Episode 1 : Taking the Fear OUT of the Workplace with Jack Stack

Jack Stack, President and CEO of SRC Holdings Corp and The Great Game of Business talks about how using transparency and openness helped build the strategies SRC Holdings used to help take the fear out of the workplace in the wake of a global pandemic.

Key Take-Aways:

1. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. (click to jump to this topic below)

Use huddles and communicate as much as you can. We have a 9:00 am call with the team and then we took every process, every question, every fear that they might have, and we met again at 1:30 to talk about solutions. Be certain that you're always on top of the latest ideas and processes.  

2. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. (click to jump to this topic below)

People are the most favorable and the most understandable and at their greatest when they know someone's vulnerable. I think it's really true and what happens is when we have tough situations, and we share the pain, this is what's critical about this open book, is to have the courage to tell people just how bad it is.

3. Critical number - health and safety. (click to jump to this topic below)

Right now, our most critical numbers are health and safety. That's the topic of our nine o'clock call. Did we change our critical number because of health and safety? Not really, because health and safety has always been number one. Any meeting we start it's always either about safety or it's about health, but what has been so rewarding is how everyone has come together to protect the health and safety of all of our people.

4. Don't stop huddling! (click to jump to this topic below)

Jack talked about keeping discipline to the huddles. There was a question asked about what do I do? Do I cancel my huddles? This is the most important time to stay disciplined to those practices. Especially in communications of your huddles. To keep people informed on the state of the business. Those types of things keep people focused on the critical number.

5. Work your liabilities. (click to jump to this topic below)

You're going to learn so much if you work your liabilities. You need to ask for the moon. Alright? If you've got a bank note go to your banker now and you ask them to push up principal payments or reductions in terms of interest rates. The quicker you react to protect your cash flow, which you do  by understanding each of your liabilities, in the end, it's gonna make you stronger.

5. Activate your contingencies. (click to jump to this topic below)

I’ve looked at everybody's plans and said, “Okay, what happens if you don't make this plan?” And I question what they know and understand about the market. Tell us what is the movement? What is the act? What is the business we're going to be in? What is the market set we're going to be? Think differently because and build contingencies. A big portion of our business was obtained because of our diversification program and our trapdoors because we're saying what if, and we're saying is what if we are in a black swan?

Click "More" to read the full episode transcription.

Steve Baker (0:00:10):

Good afternoon. Welcome. I'm Steve Baker with the Great Game of Business. We'd like to welcome you and thank you for taking time to spend with us. We know that the President of the United States is making an address right now. So, you'll likely be seeing us in recorded fashion. Unfortunately, you can't fix any of this in post-production. There are a couple of things we want to talk about before we begin. Talking about how to lead through a crisis.

We want to make sure you know that none of us are symptomatic and that we are following guidelines used in the White House Press Room. We're keeping an appropriate distance. 

We also have a contingency—thanks for joining us on Zoom. Zoom has been overwhelmed over the last couple of weeks trying to keep up with demand of remote workers. So, if for some reason we crash during this event, we will go to a contingency and you'll need to check your email so that we can go to our alternative site.

So, I'd like to welcome Jack Stack, our co-founder and CEO of SRC Holdings for joining us and Rich Armstrong, president of the Great Game of Business. Man, this is really interesting because over the last few weeks, we have seen so much happen in the world. So much of it has been unpredictable.  We don't know where it's going next, and the word “black swan” keeps coming up. And I thought we could start by defining what a black swan is for everybody.

Although the term itself was coined a long time ago, and in Latin believe it or not, it was really popularized in 2001 by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book Fooled by Randomness. And then again, his book, Black Swan in 2007.  And basically, a black swan is defined as “a rare and unpredictable event that has severe and widespread consequences” and there's another part of this you may not know until later, when it's all over, there'll be a widespread insistence that it could have been avoided with the benefit of hindsight. Some examples of the dot-com bubble, 9/11, the crash of the economy in 2008, even Brexit could be considered a black swan because it wiped out $2 trillion of value in the economic marketplace.

 Here's what we want to do today is we want to talk about what's happening in real world situations. You guys sent in your questions. There were so many questions, in fact, we saw them starting to fall into categories, and we will do our absolute level best to make sure we touch on all of them. In addition, Rich and I will continue these conversations weekly on Fridays. And we'll have some other goodies for you at the end of this session. So again, welcome and thanks for participating. Let's start this way: some of you are in dire straits. There's no question about it. Some of you are strong, but your supply chains are interrupted. You might be disrupted by mandatory shutdown, something we're looking at here at SRC, perhaps. And some of you are so young, you've never even seen a black swan before. So it's a really incredible time to take action, but also to learn as we go. We're in it all together. So again, as we collected your responses, and we looked at these similar categories, that's how we're going to kind of address them.

So, first of all, Jack, welcome, and thanks for being here. We really appreciate it. We've had a lot of questions around the very first steps to take in light of this crisis. What was your first step in dealing with this pandemic at SRC?

 Jack Stack (0:03:48):

Well, very quickly, we broke this thing down into kind of levels. The first level was obviously the safety, security, health and welfare, of all our associates. That was number one—level number one. Level number one lead to level number two, which means that you can’t only take care of them internally when they're at work, you got to be very concerned with them outside of work as well, and what comes in from outside of work. So, level one and level two is really all centered around health and safety. Level three is what happens: how do you run? How do you stay alive? What happens when your supply chains are broken? What happens when your associates who, God forbid. were touched by the virus? And then we also have level four which is, okay, if you get called today, you're told to mandatory shutdown, what are you gonna do? How are you gonna pay your people? The big thing is is that we don't have a future without people, okay? We won't have a future. So we've got to get them healthy. We've got to prove to do every preventive maintenance practice we possibly can. 

We then still have to meet our obligations to our customers at the same time, and it's a very difficult situation to be in. One day worrying about the health and welfare of people, and then listening on the TV about the terms of an economic stimulus package, and taking people out of the workforce at the same time. We’ve really got to find a balance in terms of making the right decisions. Every day we wake up and we’re guilty for one thing, and we’re scared to the other thing.

So we broke this thing down into four levels, concentrating heavy processes in terms of preventive maintenance. We're doing everything imaginable and we're listening to our people. And we're very, very fortunate to have an organization that people are very innovative and creative, okay? And give us a tremendous amount of ideas. When we're vulnerable, okay? They are at their best.

And so, we have a nine o'clock phone call every single morning. The average phone call lasts—well, at the very beginning of the crisis the phone calls lasted probably about 90 minutes every phone call. We then took every process, every question, every fear that they might have, and we met again at 1:30. At the next nine o’clock phone call, that phone call had 58 people who then had responsibilities of passing it through to everyone inside the organization.

