What does the management structure look like at your company? How do you break down various management tasks? Our guest today is Garrett Delph, and he shares with us his QuadCore Management program to provide a lens to help you better analyze your businesses management structure.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
If your business is chaos, do not buy the lie that it is just meant to be that way.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- You can visit our guest’s website at:
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- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
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- Connect with our guest on social:
- Garrett’s LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrettdelph/
- Garrett’s X Page: https://twitter.com/garrettdelph
- Garrett’s TikTok Page: https://tiktok.com/@garrett_delph
- Garrett’s Medium Page: https://medium.com/@garrett_delph
- Clarity Ops Website: https://clarityops.co/
- Garrett’s Thought Leadership Blogs: https://blog.clarityops.co/
- https://nexa360.clarityops.co/
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Garrett Delph stands at the forefront of business transformational solutions for the new generation of leaders. He is the Founder and Chief Clarity Officer of Clarity Ops, LLC. A serial entrepreneur and resultsdriven processator, he has established a track record of founding three successful international businesses that have collectively generated over $50 million in revenue. Garrett’s new generation business solutions are created for leaders who need faster, easier, and more profitable step-by-step ways for scaling businesses.
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If you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week, we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I’m wondering what the management structure of your company looks like and how do you break down various management tasks or assign them to different people.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:26):
Well, our guest today is Garrett Delph, and he shares with us his QuadCore Management Program and philosophy, which helps provide a lens to help managers and leaders better analyze and understand the use of their management structure and the teams that they have implementing those management structures. Now, Garrett is the founder and chief clarity officer of Clarity Ops and a serial entrepreneur where he’s established a track record of founding three successful international businesses that have collectively generated over $50 million in revenue.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:02):
Garrett’s new-generation business solutions are created for leaders who need faster, easier, and more profitable step-by-step ways for scaling businesses. You’re going to love our discussion about as QuadCore Management Program. It’s very interesting and provides a really great perspective on helping you assess your business management and leadership structure. So let’s go ahead and jump right into my interview with Garrett Delph.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (01:26):
Tom, by the way, thanks for having me. Really excited to have this conversation. My name’s Garrett Delph. My company name is called Clarity Ops. We are an operational partner to businesses, small and medium-sized businesses, looking to grow and scale.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:41):
Wonderful. Well, your background and expertise and what you talk about certainly has a direct connection to what we do in helping companies franchise their business. There are some parallels here.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:52):
And one of the things, when your interview topic came across my desk that really stood out, is a framework that you have that’s called the QuadCore Management Framework. And I’d love for you just to talk about this and just give us the kind of who, what, where, when, why, how kind of an overview because I find it fascinating, and I think it would be really valuable for someone who listens into this.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (02:17):
Think of a QuadCore Management Framework as a load balancer. For any of your customers that are in cloud, let’s say AWS, for example, one of their very popular technologies is to load balance technology with supply and demand needs so that the tech and whatever you’re running can scale. And what happens is when you overload something, any component in the tech generally crashes. We see this play out in the world in general, right. Too many… Too much weight in the back of a truck. It loads down, blow out tires, it tips over, whatever it is, right.
Garrett Delph, Clairy Ops (02:59):
And so how this sort of came about in my early days of growing business is I was a one-man band, and you do that for a little while, and as you begin to grow, you add people. But what I didn’t understand is for an entrepreneur, I had the capacity to actually… I had a higher threshold for weight. And so what I didn’t understand is I brought on people to lead. I assumed they had the same capabilities I had regarding RAM and being able to multitask. And in general, what I found is the makeup is different. Typically, there’s this makeup difference between entrepreneurs, operators, and those they hire.
Garrett Delph, Clairy Ops (03:41):
And so I just would find these superheroes, great people, and I’d say, “You’re really smart. You are really great. You can do it all.” And so I would put on high-level leadership, all of sort of the different hats that come with different types of managers, and it didn’t work. I tried to force it with a stick, tried to cram it on people, and make it work. And that caused just tremendous amount of pain, stress, unhappiness. It created a lot of slowness, breakage in people and in operations. And so I was like, “This is really not working well.” Then also, as an entrepreneur, you have budget constraints. So it’s not like you, “How do I solve this?” And you’re not thinking, “Okay, hire a bunch more people.”
