Stop Being the Bottleneck – Client Workshop

Every founder has a deep connection to the details of the projects that drive the business toward the mission. However, they often struggle to let go of the small things to focus on the most significant, most valuable projects.

Today, we look at the bottlenecks of growth. This training is filled with insight from founders who have learned to let go and continue to do so in scaling the company forward. This training is mainly for founders that want to step into the CEO role, but you can share this with others on your team if you see fit. All FGB workshops are designed for sharing within your company walls. Please don’t share it outside your teams without written permission from Gene Hammett.

Download slides from the workshop.

 

 
 

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

FGB-2020-05-21-Workshop-Your-Are-The-Bottleneck

All right. So we have a very special day that we’re planned here. I’m really excited about delivering something to you. This is not your traditional webinar. This is truly a workshop. I’ve never seen such you know, amazing leaders in one place at one time. So I’m kind of humbled to be a part of this and to bring you guys together.

[00:00:20] But common bond is really, I guess me but it’s really the podcast. I’m going to share my screen with you cause I’ve got some stuff planned for today. And that’s what we’re going to do. So here we go. You guys should be seeing my iPad. You guys see that?

[00:00:50] Yep.

[00:00:52] The only downside of this is I can’t really see you guys. Let me see. Maybe I can change the way this works.

[00:01:01] There it is. All right. I can move you guys down here. Okay. And that I can make this full screen. All right. So we are here because you got an email from me or your client or both. We have a lot of people here that are just amazing leaders and they want to learn how to go to the next level. And that’s what this is about. I was looking at the numbers from last week. And many of you have been on the show before? We were up 263% and I was trying to figure out why the heck we’ve got, cause really hadn’t changed a whole lot of marketing around what we’re doing, but we were getting a lot more downloads. And so I don’t know if that’s you guys sharing it.

[00:01:46]Or a combination of things just kind of fitting together, but I was like, what’s going on here? And so I looked at some of the individual episodes. So some of our special guests today are truly people who have been on the show before one of the top episodes around leadership and culture. Cause you guys know, I focus on the Inc 5,000.

[00:02:09] So that’s, there’s some special guests in here that aren’t clients. Many of you are clients or past clients. And some of you are actually both, but I just want to say a special, thank you to you guys. This is all founders CEOs. High, fast growth companies. So again, this is not people who want to be in business. There’s no one here that’s like, maybe I’ll start a business someday, or maybe I’ll become a leader someday. You’re all doing it right now. And I just want to thank you for your time. We’re going to go through this.

[00:02:41]A lot of familiar faces. I look at the, this screen here. I don’t see Mike, right? So I’m going to keep going. So the special guests we’ve already talked about this is fast-growth boardroom, so I do something very special for, for leaders and, and this is certainly not a pitch or anything like that, but this is just, we do coaching content and community. The coaching is something that I do in a sense. Element to this. So there’s a little coaching today, but not a lot. It’s mostly on the content side. I want to create some of the best content specifically for people that are growing their companies. That’s what part of this is today. And then the community is, you know, I know a lot of people are in group programs and the thing I hear over and over and over it’s like a group is only as good as its people.

[00:03:35] And I wanted to create something for fast growth. That’s the reason I’ve been interviewing fast growth people for the last like four years or five years. And that’s where I focus my, my energy and focus client selection. And and all of you guys are on the Inc 5,000. So why we’re here is to become extraordinary leaders. I know that an extraordinary word, Mike might turn a little bit people, but bear with me for a second. If you really want to grow your, your company from where it is today. It’s not just putting your head down and doing the work. It’s become an extraordinary leader because you don’t get to the scale of growth, probably that’s in your head without truly building a team about truly having systems that drive all of that. And so what we’re here to do is to learn some of the nuance, to become an extraordinary leader, maybe to remove some resistance and friction that’s going on inside this. I’m going to give you my best stuff I can. And in this time period, it’s also about creating high-performance teams and cultures that really create the kind of growth we want. And eventually, someday, may people want to exit, you know, I get an email every week from someone that’s been on the show before. That’s like, oh, I exited the company and I I’m no longer there. I’m starting something new. And it’s pretty exciting to see that people are, are wanting to do that, but increasing the value of your company just for a second here, does anyone.

[00:05:03] Not believe that becoming a better leader will increase the better the value of your company. Raise your hand. If you believe that Eric, do you believe that?

[00:05:19] Speaker 1: I believe that it will to be clear.

[00:05:22] Gene Hammett: Okay. Because you, you can’t do it all, like as smart as you are, is, is, is talented and it’s hard worker. None of you can do it all. So you’ve got to, to activate the people around you. And that’s what, what today is about. And in some senses, I probably overdone it on the content inside this. So forgive me if we, if it feels a little bit rushed, but that’s why we’re here. Those of you who are in the fast-growth boardroom, there’s some important dates that I want you to be mindful of each month, we do a coaching call, which is we address the challenges that are going on. And we do we set the goal for the month. I know that that you guys have set a goal of her back. Many of you, you’re making some progress on that. So June 4th, we’re going to see where you are set a new goal and keep pushing the other training. So we do training once a month on this. We’re going to do explicit communication.

[00:06:14] Next month. Communication is the biggest blind spot within leadership. People think they’re good communicators and their team will come back and tell me they’re not. And so I call it explicit communication. Not because I’m going to teach you how to cuss. Cause many of you can probably cuss much better than I can. No, Alex, my joke the, the real thing around explicit communication is how do you create. Moments of communication where people feel like they’re connected to that moment and they, what you’re saying cannot be misunderstood. And so that’s the next workshop. We’re going to go through the seven elements of an effective request and that’ll be a big part of that. So all that being said, wow, I think we have everybody who Pete has showed up for this. Next important date is the leadership event that we’re doing in September. Two days we’re racing Porsche’s I did this before. Fantastic. So small group of people, we get to go to the Atlanta Porsche test, track, race, race, I’m not Eleven’s and GTR threes and things like that.

[00:07:23]Depending on what your flavor is, but it is a lot of fun. So put that on your calendar and then finally, Just kind of curious. I know not everybody here is a member. But if we did a leadership in the winter experience, realm, Yellowstone, Whistler, or Steamboat, which would you prefer? I’m gonna see if my polling stuff works.

[00:07:45]Okay. My polling stuff does not work. So we have comment, which would you do, Tony? Thanks for hitting their three Steamboat. Which would you guys cheers? Just kind of curious, you can put the name or you can put 1, 2, 3. I just want to make, be easier for you guys. I’ll come back and look at this. I’ve just, I’ve got a plan in these advanced imagine putting together a three-day experience for leaders takes, take some time to put together.

[00:08:13] So I see a lot of different varieties of different things. Yes, I probably did use the wrong abbreviation for Montana bill. Thank you. All right. The next one is the spring event is either going to be dune, buggies are driving a tank. So I’m kind of curious, which would you guys rather do? I’m kind of torn on this myself. So what would you guys do for the may event? Mostly dune, buggies, few, few tanks. I want to do both. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a way we can do both. I don’t know. All right, so that’s all kind of the preliminary stuff. We’re going to dive into this right now. This is we’re going to talk today. We’re going to engage in a little bit. We’re going to have a conversation.

