Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Sam, The calendar change. But did your business actually change? We're going to be talking about that. Hi, I'm your host, Ryan Codd. Pivotal change episode tonight is going to be all about the new year, making changes moving forward, how to track that, and how to really establish yourself in various ways in the new year to really get those desired changes you want.
[00:00:52] So I'm your host, Ryan Kahn from CS Business Consulting. We've got a fun episode tonight where I'm going to walk you through this. So I want you to really understand that resetting your business after the first week is a serious reality check. The first full week or two of the year tells the truth about your business.
[00:01:10] It's going to tell you about how energy or motivation can really fade quickly and how important structuring really is. Delegation, the enlightenment of the vision and ideas to staff and clients and people alike. It's going to also reveal to you where workflow or systems or structure is missing.
[00:01:32] That's what we want to examine. So you've got right now the first full week under your belt. I know we got the rush coming off of the literal holiday, New Year's Day, a shortened week, a couple of things going on there, but now that you've got a full week or two under your belt, you should be invoking those changes that we've talked about. We talked about the three, three types of goals. You know, the three day, the 30 day and the three month goal. Well, those three day goals, those first week goals, they should be done, they should be accomplished, and they shouldn't be continuously getting kicked to the back burner.
[00:02:04] Put them up front, attack them, and make sure that they don't go down the road and just keep pushing it off until the calendar disappears for yet another year. Many owners realize that nothing actually changed except the number on the calendar. We can't have that happen. We have to continue to refine ourselves, to sharpen the sword and to move our businesses forward.
[00:02:27] Staying in the same place, stalling and just doing the same old thing is actually not neutral. It's actually sliding backwards. You look at the time value of money, you look at technology, you look at the availability of various resources, raw materials, it all gets more expensive and harder to acquire. So if you're staying the same, you're actually falling behind.
[00:02:49] There is plenty of danger for your company and for you as a leader in carrying last year's problems forward into the new year. You need to keep short accounts on your problems. You need to identify them quickly and write them down. I really like there's a famous quote that says if you can articulate and write down your problem, you're halfway to solving it. And that's why it's so important that you keep things in line and you put dates on when they are going to be accomplished.
[00:03:16] Most people are too busy to really try to push forward and attack the problems at hand. And what they don't realize is that if you're too busy to attack the problem now, to expend a little more time, a little more effort, maybe even a little money, more money and resources to address the problem now, it's costing you far greater in the future.
[00:03:37] The expense now is well worth the return on investment of the hours, the time and the stress that you save.
[00:03:44] And most of these businesses that are struggling with this are not broken, they're just unaligned or they have a system that's not firing on all cylinders. Imagine that you have a fully functional, fully functional vehicle. All the doors work, the tires are great, exhaust the engine, the brakes, all of that works except for one thing.
[00:04:03] There's one single piston in the engine that is not firing correctly. So when you go to accelerate, when you go to cruise control, when you have to do thing, whenever you do things that you need that engine to be relied upon, it's always a little weak, it's always a little lagging behind and it's not quite perfect. Again, it's overall functional, but you need to repair and be firing on all cylinders. That's what we're trying to talk about. And alignment is pivotal. If you can write down and articulate the problem, if you can articulate the vision and write it down, then you can draw the problem into alignment with the vision and with the people. They're going to help you carry out that vision throughout out the year and by this time next month. So the 30 day goal, you should have concrete steps, you should have booked trainings, you should have examples of teaching moments where you were handing over the next area of training and elevating people or the next area of remedial, hey, we need to fix this and I need to delegate and things like that. That's really important.
[00:05:06] So the earlier you do your course correction and again, even though I said the first full week is out of the way, it doesn't mean you can't just do it right now. It doesn't mean you can't put something on the calendar for Friday or Monday or Tuesday and just go ahead and don't become the snail who just drags themselves along.
[00:05:22] Take Those problems from last year, correct them and leave them in last year. Use the calendar as an excuse, literally. Go to your clients, go to your employees, go to whomever will listen and say, I've set New Year's resolutions, I've set a new goal, I've done these things and now's the time to strike. And believe it or not, people don't get mad at you for that. They respect you for that. They respect you for trying to improve, to trying to make things better. And some of those critical conversations, they will absolutely rear their head. Hey, employee, I need you to take on more responsibility. I've been paying you to do a job and I have not given you enough responsibility to truly full fulfill the job role that I need you to do. And you may have to have a tough conversation about how you needed to do more. You may have a stud star employee that's coming over and they're just got so much work on their plate that they can't really shine because they're taking on work. They're being assigned more work because they're the go getter. Well, you need to tell them. It's like, I know you're a go getter and I really want you to shine and I want you to be able to do your primary roles perfectly.
