Enjoying Life in Tandem with Your Business Achievements
Video Transcript:
Alright. We're going talk about habit number one of my book Your Oxygen Mask First - Living an Amazing Life. The question is:
How good are you at enjoying life in tandem with your achievements in business?
A great quote here is, "Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it that you can." What we know, for sure, is that we have today, and the next few minutes, to enjoy our life. What happens tomorrow or in a decade or a century, we'll find out when we get there. The idea of this chapter is to make sure that you fully enjoy your life along with your achievements.
A lot of times people get so focused on achievements that they forget life. Your business can be very addictive, it can be very exciting, it can be very, very rewarding, but a successful business or career alone doesn't really lead you to a great life.
Unfortunately, some people make these promises to themselves, "When/Then."
When I'm older, or when I make a million, or 10 million, or a hundred million or a billion, then I'll start enjoying life. Unfortunately, it doesn't work so well because the habits you're building in your 20s, in your 30s, in your 40s become how you live your life in your 50s, in your 60s, in your 70s.
Are You Enjoying Life?
To help you understand whether you need to work on this principle or not, ask yourself if you rate your current enjoyment of life at less than nine out of 10.
Here are the five questions to consider, to help you understand whether you need to work on this principle or not.
- Do you rate your current enjoyment of life at less than nine out of 10?
- Would you feel that you had used your life well if it all ended today or tomorrow?
- Do you tend to use your passion for work and have little left for the rest of your life?
- Is it normal for you to look forward to things in your life?
- Do you often find yourself saying or thinking, "woulda, coulda, shoulda"?
The root distinction in this chapter is about the head versus the heart, or what we call achievement versus enjoyment. Head success, as I have talked about, is very seductive: it feeds the ego, and it makes you feel good. For example, we're a big company and we had a 150 million in revenue, or 500 million, or a billion or even your first million. There's a sense of pride and worth that comes out of these achievements, and it feels really, really good.
On the other side of it is the heart, and the things that make you feel good inside - and those are the things that you enjoy in your personal passions or the quality time that you have with your family. The idea is to make sure that you have both. And personally, if you go and make a billion or 10 billion dollars but you're really not enjoying your life, odds are you're going to end your life with regret, and for me that's a real shame.
Key point: if you don't make time to enjoy what you achieve, your life might look great, but it's not going to feel great.
The challenge for this chapter is to complete what we call the amazing memories thread. Look back to some of your biggest accomplishments, your best memories, and look at what the head part of that achievement was and the heart part - or the enjoyment part - of that achievement. Many achievements have both, and the best have both. But I want you to go back and think about those biggest achievements, and what they gave your head, and your heart.
When you go and get to the last chapter of the book, which talks about plan, plan and plan again, you'll see on the master plan, there's a whole section, in the middle, that addresses this head versus heart success. In that tool, it has you think about the ultimate in your lifetime in both work, self, and life. And it has you answer three questions in each category:
- What is it you want to achieve?
- What is it you want to enjoy?
- What is it you want to be remembered for?
Personally, I find this a lot easier than thinking about your purpose or your why. Those things are excellent, but these three simple questions seem to be a bit easier to access and get into.
I challenge you to read the chapter, to do the exercises in the book if this really resonates with you.
Micromanaging vs. Leading
One of the biggest challenges for a leader as he or she grows into the role is the process of updating the way they operate - moving from doing the actual work to understanding what needs to get done, and trusting their team to get it done without micromanaging.
Video Transcript
Today I want to talk to you about one of the biggest challenges for leaders as they grow in terms of changing their operating system.
I call it the shift from being an amazing doer to an amazing leader.
I've seen most of the high performers that I've seen in companies become high performers because they're amazing at getting things done. But as those people become leaders or managers, it's actually more challenging to switch the operating system from being an amazing doer to an amazing leader, because they used to get all their kicks and their accolades from being a doer.
One of the clients I work with characterized himself as Superman. That was the persona he had - and still has a little bit. A great guy. But the thing for him, and really the way he framed it is that you actually need to go from being a Superman - or a Superhero - to building a team of superheroes and investing your energy in helping other people to become like that.
