David Horsager (Intro):
Welcome to the Trusted Leader Show. I’m your host, David Horsager. Join me as I sit down with influential leaders from around the world to discuss why leaders and organizations fail, top tactics for high performance and how you can become an even more trusted leader.

David Horsager:
Welcome to The Trusted Leader Show. It’s David Horsager here again, and I have an amazing leader, a new friend. I’ve had the opportunity to see him in action in his company. They’ve done some amazing things. He’s led in high trust way through a significant merger. He is led an organization through, I would say, fairly significant financial changes in our markets and world. And I can tell you from the front lines he’s loved and liked and some people aren’t. Both more than that, he’s trusted and I’m grateful to have him on here. Thanks for joining us. Stan Moss, the CEO of Polen Capital.

Stan Moss:
Hi David. Grateful for the opportunity to be with you today.

David Horsager:
Well, Polen Capital’s done some amazing things, but let’s start with you Stan. You’ve done some amazing things. If you look, anybody can look at your resume on LinkedIn or anywhere, but just give us a little glimpse. What do we not know about Stan Moss? What’s your quick story?

Stan Moss:
Growing up, both of my parents were educators. My father was a teacher, he’s a football coach, actually, the head football coach and a principal. And then my mom was a fourth grade teacher. So my entire childhood I was growing up around teachers, leaders and coach coaches. And this had a great influence on who I am today. So my parents dedicated their lives from a service standpoint to helping others. And I learned from them and I enjoy learning and my lifelong learner, I love helping others and my wife and I have tried to the best we can to instill those same values in our two teenage boys.

David Horsager:
, the proof is in the pudding, right? I often say I teach this trust work, I love this trust work. I’ve seen the impact of this trust work and I’m totally imperfect at applying it. Just ask my teenagers. So we’re working on it, but I, I’ve kind of got some of the same, 14, 16, 18, 20. So we’re working through it together. Tell us, I wanna dig just a little bit deeper on that. Your dad, football coach. My dad was very important to me as far as a trust perspective. Both mom and dad were, but were you and football, did he coach you specifically?

Stan Moss:
Yes, I was a high school and collegiate athlete. I played football in both and my dad was the head coach of the football team. What’s

David Horsager:
That? What was that like? I didn’t have mine just watched on the sidelines. They weren’t involved there. We were involved in the farm, certainly coaching on throwing hay bales and picking rock, but not in football. When you got other people vying for positions and people are wondering if your pre preferences because you’re their kid or not, what were some of the things you learned about having to deal with those leadership or even trust issues?

Stan Moss:
Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there, but I do think that it was an advantage certainly to having my father be a coach and be my coach because after practice was over or after the game was over, some may view this as a negative, but I would go home and we would talk about practice or we would look at the film and break down the tape. So I felt like from a understanding the game of football perspective, that I had a distinct advantage over others because I was literally living with a coach. And then on the negative side, there’s always perception of favoritism. But my dad made sure that that didn’t happen. I would say he actually, he went to the extremes of making sure that no one thought that I was being treated with any favor whatsoever. So from a leadership perspective, my dad handled that really well, which helped protect me.

David Horsager:
Yeah, absolutely. Who’s your teams these days?

Stan Moss:
Well, I went to the University of Alabama and I’m a huge fan of the University of Alabama and head coach Nick Saban as well.

David Horsager:
Absolutely. Well, you’ve got some wins to be grateful for. In Minnesota we say you don’t have too many hopes. Usually it’s our favorite time for football’s about July when everybody’s excited that it could be a winning year. But on the call it’s level. We finally, we’ve had a few more wins lately and actually we do on the pro level this year too. But usually there’s some big disappointment coming, so we don’t want to get too excited in Minnesota about any of that stuff. , go ahead. Were you to say something else?

Stan Moss:
Well, I was gonna say that your Vikings are doing quite well and also our dolphins down here in South Florida are having a good season as well.

