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One of the more memorable books in my library was published in the summer of 1987. It was written by the Jan Carlzon, CEO of SAS Group, owner of the airlines Scandinavian Airlines and Scandinavian Airlines Ireland. I had been reading of him in the business press so I was anxious to read the book when he was first translated into English. The title? Moments of Truth.

Mr. Carlzon took over a company losing many millions of dollars each year. Within the first year of his leadership the company was first among European carriers in on-time punctuality. His days in the hospitality industry served him well and I greatly admired his work. I was 30 years-old. He was joining the ranks of others who mentored me through books and stories of his leadership.

The moments of truth Mr. Carlzon talked of were the moments when his airlines had contact with customers — passengers. Every moment was important. Critical to success. He understood that and trained for it.

My 15 years or so of retail experience (at the time I read the book) connected immediately with Mr. Carlzon’s philosophy and strategy. Touchpoints or moments of truth was critical in my industry. I realized it was crucial for any business in any industry.

The book gave language to my philosophy that I had been preaching for a number of years in my own work. Touchpoints needed to be all be magical if possible. Otherwise, they had to be consistently excellent. Predictable and replicated at the highest levels.

It’s hard work, but I learned that happy employees and customer-friendly processes helped. I also learned that things slip when you neglect them. Or when you ease up the focus on them. Entropy occurs. It’s natural. And it impacts everything including the service we render to prospects and customers.

Maintaining the strongest connection possible on the touchpoints of your business is crucial for your success. It’s too easy to think we’ve got them all figured out and assume things are working as they should. Don’t get complacent with it.

Step 1 – Catalog every single touchpoint inside your company.

Make note of every possible way people can interact with your company. Every email, phone, social media or live interaction should be accounted for. This should answer the question, “How can people contact us?” as well as, “How can we contact them?”

Step 2 – What systems are in place to ensure your company is responding promptly and appropriately?

This should be documented and not left to chance. For now, make sure you have what is currently happening — or what is currently supposed to be happening.

Step 3 – Randomly test each touchpoint and measure the results.

Commission help from people to test your people and the systems currently in place. Have people call, email or send social media messages. See how well your people and your systems are currently performing. Do not use people inside your business. Do not alert people that you’re doing this. Tell no one. Just do it.

Gather the information on each touchpoint. Just here you’ll be tempted to jump in the big middle of people when you spot a failure. Resist knee-jerk reactions. In order to figure out the current status you need to finish the exercise of going through every single touchpoint multiple times. You don’t want to let one incident fool you into thinking every incident happens the same way. Test each touchpoint as many times as you practically can. More is better. You’ll see a pattern develop. It may be great. It may be poor. Don’t disrupt things…yet. You must have a sense of reality first.

Step 4 – Time to huddle with your inner circle and make sure everybody is involved to improve the touchpoints.

Present your findings. Curb your emotions if the results were poor. This isn’t the time to vent. Look in the mirror. Things are this way because you stopped paying attention so get angry with yourself first. Better yet, get busy fixing things.

Calmly present the findings to the team. Insist that nobody leave the meeting and go browbeat the employees involved. Make sure everybody in the room understands the objective is to first, implement improved systems (which will include training people) and second, to instill a culture where superior touchpoint experiences can be delivered 100% of the time. And when that expectation isn’t met, you want to make sure there’s a safety net of some sort in place to recover the person and make amends for any bad experiences (and it’ll happen).

Step 5 – Systematically start improving the processes. Think about creating some small teams of people dedicated to improving every touchpoint.

No touchpoints happen in a vacuum. It’s critical that each touchpoint be considered individually and within the context of the entire company. So if you appoint a 3-person team to tackle the social media touchpoints, make sure they don’t silo themselves away from the other touchpoints.

It’s helpful if you have all the touchpoint teams (should you go this route) come together to compare notes and exchange ideas. This is also a great way to foster greater collaboration and cooperation inside your company.

Step 6 – Bring everybody involved together to review the suggested recommendations. Have each team present their suggestions to the entire group.

Debate them. Discuss them. Decide “what’s next?”

Figure out what actions will be taken. Everything must be documented. Including whatever training may be needed.

Step 7 – Execute the changes.

Do whatever it takes to make the changes simultaneously. I would not recommend you fix phone calls without addressing the other touchpoints. Wrestle the entire thing to the ground in one fell swoop. Find a way.

Step 8 – Test the changes and adjust accordingly.

Every process requires tweaks. Battle plans are great when you’re in the tent figuring out what to do. Once the bullets start flying, those plans often need to be adjusted. Do it. Don’t be fearful to adjust things based on how they work in the real world.

Step 9 – Nail it down once you figure out what works best.

Now it’s time to establish the non-negotiable standards for your touchpoints. This is how you want it done every single time. Standardize the processes and make sure everybody knows what’s expected. Reiterate that these will be the standards for which you’ll hold everybody accountable.

Preach the message that the goal is an excellent customer experience for every touchpoint. This isn’t about making it easy for your company necessarily, but it’s more about making it as frictionless as possible for the person contacting your company.

Step 10 – Randomly test it and constantly discuss it. Refine it as necessary.

Don’t ever trust it to just happen again. Stay on top of it. Pay attention to it and you’ll achieve excellence. Take your eye off of it and it’ll slip.

