There are two versions of “you” running your organization: 

  1. The one you’ve created in your mind which is composed of your beliefs about yourself, typically including attributes like rational, principled, disciplined, and fair; and
  2. The one living in the minds of your team. 

But the latter is based entirely on your team’s observations of your actions, not what you think or believe. This “observed” version of you sets their expectations and is the one they model. 

This is the mechanism by which organizational standards form. You’re always leading by example, one way or another, and there’s no “off” switch. The only variables are what kind of example you set and whether you’re setting it on purpose.

The distance between the leader you believe yourself to be and the leader you are in the eyes of others is something I call the “Behavioral Integrity Gap.” This gap forms because your intent and your impact are two different things. Most leaders only pay attention to the first, and that’s the problem which, if unaddressed, can become very costly over time.

So let’s talk about each one.  

What You Say vs. What You Do

The first place where the Behavioral Integrity Gap appears is also the most visible: your team calibrates to what you actually do and practice, not to what you claim. 

The commitments you make in a meeting are either kept or not. Your stated values and priorities either hold up when they’re inconvenient, or collapse under pressure. These are the basic mechanisms that teach your team what’s real and what’s performative. And when there’s a mismatch, they don’t index on your intentions. Rather, they default to how they’ve seen you behave. This is why leading by example is so powerful and, for many, a double-edged sword: it’s always happening, and always happening automatically.

Your intent and your impact are two different things.

I coached a CEO years ago who wanted his team to operate more strategically. “We can’t keep chasing the issue of the day,” he would say. Yet he didn’t practice what he preached. In fact, he was often the biggest source of disruption in the company. A customer complaint or a competitor’s announcement would become an instant top priority, literally overnight. Executives were forced to drop planned work to respond, only to have the next “even more urgent” priority replace it a week or two later. His team learned to stop planning altogether and, instead, start waiting for the next fire. He, meanwhile, kept complaining about weak execution while personally making disciplined execution impossible.

When he became more self-aware through our work together, we arrived at a simple solution: he stopped turning every concern into an organizational priority. New ideas and emerging issues went into a “parking lot” for deliberate review unless they cleared a predefined bar for immediate action. The executive team was able to protect their agreed-upon priorities, execution became more consistent, and genuine emergencies became easier to recognize. 

The irony wasn’t lost on the CEO: His team was only able to stop chasing “the issue of the day” when he stopped doing it himself. He finally became the disciplined leader he’d demanded everyone else become.

What You Say vs. What You Tolerate

Although your actions are the most obvious place you’re likely to find a Behavioral Integrity Gap, they’re not what’s most insidious. 

Your team doesn’t only calibrate themselves to what they see you do. They also calibrate to what you’re not doing. In other words, what they see you tolerate.

This dimension of the Behavioral Integrity Gap is stealthy because it stems entirely from inaction, not from action. You don’t have to say or do anything for a problematic standard to take hold here. Instead, all you have to do is fail to act when your standards aren’t met. Tolerance of anything is never neutral; whatever you allow to persist without comment or action becomes an acceptable standard for everyone watching.

They calibrate to what you’re not doing.

I’ve seen this manifest in a variety of places, including tolerating a chronic underperformer, a toxic manager, a client who is abusive to your team, a high-performing cultural misfit, a persistent quality problem, and a longstanding staffer who is in the wrong role – just to name a few.

None of these issues have anything to do with your intentions and what you say about them. It doesn’t matter how clearly you’ve articulated your expectations; if situations like these remain unaddressed, your team (and by extension, your organization) will see them as culturally acceptable and they will persist.

By the time you finally take a step back and have the perspective to see this, you’ll be shocked to discover even more skeletons in the closet and exactly how far your firm’s standards have fallen.

The Standard You’re Actually Setting

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” — Attributed to Albert Schweitzer 

The standards and expectations underpinning your organization’s operation have nothing to do with your intentions. They are established solely by what you do and by what you tolerate. When you fail to meet your own expectations in either area, rest assured your team will as well. 

And, until you close that gap, nothing will change. 

You don’t need a new program, initiative, or company-wide memo to solve this problem. The solution is focused, deliberate action. Pick one standard you’ve been failing to uphold – either something you’re not doing OR something you’re tolerating – and hold yourself to it starting today, not next week, and certainly not next month. 

These small, visible corrections will rebuild your credibility and reset your team’s standards more rapidly and effectively than any speech about “renewed commitment to our values” ever will. 

Because as a leader, you don’t set the standard when you speak. You set it when you act… and when you don’t.

If this article challenged you to think differently about your role, share it with someone else, and subscribe for additional insights on becoming a more effective leader.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success:

When someone on your team falls short, misses the mark, or underdelivers there’s a likelihood you — yes, you — are part of the equation.

Yet I’ve known and coached many leaders whose first instinct was to conclude the behavior or performance problem was 100% attributable to any team member who missed a deadline, short-changed a deliverable, or somehow underperformed.

Occasionally, they were right. But most of the time, they were wrong.

I’m not saying that underperformers are never the problem. But all too often, they’re simply the one left holding the bag, for reasons having nothing to do with them. The leader may, for instance, have overloaded them with tasks or overestimated their capabilities. The leader may have “set” expectations that were never clearly communicated. Or the leader may have delegated the work and then walked away – a classic “fire and forget” move – assuming delivery would follow.

The irony here is that leaders who likely pride themselves on accountability are failing to apply it to themselves.

Leading by example, which I explore in detail in my book, Creating a Culture of Accountability, is one of the three elements of accountability and the foundation upon which consistent high performance is built. Before you can hold anyone else to a meaningful standard, you must hold yourself to one first. Failure here creates a 100% probability of downstream suffering.

So let’s have a hard look in the mirror today.

The Instinct to Look Outward

When something goes wrong, most leaders’ first inclination is to look for the cause externally. It’s an understandable cognitive shortcut – after all, you’re not the one “doing the work.”

Experienced leaders are especially vulnerable to this reflex. The longer you’ve been in the seat, the more successful your track record, the more confidently and quickly you’ll conclude your leadership isn’t the issue. What’s more, looking outward is easier, faster, and far less uncomfortable than examining how you may have contributed to the problem.

But in these instances, confidence can quickly become a liability. As you fixate on symptoms — so-and-so’s attitude, output, or apparent lack of ownership — you become blind to the true root causes of the problem. Meanwhile, the costs compound. For instance, you might spend substantial time and effort trying to coach and manage someone who you yourself set up to fail.

Your team, meanwhile, has already concluded where the real issue lies, and the discrepancy between what they see from you and what you’re willing to acknowledge doesn’t go unnoticed. Over time, this damages morale and erodes trust in your leadership, sending a message to high performers that learning, growth, and accountability only apply selectively. And let’s not miss what this does to your own trajectory as a leader: An executive who only looks for problems in others lacks self-awareness and never truly grows.

None of these costs are hypothetical. I’ve seen them appear across businesses of all sizes and shapes. For instance, years ago I coached the executive team running a chain of fast food restaurants in New York City. They seemed to have an inexhaustible list of examples illustrating just how lazy their store managers and frontline staff were. Over time, it became clear to me, however, that the issue wasn’t the team, but with the CEO herself, who was consistently demeaning toward her staff. She had communicated, through both words and actions, she expected very little from the people running her stores. Her own belief system became a self-fulfilling prophecy that set her teams up to fail, yet she couldn’t see it. Her path forward began with self-awareness as I illuminated the role her beliefs and assumptions played to set the stage for the problem she was experiencing.

Ask: “What Is My Role in This?”

So what’s a senior leader to do when a problem surfaces with a member of their team? The answer is deceptively simple, but not necessarily easy.

When someone on your team is failing to perform to expectations, FIRST take time to objectively assess your own potential role in the situation. Here are five questions I recommend to get started:

1. Did I give them the right tools?

More than just assigning them the work, did you give them what they needed to do it well? Did they have a budget, or were they supposed to execute without funding? Did they have access to the right people, tools, and information? Did they understand the history and context of the assignment? If you never gave them everything they needed to succeed, don’t be surprised if they’re simply doing the best they can with what they have.

2. Were they ready for this role or assignment?

This is one of the most common and costly errors I see. A strong performer in one seat is promoted or elevated and everyone assumes the transition will be smooth — because why wouldn’t it be, if they were successful before? But past performance in a different role is not necessarily evidence of readiness for a new one. This gap is especially wide in doer-to-manager transitions, where the skills that made someone exceptional doing the work have almost no bearing on their ability to manage others.

3. Did I invest in their success?

Your responsibility as a leader extends far beyond handing out work and stepping aside. Did you schedule time for ongoing coaching, mentorship, and development, or did you assume they’d ask if they needed help? Did you rush through their onboarding, or did you give them the depth of instruction and training the role demands? Delegation without ongoing investment is not delegation; it’s a form of abdication.

4. Were my expectations clear?

There’s an enormous difference between communicating expectations and them being understood. Consider how often expectations are “set” in passing — say, at the end of a meeting that ran long, or in a conversation where three other things were also discussed — and you’ll see why this is an issue. It’s easy to walk away feeling all is clear when, in reality, you’re both operating with completely different pictures of success.

5. Have I been utilizing the three building blocks of accountability?

Accountability is built on three things: belief, context, and attention. Belief: Did they know you were confident in their ability to deliver? Context: Did you make it clear why the project or assignment mattered — to them, to the team, to the broader business, and to you personally? Attention: Did you check in regularly to catch obstacles early and demonstrate that you were invested in their progress? If you missed any one of these building blocks, there’s an excellent chance you’re a contributor to the performance issue at hand.

When you perform this exercise, consider enlisting an outside party (a mentor, coach, or peer) who you trust to tell you the unvarnished truth, especially when it’s something you don’t want to hear. While uncomfortable, outside perspective is critical to self-awareness and establishing the reality of your situation.

It’s extremely rare for a leader to have zero culpability for a team member’s failure to deliver. The point of this process isn’t self-flagellation, but to help you identify your contribution, making the invisible visible.

Accountability Starts with You

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.” —Attributed to Theodore Roosevelt

There’s no doubt there will be situations where you find the other person fully at fault due to their capabilities, fit, engagement, or judgment. But you must earn the right to arrive at that verdict, which means ruling out your own involvement first. It’s a step – and a habit of looking in the mirror – few leaders are willing to practice. And from what I’ve observed over the past twenty years, it will likely reveal you play a bigger role in your team’s performance challenges than you think.

Leading by example is the most challenging element required to build a culture of accountability. It requires enduring the discomfort of both intellectual honesty and a willingness to examine your own decisions and behaviors before scrutinizing anyone else’s. This makes it tempting to brush off — but without holding yourself to the same standards as you hold your team to, what you preach will always be undermined by what they see you do.

So the next time someone on your team misses the mark, resist the reflex to jump to conclusions and take a look in the mirror before you look across the table. Your team, your business, and your own development as a leader depend on it.

If this article challenged you to think differently about your role, share it with someone else, and subscribe for additional insights on becoming a more effective leader.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success:

Ask any accomplished manager or leader whether holding people accountable is part of their role, and they’ll answer “yes” without hesitation. In concept and in theory, it’s simple to understand.

But it becomes complicated in practice when you look across the table and realize the person who needs to be more accountable — the person who isn’t delivering or requires a course-correction — has sixteen years on you. Or is two levels senior to you on the organization chart. Or has been with the firm longer than the span of your entire career.

Suddenly, these conversations feel like a different proposition. And for many managers and leaders, it becomes the exchange they avoid, water-down, or never have.

They convince themselves the person “already knows” what’s expected, or resort to dropping hints instead of engaging directly. They hope the other person will magically realize what the problem is and what needs to be done. And they justify all of it with some variation of the same logic: Who am I to tell this person anything? They’re my superior, or certainly more experienced. They’ve been doing this far longer than I have.

This approach isn’t a courtesy to anyone; it’s a failure of leadership that creates needless ambiguity while often penalizing others on your team. When you avoid holding someone more senior accountable, expectations remain hazy, assumptions fill the vacuum, credibility with the rest of your team erodes, and – quite often – your highest performers begin looking elsewhere.

The truth is that nobody — including those more senior or more tenured than you — is exempt from accountability for their results and their actions. Similarly, you’re not exempt from holding them accountable. Operate as if you are, and you’ll find yourself mired in the misery of trying to manage sustained mediocrity (or worse), which could put YOUR role at risk.

Here’s how to hold someone accountable, even when they outrank you in age, experience, title, or tenure in the organization.

The Seniority Excuse, and Why It’s a Problem

We’ll begin by unpacking why holding senior people accountable can be challenging.

The authority dynamic plays a large role in why this is hard for many leaders. Walking into a conversation with someone who has more expertise, more institutional knowledge, or more years in their career than you carries a heavier psychological weight than a similar conversation with others. It can feel presumptuous to course-correct or set expectations with them, potentially even surfacing insecurities about your own authority and expertise. Even leaders with strong track records and genuine confidence can find themselves second-guessing in this scenario.

The discomfort may also have deeper roots, extending back to something most of us internalized long before we ever led a team: Many of us were taught to respect and defer to our elders. And while that instinct might have served us well as children at the dinner table, it can cause real problems when we carry it uncritically into the workplace.

Think about what it costs when you avoid holding someone accountable. Even the most experienced, well-intentioned people will make assumptions when left without direction and clear expectations. Those assumptions lead to misalignment, rogue decision-making, and, yes, conflict — the same thing you probably hoped to sidestep by staying quiet. Meanwhile, your team is watching who is (or isn’t) held to the expected standards. And make no mistake: As one of my clients painfully learned just this month, the most capable people are always the first to leave an environment where rules are inconsistently applied.

And that’s not even getting into what this behavior costs you. Every time you talk yourself out of a necessary conversation, you reinforce your own habit of avoidance. Over time, the range of situations where you’re willing to intervene shrinks, and your growth and efficacy as a leader stalls in direct proportion.

I’ve seen many of these consequences play out in my client work. Consider Susan, the operations manager who inherited Paul, a veteran supervisor. Although Paul knew the business cold and had built strong relationships across the organization, he had a tendency to exhibit dismissive, cutting behavior toward his colleagues. Susan would have addressed the problem behaviors immediately if they were coming from anyone else on her team. But because of Paul’s tenure and experience, she held back and said nothing.

Over time, her team’s frustration compounded. Other departments began avoiding Paul and one of Susan’s top performers left for “an opportunity they couldn’t refuse.” Susan’s silence communicated something she never intended: that the firm’s values and her standards apply to most people — but not to all of them. This erodes the team or company culture subtly but steadily, until it becomes a hollow shell of its former self.

While seniority might change the perceived social stakes of a conversation, it cannot change the standard.

The Building Blocks of Accountability

There is no separate or special accountability playbook for more experienced or tenured people. The building blocks of accountability, illustrated in the diagram below, remain the same.

Article content

What does change is how you frame and apply them. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

1. Expectations

Every accountability conversation should begin with a genuine expression of confidence and expectation in the other person’s ability to deliver. This belief needs to be both specific and authentic.

With most team members, expressing this belief is relatively straightforward. But with someone who has twenty years of experience, statements like “I know you’ve got this” can easily be interpreted as condescending. Someone with a decade more experience than you doesn’t need reassurance about their general competence. What they need is to understand that you’re having this conversation because of who you know them to be.

Reference their track record. Reference something they accomplished that earned your respect, even if it predates your tenure. Make the connection between what you’re asking of them and what you know they can do. This changes the framing from “I believe in you” to “I’m holding you to this standard because I know what you’re capable of in this area.”

When you challenge, coach, or correct without first expressing belief, it can feel like criticism. When you express belief without accountability, it can feel like hollow praise. But when you put them together, and they communicate something different: I see you, I respect your capabilities, and I expect more.

2. Context

Why does this matter?

It’s easy to be short and shallow here, particularly with senior team members who already have a deep understanding of the business. Don’t make this mistake.

While most experienced people have an understanding of why the results you’re delegating matter, they often don’t have the specific, personal context for why this result matters right now.

Think back to the veteran supervisor Paul violating Susan’s team values as he poisoned the culture. A generic reminder about why “professional behavior” matters was likely to do nothing. Here’s what Susan should have said: “Paul, you may not think about it much, but Tom, Sarah, and Nick respect your achievements here and watch everything you do. They’re learning what’s acceptable from you and will apply this in their own careers. Is this what you want to leave them as your legacy?” She has held up a mirror and invited Paul to see the downstream consequences of his behavior while making him a partner in the outcome.

There’s a bit more magic to thoughtful, specific context as well. It demonstrates you’ve done the work of thinking carefully about the situation and about exactly what you’re expecting. Although this credibility always matters, it’s particularly critical to establish with those more experienced or tenured than you because it’s far harder to dismiss someone who has a crystal clear understanding of the stakes.

3. Attention

Setting an expectation without following through isn’t enough to create accountability. Attention — periodic, deliberate engagement over time — does.

With more experienced people, the nuance of attention requires care. Check-ins can easily come across as surveillance or micromanagement, and someone with deep expertise in their role will notice immediately if you’re hovering. The objective here isn’t to monitor them, but rather reinforce that this is important to you and that you’re invested in their success.

Frame your check-ins as support, not oversight. “Are there any obstacles I can remove for you?” does something fundamentally different than, “You’re on track, right?” One opens a conversation, while the other demands compliance. When the news is good, remember to say so explicitly; course-affirming feedback is just as important as course correction. People need to know that you know when they’re getting it right.

Although checking in might feel awkward at first, make no mistake: Experienced people notice an absence of follow-up. They’ve managed — and been managed by — enough people to know the difference between a leader who cares about the outcome and one who has simply set an expectation and moved on. And when they conclude you’re the latter, you lose the credibility you built by having the conversation in the first place. Don’t be surprised if you end up right back at square one again, paralyzed by the fear of setting expectations or having to intervene late in the game to get things back on track.

Asymmetry as an Advantage

It’s easy to overlook or minimize the Building Blocks of Accountability when you perceive the power dynamic as “not normal” from your position. But what you miss while you’re dreading or avoiding the conversation is that managing someone with more experience is more than just survivable. In fact, it’s one of the more powerful leadership opportunities available.

Senior, experienced people have all lived through ambiguity. They’ve seen plans (and leaders) fail, and watched teams overcorrect. When you approach them with clear expectations, genuine belief, specific context, and real attention, they often respond even more positively than less experienced team members might, because they understand how rare it is. Under the right circumstances, they can become an asset with the institutional knowledge, credibility, and experience to become a mentor and a model for more junior colleagues.

Lean In and Lead

“The standard is the standard.” — Mike Tomiln, Former NFL Coach

The discomfort of holding a more tenured or experienced person accountable is real, as are the consequences of avoiding it. Dodge that responsibility, and you’ve got murky expectations, misaligned assumptions, and a team that’s watching you exempt certain people from rules everyone else is expected to follow. None of that is sustainable, and none of it serves the firm, the people on your team, or even you.

Accountability isn’t something you can choose to deploy when it’s comfortable. It’s a non-negotiable prerequisite for sustainable organizational success. The moment you start treating it as negotiable – making exceptions based upon title, pay grade, seniority, or any other criteria – is the moment your team’s results, engagement, and cultural norms begin to erode.

This isn’t a matter of whether you have the “authority” to hold someone accountable. You do. But it’s up to you to exercise your accountability to hold others accountable, even if it feels awkward or nerve-wracking.

Lean into it. Leaders who are willing to hold the line with everyone (themselves included) –  consistently and without exception – achieve far more than those who rationalize mediocrity.

If this article challenged you to think differently about your role, share it with someone else, and subscribe for additional insights on becoming a more effective leader.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success:

If I observed how you spent your time at work over the next thirty days — every meeting, every decision, every hour of focused effort — how closely would my observations match what your role requires of you?

It’s a deceptively simple question, and when I pose it, most leaders assume the answer is “pretty closely.” After all, they’re busy. Perpetually busy. Their calendars are full, their inboxes are overflowing, and the demands on their time are relentless. Surely all of that activity adds up to fulfilling the requirements of their roles.

In my experience, it usually doesn’t. Far from it, in fact.

This is one of the most pervasive and least discussed problems in business. Leaders at every level—managers, VPs, C-suite executives, you name it—are chronically operating below the requirements of their role (and, accordingly, their pay grade). They’re doing tactical or management work that belongs to the level below them (and, in many cases, the level below that!). They’re solving problems they shouldn’t be solving, and they’re knee-deep in decisions that shouldn’t require their involvement.

Meanwhile, the strategic, future-shaping, capacity-building work mandated by their level and role remains underaddressed or even altogether undone. Their teams are left to function without proper management and coaching, others are forced to take on additional work to compensate, and their own professional development languishes. These consequences compound, often unnoticed, for far too long. And by the time most leaders recognize what’s happening, they’ve spent months or years unintentionally creating organizational problems that are challenging to unwind.

This isn’t a time management problem. It’s not solved by productivity hacks. And it won’t fix itself just because you recognize it’s happening. Breaking free of this role / level trap requires an honest reckoning of what’s keeping you there.

The Doer–Manager–Leader Continuum

Every activity in every organization falls somewhere along a spectrum I’ve labeled Doer–Manager–Leader. Every bit of work you engage in aligns with one of these roles. Together, they form a continuum that moves from left to right:

Doer—————-Manager—————Leader

Doer: At the far left, we have Doers. Doers execute. Their work is concrete and immediate, measured by tasks completed and tangible outputs delivered, and their time horizons tend to be short: this hour, today, this week. There’s nothing wrong with being a Doer; virtually everyone starts their career as one, and your work at this stage shapes how you build your craft over time. Businesses need Doers. Someone has to do the work, and doing it well is genuinely valuable.

Manager: Just as every business needs Doers, every business also needs people to coordinate and support them. This is where Managers come in, overseeing the production of today’s work, solving operational problems, and improving the capabilities of the Doers. Managers ensure outputs are delivered on time, on budget, and to quality standards, and that the right people are doing the right things, at the right time, to the right standards. Managers, like the Doers they supervise, live largely in the present, though their view often reaches slightly further. A competent manager extends the productive capacity of their organization, making it possible to accomplish far more than any individual could alone.

Leader: Leaders fall on the right end of the continuum, but operate in a fundamentally different dimension than Managers and Doers. Their work is entirely anchored in the future: building organizational capacity, developing the next generation of managers, shaping culture, and allocating resources to the highest-leverage opportunities. A leader’s work is to anticipate the conditions the business will face twelve, twenty-four, or thirty-six months from now and make decisions today that position the company to meet them. The more senior the leader, the more their value derives not from what they personally produce today, but from what they make possible for everyone else tomorrow.

Career progression, in theory, moves from left to right along this continuum. You start as a Doer, where you focus on execution. As you advance into supervision and management, you begin coordinating others while still staying close to the work. Then, as you continue into leadership roles, you make an essential and difficult transition to stop being a producer and instead become an architect of the future conditions under which others produce.

But as I just mentioned, that’s in theory.

In practice, the journey from Doer to Manager to Leader is far more challenging—and that’s where the trouble starts.

Where Is Your Time Actually Going?

Regardless of your job title, industry, or geographic location, you operate somewhere on this continuum every day. The key question to consider is whether your day-to-day and week-to-week actions align with what your role and level requires. For example, if you’re a CFO and every week you personally review and approve the payables, you’re operating as either a Doer or a Manager (depending on the size and complexity of your team)–certainly not as a Leader.

I want you to do something right now, or at the very least before you close this article: open your calendar and review the last 30 days. Go through every meeting, every block of focus time, and every recurring commitment, then ask yourself: What percentage of my work over this past month was Doer work? Manager work? Leader work? And be brutally honest! I’ve been in rooms full of leaders who routinely spent 2-4 hours per week collectively discussing Doer and Manager issues despite the gathering being called a “Leadership” meeting.

If you can’t get useful data from your calendar, do yourself a favor and track it real time for a week or two. Every hour, note what kind of work you’re doing, then assess. How much of your time was engaged in leadership work, and how much of it was work that a capable person at a level below you could—and should—have handled?

The leaders I’ve put through this exercise are often uncomfortable with what they discover, because the distribution almost never looks the way they assumed. Senior leaders who consider themselves strategic thinkers often discover they’re spending the majority of their time in Manager and Doer mode. Managers who believe they’re developing their teams find that they are mostly glorified Doers, engaged mostly in producing the work. The trend always gravitates downward — never upward.

The cost of this misalignment of activities vs. role requirements accumulates on multiple fronts. As a leader, the strategic work your role demands languishes — and an organization without fully engaged leadership at the top slides, slowly at first, and then faster, toward mediocrity. Other leaders get pulled in to compensate for the void at the top, overtaxing them and fragmenting the focus of the whole team. Meanwhile, those further down the organizational chart are deprived of the development and coaching they need, because both Managers and Leaders are too consumed with execution to invest in them properly. And perhaps most insidiously, you stagnate. By defaulting to work you already know how to do, you never build the capabilities your current role requires. And the longer this persists, the harder it becomes to change.

Regardless of where you fall on the continuum — whether you’re a Manager spending too much time as a Doer, or a Leader who hasn’t fully left Manager (and/or Doer) mode behind — the operative question is the same: how do you move yourself to the right, and continue progressing rightward over time?

What Keeps You in the Weeds

Most leaders already know, in the abstract, that they should delegate more and lead more. Almost none of them are in the weeds because they want to be. And yet the pattern persists.

There are several common forces to explain this, each of which make it challenging for leaders to wean themselves away from lower-tier work:

The fear of loss. Many leaders have risen to their current position because they became exceptionally capable executors first. And once they’re promoted, they can’t let the execution go, because at some level, they believe no one else does it as well as they do. Consider a manager who spends her time quietly reworking her team’s deliverables after approving them, just to “make sure we get it right.” She stays involved in work that’s not hers anymore, and in doing so, becomes the bottleneck. Worse still, this signals to the team that she doesn’t trust them with the work. Over time, her direct reports–increasingly disengaged–may even stop trying to get it right the first time.

Promotion without preparation. When someone advances without the training and mentorship required to be successful at the next level, they do what anyone does in unfamiliar territory: They default to what they know, which usually falls below the scope and requirements of the new role. I once worked with a newly minted manager who was operating like a Doer because he’d never been taught how to delegate or have a direct conversation when someone on his team missed the mark. Instead of developing those skills, he did the work himself. His team was underutilized, and he was overwhelmed — a combination serving no one.

Lack of effective coaching. Even leaders who want to move away from execution and toward leadership often lack the self-awareness to understand what, specifically, they should be doing differently. Without that outside perspective, it can be nearly impossible to grow. I’ve coached executives who reached the VP level and beyond while still operating with the assumptions and habits of a middle manager. The reason was simple: Nobody had ever created the conditions for them to see themselves clearly. One of the roles of a coach is to help make the invisible visible.

Structural mismatches. Some leaders are held in place not by psychology, but by organizational design. When accountability is unclear, role ownership is murky, or reporting lines create confusion, the path of least resistance is often to step in personally and sort things out. Oversized spans of control are another structural trap: a leader in charge of twenty direct reports could easily spend the majority of every week in check-ins and one-on-ones. It’s not a matter of discipline; it’s a math problem. There are simply not enough hours left for future-focused work, regardless of intentions or capabilities.

Reactive hiring. When someone leaves an organization, the instinct is usually to fill the seat quickly with a like-for-like replacement. The problem is that a vacancy is also an opportunity to assess the relevance of your current operational structure BEFORE reactively hiring an exact replacement. Does this role need to exist in its current form? Are the responsibilities distributed the way they should be? These are the questions to ask during this critical window. Leaders and hiring Managers who don’t often find themselves locked into an outdated, poorly optimized organizational design.

Ego and identity. For some, operating below their level and role is simply a matter of self-concept. Their sense of worth is commonly bound to a need to feel like the sharpest problem-solver in the room or the person who knows how to handle everything. For these leaders, stepping back and allowing others to own decisions feels like a diminishment, and that’s a tough pill to swallow. I once coached a senior leader who insisted on being included in vendor selection processes multiple levels below his role. When I asked why, his answer was, “I’m the best person here at evaluating these deals.” He wasn’t wrong. But being the best at something and being the right person to do it are two entirely different things — a distinction he couldn’t make until his identity stopped depending on it.

Failure to prioritize fixing the problem. This is the most insidious obstacle because it usually masquerades as a virtue. Although some leaders recognize they’re operating below their level, there always seems to be a reason why “now” isn’t the right time to address it. I’ve encountered many who say they’ll step back “as soon as we get through this XXX (fill in the blank with the project or other distraction du jour),” quarter after quarter. And that never ends. Urgency bias is self-perpetuating: the more time you spend in the present as a Doer, the more you see Doer-level problems everywhere. This creates the illusion of even more demand for your time, leaving less and less room for the work to fix the root cause once and for all.

These barriers are real. I’ve watched them derail capable, well-intentioned leaders. And odds are, at least one of them is operating within you, to some extent, right now.

Now the Real Work Begins

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” — Theodore Roosevelt

Mismatches between where leaders spend their time and what their roles require of them are more common — and more costly — than most are willing to admit. And unfortunately, there’s no universal solution to this problem, because the forces at play aren’t universal. The real work starts with identifying which of the obstacles has the strongest grip on you, and then taking targeted action.

So here’s my challenge: Audit your time. Review your calendar for the past few weeks, or track your time deliberately for the next one or two. Be ruthlessly honest about what category each hour falls into — and what, specifically, prevents you from operating at the right level.

If your primary constraint is fear of loss, then your path forward might be deliberate disengagement: assign the work, resist the urge to step back in, and have the discipline to let any perceived imperfections stand. If you were never taught to manage, your work might be to find a mentor who can show you, or a coach who can help you build those skills. If the obstacle is structural, that conversation needs to happen with the right people, right now — not next quarter. Whatever your specific constraint, address it with the same rigor and intentionality you’d apply to any other business problem. Because that’s exactly what it is–and the stakes are astronomically high.

Your role carries a title, a level of compensation, and, above all, a set of organizational expectations that aren’t met when you operate to the left of where you should be on the Doer–Manager–Leader continuum. Your responsibility as a leader is to ensure, no matter where you are on the spectrum, you’re always in motion–slowly and steadily to the right.

Until you do, you’ll never perform at the level that your role, your compensation, and your business demand.

If this article challenged you to think differently about your role, share it with someone else, and subscribe for additional insights on becoming a more effective leader.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success:

You’ve worked hard and it’s paid off. There’s a rush of excitement, satisfaction, and maybe even a little disbelief. Your new leadership position carries more influence, greater earning potential, and a real opportunity to shape something beyond yourself. Indeed, it’s a fantastic-feeling moment worth celebrating.

But there’s a catch: Having the title isn’t the same as producing the results.

And successful leadership requires investment. All of the benefits, perks, and impact you envision only happen downstream of what you put into the role, not as an entitlement of possessing the corner office.

No matter the industry or the firm, every leader must bear four burdens to generate and sustain the expected return. Think of them as your price of admission to the game of success.

The Four Burdens of Leadership

Although most leaders are aware of the more obvious burdens of the role including longer hours, weightier decisions, more challenging work, and the feeling of responsibility for others, the most consequential are behaviors you must adopt, change, amplify and/or stop to lead effectively over time.

Here are the top four:

Burden 1: Leading by Example

This one sounds straightforward, but isn’t easy.

Leading by example means going first, especially in uncomfortable situations or those requiring you to be vulnerable in front of others. It means living every one of your stated values, beyond reproach, not just when it’s easy or convenient, and particularly when it’s neither. It means modeling every behavior you expect of others, everywhere, all the time.

This rule has no exceptions and no off-the-clock exemptions. Your employees, colleagues, and company culture will mirror your behaviors, whether you realize it or not. What you do sets the standard — as does what you allow others to do.

When you tolerate behavior you shouldn’t, you are still leading by example. When you accept mediocrity from a team member, you are still leading by example. When you are habitually late, disorganized, or fail to honor a value you’ve publicly committed to, you are still leading by example. When you do these types of things, you model the wrong behaviors while your people watch.

There are no secrets in an organization. All eyes and ears are on you — and they’re paying attention to what you do more than what you say.

Burden 2: Neutralizing the Power Gradient

Every organization has a power gradient: an invisible differential between more senior and less senior people that distorts communication in both directions. The greater the distance between the senior and junior person, the greater the distortion. In practice, those junior to you are less likely to speak candidly, challenge your assumptions, or deliver news you won’t want to hear. They are also more likely to interpret (or misinterpret) your words — even your most casual remarks — as carrying authority and intent you never meant to convey.

This phenomenon is well-documented. A series of studies by researchers at the Harvard Business School found that employees hold deeply ingrained, automatic beliefs about the risks of speaking up to those above them in a hierarchy — beliefs so embedded that employees often stay silent even when leaders are genuinely open and receptive. And telling them to “speak up” won’t necessarily help.

This has almost nothing to do with your personality. It doesn’t matter how warm or personable you are; the gradient is always there, and it can do real organizational damage long before you ever realize it’s happening.

The greater the distance between the senior and junior person, the greater the distortion.

I saw this in action with a client of mine recently. The CEO of a 500-employee firm was having a casual hallway conversation with a staff member when the topic turned to a current challenge the business was facing. The CEO mused, thinking out loud, “I wonder what would happen if we tried doing (this other thing) instead.”

To him, it was just a thought. The employee, however, heard a directive. She acted on it, and wound up creating a significant mess within the organization. When the news made its way back to the CEO, his reaction was, “I didn’t mean it as an instruction. I was just thinking out loud!”

Yes, but as he painfully learned, that doesn’t matter – because the burden of clarity always belongs to the person with more power (higher on the power gradient). Senior leaders must understand how their casual observations, half-formed questions, and even their silence might be interpreted and acted upon.

Neutralizing the power gradient is an active discipline requiring self-awareness, self-control, and deliberate, ongoing practice.

Burden 3: Growing and Improving to Outpace the Demands of the Business

I often see leaders use their past selves as the benchmark to assess their development. It’s an understandable instinct: you look back at where you’ve been, see how far you’ve come, and feel good about your progress.

The problem is that the past is an irrelevant standard for today. A more useful perspective is to consider the future demands of your role, which are always ahead of where you currently stand. Your market is evolving, your customers are evolving, technology is evolving, and your team is evolving. The complexity of the business you’re running today is compounding over time. And the capabilities required to navigate that complexity and win are a constantly moving target.

It’s remarkably easy to become complacent with your own leadership development. It’s tempting to take a breath and relax when the business is doing well, and you might even feel a sense of stability. But the truth is if you fail to consistently progress a few small steps beyond the current demands of your role, you’re borrowing against your organization’s future. Although this form of debt accumulates quietly, the bill usually arrives suddenly and in the form of a crisis. The results are painful. Your firm’s sustained growth rate will never outpace your own rate of growth as a leader. In almost 25 years of coaching, I have yet to see a situation in which it has, and I can all but guarantee, you won’t be the exception. That’s the reality, which is why your own continual growth and development is a burden you must always carry.

Burden 4: Subordinating Your Ego

Each of the three burdens we’ve discussed so far requires a common denominator prerequisite that doesn’t come naturally to most leaders: you must learn to keep your ego in check.

You can’t lead by example without a willingness to admit, publicly, when you’ve set the wrong one. You can’t neutralize the power gradient without acknowledging when your words — even unintentionally — cause harm. And you can’t continuously learn and grow without regularly acknowledging that what you know and how you lead is insufficient to meet the future demands of the business. These behaviors all conflict with a dominant ego.

Self-awareness is a major challenge to successfully subordinating your ego. This is because your ego rarely announces itself as your ego. Rather, it presents as confidence, decisiveness, pattern recognition, and hard-won conviction — the very qualities that likely helped you earn your leadership role in the first place. Without self-awareness, it becomes impossible to mute those habitual patterns long enough to recognize when you’re, say, failing to lead by example. Or saying things that could be misinterpreted. Or stagnating your growth as a leader.

Self-awareness is foundational to ego subordination — and ego subordination is foundational to every other leadership investment you make.

Ego subordination separates leaders who succeed from those who stall or flame out. Get it wrong and you’ll never master the other burdens from the shadows of your blind spots; get it right and everything else becomes possible.

Your Investment: Assess and Elevate

Understanding these four leadership burdens is not the same as bearing them, which begs the following key question: How do I effectively shoulder these burdens to generate the returns I seek from my leadership role?

The answer lies in two distinct practices.

1. Seek and embrace feedback in all areas

Developing your ability to meet the burdens of leadership requires an accurate picture of where you currently stand, which is precisely where leaders often run into trouble. As we discussed earlier, although self-awareness is critical, it does not come easily. We are, as a rule, unreliable judges of our own performance. Left to our own assessments, we tend to subjectively see ourselves as what we want to see, rather than through a more objective and realistic perspective.

The antidote is something self-awareness researcher Tasha Eurich discusses at length in her book Insight: the most consistently self-aware leaders actively cultivate a circle of what Eurich refers to as “loving critics” — people who care about them enough to tell them the hard truth. They aren’t cheerleaders (who validate by default), and they’re not heartless critics (who challenge without caring). Rather, these individuals have a specific combination of genuine care and unflinching candor that makes honest feedback both possible to hear and impossible to dismiss.

Self-awareness is foundational to ego subordination — and ego subordination is foundational to every other leadership investment you make.

Building this circle requires three elements: You must get comfortable hearing hard, direct, and often uncomfortable feedback. You must actively seek feedback, rather than waiting for it to arrive. Perhaps most importantly, you must develop a growth mindset: a conviction that you can improve your weak areas — and an understanding that candid feedback is the only way to improve them.

2. Elevate yourself across all four burdens of leadership.

Seeking feedback without acting on it is just theater. The investment only pays off when the inputs translate into changed behavior — and that requires a certain level of deliberateness. When a loving critic tells you that you’ve been tolerating something you shouldn’t, or that your words landed differently than you intended, or that you’ve been coasting on last year’s capabilities — do something about it. Identify specifically what needs to change, what that change looks like in practice, and what you’ll do differently starting now.

Incidentally, this process – in and of itself – is one of the most direct expressions of leading by example available to you.

Hold yourself accountable here with the same rigor you hold your team accountable. Set clear expectations, implement regular check-ins, and surround yourself with people who will hold YOU to high standards. This goes beyond loving critics; it might include structured peer groups where candid assessment is the norm rather than the exception, or mentors who are operating at the level you’re trying to reach. You might also consider adding a qualified coach to your “growth team.”

The leaders who make the most sustained progress rarely do it in isolation — not because they lack the capability, but because external expectations and external perspective are irreplaceable.

Finally, be mindful that this process never ends. The demands of your role will continually evolve, which means your investment in meeting them must too. But there’s a genuine upside here: consistency compounds. When you make growth in each of these areas your priority and new mode of operating, you’ll build an organization that reflects that commitment at every level.

Conclusion

“Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.”  – Attributed to Peter Drucker

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

The impact you have as a leader, the teams you build, your financial aspirations, the legacy you leave… They’re all real rewards, and they’re absolutely achievable. But none of them will come to you if you aren’t willing to make the right investments.

Far too many leaders don’t figure this out until it’s too late. They enjoy the title while avoiding the burdens until the debt has compounded beyond the point of recovery.

But this doesn’t have to be you.

Where, right now, are you failing to meet the burdens of leadership? And what investments must you make to improve?

If you’re serious about taking action, I recommend the following books to help you work through the process:

If this article challenged you to think differently about your role, share it with someone else, and subscribe for additional insights on becoming a more effective leader.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success:

A dozen executives were seated around the conference table. After the typical opening niceties, the CEO cleared her throat and asked, “What are the options to improve our gross margins by at least 20 percent?”

A few leaders in the room spoke up, but pointed to the causes: market pressure, talent gaps, lagging execution, a competitor who just made a bold move. They articulated the challenges to the firm’s gross margins clearly and, for the most part, accurately. But that wasn’t the question to be answered.

By the time the conversation concluded, only five of the twelve executives in the room actively proposed solutions and volunteered to lead next steps. Beyond those few, the other attendees either nodded along without offering much unless directly questioned or reiterated the problems and challenges facing the firm.

The meeting concluded with the majority of the leaders saying things like “This was really helpful,” “Great teamwork today,” and “It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.”

Comments like these coming from business leaders make them sound like they’re spectators watching a game rather than players on the field, in the action, trying to win.

This is a common, highly unproductive dynamic on senior teams.

There are two types of people on most leadership teams at high-growth firms: those who actively drive the business forward, and those who seem along for the ride – the passengers. Most CEOs assume each of their key seats is occupied by a driver. In my experience, they’re often wrong, and it costs them dearly—in frustration, in lost productivity, and in a culture that tolerates passivity.

Your organization’s success depends on an executive team of drivers, not passengers.

The Driver vs. Passenger Dynamic

At any given moment, every person in a company occupies one of two roles: driver or passenger.

A Driver is wired to act. They don’t wait to be told what to do; they see it and take action. When a problem surfaces, they instinctively bring solutions to the table. They follow through on their commitments and push the organization forward even when it’s uncomfortable. In meetings, they’re engaged, full of productive ideas, decisive, and biased toward taking action.

A Passenger, on the other hand, occupies their seat but doesn’t actively operate the vehicle. They’re present, often pleasant, and reasonably competent at naming what’s wrong. They’re skilled at appearing engaged: nodding along, asking the occasional question, and expressing enthusiasm for other people’s ideas without volunteering to carry some of the weight. They’re biased to be reactive rather than proactive, and when it comes time to step up, they typically step back.

Here’s a real-world example of how these different roles play out:

A driver who has accountability for an at-risk customer, doesn’t wait to be told to act. He schedules a call with the client, shows up prepared with questions and ideas, and comes back to his team with three concrete options and a recommendation of which make the most sense to pursue.

A passenger in the same situation, mentions the customer’s order volume has been flat and that they’re “difficult to deal with” during a meeting. When pressed, he might agree to “keep an eye on it” without ever acknowledging it’s his problem to solve.

The differences here have nothing to do with intelligence, capability, training, or tenure. It’s how each individual is wired to respond when the path forward requires them to step up and take ownership—particularly when something feels uncomfortable or challenging to them.

The Passenger Tax

On the surface, having passengers in leadership roles might not feel like an existential threat to your business. But tolerating this dynamic creates a heavy tax that affects organizations on multiple levels.

The most obvious cost is work distribution. On every team with a mix of drivers and passengers, a small number of people–the drivers–routinely do a massively disproportionate share of the work. They absorb what the passengers avoid and, over time, this becomes normalized. Teams begin to reorganize themselves around who can be counted on, which–surprise!–are the drivers.

Article content

Don’t fool yourself into thinking they don’t notice. It’s painfully clear to every driver who’s contributing and who isn’t, and while they may not say it directly, it wears on them—not just because of the workload, but because of what it says about the team leader’s standards, leadership, and consideration for people. Never forget that your most capable people have other options and can and do vote with their feet.

But perhaps the most damaging impact is the multiplication effect in organizations where passengers become normalized. Simply put, passenger behavior breeds more passenger behavior. When teams see leaders operating without accountability, without proactivity, and without initiative, they follow. Passivity, when tolerated, becomes expected–from the top all the way down.

None of these costs are compatible with a healthy culture and sustainable growth. Scaling a business demands relentless positive momentum, and when passengers occupy key seats, there are fewer people driving the firm forward.

How Passengers Hide in Plain Sight

Given the stakes, it’s surprising that many leaders fail to see this dynamic until it’s created full-blown toxicity on the team and undermines execution. Here’s why: passengers can be difficult to identify.

When two people “collaborate” on something, it can be genuinely hard to tell from the outside whether one of them is driving and the other is along for the ride. Passengers often contribute just enough to maintain the appearance of engagement via a thoughtful comment here and a reasonable question there. They are rarely people who visibly drop the ball because they carry so few. Instead, they’re far more likely to be standing nearby when someone else picks one up.

The language patterns of passengers provide particularly effective camouflage. Remember the chorus of noncommittal comments after the leadership meeting in the opening story? Passive communication like this can take a myriad of forms:

  • “That’s a great point.”
  • “We need to think carefully about this.”
  • “Glad to be involved in this.”
  • “I’ll defer to the team on this one.”
  • “Happy to help however I can.”

None of these statements is inherently wrong and, on the surface, they seem both collaborative and participatory. But none create value or include a commitment to act—and that’s the crux of the issue.

Beyond the rosey, obfuscating language, it’s worth noting that passengers are often tough to spot because “driver” and “passenger” aren’t fixed identities. Leaders can be drivers in some domains and passengers in others. This pattern tends to correlate strongly with one’s comfort zones; a leader is more likely to exhibit passenger behavior when they feel uncertain, fearful, or out of their depth. For example, a leader might drive and excel in building client relationships but show up as a passenger to avoid providing direct feedback to someone on their team.

This raises a critical question: if the passenger-driver dynamic is context-dependent, can people who are passengers learn how to become drivers?

Making the Shift

My answer, based on more than two decades of coaching executive leaders and teams through exactly this challenge, is yes. Passengers can become drivers. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times—my role as a coach is often to help my clients identify areas where they’re behaving like passengers and to foster driver behaviors instead.

This doesn’t just happen, however. It requires direct intervention and the passenger’s willingness to sit with genuine discomfort and do the work of change. But with enough discipline, it’s certainly possible to make the transition. Here’s how:

Step 1: Identify your passengers.

Don’t rely on charisma or charm. Take an honest look at your leaders and how they operate, both in the short term and with respect to longer-term initiatives. For each person on your team, ask yourself:

  • Do they follow through on their commitments?
  • Do they surface problems along with proposed solutions, or do they only surface problems?
  • Do they tell me what they’ve done, or do they wait to be told to act?
  • Do they carry their fair share of the team’s collective burden, or are they consistently lighter-loaded than their role demands?

These answers will point you toward your passengers. Pay close enough attention, and they’ll also point you toward specific zones where otherwise-capable leaders have discreetly checked out.

Step 2: Set clear expectations.

Vague expectations produce vague behaviors. If you want drivers, you have to be explicit about what driving looks like in each leadership seat—for your CFO, your VP of Operations, your sales leader–everyone. What accountability and initiative look like is often role-specific and needs to be communicated clearly rather than assumed.

Step 3: Set non-negotiable behavior standards.

Starting today, driver behavior is no longer a nice-to-have in your organization. Make that explicit—name the consequences of passivity and mean it. Do the same for driver behavior: make it unmistakably clear that initiative, accountability, and follow-through are recognized and rewarded.

Step 4: Sharpen driver behaviors in individual areas.

For each leader operating as a passenger in a specific domain, name it, target it, and improve it through ongoing feedback, coaching, and course-correction. This might mean stretching them into situations where avoidance becomes untenable. It will certainly mean establishing accountability within their role and for the process of transitioning to driver. For some on your team, you might consider engaging an outside professional to coach and develop them. Meaningful progress rarely happens without an external impetus, because the comfort of their passivity is precisely the problem you’re trying to overcome.

When you commit to this process, some of your leaders will surprise you in a good way. They may have drifted into passive patterns without noticing, and will step up when you clarify your expectations and provide them support. Others will struggle but improve incrementally. And, inevitably, others will make it clear through their ongoing actions that they’re either not willing or  not able to make the shift.

For those in that last group, the honest conclusion is that they’re in the wrong role. Keeping them there won’t serve them, your team, or your organization. The kindest and most professional thing you can do in this situation is to transition them out, freeing up the seat for someone who will drive.

Building a Culture of Drivers

Remember the multiplication effect I described earlier? It cuts both ways. Just as passenger behavior breeds passivity, driver behavior—when it’s recognized and rewarded—breeds more driving.

But just like turning passengers into drivers, building a driver-first culture isn’t a one-and-done initiative. It’s a process that must be sustained over time, beginning with the following fundamentals:

  • Start at the top. Nothing undermines a driver culture faster than executives who are exempt from the standard they establish for others. If passenger behavior exists in senior leadership, address it visibly and unequivocally.
  • Hire for it. Evaluate driver tendencies explicitly when filling leadership roles. Behavioral interview questions, reference conversations, and even how a candidate engages in the hiring process itself will tell you a great deal.
  • Build accountability into how you run the business. Meeting structures, ongoing performance conversations, and decision-making processes should all make passivity visible and difficult to maintain. (For more on making faster, better decisions, read my article on Decision Velocity here.)
  • Reward driver behavior publicly and specifically. Call it out when you see it. Make it clear what you’re celebrating and why. Done consistently, this sends a clear message about what your organization values and expects.
  • Extinguish passenger behavior. Deliver timely, direct 1-on-1 feedback and clarify your expectations around driver behavior when you observe passenger behavior.

Finally, and most importantly, lead by example. This is non-negotiable. If you’re asking others to be drivers, you have to be visibly, unambiguously driving—especially in the areas where it’s hardest for you. Because your team is watching, all the time, and they learn far more from the behaviors you model than from the words you speak.

The Choice in Front of You

“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” — Attributed to Michael Jordan

Having a seat at the leadership table is not the same as leading. These two things are frequently confused at great cost. Although a title may confer authority, it does not automatically confer the drive, initiative, or accountability that leadership demands.

Passengers in leadership seats cause disproportionately concentrated work, eroded morale, sluggish execution, and a contaminated company culture. Drivers, on the other hand, create momentum. Drivers raise the collective standard and make everyone around them better. Learn to spot the difference, and to build a culture of drivers within your organization, and you’ll be amazed at how much faster and further your business can go.

