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, I love the thinking of, you know, responsibility is something that we take versus accountability being something that we give or dish out.
know, there's a much more freeing approach when we look at it that way. And there's so much responsibility to take.
take, you know, there's really enough for everybody. We don't have to take it all. But when we take our peace as leaders, we free up, I think, the opportunity for, when we make it safe for the people around us to take what's theirs.
@22:16 - Javan
Yeah, that's a great insight.
@22:17 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. I wrote down the shop floor as a reflection of how management thinks, because it could be, you know, it doesn't even have to be a shop floor, you know, was in clinical services, you could walk around a clinic and, you know, maybe it's the clinic, right?
What does that look like? What the expectations? What's the feedback loop look like? they have the reason, you know, the same type of thinking, what you're saying, wow, be, you know, could be applied anywhere.
I love that quote. I believe you, if I'm not wrong, you've used the EOS system in your scaling. Is that right?
Yes. How, how did that go? How did you navigate, you know, implementing that? do you find to be effective there or challenging?
@23:00 - Javan
Yeah, so the most critical benefit we've got, we got from using EOS, you know, entrepreneurial operating system, know, with men in this book, Traction, is the ability for leadership to have a common language.
@23:16 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Okay.
@23:17 - Javan
And I don't know. I mean, I'm a fan of EOS, there are alternatives out there, I believe, a lot of good ideas in EOS came from, from a harness and scaling up in the habits.
Okay. There, regardless of what system you use, the benefit I find in using a system and committing to an operating system is a common language and a common understanding of what that language means.
You know, we were scaling a company that was growing, we're adding people, we're adding more complex processes, we're needing to negotiate with customers and suppliers in different ways.
@24:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
is there's a lot of balls in the air and there's a lot that needs to happen.
@24:05 - Javan
There's also a lot of potential distractions, a lot of things that can take time and energy that don't actually move the ball forward.
And for us, EOS gave us a way to say what's the strategy, what's the vision, know, I was trying to implement lean manufacturing in the shop for a few years before we found EOS.
And the thing we kept running into is we could make efficiency improvements in how the shop for operated, but we struggled to tie that to larger strategic goals for the organization.
So making your processes more efficient is great, but if leadership hasn't made clear where we're trying to go and what the future of the organization is and what winning looks like, write your strategy, how you define your success, if that stuff isn't clear and
commonly understood, then you're you're going to struggle to make things more efficient. You're going to struggle to optimize systems and processes in a way that you might.
You may do it in a way that detracts from the direction management ends up going. Exactly.
@25:17 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah.
@25:17 - Javan
what I found is every time we attempted to have a high level, you know, discussion about the future and where we're going is there was different assumptions.
@25:27 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Finance showed up assuming, hey, we're a manufacturing company, know, 5% growth per year is good, sustainable, we're not going get too much trouble doing that.
@25:39 - Javan
Sales was looking at our industry and saying we have a really neat product, people really want, there's huge demand here.
so sales is thinking in terms of we can do 15, 20% growth if we had the right resources behind us.
no wonder sales and finance.
@25:56 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
That's a big difference.
@25:58 - Javan
We're like oil and water in every discussion. Right. You're using something like EOS laying out our strategic goals, right, EOS uses the idea of like a like a 10 year target and a three year picture.
@26:16 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
And you take your priorities for the year using something like that that was simple and got us all speaking the same language and surface some of those assumptions that different apartments and parts of the company head, and God is talking to each other at that level rather than just fighting about the execution, the tactics, right, those were game changers for us.
There's no doubt about it. Mm hmm. That's exceptional. So it really connected the efforts of that process level improvement with the executive level strategy improvement and kind of put you all on the same page.
Yeah. That's outstanding. So success is a lousy teacher, what's been a challenging leadership moment or even outright failure that has really altered your course of action or taught you something really
meaningful.
@27:02 - Javan
Yeah, that's a great question. I've made a lot of mistakes. When I look back at mistakes, I think there's sort of two things you look at, right?
There's the actions and you look back and you say, the shorter what it could have, I should have done something different.
What I think is more interesting is to also look at the thinking behind it, like what puts that frame of mind.
A little bit of background, like being promoted very young, quickly and not feeling like I necessarily had the qualifications, the resume, to be doing the job that I was trying to do with the amount of direct reports that I had, I was thrown into a situation that really felt like sink or swim.
I call this underwater leadership because it often felt like I was underwater. I was thrown off the deep end and it was sink or swim and I felt like I was
order, you know, half the time. And with that came a lot of like, insecurity and self doubt, like, am I doing the right stuff?
I got to show results, I got to do things. I don't know what I don't know. And I have to not to trust that I'm not able to do something here if going to be successful.
So I think when I look at most of my mistakes, it kind of comes back to not even not trusting my own instincts.
