Okay, so today I want to take a minute and share with you a little on moving to Prime.
So what is the definition of Prime?
Prime is that you leave behind a legacy that can thrive without the founder.
So if I took you as the founder out of the picture, will the business thrive?
I'm not saying we're going to take you out, we're just saying if we took you out, right?
So if it was necessary for you, so it gives you options.
So your objective here is to set your organization.
So if you had me asked us that question, say, of Brilliant two, three years ago, you took
Graham out of the picture, there was nothing left.
You know, I mean, the whole thing weighed and hung on his shoulders.
More and more that's moved away.
Graham does much less of the training.
He supports us, of course, the School of Leadership I run together, you know, he's involved for
sure and he's part of the training, but less and less we've been moving him so that the
founder wouldn't be critical.
Now, he'll be involved for a long time, but we have to move that trust from the founder
to a team so that that transfer of trust needs to take place.
So it's not like, well, I can only do make a decision if I speak to, you know, the CEO,
if I can speak to the leader, if I can speak to the founder, if that's going on in your
organization, definitely a sign that you've got some work to do.
So what are we talking about?
Here's a visual for those of you who like graphics.
What we're saying is when you had the idea, there was some initial resistance.
That's what the little resistance signal is there.
There was some resistance to start, get the idea started, right?
So the Lord gave you an idea or you got an idea or you had a plan and you started your
plan.
And as you go and grow up into some sort of success, then what happens is there's another
resistance.
Going from success to prime is actually quite tough.
Why?
Because when think of when you started, when you started your company, when you started
your organization, you did everything.
Then as you started to grow, you got a bunch of generalists who are all just doing whatever
it takes.
And so everybody was involved in everything.
People loved it because they felt like they were part of everything.
It was small enough for everyone to know everything.
But then to go from success to prime, now we have to get specialists.
We have to get people in their lane.
And so that's a whole different leadership structure.
That's a whole different growth for you as a leader to move your organization to prime.
So yeah, we can get you to success, but then taking you to prime is the real challenge.
So let's go through.
So what is, what are we talking about?
So think about as complexity increases in your organization, what happens to the speed?
The speed plummets.
Right?
Why?
Because with complexity, as we often say, you know, the mist in your mind becomes the
fog in the organization.
So what happens here is that in that, when you're not clear because of complexity and
as the organization develops, what happens to you as the leader, as the founder, you
often end up doing aspects of the business you don't love doing.
You end up administrating your own business.
And you know, Dan Martell talks a lot about end up being the administrator of your own
business, hating what, what, you know, all the good stuff was given away to other people.
But what happens with, so often we give up also, so when we go from, you know, something
that's simple to complex, what happens is as the thing gets more complex, what's our
first normal reaction?
To control it, putting more controls, more forms to check, more checks and balances,
more standup meetings, more this, more that, more the next thing.
And this is the strategic mistake.
By the way, prime has got nothing to do with how old your organization is.
You can have a company that's 12 months old and be in prime.
You can have a company that's 20 years old and is not in prime at all.
It's still in that early stage.
So we know that simplicity drives speed.
You know, Jack Welch built the whole of GE around the three S's, self-confidence leads
to simplicity, leads to speed.
So because it takes a lot of confidence to be simple.
And you know, we've said many, many times that the notion is, if you're dealing with
complexity on anything, you're still the student.
But when you're dealing with simplicity, you've become the master.
Because it's simplicity, being able to make a thing simple is really, really challenging.
Because especially if you know that the detail is nuanced, you know, reality is nuanced.
But simplicity, it helps create and give people confidence and drive your team.
So the thing that drives complexity is control.
Here's a quick way to reduce some of the complexity.