David Horsager:
That’s right, that’s right. Oh yeah, we got the, there’s comparisons to Dan Marino and that’s always a good thing. So , let’s jump in here a little bit. We’ve this, you had parents at leadership. I mean we see there’s a lot of learning in coaching and in sports for sure, discipline and collaboration and all the great things that happen. But give us just a quick journey there on your corporate side. And then I want to jump into some of the great things that at least I saw in my short time so far in collaborating and partnering with Poland Capital. But let’s just the corporate journey and then even with an emphasis on Poland Capital and what’s it about, where is it headed?

Stan Moss:
Sure. I actually joined Poland Capital in 2003, so getting close to 20 years now. And the firm has evolved quite a bit. During my time when I first joined the firm, I actually joined as chief operating officer and Chief financial officer and the firm was led by the founder, David Poland and David Poland’s. Leadership style was very much command and control and we focused on managing time and then producing results for our clients. So we did a great job on producing results for our clients and internally because of the command and control style that would lend itself to being a lower trust environment. So unfortunately our founder passed away in 2012. I was able to step in as CEO and the other leaders of the firm. We decided to move away from a command and control structure to being much more collaborative, focused on autonomy, empowerment, and really having a healthy culture where we could develop people and people would want to join our firm so they could learn and have a terrific career here. And then since that time, we’ve actually been able to achieve pension and investments, best places to work status for seven consecutive years. So very proud to talk about that cause we had significant impact on change.

David Horsager:
It’s a big change and I wanna get into some of the other changes you’ve helped create in the midst of even a merger lately. It seemed like I watched people that were actually a lot of times in mergers as you know, that people are leery and worried. And I saw some people were excited and actually were saw that it almost felt too good to be true to them, some of the new folks jumping in. But there’s something about your culture, something you’ve done intentionally. I wanna go backwards first and say what going from command to more autonomy and freedom, how did you actually do that? What are some things you actually did to have a healthier culture where there was way more collaboration and way more trust?

Stan Moss:
Well, I think you hit on the key word in the question is being intentional about culture. Cause a lot of people talk about culture being the air that you breathe or the way that things get done and some of that is actually true. But I think those that nurture culture are very intentional about culture and have a common language and how they talk about culture to help define it are where you find success around the healthy culture. So one of the first things we did was around freedom, our autonomy. So I call it freedom within a framework. So we wanted to give every single person in polling capital the freedom to do their job, to drive results, achieve goals and objectives in a way that they best saw fit, but within the constraints of a framework. In other words, if we have an investment process that we’re going to execute, stay within the framework of the process itself. If we’re gonna talk to one another and give one another feedback, we use the terminology radical candor. And so there’s a defined scaffolding around how we give one another feedback. So we’ve worked in every element of our culture to put some type of framework around it so people know how to operate and then be able to take advantage of that freedom because without the frameworks, freedom is a very difficult thing and it requires a lot of responsibility. So frameworks help people actually take advantage of the freedom itself.

David Horsager:
So talk to me about this, and I remember you had this results framework and you’ve kind of modified it a little bit to work there, but a lot of people would say right now they’re asking, they’re senior leaders asking, especially they’re use to command control, they’re like, yeah, but how do you have people accountable? How do you hold people accountable? You just give this freedom and they can work wherever and they can do whatever. And you’ve given all this freedom, how do you actually have accountability to results? What say you?

Stan Moss:
Yeah, it’s actually a great question. And we’ve had this system in place for a better part of a decade now, and then we’ve learned a lot through implementation of it. And I’d say that one of the key things is that it puts a lot of emphasis on the manager. So not the person who’s actually driving the work, but the manager. So the manager really needs to be very intentional and specific around goals and objectives and what are those goals and objectives and specifics that the individual who works with them needs to accomplish. So if you’re very clear about that, the person knows what they’re supposed to do and then if they’re struggling with how to do it and you come back to the manager will provide you with training and resources, guidance, mentorship, coaching to help you achieve those results. But if you know what you’re doing, you don’t need it and then you have the freedom to get it done. So I think that that is key piece is in the manager setting the goals and then working with the individual. And then secondly, we like to measure, you put in key performance indicators, you measure what matters and then what you measure gets done. So you need those KPIs tied to your overall strategic objectives as a firm. So then the manager can also interact with the person and can see what the KPIs are generating in terms of results.

