Okay, so today we're going to talk a little bit about what on earth are we doing?
And we're going to get into this idea that clarity and simplicity drive speed.
Jack Welch famously called it the triple S. You have to have self-confidence to be simple
and simplicity drives speed.
It does take boldness to be simple because when we're sophisticated, when we're complicated,
we think we're being sophisticated.
One of my favorite stories about bringing unbelievable clarity to your organization
is the story of the Ritz-Carlton.
They looked at some of their best practices.
And I love what this, I mean, these people have won so many awards, I'll just skip past
all that.
But just to say, these achievements came from one very simple framework.
And this is what they did is they, when they were doing initial training in their group,
they had a simple training motto.
They reduced the whole of running a high-end hotel group, does anybody know what they reduced
it to?
Does anyone know what their one line was?
So we weren't servants cleaning the rooms.
We weren't bellhops carrying the luggage.
We weren't receptionists checking people in.
None of that.
They reduced their entire organization down to, we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies
and gentlemen.
We're ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.
Can you just see the 10 things that got upgraded right there?
You're not servants.
And so because you're ladies and gentlemen, that means we're going to trust you.
So you get every single person in their organization gets $2,000 to spend at their discretion to
make a guest happy.
So somebody came in and said, oh, my car got really messed and got dinged, send it off
to the body shop around the corner or get it detailed or whatever.
Oh, my television broke, just go and get a new TV and install it.
They can spend $2,000 and it just solves problems.
Now you can say, well, I can't do $2,000, but you can do 50 bucks.
Just that little message that you're sending to your team.
Now here's the question.
It's 2 a.m. in the morning and we knock on the door of each of your employees.
We wake them up and we say, what's your motto?
What on earth are you doing?
And everybody at the Ritz-Carlton says, we're ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.
Right?
Here's how you know you've got this sorted or not.
If I came there, didn't ask you, but I asked your team this question, would they talk for
three to five minutes?
That means they're clueless.
If it takes lots of sentences, right, why do you do what you do in your organization
has to be that clear that it tells everybody what the guardrails are right away.
So the brilliance of this simple statement has three key elements in it, right?
It clearly states the goal is to serve ladies and gentlemen, right?
That's very, very clear.
But it's also full of possibility because it makes it clear that the staff are not merely
employees or staff, they're serving customers.
They're not just serving customers.
In fact, they're serving ladies and gentlemen.
So embedded in this simple, simple statement is an invitation for every member of the team
to see themselves as a lady or gentleman.
And it speaks to the sophistication and the grace of the level of service they want from
their organization.
It carries this embedded compliment to every team member, but it also positions and sets
them up in a different posture so that they can take, you know, a different way at a different
grace level and a sophistication.
So it didn't matter if you're part of the cleaning staff, the bellhop, catering, you
know, reception didn't matter.
It's all the same thing.
We're ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.
Now if I asked the average company, especially big companies, what's your mission?
And it's just the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We're here to provide a superior service to our customers and blah and give a higher
return on blah, blah, blah.
It's like you went to mission.com online and just generated something or another.
OK, we got that check.
It doesn't inspire.
So you know, you've nailed down your clarity point.
You've nailed down your mission statement when it postures.
your team. It sounds like an invitation to be something, to be someone. It explains what
you're trying to do. And it makes it clear how to go about doing it. It's got a permission
built in it. The clarity is so powerful. Now you say, well that's really brilliant. I don't
know if we can come up with that. Hey, I will tell you, it takes months to get these things
sorted. It takes months. So don't say, well, we're going to do one deep work session. We're
going to get the whole team together in four hours. We're going to come up with it. You
might start coming up with it. Does anybody feel right now that, hey, I've already got
that. I already know what that is. So in the worksheet, if I ask you to give that worksheet
to every employee and ask them to write it out. If it's not word perfect across the board,
you've got work to do, which is great because it means you can also upgrade it. Maybe you've
got one, but it doesn't have that inspirational element. Look, it's a powerful way to enroll
your team in why you exist. If your business went away, would anyone notice? And so that's
part of the why you exist. So this clarity is really critical. I love the way Andy Stanley
says this. He says, the mist in your mind becomes the fog in the organization. The mist
in your mind becomes the fog in your organization. So remember, what's the first rule of leadership?
First rule of leadership is, what am I being that this exists? Not why are these people
not listening to me? Why did my team not do what I tell them? What am I being that this
exists? So clarity, this mission is about clarity around an unreasonable commitment
to something that should be. That's something really important. So bold leadership refuses
to back down just because we don't know how. Don't how the idea to death. Yeah, yeah, but
how are we going to do that? How are we going to be ladies and gentlemen serving ladies
and gentlemen? Don't how it to death. Just write out what should be and then figure out
how to go there. So I know we've made this comment very many times and it's this simple
idea. If you're in complexity, you're still the student. If you're in simplicity, you've
become the master. Because when you can simplify complex concepts so that they're accessible
to everyone, you have leadership. This becomes the foundation of your leadership. Because
complexity is the enemy of clarity. Now we get it. When your organization is growing,
complexity comes. I don't know if this is a well-documented level, but in my personal
experience, you know when it's just you and under five people, it has a different level.
