In this episode, Jamie Nau, our host and Summit CPA's Director of Accounting/Virtual CFO sits down with our COO and Co-founder, Adam Hale and our People Operations Strategist, Josh Jeans to talk about a one of our core values - curiosity. We will discuss about the importance of curiosity in developing a team of constant learners and how it can impact hiring, employee productivity, and day-to-day operations.
"The end of curiosity is that understanding and it's engagement. And if we get to that and then we're going to increase our quality of interactions with our internal stakeholders and with our teammates, we're going to increase the quality of the service we provide to our clients because we are fully engaged. We are better understanding who, who they are and what they want." - Josh Jeans
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Jamie Nau: Welcome to today's podcast. I am really excited about today's show because we're going to talk about one of our core values. Having curiosity within your company as well as constant learners. So I'm joined once again by Adam our co-founder and owner of the company. And we are also joined by Josh who's our head of people ops. So this is a really important topic to us and we wanted to bring Josh in here because Josh is a really important part of making sure that we have this as part of our core values. So Josh, I'm going to throw this right over to you. When it comes to having curiosity and constant learners within your company where do you start?
Josh Jeans: Yeah, well, I think naturally we will start at the beginning. So in order to have curiosity that is a central value for our company. We obviously want to hire for that. So as we're going through the process with our candidates, I'll just use our senior accountants for example, they're going to start with an interview with me and I kind of do that initial screening. I'm looking for, a little deeper dive into their resume, a little bit of culture fit, but one of the big things I'm looking for is have they done their homework on summit? Do they know who we are and what we're about? And are they asking me questions? Really I want to see is this person trying to envision what life might be like as a part of this team. Are they curious about how people relate or how we operate in a fully remote environment or, you know, how are clients assigned and all those sorts of things. I'm looking for any of those questions to come up because that's telling me, okay, this person from the get-go, they're wanting to acquire more knowledge and understanding. They're wanting to learn. And in each round of our interviews, the opportunity for that goes deeper and deeper because if they get past me, they're going to do an interview with some of our senior accountant trainers. So that's somebody who's done the role for years. They've got the actual tactical experience and been in the weeds doing this job. So they get the opportunity again, to ask deeper questions of what is a day in your life like? What do you think would have made your first year easier? What's one thing you would have told, you know, if you could rewind until the first week, one thing, what would you have told him or her? All sorts of things. And those are all questions I've heard that are telling me like, okay, this person is really they're invested in this process. They want to know. And that's pretty starkly juxtaposed with somebody who we finish asking them questions and say, all right, now, you know, we've reserved this 15 or 20 minutes to allow you to ask any questions you've got and they just kind of give you a blank stare.
Adam Hale: Yeah. Like, so would you say, you know, what is my starting pay? Uh, what are my benefits or can I take my first days of PTO? Not good curiosity questions for first interview.
Josh Jeans: So, I'll clarify that those are perfectly acceptable. No, that's okay. You know, we got it. So if somebody wants to know those things, I'll answer them, but that's not telling me anything about your character. That's telling me that you have an agenda next to you. And you're taking some tactical notes, but that's not telling me that you're curious about what this job feels like day in and day out. And if you can see yourself doing it and growing into it and how you could contribute to the company. So, once somebody gets past their trainers, they're going to go to somebody who would be in leadership over them. And again, more and more opportunities to ask questions, to be curious, what's it like to work under you? What would be one way to manage up all these sorts of things that we're looking for? So that's one way that we really fight to center curiosity that we want to filter out people who lack curiosity in our interview process.
Jamie Nau: I think what's funny about what you mentioned there is I'm usually at the end phase of that interview process. And so it usually they've talked to you, they've talked to the trainers and then I'm kind of the last stage. And so like when they're at that point, they've already had two opportunities to ask questions. I'm kind of a third chance to ask questions. And so sometimes, you know, people will come in with Josh did a great job answering questions, so did the trainers questions. I have nothing for you. And to me that's still like, okay, there's nothing we've talked about in this conversation that has made any questions for you. I do my interview style very conversational, just two people talking and really trying to figure each other out. And so, you know, you want to make sure that they're going to hear something that they have a question on. And again, the other part that I see is we'll begin the interview and I'll spend five minutes talking about what their typical day looks like, just because it came up in conversation.
Adam Hale: Yeah. I mean, same thing happens with onboarding too. I mean, once they jump on board, it's always scary. Whenever you get somebody that's not asking a ton of questions, because I know as many processes and systems we have in place, you really have to speak up and ask questions if things don't make sense. So I think to your point, Josh, also creating an environment, we kind of talk about this a lot, but you know, creating that environment from day one where they feel like it's okay to ask questions.