Here’s my challenge: take an inventory of your leadership team. Not a polite one—an honest one. Identify your passengers. Then take active steps I’ve outlined above to close the gap, one way or another.

Don’t become a passenger yourself! Take action to build a culture of drivers on your team and throughout your firm.

If you found this article illuminating, share it with someone else, and subscribe for more insights that will challenge you to become a more effective leader.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success:

The CEO of a B2B services firm thought she had a reasonable approach to decision-making by meticulously gathering all available data before every major decision. So when her team needed her to approve a pricing change—a decision that would affect client relationships and revenue projections—naturally, she took her time.

Six weeks, to be exact.

“I just need one more data point,” became her refrain to an increasingly frustrated team.

While she deliberated, the firm’s competitors continued to move. Her sales team slowed their client interactions to a crawl, effectively paralyzed while they waited for her decision. But the real damage was invisible and far more costly than the pricing change itself.

The leadership team began defaulting to “Let’s wait for her call” on everything. Meanwhile, her indecisiveness trickled down to department heads and project managers, who became hesitant to make their own decisions and began building decision delay buffers into their project timelines.

Without realizing it, this well-intentioned CEO had trained 200+ people to believe that decisions were made very slowly at the firm.

To the CEO’s credit, when she uncovered this uncomfortable and somewhat embarrassing reality, she acted without hesitation and implemented a 72-hour deadline for any decision that could be reversed or adjusted. That simple change streamlined decision-making across the firm, unlocked execution, and eliminated bottlenecks that had slowed things previously.

This story illustrates a repeating pattern I’ve observed and highlights the power of decision velocity: the speed at which an organization identifies, deliberates, and makes good decisions. This often-overlooked element can be the difference between organizational momentum and virtual paralysis.

Sustained success in any worthy endeavor requires both quality and speed in decision-making, and there are systemic ways you can improve both.

The Hidden Costs of Slow Decisions

Most leaders tend to obsess over decision quality, and rightfully so. Bad calls can be expensive, embarrassing, sometimes irreversible, and even career limiting. But this emphasis ignores the variable of speed and how much damage slow decisions can create, even if they’re right.

Your customers, suppliers, and competition generally don’t wait for you to make the “perfect” decision. While you deliberate, competitors capture market share, critical suppliers shift loyalties, and customers find other solutions for their needs.

Looking inward, let’s also consider what happens to organizational momentum when decisions move like molasses: Slow decisions breed missed opportunities which tend to decrease confidence among managers. This, in turn, leads to even slower, systemic, more cautious decision-making. These effects ripple downstream predictably, delaying department-level decisions and slowing operations.

Meanwhile, your best people become frustrated and question whether they’re in the right place. High performers don’t linger in organizations that move at the speed of consensus; they migrate toward leaders who can process information, make decisions, and quickly commit to a clear path forward.

Perhaps the most damaging consequence of all, however, is what psychologists call learned helplessness. When an organization repeatedly experiences decision delays, people stop taking initiative. They learn that bold moves aren’t rewarded, it’s safer to wait than to act, and certainty is valued more than progress. Although this change doesn’t happen overnight, once it takes hold, it can be extremely difficult to reverse.

Decision-Making Traps Steal Your Momentum

Although there are a number of decision-making habits that sabotage decision velocity, most leaders don’t see the patterns, making them quite insidious as they become invisible constraints on the organization’s performance. (It’s also why finding a coach, peer group, or mentor can be critical to understanding your own leadership habits).

Here are some of the most common—and hard to spot—momentum-stealing decision behaviors:

Consensus Addiction: This is what happens when you mistake collaboration for leadership and seek unanimous buy-in before you’re willing to commit to something. Leaders fall into this trap because shared decision-making feels safer; if a choice goes wrong, at least everyone was involved in making it. The problem is that consensus diffuses accountability and prevents you from making bold moves when they’re warranted.

Note that consensus is not the same as consultation. Consultation involves gathering input from key individuals, then making the decision as the leader. Consensus-seeking, on the other hand, means everyone gets a vote, which typically produces watered-down choices that offend no one but inspire few.

Goldilocks Data Syndrome: The B2B CEO in the opening story is a perfect example of what happens when you spend too long waiting for “just the right amount” of information. The truth is that you’ll rarely feel you have enough data to decide with 100% certainty, and there comes a point where additional data only leads to analysis paralysis.

Procrastination Disguised as Caution: Leaders caught in this pattern habitually delay their decisions. They tell themselves they’re being careful and responsible, but in my experience, they’re really trying to protect their ego, which they wind up prioritizing over organizational results. This sends a clear message to teams over time and creates an organization-wide aversion to risk and innovation.

Over-Involvement of the Wrong People: It is shockingly easy to solicit decision input from “ghost stakeholders” (those with opinions who aren’t accountable for results) or from people who lack what Ray Dalio calls “believability” (the qualifications and relevant real-world experience to contribute meaningfully). These individuals aren’t bad actors, but when you involve them in a decision, it dilutes true expertise with uninformed input and can create lots of static noise, clouding the real issues and slowing you down.

Carrying Zombie Decisions: Zombie decisions are past choices that haven’t been revisited or retired, even after they’ve outlived their usefulness. These decisions persist because leaders are reluctant to abandon something they’ve already invested in and worry that changing course might make them look wrong or weak. But sustaining the ongoing consequences of outdated decisions drains resources that should be allocated elsewhere.

I once worked with the CEO of a technology firm who fell victim to several of these traps simultaneously. When hiring a new VP, he insisted that every functional leader weigh in on the decision. His stated reason was to ensure all voices were heard, but his real motivation was his fear of appearing autocratic or being responsible for making a bad hire.

The hiring process spanned 90 days and 14 separate interviews. While he struggled to get everyone’s blessing, two top candidates accepted other offers. They were stalled until the CEO finally decided to limit the decision to himself and the hiring manager. Lo and behold, they had a solid hire in the seat within three weeks, but the lost momentum had cost them well over 3-months time and two top-tier candidates.

A Framework for Faster, Better Decisions

Here’s what leaders can do to improve both decision velocity and quality.

Clarity throughout the decision process is critical: Ambiguous, undefined decisions consume enormous time and mental energy because you’re trying to make a decision while simultaneously trying to decide what you’re deciding! When you create clarity around the decision-making process first, you’ll reduce the cognitive load and, in turn, boost velocity.

The following framework eliminates the confusion of ambiguity and accelerates high-quality decision-making. (You’ll find more clarity-building resources in my book Activators and on my website.) Follow these steps whenever you face a consequential decision to cut through the confusion and make it easier to move forward.

1. Identify the Decision You’re Making. Most “decisions” are actually multiple decisions bundled together, which creates confusion and choice paralysis. The workaround is to break complex issues into binary or multiple-decision formats. Are you deciding whether to launch the product, or are you deciding when to launch it? Are you choosing a new vendor, or are you deciding whether to change vendors in the first place? The more specific the decision, the faster it will move.

2. Assign a Single Point of Accountability. Committees don’t make decisions — people do. One individual must be accountable to make the choice and for the results. Define their authority boundaries clearly, including budget limits, timeline constraints, and approval requirements. If necessary, designate a backup decision-maker so momentum doesn’t stop when someone is unavailable.

3. Establish Criteria Defining a Good Decision Before You Analyze Options. What does success look like, and how will you measure it? What’s your risk tolerance? What trade-offs are you willing to make between speed and perfection, cost and quality, short-term pain and long-term gain? Defining these criteria upfront prevents decisions from becoming moving targets.

4. Set a Deadline. Include an information cutoff date — the point when you will stop gathering data and make the decision — to avoid falling into the Goldilocks trap. For complex decisions, build in specific review checkpoints, but don’t let these become opportunities for endless revision. Setting a hard deadline creates healthy pressure that forces prioritization of the most important data. This is the step where you’ll actually make the decision!

5. Decide How and When the Decision will be Enacted. Don’t even think about this step before you’ve completed steps 1–4! Many leaders jump ahead to implementation while still making the decision, creating more complexity and frustrating delays. In order to decide with clarity, you must separate the decision itself from how you’ll act on it once you’ve made it. Remember, deciding now doesn’t mean acting now. You can commit to a direction without having every implementation detail figured out — and many implementation challenges become clearer once you’ve committed to a path.

Throughout this process, remember to keep your long-term objectives in mind. As you’re analyzing your options, ask yourself: “Does this choice move us closer to our long-term goals?” Whether that’s a BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal) or a 3HAG (3-year highly achievable goal), use your ultimate destination as a filter to eliminate options that don’t serve you.

Additional Tools to Accelerate Decision Velocity

Although this framework removes the psychological hurdles from decision-making, you still need practical tools to operationalize it, both individually and at scale. The following systems will help you make faster decisions consistently—and, just as importantly, integrate them into your existing processes without overhauling how your organization operates.

Time-Boxing: Give each choice a deadline the moment you identify it. This creates accountability and prevents decisions from aging indefinitely.

Ownership Tracking: Document who owns each pending decision and who needs to be informed after the choice is made. This reinforces single-point accountability and eliminates back-and-forth.

Decision hygiene: Schedule time to audit past decisions. (I recommend doing this quarterly.) Determine which no longer serve your strategy and course-correct to avoid zombie decisions. Conduct post-mortems on key decisions to reflect on the process, the decision, and the outcomes to learn and continually improve your team’s decision processing.

Pre-Mortems: Before acting on any major decision, think through the worst-case scenario. Brainstorm the most likely reasons it might go wrong, then build safeguards against those failure modes to strengthen your implementation plan.

Decision Logs: Maintain a running list of decisions that have already been made, capturing the decision-maker’s rationale at the time. Review your list periodically to identify bottlenecks, patterns, and learning opportunities. This will also help keep your team from relitigating the same issues over and over.

Weekly Decision Reviews: Consistent meeting rhythms drive alignment and support accountability, both in planning and execution. Add a standing weekly agenda item to track what choices are coming in the next 30, 60, and 90 days, identify where they’re stuck, and review how previous choices turned out.

Reversible vs. Irreversible Filter: Most decisions you agonize over can be undone if they don’t work out, so try to match your analysis effort to the actual stakes. Amazon uses an excellent framework for this:

  • “Type 1” decisions are irreversible with high stakes. Spend time gathering 80–90% of the available data before deciding.
  • “Type 2” decisions are reversible with lower-stakes. Make them when you have 60% of the available data.

Simple interventions like these often produce the biggest breakthroughs in decision speed and quality. I knew one CEO who was frustrated that his company kept losing market share because competitive responses took too long. He added a single item to his existing executive team meeting agenda that included a deadline for key operational decisions. This forced accountability and within two months, leaders were showing up to meetings with their decisions already made, freeing capacity to focus on implementation.

One final thought: these tools will only work if you do. Time-boxing won’t magically make you decisive. Weekly meetings won’t eliminate your tendency to seek consensus. You have to be willing to examine your own decision-making habits and recognize that, for better or worse, they are the default for your whole organization.

Take Action Now

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.” —Napoleon Bonaparte

The compound effects of your decision velocity—both positive and negative—shape your organization’s culture. When you model hesitation, it replicates throughout the company. When you model decisiveness and clarity, that replicates too.

Most decision delays aren’t information problems. They’re psychological problems, constrained by your willingness to choose a direction and take responsibility for the outcome. The good news? It’s possible to do this without sacrificing the quality of your decisions. Clear decision-making processes, practical tools, and an awareness of the patterns that slow you down can create the foundation for sustained momentum—both organizationally and individually.

Time for action!

Here’s your challenge: Identify an important decision you need to make in the next 30 days. Choose two of these strategies and use them to sharpen your decision-making process. Then pay attention to what happens after you act.

The market doesn’t reward perfect leaders—it rewards those who are decisive and who course-correct quickly. Which will you choose to become?

If this article made you think or act differently, pass it along! And subscribe for more Straight Talk about leadership and business growth.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

As December winds down and executive teams finalize their plans for the coming year, many fail to identify their most existential risk: They’re stuck in what I call The Growth Trap.

It’s not because their goals are too aggressive or because they’re incapable or because their strategy is wrong. They’re stuck because–ironically–the firm’s growth and success has, in and of itself, become the architect of their limitations.

I’ve watched this scenario play out time and again over two decades coaching successful executives. Here’s the pattern: A leader creates and grows a thriving business, hits their stride, and then finds themselves working harder than ever while the business fails to generate an increasing return to justify their efforts. The very growth they’ve fought to achieve becomes their master, continually sapping their time, energy, and sanity while delivering diminishing rewards.

Understanding and escaping The Growth Trap is non-negotiable for growth-minded leaders. Overcoming this single leadership malady often makes the difference between building a firm that fulfills your highest aspirations and operating one that entraps and disappoints you.

Understanding The Growth Trap

The Growth Trap occurs when your business fails to produce returns proportional to its increasing size and resources. Instead of driving better results with less tactical involvement from you, the increasing complexity of scaling the firm demands more from you, both personally and professionally.

Article content

The effects of The Growth Trap are quite painful. Expensive operational inefficiencies arise with scale such that, even as the business generates more revenue, profitability diminishes. Meanwhile, you’re working longer and harder while feeling less in control than you ever have.

Leaders often mistake their circumstances as part of the inherent cost of scaling. They tell themselves, “This is just what it takes,” or “Once we get to the next level, it’ll get easier.” But that’s the trouble with The Growth Trap: It’s systemic, not situational. You’re not dealing with a temporary bottleneck or market challenge; you’re caught in a structural pattern where every step forward requires you to work harder just to maintain your current position. The energy you need to advance increases while your capacity to sustain that energy decreases. It’s maddening and frustrating!

Signs You’re Caught in The Growth Trap

The Growth Trap never announces itself clearly. Instead, it manifests through a gradual erosion of organizational effectiveness that most leaders attribute to external factors rather than internal structural issues. That’s why, before dismissing this as someone else’s problem, you need to be brutally honest with yourself about your current reality. Look closely enough, and you may be surprised by how many of the following telltale patterns exist within your business.

Cycles of progress and setbacks. Your business runs with a seemingly endless cycle of hopeful progress followed by setbacks. It feels like a frustrating vicious cycle – you and your team take 3 steps forward and then 2-3 steps back again. It’s like you’re spinning too many plates and it’s only a matter of time before they start to fall when you’re too exhausted to keep them all going. This is a classic symptom of underlying issues that growth has exposed but not addressed.

Too many competing priorities. You’re managing an increasing number of critical priorities that all seem to require your direct attention. It feels like a losing game of “whack-a-mole.” When you focus on sales, operations suffers. When you address operational issues, client relationships deteriorate. And more. The business has clearly grown beyond your capacity to manage the critical functions, yet all of the know-how hasn’t fully transferred to others.

Gaps between knowledge and execution. Your strategy is sound, but execution is falling short of expectations. Your team nods in agreement during meetings, then delivers results that miss the mark. Knowledge isn’t the problem, as you likely already know what needs to happen; the problem is the organizational capacity to translate that knowledge into right action and more predictable results.

Vanity growth vs. reality. Perhaps the most insidious symptom is the feeling that your business is becoming increasingly unmanageable. Your revenue might be higher now, but your margins have shrunk. You might have more employees than ever, but you feel more isolated, burned out, and overworked. From the outside, your company appears a shining success, but you’re questioning that and wondering if it’s all worth the cost.

Although experiencing one of these challenges on occasion isn’t a five-alarm fire, the real danger escalates when any of these conditions become your normal operating mode. This is the true sign of underlying structural problems that require systemic intervention. The first step is to understand exactly what’s causing them.

Why You’re Stuck

There are five root causes of The Growth Trap:

1. Increasing Complexity; Decreasing Alignment

Linear growth yields exponential complexity: More products, more clients, more employees, more processes, more decisions. Increasing complexity far outpaces the actual growth rate of your firm.

That said, the real issue isn’t the complexity itself, but the misalignment it creates.

For example, when your organization was smaller, everyone could see how their work connected to results. Communication happened naturally, and decisions were made quickly with full context. But as you grow, this naturally tight alignment disappears. Different teams develop their own priorities, and information becomes filtered and distorted as it moves through new layers. Individuals might make reasonable decisions based on this information, but because the information is incomplete, they’re creating poor outcomes at a collective level.

2. Lousy People Decisions

Your people represent one of your largest expenses, yet most organizations treat staffing decisions—hiring, promotion, role assignment, and team composition—like amateurs. You might have a few rounds of interviews and perhaps use some assessments, but ultimately, it’s someone’s gut call.

This approach becomes devastating as growth demands more frequent people decisions. Here’s the thing: poor hiring compounds exponentially. A mediocre performer in a key role doesn’t just underperform; they make the people around them less effective. They require more management attention, create bottlenecks, and lower the performance standard for everyone else. In the process, they’re slowing growth, hurting engagement, and burning through resources. And when the underperformer or cultural misfit is a manager, the damage is at least 10X worse!

The core problem here isn’t the occasional mishire; rather, it’s the absence of systematic tools to assess the soft skills, values fit, and capabilities that drive performance and support the culture you’ve built.

3. Increasing Competition, Decreasing Margins

As you scale, your growth attracts the attention of more competitors. Meanwhile, your longstanding clients seek more and more value, pushing you for lower prices, more services, or faster delivery—and occasionally even demanding all three simultaneously!

This creates a profitability squeeze from two different fronts. Rival firms can undercut your pricing because they haven’t invested in the infrastructure and people that made your growth possible. They’re courting your clients, who will begin expecting the same or better offerings at discounted rates.

This margin pressure is particularly dangerous because it often coincides with increased operational complexity. Your costs may have grown to manage the complexity, but your pricing power seems to have diminished. You’re caught between clients who want more value and operations that cost more.

4. Cash Flow Constraints

Growth won’t happen without cash in the same manner that life can’t happen without oxygen. Every expansion decision (new inventory, additional staff, upgraded systems, etc.) requires an investment before generating a return. This is where your Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC)—the elapsed time from when your business spends a dollar until it collects it back as revenue plus some profit—becomes a critical constraint.

Many profitable businesses fail because they can’t properly fund their growth. They’re caught in a downward spiral between the cash required to serve existing clients and the investment needed to capture new opportunities. These constraints reduce strategic flexibility and force short-term decision-making. You end up chasing quick revenue over sustainable profits, deferring infrastructure upgrades, and making hiring decisions based on immediate availability and/or affordability rather than long-term fit. Each short-term choice you make accumulates to create long-term problems, themselves requiring even more cash to resolve.

5. Leadership Stagnation

Root causes one through four above contribute to a vicious cycle: The leadership team spends more and more time extinguishing fires with less time and energy to be strategic. You become prisoners of your own success, managing complexity for survival rather than driving profitable growth. Your days are consumed with tactical operations and problem-solving. As a result, you can’t think ahead to the future. Your perspective narrows, your creativity diminishes, and you feel exhausted most of the time.

You and your team must grow for your business to grow. Failing to acknowledge and act on this condemns you to insular thinking, less innovation, and an inability to react to competitive and environmental threats. As a result, your team spends most of its time stuck in the past at the expense of your future. All strengths and weaknesses in your organization can be traced directly back to the leadership team and your levels of trust, competence, discipline, alignment, and respect – each of which requires continual care, planning, and development.

Steps to Escape The Growth Trap

Each of the five root causes rarely exist independently. This is why it’s almost impossible to escape The Growth Trap with piecemeal solutions or halfhearted fixes. The permanent, scalable solution demands coordinated action across all five areas.

Leadership Development Must Become a Strategic Priority

Breaking free of the Growth Trap always begins with leadership because an organization’s sustainable growth rate cannot exceed the personal growth rate of the people running it. You MUST continually learn, grow, and improve as a leader for your business to successfully scale. Get started by establishing rhythms and systems that create space for learning and strategic thinking, rather than hoping it happens naturally.

You can do this by:

  • Implementing monthly business planning sessions focused on future opportunities, not current problems.
  • Holding quarterly leadership team retreats to tackle people issues, to make space for strategic thinking, and to learn and improve as leaders.
  • Identifying clear and specific outcomes for every leadership role in the firm.
  • Creating individual development plans for each leader built around who they must become to achieve future success.

The goal of this is to continually develop leadership effectiveness to outpace the growing complexity of your firm. As Marshall Goldsmith said in the title of his aptly named book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There,” if you’re not willing to put in the work to develop yourself and your team, odds are you’re never going to get what you want most.

Address the Other Root Causes

While leadership development is foundational, it’s not a “magic bullet” fix. As you’re improving your leadership capabilities, you’ll need to prioritize and resolve other problematic patterns affecting your finances, resources, and operations.

Start by assessing which of the first four root causes is most active in your business. Rank them from 1–4 based on the damaging impact each is exerting on your business. This will give you direction on which to prioritize first. Here are several of the most common areas requiring attention and how to get started:

Organizational Misalignment:

  • Assign a single point of accountability for every critical business outcome.
  • Create clear decision rights that eliminate approval bottlenecks.
  • Establish regular cross-departmental communication rhythms.
  • Implement systematic conflict resolution processes.
  • Design workflow processes that promote collaboration and more predictable outcomes.

People Problems:

  • Create interview processes that objectively evaluate soft skills, cultural fit, and capabilities, not just technical proficiency.
  • Establish objective promotion criteria.
  • Implement systematic onboarding for new staff, including integration into your culture.
  • Track hiring success rates and continuously refine your process.
  • Implement a regular talent assessment process to ensure leaders are always talking about how to coach, develop, and engage people.

Competition and Profitability Erosion:

  • Create accountability systems to ensure consistent quality.
  • Establish leadership practices to strengthen long-term client relationships.
  • Make disciplined decisions about which clients and projects to pursue.
  • Establish clear criteria for saying “no” to low-margin business.

Cash Flow Constraints:

  • Calculate your Cash Conversion Cycle and identify the biggest opportunities to shorten the cycle time.
  • Develop organizational awareness of how day-to-day decisions impact cash flow.
  • Create systematic decision-making processes for major cash expenditures.
  • Build discipline and accountability around collections and receivables.

You don’t get stuck in The Growth Trap overnight, and you won’t break free overnight, either. Although it takes sustained effort and discipline to overcome, the alternative is far more painful as you’ll remain stuck in patterns that grow more expensive and more exhausting over time.

Start with leadership development and one other high-impact root cause, then expand your focus as you build momentum. Over time, you’ll feel more energized and productive as growth begins generating the results you’ve always wanted.

Make Growth Work for You, Not Against You

“You are not stuck. You’re just committed to a certain pattern of behaviour because it helped you in the past. Now it’s time to upgrade.”    – Emily Maroutian

Your firm’s growth should make your life better, not worse.

But that’s only possible when you stop battling complexity with tactical solutions and start building leadership and organizational capability instead.

Leaders who successfully navigate growth understand this. They recognize the business practices that built their success must continually evolve as the business scales. They actively develop new capabilities and habits in themselves and in their team which, more than anything, is the key to scaling sustainably.

The Growth Trap is caused by a predictable set of patterns you can recognize, understand, and overcome. The only variable is you.

Found this article useful? Share it! And subscribe for more Straight Talk about leadership and business growth.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

Every leadership team I coach has at least one: a product line, a long-time team member, and/or a legacy client everyone knows isn’t working… but no one wants to touch. The specifics vary, but the pattern doesn’t:

Something or someone once valuable in the past is now slowing the firm’s progress, yet no one is willing to act.

I understand these decisions can be difficult, often involving an uncomfortable admission that something—or someone—you once valued and may still be loyal to, has become a liability. It’s easier to rationalize one more quarter, one more year, or one more workaround than to face what needs to happen. But your business can’t achieve its potential by continuing to operate as if nothing has changed as you’ve grown.

In his book, Necessary Endings, Henry Cloud writes, “Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.”

Many leaders miss this completely. They interpret these moments as painful failures rather than what they are: necessary acts of stewardship.

The sustained growth of any organization demands honesty over sentimentality. It requires leaders to acknowledge the reality of what protecting the past costs, to understand what they’re holding onto and why, and to take the actions needed to clear the path forward.

The Hidden Cost of Protecting the Past

We humans are fantastic at justifying our loyalty to the past. In a business context, leaders often bend over backwards to explain away an underperformer or protect a failing business line, insisting there’s hidden value or brushing off others’ concerns altogether. Although these justifications might feel reasonable in the moment, they mask the real damage being done across three dimensions:

Financial: Your low-margin product line is being subsidized by other, more profitable work. The veteran employee making $150k annually while producing $80k of value represents a $70k “loss” when, in fact, they should be producing upwards of $300k in value for the firm (that’s a $220k annual swing in the expected return on those salary dollars!). Every resource tied up protecting or working around your legacy assets is a resource you can’t invest in growth.

Cultural: If you’re protecting underperformers, cultural misfits, or toxic clients, you’re sending an unmistakable message to your staff: “The accommodation of one or two people matters more than the welfare of everyone else.” Your high performers will see it first, but everyone will resent it, costing you dearly over time.

Strategic: When you cling to the past, initiatives stall and execution slows. Your legacy offerings could be positioning you as yesterday’s solution in a market that’s already moved on. Your leadership credibility suffers as the team watches you prioritize the comfort of what you know over the discomfort of needed change.

If you want your company to grow, you have to stop defending what no longer works.

Five Areas Every Leader Should Reevaluate

Every scaling company accumulates baggage—relationships, offerings, practices, and yes, people that made sense at an earlier stage but no longer serve the business. The challenge is that these obstacles hide behind loyalty, familiarity, emotional entanglement, and the complexity of unwinding them. Many even disguise themselves as assets when they’re actually liabilities—so you’re not just tolerating dead weight, you are actively defending it.

Here are five areas where these legacy impediments to profitable growth often lie, and the questions you should ask to help expose them.

People: The Loyal but Limiting Veteran

These are individuals who were once indispensable, but have been eclipsed by the firm’s evolution. They aren’t bad employees and they’re certainly not bad people; they’ve often been around for years and have built strong relationships with others at the company (including you). But the value these individuals create no longer justifies the expense of carrying them.

I’ve encountered teams who have spent years building elaborate workarounds to accommodate these individuals’ limitations. As hard as it is to let them go, it’s only after you finally say goodbye that you’ll realize how draining and costly the relationship had become. In contrast, I’ve also seen beautifully orchestrated transitions where people were moved into a role that better fit their strengths and capabilities. When that works, everyone wins: The person finds work that energizes them, the company gets to apply their strengths where they matter more, and a former liability becomes a value-producing asset.

To diagnose this, ask yourself:

  • If this person applied for their current job today, would we hire them?
  • How much bandwidth are we spending managing around this person’s limitations?

Lines of Business: The Legacy Offering That’s Past Its Prime

Your company’s offerings should evolve as your market, capabilities, and strategic direction evolve. But they don’t always do. Often, product lines that made perfect sense five or ten years ago continue consuming resources long after they’ve stopped serving your current strategy.

One manufacturer I worked with clung to a low-margin product “for the relationships” far too long. When they finally shut it down, their profit jumped 30% in a single quarter—and morale skyrocketed. The team had been frustrated for years watching leadership defend yesterday’s business; all they’d needed was permission to focus on what really mattered.

The most common objection to this, of course, is, “But the product still makes money! What about customers who still want it?”

Here you also have to consider the opportunity cost. What could you build if your resources weren’t locked up in a stale line of business? And what message does it send to your team—and to the market—when you defend legacy revenue instead of innovating and pursuing growth? The question is not whether something is profitable right now; it’s whether it’s the best use of your resources in service of where you’re trying to go.

To diagnose this, ask yourself:

  • If we weren’t already in this business, would we choose to enter it today?
  • What growth opportunities are we saying ‘no’ to because resources are tied up here?
  • Is this business line or product consistent with our future vision for the company?

Clients: The Profitable Parasite

Not every client deserves to be served forever. Some cost more in frustration than they contribute in margin. In fact, you probably already know which clients I’m talking about! Although you (and your team) might fantasize about them leaving, you can’t bring yourself to cut the cord because you fear some form of financial loss. I once helped a B2B services firm make the difficult decision to cut a toxic client. This client had negotiated rates down over the years and churned through countless account managers. Dropping them cost the firm 20% of their revenue upfront—but it saved them 80% in headaches. Within nine months, they’d more than replaced that revenue with three new clients who valued their expertise and paid full, highly-profitable rates.

The decision to drop a problem client carries an understandable fear of financial loss. But here’s what that fear obscures: you cannot attract and serve the right clients when your capacity is consumed serving the wrong ones. The energy, creativity, and bandwidth you reclaim by ending bad-fit relationships create space for better ones.

To diagnose this, ask yourself:

  • If we could replace this client with an ideal client tomorrow, would we?
  • Do our best people enjoy working on this account?
  • What’s the cost of staff turnover due to those who have burned out serving this client?

Partners and Vendors: The Comfortable Constraint

Vendor and partner relationships tend to calcify over time. That friendly supplier who once bent over backward for you may now be quietly holding you back. They know you won’t leave because change is hard and the longer you stay, the harder the transition becomes.

For example, I’ve seen senior leaders hesitate for years to replace long-time Information Technology partners. The relationships were friendly. Comfortable, even. But the service had deteriorated, with slow response times, outdated recommendations, and prices that crept up annually without any improvements in value.

Loyalty is admirable, but complacency is not. The wrong partners consume your resources while invisibly constraining what’s possible. By continuing to work with them, you’re expecting them to enable a version of success they’re not equipped to help you reach. And the irony is when I’ve watched these leaders finally make the switch, they inevitably see their costs decrease while both reliability and value improve dramatically. In hindsight they realized that what felt comfortable cost them far more than some courage ultimately did.

To diagnose this, ask yourself:

  • If we were choosing a _________ (fill in the blank) partner or vendor from scratch today, would we pick this one?
  • Is this relationship assessed on current value or historical value and comfort?
  • How effectively does this partner or vendor support what we’re trying to accomplish? What about three years from now?

Advisors and Peers: Familiar Voices Keeping You Stuck

Advisors, consultants, board members, and even peer groups often outlive their usefulness as you continue to grow.

I once worked with a CEO who realized his long-trusted advisor was still pushing the pre-growth thinking the firm had adopted years before. This advice wasn’t wrong for a struggling startup, but it was misaligned with what an established, scaling company needed. It was a difficult realization to come to, but honoring his mentor’s early-stage contributions included recognizing when it was time to move on.

Similarly, you can outgrow peer groups, forums, and all sorts of other external advisors.

To diagnose this, ask yourself:

  • Are our advisors pushing us, teaching us, and leading us–or helping us maintain our “comfortable” position?
  • How much do we contribute to peers, groups, or forums compared to the value we receive in return?

Breaking Through the Obstacles

As you thoughtfully consider these five areas, you’ll likely find at least one that requires immediate change. The next question is whether you’ll face it and act, or let history and inertia dominate your decision-making.

Knowing intellectually that something is no longer working doesn’t override the emotional resistance that might be blocking you from acting. Until you identify what’s really stopping you—the internal barriers that make inaction feel safer than action—nothing will change.

So let’s briefly explore the four most common barriers I’ve seen keep leaders stuck:

Loyalty: It’s easy to confuse loyalty to a person with loyalty to their role. You can and should respect someone’s past contributions without chaining them to a role that’s no longer a fit for them. I’ve found this is often better both for them and for you.

Fear of disruption: You might think you’re avoiding chaos by maintaining the status quo, but when your team is working around wrong-fit staff, hard-to-please clients, and profit-challenged products, your performing staff are frustrated, and that’s a much more significant longer-term disruption.

Sunk-cost fallacy: You look back on the resources you’ve poured into a problem and hesitate to act because you don’t want it to all be for nothing. But every dollar and hour you’ve invested is already gone. Continuing to press forward, like a gambler on a losing streak, will only dig you a deeper hole. And the first rule of finding yourself in a hole is to stop digging!

Ego: Ending something that isn’t working can feel like admitting you’ve made a mistake. But there’s nothing wrong with admitting that something that once worked is no longer the right fit. If anything, it’s an acknowledgement of your firm’s growth and success!

The irony is that across all of these barriers, the exact thing you’re trying to avoid is already happening: disruption, wasted resources, and talent disengagement compound by the day, steadily sabotaging your firm’s future. To combat this, you need to take action—and to take action, you need to understand that you can acknowledge what was without sabotaging what comes next.

Growth Requires a Reckoning

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” — Peter Drucker

Far too many leaders make today’s decisions based upon yesterday’s loyalties. This isn’t just inefficient; it’s destructive, sabotaging progress and increasing the burden on the entire team.

So here’s your work: Look honestly at your business and identify what or who you’ve been protecting that requires a reckoning. Name it clearly, measure what it’s costing you, and evaluate which of the obstacles have prevented you from acting. Then take the steps necessary to effect change. Do it with respect, but do it.

Because every day you wait, the cost compounds as the distance between where you are and where you could be remains the same.

Found this article useful? Share it! And subscribe for more Straight Talk about leadership and business growth.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

There’s a great reason I refuse to facilitate standalone annual planning sessions: they don’t work.

To be clear, planning sessions CAN BE effective to create a sound plan with clear priorities and crisp accountability. But here’s the problem: the true objective isn’t just to create a plan, but to also successfully execute the plan, advancing the business throughout the ensuing year.

Nobody cares about a great plan. Everyone cares about accomplishment and results!

Yet standalone planning exists to create a great plan and typically leaves execution as an afterthought for the team to figure out.

In early 2025, for the benefit of an organization I care about, I made an exception to my rule and agreed to facilitate a standalone annual planning session. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, I’m reminded I should NEVER make an exception to this rule.

The planning session itself was tremendously successful. We drafted core values for the organization to explicitly define their culture, created a 3-year highly achievable goal (3HAG), and identified their top addressable challenge for 2025, which was broken into two well-defined key initiatives with clear accountability.

All of this was accomplished in one day with the senior leadership team. It was a great day, and they walked out the door with a solid plan.

Now, 10 months later, virtually none of it has been executed.

Although their core value definitions were completed and rolled out to leadership, the president didn’t follow through and complete the rollout organization-wide. She also failed to set an example for reinforcing them over time—including tolerating certain behaviors from team members who violated their now clearly defined values. As a result, there has been no change to the culture this year.

Although some progress was made on one of the two key initiatives for 2025, the president refused to “keep the main thing the main thing,” and neither will produce any value for the organization without being executed or implemented.

This organization continues to operate inefficiently, with unnecessary drama, without clear role accountability or succession, and is at risk of losing dedicated, competent leaders. In short, they’ve failed to advance toward their 3-year objective because they failed to execute on their plan.

This story (and many others just like it) illustrates the fact that a great plan isn’t in any way correlated with attaining the desired results.

Here’s what is: execution rhythms.

Four key rhythms, when combined with a solid plan, have the potential to improve your team’s execution and stack the deck in favor of attaining the outcomes you seek. The following four rhythms will help you do that while also improving your team’s focus, communication, cohesiveness, accountability, and results.

Meeting Rhythms

I want you to picture your heart for a moment: when you’re resting, it beats slowly. When you’re sprinting, it pounds faster. In a healthy organization, meeting rhythms follow a similar pattern. The faster you want to move and grow, the more frequently you need to synchronize.

So what does this look like in practice?

I recommend establishing a set rhythm of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings. Each meeting type plays a specific role in driving execution, and together they create the alignment that separates high-performing teams from those who plan but never achieve.

As a coach, I work alongside my clients in their monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings to provide coaching and ensure these sessions drive meaningful outcomes. But the real power comes from knowing exactly what each meeting should accomplish and maintaining that discipline over time.

Let’s break them down.

Daily huddles are quick stand-up meetings that are among the most powerful tools in your execution arsenal. They serve a single, critical purpose: synchronization.

In a successful daily huddle, everyone on the team shares:

  • What’s happening today
  • Who will be where (and when)
  • Who needs help
  • What obstacles might be approaching

This shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes each day for your team. Get in, get aligned, get out, and you’ll eliminate damaging misalignment and countless hours of unnecessary follow-up throughout the week.

Weekly meetings give your team space to dig deeper. Each week, in place of one daily huddle, set aside an hour to focus on metrics and broader initiatives. Address recent issues that have surfaced, and discuss what needs to happen to hit the month’s objectives. The discussions and debates here matter, so lean into them.

Monthly meetings involve checking the scoreboard and adjusting your game plan. Each month, block 2–4 hours to take a step back, assess performance, and change course as needed.

During these sessions, leaders should:

  • Reinforce priorities to ensure the team is laser focused on what matters most
  • Tune alignment between teams, initiatives, and overall company objectives
  • Collaborate to discuss, debate, and solve problems

Quarterly meetings demand a full day’s session. You’re not gathering for status updates or PowerPoint presentations; you’re having a thoughtful dialogue about progress toward the firm’s major objectives, team alignment, and priorities for the next 90 days. This ensures you maintain traction toward your annual goals.

Annual meetings are where the real heavy lifting happens. Each year, set aside one or two full days to confront hard truths, place big bets, and make honest commitments 1–3 years out. Having the right people in the room for these meetings is essential. Surround yourself with people who will challenge your thinking and help you work through the critical questions that will shape your long-term strategy.

Without disciplined meeting rhythms, even the best plans can deteriorate into good intentions. Master these cadences and you’ll build the foundation that every high-performing organization requires: aligned teams, precision execution, and more predictable, sustainable growth.

Learning Rhythms

Although meeting rhythms create accountability, they’re not enough on their own. Why? Because you can’t execute next year’s plan with last year’s capabilities. This brings me to a truth I’ve never seen violated: your business’s growth rate will never exceed the personal growth rate of the people running it. Ever.

When you commit to an annual plan that requires change—and every meaningful plan does—you’re also (often unknowingly) committing to the fact that you and your team must change. New initiatives and new capabilities require new skills. Process improvements require new habits. Strategic shifts require new ways of thinking. Marshall Goldsmith points this out in the title of his classic leadership book: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.

Learning rhythms put discipline around this reality. They’re structured, recurring opportunities for you and your team to build new capabilities together. And when used well, they transform personal development from a nice-to-have into a systematic expectation across your firm.

Learning rhythms can take a variety of forms. In my coaching model, we have a quarterly learning rhythm built into our work: a “lunch and learn” session during our planning day where we dig into a specific topic that will stretch the team’s thinking. Most of my clients also commit to reading and discussing one business book per month. (Some of their recent selections have included Onboarded by Brad Giles, The AI-Driven Leader by Geoff Woods, and Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara.) These aren’t casual conversations; they’re accountable, deliberate discussions about how to apply new concepts to real challenges the team is facing.

External learning matters, too. Conferences, training programs, retreats, university seminars—these are all ways to bring fresh perspectives and outside expertise into your organization. Set a target number per person, per year, budget for them, and create real accountability around attendance. Make it an expectation, not a nice-to-have.

The principle behind this is simple: leaders must change first in order to lead their firm through change. If leadership development doesn’t stay ahead of a company’s needs, teams become less effective, and both execution and growth suffer.

You simply cannot lead where you haven’t yet gone yourself.

Project Rhythms

Most annual plans identify 2–3 critical initiatives to strategically advance the firm. These priorities deserve more than a passing mention in your weekly meeting or a bullet point on the monthly agenda. They need dedicated meeting rhythms of their own.

How frequently these meetings happen will depend on the pace of work and the number of people involved—and this may shift over time. For instance, for an annual key initiative, you might start by having meetings every other week. As the work progresses and the team builds momentum, you might relax to monthly check-ins. Then, as you approach critical milestones or encounter significant challenges, you may want to ramp back up to weekly or even daily sessions.

Ultimately, the person who’s accountable for the project should be the one who determines this cadence, in collaboration with the person to whom they’re accountable. The goal isn’t to create rigid meeting schedules, it’s to enable continuous course-correction and maintain ongoing, transparent communication.

By implementing project rhythms, you and your team can more easily stay aligned and ensure successful execution of your most critical strategic initiatives.

Process Rhythms

Your firm’s core processes deserve the same discipline as your projects. Each of your 3–5 core processes—whether that’s order origination, design-build, billing and collections, client onboarding, employee development, or others—should have its own communication rhythm.

Here’s why: core processes typically run horizontally across your organization chart. No matter how frequent, departmental meetings cannot capture a single full process, because no one department owns it end-to-end. That’s why each of your core processes needs one person named accountable for its smooth execution, ongoing maintenance, communication rhythm, and continuous improvement.

There’s no doubt you need the discipline of meeting rhythms, learning rhythms, project rhythms, and process rhythms to drive accountability and results. If you can’t commit to them, no amount of planning will ever produce the outcomes you want.

But even when you do commit to and execute all four rhythms, there are two additional ingredients separating teams who achieve from those who go through the motions.

Desire and Willingness

As I mentioned earlier, every worthy plan demands change in order to succeed. You might need to implement new software, launch new products, expand into adjacent markets, or raise quality standards. And every one of these changes also requires individual people (and especially YOU!) to change—how they think, how they act, and the roles they occupy.

This is where most plans fail, because leaders fail to understand the two prerequisites of every change process: desire and willingness.

Desire is the “want to.” Without it, change won’t happen. And I’m not just talking about your desire for change as a leader. Your team and staff need to want it too. Do they see why this matters? Do they believe it’s worth the effort? If you haven’t built genuine desire across your team for the changes your plan requires, you’ll watch people nod in meetings and then do nothing differently.

Willingness is “the doing” of the hard work of change. It’s pushing through discomfort when your instincts tell you to retreat to what’s familiar. It’s learning new skills, breaking old habits, and challenging comfortable beliefs. Leaders often underestimate how much willingness their plans demand (and how quickly it evaporates when obstacles–predictably–appear).

Here’s the dynamic that determines success: desire gets you moving, but in order to succeed, you need both desire and the willingness to keep going when things get difficult. And they will get difficult. When initiatives stall—and you’ll know because deadlines slip, energy fades, and excuses multiply—the root cause is always a deficit of desire, willingness, or both.

So be deliberate about building and maintaining each of these prerequisites within yourself and your team, not just during your annual planning session but throughout the entire year as the real work unfolds.

Conclusion

“Execution is everything. It’s the last 95 percent of the equation.” – Phil Knight

In my two decades coaching successful senior leaders, I’ve seen firsthand that a solid, well-conceived plan in no way guarantees desired results. In fact, there’s almost no correlation between plan quality and business outcomes!

So, as this year comes to a close, stop viewing annual planning as an event where you create a document, check a box, and then move on. Instead, treat it as the starting line of a year-long marathon—one that demands discipline, well-constructed execution rhythms, and a genuine desire and willingness to change.

The choice ahead is simple: commit to these execution disciplines now, or explain next year why, yet again, not much changed.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

There’s a massive difference between your technical expertise—what you know how to do—and the expertise required to build and scale a profitable, enduring organization.

Consider:

  • Just because you’re a great attorney doesn’t mean you’ll be able to grow a successful law firm.
  • Just because you’re a respected builder doesn’t guarantee you’ll create an enduring construction company.
  • Just because you’re a brilliant marketer or sales pro doesn’t ensure you’ll be successful as a senior leader or CEO.
  • Just because you’re an experienced research chemist with an MBA doesn’t imply that you have the ability to scale a pharmaceutical firm.
  • Just because you’re a top-notch shop floor manager, you’re not necessarily going to become an effective operations leader.

Here’s what you and countless other entrepreneurs, managers, and leaders often miss:

Technical expertise is important. But it’s what you wrap around the technical expertise at your firm’s core that creates the ability to turn it into something meaningful at scale.

Here’s an introduction to the five systems you must master beyond your technical know-how to stack the odds in favor of profitably scaling over time.

1. Strategic System

Strategy is a misused and widely misunderstood term. Many leaders think of strategy as setting growth goals, general direction, or even financial targets. They’re wrong.

Strategy isn’t a number, a direction, or a goal. Rather, it’s a thought process designed to clearly articulate the firm’s business model and positioning so that other systems can precisely align to it.

Your business strategy encapsulates how you intend to be successful over time. It’s the thought framework informing decisions, investments, and actions at the core of your enterprise. Accordingly, strategy requires careful consideration and refinement.

One of the hallmarks of effective strategy is clarity regarding what leaders should say “no” to and what they should say “yes” to. Strategy enables clear, focused decision-making. After all, when you’re trying to be too many things to too many people, you’re really not much to anyone.

Within the Strategic System, there are four key tools to hone your focus and help you gain clarity.

The Key Process Flow Map: It’s critical to visualize exactly, step by step, how your firm turns a prospect into a paying customer. This flow chart provides a view of how your departments and teams currently interact; it highlights accountability and makes it easy to see whether each step is performing or underperforming. This tool enables leaders to discover gaps, bottlenecks, and handoff failures they never noticed or never even thought about. Every client I coach is surprised at the insight and value gained from this tool. One even realized they were losing almost half their qualified prospects between initial contact and proposal delivery simply because no one owned the transition!

The Core Customer Tool: This helps identify who you should be serving and, equally important, who you shouldn’t. With these insights, you can identify the customer who is most likely to do business with you for optimal profit and who is likely to share their positive experience with others. When you’re crystal clear on your core customer, including who they are and how they think, every other decision becomes easier.

The Attribution Framework: You need to pinpoint your competitive differentiators—the few things that make your core customers choose you over others. Not the things you hope differentiate you, but the ones that actually do. This requires brutal honesty about what you do differently and/or better than anyone else.

The Activity Fit Map: It’s not enough to claim you’re different; you need systems that prove it by delivering every day. This tool connects your differentiators from the Attribution Framework to specific actions that reinforce them over time.

These tools create a powerful roadmap for every decision, investment, and priority across your firm. Without this clarity, you’ll make more reactive choices that dilute your focus and waste resources.

Once your strategy is in place, it’s time to focus on your firm’s foundation.

2. Cultural System

Your firm’s Cultural System is the foundation for growth. It’s the invisible force that determines whether your people deliver extraordinary results or merely show up.

Many leaders treat culture as an afterthought and unknowingly pay a massive price.

On the other hand, companies with intentionally curated cultures experience less drama, higher employee engagement, and more consistent execution.

There are two leadership tools at the core of a strong Cultural System. They are straightforward but require discipline to properly define and implement.

Core Purpose: This answers the question of why your firm exists beyond making money. It isn’t corporate fluff, it’s what transforms employees into believers. When people understand the meaning and purpose behind their work—the why—their engagement and results soar. I’ve watched average performers transform into exceptional producers when they care more about what they’re doing and connect their daily tasks to something larger than a paycheck.

Core Values: These define the expected behavioral norms for your firm. In other words, how you expect people to show up and act every day. They’re not aspirational statements for your website or office walls; they’re powerful, behavioral decision-making tools that high-performing teams use daily. Hire by them. Fire by them. Promote by them. Like any tool in a workshop, if your values sit on the shelf instead of being actively used every day, they have no impact or importance.

A clearly defined Cultural System supports and strengthens the remaining three systems: People, Execution, and Leadership. Get it wrong or don’t actively use the tools, and everything else becomes exponentially harder.

3. People System

Many leaders overestimate employee performance because they lack objective measures and clear accountability. They rely on gut instincts instead of data and tend to benchmark against their current team rather than what’s actually possible.

The result? They think they have A-players when they’re actually managing B- or C-performers, then wonder why it’s so challenging to scale the business.

Your People System requires five components.

Hiring: There needs to be a scalable system to attract and hire A-players for every role. This means building repeatable processes to identify talent consistently. Most hiring is reactive—you need someone, so you post a job and hope. But A-players don’t apply to generic postings. They’re attracted to opportunities that speak directly to their ambitions. Use the Core Customer Tool from the Strategic System to pinpoint your ideal hire for the roles that are most critical to support your aspirations for growth, then design the hiring system to attract them.

Onboarding: First impressions count. Onboarding sets the trajectory for new hires’ success or failure. It shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought, but rather as a strategic discipline to ensure the stage is set for your newly hired A-players to feel engaged and confident as they rapidly ramp to productivity. My friend Brad Giles wrote the definitive guide on this in his excellent book Onboarded.

Coaching & Growing: It’s important to coach your people for growth, not for results. This means recognizing patterns and delivering crisp feedback that elevates each team member’s capabilities and expands their capacity, not simply telling them what needs to be done. I’ve previously written about coaching for growth and how to develop people to think and execute more autonomously.

Right People in the Right Seats (RPRS): Develop systems, accountability, and discipline to remove underperformers or cultural misfits from your firm. This is especially critical for management! This is where most leaders fail; they tolerate mediocrity because they’re uncomfortable with difficult conversations. That tolerance destroys the culture and limits growth. Design a quarterly or semi-annual employee rating exercise for your executive team to calibrate on what “great” looks like and create accountability for performance and fit.

Retaining — If you’re executing the first four elements of your People System properly, staff retention is rarely an issue. A-players want to work with other A-players in environments that challenge and develop them. Give them that, and retention solves itself. If you have a turnover issue right now, refer back to the first four elements of the People System for a permanent solution.

With the right players, standards, and strategies, let’s look ahead to execution.

4. Execution System

A great strategy without disciplined execution is a waste of time and money.

Your Execution System connects employees’ daily activities to the firm’s long-term, annual, and quarterly objectives, ensuring alignment and that nothing important falls through the cracks.