Cut your meetings in half.
number of them and how long they last. We have a whole strategy for meetings and
what kind of meetings actually work. Very few meetings actually produce what you
think they produce. One way to help your team understand this, take your total
payroll, divide it by the number and figure out what the average hour per
person costs. Then do a quick, I did this for several companies, then just do a
quick audit for two weeks. Ask everybody at the end of the day just to put out
how many hours they were in meetings. Then work out what your average
meeting is an hour, hour and a half. The average number of people is 405 or 4.5
whatever the number is. Then you work out, hey we just spent $2,000 per
meeting this week, this month. This is a wake-up call. Now if you really want to
drive it home, add the simplicity part. Don't just say, let's say you sell a
product that costs $1,000. We just use two products of
sales every time we had a meeting. That will get their attention. Because
suddenly we don't, because what a lot of people do, by the way, if your company, if
your group are having a lot of meetings, that's a sign that nobody feels
empowered. So what they're doing there is they're creating the generalist thing. We
all have to be in on it so we can all get everybody. So we have a mindset
of, oh we should invite everyone just in case. Let's invite the CFO and the thing
and so and so and the next person. Because just in case they need to know.
Don't do just in case, do just in time. So these are simple quick ways to get rid
of some of the complexity in your organization. Okay so we want to get the
business to prime. So let's talk about moving from success to prime. What does
that actually look like? So let's talk about a success culture. You know when
you've just hit that success, everybody's working flat-out, usually crazy hours.
It's unsustainable effort. When you're coming out of that startup mode and
you're making your first few million dollars and the company's starting to
show a profit and it's starting to grow, you do unsustainable things. That's how
you learn. And by the way, that's normal. You know I'm thinking of Airbnb. You know
Airbnb, when they tried to launch their first thing in New York or
whatever it was and nobody was signing up, you may remember that the CEO and I
think the CFO happened to be a photographer, actually went to the
person's house, took photographs and got it rented and went through. Now is it
sustainable for the CEO and CFO to go to everybody's house and take photos? Of
course not. But they learned very quickly that great photos was the key to that
success of that business. So doing the unsustainable thing is part of the
learning. But then you have growing complexity, more customers, especially
in those early stages where you haven't quite packaged up your products
enough and so you just want the business. So you do all these little
variants of the product which gets very complex. And you get role confusion.
People are stepping over each other because not clearly defined roles.
Because we're coming out of generalist mode, in success mode, and trying to move
now into prime. There's discouragement. You know it's not like it used to be.
There's all these new people. I don't know what's going on. I'm just
looking for the good old days when we all knew what was happening. You've all
heard this before. And so I've seen even founders lose interest at
this point or motivation. I didn't sign up for this. This is complex. I don't want
to do this anymore. I can do this in a simpler way. I'm gonna either hand this
off to someone else or we have to rethink everything. So as we're
going through all of that, let's look at what prime leadership looks like. So I
want to introduce the idea of a new paradigm for leadership with somebody
being the conductor of the orchestra. Anybody's familiar with Ben Zander? By
the way I'll try to give us many direct references to where some of these best
practices are coming from. So you can look him up. There's a fantastic book
that Ben and his wife wrote called The Art of Possibility. And in The Art of
Possibility they talk through this idea of a leader being a conductor. And Ben
tells a fantastic story when he says, you know, he was about 45 years old
and he had an epiphany. And the epiphany was, hey I'm the only musician who
doesn't make a sound. And if you think that's it, you know, conductors are often
some of the most talented musicians, right? So what's the job? The job of the
conductor is to make sure every musician is in the right seat. Or you can use a
bus analogy. You're the bus driver but is everybody in the right seat on the bus?
And when you're first getting going, people are used to standing on the bus,
walking around, sitting random places wherever they needed. But now can you
assign somebody?
