Randy Cantrell

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I’ve been putting audio online since 1997. Podcasting since it first began. Over a decade ago I created The Yellow Studio, a home office and podcasting studio. When I assembled the studio I had two options of workflow: recording or broadcasting. I choose to go the broadcasting route because I didn’t want to do a bunch of post-production work, meaning I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time editing. The broadcast workflow is like live radio. You do the work upfront, preparing before you ever hit record. It’s live broadcasting without an audience…until you release your recording.

To do a broadcast workflow required more money. The equipment was largely intended for radio stations because…well, they’re in the broadcasting business. It’s hardware-intensive to do it the way I’ve done it for years. And the hardware ain’t cheap, but it lasts and lasts and lasts.

I’ve got 5 pieces of gear in my equipment rack. I’ve got the main mixer and a side mixer. And who knows how many feet of cabling. The cabling and connectivity is nightmarish. But when I created the studio there was simply no other option if you wanted to create a broadcast workflow, which was a non-negotiable for me.

Through the years a number of solutions have been offered by various manufacturers, but none have checked all the boxes of what a seasoned podcaster might want or need. None have made me envious enough to ditch my current set up because they haven’t simplified things enough to warrant me dismantling my set up, selling my existing stuff and reworking things. None have been simple and straightforward enough to give me the benefits I want and let me maintain or better yet, simplify my longtime workflow. Until now…

There’s at least one product coming out this month – after years of others trying – that may just do the job. We’ll see. I’m going to be watching it very closely to see if it will do what I’ve been longing for for years.

Simplicity is a common theme around here. So is innovation. They go hand in hand.

Most of us own and operate businesses that are not on the bleeding edge of technology. We typically don’t have billion dollar R&D labs cranking out a variety of potential game changers. I read over the weekend that the CEO of Novartis announced a new drug, which goes by the name AVXS-101. It saves lives of kids with a deadly disease called spinal muscular atrophy. It takes only one injection of the drug, but it costs $4 million for that one dose. Talk about innovating for simplicity – one injection, done. Cha-ching, FOUR MILLION DOLLARS.

I can be easily obsessed with simplicity because it’s a great weapon against customer or client friction. Take my podcasting challenge. Two mixers, five or more pieces of hardware and lots of cabling. Lots of friction for me, but when there are few (or no) options, you do what you have to do. Most of us operate businesses where we’ve got plenty of competition. Our customers won’t likely tolerate any more friction than necessary to get what they want.

Do It For Your Customers

We’re not innovating for any other reason. The goal to simplify things is so we can make it easier for our customers to buy from us. And easier for them to benefit from whatever we do for them. Plus it’s far more pleasant an experience.

Think about the basic customer experiences of contacting customer service. Let me pick on one of my all-time favorite bad customer experience companies, DIRECTV. They’re world-class in pathetic customer service. From complicated pricing where they love to inch up your bill every few months. To their woefully poor phone customer service where you have to jump through hoop after hoop to simply get something done. They seem to intentionally build in resistance (friction) everywhere they can. It’s evident they believe by making things more complex they’ll pad their profits. Banking on customers to not scrutinize a monthly bill and the loss of a discount, they seem to figure customers will just blindly pay the increased bill, giving them higher profits. Maybe so. But it won’t be enough to overcome the loss of customers who simply walk away.

DIRECTV continues to lose customers to their traditional service. It’s only overcome by the addition of customers to their streaming service. I’m a customer and I can attest that the experience has always been terrible, but like my podcasting studio…I’m just waiting for the time when I can kick them to the curb. I’ve got my eye solidly set on 2019 for making that happen and I’ve been a DIRECTV customer from the beginning. My loyalty is non-existent though because they make doing business with them so difficult.

What About You?

Do you have complexities where they don’t need to be?

Do customers have to jump through hoops to do business with you?

Dig into every place (every possible way) where you can innovate for simplicity so your customers can benefit?

You should experience the complexity instead of making your customers experience it. Many businesses do it in reverse. Like DIRECTV, too many companies focus on how they can make their own lives or businesses more profitable or easier when they should understand the path to success is making everything as easy as possible for the customer.

Win the customer by making it easy. Every industry and business can do this better.

Car dealers, why does it take 4 hours for a customer to buy a car from you?

Furniture dealers, why does it take 2 days for a customer to get their purchase delivered?