David Horsager:
How do you see that? Just take that another step further. Do you have a rhythm of meetings or how is there an expectation on these managers being specific? In some organization you set a strategy maybe for a year and then they boil it down to 90 day, in our case, 90 day quick plans. And then we boil it down to what are the weekly three that are most gonna push forward this 90 day. Is there a rhythm that you have at all around KPIs hitting something that, or an expectation of your managers to, hey, every week you’re checking on these or every month or every, is there a certain kind of a dashboard or rhythm to check on outcomes or accounta hold people accountable to these things?

Stan Moss:
Yeah, the short answer to that, that is yes, more extended answer is we start with a strategic plan, which strategic plans used to be five years, we we’ve shortened ’em to three and they’re adaptable, we can change them. But we set out a three year strategic plan and then each year we spend a lot of time working on what are the five major objectives that we want to achieve as a firm during a calendar year. Once those goals are established, then we go to the departmental level goals, get those goals established and those drive down to the individual goals. So it’s a tiering system that’s all linked back to the strategic plan. And then the KPIs are there to measure on achievement at the individual level, the departmental level, and all the way up to the strategic plan level. And then we report on KPIs weekly.

David Horsager:
Okay, that’s what I wondered. Weekly KPIs. And do you have a dashboard for that or is it just emailed in or something? Weekly. Weekly KPIs are reported.

Stan Moss:
We do, we call it the management scorecard, but we have a Microsoft Power BI dashboard. Yeah, sure. All the leadership can see it.

David Horsager:
Yep. That’s fascinating cause because I feel like in my experience, just with your people briefly, you’re driving financial outcomes for people they wanna see, they want to know that you’re doing the right thing, they want to know why and all these things. But it’s what I feel like at your firm there is a freedom because there is a framework. I mean there there’s a freedom that’s allowed because they still do know, hey, they got the management, they can see this, they’re accountable to this, it’s fair. And some people are trying to move toward just kind of open freedom, which then everybody’s questioning well what really is happening? And I think in my time and I kind of probably deeper with a hundred companies a year or whatever and then some very deep and some not very deep. But in my shorter time with you guys, it just seemed like there was more of a joy and freedom because of this framework.
And there’s not many people that get that mix. And I’m sure that even leads to the best place to work. And I was looking at some of the other awards you guys have received, but anything else you would say just as far as a couple tips for high trust culture for how you’re driving a high trust culture where people can perform at their best. There’s some other things you did with the best place to work, but maybe one or two more tips that you could share with others that are trying to create teams where people can perform at their best.

Stan Moss:
I really believe the number one thing is clarity around communication and then communicating with frequency and with repetitiveness, one thing I learned early on is just because you said something once doesn’t mean everyone got it. So you need a cadence of that repetition to reinforce messaging. I feel like it’s very important to meet with my direct reports once a week we have a meeting in which we go over the list, like the top five things they wanna discuss with me and I’ll try to list the top five things I wanna discuss with them and we’ll have at least a 30 minute meeting and wrap about these in priority fashion. And then the idea there is if that’s working with us, it’s gonna work for them to talk with their staff to make sure that we’re focused on the highest priority issues across the firm. If there’s any issues that are happening in the firm that those will get elevated to me. So we’re all on the same page. And I think that that’s critical in achieving goals and executing on those goals. It’s just communication.

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David Horsager:
Speaking of the consistency of communication, you’ve taken some of these ideas, even our work trust edge. Well tell us what you’ve done with Trust Edge for the fun of it since people are aware of at least what that is that are listening.

