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Podcast #8 - CLEAR Performance Coaching - How To Improve Performance - CLARITY · CLEAR Performance Coaching

• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is where leadership performs.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you can step in and show up on purpose every day.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome back to another episode of Clear Performance Coaching.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_04: My name is Rick Timlick.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Sam Bracken.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm Kent Vaughn.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: And today we're going to dive a little deeper.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_04: If you heard and stuck with us through the last episode, we talked about improving performance.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_04: And it's something we've all spent decades and decades working with organizations on.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_04: We want to deep dive into improved performance, specifically around clarity.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_04: You know, clear goals have five rules.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_04: We'll talk about what those are.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_04: But when we talk about clarity, it is the what you're going to accomplish.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_04: And we want to make sure that is so clear that no one can misunderstand it, that they can name those five rules directly.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_04: And just as a bit of a watch, the goal should be committed to, aligned with team priorities, and within your control.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: So I kind of gave a little broad setup.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_04: We want to dive right away into it.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_04: Sam, tell us about it.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so here's the interesting thing.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: We have found that everybody, every employee deserves to have a great leader.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: And the first thing that a great leader does with an employee is establishes and co-creates a goal with them.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: Clarity around a gutsy goal, some kind of goal that makes you slightly uncomfortable, something, some aspirational thing that you're going after is really, really critical for people to make progress and to create a culture of challenge and engagement, right?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: And we, over the years, we've created five rules that these goals need, right?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: Five rules for gutsy goals.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: So when you're talking about a goal, right, having a clear gutsy goal, the first rule for a clear gutsy goal is to own it.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't do you any good if it's a goal that you have no control over.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: If you can't own it, you can't actually make it happen, right?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: I see oftentimes people will have a goal that they have nothing to do with, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: So if I'm a salesperson and my goal is to affect the quality manufacturing of the product, like that's misaligned, right?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: So you need to own something that's in within your control, your sphere of influence, and your control.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: Ownership is cheap.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you don't have a sense of ownership, like you won't be, you won't be committed to it.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: So owning it, actually having it be within your direct control to achieve is the first rule for a gutsy goal, right?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: The second rule is aligning the goal.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: Now, professionally, you know, the people that report to you, their goals need to be aligned to you.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: Your goals need to be aligned to your boss, and your boss's goals need to be aligned to the top of the organization, right?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: So this idea of alignment is really important.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: But when you look at goals in organizations, like what oftentimes you see balls of yarn and just some kind of confusion, and that you don't have this proper alignment, right?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: Because when you have good alignment, it really, really helps goal achievement, right?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: Alignment in behavior, alignment in understanding what the goal is, what it's not, what you're saying yes to, what you're saying no to.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: This idea of alignment is really, really critical.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: And your personal life, your goals need to be aligned with your values, right?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: In your professional life, your goals probably need to be aligned with some kind of key performance indicator, a KPI, that you are responsible for and that you own, right?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's the second idea for a Gutsy goal, right?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: The second rule for a Gutsy goal.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: The third rule is to map it.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: The third rule is to map it.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: Now, when we say map it, we mean every goal needs a start line, a finish line, a deadline, some gap.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_03: It needs to be mapped and gapped.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: Now, here's why it needs to be gapped.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: Because psychologically, your subconscious wants to close the gap.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: So if I say my goal is to lose some weight, I need to lose weight, versus I say I need to go from 290 pounds to below 265 pounds by August 2026.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: I got my gap.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: And if I know I gotta lose that weight, then I can break it down, I can do this, the math on it, that means I gotta lose a couple pounds a week over the next four months, right?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: Then I know what I gotta lose, and I understand the rules of the game.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: But if you don't gap it and map it, you won't understand when you achieve it.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: So this idea of mapping it, gapping it, really, really matters.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: When we were at Franklin Covey, we used to say, from go from X to Y by when, some time frame, right?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: You own it, you align it, you map it, then you need to reinforce it.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: You need to talk about it all the time.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: It needs to be in the top of your mind.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: It may be in the back of your mind.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: In the front of your mind is the behavior that you need to do to accomplish the goal, but in the back of your mind, you need to always understand where the goal is and where you're at in comparison to the goal.