Stephen Lynch - Meetings that Drive Business Execution

Welcome to the Exit Coach radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit. Coach, tip of the day on Exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Thanks very much for joining us today. My next guest has been with us before. It's always a pleasure to have guests back so we can go deeper on their topics. This is Stephen Lynch from Results.com. He's the head of strategy and consulting. Now let me ask you a question. You get into your car and you have no dashboard. How would you feel about that? And yet most business owners operate their business without a good dashboard. And what Results.com does is to provide management dashboard software to help you engage your employees and achieve your company goals faster. Very important stuff. So Stephen, welcome back to the show and thanks again for joining us once again today. Hello, Bill. Thank you. It's a, a privilege to be back here again. And uh last time we talked in great detail about some of the important dashboard factors that business owners should be aware of and today we're going to talk about meetings that drive business executions. So I'm I'm happy we're going to talk about that, Stephen, before we get into that, tell our listeners just briefly about results.com and how it got started and what all you do for business owners. Uh, basically, it started, we've spent the last two decades as a management consulting firm, but now we're a software firm. We make management dashboard software for small to medium sized businesses, and it helps companies to track their their key performance indicators, their projects, their tasks, and most importantly, it helps them to run more effective meetings to drive better results. And the goal is to help business leaders to engage every employee at every level to contribute to the overall company's success. It's, it's a web-based software as a service platform. And that's what most business owners need today is some kind of a way to say, OK, I've, I'm going to be, uh, I'm going to be spending less time on the day to day operations. I'm going to be more of a CEO and visionary, but I need to have something to take a look at to see what so I can react quickly to any problems or or opportunities that arise as a result of business operations, right? Correct, yeah, you want to be able to see your, your business at a glance on a screen, whether it's your, your laptop or your mobile device, and, and say, what's happening in my business right now? How are the numbers tracking? What are people working on? Who's going well, who needs my help and support. So it helps direct your attention to, to the right place so that you can, you know, intervene and or manage effectively. And of course, listeners, you can go to Exaoachradio.com, look in the audio library, and enter Stephen Lynch, L Y N C H into the search engine, and there you'll find his his prior interview on that topic. So let's talk about meetings that drive business execution today. And what are some of the most common problems that hold companies back when it comes to executing their strategic plans, Stephen? Yeah, I, I, over the years I've learned that there's, there's probably 3 main reasons why companies fail to execute, and I, I call them the 3 lacks, and one of them is lack of focus, and yeah, so some companies fail to execute their plans because they lack focus. They, they spread their energy over over too many projects, and they keep saying yes when they should be saying no, and, and they try to take on too much. And when you try to take on too much, it dilutes people's focus, and as a result, companies fail to do anything well when they do that. The other lack would be lack of good data and, and, you know, and this happens when people aren't keeping their progress updated and it might be that someone decides that just for this week, I'm not gonna update my dashboard. So, We can't see the current status of their goals or their tasks because they might say, hey, I'm too busy, and, and then it happens again and, and, and another week passes and very soon the dashboard isn't telling the truth. And when your, your, your key numbers, your projects and your tasks are not kept updated and not kept visible to everyone with current accurate data, then you no longer have a clear picture of what people are working on or how well things are going. And you know, before long, uh, performance suffers. And the third lack would be lack of follow-up, and I see many situations and, and client firms where they've got an employee who's falling behind on their goals or their tasks, and it's happening week after week. They're falling behind, but the, but the manager hadn't said anything about it. And when the manager doesn't speak up, By asking the employee, uh, for example, hey, Bill, what's happening here? It sends an implied message to the rest of the team that the manager doesn't really care about performance and accountability. And after a while, performance will slack off across the entire team. So those three things are the most common, uh, problems I see when it comes to strategy execution, lack of focus, lack of good data, and lack of proper follow-up. And, and the answer to that, I guess, is, is running effective meetings each and every week. And I know meetings get, get