Touchpoints are an area where you can’t afford to slip. You can’t afford to be mediocre. You must be outstanding! It’s a primary way to strengthen your customer base, improve your brand and create greater loyalty.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

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If you were King Arthur you’d have knights to gather at the roundtable. But you’re not a king. Much less King Arthur.

But you spend nights around the table. Likely fretting about decisions. Trying to figure out what to do. Searching for the best answers to your perplexing questions.

Leadership is hard. It taxes the mind, the body, and the spirit.  All good leaders pay a price, but most do so happily. I like to think most also do it with compassion and grace (although I know it’s likely rarer than I wish it were).

Early morning starts. Late-night stops. Sleepless nights. These are common to business owners and leaders.

You spend nights around a table. Maybe a kitchen table in your home. Maybe your desk at work. Maybe a desk at home. Maybe a conference table at the office.

Today I don’t want you to focus on lamenting the decisions you face. Instead, I want you to focus on the resources at your disposal. Think of the assets that should be present at the table with you.

Leadership is lonely, but mostly it’s unnecessarily so. Yes, the buck has to stop somewhere. Tag you’re it. But that doesn’t mean you go it alone. It means you alone bear the responsibility of the decision. And it means you ought to be willing, even anxious to own whatever outcomes are produced…especially failures. Best to give credit to others when things go well. Necessary to take the blame when they don’t.

Meanwhile, the table represents the process of decision-making. Nights represent the exhaustive time spent wrestling with the process.

I’ve only one message in today’s show – do not go it alone. And there are compelling reasons for it. Chief among them is, you’re just not that good. Nobody is.

Accept the limitations of any one person, including you.

Every CEO and business owner bears one major responsibility – to make decisions about the deployment of resources. We decide where investments in people, capital and other resources will be made for the forward progress of the organization. That burden alone is enough to create insomnia for a lifetime. But it’s a burden that nobody should feel obligated to accept alone.

Businesses aren’t democracies, but even monarchies have trusted advisors, just as King Arthur had his knights who gathered with him around their table.

It begins with you knowing yourself and your role well. Self-awareness is paramount. History has shown us countless foolish leaders who prized their thoughts, opinions, insights, and experiences above all others. Easily seen in the lives of others. Much more difficult to see in our own lives.

Look deeply in the mirror. Value your opinions, insights, experience, and knowledge, but not at the expense of thinking your business success hinges solely on it. It’s a foolish strategy even for solopreneurs. Recognize your brilliance, but recognize even more fully your limitations.

Multiple viewpoints provide improved perspective.

When you sit alone struggling to find just the right answer you limit yourself to your perspective. Your biases and opinions alone determine the answers you’ll consider. Rare is the person who can embrace thoughts not his own while sitting alone. I’m not even sure it’s possible. Not in a practical sense.

When we’re wrestling with an important decision there’s no danger in having differing viewpoints, opinions, and insights. Don’t be threatened by opposing viewpoints. Instead, relish them. Search them out. Surround yourself with people brave enough to express them freely.

Vigorous debate and passionate viewpoints will result in decisions much more likely to serve the organization. And it will result in an elevated performance-based culture, too.

Better decisions are made with more involvement.

It’s about improved decisions. If your focus is on anything else, then you’re pursuing vanity – not greater business success. As you deploy resources your wisdom will be demonstrated in putting as much power behind improved decisions as you possibly can.

All for one. And one for all.

It’s the traditional motto of Switzerland, but you and I know it from the story of The Three Musketeers. It’s a great high-performing culture battle cry for your company, too.

There’s fun in working together. If you’re going to grow great as a leader you should show your team the way. When the knights saw the demeanor and behavior of King Arthur they were determined more than ever to fight for him and any cause he was behind. Your team will embrace the fight with higher zeal when you make key members part of the process.

Figuring it out should be a team effort with you leading the way. Relying on those whose insights, opinions, knowledge, and experience can contribute to help make the nights around the table profitable.

You’ll likely spend considerable time around a table. More likely than not you’ll have some late nights sitting around it. There’s no point sitting there alone. Gather others around the table with you. Employ them to join in the fight and prepare for greater success and lots more fun.

Be well. Do good. Grow great.

Randy

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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was first published in 1793. In the 1916 edition editor, Frank Woodworth Pine wrote this in the introduction…

Franklin is a good type of our American manhood. Although not the wealthiest or the most powerful, he is undoubtedly, in the versatility of his genius and achievements, the greatest of our self-made men. The simple yet graphic story in the Autobiography of his steady rise from humble boyhood in a tallow-chandler shop, by industry, economy, and perseverance in self-improvement, to eminence, is the most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men. It is in itself a wonderful illustration of the results possible to be attained in a land of unequaled opportunity by following Franklin’s maxims.

When Franklin was a small printer in Philadelphia and deeply in debt he developed an idea. You may think Franklin considered himself a big thinker, a potentially major figure in the world. But that’s not true. He was a simple man who thought of himself as ordinary. He didn’t feel he lacked the essential ingredients for success though. Franklin felt that he needed to find a method that would work. He was creative and practical so he devised a method he could use.

He focused on 13 topics that he thought were important for his success. Franklin decided to give each subject a full week’s worth of attention. His goal was to work through the 13 topics in 13 weeks. (My 7×7 Fast Start is a rip off of Franklin’s idea to tackle a single thing over the course of a week.)

Franklin figured he could go through the list in 13 weeks, then start over again. With that sort of discipline, he figured he could work his way through the list of 13 subjects four times a year.

