Quit Losing Talent

Quit losing talent! Mike Harbour, President of Harbour Resources and leadership development expert, shares his insights on leadership training and development in the healthcare industry. Mike also discusses the challenges faced by mid-level leaders, such as the shortage of workers and the lack of purpose in their work. He highlights the significance of effective communication and the need for leaders to model good communication skills.

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Subscribe to the Talent Empowerment Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@TomFinnovation 

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📌TALKING POINTS

04:18 Balancing Assertiveness with Kindness and Empathy

07:10 Managing Financial Motivation vs. Putting Goodness Out in the World

10:06 Helping New Leaders Model the Right Way to Cut Expenses

13:15 Challenges Faced by Mid-Level Leaders in Today's Market

18:29 The Importance of Effective Communication in Leadership

23:19 Building a Leadership Brand and Changing the Status Quo

29:02 Developing the Next Evolution of the US Healthcare System

34:02 Strategic Planning and Preventive Leadership

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🔗CONNECT WITH MIKE

• Website: https://www.harbourresources.com/

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🔗CONNECT WITH TOM

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Tom Finn (00:00.746)

Welcome, welcome my friends. Today we are learning from Mike Harbour. Mike, welcome to the show.

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MIke Harbour (00:05.854)

Hey Tom, glad to be here man, thanks for the invite.

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Tom Finn (00:08.746)

I am thrilled to have you on the show today. There is a ton to learn from you. And if you don't know Mike, let me take just a second and introduce you to his rich background. He spent over 20 years in the healthcare industry as a leader in hospital operations, in leadership training and development. He's done sales, talent management and executive search. Now he's the founder of Harbour Resources and he's got one mission and that is to help build great leaders full stop. And he started his own personal and leadership development, sort of work on himself with 12 years in the army. And then he entered corporate America and look, he's coached and interviewed and mentored tens of thousands of leaders since a time called 1999, which seems like a long time ago, at this point. 

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So Mike, welcome to the show. Thrilled to have you on. And I just want to know with your extensive leadership background and your work you've done in healthcare, help me understand in our audience. What makes you different in leadership training and development?

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MIke Harbour (01:08.478)

Yeah, thanks Tom for the great question and thanks for the warm welcome as well. You know, 1999 seems like yesterday to me, probably like it does you. That's, man, I can't believe where I'm at today. I was 29 in 1999, so I'm 54 today. So, you know, here we are 25 years later still trying to figure out, you know, how to be a better leader, right? I'm still trying to figure that out. I think that's part of maybe what makes me a little bit different in the space of leadership development and coaching. I grew up with very, very poor modeling in my home and lots of dysfunction there. And I was really seeking leadership out. I needed leadership in my own life and I really didn't know where to go. And back when I was growing up, maybe much like you, Tom, there wasn't really like mentoring back then, it was just, hey, just keep your mouth shut and go do your job, right? And then I wanted to do a better job of leadership and leading. And I kind of thought leadership, as you can tell, I'm kind of loud and proud, maybe a little bit aggressive. And that seemed to work a little bit in the Army when you've got rank on your shoulder. 

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But luckily, Tom, I had a great leader in my life in the Army that said, Mike, you've got a lot of potential but you need to grow and develop. And he gave me a book, the first book I ever read, Tom, I was 23 at the time, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And it really changed my life, right? I mean, I've read the Bible since, that's been a great book. And I've read hundreds and hundreds of books since then as well, all books. But that book changed my life because I finally found something I liked to read. I was a high school and college guy but I never read anything but the Cliff Notes or the Table of Contents just enough to get by. And so I think what makes me different is just a hunger to grow and continually look for ways to get better, right? And then also knowing that I was promoted quickly in all kinds of different, whether it be in the military or even civilian war, I promote quickly in those roles because of my aggressiveness or my assertiveness, my ability to execute, which is what happens a lot in corporate America, by the way, when you really get down to it. I mean, people get promoted because they've been in a role the longest, somebody leaves and, hey, Tom, you've been here a while, you're the next leader. Hey, Tom, you do a good job, you're the next leader. And most of them don't know how to lead, right? Most people don't know how to lead. And so that's, I think because I've been in those shoes, I know how to help people lead more effectively, I know how to coach and teach that from a grassroots level up to the executive level. I think that's what I bring to the table that maybe someone who has a pedigree of an MBA or something like that, which I do not have, not that there's anything wrong with those, but mine is like on the ground leading and learning, really in the trenches of leadership.