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:35):
I know exactly what you mean. Having gone through that myself and many of the clients I work with where they reach this point where you start hiring people and realizing, “Oh wait, not everyone can do what I can do.” That I think the way-
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (04:35):
That’s right.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:49):
… that you described that load balance and having a higher capacity than maybe what someone might come in just to specialize in one piece of what you were doing.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (04:57):
Yep, that’s right. That’s right. So what I decided to do is be a scientist about it and figure out what are the demands of managers and leaders. How is this playing out in the functions in the business? And this is where Quad… the QuadCore Management System came up. I determined there were four, hence the quad. You have strategy, you have maintenance and support, you have process, and then you have projects. And I found that these four repeatedly over and over made up 90% of the makeup of a manager.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (05:32):
And so I had… I was asking managers to drive strategy to simultaneously manage… or sorry, maintain and support their people. Simultaneously, I was having them build process for their functions. And when… I’ve always been a big fan of constantly innovating, and with innovation comes required to build, which requires project managers. So I would expect them to also manage the innovation projects within their functions as well.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (06:01):
Didn’t matter if it was HR, sales, marketing, IT, production, it didn’t matter. They were all in charge and caused a lot of pain, a lot of failure, even in the middle of growth. Even in the middle of growth, you stress people out. Contrary to what Zuckerberg says, “Move fast and break things.” Well, unless you’re venture-funded and you have a ton of elasticity of people in time, that in the real world does not work.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:26):
You hear similar stories, and I have book titles that are similar to that, and so on. And as the small business, small to mid-sized businesses, you start thinking, “Well, we don’t have near unlimited budgets that some of these venture-backed groups might have where they can burn through cash for two or three years or more while they’re trying to figure stuff out and hire a lot of talented, smart people to come in and figure it out.”
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:52):
But if you’re not that most small to mid-sized businesses aren’t. So you have very limited budgets with limited time, all the while trying to still support customers, provide customer service, and fulfill your obligation for whatever product or service you’re selling.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (07:09):
Also, something I would add to that is small business also doesn’t have the risk to failure tolerance. So you don’t have the long runway to make big failures because it could cost your business to go under quickly.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:28):
The earlier on you are, the smaller the margin of error that you can really work within operates. I mean, it’s really hard.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (07:37):
So there’s the four buckets that the QuadCore Management System load balances into, and then the idea is to get these four realms buckets to coordinate together by design. So that’s the other trap. If you’re not careful, you could end up creating silos. We don’t want silos. We want coordination, and they’re complimentary.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (08:04):
Quick question here for you on these four managers with strategy, maintenance and support, process managers, and project managers. Just kind of-
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (08:12):
That’s right.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (08:12):
… recap that. A new startup or a growing small business, the entrepreneur probably is all four of those in-
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (08:13):
That’s right.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (08:20):
… one as they’re growing and expanding. So let’s say someone’s at the point where they are hiring their first manager, or maybe they’ve hired a support person or two that’s starting to take on some of these duties, but it’s not as clearly defined as you’ve described.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (08:37):
How might someone start to assess and figure out, “Okay. Well, what kind of manager am I or where am I best suited to operate as the founder of the business, and how do some of my team members fit in with some of these four different manager types?”
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (08:55):
I think the best place to start is with an org chart. Map out your org chart and map out inside of that org chart the functions in your business. So I think that is… has to… Actually, I don’t think it’s a good place to start. I think it’s a must because that’s you need to be able to see where people are working and in what functions they’re working. And then the next part, which is something us entrepreneurs that have big dreams we want to go, we forget to, and that is define those positions.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (09:29):
So you build this org chart, and you know what functions. So this is a sales manager I’m hiring, or this is a support manager I’m hiring. You go, “Okay, that manager is going to be in charge of just making sure the KPIs and the SLAs are maintained and supported so we get the output that we want.” So there you are. Done. Now you give them a job description. Let that job description create accountability mechanisms.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (10:00):
And then you go, “Okay.” Now, you’re looking at the org chart, you’re beginning to grow, and you say to yourself, “Okay, who’s going to decide and define the strategic approach we’re going to take to our sales so that we can grow the business?” And so the mistake often we would do is you go to the sales manager and let them drive strategy. I would say that’s going to break things. It’s going to overload them. So now as an entrepreneur, you say, “Okay, who’s going to give the strategy to the sales manager that’s going to make sure the sales get done, operate correctly?”
