Tag Archive for: Team

The Hidden Myth That Keeps Good Teams from Becoming Great

/in , , , , /by

Do you want people treating your company like a renter or an owner?

There’s a common belief that quietly holds back even the best teams. It shows up in town halls, performance reviews, and leadership offsites. Most leaders I work with have said it at some point. Heck, I’ve said it too!

“If our people are committed, we’re good to go.”

It sounds reasonable. Even admirable. Commitment means loyalty, motivation, and alignment with your mission. It’s the same reason you go to Hertz, Avis, Sixt, or other favorites on travel.

But here’s the catch: Did you ever wash a rental car? 

Commitment is the starting gate, not the finish line.

If you want to build a business that doesn’t rely on you being in every meeting, approving every decision, and putting out every fire, you need something more powerful than commitment. You need ownership.

Unwavering Inspiration graphic on great teams.

The Difference Between Commitment and Ownership

Think of commitment as showing up, caring, and supporting the mission. It’s the foundation of an unstoppable workforce.

But ownership?

That’s where your people take the reins.

✅ Owners solve problems before they land on your desk
✅ Owners make decisions in line with the company’s best interest
✅ Owners act like the company’s success depends on them, because they believe it does

They treat your company as if it were their own car, because they want it to look great, be great, and last.

They are accountable in the truest sense: to the mission, to each other, and to the people they serve.

Why the Myth Persists

So why do so many leaders stop at commitment?

Here’s what I’ve seen:

  • Success with commitment creates complacency. If the wheels are turning, why fix what’s “working”?
  • Fear of loss of control. Autonomy can feel like a threat to consistency.
  • Engagement systems like EOS, while well-meaning, focus on alignment without fostering real agency. The result? Teams that are informed but still permission-seeking.

The leaders I admire most in business and the military champion ownership. They want people to feel a consequential stake in the company’s success, so they care for the company’s growth and well-being just as they would for their own car or home.

Sounds awesome? You have to show that same sense of ownership about their growth and well-being first. 

How well do you know their aspirations, their spouse’s name, significant days of the year, important causes, and milestones?

Questions for the Week

  • Where are your people showing commitment but not yet ownership?
  • Where might you be inadvertently encouraging permission-seeking?

What’s one decision you can delegate this week and not take back?

Ownership doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because leaders like you choose to make it safe, clear, and expected.

If you’d like a 2-minute diagnostic to gauge your team’s ownership mindset, drop me a note. I’ll send it your way. You’re building something important. Let’s make sure your team feels ownership in its success, too.

How to Address Bad Behavior At Work

/in , , , /by

I used to think that a proper butt-chewing was the right way to nip bad behavior in the bud. Confront the person, chastise them for the behavior, berate them about why they shouldn’t do it again, and end with “Do you understand!?” 

I discovered that this approach had little positive impact and significant downsides. The person who misbehaved intentionally just had to stand there and take it. Often, there was little in the way of corrective or remedial action, and people often felt humiliated. I saw numerous repeat offenses and had to escalate the consequences.

Rarely was there any emotional connection for the individual between what they did and how they affected others.

The people affected by the misbehavior didn’t receive much in the way of redress, only my reassurance that I had spoken with the individual. 

I learned a different approach that I’ll call Constructive Accountability, which has been a game-changer for me and my clients, and will be for you, too.

What Is Constructive Accountability?

Constructive Accountability connects the person who violated your behavioral standards with the impact of their actions and the opportunity to make it right. 

Misbehavior includes violating a known standard, such as being late or negligent, or treating someone poorly. The Pressure Gauge is a superb tool to make your standards crystal clear.

Note that some misbehavior may require immediate dismissal. Most sub-par actions, however, fall short of that, but the behavior often goes unaddressed. This situation perpetuates bad habits and creates resentment.

Instead of lecturing the person, do this:

  1. Identify the behavior: “Jim, you were thirty minutes late today.” 
  2. Ask the person to explain the impact of their behavior: “What was the impact of your late arrival on your co-workers and customers?” This question gets them to connect emotionally with the impact of their behavior.
  3. “How will you make it right?” This question provides the person with the opportunity to ameliorate the impact of their actions. The approach respects their sovereignty and opens the door to creativity.