Gas stations, why can’t you make sure there’s windshield cleaner liquid in every dispenser and paper towels? And while you’re at it, paper in the receipt printer?

We run into snags everywhere we look. In every industry. I’m challenging you to be the leader in your industry to make things simple. Innovate for simplicity!

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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I live in Dallas/Ft. Worth. This is a pro sports town. This season it’s a pro sports town with 3 sensational rookies, representing 3 different sports.

Dallas Cowboys rookie linebacker Leighton Vander Esch. Age 22. The National Football League.

Dallas Mavericks rookie Luka Doncic. Age 19. The National Basketball Association.

Dallas Stars rookie Miro Heiskanen. Age 19. The National Hockey League.

These professional athletes aren’t merely serviceable, they’re outstanding. Leighton Vander Esch played college football for Boise State. He was good, but at the NFL level, he’s great.

Luka with the Mavericks basketball team is a seasoned veteran having played against grown men much of his life, but at the NBA level, he’s fearless, unintimidated and spectacular.

Miro is from Finland where he’s had extensive hockey experience, but at the NHL level, he’s as confident and capable on the ice as anybody.

Three very young, inexperienced (at least at their current level of competition) players who are proving as successful or MORE SO at these highest levels of their sports.

Local sportscasters and sports talk show hosts have marveled at these young athletes playing at such high levels in their first years as professionals in the most competitive leagues in the world. Some have wondered how it’s possible, noting that as good as they were at lower levels of play — they’re even better now.

You just never know.

198 players were selected in the 2000 NFL draft ahead of Tom Brady. At pick number 199 Brady barely cracked the top 200 of players drafted that year. He’s a surefire Hall of Famer, having played 18 seasons at the highest levels possible in his sport. Who knew? Well, everybody knows now.

We know what we know. We think what we think. And what we think is our reality.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been fascinated with the human brain, how we think and how it shapes our reality. I’m no expert, but I think we can all agree that our future reality begins in our how mind. First, we think it. We believe it. Then we behave, act and make decisions according to those beliefs. Our actions bring about the results to make what was once just an idea, thought or belief a reality. It’s more complex than that, but from my simpleton’s point of view that pretty much sums it up.

It means that our ability to excel at the next level – whatever the next level may be for us, or our business – depends largely on our belief that we can excel at the next level. The three rookies here in Dallas have extraordinary skills, but their skills appear more obvious at this highest level than they did even at lower levels. In other words, they seem better at this level. It’s like this toughest of environments is where they shine most.

It begs the questions, “What if you could perform even better at a higher level? What if there are significantly higher levels of performance in your future, but you can only access them if you truly believe you can do it?”

Daily conditioning over the years of our life impacts us. We have a vision of who and what we are. It can very hard to overcome. A man making $40K a year dreams of making $50K, but having never made that much money he can’t truly see himself making that much. So he doesn’t. Sure, it’s more complicated than that, but if he can’t see it or believe it, then the details don’t much matter. Replace those numbers with much bigger numbers and you’ve got the same phenomenon happening. People making $150K a year may struggle to think they could ever earn $200K.

Self-Limiting Beliefs

They’re real. And they don’t exist when people perform at the highest levels. It’d take a lot more than a 10 minute (give or take) daily podcast to delve into the nuances of all that, but for our purposes today…I want to encourage you to give yourself permission to think bigger! Maybe way bigger!

Take a look around. Are there things or people or circumstances in your life that you once dreamed about? Look closely and carefully. You’ll likely find more than a few.

Now go back in your mind and try to remember how you felt when you really wanted those things but didn’t have them. Put yourself right back there. Where were you? What were you doing? How was your life?

If you were able to go from where you once were to where you now are…then what makes you think this is the highest pinnacle of your business achievement?

Start thinking about the next level, or maybe the highest level. What is that? What does that look like?

Why couldn’t you excel at that level? Don’t say because you don’t feel like you’re excelling at this current level. That’s an excuse that may be invalid.

Being world-class where you’re at may not be the path to being world-class at the next, or at the highest level. Sometimes being good enough is the path to the next level. Don’t get stuck in your head thinking wrongly about all this. Business is a game for players, not spectators or dreamers only. It’s a game for people committed to playing as hard as they can. For people who want to play it at the highest levels they want. It’s not up to me, or anybody else to determine the level for you. You decide for yourself.