Benjamin Franklin was 79 years old and wrote more on this idea than any other – and the man had many great ideas. He attributed his success to the discipline he exercised pursuing these 13 things. He wrote, “I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit.”

Well, I’m not a descendant of Franklin and neither are you – it’s not likely. But we can still benefit greatly. Here’s what Franklin wrote about these 13 subjects…and in this order:

1. Temperance – eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation
2. Silence – speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation
3. Order – let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time
4. Resolution – resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve
5. Frugality – make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e. waste nothing
6. Industry – lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions
7. Sincerity – use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly
8. Justice – wrong none by doing injuries or omitting benefits that are your duty
9. Moderation – avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve
10. Cleanliness – tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation
11. Tranquility – be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable
12. Chastity – rarely use venery (sexual indulgences) but for health and offspring, never to dullness, weakness or injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation
13. Humility – Imitate Jesus and Socrates

What would your list of 13 be?

If you wanted to come up with 13 subjects that would propel you forward and help you grow great, what would that list look like? What order would they be in?

Here’s your homework for the weekend. Come up with your list of 13 subjects that you’re willing to commit to. Make up your mind to give each subject one full week of focus. You’ll be able to devote a full week to each subject four times a year. That’s a considerable amount of time, effort and energy.

Franklin didn’t likely have the mind insights that neuroscience has discovered long after he died, but he appeared to have an intuition or innate knowledge of what might work for him. Turns out, it can work for anybody.

By concentrating on such things for a period of time we rewire our thinking. Things once difficult become more natural. Easier to think, and therefore, easier to execute. Franklin had figured out how to pursue mastery of things he felt were important to his success. That’s our objective in this podcast. It’s about your leadership.

That doesn’t restrict it to your business leadership. It involves helping you become a better person. It involves helping you grow in every area of your life.

Over at my hobby podcast – Leaning Toward Wisdom – I did an episode a month ago or so where I talked about the differences between wishing, dreaming and hoping. Here’s what I said:

Dreams have desire that may or may not spark action.

Wishes have desire incapable of doing anything.

Hopes have desire with intentions. Something is being done to make it so.

Franklin’s list of 13 things gave him intentions. He began doing something to make these things become realities. That’s the power of his list. And it’ll be the power of your list, too – assuming you’re brave enough to create a list and put in the work.

We all have multiple choices in this test of life.

We can do nothing. This likely the well-worn path followed by millions or billions of people. People consume information, learn something, but never do anything with it.

We can talk a big game, saying we’ll do something. Another very well-worn path followed by herds of people. Maybe their intentions are good and honest. Maybe they’re fooling themselves and others. But no matter, they’re no better than that first group because they don’t do anything.

We can make up our minds that we’re going to shift from dreaming and wishing (behaviors that take no action) to hoping (behaviors that take action intended to make the hope a reality).

So what’s it going to be? What are you going to do?

Let me know. You know how to reach me.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

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“In a minute,” maybe a teenager’s favorite phrase when asked to do something by their parents. As parents, we understand that if we don’t continue to insist, the proverbial minute will never arrive. Our kids will never get around to taking out the trash, or whatever other chores we’re asking them to do.

Yet is a different sentiment. It’s not the equivalent of “in a minute.”

“In a minute” is about procrastination.

“Yet” is about the process of achievement.

Yet is powerful. It denotes that achievement and accomplishment just haven’t happened YET. But it also expresses confidence that it will come to pass. We simply have to continue pressing toward the goal.

It can also be a crutch when it’s merely an excuse for failure.

Lately, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about this word because I hear it often used in both contexts. As an excuse and as a statement that a person is still working hard toward a target.

The optimistic part of me – the bigger part of me – focuses on the progress made. Or the progress attempting to be made. I’m happy to give folks the benefit of the doubt that when they use the word – YET – they’re putting forth solid effort to reach whatever goal they’ve set.

“Have you reached your sales goals this week?”

“Not yet.”

The power of yet is measured in whatever effort is being put forth to reach the goal. That’s the power of yet. It’s the declaration that in time we’ll reach it.

Only the pompous are able to judge the timing of success and achievement. It happens when it happens, and mostly only after great effort.

The real power of YET is in what follows. A sentiment sometimes expressed. Sometimes just implied.

“…but I will.”

Affirming our commitment. Hearing ourselves reinforce our determination.

Important matters of the mind.

As a business leader, you have a responsibility to your team to make sure that every single member embraces the optimistic idea of YET while refusing to embrace it as an excuse for failure.

How?

Step 1: Review what actions have been taken and measure the results.

Keep in mind that wishes don’t have actions, but hopes do. If members of your team are hoping to achieve something specific, then it necessarily means they’re doing something to move toward that achievement. What things are they doing? How are those things working out?

Step 2: Are they taking enough of the right actions? Help them figure that out.

Be a profitable sounding board so your team members can individually and collectively figure out if they’re taking the appropriate actions. And then figure out if they’re doing enough of them. Sometimes we take action, but we fail to do it enough. A salesperson may make sales calls consistently, but failure results because she’s not making enough calls every single day.

Step 3: Figure out what’s working and what isn’t.

Not all actions are created equally. You owe it to your team to help them figure out what actions work best. Don’t issue commands, but instead help them arrive at the conclusions that will drive higher chances of success.

Step 4: Ask them what commitment they’d like to make in order to adjust to a more effective course of action. 