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (10:39):
And then the owner gets to go, “Am I good strategist? Do I understand how to go to market? Do I understand the target avatar that’s going to give us the best bang for our investment, the ones that need us the most?” Or, “Oh, that doesn’t come native to me. I probably shouldn’t be that person. I’m going to go find a strategist.” Right. So now we’re just kind of thinking through how QuadCore comes together. And then that applies to all the functions, Tom.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (11:08):
Again, as you grow, you begin to… you get 10, 25, 50, 7,500 employees, suddenly this model can move into each function as a lift and shift. It applies to all of them simultaneously. And now we’re layering. We’re layering QuadCore across the org. And then, I mean, that’s the makeup, Tom. That’s how it goes. And then, as process begins to integrate into HR, into IT, into sales, into marketing, my high recommendation is don’t expect a strategy person to do process because they’ll probably hate it.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (11:50):
They’re visionary and they drive. Don’t expect the person that’s making sure the people do their stuff on time, on quality according to the spec also be a process architector, right. So now, as you begin to have new demands, new needs, new fulfillment requirements, find somebody that’s really good at drawing up blueprints and connecting the people to the tasks and the activities that produce the outcome.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (12:24):
Here’s the idea. Every business, irrespective product service, needs quality, right, and the customer is the judge of that quality the customer is going to tell you if you are delivering on the value you promised as a business. And so, getting back to QuadCore, how you’re going to make sure you deliver this quality to the end user is about how you define your blueprint and how you manufacture that blueprint internally. One thing, Tom, I didn’t mention a second ago is the one beautiful thing about the process-focused manager is process… your process manager can be a one-stop shop.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (13:12):
They can… You can use your process manager across all functions, right. Unlike your maintain and support manager that is focused on sales only, you can use one process person, maybe two, and their entire job is to make sure process is maintained and built and sustained on all functions across the entire business. So and these things ultimately bring you back to dependable quality that you can count on because it was built and it’s measurable.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (13:46):
Is there a first step or something for an owner or a leader of an organization that tunes in that they might be able to just take a first step to maybe begin analyzing?
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (13:58):
So you had mentioned a little bit about that org chart, but let’s say the org chart’s kind of in place. How might someone start using the QuadCore Management Framework to start kind of just assessing where they’re at and the staff and types of people they have in their company already?
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (14:15):
Yeah. I think one way to view this is view it as a health assessment. Look at your business and see if you see symptoms of breakage. See if you see symptoms of high stress and low [inaudible 00:14:33] people. See if you see symptoms in delay of your output based on what you expected the output to be delivered according to. See if you see break or inconsistencies in quality. And generally, what I found is these symptoms are indicators of incorrect load balance of people, and process. When you lift up the hood there, you begin to analyze and dissect.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (15:01):
You’re like, “Okay, I’ve put too much… Okay. For example, the reason we have inconsistent quality and we continue to get more returns from our customers than we want, oh, it turns out that there is no process for this section of the business, and so we can’t hold anybody accountable for running the same play or running the same recipe or the assembly.” So you go, “All right, maybe we need somebody to focus specifically on process for the business.” So we went from symptom, which is a symptom of something that’s not working, drilled in RCA, root cause analysis, we find, “Oh, we’re missing process. Love it.”
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (15:43):
Maybe another indicator of the symptom is you find out things are inconsistent, but you do have process in place. So then you go, “Well, why isn’t anybody following the process that we spent so much time defining?” Maybe it’s because you didn’t invest in a single manager in a function, and their primary role is to make sure the stuff gets done according to the recipes, the guidelines, the instructions, according to the TAT, the turnaround time that’s expected for whatever the activity is and according to the quality requirement.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (16:20):
Your business is franchise. First thing that comes to mind for me is like the McDonald’s, the Subways, the In-N-Outs, the Chick-fil-A’s of the world. Can you imagine if they didn’t have a quality inspector that was keeping track every time they made the sandwich that was ordered, and their output varied in direct proportion to whoever was making it that day?
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:42):
The predictability is part of what makes the customer keep coming back because they know exactly what they’re going to get.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (16:49):
Spot on. I kind of monologue there a little bit, Tom. I apologize. But the idea is look at the symptoms, and you should be able to track those symptoms back to strategy, maintain and support, process or project.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (17:05):
And I will live the rest of my life touting that because I’ve seen it, I believe it, and I know it. So you should be able to find those four something broken there, and then you just figure out, “All right, what is the best step to fix this now that we’ve identified which sort of bucket it’s coming from?”
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (17:25):
How can someone find out a little bit more about what you’re doing? If they’re interested in the QuadCore Management Framework or learning a little bit more about you, where can they go for that?
