The Bosshole® Chronicles
The Bosshole® Chronicles
Michael Kuenzi - Development: Where Performance Really Begins (Part 1)
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Most leadership training feels great on Friday and disappears by Monday, and that is exactly what we challenge here. I sit down with Mike Kuenzi, Vice President of Talent Optimization at Titus Talent Strategies, to get brutally practical about what actually changes behavior at work and what is just a polished event with a certificate at the end.
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Welcome And Why Mike Matters
John BroerA very warm welcome to all of our friends out there in The Bosshole Transformation Nation. This is your host, John Broer, welcoming you to part one of a two-part episode based on a discussion I had with a very good friend of ours at Real Good Ventures, Mike Kuenzi. Mike is the Vice President of Talent Optimization for Titus Talent Strategies, and his perspective, his approach, and methodologies to finding and optimizing talent are absolutely great. Listen in because this will be a great investment of your time. So join me in welcoming Mike to The Bosshole Chronicles. The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode. Well, Mike, it is great to have you on The Boss hole Chronicles. Welcome. It is great to be here, John. Thank you. Well, our our listeners already know through the introduction, I gave them a little bit of our history. And by the way, I just have to say, I'm so excited about this, not only for the content and the insights you'll be able to provide, but also you have just an amazing voice for broadcasting. I've been told I have a face for broadcasting, but you actually have a really good voice for it. So I think our listeners are in for a treat.
Michael KuenziIt's funny because people accuse me of the same type of face for radio. So this is gonna be this is gonna be good.
John BroerAll right. So, Mike, you and I have really actually, in the world of talent optimization, we came, we kind of came up together. Uh, we both got certified as uh practitioners and talent optimizers together in Boston, which was a lot of fun. We I I have some great memories from that. That was a really cool period of time. I've been able to watch and just really appreciate the work that you've done at Titus Talent Strategies, really being the the person in-house who has the expertise around talent optimization and the use of predictive data. And I know you use you use other elements to help build that. But one of the things that we talked about offline was you know, there's a difference between leadership development and leadership training. And I believe our listeners would really benefit from getting your insights about the distinctions and why a lot of those efforts don't really hold in organizations. So can we start there?
Training Is Not Development
Michael KuenziThat sounds great, John. Yeah. It's an interesting topic to me because most organizations we work with have a training budget. Okay. Almost every single one. Like, hey, what what's in your training budget? And basically, if they don't spend it, they lose it for that year. And so we're like, hey, that I think that sounds like a great opportunity for us to come in and provide a lot of value. And organizations oftentimes they'll bring their leaders and they'll do an off-site and they'll do a training and they spend 50 grand on you know that off-site, and a few months later, that was really awesome, but we're not doing anything. Okay. And I yeah, I kind of chalk it up to coaching. I'm doing a lot of coaching for my kids' teams. Okay. I'm like, hey, I can train you on how to do this. I'll show you how to dribble a basketball. I'm trying I'm giving you that knowledge. But if you don't practice, you'll never get good as a sport. And that's what development is. And there's a really strong difference because inherently training is really good. But the development is actually what makes it stick. It's accountability, it's repetition, it's practice, it's all of that combined, that you know, we don't want this to just to be a checkbox and something you check off your budget and you've got it. We want it to be a real impact for that organization. You can't do it without practice.
John BroerI'm going to get back to something that you said before I come back to the practice idea and totally agree with that. To draw on the sports analogy, if you're thinking about helping managers develop their leadership skills, salespeople, their business development skills, yeah, just just you know, dumping the data in and maybe giving them a couple of tools means nothing if they're not actually practicing it. Equate it to, say, for example, well, okay, so we're recording this in June of 2026, just to put a stamp on that, and we are in the midst of the World Cup. So if you think about watching 90 minutes, we happen to love it, by the way, but if you're watching 90 minutes of soccer, of football, excuse me, how many more minutes or hours or days are each of those players and those teams practicing? I mean, we don't see, we see a fraction, we see the result of so many hours of that practice. And so I I I it doesn't, it I mean, it applies not only on the basketball court or the soccer pitch or, you know, it it applies in the in the meeting room and in front of customers, the dedication to the time for practice. So we'll get back to that in just a second. But I think it's interesting when we ask clients about their budgets. And I think it's great when somebody actually does have a budget. I'm sure you've run into it when people go, oh, well, what do you, what are you, what are you going to charge us? Because we'll kind of figure that out. Um, that to me I find a bit more disheartening because if you haven't even established what you're willing to invest in your people, then everything else is an afterthought. So can I ask you this? If you were, if a client were to come to you and say, Mike, I I don't know. I have no idea. Well, like how should I how what would I how would I even begin to establish a budget for training and development for my people? What what would you recommend?