Josh Jeans: Yeah. I think what you're talking about too, is how our core value of curiosity really bumps up against our core value of being candid as well. Because if somebody doesn't feel the opportunity to be candid you can't truly be curious kind of like you were saying, Jamie, if you're just reading your questions off your like yellow legal pad, you know, and you're not present in the conversation and allowing yourself to go where the conversation's going and ask questions that you may not be fully prepared for, and you can't anticipate what the answer's going to be, but in order to be direct, to be candid, to get to the point and to make sure you're understanding those are going to interplay really well with each other. And I think if one of those is lacking, it's going to affect the other one.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, no, definitely. And I think that's kind of the key when you're choosing your core values is to make sure that they work together. So I know we spend a lot of time choosing our core values and thinking through them. I know a lot of times your core values reflect your owners and Adam is one of the most curious people I've ever met in my life. So, Adam, do you want to talk a little bit about that at the top and how that works when it comes to curiosity?
Adam Hale: Yeah, again, I mean, just kind of speaking into being the core value, we definitely want to inspire that in people. So us asking a lot of questions, hopefully, you know, makes them feel like it's okay for them to ask questions, and if not, then again, that's when we lean into the candid core value and we just call it out and we're like, hey, you should, you know, this is a give and take, you know, I'm a big fan of the five why's. I know it's not the best solution for every problem, but I know you hit on it earlier. That whenever we're even talking with new clients, just like you would with a new team member. I'm always just asking why something s didn't work. So you just kind of layer down and by, you know, taking that approach and just before I speak or diagnose what's going on and try to prescribe a solution, I'm always just usually asking why three or four times and trying to get to the root of it so that I can fully understand the problem. And so again, whether that's just explaining to them what they need to be able to do and really understand the purpose of what they're doing, or you're digging deep into a client interview and you're trying to understand their business and how to best help them. It kind of goes hand in hand just to kind of take that approach. And so by doing that right out of the gate with everybody on the team and myself and Jody and everybody else included both you, Jamie and Josh, you know that, I think that people get it and they just naturally start to lean into it a little.
Jamie Nau: And I think there's something to be said about watching someone do it as well. I think, you know, again sometimes when you're younger and you're trying to get motivated to lift weights, or while you watch an episode of Rocky you're like, yeah, I want to do that. I think sometimes that modeling works. I know starting at Summit, seeing Adam interact with the client, I'm like, dang, that dude really is just genuinely curious. And so I think we try to get our team members involved in those meetings where they see, you know, someone who really is curious and asks questions. So Josh, you want to talk a little bit about it being a learned skill and kind of how that would work for a newer employee?
Josh Jeans: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, nobody is born with like this perfect position of humility where they're curious and they always want to learn more. I think something that can be really motivating to people is we have almost a direct correlation of success with people who ask a lot of questions versus people who don't ask a lot of questions. And kind of like Adam alluded to before, like either I'm perfectly explaining this or you are the smartest person to ever live. Neither of those things is the case. So we see a lot of success from people who are, you know, in our virtual office environment, in Sococo, they're just knocking on people's doors, popping into people's offices saying, can I pick your brain on this? Can I ask you about this? I think from a perspective of learning it. Something we do is, I do coaching with all of our senior accountants on a regular kind of cadence, and part of what I'm doing there is really challenging them and asking those why's. I may get a piece of feedback about expectations and ask follow up questions. Why don't you think we were clear about expectations there? Do you think there was another question you could've asked? Do you think there's somebody else who could have been involved or do you think there was another piece of information that you were missing or the other party was missing? But part of leaning into curiosity, there's going to be lots of other pieces that go along with it. One of them is going to be humility to say, I'm just not going to know the answer. I'm a person. And everybody that I work with are also people with limits and limits to their understanding into their experience. And that's not wrong and that's not a broken system. That's how this is designed. And we have a collaborative, curious environment so that we can lean on each other, but that is depending on the environment that people are coming from a lot of people are afraid to do that because they may have been in an environment where they were looked down upon for not understanding or chastised for asking questions. You hear horror stories where that's happened and that kind of brings me to something I wanted to add to, you know, Jamie, you talked about how core values really flow from leadership and in our case, our founders and owners Adam and Jody are a huge part of inspiring curiosity in people. And creating a secure environment for them to be curious where they're not afraid, you know, they'll knock on the wrong door or they'll step on a landmine by asking the wrong question or they'll get reprimanded for kind of drawing outside of the lines. They have the freedom to be encouraged to ask questions. But in order to get that sort of secure environment, it means that your leaders cannot be leading out of any sort of insecurity because when your leaders feel insecure, that's when they get a short fuse. And that's when they, you know, chomp at people for asking questions or chastise them or push back too fast and don't have the grace. Sit down and say, okay, this person has been here for 60 days. There's no way that they're going to know how to perfectly execute this rev rec it totally makes sense that they're here asking me this question and I've had a really busy day, but that doesn't mean I can't stop and help them, or like connect them to somebody that could help them. So I think it starts at the top with leaders who are humble enough to realize okay, sometimes I'm going to need to put aside my priorities and help here.
