Leadership Hacks for Success! Darby Vannier Secrets

Martin Rowinski (00:01.278)
Welcome to another episode of Leadership Talks. I’m Martin Rowinski CEO of Boardsi And today we are thrilled to have Darby Vannier as our special guest. Darby is a seasoned operations leader with over two decades of experience known for helping founders, CEOs, and boards make the right decisions to scale their businesses. As a speaker, author, coach, consultant, and fractional leader,

Darby has transformed operational strategies and driven significant growth across various organizations. Join us as we delve into Darby’s insights on leadership, team building, and strategic growth. Welcome, Darby.

Darby Vannier (00:45.938)
Thanks a lot, Martin. I’m glad to be here.

Martin Rowinski (00:48.076)
Yeah. So looking forward, I got a, I got a few pretty good questions, I think, hopefully help our audiences out. but can you share your journey into leadership and what inspired you to focus on operations and strategic growth?

Darby Vannier (01:04.284)
Yeah, I’m not sure there was a specific moment where I said, this is what I’m going to do with my life. But, and I’ve certainly had a variety of different industries that I’ve been in, but I guess if I had to pinpoint leadership, interest in and capability, it probably would go back to my days in college. certainly I believe that we are a product of all of our experiences. So experiences lead to how we think, how do we, how we think leads to how we act, how we act.

leads to our results and our success. So everything I’ve ever done in my whole life and same for every individual I’ve ever coached, you are a product of what you have experienced. And I had several experiences in my journey in my undergrad days that actually led me to leading organizations on campus and starting several different organizations. And that was really my first foray.

I would say, certainly there was things that I can pinpoint earlier, but that’s really where I started to be like, I think I really like this thing of leading people and helping others to develop themselves and move forward. And then I kind of proceeded from there. And as I left college and started my undergrad degree, my very first role in the post college career.

had some pretty specific things that I encountered that changed how I have led for all time. and we can get into some of those if you would like, but, yeah, so I, I, I’ve been in a variety of different industries. I started out in retail. I managed at a, at a 22 screen movie theater, and then I moved on and I went even heavier retail. I was actually a manager for a Kinko store back in the days when they were 24 hours a day. So that was an interesting experience.

and then I went into the nonprofit world, not only nonprofit, but livestock association and not only livestock association, but an association for alpacas. I actually had to look up what an alpaca was before I went to my interview. So that was interesting. did that for 11 years. I was CEO there, took that organization through a variety of things, including a national merger and everything. And then.

Martin Rowinski (03:05.453)
You

Darby Vannier (03:19.484)
moved back into the for -profit realm and into the consulting area and started actually doing some strategic planning and executive coaching as well as the organization that I worked for provided those things as well as overseeing internal things as well. And then to kind of moved off on my own and doing that sort of work now as well as fractional CEO, COO work as well.

Martin Rowinski (03:44.094)
Awesome. And I know you emphasize making the right decisions, not just the easy ones. Can you elaborate on how leaders can cultivate this mindset with their teams?

Darby Vannier (03:55.164)
Yeah, it’s kind of something that it’s kind of become my mantra throughout my entire career. I’ve always been a big proponent of trying to look at where we headed and making the right decision for the long term, not necessarily the easy decision. So we can make a decision today that makes us feel good today, maybe helps our business today or this year and helps us move forward. But that might not.

be the right decision to help us three years from now, five years from now. So any organization that wants true innovation, that wants to be able to scale over the course of time, you really do need to focus on taking a look at your decisions, particularly the ones that are of high impact and saying, okay, this looks good for today, but how is this gonna look in three years or five years? What is it gonna do?

So I’ll give you an example. When I took the position with Albuquerque Owners Association, that organization, it was kind of, it had up to that point been outsourced. The board had outsourced to an association management company. It had not gone well. The previous management company had not done well and things were kind of decimated and they decided we’re done with this. We’re opening our own office. So I became their first CEO.

Once we got things stabilized with that organization, we were looking at the software we used to manage the entire organization. And this is to run our membership, to handle our DNA testing results, to manage all of the bloodlines for all of the alpacas in the whole United States. All of that software. And we said, what we have is not efficient. It was never built for this.

So we started looking at what our options were, off the shelf products, as well as a full custom option and everything. And we ended up choosing a full custom option and it was a big investment. This organization, because it had been so decimated, didn’t have a lot of money. We were building back up at that point still. So the decision then, and this was 2006, 2007, we invested about $150 ,000 was the initial investment in the software.

Darby Vannier (06:01.894)
which was a huge amount of money for this organization at the time. So it was a hard decision. And that was my point to the board at the time was this is the right decision for the long term because it’s going to enable us to be more efficient, to do more without having to increase our resources and everything going forward. And sure enough, within a few years we were doing double the transactions, actually with less people.

