S13E23: “Servant leadership bit me on the ass”, with Aaron Cruikshank (CEO, CTRS)

Aaron Cruikshank
Employers don't look after you, you know, as an employee, you either have to find that unicorn employer or really take your own destiny into your hands and and, you know, so so partly, they informed me to become a business owner because It colored my experience with employers on my end. And also as a business owner, it colored the way that I wanted to show up for my employees to kinda say, you know, everybody deserves to be treated well as as an employee and employment shouldn't be exploitive And I think there's other other aspects of our values as well, but that's probably the number one in terms of the way that we run this agency versus the way other people run their agencies.

Richard Medcalf
Welcome to the Impact Multiplier CEO podcast. I'm Richard Medcalf, founder of X Xquadrant, and my mission is to help the world's top CEOs and on and Earth, shift from incremental to exponential progress and create a huge positive impact on our world. Now that requires you to reinvent yourself and transform your business. So if you're ready to play a bigger game than ever before I invite you to join us and become an impact multiplier CEO.

This is a fun episode. Here I speak with Aaron Krkschank, who is the CEO of CTRS. That's a Canadian market intelligence agency. On the surface, his business seems relatively traditional, right, doing market intelligence in a pretty interesting way. For for a very large, corporate clients. However, his heart is for impact. His bill, his business, around creating life changing employment for his team. And that comes from a really deep place that we discover in the episodes. We also find out life's not always easy. And in fact, as he describes it, servant leadership bit him on the ass. Came back not in the way he was hoping, and we learn how did he deal with that? What did he learn? So we look at purpose radical transparency, leadership, really interesting conversation with Aaron Krkshank. Enjoy.

Hi, Aaron. Welcome to the show.

Aaron Cruikshank
Hey. Good to be here.

Richard Medcalf
So this is gonna be an epic showdown between, between the Beasty boys on one hand and and Freddie Mercury on the other. I'm joking because I know that you introduced yourself and your bio is the rock and roll bad boy of market intelligence. And, and so, you know, I love that. So it sounds like anybody who describes themselves as the rock and roll bad boy. It's gonna be good in my books. And, I'm gonna jump in with a brilliant quote that I read from you, which was servant leadership bit me in the ass. So let's start there. It's true. How the hell can servant leadership bite you in the ass.

Aaron Cruikshank
Yeah. It's it's one of those things where I think sometimes you can get a little too into something, you know, like when people get to into cold pressed juice or something like that or nutritional shakes and all of a sudden, that's all their keto, and that's all they can talk about. And, I got a little too into servant leadership and I think over extended myself in big ways to my people, and and it did bite me in the ass because, you know, I ended up in a situation where I majorly overextended myself to to benefit an employee. Had to do some layoffs, because of the financial situation and the probably the employee that we've done the most for, ended up suing us, for her laying laying her off because she felt like we haven't done enough for her, but in the grand scheme of things, we've done a crazy amount of things for her. So, yeah, tends tends to no no good deed goes unpunished as they say.

Richard Medcalf
Well, it's interesting, isn't it? What I'm hearing there is Well, if you need to just dive in, actually, what what do you mean by what was it about serving leadership which had those consequences?

Aaron Cruikshank
Yeah. I mean, I think What I was the part about servant leadership that I was forgetting is any any hear coaches talk about this kind of stuff all the time as they say the planes going down, you gotta put your mask on first and then worry about putting the masks on other people. And I've never been particularly good at that. So I think the mistake that I was making was not keeping my needs as a CEO or business owner in balance with the needs of my employees, and I was just giving giving giving too much. And, you know, I had people on my team telling me I had to stop doing that, and it was just there was something in me that made it difficult to keep things in balance. I was always putting everybody. I still struggle with this, but I tend to put others first and, makes it hard to take care of yourself in that situation.