their right seat or in the go back to the musician so yes it's nice that you can play the the violin
and the oboe and the whatever but now i need you to be the first violinist now i need you to be
and now we assign everybody their right seat so the next thing is they all have the same sheet
of music for very obvious reasons can you imagine the cacophony of sound if even one note was out
or somebody accidentally you know was on the wrong page so getting them all on the same sheet of
music and with and they know when it's their turn to play another analogy that helped me understand
this if any of you have ever watched a bunch of five-year-olds play soccer right what happens
it's a ball of dust that moves around the field all that happens is there's one ball and all of
them are on the ball and then this ball of dust sort of just moves around and every now and again
somebody scores something zero strategy right but when you watch a professional soccer team what is
it well one person kicks the ball to another everybody knows the play everybody knows what
we're trying to do now wouldn't it be weird in a professional team if somebody kicked the ball to
their to somebody else and um and then ran up to that person to help them kick the ball because
they didn't trust them see if you don't trust the competence of your team members that's what they
will do they can't hand it off because there's no actual trust or they're not willing to let them
learn and so founders who say i'm the only one who can do this that's what they're doing they
kick the ball to you sort of handing it off but then they they're checking every little thing
and then helping them kick and at some point you have to all be on the same page we know what the
play is we're going to trust each other even if we make mistakes and we know when it's our turn to
play and so here is the bottom line for this style of leadership it's so beautifully
empowering because you become powerful when you make others powerful as a leader you become
powerful by making your team members powerful what if you made members of your team the hero of a
story and you know robin alluded to earlier one of the best practices i know of if i took over a
business that's the first thing i install is one hour training once and once a week no exceptions
if you absolutely have to miss it then you've got 48 hours to catch up on the replay it's 100
required and and and if you because you need one place in which you can have the controls for
shifting culture culture in your business is gonna it's like turning the the you know turning it up
one degree at a time and when you're turning up a block of ice one degree at a time you can go from
you know 15 degrees to 20 degrees and so what we've done five weeks of training nothing's happened
that's not how leadership works leadership works you just keep going one day the ice automatically
melts why because you hit 32 and then you keep going and then it turns to steam what magic did
you do nothing i just kept turning it up one degree and so these people who come in and do
oh we did a three-day off-site will do nothing for your culture may help you get something
organized but you'll do nothing for culture because culture is slow learning great learning
is slow learning when it comes to culture um one way of thinking of this is so if i go to the gym
and i've been to the gym six times already so where's the results then same thing right it's
exactly the same thing you're training the muscle memory of your team you're training the
individuals so if you have moments where you make members powerful if you have moments where you
make somebody in your team the hero of the story it's game over for them and they will love you
forever that moment when you get recognized so any team that i've led it works like this
let's say dear and i working together and dear royally screws up on something and i come to
you guys and i say we the team made a mistake we apologize if dear pulls off something genius i
say let me tell you what a genius deer is um collins referred to this as the window and the
mirror when things go bad you look in the mirror when things go great you look out the window and
you identify the key person you want to turn into a hero this is the foundation of how people
feel seen and heard people need to know what i do matters here my life i am making a contribution
here you say well we do you know we do boring stuff we don't do like you know cool stuff that
non-profits do we do some pretty boring stuff it doesn't matter what you do it's that it's who you
do it with and are you seen are you received and are you celebrated that's the bottom line
and this gives us an opportunity
at a whole new level of culture as leaders.
You know, we want this thing for them.
If you leave us,
we want you to be the smartest person in the room.
We paid for this Edge course
so that you can be trained with the best leadership
stuff from around the world.
So that if you leave us,
we want you to be the smartest person in the room.
You say, well, why would we do that?
You know, I had one person said,
hey, what if we do all this and then they all leave?
And the answer to that is,
what if you don't do it and they will stay?
Just asking.
So here's the thing, do it anyway.
Invest in people anyway.
And then, you know,
I know a story of an organization
where the leader got up, he had a staff of 300,
and he said to them,
hey, we really liked you when we hired you.
We like you still.
If you feel there's a better job out there
for you, come and talk to us.
And if we have contacts, we'll help you get that job.
By the way, if it doesn't work out, come back to us.
We liked you when you left,
we'll like you when you come back.
And we know you've learned more lessons.
That is just huge.
That is the, this is the game changing culture
that empowers you to attract people above your pay grade.
People will leave more secure businesses,
take less money for a culture like this.
And when you're going through the interview process,
and we have a whole system on how to do that
based off SpaceX's training, hiring program.
When you're going through that
and you're describing this kind of culture,
it's people, you know, like, what?
That actually exists.
You know, on two occasions,
we've had people cry in the interview process
because they just, it's like,
I felt so seen even in the interview.
Okay, so creating a work culture
that people love to be a part of.
You know, as you're going through this,
this is so easy to do.
So what does that mean for you as a leader?
That means you're constantly looking
for training opportunities all the time,
because you're the conductor.
You have to point to people, you're on.
