Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Aligning Your Team & Vision | Chris McChesney - WSJ Best Selling Author

Transcript

Lessons - Aligning Your Team & Vision | Chris McChesney - WSJ Best Selling Author · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  Get your team to buy in when you have like naysayers on your team as well because that's
• 0:14
  incredibly difficult.
• 0:15
  If you haven't shown the results, they fall to what they've been doing.
• 0:20
  That's right.
• 0:21
  So one thing on that we've realized too is that if you look at an average team, you
• 0:27
  have sort of a spectrum in terms of the, something we call an adoption curve, right?
• 0:32
  So they'll be, let's say we got a team of 10 people.
• 0:36
  This is like a wild generalization, but you'd be surprised how often it's trying to do.
• 0:41
  Okay, okay.
• 0:42
  Right, so you got a team of 10 people and you're trying to do something new.
• 0:45
  You got two of them that are right in there and supporting you right out of the shoots.
• 0:49
  You know more than set it, they would matter, they might have been doing it before you
• 0:52
  set it.
• 0:53
  Okay, those are what we call the models.
• 0:55
  We'd love to model everybody after them.
• 1:00
  Then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got two people, they're not going to do it
• 1:03
  no matter what.
• 1:05
  You know, it may right there, we call those the nevers.
• 1:08
  So you get the models on one end, you get the nevers on the other.
• 1:11
  And then inevitably you've got these six folks in the middle who are the not yet.
• 1:16
  They're not yet there, but they say all the right stuff.
• 1:19
  They're like, yeah, I get why you're doing it.
• 1:21
  I understand it.
• 1:24
  You support what you're doing, Chris, but then they don't do anything.
• 1:27
  All right, so you got, so you got models, not yet and nevers.
• 1:31
  Here's the irony, most leaders fixate on the nevers because they're this visible example
• 1:40
  of what you don't want and they fight with you and they argue with you.
• 1:44
  But the truth is the nevers are no different than the not yet.
• 1:47
  They're all not doing anything.
• 1:49
  Yeah.
• 1:50
  And we fixate.
• 1:51
  And so the first thing we tell leaders is let go of your energy around the nevers.
• 1:57
  They're never coming over, promote them to customers, but don't give that your energy.
• 2:07
  And by the way, and so then the second place that leaders tend to focus after they're done
• 2:11
  focusing on the nevers is they focus on the models because the models are so rewarding
• 2:16
  and they're so exciting to be around.
• 2:18
  And there's such a validation of your great strategies.
• 2:20
  But guess what?
• 2:21
  The models are already doing it.
• 2:22
  There's no opportunity there.
• 2:24
  All your opportunity is with the six.
• 2:26
  Those are the people to get the least amount of attention.
• 2:29
  So one of the mantras that we have an execution on to your question, Scott, is move the middle.
• 2:36
  Don't, right.
• 2:38
  If I got to work with the nevers, I got to deal with human issues and I got to deal with
• 2:42
  why you didn't get the promotion, why I got the promotion, why you didn't get the
• 2:45
  promotion, why you disagree with this, all your gear, like no, like don't give that
• 2:50
  your energy right now.
• 2:52
  Your number one objective is the six people in the middle who could be doing it, who have
• 2:56
  the ability to do it, but are so lost at the day job.
• 2:59
  And that's a great place to start.
• 3:01
  Matter of fact, the same, the same bell curve works across franchises where you have hundreds
• 3:07
  of units working for you, move the middle.
• 3:10
  You're always going to have, we tell leaders this, you are always going to have variability.
• 3:15
  You're always going to have pockets of great performance and you're always going to have
• 3:18
  where, whether you are a Marriott or whether you're the worst hotel company in the world,
• 3:22
  you're going to have great performers and you're going to have variability.
• 3:25
  But leaders, just because you have variability, does not mean you have to accept the shape
• 3:30
  of your curve, right.
• 3:33
  You want to move where you want to be is you want, you want seven modeling, one still
• 3:38
  in the not yet and two nevers.