[00:08:55] So this is not just a passive thing. But I do X don’t say anything that you don’t want shared, but also this should be a safe space that we could be confidential. We could say something and no one’s going to share secrets and come around behind our backs. That’s an important part of people coming together and creating community. And before you get too deep into this, I’ve, I’ve heard someone say this to me before, and I thought it was pretty, pretty ingenious. So I’m bringing it over here to this. How would you sabotage yourself today? You don’t need to tell me, but write down on your piece of paper, however you keep them. How would you sabotage yourself?

[00:09:33] Would you flip over to Facebook because you’re interested. Would you check your stocks and see what’s going on over there with Bitcoin and or maybe you’re just confused about what’s going on in the market. Would you be checking your email? Or would you be doing something else? My hope is that if you want to be an extraordinary leader, you’ve got a chance to engage with, with other founders of fast-growth companies that you would be in the moment. But if you write down how you sabotage yourself, it’s a physical cue of reminding yourself not to go into that place, not to go into social media or stocks or email or anything like that. This is going to take you away from this moment. I did ask for 90 minutes, but I just, I just wouldn’t put this out there. When we talk and share, each of you, I’ve interviewed many of you, some of you talk a lot more than others, but no one is as succinct as we need to be today. So, you know, one sentence, maybe two sentences. We don’t need a paragraph. We don’t need the whole story. Give us, give us your 2 cents. I want to make this engaging, but if we’re not. Then I’ve got to come in and stop you. And, and if I do that too much, we won’t get through all of this, but I do want engagement interaction. Is this, is this okay with you guys? Perfect. The edge of learning, there are going to be things that I’m going to say today that you’re going to feel uncomfortable with.

[00:10:57] Maybe you feel some resistance to maybe you’re just not, you think that’s just not the way it is being mindful of those things. Write them down, put a star next to the things that make you feel uncomfortable. I’d love for you to just be aware that that’s something you don’t believe or you can’t do, or that’s not, that’s not possible here, whatever it is that comes in when you feel that resistance, write it down because all growth happens at the edge of learning.

[00:11:30] All growth happens at the edge of where you feel uncomfortable. And we’re going to hopefully find that for each of you today, because not everything here is, is meant to to just be passive and take in. All right. Here’s the first plot where we really kind of talk about this just for a moment. What do you want? You guys can, can unmute yourself and politely share with us. You can put in there, the chat. I can actually see some of the stuff on the chat. What do you want?

[00:12:08] You came here for a reason. Who’s first

[00:12:20] I’ll speak up. It’s bill spoke, true tech tools. Yeah, I’d like a company I’d like to have a company continues to grow into the next step.

[00:12:45] This is Neil from levy. Just real quick. I think that’s, that’s an interesting one. Follow up on that.

[00:12:52] Who’s next? What do you want? Seven minutes. Is that a trick question?

[00:13:01] Hey, can you hear me? Yeah, this is McNeil from allevi. So, so one of the things that I would be looking for myself is how to go from a founder to a CEO. I, I think as a, as a founder I find myself into a lot of it. Into daily, they out operational things. And, and for me, I I’d like to, not just from myself is growing to a CEO, but also give the team and the company, the tools to be able to have the right infrastructure in place to be able to, to, to keep going without skipping a beat.

[00:13:38] You’re speaking my language here. Cause that’s, that’s primarily what this is about because when you feel like you, you wouldn’t be here, if at some level you didn’t feel like you were a bottleneck to the growth, they they, Gene is Johnny Garcia. Okay. So yeah, I’m starting to fill a exactly what the gentleman just mentioned.

[00:13:57]But I’ve started to release some of the reigns that I’ve had and turn it over to the folks that I’ve hired in and brought in to run the company sort of like I have and I’m starting to. To look from the sidelines to see how successful we are. What I’ve seen over the last year is we’ve been more successful with other people you know, executing the business.

[00:14:21] Then when I was, cause I was definitely the bottom. And, and, and that’s what I’m seeing as far as the future’s concerned for all of our businesses is these young men and women that are coming in are, are you know, more mindful they’re, they’re, they’re more focused. And unfortunately for me, I’m all over the place because of all the different businesses that we have and that takes away from, and I think you said succinct it’s hard to be succinct, succinct, succinct, and one business when I have seven other businesses that I’m trying to run.

[00:14:49] So it’s but I’m starting to see positivity from it. So now I’m going to pause right here for a second, cause there’s probably some people in here. I can barely run the one I got. How can I run seven? Does anybody think that Chris? I see you smile. It’s I do, I do the work with a lot of people who have a lot of businesses and they, they actually get it a little bit better because they’ve had to, they’ve been forced to let go.

[00:15:16] And I think you said something really great there, Johnny is turn it over to the folks. And they’re doing better than, than I was doing at it. And we’re going to talk about some tools and approaches to do that inside here. This gets a pretty good idea of what you’re trying to create. I I was talking to a gentleman the other day, not a client, but just someone I said, you know what, what’s your real focus.

[00:15:36] He says, I want to create a high performing self managing team. Can you guys relate? Raise your hand. Like that would just be incredible place to be someone that’s performing at a high level. The team is working it’s self-managing meaning you don’t have to motivate them. You don’t have to tell them, you know how to do something you don’t even have to.

[00:16:00]In my opinion, self-managing, doesn’t require accountability. Accountability is a very important word that gets tossed out a lot. But ideally, when you’re having a meeting and you give someone something and it’s really clear in this moment, they should take it and they should take ownership of that.

[00:16:21] Not just accountability. You shouldn’t have to check in to say, Hey, w did that get done? I don’t know. I’m not alone with this. It’s just accountability is a low bar. You want to make sure people are taking ownership of this. And that’s, that’s a big part of my work. All right. So that’s what we’re trying to create here.

[00:16:40] So we’re on the same page. The key to this is you’ve got to empower people to take ownership of the work, the Johnny, you, you were talking about this, letting you know, letting the folks take over so you can, you know, watching the sidelines. This whole aspect of empowerment is is really important to understand this it’s the opposite.

[00:17:05] I’m having trouble spelling day of micromanagement.

[00:17:16] You guys agree with that? It really is. I mean, it’s just empowerment is, is complete opposing to cause micromanagement is about control. It’s about you wanting to get it right. You want to make sure they get it right. You jump in there. Sometimes you might say, let me show you how to have, how to work this thing.

[00:17:38] Let me show you how it’s done. That’s, you’re moving into micromanagement every time you do that. So you gotta truly empower people. Ownership on the flip side of this is beyond responsibility, which I talked about.

[00:17:55] Okay,

[00:18:02] let’s talk about that for a second responsibility. You guys ever had people at work that they did just enough to get the work done.

[00:18:17] You really can’t fault them because they’re, you know, this used to be the whole thing of leaving at five. I remember I had an employee that, that left at five every day and I explained to her. I said, you know, there’s certain seasons during the year that which we have to stay till six, or maybe even six 30, because the seasons and these moments are critical to our success and it can’t be done earlier.

[00:18:39] It has to be done at the end of the day, we had shipments that go out by federal express and whatnot. And I said, you know, when it gets into that season, I’m going to let you come in a little bit late th th those weeks. And, but you got to stay later and it wasn’t, she would do it, but you could tell she was begrudging.

[00:18:58] And she was just showing up out of her sense of responsibility down the road. I found someone that I, when I had the similar talk, they were like, oh yeah, I get that. They totally understood right away. And they were able to go beyond responsibility and take ownership for the entire work in front of us.