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Tom Finn (04:18.09)

Yeah, look, you mentioned aggressiveness a couple of times in your commentary. So how do you balance in today's modern world that kind of core aggressiveness, which we all need to embody to move forward in some way. But how do you balance that with kindness, empathy, core leadership qualities that bring people together?

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MIke Harbour (04:39.742)

Man, I love that question because that's probably where I had to go soul -searching the most. I had to do the most personally. I had to grow the most in that area because I grew up in a home where, you know, a lot of abuse, a lot of physical abuse. I really left home without empathy or compassion for other people, Tom, to be real honest with you because, you know, I grew up that way. I didn't have anybody to really save me. And I'm like, why should I have to save anybody? Right? I had to do it the hard way. 

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So number one, I think, the only way you can balance that is, is you've got to be really self -aware, which meant I had to do a lot of like work. I had to work in that area and I still have to work in that area because I can go, you know, I can go empathetic or compassionate for about this long and then I'm ready to get something done. Okay, Tom, we've, we've, you know, we've, we've had this soft conversation long enough. Let's, let's go do something now. Right? That's what my assertiveness takes over. 

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But I think you really have to learn to care for people and having kids, Tom, really changed my life. I mean, I had my first child when I was 31 years old, so I was an older parent. My son was born when I was almost 31. And that was kind of another phase where, one, I didn't want to raise my kids the way I was raised. And then I just, I learned to be compassionate, empathetic, loving with my kids with really, and then that kind of that shift said, okay, someday my kids are going to work for leaders. And I want to help leaders lead more effectively, right? And so I started working on this empathy, compassion. I have a wife who's very compassionate, by the way. And thank God we still wouldn't be together because she had her challenges with me early on. But I think we can learn to be empathetic. We can learn to be compassionate. We can learn to I'm a mentee of John Maxwell and he teaches the law of connection, learning to connect with someone's heart before you ask them for a hand where my original style, Tom, was, hey, Tom, you got to get this done. We got to get this project done. We've got to take this heel. And that was the way I led with that versus, hey, Tom, what's going on in your life? How's your family doing? What are things that are getting in the way of you being really successful in the role that you're in? Kind of connecting with you first before I ask you to take the hill. And those are learned skills and certainly I was able to do it and I think anybody can do that as well.

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Tom Finn (07:10.506)

Yeah, I love the way you put that. I think people want to know that you care about them before you ask for something, right? That's, that's pretty, it feels like common sense once you say it, but that's not how we all behave. Most of the time we go in and say, can we sell you this thing? can we partner on this deal? Right. And some of that is financially motivated. How much do you think leaders are managing this sort of financial motivation? versus sort of putting goodness out in the world. What do you think that balance looks like?

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MIke Harbour (07:42.43)

I think we do a poor job of it in the world. I mean, I just had this conversation with someone yesterday. When a company's bottom line is struggling, the first thing they do is say, where can we cut people, right? Where can we cut expenses? And it comes in the form of people. And oftentimes, the people who get cut are the ones who need the money the most. Let's just be honest. It's those front-line workers who are working paycheck to paycheck. They're trying to feed their families.