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (17:34):
Thank you. I’m on LinkedIn. Garrett Delph is the handle. It’s my first and last name. The website is clarityops.co. Anybody can go there, check out our content, check out what we do, and how we can help.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (17:46):
This is that perfect time we make that transition and we ask the four… same four questions to every guest, and the first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (17:57):
Yes, I’ve had a miss or 100 of them. I think the most painful perhaps, but the most beneficial, there was a season way back where the chairman of my board sat me down and said, “Garrett, if you don’t stop micromanaging, you’re going to kill your people, and you’re going to kill your business.” And nobody had ever said that to me before, and nobody had ever… I wasn’t even aware that that was a thing.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (18:37):
I hadn’t read anything about micromanagement. It wasn’t percolating on LinkedIn the way it is these days because it’s a problem. That was a huge miss on my part because I didn’t realize I was running a business without controls, and because I was missing controls and governance, I was frantically trying to hold it all together by micromanaging everybody all the time. That was the big miss.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:05):
Let’s take a look on the other side, a make or two, a highlight.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (19:10):
It actually parlays into a big highlight that revolutionized my professional career as a result. And that was I did as a result of seeking to understand what I was doing wrong my big epiphany was I had never focused on what I believe is the engine of success in a business, which is process architecture. It’s the rails for the roller coaster. It’s the 13-story deep hole that allows the skyscraper to go a hundred stories tall. That revolutionized my professional career.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:49):
Let’s talk about a multiplier that you’ve used to grow yourself personally or professionally or businesses you’ve run and led.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (19:57):
Have to… Number one has got to be God. I believe He’s the architect of us humans, and He’s the distributor of wisdom, and so He’s my number one go-to, and I try to do that every morning, go to Him. Beyond that, I found actually hiring people to coach me, I have found to be extremely valuable. And so I’ve… that’s been a big one.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (20:25):
And then self-education. I try to get educated and find knowledge from… I’m a big fan of Harvard Business Review. Also, a big fan of autobiographies and biographies of successful entrepreneurs and learning from them about what they’ve done and how they’ve done it, mistakes they’ve made, and the successes they’ve made. And then I have a few favorite podcasts I love to soak up.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:52):
I love it. I love it. Well, hopefully, Multiply Your Success will get added into that rotation.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (20:57):
Yes, sir.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:58):
Or at least this episode that you’ll tune in once it goes live. No, that’s great. Well, the final question, Garrett, we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (21:10):
That definition has changed over the years, but now that I’ve kind of hit halftime and my business now is helping businesses succeed more and more, success for me is watching actually, watching the businesses I work with succeed and watching their life change and watching the lives of their people change as a result of applying the principles and guideposts that work that they didn’t know existed.
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (21:44):
That is… got to be the most gratifying thing on the planet, and I’ll maybe end with this. It’s because it’s a twofer. The business achieves milestones of success they couldn’t have otherwise. Also, the people in the business, their lives change because stress goes down, happiness goes up, and that permeates actually into their personal lives.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:15):
This has been a great interview. And before we go, is there anything that you were maybe hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Garrett Delph, Clarity Ops (22:24):
Thanks, Tom. That’s a great question. I would say for any budding entrepreneurs or even seasoned entrepreneurs that are… still have the… the hope and the dream is still alive, and you’re looking to keep going, if your business is in chaos, do not buy the lie that that’s just how it’s got to be because it doesn’t. There is a path forward that actually can give you thriving success with the chaos. It’s just about finding the right architecture.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (23:01):
Garrett, thank you so much for a fantastic interview, and let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is the framework of Garrett’s QuadCore Framework Structure, where he talks about the four different types of managers and management needs. The first is strategy. The second is maintenance and support. The third is process, and the fourth is projects. And these are the four main components, and I like how he broke it down where you may have someone who is a process manager that might be involved in maybe strategy, and that’s not going to work so well.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (23:37):
So viewing those in this QuadCore Framework can be helpful to make sure you have your managers and leaders in the right positions or doing the right duties. Takeaway number two was this phrase that he said that really stuck out to me. And he said, “Small business does not have the risk-to-failure tolerance that you might otherwise see in a more well-capitalized business.” I thought that was great because sometimes there’s this prevailing notion in the general populace about entrepreneurs being risk-takers and being almost maybe erring on the idea of being crazy, potentially. That’s not actually the case.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:16):
It’s actually very well-thought-out, and these are calculated risks and understanding it. And every small business, including myself and our company, we have to monitor and think about all of the expenses, opportunities, and other things that come our way and make the best possible decision for our business based on what we know. Takeaway number three is when Garrett talked about every business needs quality, and the customer is the judge of that quality or the lack thereof, the quality that might exist. And I thought that was great.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:50):
And he’s exactly right. Every business needs quality. Even if your business is high volume, low quality, you still have to have a certain standard to meet for quality expectations with the customer. And always remember it’s the customer who’s the judge. And now, it’s time for today’s win-win. So today’s win-win came right at the end of the episode when Garrett gave us a little nugget of wisdom that I thought was great. He said, “If your business is in chaos, do not buy the lie that it is just meant to be that way.” I thought that was great.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (25:30):
It’s not meant to be that way. It does not have to be chaos. You can find order in your organization, and Garrett and his QuadCore Framework provides a pathway to help support finding the order in the chaos. So that’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone might be ready to franchise their business or take their company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
