Built to Perform: Lessons from 40 Years of Real-World Leadership

Bernard Aybout (Virii8)

2 weeks ago

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12 Minutes Read

Leadership – What Actually Works: Leadership Lessons From 40 Years on the Front Lines

After 40 years in the real world—working in automotive plants across Japan, the U.S., and Canada, and leading teams in HVAC and skilled trades—I’ve seen what works, what fails, and what gets in the way. I’ve dealt with union shops, crisis turnarounds, digital transitions, and fast-moving field operations. If there’s a bottom line, it’s this:

You can’t fake results. And data doesn’t lie.

Every principle I believe in has been tested on the shop floor, in customer homes, under pressure, and backed up by what the numbers show. This is not theory. This is proven execution.

Eight Attributes That Held Up Everywhere

Across industries, teams, and cultures, these eight truths kept showing up.

1. Act Fast and Adjust

Paralysis by analysis kills momentum. In both auto and HVAC, I’ve seen good teams over-plan themselves into irrelevance. Meanwhile, the teams that ship something—anything—learn faster, adapt quicker, and outperform.

One of my HVAC divisions rolled out a preventive maintenance program in under two weeks. Was it perfect? No. But it gave us data, early customer feedback, and proof of interest. Within a month, sign-ups exceeded projections by 20%, and we had real traction to improve from. Had we waited to perfect the model, we’d have lost the window—and the revenue.

This isn’t about being reckless. It’s about being responsive. Data from field tests beats speculation every time. And in a world where speed is a competitive edge, perfection is the enemy.

2. Stay Close to the Customer

In Japan, I learned what it means to watch customer obsession done right. Sales staff would call back every vehicle buyer post-sale—not to pitch anything, but just to ask how things were going. That kind of proximity builds loyalty and long-term insight.

In HVAC, I made it a point to walk job sites, ride along on installs, and personally follow up on complaints. You’d be shocked how many operational gaps you uncover just by being present. And once I brought in NPS tracking? Patterns jumped out instantly. The closer we stayed to the end user, the better we got—on pricing, service, product design, and even staffing.

3. Empower Teams Like Entrepreneurs

I stopped managing people like cogs the day I saw what happened when you give them ownership. In one Canadian branch, I let lead techs build their own quoting process. They simplified it, made it clearer for the customer—and increased close rates by 25% in three months.

When people are trusted like owners, they act like owners. They take initiative, solve problems, and don’t wait for permission. You don’t get that when you micromanage or gate decisions behind corporate red tape.

4. Respect People, Expect Excellence

This one’s not soft—it’s survival. Plants and field operations that treat people with respect consistently outperform those that don’t. I’ve seen it in absenteeism rates, injury reports, customer reviews, and even sales.

One factory I worked with had zero turnover for five straight years. Why? Not because the work was easy. It wasn’t. But people felt valued. They had a say in how things ran. Their input mattered. And when people are treated like pros, they act like it.

Dignity and discipline are not opposites. They reinforce each other.

5. Lead By Doing

There’s no substitute for visible leadership. When I was in the field regularly, performance went up. Morale went up. Accountability improved without a single policy change.

I’ve done job walks in winter with trades crews. I’ve answered customer calls on Saturday. I’ve stood in front of team members when tough layoffs had to happen. Why? Because credibility is earned in action, not email. If people only see you in meetings, you’re not leading. You’re managing from a distance.

6. Stick to What You Know, Then Master It

Every time I saw a company chase a new product or service they didn’t understand, I watched them lose money, focus, and sometimes their core business. One HVAC firm tried to enter home automation with no internal expertise. It nearly sunk their margins for two years.

Meanwhile, my most profitable team doubled down on what we did best—commercial retrofit systems. We didn’t chase trends. We owned the fundamentals.

Being great at your core offering will always beat being average at five.

7. Keep It Flat and Simple

Flat orgs move faster. Period. At one point, I cut three layers between the field techs and myself. The result? Faster decisions, clearer communication, and a team that felt heard.

Bureaucracy breeds delay, and delay kills trust. Tools like dashboards, SMS updates, and direct access to leadership aren’t just nice—they’re necessary. Especially when work is fast-paced, field-based, or mission-critical.