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And then, you know, what happens, Tom, is that we lay these people off and then when finances get better, we ask them to come back to work for us and be loyal and love us, right? Hey, we gave you your job back. We're great people, right? We have it backwards. And look, I'm a capitalist, right? I've been self-employed since 2006. I want to make as much money as I can, but I also want to take care of people. I want to do it from a place of heart, you know, that and, you know, I've learned along the way, and I think it was Zig Ziglar that said this, if we help enough other people get more of what they want, we'll get a whole lot more of what we want, right? 

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And I think if leaders and organizations, companies would look at things through that filter, how can we help our team get more of what they want? They'll give us, they'll produce more for us. They'll find ways to cut expenses without us cutting bodies, without us, you know, doing layoffs. I think there's a lot of things we could do if, if leaders learn to look through a different lens versus just, we got a bottom line issue and we got to make a cut right now. We do a poor job of that in America, especially. And I don't, I don't, I don't say I have all the fixes, but I think there's a lot of things we could do much better. And it begins with just looking through a heart lens versus a profit lens.

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Tom Finn (09:37.514)

Yeah, look, there's lots of things you can cut in a business. Certainly software expenses, those types of things. You can cut programs. You can do those, before that you move to headcount and human capital, but let's be honest, headcount human capital is the most or largest component of anybody's, income statement, right? It really, it really is. I mean, that's where the lion's share of the money of a company goes as people. And for, for good cause, people make the business.

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So how do you take a new leader that's probably struggling with this? Let's just put it all out on the table. You got a good person who's a good leader, who's trying to lead with their heart, but at the end of the day, they've got to cut, because maybe the revenue side isn't where it needs to be. They've got to cut expenses. How do you help them model the right way to do that?

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MIke Harbour (10:27.518)

Yeah, I think, wow, it's a great question because a lot of companies I work with, I'm working with leaders on the front line or mid -level leaders, right? And so they're being managed by a C-suite, C-leader that's asking them to make those changes or those cuts or find money in their departments, right? And then, or even create a more productive team. They've got to improve productivity. So I think first, leaders have to be educated on the business side of things, right? I mean, we don't do a good job. 

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In some of the work I've done, I don't think leaders really understand the business of leadership, which is what you're talking about, those financial things and how people are their biggest expense. I mean, I think they know that, but they're not educated on that. And so educating them on the business side of leadership is very, very important, but how do we then educate them on the heart side of leadership as well? Connecting to Tom's heart and helping him understand that, hey, I need more out of you, Tom. I need you to show up. I need you to be a good teammate. 

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There's a lot of conversations that have to happen that are hard for leaders, but I need you to do that in order for us to continue to improve our bottom line so we don't have to make cuts in our people. And I don't think there's easy answers to that, but I think we have to educate leaders on the business side of leadership, as well as the heart side of leadership, and then teach them how to communicate both of those as transparently as they can with their team, which let's just be honest, most leaders aren't trained on how to have those conversations. They come in and they just say, I've been told by the CEO, we got to cut people and you're one of them, right? I mean, that's where that conversation goes. I think we even have to teach them how to like I write in my book, Quit Losing Talent, one of my strategies is the release strategy. We have to learn to release people well. So even if we do have to, we fire them, let's have a great release well conversation, or if we have to do a reduction in force, which is a different conversation, we're not firing them, we're laying them off. That has to come from a place of like real compassion, real empathy, because we're impacting their families. I mean, if they have a spouse and kids, we're impacting their families and we want to do a great job of that so that when things are loosened up a little bit, they want to come back because we treated them really well. They're not going to want to go to another organization. They'll come back to us and be that loyal, loving person that I mentioned earlier that they need to be or we need them to be.

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Tom Finn (13:15.018)

Yeah. And in addition, right, you're trying to maintain your own brand performance, with employees and there's no bigger thumbs up or thumbs down in the marketplace than somebody who's worked for the company, and speaks highly of the organization, even though maybe it hit tough times or speaks poorly of an organization because they were treated unfairly or improperly. So all of those are critical points. I want to bring up something that you touched on and I think it's really important. You said, look, I work with mid -level leaders, new managers, frontline folks that are the core of the business infrastructure. There's a lot of people in those roles, right? From, there's only a few people at the executive level at any company. And most of the managers and most of the scale comes from that kind of core middle. What do you see as the biggest challenges that those folks are facing in their day-to-day activities in today's market?