“What would you like to do to accelerate toward the goal?”

This is where the team member must commit to their own plan. Steps 1, 2 and 3 likely produce multiple answers and give the person a variety of choices they could take. Help them reason through the strengths and weaknesses of each option. Let them decide the option they think will help best reach the goal.

This step answers the question, “Now what will I do?” These should be specific action items the person is willing to undertake.

Step 5: Agree on a timeframe. 

When would they like to reach the next milestone toward the goal? Again, let them commit to a specific time-frame. These actions should be intentionally fairly short-term toward a longer-term objective. Think days or weeks here, not months.

Review the commitment made by the team member. “Beginning tomorrow you’re going to make a minimum of 20 calls and be at 90% of your monthly sales goal by the 22nd of the month.”

Again, specifics matter.

Step 6: Be their accountability partner.

Simple easy tactics are required. This isn’t a police action, but it’s a service your team members deserve. Reiterate that you have just one objective – to help them achieve their goal.

“At the end of every day text me the number of calls you made along with the number of actual sales conversations you had as a result. Text it with the number being the calls and the second number the actual phone presentations made.”

Step 7: Make real-time adjustments together.

Agree together that if adjustments are necessary, then they’ll make those adjustments. For instance, if 20 daily calls aren’t resulting in increases that will likely reach the goal…then agree to increase them to 25 daily calls.

Remember, the goal is to help them hit their target. You’re making a full commitment to them to help them do what must be done so they can achieve success. Their failure will be your failure.

But together you’re both going to commit to the power of YET. It’s not over until it’s over. So until then, the work continues with the die-hard belief that success just hasn’t happened…YET. But it will.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

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This is going to help you because I’m going to pull the curtain back and walk you through why I changed the name and strategy of the podcast not that long ago…and why I’m now changing it again. First, let me tell you about my experience in completely changing  – and I mean COMPLETELY CHANGING – my business.

Context provides understanding. 

My context goes back to my entry into retailing. Specifically, consumer electronics retail. I walked into a local hi-fi store when I was in high school and asked for a sales job. I had no sales experience, but I loved the stereo gear because I loved music.

With no experience, but a lot of enthusiasm I got a job selling stereo equipment for straight commission. That meant I got no pay unless I sold something (illegal today, but this was the mid-70’s). I loved retailing, stereo gear, music, observing human behavior and performance-based pay (not necessarily in that order). 😉

By the time I was 25 I was leading a multi-million dollar company. By the time I was 50 I had almost 35 years of experience selling, merchandising, advertising, managing, leading and operating. It was time to pass on what experience had taught me. And to lean more into my passions of being a good operator and leader.

As a lifelong learner (and reader), I had been consumed with leadership, management, human behavior, psychology, consumer behavior, marketing and sales for as long as I could remember. I was still in high school when I first read of W. Edwards Deming, the man General Douglas MacArthur brought to Japan in 1951 to help with the census following World War II. Deming was a brilliant engineer and is largely responsible for helping Japan become the world power in manufacturing long before Korea and China came to power.

If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.

I was obsessed with improvement. My own and the companies I ran.

Books have always surrounded me. Business books. Self-help (now called Personal Development) books. Psychology or human behavior books. Marketing books. Sales books. Leadership books.

I’ve invested gobs of money in books, but I’ve invested even more time in reading them.

I’ve invested far more than Malcolm Gladwell’s proverbial 10,000 hours to watching human behavior, especially consumer behavior. And I’ve invested 7-8 times that many hours practicing the craft.

Trying things. Experimenting. Working hard to figure things out.

I didn’t always succeed. I failed plenty.

The failures were all me. The successes mostly the result of having good, sometimes great people, around me. But I figured a few things out along the way. Mostly, I figured myself out.

By the time I left the C-suite I was ready to do more significant work. Work that would be legacy work. I found myself using the phrase “passing it on” far too often. And I was slowly, but surely leaning more and more into who I really am – a communicator who thrives in helping people figure things out.

I’d long know I was different in many respects. Growing up I was envious of people who weren’t plagued with what I saw as a big burden. I was a noticer. Small details were inescapable. Subtle human behaviors stood out like a sore thumb for me. Things others didn’t seem to notice leapt out at me, refusing to be ignored. I could sense things with alarming accuracy. Simply by watching people’s facial expressions, body language, and vocal tone. It was ridiculously annoying growing up.

Empathy was a natural gift. Words, too. Compassion was easy and necessary. That simply meant my empathy drove compassion which is the fuel for doing something to help. To serve.

Sure, along the way I suffered being taken advantage of some. I suffered being disappointed in people and their foolish choices. But at every turn, I was naturally wired to figure out why they did what they did. To understand them.

According to the Myers-Briggs survey, I’m an INFJ, which basically means I’m introverted, highly intuitive, emotionally driven and discerning (judging). I appear like an extrovert much of the time, but I’m fueled by going deep with people – as deeply as they’re willing to go. INFJ personality types are often called COUNSELORS because there is something we emit – some signal or something others pick up – that lets them know we’re anxious to help. So people tend to easily lean on us for assistance. And speaking only for myself, I love it. I love being that guy.

Mostly, I love that people feel safe with me. And that people trust me. Keeping secrets isn’t hard for me. Forgiveness is easy. Bitterness is hard.