Some people want to build sustainable, profitable businesses that aren’t complex or very large. They just want large enough. That’s fine. It doesn’t mean you can’t grow and improve. It just means you want what you want and that’s as it should be. Don’t let people talk you out of it.

Some want to build the biggest business possible. They want bigger and bigger and still bigger. That’s cool, too.

Just make sure you want what you want for reasons other than the negative self-limiting beliefs that you can’t go bigger. Don’t buy into the notion that the rockstars are just that much better than you. You don’t know that. You may believe it, but that’s up to you to bash that wall and break it into pieces. Jeff Bezos didn’t start out knowing how to run, operate or lead a multi-billion dollar empire. Neither did any other super-duper entrepreneur. They figured it out along the way. Largely fueled to success because the success happened first in their head. They believed excelling at the next level as possible. They lived accordingly.

Don’t rob yourself of experiencing the next level before you even give yourself the opportunity to find out. Think it. Believe it. Act on it. Realize it.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Here we are. The final month of the year. For many of us, it’s the end of our fiscal year, too. For others, it’s the end of your 3rd quarter (or something else).

There’s a paradox of saying hello to the end. It’s also hello to the start of a new week and a new month.

Today I mostly want to reflect on the last 11 months and the remaining days of 2018. Not in some detailed point-of-view, but in general. A drone’s perspective.

Hopefully, back at the end of the summer you really set about to plan and prepare for 2019. If you’ve not yet done it, it’s not too late. But you need to get started so you don’t leave your future to random chance. So let’s begin with a challenge to ourselves.

Let’s set about to make December 2018 and all of 2019 our most intentional and purposeful year ever. 

Even if random chance has been good to you, try a different approach. And if you’re a fanatical planner, you can try a different approach, too. There’s room for improvement and growth no matter how we roll.

Here we are on December 3rd. When you close the books on December 2018 what do you want to see? What results are you after for the month? What about the year?

You’re not likely going to make the year if you’re woefully behind projections? A month isn’t likely enough unless your seasonality is ridiculously slanted toward December. But I’ll remind all of us, how you end matters! I’m not going to be so idiotic to repeat the triteness — it’s not how you begin that matters; it’s how you end. Both matter, but here we are entering the final month of the calendar year so how we started is far behind us. We can’t do anything about it now. But the finish is ahead of us, so let’s concentrate on that.

End Strong

You’re thinking of something right now. Something that you wish you’d have accomplished this year, but it’s not looking good. Or something you wish you’d have improved, but so far you haven’t.

What are they? Don’t run away from them.

Maybe they’re not possible to accomplish over this last month, but what if you could? What if you could really make meaningful progress on them in the next few weeks?

Now is the time. 

Don’t let the bigness or the smallness of it dissuade you. We can all be prone to think, “There’s no way I can get that done in such a short time.” Or, “It doesn’t matter that much. I’ll start it later.” I’m pleading with you to avoid letting either of those thoughts ruin your December.

The biggest projects on the planet had simple, straightforward beginnings. Begin it now.

The smallest accomplishments often lead to much bigger, more significant efforts. Don’t minimize the impact of something small. Has your spouse ever hugged you and told you how much they appreciate you, and love you? Did it impact you? Don’t sell yourself short on doing little, but impactful things.

The Habit Of Accomplishment

Our companies and our lives operate in parallel. As the CEO or business owner, your life is impacted by the business, and the business is impacted by your life. They’re not the same, but they’re tied together. Both, your life and your company, develop habits. The habit of accomplishment is critical for you both. Leverage this final month of the year to get that habit even more entrenched in your life and your company.

I don’t care how accomplished you are, there’s room for more. But there’s another advantage. The habit of accomplishment in pushing through the finish line.

I grew up in an era where sports coaches pushed us hard to run through the finish line, play until you hear the whistle and all the other metaphors you care to remember if you’re a Baby Boomer like me. During football season we were drilled long and loud about not stopping until we heard the referee blow the whistle. Play until the end. It’s training and a habit. One you can always improve in your life, and in the life of your company. Let’s use December to make sure we take our best advantages of every day of this month.

Celebrate Wins

2018 was good in some ways. I hope it was good for you in many ways. Did you celebrate them? Did you acknowledge the great work of the people involved?