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: This is the idea of I know the kind of progress I'm making.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: So this is reinforcing it.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then finally, the final rule for a Gutsy goal is to check it.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: Now, when we say check it, we mean look at your thinking, look at the analytics, look at the data, right?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: Make sure that the data is on your side.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: If you have a goal to produce a certain amount of output, and you don't look at the data and you say, okay, I want to double that, well, that may be realistic or not realistic.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: Look at the data and say, well, the best we've ever done is X.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe if we do a little bit better than X, that might be helpful.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: But if you don't look at the data, you'll be blind.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: So look at the facts and set your goal from facts.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then you look at your emotions.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: That's your heart.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: You check it with your heart.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: Now, if you don't feel good about it, you got the wrong goal.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: So you need to understand it, you need to see a path to it in the data, then you got to feel good about it.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you feel like crap about it, you'll never have the energy to actually do what you need to do.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: So you need to emotionally feel good about it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: And then the third thing is you need to check it with your conscience, with your gut, right?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: Your head, your heart, and your gut.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: And if you feel good, you got a green light on all three of those things around the goal, then you're good to go.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: You're good to go.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: Review of the rules for Gutsy Goals are that you own it, you align it, you map it, you reinforce it, and you check it.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: So usually what we found is if you pay the price to get as clear as you possibly can get in every aspect of your goal achievement, just by doing that one thing, you'll get a bump between 10 and 15 percent of performance just when you have a goal, right?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: Just that one thing.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: And we're not even finished with clear yet, just by having a clear notion of what you're trying to accomplish.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: It just automatically moves you closer towards improving performance.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: I almost want to say, and that's a wrap.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, yeah.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_04: It was perfect, and you framed like all of it very well.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_04: We're talking about the the clear goal system and the five rules that really make that work.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_04: And we're gonna dive into each of these.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_04: You know, the way I think about the clear goals is most people don't fail because they lack desire, they fail because the goal's still foggy.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_04: And I know, Kent, you've got a great story about that.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: In one of our books, we wrote a book, uh, a story, we added a story, I was really sure about Florence Chadwick.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Florence Chadwick was this world-renowned swimmer back in the 1940s, 1950s.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: None of us were around then when she's doing all the swimming.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: But in 1952, on the 4th of July, she set out to swim from Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California, 22 miles to the California coast.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Really no big deal because she had actually swum the English Channel both directions.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: First woman to ever do that.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: So she was renowned for doing these kinds of things.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think the channel is actually a little more than 22 miles.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, the day she began swimming on the 4th of July, it's very foggy, rainy, windy, not unusual on a day like that for it to be like that.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone assumed that eventually the fog would lift.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, mile after mile, hour after hour, the fog never lifted.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: And in 1952, the only navigation they had was really interstellar.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: She certainly didn't have radar.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't have any other kind of navigation system, didn't have bite, and so she just couldn't tell how far she was going.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was cold, it was frigid, it was rainy, and there were sharks everywhere.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's literally a boat following her that had guns, rifles shooting at the sharks, keeping away.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And in about 15 hours, she said to her mother, who was in a boat next to her, I don't know if I can make this.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Oh, you've done you've done more than this before.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, at 15 hours and 55 minutes, the fog has not lifted, and she finally said, I'm done.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I can't see it, I don't know where we are, pull me out of the boat.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: She got in the boat, headed to the coast, and realized they were a little less than a mile from the coast.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: And as she walked out of the water, there were people there waiting to interview her from the news, and she said, Hey, I'm not trying to, you know, make excuses, but if I could have seen it, I could have made it.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what we're talking about.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we can end the story there, but let's just fast forward to Labor Day weekend that same year, a couple months later, she starts swimming on exactly the same kind of day.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: The weather doesn't actually ever get better that day.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: But at 13 hours and 47 minutes, she walked out onto the beach and she's interviewed by the same newscaster saying, Well, what was a few months ago when she said, She said, In my mind, I never lost sight of the goal.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: In my mind, I never lost sight of the California coast.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I just kept thinking about it, vision in my mind, I've been on this coast, I walked down that coast two months ago, I'm gonna do it again today, I'm not gonna have it fail doing it this time.