Now before you start thinking I’m all that and then some, I’ve got some serious flaws. For starters, I think I can help anybody in any situation. That’s ridiculous and I know (logically) it’s not true, but I still believe it and will die trying to help. I’m also an over communicator, which can drive family nuts I know. I enjoy understanding, which means I ask questions (lots of questions). I enjoy conveying what I’m feeling (but only to those with whom I feel the safest). And that necessarily means, at least for me, that it’s an extremely small number of people who really know me. Not because I’m unwilling to share or because I’m unwilling to be vulnerable, but because I’m unwilling to impose, which is how it feels.

It’s been long said of INFJ personality types that we counsel others, but find it hard to accept help ourselves. And that’s truer than you may know. Accepting help is very difficult because it’s a role reversal I’m not used to.

When I left leading multi-million dollar companies I set about to help business owners and leaders tackle their problems. I was a lifelong operator. An expert in human behavior. A guy with mad dog people skills – those soft skills. But I had no experience in “professional services” like executive or CEO coaching.

For the past 10 years or so I’ve experienced success and failure along the way diving deeply into the problems of CEOs and top-level leaders. What began as “roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty” consulting morphed more into coaching. I hated consulting. I loved coaching.

Consulting is “I’ll do it for you.”

Coaching is “Here, let’s help you figure out how to do it yourself.”

True confession – there was something I absolutely hated. With a passion.

Getting clients.

Not because I hated selling or because I wasn’t very good at it. Quite the contrary.

It was because I was selling ME. It was way too personal. It felt way too nasty. Too much self-promotion (something that is insanely difficult for me). In a world filled with thought-leaders I found myself saying to people (quite seriously, I might add), “I’m struggling to lead my own thoughts so I’m in no position to lead yours.” Yes, it was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it was more real than people understood. I meant it. I still mean it.

Along the way, I rubbed shoulders with authors, speakers, experts and self-proclaimed “thought leaders.” Sometimes I envied them. Mostly I didn’t feel at home around them. They just weren’t “my people.”

I was trying to learn from them – trying hard to figure out what the most successful among them had figured out. Namely, how to grow and build a successful enterprise so more people could be served. At at every turn it was growing increasingly more obvious, it wasn’t my natural wiring to promote the way I needed to. To exude the confidence and bravado that the world pays attention to – and that the world positively responds to.

Simultaneously I was finding success just being true to who I was. I’ve landed as many clients as not by sitting down with them in the first meeting, listening to what they most want to accomplish and figuring out that I’m not likely the best option for them – and telling them so.

“I’m probably not the best option to address the specifics of what you seem to want,” I’ll say. And I’ll even go on, “I’m not using a ploy to get you to want to hire me. I genuinely think you may find somebody with experience in your space who can better serve you.”

They’ll often look at me and I know the look. It’s the look, “I want to hire YOU.” It makes me feel good but puts tremendous pressure for me to over-deliver (something I’m naturally wired to do anyway). I take every engagement very personally and give it my all. It’s the only way I know to operate. I get fully invested in the people I serve.

Which is great.

Until the engagement ends. And then I’m wrecked for a period of time because it feels like the loss of a close relationship. People who have shared their deepest, darkest fears and challenges. People who found me safe. People who trusted me completely. Then we say good-bye after 6 months. Or three years.

I maintain contact with at least 80% of everybody I’ve ever served. It may be a random text message, “Just checking in on you. Hope all is well.” Or it may be a lunch where we break bread together and catch up. I don’t know any other way to be.

Four years ago I was given an epiphany. I’m being big and bold calling it an “epiphany.” It was more like a moment of enlightenment. I became aware of something I didn’t know about. Not fully.

Peer advisory groups. Professional peer advisory groups.

It instantly made sense to me. Join yourself to others who share one big thing in common – in this sense, everybody is an entrepreneur or CEO. No matter that everybody is running a company that may be very different from the others in the group. The common denominator is running a business. That provides instant understanding. Everybody knows what it is to meet payroll, generate revenues, handle HR issues, serve customers and all the other things involved in operating a profitable business.

The power is in the difference though. The various experiences and insights that each person brings to the table provide more perspectives than anybody could have alone.

One evening in this journey had me thinking about typical (if there is such a thing) support groups. That led me to one particular group – The National Organization of Parents Of Murdered Children, Inc.

I’ve seen enough shows on the ID channel to have some understanding of the searing pain parents suffer at such dreadful news. But I can’t possibly understand it. Not really. Because it hasn’t happened to me. I instantly thought, “What better place could there be for parents in that situation?” I mean, you walk into a meeting, introduce yourself and that’s all that’s required. Everybody in the room is just like you. They know your pain. It’s an instant bond and trust.

But…

The power is in the differences. Some are further up the trail in having dealt with their pain. Some are wired very differently than you. Everybody is coming from their own unique experience and place in life. Yet, they all know the pain of losing a child to murder.

A single tie binds them. The differences are where the power is to get through it.

It made sense to me. Truth is, it has made sense to anybody who will listen to it. It universally makes sense.

That led to leveraging some information made more clearly known to me by a book, The Knowing-Doing Gap by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton (2000). The book focuses on companies closing the gap between what they know and what they do. The authors argue that quite often we know enough. We just don’t do enough. It’s equally true of individuals.

You likely already know enough. You’re not likely doing everything you already know to do.

As I dove more deeply into the whole peer advisory advantage – people surrounding themselves with others who are like them in some way (for me it was either everybody is a CEO or business owner) – I knew it was work I was meant to do. How to make the transition wasn’t something I understood. Yet.