Richard Medcalf
So Yeah. It's interesting. I I come across this quite a bit, and it's all about the metaphor that we use. So what I mean by that is if you see it, well, I've got a choice to put myself. Do I put me first or then first? Right. Our values, we might well say, well, I can't put myself first. That'd be self fish. Right. And so no matter what we say, if that metaphor is it's meal then, Right? Then it become it can be very hard for us to choose me because that feels like feels selfish or ethically questionable.

So what how what can what's quite helpful is to think about a different metaphor, metaphors is how we change our mindset. So, you know, you know, what happens if it wasn't like a queue, you know, where you have to align, where you have to decide who's first in the line to get stuff. Right? Perhaps it's another metaphor. Right? Perhaps it's I haven't thought about what it would be, but it's it's something like, for me, it's like, oh, you, you know, you're all, yeah, it's something like a tug of war. You know, where you're all pulling, I or, you know, or or everyone's carrying, everyone's carrying something, and you need everyone to be carrying, you know, whole supporting the way so everybody needs to be playing their part. Able to be resolved, something like that. The way I look at it is it's all about the mission. Not that the mission can become a mill stone. And that means everyone gets crushed by the weight of changing the world or whatever. But we look at, like, what's the over there? How do we maximize collectively at contribution? That I think sometimes that helps us kind of take off this either or pressure. You know, is it me or is it there? But it's actually, like, what's the overall thing that we need for us all to move forward? To serve. But I definitely, but thank you for being honest about this clothing servant leadership. The danger is it becomes as martyr mentality, just almost what you got. And then what I hear is actually didn't even get any gratitude from it. Right? Didn't actually generate the the well-being on the other side that you hope for.

Aaron Cruikshank
Yeah. And I don't I don't need thank you cards. I don't need flowers or anything like that. Just don't sue me. I'm a pretty easy guy. Don't sue me.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Fair point. Well, it's It's interesting. One of the things I've seen with some of my clients, when they start working with me is actually it can be that, the more we actually look after our employees, and I'm curious your views on this, the more entitled they become. Right? So the had people who said, you know what? We've given them everything. We've given them the the pool table, the flexible hours, the free drinks, what, you know, whatever it is. They're like, They don't get happier because of it. They become more demanding. And so, actually, they end up in this kind of consumerist kind of mindset where need to provide more and more to try to satisfy their employee consumers. And actually, they they they they never get satisfied. And, again, I think the shift from that is rather than making it about them, for me, it's all about collectively, how are we contributing to serve our stakeholders, right, serve our customers, make a difference. And then again, when we're looking at the lens of are we all making a difference, then actually we we'd be pulling the same direction. So that's kind of my perspective, but I'm curious because you're living it in the trenches. And I know that you put a real value on looking after you employees. So how do you see that that tension between looking after them and not creating an entitlement mentality?

Aaron Cruikshank
I I think it really depends on the people involved like we we we 2023 has been a shit year in a lot of ways. And for us and a lot of small businesses, and you know, when you go through the crucible, you'll find out who your friends are and and we've been through the crucible and and what we've got left is is a core of people who share the right values and who really get the mission who see that we're pulling together. So I'm getting, you know, employees that are doing things like offering to voluntarily cut their pay or cut their hours or things like this to make sure that we're all gonna make it through this. And and we are. And, you know, things are turning around. Everything's looking better. But who who is left are the I don't have any concerns about entitlement amongst the people who are left. And my business partner and I talked about this recently, what we're likely such an amazing group that that that we've got left in and, you know, some of the people that fell by the wayside along the way, we're the ones that were sort of saying, Amy, me, me, me, me, and and they're no longer with us. And and that's because they they it was it's like a culture fit. It wasn't a culture fit. And, they, you know, And it it because, yeah, it caused a lot of tension. You know, I tried to have a conversation with an employee, last year where, you know, I was saying Look, you're you're I started the conversation by saying your compensation was the highest in the company last year. More so than mine, you mean, know, 30% more than I did last year. So, you know, just a congratulations means you're doing great work. Everything's going well. And, she stopped it and said, look, I'm I'm not comfortable with this topic. She didn't wanna talk about her compensation from that perspective, but then when she had her employee review, a couple months later, she was saying, okay. So I made, you know, like, $92,000 last year working 50% full time. I wanna know how to turn that. Oh, let's talk about how to turn that into a $150,000, and I'm kinda going, wow. Okay. So on without doing any more work? Like, what is that gonna? So I kinda said, you know, I don't I don't see how that math works. So that's a pretty big jump for, you know, and and, yeah, and it turned into a pretty ugly critique of her kind of saying, you know, you're not doing this for me and you're not doing that for me and all this kind of stuff. I'm going like, holy cow, like, work. We're we're paying you 99, and over $90,000 a year for working 20 hours a week. Like, I'm sorry. You're you're doing really well. Right now. So but, yeah, so those kind of people are gone.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes these cruise you said the crucible challenging times, do actually allow us to kind of shake out a little bit and find the people that are really aligned with what we're up to.