There are three key elements to your Execution System:

Prioritization: When everything’s a priority, nothing is. I help clients identify their vital objectives—the few things that must happen monthly, quarterly, and annually in order for their business to be successful. Everything else is secondary. This requires saying “no” to good opportunities so you can make space for great ones. Here’s how I guide this process.

Metrics: Are you measuring the right things? And are you sharing relevant data with every employee? Data is only helpful if you know how to use it. You need metrics that predict and drive success, not just report history. Start with a simple dashboard that tracks business performance so your executive team can discuss monthly. Expand from there. If you can’t see it, you can’t improve it.

Meeting Rhythms — Well executed daily huddles, weekly team meetings, monthly meetings, quarterly planning sessions, and annual strategic retreats create indisputable alignment. Each serves a specific purpose in keeping everyone synchronized and accountable. I’ve outlined the complete system here.

Execution rhythms and discipline reduce drama, help you accomplish more, and set you free.

5. Leadership System

Your Leadership System anchors the other four systems and ultimately determines the growth (and success) trajectory of your business.

Here’s why: I’ve never seen a business sustainably grow over time at a rate that exceeds the personal growth rate of the people running it. This is so important, I’ll say it again: YOU must grow so that your business can grow.

Every successful, high-performing leader I’ve coached shares one trait—they never stop growing. They’re already accomplished, but they want to be pushed to continually learn, stretch, and grow. They know that what got them here won’t get them there.

The Leadership System has two elements:

Individual Growth: This requires the continuous expansion of capabilities, perspectives, and capacity. The challenges you’ll face at scale are different from the ones that got you started. Yesterday’s solutions become today’s limitations. How are you and those on your leadership team learning, growing, and improving as individual leaders?

Team Development: The growth of your leadership team as a unit is equally critical. Is everyone able to trust and be vulnerable with one another? How do you debate ideas? How do you make decisions? Do you hold each other accountable? These dynamics determine whether your team multiplies your effectiveness or constrains it. How is your leadership team learning, growing, and improving as a unit?

These elements should be cascaded through the organization over time. Firmwide adoption of the Leadership System helps retain high-performers and facilitates succession over time. As you grow, you need all of the other leaders within your firm to grow as well. This doesn’t happen accidentally.

Conclusion

“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” – Harry S. Truman

You’ve probably established some of these systems—or components—already. If so, that’s good–but don’t be complacent! You’ll need them all to achieve more predictable results and profitably scale over time.

Even then, you’ll need to continually improve and evolve them as you, your leadership team, and your firm continue to grow.

Not sure where to start? The Leadership System is always a good bet and, as always, I’m here to help.

Although your technical expertise got you where you are—and is likely the reason you founded your firm in the first place—these five systems hold the key to scaling to significance.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

Please welcome our new sponsor The Speaker Lab. They teach aspiring speakers how to consistently get booked and paid to speak.

Setting ambitious objectives seems relatively simple. Goal setting is free, it makes you feel productive, and it can often be accomplished in a single afternoon.

Achieving those goals? Well, that’s an entirely different matter.

Objectives most worth pursuing demand far more than good intentions, but all too often even successful leaders underestimate what it will take to bridge the gap between their current situation and a desired future state.

Here’s how I’ve seen this show up time and again: Ambitious new clients enter our team coaching kickoff meeting armed with a list of 10 or more “priorities” for the business, many of which were also “priorities” the previous year. They come to me frustrated that despite all their activity, the business isn’t advancing as quickly as they’d like.

The underlying problem is never a lack of ambition or work ethic. Rather, it’s that they’ve said “yes” to more than they could reasonably accomplish and lack some key skills, resources, and expertise required for success.

Part of my work is to help these leaders understand a reality that most miss: Worthy goals require you to outperform your current capacity. I define capacity as the amount, level, and sophistication of work, decisions, and initiatives you and your team can successfully execute today.

Worthy goals require you to outperform your current capacity.

Think of your current capacity like a container: It has a finite limit. And just as a lobster cannot continue to grow without first shedding its shell, you and your team cannot grow beyond your existing container until–one way or another–you make room for more capacity.

I see leaders miss this all the time as they repeatedly try to squeeze more and more into containers already full to the brim. The results are entirely predictable: Projects stall, people burn out, and nothing important ever seems to fully cross the finish line.

When you create objectives without simultaneously considering your team’s capacity to execute, you stack the deck against successful outcomes.

The Blind Spot that Keeps You Stuck

Here’s what is tricky about capacity constraints: They’re often invisible until it’s too late.

Most leaders I coach initially rationalize their overcommitment. They tell themselves they need to push harder or that the chaos is temporary. But this just compounds the problem rather than solving it. This situation doesn’t happen overnight. You gradually say “yes” to one more thing, initiative, or scope enhancement at a time. Each seems manageable in isolation, but by the time you realize your container is overflowing, you’re already drowning.

Meanwhile, the flurry of activity around you creates an illusion of progress. Your team is busy, meetings are happening, emails are flying. It can feel productive. But when you step back and rigorously assess the meaningful progress you’ve made, the answer is often sobering.

Four Warning Signs You’ve Hit the Limit

The question, of course, then becomes: How do I recognize when we’re exceeding, or about to exceed, our capacity?

Your body and your business will tell you—if you watch for and recognize these four signs:

You have ZERO bandwidth for anything new. When someone brings you an opportunity or a problem, your first reaction is exhaustion rather than curiosity. You’re already running at 110%, and you know it.

You feel like you’re going in circles. You find yourself having the same conversations about the same unfinished initiatives month after month. You feel like you’re running on a treadmill—you’re working hard, but the view never changes.

Real, meaningful results rarely materialize. Your team’s track record over the past several months or year hasn’t been good: Priorities, projects, and initiatives that launched with energy and enthusiasm rarely deliver on their promise.

Even easy things feel increasingly hard. Straightforward team meetings turn into battlegrounds, day-to-day execution generates unexpected drama, and good people start showing resistance to reasonable requests.

These aren’t character flaws or temporary setbacks—they’re capacity signals. And they’re telling you something has to change.

Advertisement

(ADVERTISEMENT)

Two Paths Forward

Once you’ve recognized you’re exceeding your capacity, you have two options: reduce the number of things in your current container or create a bigger container. In reality and of necessity, most leaders do both of these simultaneously.

We’ll begin with the first path, because it’s often the most immediate lever you can pull to accomplish more within the confines of your existing capacity.

Path 1: Reduce the Load

When you’re operating at capacity, the fastest path to meaningful progress is to ruthlessly remove lower-value work so you can focus on what matters most. Here’s how:

Clarify Your Strategy

Effective strategy doesn’t only define what you’ll do, but also critically what you won’t do. Your strategy should be clear enough to make it easy to say “no” to anything that doesn’t fit.

Here’s how to test the clarity of your strategy:

  • Have three different team members explain your strategy to you. If you get three different answers, your strategy isn’t clear enough to guide resource allocation decisions.
  • Review your list of priorities, projects, and initiatives. For each item, complete this sentence: “This directly advances our strategy by…” If you struggle to fill in the blank, you’ve probably found something to pause or cut.

Honor Your Priorities

Leaders who successfully scale understand that every “yes” in business and in life is simultaneously a “no” to at least one other thing. You must be willing to disappoint some people in service of delivering exceptional results to advance the things that matter most. How? Whenever something new comes up, ask, “What are we going to stop doing to make room for us to say ‘yes’ to this?” Normalize trade-off conversations to ensure your main things remain the main things.

It’s also crucial to set limits when priorities are debated and chosen. My coaching clients select ONE overarching annual priority for the business each year. Further, I limit senior leaders to a maximum of two functional priorities per quarter. Although this level of rigor can feel constraining at first, it forces the right, hard choices that ensure things get done. Click here for a deeper dive on the annual prioritization process I use with my coaching clients.

Delegate and Let Go

You’re likely holding onto some decisions and tasks that should belong to others. This isn’t just inefficient—it’s preventing your team from growing while draining your capacity for the work only you can (and should) do.

Conduct an audit to identify where ineffective delegation is limiting your leadership capacity. What are you handling that should be given to others? What decisions are you making that your team should own?

Moving forward, every time you find yourself on the verge of accepting something new to do, ask yourself: “Is this the absolute best use of my time as a leader?” If the answer is no, either refuse it entirely or delegate it. And if you can’t delegate it because you lack the right people or systems, congratulations! You’ve identified the real, underlying problem—and your next priority.

Path 2: Expand Your Capacity

The other path to overcoming capacity constraints is expanding what you and your team can handle—in other words, making your container bigger. There are several ways to do this:

Invest in Development

As you develop your skills and capabilities, you’re able to execute increasingly complex initiatives that would have overwhelmed you in the past. Create a plan for deliberate, consistent self-development: Join a peer group that challenges your thinking, read more, attend relevant learning events, and, for the most immediate impact, consider working with a qualified coach.

Your team requires the same investment. When you develop your people, you’re not just helping them grow—you’re multiplying your firm’s ability to tackle bigger challenges and continue to scale.

Engage External Resources

Imagine that your company needs to upgrade its core software system, but nobody on your team has handled a technology project of this scope before. Here’s what usually happens: Your CFO or Head of IT runs the project and what should take five months stretches to eight (if you’re lucky), budgets explode, frustration mounts, and the existing software is still limiting your ability to operate the business.

There’s a better way.

If it would take your team months or years to acquire the knowledge they need to successfully execute a large initiative, hire an external consultant or domain expert who will get it done properly in a fraction of the time. Be sure to have your team to learn from the consultant to build internal knowledge and capabilities they can use in the future.

Make Strategic Hires

One of my coaching clients recently decided to hire a COO, rather than promoting internally. They understood the importance of hiring knowledge, skills, and capability aligned with where they want to be in five years, not where they are today. The expected return on this investment is astronomically high.

Although your current team may be capable, they likely haven’t ever solved tomorrow’s problems before. Highly accomplished external hires, on the other hand, bring battle-tested experience and will typically grow your capacity faster than any single promotion could. This logic applies everywhere and potentially at every level in your organization.

Choose Your Approach

The most effective leaders don’t choose between the two paths. They pursue both—but they’re strategic about which comes first. The key is matching your approach to your situation, which requires you to be brutally honest about where you stand right now.

First consider your team’s recent track record of executing “on time, on budget, on scope” priorities and major initiatives. If you’re consistently falling short, you’re likely operating beyond your current capacity.

Next, consider where you spend your time, money, and attention right now. Does it align with your strategy? Are all of these things truly most important? If not, you have immediate opportunities to optimize by pausing or eliminating projects. These relatively quick wins create the breathing room you’ll need to invest in longer-term capacity-building.

Finally, consider your expansion options realistically. Do you have the time, commitment, and budget to hire strategically, engage outside experts, or invest in your team’s development right now? These aren’t rhetorical questions—growing your capacity demands real investment, but will also generate outsized returns.

Reflecting on these questions can help you decide where and how to sharpen your focus and expand your capacity. But here’s the non-negotiable part: You must take action on at least one front. If you identify a significant objective and won’t commit to either approach, you’re setting the stage for history to repeat itself in the form of underwhelming outcomes.

The Bottom Line

“You can do anything, but not everything.” — David Allen

Most leaders fight the wrong battle. They keep pushing harder against constraints that won’t budge then wonder why their initiatives stall time and again.

The math is simple: If your objectives exceed your capacity–what you can actually accomplish–something has to change. There are two options: Focus your efforts more narrowly or add capabilities to handle more.

However you choose to proceed, begin with an honest assessment of where you are today then make a commitment to real change, not just to good intentions. Leaders who successfully scale their firms don’t delay or hope their way to bigger results—they engineer them.

You can too.

==========================================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

There’s an uncomfortable moment in every leader’s journey that, for the growth-minded, shifts their perspective and improves their potential.

It happens when they realize their definition of excellence falls far short of what’s possible and expected beyond the confines of their firm.

The brutal truth is that many leaders I’ve known—including CEOs—wouldn’t even be considered “interview-worthy” by the highest-performing executives I’ve coached. Indeed, some of the people you consider to be “A” players on your team, including you, would likely be considered “C” players on someone else’s team

This point isn’t intended to diminish your accomplishments; it’s meant to illuminate a critical reality that separates great leaders from the majority.

The highest performers ask themselves one question constantly, without regard to how “good” they think they are:

“How can I raise the bar and elevate both my team’s performance and my own?”

Think in Continuums

In any dimension of leadership performance, you’re probably not awful and you’re certainly not flawless. You exist somewhere on a continuum between the two extremes. Viewing your development this way prevents you from getting caught up in binary thinking about whether you’re “good” or “bad.” Rather, it reinforces the idea of continuous improvement and what you can do next to continue your progress.

As leaders and firms scale, there are seven predictable continuums where leaders must continually evolve to grow with their business. When you don’t progress on these continuums, your organization will struggle, stagnate, and consume far more resources than necessary to generate a proper return.

The goal of this continuums-based framework to understand where you and your team members are now and then to deliberately move to the right; toward more scalable, sustainable leadership behaviors. This is how you’ll raise the bar and continually elevate your performance.

The Seven Leadership Continuums

1. Manager <—> Leader

Managers are entirely focused on the present. They pay attention primarily to today’s work, this week’s priorities, and this month’s deliverables—not to what needs to happen to help the organization achieve long-term success. An executive who spends mornings reviewing yesterday’s sales and production reports and afternoons in meetings covering current projects might know everything that’s happening right now but has no vision for where they should be in one or two years.  They’re managing, not leading.

Leaders, in contrast, are future-focused. They spend the majority of their time thinking strategically: anticipating market shifts, identifying capability gaps, and positioning the organization for future opportunities. Their focus is on what needs to happen six months or two years in the future to accelerate the business.

Moving toward the leader end of this continuum requires allocating time for strategic thinking and creating systems to enable others to manage today as you focus on building for tomorrow. You’ll move away from being the person who gets things done and toward being the person who determines what needs to be done to get somewhere important in the next two years.

2. Passenger <—> Driver

Passengers ride on the bus. They wait for others to initiate change, they operate reactively, and they tend to offer spectator-sounding commentary using phrases like “Today’s meeting was really interesting” and “I can’t wait to see how this works out.”

Drivers, on the other hand, take ownership of moving the organization forward. They’re the ones asking, “Who should be accountable for this?” and “What exactly needs to change here?” They don’t wait for permission to solve problems or identify opportunities. They come to meetings prepared—with opinions, solutions, and next steps already formed in their minds.

The shift toward the driver side of this continuum activates when you:

  • Stop waiting for others to identify problems and start surfacing issues yourself.
  • Start speaking your mind rather than waiting for others to say what must be said.
  • Add rigor to how you prepare for meetings, conversations, and decision-making.

You must be willing to become fully accountable for ideas, initiatives, and outcomes rather than more passively observing the drivers around you.

3. Activities <—> Results

It’s always tempting to focus on activities rather than results. No doubt you and your team work hard, but activities like calls made, client visits, meetings attended, hours worked, emails sent, and effort expended don’t necessarily translate into profits or growth.

An activity-based mindset keeps you focused on busyness rather than measurable outcomes. Just like running flat out on a treadmill, it’s exhausting, but the view never seems to change!

Results-focused leaders cut through the noise and identify what matters most. They measure the results that move the business forward, define clear outcomes (hint: outcomes are nouns, while activities are verbs) for each member of their team, and then hold them accountable to deliver.

The key is to ruthlessly question whether what you’re measuring correlates with tangible business progress and yields a return on your investment to operate the firm. Activities might feel productive, but they’re a means to an end, never the end itself.

4. Instances <—> Patterns

Leaders focused on instances consume their resources addressing individual situations or problems. I see this frequently in client executive team meetings when an operational problem occurs and they focus intently on the one instance. They’ll spend thirty minutes dissecting a single error, misstep, or project delay, and while they often resolve the problem, they rarely step back to see the bigger picture.

When I notice a team in the weeds like this, I’ll often interrupt to ask, “What’s the broader pattern here?” This shifts the discussion from reactive problem-solving to more strategic, sustainable solutions. In my experience, there are always patterns to discern and resolve that generate a far higher return for the business than fixing a single instance.

Pattern-focused leaders zoom out and ask what’s really going on. When they see the similar issues surface multiple times, they’re positioned to address the root causes instead of merely treating the symptoms.

5. Being the Genius <—> Being the Genius Maker

There’s a predictable career progression that undermines many managers and leaders. You become great as a worker, get promoted to manage others because of your success and expertise, then continue to be the expert for your team, even though your role has fundamentally changed. Consider the department head who prides themselves on being the go-to person for every technical question, or the manager who can’t delegate because “It’s easier to do it myself.” Every decision flows through them, every problem lands on their desk, and every creative solution originates from their mind.

Ironically, the mindset that made you successful as an individual contributor often becomes a liability when you manage and/or lead. Teams become entirely dependent on your thinking and growth becomes limited by your personal capacity.

One brain—no matter how brilliant—cannot scale beyond a certain point.

The alternative approach—what Liz Wiseman calls being a “genius maker” in her book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter—focuses on developing other people’s capabilities. Genius makers ask questions that lead others to solutions rather than providing the answers themselves. They measure their success not by how many problems they solve, but by how many problem-solvers, managers, and leaders they develop.

6. Staffing <—> Succession

Staffing-focused leaders worry about filling today’s open roles with people who can handle the current responsibilities and workload. They’re focused on job descriptions, immediate needs, and getting someone—anyone qualified—in the seat quickly to avoid a prolonged disruption to the business.

Succession-minded leaders, on the other hand, think strategically about developing people for needs and challenges that might not exist yet. They constantly coach and grow their team members, anticipating how roles will expand and evolve, and work backward to determine what development their people need to rise to the occasion over time.

The payoff is better business continuity and the ability to scale without constantly scrambling to fill critical gaps. Further, those at the succession end of this continuum build capacity for the future, which is required to sustain growth over time.

7. Producer <—> Investor

Producers do the work—they make the widgets, manage the details, roll up their sleeves, and get things done. They focus on solving problems through personal effort and expertise.

This mode of operating has its place, and it’s where many entrepreneurs begin their journey. The problem is when you don’t, can’t, or won’t evolve beyond it, you’ll eventually reach a point where you simply cannot grow or scale any more.

At the other end of this continuum, an investor focuses on risks and returns to allocate resources rather than doing the work themselves. For most firms, available resources include people, money, ideas, technology, equipment, and facilities.

Investor-minded leaders make decisions based on risk adjusted value creation, which is a far cry from where producer-minded people spend their time. Investors think about leverage and multiplication rather than individual contribution and, in doing so, create far more profitable and sustainable results.

Continually Move in the Right Direction

“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” – Mark Twain

Your “A” team might indeed be someone else’s “C” team, but there’s a tremendous opportunity for improvement in the gap—both for you and for your organization. What separates the best leaders from the rest isn’t natural talent or lucky circumstances. Rather, it’s the willingness to clearly discern the reality of where you are right now, accept that reality, then do the work to improve.

Instead of thinking about leadership skills as something you either possess or lack, adopt a continuums framework and continually consider how you can shift further to the right from your present position.

The seven continuums we’ve outlined above will help you raise the bar to ensure your leadership becomes an accelerant for growth rather than a constraint.

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

Russian immigrant Rose Blumkin arrived in Omaha, Nebraska in 1917 as a 24-year old with $66 in her pocket and spoke virtually no English. In 1933, she opened a furniture business in the basement of her home. At first, the business helped her family make ends meet, but over time, she built Nebraska Furniture Mart into a billion-dollar empire that Warren Buffett acquired 50 years later, referring to it as “the ideal business.”

Although Rose’s work ethic and business acumen were legendary, neither were sufficient to explain her remarkable, sustained success. The difference-maker? She was a straight shooter who was crystal-clear in her expectations of others and quick to offer direct feedback to correct those who missed the mark.

After Blumkin’s passing in 1998 at the age of 104, the New York Times reported that her credo was “sell cheap, tell the truth, don’t cheat nobody.”

Article content

Rose believed that excellence required calling things as she saw them, when she saw them. For example, when she detected that a truckload of carpet delivered by a supplier was slightly underweight–just by the “feel” of the carpet–she called the carpet mill and confronted the situation directly. The mill’s investigation into the issue led to their discovery of a criminal enterprise within their own operation, which likely would not have been found without her feedback.

If she saw it or felt it, she said it—because she believed it was the right thing to do.

Blumkin’s directness wasn’t cruel or mean-spirited; rather, it came from a place of caring and holding high standards. As we’ll see, clear, direct feedback is a form of genuine kindness—something many modern leaders don’t grasp.

An Epidemic of Feedback Avoidance

In contrast to Rose Blumkin’s approach, I’ve noted a far less productive pattern among senior leaders: they systematically avoid giving direct feedback. The excuses ring familiar to me now:

“We’re too busy.” “I see my people all the time and they know what I think.” “They’re doing so many other things really well.” “We already have too many meetings.”

But the real issue behind this epidemic of feedback avoidance isn’t time or proximity or justification. It’s fear.

Three core fears prevent leaders from giving necessary corrective feedback:

  • Fear of conflict: “Am I going to upset this person and damage our relationship?”
  • Fear of retaliation: “If I ‘criticize’ them, they are likely to name my faults too.”
  • Fear of disruption: “Why rock the boat when everything else is okay?”

How can you reasonably expect anyone to improve if you don’t provide clear, specific feedback regarding what they need to change about their behavior? Even the highest-performing employees aren’t mind readers, and yet they–like you–have areas to improve.

Kindness vs. Honesty is a False Choice

Here’s where many leaders get it fundamentally wrong: they believe caring about someone personally outweighs their obligation to provide feedback—especially direct, corrective feedback.

In fact, the opposite is true.

Think of it this way: If you’re having lunch with a colleague who has something stuck in their teeth, what’s the kind, right thing to do before you say goodbye? Tell them–despite the slight risk of their momentary embarrassment. True caring demands speaking up to help others.

To that end, when you see someone repeating a mistake or working inefficiently or behaving in a way that makes others uncomfortable, it’s genuinely kind to help them learn, grow, and improve based on your experience.

When you claim to “care about people” but stay silent when they’re slipping up, you’re actually harming them (and, in many cases, the rest of your team) by prioritizing your own comfort over theirs. Consider the hypocrisy:

  • Of saying you value “learning and growth” while withholding feedback that facilitates growth.
  • Of saying you value “people and relationships” while denying those same people information that will help them.
  • Of saying you value “honesty” while not being honest with your team about their performance and/or behaviors.

Don’t fall for the false choice. Kindness and honesty are one and the same for high-impact leaders.

The High Cost of Avoiding Feedback

Your people aren’t the only ones who pay the price when you deny them feedback.

As you’ve no doubt experienced at some point in your career, avoiding relatively small course corrections today inevitably escalates into the need for a major intervention over time and the outsized cost that accompanies it. There’s a vast difference between a “Can I talk to you for a moment?” course correction conversation and a formal performance improvement process that became necessary because you avoided addressing issues as they occurred.

Further, feedback avoidance creates toxic ripple effects, damaging team dynamics and organizational culture. As others see you tolerate subpar performance or inappropriate behavior, frustration builds, performance drifts, and the problem itself becomes normalized, which is hardly the stuff of a high-performing firm.

The personal toll on leadership is also significant. When you carry unexpressed frustrations while knowing you lack the integrity to say what needs to be said, the cognitive dissonance can be exhausting—undermining your own confidence and effectiveness in the role.

You owe it to your team and to yourself to lean-in and normalize direct feedback. Here’s how.

How to Provide Effective Feedback

Feedback expert LeeAnn Renninger developed a research-based approach that I’ve been using and teaching to clients for years with great effect. Her four-part formula works for both positive and corrective feedback:

  1. Ask for permission to give feedback.
  2. Share data using specific instances of behavior.
  3. Show the impact of the behavior.
  4. End with a question to create engagement and commitment.

This framework removes the guesswork and emotional charge from feedback conversations. You can learn more about LeeAnn’s research and the four-part feedback process in this short video.

Shifting from Avoidance to Action

Rose Blumkin’s feedback was effective because it was immediate, specific, and standards-based. She didn’t let issues fester or hope they would resolve themselves: when she saw something, she said something.

Start your shift by using LeeAnn Renninger’s four-part process to provide much more frequent course correction feedback to your team. Next, over time, implement a regular one-on-one meeting rhythm with each of your direct reports.

I’ve seen many senior leaders transform their impact by implementing one-on-one meetings with their team. The most recent of these was a CEO who, after completing his first round of conversations using this approach, told me they were the best one-on-one meetings he’d ever experienced. His realization was both simple and profound: “I just need to lead,” he said, referring to his clearer expectations and willingness to be direct with corrective feedback.

Use these steps to implement a one-on-one meeting rhythm:

  • Distinguish between casual interactions and intentional one-on-ones–they’re not the same.
  • Aim for a 30-minute one-on-one session with each direct report weekly.
  • If you can’t start there, begin with meetings every other week (or twice per month).
  • Don’t consume the meeting time with status reports or “how to” coaching, but rather by sharing feedback and helping them continually improve.
  • Ask each member of your team to create the agenda for their one-on-ones in the form of 3 to 5 bullet points highlighting where they feel “stuck” or “challenged.”
  • Make it a habit to ask THEM to give YOU feedback during these conversations as well!

These sessions are an INVESTMENT that pays dividends in the form of clearer, higher-impact communication, a more capable team, more bandwidth for leaders whose capacity was previously consumed by “managing,” and a reduction in the number of ad hoc day-to-day interactions initiated by your team. You’ll also normalize the one-on-one process and regular, direct feedback throughout the organization, further multiplying the positive effects.

Conclusion

“When we make progress and get better at something, it is inherently motivating. In order for people to make progress, they have to get feedback and information on how they’re doing.” – Daniel Pink

Rose Blumkin seemed to know what, decades later, research would show: there’s a direct, causal correlation between high expectations and high performance. People tend to rise to meet clear, high standards when they understand what’s expected of them. Corrective feedback clarifies the standards, which most people appreciate knowing.

If you truly care about your people’s growth, how can you possibly avoid this?

The leadership imperative is clear: Your team’s development, the ultimate sustained success of your enterprise, and your own integrity all depend on your willingness to speak up and normalize corrective feedback.

Rose understood this. She built an empire not despite her directness, but because of it. Her legacy reminds us that the kindest thing you can do is help someone understand how they can become better than they are today.

In other words: when you see it or feel it, say it.

You can hear more about Rose’s remarkable story on Shane Parrish’s Knowledge Project Podcast, episode #227: “Outliers: Rose Blumkin—Women of Berkshire Hathaway.”

==========================================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Event…

Live Online Masterclass – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities
  • Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: July 1 / 2, 2025 (time zone dependent) – Learn more and register!

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” — Coach John Wooden

There’s a universal law that many leaders overlook: small things are reliable indicators of larger patterns. Consider:

  • If you maintain a disciplined workout routine, I expect to see discipline elsewhere in your life and you likely approach your work, relationships, and commitments with similar systematic rigor.
  • A neat, organized office signals an organized mind that pays attention to details and probably delivers quality work consistently.
  • If someone is generous and helpful to their neighbors, you can bet they’ll be generous in other areas—and probably a great collaborator and friend!

How we behave regarding “small” things directly reflects how we behave in other contexts and situations. In other words: How you do anything is how you do everything.

The Slippery Slope of Tolerating Small Deviations

I coach the executive team of a large, successful firm in the construction industry. They’ve maintained an excellent overall safety record for years, despite dramatic growth in headcount, project size, and project complexity.

Several months ago, during one of our quarterly planning sessions they noted and discussed an uptick in small safety-related issues: minor vehicle accidents, some equipment mishaps, and a few near-misses. The team’s initial response was understandable: “Let’s just keep an eye on it.” After all, their major safety metrics remained strong, and the firm’s culture was rock solid.

“Not so fast,” I interjected. “How you do anything is how you do everything—and that applies to maintaining your strengths as much as addressing your challenges. Let’s talk about what you’re tolerating here.”

William Bratton understood this when he became New York City’s police commissioner in 1994. While critics wanted him to focus only on major crimes, Bratton recognized that small infractions like subway turnstile jumping and graffiti were actually “gateway crimes” that led to more major crimes. Accordingly, he focused the force’s attention there and was proven to be correct. As police more consistently addressed minor violations, over time, major crime decreased significantly. But more importantly, neighborhoods became places where law-abiding citizens felt comfortable, businesses thrived, and community pride grew. Small actions–the police stopped tolerating minor crimes–created massive upward spirals of improvement.

The same is true in business leadership: tolerating minor deviations leads to bigger problems while executing small things well yields more success over time.

Minor Shifts for Major Results

There are four key areas where getting little things right creates a disproportionate positive return for leaders and organizations.

1. Frequent Feedback and Course Correction

Leaders who master small, frequent course corrections tend to avoid major issues down the road—think about consistent minor movements to maintain a ship’s course versus an occasional hard turn because you’ve drifted far off course. It’s much easier to do the former, it takes less time, and it consumes far less fuel (energy).

The value of addressing deviations when they’re small applies not only to problem areas, but also to recognizing and amplifying what’s working and to reinforcing positive behaviors, both of which build momentum.

As a leader, you set the standard for even the smallest behaviors in your organization. With that in mind, ask yourself, “What’s my threshold for intervention?”

2. Meeting Discipline and Engagement

Excellent meeting standards create environments where great thinking happens. When you set and enforce clear expectations for preparation and engagement, you’re not just limiting distractions—you’re creating space for innovation, collaboration, and high-quality decision-making. On the other hand, tolerating distractions, disorganization, no agendas, low engagement, and latecomers creates the exact opposite.

Keep in mind that the whole organization is watching and will notice the smallest of clues for insight into how they should behave. Your own meeting discipline becomes a model for how serious work gets done throughout the organization. Teams that experience well-run meetings consistently begin to expect and create that same level of excellence in other interactions. It’s a small thing that definitely leads to bigger, better things!

3. High Communication Standards

Frequent, precise communication doesn’t just prevent misunderstandings; it builds trust, creates clarity, and accelerates execution. When you stick to communication rhythms, including daily huddles and weekly team meetings, and maintain high standards for transparency, you’ll create conditions where your people can perform at their best.

Small lapses in communication compound rapidly. For instance, a missed or inaccurate update leads to misaligned priorities, vague instructions create confusion, errors, and rework and inconsistent messaging undermines confidence throughout an organization.

The relationship between clear communication and execution is direct: when you get the small interactions right, bigger things get done faster with less drama along the way.

4. Consistent, Disciplined Decision-Making

Applying rigorous thinking to small decisions builds muscle memory for higher-stakes moments. But more than that, consistent decision frameworks create both consistency and confidence throughout the organization.

When people see you approach small choices with the same thoughtfulness you bring to major decisions, they learn to trust your judgment and emulate that approach in their own responsibilities.

Implement a “Fine Threshold” Approach

Now that the four areas of focus are clear, it’s time to consider the first of them–frequent feedback and course correction–more deeply to recalibrate your intervention threshold. Aim for a much finer threshold that triggers more frequent very small responses to “keep the ship on course,” rather than a larger threshold that triggers a less frequent, but very large response.

Steps for leaders:

1. Identify your current intervention thresholds. When do you typically step in? Do you wait until meetings consistently run over before addressing preparation standards? Do you delay feedback until performance reviews rather than addressing issues in real-time? Do you make quick decisions on small matters without the same process you’d use for larger ones?

2. Lower these thresholds deliberately. Address issues early, and when they’re small. Speak up when you first detect a minor deviation rather than waiting for a pattern. Give feedback immediately when you notice something, not days, weeks, or months later.

3. Create appropriate small responses for small issues. Your reaction should match the scale. A brief conversation is appropriate for a small issue, not a formal corrective action plan.

4. Be consistent in addressing issues at this new threshold. Every instance matters. If you address it once but tolerate it the next three times, you’re teaching people the standard doesn’t really matter.

5. Model this behavior for your team—you MUST lead by example. Your team learns far more from watching how you handle small things than how you handle big ones. Model what consistent standards look like through your own day-to-day behaviors. Most importantly: mind what you tolerate–in yourself and in others.

The Cascading Benefits

When you consistently course-correct minor deviations while also recognizing and reinforcing small positive behaviors, something remarkable happens: a culture of excellence grows far beyond the little things. As a result, expectations and standards of behavior elevate throughout the organization.

You’ll notice team members expecting and maintaining these standards on their own and with others, even when you’re not present. They take pride in getting small things right because they understand how it connects to more and greater success.

Conclusion

In the months that followed our initial conversation about small safety deviations, my construction client learned this lesson powerfully. As they consistently applied a fine threshold approach to minor safety issues, something beautiful happened. Not only did small incidents decrease, but their already-strong safety record improved further. More importantly, this attention to detail enhanced their reputation with clients and created even more pride throughout the organization.

Excellence isn’t about perfection; it’s about paying consistent attention to the details that create conditions for success.

Here’s your challenge: identify one area where you can better align your team’s fundamental behaviors with the big picture of what you want to achieve. Look for an opportunity to get small things right that compound into larger wins.

Remember, your team doesn’t just learn from watching you handle the occasional big opportunity or crisis—those moments are too infrequent. They learn far more from how you approach the small, day-to-day choices, interactions, and situations they see constantly.

It’s your job as a leader to use these small moments to lead and model excellence, because how you do anything isn’t ONLY how YOU do everything. How you do anything is also how your ORGANIZATION does everything.

And good, bad, or neutral, the results of YOUR choices are reflected everywhere. Choose wisely.

==========================================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Event…

Live Online Masterclass – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities
  • Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: July 1 / 2, 2025 (time zone dependent) – Learn more and register!

==============================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“The greatest gap in the world is the gap between knowing and doing.”  – John Maxwell

The gap between what you know you should do and what you actually do is a barrier to your personal growth and to your company’s growth.

I’ve been coaching Phil (not his real name)–a senior leader in a $200+ million business who’s been grappling with a problem that’s cost his team dearly for months. One of his direct reports, Ted (not his real name)–a  long-tenured employee with impressive domain knowledge, is failing as a manager. Ted micromanages relentlessly, communicates selectively, and treats people poorly.

My client knows what needs to happen. Yet months have elapsed and he’s yet to take action to remove Ted from his manager role.

But why? In this case, Phil is emotionally entangled with Ted due to their long history together at the firm and he fears the potential fallout from making a change. Meanwhile, an entire team continues to suffer under Ted’s poor leadership and Phil is far more in the details of the day-to-day than he should be as a senior leader, limiting his ability to be more strategic and future-focused.

Sound at least vaguely familiar? If not this exact scenario, then perhaps some of the elements have played out in your own experience.

The Knowing-Doing Gap Defined

Phil’s situation illustrates what organizational behavior experts call the Knowing-Doing Gap: the space between what we know we should do and what we actually do. And for the record, there’s no doubt Phil knows exactly what he should do–he’s told me himself!

I’ve observed this phenomenon repeatedly in my work with CEOs and executive teams. They’ll read the books, attend the conferences, hire coaches, engage consultants, and can articulate exactly what needs to happen—yet they don’t act on what they know.

But why? If we already know what to do, why don’t we just do it?

Three Hidden Growth Killers

Through my coaching practice and research, I’ve identified three Hidden Growth Killers that operate invisibly to create our Knowing-Doing Gap. Consider how each of these could be contributing to yours:

1. Motivators – particularly fear. My client Phil knows the right move, but fear is overriding his inspiration to act. Your fears might be about confrontation, disruption, potential loss, missed opportunity, or your reputation.

2. Habits – status-quo, comfortable patterns that become barriers to necessary change. Perhaps you’ve fallen into a pattern of avoiding difficult conversations, you’ve established a routine of waiting for the right time that never comes, or you’ve come to tolerate / accept someone’s poor performance or inappropriate behaviors.

3. Beliefs – limiting thoughts that stifle right action. Do you believe any of the following: domain expertise is irreplaceable, tough people decisions tend to end badly, it’s easier to deal with who I know than to hire someone new or if I confront someone on my team things will only get worse? These are all examples of unproductive beliefs for managers and leaders that unconsciously influence your behavior.

Your Motivators, Habits, and Beliefs interact as the unseen mechanisms preventing you from doing things you know you should. If you’re curious to assess how severely these Hidden Growth Killers are affecting your leadership, invest 5 minutes and complete the Hidden Growth Killer Self-Assessment (it’s free and won’t require you to enter any contact details).

The Cost of Inaction

The price you pay for your Knowing-Doing Gap is steep:

  • For the business: Growth is a struggle. Opportunities vanish. Competitors gain ground. In my client Phil’s case, an entire business unit is underperforming.
  • For the team: Trust in leadership diminishes as people wonder, “Don’t they see the obvious problem like we do?” Morale erodes. Top performers leave. Those who stay become increasingly disengaged.
  • For you as a leader: Your credibility suffers. Your stress increases. Your confidence diminishes as you repeatedly fail to act on what you know is right.

I’ve never observed a business where the sustained growth rate of the company exceeded the personal growth rate of the people running it. Here’s the bottom line: when you don’t act on what you know, both personal and organizational growth grind to a halt.

Five Strategies to Close the Gap

After years of helping leaders overcome the Knowing-Doing Gap, I’ve developed several strategies to break through:

1. Recognize Your Inner Voice

That stream of thoughts telling you why action is risky or why “now isn’t the right time?” That’s not you—it’s just the voice in your head. Start by observing this narrative without identifying with it. Notice when fear-based thinking arises: “If I replace this manager, I might lose critical institutional knowledge” or “What if the team reacts badly?”

Simply recognizing these thoughts as separate from yourself creates space to choose a more productive path.

2. Elevate Inspiration Over Fear

Research shows that fear carries approximately twice the psychological weight of inspiration. This means that to overcome fear-based inaction, your inspiration (I) needs to be at least twice the magnitude of your fear (F).  Keep this simple formula in mind when you find yourself hesitating to act: 2I > F.

To increase your inspiration, ask yourself: “What would motivate me to act despite my fear?” For my client Phil, inspiration might come from envisioning a high-performing team or happier staff, or from fulfilling his responsibility to the organization’s overall success, or from accelerating the careers of those on Ted’s team who won’t progress while he’s still managing.

To reduce your fear, which is another effective way to make the formula work, use this research-based Fear Reduction Tool.

3. Challenge Your Existing Habits

We often don’t act because we’re stuck in comfortable patterns. Breaking these patterns requires effort and deliberate disruption.

For example, if you habitually delay difficult decisions, try making smaller decisions more quickly and create artificial deadlines for yourself with accountability partners. You can also physically change your environment to help break a habit: literally go to a different space to signal to your brain that this is not business as usual.

For deeper work on habit change, use this research-based Habit Change Tool.

4. Reset Your Locus of Control

One of the most significant determinants of action is your locus of control—whether you believe outcomes are determined by your own agency and behavior or by external forces.

Ask yourself: “Am I waiting for permission? Validation? Perfect conditions?” Take ownership of your decisions and your agency to act rather than allowing circumstances, other people, and/or external forces to dictate your moves. Remember, not deciding is itself a decision, and it’s usually the wrong one.

5. Be Your Way Into Thinking

Sometimes the path through delay or inaction is to simply start moving. Even small forward steps create momentum to tip the scales and overcome inertia. Don’t wait until you feel 100% confident or have eliminated all uncertainty, but rather set your default to act.

If your Knowing-Doing Gap is like Phil’s, you might take small steps by documenting performance issues or having preliminary conversations with HR. These moves create forward motion to build toward the necessary action.

Conclusion

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”  – Peter Drucker

Your Knowing-Doing Gap won’t close through knowledge (i.e., more knowing) alone. In fact, seeking more information often becomes a crutch and a justification for further procrastination—yet another way to avoid acting on what you already know!

It’s time for you to act.

Identify one area where you’ve been stuck in knowing without doing. What’s one concrete step you could take this week to begin to close the gap? It doesn’t need to be the complete solution—just enough movement to begin building momentum. Pro tip: use one or more of the tools I’ve shared as an initial, small step!

The things you know you should do but aren’t doing keep you up at night, slow your firm’s growth, and diminish the odds you’ll achieve your own personal aspirations.

On the other hand, and with the benefit of clear hindsight, I’ve never had a client regret making a hard, right decision and then acting to see it through. If anything, they look back and wish they’d acted sooner!

For a deeper exploration of the hidden mechanisms that limit growth and success, and even more tools to overcome them, check out my book Activators: A CEO’s Guide to Clearer Thinking and Getting Things Done.

==========================================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

The difference between extraordinary success and “what could have been” isn’t talent—it’s the discipline to be consistent when others aren’t.

A Tale of Two Professional Tennis Stars

Nick Kyrgios burst onto the professional tennis scene with undeniable talent and flashy play that suggested he could become a multi-Grand Slam champion. With one of the most powerful serves in tennis (rated by ATP as fifth-best in history), extraordinary shot-making ability, and the rare distinction of beating each of the “Big Three” players (Djokovic, Federer, and Nadal) in their first meetings, his potential seemed limitless. Yet, Kyrgios embraced his inconsistency and lack of discipline almost as a personal brand. He famously admitted to minimal training, partying before matches, and prioritizing entertainment over results. In tournament play, he oscillated between brilliant performances and first-round exits, managing just seven career singles titles and never advancing beyond a single Grand Slam final (Wimbledon 2022). Today, at just 29 years old, he’s primarily a tennis broadcaster and commentator for the BBC and ESPN, while his playing career has become largely defined by injuries and what could have been.

Now let’s consider Roger Federer, whose 20 Grand Slam titles, 103 ATP singles titles (second most in the Open Era), and record 237 consecutive weeks as world #1 overlay a very different underlying story.

Federer’s career was defined by meticulous consistency—in his preparation, technique, and mental approach. His daily routine was legendary: precise practice sessions, detailed attention to recovery, nutrition planned to the calorie, and a disciplined approach to every facet of his profession. Even into his late 30s, Federer maintained rituals that had served him for decades, adapting them only when evidence suggested better approaches. In 2017, at age 35 and following knee surgery, he returned to win three more Grand Slam titles when many thought his career was over.

Tennis, business, or any pursuit of massive success requires relentless consistency and discipline over time. The divergent habits–and results–of Kyrgios and Federer illuminate this truth vividly.

But in business, it’s not just about your own consistency and behavior as a leader. It’s also about what you expect of others, what you tolerate in them, and the boundaries you establish throughout your organization.

It’s surprisingly easy for leaders to justify the lack of consistency and discipline. Some feel it’s required to remain nimble as a high-growth, entrepreneurial firm. Others, just like Nick Kyrgios–entwine it with their identity and claim, “it’s who I am, and it works for me.” And there are those who simply don’t recognize the issue at all.

Let’s break down the real costs of inconsistency and its close cousin mediocrity and recommend some guidelines to help business leaders and their teams find the disciplined strides required to win.

Inconsistency Squanders Resources and Increases Risk

“The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.” – Jim Collins

Start. Stop. Start again. Stop again. The well-researched cost of task switching is staggering—studies show productivity drops by 40% when we constantly shift focus. Now multiply that across a team and, then again, across an organization. The toll is immense.

Think about the consistency of your meeting rhythms, how you honor, resource, and accomplish your priorities, your intolerance of non-fit staff, and how you communicate to employees. Now consider these inconsistent actions I’ve routinely observed in businesses of all sizes:

  • Weekly and/or monthly team meetings cancelled and/or rescheduled.
  • Sporadic daily huddles.
  • Major “Priorities” that change weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Then change again.
  • Some low performers and non-fit staff are tolerated, while others are not.
  • Departmental and/or companywide communications occur only “when there’s something important to say.”
  • Leaders failing to lead by example (walk their own talk).

Inconsistency in any of these areas increases the risk of mediocre results over time.

You’ll also burn out your team–and potentially yourself–more rapidly. The mental energy required to constantly recalibrate, restart, and redirect is exhausting and, in fact, exponentially higher than maintaining a steadier, more disciplined approach.

On the other hand, more disciplined organizations have less risk exposure to unanticipated events and are notably more resilient. I witnessed this during COVID when a client called me just a couple of weeks after flipping their 1,000-person firm fully virtual in 24 hours: “If not for the structure and discipline you helped us put in place, there’s no way we could have done this. We’re fully virtual and nothing’s changed, other than we’re all on computer screens instead of in the same room.”

Their consistent approach to leading and operating the business enabled them to adapt at lightning speed without derailing. That’s the paradoxical power of consistency—it creates the foundation for extreme agility when it matters most.

Mediocrity Destroys Value and Stagnates Growth

“Mediocre people don’t like high achievers, and high achievers don’t like mediocre people. So if everybody doesn’t buy into the same principles and values of the organization at the same high standard, you’re never going to be successful.” – Nick Saban

There’s simply no room for mediocrity on teams that aspire to achieve great things, including your team, group, division, business unit, and organization as a whole.

You may have heard the saying that “one A player’s productivity replaces two B players or three C players.” I’ve seen this in real life, and you probably have too. Again, the cost of mediocrity is staggering and far beyond the simple payroll math. Consider the drag on profitability due to inattention, rework, miscommunication, and poor quality–and your potential to scale. Worse, your A players are likely to abandon ship when they realize their B and C player colleagues are there to stay.

The good news? With focus and energy, inconsistency and mediocrity can be overcome. Unsurprisingly, the solution begins and ends with you.

You Are the Problem and the Solution

You get what you tolerate in yourself and in others. As I wrote in my first book, Activators, wherever you are right now is exactly where you’re supposed to be, given the accumulation of your thinking, decisions, and actions to date.

Here are four steps to improve consistency and discipline in your organization:

  • Make up YOUR OWN mind that you want to lead and operate a high-performance organization, then collaborate with someone (like a qualified coach) who will help accelerate your development into the leader you’ll need to be. Think about Roger Federer’s disciplined approach to his craft—what does your version of that need to be? Remember: the desire to change isn’t enough; you also must be willing to do the work. Federer was well coached and an extremely hard worker.
  • Set clear, non-negotiable, high expectations for your team. Implement a Role Accountability Card process (explained in this article). Coach your team. Replace those who won’t or can’t operate to an excellent standard in their role.
  • Share your vision and standards firmwide, often. Structure meeting cadences and agendas to reinforce your expectations, fundamentals, and priorities regardless of whether you’re in the room. Note well: this work never ends.
  • Create habits, not heroics. Build systems that make consistency the default, not something that requires extraordinary effort. The best performers aren’t those who occasionally muster superhuman focus and feats—they’re those who show up and do the work of steady excellence day after day.

Conclusion

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

The contrast between Nick Kyrgios and Roger Federer isn’t just about talent—it’s about the disciplined, consistent application of their talent over time. One athlete reached the pinnacle of his sport and stayed there for decades. The other will be remembered for his flashes of brilliance, forever overshadowed by what might have been.

The same is true of the firms in your industry: the most constant and disciplined will win over time. How do you and how does your firm stack up?

Hard reality alert:

If you can’t, won’t, or don’t get this right, then you are mediocre too. This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s the truth and one of the most challenging, yet productive realizations for leaders to internalize. In a caring way, I remind my coaching clients of this often.

The choice for consistency and discipline is yours to make—today and every day. And it’s just that: a choice.

================================================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast” – United States Navy SEALs

My client Evan was a perpetual motion machine. As the founder and CEO of a growing services firm, he generated a constant stream of new ideas and initiatives, quickly changed direction based on new opportunities that crossed his desk, and made rapid-fire decisions, often counter to his team’s counsel. He justified his actions as required for success, using vague idealistic language about “delighting customers,” “beating the competition,” and “speed to market.” Evan took extreme pride in being “entrepreneurial” and “agile.”

But those around him didn’t experience Evan as either one. Instead, his best performers were frustrated and burning out. Important, previously-agreed-to strategic initiatives languished half-finished as his new ideas took precedence. Team morale was plummeting, and despite nonstop frenetic activity, the company wasn’t making much progress.

Ironically, Evan’s drive to get more done, more quickly created exactly what he was trying to avoid.

His story exemplifies a common pattern: although it’s easy for leaders to equate activity with achievement, growth and organizational health suffer. Clearly there’s a better way.

The Activity Trap

As I detail in my book Activators—A CEO’s Guide to Clearer Thinking and Getting Things Done, there’s a significant gap between how we think leadership works and how it actually works. It’s never as straightforward as we assume.

A bias toward constant action like Evan’s typically stems from one or more underlying fears. These might include a fear of missing out, a fear of falling behind, a fear of not being liked, and a fear of appearing indecisive—just to name a few common culprits.

Here’s the connection to leadership: fear-driven behavior negatively affects decision-making, collaboration, and prioritization—and each of those is an imperative for sustainable business growth.

The cost of constant motion, as Evan’s story illustrates, is missed opportunities, burned out people, suboptimal choices, and generally less of what the leader wants most.

The Power of Strategic Pauses

Back when NASA flew the space shuttle, I became a bit of a “rocket junkie” and watched as many liftoffs and landings as I could. Over time, I discovered a fascinating step embedded in the space shuttle’s launch sequence: the shuttle reduced the thrust of its engines about 30 seconds after liftoff. This seemingly counterintuitive move was to enable the vehicle to endure “maximum dynamic stress” (and not shake itself to pieces!) before throttling back up and accelerating into orbit. Without reducing its thrust after launch, the space shuttle would never achieve orbit.

This same principle applies to leadership: deliberately throttling back at the right times accelerates execution, growth, and success—while preventing the organization from falling to pieces.