Once you agree on the remediation, the person should follow through on their actions. They are unlikely to repeat the misbehavior because they have come to grips with the consequences and made amends. 

If they refuse to make amends, fire them because they are consciously opting out of your culture. 

What about extenuating circumstances? What if they had a valid reason for being late, for example? 

Use the same process. Notice that you are not issuing reprimands or humiliating people. You are asking them about the impact and how they plan to make it right. 

This approach takes you out of the judge role and into the role of connecting people emotionally to your company’s standards. When people take ownership of their actions and consequences, they demonstrate commitment to your culture and to being a good co-worker.

Building Disciplined Foresight

/in , /by

Discover how Disciplined Foresight will transform your business. 

Did you ever feel like you constantly react to events instead of shaping them?

I felt like that for the first three months of our tour in Afghanistan. We were doing plenty of big combat missions and winning each fight. The enemy’s attacks, however, kept getting larger and more sophisticated. 

Our biggest firefight on July 27, 2007, resulted in Tom Bostick and Ryan Frische being killed and scores wounded. The enemy suffered far higher casualties, but their recruiting pool seemed endless. We were winning battles, but losing the war.

We had to adapt. Fixating on the enemy played into our opponent’s hands. I felt I was in perpetual crisis management. You cannot leap forward when you are on your heels. 

What Is Disciplined Foresight?

Disciplined Foresight is the intentional, structured, and principled way of anticipating the future so you can act with clarity and confidence—especially in uncertainty and complexity.

Building Disciplined Foresight began with pattern recognition. The patterns showed us that the enemy were locals, not foreign fighters from Pakistan, as we believed. 95% of the people we thought we were helping were trying to kill us.  

Pattern recognition helped us go from downstream (reactive) to upstream (anticipatory) thinking. 

The enemy could afford to lose fighters, but they could not afford to lose popular support. Building trusting relationships with community leaders would take time, but would turn the tables in our favor.

Finally, we needed a simple strategy to put theory into practice, something that put 800 paratroopers spread across seven outposts in an area the size of Rhode Island on the same page.

Six months later, the commander of the largest enemy force signed an agreement with the elders to stop fighting. 

How to Apply Disciplined Foresight and Its Core Habits to Your Business

Pattern Recognition: To gain a strategic edge, you must grasp reality.

How skillfully do you detect what’s really going on?

Red: We react to symptoms and guess at causes.

Green: We quickly diagnose and act on causes. 

Do you have visual models that help you recognize patterns?

Upstream Thinking: To create the future, you must promote desired actions.

How ferociously are you shaping events?

Red: We are in problem-solving mode.

Green: We envision and exploit opportunities.

What is your process for getting ahead of events?

Simple Strategies: To blaze through turbulence, you must create leverage.

How relentlessly do you create focus and momentum?

Red: We do too much, which leads to confusion.

Green: Our flywheel turns on its own power.

Client Success 

One of my manufacturing clients started applying the pattern recognition tools we developed to improve their profitability. They noted they were losing money on some of their largest clients who required highly customized jobs, which increased waste and rework. 

The sales team focused on these clients because they offered expansion opportunities and were easier to acquire than new business. The sales team got the bonuses, the client was happy, but the company was going bankrupt.

The company defined its product standards and paid top bonuses for sales that met the criteria. Anything outside the standards needed senior leader approval. Having clear standards made discussing the requirements with their biggest clients easier, many of whom agreed to modify their requirements or pay a higher price. 

Strategy Call

What would getting to green Pattern Recognition, Upstream Thinking, and Simple Strategies do for your business? Let’s have a strategy call to outline a game plan that works for you.

Regrettable Versus Unregrettable Turnover

/in , , , /by

Struggling with turnover? Here’s how to build a workplace where people want to stay.

Some employees are not the right fit for your company. This turnover is unregrettable, and letting them go can be addition by subtraction. Regrettable turnover, however, includes high-performing employees who vote with their feet. Differentiating the turnover is vital because you address the problems differently. 

Unregrettable turnover means you have a hiring problem. You need to improve your process to identify and attract right-fit prospects who will buy into your culture and grow with your company.