[00:19:18] You guys get that

[00:19:22] you want people to take away. This is, this is Tony real quick. We, we hire against clock-in clock-out mentality. So during the kind of like the onboarding process, we ask, you know, what works and what doesn’t work. And, you know, we, we say I need a two-year commitment from any employee that we hire. So if you can’t give me a two year commitment, I pass on hiring you.

[00:19:44] No matter if you’re the greatest candidate across my plate, I’ve heard this many times before. And I, I really agree with what you’re saying, Tony. That two year commitment question upfront is just you know, it doesn’t have to be in a formal contract, but they’re willing to commit two years. Do you, th they’re willing to give you hopefully all of themselves for that two years, because you’re going to give back to them training and expertise and all of this stuff that you’re giving them, but they’re coming back to you for two, two years.

[00:20:12] I love that. I’m kind of curious, Tony, if you tell us, how do you make sure you hire against the nine to five. I use, I use my formula, drainers and drivers. So I asked three questions, basically, you know, tell me three things that you liked about your last job, three things that you hated about your last job.

[00:20:31]And then tell me the person who hired you or did they fail you because otherwise they wouldn’t be looking for a job, right? So they failed you in kind of like onboarding you and not giving you a runway to grow in the company. And so just to, to back up about that two year commitment, I personally, any bar, any person that comes into my company, there’s 70, about eight people, any person on my leadership team, I give them a two year commitment and I asked the two year commitment from them.

[00:20:55] So it’s, it’s me giving them that statement because I, I feel if I’m going to bring you in, put you under my wings, then, then you need to know. And I asked one other question. That’s super valuable that no one ever asks their employees or any team member. What’s your goal. Like give me a, give me a personal professional goal.

[00:21:14] And I will tell you nine times out of 10, they’ve never been asked that question before, by any, anybody in a company. You know, I want to know what they’re after, because I want to help them get that. And then once I started helping them to achieve their dreams, they’re going to help me work on mine. Do you guys spend this as valuable?

[00:21:33] I do. This is exactly the reason why I want to have smart people coming together in a community that are sharing with us. What’s working and what’s what’s maybe what’s not working sometimes, but these are just, I think these are goals. You’re hearing it. Not from me. I’m not trying to teach you something, but Tony sharing what he’s learned, hiring a lot of people, probably not 70, a lot more.

[00:22:02] And you know, this becomes a system. We’re going to talk about systems a little bit later, but when you have a hiring system that takes and, and, and you really understand, I, you know, he, he said this, I’m going to highlight it against the nine to five. If that’s what you’re looking for, then you’ve got to look for ways to be intentional about that in your hiring process.

[00:22:27] And these are ways that that Tony has shared with us. It was exactly the reason why we come together for something like this. All right. So we got here because we were talking about the key to empowerment is empowering people and take ownership of the work beyond responsibility. I, you know, I, you guys know I’m a professional speaker and I, I always have this story.

[00:22:47] I love to share. It’s just a micro story, but do you remember the, your first car, the one you paid your own money for? I’m sure you, do you remember what color it was? Yeah.

[00:23:05] That car mine was a kind of a shit brown in color. It’s like 80,000 miles on it. It was like a 1983 Honda accord. It was a beater, but I love that car because I owned it. It represented freedom for me. Right. That first cars just absolute freedom. I got it. The day I turned 16 and right before that I paid half the money and my dad paid half the money.

[00:23:26] That was the deal we struck. And I really felt like I own the full thing. It wasn’t part his part. Mine. It was mine. You guys, you guys can probably relate to that. But do you remember your first rental car? What color that was looking at the pictures you got, you’re all old enough to know. I know you don’t remember your first rental car but you took responsibility for that car.

[00:23:48] You signed away, you did all this stuff that you had to do. And my, my, my only thing for you to really resonate on here is there’s a difference between taking responsibility for something and the feeling of ownership. Do you guys get that? Our job is to lead people, to feel a sense of ownership of their work.

[00:24:13] So as we keep moving through here, leadership is the cornerstone of more growth. The leadership, the leader that you are today has created the company that you have right now.

[00:24:30] There’s a whole bunch of stuff at play. Everything. You’ve done all this stuff. The way you’ve showed up the energy, the confidence, the, the courage, the, the grit, the persistence, everything that defines you as a leader has created what you have today. But if you want more. You’ve got to be willing to let go of that person and become someone else.

[00:24:54] Johnny said something earlier. I finally decided to give my folks the chance to just do this without us. And that’s what we’re going to be doing later in this. So I’m always looking for ways to figure out how to help you and serve you. And so you can draw this little quick piece of a triangle on your map, looking for my notes here.

[00:25:21]The, the interesting thing here on this is there are certain challenges that we have that are just inherent in who we are right now. If you’re a doer in your business, your biggest challenge is time. And the way you graduate from that is by hiring people. It makes sense. Right? Simple. You guys with me so far.

[00:25:49] And if you’ve seen this before, forgive me, but maybe it helps to see it again. If you haven’t seen it again, just take a look at it. And then once you hire people, you become the manager of people. You’re still probably doing. You’re still in that founder mode. And so you’re trying to manage the chaos.

[00:26:08] We’ve heard this before, right? You, you, you’re all fast growth companies are so much going on. You’re juggling a lot of stuff. And the way you get out of this is you start to focus on systems. You may call it something else. Maybe it’s technology, maybe it’s something else, but you start to kind of codify how you get things done.

[00:26:28] And then once you graduate from that, your big thing is you become the director. You, you were directing the traffic and the people around you are still involved in the day-to-day. You’re still in the kind of founder mode. But what, what I see happening here is your big challenge here is overwhelmed because you’re trying to do so much.

[00:26:50] You’re trying to attend every meeting you can, you’re trying to attend, you know, be a part of sales and marketing and new products, whatever it may be, the way you graduate from this is you empower your executive leadership team. Now I know many of you, people here have, have really understood this. We have Lawrence Armstrong who is, is now the chairman of his company.

[00:27:16] And I think I looked at LinkedIn. He was the CEO for 27 years and he’s been the chairman for 18 months. Lawrence did I got that right?

[00:27:31] He’s on mute, but maybe we’ll come back to us in a second. And he knows the value of that executive leadership team. And I think all of you do at some level, and you’re all in different places. And that’s one reason why we’re doing this. W you, you’re trying to decide where you are and where you spend most of your time.

[00:27:50]Once you empower your leadership team, you become the leader. And then the biggest challenge is people. I had a client once who said doing the work is easy. These people are that’s, what’s hard. Can you guys can relate to that? It’s all their emotions. It’s all the things that are going on. It’s it really is something that you have to understand how to do.

[00:28:14] And then I say, I believe the way you graduate from this is you really get an ownership across the county. All the people are able to take ownership. And when I say all, I mean, I know there’ll be people that are still nine to five, they’re still, that are still key players. They’re doing certain things.

[00:28:36] Maybe you have hourly employees that don’t feel a sense of ownership. Your business probably has that, but all in all the key positions, all the things that really matter the ones where you’re expecting people to make, make decisions and really think for themselves, you want them to take ownership.