At the end of the year, during this final month, it may be an ideal time for you to sit down with each employee for 5 minutes (if you’ve got fewer than 100 employees; maybe you could pull it off if you’ve got a few hundred people). Not for a formal review, but for a conversation. A check-in.

“I wanted to thank you for contributing to 2018.” Point out something specific, if there is something you single out. Find something. Yes, this will require some prep work with leadership, but these people are driving the performance of your company. There’s no investment you’ll make that will foster higher performance than to acknowledge them, thank them and leave them soaring with confidence and gratitude.

Momentum

Let’s use this month to build momentum going into 2019. We want to hit the ground running as we all start a new year.

Use December like an airplane uses a takeoff runway. Let’s build up speed, get things going in the right direction and get this bird up in the air soaring higher than ever before. Who knows how high, how far and how fast we can go? It’s time to ramp up our energies to find out.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Wise parents begin to instill into their elementary school kids how to behave and react to influences they may have yet to encounter. We want our kids to be prepared for dealing with things like drugs, alcohol and sex. And it’s not just a fear-driven agenda we’re fulfilling. It’s practical.

As parents, we know the value of facing something ahead of time. Driven by our love of our kids, and our desire to protect them, and arm them with as much wisdom as we can — we engage in conversations where we discuss the various scenarios they’re likely to encounter. We rehearse how they should react when these situations happen. Our hope and goal are that they’ll remember these conversations and respond with wisdom. In short, we don’t want them to be caught off guard.

Why don’t we do that more with our own lives…and our businesses?

Pre-think? Pre-determine? And then prepare accordingly?

Complacency. That’s the biggest reason. We get into the routine of life going the way it goes. So we don’t think about something disrupting it.

Avoidance. Another big reason. We don’t enjoy thinking about the negative things that could happen. Think about all the financially successful people who die without having their affairs in order. Even people who may have been suffering from ill health. Largely we want to avoid considering bad outcomes.

Let’s end the week by getting real. You’ll thank me. I promise.

I Learned The Hard Way

As a young leader I had to figure some things out after being smacked in the face with a really bad situation. I’d love to tell you it only happened once or twice, but life is happy to hit you in the face as often as possible. I endured my fair share of punches. Thankfully, none were fatal.

I once had a manager working for me who I really liked. I had recruited him from a vendor I once dealt with. He was likable and seemed to have the right demeanor for the job. It was the early 80’s. That’s important for the context.

One day somebody discovered a stash of marijuana in his office. I was stunned. Stunned that he’d have it at work. Sort of stunned that he was smoking pot. (Years later we’d all call it “weed”) 😉

I’m not naive. I’ve never smoked pot, or even had a drink of alcohol, but I’ve been around it more than I care to admit, especially in high school. But we were grown guys, admittedly still young – me in my mid-20’s and him in his 30’s. And like I said, it was the early 80’s…quite unlike today where the cannabis industry is on the verge of booming.

I remember thinking how I hadn’t come to work that day expecting to part ways with him and now make finding his replacement my number 1 activity. But here I was having to do both. I wished I had seen it coming. I wished I had known. I wished he hadn’t brought it to work. I even wished somebody hadn’t found it. He apologized profusely for having it, but the damage was done.

Mostly, I wished I had prepared so I would have had a contingency plan. I was completely unprepared. It was my fault.

It wasn’t my last punch to the gut, or mouth. Over the years I learned to play as many “what if” scenarios as possible…because most anything IS possible. Without being a Negative Nellie you can prepare for the biggest disasters possible. Playing them out in your head isn’t quite the same as dealing with the real thing, but it sure makes decision making easier when you’ve at least considered the possibility beforehand.

Pre-Think

My preference may not be yours, but I’ll share it in hopes you find value.

I prefer to pre-think by myself first. I used to do this by trying to intentionally think of the worst thing that could happen to me as a leader. I stopped doing that because it seemed to bog me down. Instead, I just start thinking of all the bad things that could happen. I still do what I’ve always done – I begin with PEOPLE. That’s probably because as a young leader those were where most of my gut punches came. And also because replacing key people is such a daunting task (and time-consuming).

I brainstorm all the various things that could erupt in a moment. What if a text or phone call came delivering me this news? What if somebody walked into my office and quit? I barrage myself with questions like that and write them down. I don’t worry about ranking them. What’s the point? They’re all bad. They all will demand elevated time and attention. Most of them will obliterate my schedule.