And when somebody makes a suggestion,
you know, Ben Zander tells the story
of somebody who came to him,
one of the musicians said,
why don't we do this piece like this?
You know, it's all classical music, of course.
And I think he was the conductor
of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.
And he said, well, what if we did this piece like this?
And so he said, okay, I'll think about it.
And when they got to playing it, he did the piece.
And she said, you did my piece, you know.
You did my thing.
And then of course, when they're all together,
he gave credit to her.
And so you did my piece.
That's how you want your people to feel.
You did my piece.
You took my idea.
And then make them the hero of the story.
Let me ask you, will they be more prone now
to innovate more or less?
Obviously more.
When one of those emotional moments happen,
something beautiful happens to the culture.
And when other team members seeing, you know,
other people being made the hero of the story,
in a very, you know, I'm not talking,
you know I'm not talking in a cheesy way.
Because a lot of leaders say,
hey, I want all your ideas, tell us what you think.
And when you tell them what you really think,
you get your head handed to you.
Go, that's the last time I'm doing that plan.
So what does this mean?
It means we create an environment
where good people can thrive.
Let me give you a warning about this type of leadership.
If you take all the upside, there is some downside.
Downside number one is,
number one downside is,
not everybody's gonna love this.
There will be people in your team
who don't wanna be growing.
So think of it like this.
Here's the gradient, you're on this gradient way here.
And now you're taking this weekly training,
you're tilting the gradient up slightly.
Now with the training, you know,
you're tilting it even further up.
So the gradient, the learning curve,
or as Elon Musk puts it,
he who innovates the fastest wins, right?
So as you push that gradient up,
and you're driving a new type of culture,
where you're teaching people
that this is an environment that you can trust,
that you can flourish in.
I'm the conductor.
You played my part.
You played my music.
You played my bit.
That moment.
But some people,
they're gonna grow slower than the growth rate.
I'm not saying they're not growing at all.
I'm saying they're gonna grow slower
than the pace and the gradient
you've now set for your organization.
What's gonna happen to the gap?
Bigger.
bigger and bigger. And so the kindest thing you can do as a leader is release those people back
into the marketplace so they can be involved in an environment that's growing at a pace that
suits them better. That's not because they're slow or this. It's just this culture, this
environment is too quick. And I can tell you this is a self-sorting mechanism. You think,
oh, well, you know, I'll try to bring everyone along. No, you won't. You'll either lower the
gradient or those people will leave. I'm afraid that's the truth. I wish I could tell you there
was a kind of thing. But the kindest thing you can do as a leader is to sit down with them and say,
look, we've got 30 days. In 30 days time, we're going to get together. These are things we're
going to measure. And if they're not there, make sure your resume is in order. That's the kindest
thing you can do. Don't shock people from nowhere and just fire them. That is horrible.
And also, you need people in your team to see that this is a safe place.
OK, let's bring this in for a landing. So small changes gain massive momentum. It's one degree
a day or one degree a week. That means you've moved the temperature up 52 degrees a year.
That will profoundly change the culture of your organization. So people ask,
how did we at Brilliant increase in 18 to 24 months? How did we increase the productivity
by 500 percent with half the size team? There was no magic in that. Oh, you must have had
extraordinary people. Look, we all have extraordinary people because we have ordinary
people that can be trained to do extraordinary things. That is true for almost every organization.
I said there were two things. The second thing, one, you will lose the slower growth people in
your organization. The second thing that will happen over time is that the momentum and speed
of the organization will demand more from your leadership because it means you're going to have
to give people the gift of trust, not trying to tell them to earn your trust. I spoke to a
a CTO of a large insurance company and he said, well, I'm just not a very trusting person.
You know, they have to earn my trust. I said what you just told me. I said, firstly, that's a bunch
of nonsense, because what you just told me was that you never trust anyone for any reason
whatsoever. You just came up with an excuse. Why not? Because trust, you give people the gift of
trust and then teach them how not to break your trust by this. When you make a mistake, tell me
first. That's how you keep my trust. Not like you can't make mistakes. Just tell me first. Own it.