[00:06:27] So I'm going to have you delegate some, I'm going to have you pass the buck, and I'm gonna have you train off some of your responsibilities so that you can catch your breath and slow down and you'll actually be able to excel even more in your position.
[00:06:43] So think about that. You're not broken. You don't have to call yourself broken. You don't have to call yourself unrepairable or unfixable. You need a tune up. You need to be tweaked. You need the next component repair, the manufacturer's warranty replacement. That is going to get you to the next step.
[00:07:02] I like you to write with a pen and paper when you watch this show. So I'd like for you in the next few moments before we cut to commercial break, if you've not done it on a prior show, do it now. While you're watching and listening. Listening. I want you to write down one goal that you can fix by next week. That's about six days away.
[00:07:21] Go ahead and write that goal down and say, I will fix A and whatever A is. And then you have to say, how will you fix it? I will buy the new software. I will train the employee, I will review the report I will remove myself from the board meeting or the team meeting. So the team can just. They can just go cook. Right? They don't have to sit here and dance around the boss. I will. And then you're going to say how you're going to do that. And then you're going to put number three in that spot. You're going to put the why this needs to be fixed. So what are you going to fix? How's it going to be accomplished? And why are you attacking this area right now? So think about that for a minute. Articulate it out, because then you're going to go to your people backwards and you're going to say, here's the why something needs to be fixed. I want to identify what needs to be fixed and why. And then here's how we need to get it fixed and here's who we're going to do it with. So you're going to kind of flip the script on them in that way.
[00:08:19] The next thing that you want to do is you want to evaluate anything that is confusing you or your people on what's halting progress. What is creating maybe some false confidence. Like, hey, you think you're doing something right? Well, the job's still getting done anyway, right? But that's false confidence because maybe when a crisis situation hits or maybe when a timeliness issue arrives, or you just don't have a person there because they're on maternity leave or they're sick or their child got hurt, you know, heaven forb.
[00:08:50] But that false confidence says, oh, I'm able to scrape by anyway.
[00:08:54] But all of the other bailout parachutes are there really saving you. So look at all of your little parachutes, all of your little crutches that are allowing you to limp along and giving you false confidence.
[00:09:09] That is a conversation that we've had to have in the past before, is like, we're trying to get better, more efficient, more effective in the final delivery of our services and our product to our clients to have bigger smiles on their faces, more high fives and thumbs up, and just continue to grow and elevate ourselves. But we had to address some areas of false confidence, and many of us have the ability to win. Listen, it's crunch time. We can really crunch and we can really execute under pressure in a pinch and get these things done before whatever deadlines show up. So if we have these hard deadlines, like the IRS and state deadlines, nobody's getting past those. You can file an extension, but after the extension is done, it is time to execute well, we just happen to have two or three key performance performers that function well under stress. But let's say one of them has to move off and care for, you know, a sick or elderly parent or grandparent. Let's say one of them just has more babies and wants to, you know, shift jobs to something that's less time consuming or make up your reason. Maybe they just get sick of Ryan the knucklehead and they leave. Well, now I don't have those crunch time people and that was my crutch. My false confidence was I have two or three people that can just get it done. We can slack all year or up to that date, but when it's crunch time, we'll just wait for crunch time and in a high pressure situation, we'll pull ourselves through. That's no way to run a business. That's no way to run a cycle or a workflow. But instead you have good systems with good metrics and you're measuring this all throughout the year.
[00:10:37] So when you measure this all throughout the year with these metrics, somebody is keeping tabs the entire time. So that's the importance of just pressing pause and giving yourself an assessment before you just push harder for the sake of pushing harder. So there's this famous saying is called work smarter, not harder. Well, I'm going to encourage you to do both work smarter and harder and you're going to get the and harder by vision, alignment, better motivation. And motivation is not just like that's something that goes with energy levels. It's better discipline. And discipline is going to create the motivation. So here's some quick takeaways for this quick segment. It's a reset. It's not about starting over because you're not broken. And it's about realigning priorities, expectations and then execution. So once you really acknowledge that motivational alone is not going to fix it, what fixes it is disciplined execution. And we're going to talk about that in just a few moments after this. Commercial break.
[00:11:52] Foreign.
[00:12:08] Welcome back to Pivotal Change. I hope you enjoy what you're watching. In fact, I kind of know that you do because you keep coming back. And what I hope is that you like some of the other shows on the NOW Media TV network as well. So I want to tell you how to find those. You can go on to Roku, you can go on to your iOS platform, you can go to NowMedia TV, the website, and you can download all of your favorite episodes. You can check out our full service lineup. We have everything from Culture, to business, to shows like business and leadership like this. We can help you grow an entrepreneur. We have legal talk. We have things that can answer anything about what you have questions on in life. And you can find it in podcast version two. So this show, Pivotal Change is right there, as you can see. And there's so many others in English and in Spanish, full by lingual network. It's international for the United States and all of Mexico and expanding into new territory soon. So go on there, check us out and continue listening on the fly. And I want to wrap us back in here. And we ended the last segment talking about a little bit of the difference between motivation and discipline.