Here’s another illustration of this principle to consider: If you’ve ever hired a professional painting company, you know they don’t start painting as soon as they arrive. Instead, they spend up to 60% of their time preparing to paint—taping edges, removing fixtures, protecting surfaces, and the like. They start “slow” deliberately so they can deliver a superior result with great efficiency.

Where must you slow down so that you can speed up?

When to Slow Down

There are three critical junctures where strategic pauses can create exponential value:

  • Before Major Decisions. Take time to gather input and consider second-order consequences. No, you’re not courting analysis paralysis here, but rather engaging in thoughtful evaluation to take clearer, more confident action. Use tools like the Fear Reduction framework to minimize the negative impact of your biases and fears. Filter decisions through the lens of your Purpose, Values, and Strategy to ensure you’re allocating your resources in alignment with your goals.
  • During Execution. Like a ship at sea navigating to its destination, constant small adjustments as you execute are far more effective than just one or two major course changes. Large deviations, after all, are often sources of delay, budget busting, and under-delivery. Build regular checkpoints into your processes through structured meeting rhythms and coaching conversations. When contemplating course corrections, sooner is ALWAYS better than later.
  • After Completion. Make learning a deliberate part of your firm’s DNA through After-Action Reviews (AARs) focused on learning, not blame. Don’t call them “post-mortems,” which tend to focus only on failures. Rather, identify patterns of both success and failure to improve future initiatives by determining what should be repeated and what should be improved or eliminated.

How to Make It Work

Meaningful change MUST start at the top of every organization. If YOU don’t embody the value of slowing down to speed up, your team won’t either. How you run meetings, engage in thoughtful debate, and make decisions signals your values and priorities to the organization.

What messages have you been signaling to your team through your actions?

Here are a few tools to help you change the signals and to keep you on track:

  • The Fear Reduction Tool from Activators, (mentioned above) will help you reduce the impact of your fears on the quality and timeliness of your decisions and actions.
  • Regular meeting rhythms and standard, structured agendas will build more intentional rigor into your process. Create temporary meeting rhythms for major projects in addition to your department and organizational rhythms.
  • The Priority Planning Tool from my monograph Creating a Culture of Accountability ensures thoughtful planning, improves accountability, and strengthens your team’s alignment with your priorities.

Conclusion

So, what happened to Evan and his exhausted team?

The firm’s transformation after Evan implemented these practices was remarkable. The flood of new ideas became a carefully curated, slower stream. His executive team made deliberate trade-offs in their planning and were able to complete important initiatives that cumulatively advanced the business.

Most importantly, when the executive team slowed down strategically, the firm’s growth accelerated, profitability improved, and company-wide morale soared as people felt more purposeful, more accomplished, and less frantic.

Often, the fastest path forward requires you to slow down first.

================================================================

Click Below to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

Uncertainty abounds in our world, where rapidly unfolding events, mass marketed misinformation, market risks, political instability, climate change, and a host of other conditions compound to challenge even the most disciplined leaders. Worse, all of this is perpetually amplified as velocity of change continues to accelerate over time.

Meanwhile, researchers have found that under pressure and uncertainty, cognitive biases and fears play an outsized role to influence decision-making.

It’s not a compelling mix: At a time of great need for clear thinking to inform critical decisions amid uncertainty, leaders are more likely to be unconsciously hobbled.

The sustainable path forward includes incorporating deliberate structure in the form of mental models to guide your thinking when it matters most.

Here are four proven mental models that will help you think more clearly, make better decisions,  and act more decisively, not only in uncertain times, but all the time. To facilitate implementation, each mental model is accompanied with a few key questions to help you put it to work:

1. Essentialism

“We struggle with the complexities and avoid the simplicities.”  – Norman Vincent Peale

Success isn’t about doing more things—it’s about doing the right things with exceptional focus. The mental model of essentialism, or concentrating on what’s truly necessary, helps leaders cut through noise and distraction to identify and then act upon what really matters. The core principle here is that complexity doesn’t scale. As any organization grows, leaders must become increasingly selective about where they focus time and resources.

Begin by defining the essential for your organization. First create a crystal clear vision of what you intend to accomplish and achieve in the next three years, including the small number of key capabilities that must be developed or enhanced for you to get there. Next, identify the #1 Addressable Challenge that must be resolved this year as you begin the journey to your three year destination.

This clarity makes it easier for you to prioritize what must be done, to eliminate non-essential activities and initiatives, and to stay true to your aspirations.

Along the way, you’ll need the resolve to disappoint people by saying “no” to efforts that don’t align with what’s essential so you can deliver emphatic “yeses” to items that advance your cause.

Key Questions:

  • What must you say “no” to in order to protect your top priority?
  • Where has unproductive complexity crept into your operation?
Admiral James Stockdale

2. The Stockdale Paradox

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”  – Soren Kierkegaard

Admiral James Stockdale was the highest-ranking American military officer captured during the Vietnam War. He spent eight gruesome years in the “Hanoi Hilton” as a prisoner of war, where he was repeatedly tortured. Yet by his own account, Admiral Stockdale emerged from the camp stronger than when he entered.

It turned out that both optimists and pessimists died in the camp. Stockdale noted that optimists died of broken hearts, having their hopes for release and return home repeatedly crushed. The pessimists had no hope, gave up, and lost the will to survive. Stockdale survived because he retained faith that regardless of the reality and difficulties of his horrendous circumstances, he would prevail and emerge stronger.

Here’s the paradox: he continually confronted the brutal facts of his current reality while simultaneously expecting that he would eventually emerge as a better version of himself. As a leader, you can harness the Stockdale Paradox mental model, acknowledging the brutal facts about your organization and what it faces while expecting you’ll strengthen through the adversity and see better times ahead.

We saw the same approach among successful leaders and organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who were able to recognize the brutal reality of what they faced while simultaneously believing they and their teams would make it to the other side, made it, while those who were overly optimistic (“relax, this will all be over in a couple of months”) or pessimistic (“it’s going to be impossible for us to survive this”) didn’t.

Key Questions:

  • What brutal facts about your business have you been reluctant to face?
  • How effectively are you communicating both current challenges AND your unwavering faith to your team?

3. Return on Luck

“Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”  – Ray Kroc

Author Jim Collins uncovered something fascinating while researching successful companies for his book Great by Choice: HIgh performing firms weren’t any luckier than their less-successful counterparts. As Collins explains: “When we study this over and over again, what we find is we’re all hit in life with different kinds of luck. But a huge swing variable is there are those who grab it and then get a high return on that luck, and there are those who fritter it away.”

Here’s the gist of his research: Over time, there is a roughly equal distribution of “good” and “bad” luck affecting individuals and businesses. What makes the biggest difference is how you and your team respond, regardless of whether they are “good” OR “bad” luck events.

Consider how different leaders respond to winning a major account (a “good” luck event):

One might think, “This is fantastic, let’s celebrate and relax; we’ve achieved some security,” using it as an opportunity to catch her breath. By leaning back after a big win, she’ll probably generate a fair to poor return on this good-luck event—and miss the chance to further capitalize on it.

Another might think, “Wow, we just won this big account. We’ve got momentum, so let’s double down and create a new program to help our salespeople continue to crush it in the market.” This approach will likely lead to a much higher return on the same event.

Are you harnessing the benefits of the Return on Luck mental model, regardless of what’s thrown your way? Always seek to maximize Return on Luck, whether good or bad: Capitalize on positive circumstances, find opportunity in setbacks, and build resilience in your team along the way.

Key Questions:

  • Think of a recent negative event that affected your business. How can you generate a positive return on this situation?
  • How can you incorporate the Return on Luck mental model into your firm’s culture?

4. Bias to Act

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”   – Theodore Roosevelt

In rapidly changing environments, standing still—or failing to take action—equals falling behind. The idea of the status quo is an illusion which, in fact, doesn’t exist; you’re either advancing or losing ground as the world evolves around you.

While thoughtful planning matters, leaders must maintain a bias toward action. The cost of inaction often exceeds the cost of imperfect action. Forward momentum, even if not perfectly directed, creates opportunities for learning and adjustment that stagnation never will.

I use an “80%” technique with my coaching clients to help them resist overthinking and stagnation in favor of taking action. As long as there is 80% alignment, certainty, or confidence in a decision or choice, it’s time to move forward and act. Once in motion, it’s usually quite easy to tweak and course-correct well beyond the 80% mark. But if you shoot for 90-100% confidence as a precursor to act, there’s a high probability you’ll get stuck and delay taking action.

For many organizations, “good enough” is often a victim of “perfect,” slowing momentum and growth. The Bias to Act mental model is the answer.

Key Questions:

  • Where are you delaying action even though you know what needs to happen?
  • How can you amplify the voices on your team that generally advocate for action rather than delay?

Conclusion

“Fear is often our immediate response to uncertainty. There’s nothing wrong with experiencing fear. The key is not to get stuck in it.”  – Gabrielle Bernstein

Welcome to the “new normal.”

The velocity of change is accelerating and, most likely, won’t ever slow down. Making the right, timely decisions for your organization can be perilous, yet you must act to pursue your goals and to avoid falling behind as others advance around you.

Taken together, these four mental models are key to reducing the influence of fear and unhelpful cognitive biases, to making better decisions, and to successfully navigating uncertainty toward the future you want:

  1. Essentialism
  2. The Stockdale Paradox
  3. Return on Luck
  4. Bias to Act

Study them. Master them. Share them with your team.

================================================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”  – Stephen Covey

Several years ago, I began working with a new client—a $100M+ services business. During our two-day kickoff workshop, the executive team aligned beautifully on their long-term direction and identified two clear, organizational priorities for the year ahead. As we went around the room sharing closing thoughts at the end of our second day together, several team members contrasted our session with their planning process from the prior year. They had emerged from that one with twenty “priorities.”

When I asked how many they’d accomplished fully, the answer was telling: “None.”

This scenario has played out countless times across my decades of coaching leaders. The math is simple but brutal: when you divide limited resources, time, energy, and attention across too many things, you get limited progress on all of them. More initiatives, even if they’re labeled “priorities,” rarely translate to meaningful progress. Rather, the inverse is true and they result in almost none.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Here, we’ll identify the three major costs of scattered focus and explore a practical approach to accomplishing far more, by doing less. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to identify and execute the vital few initiatives that will drive the majority of the results and success you seek.

The Hidden Cost of “More”

Strategic dilution is one of the most expensive mistakes a growing company can endure. When resources and attention are divided across too many initiatives, the output is inevitably limited across the board. This approach creates confusion about the direction of the organization, increases internal conflict, and erodes confidence in leadership. After all, what are leaders doing if they’re not making decisions about what matters most?

Pursuing too many things is an easy trap that ensnares many.

Entrepreneurial and growth-minded leaders like us are wired to see opportunities everywhere. Your customer suggesting a new product idea? It could open up a whole new market. A potential acquisition? It might be transformative. That new technology? It could revolutionize your operations. Each opportunity looks promising in isolation, and saying “no” feels like leaving money on the table.

This is a prime example of fear-based decision making. You’re likely familiar with the phrase  fear of missing out (FOMO). FOMO is fear-based scarcity thinking causing us to believe if we don’t pursue the opportunity in front of us now, we’ll miss out forever.Though FOMO may be understandable, it drives horribly inefficient strategic choices.

Fear-based decisions are particularly common among entrepreneurs who haven’t evolved their self-image at the same pace their firm has grown (read more about this in “What to Do When Your Business Outgrows You”). The very qualities that make one excellent at starting a business—being scrappy, fast-paced, and unstructured—routinely become serious limitations as the organization scales.

The Three Major Casualties of Doing Too Much

The cost of trying to do too much is far higher than most leaders realize. Let’s examine three major casualties:

1. Leadership Effectiveness

When you’re juggling multiple initiatives, your ability to think clearly and make sound decisions dwindles. You lose the critical “thinking time” necessary for strategic leadership. Instead of serving as your organization’s “true north,” pointing clearly to what matters most, you become a source of confusion as your own time and focus are diluted and diminished.

2. Team Performance

This confusion cascades through your team. Multiple competing priorities undermine role accountability and create unclear reporting structures. When accountability becomes fuzzy, the entire framework we use to drive results begins to crumble.

Worse, high performers who crave clear direction and meaningful progress become frustrated because they want to see how their work connects to the organization’s most important priorities. Meanwhile, your lower performers find it easier to hide behind the chaos, using “too many priorities” as an excuse for poor execution. The result? Slow progress, decreased engagement, increased burnout risk, and difficulty retaining top talent.

3. Execution Outcomes

The most severe effect of doing too much is to execution. Critical initiatives—the ones that could truly transform your business—rarely reach completion. Resources are simply spread too thin to drive meaningful change. Projects start, stop, and flounder, increasing costs and the odds of damaging your credibility with customers and stakeholders.

Ironically, the most challenging, most critical things you must accomplish often wind up at the bottom of everyone’s list and focus. They simply get lost in the mix, confusion, and conflict surrounding the simultaneous pursuit of too many things. Over time, this weakens your competitive position as opportunities slip away due to slow and/or sloppy execution.

The Power of the 80/20 Rule

The solution lies in understanding and applying the Pareto Principle to prioritization. In 1906 Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto famously observed that 80% of Italy’s wealth was owned by 20% of its population. The same pattern—that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes—appears consistently in business and in life. In an organizational setting, the implication is that a vital, small number of initiatives drive most significant results.

Think of your priorities like a line of dominoes waiting to be toppled in sequence. The trick is learning to identify the “lead domino” that, when pushed, will knock down the most others in line. Just as Pareto’s observation revolutionized economic thinking, this principle can transform how you approach priority-setting and resource allocation in your firm.

Clarity Creates Momentum

When you focus on fewer, clearer priorities, something remarkable happens: momentum builds. This isn’t about doing less—it’s about achieving more through better strategic choices and more disciplined focus.

Communication around your priorities will become both easier and more effective. Instead of trying to keep twenty balls in the air, your team will focus on meaningful updates and progress on a vital few initiatives that truly matter.

All of this creates a virtuous cycle: better strategic choices and a small number of priorities enable clearer communication, which leads to better execution, which builds confidence and momentum, which in turn drives better results.

How to Make It Happen

So, how do you let go of the majority of your firm’s “priorities” and instead focus on the vital few things with the biggest impact on your operation? Let’s consider three simple phases: Assessment, Alignment, and Execution.

1. Assessment Phase

Identify your firm’s #1 Addressable Challenge (#1 AC). It’s the problem or opportunity you MUST resolve to unlock the next phase of your organization’s growth (read this article for a deep dive on the process). When your #1 AC is clearly defined, evaluate all current projects and initiatives through this lens. Be ruthless in eliminating or deprioritizing those that don’t directly align. This requires courage—the courage to say “no” to good ideas in service of the vital few great ones. Your goal is to identify the 1, 2 or 3 major initiatives required to fully resolve the #1 AC.

2. Alignment Phase

Next, create alignment. Ensure your leadership team not only buys into your sharper focus, but joins you in eliminating non-priorities. Assign single-point accountability to each of the #1 AC initiatives and agree on clear success metrics.

Communicate your #1 AC and its corresponding initiatives to all employees and ensure that rhythms are put into place to maintain accountability, communication, and focus firm-wide throughout the year.

3. Execution Phase

Finally, it’s time to execute. The key to maintaining focus is having discipline to avoid scope creep. Say “no” far more often than “yes.” Monitor progress consistently and course-correct early and often. The Priority Planning Tool (shared here and available in my book, Creating A Culture of Accountability) will help you structure these crucial initiatives and maintain clarity throughout execution.

Conclusion

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”   – Steve Jobs

Remember the client whose planning session I described at the beginning of the article? They achieved more in the ensuing six months than they had in the previous two years by focusing on just two clear priorities. Their success came not from doing more, but from having the courage to do less, far better.

As you reflect on your own organization’s progress, consider:

  • Have we been spreading our resources too thinly?
  • What is our #1 Addressable Challenge for the coming year?
  • What “good” initiatives might we need to say “no” to in service of what matters most?

Remember: Doing less, better = Accomplishing more.

================================================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” – Stephen Covey

A CEO recently confided in me, “Mark, I feel like my team is constantly putting out fires. We’re busy all the time, but I can’t shake the feeling we’re not making real progress.” His words echoed a sentiment I’ve heard countless times from executive-level leaders. While the individuals, industries, and geographies differ, the culprit is always the same: ineffective prioritization.

The ability to prioritize and then execute effectively can make or break any leader’s success. Yet many fall into the trap of confusing busy work, other people’s priorities, and a “whack-a-mole” barrage of internally and externally derived emergencies with meaningful progress.

The cost includes stagnation, burnout, and a nagging sense you’re not living up to your potential or delivering on your commitments.

Here’s some good news: Changing how you prioritize will change your results. Better yet, it’s easier than you think to solve your most pressing issues by shifting how you manage your team’s time, attention, and energy.

Before we rush to the solution, let’s more clearly diagnose the problem. Here are three telltale symptoms of ineffective prioritization:

3 Symptoms of Ineffective Prioritization

  1. Constant Firefighting: Although you may have aspired to become a firefighter as a child, it’s the last thing you want to be doing as a business leader. If you’re regularly responding to emergencies, it’s a sign you’re not attending to important, high-value initiatives, a number of which would probably help you prevent the fires.
  2. Lack of Progress on Key Objectives: If your goals this year or this quarter sound virtually identical to your goals last year or last quarter, you’re not adequately prioritizing the decisions and actions required to advance your cause. Although it’s easy to get caught in the cycle of completing routine busy work and small tasks, that’s a weak excuse to forfeit the future you want for your organization.
  3. Feeling Exhausted and Stuck: Ineffective prioritization often feels like running on a treadmill up a grade at high speed: You and your team are exhausted and burning out, but the view never seems to change. You’re stuck because you’re focusing time and energy on the wrong things.

If these symptoms sound familiar, you need a different approach to progress. Here’s a straightforward, five-step process to help you and your team dramatically improve prioritization and move the needle on what matters most.

5 Steps to Effective Prioritization

1. Clarify the Key Challenge You Must Solve

Often, what we perceive as the problem or challenge is merely a symptom of a deeper issue. For instance, if you’re constantly putting out fires, the real problem might not be the fires themselves, but a lack of proactive systems to prevent them. Before leaping to solutions, take a step back and create a thoughtful problem statement that exposes the root causes. Once you know what you’re actually up against, you can become far more effective at addressing it.

Create a thoughtful problem statement that exposes the root causes.

Don’t ever do this alone. Gather your team and ask, “What’s the core challenge we must solve to move our organization forward?” Be specific, avoid generalizations, and discern the root causes from the symptoms. A well-defined problem is half-solved.

2. Identify the Small Number of Priorities Required to Solve the Challenge

Once you’ve clarified your key challenge, identify the actions that are both “necessary and sufficient” to resolve it. Typically, there are only one to three initiatives that truly fit this criteria. Be ruthless in your assessment—not everything that could help is necessarily vital to your success.

There are only one to three initiatives that truly fit this criteria.

Ask, “If we accomplished only these things, would it be enough to solve this key challenge?” If the answer is yes, you’ve found your true priorities.

3. Create Single Point Accountability

If you’ve followed me for any period of time or read my book Creating a Culture of Accountability, then you know that if more than one person is accountable, nobody is accountable.

Assign accountability to a single person for each initiative (priority). Their job is to assemble a team, create a detailed plan, and present it to you for feedback and eventual approval.

If more than one person is accountable, nobody is accountable.

Being accountable doesn’t mean they do all the work, but it does mean the buck stops with them. Clear accountability drives action and prevents the dreaded “I thought you were handling that.”

4. Learn to Say “No”

A priority is something that must occur at the expense of other things. If it doesn’t, it’s not a priority; it’s just another item on your “to-do” list! You and your team must learn to say “no” to things that don’t align with your key initiatives far more often.

A priority is something that must occur at the expense of other things.

This step can be particularly challenging, especially for leaders who pride themselves on being responsive and accommodating. But remember: Every “yes” to something that isn’t on the list is a “no” to your actual priorities.

Be prepared to disappoint in the short-term to deliver in the long-term. It’s your job.

5. Regularly Reassess Your Focus and Progress

Create a habit of reviewing the key initiatives with your team. At a minimum, check quarterly initiatives weekly and annual initiatives monthly to ensure they’re properly resourced, moving forward, and generally being honored as priorities–at the expense of other things. The most important role of every leader is to point to what matters most, which should always include your key initiatives.

A low-energy, highly effective way to “point” to them is to include key initiative line items in your meeting rhythm agendas as non-negotiable discussion topics. This keeps them front and center and signals their importance to your team.

While these steps are relatively simple, they require discipline, focus, and a willingness to make tough choices. But the payoff is immense: clarity of purpose, a team energized and aligned around what truly matters, and concrete results that advance your cause.

Conclusion

“Your decisions reveal your priorities”  – Jeff Van Gundy

Effective prioritization isn’t about doing more things right; it’s about clarifying the problem and then ensuring the path is cleared to properly resource and address it. When executed with rigor, these five steps dramatically improve the probability you’ll “symptom solve” less and meaningfully resolve your organization’s key challenge.

Invest a disproportionately large amount of time and energy into Step 1 and resist the well-worn path (and your instinct) to jump to solutions before you carefully and clearly identify the root causes of the challenge at hand.

The payoff is immense: clarity of purpose, a team energized and aligned around what truly matters, and concrete results that advance your cause.

It’s time to pull the plug on the costly and exhausting treadmill of ineffective prioritization. You’ll find the rewards well worth the discipline and investment.

========================================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

As a leader, you make decisions every day based on some degree of incomplete information – you do the best with what you have and move forward. You’re able to function this way because you possess deep knowledge and context regarding the operation of your business.

But hiring a coach isn’t a day-to-day kind of decision for you. In fact, you might hope it’s a once in a lifetime decision! But a risky one at that: You are contemplating a substantial financial, time, and energy investment that also ultimately requires a leap of faith.

Hiring a coach isn’t a day-to-day kind of decision for you. You are contemplating a substantial financial, time, and energy investment that also ultimately requires a leap of faith.

What if you engage the wrong person or firm? Pick a tool, system or framework that doesn’t work for your company? Get sold something that sounds great, but doesn’t address your root issues? Work through a process that takes a lot out of you and your team but doesn’t produce concrete, measurable business results? The list goes on…

Fortunately, a solid vetting process can mitigate your risk and maximize the probability of success. To help you navigate this crucial decision, I’ve identified six key factors that help business leaders separate top-tier coaches from the rest. Use them to tip the scales in your favor to find the “right” coach for your firm.

1. Focus on the Person, Not the Toolkit

The last time you hired a contractor to work on your home, you probably didn’t ask them which brand of tools they planned to use during the project. But why? Because you were more interested in the outcome than in understanding exactly which tools would be used to make it happen. So – accordingly – as you evaluated different contractors you focused on who they were: How well you liked and trusted them, the quality of their work, their references, and their overall qualifications to undertake your particular project. The toolset didn’t matter – you picked the practitioner and trusted them to bring the right tools to create the outcome you wanted.

Use the same thinking to evaluate potential coaches for your business.

Pick the practitioner and trust them to bring the right tools to create the outcome you want.

Evaluate candidate coaches based on how well you connect with and trust them, the quality of their work, their references, and their qualifications for your specific needs. Trust that a competent coach will bring the right tools to achieve your desired outcomes and then let them do their job.

2. Determine if They Walk Their Talk

A coach with integrity should practice what they preach, embodying the principles they advocate. Ask pointed questions to assess whether they walk their own talk, such as:

  • When was the last time you met with your own coach?
  • What are you working on with your coach?
  • How are you using the tools and processes you recommend for us in your coaching practice?
  • How much did you spend on your own professional education and development in the past year? What did you spend it on?

Someone with integrity should be able to easily answer all of these questions, lowering your risk if you hire them. If they seem to squirm or dance around the answers, they don’t walk their talk and you should consider yourself warned.

3. Consider Your Requirements for Personal “Fit”

Personality, methods, and style matter, but that doesn’t mean a session with your coach should feel like hanging out with a great friend. An effective coach pushes you out of your comfort zone, addresses uncomfortable truths, and asks thought-provoking questions. They name the elephants in the room and make your brain hurt sometimes.

If you want these things from your coach—and you most certainly should if you’re serious about change—then be careful not to confuse the appropriate “discomfort” they may cause in you and your team during the selection process with your sense of “fit.”

On the other hand, a great coach also makes you feel capable, confident, and inspired. A great coach—even in the midst of sharing the most brutal truth—will give you a sense of possibility and hope. Look for someone who listens intently to both the spoken and unspoken, striking a balance between firmness and compassion.

A great coach—even in the midst of sharing the most brutal truth—will give you a sense of possibility and hope.

With all that said, consider where your needs fall on the “tough love” to “supportive encouragement” spectrum (most CEOs I know fall somewhere in the middle). Trust your instincts about fit, and ask client references directly about the coach’s personality, methods, and ability to adjust their style to different clients and circumstances.

4. Evaluate Training, Experience, and Education

Many professionals like physicians, attorneys and accountants (even hairstylists and morticians!) are required by law to pass exams and earn licenses before they are permitted to practice. After that, they must attend a certain number of “continuing education” hours each year to maintain their licenses. All of this makes sense—when you go to the doctor or meet with an attorney, you want some assurance regarding their competence, which is exactly what licensing programs help ensure. How about when you hire a coach for your business? Well…

There are no licensing or continuing education requirements for coaches.

Due to the absence of professional requirements, there is an extremely low barrier to entry for the coaching business. Just about anyone can decide they want to be a coach and—presto! The next day, they can legally be engaged by a client, without regard to their training and competence. This is a massive risk multiplier and must be addressed in your selection process.

To mitigate your risk, inquire about formal training, certifications and number of years of practical experience. Look for a voluntary commitment to ongoing education—at least 40 hours annually is a good benchmark—and request specific examples of recent professional development activities. A coach invested in his or her own growth is better equipped to foster yours.

5. Assess Measurable Results

Past performance often predicts future success. But unless you are in desperate need of additional industry experience, which is the last thing most growth-oriented leaders need, don’t fall for the “industry experience” trap. Instead, focus on more relevant factors such as prior work with clients of similar size and complexity, business model, leadership maturity, and ownership structure.

Don’t fall for the “industry experience” trap. Instead, focus on prior work with clients of similar size and complexity, business model, leadership maturity, and ownership structure.

Ask the following questions, with a focus on the subset of their clients most relevant to you:

  • How do you measure your success in the first six months of a client relationship? Give me some examples of the early results you helped clients attain.
  • How do you measure your success one to two years into a client relationship? Give me some specific examples of the longer-term results you helped clients attain.
  • What are the results I should expect to hear about from your client references? Are those typical?
  • How long does a typical client engagement last for you? Can you provide an example of a client engagement that ended prior to the end of your anticipated term? Why didn’t it work out?
  • What are the things your best clients do that drive their results and success? What is your role in that?
  • What are the reasons your least successful clients don’t get better results?

An experienced coach with a track record of results will answer these questions transparently with examples of both client successes and failures. If the answers you get are non-specific, subject to extensive qualification, or in denial of any negative client experiences, buyer beware.

6. Look for a Guarantee

The purpose of any guarantee is to lower a purchaser’s risk, whether perceived or real. Although business performance guarantees like profitability or growth rate are relatively rare (after all, you are the one operating your business, not the coach), satisfaction guarantees—often including a “money back” component—are more common.

A coach willing to put “skin in the game” speaks volumes, highlights their confidence, and lowers your perceived risk. Ask each coach you evaluate whether they offer a guarantee. And, if not, why?

Conclusion

A competent, professional coach can be a game-changer for your firm, providing invaluable insights, challenging your assumptions, facilitating meaningful, lasting change, and helping you successfully navigate complex business challenges.

By carefully evaluating prospective coaches using the six factors I’ve outlined here, you’ll significantly increase the odds of finding the right fit and generating a fantastic return on your investment. Consider this process your secret weapon against mediocrity as you seek professional coaching to accelerate your firm’s results and success.

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” — General George S. Patton

Video conferencing has been part of corporate life since the 1990s. As we’re all painfully aware, it rapidly became a ubiquitous mainstay during the COVID pandemic that remains in widespread use. But rich media cuts both ways, offering tremendous benefits in certain use cases, but dramatically diminishing creativity, focus, engagement, and teamwork in others.

When was the last time you thought about when and how you and your team use video to communicate? It’s an important question to consider because, somewhat counterintuitively, there’s a strong argument to be made for less face time and more phone time.

I recently chatted with my longtime client Andy Fisher, CEO of technology solutions company Myriad360, about the opportunities and limitations of video—and the vital importance of maintaining practical, efficient, and effective communication channels.

There’s a strong argument to be made for less face time and more phone time.

Like many businesses, Myriad360’s relationship with video conferencing changed dramatically during the pandemic. “Previously, we were very much a New York-centric business. People came into the office every single day. You wondered what someone was up to if they worked from home for two days,” Andy said. Though team members were accustomed to video conferencing with clients across the country and around the world, communicating via video within the firm became the norm when the pandemic’s stay-at-home orders went into place. Since then, Myriad360’s 145 employees have transitioned away from offices to a remote-first structure. Along the way, Andy and his team began more closely evaluating the impact of “mostly video communications” on their interactions. What they found aligns with my own experiences as a coach and the body of research on video as a means of connection.

In the spirit of General George S. Patton’s wise words quoted above, here are four constraining effects of video communications that make the case for more phone time:

Diminished Focus

If you’re a leader, you undoubtedly care about your staff’s ability to focus. Ironically, while many rely on video as a means of keeping tabs on others’ presence and productivity, it often has the exact opposite effect. While seated in front of a computer on a video call, one is subject to every distraction the internet has to offer! For example, the constant ping of email and Slack notifications, background objects in others’ cameras, “breaking” alerts from news feeds, and even gazing at our own reflection takes away from our ability to be optimally present for those on the other side of the dialogue.

Since well before the pandemic, I’ve preferred one-on-one coaching conversations via telephone to both in-person and video interactions. I find that I am a significantly more effective listener and coach when I eliminate the distractions inherent in face-to-face and video conversations. Over the phone, I’m more likely to perceive the nuance of tone, inflection, hesitation, and emotion–all of which add to my efficacy as a coach.

When the world rushed to video in 2020, we unknowingly surrendered some of our focus.

Greater Fatigue

As Andy points out, “There’s such a thing as Zoom fatigue. It’s looking at yourself that makes you tired. Who wants to stare in a mirror all day?” Extensive research, including work by Stanford professor and founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab Jeremy Bailenson, shows that, for humans, looking at ourselves is actually quite stressful—and thus, exhausting.

Further, work days tend to have less variability for those with heavy online video communications. We’re tied to our desks longer and experience fewer changes of scenery, a smaller number of spontaneous conversations, and less novelty–all of which are important to recharge ourselves throughout the day.

If you feel more wiped out at the end of each business day than you used to, video may be to blame.

If you feel more wiped out at the end of each business day than you used to, video may be to blame. At the very least, like I’ve done, change your settings so you’re not sapping energy by looking at yourself in the virtual mirror.

Less Creativity

Some of the world’s best known leaders—Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and President Harry S. Truman, among many others, have been known for their tendency to “walk-and-talk.” It turns out, there’s something to this: in 2014, a Stanford University study found that walking significantly improves creativity, making it a worthwhile endeavor during conversations.

Video communication, on the other hand, all but forces seated, at-your-desk participation (lest you risk giving other participants motion sickness as you wander around). Being tethered to your desk interrupts and limits the creative cognitive processes essential to solve problems, to innovate, and to build quality relationships. Andy agrees. “I’ve found that I don’t do my best thinking sitting at my desk, where I’ve got to be contained. I do my best thinking walking around the house or the neighborhood, with my earbuds in.”

Get up. Get out. And do it on the phone.

Lower Vulnerability

As I worked with leadership teams through the pandemic via video, I noted a decrease in personal vulnerability and sharing which are essential elements to build trust and a high-performing team. Although I don’t exactly understand the cause, it seems like face-to-face interaction via video reduces our willingness to be vulnerable, to challenge others, and to offer new ideas.

Creating an environment where people are comfortable being vulnerable, instigating productive conflict, and taking risks requires work and is key to your success. Think about how a reduction in video calls might help your people perform better as a team.

Conclusion

A leader’s effectiveness is measured by the accumulation of results stemming from their decisions, with passive, default choices often producing the least favorable outcomes.

When Andy realized how video was negatively affecting his focus, creativity, and energy, he decided to scale back his reliance on Zoom calls: “I’ve moved all my one-on-one meetings to audio, where I can walk around the house. I find that I’m more of a creative thinker and I tend to be more focused [on the phone], because there are no other distractions.”

Of course, there are circumstances in which video remains the most effective medium. When you’re sharing bad news or otherwise providing an update that has a significant impact on someone’s role, it’s important to be able to observe and interpret body language and other visual cues. Similarly, Andy holds his firmwide all-hands meetings and other conversations with multiple voices over video, as it’s helpful to see those to whom he’s speaking while also minimizing unexpected interruptions.

“In my business, we have Zoom, Slack, email, phone calls, and text messages. I use all of them every day. My choice of medium depends on the type of communication, the urgency of it, and the recipient or recipients,” Andy said. “We try to use the right tool for the job.”

Are you making active or passive choices?

Indeed, video communication is a tool, just like the telephone. Both have strengths and both have limitations. But are you making active or passive choices?

It’s time to think more critically about your team’s communication habits and whether, in fact, you’re using the right tool for each job at hand. Video may have killed the radio star, but long live the telephone!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“When I came off the boat I was very proud of the thick calluses which had developed on my feet. But now, I am struggling to get into my favourite high heels which is a shame…” – Pamela Stephenson

In humans, a callus is formed when repeated irritation causes our bodies to create a hardened outer layer of tissue. A callus doesn’t eliminate the cause; rather, it protects from further harm and allows us to continue the activity from which it originated in the first place. The downside of a callus is that it can interfere with flexibility, reduce sensation, and mask an underlying injury. Although we typically think of calluses on our hands and feet, they form anywhere there’s a repetitive irritation.

It turns out, like humans, organizations develop calluses for the same general reason: to avoid or circumvent pain points. Organizational callus forms when you operate around or despite certain people, deny reality, tolerate unwieldy processes, or expend excessive resources to compensate for clients or suppliers with significant shortcomings or unreasonable demands.

Workaround organizational calluses are not scalable. They are costly to maintain, exhausting for your team, and often cause top performers to quit. Worst of all, the negative effects stealthily increase over time–starting with a simple, seemingly appropriate workaround, then building into something that “all of a sudden” becomes debilitating and growth-preventing.

There are four common causes of organizational calluses: people, processes, customers, and suppliers. Let’s take a closer look at each and discuss how you can prevent them.

People

The most important question in business is and will forever be “Who?”

Accordingly, pay particular attention to underperformers, cultural misfits, and toxic high performers. Each of these employee archetypes predictably fuels the formation of a workaround organizational callus. When leaders tolerate the people in these categories, they normalize the behaviors and virtually guarantee increasing organizational inefficiencies over time.

Here’s how to avoid people-related organizational calluses:

  • Implement rigorous Right People, Right Seats (RPRS) standards for both performance and culture fit and assess every employee quarterly.
  • Build a Culture of Accountability.
  • Mind what you do and what you tolerate as a leader. Leading by example includes not just your own behavior, but also what you tolerate in others.

Processes

The most significant source of messy, inefficient processes is a lack of accountability. Each core process in your firm should have a single point of accountability. Just like your bedroom closet, processes become less orderly over time necessitating oversight for smooth operation, maintenance, and enhancement. Common core processes include customer acquisition, service delivery, manufacturing, billing and collections, and talent acquisition.

Single-point accountability can be challenging for leaders, as most core processes run across organizational departments—sales, operations, customer service, human resources, and accounting to name a few—rather than within them. That said, it is crucial to create crystal clear accountability for the cross-functional processes at the heart of your operation in addition to the functional departments within it.

Here’s how to prevent process-related organizational calluses:

  • Create clear single-point accountability for each of your firm’s core processes.
  • Build the imperative for change into your culture. When you normalize disrupting the status quo, your firm is far less likely to suffer from messy, outdated processes.
  • Regularly assess and update your core processes. I recommend every 12–18 months, depending on the growth rate of your business.

Customers

Beware of customers with unreasonable demands, those who are slow to pay you, and those who treat your staff poorly. These characters tend to create organizational calluses as you and your staff compensate for their shortcomings. Further, if you do the math, you’ll likely realize you’ve been accommodating your least profitable customers, which is hardly the path to sustainable, profitable growth.

Years ago, one of my coaching clients in the contracting space had a callus in the form of a “best” customer who owed them more than USD $4 million and was over 6 months in arrears! Even worse, senior leadership continued to accommodate this customer despite their unwillingness to meet their financial commitments.

Cash flow, of course, is critical so my client spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to “borrow from Peter to pay Paul” as their largest customer strung them along with millions in receivables. Predictably, their issue with this client started small and grew over time. As it did, they established a callus of distracting and non-productive financial maneuvering to compensate.

Avoid customer-related organizational calluses by:

  • Identifying and focusing on your core customer: people who value your products or services and are willing to pay a fair price for them.
  • Holding your customers accountable to treat your people well.
  • Periodically evaluating your customers and terminating or renegotiating low profit, high hassle relationships.

Suppliers

Each firm that names you as a customer should contribute to the value and efficiency of your operation. If they don’t, find replacements who will.

I once coached two partners running a major dress manufacturer. Design, sales, and distribution were handled out of their New York offices and manufacturing was completed via contract in China.

At the time, their manufacturer was struggling with quality control. To compensate, my client hired a firm in China to spot-check dresses in the factory prior to shipping. Because a significant number of dresses were still shipped with quality problems, they established another quality check and repair facility in New York. In addition to the expensive, work-intensive quality checks, their retail store clients who sold the dresses to the public lost confidence in the brand’s ability to deliver on its promises. Despite these issues and the massive organizational callus they built in response, the two partners continually refused to consider adding another factory to their manufacturing stable.

Be mindful of this cautionary tale and monitor your suppliers, contractors, and vendors for the following callus-inducing symptoms: low quality, infrequent and/or opaque communications, unreasonable demands, and a general lack of “good partner” behaviors.

To stop supplier-related organizational calluses:

  • Create and document expected standards of behavior and performance for each of your major vendors.
  • Establish both normal and exception-based communication rhythms and reporting.
  • Create relationships with potential backup and secondary suppliers. This “virtual bench” will empower you to hold high expectations of your suppliers and to replace them quickly if it’s warranted.

Conclusion

Any minor irritation in your firm has the potential to induce costly, growth-slowing organizational callus. Leaders can prevent this by tuning into the symptoms, establishing clear behavioral norms, and acting aggressively to remedy exceptions.

Here’s the common denominator: Mind what you tolerate as a leader and adopt a bias to act. This posture sends a clear message to your employees, to your customers, and to your suppliers, while simultaneously helping you attract and retain top tier talent (who typically have a low tolerance for passive leadership).

What callus-inducing conditions are you tolerating in your firm? An honest answer followed by focused action could be one of the most valuable things you do for your firm this year.

==============================================

Coaching Opportunity

I have a rare, available slot in my coaching portfolio.

I’m looking for an established, aggressive CEO running a high growth firm with USD $25–400 million in revenue. Already successful, they’re obsessed with continuing to scale, but cannot PREDICTABLY generate the financial or quality-of-life results they want through the performance of the business.

Who do you know who should know me?

With Gratitude – Mark

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

Whether you realize it or not, there are always obstacles in some shape or form standing between you and what you want to achieve.

If obstacles didn’t exist, it would be a breeze to accomplish just about anything. Hiring (and retaining) great people, improving profitability, increasing sales, retaining customers, building the culture you want, raising capital, and creating partnerships would be easy!

Yet all of these are massively challenging to achieve. The obstacles are the challenge!

Looking through this lens, when you identify an objective to accomplish, you’re really stating that you intend to overcome the obstacles between where you sit today and where you’ll be when you’ve achieved the desired outcome.

But you and most leaders don’t typically think of it that way. You probably create a plan delineating the steps and actions needed to achieve the objective and hope these get you where you want to be, roughly on time.

“Obstacles are the challenge.”

In reality, obstacles you’ve never considered loom in front of you and your team, and you’ll need to deal with them before you can make it to the finish line. The discipline to identify and systematically solve them from the beginning is an underappreciated and little-discussed attribute of effective leaders. Incorporating potential obstacle identification into your goal planning process is one of the most important things you can do to set yourself up for success.

With that in mind, let’s consider the four most common types of potential obstacles you should be thinking about as you plan.

1. Mindset Obstacles

Whenever you’re aiming to accomplish something important, start your planning process by identifying potential obstacles of the mind: The thoughts preventing you and your people from attaining the objective. Let’s say you’re trying to reduce discounting behaviors in your sales organization. The belief system supporting discounting behaviors is a huge potential obstacle to achieving this and it’s not necessarily limited to your salespeople—everyone involved including you, sales managers, sales support staff, and your accounting team can influence the outcome. For success, everyone must believe the value of what you provide to your customers is greater than the standard asking price before you can make the change stick.

Mindset obstacles are stealthy and ubiquitous, so start with them first and be honest with yourself about which beliefs, biases, attitudes, and assumptions have the potential to delay or derail the desired outcome.

2. Structural Obstacles

Every organization has structures, processes, procedures, and systems—or lack of thereof—with potential to prevent leaders from growing their business. Your goal planning process must identify the potential structural obstacles that you’ll need to overcome to achieve the results you want. For example, one of my coaching clients has an objective to improve the profitability of their customer relationships while simultaneously maintaining an exceptional customer experience. Together, we identified a structural obstacle to achieving this: Accountability for project profitability wasn’t possible at the project manager level in the current organization structure. They’re working to solve this and several other obstacles, as they must, to achieve their goal.

Which structures, processes, procedures, or systems are potential obstacles to your objectives?

3. Knowledge & Skill Obstacles

I’ve never seen a business with a sustained growth rate that exceeds the personal growth rate of the people running it. This phenomenon sets the stage for another common potential obstacle to achievement: A lack of skills and knowledge. How many times have you tried to accomplish something you’ve never done before? Just that notion should be enough to trigger the potential obstacle warning sign! Yet I see leaders routinely and confidently charge into the unknown with a plan to build, fix, or enhance something they lack the skills and knowledge to accomplish only to be frustrated months or years down the road when they find themselves working to solve the same problem time and time again.

Sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know, especially if you’re trying something no one on your team has accomplished before. Find the discipline to identify the skill and knowledge obstacles that could stand between you and your goals. To overcome these learning- or awareness-based obstacles, consider hiring an expert (in hindsight often the best investment my clients have ever made!), consulting with more seasoned colleagues, taking a course, or finding other credible sources of learning to close the skills and knowledge gap to accelerate your progress.

4. External Obstacles

Potential obstacles to achievement also lurk outside your organization. These external obstacles might relate to client expectations, limitations associated with suppliers (think turnaround time, pricing, or logistics), governmental regulation, acts of nature, or anything else you don’t directly control. Although not in your direct control, you likely have influence to move these potential impediments to lower downside risk. And even if you can’t exert influence—for example, preventing a hurricane from making landfall on the day your new product line ships to customers—you’ll certainly identify risks, enabling thoughtful mitigation or contingency plans.

Which external obstacles pose potential risks to your goals?

Don’t Become Blinded by the Bright Side

By now you might be tempted to think, “I’m an optimist and it seems awfully pessimistic to focus so much time and energy on obstacles. I don’t want to concentrate on what could go wrong. I’d rather power through to get things done—after all, it’s gotten me this far.”

Here’s the thing: As a leader, your job is to be neither an optimist nor a pessimist. It is to discern reality and then create the actions that yield predictable results. The pursuit of reality requires you to do the thoughtful, critical work of identifying potential obstacles before planning to achieve your goals because the only thing I can guarantee is a non-zero probability they’ll slow or derail your progress.

==============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Masterclass – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Dates: May 14th and May 15th

Learn More…

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

After more than two decades of coaching leaders across industries and around the globe, I’ve come to the following inescapable conclusion: It’s exceedingly rare to not have a business outgrow its Founder.

Scaling successfully requires recognizing this reality in order to adjust your perspective, mindset, and behaviors to do what’s best to support the business. More often than not, however, businesses stagnate, struggle, or fail altogether because the Founder / CEO refuses to admit and/or act on the fact that their organization’s needs have exceeded their capabilities.

Let’s explore why your business will most likely outgrow you in your current role, learn what you can do to avoid getting stuck, and discover how a change in perspective can transform both your potential and your organization’s growth trajectory.

Why Entrepreneurs Don’t Scale

To realize why most firms inevitably outgrow their founder, it’s critical to acknowledge that the qualifications to start a business are very different from those necessary to operate one at scale.

Imagine playing a game of word association with someone you know. If you were to say the word “entrepreneur” and ask them what comes to mind, they would likely respond with terms including “scrappy,” “fast-paced,” “risk-taker,” “unstructured,” etc.—all traits that allow Entrepreneurs to throw caution to the wind and lean into launching their big idea.

The qualifications to start a business are very different from those necessary to operate one at scale.

While those attributes are both necessary and ideal to get things up and running, they don’t align with the qualifications required to keep an established, profitable business on track and growing at scale. That’s why savvy founders seeking continuous growth hire an operator.

It’s certainly an Ego stroke to retain the Founder / CEO title, but it’s quite another thing to hand your growing toddler or preteen “baby” to a professional operator—typically a president or chief operating officer—who replaces you to run the operational day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, and annual rhythms of the firm. That said, I’ve had multiple clients over the years who, with coaching, have done this with tremendous success. In hindsight, all of them report that it was the best thing they ever did to drive their aspirations, financial returns, and quality of life.

But making the decision and preparing for the transition is universally challenging. Here’s why: If your self-image is “Founder and CEO,” you’ll likely feel threatened by the idea of hiring someone to operate the business, because you’re already that person. This perspective reveals the primary obstacle Founders face as the firm outgrows their managerial and leadership capabilities: The decision to hire an operator conflicts with their self-image—who they believe they are!

Sadly, this is why it’s so darn hard to grow any business into significance. This can be observed statistically by taking a peek at the US Small Business Association’s (US SBA’s) grim survival data, which indicate that 96 percent of all business starts fail to grow beyond $1 million in revenue.

The Entrepreneur’s self-image is commonly in the way! But why is this so pervasive?

It’s highly unusual for Founders to be self-aware and willing to do something about it. Common obstacles to letting go include ego (fear of losing status), scarcity (fear of not being “fully” in control of the business), misunderstanding the very different roles of Owner and Manager, and resistance to funding an experienced hand to accelerate the firm. Your self-image is enmeshed in each of these obstacles, which is why they are so challenging to overcome. But there’s good news in the form of a path forward:

I’ve found there are three phases to every Founder’s self-image that evolve and progress for those willing and able to release one phase to reach the next for the benefit of themselves and their firm. They are the Entrepreneur, Builder, and Investor.

Transitioning from Entrepreneur to Builder

The first evolution of the Founder’s self-image advances them from “Entrepreneur” to “Builder.” Builders realize they’ve created something meaningful and understand that continuing to develop it demands discipline, process, and rigor.

Let’s consider the term “Builder” and play word association again. What words and phrases would your friends associate with the term “Builder?” You may find yourself thinking of some of the following:

  • Firm foundation
  • Right pieces in the right place
  • Process
  • Following a plan
  • Growing

The “Builder” self-image is a seismic shift from your self-image as an “Entrepreneur” and, in fact, is essential for survival as your firm grows into adolescence. Yet those with a “Builder” self-image also struggle to replace themselves as the business outgrows them. This is because they still perceive themselves as critical to the operation. The “Builder’s” self-image, just like the “Entrepreneur’s” self-image, doesn’t align with hiring an operator largely due to the same set of fears and obstacles preventing them from taking action.

Becoming an Investor — Where the Magic Happens

The third phase of the Founder’s journey is where the magic happens: Your self-image shifts yet again! This time, it’s from “Builder” to “Investor.”

Investors place bets on others to do things that generate a return. With the self-image of an “Investor,” it becomes much easier to see the obvious answer that will drive a higher return from your business: hiring an expert to run and continue scaling the operation. In fact, you must invest in others at some point to achieve the kind of return you seek. It’s the only way to move beyond your current position and contribute to the meaningful development of something bigger than yourself.

You must invest in others at some point to achieve the kind of return you seek.

Of course, none of these transitions are easy or low stakes. The Founder’s self-image journey from “Entrepreneur” to “Builder” and then, hopefully, to “Investor” represents a tremendous shift in identity, mindset, and behavior. But if you think back and remember the earliest days of your venture, you might realize that at inception, an “Entrepreneur” is actually an “Investor” in disguise. After all, when you launched your firm you chose to invest in yourself and fund your idea. The irony of the entrepreneurial self-image journey is that it’s about figuring out how to return to your roots as an investor in people and ideas!

Conclusion

As your self-image advances through this rarely traveled full progression, you’ll be better positioned to make hard decisions, including the one to step aside when the business almost inevitably outgrows your capability to operate and grow at scale. The ability to transition makes you that much more likely to breathe the rarefied air not only of the 4 percent of businesses that scale past $1 million in revenue, but also of the 0.4 percent who scale past $10 million in revenue (US SBA data). When you evolve your self-image to align with the real needs of your business, your business evolves in response–not the other way around.