Regrettable turnover may indicate leadership or culture problems. Do people feel like they are growing and developing or stagnating? Do they feel out of place in your company? Are their leaders inspiring them to contribute their best?

Avoid Managing the Metrics

You should pay careful attention to turnover, but beware of the perverse incentives. Evaluating your managers on turnover could lead them to manage the metrics. They may seek to reduce unregrettable turnover by not enforcing standards, for example, which leads to more wrong-fit employees and more significant frustration for your high performers.

Example: Salesforce’s Focus on Employee Growth to Reduce Regrettable Turnover

Salesforce, a global leader in customer relationship management (CRM) software, faced challenges with regrettable turnover among its top performers in the competitive tech industry. To address this, the company implemented a comprehensive employee development strategy centered around two key elements:

  1. Customized Career Development Plans: Salesforce introduced personalized career paths tailored to each employee’s goals and strengths. They created opportunities for growth within the company, including structured internal mobility programs to allow high-performing employees to transition into new roles that matched their aspirations.
  2. Leadership Coaching and Feedback: Recognizing that leadership quality was a critical factor in regrettable turnover, Salesforce invested heavily in training its managers to provide better coaching and feedback. Leaders held regular one-on-one meetings to ensure employees felt valued, challenged, and supported in their growth.

Results:

  • A reduction in regrettable turnover, particularly among high-performing employees who previously felt stagnant or underappreciated.
  • Increased employee engagement scores, reflecting a stronger sense of belonging and opportunity within the company.
  • Retention of institutional knowledge, ensuring Salesforce could continue delivering value without the costly disruptions of high turnover.

This example illustrates how investing in leadership development and personalized growth opportunities can directly combat the root causes of regrettable turnover while fostering a culture where top talent thrives.

Creating an Employee Development Strategy

Create an employee development strategy by designing a double-axis chart with short-term and long-term on the horizontal axis and tangible and intangible on the vertical axis. This chart helps you identify both the tangible benefits, like pay and perks, and intangible benefits, like career growth, purpose, and a positive work environment. People are drawn to workplaces where they align with the values and see clear paths for personal and professional growth. When you compete on culture and development rather than focusing solely on short-term tangibles, you create a workplace that retains top talent and inspires excellence.

Building an Inspiring Culture

During my February 12 masterclass, Building an Inspiring Culture, I’ll discuss how to fit this tool within your culture strategy so you decrease both regrettable and unregrettable turnover while boosting your profitability. 

Register by February 9, and you’ll get lifetime access to my signature online, video-based program, Building an Inspiring Culture, which gives you the step-by-step processes to create a culture that advances your goals and evolves and grows with your company.

Everyone who registers gets the video recording, so don’t worry if you have a conflict on February 12.

How to Shorten Your L10 Meetings While Increasing Your Impact

/in , , , , /by

Learn how to transform your L10 meetings into efficient and solutions-oriented sessions.

I used to think that the purpose of meetings was to share important information and boost accountability. Participants highlighted what they achieved and learned; we reviewed stop-light charts and metrics to assess progress and compliance. I grew up participating in such meetings, which seemed normal and practical.

Years later, I looked around the room during a staff meeting. We had around 30 attendees. I listened as they read the PowerPoint bullets from their slides, highlighted the numbers on their charts, and explained any discrepancies.

Why was I having intelligent people read out loud to other intelligent people looking at the same charts? 

A staff member suggested we share the charts in advance and create an agenda focused on solving problems and coordinating solutions. Brilliant! I could free people to do their jobs. We accomplished more in half the time. People saw meetings as valuable instead of soul-sucking. 

EOS L10 meetings suffer from the same problems I was inflicting on my teams.

EOS’s weekly L10 meeting envisions 90 minutes per session. That’s 78 hours of L10 meetings in a year. If you and the ten people in the meeting make an average of $100 per hour, that’s $780,000 invested in these meetings.

What if you cut that number in half? What could you do with 39 hours of additional time?

Cutting that time in half is easy once you take my staff officer’s advice. Use shared documents to convey information and devote your meeting time to making decisions and coordinating solutions. Reading slides or information bullets out loud insults everyone’s intelligence. 