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MIke Harbour (14:08.254)

Yeah, great question. I want to come back to that, Tom, and hit on something. What you said about employees we've let go and our employee brand. I'll write about that in my book as well. The people we let go. 

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One of the things I define a quit losing talent culture as when people leave us, they leave us as better people. We're going to lose people from time to time. Even if we're a great leader, great company. They're going to leave and go out into the marketplace for different reasons. A promotion that wasn't available for them here. They had to move or whatever. But when they leave us, they should leave us number one as better people, but they should also leave us as a recruiter for us. If we've done a great job, like developing them and growing them and helping them be better people, they're going to tell the marketplace, they're going to be like a stealth recruiter for us, right? I mean, they're going to recruit for us without us even knowing it because they're going to tell the marketplace about us. So just wanted to add that. I think I didn't want our listeners to miss that. You have an impact that ripples out into the marketplace, whether you know it or not, even when you lose people. So part of that release well process is important. 

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Now let's come back to the challenges that people are facing. Right now, especially in the spaces I'm working, I do most of my work in healthcare, but about 15, 20 % of my work is outside the healthcare space. Right now, the biggest challenge they're facing is more work than they can do with the amount of people they have. I think there's such a shortage of people in the workplace, in the workforce. I don't think there's a shortage of people. There's maybe a shortage of people willing to work or work as hard as maybe what you and I did, Tom, and I'm not saying that's wrong. I just think we haven't done a good job as especially Gen X leaders of connecting purpose to the work that's there, right? And what we know and this research tells us this is people aren't burnt out on work. They're burnt out because of purposeless work, right? And so we have to do a better job as leaders to connect. What they do, even if it's sweeping the floor, there's a huge purpose behind that, right? Especially in the healthcare space, I teach this a lot. The housekeepers are some of the most important people in a healthcare organization because they keep the place clean, they keep infection down, they make the family feel comfortable when they come in to see their loved ones who are in the hospital. And so if we can learn to connect purpose to place, right? I mean, purpose has to become before place. And if we have purpose, place is going to be really good, people will come to us, right? It's the old build it and they will come type of philosophy as we heard in the movie Field of Dreams. So some of those challenges is leaders aren't communicating purpose, number one. So people come to work, not really excited to do it because I just got to go do that stinking job again.

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And so a lack of communication is one of their challenges. The other thing that I think this generation behind us wants more is they're not self-driven to grow themselves without the organization doing it for them. Maybe our generation, the GenX generation, we were self -motivated to grow. We'll go, like I said at 23, I started studying leadership and personal growth and mindset and human psychology. I've been doing that for 30 years now the generation behind us, they need a path. And so one of the challenges I think they face is they come to work and they don't really see the path of how they get to the next rung on the ladder. They hear the leader saying, you need to work harder, you need to do that job better, but they don't really give them a path of how to get there. And they want a path to that purpose as well. Like how do I connect what I'm doing? What are the skills I need to learn to really fulfill that purpose? So companies and leaders have to do a better job of, of drawing the map. Think like you're the navigator. Use a GPS today to draw the map from where they are to where we need them to go. And again, it's the purpose, but it's the path to get there. It requires a leader to be really great at communicating time.

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Tom Finn (18:29.258)

Well, that is a bomb right at the end of your commentary communication. I mean, that, that seems to be the one thing that people struggle with the most. I mean, every generation, this isn't generational. We're not picking on anybody here. but, but communication is the hardest skill perhaps to, to learn, and to figure out how to use effectively. How do you, how do you do that with this workforce today? How do you teach them how to be a more effective communicator?