[00:13:08] Motivation feels really good, but it rarely lasts. Motivation is more connected to an emotion than it is an actual practice. I feel motivated today while I'm really motivated. I got this new job job assignment, and then a year later, you do that new job assignment over and over again. It feels like you're in a factory and there's no motivation to get up and do it again. You go to the gym for a long time, but I'm just going to skip a workout because I'm not feeling motivated. So motivation rarely lasts. It comes and goes. It's. It's a little bit like waves. But here's the key point. Discipline outperforms motivation every time. And I've said a quote on the show. I put it on my little board, I sent it out. I said, you don't need motivation. What you need is discipline.
[00:13:53] Motivation is ultimately unreliable and especially in leadership. Okay? If you're having just employee problems, if the finances are getting tight, if the product is back up, if the customers are complaining, I mean, you could be Superman, but you're not going to be motivated all the time.
[00:14:10] Discipline is you saying, I'm going to make this phone call anyway. I'm going to find a replacement vendor. I'm going to get the money, I'm going to go make the extra sales, or I'm going to pressure the sales team with some more rewards and commissions to spike us up this month. And you're going to do the things that are discipline necessary. I'm going to show up anyway. I'm going to tie my shoelaces and I'm going to get out that door and I'm going to go to the gym no matter what. That is discipline, and that's showing up when motivation disappears. Okay?
[00:14:38] High performers rely not on motivation, but on systems, not on feelings, but on consistent processes that build you up over time. They are looking for what Do I get to go check the boxes so that I can guarantee forward progress? Check the boxes so I can guarantee success. What is going to be my oxygen? My oxygen is that whether I'm motivated or not, I can go follow the plan and the plan will succeed.
[00:15:10] Businesses fail from inconsistency. I deviated from the plan. I got off script in the sales pitch. I didn't follow protocol when making the measurements or the analysis, right? And that inconsistency damage you, damages you and your business way more than any kind of lack of talent, right? So that's the thing is discipline is predictability from consistency. And that creates trust and that creates success. And that will rebuild and reinflate the motivation that you need.
[00:15:44] So businesses, they may have a whole squad of rookies, but if there's consistency in training, consistency in systems and processes, they can quickly come up to the bar and meet the company expectations, meet the KPIs and the metrics that are set before them. And that predictability is really what builds some serious trust. Knowing that I can show up, I can follow the plan and I can just do the ABC process and follow the script and I can be successful here. More than successful, I won't just survive. I'll actually thrive in an environment like that. And it doesn't matter so much on personality types about like, oh, this person's really, you know, OCD slash A type personality. And this person over here is really creative and really visual and really artsy. If there's processes for all of those things, the artsy person is just as successful as the type A person, okay? So you break that down into simple daily standards that anyone can follow. We had a old saying in law enforcement that says, hey, you have to cop proof this, right? So some people say, you got a dummy proof it. We would say you'd have to cop proof it. Making fun of ourselves in two capacities. Cops live fairly rugged lives and their patrol vehicles are constantly grabbing stuff quickly and throwing stuff down. And stuff gets cold and wet and hot and, you know, beat up. And so you have to cop proof a piece of equipment because it's got to be durable, right? But then you have to cop proof of it because when somebody is under stress, when somebody is doing really complex thinking about, does this match case law? Did I interview the witness properly? Property, where can I locate my suspect? You got to be able to follow your system outside of that realm of complexity and stress and hot and cold and tired and wet and all that stuff. And the system has to be there so you Got to cop proof it, right?
[00:17:31] Translate that over to our business world.
[00:17:34] We do everything, we're highly advanced accounting services with tax planning and strategy and advisory, okay, and that's our consultation. So we talk about some serious stuff with our clients with some big zeros behind the, the implications of what we do.
[00:17:50] But we always do everything at like an 8th grade level, right? I need to be able to follow these instructions so that I could take a random 8th grader off the street. And could they follow this same set of instructions?
[00:18:00] If what I'm explaining to the client, to my staff member, if what is being explained to me is above an 8th grade education, can you truly expect me to fully grasp what we're talking about? To be able to grab a hold of it and then make a change, make a pivot and move forward? So the simple daily standards outperform these big institutional goals, these big lofty visions, which I want you to have big visions, I want you to have big goals. But it's the simple standards that are going to plug away over time that build that up. So your simple standards you can break down like really like every morning at 8am I want everybody to open up their dashboard and I want them to look and see what messages they've received, what, what software needs updated, what systems are due today, what projects and tasks are due today versus tomorrow versus next week. And you're going to work in order, right? You're going to answer any pertinent messages. Because we have a turnaround time on when we answer our clients so that people don't get frustrated from lack of communication. And not only clients, but money walks out the door. But we, we do these things, we set these simple standards. Okay, after you've done your dashboard, after you've done your messages, after you've done that, you work on your tasks in chronological order, or if there's a time sensitive urgent one, yes, you can slip it to the front, but that doesn't mean everything else doesn't get come back to. So if you follow these just simple workflow standards, you're going to be successful in moving through your to do list.