So, we have a morning huddle around  health and safety. And that's working really well because data is moving really fast. Yesterday, we broke through on testing here in Springfield, right? We can test, alright? We can bring our people into a safe area. We know how to go through the processes and the procedures. We work closely with our hospitals. And again, it's only certain that we're always on top of the latest ideas and latest processes, but also our people are doing tremendous things internally with coming up with ways of, you know, putting up a plexiglass between workstations and making certain that we have the proper distance requirements and anything that they feel that they can help one another out. It is really tremendous. We’re able to see how calm everybody in the organization, because the phone call that went out at nine o'clock this morning we had no questions which is really, really rare when you're running this size of organization we have.

So we’ve gotta calm down. We don't have a goal on health and safety, okay? Those are always moving around. Those are always illusory tadpoles every time, so that's why we will not give up on this nine o'clock meeting. And then at the same time, we're adding to the meeting a little bit of level one. What is the current work conditions? I mean, every week we tell everybody, what our customer, our board what our schedules are. We've been doing this for 30 some years, and sometimes you take things for granted. So all of our processes and procedures, we're kind of reiterating saying, “If you're worried about backlogs, if you're worried about workloads, here's where you can go to find the information relative to whether you're going to have a job or not, whether we're going to have a layoff or not, and what's in our control, what's not in our control.” Alright? So that's the whole idea of how to run the operations.

Okay, so we have operational meetings going on where we're really trying to figure out what resources do we have in terms of people, materials, our supply chain, and then at the same time being absolutely certain that we could meet our customer’s expectations. Just for everybody's knowledge, okay, our order board through May, right now, is only off by about two and a half percent. That's all from our original forecast, right? It's kind of a comforting factor to our organizations. I don't know if it's going to continue, but as of today, you can go in there you can say our people believe that our board is strong through May. So that, and then we teach you more than they can go, obviously, to get that. For one, it's hard to shut down. So here's what we're doing in terms of shutdown: think about it as a three legged stool.

What we're trying to do is put a compensation package together in terms of: if in fact, we're mandatorily shut down or if we’re shut down because of a demand situation or a supply situation. That we have some kind of supplemental pay for our people. The degree of supplemental pay is finally going to be based on each one of these legs of the stool. One, is there will be state aid somewhere. Whether it's social, whether it's unemployment compensation, short-term disability, maybe you got business interruption insurance. So we have one person that's working on that leg of the stool, and that leg is changing because states are trying to figure out how to cover their unemployment compensation pools. Do they have enough money? Will it dry out? Will they get help from the government? So we got somebody focusing on state aid, alright?

The second thing is the federal aid. So we have one person on that second leg of the stool concentrating on what federal aid will our people be able to get? Will it be 2000 deployed, will it be 1200 dollars deployed? By the size of our organization, let's just round it off at about 2000 people and they were all to get $1,000, okay, you got $2 million that would come in for that leg. If you get $300 a week on unemployment compensation from the state, and you multiply by the number people that's the leg. So the third leg of the stool is what we're going to take out of treasury. So, we will then decide what we're going to take out of our cash balances, what we're going to take out of money market accounts, what are we going to take out relative to debt capacities that we have? Because we like our people. We want our people to make absolutely certain while they're abiding to the guidelines and making sure that everybody's healthy, they're going to be financially healthy at the same time. So we're looking at this thing, and we're going to have a compensation program, but the problem of the compensation program is getting the federal people to really kind of give us an indication in terms of what it’s gonna be. And then the state people will tell us where it's going to be. And then we will then have the challenge to determine how long do we expect this to go? Right, right.

And all I can tell you right now is how long do we expect it to go? It's not scientific, it's unquantifiable. It's the fact that we digest a lot of data, okay? I mean, we’re up at like five in the morning. We're listening to as much data. We're in our cars listening to Sirius. We're listening to data from our customers, from our hospitalizations, and we have full coverage from our people. You digest as much data as you possibly can, and then you finally come up with an answer, because you got to get off the pot. You got to make a decision. If you're going to build a scenario, or you're going to build a model in terms of just how far you can go. So we are at the point, right now, building models and anticipating this thing to go from eight to thirteen weeks. Now, please don't quote this, okay? This is our models. It's based on our communities. It's based on our state, it's based on the whole 50 States of the Union, okay, the information that we're getting, the markets that we're in, the processing, okay? So, we're looking at how far that stool—that’s a bad phrase, but how far that probably appropriate phrase will go in order to make certain that we're taking care of our people.

Steve Baker (0:12:03):

So you're literally taking what's happening out there, as far as packages from state and federal, as soon as that can be quantified you can add that to the SRC zone internal plan to actually stretch it out further to cover people should this go longer?

Jack Stack (0:12:20):

Yeah. And we're very fortunate to have really kind of literate people where they can really understand them when we say to them, hey, listen, if you get 1200 hours per person inside your house, you know, that's $2400 in a married couple that you really need to be able to save during this economic period of time. We're more than happy to supplement. Don't come back to us please and say, “Oh, no, this is my money.” You know, “I demand more from everybody else inside the organization.” You know, we're vulnerable together. So we would try to figure out, how can they get absolutely certain that their take home pay is as close to what they're accustomed to using without totally becoming insolvent, alright?

And so we build certain solvency levels inside the organization. What's the solvency level? Okay, to us it’s like, we look at earnings, we look at the appreciation, we figure out what our profits are in terms of those combinations. And then we know in today’s market, you can borrow almost four times what your annual earnings are. So I'd say it's a four to one leverage ratio, right? We know things are going to change. So, when we apply a six to one ratio in terms of when we think we can come back, okay? So, we're working on all kinds of situations that we can extend this thing as long as eight to thirteen weeks in order to make certain that everybody doesn't see a significant hit to their income.

Steve Baker (0:13:42):

So you're really taking uncertainty out as much as you possibly can. Which is difficult in a situation where you have so much uncertainty coming at you every day from Internet, TV, all the different media.

Jack Stack (0:13:55):

We change, we look into something a little farther out, we can get with this thing. And tomorrow, people are going to really understand how they basically can get through with it. I mean, we're at a point right now we're even taught some of our people that we go into a supplemental pay program, or people are working for home, we want to make absolutely certain that we have educational tools that people are going to be taking home to their families, okay?