Adam Hale: Yeah, I think it's important. I mean, whenever I'm having conversations with people, I always, you know, you know, I'm pretty explicit and call out the fact that I love questions and answering questions and doing those kinds of things. I prefer that kind of back and forth, but I do think is important about curiosity that I guess we didn't really talk about. I want to make sure it's clear from a consulting standpoint is a lot of times, whenever you talk about like, hey, ask why or have questions or do that kind of stuff. You know, Jamie was talking about, you know, being to the point where you're just kind of asking questions to ask questions. That's what you have to be really careful about. Sometimes I'm in calls where I'll like, I'll prep Jamie for a call and say, hey, make sure you ask a bunch of questions. Keep saying why. And there doesn't seem to be any purpose behind the question. It doesn't seem to be leading anybody down there. So there is a little bit of an art to it. I'm not saying that you rehearse it beforehand or anything like that, because the whole point is their response is going to take you down a different rabbit hole every single time. It's just choose your own adventure every time they say something, if you're actively listening. So just making sure that there's a purpose behind your questions. And like you said don't feel bad about, you know, asking a silly question or anything. You see it on client calls all the time. I'm just like, why would you do that? Like I genuinely mean like that doesn't make any sense to me explain it like I'm a five-year-old. And then they explain it, and I go, well, why this, why that? And by the time I get done with my why questioning and I'm going through all that, the client, a lot of times, is like, oh, I see where you're going with this. Yeah. Probably not a good idea. I'm like, okay, cool. That's where I was going with it. And sometimes I'll be like, well, here's where I was going with it. And this is the reason why I was asking you all those questions. But now the way you laid it out makes a lot of sense to me. And I don't think that's going to be an issue and people can tell I'm engaged in the conversation. I understand what they're doing.
Jamie Nau: I think that goes back to the actual true core value. The core value is not just ask questions, the core value is to be curious. I think if you're curious, it's because you do have a purpose behind your questions. I'm not asking questions to fill airspace. I want to actually know what the answer is because there's something behind it. So like when someone says something, maybe we talked about it on the onboarding call, maybe my first three questions. So I do think that the natural curiosity, or like actually wanting to know the answer as opposed to just filling airspaces is really key.
Josh Jeans: Yeah, I think you're completely right, Jamie, I was thinking as we went along, that questions are the means, but they're not the end. The end of curiosity is that understanding and it's engagement and if we get to that then we're going to increase our quality of interactions with our internal stakeholders and with our teammates. We're going to increase the quality of the service we provide to our clients because we are fully engaged. We are better understanding who they are and what they want and ultimately in our role, in a consultative space, we want to help them better understand who they are and what they want. And the hope is that our curiosity leads to both our understanding and theirs.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, for sure. I think this is a definitely a huge thing here at Summit. It's something that's really important. So do you want to talk a little bit about like, you know, again, we've talked a lot about how this could work for CPA firms. You want to talk about how this could work for other companies and why it would be important for other service providers out there and why this would be really important to their core values?
Adam Hale: Well, I mean, I think that it kind of speaks for itself that everybody wants somebody that's actively engaged in whatever they're doing. Curiosity is, you know, the key example of somebody being interested in what they're doing and being engaged. So it's all about engagement. That's really what curiosity is. And it takes some practice. As Josh said, you know, being okay with being vulnerable, so setting it up as one of your core values and making it part of your culture means that it's okay to learn and make mistakes and fail forward. I think that's really important for any organization to get bigger and better and stronger. But trying to make it also a continuous part of who you are and what you're trying to do is important as well. It's not only just us constantly asking questions of one another and trying to get to the root of things. It also helps you become better at actually explaining the task because you already know now that I've already met with you a bunch of times, Josh and you, and I know you're going to riddle me with five different why questions or whatever it is, I'm fully prepared coming in. I'm like, so here's my idea. This is what I'm thinking. This is the problem. This is what I did. This is why I try. So you're trying to also coach people into being better problem solvers themselves, because now they're going to think out the the problem, as opposed to just, you know, coming to you with their shoulders around their ears going, I don't know, you know, that kind of a thing. So again, it goes both ways. It not only makes you more engaged as a consultant, but it also really ups the game of the team member or even the client to know and think out questions.