[00:19:31] Execution then starts to compound when it gets boring and it gets consistent. Execution is really when that, that happens. So you're going to be so good, you're going to find your talent at something. You're going to have a system to rely on that's going to expand your talent.
[00:19:46] No matter how exciting it was in the beginning, at some point your favorite thing in life will get boring unless you do it Once a year, Right. So if you do it consistency consistently, even the fun stuff gets boring. And so our brains are trying to get dopamine and we're trying to pivot all the time. But you have to do the boring stuff first. Sometimes you have to keep coming back to the basics. You got to retrain yourself on the basics. Hey, what do we do when something fluctuates? What do we do on a client? And you know, know, ask this objection. What do we do when the tax law changes and the market shifts because of it? Well, guess what? We go back to our simple standards, we evaluate it in this order, and we make our move forward.
[00:20:24] Leaders set the pace through what they tolerate and what they repeat. And I'll give myself a black eye right here on air. I've tolerated a lot of stuff in the past that later came back to bite me. I thought I was being Mr. Nice Boss, and I thought it was being okay. But that exception became a culture, and that culture became toxic.
[00:20:43] And so now I have to stop letting people repeat it. And it looks like I'm taking back favors when really I'm just trying to get back to discipline for all.
[00:20:50] That's why systems are so important, because they remove emotion. Right? Like, I don't have to get emotional and feel like, oh, I'm the bad guy. Well, no, the policy and the system says it must be done in ABC order. I can't let you skip C and go to D, so please go back and get C done. So the workflow and the policy and the process does it. It's not me being a bad guy. The system's built that way.
[00:21:09] And then leaders ultimately win through that type of consistency because then they're going to see that like, well, this person got an exception, but this person didn't. That's not fair. Right.
[00:21:18] And anytime that you have to execute on an exception, you need to really vocalize it. To a lot of people. This is an exception. And this is why it's an exception. So that, you know, without airing out too much personal business, people know that. Oh, my goodness. Okay, that makes total sense. So and so's granddad got in a car accident and they're not going to come in for a couple days and we're going to allow them to work virtual when they're not normally a virtual employee. But no, this makes sense. Right? So that's the kind of stuff. So create those standards that'll give you predictability, get job roles and responsibilities and build that trust through systems, through consistency, through the boring Stuff that you do over and over again that is based on simple steps and simple actions. Okay, so here's maybe some practical examples like just go through like a weekly planning and review rhythm, like going every Monday morning. And before you just jump right into the emails and all that urgent stuff that's waiting on you, go to a planning look at your calendar and everyone else's calendar and fill in all those blank and white spaces on the calendar with your to do items or with your meetings with employees and your trainings. So eat up that space. Now you can still mark yourself as free, but just so long as it's on the calendar for you to actually do and be reminded and get the notification for. Get some non negotiables, get some daily non negotiables today. I will not.
[00:22:36] And then you put whatever distractions are there, whatever tasks that you've delegated, I will not interfere with this. I will not skip this meeting. I will not. And get those non negotiables. And I will not let somebody skip a task or pass the buck to another employee. And then measuring your execution, redefine some metrics, get them put in place and of course have a system and a person and a way to track it all. And that way you're leading with your intention, your intention to keep the business strong, which keeps the employees strong, which keeps everyone secure and moving forward important. So motivation almost always is what starts things, but it's going to be discipline that finishes them. We're going to talk a little bit more about this kind of stuff, about how it affects over time, what happens when you lack discipline and maybe you soften your standards and how soft standards ultimately create confusion and then drift. So stay tight. We'll be back right after this with more pivotal change.
[00:23:34] Sam, you've made it past the halfway point. Welcome back to Pivotal Change. We're going to keep this conversation going because we've been talking about a lot of really important stuff about how the new year is so important is just a good made up marker in time to make changes and do things right. It's not so made up because the fiscal year ends, calendar year, fiscal years usually tied for both people. And those first couple of weeks of the year are really going to tell you if the changes are making are going to stick or if your business is going to stick in a rut. And we're talking about like you're really motivated at the beginning of the year, but it's discipline that's going to carry you. So we've just had those Conversations we really emphasize discipline and how to get some predictability and how to get some non negotiables for a leader and how to plan and do those things to really get the motivation that starts you moving forward to be sustained through discipline. So now I want to talk about some of the standards you might be putting in place. Standards don't just disappear. What happens is they slowly erode. And I want you to think about that for just a second in they don't disappear overnight, do they? Like if we used to have a standard like we're always going to do this right? And then we're not really doing that thing anymore that it just some random Tuesday somebody slapped the table and said stop doing that or did it slowly phase out over time and maybe you had a cultural shift, maybe a little bit of a workflow shift where the standard is still in existence and it's still important but we're just not going to adhere to it because yeah, we got to go out of our way or it's just a nuisance to keep up with it after all.