We're using a lot of the stuff in The Great Game of Business, what you're giving us in terms of education and literacy and profit and loss statements, and you know, how to truly understand the crisis books you've been writing, we're saying that if in fact that we’re shut down, we should at least spend one or two hours a day learning business. So we've really gone into a lot of depth in terms of trying to how to handle this emergency shutdown situation, and it's coming so fast. 20 minutes ago, I heard that New York just basically, only essential businesses are going to be open and they've closed everything else down. So we got to be ready.

Steve Baker (0:14:56): It's got to be ready, right? For sure. Rich, we read a lot of different questions on this from the community. Would you talk about the most effective way, you know, listening to those questions about how to deal with uncertainty and morale? Kind of playing off of what Jack has talked about?

Rich Armstrong (0:15:13):

Yeah. You know, it’s exactly what Jack has talked about, it's just over communicate. The bottom line, what I've seen what SRC is doing, and a lot of our practitioners is, is taking opportunities to set up the communication rhythm and keep consistent with that communication rhythm and answer the questions that they have. And yeah, I've talked about I mean, the first, you know, calls that we've been we had in this process, there certainly was a lot of questions. And now over time, people are getting their questions answered, and now able to communicate that down to their organizations. So I think all of that just has a way of calming everybody down so they can start to think creatively of how they're gonna deal with the situations.

Steve Baker (0:15:59):

Yeah, and in a world of chaos, it's nice to know that work is one place we can get some steady, good information and count on that. That should be one place we can win. Jack, here's a bit of a follow up, what about companies that are dealing with lost orders like retail and restaurants? What should they be doing right now? I mean, you're already in the retail business and the training and coaching business. What should companies do?

 Jack Stack (0:16:27):

I’ll talk about some of the other small businesses. They probably are more personal to me. Okay. Sure. They're very, very small family run businesses that have been basically shut down. Retail, whether it's in the clothing industry, or whether it's in the toy industry. Like kids who've got small business says they are basically shut down. And we're working with those businesses as well as we're with big businesses trying to tell them some of the things they really need to do. Okay, so that's pretty much a lot of the questions, what do I need to do if I don't have orders?

And so the thing that I'm trying to teach them is this, okay? First thing you really do is go after your liabilities. Alright? Take your liabilities, take your notes, take your bills, and immediately contact those people that you have to pay and tell them that you can't pay. Don’t hesitate. Be the first ones out there. Tell the person that’s got your rent or the person on the mortgage is changed and I’ve noticed the bank is giving some forbearance—mortgages not forbearance, but they're giving grace periods, okay? So the first thing to do is go after liabilities. I go after those things that are scary, whether it's vendors or whether it's the payroll taxes or something. I don't think—we may get a break on payroll taxes. We may get holidays; we may get pushed up. Pay attention to your liabilities, okay? Call people up and tell them that, “Listen, I'm not necessarily going to default, but can we stop until a certain point of time and we'll be more than happy to just readjust and get back to the marketplace.”

One of the things that one of the small businesses told me last night, and I'm just absolutely floored with the comment. They put out a video yesterday talking about the vulnerabilities of their store. The vulnerabilities of retail. The invulnerabilities of what are you going to do with your associates that have been with you for 15 years? That, you know, I have to sit there and say, I don't know if you might get paid. And she went online and caught a lot of attention and it was actually posted in terms of one of the newscasts here. But the point that she was trying to make and this is a point that I think all of us big or small really need to understand is that she said that people are the most favorable and the most understandable and at their greatest when they know someone's vulnerable. Because, the response that she got by putting out this piece came from customers, came from her associates.

And when I think about this, I think it's really true that what happens is that when we have enough tough situations, and we share the pain, and this is what's critical about this open book, okay, is to have the courage to tell people just how bad it is, okay? In the hopes that they will understand the vulnerability, and then what you will see inside your organization is new ideas. How to best utilize the assets that we have inside the company. Maybe this toy store now figures out how to be able to do online, maybe they know Easter is coming up. So they’ll be packaging things that they have never done before. The inspirations will come from people inside your organizations. I mean, I think innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship comes when you're in trouble, okay? Not necessarily when you're really really doing well.

So, if you're running an operation right now, and you're afraid of telling people really things that you don't know, you’re missing such an unbelievable opportunity that we have a resource, okay? But also you're teaching them a reality. You're teaching them about life and it isn't all about decision making made at the top, it's trying to figure out how to get paid participation for everybody you got inside your organization. So these small businesses really got to be able to offer on track with their liabilities, okay? And there are people sitting at home that are out of work.

You can be asking them to help you and say, “Hey, would you mind negotiating this one particular piece?” Take little aspects of your liabilities and go out there instead of tasks moving until 13 weeks out or 15 weeks out or something of that nature. And then is that, obviously, maximize what assets you have. If you got cash assets, if you’ve got receivable assets. Please keep people on top of your receivables, alright? Stay on top of whatever receivables that you have. Put somebody on it right away, and make certain that they're dogmatic in terms of that, because, you know, receivables are going to go out. They're gonna go further out, you're going to be counting on those receivables.

The quality of the information that you have relative to the revenues that you’ve got going back inside your organization is what you're going to be using in order to be able to figure out how you allocate what assets you have to your people. And obviously the most important asset that you can get is cash. And so what you really want to do is to be able to figure out if I do get cash, what's my next move? What's my next step? Is it going to be in salaries? Is it going to be in inventories or is it going to be—and then at the same time, the hardest thing is the bounce back.

I mean, what am I going to do when we have an upturn? And there will be an upturn. And so you can just keep in the back of your mind what kind of reserves do I have, and how far can I go from a solvency standpoint, being absolutely certain that I’ve got a bounce. I can get back those credits. Call your credit card companies. I'll tell you right now Chase is charging an extraordinary amount relative to their credit card. If you're delinquent at all, and a retail operation with that kind of a credit card, they're not backing off on the interest rates. But I'll tell you one thing, I just talked to a small business. American Express is becoming more tolerant. Is that a brilliant strategy for American Express? Yeah, they'll create a lot of market share, to be able to help someone is vulnerable. Okay, so I understand that people are really, really receptive, they're positive. And it's not a bad thing to talk to people and explain to them what the situation is. And then you'll get a tremendous amount of rebound, subpar ideas, or suggestions. Their revenue producing ideas, okay? And that's what this Game is all about is to teach people how to create revenue producing products and ideas. I think a whole new generation of new business is going to come out of this and just a relatively few weeks.

Steve Baker (0:22:50):

Yeah, I think you're right about that. As we think about people who are saying, “Okay, I got through to my liabilities I talked to my banker. I extend the terms that I'm paying to my vendors.” All those different things are great immediate actions. A lot of people have been asking this question, “Should I change my critical number in these crazy times?” So do they abandon their plan? Do they establish a new 90-day critical number? How would you talk to folks about their critical number?