When people can see the playbook and talk to the coach, they perform better. Every time.

8. Be Tight on Values, Loose on Execution

When your values are crystal clear—integrity, quality, customer-first—then you don’t need to script every move. Teams will improvise within the framework of what matters most.

In Japan, teams operated with minimal supervision because the shared values were so deeply internalized. In my U.S. branches, once we had strong cultural clarity, I stopped getting pulled into every decision—because people knew how to act, even when things went sideways.

If you’re constantly policing how work gets done, you haven’t made the “why” clear enough.

What Culture Actually Looks Like – Leadership

Culture isn’t posters, speeches, or slogans. It’s how people behave when no one’s looking—and how they talk about their work at lunch or after hours. You don’t build it with HR emails. You build it with actions, consistency, and accountability. And yes—you can measure it. I did. Here’s what I built mine around:

Common Sense, Ruthlessly Applied

The best cultures don’t tolerate overcomplication. They question anything that wastes time, adds friction, or exists just because “we’ve always done it that way.”

I’ve worked in plants and job sites where approvals were faster than some office teams move a PDF. Why? Because we stripped things down to the essentials. One plant cut five approval steps from parts ordering and immediately saved three days per request. That translated to faster turnaround, fewer delays, and happier teams.

Good culture clears the clutter. Great culture refuses to build it in the first place.

Know the Customer Inside Out

In every business I’ve led, getting closer to the customer made us better—on pricing, service delivery, even team training. It wasn’t a hunch. We tracked it.

Satisfaction scores, callback rates, service renewals—those were cultural indicators. If those numbers dipped, we weren’t just failing the customer; we were getting disconnected from reality.

I made sure my teams knew who they were serving. Not just a “target persona”—the actual people. That meant shadowing service calls, reviewing support tickets, listening to complaints directly, and making sure everyone understood the consequences of their work.

Build Innovation Into the Routine

I’ve never seen sustainable innovation come from the top down. The best ideas always came from the people doing the work.

We created a rhythm: every week, every team could submit a fix, an improvement, or a shortcut that made their work better. We tracked how many ideas were submitted, implemented, and what impact they had. It became second nature.

One technician redesigned the layout of his service van to save 10 minutes per job. Over a month? That was hours saved—and more revenue earned. Multiply that across 20 vans, and you’ve got a system-level improvement driven by frontline insight.

Culture rewards curiosity and gives people the freedom to improve what they touch.

Treat People Like Adults

Trust isn’t just a word—it’s a system. When I treated people like professionals and gave them clear expectations, they delivered. When I gave them visibility into performance data—and didn’t use it to punish—they took ownership.

We saw it in accident rates. In productivity. In accountability.

Micromanagement kills culture. But so does neglect. The sweet spot is clarity, trust, and shared responsibility. We built scoreboards, not surveillance.

Respect and expectation—together—created high standards without burnout.

Be Visible. Be Measurable.

I tracked how much time I spent in the field, at branches, or on-site. Why? Because presence changes performance.

The more I showed up, the more connected the team felt. And when I listened—really listened—things got better faster than any memo could manage. I didn’t wait for surveys to figure out what was wrong. I heard it live, fixed it fast, and the data followed.

Culture improves when leaders are real, reachable, and repeatable.

Chaos and Change: Where Data Becomes Your Lifeline – Leadership

I’ve led teams through recessions, chip shortages, supplier failures, and tech disruption. In every crisis, one truth stood out:

The teams that had real-time, accurate data survived. The rest guessed and hoped.

Customer Dashboards: Let us react before they even complained.
Inventory Data: Saved us hundreds of thousands during supply chain chaos.
Employee Performance Metrics: Let us reward right and coach better.
Cost Tracking in Real-Time: Showed which jobs were worth it and which weren’t.

Data doesn’t replace leadership. It sharpens it.

Projects > Titles. Results > Rhetoric.

The best shift I ever made was to project-based work. Here’s why:

Each initiative had goals, metrics, and an owner.
Success was visible.
Feedback was fast.

And the data backed it up: shorter cycle times, lower burnout, and clearer accountability.