[00:25:25] So they really start to drift, right? So you're going to have to change things. You're going to have to put in KPIs for your company, you're going to have to put in metrics for your company. And we're going to talk about KPIs and metrics in this segment a little bit. Here's where it usually happens though. This is where some of the erosion happens. Soft seasons, right? Like if you don't have your, your busy season, you don't have that busy season. Got the soft season. Usually people start to slip. They don't stay busy all the time.
[00:25:53] They won't have their, their hands just actively doing something, their minds actively engaged. And anytime somebody has the opportunity to like going to get my cell phone out and check social media. Oh, I'm going to go ahead and peruse through the weather and the news updates and I'm going to talk by the water cooler a little longer. Those soft seasons, they usually happen around holidays. We just went through that and or phases of growth, right? Sometimes this off seasons happen like hey we're growing, we're making some changes. Maybe we just got a new piece of equipment or a new piece of technology that helps us do our job better.
[00:26:24] But now I got a little more free time. So even though we're growing I can schlub off a little bit it so we don't want to do that. We don't want to have moments of chaos. Maybe there's Something crazy goes on there. Maybe you do do a software change and the migration creates chaos and it's going to take three days till everything filters into the new system. What do I do in these three days? And then you start slipping your standards and those standards never come back.
[00:26:45] Sometimes just plain avoidance. This is the one part of the job that I absolutely hate. By golly, I can't. I don't like doing this job. So I'm going to keep avoiding it. I'm going to keep procrastinating, I'm going to keep, keep pushing it off to the side and eventually it doesn't get done. Maybe nobody notices, maybe it becomes a habit because the other employees see that didn't really have to get done. And we're still kind of floating above water. And that's when that happens. That's called drift. When those soft seasons, when those weird times in business and life happen, you start to drift. You drift off your plan, you drift off the the road. And we know what happens if you start to drip off the drift off the road. Yeah, you get two tires in the gravel, you're probably okay feeling the rumbles. She get all four tires off into the ditch and you're usually ending up upside down. And that's not where we want any business or business owner to end up. So these KPIs are going to be really important because you need to have characteristics of the KPIs, what you will create and what you are going to hold yourself to. KPIs are usually on the larger scale of the company. These are more of the umbrella issues that you're trying to capture. You want to make them all relevant to your mission statement and the primary products or services that you serve. Okay. The number two thing which is so important is they have to be measurable. You have to be able to achieve or obtain something over time. So if you set a KPI that just says we want to be the best in our field, that's not measurable. I guess, unless there's some Forbes rating and you become the number one company in the world, congratulations, you don't need to watch the show either if that's the case. But they need to be specific. Like put numbers like we want to grow ourselves to be a 20, a 50, 100 employee firms that does business in the entire region. And we want to do that within one year, three year, five year mark. So you're going to put a time on it. And then your KPIs again, this is company wide, have to have actionable items set to them. So the actual items are we're going to do that by acquiring a new software, by merging with partner companies around the country. We're going to do that by elevating revenue to 10 million 25, $100 million in revenue. We're going to do that, like I said, by hiring a thousand employees or finding six more professionals or getting 10 more pieces of equipment so we can have five more crews running. Those are measurable KPI. So in three years we're gonna have 10 additional crews running and 10 additional states by mergers, acquisitions and an increase in employees and revenue. Those are starting to get to be real KPIs. And then instead of your 3, 3, 3 goals, you're going to be actual doing some budgeting, some projections. And by this date and this time we're going to enter into by this date and this time we're going to do. And you just keep going and you, and you get those down there. You probably want three to five KPIs and they can have varied ranges. You might have one that's a one year KPI and you may have one that's a five or even 10 year KPI. But the three and five year markers tend to really kind of be sweet spots.