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And really, that's what we're talking about is in spite of all the fog, all the morass of things going on, the insanity, you keep your mind riveted on, okay, but what is that thing that we're going to go after no matter what?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I love it.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great example of the power of vision.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, really being clear on the vision.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I was just gonna add again, you know, from my perspective, some of the neuroscience behind that.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I mentioned last time that your brain can't execute on a blurry target.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_04: And the reason is we know the rules to succeeding in a goal, but they reside in our prefrontal cortex, right?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_04: So the rules are up here in my mind.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_04: And when the target's clear, the brain's got a better shot at filtering all of the noise and organizing my behavior around what matters.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_04: So she had sharks, she had all kinds of things going on, but the end line wasn't in sight, and so therefore, she moved back into her brain about all the reasons why she couldn't.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's a great story.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_04: You know, when we dive into some of these rules, and I think it's important to do that.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_04: That first rule of ownership.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_04: I can't tell you, Sam Kent, how many times I've come across leaders that weren't at the very top but said, My goals were just given to me.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_04: I was just told this year, here's what I'm gonna execute on.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm telling you, the commitment towards that is pretty thin.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: Because they weren't involved.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: They weren't involved.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and you know, I agree 100% with that.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Being in no involvement, no commitment.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: But here's what I also think is there are a lot of organizations that get stuck like that, right?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: You're in the middle and you want to differentiate yourself.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, what what I think you have to do with your team is say, hey, listen, here's the mountain we have to climb.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't get to decide that.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: But what we do get to decide is how we're going to climb it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: But how we're going to work together and how we're going to be successful.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that is tremendous because now we're setting our goals within the context of the goal or the KPI, et cetera.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're taking back control of our lives, and we're not saying we don't have control.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: We may not have control of identifying that the overall company goal is to improve patient satisfaction 18% this year, or grow sales by 22%.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or what I may not have control of that.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: But what I absolutely do have control over is how well we're going to do it as a team and what we're going to do together.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: So would love the idea of being involved and being committed.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: But when you get something handed to you and you don't have control of that, you do have absolute control about your mindset about it and what are we going to do about it versus giving off and saying, well, we don't have control, so we just do the best we can.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're not we are not going to do the best we can.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to do better than we can.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because together, resources, it's amazing what we can do when we're locksteps together on this.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_04: I love this.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_04: To me, what you said is the attitude of ownership is just as much important as the kind of creation of what you're owning.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: So from a coaching perspective, we need to, as we work with our people, we need to pull the goals out of them and things that they feel a sense of control over, they feel a sense of ownership around, and it needs to be informed, right, by the company's key performance indicators or whatever, whatever the metrics the company has.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: But they need to have a sense of ownership and control.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: If they don't, they're just going to say, it wasn't my fault.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: They're just going to blame someone else when they fail.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: So but for them to take complete accountability, they have to own it.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: So later in our process with CLEAR, it's key that they they have a goal that they actually can impact, or that they I guess the best way to say this is they think they can impact.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's the thinking that you can control the outcome, which is really the most important part of this.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you think you can control the outcome, if you think that you have free will and that you can really impact this goal, that's most of the battle.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: Is your the way you frame and think about the challenge?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's really, really critical.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_04: I agree.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_04: People work harder and persist longer when the goal feels personally meaningful rather than just externally pressured.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_04: So absolutely right.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_04: So when we own it, now we've got to dive into how do we get into an alignment?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_04: And and I'll kind of set that up.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's funny when I think of strategic direction.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_04: How many companies that I know go from vision all the way down to deployment, and they forget the alignment piece.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_04: All of these things need to work in harmony together in order to achieve the vision.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was just thinking about what I see again and again in organizations, we've all seen this, is a part of alignment is the why.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Why are we doing this?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it important?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Leaders seem to think, well, we lay out the goal there, and people automatically get why this is important and why we ought to be working on it, right?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think an important part of that really is making sure people are really clear about what is the goal and why is it important to us, right?