I don’t fret about ones that won’t do that. There are bad things that can happen that are more easily deflected. Not every punch is solid. Or to the gut or face. Some hit you on the arm. Others are glancing blows. I don’t sweat any of those. Things happen and we deal with them rather quickly because they’re inconvenient, but they’re not completely disruptive.

I focus on the disruptive ones.

I’ll ask the leadership team to do the same thing. Each of them pursues their answers in whatever way best suits them.

As CEO or owner you aren’t going to likely share your entire list with your team – after all, part of your list may include one or more of them walking in and resigning. But you can come together with your team to discuss the lists each of you has compiled to pre-think where you feel vulnerable.

Pre-Determine

Next, I focus on answering one question: “What can we do to better protect ourselves from this possibility?”

If this negative thing were to happen, is there something we could do in advance to soften the blow? If we want our kids to turn down offers by their friends to steal and drink liquor from a friend’s parents’ liquor cabinet, then we openly talk about it. We may suggest they just leave. If they’re unable to leave, we may suggest they say no to their friends and call us so we can come get them. Whatever your answer is for facing such an inevitability, that’s what you’re pre-determining. It’s a pre-determination because it hasn’t happened yet, but you suspect it may. Or you know it could. That’s exactly what we’re doing with regard to our company.

Make up your mind in advance. Some things will be easier than others. As you figure these things out, some things will be far more cut and dried than other things.

I had to deal with fist fights in the workplace before. Well, I had pre-determined that I wouldn’t tolerate any violence. Period. Generally, I felt good about that pre-determination. Until one employee was attacked by another employee and he defended himself. By all accounts, the verbal abuse began by the attacker. The other worker, attempting to ignore the escalation, began to walk away. The verbal abuser attacked him from behind, at which point the victim beat the ever-living snot out of the attacker.

After talking with employees, getting written statements and interviewing each employee I was happy that I had pre-determined what I might do if a fight ever broke out at work between 2 or more employees. What I had NOT pre-determined was what I’d do if one person was justified and one wasn’t. But that wasn’t any kind of a stretch for me. I terminated the attacker and retained the defender.

The details may not always be exactly as you pre-thought them, but that pre-thinking and the pre-determining will still help you figure it out more quickly in the moment.

Prepare

Here’s where the action plan gets crafted. This is where you figure out if Bob suddenly quits, who will replace him. You begin to look at the org chart to see if you’ve got people on your roster who can step up and fill in. You can begin to look at potential candidates outside the company. You won’t know how available they may be without talking with them, which isn’t likely something you’d want to do. But you can at least create a short list of possible candidates. Apply that same approach to whatever “what if” scenarios are on your list. Some will be more difficult than others. Don’t avoid dealing with them.

Don’t allow complacency and avoidance to rule. They will unless you lead an intervention. Your team and your company deserve every protection you can provide. Just like our children do. We love our companies. We love our employees. We love our customers. We want what’s best for all of them so we have to put in the work.

I’ll end by telling you that decades ago it was this kind of exercise that influenced me to craft what I called my business philosophy.

At the time companies were riding the trend of creating a corporate mission statement. I mostly found them hokey and useless. And I wanted something more personal and in line with how I most wanted to behave. It morphed into what I most wanted my people to embrace, too.

I intentionally wanted it to be concise and actionable. I also wanted it to be as absolute as I could make it because I realize there are so few absolutes. Kind of like my general rule of not allowing any workplace violence…there are often shades of grey to manage. But I was able to distill four areas where I felt comfortable and confident establishing absolutes.

You may also find value in working through the exercises of pre-thinking, pre-determining and preparing then crafting your own statement. It brings clarity and helps convey the things that matter most.

Before I go and end the week I want to make an overt offer to every business owner in the United States. I’m currently enrolling (recruiting may be a more blunt term) business owners into The Peer Advantage by Bula Network. It’s a 7-member professional peer advisory group comprised of business owners from around America. We’ll meet twice a month using a video conferencing platform, making it super convenient. It’s reasonably priced and I can promise you it’ll be among the highest ROI things you can do for yourself and your company. You can find all the details at ThePeerAdvantage.com, but let’s jump start things by having a conversation. Go to BulaNetwork.com/apply and complete that short form. You’ll plug in some vital information to help me better understand you and your company, then we’ll schedule a time to have a phone conversation. I want you to take advantage of this because the value of business owners sharing experiences and helping each other is profoundly life-changing. So please go apply today.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Simply put, core competencies are what you do best. A more detailed view might be the things you need to do best in order to thrive. It’s the practical side of business building that relies on focusing more on your strengths, and less on your weaknesses. Soar with your strengths.