[00:29:44] Most people overestimate what they can do in one year, but they drastically underestimate what they can do in three and especially five years. So don't be afraid to make those five year goals a little, a little juicier, a little heavier of goals. So now that you're getting on top of your standards, not dropping, what you're doing is you've set the stage and now you have a drop in stress and a drop in resentment. Because I have clarity on where we're going, right? And this clarity with these written goals. These written KPIs are really important because if somebody did have stress and resentment, it'll at least result reduce and then you're going to have these clear expectations to reduce conflict and frustration. So for example, financial KPIs, customer KPIs, operational KPIs, these are really important because the financial ones, like I said, I kind of just blended it in there. We want to be a 5 million, 10 million 100 million dollar company. We want to have customers in all of these areas. We want operational to have this much software, this much crew, this much equipment, and then the employee KPI are usually tied to something called PPFs. Personal, professional and financial goals. And you definitely want those to continue to push you through talking with your employees and getting a specific knowing level of care for what they're trying to achieve personally and professionally in their lives and ultimately financially. So if you can bounce those back and forth, you're going to have re established standards. Because as a leader you can say if you want your personal professional goals as a part of those employee KPIs, I'm going to elevate you and I want you to be able to achieve this level that will help you achieve your goals. You're now getting vision alignment and goal alignment and that's where some metrics are going to come in. Metrics are a little bit more internal and a little more specific.
[00:31:34] So KPIs would generally be on the logistics side of theme. What's the total consideration of what it's going to take to get somewhere to get this, this battlefield established in one? How are we going to win the overall battlefield? Right. And then the metrics are the tactics. So that's like each team is going to need a five man fire team equipped out with this type of weaponry and gear and night vision and claymores and whatever. So they can secure their sector. They can secure their sector. They can secure their sector. When guess what, when all the sectors are secured, you've won the battle. But you, you own the territory in the enemy city and logistics. The KPIs have been accomplished as well. Well, and you need to know what it takes to support each of those teams and each of their endeavors. So metrics may be something as simple as a salesperson needs to make X number of calls a week or a day and then they need to close X number of product so that we can be chasing our revenue goals. Right. So this is tying in with KPIs. But ultimately, and it's not just purely a money game, it is a livelihood game. Everyone needs to be working to increase the overall profit margin of the company. That's everyone's job. If everyone's there just to take home a paycheck, they're not bought in. Everyone's job needs to be. I want to do my part to increase the revenue of the company because all ships rise with a rising tide and that's what we're here to do. So those reestablishing of metrics and KPIs re establishes your standards and leadership. And it's not you being mean, it's just everybody agreeing that they're going to help get to the goal.
[00:33:09] Now everyone's got to work together. Like I just said, you can't say I have my own metrics that I have to stick to. Therefore, I'm not going to be a team player and help you accomplish your metrics because it might jeopardize my metrics. Well, your metrics should also be tied to some type of handoff and prep to other teams, right? So we always tell our staff, if you're passing off your job to somebody else, your work product, you better do your darn best to put a ribbon around it before you hand it over to a team teammate. You know, don't give somebody just a pile of garbage that they have to deal with. And you technically checked the box. That's. That's poor teamwork. And it actually will eventually reflect in your attitude, your culture, your teamwork, and your metrics. So any of these standards without care can create some entitlement.
[00:33:56] Excuse me, other way around. Care without these standards created creates entitlement. So you just say you care about your employees all the time and you're constantly doing the stuff, but you don't have standards that they're achieving. Well, they're just gonna by nature, not because they're bad people. Continue to take and take and say, well, I expect all these things, and I've never had to check these boxes or reach these goals before. Why do I suddenly have to work so hard? Why something try to move the ball on me, you know, and that's why you really need to get after those. So go ahead and create those standards. Do without fear, but also do it with the expectation that you're trying to clean things up, make everyone more efficient. If I can measure my people, I can grow my people. The goal is to have clarity and growth, not just control for the sake of control.
[00:34:37] The metrics reinforce the expectations. The metrics reinforce the goals. The metrics reinforce the KPIs. And the KPIs are going to increase everything that you see on the scene. And there's just kind of a, an example of numerically, how to work through some of that stuff. So a couple of practical applications here recommunicate the expectations clearly and directly. And that should be happening right now. Last week, this week, Tie all these standards to something that's measurable. The outcomes, the behaviors. Review your KPIs, rewrite them, get the performances down openly, and work to them consistently and address the gaps as early as you can instead of letting stuff compound. Address gaps early. Strong standards ultimately create freedom, not restriction. So here in just a moment, we're going to talk about how standards alone are just not enough. Right? You can't just have standards everywhere. If the owner is still doing everything. So this is where a lot of entrepreneurs also get stuck. So sit time tight right after this break and we'll be back for the final segment of the evening.