a bad rap and many people say, oh, no, not meetings. And I think, you know, meetings can be a waste of time, but it doesn't have to be that way. Meetings, if you do them right, can help you to be more productive, not less, and they can actually save you time as a business owner. And in fact, in my view, if you want to become a great leader, you must learn how to run effective meetings. And, and that's what we've seen that the great leaders, the great managers that we work with, they run great meetings, whether it's with their teams or with each person one on one. But, and the great news is, is that being able to run an effective meeting is a learnable skill. Mhm. That's good to know because I, I would think the, the, the falling, the fall down point for a lot of people might be, you know, it's that agenda. I just don't always have new fresh stuff to put on the agenda, but from what I'm hearing from you, I think you said without, you know, the lack of focus, lack lack of continuity and follow up, those become checking points. those become that becomes a leading part of the agenda, and then that gives you, you don't have to start with a blank piece of paper for each meeting, is that right? Correct, yes. Every meeting should be a continuation from from the previous one. And what are some other tips? I mean, we, we've all heard some tips about leading meetings and things like that, but how do you put on an effective meeting? What are some tips that you can give our listeners? Yeah, and, and I'll come to that, but one of the the things before you run an effective meeting is to get really clear on what it is that you want to be working on. And, and one of the biggest problems I see is that companies are, are taking on too much. So before you can run an effective meeting, you need to, to prioritize first of all. And, uh, there's an incident recently where the general manager of a, a manufacturing company contacted me to inquire about our results.com software, uh, to help them execute their strategic plan for this year. And he said they always conduct strategic planning at the end of each year and come up with a list of things that they want to do in the coming year. And he sent me this list and it had more than 20 projects that were assigned to various individuals with due dates sprinkled throughout this year. And he said that the problem was that they seldom got many of these things done each year, and the board of directors was was getting frustrated with their lack of focus and their and their lack of results. And he, and he asked for my advice first and I said, well, I said, you've got a long list of things to do here, but that's not a strategy. Goal setting is not strategy. It's, it's just a list of things to do at this stage and It happens quite a lot where you have a planning meeting and you've got the managers on the board of directors there and they come up with a list of goals that they'd like to see accomplished. But rather than whittle it down to a few important strategic moves, they sweep that whole lot into a big list and say that's our plan. And I said, well, no, it's not, uh, to come up with a winning strategy, it requires some careful analysis and you've got to get a really thorough understanding of how your industry is likely to play out and get really clear on a small handful of moves that your company needs to make in order to position yourself for success this year, but also in. To come as well. And I said, look, you're just trying to take on too much and you'll be better served by focusing on no more than 3 key strategic projects to work on at any given point in time. And to review and update those 3 key strategic projects, each and every quarter as part of a quarterly strategic review and Always, uh, you know, I, I think of, uh, a story attributed to Warren Buffett that highlights that lesson, and, and the story I heard was that someone, uh, approached Warren Buffett with a list of their personal goals and it had some 25 things they wanted to accomplish in the coming year. And Warren said, well, here's a highlighter, highlight what you think of the top 5 in this list. And the person did that and, and Warren said, right. I just want you to focus only on those and work only on those in the coming year. And the person said, what about all the other ones? When should I work on them? And, and Warren Buffett said, No, you don't understand. Everything that's not in your top five becomes your avoid at all costs list. Oh I like that so like focus only on those avoid everything else on that list and and that's the hard thing for businesses to do. They think, they think there's a whole lot of things we want to do, but it's like get really clear on what the critical things are and avoid everything else. And, and Steve Jobs was the same. He used to take his managers for for off-site planning retreats and he'd say, right, I want everyone to refine what are the top 10 things that Apple needs to do right now. And everyone would fight and struggle to get their pet projects on this top 10 list. And Steve Jobs would then say, I want you to rank them 1 through 10, and, and they'd struggle to get them ranked 1234, all the way through to 10. And then he would go, we can only do 3 and he'd cross out the bottom 7. And so he really clearly signaled to his managers the