We didn’t eliminate anybody, but as people left, evaluated and we just didn’t need them because we became so much more efficient because of that specific decision. And that decision with that software enabled that organization to grow beyond where they thought they were going to be able to grow to. So those types of decisions are what I’m talking about when I, when I say, you know, let’s make the right decision, even though it might feel uncomfortable. and not just what is easy and makes us feel good.

Martin Rowinski (06:54.968)
Yeah, absolutely might be difficult, but you saw you saw what it’s going to do and it worked out for you.

Darby Vannier (07:01.35)
Yeah, it doesn’t always work out, but it did in that case.

Martin Rowinski (07:03.022)
That’s a good thing. How do you define transformational leadership and what are some key strategies you use to implement it in organizations?

Darby Vannier (07:15.474)
I think transformational leadership in general really just goes hand in hand with innovation. So as you look at a company, and certainly as throughout my whole career, whenever I’ve looked at companies that I was thinking about moving on to, or that sort of thing, I’m looking at an order for an organization that wants to grow, that wants to scale, that wants to build the things that are necessary to take that organization forward in true transformation.

That requires a certain type of leadership that is open -minded, that is willing to change. So some of those strategies, you have to definitely be able to sit down with your team. You need to hire good people, spend the time with them. I’m very big on coaching. I’m very big on spending a lot of time upfront to hire the right people because I’m not an expert in everything.

I don’t want to hire cookie cutters of Darby. I want to hire people that are going to fill gaps that I know that I have so that we can grow this organization. That means that you have to have a certain amount of willingness to be humble and to trust the people that you have, allow them to challenge you. One of the things that I’ve always told people that have worked for me is, is I want you to challenge me. I want you to tell me if you think I’m an idiot.

Tell me I’m an idiot. mean, be respectful about it. We’ll have a conversation, but tell me you think I’m wrong because I hired you for a reason. I want you to do that. You’re the expert in your department, in your area for a reason. So tell me why you think, and we’ll move forward. And sometimes that means that I’ll look at it and say, yeah, I think you’re right. I think we should shift directions. Sometimes maybe I have more information than you have. And I…

say, you know, I appreciate the information. We’re going to go forward this other way anyway, and we’ll continue to utilize all of that information as we move along. So transformational leadership just means really spending that time with individuals, getting to know them and form those relationships so that you can have a high amount of trust so that you all can be focused on moving your organization forward.

Martin Rowinski (09:22.604)
That’s awesome. And I know you’re a book author, indispensable leader, correct? So talk a little bit about that. What does it cover?

Darby Vannier (09:28.679)
Yes.

Darby Vannier (09:34.172)
Yeah, it really deals with the idea. So I started off the beginning of the book with this whole idea. I’m sure you have been asked it before, or you’ve heard it where people say, are you a manager or are you a leader? And I started off the book by saying, I don’t think that’s the best question because I know a fair amount of people who are managers and would consider themselves a manager, but are actually really great leaders. And by asking that question, you’re kind of implying you cannot be both.

And I don’t think it’s a great question. So how I ask individuals to look at it is let’s look at this as more traits. So think of it more like managerial type traits or visionary type traits, which is what I think people are trying to say when they say leader. And again, I don’t think it’s great because I think there are a fair amount of visionary individuals who are not great leaders as well. So that’s why you can’t equate those things. So I think they’re really talking about those.

managerial traits where you’re highly organized, you’re task driven, you like to check the box, get things done. You’re the one that deals with the, are we going to do and how are we going to do it? And then the other end of that spectrum is the high visionary person, the entrepreneurs, the individuals who are passionate about, they’re coming up with a lot of ideas and new innovation. They’re not great at implementing those things necessarily, but they come up with a lot of those ideas. They’re the ones that are talking about, why are we going to do it?

Why are we doing this and what is it gonna achieve for us? Not necessarily the how are we gonna do and what are we gonna do? And really the whole book kind of goes through and says, rather than think about you have to be one or the other, let’s talk about what these traits are and try to pull the best traits from all sides, create the best possible leader that you can be as an individual. That may mean that you are more.

managerial, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have some visionary traits. It may mean that you’re high visionary, but you can have some managerial organized traits. And it really goes through that in talks. use a lot of stories from throughout my life and my career to illustrate various points and that sort of thing as well.

Martin Rowinski (11:44.586)
Awesome. Now let’s talk a little bit about fractional leadership. You mentioned you’ve taken on some fractional work CEO, fractional CEO. And as a fractional leader, how do you balance providing strategic oversight with allowing organizations to maintain their unique culture and identity?

Darby Vannier (12:03.602)
you really have to get to know the organization. And honestly, this is one of the skepticisms companies have about using fractional leaders, whether it’s CEO, COO, CFO, CMO, whatever. One of the skepticisms companies have that you often have to overcome is that how is a fractional leader ever going to truly understand my company and be dedicated to my company? And so going in, you really do have to spend some time and get to know them.