Aaron Cruikshank
And I don't I I don't mind paying people well and treating people well, but don't, you know, I don't I don't wanna throw them back in my face because that doesn't that doesn't feel good.

Richard Medcalf
So, Aaron? Just let's set the context a bit as as we've I know we jumped straight in here. So you you're the CEO of CTRS. It's a market intelligence agency. Just perhaps explain a little bit about you know, in a couple of words, just what it is, and then why why this business, right, why did you decide to set this up and make this your your thing?

Aaron Cruikshank
Sure. So Market Intelligence is looking at everything external to your business. So most companies when they're trying to make a big strategic decision, they'll open up the books. They'll look at everything internally and spend most of their time focused on that. Were of the school of thought that that's state. You should not that you shouldn't look at your internal stuff, but you have to pop your head up and look around and kinda go, what's happening around me in the environment? What's happening with my customers? What's happening? The market and and spend a lot more time looking at that. So that that's the business that we're in is helping our clients look at the external environment and bring that intel inside to make informed decisions about just about anything, getting into a new market, opening a new location, you know, we do that for government private sector, universities, not for profits. Everybody's got intelligence gaps that is stopping them from making crucial decisions.

Richard Medcalf
Got it. And and so why the why this business, what what made you decide you wanted to make this your, your main thing in in business?

Aaron Cruikshank
Well, like a lot of consultants, we started out trying to do everything for everyone, which was obviously a terrible thing to do. And what we found was we there was so much blue ocean opportunity with market intelligence. We just weren't seeing a lot of other people doing it. And when we were doing it for clients, they would kind of freak out and go, wow. I I nobody does this. I can't believe. So so we heard that enough that we just kinda went, okay. There there's a real opportunity here because there's an underserved market here And, you know, to the best of our knowledge, we we we update our own market intelligence ourselves every year. We still can only really identify 2 other companies globally that do what we do. And and so it's a great niche to be in. And, and lots of channel partnership opportunities. So it's just mostly we're in this business because it's a lot of upside, and and we're providing a lot of value to our customers.

Richard Medcalf
So got it. Perfect. And so I know that you do this with a very specific set of, of ethics, really, or or approach around this and and you because on one level, this is sounds like a fairly traditional business. So market intelligence agency, you know, it's got some blue chip clients and smaller businesses and everything else. On the other hand, you know, we're here because because of your desire for impact, and this is business as a force for good. So just talk about a bit about, like, the heart that you come into this with, right, what what are you trying to do a bit differently from perhaps your traditional consulting company?