Breaking Down L10 Meetings to Reduce Wasted Time: 4 Steps

Here’s how to break down your typical L10 meeting to reduce wasted time:

Step 1: Gather information asynchronously into a shared document or dashboard.

  1. Weekly Scorecard Metrics. Perfect for a dashboard. Periodically assess them to avoid metric mayhem.
  2. Rock Updates (Rock is EOS jargon for quarterly goals). See above.
  3. To-Do List Updates. Mark completed tasks and provide short comments on any delays in a shared task management tool (e.g., Asana, Trello, or a shared spreadsheet).
  4. Customer and Employee Headlines. Flag items requiring discussion.

Step 2: Prepare the meeting agenda and prioritize the issues for discussion and resolution. Give participants 24 hours to review the agenda and the read-ahead materials.

Step 3: Use the meeting to tackle your top 3 cross-cutting issues. Identify the problem you want to solve, discuss options, and decide. Work on individualized issues separately. Keep the meeting to 45 minutes or less. 

Step 4: Make Commitments. I learned this approach from Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence. Review each item on the to-do list and ask the responsible individual if they can accomplish the task by the deadline. That simple public commitment, Cialdini says, increases compliance dramatically. 

Let me know how this approach works by hitting reply and sending me a quick note. 

Your Team: How to Harness the Potential to Transform

/in , /by

Your leadership style can accelerate your organization’s innovation and your Team’s Autonomy. 

team

I want to ask you three questions. 

  1. Who is your favorite leader, and why?
  2. What kind of leader did you aspire to be before becoming one?
  3. What kind of leader are you now?

I’m assuming that many of you wanted to be the kind of leader who inspired your Team to willingly give their best to your organization. You probably don’t want to be a fire-breathing leader that micromanages every little nuance. 

According to the chart below, many of us aspire to be the “Sage” leader–the one who creates transformation and helps our Team to accomplish their dreams. To do this, we need to share the “why” with our Team. 

It is no easy feat to cross the line between “Hero” and “Sage.” Many leaders are perfectly happy in the “Hero” role and have little ambition to move into “Sage.” Being the hero is seductive. People look to you for answers and solutions, which can actually slow down your business’s progress because it creates a sense of dependency. This “Hero” designation is fine if you are ok with the status quo, steady turnover, and employees who come to work to simply receive a paycheck. The “Hero” leaders run out of “how” when things become too complex. They give people agency to solve problems and innovate at the lowest levels possible.

On the other hand, there are those special organizations that create Teams with high autonomy. Only “why” leaders can handle complexity. “Sage” leaders aren’t afraid to shed their tough exterior shell, admit that the sum of its parts is greater than the whole, and explain the “why” so that their Team thrives in a complex world through autonomy and innovation. Everyone has the “roll up the sleeves” mentality. Not only does the job get done, but it’s more impactful than before.

Action Steps to become a “Sage” leader:

  • Take the Lead Well program: This program illustrates the six habits you need to become a “Why/Sage” leader. Click here to download the one-pager. Are you a good fit for this program? Apply Here! The next program starts in June.
  • Understand and Execute the “Lobster Principle:” Lobsters are animals that never stop growing. However, they need to shed their skin and be vulnerable for brief periods to move forward with their growth. Like lobsters, leaders need to shed their tough exterior once in a while to grow. Vulnerability means that you don’t always have the answers and that you’re willing to lean on your Team. It shows that you value them and their input, creating more buy-in and belonging.
  • Get to know your Team: You can’t become a transformational leader without getting to know your team. This takes time and energy, and it always pays off. It coincides with the “teach your Team to fish” analogy; the upfront time will pay off in the end. A “Manager” will give their Team a fish and feed them for a day. The “Sage” will teach their team to fish and feed them for a lifetime. Knowing your Team’s dreams and aspirations will help you create those meaningful transformations in their lives.
  • Practice sharing the “why” and then let go: This is a scary thing to do for the first time. There will be hurdles, pitfalls, and errors and that’s ok. Learn from the mishaps and keep handing over the reins. Eventually, your Team will gain a greater sense of agency, become more intuitive, and learn to ask the right questions to better guide their decision-making. Before you know it, your business sustainability will bolster, and the magic will happen in spite of you, not because of you.