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MIke Harbour (18:57.342)

Yeah, I think first of all, we have to be a model of what we expect. So as I mentioned earlier, you know, my home life, there was no modeling for good leadership or communication time. My parents, I thought they were going to kill each other every day of my life. I mean, it was flammable every day, right? So I left home with zero ability to communicate with other people effectively. I mean, I could yell at people, I could tell people to do stuff, but to communicate effectively, I didn't have any skill at doing that. 

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So I think the first thing, if we want to impact this generation, to be better at it, we've got to go to work on ourselves. And I call it having an appointment with the mirror. You know, as a leader every day, I've got to get up and look in the mirror and say, okay, how am I going to communicate today? What am I going to do to communicate more effectively? What skill do I need to learn? For me, I need to lower my voice. I'm loud. I'm aggressive, I'm assertive, I need to lower my voice, I need to soften my approach, I need to ask more questions. I have to say that to myself every day in the mirror, Tom, and I've been studying this for 30 years, right? But I need to be a student of what great communication is, first of all. We also need to understand what communication, it's more than the words that we say, it's our tone of voice, it's our body language and how we use that when one of our employees comes into our office and they're trying to talk to us and we've got our head in the computer and they need a real conversation and we're kind of ignoring them, talking at them, not with them because we're still looking at the computer screen or typing on the computer. Leaders call it multitasking, but it's really creating multi -problems because you didn't hear what you needed to hear there.

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And that's the real essence of leadership is really being able to hear what's not being said oftentimes. So I think first step to help this generation communicate better is I've got to be a model of that. I've got to learn, I've got to study, I've got to practice good communication. And the second step is when I'm communicating with someone, this generation behind us, Tom, they were born with a digital device in their hand, right? And so, they like to communicate maybe through text or Twitter and through their phone and those kind of things, but so much of that can be miscommunicated. And so we have to step in and say, hey Tom, I know you like text messages, but I just want to make sure we have a personal connection here. And let's put our phones down. Tell me what's going on in your life. Again, I'm going back connecting to the heart. Tell me what's going on in your life. Tell me what's going on with the team. How are you connecting with the team? Tell me some of the challenges of work. I call these talent lock conversations. I write about them in my book, Talent Lock Conversations. What can I do to have a good heart connection so that I can get this talent locked in? 

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Once I've done that, Tom, I've built trust, then I can communicate maybe hard things, challenging things. Then I can teach them, hey, this is what real communication is, Tom. It's not going out to Facebook or Twitter or TikTok and posting a video about one of your coworkers because you hate them and they did something wrong in the workplace. It's really putting those devices down and having a human to human flesh to flesh conversation to work through those differences and those challenges. But again, it begins with me, the leader, right? I've got to model that with them. I can't just say, hey, Tom, you need to communicate better with your teammates. You need to communicate better with your customers. That's telling people that's not educating people. As leaders, we have to be coaches.

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Tom Finn (22:44.042)

Yeah, that's, that's a great way to look at the world and it starts, I always say point the thumb, not the finger. and if you point the thumb, you hold yourself accountable first. And so everything that you're asking your team to do, everything that you're looking for your team to accomplish, you should be doing first as a leader. And if you can lead by that example, then good things happen and people stay and they want to be on your team and people from other divisions or departments want to come work on your team. And that's how you build your leadership brand. And it all starts with, you know, pointing the thumb, not the finger and holding yourself accountable. So I'm, I'm with you 100 % on this philosophy.