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's an important part of alignment.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's really clear about why we need to be doing this.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of times people get stuck in a little part of the process.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not stuck, but they're part of the process, and they don't see the bigger picture.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then when they see the bigger picture, they go, Oh, now I know why I need to put these seven bolts to attach this catalytic connection system onto the engine, not just six bolts, right?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now I get why this creates a problem, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so a big part of this is really helping people understand and getting to the to the crux of, well, why is this important?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Why should we chair?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: What are the impacts if we don't do this?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when you talk about alignment, it's really important when you're talking about a project goal, like a project plan, right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: That the milestones that are added together to achieve the project's completion, right, those milestones need to be aligned.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: If you have teams in different parts of the world all working on different portions of a project, get it completed, right?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: If they're not aligned, at the end of the timeline, you don't achieve the goal, right?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: So understanding where you fit in the organization's objectives is really critical, a real critical part of your empowerment and your ability to achieve your objectives is that just this understanding of where we're at, how critical it is, how important it is, and it connects with owning it.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: So, right, so if you have the proper alignment, it's easier to own it.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: And what I see in organizations a lot is that the goals won't be aligned.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: If you share different functions, they have different goals, and no one's looking at how the goals can work together to have the whole unit succeed.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so this can be really challenging if you have a lot of leaders that don't work together and their pride and egos are getting in the way, and they're not aligned in their objectives.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: So it needs to really be dialed in from the top down and the bottom up, but top down, bottom up, we need to have pure alignment all the way up and all the way down.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: And just that one thing by aligning, by aligning the various departments and functions so it all works together to achieve a greater goal can have a gigantic impact on a company's ROI, net income, and performance over time.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, hugely, hugely.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_04: You know, when I think of alignment, you know, to me it's funny there's lots in this change management, change leadership space, you know, the pro side, the ad car model, all of these thinking.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_04: But to me, all of it really is about in reducing that internal friction in organization.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_04: That's exactly what you're talking about, Sam.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_04: You know, all the things that are going to get in the way of us achieving what it is we want to set out to achieve.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_04: It's that that alignment piece.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: Reduce friction.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: Alignment acts as a lubricant to make things run fast.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: To run fast.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Great idea.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: A video popped up that I was looking for about this, and we've heard about this before.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: It happened many times in the world.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Croatia, Caramba, other places where they build a bridge from both sides of the river at the same time and it doesn't meet in the middle.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Once it was off a little up, you know, horizontal once it's off a little vertically, right?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the same thing happen where where we think we're aligned, and when we get together, we're not aligned.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And when a bridge doesn't, when you're off a foot and you know, horizontally or vertically, you've got real problems on this.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's happened 60 times in the world.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: You think, oh, that's never happened.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's actually happened more than once.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: China, Karamba, Croatia.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the list goes on of where this has happened over the years.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know, from a behavior standpoint, alignment's really important.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: I like to talk about people who fail to produce the required results.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: I like to talk about instead of them being like worthless turds, right?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: I like to talk, I like to talk about them in terms of they're just misaligned in their activities to get to go.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: They're just misaligned.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: They're not understanding how they can be aligned, how their performance and their behavior can be aligned with the goal to achieve it.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: So alignment works organizationally, but it also works individually.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: Are you aligned to do what's best for you, what's best for your boss, what's best for the people that work with you?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: Are you aligned in your values?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: Are you aligned in your competency to achieve the outcomes?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like alignment can say a lot here.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: We could say a lot about it.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: But it's really important.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and let's move on to kind of the third rule: map it.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_04: And I really I've always loved what you said.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_04: Map it and then gap it.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_04: It just sticks out so strong to me.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_04: But mapping it, this is where the goal gets translated into an actual path, right?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_04: Like, and now I can see where it is I'm trying to get to.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_04: And it's you used the weight loss example, and I'm on that weight loss journey.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_04: And that was exactly it.