• 3:41
  You get all the results you can handle with that formula, like that, so that's just,
• 3:46
  it's a mindset around how you tackle those objectives that require that human buy-in.
• 3:53
  But that was a very high level cursory cut, but that makes sense.
• 3:56
  No, it's a good advice.
• 3:57
  It's good advice because I know that that's, there's, there's just speaking from experience,
• 4:03
  like these are the issues that I've dealt with in my career and I see other people struggle
• 4:06
  with leading leaders and getting buy-in.
• 4:10
  We're trying to remove ambiguity.
• 4:11
  We're trying to take on tasks that ambiguity so that everything's clear, everything is
• 4:15
  comforting.
• 4:16
  We see the end result.
• 4:17
  We see the vision.
• 4:18
  So, first of all, how do we do that?
• 4:20
  And then how do we apply Savie's four principles to executing when we have that clear vision?
• 4:25
  So first, how do we get rid of that ambiguity?
• 4:27
  Yeah, so let's do this.
• 4:29
  Let's put up sort of two obstacles and then let's maybe walk through the disciplines.
• 4:34
  So the one obstacle is, it's not that people, we think this, but it's not that people
• 4:39
  necessarily resist change.
• 4:42
  We think people resist change because it looks like they're resisting change a lot.
• 4:46
  What they resist is uncertainty.
• 4:49
  People initiate change quite a bit.
• 4:52
  So it's, it's really unfair to say that it's a human dynamic to resist change.
• 4:55
  What people resist is the uncertainty that often comes with change, okay?
• 4:59
  So if you said uncertainty is sort of one issue and then the, here's the second issue
• 5:06
  that gets in the way of execution.
• 5:07
  And it's, it's urgency.
• 5:11
  It took us a long time to sort of see this.
• 5:13
  This was hiding in plain sight that any goal that you're trying to achieve, any strategic
• 5:20
  priority, anything that's really important will always compete with the day job.
• 5:25
  And we've given the day job a nickname called the whirlwind, right?
• 5:29
  So this day job, this whirlwind always feels urgent, immediate, oh, I've got to get back
• 5:34
  to someone.
• 5:35
  So, oh, I promised I might have that done, oh, I've got to do this.
• 5:37
  Oh, I've still got seven unanswered emails, oh, oh, oh, right.
• 5:41
  And so we're working all day long and you can live in the whirlwind and not move on
• 5:46
  anything strategic.
• 5:48
  And here's the other problem.
• 5:49
  In the moment when a human being is confronted with a choice between something that's happening
• 5:55
  right now or spending energy on something far more important but less urgent, the human
• 6:01
  default does not go to importance.
• 6:03
  The human default goes to urgency.
• 6:05
  This is the great barrier to strategic execution.
• 6:09
  We're not wired for it.
• 6:10
  We are wired for immediacy.
• 6:13
  So you think about those two factors, this resistance to uncertainty and this whirlwind
• 6:20
  of urgency that we have to execute through.
• 6:23
  So if you just think of those two things and then what are the four disciplines?
• 6:28
  All right, well, the first one is called discipline ones, called focus on the wildly
• 6:33
  important.
• 6:34
  And it's a decision that a leader or an entrepreneur or a professional person makes when they say,
• 6:41
  I am going to give something disproportionate energy.
• 6:45
  I'm not going to ignore it.
• 6:46
  It doesn't mean I got to ignore everything else.
• 6:48
  Everything else can go into whirlwind but something's going to get disproportionate energy.
• 6:53
  And I'm going to, and not only am I going to narrow the focus but I'm going to, it's
• 6:56
  a little bit like focusing a camera.
• 6:58
  I'm going to bring it into focus.
• 7:00
  I'm going to give it a starting line.
• 7:01
  I'm going to give it a finish line.
• 7:03
  I'm going to give it a deadline.
• 7:05
  And there's a whole science around how you do that in organizational setting and how you
• 7:09
  do that between levels.