So I think sometimes it's easiest leaders to kind of think that somewhere out there, there's this leadership rulebook. There's the things that we should do.
And we should like, these are the right things to do. And I think I've kind of learned over time, like my maturing process has been that, you know, there isn't a mythical leadership rolebook.
@28:52 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Wait, I thought we were going to talk about that.
@28:56 - Javan
Well, I haven't found it.
@28:57 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
So if you know,
@29:00 - Javan
that it exists.
@29:01 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Well, you're pretty well read. So if you haven't found it, then I'm going to trust that it's not out there.
Maybe we can write it.
@29:08 - Javan
So like to me, it's like learning to trust my own instincts, right? And part of this is the belief that leadership is ultimately more about the character of the leader.
@29:17 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yes.
@29:18 - Javan
Then about what we do.
@29:20 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah.
@29:21 - Javan
Obviously, what we do matters, it comes out out of who we are. But if we're not focused on the character and kind of who we are, we're going to get it wrong more often than we get it right, which has often been my experience is getting wrong more often.
I think, you know, the reflection, like the character of clear over longer period of time. And I think it's very easy to misjudge leaders' character and intention when you only look at like isolated situations.
@30:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
about context. Sure. Sure.
@30:02 - Javan
And so, you know, for me, part of it, part of learning and growing as a leader was learning that part of the job is acceptance, that I'm going to be misunderstood at times.
Right?
@30:12 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
I'm going to look like a bad guy, and I just have to accept that.
@30:16 - Javan
At the same time, like, I can't use that as an excuse to be a jerk.
@30:19 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Right. Beautiful. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, you do give away the right to be liked by everybody, but you do you have to be like a ball.
@30:29 - Javan
Well, I mean, at the end of the day, like, the job is influencing people, right? So, that gets hard when not everybody is going to see the kind of long term best of the organization, when that's your job, right?
Like, when your job involves steering an organization to a future state, that's not the current reality.
@30:49 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Like, you have to know you're going to get hate mail, like, maybe not literally, but you're going to get their reality and their perception of what they can see if they're if you're at the top of the mountain, you can see the next mountain, because that's the vision.
the future state. Most of the company is now on the top of mountain with you. They're somewhere along the way, on the way up.
And their reality is very different than reality.
@31:08 - Javan
Yeah. And the top part of that sometimes is even when you're the person who sees that, and that's your job to see that, is sometimes you don't always know how we're going to get from here to there.
@31:18 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Absolutely.
@31:20 - Javan
And that can be frustrating. Personally, it can also be very frustrating to your team, because you're trying stuff. And sometimes it feels like you're just throwing them against the wall, and it doesn't work.
But the job is right to have along from the best of the of mind. And as long as you keep that mind, instead of kind of chasing the adulation of everybody, but outside the organization, outside the organization, you have to remember, like, if that's what you're going for, if you're going to be like by everybody, it will keep you from doing the hard things that you need to do.
@31:53 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Leadership is not for you if that's your main motivator. Yeah, you're seeing that feeling fail a lot. I definitely didn't always
@32:00 - Javan
Trust my instincts right I ended up acting too slowly on what I knew was the right thing You know whether it's really like the people and putting people in the right positions or moving them out of positions Very they couldn't stay um Sometimes you like that's a lesson.
Almost everybody has to learn the hard way Yeah Yeah, well you want to be nice and and it's used nice and kind and that's for a long term um, but ultimately like A lack of courage or indecisiveness like I found is often tied to my own self doubt and so like learning to Trust my instincts.
Um Rather than saying well, I probably have this wrong Because I am so new as a leader or you know, I don't have experience in this area Um, like that's been a learning curve.
Um, of course Taking that tent kind of egotistical place and becoming a jerk about it Is a whole other problem Um, the downfall
about many other leaders. But yeah, for sure. I find that like insecure leaders feel need to exercise like increasing degrees of control and like consolidate power, silence, contrarian voices.
like learning to focus on influence staying focused on how do you influence how do you impact results? How do you influence how people are thinking about I mean, it's the very first thing you started with, which was I wanted to find out how what made people tick, was important to them and get those in the white space kind of conversations going.
@33:42 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
So it seems like that's where you started and that's where you're still at in terms of one of the very key aspects to your leadership.
And I know self reflection is really important to you. You're always sort of thinking through and talking through things that you have done or will doing and thinking about your own.
self as a leader. And I know I think you're certified through working genius. And that's been something also that you've used as a reflective tool.
Talk to me about that in terms of how it's helped you understand yourself as a leader, your team, because that's probably something some listeners use as well.
I'm curious your experience on that.
@34:19 - Javan
Yeah, I like evaluation tools because they give you a language for understanding things.
@34:25 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
I'm looking for about putting too much stock in one kind of way of categorizing people.