Josh Jeans: Yeah. I think what you're saying also alludes to the fact that that really increases the quality of the partnership between us and our client too. Because if they've gotten to where they've learned to problem solve and kind of project manage themselves and come to that meeting prepared and they don't spend time on things because they knew it was coming. That allows us to go to the next step of development. And we're doing a more strategic thinking, high level thinking forecasting. We get to talk about more creative projects or complex problem solving because we're not having to spend all the time in the weeds saying, why did you do this? Because they've already done that work themselves. And that's just going to increase the quality of our relationship with them moving forward.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, I was at a conference recently and we talked a lot about verticals and we talked a lot about how you choose your vertical. I there's a correlation between curiosity and passion, right? So I think that when you're thinking about your company and what you're going to do and how to do. You want to make sure you're passionate about it, and you want to make sure it's something you're really interested in because if somebody's really interested you're going to naturally ask questions. You're going to naturally be curious.
Adam Hale: Yeah, whenever you start to see the passion rub off on an owner, that's when you see the business start to go kind of downhill. So, you know, even whenever we engage clients, we kind of sometimes, you know, relight that candle forum, you know, cause we start asking them about it and you can see them kind of get more excited and as you start drawing and putting together a plan for them, then they're usually like, oh wow, this is great. And you know, they start to get more into the game. So, it helps them in that regard as well.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, for sure. Josh, any other topics we need to talk about in this area? I think we've covered quite a bit but I want to make sure we're not missing anything.
Josh Jeans: I think the only thing I would add here at the end is that this is a really important value for folks to have when it comes to their own career trajectories and for people to feel the freedom, to be curious and ask what could my role evolve into? How could I make this better? Or is there some other part of the team that I could shift to where I could have a greater contribution? Somebody who has that sort of outlook is going to be, they're much more workable from a leadership perspective because they're displaying like I'm a team player. I really want to contribute here, as opposed to somebody who kind of just wants to stay in their lane and not really think about anything else. And there's some people who love what they do and they don't want to change. And that's okay. I want to see them be curious about how could I make this role easier for me and how could I increase my contribution over time, but still stay in this role and really crush it. It's something that's really helpful for people's career trajectory. I think it helps them get placed into a position that's more fulfilling for them. If they act on that curiosity over time to see where's my best fit, where's my best contribution? I think that's ultimately going to help their satisfaction at work.
Adam Hale: Yeah. I talked to college kids and ask why did you choose accounting? Even just dealing with it with my own kids, you know, I was talking to them and I said anybody that tells you go do the thing that you love the most in the world, between you and me, they're full of crap. Sorry to anybody listening. It's just like, I really love accounting. I'm not saying that, you know, you should do stuff that you hate. I mean, you want to make sure that there's a certain amount of passion, but you know the thing you love most, you know, Jamie, I know you love basketball, but sorry, man. You're not making the NBA. You know what I mean? It's not going to be a career. So it's one of those things where, you know, advocate for finding something that just comes to you naturally, and that you're curious about how to get better at. And so if you have those two pieces then it'll serve you well in any profession. And then if you're my kid, I also add a third one on there, which is, also make sure that it actually pays you a livable wage cause I don't plan on supporting you for the rest of your life. You can tell if you're curious about something, if you're always wanting to read more about it or look into it or watch stuff about it and for us, you know, that's how we can, that's a kind of a tell for the people that are in our leadership group. Taking it upon themselves to read a book or learn about something and contribute that back into the knowledge base.
Jamie Nau: I think to that point. I remember a couple of years ago I read a book about the early Patriots when they were first minister bulls, kind of about this team structure and the learning style there and how they did stuff, and I'm like, I could see how that would work at Summit. I started drawing lines. Again, like, you know, make people work in a certain way. So I think that's the thing too, everything you read, everything you consume, you do sometimes just convert it back to things you're passionate about and really curious about and see how that would relate. I think that's the other thing too, not only searching for topics or searching for books or videos or articles that relate to what we're doing, but also just drawing correlations that might not always be there.
Adam Hale: And to be clear, you weren't talking about cheating, like whenever you're reading about the Patriots, right?
All: Laughing [in audible]
Josh Jeans: We've talked before about being in the great resignation right now, and so many people are reshuffling what they do and where they work and what they want. And Adam, I think you're really touching on that. I've seen several times recently kind of in the people operations space, people talking about the difference between burnout and bore out. I really liked what you said, like pick something that you actually have competency in and that's going to help you not burn out, because if you're always doing something that you're not naturally gifted in, that's really, really hard. And then to pick something that you're curious about and you have a passion in that's going to help you prevent you from being burned out and just choosing something different because you're just so sick of doing the same thing over and over again. I really think both of those things contribute to long-term satisfaction in wanting to invest where you stay and to grow relationships with your team. And that again contributes to the quality of service you provide in your personal quality of life and where you're working.
Jamie Nau: Great. Well, I think this was a really good conversation. I wish we could keep talking about it. So I appreciate you guys coming and on.