What that means is if you're a great doer, you know exactly what to do, how to do it, and you plan it out and do it.
But as a great leader what you need to do is to know what needs to get done, and then you’ve got to challenge - and trust - other people to go and figure out the how. You just monitor and maintain, and ensure that they're on track.
If you want to make that shift from doer to leader, just make a list of the habits that you need to change, and realize that the ones that were assets to you as a doer might need to get forgotten in order to become a better leader.
One of the best techniques that I've seen, and it's obviously easier when you have really strong people, is to use the word “challenge” and say to one of your people, "Look, here's a challenge for you. Go and put together your ideas on this. Come to me with your plan of attack. Let's look at it, and make sure we're on the same page."
And then let them go to run and do it. And avoid the temptation to give too much input or too much direction. Let them do it. Let them own it.
The summary today really is: if you want to be a great doer that'll only take you so far.
You need to let go of those skills if you're going be a great leader.
The Power of Executive Coaching Triads
Magic happens during executive coaching triads because the sessions facilitate incredibly succinct, transparent communication between leaders and the CEO.
Video Transcription
I want to share with you something that I found a few years ago, when I stumbled onto a tool that has been incredibly powerful for helping to improve the performance of executives.
Actually, so powerful, it shocked me.
I've been coaching now almost 19 years, and have worked with hundreds of CEOs, and executives around the world, and it's almost embarrassing to me that I didn't find this tool earlier. This tool, is what I call “executive coaching triads” ('triads' for three).
The idea was to get a methodology that could be scalable: to take unknown coaches, and bring them in to support leaders in the company, before we really knew how effective they were. Basically, the CEO could keep an eye on them.
I did some work with my coach, Nan O'Connor. She's brilliant, and we figured out this methodology, with her help. This idea of the triad is that, as part of the coaching methodology, there is a regular quarterly feedback session between the CEO, the executive, and the coach.
And this is what it looks like: There's normal coaching work that happens, in terms of figuring out how a leader can grow. But then, every quarter, we sit down with a simple agenda:
- The executive has 10 minutes to share where they're doing well, and making progress, and where they need to improve.
- Then, the CEO, for their seven to 10 minutes, says where they see the executive making progress, and where they need to improve.
- As the coach that's there, I make some notes, add in any other comments or commentary, and then clarify the areas where that executive needs to grow.
And the magic that happens in those sessions - I wouldn't believe it, if I hadn't seen it myself - is that it forces this incredibly succinct, transparent communication between the leader and the CEO.
Secondly, the CEO gets a sense of the work that the coach is doing – to almost audit the coach, to see the coach in action, and hear some of the things that they're working on.
Thirdly, because the three of us have been witness to that conversation, the follow-through is incredible, mostly because they know that, next quarter, we're going to have the same conversation, where we're gonna have the follow-through, and again, talk about the improvement in the next areas of focus. It's quite fascinating.
The idea - the best part for the CEOs watching this – is that you can go through and give feedback to your entire executive team in two hours a quarter - deep, powerful feedback.
Because it's quick, you're succinct, and get to the real meaty points.
The CEO gets more comfortable giving feedback, the executives get more of the feedback that they all seem to crave. It's incredibly time efficient.
After that, the coach goes on to work with the executive.
The challenge today, as a CEO: look to make sure that your executives are getting regular, powerful feedback to help them grow. And, as an executive, or a leader in a company, make sure that you're doing the same with your people.
There's a bit of a cheesy saying: "Feedback is the breakfast of champions" - and I do believe that.
Truthful, helpful feedback, with an intent to make a person grow, is the best way to grow strong leaders. Have a great day.
Will your team walk through walls for you?
Amazing things can happen for an organization when leaders have the ability to make a genuine, emotional connection with the people they work with.
I’d like to talk to you about a concept that I worked out with one of my clients called “walking through walls”.
Video Transcription
Leaders all seem to have one thing in common: people will literally walk through walls for them. They will knock walls down. They will deal with any challenge, go over a barricade, under a barricade. They will do almost anything that's legal and ethical for that leader to get things done.
So, when someone else shared this concept of ‘walk through walls’ with me, it really resonated. And here's the challenge for you: Will your people walk through walls for you?