I tried to choose companies also. I have had some situations where I actually turned work down because I didn’t really understand their business. I wasn’t passionate enough about it. And I knew that while I could probably help them a little bit, I probably wasn’t the best person for that particular company. And that’s why it’s good to have a variety of individuals. But as you get in there and learn what their organization is and understand their culture,

The difference, what you have to understand is the difference between a fractional leader and a consultant. A consultant comes in, looks at a business, asks a lot of questions, and typically will come back and say, here’s what you to change or what you need to do. And they’ll just give it to you and you’re on your way. Good luck. And it is what it is. Fractional leaders on the other hand, are on the other side of that. They do all of that analysis and try to figure out what’s a

the best path forward, but they’re actually working within your organization. And there’s a broad spectrum of what companies want and what companies need. I’ve done some fractional work that is on the very basic side that they just want somebody to come in. They’re running Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS, if you know what that is. And they just want somebody to come in and help run their leadership team meetings every week. They don’t want any work beyond that. They just need somebody external to come in and help them.

keep organized and on track with all of their rocks and moving forward. There’s the other end of that where I have also had folks who want you to step in their business and they want 30 hours a week or more, almost full time, and they want you fully immersed. They want you to make decisions. They want you to play that COO role or that CEO role and really come in and make decisions. Either way, you still are going to be spending the time to understand their organization.

Darby Vannier (14:24.072)
And I really enjoy that because part of my career is very big on development in general. That’s development of people and their skills. That’s development of organizations and helping them strategically grow their organizations. That’s my mantra on decision -making. So that enables me to have an outside perspective, but also play within the realm of their organization as well.

Martin Rowinski (14:49.046)
That makes sense. Let’s look at the future a little bit. Future of leadership. What trends do you see shaping the future of leadership and how can leaders prepare to adapt to those changes?

Darby Vannier (15:02.674)
You know, it’s interesting because I’ve been asked this before a variety of times over the entire course of my career. And I think leadership really kind of goes through cycles. I don’t know that it changes a ton. Certainly how we lead has changed. You know, in my father’s day, it was more, I tell you what to do and you do it and it varies, you know, black and white. And nowadays you have to take a much softer approach, but

the leadership piece and actually being able to establish trust, establish credibility, establish respect with the individuals that you’re working with, all of that still exists. So I really don’t think from that aspect things are going to change a lot. What does change is as culture changes, certainly how we manage, and this is different than just leading, but how we manage people and resources changes over time.

Every generation is a little bit different, so it requires different communication levels. Again, I’m not sure that it has changed leadership. It just means that you have to be able to communicate in a variety of different ways. Communication is a really good example because in a workforce, you could have some older generation. There’s certainly some boomers still out there as well as working backwards down into X generation.

So you could have individuals who wanna talk face to face or talk on the telephone. And you could have also younger individuals who they’re more comfortable with getting an email or even a text message than they are with having to have a phone conversation or that. So adapting your approach to the individual. I always try to make sure that I do that. Really get to understand the best way people’s communicate. Also the best way people learn.

So there are visual learners, there are people who are better at reading information and digesting it. There are people that need to do stuff to be able to learn information. If you can really understand those things and try to encompass all of them as a leader, that’s going to continue to be a benefit to you. Certainly we are going to have an interesting time as leaders with, I know you’ve had conversations, I’ve seen some of your other podcasts about AI and how that changes everything.

Darby Vannier (17:28.264)
There will be changes coming because of that. You’re already seeing it with coaching and executive coaching. There are companies out there who are trying to create AI engines that you can basically talk to and get your coaching and not have to talk to a person anymore. That will remain to be seen. I’m not sure that it will ever get to the point that we need it to be because certainly coaching is a very specific and unique thing.

But again, I also don’t know that it changes a lot because we also have, I there’s a lot of coaches out there. People just hang up their shingle and say, I’m a coach now. And they don’t necessarily have the experience to be doing it anyway. So I’m not sure that that’s really going to massively affect us anyway. certainly leadership’s gonna continue to evolve, but the basis of leadership I don’t think is going to change a lot.

Martin Rowinski (18:24.598)
Yeah, no, I agree. you know, personal is different than generic advice that you might be struggling with, which AI obviously processing all the data can probably give you a generic answer might not be the personal correct answer. But so speaking of Darby, what personal leadership practices do you follow to continue growing and evolving as a leader?

Darby Vannier (18:40.392)
Exactly.