Think about your current self-image—are you an “Entrepreneur,” a “Builder,” or an “Investor?”—and what (or who) can help you transition to the next phase? Yes, all meaningful change is uncomfortable at first, but rest assured that moving through this progression will be well worth it. Remember–every one of my “Investor” clients say it was the best thing they ever did to drive their aspirations, financial returns, and quality of life.

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

  • Follow Mark on LinkedIn
  • Learn about Speaking and Workshops
  • Buy Books: Activators – A CEO’s Guide to Clearer Thinking and Getting Things Done -and-Creating a Culture of Accountability
  • Contact Mark to Explore CEO & Executive Team Coaching

“Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.” – Jerzy Gregorek

In every domain, the more data points you collect, the more insight you gain. This is because more information makes pattern identification easier. As a coach, I’ve built a unique perspective across years, economies, industries, clients, and scenarios that enables me to discern patterns most leaders struggle to spot.

One of the most challenging patterns for leaders to detect is the connection between their decisions and the ensuing long-term outcomes. Decisions that drive immediate results—say, choosing a scoop of mocha chip ice cream rather than strawberry—come easily and with very little noise because the effects are right there in front of you (Mocha Chip! Yum!). Decisions with bigger implications for your business and your life, however (like the cumulative effect of choosing between ice cream and an apple every night after dinner) require taking a step back to analyze the pattern correlating the daily choice with the probability of a long-term outcome. But in a business context this can be extremely difficult, if not impossible to spot from the trenches as you operate your organization on any given day, week, or month. The time delay between your decisions and the outcomes, which may span months or even years with all sorts of other noise along the way prevents you from seeing what works and what doesn’t.

As I wrote in my first book Activators, we are masters of procrastination and avoidance, usually to the detriment of what we want to accomplish. With the accrual of pattern recognition over the past twenty years as a coach, I’ve concluded that when leaders face a decision and choose to pursue the “easy” option, it’s far more likely to present future challenges than choosing the more “difficult” alternative instead.

To illustrate and to encourage you to select the more “difficult” path more often, let’s explore the five most common areas where I see leaders choose the “easy” route to the detriment of their team, their firm, and themselves.

1. Providing Hard Feedback

Providing hard feedback is challenging even for seasoned, experienced leaders. One of the leaders on a client executive team I coach oversees a group of professional managers. There’s a manager on his team (we’ll call him Burt) whose ego is in the way of his ability to relate to clients, staff, and peers, diminishing his ability to do his job effectively. The other managers in the group feel like Burt isn’t a team player; instead, it’s always all about him.

On a recent call, I asked my client, “Have you ever had this conversation with Burt?” “Well,” he said sheepishly, “I’ve danced around it, but I haven’t ever delivered the feedback directly.”

My client has avoided providing meaningful feedback to Burt. He dreads the discomfort of sharing his and others’ observations, and worries that Burt—who has massive potential in his role—may choose to leave. He’s made the easy decision so far (avoidance), and the problem has grown worse over time.

The good news is that my client is very receptive to feedback and change. I coached him on how to provide caring, very direct, hard feedback to Burt. There’s no doubt in my mind that the conversation will occur, and that there will be one of two outcomes:

The first possibility is that Burt will be upset about the feedback and refuse to improve, ultimately creating a different kind of problem to be resolved. Based on everything I know about him, that’s unlikely. The second, more probable outcome is that Burt will be receptive to the coaching and work to change his behavior.

By making the hard choice today – confronting his fear and embarking on a direct and difficult conversation – the team, the firm, Burt, and my client will all experience a better future.

2. Removing Non-Fit and Underperforming Staff

Of course, not every employee relationship can be salvaged with a tough conversation. Occasionally, the hardest and best decision is the one to say goodbye.

Another client of mine employs an extremely senior and high-performing sales professional (we’ll call her Lisa) who has struggled for years to collaborate with others. Because Lisa is so senior, she’s been placed in numerous roles, managing teams over the past eight years and every time it’s ended poorly for the company and for her personally. Sure enough, she’s managing yet another team now and things are not heading in the right direction. In fact, her management—or lack thereof—is creating irritation and inflammation in an organization that is otherwise performing at an extremely high level.

Just the other day, I once again raised this recurring issue with my CEO client. “At some point, you’re going to get tired of being on the treadmill with Lisa, and you’re going to need to do something about it. There’s no scenario in which she’s going to change.”

My client was afraid; Lisa generates a significant amount of business. And yet, by making the easy decision to retain a non-fit employee, the CEO has created continual headaches for himself and his team over nearly a decade. The hard decision to remove Lisa from the firm will yield a much brighter set of outcomes all around. Although the jury’s still out on this matter, I’m confident my client will come around and make the hard, right choice for the sake of the rest of his team.

If you’ve been avoiding a similar decision, consider this your sign to move forward and take the harder path.

3. Upgrading the Team

As any business scales, it becomes increasingly likely that the people who helped the business reach its current state won’t be the right ones to advance it to continually higher levels of sophistication and performance. It’s not because they’re underperforming or even because they’re a poor fit for their roles; it’s because the demands of a scaling business are likely to eventually exceed their prior experience and capabilities. In other words, the business outgrows them.

In this situation, many leaders take the easy route. They feel loyal to those who have been with them from the beginning, unconsciously deny reality, and convince themselves that the person currently in the role will figure it out. But the reality is that failing to acquire more seasoned talent denies the firm and rest of the staff the opportunity to accelerate and grow.

I’ve seen leaders take this particular easy route time and time again, keeping their current team and sacrificing the firm’s potential in the process. I’ve also seen others make the hard choice to acquire highly seasoned leaders and experience an absolute transformation as a result. They achieve more, more rapidly than they ever thought possible!

By making the hard decision to upgrade their team and taking some relationship risk to do it, leaders create an easier and brighter future than those who don’t.

4. Holding Others Accountable

Sometimes the hardest decisions come in the form of holding others accountable. I began working with a client several years ago immediately after their organization had merged with another large entity, resulting in two very different cultures that were smashed together rather than thoughtfully integrated.

I was hired by the CEO to help the leadership team gel and develop a culture that would enable the firm to grow and scale. The team played along and, among other things, defined their core values and the specific behaviors that would be required in the new culture. However, the senior leaders were fearful of holding people accountable to the new standard.

They were grappling with the usual factors that influence us to choose the easier route: fear of broaching the conversation itself or that top performers would quit if they told them the behavioral expectations were shifting. Ultimately, the leaders realized they didn’t have a choice, thanks to the CEO’s leadership and non-negotiable stance on the direction of the firm.

The hard decision was made.

I coached them to use several methods and processes to hold their people accountable and they began doing the difficult work with the knowledge that their efforts would lead to vastly different and better outcomes for the business. As expected, most employees accepted the new cultural norms and a minority of others refused. Over time, they either left on their own or were asked to leave.

By forcing the issue, the culture—and work—became easier and more harmonious firmwide. Today, this company is significantly larger than when I began working with them, their culture is a significant differentiator in their industry that helps attract top tier talent, and they’ve built one of the strongest and most successful cultures of all the clients in my coaching portfolio.

5. Selecting Priorities

Hard decisions aren’t limited to personnel.

Fortune favors the focused: If you have more than one or two priorities for your business this year, you have too many. You might make progress on many different fronts, but the odds are you won’t fully complete the one or two things that are essential to accelerate profitability and growth.

This concept comes with a learning curve. I’ve never met a new client who wasn’t challenged by having too many things on their plate. There are a host of reasons as to why too many priorities make it onto their list, including failing to make other hard decisions from a misplaced sense of loyalty to others, to over-weighting the input of people who are out of their depth relative to the sophistication of the organization.

When you acquiesce and say “yes” to six or four or ten (!) different priorities, you’re probably not going to get any of them done because you’re diluting the organization’s ability to focus and execute. Meanwhile, when you make the hard decision to focus on just one or two, putting aside what seems pressing to make sure the truly vital priorities get your full attention, you ultimately accomplish a lot more and accelerate the progress of the business.

Conclusion: Choose Wisely

“Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you.”  – John C. Maxwell

The patterns linking easy decisions to challenging outcomes and hard decisions to better outcomes are unmistakable and universal.

While identifying your organization’s patterns while you’re enmeshed in the day-to-day may be beyond the realm of possibility without the perspective of a mentor, a peer group, or a coach, the following keep-it-simple approach will work for most:

Listen to your emotions and begin leaning into hard things more deliberately.

If you don’t, you’ll continue to gain the small, immediate rewards that come with letting yourself off the hook today at the expense of a more difficult road ahead. If you do, you’ll experience both personal growth and some short term adversity in exchange for a much better tomorrow for days, weeks, and years to come.

The decisions are yours. Make them wisely.

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Effective teamwork begins and ends with communication”  – Coach Mike Krzyzewski

During World War II, militaries began relying on two-way radio technology to communicate more effectively across land, sea, and air. But the radios were often unreliable and difficult to hear, so shorthand language was devised to increase reliability and understanding.

This is how the term “Roger Wilco” originated. It’s shorthand for, “I’ve received your message, I understand it, and I will comply with it.” The phrase became a way for pilots and ground troops to quickly affirm important instructions and make more rapid decisions when lives were at stake.

While I hope lives aren’t at stake as you operate your business, ensuring your messages are understood is just as important whether by phone, Zoom, or in person as it is on the battlefield. Yet, communication is the number one blindspot and weakness I encounter while coaching business leaders. Even worse, many leaders lament that their people don’t make the “right” decisions often enough which, in fact, is a direct consequence of their own shortcomings as communicators.

Leaders often under communicate because communication isn’t a priority to them (it should be) or because they think something is so obvious (to them) they assume it doesn’t need stating. In other instances, leaders think they’ll appear foolish repeating themselves to their team.

A factor contributing to these situations is the cognitive bias known as “the curse of knowledge.” This bias is in full effect when we (often unconsciously) presume others possess the same knowledge, outlook, and background we do. As a result, we overestimate how much others grasp or relate to our thoughts and feelings. Here’s the thing: More often than not, they don’t have the same information or context we do!

If you’ve ever had a friend tell you a story that didn’t make sense because they omitted a critical detail, you’ve experienced the curse of knowledge firsthand. In a social situation, an omission like this isn’t a big deal. You would simply ask your friend to back up and explain the part of the story you didn’t understand. In a business context, though, nobody’s going to tell the CEO, department head, or team leader in front of a room full of people what they just said doesn’t make sense.

This is why every leader must be ever conscious that there’s a sizable gap between what’s in their head and what’s in everyone else’s. Your job as a responsible communicator is to build a bridge, meet them where they are, and then lead them across it so that they share the information and context you possess at any given moment. In other words, what’s on your mind should be on their minds too.

The question is: How do you make that happen?

Here are five ways:

1.  Recurring Meeting Cadence

Information is the lifeblood of every firm. The steady, predictable heartbeat that pumps life throughout is your communication rhythm—daily, weekly, and monthly meetings.

I recently met with a client who was struggling to make his executive team’s daily huddles work. “Nobody can think of what to say in the huddle,” he lamented.

Since the daily huddle’s purpose is synchronization, I coached this executive team to think about the information they possessed that would be helpful for others on their team to know. I suggested that they prepare for their huddle by asking themselves, “What do I know that my team NEEDS to know?” After all, that’s the definition of synchronizing—to align understanding and get on the same page.

Synchronization items for your daily huddle can be personal, cultural, and business, client, or supplier related. Nothing is off limits as you and your team strive to share information and synchronize.

Other meeting rhythms are Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly (WMQ) and focus more on assessing results, troubleshooting, problem solving, brainstorming, debating, planning, and overall team cohesion. The challenge for most teams here is articulating the right topics to discuss and clarifying the intended outcome of the conversation. Is your team engaging in the right conversations during your WMQ meetings?

To make this easier, I have my coaching clients use an IDS framework to conduct their WMQ meetings, where they Identify, Discuss, and Solve issues at hand. Not all items that are identified are discussed, and not all items that are discussed are solved during the meeting. This is okay, because naming the “elephant in the room” is often equally as important as solving it.

And remember: Just because YOU can see the elephant doesn’t mean anyone else does!

2. Passive Communication Mechanisms

Not all communication has to be verbal. In fact, it shouldn’t be!

Relying purely on speaking or email can become exhausting for both you AND your team. Use more passive methods to share and reinforce the information in your head as well.

For instance, several of my clients use computer screensavers and laminated reference cards on conference tables that list their firm’s core values, purpose, and priorities. Others adorn their hallways and meeting rooms with posters or murals sharing important information. Artifacts—like stress balls or desk stationary—with, for example,  your firm’s brand promise emblazoned on them might also serve as constant visual reminders of what’s important.

These passive methods are quite effective because they’re always in plain sight and being absorbed by the people who view them. Just remember that passive communication mechanisms augment the other things you’re doing to share what’s in your head. They are NOT a stand-alone solution!

3. Repeatable Processes to Reinforce Most Important Things

This is another method that doesn’t require you to constantly expend energy. Repeatable processes can also reinforce the information your team needs to know.

For instance, several of my clients have a rule that any time an internal meeting has more than eight attendees, they must begin by reciting their company’s strategic cascade: core purpose, core values, three-year objectives, and current year priorities.

The process takes all of two minutes, constantly reinforcing what matters most to the organization and ensuring top-of-mind alignment during the meetings that follow.

What simple, repeatable process can you implement firmwide to reinforce what matters most?

4. The Drive-By

A “drive-by” is when you use a casual conversation, perhaps while passing someone in the hallway, as an opportunity to share what’s in your head with others. You can open the dialog with a statement like “I’ve been thinking a lot about…”, or you can ask a simple question.

For example, you might ask an employee to state your company’s Core Purpose while you’re both waiting for the morning coffee to finish brewing. If they know the answer, that’s great! But if they don’t, that’s okay too, because it presents an opening to make a friendly agreement. You could say something like: “Can we make a deal? The next time I ask you to recite our Core Purpose, I need you to have the answer. Will you have the answer for me the next time I ask you?”

There’s no brow-beating, no punishment, just an expectation that the employee internalizes whatever it is you’ve asked of them. It’s another mechanism to help transplant what’s in your head into theirs.

5. One-to-Many Communication

While one-on-one meetings and drive bys are excellent means to convey information, they’re not particularly scalable for senior leaders in large firms. If scale is an obstacle for you to communicate effectively, augment your more intimate conversations with one-to-many communication tools such as newsletters or personal video updates.

Consider the one-to-many construct your version of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “fireside chats,” in which he delivered a regular evening radio broadcast to the American public. Roosevelt conducted these mostly during the height of the Great Depression and during the early years of World War II—times when the public required reassurance and leadership.

The communication doesn’t need to be “commander-in-chief worthy,” though.

For example, one of my CEO clients sends a video update to his entire company via Slack every week. It’s never rigid or formal, just a short, three-minute video where he talks about what’s been on his mind. Sometimes it’s about something that caught his attention that week, an interesting person he met, or an important milestone in the business. Those weekly videos also give the CEO a public platform to recognize deserving employees who did a particularly good job or helped secure a new client.

It’s a wonderful tool to share what’s on your mind with your team and to get more people thinking more like you over time. You’ll be surprised how grateful your staff will be to hear from you regularly in a one-to-many format!

Conclusion

“Do not assume the orderly soldiers standing before you fully comprehend the larger mission and why their role matters.” – James Stavridis

Used regularly and in balance, these five communication methods will improve the alignment of your team and their understanding of your thoughts, ideas, and priorities. But a word of caution as you begin to deploy them:

As a leader, you’re likely accustomed to operating at a strategic level. But the language and terms of communication at 30,000 feet differ from the language and terms those with boots on the ground understand. Be aware of this—and be prepared to translate.

Here’s a useful rule of thumb: If you can’t explain any element of your plan, strategy, or business and its operations to the least-educated, lowest salaried position in your firm, then you don’t understand it well enough yourself. In other words, if you speak French and your team speaks Chinese, it’s not their problem to understand you—it’s YOURS. You have to meet people where they are and bring them to where you want them to be.

This is difficult for many leaders to identify and improve because it’s rare they receive meaningful feedback about their communication shortcomings. The greater the power gradient—that is, the further up the organizational ladder you are from your audience—the less likely people are to question you.

Simplify your message so it can be easily understood by everyone, then use the five communication methods described here to get the job done constantly and consistently over time.

In short order, you’ll build the bridge, closing the gap between the information in your head and the information possessed by your team. You’ll also hear a resounding “Roger Wilco” much more often.

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”  – Margaret J. Wheatley

As the year comes to a close, it’s natural to look forward to a bit of a break and the promise of a fresh start in January. But too often we proceed without looking back to appreciate where we’ve been and to reflect on the weakest links in our leadership.

This process doesn’t cost a penny and only takes a couple of hours to thoughtfully complete.

The psychological benefits of reflecting on past events are well-documented. For example, A University of Zurich study found that reflecting on past challenges aids in processing future negative experiences, boosting both self-efficacy and resilience.

Indeed, there’s a tremendous value to pausing, reflecting, and taking stock of what worked and what didn’t work for you, your team, and your organization over the past year.

Before you rush into 2024, use the waning weeks of 2023 wisely to look back and assess. This reflection will help you derive meaning, value, and actionable next steps from both accomplishments and shortcomings of the past year.

To guide you in this important process, here are 10 key questions to ask yourself that set the stage for a thoughtful and productive assessment.

  1. Where did I miss the mark as a leader this past year? (Be brutally honest with yourself here.) Based on this reflection, what behaviors do I need to change in the coming year?
  2. What is one behavior that I will stop tolerating in others next year?
  3. What is one behavior that I will stop tolerating in myself next year?
  4. How clearly have I defined and communicated the direction, strategy, and priorities of the business to employees?
  5. Who in my personal and/or professional life do I need to deliberately distance myself from?
  6. Who in my personal and/or professional life do I need to move closer to?
  7. Which members of my external professional team (accountant, financial adviser, legal counsel, coach, etc.) are no longer the right fit, given where I am in my personal and professional life right now?
  8. Where in my life am I creating an unhealthy codependency? What must change?
  9. Where do I need to define or strengthen a boundary to help me achieve something important?
  10. Which client, supplier, and/or partner relationships should I upgrade / replace to accelerate the business?

Conclusion

“Self-reflection is a humbling process. It’s essential to find out why you think, say, and do certain things…then better yourself.” —Sonya Teclai

Although there are certainly additional questions you can ask to plumb the depths of your leadership, I’ve purposefully kept the list short to encourage you to think deeply rather than broadly.

As you contemplate these with the level of thought and sincerity they require, you’ll uncover answers that make you uncomfortable. Lean into that discomfort, because it’s the indicator of the way toward a better future.

If you’re feeling brave and open to feedback, engage others who you respect and trust. They’ll provide input and feedback to overcome blind spots in your own thinking, helping you answer the questions more rigorously.

While each new year brings the excitement of a fresh start, reflecting on the prior year’s challenges and accomplishments yields valuable insights to help you improve as a leader. May your reflection on this past year help you set the stage for accelerated growth in 2024.

All the best for a healthy, fulfilling, and prosperous new year!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” Albert Einstein

It’s annual planning time!

This is the season when the vast majority of teams gather to take stock, look ahead, discuss, debate, and choose their goals and priorities for the coming business year.

The problem is, most teams debate the wrong things.

In my experience, business leaders spend very little—if any—time identifying and clarifying the challenges they’re facing. Rather, they gravitate toward the more comfortable process of discussing which initiatives and projects they should prioritize in the coming year.

This is a huge mistake. If you’re having conversations about solutions and you haven’t clearly identified the significant, addressable challenges you’re facing, the odds are high that your priorities won’t solve the root causes.

The instinct to jump into action is not totally surprising. Our bias to move is hard-wired, dating back millennia to when our ancestors huddled around fires in caves. Your 50x great grandparents didn’t have the luxury of time to think—if they didn’t move, they would have either starved to death or become some predator’s dinner.

The modern-day version of this innate bias to act exists in the can-do entrepreneurial spirit, where founders and leaders feel compelled to “take action or risk failure.” Spoiler alert: This is a false choice!

A thoughtful analysis of your situation a few times a year does not reduce your momentum. In fact, it accomplishes the opposite. If you ask, and thoughtfully answer, the right questions during your planning process, you will accelerate your progress.

Here’s the question that should dominate the conversation during your team’s annual planning session: “What is our firm’s #1 Addressable Challenge in 2024?”

Use this 4-step structured approach to thoughtfully identify, clarify, and articulate your firm’s #1 Addressable Challenge for next year and to transform the value of your annual planning session.

What is an Addressable Challenge?

Let’s begin by defining the term Addressable Challenge.

The word “addressable” implies something that is within your control to resolve or change. For example, “the high interest rate environment” is not an Addressable Challenge because this is not something you can control. Dig deeper however, and you may see that high rates could be causing other challenges in your firm that you CAN control.

One way or another, be sure to identify potential challenges you can manage and control, and filter out the ones you can’t.

My use of the term “challenge” also warrants some explanation. It’s easy to think of the word “challenge” as synonymous with “problem.” But it’s also a challenge to successfully pursue an opportunity! Opportunities might include opening new locations, launching a new product, or executing on an aggressive growth plan. After all, the pursuit of a truly worthy opportunity is always a challenge.

When you think about potential Addressable Challenges, be sure to consider your worthiest pursuits, not only your biggest problems.

Step 1: Identify Your #1 Addressable Challenge

Now that you’re clear on what an Addressable Challenge is, take the time to identify the top two or three in your firm.

This is the most difficult step in the process. I’ve found that when I ask my clients to identify Addressable Challenges—even after we’ve clearly defined the term—they rarely come back with actual challenges on the first try. Instead, most suggest projects and initiatives disguised as challenges.

For example, just last week at a client annual planning meeting, the firm’s President suggested: “Our number one Addressable Challenge next year is to replace our ‘XYZ’ software.”

No, it’s not! The software replacement is the SOLUTION to some other challenge, not the challenge itself. What’s more, it might not be the only solution to the root causes of the challenge!

Significant challenges typically require a multitude of changes across an organization. That’s why it’s critical to articulate the challenge as clearly as possible and not get sucked into the simplicity of prioritizing a single component.

A proper Addressable Challenge starts with phrases like “we can’t,” “we don’t,” “we haven’t,” and “it’s been difficult to.” If you can’t put those words in front of your challenge statement, you probably have a solution, not a challenge, on your hands.

Once you and your team have identified the firm’s top two or three challenges for the coming year, force rank them to determine which is the #1 Addressable Challenge by asking: “If we could only resolve ONE of these next year, which would we choose?”

Finally, ensure that your challenge statement is in the form of a complete sentence.

Here’s an example of a well-formed Addressable Challenge statement:

“We cannot reliably deliver on our operational and growth commitments.”

Step 2: Identify the Contributing Factors

Now that  you’ve articulated the #1 Addressable Challenge in the form of a sentence, the next step is to identify the contributing factors.

There are always a number of contributing factors or root causes associated with every Addressable Challenge. If you’ve been intellectually honest about your challenge, the contributing factors are going to be quite uncomfortable to name and contemplate.

Root cause contributing factors might include leadership issues like tolerating the wrong people on your team, boundary issues like saying “yes” to every client’s demand, execution issues like getting distracted from priorities with “flavor of the week” fire drills, and process issues like a lack of standardized procedures.

Do your best to thoughtfully identify as many contributing factors as possible with your team, then narrow the list to the most significant three items by asking: “Which THREE of these contribute to 80-90% of our Addressable Challenge?”

Finally, as in the previous step, assemble the contributing factors into a complete sentence.

Here’s our Addressable Challenge statement with a well-formed contributing factors sentence that follows:

“We cannot reliably deliver on our operational and growth commitments. Contributing factors include a culture of “doership” not leadership, a lack of sales leadership, and failing to address project,  technical and financial risks.”

Step 3: Articulate the Effect on the Business

Every Addressable Challenge has implications affecting your firm which exact a price (or an opportunity cost) today and in the future.

To move the specificity and rationale of your firm’s challenge to an even deeper level, the next step is to articulate the impact on your business. I urge you to go deep here and uncover the effects that resonate with emotion. While it’s ok to name something like “slow growth” as an impact, it’s more powerful to dig deeper and name the effect of slow growth like “demotivated employees” as the true impact.

Do your best to thoughtfully identify as many effects as possible with your team, then narrow the list to the most significant three items. Finally, as in the two previous steps, assemble them into a complete sentence.

Here’s what a well-formed effects sentence looks like when combined with our example Addressable Challenge and contributing factors:

“We cannot reliably deliver on our operational and growth commitments. Contributing factors include a culture of “doership” not leadership, a lack of sales leadership, and failing to address project, technical and financial risks. The effects on the business include a damaged reputation, rushed work leading to poor decision-making, and frustrated employees.”

Now that you’ve created a complete, three-sentence Addressable Challenge statement, notice how this level of thinking is a far cry from “We need to replace our ‘XYZ’ software next year!” It’s meaningful, it’s specific, and it’s actionable.

Steps 1-3 (75% of this process) clarify the challenge. In the final step, we’ll advance to identify the solution.

Step 4: Identify the Initiatives Required to Solve the Challenge

I’ve found it’s useful to think of the solution as a series of work streams or initiatives that, taken together, resolve your #1 Addressable Challenge. Consider the challenge and identify the two-to-four high-level initiatives that must be executed during the year to get you to an acceptable end-state. These initiatives should sound like more “normal” annual priorities and are the levers you and your team believe must be pulled to fully address the challenge.

For example, here are the initiatives required to solve the Addressable Challenge statement we’ve built through the article:

  • Improve Sales Leadership
  • Create a More Scalable Services Business
  • Ensure Excellent Project Execution
  • Increase Leadership Discipline

The final step in this process is to assign single point accountability for each initiative. From there, you can assemble teams, plan and manage them for the year ahead. I suggest that my clients name solving the #1 Addressable Challenge as their sole annual priority, then note the 3 or 4 key initiatives that comprise the solution.

Conclusion

“The ancestor to every action is a thought.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

When executed with discipline, these four steps yield a crystal clear description of the most important challenge your company faces and the work required to effect meaningful resolution. Each time I’ve used this powerful process with a client, there’s some version of utter amazement at the rigor and depth of the challenge, the fit of the solutions, and the motivation to see it all through.

The specificity, clarity, and intellectual honesty this evokes illuminates a path forward and adds both structure and meaning to the annual planning session. Resist the well-worn path and your instinct to jump to solutions before you carefully and clearly identify the challenge at hand.

You’ll find it’s well worth the restraint and investment.

==============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.

Class Date: December 7, 2023

==============================================

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: December 7, 2023

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

=======================================================

Please welcome my new sponsor HabitStack, a platform that helps teams

focus on important goals even though they’re busy.

=======================================================

I have marveled often at the thin line that divides success from failure and the sudden turn that leads from apparently certain disaster to comparative safety.” – Ernest Shackleton

Even on a great day, leadership is full of challenges.

As obvious as that may seem, many of us act surprised whenever the going gets tough. I think it’s because we’re conditioned to erroneously envision the road to success as a straight path. We see or hear about people just getting started (point A) and see or hear about others who’ve made it (point B), then mistakenly extrapolate a straight line of progress from A to B. How easy their journey must have been!

In reality, the path to success looks more like a seismograph measuring an earthquake. It’s erratic, messy, and loaded with peaks and deep valleys along the way. In his book, This is a Book, comedian Demetri Martin aptly illustrated it like this:

Why is the path to success so helter-skelter? It’s because hard things are inevitably challenging, and no matter how experienced or well-prepared you are, you can’t ever accurately predict what lies ahead.

In 1914 as he attempted to reach the South Pole, explorer Ernest Shackleton and his 28-person crew were less than a day’s journey from the Antarctic coast when ice trapped their ship, Endurance (point A). They drifted with the ice for more than two years before being rescued and returned to England in 1916. Miraculously, everyone survived (point B).

Here’s the mess in-between we tend to gloss over: The crew’s safe return required a superhuman level of courage and leadership from Shackelton, who later downplayed his heroism in his memoir, South. “Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all,” he wrote.

What Shackleton understood and what all capable leaders understand is that adversity is inevitable. It’s how we respond that makes the difference.

One of the privileges of my role as a coach is to witness the challenging, amazing things my clients accomplish and experience as they grow. I see victories, defeats, good, bad, and ugly, tears of joy and sorrow—and everything in between—from multiple organizations spanning industries and geographies, each run by very different people.

No matter how diverse these firms may appear on the surface, they all face adversity one way or another, all the time.

As a leader, it’s important to normalize your perception of adversity, because the more you expect it, the better prepared you’ll be to face it when it inevitably knocks on your front door. To help normalize and illustrate the inevitability and constancy of adversity, today’s article features four of-the-moment client scenarios, each of which occurred within the past 90 days. All these firms are solidly in the middle-market ($100 M+ revenues), are well led, and are profitable.

After the stories, we’ll outline five actions to improve resilience so you and your team can lessen adversity’s unavoidable sting.

Client Story #1: Supply Chain Snarl

This client sells and maintains heavy equipment and machinery, and they’ve run into significant supply issues with one of the manufacturers they represent. If you sell things for a living and can’t get the things you sell, it’s a big deal!

Although many companies experienced some level of supply chain challenge over the past few years due to Covid, this manufacturer isn’t solely dealing with a post-pandemic hangover. Not only has it been unable to recover from the pandemic, but it was also recently acquired by a firm whose business practices don’t align as well with my client’s needs.

My client has several hundred machines on backorder with the manufacturer and very little guidance on when to expect inventory. In short, they’re unable to sell these high-demand, highly profitable machines, to their customers. There’s no end in sight, nor is there any confidence the manufacturer will resolve the issues in any reasonable way.

As a result, my client’s business is operating below their intended plan. They need to decide how to continue operating and meet their goals despite the effective loss of this manufacturer’s product line.

At the scale with which my client operates, this manufacturer’s post-acquisition failure to deliver isn’t something that could have been predicted. And yet, here they are. They’ve had to shift gears significantly and accept that they’re going to endure some short-and medium-term pain to get back on track. They have a plan that’s viable and they’re going to be fine, but the journey won’t be without additional discomfort and disruption.

Client Story #2: Credit Line Crunch

This long-standing client is in an industry that relies heavily upon lines of credit to operate as part of the business model. A few weeks ago, the bank holding my client’s (large!) credit line sold their loan portfolio to another firm—which, in and of itself, isn’t unusual.

The problem is the new loan-holder is extremely risk-averse and has no experience working with firms in my client’s niche.

As a result, they froze the credit line and informed my client they would not be able to renew it at term. The frozen line of credit effectively limits a portion of the firm to operate at about 25% of its capacity, severely handicapping a growing, profitable, well-managed, and properly leveraged company.

No one without a magic crystal ball could have reasonably predicted this scenario.

Rather than focusing on pursuing their strategic agenda, they now have to shop for a new lender. It’s a big distraction for senior leadership.

The good news is this problem isn’t existential—they’re extremely credit-worthy and will find a lender—but they’re essentially running a fire drill at a very large scale. Their story is a painful example of how adversity can—and will—strike even when you’re doing everything right.

Client Story #3: Sneaky Salesperson

This client is a tech firm with an impressive, well-led sales team driving their growth. About a month ago, one of their more senior, accomplished account managers independently decided to fraudulently overbill a client.

The project the account manager was running came in significantly under the hours budgeted, but he billed it for the full amount in the original estimate. When leadership realized what happened, they acted swiftly and decisively, firing the employee within 24 hours.

Although this was absolutely the right decision, they were immediately put in the position of salvaging a large, growing, profitable client relationship and backfilling the senior account manager role.

As with the previous stories, this scenario couldn’t have been reasonably predicted. The account manager didn’t have any history of unethical behavior or poor decision making. Quite the opposite: They were a tenured, trusted, high-performing team member.

The firm is going to take a hit as they rebuild trust with their client and replace the account manager’s capacity on the team. They’ll recover, but it’s an unexpected, frustrating, and painful setback.

Client Story #4: Parent Company Problems

This client provides professional and project management services around the globe and is an independently operated subsidiary of a larger firm.

Earlier this year, the parent company made some business decisions that resulted in the enterprise becoming undercapitalized—that is, they didn’t have enough cash on hand to manage the normal operating flow of the business. This condition is similar to my other client’s frozen line of credit, but resulting from a very different (and self-inflicted) cause.

When a business struggles with cash flow, they often “rob Peter to pay Paul” to keep themselves afloat, which—through no fault of their own—is exactly what my client (the subsidiary) had to do. They have good-faith relationships with contractors and suppliers all around the world, and suddenly they found themselves unable to pay and having to manage through the crisis—while still keeping their projects on track.

True to the pattern, there’s no way my client could have reasonably predicted this disruption to their business. Nevertheless, they’ve found themselves dealing with it.

This too shall pass, as the parent company is re-working their banking relationships and will soon be properly capitalized once again.

Five Actions to Improve Resilience

Although none of the misfortune in the stories above could have been anticipated or predicted, you don’t need clairvoyance to buffer adversity’s inevitable impact. This is why each of my clients is moving past their business disruption enduring only short-term pain rather than an existential threat.

Like my clients, you can build resilience in advance of needing it. Each of the following five actions will improve your resilience through the ups and downs of your firm’s journey from point A to point B.

1. Carry Extra Oxygen

This is a concept outlined by Jim Collins in his book, Good To Great. The message is to avoid operating your business too close to the margins. Ask yourself: How much do we have in reserve for when something goes wrong?

This isn’t just about having a financial emergency fund—it extends to all domains of your business, including risk management, staffing, overreliance on certain customers, and more. Cash in the bank won’t help much, for example, if your top salesperson quits tomorrow. Instead, you need a reliable talent pipeline or perhaps even someone waiting in the wings to fill that role.

Where in your business do you need spare oxygen?

2. Refuse to Be a Victim

It’s relatively easy to play the “woe is me” game—especially when your adversity comes from a factor out of your control (as was the case in all of my clients’ scenarios). But you cannot allow yourself to be a victim.

The moment you start feeling sorry for yourself or blame others, you hinder your ability to drive forward to a solution. The best perspective is to view any adversity as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Take some responsibility—regardless of the circumstances—and use that as motivation to improve.

3. Think With “Productive Paranoia”

This is another concept coined by Jim Collins. Big tech leaders like Steve Ballmer at Microsoft and Andy Grove at Intel were notorious for actively looking out for what could go wrong.

Entrepreneurs and leaders are often told to have a positive mindset, and although this certainly has its place, it isn’t universally sound advice. Yes, optimism can serve you, but leaders should avoid being overly optimistic. The reality is that everything is not always great, there are risks associated with every decision, and as we saw above, bad things happen due to uncontrollable circumstances.

There’s nothing non-entrepreneurial about being productively paranoid!

4. Surround Yourself with A-Players

Be cognizant of the company you keep, both internal and external to the firm. This necessarily includes your professional advisory team and your professional networks.

Here’s why: When things go wrong—and they will—you need to have the right people around you to help you figure it out and recover. You never want to be in a position where the spotlight finds you and there’s an audience looking up expectantly at you alone to solve an existential problem.

When adversity rears its ugly head, put yourself in a position when you can circle the wagons with smart people and figure it out together.

5. Have Someone Safe In Your Corner

It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of a billion-dollar firm or an entrepreneur with one employee; all of us are personally vulnerable when enough things go wrong. We’re only human, and if you add enough weight to anyone’s shoulders, they’ll eventually break.

I’ve seen this type of overwhelm lead to some pretty dark places, including family issues, substance abuse, and even suicidal thoughts.

It’s important to realize that struggling to handle the pressures of leadership is NOT a marker of inadequacy. Some of the most impressive leaders I know have someone who’s completely disconnected from the business on speed dial for their mental well-being.

As a coach, I can support my clients to an extent, but over the years I’ve referred more than a few to psychologists who provide an additional, highly qualified layer of support.

When the weight of your leadership moves beyond the norm, find the help you need.

Conclusion

“It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.” – Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Fortunately, none of the scenarios I shared jeopardize the ongoing viability of my clients’ businesses. But the potential was certainly there if not for their resilience!

It’s likely the adversity you’re experiencing in your business at this moment isn’t going to ruin you either. But tomorrow, next month, or next year it could. Without the proper mindset and actions to improve resilience, the inevitable speed bumps of adversity can feel like mountains standing between you and your goals.

Normalize your perception of adversity, which is inevitable in any worthy and challenging endeavor.  Then focus on the antidote: resilience, which is among the most valuable traits you can possess as a leader and build within your firm.

As you pursue the five actions to improve resilience, you and your team—like my clients—will be better positioned to overcome any challenge you face.

==============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.

Class Date: December 7, 2023

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good [people] to do what [they want] done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

 Delegation is one of the most valuable management tools at our disposal. Properly deployed, it empowers employees to feel ownership and personal satisfaction in their roles and, statistically, makes organizations more productive and successful.

A Gallup poll found that companies led by CEOs with high delegator talent posted higher growth rates, greater revenue, and more jobs created than those run by CEOs with limited or low delegation abilities.

But learning to strike an effective balance when delegating is easier said than done. For many, delegation feels like a wild roller coaster ride with a peak and two deep valleys on either side.

Productive delegation occurs at the peak, where leaders balance between the two valleys. 

On one side is the valley of micromanagement, where leaders frustrate their teams by meddling, over-directing, and questioning their decisions and actions. On the other is the valley of abdication, where leaders throw projects and tasks at their team and assume things will get done without meaningful oversight or follow-up.

Micromanaging results in a non-scalable, unhealthy codependency between a leader and their team. This results in what I call the “genius with a thousand arms and legs” or hub-and-spoke organization structure, where the leader is like a puppeteer and employees essentially do their boss’s bidding. This structure repels top performers and is frustrating to everyone involved, including the leader!

Abdication, on the other hand, produces inconsistent execution, erratic work quality, and an inability to predictably achieve performance targets. You can’t assume that because you’ve asked someone–even a top performer–to do something, it’s going to magically be done correctly and on time!

It’s critical to overcome whatever prevents you from finding the balance point on the delegation roller coaster, lest you resign yourself to a frustrating, less profitable road ahead. 

Here are four common obstacles that prevent entrepreneurs and leaders from getting out of the delegation dips—and four solutions to find and stay at the balance point.

The Obstacles

Obstacle #1: You Enjoy Doing Shallow Work

Although shallow work—writing reports, creating spreadsheets, organizing calendars, making phone calls—is ripe for delegation, we often shy away from handing it off because it’s comfortable and easy.

In his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World,  author Cal Newport defines shallow workas tasks that are logistical and not cognitively demanding. To our detriment, shallow work is often at the bullseye of our comfort zone. These tasks can be quite seductive because they make us feel like we’re accomplishing things! In reality, they pull us away from more strategic, more cognitively demanding, more important work that advances the firm.

Obstacle #2: You Don’t Do the Math

Have you ever refrained from delegating a task because the upfront time commitment to show or teach someone how to do something seemed too high? If so, you’re a victim of a psychological concept called “hyperbolic discounting.”

In short, our brains are wired to value short-term rewards over long term gains. It’s the reason we choose a cookie today over a beach body three months from now. 

The same thinking affects your leadership! Sure, you could spend an hour teaching someone how to complete a report—OR you could do it yourself in 15 minutes. But the long-term math on a scenario like this rarely results in any gain!

Let’s imagine the report needs to be completed once per week, and now let’s do the math.

While investing an hour in training someone seems costly in the present, you’ll break even on your time investment in three more weeks and then gain 15 minutes per week in perpetuity. And that’s just from delegating one report!

Obstacle #3: You’re Afraid

Fear is often a primary factor preventing leaders from escaping the valleys of the delegation roller coaster, and it frequently results in overcompensation. 

If you’re afraid of being perceived as a micromanager—perhaps because you worked for one in the past—you’ll either not delegate as much as you should or not follow up appropriately and dive into the valley of abdication.

I’ve found this to be a very common scenario. When I speak about Creating a Culture of Accountability—in particular,  how to use the building blocks of accountability—I’m routinely asked, quite specifically, how to avoid veering into micromanager territory.

Creating accountability without micromanaging is quite straightforward, but if you’re focused on the fear of being perceived as a micromanager, you’re prevented from doing even reasonable things that are part of delegating and following up properly.

At the other end of the spectrum, you might have a fear of letting go. For example, if you’re afraid a team member isn’t going to perform a task as well as you can, it could prevent you from delegating. Ironically, that team member doesn’t necessarily HAVE to perform the task as well as you do in order to be effective, but that’s a difficult barrier for leaders to overcome.

Obstacle #4: You’ve Hired Poorly

Poor hiring is the last of the four obstacles for a reason. There’s a tendency for leaders to blame people first when examining delegation roadblocks. But if you’ve examined the first three obstacles within yourself and your organization and you still have an issue delegating, the root cause may be a people problem.

The wrong people are those who can’t—or won’t—learn, who ask the same questions repeatedly, and who make the same mistakes over and over again. I learned this lesson the hard way as a coach: You cannot coach or train people who have no desire or capacity to learn and change.

The Solutions

Solution #1: Invest Time and Energy

You can’t reasonably expect a return in the absence of an investment.  

When it comes to delegation, your investment consists of time and energy. You have to make sure that the people to whom you’re delegating have the context, knowledge, and capacity to execute what you need them to do the way you need them to do it. Your investment ensures that happens.

It also prevents the “genius with a thousand arms and legs” organizational structure I mentioned earlier, where the leader is the only person who understands the context and process of certain tasks.

Consider investing in your team the same way you might justify the purchase of a tool or piece of equipment that automates something to be faster and more reliable. There’s always an up-front cost, but the payback over time makes it worthwhile. Do the math by asking: How will my up-front investment of time and energy pay off in the future?

Solution #2: Create More Staff Independence and Autonomy

In his book Turn The Ship Around, David Marquet outlines a series of statements called the “Ladder of Leadership” that evolves from “Tell me what to do” (which is what employees expect from leaders who have the answers) through seven incremental steps to “Here’s what I’ve been doing” (which is how highly empowered employees communicate to leadership). This tool helps to engage your team more deeply in what they’re doing and take more ownership of the process and the outcomes.

The trick is to learn how to answer a question with a question before simply providing an answer.

For example, when a team member asks you some version of “what should I do?” respond with:

“What do you think you should do?”

This type of interaction creates learning, and as that learning progresses, it builds autonomy.

Not getting this right is definitely an obstacle to finding the balance point on delegation, because it’s frustrating to have people constantly asking how they should do their job. But consider: The reason they keep asking is because you keep giving them answers! Indeed, even with good intentions, we can create our own monsters.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you stop answering questions. It’s also unfair to assume that 100 percent of the time your staff will know the right answer. But if employees are never in a position where they’re challenged to figure something out on their own, they’ll continue to depend on you for solutions.

Solution #3: Delegate Using The Building Blocks of Accountability

The three building blocks of accountability—expectations, context, and attention—help business leaders find the delegation balance point and gain traction via more accountability from their team.

When delegating something, first communicate your belief in that person or team. The simplest way to say it is “I believe in you,” but you can use any number of variations: “I know this project is a stretch, but you’re more than capable of meeting the challenge,” or “I have no doubt you’re ready to take this on.”

Then, communicate WHY the task is important. Context is a critical component of accountability because it provides important information that helps your team appreciate the bigger picture beyond the work on their desk. Take the time to explain why a role or assignment matters to the firm, to the team, and even to you personally as the leader.

Finally, ensure they know you’re paying attention. Although attention might seem like the most difficult step to implement because it’s more abstract and ongoing than the first two, it doesn’t have to be. It can be a repeatable process, like a three-minute weekly sync, or a quick question/comment in the hallway: “How’s that report coming along? I’ll have it on my desk by Thursday, right?”

By establishing clear, high expectations (I believe in you), thoroughly explaining the context (This is important to me), and paying attention over time (I’m watching), you’ll find the balance point on the delegation roller coaster.

Solution #4: Create Frequent Checkpoints

If you’re still a little nervous about delegation, a good way to combat that anxiety is to create  frequent checkpoints early in the process.

For example, if you’re delegating a 30-day project to someone, you might choose to schedule a check-in after two days where the employee will present their thinking and plan for how they’re going to execute the project.

This interaction will allow you to gain an early understanding of whether they “get it” and are on the right track. It’s also an opportunity for you to offer course correction as warranted, before they are actually off course!

If the early checkpoint goes well, you could choose to schedule the next checkpoint a week later. If, on the other hand, your team member is off the mark, perhaps you could aim to regroup in another day or two after they’ve incorporated your feedback.

Consider these more frequent, early checkpoints an investment, because it’s likely your employee won’t need as much up-front guidance and structure the next time you delegate a similar project.

Conclusion

“If you really want to grow as an entrepreneur, you’ve got to learn to delegate.” — Richard Branson

As you reflect on the four obstacles and the four solutions I’ve provided, it’s important to note that, like relationship statuses on Facebook, delegation is sometimes “complicated.”

Although you might not necessarily experience any one of these obstacles in the extreme, it’s very likely you face two or three of them at a low level. It’s when they act in concert with each other that  you’re unable to escape the dips in the delegation roller coaster.

Take time to consider:

  • Where are you micromanaging and afraid to relinquish control?
  • Where are you abdicating your responsibilities to put structure in place and follow up?
  • Where aren’t you doing the math and thinking like an investor?
  • Where are you creating an unhealthy codependency?

After you identify the obstacles in your way and as you begin to implement the solutions, you’ll escape the delegation valleys and appreciate a more pleasant, less stressful, more profitable view from the peak. 

Importantly, your team will appreciate it too!

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: October 16, 2023

==============================================

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Date: December 7, 2023

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

– Leonardo da Vinci

“Keep it simple.”

Although it’s a phrase even children understand, the irony is that it’s not always easy to achieve.

Have you ever wondered why the creep of complication is a constant in our personal and professional lives? It’s because we tend to value complexity! For example, we think people who talk about complicated things are experts (they’re often not), we favor complicated products over simple ones (they’re not necessarily better or more effective), and we believe it’s worth paying more for complicated features (it’s often not).

Business leaders often exhibit a dulled sense of how growth begets complexity, which springs a trap that slows growth, dilutes cultures, and breeds mediocrity.  This growth trap captures those who can’t or won’t adjust to the reality that as any organization becomes larger, its complexity increases at a rate that’s exponentially faster than its linear rate of growth.

A scaling business works exactly in this way. In your mind, your firm grows in a linear fashion—adding one client, one employee, or even one store or office location at a time. But in reality, with each unit of growth, you add multiple layers of complexity to accommodate communications, processes, required materials, resources, and more.

No alt text provided for this image

This is one of the main reasons that businesses struggle at scale. At the extreme, complexity swamps organizations and destroys value. 

It’s up to leaders to understand that linear growth is an illusion and that the inevitable complexity must be incorporated into the planning, structure, and execution of the firm.

In other words, it’s your job to keep things simple!

Before I share a few techniques to simplify your organization, it’s important to distinguish between simplicity and being simplistic. By saying you should strive for simplicity, I’m not suggesting every facet of your organization can or should be elementary. Every industry requires a deep understanding of certain technical aspects and nuances.

For example, consider the engine in your car. Internal combustion engines are quite simple—they convert air and fuel into mechanical energy—but designing an engine to do that reliably for 100,000-plus miles is anything but simplistic!

What follows are three key areas where your business may become unnecessarily complicated as you scale—and questions you can ask to simplify your operation. Although the questions themselves are quite simple, the thought processes required to produce the answers will be anything but.

Key Area #1: Business Model and Strategy

When you don’t have a clear business model and strategy, business can feel very complicated and stressful. You might be doing too many things at once or trying to please too many different types of customers. Even worse, if your business model isn’t solid, you’ll be trying to build your firm on a shaky foundation.

These three questions will help simplify your thinking about both business model and strategy:

Who is Our Core Customer?

An ideal or core customer must meet all three of the following criteria:

  1. They are a real person with wants, needs, and fears;
  2. They will buy for optimal profit; and
  3. They pay on time, are loyal, and refer others.

Leaders often mistakenly identify their core customers as those who bring in the most revenue or have been with the firm the longest. But just because they’re big or long-standing doesn’t necessarily mean they fit all three criteria! In fact, misidentified core customers are most likely to be eroding your profit and making your strategy more complicated.

Use this process to create a simple, clear statement that identifies your core customer:

  • Name 5-10 of your current customers who meet all three core customer criteria as described above. Name PEOPLE, not companies!
  • Consider those people specifically and identify a handful of common demographic patterns among them. Demographics are concrete and verifiable attributes like age, marital status, income, etc.
  • Next, consider those people again and identify a handful of common psychographic patterns among them. Psychographics are subjective and non-verifiable attributes like wants, fears, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc.
  • Create a short statement that describes your core customer using the most relevant demographic and psychographic characteristics.

Here’s how these elements came together to describe a residential painting contractor’s core customer:

“A central New Jersey homeowner with $100k+ household income who is active in their community and proud of their home.”

Now that you’ve identified your core customer, it’s time to ensure that all marketing and selling activities are optimized to find, attract, and win their business. Don’t continue trying to be all things to all people (and firms)!  Rather, become a fantastic fit for your core customer and focus your resources on them.

What is the value we create for our customers?