Jack Stack (0:23:20):

Right, I read that question. I think it's a great question. And then, I kept thinking about this a lot. I'll just tell you right now our most critical numbers are health and safety. I mean, that's, that's our nine o'clock call. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that is our critical number. Did we change our critical number because of health and safety? Not really, because health and safety has always been number one. I mean, any meeting we start it's always either about safety or it's about health, but what has been so rewarding is how that phone call—yes, a phone call and I'm from the counselor out on the rotary phone there. I really do believe that phone calls work really well.

My 9 am call on health and safety. It has calmed down in this organization. Like, they are tremendously calmed down. They know that we're doing everything we possibly can to push this thing as far away as we possibly can. And then we will always be reactive if something happens. So we were able to calm down. There was a huddle. I mean, don't sit here and just don't think you can have other huddles or you should eliminate your other huddles. I mean, this is your communication channel.

So are we going to change our critical number in terms of our organizations? No, we're not. Why would we? I personally think what will happen, from our standpoint, is that you better get ready for the fourth quarter. Do you listen to some of the pundits in terms of that they’ll have forecasts on what they perceive the economy is going to be? They're expecting a tremendously big spike in the fourth quarter. Now, what does that mean? Well, you're going to be having a big spike in the shortest number of labor hours you possibly can in any quarter that you’ve had, right? So, there's some things that you can pull out of that fourth quarter and you can start spreading it and this thing hitting red for, you know, a big comeback. Okay, so you've got to be concerned about the upturn, you gotto be thinking about the upturn, as much as you're thinking about what's happening in terms of the businesses that you're running in the present time, as well as in the contingencies if, in fact, you're shut down. So, juggle a lot of balls, losing your huddles, and losing your communications, is foolish at this particular point in time. I mean, you just want to keep your patterns, you want to keep your routines. You don't want to send any kind of fear inside your organization. You wanna eliminate the fear.

Steve Baker (0:25:41):

That's great. So, Rich, could you take that for a minute and talk about—I know you've talked to a lot of businesses, small to midsize businesses, about critical numbers. Can you talk about, you know, should I just throw the plan out the window? Do I keep the plan but have a 90-day thing? I think that Jack is giving us a perspective that we can really take in. I'd like to hear what you think about it as well?

Rich Armstrong (0:26:07):

Yeah, I think what Jack said is right in terms of, right now, it's health and safety. But we're in pretty good shape right now with SRC in terms of our orders as Jack talked about. There's other practitioners we've talked to they're not in that shape. Obviously, what it comes down to is that probably in the short term basis, you are focused entirely on cash.

So, I look at it as that you don't want to throw your plan out the window. The plan is the targets. That's where you're cheating and hopefully we have an upside that we can take advantage of in the fourth quarter. But, you may need to put together a 90-day plan with a critical number like cash or there may be some other challenges you had. We had a practitioner, they called in, and said that basically they've set their 90-day plan and its revenue, but he's told everyone there's $90,000 in revenue. That's what will allow us to sustain the jobs, sustain activities, cover the overhead of the business, and be able to continue in the next 90 days. $90,000 in revenue per month. That's the kind of thinking that they need to be looking at and thinking about at this point in time.

Steve Baker (0:27:19):

So a tremendous amount of courage. I love the idea of taking fear out of the organization, over communicating with folks so they can understand this is a good safe place. We're going to be taken care of, but now we need to activate. I heard someone in the community talk about when you create that safe space, you actually get more creativity because people aren't worried about, “Do I have toilet paper and a loaf of bread?”

It's, “What can I do to help?” And I love that there's so much courage behind the idea of: we need $90,000 just to keep the doors open. So that will really get us focused, and yet it doesn't take our eye off the bigger critical number that we've set. So we don't abandon the plan. What we do is say every play between now and the end of the year changes how we get to plan.

Jack Stack (0:28:07):

I think you guys are absolutely right. But this thing is like a continuous movement. Okay, so you'll have a critical number and then you have variances and deviations to that critical number. It's a very small deviation to that critical number than what leadership gets on, but leadership works for. For instance, if we have one of our facilities, for instance, that does not have enough work and we have another facility Dallas dealing in the agricultural section of our county and they are over—they need people. Okay, we can see by having at least a critical level, or at least a standard in terms of what's going down, what's going on, what needs to be fixed? So what we've done this week is we've established one person that allocates people between organizations. Those people that are more than willing to go from one side of town to the other side of town in order to be able to get work.

And so you need a standard. You need the highest/weakest point in your company when it's a critical number. Then, when things begin to fall, that's how you have a priority in terms of what needs to be fixed. Okay? And that's what a lot of people don't understand. And they just don't have plans and they don't have critical numbers. I mean, you want to be working on where the fire is at and put it out as quick as you possibly can. And people respond to that. People respond to that if, you know, if you have that direction. It's $90,000? $90,000? They'll go after $90,000. Listen, people are incredibly creative. You have to trust them to be able to be part of the solution. That's the key to open book management.

Rich Armstrong (0:29:42):

Steve, I'd like to just add in. Jack talked about keeping discipline to the huddles. And I think there was a question that was brought out is that do I, you know, do I cancel my huddles? I think this is the most important time to stay disciplined to those practices. Especially in communications of your huddles. To keep people informed on the state of the business. Those types of things to keep people focused on the critical number. I know that I think there was a coach that talked about that he just attended a huddle of about 200 people in six different operations. They did it completely virtual.

So there's technology, there's a lot of ways that you can still make it happen that you need to know. What we've done at SRC, obviously, that we're trying to keep all of our meetings to 10 or less. So what do we do about that? We can't have all team huddles right, but what we've done is double down on those team huddles at departmental huddles. Those pretty huddles. And, you know, I got a message from Christie the other day that said that, you know, it was great that we put so much emphasis on really boosting up those team and departmental huddles, and getting supervisors ready to lead those huddles because they're coming into play right now. They're the communicators right now. That's where the information is going through. That's what's keeping people excited about what we can do to keep the business going forward.

Steve Baker (0:31:01):

Then, you're talking about Christie Shale our head of talent and organizational development and the investments that have been made in making sure that we're huddling in all levels of the business, not just the top.

Rich Armstrong (0:31:11):

So I really encourage practitioners and attendees we have is that: think about those other communications. You can do small huddles, contained huddles, get the big communication out and make the most of the communication with small-team and departmental huddles.