What would your answer be if I asked you, “What’s your core competency?” Shockingly, some owners and CEO’s struggle to answer succinctly and clearly. A common response is more of a rambling searching than a clear declaration. I don’t think it’s because owners and CEO’s don’t know. They’ve just not really given it enough thought. It’s like I’ve caught them off guard (which isn’t really the point). I honestly want to know their answer.

Think about it. Self-awareness is hard. Whether it’s your personal self-awareness or your self-awareness about your company. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about when we talk about core competencies. “What do you do best?” “What does your company do best?”

It’s at the heart of who you are and your competitive advantage. You’d think more of us would think about it. Sometimes we don’t because we’re just too busy doing business. We’re installing HVAC systems, repairing cars and trucks for customers, selling boats, building custom homes, selling cars, or whatever else defines our business. So it’s understandable that quite often business owners or CEO’s answer the question – “What do you do best?” – by simply stating what they do for their customers. But it’s deeper than that. More foundational.

A home builder builds houses, but his core competencies may include being able to find and acquire land. Building the homes on the land is just a way to enhance the investment and turn an even higher profit.

A retailer sells stuff, but her core competencies may include being able to find and acquire solid bargains. Selling the products at retail is just how she leverages her buying skills into higher profits.

In other words, it’s not always as it appears. Nor is it always what you might think it is.

“What do you do best?”

Let’s start with your company. What are the core competencies of your business? It’s worth wrestling down so you’re sure about them.

Suggestions

Step 1: Assemble multiple groups of people to see what others think.

Sit down with your leadership team and ask them to answer the question: “What are we best at?” But don’t stop there.

Create a group comprised of front-line employees with leadership (front line leadership and others). Mix and mingle is a good strategy. Hierarchy doesn’t exist in the group. The representative roles does matter.

Create a group of customers. How about a group of suppliers? Have top leadership facilitate these groups (for obvious reasons).

Have the groups wrestle just one question: What are we best at? As a company, what do we do well – perhaps better than anybody else?

You may learn that others, inside and outside the company, think your company is best at something very different than what you think. It’s easy for you to see what you want or hope to see. By getting a perspective from a variety of viewpoints you’ll more likely find out how things really are.

Step 2: Assemble the information and review it with your leadership team.

With fresh eyes – as much as that’s possible – open the envelopes to reveal the answers of what people think your company is best at. Don’t debate the validity of the opinions. What’s the point? People think what they think. If what they think is incorrect, it’s your fault. No point blaming them for their opinion.

Start with the congruencies. You’re likely going to discover some opinions that fit your own, and the opinions of your leadership team. You’ll have the thoughts of your leadership team, your front-line employees (and others inside your organization) and hopefully you’ll also have the thoughts of people outside your company because it’s their feedback that’s most valuable, especially customers.

Are the congruencies top-ranked, meaning do they occupy the top thoughts of the groups? It may be that you and top leadership feel a core competency is one thing and the groups agree…except it’s the number 1 thing according to your leadership team and it’s about number 3 on the list of others. Sometimes disconnected. Wrestle with that.

Examine the incongruencies, those things others list, but you may have not considered. Don’t be angry about it. Instead, be thankful because there may be big opportunities in those areas where others see strengths you’ve not considered.

This is the time to debate and argue amongst yourselves – not on the validity of the feedback, but on the viability of these things. Some questions to help you and your team may include:

“Do we want to leverage this core competency?”

“Do we want to rearrange our core competencies in order of importance to our company?”

“Are we working to leverage the right core competencies?”

“Are we in the right business (based on our core competencies)?”

Step 3: Keep the debate alive. Work toward clarity.

Don’t conduct one meeting. Keep the conversation going. Keep your leadership team thinking about it. Sit down periodically to see what new insights have bubbled to the surface. The team will likely know when they’ve wrestled it long enough to have gained clarity.