Just because you can describe your core customer doesn’t necessarily mean you understand or create optimal value for them. Consider: people don’t pay thousands of dollars for Louis Vuitton luggage because they need a place to pack their socks! Rather, LV’s value to their core customer is prestige and exclusivity.

Go beyond the obvious here. For example, is your value Convenience? Quality? Affordability? Time savings? Prestige? Or something else?

Thinking more deeply about your core customer’s wants and needs, and answering this question thoughtfully will simplify your firm’s strategy.

Now that you’ve identified the value you create for your core customer, you can ensure that all communication, design, and operational activities are optimized to deliver it.

How do we deliver our value and make a profit?

The answer to this “How” question is the essence of strategy. Clarity here enables better decision-making, more productive prioritization, and more effective allocation of resources.

There are countless options and trade-offs to consider here, including:

  • Direct to consumer vs. retail or channel sales?
  • Product vs. service—or both?
  • One-time purchases vs. subscription offerings?
  • And more!

Of course, there are important operational implications for each of these choices, which is why it’s so critical to clarify and articulate your “How.”

Key Area #2: People

Although most firms rely on staff to operate and scale, people can be challenging to lead and manage, particularly as organizations grow.

Answer these three questions to simplify the job of scaling your team while reducing the potential for people-induced headaches and drama.

Would I enthusiastically rehire every member of my team?

I pose this question to leaders because it forces them to take a brutally honest look at their team. Note the key word in the question: enthusiastically.

Considering this instantly shines a light on people who aren’t a good fit, people you’ve been tolerating, and people who are underperforming. Whenever your answer is anything less than an emphatic YES, pay attention! There’s something going on that is making your business more complicated than it should be.

You are only as good as your weakest link. But it’s often difficult to identify a weak link, acknowledge the problem, and/or make the decision to remove someone from the organization. 

Here’s the embedded complexity: You accept mediocrity because you’re busy, people are hard to find and hire, you’re unwilling to accept a hard truth, you’re emotionally entangled with some of your staff, or—let’s be honest here—you’re overly dependent on some of your worst offenders. So you tolerate the weak links.

Stop tolerating mediocrity and get the right people on your team. Click here for a deeper dive on this topic.

Does every role in the firm have clear outcomes?

It’s on you, the leader, to clearly communicate to every employee what is expected of their role. After all, if your people don’t understand what they are expected to produce, how can you reasonably expect them to deliver?

Creating a Role Accountability card with the three most important outcomes for every role in your firm simplifies and documents expectations. Notice I said outcomes, not activities. Most organizations I’ve encountered are activity-focused—for example, a salesperson calls prospective clients, qualifies prospects, and closes deals. But we pay salespeople to produce outcomes like signed contracts, revenue, and gross margin.

No alt text provided for this image
Sample Role Accountability Card for a COO / Operations Leader

The same activity vs. outcome issue applies to every role in your organization. Activities are verbs; outcomes are nouns—simple and clear. If you don’t have role accountability cards for each position in your organization, you should create them now. This article shows you how.

Has our firm’s culture been clearly defined with specific behaviors?

Your organization has a culture whether you’ve purposefully defined it or not. Is yours “accidental,” or has it been intentionally created and cultivated?

A small number of Core Values are the building blocks of culture, but the values themselves aren’t enough. They’re of limited utility until you link each of them to specific behaviors, commonly supplied as a one-to-two sentence description that accompanies each Core Value. Those specific behaviors provide clarity around what is expected and serve as a coaching tool for managers.

Productive cultures don’t typically happen by accident. Expend the time and energy to define and create yours with clarity and intention. You’ll hire better fit staff, improve overall esprit de corps, and retain more top performers–keeping things simple as you scale.

Key Area #3: Execution

The measure of great execution is consistent growth and profitability, as well as drama-free day-to-day operations. These three questions will help simplify and improve your execution:

What are our 1-3 priorities for the year?

This is a super simple question and a great way to streamline your thinking about the business. I’ve always said that if everything’s a priority, nothing is, and if you have 10 priorities or chase shiny objects, you’ll make things far more complicated than necessary.

No alt text provided for this image
Vilfredo Pareto

To get clear on priorities, use a principle from 19th century Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto was the brains behind the 80-20 Rule, the idea that a small fraction of things exert an influence on the vast majority of outcomes. 

That’s certainly true when we think about prioritization. You want to identify the one-to-three things that produce maximum value and propel you in the direction you want to go. Each priority, of course, should have a single point of accountability, and you should make sure you’re communicating and engaging the company around your priorities throughout the year.

Does every employee attend a daily huddle and a weekly team meeting?

Communication is one of the areas where the complexity bug bites the hardest. As the organization scales, you have more clients, employees, and/or locations, and the task of effectively communicating across those channels grows exponentially more complicated. Suddenly, it feels like nobody knows what’s going on!

It’s likely you’ve been on the receiving end of poor communication at some point in your career. It’s not fun, it’s stressful, and you can literally see the wasted time, energy, and resources all around you.

To combat this, put every employee in a daily huddle with their team. Huddles should be just 10-15 minutes maximum with the singular purpose of synchronization. You don’t debate, you don’t solve problems; you just make sure the team is in sync for the day. Consistency is important, so conduct the huddles every day!

Every employee should also attend a weekly meeting with their team. This one is longer (30-60 minutes), replaces the daily huddle that day, and it gives everyone time and space to dig into how the team is doing. The weekly meeting is where people can identify, discuss, and solve the right questions to continually improve.

Do each of our core processes have a single point of accountability?

Every organization has two-to-four core processes that are the guts of your operation. For example, most firms have some form of a client acquisition process—a combination of marketing and sales. Then there are core processes typically involving design, production, delivery, and more.

The problem is, while most organizational action is vertical in nature (think departments and teams), core processes tend to run horizontally across different departments and teams. As a result, core processes can get sloppy over time! It’s also easy to lose sight of the need for a single accountable person for each core process. Clarifying your two-to-four core processes and single point accountability for each helps keep things simple, even as your organization continues to grow.

Conclusion

“Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”  – Steve Jobs

Your company is a factory. Regardless of whether you produce goods or services, you convert raw materials and processes into value for your customers.

But as your factory grows, it’s increasingly susceptible to the growth trap and will become exponentially more complex unless you’ve actively and consistently worked to simplify things.

It’s important to note that this isn’t a “one-and-done” process! If your company is gaining ground—and I hope it is—each new milestone of growth will introduce new problems and complexities that must be addressed to continue your journey.

Review these questions annually with your team to continually assess and evolve your approach to Business Model and Strategy, People, and Execution. Done right, you’ll stay ahead of the complexity curve by arriving at the simple, powerful answers clearing the way to the future you envision.

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Date: Dates for Fall 2023 Classing Coming Soon!

==============================================

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: Dates for Fall 2023 Classes Coming Soon!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.”
— Tim Hiller

When was the last time you thought about how you compare to others? The context may have been as an entrepreneur, a business leader, a homeowner, a spouse, or a parent.

For most, it’s within the past 24 hours—but more likely, it was within the last 60 minutes!

Comparisons are inevitable. In fact, we perpetually assess our personal and social value by measuring ourselves against others. This is a function of Ego—our judging and comparing self. Studies suggest approximately 10 percent of our daily thoughts are comparisons. We use them to evaluate our actions, our accomplishments, and our opinions.

Your Ego cranked up at a relatively young age, as you began noticing some of your peers could run faster on the playground, others had more friends, and perhaps more than a few performed better on spelling tests. Through comparison, your Ego creates your psychological immune system, which helps justify your “rightness” in the world and protects your sense of “self.”

As we become adults and business leaders, our comparisons become more complex. We’re constantly comparing our circumstances and status to others to assess how we’re doing. Sometimes these comparisons are overt—for example, analyzing performance data from firms in your industry. But often, our comparisons are unconscious: Maybe you’re angry or upset about certain results or a lost deal, so you peek over the metaphorical fence to see how others are doing.

Your Ego compares and judges, but ultimately, fabricates conclusions to justify your feelings (and sense of “self”).

On one hand, comparison (dressed up professionally as the term “benchmarking”) is important for any business because you don’t ever want to operate in a vacuum. On the other hand, it can have serious operational consequences because of two potential pitfalls:

  1. Comparisons are rarely apples-to-apples. You may be benchmarking against a metric or a set of conditions you don’t fully understand, which creates a false impression of your position relative to the benchmark (Fact: “We just lost another deal to X-Corp because of price.” Assumption: “They’re profitable at a lower price, therefore we need to be profitable at lower price to compete!”).
  2. Your interpretation of benchmark data leads you to create a false ceiling that diminishes creativity, momentum, and performance (“The best margins in our industry are 18 percent, so it’s great that we’re almost there.”).

Regardless of whether you’re setting the bar too high or too low, the results of professional comparison can be more dangerous than value-generating if you don’t do it correctly.

Here are four areas where you should be careful and deliberate about how you benchmark:

Employee Performance

Employee benchmarking tends to be internal. For example, if you’re running a sales organization, you likely have some staff who are very high performers, some who are moderate performers, and (hopefully) a small number who aren’t very good at all.

If your highest performer is producing $3 million a year, and your average performer is producing $1.4 million a year, the tendency is to look at the high performer as your benchmark for what should be achievable for everybody on the team.

There’s logic to this thinking—but the problem is, how do you know $3 million is a good benchmark? What if another person came in and produced $5 million? How would you look at the production of your $3 million earner?

Unless your top performer is the best in the world—and odds are they aren’t—there’s a huge risk in internally benchmarking against them.

When you benchmark against your own internal high performer, you create an artificial ceiling and an expectation of “this is as good as it gets.” It’s the same belief that played out in the 1952 Olympics when Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes. At the time, experts believed that running a sub-four-minute mile was physically impossible, but once Bannister broke through, it took just 46 days for another runner to cross the four-minute threshold. As of June 6, 2022, 1,755 athletes have run a mile in less than four minutes!

Unless your top performer is the best in the world—and odds are they aren’t—there’s a huge risk in internally benchmarking against them.

Rather, make sure you’re continually challenging top performers in every area of your business. Believe that there is always more potential and that something’s being left on the table. Don’t ever label employee performance ceilings. Push them!

Peer Group Members

Forums and peer groups have become ubiquitous fixtures in the global business community, including Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO), Young Presidents Organization (YPO), and countless practitioner-facilitated and industry groups. There are two common benchmarking problems here: Lack of context and false ceilings.

Most leaders show up to these peer groups with their Egos and internal narratives in overdrive: “How do I stack up? Where are we better? Where do we lag?” 

I work with a client who meets with and benchmarks against numerous peers in their industry (non-competitively, because they’re in different geographic markets). During one of our monthly meetings, the CFO shared rolling 12-month benchmarked profitability data from one of their more profitable peers. On paper, the peer firm looked ridiculously profitable, which the leadership team found rather demoralizing!

I challenged them on their wholesale acceptance of the data, pointing out they had no idea what was actually happening behind the other firm’s spreadsheet. As it turned out, my hunch was correct. The peer company had included their Payroll Protection Plan (PPP) funds in their operational results, inflating their profits. The PPP was a pandemic-era US government forgivable loan given to qualified businesses that, when forgiven, created a windfall profit. My client was benchmarking against an unachievable target because they’d rightly excluded their PPP funds from their own operational performance data. 

You could spend all day beating yourself up about a comparison scenario like this, but the reality is, if you don’t understand the context of what you’re benchmarking against, it doesn’t work.

The second problem with comparing yourself to peer groups is that it’s also relatively easy to construct false ceilings.

There’s a double-edged sword here: By nature, peers are equals. That’s a good thing, because you’re with others who experience similar problems, challenges, and opportunities. The risk, though, is that your peers also likely share your fears, bad habits, and anxieties. When you compare yourself to them too closely, you’re liable to create artificial ceilings for yourself (“Bob and his team can’t solve their staffing problems, so maybe it’s okay that we haven’t solved ours yet either.”).

If you don’t understand the context of what you’re benchmarking against, it doesn’t work.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe peer groups are beneficial and it’s certainly nice to have others with you in the same boat. But you have to ensure your peers challenge you and add to your growth because overly sympathetic peers, even with the best intentions, will reinforce and reward your status quo.

The remedy here is to ensure diversity in your professional neighborhood by including people several steps (or more!) beyond your level of sophistication and success. They’ll call out your BS, challenge you, and help you elevate your game.

Industry Data

No matter your industry, there’s plenty of data out there about it—from consulting groups like McKinsey or Gartner, government agencies, trade publications, and more. And while external data is critical to consider as you formulate strategy and plan, it can be a serious handicap if you don’t use it correctly.

For example, just because industry data shows you’re being outperformed in a particular area doesn’t necessarily mean you have a problem. It could mean you have a different strategy, or there are outside factors baked into the data that you aren’t seeing. The result is, like Miguel de Cervantes’ famous character Don Quixote, you risk fighting windmills you mistake for giants, which can distract you from your true priorities.

Of course, the inverse of this scenario can also be true. A particular set of data might indicate you’re performing well in comparison to your industry, which can cause you to mentally set a ceiling for your success. The data validates your progress, so you stop pushing or asking yourself how you can improve. 

Rather than let data draw the finish line, ask yourself how you can keep going. Remember: Don’t label performance ceilings. Push them!

Economic Indicators

In my 25 years as a coach, I’ve been through all manner of economic seasons: up cycles, down cycles; bull and bear markets; recessions and surpluses. What I’ve learned during these times is that there’s a significant element of self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to economic forecasts. If people believe it’s happening, they’ll somehow make it happen.

Too many leaders automatically assume, absent any rigorous thinking, that macroeconomic factors will impact their business. The truth is that those factors may play a role in your firm’s outlook, but there are plenty of situations where your “individual economy” can be vastly different from the economy of your country or region.

If people believe it’s happening, they’ll somehow make it happen.

John D. Rockefeller’s empire was built not during prosperous times in the United States, but in times of economic fear: the Civil War, the panics of 1873 and 1907, and the stock market crash of 1929. While others retreated in fear, Rockefeller approached each of these economic downturns with logic and self-discipline, which enabled him to spot opportunities where others saw none.

Similarly, I have a client that has shattered almost every possible performance record this year, despite the doomsday prognosticators warning of a recession. To be clear, I’m not advocating you ignore economic data and take irresponsible risks, but you should be aware of the assumptions you make when you over-weigh it. 

Conversely, you shouldn’t use economic indicators as an excuse to let off the gas, either. Settling for mediocre metrics and blaming it on the economy is victim-based thinking, which is dangerous in any season.

Don’t let your perception of broad economic conditions shape your perception of your capabilities. Set your course and keep pushing.

Conclusion

“We won’t be distracted by comparison if we are captivated with purpose.”
– Bob Goff

One of the most important things you can control as a leader is your perspective. It’s inevitable that your brain will push you to make comparisons between your firm and others, but it’s critical for you to appropriately challenge this default setting. Absent that, ill-informed benchmarking can do you far more harm than good.

Remember:

  1. Comparisons are rarely apples-to-apples. Looking at something or someone  seemingly outperforming you can set a false and perhaps unachievable standard when you don’t have the full context behind the data.
  2. It’s easy to establish false ceilings for performance when you benchmark through a very narrow lens of comparison and focus on what you (or those around you) think is possible.

Although comparisons are inevitable and an essential part of being human, it’s critical for leaders to utilize every possible method and precaution to benchmark deliberately, logically, and with care. 

In other words, be sure to keep your eyes on your own prize more so than on the achievements of others.

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Date: August 2, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: Dates for Fall 2023 Classes Coming Soon!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“The best defense is a good offense, and I intend to start offending right now.” — Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek

For millennia, leaders have known that the best defense is a good offense. Among others, these sentiments have been attributed to George Washington, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Mao Zedong, each of whom certainly knew his way around a war.

Yet in business and in life it’s surprisingly easy to default to a defensive mindset, despite the fact we know playing too conservatively can undermine our achievements. For instance, when you worry about limited resources or a general lack of something you need, it’s almost impossible to make the hard, right decisions to advance because everything feels too risky.

Psychologists call this state of mind scarcity-based thinking. We develop a scarcity mindset when we focus on what we lack—or think we’ll be lacking. This can include time, money, relationships, or just about any other resource. Due to its ubiquity and damaging impact, scarcity is one of the “big three” fears I addressed in my first book, Activators: A CEO’s Guide to Clearer Thinking and Getting Things Done. 

We develop a scarcity mindset when we focus on what we lack—or think we’ll be lacking.

A scarcity mindset served humans well when our day-to-day survival was less assured than it is today. We’re much less concerned now about starving or lacking shelter, but the wiring remains in our brains. For instance, politicians manipulate this instinct by invoking fear via scarcity thinking to rally voters against their rivals.

Fear is a tremendous driver of human behavior and chances are somehow, somewhere, scarcity-based thinking is influencing your decision-making as a leader. Here are four pitfalls of scarcity-based thinking in leadership and three tools to help overcome them.

Scarcity Thinking Undermines Right People, Right Seats

As a leader, the most critical question you can ask is who? Putting the Right People in the Right Seats is the most fundamental, critical ongoing decision process any leader will ever face. But scarcity-based thinking can prevent us from making hard, right choices around people.

Let’s say you have an employee who’s a good producer, but they’re a poor cultural fit and toxic to your team. You know you should show them the door, but you worry about the loss of revenue (or profit) that would result from their dismissal, or the time and resources required to find, hire, and train their replacement. And even then, what if the new hire doesn’t work out?

The fear of lacking resources in this all-too-common scenario causes even the most seasoned leaders to take pause—or even justify retaining a problematic person who is likely making their coworkers miserable most days of the week.

On the other hand, I’ve never had a business leader fire a problem employee and say, “You know, we should have kept them on for another six months.” Rather, they usually come to me with a sheepish look on their face and say, “I should have done that a year ago.”

Key Question for Leaders: Are you justifying your staffing choices with what if scenarios or making the hard, right decisions to build your team?

Scarcity Thinking Prolongs Unprofitable Relationships

Similar to its effect on Right People, Right Seats decision making, scarcity-based thinking also affects relationships in other areas of your business.

I periodically challenge my coaching clients to examine their relationships with clients, suppliers, partners, etc. and ask who they’d like to “fire.” Most leaders easily identify these unprofitable and/or energy sapping relationships, but when it comes to actually cutting the ties, they balk.

Here again, we observe the scarcity mindset hard at work. Leaders rationalize maintaining those relationships because they worry about the consequences of lack. Yes, they acknowledge that Client A is borderline abusive to their employees and a huge time suck, but how will they replace their revenue? Or yes, they acknowledge Supplier B has a quality problem that costs time and money, but how much time will it take to bring a new supplier online?

Avoiding those hard, right actions out of fear drains time, profits, and positive emotions from your firm. Just like firing a problematic employee, you’ll never look back and wish you’d held onto an unprofitable relationship for longer.

Key Question for Leaders: Which client/supplier/partner relationships should you upgrade and replace to improve your business?

Scarcity Thinking Nullifies Prioritization

Scarcity-based thinking also diminishes leadership efficacy in prioritization. A small number of thoughtfully conceived priorities informs resource allocation. Put another way, your priorities guide what you and your team should say “yes” and “no” to, improving your firm’s focus and accelerating the accomplishment of “most important” things.

But with a scarcity mindset, leaders tend to worry that the priorities they selected aren’t the right ones or that by defining explicit and precise priorities they might miss opportunities that fall just outside of their chosen path. The scarcity fear here manifests as classic FOMO—the Fear of Missing Out.

This FOMO causes leaders to chase other ventures or projects that don’t align with their focus. They effectively say “yes” to things beyond the bounds of their agreed upon priorities and justify this “shiny object syndrome” as a way to mitigate the risk of losing out.

Key Question for Leaders: What “shiny objects” are distracting you and your team due to your FOMO?

Scarcity Thinking Promotes Underinvestment in Growth

Whether you’re a leader with a big plan or an entrepreneur aiming to scale your business, you have to take smart risks to get there. I’m not talking about betting everything, but rather a willingness to make investments likely to pay off with growth.

Growth-minded leaders take calculated risks because they understand that growing requires a certain amount of risk and associated discomfort. But as I mentioned earlier, scarcity-based thinkers tend to be risk averse for fear of losing or not being able to replace resources.

Studies show that leaders with a scarcity mindset make choices based solely on the potential of catastrophe—no matter how unlikely. In other words, they habitually overestimate risk.

As a result, they underinvest, pinch pennies, and stretch their existing resources—including people—to the limit. It’s the exact opposite of the success formula for growth!

Key Question for Leaders: What calculated risks are you avoiding due to a fear of lack?

Three Tools (and a Bonus Strategy!) to Reduce Scarcity-Based Thinking

Here’s the good news: You can actively combat a scarcity mindset and shift your thinking from fear (moving away from what you don’t want) to inspiration (moving toward what you want). Here are a handful of easy-to-use tools to help get you there:

Fear Reduction Tool

The Fear Reduction Tool will help you reduce the emotion that fuels scarcity-based thinking while also increasing the logic supporting something you’d like to accomplish. Access the Fear Reduction Tool here.

Know Your Why Tool

Increasing inspiration is an analogous but inverted process to reducing fear, and it is of equal importance. Here, we’re looking to increase emotional involvement and decrease logical thinking to inspire action. Access the Know Your Why Tool here.

New Neighborhood Tool

When was the last time you deliberately put yourself in a position to be challenged by others more accomplished than you? 

The people with whom you surround yourself—your neighborhood—have a massive impact on your mindset. If you spend most of your time with others who are at or below your current level of success, odds are they share many of your fears, biases, and blindspots. Accordingly, although knowing that others have the same issues as you can be comforting, they’re not the right people to challenge your motivators, habits, and beliefs! The New Neighborhood Tool helps you identify those best positioned to help you stretch, learn, grow, plan, and execute in your business. Access the New Neighborhood Tool here.

Bonus Strategy: Lean Into Gratitude

By definition, a scarcity-based mindset focuses on lack—what you don’t have. Gratitude, on the other hand, highlights what you already have. This isn’t “woo woo” stuff, so stick with me here—the brain science supporting gratitude is rock solid. Over time, focusing on gratitude puts your mind into a place where you have a firmer foundation and it helps you become more willing to take the right kind of risks.

Here’s the simple, time-efficient way I help my clients lean into gratitude: They begin every weekly leadership team meeting with a round of appreciation. Every team member states one personal and one professional thing they have appreciation for. Try it and stick with it. You’ll be amazed at how it improves relationships on your teams and the results of your time together.

Conclusion

“What drives innovation is abundance and ease, not the pressure of scarcity.” — Adam Gopnik 

The desire to get more of something “good” or less of something “bad” lies at the root of every human thought and behavior. The “good” includes thoughts about expansion, abundance, growth, and possibility. This is inspiration. The “bad” encompasses anxieties about contraction, scarcity, and the urge to protect ourselves. This is fear.

Evaluate your default leadership mindset with the following questions:

  • How often do I tend to move away from loss rather than toward gains?
  • How often do I procrastinate on making good, hard decisions for fear of their consequences?
  • How often do I flip-flop on decisions after being swayed by outside influences?
  • How often do I choose to give up potential good things in order to maintain what I have—even if there are significant downsides?

With your answers and the tools outlined above, you have a much better chance of reducing the costly impact of scarcity-based thinking on your leadership and your results. You’ll move from defense to offense more often, which will accelerate progress toward your aspirations.

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: July 20, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Date: August 2, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.” — Nassim Taleb

Anyone who’s raised or been around young children is all too familiar with the word “no.” 

“Noes” begin when toddlers take agency over their lives and make choices based on their preferences. “No, I don’t want to go to bed. No, I don’t want to pick up my toys. No, I don’t want peas with dinner. No, I don’t want to wear any clothing today!” Sound familiar?

Reflecting on my own personal experience, the endless and relentless flow of “noes” can be supremely frustrating for parents and other adults!

But if you’re willing to be curious and stick with me, there’s a high-stakes lesson here for leaders:

What our toddlers seem to understand is that every time they say “no” to one thing, they are able to say “yes” to something else they deem more valuable.

As adults and as leaders, we often lose sight of this profoundly powerful concept! 

What our toddlers seem to understand is that every time they say “no” to one thing, they are able to say “yes” to something else they deem more valuable.

We say “yes” to please others. We say “yes” because we want to be well-liked. We say “yes” to keep up with competitors or out of fear that if we don’t, we could miss out on a big opportunity. In other words, we say “yes” more than we say “no” and routinely occupy ourselves (and our teams) with less valuable pursuits.

Although many of these choices might seem reasonable at the moment, all they really do is move you away from other, more valuable options—including your goals and aspirations!

Here’s the hard truth: There are both apparent and hidden costs associated with every “yes” choice you make. You invest in those choices financially, physically, emotionally, or with the most valuable commodity of all: Time.

Where are you saying “yes” when you should be saying “no?” And even more critically, do your “noes” really mean “no?”

Here are four areas where high performing leaders embrace their inner toddler:

Growing People

Let’s open with a classic dilemma for leaders and managers: Should I fix a problem myself, or teach someone else to do it?

If you aspire to grow and scale, it’s imperative to elevate yourself above the day-to-day to a more strategic level. To get there, you and all of the leaders in your organization must actively build capability among the next level of leadership (or future leaders). Intellectually, this makes sense, yet when a real-world problem arises and alarm bells are ringing, your natural instinct is to fix things yourself.

In that moment, you’ll likely reason it will be more efficient or effective (or both) to do it yourself. You’ll also probably make a mental note that you really ought to show others how to handle issues like this when you have more time. And there’s the rub: You never make the time.

By saying “yes” to solving the problem, you’re actually saying “no” to scaling your business and helping your employees grow.

I get it—the math often makes these types of decisions daunting. It’s much easier to spend 15 minutes taking care of something than it is to find an hour to properly teach someone. But in six months, when you’re frustrated that your next-level leadership can’t do anything by themselves, you’ll regret it. It’s not that they’re incompetent—it’s that you said “no” repeatedly to investing the time it takes to scale your business properly and sustainably. 

By saying “yes” to solving the problem, you’re actually saying “no” to scaling your business and helping your employees grow.

Key Takeaway for Leaders: Say “no” to doing things yourself so you can say “yes” to growing your people and creating a more scalable organization. Ensure your extended leadership team does the same.

Business Strategy

Your Strategy captures HOW you intend to attain the WHAT, defined by your goals. As such, strategy directly informs choices and actions that need to occur—and in some cases not occur—to achieve your aspirations.

The data is pretty clear that a narrow business strategy is far more effective than a broad one. For example, trying to be many things to many people is not nearly as effective as trying to be one thing to a lot of people or a robust package of things to a small group of people.

But as you taste success and as your business grows, it becomes tempting to chase “shiny objects.”

When you say “yes” to the distraction, you say “no” to your strategy.

These projects or opportunities aren’t consistent with your strategy, but you rationalize your way into them. You think “we could make a lot of money doing this,” or “this isn’t that far off from what we said we wanted to do,” or my favorite, “it won’t take much time or effort.”

When you say “yes” to the distraction, you say “no” to your strategy.

Leaders with shiny object syndrome completely demoralize their hard-working teams. I’ve been in rooms with CEOs who have directed employees to chase distractions, and you can see the light drain from their team’s eyes when they say something like “it’ll barely take any time and the potential upside is massive!”

To the contrary, as a leader, you should be the one constantly aligning everyone to your vision. You should be the one saying “no” to keep everyone else on track.

Key Takeaway For Leaders: Say “no” to distractions and shiny objects so you can say “yes” to your business strategy.

Company Culture

Company culture is defined through core values—or “cultural commitments,” as one of my clients calls them. Although your cultural commitments are specific behaviors you’ve agreed to say “yes” to, I frequently see leaders underinvesting in building their culture while simultaneously tolerating non-compliant behaviors.

As with shiny object syndrome, leaders often rationalize non-compliant cultural commitment behaviors by pointing out unrelated virtues possessed by the violators. Here’s what that sounds like: “Yes, I know that Bobby in sales is a bully and a jerk, but he’s the highest-performing salesperson we have.” This mode of rationalization places all of the focus on the cost of potentially firing Bobby, with zero weight on the ongoing damage he’s inflicting on the rest of your team which, in these cases, is typically horrible. 

These behavioral concessions are a slippery slope. By allowing non-compliant behavior to occur, even if you never utter a spoken word, you say “yes” to that behavior and “no” to your cultural commitments in full view of every employee! 

By extension, you’re effectively saying “no” to building the right culture, “no” to attracting and retaining the right people, and “no” to feeling good about the type of business you’re building.

By allowing non-compliant behavior to occur, even if you never utter a spoken word, you say “yes” to that behavior and “no” to your cultural commitments in full view of every employee.

You might not realize this at the time, but by not correcting off-culture behaviors—or occasionally showing an employee the exit—you forfeit all of those things.

Key Takeaway For Leaders: Say “no” to culturally non-compliant behaviors so you can say “yes” to building the organization you really want to run.

Prioritization

You’ve heard the old saying a million times: “If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.” Yet this is one of the primary reasons I see businesses struggling to grow.

You and each leader on your team should have a very short list of one, two, or three priorities at any moment in time. This list denotes the guidelines for what you should say “yes” to and how you should allocate your resources. Anything outside of your priorities should be an automatic “no” unless the priorities are on track and on time.

At the leadership level, saying “yes” to non-priorities slows everything down.

Not only should you say “no” to new things that come up for yourself, but you should also not tolerate your people focusing their time and attention on non-priorities. Unclear priorities weaken the company’s execution and demoralize staff, as everyone is working hard but meaningful progress seems elusive.

At the leadership level, saying “yes” to non-priorities slows everything down. You wonder why you’re not growing the way you should be, or why things aren’t getting easier. It’s all because you’re saying “yes” to the things you should be saying “no” to.

Key Takeaway For Leaders: Say “no” to non-priorities and distractions so you can say “yes” to the most important things that will advance your firm.

Conclusion

“What you don’t do determines what you can do.” — Tim Ferriss

Leadership can feel like being on a medieval torture rack—you’re constantly being stretched in a thousand directions by the pull of others. Without a clear understanding of your “yeses” and your “noes,” you’ll be ripped apart. 

In other words, if you don’t choose the “yeses” and “noes” for yourself, others will “choose” them for you:

  • The middle manager on your team single-handedly solving problems as the rest of their staff stagnate in their roles.
  • The Inc. Magazine writer’s shiny new idea cannibalizes traction from your business strategy.
  • The toxic, high performer stays employed and erodes your culture.
  • Personal agendas arising from unclear priorities erode execution, slow results, and exhaust your hard-working staff.

Channel your inner toddler

Get clear on your “yeses:” Your commitment to growing people, your business strategy, your cultural commitments, and your priorities.

Then, stay true to them no matter what. Your “yeses” must mean “yes,” and your “noes” must mean “no,” in both words and deeds.

Channel your inner toddler, stay true to the highest value prizes in your sights, and don’t let anyone divert you from remaining relentlessly focused on the things that are the most important to your success.

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Date: May 25, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: May 31, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Whatever you are willing to put up with is exactly what you will have.” – Anonymous

Introduction

In 1987, the New Jersey State Police received a report that a hunter had died on a small patch of land jutting into the Delaware River called Finns Point, however they refused to retrieve the body.

Their reasoning? It was outside of their jurisdiction.

As it turned out, neither New Jersey nor its neighboring state Delaware were sure within which state’s boundaries the Finns Point peninsula belonged. Because neither state claimed the land, it was unmonitored and unpatrolled.

Over 30 years later, the ownership of Finns Point remains unresolved. As a result, the area has become a magnet for abandoned vehicles, garbage, and illegal activity. While this no-man’s land between the two states has become somewhat of a joke to state legislators and geography buffs, the unclear boundary has essentially rendered the land useless.

Boundaries matter!

I recently met the CEO of a $100+ million firm who was having trouble achieving his goals. His problem: no boundaries. He and his team weren’t singularly focused on their execution plan because he entertained numerous distractions in the form of “shiny new projects” that seemed important but weren’t driving the business forward. This CEO had neither defined nor enforced a clear line delineating what he and his team should say “no” to.

According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of a boundary is “something that indicates or fixes a limit or extent.” Clearly, they’re not only for maps! 

A boundary is an expectation of when, where, and how you say “yes” or “no.” For example, the New Jersey State Police say “no” to recover a body from land outside the defined boundary of the state. As a business leader you can create boundaries that clarify how and when you expect your team to act, the scope of products and services you offer, your business model, your availability to the team, and more.

Boundaries can also be personal. For instance, consider a boundary that states you’re not going to miss any of your daughter’s softball games this season. This is a boundary of your time designed to compel you to leave the office early enough to make each game without exception.

Clear boundaries make us and our organizations better.

They can apply to you, your team, staff, customers, partners, and suppliers. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to set and enforce the right boundaries to help you achieve your goals.

Here are five areas where adding boundaries will accelerate your progress:

Time and Availability

“Boundaries are a part of self-care. They are healthy, normal, and necessary.” – Doreen Virtue

When I launched my coaching practice, I established several boundaries around my time and availability. For example, I made a rule that I don’t schedule client time on weekends. Ever.

As a result, my coaching clients know not to ask me to schedule time on weekends. They also don’t call me on weekends unless there is an existential emergency. Has that happened on occasion? Of course. But because my clients are so clear on the boundary, if a client calls me at 5 p.m. on a Saturday I’m going to answer immediately, because I know it’s a real emergency.

This simple time-based boundary allows me to live my life my way. I can enjoy every weekend and not think about client commitments. What’s more, I return to the office every Monday refreshed and focused because my work and personal time are clearly delineated.

To set boundaries in this domain, you might make yourself available for questions during a designated chunk of time but make it clear to your staff that outside of those office hours, you are doing focused work and should not be disturbed.

Likewise, you might set boundaries with your team about working outside of business hours. The tech company Slack, for example, forbids its employees from sending any communication on nights and weekends. Its unofficial company motto is, “Work Hard and Go Home.”  

If you’re not setting boundaries around your or your team’s time, other people will run your life. And likely, it won’t be in the direction you want it to run.

Strategy

“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say ‘No’ to almost everything.” — Warren Buffet

Although most leaders understand the importance of a good business strategy, they don’t necessarily know what strategy is. Strategy is essentially a stated commitment of HOW you intend to execute to achieve your organization’s goals.

As such, strategy is a boundary. It delineates which activities and decisions are acceptable and, by omission, which aren’t.

The beauty of a good strategy is that it should cause you to say NO far more than you say YES. As I mentioned in the opening CEO story, leaders with unclear strategic boundaries tend to fall victim to what I call “Shiny Object Syndrome,” where they pursue new and “exciting” opportunities that arise.

Although leaders with this syndrome feel good because they’re acting “entrepreneurially,” seeing opportunities, and taking action, this approach dilutes their ability to achieve the organization’s stated objectives.

Once your firm develops a well-thought strategy, it’s your responsibility to enforce its boundaries. When new, shiny opportunities arise, evaluate whether they fit the activities articulated in your strategy.

If not, it’s a hard “no.” 

Terms & Conditions

“It is necessary, and even vital, to set standards for your life and the people you allow in it.” – Mandy Hale

I’ve written in the past about establishing non-negotiable terms and conditions for you and your firm. These are also boundaries that help accelerate your firm’s progress.

A leader’s number one responsibility is to point to the things that matter most. This creates clear expectations that help employees understand where to focus and how to act.

Your leadership terms and conditions might, for example, include:

  • Not listening to a problem unless the team member also brings at least one idea for a potential solution to the table; or
  • Setting the boundary that if a meeting organizer doesn’t circulate an agenda 24+ hours before a meeting, you won’t attend; or
  • The requirement that your customers treat your staff with dignity, or risk being asked to find another supplier.

Terms and conditions like these make your firm a better place to work while simultaneously improving operations and efficiency.

Role Accountability

“[Boundaries] define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom.” – Henry Cloud 

Role accountability is one of the murkiest areas I observe in almost every business. This is why I wrote an entire book on the topic.

When the boundaries of your organization’s roles aren’t clearly defined, all sorts of things can fall between the cracks. I often see role accountability so poorly defined—even in large firms—that no single person is accountable for revenue until you get to the CEO. And when you’re running a 300-person organization that’s doing north of $100 million in revenue, that’s a huge problem!

Think about your business and answer the following simple questions: 

  • What role is accountable for revenue?
  • What role is accountable for operating profit?
  • What role is accountable for generating leads?
  • What role is accountable for the number of initial meetings scheduled with prospective customers?
  • What role is accountable for the quality of your products and/or services?

If you and your leadership team can’t answer each question with a single role, you have work to do!

Clear boundaries around role accountability are essential to create sustainable scale in any business. To get more clarity surrounding the roles in your firm, I recommend creating role accountability cards for every person in your firm, division, group, or team. This article shows you how. 

Behaviors

“Your boundaries protect the inner core of your identity and your right to choices.” — Gerard Manley Hopkins

The final area where you should consider establishing boundaries is around behavior.

The primary method to shape behavior should be establishing your company’s core values, which are the behavioral rules leaders and managers use to establish and maintain a desired culture. This article will help you create core values for your company.

Beyond core values, some businesses also create additional behavioral boundaries in the form of an “our way” type of manifesto, outlining standard operating procedures for how the company should run. For example, an “our way” document typically includes expectations around how to communicate with each other, with customers, and with suppliers.

All of these behavioral rules and norms are boundaries because they’re expectations of behavior that you require of your staff. In the absence of that guidance, you leave everyone on the team to determine their own way of behaving, which isn’t scalable and can be extremely frustrating to managers and high performers alike.

Conclusion

Boundaries make us and our organizations better. But where should you begin? How do you know where you should draw your personal and organizational borders?

Start by identifying your metaphorical Finns Point. As officials in New Jersey and Delaware learned, areas of friction and conflict often highlight ill-defined boundaries.

Think about your firm and name the areas where you’re frustrated by a level of performance or certain behaviors or conditions that annoyingly persist without ever being resolved. Then consider which boundaries are missing at the root of the conflict. Odds are, they lie in one or more of the five areas I’ve outlined above.

Draw your boundaries, then communicate and enforce them, and watch as the improved clarity propels your team and your firm forward.

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: May 31, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Date: May 25, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.” – Nikos Kazantzakis

In the 1999 film The Matrix, Keanu Reeves’s character Neo is given a choice to take a blue or red pill. The blue pill will allow him to continue his life on its current course, while the red one will wake him up to the reality of his situation. Neo chooses the red pill and, as a result, gains a more accurate view of reality as he discovers he’s spent his whole life living in a simulation.

Though business leaders don’t live in a sci-fi fantasy, I’ve found many to be unknowingly blind to the reality of their circumstances just like Neo. While it’s easy to say and understand that the role of a leader is to assess and clarify reality to make decisions, in practice, it’s quite challenging because your reality is influenced by biases, habits, assumptions, past experiences, and all sorts of other baggage you carry around every day.

For example, your interpretation of events or circumstances might be shaped by your ego, preconceived notions about your team, a lack of prior relevant experience, or perhaps insufficient data and information. All of these elements (and more!) fog the lens you use to assess situations, circumstances, and results—that is, they prevent you from creating an accurate view of reality.

It’s second nature for start-up and early stage entrepreneurs to make rapid decisions by trusting their gut. Those decisions are usually okay when the stakes are relatively low because it’s better to keep moving than get bogged down by incessant deliberation.

But beyond the early stages, when your organization is scaling and making meaningful progress, you must apply more rigor to clarifying reality before making decisions—particularly high-stakes calls involving investment and/or risk.

Your role requires you to overcome inherent biases, tendencies, and preconceived notions to assess and define reality as objectively as possible. Here are four mechanisms that will help:

Use Data

If you’re not making decisions backed—at least in part—by data, you’re operating the business like a blindfolded archer: You know the target is somewhere in front of you and you know how to shoot the arrows, but everything else is up to chance. Although I’m not a gambler, if I was, I’d never bet on a blindfolded archer to hit their target!

Without data, you can’t discern reality.

The first things that come to mind when we refer to data are numbers and statistics. But quantitative data is only one element. The other, qualitative data is just as important. This data might measure product quality, team morale, or suggestions to diagnose a problem—whatever can help give you an accurate picture of the reality you need for a particular decision. For example, periodic check-ins and conversations with your team to collect anecdotal data offers nearly as much insight as a performance dashboard. I call anecdotal data “color commentary,” as it adds significant color, depth, and value to otherwise “black and white” quantitative data.

Data should come from OUTSIDE your firm as well. Leaders should collect and reference information on the markets, economic activity, competitors, investment capital, and interest rate trends—all of which may play a role in determining the reality of your situation.

Key Questions for Leaders:

  • What data do you need within and outside of your business to clarify the reality of your situation and plans?
  • How can you improve the collection and incorporation of “color commentary” into your assessment of reality?
  • If you were stuck on a desert island and had to continue operating your firm, but you could only receive 10 pieces of information each month, which metrics would you choose?

Crowdsource Perspective

Even if you feel like you have a strong grasp of internal and external data at your firm, the inherent biases I mentioned in the introduction will inevitably color how you perceive things. One way to combat this is through crowdsourcing, wherein you collect diverse opinions about a topic and piece together a mosaic of reality. 

One of my coaching clients in the financial sector crowdsources a rolling 12-month macroeconomic forecast each quarter. It’s a tool they use to clarify the reality of their operating environment and their assumptions. Each quarter, they produce an updated consensus forecast of the macroeconomic environment for the next 4 quarters—a version of reality that the executive team uses to make decisions.

When you tap into the crowd, you gain insights and perspectives that are impossible for you to perceive—or offer—yourself. This process fosters discussion and constructive debate that helps overcome individual biases and blind spots.

Key Questions for Leaders:

  • Who are you involving in the process of determining reality?
  • Are they the right people with the right expertise?
  • Are you asking them the right questions?

Ask More and Better Questions

As I’ve written about previously, most leaders don’t ask anywhere nearly enough questions. Even when they do, I see many fail to dig deeper by asking follow-up questions that generate the most value.

One mantra I instill in my coaching clients is to “ask one more question.” More often than not, that extra “one” is the key to determining reality. 

For example, one of my favorite things to do as a coach is ask leaders who they think is best suited to serve as their successor. Most balk at the question and say there are a couple of potential candidates. When you ask a question and the other person doesn’t know or provide a satisfactory answer, your natural instinct is to let it go and move on.

But the “one more question” mantra leads us to keep digging. In this case, I follow up by asking, “If you DID know your successor, who would it be?” Ninety percent of the time, they answer that follow-up question in a heartbeat!

Part of asking good questions is accepting that you don’t know what you don’t know. By asking that extra question, you’re allowing yourself to be inquisitive and curious. As a result, you shine a light on areas that would have otherwise remained in the dark.

By asking more and better questions, you’ll ascertain a clearer view of reality.

Key Questions for Leaders:

  • Are you asking enough questions?
  • How can you develop the habit of asking “one more question?”

Run Experiments

There’s no doubt that when you’ve embraced and implemented the first three mechanisms I’ve outlined, you’ll have a clearer sense of the reality that lies before you. But in some sense, using data, crowdsourcing, and asking more and better questions only gives you a hypothetical picture of reality.

The only way to truly clarify and solidify that reality is to test it by running experiments. Experiments are effective because they test your hypotheses of reality before you place big bets.

In his book, Great By Choice, Jim Collins brilliantly captured this concept with his maxim to “fire bullets, then cannonballs.” The thinking here is that results from rapid, low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experiments help calibrate reality. Based on the findings, determine the path forward and consider concentrating your resources into firing that big cannonball (bet).

For example, let’s say your firm is considering opening a satellite office in Geneva. Rather than diving in headfirst and incurring all of the costs associated with opening a new office in a new country, think about the ways you can test the reality of your assumptions using experiments over the next 90 days. Here are three ideas: You could remotely interview prospective clients living in Geneva, you could speak with a friendly competitor already in the market, and you could contact your suppliers and ask them to simulate the effect of a Geneva office on your relationship.

All three of these potential experiments would cost very little in terms of both money and time. The more you run, the more useful information—and view of reality—you’ll have to help you make the best, right decision for your firm.

Key Question for Leaders:

  • What rapid, low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experiments can you run in the next 90 days to test your hypothesis of reality?
  • Where else could an experiment be useful to improve your view of reality?

Conclusion

“The leader’s role is to define reality, then give hope.” — Napoleon

It’s your job as a leader to clarify and define reality as objectively as possible as a precursor to decision-making, which sounds a lot easier in theory than it is to accomplish in practice.

Your version of events and circumstances is shaped by ego, preconceived notions, experience, information, and whatever other mental baggage you carry with you every day. ALL of these can fog the lens you use to interpret situations, conditions, and results, preventing you from accurately assessing and determining reality.

Use these four mechanisms to overcome your fog-inducing inherent biases, tendencies, and preconceptions to assemble a more accurate view of reality:

  • Use Data
  • Crowdsource Perspective
  • Ask More and Better Questions
  • Run Experiments

Lastly, for even greater effect, surround yourself with people who point out your weaknesses and provide direct, constructive feedback. Author, social scientist, and self-awareness expert Tasha Eurich aptly calls these folks “loving critics;” they care about you deeply and are able to confront you with the brutal realities you need to hear.  

Just like Neo in The Matrix, it’s your choice to take the red pill!

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Building a More Accountable Culture

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with an accountable culture execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build an accountable culture.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: April18, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Date: April19, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Change does not occur by merely willing it any more than behavior changes simply through insight.” — Leo Buscaglia

Now that we’re a month into 2023, you’ve probably identified at least a few goals and priorities you aim to accomplish this year. But how will you achieve them?

Goals aren’t achieved because you will them into being. Rather, they manifest as the result of thousands—if not millions—of decisions you and your team make over time. 

The problem is, while making many of these choices, it’s easy to become distracted by short-term rewards while failing to contemplate long-term consequences. One by one, the decisions you make slowly steer you away from the course to achieve your goal. Over time, they compound with the same unhappy result as an airline pilot steering just one degree off course as she flies from New York to Madrid: you miss the destination.

Too often, I see leaders focus so much on the finish line they lose sight of the path or paralyze themselves while obsessing over the process to get there. In both cases, they aren’t acknowledging the imperative that they must change themselves to achieve what they desire.

Here’s a new, behaviorally realistic way to think about achievement: A goal isn’t a goal—it’s the SYMPTOM of the changes you make over time. For example, if your goal is to achieve annual revenues of $15 million in three years, that result will be a symptom—an outcome—of how you changed your behavior along the way.

In other words, to achieve different results, you MUST change your behavior!

Here are three research-based behavior change techniques that will accelerate your progress.

Be Your Way Into Thinking

“Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The quickest way to modify a behavior is to just do it. Being your way into thinking is more colloquially expressed as “fake it ‘til you make it.” With this technique, you’ll emulate the desired behavior and course correct over time until it becomes both natural and effective.

Fear is often the obstacle to being your way into thinking. I observe this consistently in many of the coaches I mentor. They complete their initial training and return home, but rather than picking up the phone to network and contact potential clients, they read manuals, work on their website, and occupy themselves with other things they justify as prerequisites to get started. They’re afraid they’re not ready, they’re afraid they’re not good enough (yet), and they’re afraid they’re going to embarrass themselves.

Many believe that once they learn and master everything, they’ll feel like the professionals they hope to become, enabling them to make the calls. Instead, their efforts just delay the process. In this case, the way to learn—and learn quickly—is to emulate someone you know, dial the first number on your list, and say hello.

Here’s how to make this method work for you: Let’s imagine you decide you need to have more direct conversations with your team—a behavior you’re not very good at that makes you uncomfortable. 

To start, you might reach out to a friend or colleague who is great at giving feedback and ask her about what she does when one of her direct reports needs direct feedback. You might inquire about what she thinks when she walks through the door, or how she opens the conversation when they sit down. 

Perhaps you worry in these situations that you’ll ruin someone’s day. You might learn that your friend thinks differently: “I’m about to do this person a great service because, without this feedback on their performance, they wouldn’t have the opportunity to get better and reach their potential.” It’s the same situation, the same conversation, but with two very different beliefs driving—and thus determining—the leader’s behavior. 

Next, instead of just thinking about her insights, try emulating her feedback beliefs and behaviors immediately. Of course, it will feel uncomfortable at the beginning, but you’ll learn from the process and improve over time. 

If / When, Then

“Most bad behavior comes from insecurity.” — Debra Winger

Human behavior is governed by a rule of consistency—we behave in a manner that aligns with our conception of ourselves. If someone prompts you to consider your altruistic tendencies by asking whether you imagine yourself to be a generous person and then later that day someone else asks you to support a worthy charity, you’re more likely to donate than someone who wasn’t primed to think about their willingness to give.

Over the years, I’ve worked with many CEOs who were not formally trained in critical parts of their business, like accounting and finance for example. Though they ran a successful business, some remained overwhelmed by the numbers, and they avoided financial information and reports. This behavior created active ignorance, further reinforcing and magnifying the problem over time.

To change behaviors like this, I coach my clients to utilize “if/when, then” statements. An “if/when, then” statement names a cue and the behavior it will provoke. The financially unsure CEO, for example, might create this statement: “When I receive our monthly financials, then I will sit down that day for a minimum of 30 minutes with my Controller to understand them.”

While these words won’t turn anyone into a finance whiz overnight, they will cue you to do the thing you know you should do.