Jack Stack (0:31:28):

I don't think it's a matter of what if, but I think it but it is, it's a matter of, and I don't want any of the viewers to think that we are huddles with still everybody coming into one room, okay, they are degrees of separation, significant degrees of separation, okay? And that's just one of the challenges that you need to be able to overcome. So, we start out at nine o’clock, and we hit 58 people. You know, if 58 people actually each only take two or three people and two or three people take it, it gets—the most important thing and this is something to remember, it's the consistency of a message in a fluid market. Okay? And that is like an oxymoron. Okay? That's like a North Star. It's terrible.

But because there is fluidity, that's why, instead of a weekly huddle, and we're almost having it at nine o'clock now, the nine o'clock meeting this morning started at 9:31, okay, because we got all the relevant data around health and safety, we got all the relative data relative to where we are in terms of the $90,000, and that's what we tell them that we are waiting for and listening for, are the solutions relative to what to do if we have a shutdown? So, that is like a repeatable pattern. We think we see tremendous differences in cultures and behaviors when we have continuous patterns. People will know that there will be changing. You know, a week ago we didn't have testing. Everybody was screaming about the testing. We then went and expedited with our hospitals the testing. The testing has been in effect. Once they hear they get that type of information, the comfort factor of the question goes down and we move on to the next challenge. Okay? So that consistency of a concise message is just absolutely just, it works miracles.

Steve Baker (0:33:15):

That's really interesting because good times or bad, we say that you should keep your huddles up. As an example: that rhythm, that communication, that consistency, and, Jack, through the years I've repeated a quote I heard from you over and over again, about the difference between players and champions. You know what I'm talking about? So the champions that to learn the trade through the boredom, is that there's got to be a little lemonade. Yeah, absolutely.

Jack Stack (0:33:42):

But I think that's respectful.

Steve Baker (0:33:44):

Exactly. And that's what everyone out there knows me for.

Well I think it's important because as we travel around the country and we share that Jack Stack-ism is the difference between players and champions is that champions have learned to train through the boredom. It's more important now than ever. But when this is over, people will be like, “Ooh, well, we got through that, thank goodness.” And we will, you know, they'll get busy. We got too busy to have the huddle. When I read one of the questions that said, we've stopped having our huddle weekly. It only just stopped me in my tracks. So what would your advice be? I think you gave it already, but just to punctuate it, because you talked about the importance of that weekly huddle.

Jack Stack (0:34:33):

Well, let me see if I can address three of the questions at one time. Our critical number is retention. We are in a labor intensive market. And we've been working on retention, as you will know as many of you have followed us the last two years, okay, we've been doing some striking things because we feel that whoever has a dominant workforce by 2021/2022 will dominate the market. So, we also came to the conclusion that over the last 36 months after the last three years, that 40% of our employees are brand new, they're just brand new. And then that number holds true in a lot of different organizations. And what everyone knows is retention, because the availability of jobs prior to the crisis has been one of the most significant problems that we had in terms of limiting the growth that we had and relative to our economy. So, we can't lose track of really what it was that we're working on. Right. And what's ironic for us is every tension now is probably a big advantage in a crisis to be able to now teach people—that 40% that has never been through this before. Where your cultures are put to test, where your values are put to test. Whether if you say that jobs are number one, they will now see that jobs are number one. I mean, this is our fifth trip to the black swan.

I mean, this is our picture and typically what we've seen in the past is that after it's over, people are trusting and grateful. I mean, they're just grateful. And, you know, they're so respondant. And that'll go on for about three to five years and then something will change. And then people will sit down, forget about the fact that you didn't lay them off during this time. You know, we had demonstrated but we have the big crisis of the Springfield or the whole television community collapsing. Zenith was the biggest producer, okay. In that crisis, when we brought people back, they stayed with us, because we've never laid anybody off and they got bigger job offerings from somebody else, okay, that was because of the culture that we, and what values that we have inside of the company that we were able then to build a workforce, it took us 10 years. Now here, we fast forward, we're 10 years later. 40% is new and 60%.

And so now it's more important to be able to figure out how to be able to teach, how to be a lead, how to be able to communicate, how to build your teamwork, and then obviously you're going to be surprising the champions and the entrepreneurs and the innovators and the creators are going to come out here. As I said, I have never, I've always, always erred on the side that I believe growth comes when you don't have resources. Okay? And growth comes when you have extraordinary people.

Steve Baker (0:37:19):

Right? So the mother of invention is necessity. Is that the quote?

Jack Stack (0:37:26):

You might want to put that together, put your name up. 

Steve Baker (0:37:29):

I think I stole that from Edison. Let's just go with Steve Baker. So, you answered a lot of questions about financials earlier and about dealing with banks and lenders and that sort of thing. Somebody asked a question I do this is word for word, how much debt would you absorb just to hang on to your employees?

Jack Stack (0:37:51):

We will go—we will estimate what we think our earnings are coming back and we will assume that we could get six times that amount in a while. So if we think we're going to make $100,000, we would figure that the leverage would allow us to get to borrow at least $600,000 at the worst case scenario in terms of debt. That does not add to any cash that you might have. But we're willing to go down to it six to one. Six dollars for the debt to one dollar for the earnings. That's our leverage ratio right now. And those are the models that we're working with.

So like right now. Right now, it's in the marketplace it was four to one in most cases, okay? Most businesses could get loans up to about four times their earnings depreciation. So you use it and then you figure, “Okay, things are gonna get worse, they're probably gonna ease up credit.” So, you have to go down to a point of solvency, and you have to decide what solvency is. So we've decided that it's, you know, how much debt do you feel good with? This is worst case scenario. This is really the worst case scenario. How much debt can you get? Okay, relative to the earnings that you have. So you really need your people to tell you what do we think earnings are going to be under a second quarter rise and third quarter rise a fourth quarter spike, okay? This is why that whole high involvement strategy and high involvement planning is so critical. Alright, so you can be able to get those parameters. So you do have the ability to bounce.

So, we could probably go and our liquidity is really good right now. We've done a lot of really good things because of the Game. We've been very blessed because of the people we have. Okay, so our liquidity isn’t really struggling, right? We don't have to use debt right now to stay the course. That's kind of a bad statement when we heard some people say this could go into months, okay. We cannot wait the months obviously, okay. Right, but we can go a period of time. So our model is ours. And we will figure out what is our earnings going to be at a specific point in time? 30 days, 60 days out, 369 days, and then we will assume that we could borrow at that particular thing. Now, I know there's probably a lot of really brilliant CPAs and accountants out there and God bless you. Okay. And I know you're gonna tell me that, well, what about this and what about that? In our businesses, and as fast as we gotta move, we can throw in all these different type of exceptions. We process data, this is not empirical, okay? We process it and then it becomes a gut reaction, then we go to the formula. So our formula is, we think that we can go down to about a six to one ratio, which means we can borrow a lot of money if we if we can sustain our earnings.