Michael KuenziUsually what I would say is there's a
Budgeting Through Engagement And Retention
Michael Kuenzilot more questions that I would try to to spin and ask for that person because ultimately we got to figure out their pain first. Sure. Yep. And there's usually kind of a big three that I think of of the common key pain points when it comes to development and training. And one of those is engagement. Okay. The other being retention. And then the other one is actual performance. Okay. Which are all gonna be levers to pull when it comes to profitability and ROI of said training. The challenge sometimes with talking with somebody that doesn't have a budget is they usually haven't given a thought of you it's gonna be a lot of indirect ROI. It's not one of those things where it's like, hey, you're gonna save ten thousand dollars by X. It's very different than another kind of product. So if they don't believe in that, I think we have to kind of talk about each one of those. So if we, you know, kind of start it with the retention piece, or sorry, the if we started off with the engagement piece of it, this is where we have to be backed up by other statistics that say, hey, when people are engaged, they're gonna have X amount of performance difference. You're going to get that. But I try to pair that with a tool like the Predictive Index or a Behavioral Assessment because what's so critical when it comes to engagement is consistency in how you communicate with other people. And you might have something like EOS or these operational systems that are amazing for your business in terms of speaking that same language, but you don't always have a language for your people. And that's the piece I think that is so missing. And when you've got that language, and we can say, all right, if John is a captain and Mike is a persuader and this person's a guardian, it gives us an opportunity to really talk differently and adjust to that person's needs, and engagement will rise. Yeah. To quantify that is very challenging for people.
John BroerThat is true. Although, statistically speaking, I mean, as engagement increases, retention and performance are going to follow suit. We've seen that happen, but uh you know, so I love that. I love the idea of saying, okay, before we before we dive into a specific number, and I I'm gonna I'd like to share with you just something that I did years ago when I was building a uh corporate university, it was like, well, how do we we have to be able to come up with some sort of a substantive budget? Uh I had a budget, but I couldn't figure out where they came up with it. But back to your point is let's dig a little bit deeper and in terms of what are you trying to, how are you trying to impact engagement, retention, and performance? Um, because I think, would you agree with this that nowadays I think executives, many executives, I think they get very comfortable with saying, well, turnover for the most part is just a cost of doing business. And it's like, wow, that is I just got off a call with a prospective client who's really interested in PI and talent optimization, and they said, our turnover right now, and they employed maybe a thousand people, their turnover is in seven figures.
Michael KuenziWhoa.
John BroerYeah. And so they're calculating it to, I mean, like to the penny. And when I and I told them, I said, now I I didn't, I wasn't trying to be flippant, but you know what I you know, yeah, I'm sure you've said this is look, we could establish you with a talent optimization platform, use PI, put it up in front as far upstream as possible, and I am very comfortable saying that we could cut that by 20% in our sleep. Easily. And and he said, Oh, you've got to be kidding me. And I said, Well, it seems to me like you've just sort of, while it's uncomfortable, you haven't figured out a way to to carve that seven figures down. And and that's essentially where it was. But he was just sort of like, Yeah, that's just what it's costing us. So I'm sorry, I'm kind of getting far afield on this, but but you know, your point is those specific questions need to reveal where are the real dollars being lost and helping the client understand these can be recovered. You you don't have to be losing that kind of money.
Michael KuenziWell, and it's interesting because a lot of executives, especially, I think I will say human resources, they they get it. I think they see and they deal with that a lot. Whereas a lot of times, you know, because they're working in the business, right? The executives are working on the business, and so realistically they're trying to look at you know the bottom line and what this costs, and they're always looking for ROI. And recently I tried something new, and it was interesting how it landed with the executive. He said, I don't think this is fair that I should have to take on all the risk when you can't promise me ROI. And I said, You know what? That's fair. It is. How about I said, How about as it comes to the turnover and the money that you're spending on turnover? Let's split what you are losing normally. Let's split that because it's gonna be better, 50-50, right? And we'll both take that risk together. And he said, you know what? I think I'm better just buying the subscription from you.
John BroerI I know, I I I love that idea, Mike. I I absolutely do. I'll I'll do it, I'll pay for your subscription. But like if we we save you uh $300,000, you're gonna you're gonna write me a check for $150,000. And you're right, when you put it in those terms, it's usually like, yeah, I'll I'll pay $30,000 for a PI subscription or whatever it is. Well, I I appreciate that. And I really think that's sound advice for our listeners that you need to um our our our managers, our supervisors, and leaders need to be thinking about let's get serious about establishing a real budget for developing our people. And again, it's not just training, it's the development. I'm gonna get back to the practice idea. One of the things that I did years ago is if when people press me on it, I said, okay, you want a simple, simple way to do it, uh, however many full-time equivalent FTE you have in your organization, multiply that by a thousand. You have 300 people take $1,000 per person, and your training budget is $300,000. And they'll say, Oh my gosh, we've never done that before. I said, Well, remember, you're not going to spend $1,000 on every single person. You know, your executives might be sent to something that has a higher dollar value associated with it, but you're committing dollars and you're carving that out for development. Because it's hard for me to take organizations seriously about wanting to develop their people if they don't have the dollars committed to it. So, okay, I'm sorry, I'm gonna get off my soapbox. Um, so let's get back to the practice part.