importance of focus and said, we're only going to do that and we're not going to do those other 7 things. That's a very valuable lesson, a very valuable information is so 3 is the magic number. It is, it seems to be, and, uh, we've long since recommended this philosophy as well. So, uh uh uh strategic planning, it's not about a big list of, of goals, it's about going through a discipline process and identifying a small handful of critical projects that will have the biggest impact on your future success and only focusing on those projects to the exclusion of everything else. Brilliant, brilliant. Now you're a big advocate of having one on one meetings with employees every week. Why are these so important? Uh, yeah, well, it's something that we've observed and, and working with thousands of fast growth companies, I've, I've noticed a key success discipline that the top performing leaders and managers routinely practice, and it's that they do schedule a regular one on one meeting with each of their direct reports. Now, yes, team meetings are important. You've got to have those each and every week to keep everyone aligned, but you can't deal with the subtleties of each individual's personal needs in a, in a team meeting. And it's the one on one meeting where you're focused solely on that person. Their needs and how you as a manager can best coach and support them in the execution of their goals. And it sounds simple, but it does not necessarily mean that it's, that it's easy. It is a discipline and it often gets placed in that important but not urgent category. Takes real discipline to To a schedule of one of my meetings, but the payoffs are huge, and, and I often say to, to audiences that if you just did one thing differently as a result of, of, of, of listening to me, it's book and schedule a one on one meeting with each of your staff and make sure that it happens each and every week. Should take you no longer than 30 minutes per person. So say for example, if you had 7 direct reports, you should be able to meet your whole team in one afternoon, one after the other. Block that time out in your calendar, make sure you keep those appointments, and, you know, don't blow them off. You, you know, your number one task is to coach and support your people, because you only succeed when your team succeeds. That's great information. So, uh, in those, in those meetings are those again kind of check in meetings that that's where you get back to the, uh, the other shortfalls you talked about which is continuity of, of data and information in the follow up. Yeah, so in, in that meeting, uh, uh, a typical agenda for a one on one meeting, I'd start off with having the person provide me with a status update on each of their goals and tasks. And it's just a discussion to make sure both of us are fully aware of, of the current situation. I would ask them to confirm their tasks for the coming week, and I'd say, well, you know, so what one action could you take this week to move each of your goals forward? And I'd make sure that we capture that task, write it down or or enter it in your software dashboard so that both of us know, here's what that person is working on this week. But it's, it's really important that you follow up each week to make sure that those tasks get checked off as done. And I've got a saying that successful business execution, it's, it's 20% giving people clarity about what needs to be done, but it's 80% following up to make sure it actually gets done. And it's, it's, it's the old saying, you get what you inspect. And, and if you hold people accountable for honoring their commitments to you, it's crucial if you want to create a high performance culture. It's not micromanaging. You give the person the freedom and autonomy to go away and determine how best to achieve each task, but you must follow up each week to close the loop and make sure that it actually gets done. And there again it's your opportunity as a leader to impose upon people the importance of focusing on their top three goals, their top 3 objectives, as opposed to if obviously if you don't keep this in check and you have people that have task lists that are 20 items long based on goals, then you're going to have problems down the line eventually, right? Absolutely. And if you can help people prioritize their work each and every week, then you may not speak to them for the rest of the week, uh, but at least you know they are working on the right things and you can follow up next week to make sure that they didn't get those things done. Now Stephen, everybody has problem employees or struggling employees. What should a manager do when they have an employee who's struggling? Yeah, there's always one in every team, isn't there? And, and, and I guess one of the, the keys I find there is, is if you really want to effectively manage and coach your people, it's you've got to make performance visible somehow. Obviously, I would recommend a software dashboard like Results.com, but regardless of what you use, make sure that you keep the scores visible, that you keep people's work visible so that everyone can see what everyone's working on. And the Harvard Business School, they call that management approach radical transparency, and they have found that it does deliver superior results because Our brains, I