Steve Baker (0:40:44):

No, thanks for that. So if we take it, that's SRC’s perspective. And I like the way you put it. It is we've got to figure out our formula and other folks will have to figure theirs. To a smaller company, who may not have the liquidity and the solvency SRC does— 

Jack Stack (0:40:57):

You’re gonna learn so much if you work your liabilities. You're going to work so much. You’re gonna work your notes, okay? And you go ask for the moon. Alright? I mean, if you've got a bank note, okay. And you go to your banker now and you ask them to push up principal payments or reductions in terms of interest rates, okay? I mean, it's better to go to them now than it is when you have to go to when it's really really bad because of the ease of difficulty are going to get tougher and the demand for this and the attention to the banking industries and the mortgage industries and SBA loans, okay, with the times you're gonna need to get louder and louder, okay. So the quicker you react to protect, okay, your cash flow, which you do that by understanding each one about your liabilities, in the end when you come in, it's gonna make you stronger.

I mean, you're gonna maybe find some vendors that are gonna give you 90 days. They're gonna give you 120 days. And if you come back, and you're gone 30 days, you’re gonna sit there and go, “Oh my god, this is gonna give me capacity. My payables can be stretched out, which has never happened before.” I mean, this is the time to go in there and negotiate some of those best business practices that you want that would that you wanted to get changed when things were going good. Okay, right. So learn from those learn from them. And then you'll need to have a grasp of them. You’re probably gonna have to do cash flow statements in terms of, maybe, I've seen some of our associates, small businesses, have to do their cash flow statements around their entire conference rooms.

From what was going to be paid every day, what was going to be paid every minute, what was going to be paid every month. And then what was coming in from the people that were kept creating the ideas and boy, I'll tell you couldn't believe the sense of I don't know, I'm probably crazy, but sometimes, I think I like it when it's more difficult. I mean, I think I've always been a person that likes to come from behind and I don't… I'm sick. I really like the challenges, okay? And I don't look at it as the end of the Earth, okay? I mean, you got to understand the power of the people that you’re working around you and you have to believe in them. And if you believe in them, you're going to be absolutely surprised what's gonna happen when you get out of this.

Steve Baker (0:43:19):

Originally, I always say it begins with the right leadership, you know, based on your original idea and then putting it into a methodology. I think this is really cool because, you know, your vibe that you put out is coming from a place of strength and of confidence and positivity rather than—it was realism though, right? This is bad. But we can do this because we're more engaged and smarter. We can dominate. That sort of thing. Is it important for leaders to come through with their most, I'll say two things, confident but authentic selves?

Jack Stack (0:44:03):

I wake up in the morning scared to death every day. Don’t think we’ve got answers to these challenges, but what we do have is an insatiable appetite for information. And that's what we try to encourage in the Great Game of Business, okay, is to have everybody have that insatiable appetite. Forget the dumb questions. Okay. Remember the little business owner that said, you know, people will respond when you're the most vulnerable, okay? Which is really kinda interesting.

Because when you're going to make a decision too many times you make the decision for the 5% of the people that are negative, right? Okay, you forget that 95% of the people that are really positive, that will work as hard as you want them to work or help you through some of the most ridiculous times that we experience. So, if you miss that 95%, and you're doing everything to focus in on the people that are really going to be negative, regardless of what you do you’re gonna have a bad time. But the only way you can capture that 95%, you gotta make a decision, okay?

And you can process all this data, I mean, you can, you could try to make it as empirical, you can try to make it as quantitative, you can try to back it up with any kind of experience, but I'm going to tell you is that the more data you have, the stronger your gut is gonna be. And at the end of the day is something like this. I mean, if you had an understanding of at least the parameters of financials and businesses, you have the outer scope, you stay in the in the inside of this thing. You then make decisions, okay? How do I make a decision on the financial scenarios for eight to 13 weeks, okay? We're saturated with knowledge. Okay, what's happening in China? The disease started in January.

Yesterday, we heard that Starbucks actually put up a business where it started. Okay. How many weeks is that? January, February, March, okay? That's, that's 10 weeks, okay, that's falling in line with that eight to 13. You draw information from here, you draw information there, you process, you saturate yourself with the data, you get it from your people in the organization, you say, “Okay, let's see how long pay can last over a period of time.” That's how you process. If you sit there and become paralyzed and sit there go, “Oh, man, I gotta substantiate this, I got to have all the backups in place in terms of making these types of decisions in our are crisis period of time.” Your people are gonna see that. And you want your people to be making strong decisions about what's going on in their houses, what's going on in their education systems, okay, what they are doing in terms of helping other people's in terms of their community. So you gotta be able to figure out how to create that strength, even if you're wrong. Find a way to run. Fix it, fix it. As fast as you can get. If you’ve got the deviation, the variance, the process to be able to fix the variance and deviations. I mean, I often thought leaders are not about establishing standards. Leaders are about having the capabilities of having plans in place when you don't meet the client.

Steve Baker (0:47:12):

So along those lines, can we talk just for a minute about contingency planning? Yeah, we we've been doing that for years. You came up with it so long ago. it's second nature to you. When we talk about it out in the community. A lot of people who are beginning their journey on Great Game, they aren't even close to it yet. But now's a great time to be thinking. Could you just touch on what is contingency planning and how it works at SRC and then Rich, I'd like you to follow up with you know, how we teach it out in the in the community.

Jack Stack (0:47:40):

Okay, this goes back to your black swans, right? I mean, yes, after you've dotted every I cross every T and you think that you have got everything figured out inside your company. And even if you go to your salespeople and say if this sales plan doesn't work, what are we going to do because people's lives are at stake? After you've run all the traps. You got to set that aside and say, “Okay, now what's going to be unexpected? What is going to happen?”

For a long period of time, the last 10 years, we've been saving money. We've been saving cash. It wasn't less than two months ago, I was reading the move in the country was cash was trash. Cash is trash. And if you have cash in your balance sheet, it is the worst thing you can do with your big company or small company that you have to be able to put your cash into play. The other thing was borrow as much as you possibly can because it's a low interest rate. Okay, and how can you get hurt? It's never, I mean, it's never been as low as what it is. It's just borrow as much as you possibly can. What could possibly happen? When you get into those kind of situations, that’s contingency number two. That's when you sit there and you say to yourself, “This is insane. This is wrong.” You know something bad is gonna happen.