Stan Moss:
Yes, we’re been terrific. So David came in May and gave a keynote speech to the entire firm about trust and we assigned the book the Trust Edge to the entire firm. And then we also have a group called Culture Club where we read through each chapter of the book and then have a discussion about it. So those two things happened and then our learning and development group in the firm used a trust pillar for each month from May, and it goes all the way through December. So one of the pillars is highlighted each and every month and then we actually kind of post a definition out on our feedback platform and then ask for feedback and recommendations on who in the firm, in the entire firm should receive recognition for one of the trust pillars. So the person who is the most post on one of the pillars actually receives a shout out and recognition at the firm. So it’s been really terrific how we’ve been able to ingrain and use the chapters and how it fit within our organization over the course of learning and development for the year.

David Horsager:
And we’re excited you have a key person in learning development getting certified now in the deeper work. But I think the really cool thing, many people ask me, oh I bet you’re dealing with poisonous organizations and problems cuz you’re talking about trust. And of course that’s not the case most of the time we’re dealing with great organizations that get trust and want ongoing greatness. You, you’ve had a lot of great things going for you, you had a lot of great culture already, but it’s people that kind of get like, oh this trust really is important to keep it going to grow even more. And those that are kind of the poisonous ones, they just want image work, they wanna look trusted without actually being the most trusted their industry. Great ones like you. I think it speaks to the learning and development. You’re a continual learner.
You’ve gotta coach a friend of ours that does some of your ongoing coaching. Your team sees that you’re getting ongoing coaching, your team sees that you put money into learning and development and culture change and all these things and you’ve done a lot more before we were there. But I think they see that care for learning and development that care for culture. Did that as you had this merger happen, how did you keep trust and increased trust in even in the midst of some of it’s always hard. I’ve dealt with a lot of these where we’re bringing and a different entity into join our culture and try to create one. Tell us about what you think you did and maybe you want to share if you feel like you’ve done anything wrong in that regard.

Stan Moss:
I think one of the things that we did that worked really well as an organization is that we were present meaning either on Zoom or in person, we were consistently communicating with the firm that we were acquiring and then doing what we said we were gonna do from day one. If we said we’re gonna do something, we did it. If we said our benefits look a certain way, that’s what they look like. If your compensation structure’s gonna look a certain way, that’s how it ended up looking. We’re gonna train you, we’re gonna give $5,000 to every single employee we did it. So everything that they were hearing that they may have had some skepticism about because they were at a different place when they came to Poland Capital, it came true. So I think that that went a long way for building trust between the organizations.
And then I think the key thing that we did that you were a big part of is that for the first time we brought everyone together as an organization for that May event. So it was not only the people that were had joined Poland Capital through the acquisition, but we had also hired a lot of people through the pandemic who had not ever set foot in a polling capital space are interacted broadly with a group of people in person at Poland Capital. And we had a lot of things during an entire week of a gathering and the feedback on that was it was great that people really enjoyed it and they felt part of the Poland family once that happened. So you trust was built throughout from that.

David Horsager:
I saw a lot of good in that and I saw even who you trusted to be on the platform. I think there was some folks, I remember one former armed services gentleman and he was asking me a little bit about speaking and kind of being nervous and he did a great job but you trusted your people to be in front of others and maybe that even helped develop them and make them better. And I think there was some, it was just really fun to see. I could go into a lot of the, it’s little things that I see when I’m around companies and organizations and little things that you guys did differently. And like I said, in our short time of knowing what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

Stan Moss:
Yeah, I would say that I think to a casual observer and certainly to per anyone who works here, you really see the importance of continuous learning at the firm or what we would call mastery. We’re always trying to learn from my seat throughout the organization cause we actually really believe that that learning is a competitive advantage and then the more that we continually learn that can set us apart from others in the industry and it’s just extremely helpful in life. I think I heard you on one of your other podcasts talking about the average number of books that an American reads in their lifetime. So just think about if you’re reading a book a week, how much more that you’re learning compared to the average person in our country and what benefits that can provide you in your life. So you take that same type of thinking and apply it to an organization and learning compounds just like interest compounds, it’s one of the eight wonders of the world as compound interest. I’d say compound learning is as well,