“Everything is hard until it’s easy.”

We each hold personal truths. They’re not empirical truths. In other words, they form our reality, but they may not all be real. We just think they are. And we behave as though they are. These personal truths drive our behavior. Empirical truths don’t.

Mostly we chase more information. I’m not prone to data overload. I don’t go seeking more information before reaching a conclusion. Yet I lean heavily toward evidence because my intuition is so high I want to do my best to make sure I’m seeing it as it really is. If the decision is important (which just means the stakes are higher), then I look for more evidence that I’m seeing things correctly. If the stakes are low (which just means the stakes aren’t high at all), then I’m comfortable and confident leaning more on my intuition.

I’d been coaching individual people or small groups. The work had been personal, intimate and always within the context of their challenges, opportunities, and experiences. In every case, there was also another important element – internal politics. In some engagements, the politics were so enormous they impacted every decision made by individuals or the teams. In every engagement, the coaching sessions had to take into account politics. It’s just how the work went.

I had not analyzed this. I just accepted it.

Working to get myself up to speed on peer advisory groups was opening my eyes to some existing things that weren’t working for me personally. I was growing increasingly unhappy because I was having to regulate myself more and more. And I didn’t like it.

For example, candid conversations are easy for me. I relish them. They work. Beating around the proverbial bush, talking in riddles, making clear things mysterious is a surefire recipe for poor performance, unhappy and disengaged people. But I’d often find myself surrounded by that kind of behavior. In some cases leaders were quite committed to that effort, wanting me to “change” their people when in reality THEY were the problem.

I lost myself somewhere along the way.

Never one to sell out, every engagement took a large part of who I am and eroded it. Some much more than others. Sitting down with people helping them gave me energy. Dealing the politics knowing they were in a circumstance where so many other things beyond performance had to be considered — sucked the life right out of me.

By the time I reached out to Leo Bottary who had co-authored the book, Power of Peers: How the Company You Keep Drives Leadership, Growth, and Success – I knew I was due to major change. I didn’t yet know how or what that meant.

Leo and I became fast friends and I began to learn. And learn some more. And learn some more.

Along the way, I decided it was time to push all my chips into the middle of the table and bet the farm on becoming a leader of peer groups. That prompted the birth of an idea, The Peer Advantage.

Twice – that’s right, TWICE – I’ve made a shift in this podcast by renaming it The Peer Advantage podcast. Thought was, become the podcast with that focus. The first time I did it without much thought. The second time I did it with lots of forethought. That was recently, within the last few months.

It was a mistake both times. I wasn’t doing what I knew to do. Instead, I began to do what I knew I likely shouldn’t do, but I was desperate to make this shift or change in my life’s work.

“What do you want to be known for?” I had asked myself. Not in some vanity sense, but in a marketing or business sense. My answer was, “I want to run at least two online peer groups serving business leaders.” The answer was far less focused on identity as it was on what I most wanted to DO. Truth was, I simply didn’t want to be restricted to worry about helping navigate the politics inside their organizations. Instead, I wanted to help top-level leaders – the ones mostly responsible for the politics (and culture) – to forge ahead in building, growing and sustaining a high performing organization. The only way to do that is to help the person at the top.

That insight is important because it make the change of this podcast to The Peer Advantage even more idiotic. Bad move. Failure. Why? Quite simply because more than 99% of top-level leaders have any experience with professional peer advisory groups. Almost nobody has experienced them. Almost nobody understands the true value of being surrounded by other CEOs or entrepreneurs. And many others, who still don’t understand them, think they’re something they’re not. Some think they’re networking groups where entrepreneur exchange business. Some sort of “you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours” deal. Some think they’re “good ‘ol boys” clubs where people get together to just shoot the breeze. Almost nobody I’ve encountered in the last few years to engage in conversations about the power of peers understand it in a professional context.

I’m empathetic about all this, but it was puzzling because almost everybody gets the power of peers when it comes to kids. We all seem to fully understand the impact our friends had on us when we were young. And those of us who are parents or grandparents understand how important it is that our kids run with the right group. We care about who our kids choose as friends.

We don’t seem to understand how that same exact power is present in our lives as adults. That’s important because it’s what drove me to make the change in this podcast, a change that I repeat – was a failure and the wrong move. I knew what to do, but instead of doing it…I did something different. I didn’t’ think clearly. And I got impatient. That’s a big part of my failure.

I reached out to a couple of podcasting buddies who have vast knowledge of this medium and how it all works. Not just from a technical viewpoint, but from a marketing and building an audience standpoint. One responded right away, but the other one didn’t respond at all. I thought nothing of it. Rather than move forward with my plan to have these guys question me, challenge me and help me figure this out – I just dove in to do what I felt I should do. I made the change and immediately felt like it wasn’t right. But I leaned into it anyway. I’m not afraid to try something, but I wanted to get it right. I failed.

Some weeks went by and I heard from the buddy who hadn’t responded. He was up for the challenge. But by then I was multiple episodes into the change. Too late. I hadn’t given enough breath to the process. Instead, I had dug in and made a move that likely could have been prevented – a failure that I could have avoided if I would have relied on these two trusted friends. Friends who understand me, podcasting and my context. But I ignored it. Trudged forward even though at some level I know what to do, and they could have helped me.

The emperor has no clothes.