Now what you do is you figure out what bad is gonna happen? And, while people are telling you to take your cash off the balance sheet and give it out in dividends or giving it out and buying back stocks or giving it out in terms of compensation to associates or someone of that nature. You got to sit there and say to yourself, “When you don't have anything less, what are you going to do?” And you've got to institute those echoes in the back of your head that’s in there saying, “I don't have it figured out and I'll never really have it figured out. But I do need a try and do it.” I've always believed in contingencies. I’ve looked at everybody's plans and I said, “Okay, what happens if you don't make this plan?” And they look at you like, “What do you want me to say?” And you go, “No, I don't want you to say something. I want you to tell us what is the movement? What is the act? What is the business we're going to be in? What is the market set we're going to be?” And, I'm gonna want you to think differently because we have people in our stores, we have people in our shop whose lives depend on these guys, right?

So, the more you get a backup plan and a contingency. And, I'm telling you, this is crazy for me to tell you this, okay? But we love the markets that we were in. We looked at—we’re predominant in transportation and that we had to diversify. So we got into on-highway versus off-highway and then we got into marine and then we got into, hey, we're heavy in the agriculture business, right? How ironic that if we forced to shut down that we're in a business as they call it, when they use these things, only essential, right? So now we have one big portion of our business because of our diversification program because of our trapdoors because we're saying what if, and we're saying is what if we are in a black swan?

We've had two industries that they probably will not shut down. Which are the agricultural site and the defense site, because we do a lot of defense businesses. So those two things are going to be pumping at least some revenues back into the company that we can use in order to be able to pay the people that are off if they're not on essential business. This is crazy thinking, but it works.

Steve Baker (0:51:14):

But that crazy thinking you say is crazy smart, right?

Jack Stack (0:51:18):

And it takes a long time to figure out that you were smart. We went 10 years this recession, but we knew there was a recession. Right? Okay. We just didn't know it was gonna be like this. But we are prepared for this.

Steve Baker (0:51:30):

And we're going to talk about that more in a moment. But I do want, Rich, if you don't mind, to share with us a little bit about how contingency planning works, because I think the viewing audience has got to be thinking about, “I don't have time to think about that now. Now's the time we should be kind of at least making some notes. Right? I mean, what would you advise?

Rich Armstrong (0:51:48):

Some of the companies that are out there that are maybe doing well right now, but if this this situation evolves even further, and they do see some kind of economic downturn. This is the time to be thinking about that. While you're doing well, what are the things that we can do if our revenue shifts on us? And, what this contingency planning process is, you know, in my time here at SRC, I've seen it help our organization so many times in terms of thinking ahead. You know, most of the time when we're asking the sales and marketing person to come up with their sales plan, we're saying give us a 12 month sales plan.

And they say, “Okay, I think I can get 15% growth.” But we've always now gone, “Okay, tell me what the next 15% growth is.” You know, what if that 15% doesn't come in? What can we replace it with? Now, that's where the innovation comes in. You know, where people start thinking outside the box. It also teaches them up very well in terms of thinking about the next one, two year, three year, five year plan. So, you know, often when we talk about this is growth and contingencies, right? You're thinking about all those growth opportunities, how to generate revenue, and then you have to identify from those, what are true contingencies? What are things that we could activate just in the next six to 12 months very quickly? Some can be activated, some can't, you know?

I mean, one of the things, you know, obviously, here at SRC they drilled into us about planning with contingencies. And, you know, Jack has been talking about this 10-year period for recession. With Great Game of Business, we went through that in 2009 and this business lost 50% like that, and we don't want to go through that anymore. So, we've been thinking about and putting in place different things like online learning, virtual learning, a lot of things to kind of prepare for that. And then that kind of thinking, yeah, maybe you can think of that as a growth opportunity, but that thinking was really driven off the fact that we don't want to go through that period of time anymore. We want to find ways to be able to provide our services, take care of our people, and it comes down to virtual, you know, virtual type training. Everybody's trying to jump on that bandwagon now. We’ve been working on that. We're able to activate it. We had our first virtual workshop last week, right? So in the workshop, there's a lot of things that you can do in preparation that helps you in these periods of time.

Steve Baker (0:54:10):

And when better times come, staying to that discipline allows you to have an innovation engine because you're constantly coming up with new ideas that that could help grow the business. So here's the one that that I've been really thinking about supported by a lot of people out there in the community who've asked the question. We've been hearing you at the gathering every year talking about, you know, there's a there's a recession coming. You know, you forecasted a downturn for many years, followed by an “oh, no” upturn. They literally, the year by year forecasts that you've made, has always been followed by: “There's going to be in debt, and then there's going to be an uh-oh.” How long will the impact of this pandemic affect the economy?

Jack Stack (0:54:57):

Oh my god, this is—forgive me for this explanation, forgive me. Okay. I think that most companies will be up in there and on a path within eight to 13 weeks. Okay, I think there will be an upturn. Alright. I really believe in our medical supply chains. I really believe that once we get a critical number in the United States, we work together to fix it as best as we possibly can. I definitely think that there's going to be a positive. It could be eight to 13 weeks, which I hope it isn't. I hope it's, like shorter than that. But we're planning eight to 13 weeks.

Steve Baker (0:55:43):

I'm hoping for shorter because the social distancing, I'd rather be much closer.

Jack Stack (0:55:49):

Actually, I think this social distance thing we’re doing is fine. I mean, let me think let me just tell you what I think is gonna happen. I know there's been a lot of questions about 401ks and things of this nature. And by God, please tell your people to hold on to their 401ks. Don't make any changes. Okay? Because there will be a better time, but I think this is my—don’t hold this against me. I think that a lot of businesses who have been running for the last 10 years that have not cleaned up their balance sheets and have a lot of bad inventories, a lot of bad buildings, a lot of bad depreciation, a lot of bad debt, you know, that have been building these accruals because of the pressure of publicly owned markets.

We got to, you know, always improve your earnings, okay, in your market that goes to 29,000 to 2,500. I mean, there's been so much pressure inside of these companies, okay? What happens in a lot of situations when you find a reason to dump all your hidey holes, okay? You'll dump your hidey holes. This is terrible for me to sit there and say that some people are going to say, “Thank You, Lord. I've got a virus, I can get rid of it.” That is a terrible thing for me to say. It’s a realistic thing that’s gonna happen. They're gonna clean up their balance sheet. So even as you suspect the company that you are investing in or looking at had these earnings at this one particular point, I think you're gonna really see a bottoming out.