@34:32 - Javan
I think there's a lot of pitfalls there, but what I have found it is it is helpful to have kind of a common language and be familiar with their own.
One of the things I like about working genius, I also like Kobe, is a focus on understanding people's preferred working styles and what types of work people lean into.
I've seen this over time. Some people do their best work when they're responding to a stimulus. from the environment or from another person.
Other people aren't doing their best work kind of being that disruptive force. Some people think about their work in terms of tasks and how they get it done.
Other people think about their work in terms of people and who they have to talk to and who they have to kind of have conversations with.
And so these tools are helpful for that. Working genius in particular is one of those things that was tied to a kind of a theory or a reflection, I would say of how work gets done and different things work.
And I find that much more helpful than sort of a discussion about whether somebody's an extrovert or an introvert or something like Absolutely, yeah, more labels.
@35:41 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, it seems more actionable in terms of where you get in your energy, what's gonna excite you, where do you wanna put your time, where do you best work?
getting to know people which is really one of your secret things that you've offered here.
@35:56 - Javan
Yeah, building teams is critical to the success of any organization. And, you know, I'm always looking for how do you create those synergies, how do you create that moment where, you know, a team becomes bigger or better than the sum of its parts.
And I feel like working genius, you know, begins to get at that when you think about like, what are the different, what are the different geniuses of their language, what are the different right skill sets, drives that you have.
I find it interesting with working genius too, is like, they make a distinction between, you know, what you might necessarily be good at, and where you derive joint energy from.
And I think that's crucial too, because I think unfortunately there's a lot of people, you know, kind of in jobs that have never really reflected on that.
And sometimes there is a difference. I mean, I think in general, like where you find energy, like you tend to lean into that kind of work more and so you tend to get better at it.
But sometimes that isn't always the case. so it's easy to experience burnout if you're not aware. of what types of work you experience more flourishing in.
@37:06 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
It also goes back. It's more information that goes back to that intersection you referenced earlier, which is that systems versus the individual intersection.
And the system is what are you being asked to do, reinforced for doing, those kinds of things. then the individual is like, where are my motivations and my preferences and how to un-skills and how those interact?
@37:26 - Javan
Yeah, and the better those line up, the more success work could be in the long term. I always say employment is a negotiation between myself and employer.
I remember that when I'm having to have conversations with people, whether it's hiring or firing or discipline conversations, there's no wall that says you need to work in one company for after career or your career.
And so learning to look for what makes sense for you, I think is key. That's my primary goal. want to see people flourish and grow.
Um, whether I mean, hopefully, uh, most times want that to be working for me and working in the company that I'm in.
Uh, but sometimes it's not the best answer for them. And, and I need to be open to that.
@38:13 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, sometimes that's very freeing for them, but they need to sort of have the, the, um, or the permission to have that thought.
Right.
@38:24 - Javan
and, you know, we talk about turnover and attrition lot when we look at people's statistics. I always want to say, you know, there's limits to that because, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that just because your turnover exists, that it's bad.
You know, there are people who graduate from jobs and sometimes leaving doesn't mean they're dropped out.
@38:43 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Sometimes it means they're a graduate of the job that they're in. Yeah, outstanding. You're growing them. know growing leaders is one of the things that you love to do.
As you've been, you know, training and promoting and mentoring. Have you found there to be an undervalued leadership skill that you.
promoted within your own development areas with leaders?
@39:08 - Javan
Yeah, curiosity. I definitely say curiosity, learning to be inquisitive. It's so underrated. know, oftentimes, people think leadership means that you have the right answers.
@39:23 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
That's never been my experience, right?
@39:25 - Javan
yeah, your leadership success hinges more on your ability to ask the right questions than in knowing the right answers.
It's not how much you know, but the ability to move people forward that is key to leadership success. you all are going ask the right questions.
@39:41 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
You are preaching to the choir. My three values for the podcast are curiosity, vulnerability and ownership. So you hit one of my nails on the head right there.
Absolutely. Where are you still growing as a leader? Where are you still trying to develop?
@40:02 - Javan
That's a great question. So many areas. There's about that story. don't have that much time.
@40:08 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Do you just have to pick one? Yeah, I've got pick one.
@40:11 - Javan
So for me, the area that I think about a lot is communication. So I have a lot to do to grow in communication, just making sure that people are clear and I where we're going.
And then celebrating when we're making progress and where we're going. So I think early in my career, got so used to being misunderstood and had to learn less than about not needing to be liked, that sometimes I shrink from having the conversations and bringing people along as much as I can.
The other thing is I'm a whole lot better, of one-on-one, explaining things to people, and explaining things to learn more.
a bunch of people is something that I need to get better at doing.
@41:03 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Okay. So talking in front of crowds and then, you know, in general, when you're speaking about communication, are you thinking it's just frequency, getting the messages out more frequently that you want to be working on?