Aaron Cruikshank
Right. Well, a little bit of backstory. I grew up in a blue collar family lots of trades people. And my dad was one of those people who I I would call him exploited. Right? Like, he was he was somebody who is a very talented welder who ended up working for folks who took advantage of the fact that he wouldn't say, shit if his mouth was full. So if if he was being mistreated, he would just kinda, well, that's the boss and, you know, we we just kinda knuckle on and do do what they say. And, even from a young age that really irked me, that that how can you let your employer treat you that badly? My dad's a smart guy and and and a lovely man, but it it really formed, I think, at a young age that that sort of take to go. Employers don't look after you. You you know, as an employee, You either have to find that unicorn employer or really take your own destiny into your hands and and You know, so so partly, they informed me to become a business owner because they colored my experience with employers on my end. And also as a business owner, it colored the way that I wanted to show up for my employees to kinda say, you know, everybody deserves to be treated well as as an employee and, employment shouldn't be exploitive. And I think there's other other aspects of our values as well, but that's probably the number one in terms of the way that we run this agency versus the way other people run their agencies.

Richard Medcalf
I hope you're enjoying this conversation. This is just a quick interlude to remind you that my book making time for strategy is now available. If you wanna be less busy, and more successful, I highly recommend that you check it out. Why not head over to making time for strategy .com to find out the details? Now back to the conversation.

Yeah. Yeah. I I I know that you've you've you've you've talked about this in the past about the need to really pay people properly and not take excuses of, you know, the economy is a bit down now or so forth. What we can talk about that, but what I'm hearing is that it comes from quite a deep place. It comes from your childhood. It comes from the images you still have in your in your mind of your your father and what he went through. And it's amazing isn't it? Fairly listen that it's, like, so important to tap in to those prime Rivendell drivers that we have that For me, it's my sister. I've talked about it many times. Didn't I didn't realize as I grew up how impactful it was, but actually, that deep sense of, like, not everybody gets to do what I'm getting to do. And so, like, let's go for it. Make a difference. Really deep within me. And so I hear for you the same thing. Right? Like, you have that fundamental thing. I don't wanna I don't wanna treat people like I'm my down as treated. I wanna take a different path. And that's, you know, you're not gonna, like, get it. You're not gonna wave it from that approach because it's somehow, somehow, you know, build deep within you.

Aaron Cruikshank
Almost like a duty.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Like a duty. Yeah. And and and to come back to that, how do you reconcile those? Because you wanna balance, you know, you wanna support your people. And then, of course, you've had a challenging business situation as you mentioned. So what was yeah. How did you manage that on one hand thing? I need to kind of support my people pay them properly through everything. On the other hand, businesses tied right now. How does how did you navigate those that tension?

Aaron Cruikshank
I would say what we did was and and to the sometimes my business partner and my general manager kinda go, but, I'm I'm really big on radical transparency. So when when things are not going well, I I think I don't like to soft shoot with the team. I don't like to try to everything's fine. Everything's fine. I, you know, I I am very honest with the team and say, you know, hey, you know what? Last 3 months, I didn't get paid you know, and I'm paying you guys. I didn't get paid, and not to guilt them, but just to let them be aware of what the situation is or if I've had to finance part of the business with a home equity line of credit or something like that to say that's what I've had to do. And and, you know, and and it's resulted in them coming forward. And I love my people so much because they've with with that radical transparency and the care and love that we all have for one another, we've been able to come together now, to get out of this difficult situation by solutioning things together. So that's that's been wonderful. And it's, you know, I I'm sure you've talked to other leaders who feel there's a certain sense of isolation when you're when you're a leader. And and I also think that this is a way to combat that. And There's there's there's certainly contrarian schools of thought on this, and that would say that I'm too transparent or I'm I share too much. But, again, it's a cultural thing with with CGRS. And, you know, like, if anybody on my team wants to see the financials, I'll pull out the P and L reports and walk them through them. And if they don't understand what they mean, I'll give my crash course on how to read financial statements and and we have lay person talks about what all these things mean because I want them to understand. I want them to be fully aware of how the business works and what their role in it is and how they contribute to value and how how the company is gonna grow, and and that's how we get to solutions together. And it's it's not just it's not just about making it easier for me. I think it's about opening up opportunities for us all to do better. And and again, it's almost like it's like our ethos for the business. We we want our clients to make better strategic assistance by having all the best information possible. So if I'm asking my employees to make, I don't wanna micromanage them. They gotta make their own strategic decisions day by day. They need all the information in order to do that most effectively. So I can't withholds the majority of the information about how things are going from them because then they're not gonna make the right decisions day to day.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. I love I love the fact that you're applying the hicks internally what you're living externally. And what I also heard is it went times difficult. That information actually creates a deeper bond because I think one of my definitions of influence, how how you create influence, relational influence, rather than transactional relationships. It's through sacrifice. When somebody knows that you have sacrificed something of yours, for them, whether it's time, whether it's your kind of, veneer of reputation, you know, your image Whether it's your money, whether it's resources, right, what if you've actually given up something of yours for them to serve them some way, then suddenly they know, okay. This person's on my side, and I can trust them. And and they have the right to speak into my life a bit as well. And so what I heard is that when people go, oh, yeah. Aaron's not taking his salary this month so that he can keep paying the rest of us. I I'm sure those people start to wanna do anything to help keep the business going. Right? They're certainly realized they've got somebody who's got their back and they wanna reciprocate.