Here I was embarking on making major shifts in my business and this podcast. Aiming to help people learn how to leverage the power of others. And I was forced to face the reality that I wasn’t doing the very thing I was preaching. I was completely hypocritical. Trying to go it alone when I had two buddies willing to help me.

The lesson for you is no different. We’re driven to do things. Make things happen. Patience isn’t likely our strong suit. We’re driven to get things done. Accomplish something.

I could have avoided confusion, failure and feeling crappy about myself if I had leveraged the power of others. These guys were willing to serve me simply because I had asked. That’s the kind of guys they are. It’s the kind of relationship we have. I’ll go you one better — I told them both that I’d like to record it because I felt the conversation might benefit other podcasters fretting about changing their business or their podcast. It was a good idea. A really good idea. But I blew it. Ripped it to shreds without much thought because I got antsy.

After some weeks of thinking, “I shouldn’t have done this” I just stopped. One day I got up and decided I’m going back to Grow Great. Classic case of neglecting to do what I knew I should and an even more classic case of making a decision without the insights of others fully capable and willing to help me. Guilty of preaching one message and doing something completely contrary to it. #DOH

There are likely so many things in your life as a leader that you already know to do, but you’re not doing them. Let me encourage you to get in touch with those things. Sit down and think more soberly about what those things are.

Here are some things that might help.

1. Write down the top 3 things that are putting pressure on you today. Put them in order of importance.
2. Focus on the top one. Is there one thing you feel very confident about doing with regard to that one issue — but you’re not doing it? It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small. Just one thing that you’re thinking you should do. It would be something as innocuous as calling a meeting to discuss it with people who could likely influence a better decision. It would be something more concrete like an important decision to take some action. Narrow your attention on the one thing you could do next.
3. Do that one thing. Call that meeting. Make that decision. Do whatever it is that might move you forward.
4. Measure the impact. How did it work out? Does it feel right? Is it working out favorably? Get a grip on whether it’s working or not. Does it need more time?
5. Get feedback from people who can help. This is important – and something I neglected to do. I skipped this step. Truth is I skipped many of these steps and created confusion and chaos that could have been avoided. But I got impatient and stupid. Huddle with people who can provide valuable insight so you better understand the adjustments you should make.
6. Take action based on whatever commitment you made to yourself based on the feedback.
7. Lean on the people who provided the feedback to help you become or remain accountable for what you decided. You owe it to yourself. It’s less about what you owe the people who helped you. You owe it to your own forward progress and success.
8. Keep doing this so you develop better habits of focusing on the important things – those critical decisions you must make – and on leaning on others to help you do it better. Exercise these steps on those number 2 and number 3 things on your list of things that are putting pressure on you today. Don’t neglect them, but don’t commingle them with the top priority. It doesn’t mean you can’t tackle three things at once (you do that all the time and it’s often necessary). Do each item as you need to. They may or may not influence each other. That’s for you to decide.

You WILL figure it out. Others can help accelerate that. And make it more effective and impactful. Stop behaving like a hermit with all the answers. Save yourself the time, embarrassment and failure that can often accompany stubbornness.

I’ve made a commitment. To myself.

I’m going to lean on people I trust. Period.

It’s at the heart of the work I most want to do. Work that I think provides some of the highest value the planet has ever known – the power of others!

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

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Everything good is sales. 

Everything bad is lack of sales.

Go ahead. Argue against it. Push back.

But I know what I’m talking about. I’ve experienced dreadful lease negotiations. I’ve participated in tense and uncomfortable vendor negotiations.
I’ve experienced fires and break-ins.
I know what it is to lose a good key employee.

I know what bad looks like and how it feels.

A business consists of daily problems that have to be solved. A business also consists of daily opportunities that have to be spotted and seized.

There’s a good reason why the first leg of my business-building trifecta is “getting new customers.” Nothing comes before that. Not really.

The other night my wife and I were watching the History channel series on “The Food That Made America.” Part of that history involved Milton Hershey, creator of The Hershey Company, a chocolate maker.

Hershey had sold an earlier company for $1M. He poured that money into a remote area of Pennsylvania where he designed a town and a factory. All before he even had a recipe for milk chocolate, an idea he had discovered from European chocolatiers who used powdered condensed milk. He was determined to use fresh milk from the many dairies around the site of his new city and factory.

Construction went on for over 2 years and was almost complete before a Hershey employee finally stumbled on a recipe. And, as they say, the rest of history.

My wife and I were observing how backwards it all seemed. No recipe for milk chocolate…just a die-hard determination that it had to be milk chocolate and it had to use fresh milk. No customers. But he built a city and an enormous factory.

Okay, it can work. Clearly. But that doesn’t mean it’s how you should go about it. It’s not advisable. Unless you’ve got a brilliant idea, a lot of money and a do-or-die spirit. Hershey had all of that. Most of us don’t.

“We didn’t hit our numbers last month.”

“It’s a slow month so far.”

“Things are slow.”

Owners and leaders universally understand the pressures of poor or lackluster sales. “We need to make something happen,” we sometimes say. What we mean is that we need to make something good happen. We need to get more business!

We need to get new customers!

Making something good happen is what drives us. It’s what separates us from others. Confidence and belief that we can affect change. The desire to control our destiny rather than let others impose on us. And if we are going to fail, we’ll do it on our own terms by doing things based on our deep beliefs that they’ll work.

Success stories are those where it worked out.

