Latest / Daily Influence / 665. From Reflection to Responsibility: What 30 Years of S.M.A.R.T. Management Requires of Leaders Now

Transcript

665. From Reflection to Responsibility: What 30 Years of S.M.A.R.T. Management Requires of Leaders Now · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IE Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
• 0:32
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• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, Brian Smith here with the I&Team series and your daily influence and you know this week marks a convergence of milestones for me and for our work Saturday the seventh marked 30 years since individual advantages began and you know a lot of people in the audience may not know but that our official name is individual advantages and IA business advisors was adopted.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, maybe about 10 or so years ago, but it began as not a firm with a master plan, but as a vehicle for learning for curiosity and for understanding how people behave, when the pressure of technology and to do more and change enter their world.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I mean about that is is that it began as a way for us to, you know, analyze what kind of influence technology was having on the behavior of humans in an environment that I was working at the time, which was ERP systems.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And earlier this week, we ran an episode on equity and inclusion, a reminder that growth without humanity isn't progress, especially in the social climate that we're living in today, which is amazingly difficult.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: For almost everybody, I don't care where you sit.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's still difficult.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yesterday, I turned 60.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I started this company before it was really even a company before my 30th birthday.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so today, really isn't about celebrating longevity.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about reflecting on what 30 years of smart management and a lifetime of learning has taught me about
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Growing without breaking myself, growing without breaking organizations, growing without breaking the people in my area of influence, or all of us together and trust me along the way, I have done a lot of breaking, but what I have learned primarily from most.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: of that time spent has been that growth and scaling art the same thing in confusing them causes damage.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can recognize and understand the damage that can be caused because I've lived it.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I'm trying to explore with you today is that,
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Growth is learning scaling is repetition of that learning and you can't have one without the other and When organizations try to do both at once, they multiply what they haven't figured out yet.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: They multiply the breaking.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: They multiply the damage
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we didn't start as a growth company.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: We started as an educational platform for me, supporting my work to eventually get a PhD in organizational psychology.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was a way for me to observe the behaviors of the people that were being influenced by the technology that I was implementing through my work.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was a place for me to get real world testing of what the attempt to scale work was
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And every evolution that I went through, every season that I lived in that evolution taught me something new, taught me something new about myself taught me something new about the humans I was influencing taught me something new about the organizations that they work for and the organizations that I used to do the work.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right about the time I started I.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: A. I had just sold our first company business accounting solutions, which was an ERP and an accounting system integration company to cornerstone consulting group and that evolved because we had a client that I have been working on right before that sale called 3D geophysical and I went to work for that company and it provided me with more access to the data that I was trying to get.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it led us to different iterations.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: All of the people that were involved at the time that IA was doing data collection led to where we're at today, STC, Parsec in Vision.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: All companies I got to be a part of, all of them fed individual advantages are IA, with the kind of information that we needed, the type of learning
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: that we needed before anything could be grown or scaled.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And pain came when learning was rushed.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: We caused a lot of that pain during that process or when we thought things were done.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And look what I learned most of all is that businesses don't fail because they can't grow.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: They fail because they scale answers.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: They haven't yet earned yet.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I threw the process of I.A.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: learned and earned a lot of those lessons.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the most important point is that that learning process is important, that growth is important before you try to scale.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: They look at lead me to also understand that
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: our smart system only works when it becomes a discipline discipline is important in process environments discipline is important in technology environments discipline is important to humans.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not talking about discipline as a corrective answer.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about discipline as a way that we hold ourselves accountable to our actions.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: The framework
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: doesn't make things happen.
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the humans who are disciplined within the framework that make things happen.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: The smart as a checklist is easy, smart as a discipline requires humility, feedback, behavior adjustment, understanding, it requires participation, intentionality, smart evolved,
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Alongside all of this, it started from tools like BitPro to BizVision, which led to smart management, because each stage that we went through revealed new constraints, new understandings, new ways that we evolved, who we were as individuals working in these environments, and it allowed us to bring to the world today where we are at after 30 years.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: smart became how we paused before scaling.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not how we accelerated.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was about slow down.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was about understanding.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was about intentionality.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: The discipline showed up.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: as we measured for readiness instead of ambition.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: How we listened to the breakdowns of feedback loops instead of defending our decisions, and it helped us to rebuild systems that once worked, but that no longer fit.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look as life has evolved, as technology has evolved.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have evolved also.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: we've become more expected.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've wanted things faster.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've taken a lot more things for granted.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what we have done through this evolution as an organization is giving us a framework and a discipline to slow down and move within a safer, more intentional pace.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm very proud of that evolution.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: The idea that we have here in our organization is that framework tells us what we need to do discipline forces us to face whether you're actually ready to do it again and again or not.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: It gives us that interaction between policy procedure and human behavior.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And look, if you want to have sustainable growth like we have here at IA and as I have and others like myself have had in a lifetime of learning and a lifetime of mistakes but on a lifetime of evolution that takes us to positive and responsible influence that it's letting the business and yourself evolve.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: listening to it.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: What makes you successful at one stage of your business might eventually limit you at the next.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: You need feedback loops.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You need intentionality to understand those milestones in those points of clarification.
• 8:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Leadership maturity is learning one to release once worked.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Moving past it and into that new evolutionary area you may find yourself taking a step back and listening to those around you
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: The personal lens that you can really lean into through all this is that we stayed intentionally separate so that we could observe not defend.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: We held ourselves accountable even when we were making mistakes.
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: We looked back on those things.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: We revisited them and we leaned into those lessons and then used those to evolve.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: leadership styles, systems, and, you know, habits, they have expiration dates, ignoring those signals, ignoring those things that are no longer working, it creates friction, it creates chaos, it creates the episodes where we make more mistakes instead of moving forward in a positive way.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: This realization
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It happened and eventually became what we commonly now call the I.M.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: team series.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's where we finally were able to understand and bring together individual responsibility, positive influence, and responsible leadership in these complex systems.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And how this evolution is continuously being fed and is continuously moving us into continuous improvement.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sustainable growth for us and for myself hasn't been about holding on about grasping and surviving.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about knowing what to let go of sooner, knowing when and how evolution is influencing us and listening to the present moment and how it's giving us that feedback, how it's giving us that direction, and being emotionally
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: with that moment and allowing it to help us to evolve with ourselves and with everything that we've brought around us at this time.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So look 30 years in the lesson isn't about speed.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not about scale and it's not even about the recognition that I've talked about.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about discipline before scale.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about clarity before speed.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's about learning before repetition.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look as we move forward as advisors, as an author, as leaders, as individuals.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our responsibility isn't just to help our businesses grow.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's to help them grow without
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I've learned that lesson the hard way, breaking the people inside.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: While that belief has shaped our past, it also shapes how we advise today and in the future and helps us to not break the people, how to grow and to scale in the most responsible and positive way we can.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's the influence we choose to carry forward day to day.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope that
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: sharing what this journey has been like these last 30 years for us here at IA can help you to take a step back and understand where you're at and your personal journey and your organization's journey and help you to influence in your area of influence the most positive and responsible way possible.
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining me today on individual influence and thank you for those of you
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: through all of the different seasons of our last 30 years of evolution and help us be the company we are today.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I look forward to seeing you again soon on Daily Air Force.