Four Pillars Backed by Decades of Numbers and Outcomes

People Drive Performance: Absenteeism, error rates, and retention are people metrics. They reflect culture. Invest here first.
Customers Aren’t Just a Department: Survey them. Walk with them. Bring them into product reviews. You’ll build loyalty that reduces acquisition cost and boosts LTV.
Action + Feedback = Results: We measured outcomes weekly. Test. Tweak. Track. Win.
Leaders Must Engage in the Data: I never made a major decision without real numbers—and I never stayed in the office while doing it.

What Modern Leadership Now Demands – Leadership

I’ve evolved my playbook over the years. Today, these new factors are must-haves:

Equity That You Track: Promotions, pay, performance. Track by demographic. If you can’t see gaps, you can’t fix them.
Sustainability Metrics: We monitored emissions, scrap waste, and energy consumption. Being green saved us money and earned loyalty.
Digital Competence: Our dashboards, field apps, and scheduling tools reduced admin time by 60%. Leaders must know the tech they authorize.
Mental Health Metrics: Burnout rates, EAP usage, schedule flexibility. These are now business indicators.
Cultural Agility: I’ve led teams in Japan, Quebec, and Detroit. You must know the differences. Culture affects data—and how to act on it.
Data-Driven Decision-Making: You can’t trust gut alone. Gut + dashboard is the sweet spot.

What I’d Add to the Original Playbook

After four decades on the ground, across plants and job sites, here’s what else I’ve found to be essential. These weren’t just ideas—they were non-negotiables in any team that actually delivered.

1. Stick to the Knitting—For Real

Every time I watched a business chase something shiny—new vertical, new service line, new “strategic initiative”—I could practically see the wheels wobble. Diversification without alignment kills focus.

In the trades, we once experimented with bundling unrelated smart-home products into our HVAC offers. The logic looked good in a slide deck. But on the ground? It confused techs, annoyed customers, and burned out schedulers. It wasn’t our core. It wasn’t what we were built to execute with excellence.

You win by getting better at what you already do well. Excellence compounds. Distraction fractures.

2. Be Tight on Principles, Loose on the Playbook

You can’t lead chaos with more control—but you can lead it with clarity. I always set hard lines on values: safety, honesty, customer-first action. But how people got there? That’s where freedom lived.

One tech may upsell with humor and stories. Another with straight talk and data. As long as both deliver trust and quality, I’m not rewriting anyone’s script.

You’ve got to make room for different styles, as long as the outcomes—and the guardrails—are rock solid. High-trust teams need clarity, not micromanagement.

3. Get to the Front Line—And Don’t Just Smile and Shake Hands

I didn’t do Gemba walks for optics. I did them to learn, adjust, and prove I cared. That’s where you hear the things that never make it into meetings.

One tech told me during a job site visit, “We lose ten minutes a day on this clipboard.” That conversation led to a digitized checklist that saved us hours per week across every crew.

Frontline interaction isn’t ceremonial. It’s strategic. If you’re not learning something every time you show up, you’re just taking a walk.

4. Make Heroes Out of the Right People

We didn’t wait for employee-of-the-month plaques. We celebrated wins right when they happened—at stand-up meetings, over the radio, in branch newsletters, or in all-hands.

When someone fixed a customer issue creatively, beat a job timeline, or saved the team time or money, we told that story loud. Repeating those wins built a culture that knew what “right” looked like.

That’s how you drive behavior: by catching excellence in the act and turning it into legend.

5. Make Service Everybody’s Job

I used to say, “If you touch the customer’s time, money, or experience—you’re in service.” That meant ops, admin, field techs, even dispatch. If they could make a job better or worse, then service wasn’t someone else’s department—it was theirs.

We built training, language, and KPIs around that. If a warehouse delay caused a reschedule, that was a service failure. If finance fixed an invoice fast? That was service recovery.

Service is culture. It doesn’t start with a call center—it starts with ownership.

Final Word: Data + People = Durable Success

I didn’t learn leadership in books. I learned it in steel-toed boots, with spreadsheets in one hand and a tool belt in the other. Here’s what I know for sure:

Track what matters.
Act fast on what you see.
Build systems that elevate people.
Lead from the front.

This isn’t theory. It’s results.