Studies show that humans crave structure. If you structure your thinking around a trigger, you’re far more likely to complete the attached behavior because you’ve made a commitment to do it.

The results are astounding. “If/when, then” statements are far superior to simple intentions because they prepare you to notice the cue and allow you to capitalize on the behavioral rule of consistency.

Know When To Say No

“Life is hard. Life is difficult. Life is going to punch you in the gut. But when you change your attitude, you change your behavior. When your behavior changes, so do your results.” — Will Hurd

Most CEOs I know consider themselves to be givers. They believe they need to give to build the organization they want.Although this is mostly true, I’ve found that giving too much can have negative consequences. 

When you say yes to something, you sacrifice attention, time, and resources for other things. Do it too often, and your own performance will suffer. In other words, when you give too much, you become a low performer!

The propensity to give without limits is often connected to fears about ego, scarcity, and failure. This is a mechanism by which many leaders justify their importance (ego) or act on their fear that if they don’t handle things directly, their business, group, or team will fail. It’s exhausting, it’s not scalable, and—ironically—it’s a significant cause of failure!

Time is a more valuable commodity than money. You can make more money, but you can never make more time. As such, it’s important to honor your priorities and protect your time by learning to say “no” more often.

But how do you get started? Use the word “don’t.”

Tell yourself: “I don’t accept tasks that can be done by others,” or “I don’t commit to anything that doesn’t serve my goals.” Then apply that belief to your decisions and watch your “yes-to-no ratio” improve.

Conclusion

Yes, it’s still important to create goals and priorities for yourself and for your business. But it’s a fool’s errand to fixate on the goal itself rather than how you need to change to make it happen.

Remember: A goal isn’t a goal—it’s the SYMPTOM of the changes you make over time.

Focus instead on making better decisions and becoming who you need to become in order to have what you want. You do that by changing how you think and how you behave.

A word of caution: Installing new behaviors doesn’t happen overnight. You may try one of the methods I’ve described here, and then slip back under stress.

That’s okay!

Think of it this way: If you were a parent who picked up your toddler every time he reached for you, he’d never learn to walk. Humans learn from doing, not from thinking. For instance, you didn’t learn to ride a bike by reading a book about it! You had to get on the bike, fall off, and get back on again until you figured it out.

Changing your behavior as a leader is the same. It can take multiple tries with multiple models but starting and actually DOING something is the first step toward meaningful change.

Which behaviors must you change to make 2023 the year you want it to be?

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with a culture of accountability execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment, and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build a culture of accountability.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: March 13, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Date: March 14, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

Three weeks ago, 20 million people witnessed a horrific sports medicine emergency on live television. Buffalo Bills NFL football player Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field and required nine minutes of CPR to keep him alive.

The on-site medical staff had done everything in their power to be prepared for such an event. They had the necessary equipment—including an AED—and they’d rehearsed emergency action plans multiple times prior to and during the season. The medical professionals met before the game to review channels of communication and the procedures necessary to respond to any on field emergency.

They were the right people with the right expertise, in the right place at the right time. And they saved Hamlin’s life.

Experts and expertise matter. 

Yet for many entrepreneurs and business leaders, expertise is often deprioritized in favor of an “I can do it myself” approach. On the one hand, I’ve always admired moxy and the entrepreneurial spirit. On the other hand, scaling a profitable firm isn’t ever time for amateur hour! Further, why expend the time, energy and opportunity ($$$) cost to figure things out when you can access expertise to show you the way?

This leads to an important and often overlooked question for leaders: What expertise is required on or around your team to achieve your goals over the next three-to-five years?

To help you derive an answer, here are four critical areas for you to consider:

Management Expertise

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.”

– Red Adair

Entrepreneurs tend to take a DIY approach to management, even as their business scales. After all, in most cases, they bootstrapped their way to viability, so they figure this will continue to work for them. But as you scale a firm, you reach a point of diminishing returns on status quo leadership, where the size and complexity of the business catch up with you very quickly.

For example, as a firm’s employee headcount grows, it’s common to tap a top performer and promote them to a supervisory role. But just because someone is a superstar individual contributor doesn’t mean they’re cut out for managing people. I’ve seen this happen many times, and quite often, it doesn’t end well despite everyone’s good intentions.

Entrepreneurs often balk at paying more for expertise because up to this point, their bootstrap mentality has forced them to figure things out on their own through trial and error. The tricky part lies in the cost/benefit math of hiring highly qualified people with the expertise you need. Yes, buying expertise will cost you, but consider the potential return and the opportunity costs of figuring things out on your own (or not!). 

As you scale, this opportunity cost becomes more and more expensive. By bringing someone in who already knows how to manage a team of your size and scale it to the next level, you’re paying for that expertise, and you’ll end up saving.

The same principle applies to larger organizations as well. If you’re running a $50 million firm and want to scale it to $250 million, think about your current head of sales. Yes, they’ve gotten you to this point, but do they have the knowledge and skills to build and operate a quarter billion dollar high-performing sales force? Are you willing to take the risk that your current sales leader can get you there?

Financial Expertise

“If you talk to a top accountant about his field of expertise, it’s mind boggling.”

– Vincent Kompany

Most business leaders don’t come from a financial background. And yet, your job as CEO or senior leader is to drive financial results.

Consider the inception of the financial function in a small firm: When the entrepreneur decides to take the accounting function off of their plate, they typically hire or outsource a bookkeeper. It’s not uncommon over time for the same person to wind up in a Controller or even a default, if highly underqualified, CFO role.

Of course it’s admirable that your original bookkeeper has gotten you to where you are, but they’re rarely equipped to advise and lead the increasingly complicated financial function in your scaling firm. There are serious short- and  long-term implications to your financial decision-making whether you realize it or not, which can put even your future personal financial security at risk.

More timely and more accurate information that supports better decision-making and data-driven outcomes is another benefit of expert financial leadership. Entrepreneurs tend to fly by the seat of their pants when making decisions, but as their firms scale so do the risks. An expert CFO uses data to ask the right questions that frame more productive conversations and decisions.

Over the years, I’ve had several coaching clients who spent lots of money to acquire the right financial expert to help scale their firms. In every case, about six months later, the CEO said to me: “I should have made this investment much sooner.”

You should too!

Operational Expertise

“Chess masters don’t evaluate all the possible moves. They know how to discard 98 percent of the ones they could make and then focus on the best choice of the remaining lot. That’s the way expertise works in other fields, too. Wise practitioners recognize familiar patterns and put their creativity, improvisation, and skill toward the marginal cases.” – John Dickerson

Operations is the business of your business—whether you run a product or a service firm, it’s how the proverbial sausage is made. And at scale, it’s an area where entrepreneurs rarely have the right expertise.

An operations expert is able to cut through the noise. Instead of chasing down every aspect of the business and trying to improve it, the expert can separate the operational red herrings from the right levers to pull.

For example, I have a client in the technology sector who decided three years ago to step out of operations and hire a president to run the firm. He made the decision because he disliked running operations and because he knew he didn’t have the expertise to scale the firm operationally to facilitate an eventual, highly profitable exit.

As CEO, my client still charts the course, but he brought in an expert to make the right operational moves. It’s working: the firm’s growth has accelerated and, more importantly, they’ve consistently hit their profitability targets, which they weren’t able to do before.

How could high-level operations expertise transform your firm’s results?

Learning and Development Expertise

“Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise. View life as a continuous learning experience.”

– Denis Waitley

What are you doing to integrate learning into the operation of your business?

I’ve never seen an organization whose growth exceeds the personal growth rate of its people. But for many firms, accountability for continuous learning and development is disbursed and embedded within the roles of the senior leadership team who, by the way,  usually have very little knowledge or experience about professional development.

To facilitate growth, you must invest in it. Are you? Or are you talking about how important learning is and then leaving it to your underqualified team to figure out how to execute?

I have a coaching client who trains their staff extensively. To their credit, they hired a head of learning and development, but that person wasn’t the right fit. Once they hired the right expert to lead learning and development, everything changed. Line managers were able to stop stressing out about curricula and learning, and the employees became better trained and more effective in their roles.

The costs of not having an expert who can run a successful development program can be devastating, including the loss of top performers and the stagnation of your team.

Whether in-house or outsourced, how can you acquire the expertise to accelerate your team’s learning and development?

Conclusion

The price you pay for settling in lieu of acquiring the right expertise for your firm is invisible: It only becomes clear in hindsight—like getting a new pair of glasses and only then realizing how poor your vision was before. 

But be careful to not allow someone’s expertise to overshadow their cultural fit with your firm. Yes, experts matter, but if they don’t fit your culture, they will end up doing more harm than good. I’ve seen this play out also—usually at very high levels—and it never ends well. If anything, you must apply MORE emphasis on fit than normal when screening for an expert.

There is no substitute for expertise to accelerate the profitable growth of your firm. You can only bootstrap for so long before the diminishing returns become a stealthy drag on performance and results.

Each client I’ve coached who decided to invest in the right expertise for their business ultimately had the same reaction after the fact. They said they wished they made the decision and investment much sooner.

Now it’s your turn.

Which of the four areas of expertise–Management, Financial, Operations, and Learning and Development–are required to achieve your goals over the next three-to-five years?

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with a culture of accountability execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build a culture of accountability.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: January 30, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Nothing is predestined. The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.” — Ralph Blum

The end of the year is a natural time to reflect and then to plan ahead. Accordingly, I facilitate reflective conversations with my clients during our annual planning sessions to help them look back on the previous twelve months, acknowledge their accomplishments, and affirm the lessons learned.

I begin the process by asking the following questions:

  • What were your most significant accomplishments, both as individual leaders and as a team?
  • Where did you miss the mark?
  • What leadership lessons did you learn or have reinforced this past year?

Seven lessons emerged from the dialogue with my clients this year. The leaders I coach clearly learned and benefitted from them; it’s my hope you can too.

1. Be Flexible

A reporter once asked heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson before a title bout if he was worried about his opponent’s plan for the fight. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” Tyson replied.

This wisdom applies to the business world as well. In order to succeed, you must remain flexible and roll with the punches. Being flexible doesn’t imply you’ll abandon your plan when the going gets tough. Rather, it involves adjusting to reality by continually course correcting along the way. To do this, you need to have a clear view of reality—the objective truth of your situation. The objective truth is easier to find when you check your cognitive biases, use hard data, and pay close attention to others who possess the most relevant experience with the matter at hand.

How can you become more flexible?

Start by relying on smart structures like meeting rhythms, prioritization, and a culture of accountability to operate your organization. These structures somewhat counterintuitively increase your ability to be flexible on demand by reducing the cognitive and behavioral demands of running and working in the business. Like having extra money in the bank during a recession or spare oxygen tanks during a high-altitude climb, those with the most cognitive and behavioral resources at their disposal have more options to exhibit flexibility when it counts.

Key Question for Leaders: How can you become more flexible in the coming year?

2. Improve Prioritization

The primary role of a leader is to point to what matters most. To do that, you must create clarity and focus on a small number of very important things.

Here’s the problem: most leaders I meet have a priority list that’s a mile long! As the old saying goes, when everything’s a priority, NOTHING is a priority. When you lack focus, you cannot point to what matters most, and your team lacks critical guidance regarding how to make decisions, allocate their time, and expend other resources of the firm.

My advice is to pare your priorities down to a maximum of three. From there, assign one person to be accountable for each priority and have them complete my Priority Planning Tool to ensure you’re on the same page with regard to the scope and a clear measure of success for each initiative.

After that, you must honor your priorities in execution—that is, actually treating your priorities as priorities! Make their achievement a non-negotiable—what I call a “dogmatic zone” of your leadership. Read more about dogmatic zones here.

Key Question for Leaders: How can you more effectively narrow your priorities and then truly honor them as you execute?

3. Be a Broken Record

Information is the lifeblood of your organization. Think of your organization’s communication structures as your circulatory system and think of yourself as the heart. If you are not constantly pumping information throughout the firm, it cannot operate anywhere near its full potential. Just as your heart pumps blood throughout your body with a predictable, steady beat, you need to be as reliable with communication rhythms including daily huddles, weekly and monthly meetings.

Don’t be afraid of feeling like a broken record with your messaging. This is one of the most difficult lessons I help my coaching clients learn! This is challenging because we often fear sounding “stupid” when we think we are repeating ourselves.

Don’t be afraid of feeling like a broken record with your messaging.

But effective communication is never a “one and done” affair! The consequences of “one and done” communication are FAR worse than any fears about repetition. If you are not repeating yourself, you’re not giving your team a chance to learn and internalize what you’re saying.

For a more detailed explanation of how leaders can communicate more effectively, read my article on the topic here.

Key Question for Leaders: How can you improve communication rhythms and repetition in the coming year?

4. Assume Positive Intent

Very few people get out of bed in the morning with the intention of ruining someone else’s day. And yet, when we’re faced with conflict or a problem, our default assumption is often to question the intentions of those involved!

Failing to assume positive intent is one of the most drama-inducing, costly human behaviors out there. Here’s why: Context overpowers content.

When we question someone’s motives (context), the content of their message is reduced to near-zero value as we focus on the newly apparent threat to our ego, project, business, livelihood, relationships, etc. And of course, in the moment, all of this is simply a story we make up for ourselves without any concrete basis or evidence.

The good news is that it’s just as easy to concoct a story that assumes positive intent instead! Assuming positive intent means handling situations with the assumption that others are just like you: they do the best they can at any given moment with the resources they have available to them. 

This simple reframing—that everyone has positive intentions, regardless of the outcome they’ve produced—will lead to more productive relationships, less drama, better execution, and greater accountability. It’s also quite contagious!

Key Question for Leaders: How can you begin assuming positive intent?

5. Build Bench Strength

As coaches and leaders in every domain know, successful teams require a deep bench and a succession-focused mentality. In a business context, this involves cultivating next-level leaders both internally and externally so that when (not if!) the time comes, they’re prepared to step up and/or into a new role.

You can do this by creating growth opportunities for your team. Raise your expectations of them by assigning “stretch” projects that challenge them to learn and grow.

It’s also wise to consistently invest in networking with outside talent to develop a “virtual bench”—a short list of prequalified, talented people you can call when the need arises.

The benefits are clear: just imagine if every manager in your firm maintained a short list of talented external people who’d be a good fit for your firm—regardless of your current staffing needs.

Although these steps don’t guarantee you’ll ever necessarily have the next hire in-hand, they do stack the deck in favor of finding higher-quality, more qualified candidates more quickly.

Key Question for Leaders: What are the right moves for you to build more bench strength in the coming year?

6. Break Down Barriers

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of conflict within groups and among teams, and the source is often a lack of understanding where everyone is personally coming from. Simply put, these groups and teams lack empathy.

Empathy is at the core of deep relationships and high-functioning teams. Here’s why: The way you show up today is the sum of your entire life’s experiences. The same is true of everyone else—how they show up is the sum of THEIR life experiences. So, unless you more deeply understand someone’s life experience, you can’t understand why they show up the way that they do.

Empathy is at the core of deep relationships and high-functioning teams.

You must make a deliberate effort to break down the barriers of your differences by understanding one another’s stories and experiences. This always includes making time to talk about non-business things. I’ve found team cohesion exercises very helpful to accelerate this important process.

One team cohesion exercise I use with my coaching clients is to gather the team in a circle and go around the room answering one question at a time. You’ll find the questions I ask here.

The things you’ll discover about your team through deliberate cohesion work deepens your understanding of why each person looks at the world the way they do. They’ll see you and one another differently as well, which builds empathy and more effectiveness as a team.

Key Question for Leaders: How can you build more empathy and improve team cohesion?

7. Move Faster on Non-Fit Employees

Tolerating mediocrity has devastating effects on any organization over time. It repels top performers, poisons work environments, burns out managers, and slows (or kills!) growth. Yet I often see clients who continually justify keeping low performers or non-fit staff around much longer than they should.

Deep down, most leaders know these individuals need to be sent packing, but the details of how and when dominate and delay the process. Even worse, leaders justify the delays with reasons (excuses) they manufacture to convince themselves why firing low performers or non-fit staff isn’t a good idea. Trust me, I’ve heard them all!

As a result, hard questions remain unaddressed, and your culture (and employees) continue to suffer at the hands of toxic or underperforming colleagues. In these situations, you must compartmentalize the elements of your decision and start with the WHAT—determine the right action to take without regard to how or when to act.

Make the decision. Then tackle the logistics of WHEN and HOW you’ll execute over time.

It’s critical for leadership teams to constantly talk about and calibrate on the quality of their people. My coaching clients and I have this conversation in a deep, deliberate manner each quarter. You should too.

Key Question for Leaders: How can your team improve the rigor and timeliness of their people decisions?

Conclusion

“Wisdom doesn’t come from experience. It comes from reflecting on experience.”
– Adam Grant

Periodic reflection, learning, and realignment are critical to the success of your business, and now is as good a time as any to begin. You can look back on your wins, losses, and lessons learned and use them to construct a roadmap for your future journey. The wins identify the processes you want to repeat; the losses shine a light on the pain points that need to be addressed; and the lessons serve as a reminder that no matter how successful you become, there’s always room for growth and improvement.

As you close out the year, consider which of the seven lessons from my clients will help you become a more capable leader. You’ll be set to begin the new year with a fresh outlook and a new set of objectives to accomplish on the road ahead.

As French novelist Marcel Proust once said: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes.”

Here’s to clearer vision and continued success in the new year!

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Date: December 21. 2022. Learn more and register!

==============================================

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with a culture of accountability execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build a culture of accountability.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: January 30, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

What are your non-negotiable leadership lines in the sand?

American country music superstar Kenny Rogers had a long and storied career, but he will forever be known for “The Gambler,” his song that asserts you’ve got to “know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em.”

While it’s good advice for the poker table, I think it’s even better advice for leading your team, group, division, or firm.

You’re not leading if you don’t provide direction, clarity, and structure. Accordingly, your employees rely on you to continually clarify and answer two questions:

  • What matters most in terms of strategy, objectives, goals, targets, and metrics?
  • How are we expected to act, execute, interact, and behave in our roles?

One especially effective way to provide answers to these questions is through dogma: lines in the sand defining and sharing non-negotiable expectations of your team. The dictionary definition of dogma is “a set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.” Dogma often has a negative connotation because it’s associated with religion, politics, and other topics that are typically off-limits during your family’s holiday time together. But when used the right way and in specific areas, dogma is incredibly effective in providing the clarity, structure, and behavioral guidance your team requires to be successful.

You may not be aware, but you’ve likely been guided by leadership dogma at some point in your career. You’ve probably worked for at least one fantastic manager—someone who challenged you, engaged you, and helped you grow. Think about your experience with them. What was one thing you knew you absolutely HAD to do while working for them? Was it making sure you were never one second late to a meeting? Or answering the phone in a certain way? Or how you and your colleagues were expected to treat one another? Or perhaps how you had to format certain documents?

I’m betting you’ll be able to think of several specific things—big and small—that this leader required of you to advance or remain employed. Why did you do these things? Because you had to. They were non-negotiable lines in the sand!

And if you peel those behaviors all the way back, it’s because each was one of your manager’s dogmatic zones. They were the ways of thinking and doing things that your manager determined were the best and right way for the team.

When used the right way and in specific areas, dogma is incredibly effective in providing the clarity, structure, and behavioral guidance your team requires to be successful.

I use dogmatic zones in my coaching practice because I know there are certain moves that are required to position a client leadership team for success. Some examples of my non-negotiable coaching zones include how to build a sustainable culture, how to implement change, how to create priorities, and how to implement firm-wide communication rhythms. I’m fairly flexible about how my clients choose to execute the vast majority of my coaching, but when it comes to these areas, there’s only one way to do it—my way. 

Of course, not everything can be a dogmatic zone. If that was the case, which is certainly extreme, you’d be a tyrant ruling every decision, which leads to a one brain with 1,000 hands structure that’s neither effective nor scalable. It’s important to acknowledge that the most thoughtful and deliberate dogmatic zones are employee-friendly and affirming, rather than restricting and oppressive.

So where and how does it make sense for leaders to identify their non-negotiable dogmatic zones?

Here are three areas to consider. 

Boundaries

Boundaries are limits pertaining to things like time, access, schedules, and even how people are treated. 

A good example of this is work-life balance, which has become increasingly important to many people in the post-pandemic world. A Forbes Health-Ipsos survey found 90% of respondents felt work-life balance was an important factor when considering a position. As a result, some leaders have chosen to create dogma and set hard boundaries around work time. This type of dogma might include requiring employees to leave the office at a regular hour each day or insisting that staff refrain from sending email outside of business hours unless there’s a true emergency.

Others create dogmatic boundaries around how customers treat their employees. I’ve seen this scenario play out both ways—where leaders have no boundaries and certain clients treat staff horribly while the boss shrugs and tells the team they can’t do anything. On the other hand, I’ve seen leaders step in and tell customers that if they continue to treat the staff poorly, they’ll terminate the relationship. A supremely dogmatic move!

At a more personal level, I’ve also seen leaders create dogmatic boundaries that limit how and when they are willing to be interrupted during the workday. Some announce an “open door policy” that allows workers to share concerns or ask questions at any time. Others set specific office hours for access. Both methods work—it’s a matter of personal preference.

How you choose your boundaries is completely up to you and what you believe creates the right environment for your group, team, division, or firm. The important part is that you identify which boundaries matter most, set your dogmatic standards, and then reinforce them as non-negotiable.

Key Question for Leaders: Where would clearer boundaries benefit me, my team, and my firm?

Priorities

Many leaders I know suffer from the “everything is a priority” trap. The trap, of course, is that when “everything is a priority,” in reality, nothing is a priority. It is CRITICAL to be clear about a small number of priorities. You must decide what’s important at the expense of other things. This makes prioritization and how priorities are executed excellent candidates for well-thought leadership dogma.

As I mentioned earlier, setting priorities is one of my personal dogmatic zones as a coach.  Here’s what it looks like: My clients can select one, two, or three priorities—but no more than that. For me, that’s non-negotiable.

Some leaders also choose to create a dogmatic zone around priority planning. They require a clear plan, containing outcomes and actions, before allowing work to begin. Another potential dogmatic zone is how priorities are monitored and communicated to the broader team.

I’m a fan of creating communication rhythms for priorities and processes. This ensures more real-time transparency and opportunities for problem solving and course correction in response to inevitable problems and delays. Identifying and executing the right priorities correlates to profitable, scalable growth. This makes priorities an ideal dogmatic zone for leaders to clearly define how they expect their team to operate.

Key Question for Leaders: How can I tighten expectations for how our priorities are selected, planned, executed, and communicated?

Behavioral Norms

Whether deliberately created or not, your organization is full of established behavioral norms. This might include how people treat one another, how phones and emails are answered, when people arrive at the office, how people act in meetings—and much more!

As a coach, I frequently speak and write about core values and how critical they are to build a sustainable, scalable culture. Without a doubt, your firm’s core values should be a non-negotiable standard and dogmatic zone. In fact, the process I use to help clients create and operationalize their core values is designed with this in mind.

But beyond the “core,” there are plenty of other opportunities for leaders to define dogma around behavioral expectations. I have several clients whose dogma requires the most senior person in a meeting to speak last, particularly during debates and brainstorming sessions. This seemingly minor detail is critical to preventing groupthink and maximizing the contributions of each member of the team.

I’ve seen others create behavioral dogma around how people are expected to show up to meetings (on time and prepared), how meetings are scheduled (no agenda, no meeting), how promptly staff answer their phones, when staff are required to be in the office versus working remotely, and when and how people report on their critical metrics.

Beyond your core values, one way to be really clear about behavioral norms is to create a manifesto of sorts that defines your firm’s “way” of doing things. In other words, your dogmatic zones! An “our way” document can provide crystal clear guidance and expectations for both staff and management. It’s also quite useful to accelerate onboarding new employees because it sets the expectation from day one: To work here, you must adhere to our defined standards.

Key Question for Leaders: Which behavioral norms, if defined as non-negotiable ways of doing things, would accelerate our growth?

Conclusion

“Strong convictions precede great actions.” — James Freeman Clarke

While there is no right or wrong way to select a dogmatic zone, most leaders fail to establish enough deliberate, clear, and overt guidance for their teams. They miss a valuable opportunity to shape their team’s thinking and behavior where it matters most. 

Follow your beliefs, convictions, and experience to identify your dogmatic leadership zones. Although there are plenty of areas and activities in your business where your team can, within reason, do things their own way, there should be some that are non-negotiable. Identify them, clarify your expectations, and then communicate and institutionalize your dogma over time.

If you’ve read this far and are still thinking that dogma implies micro-managing (best case) or dictatorship (worst case), I’ll remind you that, correctly applied, dogmatic zones represent an extremely thin slice of the actions and behaviors inside your firm. What’s more, well-thought dogmatic zones are employee friendly and affirming, not restrictive and oppressive. 

When used in the right way and in specific areas, dogma is an effective means to provide the clarity, structure, and behavioral guidance your team needs to be successful. Outside those zones, allow your team the agency and autonomy to achieve their goals and results for the business.

In other words, take Kenny Rogers’ advice: Know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Date: December 21. 2022. Learn more and register!

==============================================

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with a culture of accountability execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build a culture of accountability.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Date: January 30, 2023. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy” 
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Our culture is dominated by images of heroes. We see them everywhere—the athlete who makes a game-winning play, the movie character who saves the city with seconds to spare, and our fire, rescue, police, and military just about every day.

One of man’s oldest storytelling structures is the Hero’s Journey—where the hero is called to adventure from the ordinary world, is guided through trials and tribulations by a mentor, and then emerges victorious against a final and most dangerous foe.

Sound familiar? It’s a powerful pattern so ingrained in us, we use it to unconsciously craft our narratives about the world. We are conditioned to applaud and reward heroes.

In the business realm, for example, entrepreneurs are lauded for their “hustle mentality” when starting a venture. “When you adopt and embrace the many facets of the hustle mentality, you’ll set yourself up to succeed beyond your wildest dreams,” writes co-founder Sujan Patel in Entrepreneur magazine. Indeed, startups tend to be “all hands on deck,” because if you don’t ship the order or ink the next deal, your firm might not survive to see another day. Even in large firms, stories of heroic behaviors to “save the big account” or “ship the order on time” often become legend.

Although there are certainly a few scenarios where heroics are necessary at work, when your business model takes hold and you begin to scale, you have to think about operating differently.

Here’s why: Heroic behaviors are neither scalable nor sustainable.

Imagine you have an employee who works until 2:30 a.m. to meet a deadline and submit a large proposal for a new account. The next morning, tired and bleary-eyed, they’ll bask in their colleagues’ heroic praises. It seems as if their sacrifice was worth it.

But was it really? What’s going to happen the NEXT time the business demands a late night? They probably won’t be quite as enthusiastic about doing it again, despite the praise! What’s worse, as the heroic behavior becomes more normalized, employees receive fewer accolades the second time around—and even fewer on the third, fourth, etc. Eventually, they become bitter and resentful about having to constantly be a “hero” just to keep the business running, which is one of several reasons I hold leaders accountable for “quiet quitting” and “the great resignation,” which you can explore more deeply in this article.

People and teams should certainly be recognized for going above and beyond. But structuring your firm to require heroic behavior doesn’t work. Systems must be put in place to allow the business to scale—sustainably—over time.

Here are three approaches to drastically reduce the need for heroic behaviors in your organization.

Strive For Casual Success

When it comes to scaling your firm, you should aim for what organizational design experts call “casual success.” While the term itself may evoke images of employees lounging on couches eating grapes, rest assured that’s not the case at all.

Casual success looks like an employee showing up for work, working all day, going home at a reasonable time, and accomplishing everything they need to do. Their hair isn’t on fire, they aren’t interrupted 25 times with emergencies, and their stress levels don’t require blood pressure medication. The need for heroics to operate is almost zero.

The problem is, business models often aren’t built to scale around the idea of casual success. Consider this scenario: When your company was a small operation, you had two employees on each client account. As you scale, you naturally assume each client will require two employees, so you form all aspects of your business model—service pricing, hiring, etc.—around this structure.

The need for heroics to operate is almost zero.

But as the firm grows, you add more variables like new services and deeper, more complicated client relationships—all of which consume additional resources to execute well. Suddenly, you realize that two employees per client isn’t enough to meet the demand. But since that’s the way you structured your business model and priced your services, you don’t have the financial resources to hire additional employees.

Now, the only way you can maintain the operation is through frequent heroic acts. In effect, you’ve asked two people to do the work of three because the structure of your firm isn’t designed to scale. Employees burn out, become frustrated, and the quality of their work drops, which results in the employees, the clients—or both—going elsewhere. Everyone loses!

The trick here is to anticipate these issues and account for them in your business model. Though you may not know exactly what your company will look like in the future—and you may have to go through some trial and error to figure things out—it’s imperative to create scalable structures, processes, and the right financial model to fuel the people and other resources you need. The sooner you can bake casual success into your business model, the higher your odds of scaling without heroics.

Refine Process Execution

Good processes also contribute to creating scale without heroics. Your business processes may have worked effectively three years ago, but they could be outdated due to your firm’s current size and complexity. This is an easy item for leaders to ignore, tolerate, or outright deprioritize, because most suboptimal processes still, mostly, work. But at what cost?

Try to avoid being stuck in the “this is how we’ve always done it” mental model I see derail many leaders. If your business is different than it was three years ago, your processes should be too!

To determine which processes within your firm need to be revamped, ask: Where’s the drama? What aspects of execution are colored by confusion, frustration, delays, added costs, panicked phone calls and/or fires to extinguish? If any of those symptoms are present inside your operation, the odds are that you have a process to improve.

Process accountability is often a factor here as well. In this case, the process itself might be sufficient, but the accountability for the outcomes isn’t clear. My go-to question when I hear about process-related execution drama is, “Who is accountable for the process?” Because most organizational processes cut horizontally across organizational silos–think about an order, for example, moving from sales to manufacturing to shipping to customer service to accounting–process accountability is often unclear.

Check your firm’s three to five core processes to ensure that there is single point accountability (i.e. ONE PERSON) for the outcome. Just like you use meeting rhythms to synchronize and communicate within your divisions, groups, and teams, begin using them for your core processes as well.

Think about it this way—effective processes with clear accountability are usually quite boring to watch because there’s rarely any drama, and certainly no room for heroic behaviors!

Examine Behavioral Norms

Another way to reduce heroics is ensuring that you don’t encourage it in the first place. When my coaching clients codify their culture via Core Values or Cultural Commitments, I ask them to name people in the firm who embody culturally consistent behaviors in a positive way. Inevitably, my clients name their internal heroes.

You cannot build a sustainable culture by either intentionally or unintentionally rewarding heroic behavior!

For example, I have a client with a Core Value of “Do The Work.” Although the underlying message of this Core Value is sound, over time both leadership and staff lost track of its intended and defined meaning. Every “Do The Work” story in the business became about someone going “above and beyond” to get the work done. In other words, the stories and behavioral norms shifted the value’s meaning to heroism.

You cannot build a sustainable culture by either intentionally or unintentionally rewarding heroic behavior!

After I pointed out that the company’s leaders were unintentionally encouraging heroism, they chose to rename and clarify the value. Now, the Core Value is called “Own It,” and it is defined with great accountability—but no heroics. The stories and behavioral norms have changed as a result.

Yes, defining the right Core Values is important, but this is not enough on its own. Leaders need to encourage staff to share non-heroic examples of Core Value behaviors. The simplest, most effective way to do this is to ensure that at least one Core Value story is told within each daily huddle to reinforce the right behaviors without heroics.

That doesn’t imply you should punish heroic behaviors if and when they occur (and, yes, they will!). To the contrary, you should appreciate employees who, when the circumstances require, go above and beyond in a heroic manner. It’s what you do next that makes all the difference!

Speak with them 1-on-1 the next day and ask, “How do we figure out a way to never have to do this again?” This conversation helps solve the structural problem, improves execution, and actively discourages heroic behavior.

Conclusion

“Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.” – Will Rogers

Heroics will inevitably play a part to launch and establish just about every business. But as your business model gains traction, you have to start thinking about how to eliminate the need for heroic behavior.

In most situations, the sooner you can move from a heroic model to one of casual success, the better. One indicator of when to start looking at systems and processes is when heroic actions start shifting from a feeling of excitement to frustration.

In the formative stages of a company, an act of heroism is met with high fives and cheers. But once those celebrations transform into questions like “Jim pulled another all-nighter? Is he okay?”—that’s when you know it’s time to start making some cultural and structural changes.

Any firm will have some heroic stories, but they can’t be the norm. Start scaling your models and systems early, and make sure your Core Values are crafted in a way that they don’t unintentionally encourage heroics. Finally, give necessary heroes due credit, but be sure to follow-through to remedy the root cause. Remember, heroic behaviors usually indicate that something within your firm needs to change.

Leave the heroics to athletes, movie characters, and first responders! Your staff, your customers, your suppliers, your shareholders, and your family will thank you.

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Employees join companies but leave managers.” – Brigette Hyacinth

Although I don’t spend much time on TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter, it’s been impossible to avoid one of social media’s more recent trends: “quiet quitting.”

Employees who “quiet quit,” frustrated with a growing plate of responsibilities and demands, perform the bare minimum in their jobs. The concept was popularized by a 24-year-old engineer from New York City named Zaid Khan, who explained in a short video that subscribing to the “hustle-culture mentality” isn’t worth the payoff. His video has netted more than 490,000 likes.

But as the LA Times recently pointed out, social and popular media trends like “quiet quitting” can be dangerous because they imply a situation is more novel or widespread than it really is. This was exactly the case last year, for example, when “the great resignation” swept the globe. Yes, it’s true that quit rates hit an all-time high in 2021, but they’ve come down significantly since then. Experts say this type of volatility is to be expected after ANY major event—like a pandemic. “Historical data on the quits rate [demonstrates] this is not an anomaly, but instead fits the pattern of many past rapid recoveries,” writes economist Bart Hobijn.

Social media, pop culture, and macro-trends aside, there’s absolutely nothing new here.

“Quiet quitting” is caused by the same disengaging factors that induce people to call out of work when they’re not really sick, which has probably been occurring since the beginning of employment as we know it.  Further,  as Gallup studies have reported for years, only around 35 percent of US managers are engaged in theirjobs.

What’s most disturbing about this for me is that trendy labels like “quiet quitting” and “the great resignation” give leaders license to blame external factors while ignoring the real, underlying problem: their own leadership.

Here’s reality: people don’t quit their companies or their jobs. Aside from pure, no-brainer financial plays, people quit their bosses, people quit unhealthy cultures their bosses create and tolerate, and people quit being overworked and underappreciated. 

Let’s get to the root of the problem, review the three research-based keys to improving employee engagement (all of which leaders can control), and then reinforce why it’s critical to lead by example.

Denial and Blind Spots

I have a client in a very competitive industry in a very competitive geography whose staff turnover numbers are spectacular (i.e. very low). They’ve had no problems with either “quiet quitting” or “the great resignation” over the past year.

With all the buzz around these “trends,” how do you explain that?

People want to work at this particular firm because the leaders have created an environment where people feel valued and appreciated. Meanwhile, I see leaders in other firms hemorrhaging employees, shrugging their shoulders in denial, saying “It’s the environment. There’s nothing we can do.”

We use logic to justify our decisions, but our logic is often flawed—and it betrays us. One tendency all humans exhibit is confirmation bias: the unconscious inclination to seek, interpret, and remember information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs. Confirmation bias influences the way you interpret the world around you. If you see a LinkedIn post about “quiet quitting,” for example, it helps you justify why your employees are leaving and, at the same time, let yourself off the hook as a leader. 

You seek confirming evidence both consciously and unconsciously because it’s psychologically difficult for us to admit we’re wrong. Further, we tend to selectively pay attention to information that confirms what we already believe. “Most of what happens in the brain is not evident to the brain itself, and thus people are better at playing these sorts of tricks on themselves than at catching themselves in the act,” writes Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert in The New York Times. Confirmation bias is a massive blind spot.

If you see a LinkedIn post about “quiet quitting,” for example, it helps you justify why your employees are leaving and, at the same time, let yourself off the hook as a leader.

This explains how trending social media topics become mainstream beliefs, without regard to the reality or veracity of the claim.

How do you overcome confirmation bias? Start by acknowledging you are flawed and strive to approach situations with a conscious and deliberate openness to explore possibilities. It pays to lean into challenges like this: A study by Carol Dweck found a group of students who actively sought difficult problems as learning opportunities, despite making more errors due to the challenge, consistently outperformed other students who avoided difficult problems.

In addition, here are a few questions to ask yourself to keep your confirmation bias in check:

  • What are the facts here?
  • What are my assumptions about this?
  • If I hired an unbiased consultant to make this decision for me, how would they be looking at the problem?

For even more rigor as you strive to keep your biases in check, use a trusted colleague, mentor, or coach to give you honest feedback about your leadership. Author, social scientist, and self-awareness expert Tasha Eurich aptly calls these people “loving critics;” they care about you deeply but are able to tell you the brutal truths you need to hear. External perspectives like these are invaluable to help you become more self-aware, to identify things you’d never otherwise realize about yourself, and to make better choices as a leader.

Building Engagement

Once you’ve taken a hard look in the mirror and made adjustments to your mindset and biases, it’s time to employ proven tactics that will engage (and therefore retain) your team.

Decades of research have consistently identified three factors that correlate to employee engagement. They are:

  • Autonomy: Self-directedness and latitude regarding how to get work done.
  • Mastery: Ability to learn and gain expertise.
  • Purpose: Feeling a part of something larger than oneself.

Think about each element and how you can improve it within your team, group, division, or firm. For example, I’ve found the simple act of asking someone for their recommendation before telling them what to do drives both autonomy and purpose!

The technique of coaching for growth improves feelings of both autonomy and mastery. But most leaders coach for results instead and, with good intentions, they give employees answers about how to overcome the problems they face. A classic example is the sales manager telling a salesperson, step by step, how to close the deal they’re working. Leaders typically feel great about coaching for results because it generally works! When someone does what you suggest and it works, it reinforces telling them what to do. Plus, coaching for results is easy and comfortable for leaders, as they generally know what to do and there’s nothing particularly challenging about giving someone instructions.

Here’s the huge problem with coaching for results: it builds each employee’s dependence on YOU to think for them and solve their problems. While this might be acceptable or even a plus in the mind of your more marginal performers, top performers see this as highly disengaging.  Further, you’re not growing your team’s capacity to be more independent and accomplish things on their own. Coaching for results is neither scalable nor engaging and actually diminishes both autonomy and mastery.

Coaching for growth, on the other hand, shifts the focus to behavioral patterns that stand in the way of each employee’s growth and development. For example, here are several patterns I’ve observed to be common in the workplace: consistently disorganized, unreliable, late to meetings, prone to argue non-essential points, slow to ask for help, too soft in negotiations, and being more problem than solution focused.

Instead of telling your employee what to do, question a pattern you’ve observed in their behavior that’s preventing them from being more effective in their role. Give them specific examples of the behavior(s) that establish the pattern and why it’s in their interest to change them. It may feel uncomfortable to speak so candidly to your staff at first, but it will result in growth, independence, and more engagement over time.

As an added bonus, A-players LOVE being coached for growth, B-players tolerate it, and C-players HATE it!

At first, it will take more time and energy to empower your employees than it does to tell them what to do. Resist the urge to give instructions. Your investments now will be repaid handsomely over time because you’ve built a more capable, engaged, and scalable team.

Walk Your Own Talk

If you’ve ever worked for a leader who embodied the phrase “do as I say, not as I do,” you are painfully aware of how disengaging it is for staff. This is why it’s critical for you to lead by example with your own behavior: you must walk your own talk.

Your entire team constantly looks to you for cues about how to behave—what you do, say, and tolerate, as well as how you make decisions and what you prioritize. Everyone watches everything you say and do!

But before you check off the “walk my own talk box,” consider that this is often quite challenging in practice. For example, if you insist that meetings start on time but occasionally show up 3-5 minutes late, regardless of the reason, your team is likely to discount what you say and emulate what you do.

Consider for a moment how effectively you’re walking your own talk. Are you:

  • Living your own values?
  • Honoring your own priorities?
  • Accountable for your own decisions and outcomes?
  • Holding yourself to the same standards and expectations you hold for others?

Before answering these, I challenge you to solicit outside opinions from the “loving critics” we identified earlier. Ask them for their honest feedback, some of which might surprise you. Listen, learn, and improve.

Conclusion

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader” 

– John Quincy Adams

Whether it’s about “quiet quitting” or “the great resignation” or some other popular media buzz-phrase du jour, there will always be some external force to blame for the difficulties you face as a leader. This is made even more challenging by your unconscious cognitive biases, particularly your confirmation bias. But if you choose to focus on what you can control, including the three levers of engagement–autonomy, mastery, and purpose–you have the opportunity to create the right standards and culture to attract, engage, grow, and retain high-performers.

Acknowledge your blind spots. Reflect on your own performance, engage a handful of “loving critics,” learn how to coach for growth, and lead by example. All of those elements begin with you.

Never forget: people don’t quit companies or jobs. They quit the unhealthy cultures their bosses create and tolerate, they quit being overworked, and they quit being underappreciated (which includes a lack of opportunity to learn and grow). 

The success of every team, group, division, or company starts at the top. When you circumvent your insecurities and biases and focus on the fundamentals of engagement, you’ll build an organization that will withstand far more than next quarter’s social media trend.

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Dates: October 21. 2022. Learn more and register!

==============================================

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with a culture of accountability execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build a culture of accountability.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Dates: October 20, 2022. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity.”

– Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The leaders I coach have all the right stuff. They’re smart, driven, and can articulate a clear vision of how their company should operate. But those same success factors are a breeding ground for overconfidence, blindspots, and cognitive biases that diminish their ability to communicate effectively and achieve peak performance from their teams. 

When was the last time a communication issue negatively affected you, your team, and/or your firm’s performance? Odds are, it happened within the past few days, if not the past few hours! The cost of ineffective communication and misunderstanding is astounding, whether in terms of time, money, reputation, and/or energy. As you think about this more deeply, I have little doubt you’ll find examples of supporting evidence on your team and throughout your organization. Even worse, count on additional negative impact below the surface, as a lack of clarity invisibly erodes morale and teamwork.

The curse of knowledge and the Dunning-Kruger effect are two cognitive biases that invisibly reduce our effectiveness as communicators. We need to understand them before learning how to work around them.

The curse of knowledge occurs when you unconsciously assume others have the same information and understanding as you. This is why, for example, a game of Pictionary can be so frustrating! The person drawing the picture knows what they’re trying to communicate, but since the observers lack the same information or context, it is considerably more difficult for them to ascertain the message.

The result of this cognitive bias is that leaders tend to communicate less frequently and with less detail than they should. An executive who directs their team to “become more efficient at processing customer orders,” for example, might understand all the steps needed to make it happen. Their team, on the other hand, hears a vague order and does their best to interpret it and execute. The path from here is depressingly predictable: over time, the leader becomes frustrated because their team isn’t prioritizing or executing as expected.

The Dunning-Kruger effect causes us to overestimate our competence or knowledge in a given domain. The domain of communication is at the top of the list for business leaders.

Studies have shown that the lower your competency in a field, the more overconfident you are in your abilities. “If you are incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent,” David Dunning wrote in his book, Self Insight.  In other words, you can’t know what you don’t know, which makes Dunning-Kruger the ultimate blindspot for each of us.

Because of these cognitive biases, every leader I’ve met thinks they are great at communicating. For example, when I ask executives if they think they’re in the top 20% of communicators at their firm, almost all say yes. 

Statistically, that’s impossible!

Especially because under-communication is one of the most prevalent and costly issues in business. The problem is, we leaders think we’re pretty good at it, and yet there are piles of evidence and never-ending complications that point to the exact opposite conclusion.

Here are three easy-to-implement, highly effective tools to help you bypass your cognitive biases, become a more effective communicator, and improve your firm’s performance. They are: Commander’s Intent, Role Accountability, and Meeting Rhythms.

Tool # 1: Commander’s Intent

Commander’s Intent is a military concept with origins in the German army during the 19th Century. The gist is that before a leader describes a detailed plan of attack to his or her troops, they must first articulate an overall view of the mission’s goal. For example, “take hill XYZ by 4:00 pm tomorrow so the caravan of supplies can get to the forward base after sunset.”

Commander’s Intent is important because nothing ever goes 100% according to plan. When an aspect of a plan inevitably falls apart, people need to know what the overall purpose is so they can improvise and continue moving forward. As such, the context of the plan is as important as the details of the plan.

Many leaders focus communication on WHAT and HOW, but fail to describe WHY something matters. This lack of context is a real handicap for the team because it forces them to become dependent on the leader when things inevitably go awry.

Many leaders focus communication on WHAT and HOW, but fail to describe WHY something matters.

Here’s an example of what I mean: One of the leadership team’s topics at a recent client meeting was to create an agenda for an upcoming two-day retreat for their 20 sales managers. The head of sales suggested the leadership team brainstorm activities, and was getting ready to open the floor for suggestions when I stopped him. “What does good look like?” I asked. “When you walk out the door at the end of the second day, what do you want to have accomplished?”

The leadership team was missing Commander’s Intent for the brainstorming activity. Although the head of sales understood the retreat’s purpose himself, without first communicating it to his team, they were going to fall into the trap of an inefficient, unfocused conversation as they tried to develop a high-stakes agenda.

Without skipping a beat, the head of sales articulated four broad objectives for the sales manager retreat, including a desire to have managers interact with colleagues they’d never met before, and leave the conference feeling aligned with the direction of the firm. Once the team understood the overall purpose, the brainstorm session that followed was highly productive.

Use Commander’s Intent at the beginning of every project, initiative, and activity—whether you’re making broad, strategic decisions about your firm’s direction, or small, tactical moves like creating a meeting agenda. Commander’s Intent provides clarity and improves performance because it provides context, improves focus, and allows people to improvise more independently when something unexpectedly derails the plan.

Tool # 2: Role Accountability

Leaders become frustrated when individuals on their team don’t perform, but I’ve found that it’s often a result of unclear role definitions and accountability. If people don’t understand what is expected of them in their role, how can you as their leader expect them to consistently deliver? Role Accountability improves communication and performance by clarifying the outcomes and results associated with every role in the organization. 

Most organizations I’ve encountered are activity-focused. When I ask a salesperson what her role is, for example, she’ll typically answer with verbs—things like calling prospective clients, qualifying prospects, writing proposals, and closing deals. Yes, activities can be important, but only as pathways to concrete outcomes, which are nouns, not verbs. If this salesperson was on my payroll, I’d much rather hear her say that her role is to achieve revenue, gross margin, and a number of new clients targets.

It’s on the leader to be able to clearly communicate to every employee what is expected of their role. If you don’t establish a universally understood performance standard for every role (think outcomes/nouns), it’s not only difficult to hold people accountable, but it’s also much more challenging to coach them to improve their performance over time.

It’s on the leader to be able to clearly communicate to every employee what is expected of their role.

Role Accountability must start at the top. Clarity and alignment in an organization flow in one direction: down. The further away from senior leadership you go, the less clear everything becomes. For example, even when there’s precise clarity and alignment on the executive team, I expect to see a bit less at every level descending through the organization’s ranks. On the other hand, when there’s poor clarity and alignment at the top, by the time you reach the front lines, people have absolutely no idea what’s going on!

Here’s how to create a Role Accountability card for each role in your firm, division, group, or team. Start with your own direct reports and give each team member a 3×5 index card. Ask them to write their role (not their name!)  at the top and then answer the question, “what are the three most important results the company expects you to deliver in exchange for paying your salary?” Be sure to lead by example and participate yourself to define the outcomes for your role as well!

Now the fun begins, because this exercise pushes your team to get it right. They will ask plenty of questions! “What do you mean by results?” or “What if I can’t measure what I do?” Reassure them that there are always measurable results–because if there weren’t the company wouldn’t be willing to pay a salary for their activities! Throughout this process, beware of verbs and look for nouns. Have the team draft their accountability cards and share their answers in the meeting, then follow-up with 1-on-1 conversations to edit and tune them into alignment with the outcomes on your card, which should be at the highest level for the organization or team you lead.

This process defines accountability by role, not by person, so if one member of your team occupies two roles–like perhaps a Controller who is also the Head of IT–they should produce an accountability card for each distinctive role.  For roles with multiple seats, there’s still just one card for the role, so a team of six salespeople would share a single Role Accountability card for the salesperson role. 

Once your team’s Role Accountability cards are in place, there will be clarity and alignment that wasn’t there before. This translates into a more aligned focus on the “right” things. After this is completed for your team, have each of your team members execute this same process with their teams, and so on–one level at a time–until you have a Role Accountability card for every seat in the organization.

Tool # 3: Meeting Rhythms

Information is the lifeblood of your organization and the Meeting Rhythms tool ensures that you, your team, and every employee are in sync. Just like we rely on the flow of our circulatory system to keep our cells nourished and functioning, you must ensure information flows throughout your firm consistently and effectively.

Although there are numerous meeting rhythms you should establish to maintain a healthy communication flow, for brevity, the two I will prioritize here are the daily huddle and the weekly meeting.

You must ensure information flows throughout your firm consistently and effectively.