I mean, the ultimate measure of a leader is that people will. And if the answer is not “yes”, then the question is, "Well, how could you get to that point?"
What I've seen is that people will walk through walls for you if you have a strong emotional connection with those people. If you are truly helping them to grow, if they feel that you have their back, and that you will give them a challenge. If things get messed up, when something turns into a bit of an issue, you're going to be with them: supporting them, helping them to dig out of it. Not hanging them out to dry, and leaving them to fight and try and solve this problem on their own; or having them embarrassed with a bunch of other people. That you're going to work with them to solve it.
Ask, “Would they go above and beyond to try and get something done for me?”
For the ones that won't, figure out: "What do I need to do to build that relationship with them and that rapport with them, such that they will?"
There's a great challenge for you. I wish you well. Have a great day.
Creating Quarterly and Annual Motivational Themes
Today, we're going to talk about annual and quarterly motivational themes, and how effective that could be to drive better results in your company - and make morale, and enjoyment of your team improve at the same time.
Video Transcription
The whole question here, first of all, you have to be sure on is: What is your #1 priority for the year?"
The problem with most companies is that they have four, seven, 28 priorities, and that's real tough. To nail down - and get down - to your #1 priority, is the place to start. And once you know that, you can engage the rest of the company in this.
You see on the screen, there're all kinds of things - if you were to ask different people in a company - what could be the priority: it could be the clown, it could be the monkey, it could be the bicycle wheel, the balloon - all kinds of stuff could be your priority.
And as a team, what you want to do is zoom in on the three or four things that actually make the biggest difference in the company. The unfortunate part is, usually, they're not quite as exciting as the colorful things you'll see - but they're important, and they will add the most value. And then the key is to zoom in on them, and forget the rest. Then absolute mastery is to pick that one that I mentioned earlier, really zoom in, and then get people aligned to that one thing.
If you talk to Jack Stack in his book "Great Game of Business," or in the Rockefeller Habits methodology, there's a concept of the critical number - and knowing that one number that will indicate you've improved in that most important area: A KPI - or something you can measure on a weekly basis - that actually proves the improvement.
The idea is you want to set different levels of success. Lots of people use red, yellow, or green levels of achievement, to say, "This is the minimum, this is what we'd like to achieve, and this is absolutely crushing the goal."
Patrick Thean, in his book, "Execution Without the Drama", talks about something called “Super Green”, which is exceeding the expectation. In those situations, you should have an extra special award, or reward, because you did something more than expected.
The point is to know your number, and set the goals you're aiming for (in terms of improvement). And then you want to have two or three, what we call in Rockefeller Habits ‘rocks’ that drive that critical number, that help actually make the improvement you want.
In a company, you might have one - or maybe two - other goals (or rocks), which would help to improve the company that year - the door to actually help drive that number, but they're just important stuff that's got to happen.
And then the challenge is to keep the main thing the main thing. And the main thing here, really, is that critical number, and making sure we don't lose focus of it.
We easily get distracted, and start focusing on other interesting, or shiny, or urgent things, and lose track on that #1 priority, and that's why you have this thing called a motivational theme.
That's where you take that number, and make sure people are continually focused on it. We want to take it from the leadership team all the way to the front lines, because that's where the work happens. One company I work with, with over 3,000 people - and when everyone in the front lines understands that #1 number, magic happens. The improvement you can make is unbelievable.
Your Critical Number
There're a few examples of critical numbers that I've seen work really, really well.
The third one there is called “Route 66”, and that's a company that took their cash conversion cycle - or how much money it took to operate the company - and from three month's working capital, down to two months, or 66 days.
Why do we pick Route 66? Well, it's fun, and we can have a lot of fun reinforcing that in the company. But what that means, in their case, is they collected their receivables a lot faster, and also got the invoices out quicker.
Another one here – “57 New Friends” - is from a company whose most important objective was to get 57 new clients. Everybody in the company knew about it, and they all helped. This is a business-to-business environment, so that one made sense.