Stories of failure demonstrate instances where it didn’t work out.

How are you gonna know until or unless you try though? You won’t. You can’t.

Let’s think about what we can do as business owners and leaders to make something good happen. 

Step 1 – You have to believe you can.

This should go without saying, but I’ve learned through the years that nothing really should go without saying because basic, foundational truths are the ones that most often escape us.

A person calls tech support for a manufacturer of a surge protector. You’ve likely seen this social media meme. I chuckle every time I see it…probably because I spent many years in consumer electronics and it resonates with me.

Starting with something as fundamental as, “Is it plugged in?” eliminates the most obvious problems. Well, unless the customer is a complete moron as the meme depicts. 😀

The point? Basics and fundamentals often provide solutions.

That’s why I begin with you – and your belief that you can do something that will affect positive change. Until or unless you truly think you have the capacity as an owner or leader to influence the outcome, then you’re sunk. What purpose do you serve as a leader if you lack that ability or influence?

Leaders must deeply believe, “If it is to be, it’s up to me.” Not in some self-centered, I’m-going-to-do-it-all sort of way. But in a way where you know that somebody – namely, YOU – must step up and get the ball rolling toward pushing back against bad things happening.

I’ve intentionally used sales – specifically a sales slump – as the metaphor for today’s show. And I’ve done so because slow or low sales create more tension than anything I know.

Imagine that your sales are 15% lower than projected. You’ve hit a dip you didn’t expect to hit. And you’re without evidence as to why. If you dive in to sort it out without deeply being convicted of you – and your team’s ability – to remedy this problem, then you’ll be grabbing at straws and likely drown. Confidence and belief are key. It starts with your own so you can then relay that to your team. A major part of your role as a leader is to provide encouragement so your team will have the confidence you have.

Do not underestimate the value of belief.

Step 2 – Find the truth. Face the truth.

Whenever bad things happen the first reaction is to finger point and find somebody or something to blame. Eliminate that. Don’t even let it get started. It can be tough to stop once it starts.

Instead, insist on evidence and make people prove their theories. Theories and assumptions aren’t bad. You just need to insist that people effectively argue their positions.

Key: Have your team focus on themselves and the organization. Rather than look to things as nebulous as the economy, or the weather – hold them accountable for keeping their search on how the company is reacting or managing all the external forces.

It’s vanity to think external forces don’t influence our businesses. But it’s NOT vanity to focus on how our business is dealing with those forces. That’s where we’re going to discover some ways we can improve.

Don’t spend time crafting fairy tales to make everybody feel better about their effort. Nobody cares about your effort. Lots of folks are out here working hard and going broke. Besides, when you impose a culture of truth-finding and truth-facing you’ll build a culture of high performance.

Don’t let anything or anybody – including yourself – off the hook. That doesn’t mean when you find the truth that you rail against it. Or that you find somebody to barbeque. It means together – you and your team – stare it in the eye, acknowledge what you think you did wrong (collectively), and you then focus on the final step.

Step 3 – Work out a plan to answer the question, “What should we do next?”

It’s great to know the future years from now, but none of us have that ability. We sometimes think we do. We’re wrong.

How provides that confidence that is so important to you and your team. Belief kicks in when we can best see how we’re going to get out of this mess. This is the business strategy part of the solution.

Let’s assume that our 15% sales decline (we missed our budget by that amount) appears to be due a few things. One, we based it on our historical seasonality. The month before we blew the lid off our projections. That month was also based on historical seasonality. But some of our key vendors had special financing for our customers this year that didn’t happen last year. When we look at the financing data it’s clear that our financing business is off the charts. Those inducements drove business and shook up our seasonality. Two, the competitors to our key suppliers responded and a month later they offered their own financing. Our team concludes that we were both ill-prepared to take full advantage of the promotions offered by our suppliers and we were equally unprepared to combat the competitor’s offers a month later.

Deeper investigation shows that almost 80% of our sales with the promotional financing involved bundling – that is, customers purchased more because of the financing. Our average ticket was significantly higher.

The team decides a good strategy would be to incorporate in-house financing coupled with aggressive bundle pricing. They discuss concerns about how that may adversely impact margins and future business, but they’re more concerned about losing momentum during these months that are historically their strongest.

When people are buying, help them buy more. When people aren’t buying, you’re not likely able to compel them to buy. It’s a classic mistake businesses make, especially businesses without deep pockets to drive promotion and advertising.

The team leans into making the most of the seasonality that has persisted for more than a decade with very little variation.

Bonus Step – Keep moving forward and keep asking and answering the question, “Now what?”

Business success is about making wise adjustments. Will the team’s strategy work? They don’t know, but they believe it will.

Now it’s time to keep your eyes on it and see how it goes. Adjust as needed. Course correction may be necessary. Don’t be afraid to learn from failure. Find greater success. Make something good happen, then make something even better happen.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

P.S. Yes, I’ve gone back to Grow Great as the name of the podcast. It just feels better. Right. And it’s in keeping with what I do best according to trusted advisors. I leveraged the power of others – other people with whom I feel safe – who urged me to lean into my natural state of being a counselor. It’s congruent with my character strengths, my talent strengths and my personality. It’s also evidence of working live without a net and letting you behind the curtain to see how things work around here. Next time I’ll share more details so you can learn from my process. It’s all part of the plan of us helping each other figure things out for ourselves, but without having to do it alone!