[00:28:55] That’s the way you get to be the Visionaire this way you get to be the chairman. Like I was talking about with Lawrence

[00:29:09] ever thought to interject here. Yep. Bill speaking. The, the challenge for me is sort of like the implicit bias that people can’t do it. And I always have to retrain my brain. To believe people will be awesome. And when I do that, they tend to surprise me. Yep. We are going to hit that a little bit later, but you said it differently.

[00:29:34] And so I appreciate you doing that. The bias people can’t do it. That’s that’s, that’s the one that’s the normal default, right? What’s the, what’s the empowering belief. People are amazing and they become amazing if you believe it. That’s my theory. Do you guys get the simplicity of this?

[00:29:58] If you default to your thinking that people can’t do it, you will always be the bottleneck.

[00:30:12] I know you’ve got stories of people that don’t have the experience don’t, don’t have, don’t meet your standards. I’m taking you to the edge of where you feel uncomfortable, but this is a great way to suppose for a moment and say, if you believe people can’t do it, you’ll never empower them. Truly. You’ll never create ownership because they’ll feel that tension and resistance.

[00:30:39] But very simply what Bill’s saying is people are amazing. If that’s, if that’s the choice you could make in your beliefs. And then he said something, they surprise me,

[00:30:56] Jean. One of the things that we talk about leadership team is that you deserve the organization. You have. So, you know, you’re the, you’re, you’re the one who hires them. You’re the one who. Can train them or, you know, set the stage for them to succeed. So, you know, it’s the other bottleneck, right? So we as a leadership.

[00:31:17] So at the end of the day, we feel that, you know, again, B we do love the organization we have. So you’ve got to do what we need to do to create the path for them to succeed. Perfect. Here’s the, here’s the question. Not, not to, not to discount that you, hopefully you guys understand this you’ve deserved the organization you have, and it really is about you.

[00:31:41] The way you’ve shown up your beliefs. If you’re not evolving your organization, won’t evolve at the pace. It could hiring more people is just putting bodies in there. You need people that can think, and you need to empower them. That’s what real scaling of the company looks like. So back to this little five phases of growth, I’m not going to ask you to raise your hand on this, but, you know, If you’re spending more of your time directing people because you feel the sense of overwhelm, or if you haven’t even reached that point yet, you’re still managing people.

[00:32:20] You’re still managing the work. So I think the number is wherever 50% is. So if you put, I, I remember one of my I was doing this with someone that said, you know, 5% down here, that’s doable that there’s certain things only you’re going to do these 10% here. You know, he’s 40% here. He’s 10% here.

[00:32:48] What’s the rest over 60, 35. That means he’s still in the director area. Because if you add up the 50%, this is where he is. So that’s where you determine where you are. Wherever that 50% mark is

[00:33:10] anybody have questions about this? I think we’re where we’ve experienced this. And maybe where the challenge exists is getting beyond the notion that, that everyone has to move up in an organization versus everyone continuing to grow in an organization. There are, there are people who greatest skill is as an individual contributor, even as a senior individual contributor, because they’re not, they don’t have the competency to manage others.

[00:33:43] Right. And so finding ways to enable people to grow when they’re just not ever going to really be able to elevate, to managing other people, because it’s, that’s not their skill. Right. So, so finding ways of enabling people, I talk about. As you move through the organization, the expectations change. But you have to, you have to want to meet those other expectations.

[00:34:07] If you don’t want to meet those other expectations, if that’s not a desire or a goal for you, then you’re never going to be happy in that other role, you have to find a way of growing without having a new set of expectations that just are misaligned with what you want to do. Love that Scott, you know, the biggest example that comes up in, in my world is whenever someone finds someone in sales, who’s a rockstar and the Peter principle, right.

[00:34:33] Someone gets in the idea and go, we should make that person, the leader of the company or of the sales team build that. Right. I don’t have any specific numbers, but does that ever really work out the way you want it to does it? I don’t know. Most of the time it does it most of the time that person’s not capable to manage and lead a team.

[00:34:56] And if you left them as, as being a rock star, you know, I won’t point names, but I have a client on here who has someone on their team who is that rockstar in sales. And the great thing about that person is he has enough self-awareness. He says I’ve managed people before. I don’t want to go back to that.

[00:35:15] I just want to go get the big deal. Right? And we’ve got to be comfortable with there’s no, you know, Scott started this thing of you don’t have to move up in the organization, but they do have to grow. You have to, you have to challenge them in certain ways. Maybe it’s new skills. Maybe it’s closed bigger accounts in this case.

[00:35:34] That’s what excites. Some people, they don’t want to move up. They don’t want to be managers, but guess what? This is not about them today. This is about you. You’ve got to decide where you are on this. And if you want to move up, you want to kind of go up this way. This is where more leverage is it’s Tony again?

[00:35:58] Hey, quick question. One thing that we recommend for our team is so w all my VPs, seven of them, they all have to find their replacement and not to be replaced in the organization, but to become visionaries in their departments, because there’s no room for them. If they’re so busy doing the hurting and the managerial work all day to day, then where can they grow the department?

[00:36:21] Cause they’re just, you know, the end of the day, they’re the throat, but the other, the other pieces I love about sales. I come from a sales background. You know, one, one piece that we do is we, we try to get sales people to fill in the gaps where they suck salespeople suck. At the end of the day.

[00:36:35] They’re not great with the numbers, but if they Bob calls on the phone, Hey, Bob, I’ll get that over to you. Right? But instead of having to do that, they have people behind the scenes to get that over to Bob right away. So they don’t even have to apologize and they can just do what they’re good at sales, right.

[00:36:50] Closing deals. So that’s one, one piece that we did just to help, but I love Scott, thank you for dropping those, some good stuff right there. Perfect. So don’t take my word for it. If you believe that just execution is the most important thing inside of your role right now you are the bottleneck because Harvard business review, and I know this is a little bit old, but it’s a, it’s a time-tested thought that that focused on execution will derail your growth down the line.

[00:37:20] What I really mean by putting this in here is we’ve got to become more leaders and leading the leaders inside of our core organization so that they’re leading those people on the front lines of executing. Not everybody higher has, you know, a hundred employees. Some of you do some of you have 200, 600, but you’ve got to, you’ve gotta be focused on your evolution as a leader.

[00:37:42] So I’m just kind of curious, and again, we’re going to be succinct here, but what are some of the symptoms of being the bottleneck?

[00:37:54] What do you feel when you’re the bottleneck of the company? Can I answer that? Yep. Cause I mean, I’ve gone through that. Over the last, I would say 24 to 30 months, we’re in the process of building $160 million hyperscale data ecosystem on the east coast of, of the us. And the first two years of the development and architecture, I ran it.

[00:38:20]And it was, it was a mess. It was a mess because I ran it. And over the last six months, I turn it over to someone else in the business to run. And we’ve accomplished more in six months than we did the first 30 months because of me running it the way I wanted it to be run. And I found, I found out a lot about myself.

[00:38:41] I found out a lot about a number of our employees. And I, I saw that I was wrong and my approach to doing it, I lost a couple million dollars because I wanted it done my way. But I needed to figure out how to let it go and let someone else run it. And we’re, we’re even closer now to having a completed because we did that and it took one of my employees to tell me, Hey, Johnny, the reason this is the way it is, is because.

[00:39:09] No me. And I, my focus wasn’t there on, on the actual development and architecture cause I was still running six other businesses. And I didn’t want to let go. But that also led to me letting go. Yeah. Yeah. Anybody else ha that’s good. Cause it feels like a mess and I, and I get the fact that you’ve been through this and it’s fresh.