Tell me first. Be first up. Make sure good news travels fast. Bad news travels faster. That's how
you keep my trust. So moving from success to prime means creating a team of leaders, not just a team
with a leader. That means you up leveling your leadership ability. That means you're handing
off things and trusting people, even if you know you could do it better. I go back to Dan Martell's
comment. 80% done by someone else is amazing, right? So forget about the 90, 95. This will be
dropped. It doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. So how do we teach people visually? Here's a
visualization that will help you think about this new paradigm. Teach people how do you bring your
strength in balance. I'm going to use a firefighter model. So imagine firefighters. They've
all got their hand on the net, right? Now imagine if these firefighters don't pull on the net just
right. If there's not the right tension, this is not going to be effective, correct?
Okay, what does that mean? That means in your organization, tension is a healthy sign of health.
There are people who want to remove the tension. We don't want conflict. You've got to have a
certain tension. In other words, imagine if you've got a powerful personality who walks in,
grabs the net, and yanks the net out of everybody's hand. What happens then? And then
the company cannot be supported. The company being the person jumping out of the fire building,
right? So now imagine if it's all just kumbaya and we're all just standing together and we're
all in agreement and the net's on the ground because we're all just making a lovely huddle.
Now the net's lying on the ground and the person jumps. That's the same as no net. What does this
practically mean? It means there's a beauty in tension. Maybe sales and marketing and finance
and technology and community management or whatever those elements are. You're saying to
your team members, I want you to pull on the net. Not so hard you rip it out of the other person's
hand, but not so
soft that there's now now there's a gap. So I need you to pull on your net. So
this is a powerful permission to tell your team pull on your net. So
question to you.
Whose hands right now are on the net? You say my hands are the only ones. Okay
that's a starting point. We need to fix that.
That's not a team of leaders. That's a team with a leader.
Okay so you have to now learn to lead a team of leaders.
That's it. That's the next level up. So who in your team
have their hands on the on the net? Are there some people you need to invite to
let go of the net? Are there some people you need to invite
to join and take their space on the net? And third
question is are some of your team members need to
be encouraged to either pull softer or pull harder?
So how does that look? That means hey we just had a meeting and
hey John I just want to talk to you about that for a minute. You just pulled
the net out of everyone's hands when you pulled that off.
When you did that no one could make a comment.
You just did in such a forceful way there was no way to collaborate. No way
to contribute because you just ripped that.
Or why did you just sit there quietly the whole time? You have said well I'm
only responsible for customer service. Listen you're the you're the pointy end
of the spear. Customer service is the most important
thing. And I remember coming doing product
development with with Team Brilliant and we had talked about some of this
and we did a presentation and I did a five or six minute presentation on the
next product that I wanted to call which we're going to call our prime
product. And I just teed it up very high level
I framed it up so the team could have a conversation.
And then our head of customer service you know the story
she told me that was really dumb idea. Tell the president the idea is dumb.
That that you got a good culture going when they can do that with
she was respectful. She said customers will never understand that.
She laid out the product it became but what was she doing there?
She was pulling on the net respectfully. She wasn't insulting. She
wasn't rude. So there is a way to do this and if you
can if your meetings look like that why
haven't I heard from you? Or when you did it you presented it so
softly there wasn't enough tension on the net.
So tension is a sign something healthy is happening.
A lack of tension is a sign that something poor is happening.
I hope that helps. Over the next you know time as we build out this all together
we're going to build four pillars with you. Each of the trainings are going to
be built around four pillars. Today we focused on a leadership pillar.
We're going to talk about building culture. We're going to talk about
building innovation and economics. What if everyone in your
team is equipped to be a leader? What if
everyone your team knows the working culture of how we work together
and what and what if the you know everyone can
innovate regardless of what they're doing. Innovation at every level of the
organization in every category. Hey we got our
invoices paid faster because we came up with this new automated whatever
and what if economically what if economically
everybody understood how what they do contributes financially to the business.
Question to you if I woke your team up and said in the
middle of the night and said tell me what you do
and how that financially contributes to the organization
can they answer that question?
It's really important that they can. Why? Because that shows they understand
the mission of the organization. We're going to get into getting that clarity
and all that stuff coming up in a few weeks. We'll talk through all
that. Well thanks for taking a moment. I hope
you know as we're going through all of that that that was that was helpful.