[00:36:08] Welcome back to the final segment of the night. Before we get on to pushing through the end of this episode, I want to make sure you know where to find us. You can go to NOW Media TV and you can find this episode and all the other episodes of Pivotal Change on that website. You can just go straight up to the episodes tab. We've got Spanish, we've got English. You scroll down, you find yourself your favorite episode. Hopefully that's Pivotal Change. But there's so many other great ones out there. You can go to Roku iOS, you can download the app Now Media and Now Media TV are the two places to go, and this is where you can get everything. I think it's so cool that we have these also played out into podcast versions. There's so many people that want to go to the gym, they want to ride bikes, they just want to travel and drive because business is business and we got to get where we're going. And you can take now Media TV and pivotal change with you wherever you go. It's 24 7. It streams dreams, it comes straight to you as you want it. It's about as convenient as anything can be. So let's keep pushing on this journey. Tonight, we're talking about how to make this change. We had a big conversation in the last segment about KPIs and metrics and the standards and how it actually creates freedom, not so much just control and restriction. And it ultimately allows people to achieve their goals, align to the vision, and really make something of themselves and of their company so that everybody wins.
[00:37:26] But we need to discuss, are we just as owners ultimately owning a job like we own our job, or are we leading a business?
[00:37:35] If the business stops anytime that you stop, then what you ultimately do is you own your job, right? But if you can leave, if you can go away and take a week or two of vacation and the business keeps going and you have to do anything more than maybe a quick emergency phone call or email with something that's crazy, off the wall and complex flex, then you probably have a business that you're leading pretty well at that point. And we all want to get there. And also, times go through flux. You know, owners never really get a vacation because if there's ultimately an emergency or a major decision to be made, the buck stops with you and somebody can look up from their cubicle and make a call to you and say, hey, here's something that we cannot resolve without you. But ultimately, if your business comes to a halt or sales drop and function drops and all the processes start to break down, you, the leader, are the job, you are the business. So many entrepreneurs get stuck in this area and they just own really stressful jobs. Doing everything creates control, but it kills growth. So you do want to have control in your company, but you want control through systems, workflows, processes, people that know you care and also care and those standards that you, that can be tracked. But if you have control because you're like, hey, I got to oversee it, I got to check off on it, I've got to be the funnel, it's got to go, go through me before it goes out the door, Hey, I gotta inspect every single job site and make the final measurements myself to make sure we're dialed in. Then you're going to kill your growth, right? You need to be able to replace yourself, make junior versions of yourself. Make sure that you as the leader are focusing on direction, focusing on your people and you're focusing ultimately on the accountability of the directions you give and the people who follow those. Operators focus on tasks and urgent processes, problems. That's what you want.
[00:39:21] You don't want to be an operator. You want people that are operators and they focus on those urgent problems and those tasks that are set up for them. But if you're the operator, you're just running around putting out fires all the time. How many of you feel like that?
[00:39:33] So again, if the business stops when you stop, you go home at night and maybe you have a restaurant and the restaurant stays open till 10, but you get off at 4 or 5 and all of a sudden the restaurant really starts to back up and having issues. The owner's got to go back in and straighten things out, out. Congratulations, you own a job.
[00:39:49] So delegation is obviously key. We've talked about it a lot, even came in our last, last episode or two where we talked about delegation. It is a requirement. Delegation is not a luxury. Set up time with your people, have the meetings start broadcasting, what goals and tasks and systems are going to be handed off, then come up with those goals for delegation. Because true leadership builds people. True leadership relies on systems and it relies even on decision frameworks can have these decision maps. We, we're probably most people are remotely familiar with like sales process and marketing funnels and they have these system, these web, these trees. Like here's your sales marketing, you know, did you Reach out to the customer. Did you send an email, make a phone call? What did they say, yes or no? And it goes in these directions and ultimately circles back to recontact the clients and then more information. And you get in these funnels. And there's only two ways for somebody to get out of your sales funnels. That's if they click unsubscribe or put you on like a block, no call list. Other than that, you keep coming back. And I'm not telling you to harass people, but have a sales funnel, have a marketing funnel, have those things. So you need to have decision trees and decision funnels that your people can follow. Say, hey, if a client asks this and the answer is yes, I go here and perform this action, the answer is no, I get the information from the client or I ask this some follow up question in order to discover what it is. And you can make these decision trees and teach other people how to work through those frameworks. And that's super powerful by the way. Way ownership also means that your business works without you having to be constantly present.
[00:41:26] So you want to be the person that can say, hey, I can step away and trust my people and things are going to be good, margins going to be, profit's going to be good, friction and, and crises are going to be reduced and everyone's going to rely on their reference material. Everyone's going to rely on each other. The team, the peers are going to build each other up. And you can do that. So, so leaders build systems where people can do that. Or you understand, like we have our five to 15 minute rule. One of our systems in place is that if you do not know something, you have to go to your team first, right? So you go to a peer and say, hey, I don't know where to find this answer. Can you show me? And then they'll come over and be like, oh, have you checked the policy? Have you checked this software system? Did you go to our library? Did you go to our AR research tool? And they're like, oh, I think to check there, go check there and tell me what you find. And then they say, hey, I found it. Never mind, I solved my own problem. And now they've imprinted adult learning to always go to that place and how to solve questions like this, not just memorize every single answer of a test, if that makes sense. So that's part of our system. Guess what? If both people don't know where to find the answer? Okay, then it goes up the chain of command. Where do we Find this answer. If that supervisor and then that manager doesn't know where to find the answer and it comes into my office or my partner's office and nobody knows where to find it, I'm going to go, here's where you find the answer. And everybody goes and gets educated. But if one whole team doesn't know that answer, what do you think my next training topic is for this week or next week? Yeah, buddy. It is that situation which nobody knew where to look.
