I watched it happen in real-time last week. A leadership team gathered around the conference table for our annual planning session. One of the team members walked in, refilled her coffee, and I could immediately see it—that invisible weight pressing down on her shoulders. Her jaw was tight. Her eyes were red, as if she may have just had a long cry in the car before coming in.  During our check-in, she spoke up: “I need to get something out. I don’t know if I can focus on anything else until I do.” What followed was a flood of anxiety that had been building for weeks. A key team member had left unexpectedly. Not just any team member—someone who’d been there for over a decade, someone they’d trusted completely. And now this leader was spiraling: What if there are mistakes in her files? What if I need to review everything

“You can’t potty train a chicken.” I looked at my friend and fellow chicken owner and questioned what made her say that to me. It was such an obvious fact. To be honest, I have been a bit frustrated with my chickens as of late. Yes, they are laying eggs, but I hate how mean some of them are to the chickens on the lower end of the pecking order. And I can’t tell you how many times I have had to kick Sally out of the nesting box at night, reminding her that she is a chicken and chickens roost at night. Only to find her back at it, sleeping (and pooping) in the nesting box again. Was my friend trying to tell me, in a subtle way, that my frustrations are unfounded? Was this another soul-searching chicken mama moment? Why can’t I just accept that my chickens are

JOHNNY CASH Read here  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHgoAQJDY_A In this episode of The Scalability Code, we talk about everything: my work history, my mother’s take on marriage, and the importance of a great Integrator.  

Most businesses have dozens of priorities, but only a few actually drive cashflow and profitability. In my experience, many leadership teams aren’t fully aligned on the handful of levers in their business that truly drive cash AND that they can meaningfully influence. Not because they’re inexperienced, but because businesses are complex. There are always dozens of things competing for attention: – Marketing ideas – Operational improvements – Customer initiatives – Technology upgrades All important, but when you step back and look at the economics of the business, only a handful of levers actually move the needle. In EOS, we call these the 8 Cashflow Drivers. I recently walked a very sophisticated leadership team through this exercise. This is a successful, mature company with an experienced leadership team who knows their business extremely well. And yet the discussion surfaced a couple of powerful insights: 1. Some things consuming a lot of

Leadership teams often define failure too narrowly. It undermines their ability to adapt. In a recent interview with Sam Paar, mentalist Oz Pearlman challenged the idea of “bombing” a performance. As he explained, failure depends entirely on how it is defined. As his skill has improved, he has adjusted that definition. He moves the goalposts and, in doing so, changes the rules. From the audience’s perspective, there is no clear signal that something has gone wrong. They don’t know what was supposed to happen next. Behind the scenes, there are different paths that all lead to the same outcome. If one approach doesn’t work, he simply takes another. In his words, “you’re defining something that I define very differently.” Failure Isn’t Binary, But Teams Treat It That Way As a team performance coach, I often act as a mirror. I help leadership teams examine where they were, where they are,