Step 4: Develop a plan.

Now what? Well, that depends on what you’ve discovered. And on what you want to do. There are no rules. You can do whatever you want. That includes ignoring what you’ve learned (which I’d advise against). 😉

Figure out how you want to proceed. I’ll just give you that phrase I’m so fond of, created by the father of StrengthsFinder, Donald. O. Clifton.

“Soar with your strengths.”

You’re wise to influence your team to lean into what you’re already great at. The goal should be to leverage it for all its worth and stop trying to be something you’re not. By the way, that goes for you and your leadership, too. Don’t mistake that for neglecting to improve. It’s just the opposite. It’s all about improving. It’s about not being satisfied with who or what you are, but it’s also having a strong enough self-awareness to stop fooling yourself.

I’m far better with words than math. My strength isn’t math. Try as I might, I’m not wired to be some high-level mathematician. It’s never going to happen. What about you? What are you far better at? Go in on that. It’s about being the best version of yourself possible. As the CEO or business owner, it’s about the same thing for your company. Make your company the best it can be at whatever it’s good at. Build on that to make your company great at it. Even world-class.

Do it for yourself, too.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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I’m not talking about block-chain technology, or AI or VR. I’m talking about what we can do – what we need to do – as business people to future-proof our careers and our companies. Should you be learning about those technologies? Of course, but unless those are at the heart of your business then you likely need to focusing on some other things.

The Past Won’t Predict The Future (Necessarily)

History is a great teacher because it’s over and the facts are more easily seen. We can be backseat drivers to history. From our vantage point, it looks easier than it did in real-time.

Wisdom is being able to get it right in real-time. It’s hard but doable. It’s impossible without varied perspectives so we can avoid our blind spots. History proves it. The biggest mistakes were often made by people arrogant enough to think they knew more than they did. Only to find out too late that maybe they would have been served by listening to some other points of view.

Your past success or failure doesn’t dictate your future. It may impact it, but that’s mostly up to you. I’m not going to discount tradition or legacy. I think they really matter. But they had to start somewhere.

If you haven’t yet established the tradition or culture you feel would most benefit your current and future growth, then get busy with it. Make it a priority. We know our employees have to learn how to win. High performing teams don’t just magically happen. They’re created, trained, fostered and rewarded. It demands a lot of work, but it’s among the most profitable work you’ll ever do as a leader. And it’s a bedrock of future-proofing your company.

High performing teams and cultures don’t continue without bigtime priority effort. You have to keep putting in the work. The fast way to lose them is to take them for granted. Assume you’ve already done that work and you no longer need to do it, and you’ll lose it. So the past accomplishments are important. Don’t surrender ground you’ve already conquered. Keep it conquered by paying attention to it every day.

Get Your Present Right

The first step to future-proofing your life, career and business is to get the present the way it needs to be. Call me Captain Obvious, but this gets by so many people who put all their hope into tomorrow.

See where you’re at right now. See it accurately.

Truth. Evidence. Perspective. Accuracy.

These things matter. Pursue them vigorously. Don’t stop. Your best tool is asking questions. Ask tough questions of yourself. Ask tough questions of others. The only reason asking questions is your best tool is because the most valuable information comes from the answers. So listen! Very carefully.

See. Hear. Understand.

I’m encouraging you to ask questions for the purpose of learning and understanding. Not to show off. Not to make people tense or uncomfortable. Not to make sure everybody knows you’re the boss.

Growing great happens when we more deeply develop our learning and understanding AND then we leverage those into our lives. It’s one thing to know something you didn’t know earlier. But it doesn’t do you much good unless you put it into action.

Start asking better questions. Not fancier ones, but ones that will get to the heart of what you need to know. Be fearless. Don’t be embarrassed to ask any question. It’s likely the one that most needs to be answered.

Next, get busy with things to grow today. I’m all for patience, but you can’t delay growth. Don’t be fooled into thinking that procrastination is a good strategy. This isn’t about expecting miraculous fast growth. Be reasonable, but don’t settle for shoving things off until the future. You’ve got to get today right. That means you have to get today going the way you want – growing.