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_04: Like, prior to getting clear, prior to putting that map down, I just knew how I felt and I wanted to feel different.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_04: But wanting to feel different did not propel any behavior change in order to go after my target.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_04: And as much as I wanted to feel better, I wanted to feel more energy, I did nothing.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_04: But when it was clear to me, when I said, I want to go from, you know, I'm 220 and I want to get down to under 200, and I wanted to do it by September, and you know, I have some other, you know, almost performance metrics.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I'm gonna go three, four times a week because that's the type of person that I want to be that goes regularly, and then instantly I'm in the gym.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_04: Now I'm hurting, I'm sore, I'm tired, but the next day didn't matter because it was loaded in my map.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: So there's something funny about the way our minds work around a gap.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: What I love about having a clear goal with a clear map is your brain with sees the gap and it works.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: Your conscious brain, right?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's where a lot of your energy, you know, requires you to do the day to day work you do, is found in your frontal lobe.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: And your conscious mind is working on things.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: And at the end of the day, you're tired.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: But if you map it and gap it right, what you do is you integrate your subconscious brain, right?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: So your subconscious brain starts working in addition to your conscious brain.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it puts you on a superpower.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: It gives you a superpower so you can achieve the objective a lot more.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then you naturally are moving toward the objective because you understand the gap.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: And then if you add quick wins to that, in other words, you lose two pounds.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: You lost two pounds this week.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then you're like, oh, I can do it.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: I can lose 20.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: I can do it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I can.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: And then you just keep going.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then you and you, of course, need to track it and measure it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: But mapping it makes it easier to track.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like you look when we started this podcast, you said something very interesting.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: You said vague, vague goals, right?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: The fog hurts more people than almost anything else.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: Vague understanding around the desired outcome really is the enemy.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: And the more you map it and gap it, the more clear you get on the outcome.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I agree.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_04: And only just say, you know, a goal without a map is like a wish with a deadlight.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_04: That's true.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: Or hope without a strategy, or you know.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, any of those.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_04: Kent, what's your thoughts on Map It?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's simple to say, hard to do sometimes.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we don't know how to do it.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so then we find people that are doing it, right?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Who's doing it well?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: What are they applying?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it may not even have to be in our same industry.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: The age-old story about Henry Ford before he opened his first manufacturing plant.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: He'd built cars before and failed and lost and had to declare bankruptcy, actually.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: But when he opened that first plant, before he did, he was visiting a friend who had just opened a meat packing plant.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And the meat packing plant, they brought insides of beef and it went on a chain, and every few feet was the butcher at a different table to cut off the one board, right?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then he thought, that's what I've been missing because before building cars was just all on a big table, right?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so by having now a platform that went through and everybody did their little piece, it was amazing how they were able to bring down the price of the car.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because that was actually his goal.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted a model tea in every single person's home, at everyone everyone's home, right?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_04: And so you can have any color as long as it was black.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, any color as long as it's black, right?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: And hey, a black car was better than no car, right?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so by having that goal out there to lower the price and make it affordable for every family, and then by mapping it in a new way, which he didn't know what it was going to be like.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: So he was searching, searching, searching, and that's where he was the father of the assembly line, right?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you like Henry Ford or not, that was this big idea.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it didn't come out of his own brain.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: It came out of something else being successful and saying, Oh, I can apply those ideas here.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: So there are the books, the stories, the examples, the podcasts, or legion to help you, the people that have people that have tried to do what you're doing, or something similar.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_04: Now, our fourth rule is to reinforce it.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, our clear system treats performance as a process, not an event or process, depending on where you are.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_04: And it keeps goals alive through repeated attention, commitments, routines, follow-up.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_04: Like it has to be real.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_04: And if it's real, you're going to reinforce it.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: Tell us more about that.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think what we do so often, we see this in organizations of all sizes.