Next we have one called “Gone in 30 Minutes”. It's a company that realized they wasted a ton of time in long, useless meetings, and they wanted to have every meeting completed in 30 minutes. There were a couple of meetings which were exceptions, but that was the goal of the company: to get mastery with meetings.
And then is a company in Ireland, that did the “Bin It” theme. The idea was to eliminate 845 wasteful actions. And what they did. The company is called City Bin, and CEO Gene Browne is a brilliant guy.
They realized that there's a lot of waste in a company, but eliminating waste is hard to do - so they made it simple. They said every person's job was, once every week - 13 weeks in the quarter - to come up with 13 ideas, that would either eliminate 15 minutes of wasted time in somebody's week, or 15 euros in someone's week. So, with either time or money eliminated out of someone's regular routine, that compounded to be 845 ideas. It was incredibly, incredibly helpful.
Another company in Canada did a similar one called “CCT 360”. They came up with 360 ideas. Same concept to strip out waste.
The point is to rally everyone around one number that has a huge impact across the business. We're all incredibly busy with all the stuff that happens in our business, in our day, and if we don't carve out time to work on these high priority projects - it seems to be that the best time is first thing in the morning, otherwise, you're gonna be doing it at home in the evening - these things don't make progress, and we don't move the company ahead as we'd like to.
What is your #1 priority for your company?
And second: How can you get everyone in your company involved in helping to move that priority ahead?
I wish you well. Have a great day.
What are the Rockefeller Habits?
People, strategy, execution and cash: four pillars that have to be equally strong in your business to be successful. Advisor to CEOs and Executive Teams Kevin Lawrence talks about the Rockefeller Habits, the challenges that face growing companies when efforts are focused on one area over another, and the benefit of following a simple methodology to success.
Video Transcription
Today, I'm going to give you the quickest overview of the Rockefeller Habits that I can - and the key principles you need to understand to see the power and value in this methodology.
Jim Collins says, "Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline."
And really, the whole idea behind the Rockefeller Habits - combinations of good work from Jim Collins and other great thought leaders - is that, in order for a company to be its best and achieve what it has the potential to, it needs to make conscious choices about where it's going grow to, and where it wants to be when it grows up. Tangible, conscious choices - and then it needs disciplines to follow through, to actually move towards that.
Most people don't really make a clear-enough, conscious choice of about what they want to do - and definitely don't have the disciplines to follow up on it.
And Rockefeller Habits provides a framework for both, that helps you get the best out of your company, and move things ahead.
The main principle is 1% vision, 99% alignment. Meaning - in a lot of strategic planning methodologies - you will put all kinds of effort and days in putting this beautiful 50-page report together, with all this beautiful language. And then it collects dust, and nobody ever sees it again.
So what we want to do with Rockefeller Habits is spend some time figuring out the vision of where we want go. It's important.
But most of the time goes into aligning the people in the front lines – people who actually do the work, interact with customers, and make things happen - and getting them engaged in what the plan is, so we can go together as a unit, and as a team - rather than executives having a great plan, and everyone else just acting as if nothing’s changed.
So the idea here - and this is a distinction that Verne Harnish came up with probably four or five years ago - is that there's this thing called strategic planning.
It turns out it's a really dangerous term, because strategic planning really is two separate processes.
There's strategic thinking, and then there's execution planning.
And what you find with a lot of companies, they start out with some rich strategic thinking when they begin their business, or when they expand their business. But after a while, they get so short-term focused that they end up just doing execution planning.
And the truth is their plans can become almost to the point where they're dangerous - because they're not in contact with what's happening in the market, or the trends that are changing in the world, or what their customers are thinking.
They almost end up with an unintelligent plan, because they haven't done enough strategic thought.
Now, why don't we do enough strategic thought?
Well, 'cause it's hard.
What's the payoff for strategic thought? Three to five years in the future sometimes, or at least a couple months.
It's not today.
We're so busy that we don't take the time to carve out, and have enough strategic thought - and we end up with a execution plan, and we wonder why our company gets in trouble.
The other ingredient is people resourcing, and getting the right people on the bus.
As Jim Collins says in his work, "You gotta get the right people, in the right seats, performing."
And then finally, cash modeling.
If you don't understand and keep an eye on cash in your business, you will end up in a world of hurt. Many of you have probably been there.