David Horsager:
No doubt about it. I think. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more on that. I think in the first book, I don’t know if, I think I quoted the study of the more you read, the more money you make in life. There’s a big study on that of course there’s a lot more benefits to that. I’ve got a brother, my grandmother was known for, I don’t say this everywhere cuz it can kinda look high ego, but she was a simple teacher, lived in a trailer house in the poorest county in Minnesota. But in her later years she read a book a day and unless, but if people visited her, she put the book down and she looked them in the eyes and she was the best listener around. But when she was kind of retired on her own, she would read, known for reading a book a day.
My brother reads about a book a week and he has for years. And I said what’s my brother? Compared to most people interesting to talk to for so many people are just, the one fun thing about learning too is people, some people learn a certain amount and they get really high ego cuz they think they know it all. And once they become more of a learner they learn, they don’t know much. So they become really humble. And I feel like that’s a similar something that I saw in your organization and I saw that in you. Obviously you get coached, you keep learning, but you see that in your culture. And I say something the proud are opposed, it doesn’t matter if you’re running for president and you’re super proud or you’re running for, I mean people, this is why we like to tip off Alabama.
We because they’re proud, they think they’re the best and they have been. But everybody wants Bama to lose except for those that are role TIRs like you because we think, but people come against the proud and that’s a little bit of humor there. But I mean in general, a ceo, a leader that’s super proud we come against, but when that’s why learners are genuinely, when they really become learners, they become really humble because they know wow, there’s a lot more to know. So I think that’s something that’s happening there. Let me ask you this for the fun, but what are you learning today? What are you learning this week?

Stan Moss:
Yeah, I’ve been reading a book by Daniel Pink. I read his book drive and that’s a big component of how we talk about our culture with autonomy, mastery, and purpose. But his most recent book is about the power of regret, which is a very interesting book. And one of the tidbits I picked up from it that was unexpected is that most people actually regret the things that they didn’t do versus the things that they actually did do. So when you think about should you take this risk in business or should you consider going back to school and things like this, those are challenges to yourself that if you did do it, you’ll likely receive great benefits from it if you don’t do it and you look back in your life and say, I regret not doing that. So I just found it fascinating that he had put some academic rigor and data to it and had discovered that.

David Horsager:
Awesome, terrific. One other thing I want to ask about you is, at least from my experience in the leaders that I see do really well that lead companies well, lead organizations well, they’re also leading themselves well in some way. And although we’re all imperfect at this, do you have any routines how you’re leading yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually, journaling, I don’t know what, but do you have any regular routines that helps you stay grounded in leading yourself? Well

Stan Moss:
I do. I get up every morning, five o’clock in the morning and I have an exercise routine. I work with a personal trainer three days a week and other days I do a what’s called a boot count class. So it’s a group class where you’re doing all kinds of things that help you but seem a little dangerous, . So to me it’s very important is for me, exercise is my meditation. So I’m just there thinking about exercising, improving my health and trying not to think about anything else. Then I come home, have breakfast, see my family, and then when I go to the office I have an hour blocked out. That’s just for me to think. So I don’t want any meetings, I don’t want any interruptions. I wanna read and I wanna to think and really center myself to be able to be my best self for the rest of the day and to accomplish the tasks that I’ve set out for that day. So I’ll do some planning as well. What are the top three things that I need to accomplish for a given day and work on getting those done each and every day and then kinda rinse and repeat each day after that.

David Horsager:
I love it. Oh those are good. Do you have any best advice from a mentor over time? You’ve led things well leading ahead of you? Any best advice or quote that you kind of come back to?