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: We lay out these plans at the beginning of the year, and we we often call them strategic plans, and we have maybe even sub goals, and then we don't look at them again for months or months or months.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we pull out that dusty binder 11 months later at the end of the year to look at it.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so people, you know, years ago we went to quarterly reviews, and then monthly reviews became kind of rigor about 15 or 20 years ago.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: We love the idea of weekly or daily review reinforce.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Every week, even in some cases, in some jobs, that needs to be every day.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, what did we do about this today?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Go.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if it didn't go well, what are we going to do differently?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: I uh there's a great leader at a plant that we work with a lot, and she has been very successful.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when her team has a bad day, at the end of the day, she doesn't let people go home.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: She said, What do we wait about?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Wait a minute.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: She got out of those 50 people to the team center and says, Okay, what didn't go well, let's just kind of talk it out.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: In a minute or less, let's just whine, complain what didn't go well.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then what will we do differently tomorrow?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: What are we gonna do differently tomorrow?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I never want people to leave thinking, oh, this is terrible.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: We can't figure this out, we can't do this.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: So for her, it's every shift at the end of the shift, quick review.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: What how do we win?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: How do we lose?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: What will we do better tomorrow?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you know what?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then she'll say very simply something like this.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have great confidence in you.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen how well you've done in the past.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: We'll figure this out tomorrow.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: We are, and she'll say the company name, right?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's amazing the success she has had as a leader because of that simple idea of reinforcing it, checking it, and on her case, a daily basis.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Some jobs it's an hourly basis.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: But for sure, if you're going more than a week of reinforcing and checking, you wonder are we doing that on that?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: You know, one of the things I like about reinforcement in the spirit to add to what Kent's talking about is this notion that you can chunk it down.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of times when you have a big goal and it's a yearly goal, people don't do the math.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: They don't chunk it down in a way that they can reinforce it quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: So part of reinforcing it is understanding if you have a big goal that you want to accomplish in a year, is understanding how you're making progress on a daily and weekly and monthly basis toward that goal.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of that, a lot of that comes from being able to have that in your mind, having it occupy your brain, right?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and if you got to be careful here, because if it's the big goal for the whole year and you're thinking about it on a daily basis, that can be demoralizing.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: But if you've chunked it down and you say, if I just get a little bit better every day, and today I get this done, tomorrow I get that done, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, reinforcing it that way, at the end of a year, you'll exceed your objective, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: But most people don't do the math.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: They don't do the math and chunk it down so they can actually actively reinforce it in a way that's realistic and where people feel like they can own it and they feel like they can achieve it.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: So that's to me is part of reinforcement as well.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, my my only thought on that, and and Kent, we talked about our client that is at uh 70% participation rate, we recognize the goodness that's in that.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_04: But also, I'd say, like, what's not reinforced gets replaced.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_04: And so if we're not reinforcing it, people are gonna replace that activity with what's loudest, most urgent, what's most pressing.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_04: And so we've got to keep coming back to that reinforced piece saying, I know this feels maybe less than the urgency, but here's why it's important, and we've got to stay that course.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_04: And that's a leader's game all the time to keep reinforcing, otherwise, it's gonna get replaced.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_04: Now we're at our fifth kind of rule.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_04: This is the check it.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_04: And I love how you mentioned the head, the heart, and the hands-like all in kind of checking it.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's the discipline of asking whether the goal is still clear, is it still owned?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_04: Is it still aligned?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_04: Is it still moving?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_04: And in our deck, we've got that question that fits well.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_04: How committed are you to your clear goals?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_04: And is the goal aligned to your values?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_04: So that to me, that's the head, the heart, and then the hands part.
• 29:52