Now, how far is the bottom out? I don't have any idea. I mean, I could work a model out there trying to figure out from eight to thirteen weeks, it's going to be tough, and then it's going to come back and then the fourth quarter is going to have a spike like that. Okay, right. And then I can figure out, okay, what's that adjusted earnings going to be? But the basically thing that's gonna happen is I think everyone's just gonna have to watch. And then they go back to the first quarter of 2021 and you're gonna see a spike in the stock market, it's gonna be crazy because they're gonna say, “Well, comparatively speaking quarter to quarter over quarter and this one purchased top 100% in terms of quarter.”

So, I think that's the mood. I think what's going to happen in terms of 401ks and IRAs. Anyone that's basically taking a bath in terms of having equities or bonds as an investment. This thing—that you're gonna ride this thing out. Don't panic with it, it won't come back as quickly as it will. There will be a disappointment in terms of everybody announcing how badly the earnings are gonna be. You go through that period of time and then bam, okay, then just get ready for the bam. Good. And don't call me if it doesn't work, though. This is what we're using as a bio right now.

Steve Baker (0:58:30):

Jack, thanks for that. Rich, could you sum up kind of, you know, your observations of this discussion? Yeah, maybe some key takeaways.

Rich Armstrong (0:58:39):

Yeah. Jack, what I wanted to do make sure that the audience knew that we we're capturing all of these takeaways, as well as some, you know, some tips and best practices that a lot of our coaches and practitioners have gathered up and we're going to share that on Monday as kind of an action guide.

So, what I wanted to do is just summarize a bit, take some notes. There's a lot to summarize here. But summarize a bit of this first, and, Jack, the first thing I'd say is that, you know, we talked a lot about taking the fear out of the organization. What I heard in terms of that was that it just comes back to good old fashioned communication, making sure that that's consistent. And that's honest, direct communication about what's going on. Facts, facts, facts, numbers, and giving people feedback on that. A lot of times we feel like the communication is one way, right? It's a two-way communication for people to really understand and I think that was something I got from this. The other one that I heard clearly a lot is, get ahead of this as fast as you can. Don't hesitate. Don't get paralyzed. Take action. Talk to your creditors.

Jack Stack (0:59:57):

Just don't look there and say that the lady behind the counter doesn't have anything to do, okay? Sit down, and explain to someone, call this person, ask them where they’re being tested, find out where you can send your people. Just don't sit there and say, “Oh man, I can't be tested or they'll never give us a break in terms of our payouts.” Send people all to work.

Steve Baker (1:00:24):

You don't have to shoulder this alone as a leader. 

Jack Stack (1:00:26):

Now you can do a coordinated effort in terms of, you know, given, I mean, what are people gonna do quarantined for 10-14 days? Right?

Rich Armstrong (1:00:37):

Right. Well, in one message that you said pretty clearly is getting into banks they need to set up some time with a banker.

Possibly, one of the most important things I think we talked about is what we can do. Do whatever we can to protect our people. There’s no future without your people. And, you know, it’s the right thing to do. And this is when, you know, we really get challenged on our values and what we stand for. It's the right thing to do. But it's also the right thing to do for your business. Because a lot of people look at this decision, to me, as a cost decision when it really is an investment decision. As Jack talks about, when we see that upturn if you're coming back with the same people, same experience, same talent, as you go into this upturn, you're gonna be in such a better position than everybody else will, and really have a competitive advantage. So there's a lot a lot of reasons to do that. I know that that's challenging. And we want to share with, you know, with our community over the next two or three weeks different ways that you can take care of your people and do that in a way that you don't get to a position that you may have to lay off.

Jack Stack (1:01:53):

Well, we can be more specific later on. You know, I mean, if you want to take this: what we're doing here right now. And you say, “I haven't had the question.” Or, “I have this and I wish I had the opportunity to do that.” We'll try to—yeah, I think it's a good idea to correct those things. I think our peer coaches, I think they're really tremendous. They do a good job. They gave us so much to talk about here today. We can run it through them as well.

Rich Armstrong (1:02:15):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Last one I just want to talk about is that there is no better time to stay disciplined with practices and principles of the Great Game of Business, and we’ve talked about transparency, open and honest communication, financial discipline, thinking forward focused. One that we didn't talk a lot about that wanted to make sure that, you know, our audience, you know, can really take advantage of is create wins. You're not going to see the big wins right now. Create the small wins in your organization. It’s a great opportunity. I remember in 2009, one of the best ideas I heard from a practitioner was that he immediately put up what he called a win wall, and ask all of his people, “I don't care how small this win is. write it down. We want to see all the progress we're making in this organization.”

Jack Stack (1:03:03):

We’ve got a spotlight award we're for those people that recognize their peers that do something special. One of the first things we said is do your awards. Recognize your peers. Nothing is appreciated more than a peer to peer recognition program where, you know, you're really, really, really, really, really see the superstars.

Rich Armstrong (1:03:25):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The one thing you know, we've shared a lot of information that we're getting from our coaches, some practitioner discussions, of course, you know, SRC and Jack. But, there's a lot of wisdom of the crowd in, well, I think close to 500 registrations that we have. And we want to make sure that that information is fed back and give them an opportunity to share with us. So we are all, you know, when we send this action guide on Monday, we're going to ask a question, and I'll give you the question here so all the audience can give some time over the weekend to think about it. But we want that fed back. There's a lot of good ideas out there a lot of things they're doing, and we want to get that fed back. And, over the next two to four weeks, Steve, and I will continue to have this webinar session just to answer some of those questions, but also to maybe talk a little bit more deeper in those solutions, and help people through this process for sure.

So the question we're going to ask to the community is this, and it really goes back to what, I think, was one of the most important takeaways. So what are you doing to keep your team together during these tough times?

So what suggestions do you have for those who are struggling right now to avoid layoffs, and keep their people? What are all the creative ideas Jack talked about, you know, don't wait for the assistance. Do something now that you can do internally in your company. So that's the question. We'll throw it out there. So I have one last question for you, Jack. God forbid that SRC has to shut down, and Jack Stack himself has to be quarantine to his home for 14 days, and you run out of Miller Light, what are you going to do?

Jack Stack (1:05:16):

Someone said that if I die when I'm at home, and it won't because of the virus, okay? If something happens to me during quarantine and I’m at home, and I passed away, it is not the virus.

Steve Baker (1:05:39):

No, thank you, Jack. Thank you Rich. And thanks to all of you for participating. Be sure to answer the question, and join us next week at the same time at 11 Central next Friday. Rich and I'll be back to answer more of your questions and share back with you what has happened in the community. Thanks again and take care of yourselves.