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MIke Harbour (23:19.742)

Yeah, I love that. I want to speak to leadership brand. Just man, I love that you use that terminology. I talk a lot about employee, employer brand, company brand. And I have a lot of leaders tell me, you know, our company culture sucks. You know, we have leadership that doesn't care. It's we can't recruit people because the culture is bad. And I always just tell them, start with you. Like you build your own leadership brand. You build a culture that no one can deny that it's great, that it works. You build a culture that people in other departments around the organization want to come work for you because your leadership brand is so solid. And once you do that enough, then that will start to have a ripple effect through the rest of the organization because either leaders, other leaders will raise their own bar or they'll extract themselves from the organization because you're putting so much, it's peer pressure, right? It's if they, I mean, some leaders will stand around, they'll talk about Tom and say, Tom thinks he's better than anybody else. It's not that, it's just that I'm trying to create a brand. Tom's trying to create a brand that's better. So it attracts because your ability as a leader and your effectiveness as a leader is only as good as the team that you build. But you've got to have a culture that attracts better people and can keep better people. And it begins with you, your leader brand as Tom talked about.

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Tom Finn (24:39.37)

Yeah, look, I appreciate you doubling down on that. Cause I think it's really important. I'm trying to understand your brand. Here's the other thing that people don't talk about Mike, and we should take a second on it. When you stand up for something and you stand up for people, you will rub some people the wrong way. And that's okay. It's totally okay. If you're doing the right thing and you're standing up for your team and you're standing up for your organization, you're doing it the right way there will be some people that throw some darts and you got to be ready for that. What do you think about that?

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MIke Harbour (25:13.534)

Man, I love it. I'm going to make somebody mad right here, but there, I don't remember who said this, but there's an old quote. If, if, if you want everybody to like you sell ice cream, right? And then a great example of what you're talking about right now, Tom, and you may not like this guy or not, but there's a guy named Deion Sanders. He rubs a lot of people wrong, right? Because of what he stands for, how he says it, he can be brash, but he has a, he has an odd in his mind about what great coaching and great leadership and great human being and great man should be. He has this ideal and he stands up for that. And he doesn't really let anybody cross that line with him. Doesn't mean he's perfect. He's not a perfect guy. That's the real issue I think we have in America as they look at a guy like Deion or anybody else for that matter. They think, well, Deion thinks he's perfect. He's never said that. I mean, matter of fact, he'll probably say I'm far from perfect, but he had an ideal that he's trying to raise. 

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You know, I'm a huge sports fan. You can tell Nick Saban had an ideal for what effectiveness was about commitment, about discipline, and he was the best at it. You know, I'm in Arkansas. I live in Arkansas, so I hated playing Alabama football because it was always embarrassing to us because they were so good, but I have a ton of respect for Saban because he had an ideal and he recruited to that ideal, right? He recruited people that kind of fit that culture, not just anybody, he built that culture. So we are, and Tom, most of my life has been that way. I mean, I've rubbed a lot of people wrong because I have an ideal about what great leadership is. And even when I get hired to do coaching or training, I mean, if it's going to be one-on-one coaching, I'm going to have a conversation with that person up front about who I am and what you're asking me to do. You're about to pay me to be really hard on you, to challenge the status quo. I tell people I have an allergy to the status quo, and that's really kind of what I'm all about. I'm not talking about being perfect. Let's make progress toward excellence, right? And that, we have to challenge the status quo. And most leaders, Tom, they want the paycheck. They want the rights, but they don't want the responsibility of leadership. And when you tell people that, that can rub some people wrong, but the responsibility of leadership has nothing to do with who you are. It has everything to do with who you lead and making them better and growing them. And again, I like the spotlight. I like trophies, right? I like to win, but at the end of the day, I want other people to win. That's where I get the win myself.

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Tom Finn (28:06.73)

There's a lot to unpack there. First of all, Deion Sanders. Let's go to Deion Sanders and unpack that a little bit. Deion Sanders, if you don't know, is the head football coach at the University of Colorado Boulder and a former Major League Baseball player and NFL player and a Hall of Famer in the NFL. And his style is maybe a little aggressive but he has building a culture at Colorado and trying to bring in the right people that, that fit that culture. so the knock on, on him is overly aggressive, a little arrogant, right? but to be honest, he's been that way since I knew about Deion Sanders in the nineties when he was playing at Florida state. So talk about being true to your brand. Dion's been true to his brand the entire time. And there's something to be said for that. It's also a winner, right? He's won everywhere he's gone. Everything he touches turns to gold.