Building A Practice System That Sticks
John BroerThis is where the the difference between training and development actually comes in. What is your recommendation? How do you encourage organizations to really elevate it and actually practice it? How do how does that happen? Or how do you encourage them or get them to do that? They have to be committed to it.
Michael KuenziThey have to believe in it very fully. And I say that because you think of the trainings you've been to and you get your notebook and you get your certificate, and it's a great experience. But what the company is hoping for when they invested in that is a transformative experience. Right. One that will transcend for years to come, and we've invested in that training now and and we're good. When you have to build a system, and that takes commitment, that takes um accountability, it takes a lot of effort, it takes dollars, it takes time. And I don't know if people are willing to be able to do that. I I feel like it's a lot of us, human nature, of hey, I'm gonna go to the casino or I'm gonna play the lottery, and there's nothing wrong with that, but that's that's fix a problem fast. It's a system, it may not be very yeah, I gotcha. I gotcha the system, but right everybody's looking for the instantaneous ROI. Right. Instantaneous and that's I mean, generationally we're seeing that of being able to order whatever you want and you you get it the next day to your home. People are it's translating into the workplace of instantaneous progression of people. Well, people are very complex. Oh yeah. And that practice is what really does it. And so if you can build a system around it, you can build boundaries around it, you can speak that same language, that's where you're having and you're building a sustained environment of learning. That's gonna, that's gonna bring you the ROI.
John BroerWell, and also what is what does progression look like? So at what point can we, what are the markers that say, oh, you have elevated your you we've upskilled and you've elevated your capabilities because you're doing this? I'm gonna go back to your example of a basketball coach. My guess is that, you know, when you're coaching your team and they're at the foul line, you know, take 10 free throws and maybe their average is, you know, one out of 10, 2 out of 10. You go home, you practice that, and over time you start to see that they're increasing their average. So they're getting three or four out of 10. That's the progression you're talking about. And I don't mean to equate adult progression with, you know, kids getting, but I'm telling you, it's not that far of a leap. I mean, we're still human, and it takes that practice, it takes that repetition. I think that's I think that's really sound. But it, like you said, a system and what does that progress look like?
Michael KuenziWell, that's a key thing that I think people miss both from hiring and then training. It's not so different in terms of I don't believe, just with the thousands of clients we've worked with now, John, that the majority of people have an understanding of what success looks like. Yeah. I don't think that the majority have an idea of what the seat that that person is in is supposed to look like and what that is. Because I see a lot of people when they they create their KPIs or their performance objectives, that'd be like me saying, go dribble the basketball all day long and get good and master that when we should be focusing on what does it take to win the game. Yeah. Start there. The winning the game is scoring the most points. What's gonna help us to get those most points? Well, let's build those behaviors and let's build those actions to that common goal versus the other way, which is where people often start, and thinking that it's gonna help them win the game.
John BroerYeah, that's a great point. I I love that, Mike. I I again just I think the takeaway there is training does not constitute development. Development is the putting in the work and in the practice, and but establishing what does that progress and what does winning, if you will, look like. But you mentioned hiring.
Hiring Breakdowns And Role Clarity
John BroerAnd I know one of the things you work on at Titus, when it comes to hiring and how companies are sort of there's a misalignment or a certain detachment when it comes to role clarity and structure in their hiring. What have you been seeing these days around that? I totally agree with that, but I'd love to hear what have you been seeing around that when it comes to the breakdown in the hiring practices of organizations these days.
Michael KuenziWell, I think there's a reality that leaders are very busy. Hiring managers are very busy being successful within their role. Interviewing someone is very low on their list of what they do on a day-to-day and their skill set in general, right? Human resources, they are spending a lot more time, especially recruiters. We're interviewing people all day, every day. We can master that craft. Whereas somebody that interviews once a quarter, a lot of small and mid-sized businesses, they're they're not gonna necessarily have that natural skill to dig deeply and and find the right people. Right. A lot don't necessarily even have a process in place where you're asking consistent questions or must-have questions within that role. And the only way that we believe you can really ask those great questions is when you have that role defined very, very carefully. And it has to be what do you want them to do and be and accomplish within that first year? What is it? And it's um it's actually astounding how many hiring managers cannot answer that question. That's true. That is true, yeah. And you look at a a prototypical job description, you just look one up, a job description, it's can you lift 50 pounds? You have good interpersonal experience, whatever the situation is, it's very broad, versus if you're interviewing for a sales seat, I need to know how many calls, what's my budget, what's the sales cycle, like all these things to be able to understand has John done that before? Is he successful? And can he do it again based on the specific
Part Two Tease And Wrap
Michael Kuenzifeats and the specific actions we need him to take?
John BroerVery practical advice from Mike Kuenzi, one of the best in the business. Make sure you tune in next week for part two of my conversation with Mike when he goes deeper into the framework of talent optimization and how to make it work in today's marketplace. And more importantly, how to make it work for your organization. And we will see you next week on The Bosshole Chronicles.