The purpose of the daily huddle is synchronization. It never ceases to amaze me how disjointed people are without a huddle, even though they literally work side-by-side for eight hours a day! Huddles are critical to the performance of your organization.

An effective huddle should last less than 10 minutes, and it’s an opportunity for everyone on the team to synchronize: to know what’s going on, where people will be, who needs help, and what issues might be brewing. The huddle is NOT a forum for problem solving or debating issues—rather, it’s a touch point so the left hand knows what the right is doing.

Daily huddles should also reinforce your firm’s culture. I instruct my coaching clients to have one person in each huddle tell a non-heroic core values story every day, which is a foundational culture-building element over time.

I’ve yet to encounter a client whose organization has not been significantly transformed by the addition of well-run daily huddles. They find there are fewer surprises, less drama, and fewer 1-on-1 meetings and interruptions throughout the day. 

The weekly meeting replaces your huddle one day each week. It’s an hour-long session where you and your direct reports discuss metrics, the progress of broader initiatives, and the opportunities and challenges associated with advancing the business. This includes having in depth discussions and debates to resolve some of the issues that surfaced during the team’s daily huddles.

Your Meeting Rhythms–four Daily Huddles and one Weekly Meeting–will transform the flow of information, alignment, and performance in your firm. Even better, you’ll effortlessly reinforce your culture, build esprit de corps, and instill consistency and discipline into your operation.

Conclusion

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.”

– Dwayne Johnson

You’re a leader because, one way or another, you’ve earned the right to lead. But beware of overconfidence, blindspots, and cognitive biases, each of which has the potential to subvert your path to success.

To stay on track, create habits around Commander’s Intent, Role Accountability, and Meeting Rhythms and become consistent and vigilant with your practices. Periodically assess:

  • How often and how clearly are you expressing Commander’s Intent when you delegate, ask for input, or give direction? 
  • When was the last time you used someone’s Role Accountability card to guide a coaching session or to evaluate their performance? 
  • How productive are your firm’s Daily Huddles and Weekly Meetings? What needs to change to keep them on track?

Further, I suggest you regularly solicit feedback from your team and other trusted sources as to how effectively you’re communicating, using the tools, and creating clarity for your team. 

One final thought: Don’t fall into the trap of thinking just because you implement Daily Huddles or create Role Accountability cards that you’ve got everything under control. The Dunning-Kruger effect is real, and there’s a big difference (and tons of blind spots) between implementation, consistent use, and then mastery.

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Dates:    

==============================================

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with a culture of accountability execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build a culture of accountability.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities

Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Dates:    

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”

– Lao Tzu

We all want to be liked by others.

Some psychologists believe the desire to be liked begins at birth when we are dependent on caregivers to survive. Others take an evolutionary perspective and point out how being part of a social group enabled our ancient ancestors to survive and pass along their genes. This likely caused humans to evolve to feel hurt by rejection, which reinforces group bonds and promotes group-strengthening behaviors.

Now, tens of thousands of years later, young humans are still taught the virtues of being liked. Sharing toys, waiting your turn, and being nice to others are behaviors that yield praise for children. These same ideals continue into our adult lives—especially at work, where we’re rewarded for a job well done and criticized for falling short.

That said, the desire to be liked generally serves us well as members of groups, teams, and society. But if you’re a supervisor, manager, or leader, a strong need to be liked diminishes your efficacy. It can even backfire completely and cause your team to like you less!

According to psychologists, indicators of a strong need to be liked include:

  • Continuous efforts to please people, including conflict avoidance
  • Heightened anxiety when facing disapproval
  • Willingness to compromise your values and/or integrity to avoid rejection
  • Reluctance to stand out from the group or go against the grain
  • Fixation on a person who doesn’t seem to like you

Now consider these relatively common situations where a desire to be liked undermines effective leadership:

  • Delivering bad news effectively
  • Making and acting on hard, right decisions
  • Giving effective, constructive feedback
  • Ending non-fit customer relationships

Why? Each example includes an inherent risk that others might like you less!

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you should be disliked by your team, but I do believe you must learn to be comfortable jeopardizing short-term likeability to pursue a worthy goal.

Remember, at some level we all have a need to be liked. So, it’s not a question of whether, but rather how much your need to be liked influences your thinking and behavior. Fortunately for managers and leaders, there’s a more worthy, game-changing replacement habit to consider:

Respect.

The most effective leaders I know have developed a stronger affinity for needing to be respected than for needing to be liked. This powerful reframing enables more of the right thinking and right moves to achieve more.

Let’s consider two different real-world scenarios where a need to be liked is preventing an otherwise well-intentioned leader from making the right move. We’ll review each situation and explain how reframing “being liked” into “being respected” would help these leaders improve.

Scenario 1: Sarah

Sarah owns and operates a marketing agency with 20 employees. She considers herself a good boss because her clients and staff seem to like her, and she’s grown the business slowly but surely since she opened it eight years ago.

There are three other managers in the firm, one of whom—Chuck, the Director of Operations—isn’t holding his team accountable. As a result, client work is often late and/or missing the mark against expectations. Sarah has been stepping in to make things right for clients, which she finds frustrating but necessary.

What’s worse is that Mitch, one of Sarah’s star Account Managers reporting to Chuck, has decided to leave the firm for a competitor.

Part of her frustration with Chuck is that she already told him he needs to deliver client work more reliably. “C’mon Chuck, you know how important it is for us to meet our client commitments, right?” Sarah said. “Let me know how I can support you, okay? We can do this! We can do this!”

Meanwhile, the voice in Sarah’s head told a different story, even as her comments to Chuck were leaving her mouth. Why doesn’t he get how critical this is? I wonder if Mitch is leaving us because he doesn’t like working for Chuck. We’re going to lose clients if we can’t reliably deliver, and then what? Will I have to lay people off?

In this scenario, Sarah’s need to be liked is unconsciously preventing her from giving essential, critical, pointed feedback and coaching to Chuck. As a result, she’s risking everything she’s worked for the last eight years in a misplaced effort to avoid conflict. Her internal dialogue indicates she knows the right thing to do, but like many well-intentioned leaders, she can’t bring herself to say what needs to be said.

Scenario 2: Tom

Tom’s conversation with his accountant last week is really stressing him out. Over the past 12 years, he’s grown his bicycle shop to three full-service locations offering sales and service. This time last year, his accountant warned Tom that his costs seemed to be increasing faster than his revenue. Last week, Tom learned he lost money for the first time since his start-up year in the business. Something had to give.

His accountant remained optimistic, however, and suggested how Tom could easily fix the problem: All he had to do was raise prices to cover the increased expenses.

Tom is a well-regarded business leader in his community and takes pride in his personal relationships with his customers. As the business has grown and additional locations opened, he’s always vowed to take care of his customers, even if he isn’t able to know most of them personally. 

Tom is a giver, and through his business contributes to local causes, sponsors children’s sports leagues, and is a vocal champion of cycling safety. Having to increase prices and disappoint his community is among his greatest fears. He justified years of flat pricing as a way of “giving back” and building trust, with an eye on generating additional business volume in return.

All of that has now caught up with him, as he faces the choice of increasing prices or slowly allowing the business to wither—one uncomfortable quarter after the next—until an inevitable end.

Tom knows the right thing to do. He acknowledges that plenty of other businesses he patronizes have increased their prices. But he doesn’t want to disappoint his customers and his community.

Replacing Likeability with Respect

Like so many business leaders, both Sarah and Tom have a need to be liked, preventing them from doing the hard, right things needed to operate their firms. 

  • Sarah isn’t providing Chuck with the direct feedback and coaching he needs and isn’t able to seriously contemplate replacing him with a more capable operations head.
  • Tom can’t bring himself to increase prices, even though he knows the viability of his business is at stake.

Now let’s reframe these scenarios through the lens of needing to be respected rather than being liked:

Sarah

There are no secrets in any organization, and Sarah’s inability to shoot straight with Chuck is transparent to her employees. Though she may be liked by her team, Sarah is not respected as a result. This could explain why Mitch, her star Account Manager, decided to leave.

When she finally does give Chuck the feedback and coaching he needs, it’s true that he might not like her in that moment, or for the next few days. But he’ll certainly respect her for being straightforward and setting clear, non-negotiable expectations.

In the event that Chuck isn’t able to improve his performance and Sarah decides to replace him in the role, her consistency and action will earn respect from her team.

Tom

Tom’s inability to increase prices over so many years has likely been noticed by other business leaders around town. Odds are, they’re wondering why he’s not doing the obvious thing, which has certainly diminished their professional respect for him—even though they appreciate all that he contributes to the community.

Tom’s accountant, other professional advisors, and senior staff have also been observing his odd reluctance to do the right thing for his business, his family, and his staff. Though they like Tom tremendously, many are likely questioning his business acumen and decision-making.

When he finally does the right thing and implements across-the-board price increases, it’s true that some of his customers might not like it. But they’ll respect the decision when they come to understand that the survival of his business is at stake, as are Tom’s valuable community contributions. The decision will also repair Tom’s image with the local business community.

Conclusion

“I am not concerned with being liked or disliked. I am concerned with being respected.”

– Jackie Robinson

There’s a classic scene in an episode of HBO’s long-running series The Sopranos where mob boss Tony Soprano is arguing with his nephew and crew captain, Christopher. “What happens, I decide, not you,” Tony says. “And if you don’t love me anymore, that breaks my heart. You don’t gotta love me, but you will respect me.”

While you probably won’t ever find yourself heading an organized crime family, the sentiment within your own organization should remain the same. It’s far more valuable to be respected than to be liked as a leader. As with Sarah and Tom, if you’re not saying or doing something you “know” you should, it’s likely because your need to be liked is greater than your need to be respected.

No alt text provided for this image

Remember, there will always be unintended negative consequences that stem from a desire to be liked! For Sarah, it was a lack of respect from her employees; for Tom, it was from the community he so deeply cared about.

By focusing on being respected instead, you’ll be able to lead, make hard choices, and act on what needs to be done. You’ll become more effective in your role and experience one of the greatest ironies and gifts of leadership: Highly respected leaders are also well-liked.

=============================================

Upcoming Leadership Learning Events

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Together we will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Class Dates:    

==============================================

Live Online Class – Creating a Culture of Accountability

The best strategies and market opportunities in the world mean nothing if you’re not able to execute our plans and get things done. And yet, accountability remains a recurring, frustrating issue for business leaders around the world. Organizations with a culture of accountability execute smoothly and without drama, retain high performers, and have an improved sense of collaboration, accomplishment and fun at work.

Together we will:

  • Identify the 3 building blocks of accountability.
  • Learn 9 accountable behaviors required to build a culture of accountability.
  • Discover 3 types of accountability (it’s not just one thing!).
  • Improve role definitions and outcomes using results instead of activities
  • Expose the #1 mistake leaders make to destroy accountability and engagement

Class Dates:    

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

In a perfect world, your staff would complete their work on time, more proactively communicate problems and potential obstacles, and produce more predictable results.

They would be more accountable.

But right here, right now in the real world, projects are late and over budget, customer promises remain unfulfilled, and careless mistakes cost time and money. Operating a business often seems harder than it should—because it is! 

I’ve never met a CEO or business leader who wasn’t concerned with loose accountability on their team, the symptoms of which can be quite painful. Here are just a few of the scenarios I’ve witnessed: Leaders unable to recall the objectives they set at their annual planning session, key customers not receiving deliveries as promised, and CEOs who maintain lists of the commitments made by others to ensure nothing is forgotten. The effects of loose accountability are costly, frustrating, demoralizing, and growth-killing.

These issues were the driving force behind my book Creating a Culture of Accountability, a handy guide for building a culture of crisp, rigorous, and systemic accountability within any organization. But what if you can’t afford to wait as you work through the three types of Accountability I feature in the book? For example, I encounter leaders every week with transactional accountability problems–issues associated with a specific person, project, or task–that require immediate action.

Here’s some good news: There is a straightforward, standalone three-step system you can implement immediately. When you do it correctly, it has the potential to transform transactional accountability on your team while not consuming any additional resources or time.

Yes, you should buy my book. But if you must, you can get started here right away.

I’ve been using the three building blocks of accountability–expectations, context, and attention–to help business leaders gain traction via more accountable staff for years.

Now you can use them too.

No alt text provided for this image

Step 1: Expectations

“When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.”

– Robert Rosenthal

An expectation is a belief that is expressed either verbally or through actions. Expectations drive outcomes. 

Research backs this up, particularly psychologist Robert Rosenthal’s work with what is more popularly known as “The Pygmalion Effect”. Rosenthal selected elementary school students at random and informed teachers these students had particularly high potential. Lo and behold, the “high potential” students outperformed their peers at the end of the academic year. The explanation for their success? Teachers believed the students were talented, treated them accordingly, and the students met their expectations.

Rosenthal’s findings transfer to the business world as well. This Harvard Business Review article points to studies of company performance that confirm expectations in work settings also become self-fulfilling prophecies. 

Accordingly, it stands to reason that leaders should have high expectations of their people, including the belief that employees possess the capacity to deliver what is asked of them.

The question is: Do you?

If you don’t, you might have some people on your team who don’t belong. Or, you might have the right people in roles that don’t play to their strengths. Remember: you’re accountable to get the right people in the right seats (RPRS) on your team! For more on how to do that, have a look at my article on getting the right people in the right roles.

Assuming you have RPRS and you believe in your team, you must express it to them. When you delegate a task or assign a project, the first step to building accountability is to communicate your belief in their ability to meet your high expectations. The simplest way to say this is “I believe in you.”

If that feels too “soft” or uncomfortable for you, that’s ok. Here are some other real-world phrases that convey the same message:

I know this project is a stretch, but you’re more than capable of meeting the challenge–and rest assured, I’ll support you along the way.

I wouldn’t be asking you to do this if I didn’t believe you’d be successful. In fact, I have a feeling you’re going to do really well!

I have no doubt you’re ready to take this on.

A word of caution: don’t express your belief if you don’t mean it. Beyond the words, mannerisms and actions also transmit expectations, and it’s relatively easy for people to see through non-authentic expressions of belief.

Building Block #1: Communicate your belief in them. “I believe in you.”

Step 2: Context

“For me, context is the key—from that comes the understanding of everything.”

– Kenneth Noland

It’s intuitive to think about and ask what, who, and how questions as you lead, delegate to, and manage your team. For example:

  • What do we need to accomplish?
  • Who is best suited to complete the task?
  • How should they start and proceed over time?

But I’ve found leaders seldom think or communicate about WHY.

Context is a critical component of accountability because it provides important information that helps your team appreciate the bigger picture beyond the work on their desk. Well-thought context answers the following questions:

  • Why does this role / assignment / project / task matter to the firm?
  • Why does this role / assignment / project / task matter to the division, group, or team?
  • Why does it matter to YOU, the leader, personally?

Research into the root causes of employee engagement consistently suggests that a sense of purpose is one of three key factors (the other two are autonomy and mastery). In other words, knowing why something matters—matters a lot. When you relay the context of a task or request, you are being clear that it’s important to you. Don’t ever assume your team already knows. Just because it’s important in your mind doesn’t mean it’s important in theirs!

Be explicit about sharing the context of your request to underscore why it matters to the business and to you. When assigning a task to a team member, share the context after setting the expectation. 

Building Block #1: Communicate your belief in them. “I believe in you.”

Building Block #2: Explain the context of the assignment. “This is important because…”

Step 3: Attention

“Where attention goes, energy flows”

– James Redfield

My client struggled for years to consistently achieve the monthly Key Performance Indicator (KPI) at the core of his business model—specifically, client billable hours worked. The leadership team believed they were accountable for staff compliance with their individual client billable hour targets. As such, they produced lists of employees whose hours were below expectations and lists of others who weren’t inputting their billable hours in a timely manner. Though their intentions were good, all of these actions occurred after the fact—effectively looking back at the previous month, after it was too late to recover the hours and revenue for the period.

After listening and understanding their situation, I asked one question: “Who should be accountable for client billable hours?”

Sensing I asked this for a reason—and after a leadership team member replied “we are”—another team member hesitatingly suggested that each staff member should be accountable.

“Exactly!” I replied. “And assuming they are accountable, how can you bring real-time attention to their accountability, effectively letting them know you are watching?”

After some debate, the leadership team agreed to require each staff member to report progress against their weekly billable hour goal verbally in their daily huddle.

Through this simple process, the leadership team is crystal clear about their attention to this KPI. And, if you think about it from a staff perspective, reporting your personal metric on a daily basis is the ultimate bar-raising move. After all, no one wants to be the person who reports a zero-progress day!

Leaders with highly accountable teams pay close attention to results and actively impart “I am watching” to their teams through words, actions, and processes. Your number one job as a leader is to point to what matters most, which is exactly what paying attention does.

I occasionally get push-back with this step in the accountability process because leaders think “I am watching” is too Big Brother or micro-managerial. The point, though, is not to become overbearing. It’s to reinforce the timeline, the importance, and the expectations. By paying attention, you’re doubling down on the why of the task or goal.

Although attention might seem like the most difficult step to implement because it’s more abstract and ongoing than the first two steps, it doesn’t have to be. Paying attention can look like a repeatable process like my client implemented above, or it can be a three-minute sync each week. Here’s one of my personal favorites: Ask a question while passing someone in the hallway—”How’s that report coming along? I’ll have it on my desk by noon Thursday, right?” And keep on walking!

Building Block #1: Communicate your belief in them. “I believe in you.”

Building Block #2: Explain the context of the assignment. “This is important because…”

Building Block #3: Ensure they know you are paying attention. “I am watching.”

Conclusion

“Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to the result.” 

– Bob Proctor

The odds are overwhelming that you have an accountability problem in your firm, your division, your department, your group, or your team. One way or another, it’s slowing you down, costing you money, and decreasing the engagement of your staff.

While creating a culture of accountability is the best, long-term solution, it doesn’t necessarily have to be your first step. You can begin today by implementing the three building blocks of accountability. This three-step process won’t cost you anything and barely takes any time at all, yet yields massive potential returns.

Establish clear, high expectations (I believe in you), thoroughly explain the context (This is important to me), and then pay attention over time (I am watching). When you do this well and consistently, the benefits will come quickly and with great effect.

With these three steps, you’ll be well on your way to achieving levels of productivity you once thought existed only in a perfect world. 

Once it’s working for you, please consider sharing the process with others. You’ll be doing your part to help solve the costly, frustrating accountability headache for other leaders around the world.

=============================================

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

In this program you will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Upcoming Classes:    

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” – Patrick Rothfuss

My wife Keri and I are huge bourbon fans. This past spring, after unsuccessful previous attempts, we were finally able to secure reservations to visit the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and tour our favorite distilleries, including Woodford, Four Roses, and Makers Mark to name a few. We planned to travel there in our motor coach on our way home to Virginia from a mid-June factory maintenance trip to Michigan. Unfortunately, the motor coach gremlins struck, and the maintenance team at the factory uncovered the need for more significant work than we’d anticipated. As a result, we left the coach in Michigan for repairs, canceled the distillery tours, and came straight home.

On the one hand, we were absolutely crushed to miss the bourbon distillery tours. On the other hand, it was a relatively easy decision. The Michigan factory was, without a doubt, the best possible place to have the issues with our coach diagnosed and repaired. Further, Keri and I had newfound time to relax at home and accomplish several things around the house. Despite the dispiriting circumstances, we made the best of it and enjoyed a pleasant “vacation” week together at home.

This story illustrates an attribute I’ve strived to embody: an optimistic mentality. I’ve managed to wire myself to mentally make the best of any circumstance. To be clear, this isn’t fluffy optimism where I pretend everything is perfect, rather, I am referring to pragmatic, realistic optimism. 

In addition to serving me personally, this trait is invaluable to leaders, increasing their resilience, improving their decisions, and motivating (and focusing) their teams.

How you think about yourself, your circumstances, your surroundings, and your goals profoundly influences your outcomes. These patterns of thought or mental models are the most critical “invisible” factors that distinguish high achievers in any domain. Whether you realize it, your thoughts have the potential to either propel or derail your success in any endeavor. They often manifest as the “voice in your head.”

Our thoughts are so powerful, they can even affect our health! A 2017 Stanford study found that people who perceived themselves as less active had up to a 72% higher mortality risk than those who felt they were more active—even though both groups completed the same level of activity. Another study found that employees who were told stress enhanced their health experienced lower levels of cortisol and increased levels of the growth hormone DHEA. In other words, just being told “stress is good” actually LOWERED the biological indicators of stress.

When properly harnessed, productive mental models yield awesome power, remarkable achievement, competitive advantage, and sustainable growth. Left unchecked, they can cripple both you and your firm.

Which of your assumptions, beliefs, and habits of thinking serve you best? And which could be holding you back?

Consider those questions as you explore the following mental models high performing leaders use to 10x their results:

Return On Luck

Business researcher, author, and consultant Jim Collins coined the term “return on luck” in his book “Great By Choice.” His research concluded that successful companies weren’t any luckier than their less-successful counterparts; rather, they generated a better return on whatever circumstances presented themselves.

“When we study this over and over again, what we find is we’re all hit in life with different kinds of luck. But a huge swing variable is there are those who grab it and then get a high return on that luck, and there are those who fritter it away. When you compound that over time, it tends to produce a very big difference. And the bad luck side is also important, because it’s not just return on good luck; it’s return on bad luck.”

— Jim Collins

It turns out, over time, there is a roughly equal distribution of “good” and “bad” luck events affecting individuals and businesses. What makes the biggest difference is how you and your team respond to them, whether good OR bad.

These findings demonstrate something I’ve found working with my clients: Habits of thinking about luck determine the magnitude of return a firm generates over time. For example, the way a leader behaves after winning a large account affects future returns. 

She might think to herself, “This is fantastic, let’s celebrate and relax; we’ve achieved some security,” and use it as an opportunity to catch her breath. Unfortunately, by leaning back after a big win, she will probably generate a fair to poor return on the new account win (a good-luck event)—and miss the chance to further capitalize on it. On the other hand, if she were to think, “Wow, we just won this big account. We’ve got momentum, so let’s double down and create a new sales incentive program to help our salespeople continue to crush it in the market,” her approach would likely lead to a much higher return on the same event. 

Of course, this also holds true for the opposite scenario when one’s habits of thought create either self-pity and inaction or concerted, focused action in response to a negative event–say the loss of a key account. The choice of action or inaction after the loss similarly leads to widely divergent returns over time.

The return on luck mental model helps you seek opportunities and positive returns, even in the face of extreme adversity. There’s a catch, though: You have to be ready to seize the opportunities and generate a return on your luck regardless of whether the event appears to be positive or negative. That’s where acceptance comes into play. As I wrote in my last article, if you can’t acknowledge that the unexpected will happen, your capacity to capitalize on unforeseen circumstances is lost.

Key Questions for Leaders: 

  • When encountering an unexpected luck event, how do you seek opportunity?
  • How can you capitalize on, learn from, or grow from “bad” luck events?
  • How can you use those experiences to help others? 

The Stockdale Paradox

The Stockdale Paradox is another powerful tool for leaders. This mental model also originated with Jim Collins’ research, this time from his book “Good To Great.”

Admiral James Stockdale was the highest-ranking American military officer captured during the Vietnam War. He spent eight gruesome years in the “Hanoi Hilton” and was tortured over 20 times. Yet by his own account, he emerged from the camp stronger than when he entered.

No alt text provided for this image

After he returned home, Stockdale explained why both optimists and pessimists died in the camp. The optimists died of broken hearts, having their hopes for release and return home repeatedly crushed. The pessimists, on the other hand, had no hope, gave up, and lost the will to survive. Stockdale believed he survived because he retained faith that regardless of the difficulties of his horrendous circumstances, he would prevail and emerge stronger. 

Here’s the paradox: he continually confronted the brutal facts of his current reality while simultaneously holding hope that he would eventually emerge as a better version of himself.

As this Harvard Business School article points out, the Stockdale Paradox played out in many businesses over the last few years through the global pandemic. Leaders standing on the edge of ruin may have pinned their hope on rescue in the form of a cure for the COVID-19 virus, but more than two years later, it’s unlikely we’ll ever return to what we once considered “normal.” Leaders who weathered the storm moved their teams past the doubt—not through happy thoughts and fluffy optimism, but by constantly reinforcing the organizations’ purpose, values, and fundamentals while simultaneously acknowledging the unknowns, risks, and other hard facts along the way. 

There’s never a straight or easy path to significant accomplishment in any domain. Take the time to understand the backstory behind greatness and you’ll uncover significant adversity was overcome along the way. To surmount the inevitable adversity on the path to your highest aspirations, you must embody Admiral Stockdale’s paradox by simultaneously maintaining faith in the outcome while accepting the hard facts of your current reality.

Key Questions for Leaders: 

  • Where are you sugarcoating the “brutal truth” right now?
  • How can you reinforce your team’s connection to your firm’s purpose, values, and fundamentals?
  • Who is best positioned to help you see what you’re missing?

Choose Your Neighborhood

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”
— Jim Rohn

Both research and life experience seem to indicate Jim Rohn was right.

A University of Exeter study in 2014 reported that humans evolved to be heavily influenced by their neighbors. The result? Our thoughts, our motivations, and our decisions are invisibly and profoundly influenced by those around us. 

Sounds scary, but it doesn’t have to be if you turn your genetic impulses into a strength through the mental model of choosing the right neighborhood!

When I was preparing to purchase my first house, my Grandpa Ben gave me the following advice: “No matter what you do, don’t ever buy the most expensive house in the neighborhood because there’s only one way the other houses will affect your property value over time.”

Years later and, sadly, after his passing, it occurred to me that Grandpa Ben wasn’t only giving me real estate advice. I had become one of the most expensive “houses” in my professional neighborhood and needed to upgrade the people around me. I purposely made a series of moves to surround myself with people who were far better and more accomplished than I was at the time; people who made me a little uncomfortable and challenged me. I harnessed my genetic herd instinct to accelerate my growth and development.

Be on the lookout for the indicators you’re in the wrong neighborhood: you’re contributing a lot, but reaping very little. As you grow, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll outgrow those in your mastermind group, networking organization, peer group, or other significant cohort.

Unchecked, these situations can, albeit with good intentions, work against your aspirations as a leader. For example, advice you get from others less capable than you likely embodies THEIR fears—and potentially validates some of your own—diminishing your value over time. On the other hand, if you surround yourself with people who have broken past where you are, they’ll help you stretch, challenge you to grow, and increase your value over time.

In this same vein, be wary of the information you choose to consume. I don’t care how smart or self-aware you are, spending too much time on social media will absolutely influence your mindset, and usually in a negative way. A study in the journal “Technology, Mind, and Behavior” found that binging on negative news in order to find answers during uncertain times increased feelings of anxiety, reduced self-control, and promoted depression.

This is the reason I haven’t watched the news for the past 15 years (and counting!). I’ve found the news is mostly “bad”—because that’s what sells—and doesn’t help me learn, grow, improve, and achieve my goals. I’m still quite aware of what’s happening in the world, however I’m very deliberate about how and when I expose myself to negative influences.

Author Tim Ferris puts media consumption in perspective in his book, “The Four-Hour Workweek:” If it’s important enough, everyone will be talking about it anyway!

Key Questions for Leaders: 

  • Are you surrounded by people who challenge you and make you a little uncomfortable–or–have you become the most expensive house in your neighborhood?
  • What negative influences are you exposed to—purposefully or inadvertently? How do they affect the way you see yourself and the world?

Everyone Needs a Coach

In all of my years as a coach, I’ve yet to find a CEO who has all of the answers. In fact, those who KNOW they don’t know it all are usually the most successful! Their belief system includes the mental model that everyone needs coaching.

In her book, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” psychologist Carol Dweck explains that when it comes to achievement, many people have a “fixed mindset”—that is, they believe their basic qualities like intelligence and talent are predetermined and immutable traits. These people often believe that if they’re not good at something immediately, they’ll never be good at it. The opposite also holds true; if someone with a fixed mindset thinks they have something all figured out, there’s no way to talk to them about potential improvements.

Those with a “growth mindset,” on the other hand, believe that practice and hard work lead to improvement and eventual mastery. These individuals seek feedback and advice on ways to improve and view failures as opportunities to learn. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a primary characteristic of effective leaders is their desire to continually learn and grow. 

As a leader, it’s productive to not just have a growth mindset for yourself, but to also expect it of your team. This train of thought sets the stage for the development of a learning culture and the rejection of those who can’t or won’t learn and improve.

To be clear, the mental model that everyone needs a coach does not imply that everyone should hire a coach (as an aside, I’m not sure there are enough coaches on the planet for that!). Rather, a coaching mentality is applied to drive continual growth and development throughout the firm.

Your job as a leader and as a coach is to identify behavioral patterns that stand in the way of each employee’s continual improvement. For example, here are a handful of patterns I’ve observed to be common in the workplace: consistently disorganized, unreliable, late to meetings, prone to argue non-essential points, slow to ask for help, too soft in negotiations, and being more problem than solution focused. Great leader/coaches speak candidly, directly, and with great caring when they deliver feedback and coaching to their team.

I’ve never observed a business with a sustained growth rate that exceeds the personal growth rate of the people running it. This bar-raising mental model will get and keep you there by exerting a strong influence on hiring, expectations, decision-making, and ultimately the growth rate of the firm. 

Key Questions for Leaders: 

  • Are you “coaching” or “managing” your teams?
  • How can you promote a growth mindset among your staff?
  • Are you being coached to improve your capacity as a leader?

Conclusion

“We are no greater than the thoughts we think.”
– Bishop T.D. Jakes

In America there are two reasonable certainties when eating at a Chinese restaurant: (1) You’ll receive your check at the end of the meal; and (2) The check will be accompanied by a fortune cookie for each person at the table.

Many years ago, while traveling on business I ate dinner at the Chinese restaurant across the street from my hotel. At the end of the meal as I prepared to pay my server, I opened my fortune cookie. What I saw inside shook me to my core.

“With our thoughts, we create our world,” the fortune read.

No alt text provided for this image

It might sound strange because fortune cookies aren’t exactly known for dispensing profound wisdom, but at that moment, I knew it to be true. If I could find a way to productively harness my thoughts, I could create the “world” I wanted, which is exactly what I did in the three years that followed.

Now contemplate the power of this fortune for yourself. How you think can literally 10x your results, both personally and professionally!

Use the four mental models we’ve outlined to get started. And don’t doubt for a second they’ll work for you. Rather, rest assured you already have everything you need within you to fully capitalize on their power.

=============================================

Live Online Class – Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

In this program you will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Upcoming Classes:    

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Fortune favors the prepared mind.”

— Louis Pasteur

Paul “Bear” Bryant was arguably the best American football coach of all time. During his 25-year career at the University of Alabama, he won six national championships and 14 Southeastern Conference (SEC) titles. When asked about the key to his success, Bryant spoke just three words:

“Expect the unexpected.”

I’ve found most leaders don’t think enough about Coach Bryant’s wise words—especially as they pertain to people and succession. Unfortunate and/or unforeseen events inevitably affect employees. If you don’t plan for them, you’ll scramble to recover—potentially at an extremely inconvenient or inopportune time. Indeed, filling an unexpected leadership staffing void is often urgent, distracting, and damaging to your operating results. 

At this point, you might be thinking, “If most staffing events are unexpected, how can I plan for them?”

Although the timing and specifics of each individual situation might be surprising—and even bizarre—the idea that they’ll occur is not. Consider these stranger-than-fiction, real life scenarios I’ve encountered with some of my coaching clients over the past two months:

  • A high-performing manager was rightly promoted to branch manager, a role that includes access to a company car. Two days after the promotion, the new branch manager was involved in a hit-and-run accident, which he reported to the company after a three-day delay. His legal situation escalated quickly, and it became clear that despite the employee’s past performance, he could no longer work for the firm.
  • A well-respected supervisor was credibly accused of using racist language with an employee. The supervisor was terminated the same day.
  • An executive-level leader began exhibiting physical and cognitive health symptoms that prevented him from working over the past six weeks. This leader is a key player in the organization’s success and the CEO must fill the void for an unknown amount of time, perhaps even permanently.
  • A senior leader from a recently acquired firm was slotted to run a major practice area. Within three weeks, the new practice leader informed the CEO he was resigning to pursue his dream of running his own firm. 

In all these situations, critical team members were literally “here today and gone tomorrow.” None could have been specifically predicted, but the probability of SOMETHING happening is always greater than zero!

Meanwhile, employees have been quitting their jobs at historic rates since 2020—the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports an average of 4 million Americans quit each month. The numbers don’t lie. Believing that the unexpected won’t happen with the people in your organization is not only unrealistic—it’s irresponsible. You MUST think about succession, and you can prepare for the unexpected.

Here are four sustainable strategies that mitigate the impact of unexpected leadership turnover.

Strategy 1: Develop Internal Bench Strength

“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”

– Harvey S. Firestone

Throughout his career, Bear Bryant understood the importance of mentorship. “The idea of molding [people] means a lot to me,” he said. As successful coaches in any team sport know, being prepared for the unexpected requires a deep bench and a “next person up” mentality. In a business context, this involves cultivating next-level leaders so that when (not if!) the time comes, they’re prepared to step up and into a new role.

There’s a tendency for leaders to be complacent in this area because when you have a high-performing employee, you tend to leave them alone while directing your attention to low performers and other problems in the business. Meanwhile, the A-Player—someone with the potential to be a valuable, promotable long-term contributor—doesn’t feel particularly challenged or developed. Unsurprisingly, over time, they become bored and disengaged, which increases their flight risk.

You can engage and develop your rising stars by coaching for growth. Coaching for growth fosters all three prerequisites of high engagement: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Your job as a leader is to identify, communicate, and coach the behavioral patterns that stand in the way of each employee’s growth and development. Coaching for growth sustainably builds capability, independence, and scalability. Even better, A-Players love it!

Sadly, many leaders balk at the imperative to speak with the straight-shooting candor that coaching for growth requires. Ruled by fear, they revert to less effective techniques. I urge you to avoid this at all costs! Instead, tell the brutal truth (with caring and kindness) your people need to hear so they can continue to learn and grow. They’ll be able to do more, to think at a higher level, and to become more independent in their work which, in turn, makes them more promotable over time.

As you build bench strength within your organization, don’t be afraid to raise your expectations. Research shows we get what we expect—from ourselves and from others. If you want your staff to perform to higher standards, start their journey by increasing your expectations of them. Best of all, you’ll discover that high expectations are virtual catnip for high performers and a potent repellant for low performers.

Strategy 2: Create a Virtual Bench

In addition to cultivating talent inside the firm, it’s also crucial to focus outside. With a small amount of energy, consistently applied, people outside your firm can join your “virtual bench” — a prequalified talent pool in orbit around your firm who can be called when the need arises.

Every senior leader in the company should be accountable to network externally and seek outside talent for your virtual bench. It’s as simple as gaining agreement to remain in touch with talented people without regard to your current staffing needs. Here’s how that sounds: “There could come a time when we’ll have a need for you at our firm. I don’t know when, but would it be okay if we stayed in touch?” Great people will never say no, then it’s on the leader to periodically stay in touch.

If each of your senior executives maintains a small handful of people on their virtual bench, you’ve instantly got a list of people to call when there’s an “unexpected” (or planned) opening. It doesn’t guarantee you’ve got the next hire in-hand, but it’s a lot quicker than advertising a position and starting with no candidates.

Even better: Data suggests filling roles from your virtual bench is more successful than utilizing job boards or head-hunting services. A 2019 Jobvite survey reported that nearly 70 percent of jobs were found via networking—50 percent from friends, and 37 percent from professional networks.

Maintaining a virtual bench doesn’t cost a penny and is relatively low-energy, but it does require discipline to stay in touch every three-to-six months. The return on that time, when you need it, is extremely high.

Strategy 3: Evaluate Leadership Succession Quarterly

Thinking about, coaching, and developing people are fundamental elements of your role as a leader. Accordingly, your senior leadership team should discuss people quality and succession each quarter, as my clients do. 

During our full-day quarterly leadership meetings, each executive on the senior team evaluates their direct reports on both performance and cultural fit in front of their peers. To counter potential bias and blind spots, we open the floor for feedback, comments, and discussion, then categorize each direct report as an A, B, or C Player. On occasion, as warranted, I’ll ask leaders to evaluate two layers into the organization, not just their direct reports.

The real value of this exercise isn’t the rankings—it’s the conversations that ensue and the continual reminder that leaders MUST be accountable for the quality and continual growth of their people. It’s quite common for a manager to discover they’re not accurately assessing an employee, or there’s a diamond in the rough they need to polish. My newer clients are often surprised when they realize the conversation isn’t only about low performers (although that’s part of it), but rather to ensure their highest performers remain challenged and engaged. This process balances energy between A and C Players while also identifying the B’s who have potential to grow into A’s. 

This quarterly review process keeps senior leaders focused on people and continually developing bench strength—ensuring they’re prepared for the “unexpected,” high-performers remain challenged and engaged, and the right people get the right opportunities over time.

Strategy 4: Require Leaders to Develop and Share Staff

As a CEO or senior leader, you need to be clear with your direct reports about how you expect them to think about employees. There are two common scenarios I see that constrain organizational agility and the ability to respond to “unexpected” turnover:

  1. Leaders are unwilling or unable to delegate and/or coach for growth. Since they’re not engaging to develop their people, they become the bottleneck to succession.
  2. Leaders are reluctant to share their high performers. For example, a division head wants an emerging leader to work on an important project because it would be a valuable developmental opportunity, but their manager resists because “I really need them performing in their current role.” Although the manager’s position will likely yield better short-term results, it stifles the emerging leader’s growth, engagement, and long-term potential.

Both situations require more senior leadership intervention (i.e., it’s on YOU!). If you don’t see your senior team doing the things you need them to do, you have to lean in and set—or clarify—the expectation. Everyone in leadership must understand that thinking about succession through growth and development is critical. If they can’t or won’t then THEY become the C-Players on your team and should be coached and potentially replaced themselves.

The incentive for leaders to invest in people is the creation of leverage—a prerequisite to sustainably scale. Your team must understand that by coaching for growth and sharing resources, they can accomplish more through others and elevate themselves to focus on more strategic, higher value activities. The leverage they create ensures the company continues to grow while providing ample opportunities for others.

One way to cement and reinforce your commitment to developing people is via your firm’s core values. Values pertaining to learning and growth are quite common and quite powerful, provided you are willing to lead by example and hold others accountable. 

Conclusion

“Those who choose to adopt an infinite mindset are better equipped to manage the unknown. In fact, they are able to find opportunity in uncertainty.” – Simon Sinek

In his book, The Infinite Game, author Simon Sinekwrites that most leaders are wired to think of business as finite: There are inevitably winners and losers, and every year you either achieve your goals or you don’t.

On the other hand, infinite-minded leaders understand that goals, metrics, and timelines are arbitrary. The company itself is viewed as a vehicle to help advance an ideal or solve a human need. Ego is put aside to address the cause and, rather than competing, teams display high trust. Never satisfied with the status quo, they continually seek others—worthy rivals, as Simon calls them—to help them learn and grow. 

Leadership succession is, in itself, an infinite game. There are no goals to achieve, no milestones to hit, and no endpoint where you “win” the game. Teamwork and continual improvement pave the way for more impact, more significance, and less disruptive turbulence along the way.

Yes, unexpected, people-related events and turnover will always happen. It’s your job as a leader to understand that, expect it, and be as prepared as possible by activating these four strategies.

It worked for Bear Bryant. It works for my clients.

It will work for you, too.

=============================================

Live Online Class – 5 Ways to Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Join Mark in Simon Sinek’s live classroom! In this class you will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Upcoming Class: July 27, 2022. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

“Everything in your life is a reflection of a choice you have made. If you want a different result, make a different choice.”

— Unknown

Life is all about choice. Think deeply about any aspect of your life—your job, your wellness, your relationships—and you’ll find you’ve chosen to be where you are. Each day, you’re faced with decisions—some huge, many miniscule—and over time, these millions of choices result in where you are right now.

This can be hard to swallow, especially when you’re in an unfortunate situation and see yourself as a victim of circumstance. But you must understand that your current position is of your own design.

Over the course of your life, every choice you’ve made was to achieve something you wanted at the time. The problem is, while making many of those choices, you were distracted by short-term rewards and didn’t fully contemplate the long-term consequences. It turns out, our brains are wired for this. A Princeton study found short-term gains are fueled by the emotional part of our brains, while long-term gains stem from the logical part. The difference? Short-term rewards come with an instant shot of dopamine, the “feel good” hormone, which explains why it’s so challenging to resist the glazed donut even when you know it will undermine your diet.

The same principle applies at work. Consider how you respond when an employee asks for help to complete a task. You’re probably working on something else, and they likely interrupted you. As a result, you contemplate the effort behind their request before you answer them. You might rationalize that explaining how to do it could take 20 minutes but doing it yourself will only take five, so you tell the employee not to worry and you’ll complete the task for them. You made the choice because, in that moment, you wanted to save time, get the job done, and ensure it was done right.

Thousands of choices later, you wonder why you’re working long days handling minutia for others. Here’s why: because time after time, teaching someone how to do something seemed unreasonable. You failed to see that investing time in the moment would pay dividends over the long run.

Luckily, there’s an alternative. With awareness, you can consciously choose to delay gratification for long term gain. It requires you to act against your brain’s natural instincts, but when you understand both your propensity to choose instant gratification and your power to defer it, you can start thinking differently about daily choices and actions. 

There’s an invisible three-pronged fork in the road that precedes every choice and decision you make. The key to more productive outcomes is to acknowledge and master it. 

The Invisible Fork in the Road

“Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

— William Jennings Bryan

About a year into my relationship with a client in the technology sector, we assessed their employees’ performance and cultural fit using a methodology called Topgrading. Through this rigorous process, and somewhat to their surprise, it became clear that to fulfill their commitment to continue growing, they needed to replace some of their staff.

Unbeknownst to these executives, they were standing at the invisible three-pronged fork in the road, unconsciously contemplating their options. They could:

  1. Deny the problem and continue on their path.
  2. Operate inside their comfort zone and take limited, low risk actions—but stop short of the steps necessary to achieve real results.
  3. Decide to act, exchanging some short-term pain for a significant long-term payoff.
No alt text provided for this image

The first thing that emerged from our conversation about upgrading their staff was fear and worry. They wondered: Would the terminated staff walk out the door with important institutional knowledge? Would they take other employees or customers with them? Would they criticize the company online? And more.

As the “what if” scenarios progressed, the executives realized their fears only applied to a small subset of staff. They also determined that the cost associated with retaining those individuals was far greater than the fear of what could happen if they were let go. In the end, they chose to do the hard, right thing for the future of the firm; they chose the right path to maximize their long-term aspirations.

Since the fork in the road is invisible, it’s difficult to recognize which path you’re on until it’s too late. As such, it’s critical to learn the distinctions and symptoms. Here are some characteristics of each:

Path 1: Denial and Inaction

Denial involves consciously or unconsciously ignoring facts and evidence that would lead to a logical decision.

The largest motivating factor pushing us down this path is fear. Fear affects all of us—and likely more than you think. Acknowledging that the majority of our thoughts and behaviors stem from fear requires no stretch of the imagination, particularly in light of how our brains and biochemistry evolved. A 2009 study found that fear often overtakes the decision-making process, leading individuals to make choices based solely on the POTENTIAL of catastrophic events, no matter how unlikely.

Most fears originate in one of three areas: ego, scarcity, or failure. Ego is all about the need to judge and compare and often leads to risk avoidance for fear of negatively affecting your status, your position, and what others may think of you. Scarcity is the notion that there’s never enough. A CEO operating from fear of scarcity may be unwilling to define an explicit and precise strategy because they worry they’ll miss out on opportunities that fall just to the left or right of their chosen path. And while all leaders have failed transactionally in one way or another, losing a sale, a customer, or a valuable employee, the fear of failure becomes inhibitive more existentially: failing to provide for your family, to have time to do the things you want to do, and to place big bets and reap the rewards.

All three fears lead to risk aversion—keeping your head in the sand when you should be standing tall. This might cause you to deny clear facts or logic, or it might lead you to delay action. If you seek freedom and abundance and hope to leave a meaningful legacy, it’s crucial to understand that the fears of ego, scarcity, and failure directly limit your potential. Ego-related fear is a bottleneck to freedom, scarcity-related fear is a bottleneck to abundance, and fear of existential failure is a bottleneck to leaving your legacy.

Key Questions for Leaders:

  • Where are you in denial of facts and evidence?
  • What choice or action have you delayed?
  • Which of the “big three” fears most affects your choices?

Path 2: Comfort Zone

Management thinker Judith Barwick first coined the term “comfort zone” in the early ‘90s. She described it as “a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a set of risk.”

We LOVE our comfort zone, but it gives us a false sense of security. It feels like we’re doing “something” and making meaningful progress, but it’s an illusion: we do just enough to feel good, but never what’s required to have a meaningful impact. This reminds me of the phrase “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic:” the deck would surely look neater, but in reality the ship is still sinking.

Unsurprisingly, fear is a significant contributing factor leading to comfort zone choices. 

The most common comfort zone actions I see relate to employees and customers. Fear, emotional entanglements, and conflict-avoidance keep you from being able to address these issues decisively and meaningfully.

For example, many leaders have dealt with a toxic high performer. You know that the individual needs to be removed, but since they bring value to the business—perhaps sales or certain know-how—you fear loss and retribution. So, you stop short of letting them go, instead hoping they will turn themselves around. The conversation with them will certainly ease your mind—after all, you’ve taken ACTION! —and it might even change the employee’s behavior in the short term. But because you were unwilling to make the hard choice, you’re instead spending your time rearranging deck chairs and hoping for the best.

Key Questions for Leaders:

  • Where have you settled for the easy choice?
  • Which comfort zone decision would be most productive for you to revisit?
  • How can you move past your comfort zone with people decisions? 

Path 3: Doing the Hard, Right Things

This path from the invisible fork in the road sums up your job as a leader. Effective leaders actively, consciously, and routinely trade off short-term costs for long-term rewards. This entails not just making the right choices, but also following through with directed action. If you make the choice but hesitate to act, you’re procrastinating, which brings you back to denial and inaction!

Think back to the example of my technology client’s struggle to upgrade their staff. When I stepped into the conversation, they were at the invisible fork in the road multiplying the complexity of their situation with each “what if” scenario. They were unintentionally conflating the “what will we do?” decision of letting team members go with other components of acting like “when” and “how” should we do it (here’s an article that goes deeper into leadership decision-making). They were setting themselves up to embark on one of the two weaker paths: denial and inaction or the comfort zone.

To take the third, less-traveled path of doing the hard, right things, the team needed to compartmentalize the “why,” “what,” “how,” and “when” of their decision. I guided the conversation to clarify why they needed to take action. From there, we focused on what would be done, which identified the staff to be let go. Finally, we tackled the when and how of executing on their plan. By defining the “what” of the decision without regard to how or when to act, it became much easier for the team to see the right path and commit to it.

As the team talked it out that day, they named their fears and considered all their options. They actively contemplated each of the three paths, and by doing so brought their choice to full consciousness.

This is the key to mastery.

Key Questions for Leaders

  • How effectively are you making hard, right choices and acting on them?
  • How can you compartmentalize the why, what, how, and when of your decisions?
  • Where is your team missing an opportunity to make a hard, right choice?

Conclusion

“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

EVERY choice you make shapes who you are and your future state. You are in control of your path and your progress, but this requires making productive choices. Don’t be the leader who hides their head in the sand or lives in their comfort zone! Rather, identify and confront your fears, get comfortable being uncomfortable, and make the hard decisions. It might not feel great in the moment, but over the long term, you’ll be far more successful.

There’s a scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where Albus Dumbledore puts his hands on the young Harry Potter’s shoulders and says: “There will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.” 

That time is now, for you and for anyone seeking freedom, abundance, and legacy.

=============================================

Take Action to Learn, Grow, and Improve…

Live Online Class – Essential Skills and Tools for Scaling Your Business

Are you ready to beat the odds and scale to significance? Join Mark in Simon Sinek’s live online classroom, and learn proven, sustainable techniques to think more clearly, operate more predictably, and scale your business faster and more profitably. In this highly acclaimed class, you will:

  • Understand how to overcome three significant barriers that derail most growing firms
  • Discover four productive leadership habits that rapidly accelerate growth and success 
  • Master two techniques that dramatically improve the predictability of your performance and results

Upcoming Class: June 27, 2022. Learn more and sign up!

==============================================

Live Online Class – 5 Ways to Create Independent, Empowered Employees

Imagine how great it would be if your employees were more independent, better decision makers, and did the “right things” more often without needing much guidance. Although we intuitively know that these attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and set the stage to create scale, it’s shockingly easy to elicit the exact opposite behaviors from your team.

Join Mark in Simon Sinek’s live classroom! In this class you will:

  • Identify the three research-based keys to creating highly engaged employees.
  • Learn how to overcome the #1 obstacle to clear communication and understanding.
  • Discover how to raise your expectations while creating more engagement and independence on your team
  • Improve your capabilities as a coach to accelerate your team’s growth and capacity.  

Upcoming Class: June 29, 2022. Learn more and register!

==============================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

Performance Dynamics Group, LLC
50 Virginia Key Drive
Union Hall, VA 24176

(732) 537-0381
info@mark-green.com

Pages