  unknown: Right.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: So if it doesn't make sense in your brain and you don't feel good about it, and then your conscience, you know, which maybe is where your free will, your hands, which is like the the action it leads to, if you're not keeping that in the forefront, right, it's not going to happen.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you dread the behavior that you have to do to accomplish the goal, you won't do that with positive energy, and it's much less likely you'll accomplish the goal.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: So to control your thinking about the goal, to keep your fuel and your emotions full, right?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: Can't give from an empty cup, and then to let your conscience or your hands drive you to the right action makes all the difference.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: And even though it sounds simple, this is the hardest part of going of having your guts and goals, it makes sense all the way around.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: No matter how you look at it, you feel excited about it and you feel good about it.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_04: Kent, what do you think?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it goes it really all goes all the way back to this idea of vision and why, right?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: If we can keep that in our head, why are we doing this?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: What are where is it we're trying to go?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: What are we trying to do?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: It helps you stay motivated and doing the things that that gets you there, right?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: And checking, you know what it's it's funny, the the scale doesn't lie, right?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: You get on the scale, did you lose weight or not, right?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, it I heard Stephen Covey years ago, he was teaching a group and he was talking about push-ups.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how you got on this topic about push-ups, and he said, Can you fake 25 push-ups?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you think about it, you can't fake 25 push-ups.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can either do them or you can't do them, but there's no faking it, right?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like you may not go all the way down, but if you can't do that motion, there's no faking 25 push-ups, right?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's can we do them or not?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's I continue to check, can I do the 25 push-ups?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Am I doing 30?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Am I doing 40?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is you're trying to do, right?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I love the idea of reinforcement, but also positive reinforcement.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: What I have found over the years, and I'd love to hear you guys' perspective on this.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: When people fail, do they know they failed, or is it oh, I had no idea that was a problem, right?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: So many times people actually know they failed.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: They know they didn't make the cut, they didn't get it done.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what they need from us is not grinding on them as Sam says sometimes, or castigating them.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's to say, hey, I got confidence.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna do differently now?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now what are you gonna need this week?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: I can't go back and change that.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Can't change even what I did five minutes ago.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: But where are we going from here?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: So kind of some ways level set every week or every day or whatever, okay.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now what now what are you gonna do?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that because sometimes people just give in, give up, and walk away, right?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: And either they quiet quit or they literally leave and may not be good in either case.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this idea of kind of positive accountability, positive reinforcement, saying you can do this, I've seen you do this before because you've done this, I got I've convicted you can do that.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think that works well.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to get YouTube's perspective on how you've seen that done well or not.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I've been watching, I think it's called The Dance, and it's about the Michael Jordan story with my youngest daughter, who's you know, herself turning into a great basketball player.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, to your point, how many people have said Michael's hard?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_04: Like Michael's very hard, and and and he owns that.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_04: His feedback is critical, but and and yet he justifies too.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_04: He says, if you find me hard in practice, you're not gonna be there in the finals.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_04: Like the finals will be too hard for you.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_04: And then the other thing he says, and I never ask a teammate to do something that I'm not doing myself.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_04: So for him, if he's not the fastest running lines, he's failed his team.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_04: If he is not the first there and the last to leave, he's failed, right?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_04: So that high standard and high accountability, you know, to your point, could he have been gentler?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_04: That might have made a little bit of a difference, but he also set the bar, like he gave clear feedback, he owned it, he had intentionality.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the expressions I like to say is people don't drift into excellence, it's not an accident, right?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_04: They drift when they stop checking, they stop looking for that feedback.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, as I think through like this this idea of clarity around a gutsy goal, and as we sort of come to a close here, I just love the more clear you can be on the goal, the greater the likelihood of it you achieving that goal.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: And these five rules help you get that clarity.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's why we say if you can't see it, you can't do it, because the power of vision, and the clearer, the more clear you are on the vision by owning it, aligning it, mapping it, reinforcing it, and checking it, that helps you get a clear picture.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: And the fog goes by by, and all you're seeing is the beautiful sun, and you're seeing a path, and then that gets you closer to it.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: And you can keep that vision in the forefront of your mind.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: Everything else becomes easier, even the hard work becomes easier because you know the desired outcome that you want because it's clear.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's a great way to close.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_04: What a good capstone.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we've talked all around clarity and the five rules that make clear happen.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_04: Next, we're gonna get into leverage.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_04: So we hope you stay tuned for us.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_04: We're really gonna dive into how do we get the behaviors around us to actually make our goals happen.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_04: And with that, thank you, everybody.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_03: Have a great one.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: Have a great week.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: See ya.