Implementer Posts
Transform Success into Significance: Break the Terror Barrier
Today I started my day learning something new. Surprise Surprise! It was not my intention when I dragged myself out of bed (#notmorningperson) to attend the Buckhead Business Association. Although the speaker, Alejandro Tornato, looked interesting I was there to connect with my local, lifelong business community. Great quotes and inspiration abounded! Feeling uncomfortable? Stretched outside your way of doing things? Good! That means you’re learning. It’s harder as leaders – we’re expected to be highly capable. If we’re open to learning we have to admit we don’t know. To try and fail and try again (think 1-year-old learning to walk). “Significance is not a destination thing, it’s a daily thing” says Alejandro. To have a significant impact feels big. To get there means doing small things today that break the terror barrier. It is terrifying to change ourselves; to constantly renew our organizations to meet market needs requires it of
Alan Mulally One Ford American Icon
One Ford – Vision Vision drives your business. Ford Motor Company knows something about corporate vision. When Alan Mulally joined Ford as CEO from The Boeing Company in September 2006, the company was about to post a $5.6 billion quarterly loss. To reverse Ford’s downward spiral, Mulally created a plan to simplify the product line and borrow money to ride out the global economic crisis. He also created the One Ford Vision, which specified how people would work together towards “one team, one plan, one goal.” Mulally’s consistent articulation of that vision to everyone, everywhere, gave legs to Ford’s growth. Joe Nocera commented on Mulally’s vision in the New York Times on June 2014 after interviewing Bryce Hoffman, author of American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company. “Once he had his vision for the company, he repeated it at the start of every meeting, whether the audience was Ford executives, securities analysts or journalists,” he wrote. Mulally told Paul W. Smith on WJR morning radio that he and Bill Ford agreed on Pulling everybody together around a compelling vision and a strategy
Hit Your 2021 Year-End Target
Archery is the art and science of hitting targets. For 1,300+ years, Tibetan archers have been competing to hit targets from a galloping horse running on uneven ground in unpredictable winds. How do they do it? Litang*, who had just put arrows practically on top of each other during a single run, said… “I saw the target. Then I simply sent my strongest line of energy toward it. The arrow goes where I send it, where the deepest drive inside me sends it. It is not luck or faith, but an act of precisely gathered focus. That’s my strongest line of energy.” It is central to an archer’s training that the commitment of every part of their being – down to their electrons – guides the arrow. Modern scientists can see how intense focus causes your neurochemicals to rework habits of thought and break down barriers to success. Right
Strong Integrator = Strong Team
Strong Integrator = Strong Team The 6 Key Areas You Need to Master Seeing the growth and success of a leadership team running on EOS is one of the great joys of my work as an implementer. The role where I often see the most incredible growth is in the Integrator. If you sit in that seat, here are six focus areas that will have the greatest impact on you and your team’s performance: Regular same page meetings with the visionary: You define ‘regular’, but a good start is at least every 2 weeks and weekly in critical times L10 Meetings™ that are routinely ranking a 9 or 10 5-5-5™ Feedback sessions with the leadership team LMA checklists: Yes on all items for each leader, especially you! Your VTO being shared EVERY quarter with everyone Core documents always updated and accurate, plus constant pressure to be great (VTO™, Accountability Chart, Rock sheet/plans, L10
How Great Leaders Avoid Surprises
Surprise! You just lost a key client or employee. An important project goes sour. Something or somebody failed to come through at a crucial time. Your sales, profit, and cash are not meeting expectations. If you run a business, you know that surprises come in many forms, but did you ever experience a surprise in your business that you felt somebody should have seen coming? That maddening sense of “How the heck could this have happened?” In entrepreneurial companies, surprises can be fatal. As they grow, it’s up to their leaders to insulate the company from surprises that could threaten its survival. This essential leadership ability is the power to predict. As a Certified EOS Implementer™, I help entrepreneurial leaders become better at predicting by helping them implement practical tools to keep them focused on the future. We call it “climbing the tree more often”. When you’re mired in the day-to-day,
The Hardest Leadership Ability
In a recent quarterly planning session, a client leadership team was struggling with more “people issues” than normal in a period of fast growth and expanding staff. Comments like “He doesn’t get it,” “No capacity to do it,” and “No common sense” were to be common complaints. As we dove into the root causes of each issue, it soon became clear that all the employees being discussed were relatively recent hires. “Let’s look at how we’re leading them,”, I suggested. “Are we exercising our leadership abilities to their fullest?” In the EOS Process®, we teach Five Leadership Abilities™ that teams develop through the application of the EOS Foundational Tools™: the abilities to simplify, delegate, predict, systemize, and structure. The first of these, the ability to simplify the business, often affects how easily a growing business can improve productivity and team focus. These ultimately determine how quickly they can