Stan Moss:
I think when I was younger I didn’t spend as much time taking care of my myself physically and mentally. I’ve just working and working and working and not taking the time to think to journal, to meditate, to exercise. And I had a mentor say, if you’re gonna be in this business for a long time, you gotta take care of yourself. And the most interesting thing is once you start taking care of yourself, you actually have better output or better outcomes from your own work. So I think that’s probably the best advice I received. And unfortunately it took me too long to figure that out. Yeah, ,

David Horsager:
Me too. Some people know my story losing 50 pounds or so in five months. But I think it was a big deal, David, this doc saying, David, do you want to drive a Ferrari or a junker? Cuz I put different fuel in a Ferrari and if you better fuel your, you gotta fuel yourself differently and that can do with what goes in your mouth as well as what can exercise and everything else, but it’s work every day. But hey, this has been great. There’s a lot more we could talk about and say and get into, but I’m gonna put in a trusted leader show notes, we’ll put in there a link to your LinkedIn so people can know more about you. We’ll put in a link to Poland Capital so everybody can see a little bit about the greater organization. Two more questions. One, think of a challenge. What’s the biggest leadership challenge you’ve had and what did you learn from that?

Stan Moss:
I’d say the biggest leadership challenge that I’ve had over 20 years at Poland Capital is actually the growth of the firm itself and then the leaders I had working with me and their ability to handle the growth. So in other words, a person that you hire when the firm is say 10 or 15 people and smaller, can they grow to be able to be in the same position at a much larger organization with much broader responsibility. And so the hardest thing for me is when the person needs to be transitioned into a different position. Cause you, you’re pulling for ’em the whole time. You’re coaching them and mentoring them, you really want them to move up and for whatever reason, either they don’t want to or they’re not capable of it. So it’s kinda transitioning that person into a different role has been tough. But we’ve done it over the years. But I’d say it really pulls out the heartstrings for, cuz you care about people,

David Horsager:
You want the best for ’em, good stuff. Well Stan, it’s a treat to be know you and watch you lead well. And I can see it because I see people just really appreciating your leadership and through some great amazing growth, sometimes tough times that you can’t control. And it’s been fun to see that even in a short time. We’ve known each other, but it’s a trusted leader show who is a leader you trust and why,

Stan Moss:
I’m not sure if you’ll like this answer, but the head coach at the University of Alabama for the past 15 years is Nick Saban. And I don’t know Coach Saban personally, but I’ve studied him because he’s been a great leader for the university. He’s very consistent, he’s very disciplined. He executes on the process that he, he’s developed. He hates losing more than he enjoys winning. And one of the things I really feel like I learned from him and listening to him is that he talks a lot about the players and player development and how much focus and emphasis he puts on the players. So at Polling Capital we do the same thing, not our players, but it’s the talent and the organization. We want any person who joins our organization to join and then to get better. So from the time you join to the time you leave for whatever reason, our objectives for you to be better, to be a better person both professionally and personally.
So I think that that’s a big component of it. And then secondly, one of the things that Coach Saban’s done that was unique is that if a head coach of another team left the team for whatever reason, they usually get terminated. Coach Saban would actually hire that person to join the staff as a consultant or maybe end up putting them on the staff. So for me personally, I said that’s tremendous because these are people who are so talented that they could actually rise up to be a head coach level and it just didn’t work out at whatever time. But they’re still talented people. So at Poland Capital, we’ve hired people who founded firms who were former CEOs at other organizations to join our organization so we can have the best leadership team and executives in the industry. We believe. So I’ve kind of followed Saban’s example in attempting to do that. So he, he’s one. And then the second I’ll mention one more quickly, and is a friend of mine that you’ve already talked about, it’s Don Yeager. So Don’s been a great friend of mine, a mentor and coach, and Don’s just humble and he’s authentic and I could text him, pick up the phone and call him. He’s always there for me. So he’s definitely a trusted leader in my life.

David Horsager:
Yep. I love Don. We’re great friends and that’s part of why I got to know you, so I really appreciate that. Lots more we could say, but for now, great time. Thank you Stan. Thank you Polen Capital for all you’re doing and this has been the Trusted Leader show. Until next time, stay trusted.