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MIke Harbour (28:49.662)

That's right. Yeah. Absolutely.

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Tom Finn (29:02.634)

He's doing something right. For those of you that don't know the Deon Sanders story, go to Instagram, check them out. Actually his stuff's hilarious. And you gotta follow him. Whether you're on one side or the other, right Mike? I mean, it's good, good stuff most of the time coming from Deon. But when we think about, I wanna talk a little bit about healthcare for a second, because this is an industry in our country that is massively profitable and also, massively impactful on our GDP as a country. There are a lot of people working in healthcare and there are a lot of inefficiencies in healthcare. Whether you look at the provider side, you look at the health insurance markets, you look at the consultants that provide access for some of this work. There's a lot of inefficiency and of course, excuse me, the government that Medicare, Medicaid, all of those types of things. So when you think about healthcare and you think about leadership, what are you trying to tell people to look for in developing the next evolution of the US healthcare system?

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MIke Harbour (30:05.246)

Yeah, that's a much deeper topic than what I normally get into, Tom, because I think we have to change from the inside, right? I'm a believer in changing from the inside. And so really where I spend my time is trying to change the leader. And my hope is that if we change enough leaders from the inside, maybe 10, 15, 20 years from now, there's enough great leaders that they can start impacting it those external, you know, because look, I don't want to go too far here. Insurance companies, pharma companies have way too much control and power over physicians, how physicians treat their patients, how, you know, how patient, how they, how hospitals get paid. There's a lot of external factors that, that many people don't really know or understand. 

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You know, you Tom go to the hospital to get or to the doctor to get healthcare. And some of the things they can or can't do or say or write in your medical records is impacted by an external insurance company or a pharmaceutical contract that they have that may impact the care that you get. And so I think there's a lot of larger forces, government being one of them, right? That have so much power and control that until we change and we grow enough leaders from the inside and remove some of the older generation, and look, I'm one of those older guys, right? My time's coming too, I'm 54. But I think we gotta change it from the inside. So I spend my time developing leaders to remove the status quo from leadership in their life. Be the person who challenges the way we've always done it, right? Using Deion Center, be a guy who changes the talk, building a leadership brand, be a leader like that. And over time, eventually you're going to be the CEO of that healthcare organization. And you'll be able to affect change much, much differently than you can at a department level. The problem is, you know, John Wooden said this, you're from California. John Wooden said something like, he said, don't wait for the moment to prepare. Be prepared so when the moment arrives, you're ready to act, you're ready to go. And too many leaders want to wait until, well, when I get there, when I get there, I'll do that. When I get there, I'll grow. My challenge is let's change now. We've been saying, Tom, we're facing a workforce pandemic right now, right? I mean, if you want to talk about pandemics, we have a workforce issue right now with not enough workers.

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And there's right now there's for every 10 jobs, there's only six people to fill those jobs. So we need people. And, you know, we, we've been talking about that time for 30 years, like this work, the baby boomer retirement and the workforce shortage, the physician shortage that's going to come. It's here. The pandemic didn't cause it. It exacerbated it, it accelerated it a little bit, but it's here. And so what I'm, my, my message now is, is let's do what we can now and be ready in 30 years for whatever comes in 30 years. Let's not wait until 30 gets, because we're trying to solve a problem that we've been talking about for 30 years now. That's again, you could get me on my soap box there, but I'm a believer in like preventive care, right? Preventive leadership, proactiveness. I try to take care of my own personal health to prevent, I don't want to go to the doctor. I don't want to enter the healthcare system. So, I speak that same message inside leadership. What do we need to do proactively today to prevent the fall off of employees a year, two years, three years, five years from now?