Darby Vannier (18:51.132)
Well, one of my personal core values is lifelong learning. So that comes in many forms, whether it’s reading books or being involved in organizations and talking with individuals. Certainly doing things like this gives me learning and being involved with other individuals and more formal stuff as well. I think that that is a portion of personal development that you just need to continue on with. So as a leader, I would encourage other leaders to continually

Try to learn other things and be exposed to other things and other industries go where you’re uncomfortable Otherwise, you’re not going to learn and and work through those things because you’re gonna gain experience I mean just looking at my career and all the different industries that I’ve been in I never would have imagined like I said I didn’t know what an alpaca was when I interviewed for that role and I was there 11 years and I can tell you everything about alpacas I can tell you about DNA testing for alpacas and everything now so

Martin Rowinski (19:40.462)
Yeah.

Darby Vannier (19:49.766)
Don’t be held back by anything. Continue to challenge yourself and take on additional things. Overcome that imposter syndrome when you have it. And really challenge yourself so that you can grow as a leader, which will ultimately help you, help your team members and your organization move forward.

Martin Rowinski (20:09.25)
Yeah, couldn’t agree with that more. So speaking of books, what’s your favorite go -to book?

Darby Vannier (20:17.448)
It’s actually a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I encourage everybody to read this book no matter what industry you’re in. It does get a little scientific sometimes because they talk about some of the background behind it, but it has really great stories about habit building, how we utilize habits in our lives, both in business, how talks, there’s a big section on how marketers have taken advantage of the fact that we as humans love habits.

Martin Rowinski (20:29.23)
You

Darby Vannier (20:46.226)
I mean, if you just think about everything you do on a daily basis, you’re building, he calls them habit loops. So you’re building a habit loop with how you get ready for work every day. And if you drive to an office, you’re driving the same route, you know, all of that stuff that becomes automatic over time. But it deals with how you can take advantage then of that habit building in order to help you succeed in life and in business as far as expanding your goals and completing those and growing as an individual in our organization.

Martin Rowinski (21:16.108)
Yeah, I haven’t read that book, so I’ll have to check that one out. Thank you.

Darby Vannier (21:20.784)
It’s not a light read, it is quite thick.

Martin Rowinski (21:23.886)
scientific. So before we wrap this up, what are your top tips for recruiting and developing high performing teams that drive organizational success?

Darby Vannier (21:37.02)
The number one thing is obviously there’s a certain amount of skill and experience that you need for a position, whatever it is. Obviously there is that. However, the number one thing that you need to be working on to recruit is an individual who’s going to fit within your culture. This is not bad or good, whatever, it doesn’t say anything about your specific culture. This is assuming you like your culture.

The reason being is skill -wise, you can teach a lot of things. I can teach people to do a lot of things. What I can’t teach them to do is fit within the culture that I’ve built in the organization. And hiring somebody into an organization that is not a cultural fit is the quickest way to destroy your culture and cause a variety of other issues. So that’s why I was saying earlier, I spend a lot of time when I’m hiring, I spend a lot of time upfront trying to one,

generate the right questions for that particular position so that I know I’m asking the right things to get at what I want to know. But then I also generally will try to involve other team members in that interview process because I want to know how this person interacts with the team and if it looks like they’re actually going to fit within that culture. If I can find that individual and they have the basic skills and experience that I need, I can teach them the more detailed experiences for my particular organization.

or somebody within my organization can teach them to do that. Having said that, if you don’t like your culture, then that changes things because then you may be hiring and you may be trying, and this is a little more difficult, to hire individuals that are gonna help you shift your culture to where you wanna be. That gets a little more difficult because one, it’s difficult in analyzing that situation with them. It also is difficult because you run the risk that…

they will be uncomfortable immediately from the time that they arrive. So you probably need to have conversations upfront with them about your goals for trying to shift the organization so that they know that you understand that they may not feel entirely comfortable right now, but that’s what you’re trying to do and move that organization forward. So that’s the big thing there is it’s just really recruiting and hiring people who are going to have a good cultural fit.

Darby Vannier (23:56.616)
because that’s going to help you excel. Those are the folks that are going to be dedicated to you, that are going to be loyal. I know loyalty is a lot harder nowadays in general, but we have to look at it a little bit differently. And if we can get those individuals who are highly dedicated, even if they only stay for three or four years, if we can get them who are highly dedicated, that’s going to help you innovate and scale your organization moving forward.

Martin Rowinski (24:20.083)
Awesome. So what’s the best way for for executives or anyone that’s looking for help to find you?

Darby Vannier (24:27.788)
the best way is probably through my website. It is be indispensable .com. and I’m most active on LinkedIn. can just search for me, Darby Veneer and find me and I’ll connect with most of everybody. as long as you don’t try to sell me something immediately, as soon as I connect, we’ll be good.

Martin Rowinski (24:42.158)
They always do. They always do. Awesome. Well, thank you Darby very much. Appreciate having you on the show and for our audience, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Leadership Talks. Stay tuned for more inspiring conversations with leaders from various industries. And once again, thank you. And until next time, take care everyone. Thanks Darby.

Darby Vannier (25:06.536)
Thank you.