• 7:11
  But that's what the first discipline is all about it.
• 7:13
  The first discipline is all about targeting, getting really clear on, well, let me give
• 7:18
  you a quote.
• 7:20
  I really like this.
• 7:21
  This was something that was said to us 20 years ago by the gentleman who's now the
• 7:25
  president of Chick-fil-A.
• 7:27
  He was VP of operations at the time.
• 7:28
  His name is Tim Tisopoulos.
• 7:30
  And he said, when I meet with a leader, he's got one of the, he got one of the planets
• 7:34
  really good operators, right?
• 7:37
  He said, when I meet with a leader, the first thing I want to know is where is that leader
• 7:42
  putting disproportionate focus, this, where are they spending, like, I don't want to know
• 7:47
  your seven priorities, I want to know number one, I want to know what's your big bet,
• 7:53
  what's your plate right now.
• 7:55
  Otherwise, I know if they don't have that, they're on the defensive.
• 7:58
  They're just, they're just trying to put out fires, right?
• 8:01
  They're putting out fires.
• 8:02
  They just want to get through the week, right?
• 8:04
  And he says, it really helps me know where a leader's head is, and I think that little
• 8:08
  statement started to influence the way we use the discipline.
• 8:11
  So I got, discipline one is about what I'm going after.
• 8:14
  Discipline two is called act on the lead measures.
• 8:17
  So if discipline one is about the principle of focus, discipline two is the principle
• 8:21
  of leverage.
• 8:22
  It basically says, look, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just,
• 8:25
  just identified something that by definition, I can't move.
• 8:29
  Otherwise, I wouldn't have identified.
• 8:30
  I've just deliberately picked this really important thing that's really hard.
• 8:35
  And so if you think about a rock that's too heavy to move, yeah, and then you picture
• 8:40
  a lever, like you get a full crumb, you get a lever under there, right?
• 8:43
  And, you know, what are the characteristics of a lever?
• 8:46
  Well, a lever, unlike the rock, you can move it.
• 8:49
  The lever is influenceable.
• 8:51
  And when the lever moves, the rock moves, so the lever is predictive.
• 8:55
  And so for 20 years, we have been, I had our heads into this idea of where's the leverage.
• 9:01
  Okay?
• 9:02
  So the classic example that everybody gets is weight loss.
• 9:05
  So people know, okay, if losing weight is the heavy rock, I've just not been able to
• 9:11
  accomplish.
• 9:12
  Right?
• 9:13
  Diet and exercise really are the lever, right?
• 9:16
  I could act, I don't always act on them, but I can, right?
• 9:21
  And they're predictive.
• 9:22
  If I stay with it, it works, right, we don't believe it works, but it works, right?
• 9:28
  So it's predictive and influenceable.
• 9:30
  And what we found is that in every field of human endeavor, if you can get the targets
• 9:35
  low enough, down to where the work is happening, you can find leverage points.
• 9:40
  You can find what we call lead measures.
• 9:43
  Now, so a lead measure predictive and influenceables, not the same as a predictive indicator.
• 9:49
  There's one little distinction on this.
• 9:51
  If I was trying to grow corn, right, and crop production was my wildly important goal.
• 10:00
  That's what we call the targets in discipline one.
• 10:01
  We call them wigs or wildly important goals.
• 10:04
  My wildly important goal or my lag measure, right, was crop growth, like similar to weight
• 10:10
  loss, a predictive indicator of crop growth would be rainfall, right?
• 10:16
  We had a lot of rainfall.
• 10:17
  We're going to have a good crop growth.
• 10:19
  Okay.
• 10:20
  Well, you can't control it.
• 10:22
  Okay.
• 10:23
  Very good.
• 10:24
  It's got, right?
• 10:25
  It's predictive.
• 10:26
  But it ain't influenceable, right?
• 10:27
  Lead measures are not predictive indicators.
• 10:28
  Lead measures are true leverage.
• 10:29
  They're influenceable and they're predictive.
• 10:31
  All right.