Aaron Cruikshank
Yeah. And and and it's not just about the money. I mean, we we've got we've had people on the team who have, health issues and and things like that where they can't work full time they've got young children that they need the flexibility around. So it it's about it's about paying people well, but it's also about giving people the flexibility to still live their lives and, you know, you know, really, I think somebody I think we said this at our strategic planning thing a couple of years ago. We're trying to create life changing employment here for for folks. And, and what that the relationship that you get with your team when when you're when that's the interest that you're coming at it with to go. This job, I'm gonna do my damn best to make sure this job the best job you ever have, it it creates a different dynamic for sure. And I don't I'm not trying to buy people's loyalty because I think it converge on, like, a creepy kind of, oh, I own them now. It's it's it's nothing like that. It's it's just, I think. And I have the I have the benefit of owning a small business. Like, if I was running a business with 5 or 500 or a 1000 employees, I probably wouldn't be able to be this close to my employees. It would would end up looking a lot different, but I run a small business so I can I can have relationships with everyone who works with me? You know, have them over for dinner periodically and, babysit their dogs when they go out of town, that kind of thing. You know, it's it's I I have that privilege because of the size of the business. But --

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. I love that phrase. What a great intention to set. Secure life changing employment. I think it's a beautiful, beautiful phrase. So talk about what multiplying your impact looks like. Perhaps in business or personally, you know, what, if we're speaking in a few years' time and you're like, wow, you know, I can't believe how much you know, how much more impactful I've become or the business has become or whatever. Like, what's that look like? What what really sets you on fire?

Aaron Cruikshank
Right. So, I mean, one of the things we have this program called design to give, which is part of our our b corp, commitment And what that looks like is we give 5 at least 5%. In some years, it's more like 10% of our time away pro bonal to not for profit organizations to help them do good in the world. So from a impact multiplier perspective, I think that's the main place that shows up. So for example, we're here in Canada. There's a lot of been a lot of talk in the last 5, 10 years about indigenous reconciliation. And there's a great organization here called the Downy WENJEC Fund that that helps organize the schools, businesses, communities, connect with indigenous reconciliation. And, we were able to step in in something very specific and help them actually measure their impact and and figure out what what to do with that and how to grow that impact. So Could we, as a company, do that much on indigenous reconciliation directly? No. But if we can find an organization that's doing that good work and give them a leg up in in one very specific area, that that then the impact is multiplied, right, because they're gonna help, hundreds or thousands of people. And and my direct impact is what I can do for my employees. What what and and but the but the impact multiplies in a number of different ways because my employees get this great opportunity to work with these great organizations. So they feel like they're doing something good in the world. We are doing something good in the world, but then what we choose to support are organizations that can do much more than we can directly. So what we're providing levers we're providing levers to organizations to move big rocks. And and, that that feels good. It's what it's it's the same thing we do for our paying clients But because of this commitment to give away so much pro bono, we're able to provide it to organizations that would never be able to afford to hire us.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Yes. So such a great model, right, that you're able to take your core skill set and and deploy them for the good of of these NGOs that that can do is so much good with that leverage effect. I love that. So as you're looking to move forward, what's how do you multiply your own impact? What's gonna be the shift in you that allows you to become more influential and more impactful in your own leadership and what you're up to in the world?