@41:15 - Javan
Yeah. I, and some of it is just making sure people know where we're going and why things matter, right?
know, is part of it is, part of influencing is like you have to be prepared to be influencing your people at the level of what they believe is important.
And sometimes, you know, I don't like to be commanding controls. I don't like to be, I'm fine not being allowed to voice in the room.
@41:40 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah.
@41:41 - Javan
I don't need to be the guy up front. I'm fine working behind the curtain. And sometimes just learning that part of the job requires me to be clear that people know what's most important to me.
And, and sometimes, sometimes that feels a little selfish to me.
@41:59 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Like, they really have.
@42:00 - Javan
to know what's most important to Javan. so just learning to sometimes get myself out of the way and be like, hey, this is where the company's going.
Here's what's most important to what we're trying to accomplish. I need you all thinking about this is really important.
And just being able to have that conversation.
@42:19 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
And again, like you said, it's frequency, right? You can't say something once. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
@42:24 - Javan
don't believe you when you say it once. You're people don't remember you when you say it once. Right. They need to be able to, you need to be so annoying saying the same things that they can hear you and finish your sentences for you in their own heads, right?
And you really have to push on those most important things.
@42:45 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, I was coached one time to really think about, you know, when you walk into the room, you want people already coming to you and saying, you're here to tell us about this, aren't you?
Right? Like they already know what you're coming to say because you've said it so many times. you know you have enough messaging out there.
Yeah, and you just really yourself got just about that. I mean, I know I was like, I feel like a neck, right?
But there's a, I think there's creativity potentially to how many different ways can we say this or to a podcast, previous episode, you know, had Matt's on, we talked about storytelling.
So how can I have stories that communicate the messages that are important to both an internal and external audience.
so that I think is a lover for leaders as well. So what's next for you for the company? What's exciting you?
@43:39 - Javan
What is inspiring you? Yeah, I feel like I'm learning a lot right now in the season. You know, I was part of a family owned company for a long time.
I got to help build and scale that, introduce systems to it. You different layers of governance, you know, build leadership team, went through some market cycles, learned a lot of.
about that, and then recently helped the owner sell the company. So we're now owned by a larger company strategic private equity back play.
So that's a whole new world learning a lot, getting to interact with a lot of people who are really good at what they do kind of throughout the country.
So I'm right now enjoying learning all I can about that. And I think the next phases continue to grow leaders.
I think it's all my passion for that comes from that sort of experience to underwater leadership as a young leader.
And one of things I was really scared of for years was I kind of had this picture in my head.
don't know where it came from, to be honest. in Greek mythology, who's the character? It's Icarus, I believe, who flies too close to the sun.
And I often worry that that was going to be like my experience in leadership was that I was going to kind of rise to or really get and kind of not have the goods to go the distance.
And so, and I feel like I've seen that happen to other people. so, I wanted to kind of avoid that fate.
And so, you know, investing in myself and making sure that I'm around to help other leaders, investing themselves is something I want to keep on doing.
@45:30 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Well, it sounds like now you're back into a bigger pond, right? Being into a bigger strategic, larger company and have the opportunity maybe to grow and develop inside that larger system.
So, right back to where you want to be again.
@45:47 - Javan
Yeah. interesting.
@45:49 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
cool. Very exciting. Very exciting. Well, this has been a great conversation. are so many nuggets and opportunities for listeners to take away.
Really thoughtful comments and suggestions from your conversation. I'm going to highlight a couple of things that I took away and hopefully I can get them straight on all the notes I took.
at the top of my page, I wrote the shop floor as a reflection of how management thinks. And I think if nothing else, we take that away, that's huge, right?
That actually brings us to the systems thinking piece, which is where we as the leader of the organization are taking responsibility, are we setting up our people for success?
And I love how you highlight that. That is not in conflict with accountability. And I think that's really important because what we don't want to stick away personal accountability, but we do want to take ownership as leaders and companies for setting up the environment for success for our people.
So I just love that. I think that's really huge as a fellow systems person. And I love where you started, which was learning how people tick, what
makes them thick, what's important to them, translating between departments. one of my favorite books is that leading the white space book, you know, Gary Rumler, and just that type of thinking that that's where really the work happens in a company, not on these org charts, you know, where people have just their names and boxes, but it's between those boxes where the actual sausage gets made, right?
So I just love that great, great, great, takeaways for listeners today. If they want to find out more about Keeling or connect with you, Javen, how might they do that?
@47:34 - Javan
Sure, companies at KeylinkOnline.com I'm a LinkedIn look me up there
@47:36 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Awesome. And I'll have both of those things on the show notes. So thank you so much for an awesome conversation today.
@47:44 - Javan
Thanks, Kirsten. All right, take care.