• 10:32
  So getting, so you might have an organization with eight, nine different teams.
• 10:36
  Each team, we really limit you to one wildly important goal per team, per work group at
• 10:41
  a time.
• 10:42
  This is what we found.
• 10:44
  People can handle the day job plus one, right?
• 10:46
  So they got one way that team has been very involved in creating the lead measures.
• 10:51
  Discipline three now is called keep a compelling scoreboard.
• 10:56
  And it's really about, for me, it's about throwing the game on switch.
• 11:03
  Like that's, to me, that's a, that's a tangible, it's a binary switch when someone goes,
• 11:09
  all right, it's live, game on, right?
• 11:12
  And I engage.
• 11:14
  And the hypothesis that you've created in discipline one and discipline two doesn't put it into
• 11:18
  motion.
• 11:19
  But the minute you go game on, and for us, that's been a scoreboard.
• 11:23
  So we have an app for DX OS that we've got over a half a million people on right now,
• 11:32
  utilizing and in very simple terms, it's not like, it's not like a business scoreboard.
• 11:38
  It's not like a spreadsheet.
• 11:40
  It's not like, well, like a coach, we think of it this way.
• 11:43
  It's not a coach's scoreboard.
• 11:44
  You need those, you have those.
• 11:46
  This is a player's scoreboard, okay?
• 11:49
  So if you think about the scoreboard at any athletic event, it's much more like that than
• 11:54
  it is the spreadsheet they hand the coach at half time.
• 11:56
  So that's discipline three.
• 11:57
  Does the team, can we take what we did in disciplines one and two, and can we make it
• 12:01
  go game on?
• 12:02
  And the discipline four is create a cadence of accountability.
• 12:08
  And that is every week, right?
• 12:12
  Every team that owns a scoreboard, each individual making commitments, and then reporting the
• 12:16
  next week, like in addition to the hundred things I got to do this week, what's the one
• 12:21
  or two things that are going to ensure we do the lead measures?
• 12:25
  Like if my lead measures are diet and exercise, right?
• 12:28
  What would a commitment be?
• 12:29
  We'll do diet and exercise.
• 12:30
  No, no, no, no, we know that.
• 12:33
  My commitment might be it's going to rain next week, so I'm going to get that gym membership
• 12:36
  because I hate running in the rain.
• 12:38
  Or I'm going to go to Whole Foods because I've got these recipes, but I don't have the
• 12:42
  ingredients, right?
• 12:43
  And I've got to, right, I've got to, right, want to make sure that I'm not eating junk
• 12:48
  and that I'm hitting that calorie lead measure.
• 12:50
  So discipline one, get the focus, discipline two, get the leverage, discipline three, game
• 12:55
  on, and then discipline four, if you've ever heard the adage force against leverage,
• 13:01
  that's right, that's applying that force.
• 13:03
  So what we found is by doing that, we're able to drive activities into an otherwise
• 13:09
  schedule of urgency and do it in a way that it doesn't feel overwhelming to people where
• 13:15
  they're like, I don't even know where to start.
• 13:18
  So now we have, breaks it down.
• 13:21
  Yeah.
• 13:22
  So this is the formula to overcome that inherent human need to focus on the urgent and then
• 13:27
  align it with that North Star metric, those business goals.
• 13:30
  This is the formula that allows you to action, it's actionable now.
• 13:34
  All right.
• 13:35
  This is, I like this a lot.
• 13:36
  I like this a lot.
• 13:37
  So this is, this is what you have been working on with organizations to pivot, suggestions.
• 13:43
  Yeah.
• 13:44
  But also, yes.
• 13:45
  But they're lying in the Holy Grail, we've been looking for it for some time.
• 13:49
  Yeah.
• 13:50
  Even working on it for some time, ages, yeah, 20 years, we've been refining, we've been
• 13:56
  refining.
• 13:57
  Remember what I said about Franklin Covey and principles, like these are the principles,
• 14:01
  focus, leverage, engagement, accountability.