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Tom Finn (34:02.186)

Yes, strategic planning and looking ahead for leaders is so important. You've got to do it. And it's hard. It's heavy and hard work to look down the road five, 10, 15, 20 years, but you've got to do it as a leader. And I agree with you a hundred percent. It has to be done and it's homework that needs to be done. The other thing that you said that just grabbed, you just grabbed me through the microphone here and shook me was status quo. So for all you listeners out there, if you ever hear these words, this is the way we've always done it. That's when the flag goes up and the hair on your back, your neck should stand up and you should say, r we've got ourselves a problem here if we're saying this is the way we've always done it. Because a lot of those policies, procedures, processes that we're talking about, certainly in healthcare, Mike, have been around for 50 years. And let me tell you, the stuff from the 70s, the process from the 70s or the 60s for that matter, or when insurance was sort of started in the fifties. I mean, we don't want those, not in a modern-day workforce and certainly not as it relates to healthcare and systems and certainly in leadership and just the fundamentals of leadership. So if you hear that, I'm with you. Status quo, no thank you.

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MIke Harbour (35:20.862)

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I was doing some strategic planning with an organization a few years ago, Tom, and there was a guy who had been with the organization 35 years, and there was lots of– there was a lot of younger people in the room as we were doing this planning, and, you know, he kept saying, when we tried that before, okay, when did you try that? Well, it was 10 years ago. We tried that before. When did you try that? 15 years ago. And so I finally – I said – you know, I asked him, I said – can't even remember his name. Let's just use Tom. Tom, how many of the people you tried that with are still in those roles? Because this was an organization that was working with hospital CEOs. How many CEOs are the same as they were 10 years ago? None of them.

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So you're telling me that something you tried 10 years ago might not work today because there's different people in there? Or what technologies changed today, Tom, that wasn't around 10 years ago? And so be open to ideas because technology has changed right here. Tom and I are talking, he's in California, I'm in Arkansas. You know, I'm on the internet in Arkansas, Tom, believe that or not. But yeah, I mean, most people don't, right? It's a new thing for us here, but it's, you know, who would have thought, like I've literally talked to people all over the world sitting right here at my desk, technology that we didn't have just 10 years ago.

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Tom Finn (36:31.018)

I didn't actually know there was internet in Arkansas. Nobody did. It was great.

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MIke Harbour (36:47.166)

Really, you know, and then with the whole advent of AI, you know, and we, who knows what we're going to be able to do with AI. I mean, I'm using AI to help me in my business, even with writing and things of that nature to help me get better and faster to market. So, you know, and I use AI with my podcasts and transcribing those and pulling notes out and capturing my ideas. It's incredible. Some of the technology is out there. So we need to be available to move away from that's the way we've always done it to what's the future hold and how can we grab a hold of it.

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Tom Finn (37:23.754)

Yeah, Mike, well said and can't thank you enough for your thoughts and your commentary. And quite frankly, just the way you look at the world in, making leaders, better people, better, better managers, and focusing on doing the right thing. You got a book that's out. and I would love to know where people can find it. Quit losing talent is the book. where can folks pick it up?

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MIke Harbour (37:48.126)

Yeah, Quit Losing Talent, the expanded edition, 20 leadership tactics to win, keep, and inspire great employees. You can find it on Amazon. Barnes and Noble online as well has the book. You can learn more about it on my website, harbouresources.com too, Tom.

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Tom Finn (38:08.362)

Awesome, Mike. Well, thanks for being on the show, my friend. Keep doing what you're doing. It's making an impact one person at a time and appreciate how you're looking at the world and framing up these leadership conversations.

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MIke Harbour (38:20.638)

Hey, thank you, Tom, for having me on your show. It was a great pleasure to talk with you and I love what you're doing as well. Keep it up.

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Tom Finn (38:26.538)

Thank you, my friend. Great to be with you today.