How will you know? Figure out how to measure what matters. Sales and profits are easy measurements, but depending on your business those may be tough to use for short-term growth measurement. Some companies have a sales cycle measured in months. Many months. Sales and profits today aren’t going to be a great measurement for today’s growth. Are there activities tied to growth that you can measure? Of course. Then start doing it. It can be something as basic as the number of prospecting calls or something else that fits your business. Figure it out and get after it.*

*Let me quantify “figuring it out” because somebody criticized that phrase thinking I’m talking about it in an absolute sense. I seriously doubt you think that, but I’ll explain it more fully. Every time I say “figure it out” I’m talking about what we must do for ourselves so we can move forward. I’m not talking about us knowing all the answers or possible outcomes. And I’m not talking about us having everything 100% nailed down. Your context matters because I can share my experiences with you, but you have to realize my context is different than yours. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn from me and that I can’t learn from you. It does mean each of us has to do some thinking for ourselves to apply what we learn to our circumstance and situation. Do I know enough to begin? Do I know enough to feel confident in what my next step should be? That’s figuring it out.

Get today as right as you can. Along the way, when you realize it may not be going right, then make adjustments to get it more right. It’s called living. But I call it GROWTH. It’s how we improve. And it doesn’t mean all of life is trial and error. It means we compile the learning from others, couple it with our own, decide what we think is best, then step forward. Based on the feedback of that forward step we realize sooner or later that we were right, or not. So we adjust.

Today matters because that’s where we get our feedback.

CEO’s and business owners who plan for a better future without working on today are failing to future-proof their careers and their companies. Mostly because they’re not taking the advantage of the ongoing learning – the feedback – they could be getting by starting right now.

Put Today In Perspective With Tomorrow

Right now I need to lose about 20 pounds. I’d love to be 20 pounds lighter by the first of next year. Maybe that’s not the healthiest approach though. So let’s say I set about to be 20 pounds lighter by February 1, 2019. That’s about 8 weeks away. That means I’d need to lose about 2.5 pounds a week. But I’d be challenged to do it during one of the worst times of the year – the holidays! Could I do it? Of course. Is it reasonable? That depends on how badly I want to do it, and if it’s important enough to be right now — and on February 1, 2019. It’s a now thing, but it’s also a journey of 8 weeks culminating on February 1st.

That timeline is the perspective and it’s not all the same. Let’s suppose I start today. Today might be easy. I may be highly motivated. By Friday I may be struggling with cravings that would foil my progress. Let’s say I fight through that, but then the family goes out to eat on Sunday after church and they want to go somewhere that’s a favorite of mine. A place where I enjoy a plateful of something that would wreck my eating plan. And put my weight loss goal in the ditch! That day would feel and look differently than Saturday.

Every day is a journey. 

Keeping the goal in front of you while enduring (at best, enjoying) the journey is key. So future-proofing your life, career and company isn’t about right now, or tomorrow, or a year from tomorrow. It’s about all of those. At the same time. Just like my weight loss journey (should I decide to take it). 😉

Your job is to serve the company and everybody in it. It’s been said that great leaders see the future first. I think that’s right. You have to see the future first in the sense that you determine the course. Can I see myself 20 pounds lighter in the future? If not, then I’m not going to lead my life to go there. The same goes for you running your company.

Always Looking Ahead

Great CEO’s and business owners are always looking ahead. There’s an ongoing discontentment required of great leaders. Not a dissatisfaction necessarily, but a realization that we can be better. We can do better. I feel pretty good, but I know I’d feel better if I were 20 pounds lighter. That would be an improvement for me. What would be an improvement for your company? What would be an improvement for your life and career? You have to set the aim toward the future.

Big Goals. Small Goals. Long-Term. Short-Term.

It all matters. My 20 pound, 8-week goal could be considered long-term or short-term. Depends on how I want to approach it. That’s up to me. Frankly, I’d see it more longer-term and I’d see my daily activities required as the short-term goals. As the leader you have to break it down in ways that best serve your company. That means, you have to consider the people in your company. That’s largely what future-proofing is all about. Yes, there’s infrastructure stuff. There’s digital transformation stuff. It’s important and may involve technology. But another part of future-proofing may have little to do with technology. It may mean you need to make sure you’ve got the right people where you most need them for whatever goals you’ve set. It may mean you need people with a new skill set that you don’t currently have. Again, that’s for you to figure out. It’s a good news, bad news deal…but I rather think it’s a good news, and more good news deal.

You Can Start Today. You Can Never Stop.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!