[00:39:28]Anybody else have any symptoms that can share here? What would you see as the majority or I think one of the common symptoms is if you allocate your time based on the things that you think you’re supposed to be spending your time on, and you do a true breakdown of your allocation and you find that a, it keeps shifting one way or the other into other categories, generally it’s it’s either you’re the bottleneck was

[00:39:59] anybody else adds up. I would say when it feels like people don’t understand.

[00:40:10] Give me just a little bit more on that. They’re missing out on the, what the expectation is and you just feel like they, they don’t understand. They don’t understand. I got to do it myself. Yep. I I had somebody who guys are clients on here, and I haven’t decided I haven’t shared who’s a client. Who’s not because I want to, I don’t want to break confidentiality around this, but one of the guys on here, when I first talked to him, I said, how would I know that you’re the bottleneck?

[00:40:38] And he said, well, their sport team reports at the edge of my desk, that my team expects me to review this week. And that’s what I typically do. I’ve got 25 years experience in this industry and they really rely on me to review the work. Now we all know as outside. That’s probably not the best use of a CEO’s time.

[00:41:02] Can you guys agree with that? It, you really want to to be able to identify the places where you’re the symptom, you know, to give you the, the real context around that, I said, how long does it take you to review those reports? He goes about three hours. Each, they make two to three hours. I said, that’s half your week of reviewing reports.

[00:41:19] And he’s like, yeah, that’s what I do half my week. And the beautiful thing is no longer does he do that because he’s, he’s able to let go of that that piece of it. All right, go ahead. I was gonna say, I, I I meet everybody when we hire them. So I have about a 30 minute meeting with every single person after, after we hired him.

[00:41:41] And it’s just a chance to kind of, you know, meet one-on-one and have a conversation and. But I tell everybody, like I have, I have the same spiel, but I do this so I can tell everyone. I told you this, when you were hired that I’ve held just about every job in our company, through my career. I’ve, I’ve had those roles with the exception of two.

[00:42:00] I’ve never been a CFO. I’ve never been the head of marketing, every other job I’ve had. And those, and I tell them that because those aren’t my jobs anymore. I’ve had your job, but it’s not my job. And my job is not to make the decisions. My job is to be the plow that clears the road for you to make those decisions.

[00:42:17] So I don’t want anyone feeling like I’m looking over their shoulder. Like, I want you to make the decisions, but I want you to come to me when there are things that are in your way. Like, that’s the conversation that I want us to have is if there’s something that’s holding you back, let me remove it. But don’t come to me after the fact.

[00:42:38] Right. And say, here’s why something couldn’t be done. Come to me beforehand and we can remove it. And then that way, you know, that like, that’s my way of putting you, putting you in charge. Like you make the decision you drive, but come to me beforehand so that if there’s anything in your way, we can talk about it.

[00:42:57] But don’t come to me with excuses afterwards about why it didn’t get done. It’s got the, it’s funny about that is I think one of the hardest things in my organization is getting good information, right? Where do you go to get good information about what’s actually happening? That’s right. You can do everything in order to open up the lines of communication, but you never know if what they’re telling you is actually what’s happening and that’s, it’s not about trust.

[00:43:22] It’s just the nature of it. So I’ve always tried all these different exercises. Well, I, in leadership meetings, I almost never talk about work. And the idea is that when you don’t people start talking about work and the things they talk about, those are very likely to be honest things. That’s how we get along.

[00:43:39] Good information from the organization about what’s actually happening. It’s interesting. I, I want to highlight that for a second. I mean, maybe I should write that down, but I can’t talk and write it down very well. He’s not talking about work, he’s doing these leadership exercises and, and I, I see too many people missing this opportunity.

[00:44:02] I’m not sure who that is, but you can meet yourself. He’s leading the people through these exercises and having different kinds of conversations, because if all you talk about is the milestones, the metrics and what to do next, that’s managing the work. That’s not leading the person. You guys get that in order to stop being a bottleneck, you’ve got to become more of a leader.

[00:44:24] That’s the reason why this five phases of growth is what it is. So. This is meant to be fun. You guys can put the numbers in there if you want, but this is different types of bottlenecks. The expert, the one who has all the answers, the one who reviews the work. And just, where are you now be honest with yourself.

[00:44:50] You don’t have to put this into the chat or anything like this, but, you know, are you a six in this case? I I just met with a prospective client the other day. And instead of my CEO, his biggest challenge or COO is that he tells the people what to do instead of letting them figure it out themselves.

[00:45:12] And, you know, he needs some coaching around that. The COO should understand to empower people, to take ownership. So where are you on this?

[00:45:27] The next one is the hyper involved. If you’re over-scheduled, you’re probably doing this a lot more. If you feel guilt because you can’t be there for everything, where are you? What’s your number.

[00:45:48] All right. Number three, the recur, the recovering micromanager. Nobody’s a micromanager on this list list. Maybe you used to be, and it’s fun because when you had four people, it was a little bit easier to be supportive. Maybe you couldn’t afford to hire really experienced people, but you’ve you’ve you had to learn to let go of that, but you struggle giving up control.

[00:46:09] Sometimes you’ve got to weigh in on the decisions.

[00:46:18] I get this a lot. I think we talked about it. We’re frustrated when others don’t make their standards.

[00:46:26] And go back to Bill’s question. I chose to believe that everyone’s amazing if you believe that everyone’s amazing. You wouldn’t, you would, you would be on this rarely side. All right. So the doer, this makes sense. The person who believes in just jumping in, let me, you know, let me, let me help you out here.

[00:46:44]You, you can do this at times, but if you’re doing it all the time it, it really is. If you’re down here, it’s a problem. All right. And then finally, the firefighter, this was the one that got me. When I ran my company, when we were going from a million, 5 million, I felt like I should be removing obstacles for my employees.

[00:47:07] And I had a coach almost 20 years ago said who told you that you had to remove the obstacles. So nobody, I just, I wanted, I want to make sure that it’s, that they’re just doing what they’re supposed to be doing. They weren’t doing the hard stuff. I was, I came over every day, exhausted and I was way down here.

[00:47:27] So those are five different types. The, what you do with that is just, just lock it in, see, see where you are. Just be aware of it. Speed up a little bit here, but we have, I’ve always want to create these frameworks around here. I’ve been doing this for 10 years. I want to create things that allow me to communicate effectively, so they can’t be misunderstood.

[00:47:52] And at broken down growth, predictable growth, and the three parts. One is your team. You want your team to play at the highest level. Great. You want systems that are, that are always evolving and yeah, you have to lead. The problem is this you, you’re not expanding the way you need to. I think you’re coming here today because you guys want to expand something, maybe see a perspective, maybe learn from others, like we’ve already done so far.

[00:48:23] So we’re going to go into the inner game. I told you, I’d share with you three mistakes. If you’re the bottleneck, you have the wrong mindset. Bill’s example earlier was as good as I can believe. He believes that their people are successful. That’s his mindset. Now you guys get that,

[00:48:47] but if you believe that they can’t do it, you’ll always jump in. You’ll always make the decision for them. So you’ve got to make sure you have the right mindset as you begin to evolve. And here’s the beautiful thing about mindsets. You’re never done. You are never completed in your journey of having the most powerful, empowering mindset that you could have because there’s always something you’re working on.