Aaron Cruikshank
Well, I am trying to there's a few different ways. I'm I'm trying to do that, Richard. One is I am trying to eliminate the linchpin position that I'm in the business right now. So I've spent a lot of time the last 2 or 3 years. I'm a big fan of the, traction books and and, another book called Bill Pasell, where where it really focuses on, you know, to get satisfaction out of the business. His and and stability is to not have the owner or the CEO be that critical piece that if I get hit by a bus, the whole company goes down. So made a lot of progress on that. I think the last piece left is to not be the where the buck stops on sales. That's really the last part where I'm I'm kinda stuck. So I'm working on that part right now. And then I'm gonna focus on, developing a bit of a community of practice around what market intelligence is. So It's not currently the way that market research has a community of practice, market intelligence does not have anything like that. It's such a weird little niche. So I'm gonna you know, there are a handful of books written on this, so I think I'm going to, work on a book to try and help especially smaller businesses understand the the impact of what this is and how it how it can help them and definitely gonna focus on cheap and cheerful so people can if they can't afford to hire us that they can learn from the book and make changes in their own business or the way that they approach strategic decision. Making by using some similar tools to the way we do. And and I'm also going to I'm working on a teaching journey. So I'm in the process of becoming a university professor over the next 5 or 6 years. And and my hope is when I'm when I'm in my mid fifties and onwards is that I'll be able to teach a younger generation how to use these tools and how to apply them to their businesses or their employer's businesses and and, make those kind of changes. So I I think the toolset that we we use is an important one. And it's one that's very poorly out understood outside of blue chip environments, and I think it's we're trying to democratize the ideas. We're trying to democratize the tools and and make sure that, more people know how to use something benefit from them.

Richard Medcalf
Well, it's amazing that you've you're really investing in this idea of teaching. We're actually creating professional qualifications to really do that in a optimum way, I guess, or in a most professional way.

Aaron Cruikshank
It it's it's weird going back to school at this age, Richard, because I mean, like, I the last time I was in school was 18 years ago. And and now I'm I'm back in cool, and it's just and and it's it's it feels weird. I'm a better student than I was the last time. That's for sure.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Good. Good. Good. Only for doing it. Beautiful. Well, hey. It's been a great conversation. I've I've enjoyed kind of really getting into this story of what makes you who you are. And what gives you that drive to serve employees as well as serving your customers, right, or or serving stakeholders, the shareholders, and and just understanding this mission that you're on to democratize this this area of market intelligence, which can have a big impact on businesses large and small. If you wanna find out more about you or about, CTRS, your your business, where where should they go?

Aaron Cruikshank
Real easy to find on LinkedIn. That that's sort of the main place to interact with me. So if you just search my name on LinkedIn, there aren't too many air encryptshanks and, look for the error in cryptshank. We had CTRS and add me. And I I think there's a connection to our newsletter. On my, links there so you can also check that out. But follow me on LinkedIn. Get connected to me there. I'm always happy and tracked on a one on one basis with folks.

Richard Medcalf
Perfect. Alright. Well, thanks a lot. I mean, Troy speaking with you, and I wish you all the best, as you continue to build out your business.

Aaron Cruikshank
Thanks, Richard.

Richard Medcalf
Well, that's a wrap. If you received value from this conversation, please do leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Would deeply appreciate it. And if you'd like to check out the show notes from this episode, head to com slash podcast where you'll find all the details. Now finally, when you're in top leadership, who supports and challenges you at a deep level to help you multiply your impact. Discover more about the different ways we can support you at xquadrant.com.