We've got some great tools around cash, actually - one great tool around cash, that makes a huge impact on companies. And personally, I've seen a couple of hundred million dollars put back into businesses through using this tool. Just in terms of managing cash, it's incredible.
So here's how it all comes together:
If you have a vision of where you want go - think of it as being the roof of the house - and then four pillars underneath that support that roof.
Those pillars are people, strategy, execution, and cash.
And as a company grows, you need to grow each of those pillars.
But the sad reality is that companies typically have a favourite - and typically have one they neglect.
And when you neglect one of those pillars, it's like a four-legged stool. If you chop off on the legs, sooner or later it's going fall over - and someone's gonna be lying on the floor in pain.
Well, that's what happens in companies.
So in this methodology, what we need to do is to continue to nurture all four of those pillars - so the pillars continue to improve and get stronger in unison.
It's not going be perfect, but so they're not too far out of the sync - and we don't get some rude wake-up calls or ugly surprises.
So all that thinking and theory is great. The question is how do we do it?
In the work that I do with companies, the ‘how’ part is where the value is. The theory is interesting.
So in Rockefeller Habits, the idea is to give you tools to be better leaders as you grow - so as your business scales up, you can too. And we have tools under people, strategy, execution, and cash.
So that’s how the whole model works with the Rockefeller Habits, and why it gets great results - and why I'm such a big fan of these tools.
It's four-three-two-one results: Four decisions, three disciplines, two dynamics, one driver
- First of all, you've got the four decisions. You got to start there, and decide which of those four pillars do you want to improve: People, strategy, execution, cash.
- Secondly, once you've made the decision, you’ve got to do something about it.
- We have three disciplines that help you to follow through:
- You’ve got to set your priorities, your goals, your rocks, whatever you want to call them.
- You've got metrics or data to help you know that your business is healthy, and on the right track, going in the right direction.
- And then you have meeting rhythms to people in sync, and keep the communication flowing.
Then you've got two dynamics: reputation and productivity.
Reputation keeping people happy. Productivity getting results, making money.
The challenge for some businesses is that if they get too focused on reputation: people will love you - but you're not going to be effective, get any results, or make any money.
If you get too focused on just making money and being efficient, usually you hurt relationships with customers, or suppliers, or employees. So the challenge is trying to keep it between the ditches.
You’ve got to balance these two dynamics constantly, so you don't get your business in trouble.
And finally, a driver: Someone from the outside who will work with a CEO and executive team to help them be their best.
It can be a coach, who will help to guide you, and hold you accountable.
It could be a consultant, who will come in, and have domain expertise.
Or it could be an educator: someone who will come along and provide you tools and insights to improve.
So the one that I want share with you is around the four decisions: People, strategy, execution, cash.
And as you can see here, people drive happiness, and accountability in the business: The right people in the right seats doing the right things.
You know that when you work with a team of people that you enjoy working with, and you seem to be on the same page, it's a lot more enjoyable and more productive. That's what this people pillar is about – about getting that dialled in.
Strategy is about driving your revenues and margins in the future, and a good strategy will be reflected in the margins that you generate in a business.
And we've got things like brand promise which is what you promise to your customers that makes you unique, and valuable, in their eyes - such that they're willing to pay a premium, ideally.
BHAG, Jim Collins calls a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" - and an ‘X’ factor - something that gives you a 10- to 30-time competitive advantage.
Then the execution pillar: it's about what generates your profit, and frees up time for other higher priorities, annual plans, quarterly plans and themes.
And then cash, which is your oxygen - keeping your business growing - and making sure, as you grow, you don't become more burdened with cash problems, or cash headaches. It doesn't have to be that way.
So people, strategy, execution, cash.
In summary, the Rockefeller Habits is about bringing a set of tools, in those four pillars, to make it easy to optimize each of those pillars as you grow your business.
The root of it is one document in the middle that pulls it all together, which is the one-page strategic plan.
One page that gives you an overview of your whole strategy - from 10 to 25 years down the road - right down to what you're going do in the next 90 days.
So there you have it: that's the Rockefeller Habits. Have a great day.