[00:49:16] And this isn’t meant to be, you know, to, to bring you down. We’re all working on thinking more clearly about who we are and showing up as that best version of ourselves.

[00:49:32] The problem with people with the mindset says is that they, everyone knows this formula, right? You’re all where you are today because your company has taken, taken impeccable action and gotten results. I don’t know who owned here is the fastest of the Inc 5,000, but it doesn’t matter. You guys are creating in different markets in different places.

[00:49:56] You have different teams, different goals. You guys have all demonstrated incredible results. And so you understand that you’ve got to take actions. I want to give you a little bit of an edge on this formula and it looks like this. If you guys have seen this before, this is really about what do I do, right?

[00:50:15] What actions do I take so that I can have, you know, the money? So that can be free. You’ve seen this formula before. I think that this doesn’t really work. I think actually we want to change the formula and it looks more like this. B do have

[00:50:44] the best example I can give you is if you’re more confident as a leader,

[00:50:52] you will create leadership and you will have. The team you want

[00:51:05] simple example, being more confident, being more decisive,

[00:51:13] having trouble spelling today. Does anybody have any questions about this being part? Okay.

[00:51:26] Here’s the key. If you can define who you’re being with the action you’re taking, you’re going to get better results.

[00:51:41] The problem is sometimes we show up frustrated.

[00:51:48] Do we get very good at results? When we take action, when we’re frustrated?

[00:51:56] Are we creative? No, not really. So what I’m asking you to do when you’re in a moment of leadership, when you’ve got to have a difficult conversation is for you to be intentional about who you’re being before you take that action. It’s a very simple thing. It is literally you taking three seconds to go.

[00:52:25] What do I have to believe? Go back to Bill’s thing. If he believes that people can’t do it,

[00:52:36] is he going to have a conversation where he’s delegating this work and the appropriate way the answer is? No, but if he believes people are amazing, then he has the conversation from that perspective, that’s his shit. Right. He’s optimistic instead of being pessimistic. Do you guys get that? Is this too out there for you guys?

[00:53:02] I know you guys got to do list and you’ve got a lot of stuff you’ve got to do, and you’ve got to show up for meetings, but when you get the fact that you can show up as your best, most empowered self in every moment, you will be able to be a stronger leader. Here’s the word I hear the most being reactive is killing your growth.

[00:53:26] If you’re reactive, most of your day, you’re not being the leader that your team deserves,

[00:53:39] who here would give me just a little bit about the dangers of being reactive. You’ve learned it. I know a lot of people have learned this. You’re you’re, you’re really trying to get away from it, but who would, who would share something? I’m sure many of you to bail, you got something there. I end up spending time apologizing afterwards, wasting time, because I realize at some point down the road, I realized, yeah, it is, if this is the way you’re being right.

[00:54:17] Will you ever be the leader that your team really deserves? Will you ever get to the kind of growth you want? Will you ever move up that triangle being reactive from what I’ve seen? It’s extremely hard. So how do you do it? Well, becoming the best version of yourself is unlearning the things that you have that have made you exactly where you are.

[00:54:49] So you’ve gotta be willing to unlearn some of the approaches you make. You gotta be able to step back just like any visionary would and say, what’s really going on here with myself and look at this in such a way that you’ve got to look for the shifts that are necessary. Here’s the exercise I do with my clients.

[00:55:13] We won’t have time to go through this today, but I want to give it to you because I just, I think it will help. And maybe we can do a micro version with, with anybody you want. But the story I want to share with you here is I call this the higher self exercise. This is part of my frameworks that I’ve been developing over the years and, you know, are there other versions of those out there?

[00:55:36] Probably, I, I don’t pay attention that much to what other people are doing, but I know with my clients, if I can get them clearly to define how they’re showing up now, If we can put words to what’s getting in the way of them being the leader that they need to be. That’s the first part of the step. So step one is, is now, who are you being right now?

[00:56:06] I had a client of mine right after this Porsche event that we did last year or not last year because no one did anything last year. Did they? In 2019, and he sat down with me and he said, you know what, I’m anxious way too much.

[00:56:25] And I am you talked about anxiety. You talked about just the pressure. You had 200, no 300 employees 20 years of leadership experience. And he said, the leader that I am today is from the. Leader that I am today. I don’t know if I’m going to make it in the next five years of this company.

[00:56:50] He got really sober to how he’s showing up. Now, you guys get this first part, any questions on how you’re showing up? Now,

[00:57:08] if you can get this and be honest with yourself, this is, this is the hard part. Are you showing up frustrated

[00:57:20] more than you should be frustrated with your team frustrated with not getting the. Jean, one of the things that we do on a monthly basis, we have a monthly call with that, you know, manager, all the managers, of course we have weekly, but on a monthly basis, we have a one-word go around. And how do you feel one word?

[00:57:41] And that pulse tells us how we’re doing as a leader, as leaders, as well as a team. So here anxious, frustrated you know, nervous, a positive versus, you know, you know you know, nervous or anything like that. We get, we get a great pulse and this one word is something that we use all the time. So one word, how do you feel?

[00:58:03] No explanation. Just one word. So just, just an idea. Yeah. I it’s, it’s exactly what we’re talking about. I do it when I’m doing it. One-on-one with a client and of course we’re not one-on-one here. We have 20 amazing leaders. It’s hard for them to initially get to it. This is something that I have to pull out of them.

[00:58:24] This is one of the problems. This is one of the benefits, I guess, of coaching. I’m not emotionally attached to this, but when you get really sober to what, the way you’re showing up now on a more consistent basis, I know you have your moments of just, you know, pure joy and excitement for what you’re doing, but what is the way you’re showing up now back to this story.

[00:58:50] So I’m going to start step two. If it’s, if you’re really defining your higher self it’s, I’m not asking you to be someone you’re not. I’m asking you to make a choice, to be the person that you want to be to step into the next level of you. And so what this person actually did when I was talking to them and said, you know what?

[00:59:13] I am calm.

[00:59:18] Everything ships inside my world. I go tell me a little bit more about that. He goes, I can do anything. He goes, I’m unstoppable. And it’s like, okay. So when you’re calm, what does that look like? And he’s like, yeah, you know, I’m not getting angry. I’m not I’m not frustrated with anyone. I’m able to listen to them and I’m able to respond with the right question.

[00:59:42] I’m able to, to make the decisions that I need to make. And this is the, you know, the president of a 300 person company, there are 400 now. So the grown $50 million, this was what unlocked something inside his leadership that allowed him to move to a completely different place. When COVID fell apart. He was the first leader I talked to when everything was shutting down and I felt like he would revert back to this, this way of being.

[01:00:14] Because of the unknowns that were going on, it was common. I talked to some leaders that were literally like their hair was on fire. But he said to me, these words calm minds will prevail.

[01:00:37] He goes, I’m just going to keep that in my mind, as this goes forward, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Do we have to lay off people? I hope not. Do we have to do this? I don’t know, but I know if I’m calm, I will be the best leader I can be. Do you guys get the simplicity, but also the, the, the many levels that, which this defines how you’re showing up, you guys get that.

[01:01:03] This is, this is some of the deepest work I do with, with my leaders. I mean, many times we’re, we’re very strategic and tactical, but when we decide how you’re showing up, and we define this higher self, who are you becoming, things get much more clear and they’re able to operate in a different level from that.