guess, are wired and strongly motivated by a sense of fairness. And when everyone's performance is made visible, that way as a manager, we can coach our people in a highly objective fashion. We know who's going well and who needs our praise and acknowledgement, but we can also see who's struggling and who needs our help and support. So if we have got someone who's struggling, you know, what do we do? And, and I, I like this quote from Peter Drucker. He said, leaders owe it to the organization and their fellow workers not to tolerate non-performing people in important jobs. And Personally, I can't think of any job that's not important. And, uh, and here's where I see many managers come unstuck. They might invest in a software dashboard so that they make everyone's performance visible, but then they fail to to close the loop. And, and as that by saying, it's successful business execution. It's 20% giving people clarity about what needs to be done, but it's 80% following up to make sure it actually gets done. And, uh, so, you know, if you do see someone that, that, that, that is not performing, you do need to address it. It's not fun, but it, but it has to be done because problems in my experience, they seldom fix themselves. And if you allow people's performance to be below the agreed standard without saying anything. And without taking visible action to address the issue, what you're effectively saying to the rest of the team is that poor performance is OK around here. Well, no, it's not. And, and if you allow poor performance to be the norm, a culture of mediocrity can develop, uh, in your organization. Um, yeah, people will show up, they'll put a smile on their face, but, but they won't take performance and accountability seriously. And if you're not careful, they won't take you as a manager seriously either. So let's assume you've got someone struggling on your team and you, and you think, yep, I've fulfilled my side of the bargain. I've, I've hired the right person for the role, I think. I've, I've given them clear expectations. We both agree that these standards are, are, are relevant and achievable. I've given them the tools, the training, and the mentoring and support that they need, um, you know, so I, I think of fulfilling, uh, my side of the bargain. If you haven't, then you need to start by fixing yourself first, but But let's assume that you have, I guess my recommended approach is to use a 3 question sequence and, and it's every time you see performance is not where it needs to be, you just ask, you know, this three-word question, what's happening here? And you ask it in a, in a, in a friendly, non-threatening manner and allow the employee to respond. Now, there may be a valid reason why something's not getting done, and let's make sure that we get that reason out on the table. So the first question is, what's happening here? My second question is, OK, so what action can we take this week to move this forward? I'd let them come up with suggestions first. I might provide some suggestions myself, but we will capture at least one action that they can do this week that's going to help address, you know, their below par performance. And my third question, what support do you need from me? I want to make it clear that I'm on their side and that my role is to support them to be successful. Uh, and, but most importantly, I need them to know that each and every week I'm going to follow up to make sure that that task got done. And most importantly, they need to know that each and every week that same three questions sequence is going to occur whenever we identify any performance issues. It's what's happening here? What action can we take this week to move this forward? What support do you need from me? And hey, if the person makes the necessary improvements, I'm going to praise them and acknowledge them for their progress. However, if they're continually or habitually falling short, then it's, it's my job now to do something about it, and I, and I can't let poor performance fester. Fascinating information. Great, great to spend some time with you today. Let me tell our listeners that that Stephen's the author of the award winning book Business Execution for Results A Practical Guide for Leaders of Small and Mid Businesses, and his book was Judd Best Management book in the US the USA's 2014 Small Business Book Awards. And he's had articles published in The Economist and writes a weekly email newsletter that has over 40,000 business leaders subscribers around the globe. Results.com's software gives them unique and privileged insights into the day to day operations of thousands of small and medium. growth firms and if you'd like a demo on how the software can help your company, go to their website www.results.com and request a demo and let them know you heard about results.com via Exa coach Radio, and they'll throw in a free consultation session on how to improve employee accountability in your organization. Thank you so much, Steven, for joining us again today. It's been fascinating and interesting, and I look forward to the next time we speak. Thank you again, Bill, and I, I, I really admire and, and appreciate everything that you do for your listeners. Thanks very much. We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back after this, so please stay with us.