[00:42:58] So that's another way how you specifically delegate. You specifically coach your learning. And that ultimately enables growth. True delication enables growth. And people can get to where they're old and gray together, working at a job that they absolutely love and have great freedom, great discretion, and great life harmony.
[00:43:17] So stop focusing so much on the outcomes and start focusing on the people. So a lot of business owners, and they must look at the outcomes. How much profit did we make from sales last quarter? How much, how much turnover did we have in our client base? How many people do we lose? How many people do we gain? You know, how much did the expenses go up with raw materials versus what's our margin now? Do we need to raise fees? Do we have to change your hourly rate? Are we closing more or less deals on our sales pitches? So you're looking at those outcomes. What happens if you want to change those outcomes? You don't just go in with a whip and say, everybody, try harder, drive farther, drive faster. You focus on the people. Well, maybe I need to tweak my sales pitch and I need to tell people how to do the sales pitch a little different and tweak it for a little bit more modern language or a better workflow that makes sense to the client. And I learned how to get people to tell me no so that a yes feels natural. And so that's a lot of things that you can really work on is focusing on the people. So what happens if you just focus on the outcomes all the time? The.
[00:44:20] The. That's the symptoms, right? The outcomes are the symptoms. The people are the cause. So fix your people and the symptoms will correct themselves. Themselves. Okay.
[00:44:28] Ownership creates sustainability. So not ownership you as the owner of the business, but ownership of the task. Ownership of I know how to do this, I know how to execute this. I know where to go. I know how to teach other people where to go. That type of owner, hey, this is my client. I'm responsible for following up with this client every single month, whether we've talked to them or not already. Well, guess what? I'M responsible for keeping that client relationship alive. And guess what? It's a metric and I may be rewarded. I will be rewarded for doing my job well. And I'm going to own that. So I can get, I can make my margin, I can make my bonus, I can make my pay raise.
[00:45:01] That's the stuff that really sends people into the future and their businesses. So let's create better situations. Let's move from just plain old beating people up over execution to being able to delegate and have oversight, right? You can always trust that the work is done and then you just do a verification step step. But where you start to lose trust is where you start to micromanage and get down in the process and sit down next to them. And now you're stuck in operations. So trust, verify, move forward, then teach other people how to verify. So trust and verify. Trust and verify and keep moving. Replace reaction with proactive planning. I love doing exercises with, with people that I coach, train, or work with about the action versus reaction exercises. And those are always pretty shocking. But action always beats reaction. You can't react fast enough, right? So if you're reacting all the time as a boss, you need to get proactive in tweaking your systems, tweaking your monitoring, tweaking your follow up, tweaking your, your personnel so that you have to stop reacting and putting out fires all the time. So if you can look back at your last month and say, what are the three or four or five most urgent things that I had to respond to that I had to react to? You look at them. Maybe there's some consistency, maybe they're all in the same route realm, right? And you can go proactively, address how to prevent those reactions from occurring and then build other leaders. So start teaching leadership. Start teaching how you make decisions and how you assess situations and how you rely on things. And then you can say, hey, did you know that if you're going to go over here, Sally's a little sad today. Hey, why don't you go check on her, see how she's doing. Who knows, maybe somebody can take her out to lunch or something like that. And then you learn how to lead and boost spirits and care for your people. You're starting to now build other leaders.
[00:46:44] So spend time on strategy as well and make, make effort really important. Like how much effort did you put in there? Okay, you put a lot of effort into it and the outcome wasn't what you wanted.
[00:46:56] So let's strategize how to tweak, change or elevate your skill set, your system you're working on, so that this effort that you're willing to put in is rewarded with better, better measurable outcomes. And so you keep tweaking those. That's a strategy skill. And you want to ultimately get to the point where we're not just scraping by and surviving, but we are thriving. We are thriving.
[00:47:16] So the goal is not to work less necessarily. The goal is to work right, work right on all the levels. That's how you're really going to end up creating a business that supports you and your life and that of all the livelihood of the people that depend on you as well.
[00:47:31] So work at your right level. And I want you guys to think one thing when you go out here and you do this stuff, go see the change, and I want you to be the change. And we'll catch you right here. Next time on PIVOTAL Change.