[01:01:24] So moving into the second one, your actions, you’re not spending your time on the right things. Okay. A lot of people understand that, you know, there’s, there’s so many tools out there about, you know, which quadrant are you working in that, you know, the urgent or the important I try to go beyond some of those things, but, you know, in order to move to the next level, you’ve got to spend your time on the right things.

[01:01:52] And this is what gets you out of this. Take a scan of this, this time chart. That’s up here. Are you let me explain the different times. I know you don’t have the worksheets in front of me because part of me just said, you know, I don’t want to to overload you guys with this and I don’t want you to get ahead of me, but let’s go backwards here.

[01:02:15] Free time. Free days. How many days do you are completely unplugged? No email, no, you’re there for you, your family, your hobbies, whatever it is. Where do you feel like you are in that chart? If you have no free days and , and I understand their seasons of which we’re working. Like if you’re trying to raise money, if you’re doing, going through an acquisition, you’re going to not have those times, but are you okay with where you are right now?

[01:02:46] Does it, is it critical? Does it need improved? Or the, this is something that you’ve made an, a priority and it’s worked for you. So that’s free days. Personal time is really just time for yourself. Do you have time to work out? Do you have time for your hobbies? Do you have time to, to unplug and rest?

[01:03:03] Like, no. Do you have that built into your schedule if you don’t then, you know, there’s something to work on family time. I’ve got one teenager, I’ve got a wife and they mean the world to me. And I know that if not, I’m not intentional. I don’t want to lose sight of that, how important it is. So I actually include this in with my work, because it’s important to me, hopefully your, your family’s important to you, but where are you?

[01:03:32] Does it, do they need more time?

[01:03:38] Leadership time is the time to develop that. The time we were truly connecting with them. One-on-one meetings, team meetings, all of those things that not meetings for status sake, but when you’re truly leading the person we go back to, I can’t remember who said this. I think it, maybe it was Tony is like, we ask them about their goals, their personal goals and their professional goals.

[01:04:03] This is a great conversation inside of our leadership conversations, not just when we hire them, but throughout the process. So make sure that they’re, they’re growing and they’re on track because if they feel a sense that working here allows me to achieve my goals, then they will love working there.

[01:04:21] They’ll take more ownership for it. Visionary time is really just the time that we spend strategizing and looking at what the future will be and really thinking about around, you know, looking at the bins around the. I ask a question to many people, just like you and said, if you don’t do this, who in your company is doing the visionary work?

[01:04:44] The answer is always the same. If I don’t do it, no one does it

[01:04:54] impact time is the time that you’re, you’re doing your most valuable work. So all that being said, you should be able to put on here and you should be able to find the things that are below the line. This is not one of those things where you work on the strengths and you just keep doing the things that you do really well.

[01:05:17] And just keep it. This is the one things where you, you find the one or two areas and you, and you figured out a way to improve them. Does anybody have any questions about this, this framework on the time?

[01:05:35] All right. I’m going to skip that another way to look at your stuff. And I want you guys to participate with me here. We all do $10 task. We all do things that we shouldn’t be doing, but are you really intentional about it? A buddy of mine, Todd Herman. Who’s been on the show before did this, and I kind of borrowed this over and I just want you guys to be very mindful of this.

[01:05:57]I have someone on my team that sorts and tags emails. So I only look at what I need to look at. It’s very inexpensive to do that. And it has saved me tremendous amount of, of going through and deleting a bunch of crap. To be honest with you. Is there anything else you guys would add to the $10 lists?

[01:06:18] And I, I left space here because I purposely, we want you guys to give me some things, what could we add to this list that, you know, are $10 tasks that you’re doing?

[01:06:40] Nobody wants to play with me. I think that sometimes because I’ve been you know, started and came up as a problem solver and have a particular bent towards marketing or something, sometimes I find myself reviewing something and then trying to improve it, you know, or, or do the little research, which none of that is what I should be doing.

[01:07:05] But it’s kinda my, you know, that old habit sort of, so I’m going to put improving things over here, but also in here. Cause there can be little things that you’re doing. But if you’re a private improvement in marketing campaign, that’s a more, that’s a higher level of function. So we’ll put that over here.

[01:07:21]The real key here is for you guys to be very conscious of what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis that could be given to someone else could be delegated to others. And so one-on-one meetings. I don’t recommend you delegating that. For many reasons, you’re coaching people. That’s a $500 tasks. It adds value much beyond the moment.

[01:07:46] If you truly are doing that financial analysis, the time you do that, maybe, maybe financial, not a going to be able to hear, but this is the, this is the real question. What are the $5,000 tasks that you guys do in your business? Just give me one minute. Somebody shout out a couple of things that you guys are doing that are worth $5,000.

[01:08:11] I can answer that. And I’ve been doing this lately, is the interaction with the customers? That’s by far probably my most important job and duty is the interaction with our customers. Perfect. Here, you can add something to that.

[01:08:31] I would add making, making connections to kind of feel your growth.

[01:08:45] I had been calling on a a client down south and a month and change. And I know I had the service that he needs. So looking at what’s transpired over the last year, the lack of personal communication or in-person communication be more specific. I went to a local barbecue store. This in Western Tennessee picked up 20 barbecue sandwiches.

[01:09:09] Knowing the guy couldn’t see me went met with his assistant, said, I’m just here. So he could place a face with the voice, but now you can got a call from 15 minutes later, apologizing that he couldn’t come out and asking when we could meet this coming week. And we started doing business with him prior to that.

[01:09:28]I think you really put the odds in your favor now, getting back to some of those old things, handwritten notes and in-person. Love that the key customer approach, you know, I would add in here things like any kind of visionary work that you’re doing, right? The strategic planning,

[01:09:50] the point behind me putting this up here is not, everything is equal. You need to make a conscious, intentional choice as a leader. If you want to stop being the bottleneck to be moving in this direction, you want to be over here as much as possible. I know this is the obvious, but most people are getting are drowning and smaller things.

[01:10:18] They’re drowning and the things over here to the left. So that being said I’m not going to go through this, this exercise, but this is an easy one to kind of grasp the time. Audit matrix is literally listing all the things down here. That you’re doing in a week, you list them down, the meetings you attend and the real asterick here is the doctor has said to you, you’re on bed rest.

[01:10:49] You can’t do anything for the next six weeks. So who would you do it? What’s the name? Right? And then listing, what is the mindset or skill set that they would have that allow you to give that up and let go of it? Hmm. It’s a very simple way to look at this. And then basically you prioritize this and one by one, you begin to, to empower it.

[01:11:17] Here’s the beautiful part. These are probably things that either you don’t want to do anymore, you know, you shouldn’t be doing and you’re just doing it out of just, it just the way it is. But if you’re constantly looking for the person, this person wants an opportunity to step up and grow and learn.

[01:11:36] And many times they appreciate you giving them something extra because they can learn from it. But we don’t see that part of it. We don’t think about it. All right. The empowerment framework is a very simple way to, to, to delegate. A lot of people are not delegating effectively. I call this the three-three one.

[01:11:57]You may have heard me do special episodes on the episode about it, but every person should come to you with an understanding of what this three-three one framework is. Now, if you’ve got a brain, you know, a very young employee with no experience whatsoever, this is not as useful, but when you have someone that you’ve trusted and has experienced and you really want to empower them more, instead of them bringing you a problem or an issue or a challenge, you ask them to bring you the answers to three questions.

[01:12:25] What is the problem, the real problem,

[01:12:35] what causes the problem, right? What’s the trigger

[01:12:46] who, or what is impacted by the problem. Those three questions. 1, 2, 3 are really for you to make sure that you’re talking about the same thing. You’re not talking about four to 14 different problems, and you’re not talking in circles. You’ve really are talking about one problem. They understand what’s causing the problem.

[01:13:14] They’re not just bringing you symptoms and that they know what the impact is across the organism.

[01:13:22] And then you ask them to come up with three options. What are the three options that you see as what we should do next? You want to see if they’ve thought through what are the things that we could do what’s possible. And you would, if you really are empowering them, you want them to give you the one recommendation and you can say, yep, let’s go.

[01:13:49] Or you could say, wait a second, let me ask you a few more questions. Hopefully you get more of this the way the second is. If you don’t agree with their recommendation, you want them to see it differently. And so you’re going to go through a different course of actions, but if you had everyone in your organization doing this, would things change, would people feel more empowered?

[01:14:19] Is this simple enough for you guys to, to, to grasp. Yeah. Here’s what was beautiful. Use it with your executive leadership team. They’ll get it right away. But it’s so simple that they can start using it with their teams. They can use it with everybody that’s on the front line. There shouldn’t be a person that has an issue that isn’t capable of saying, okay, here’s what the real problem is.

[01:14:45] Here’s what the cause is. And here’s what we can do about it. So that being said just another one of the frameworks that I wanted to share with you guys. I love systems systems are predictable. I’m I’m an engineer. I don’t know if you guys knew that I went to Georgia tech don’t don’t fault me for it.

[01:15:00]But I was an industrial and systems engineer, and so I love sort of systems in my own business. And I’ve seen the power of that in others. We need systems to grow predictably beyond. But we want them to grow through. Go ahead. Who was that?

[01:15:23] All right. So we want them to grow through ownership. So systems are not there for you to push on and develop as much as possible. Now, if you don’t have enough people, I get it. But the idea is to get people to really help you do this through ownership. This is about your people. Now there’s many different types of systems in this.

[01:15:46] This is certainly not all of them, but I’ve got clients that I’ve been working with for a long time. They’ve been like, you know, this whole year, this is all I’m working on is the sales system. I want to get that right. We’ve got it. The other things, right. I want to get this right. We’ll get this right work with me to help me do that fine.

[01:16:06]But systems are really a way to create repeatable results. One system inside. This is a strategic plan. I think this is out of, out of order a little bit, but a strategic plan is, is a system. It’s not a document. And if you truly want to empower yourself and unlock yourself out of this, this bottleneck position you’re in, you want to have a strategic plan.

[01:16:30] That is, that is really pretty powerful. It can’t be in your head, right. It can’t be just up here. It’s got to be communicated to others. So in fact, I believe a strategic plan that is impossible to misunderstand too, or to be misunderstood is the key. That’s the goal. How do you create that kind of document, that kind of, of information.

[01:16:56]You want to make sure that it’s available to people with feed back loops because those people that aren’t really using the strategic plan, they’ll have a sense of ownership around this. And you want to make sure that every, every individual department and everything is empowered to through this strategic plan to take ownership of their work, most strategic plans don’t work.

[01:17:18] That was the right order. I tried to find some real specific data behind this, but will, all I found was like some, some broad numbers, but I also know that most of the time they don’t work because they’re not truly living the plan. They’re not making it a part of the day-to-day and the conversation. And I’m not saying sit down in meetings and just to go over to the plan, I’m saying, create something that is shareable.

[01:17:39] There’s many different ways to do strategic plans. I just go up a couple of different diagrams. You don’t, I’m going to give you guys these slides if you want them. No, this is a business model canvas. I’m not familiar with these tools, but, but some of my clients use them. And the one I use that created it is just a Google spreadsheet.

[01:17:56] It, it allows for collaboration. It’s shareable. It does tracking it. It creates alignment, but you have the core information. You customize this, your company and you have things like mission, your values, your, your vision for the company of what we’re creating. I know you guys can’t read this. And I’m going to give you a copy of it if you want, but this is the one-year plan the quarter, and there’s other pieces behind this, you can do color coding so that you can see where you are.

[01:18:27] Green is things that for my clients that we’ve already accomplished red is things that are, that are not going as well as expected. And so you can have different areas for your, this is about employees right here. This is the rally cry, which is something I use in my business. This is about departments.

[01:18:48] So all in this one spreadsheet. You can have each department, even you as a CEO has something that you’re doing and you can fill out this and keep everyone aware of what you’re doing. You can have your sales team filling out this,

[01:19:09] and I share something like this with you, because you want to make sure that the systems in your business are evolving for where you’re going. If you want to create growth. And if you are the only person with the ideas, then you’re missing out on a chance. Any questions about their strategic plan?

[01:19:30] Okay. I if you’re not sure where you are with this and how do you make it, you know, shareable and hard to misunderstand, then I’d love to just to sit down with you and help you just as another gift for you. If you want to do that you’re welcome to, to reach out to me. I want to help you become an extraordinary leader.

[01:19:50] And if any of these tools are something that you want help with I’m happy to give for you guys. I, I feel like this is a very simple framework that one to share with you guys, as we wrap this up is there’s a paradox in leadership. If you want more of something, you’ve got to be willing to understand.

[01:20:08] There’s two sides to everything. If you want more trust,

[01:20:17] you want to receive more trust from your people. You’ve got to be willing to give more trust. You guys get that. There’s two sides to everything. If you want ownership,

[01:20:33] you’ve got to be willing to give ownership and you’ve gotta be willing to risk. They’ve gotta be willing to receive it. Your employees have to be willing to say, I own it. I got this

[01:20:49] and you’ve gotta be able to trust them enough to do that. So all this being said excuses don’t help you if you, if there’s anything in here that you’re, you’re, you’re not sure about it. Don’t make excuses. It really is up to you to drive this. It’s easy to do what you’ve always done. The enemy of success is a lack of patients.

[01:21:10] And so my final question to you, what is more important to you? Growth country.

[01:21:19] I took us right to the edge here. Excuse me.

[01:21:21]All right. So if you guys want to stay connected with this, I know I’ve got your email addresses, but you want to stay connected with each other in some way, I’ve got a free group that I hate. Facebook is probably as much as anybody, but if anybody wants to be connected with each other, then you can use these links or ask me that what the links are.

[01:21:41]It’s a new thing I’ve started. I want you guys to learn from each other, share with each other. I will be sharing some media opportunities if you guys want to get more media for your company and things like that. And this whole reason for being here is to help you become an understanding. I’d be an extraordinary leader.

[01:21:59] And I’m here to help you do that in any way I can. So anybody that needs to leave can leave. If anybody has a question, I’m going to stick around for a little bit answer questions and do anything you want. Again, I promise no pitches and whatnot, but if you have any questions, let me know. Okay.

[01:22:17] Everybody’s dropping out. Thank you for doing this, Gene. Thank you, Jacob. Any questions? Hey, scream much. Thanks Shane.

[01:22:31] No questions, Gene. Krish preciate. It. It was good to connect again here. See Alex. Thank you, sir. We’ll talk soon. Thank you, Gene.

[01:22:53] All right.

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.