Everybody knows everything. It's a bunch of generalists. Think about it this way. When
you start, you do everything. Then you grow a little bit and then you've got a team who
does everything. Then you grow to the next level and now what you're doing is you're
now getting more people in their lane and not everybody knows everything. So with complexity,
it seems like when we get to about 15, that gets to a new complexity level. I know some
of you have about 25 employees, that gets to a new complexity. When I hit 50 in my company
for the first time, I hit 50 employees. It's like what happened? It's like the wheels started
falling off. The reason is, the systems you put in place to support 15 people cannot support
50 people. The mode of operation, when you were 15, you were still small enough to let
everybody know what was going on. When you're 50 people, you don't have that. I remember
one day, we got to about 85 people and I was sitting with a leadership team. So I had a
president and I had eight people on my management team. CFO, I even have a chief legal officer
because we were working with big insurance companies, multi-billion dollar insurance
companies and I was spending 30, 40k a month on legal fees. So I thought, hey, let me get
that in. I'm looking around at all these things. My chief operating officer, we brought in
from Washington DC. He was the retired general who led one of the electronic warfare part
of the first Iraqi war. So I brought in this general. He was one of the best operations
guys I ever worked with. I had this amazing team, but you know what I knew? I realized
I started to suffer from
depth perception in the organization. I couldn't see deeply into the
organization anymore and I was relying on these people telling me stuff. And so
one of the things that you can solve that depth perception problem as you
grow is to make your mission so simple that everybody gets it. And so I would
just walk around and ask people if they didn't have our mission statement
memorized. Then I knew that we still had work to do. So we want to get rid of that
that fog in the organization by clearing the mist in our own minds. Having it more
or less doesn't count. It doesn't produce the effect. So what we're trying to do
here over the next 12 months is want to pick your organization up and see you
get 200 to 500 percent increase in productivity. And we want to build a
culture that can deliver it. But the starting point for that culture has to
be what on earth are we doing? And so I want to say this to you. Look I remember
being part of a transaction. At one point we were partly owned by the largest
privately held life insurance company that in the United States. And I was
speaking to the owner and I used to fly with him on his jet and we'd go and see
CEOs big insurance companies. That's how I got to all the top insurance companies.
And he would phone the CEO of some you know big insurance company like New York
Life or these big companies. Hey we want to show you some technology while you're
having lunch. I want to bring in a young guy. I was young then. And we will
and we'll do the presentation. And then he sits down and he tells me the story. I
said hey you know because they just flew back from something else. And he said well
we are down in Texas and we're buying an insurance company. And they'd bought 13
insurance companies at that stage. And he said and I met this good old boy.
And the good old boy had a very simple way of doing business. And sorry they
were selling a piece of their business to this guy. And so the guy just looks at
them. They do their whole presentation and the CFO and you know the investment
banker. And they do all the stuff. And he just sits there and he listens. And when he's
done he says I just want to know one thing. Is what I'm buying and what you're
selling the same thing? He's what I'm buying and you see you go but he this is
a billionaire right? Well what you find is as you get higher up the ranks people
get simpler not more sophisticated. They leave the sophisticated to the people
they hire. Well hire an investment banker or hire the attorney and the CFO. I want to
get it really really tight. So here's what I want to yes where I want us to
land with this. I want us to ask three questions and I want to give credit to
Andy Stanley for these three questions. They were so helpful. I've implement this
in every single business that I've run. And one time over breakfast with him I
said I'm so glad you don't charge royalties on this because I'd owe you a
lot of money. And here's what I do. In every single company we take some time
and we'd answer three key questions. And this is to bring that level of clarity
about you know what are we doing? What on earth are we doing? The first question is
what are we doing? Second question why are we doing it? Third question how do I
fit in? So in next week's video I'm going to talk through a one-line job
description that makes it super clear how everybody fits in. So for today let's
talk about what am I doing. Well we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and
gentlemen right. Why are we doing this? The why by the way you can normally find
is the passion behind you know why the founder started. The passion behind why
we exist and it's important that we exist. That's the passion. That's the
extraordinary aspect. Now I know Simon Sinek says start with why. I'm totally
fine if you want to do that. You can certainly start with why. So whatever it
is whether you start with why and then what it doesn't really matter. But the
question is what are we doing? What are we doing here? Remember is what I'm
buying and what you're selling the same thing. We need to reduce. If you want to
become a great coach to your team remember we're building a team of
leaders. Well that takes a different leadership you know if you're if you're
leading a team of leaders than if you're just leading a team. So a team of leaders
means you start becoming a more and more of a coach. I think that you know I some
of the best CEOs spend a good percentage of their time. Jack Welsh evidently spent
70% of his time coaching and training. So if you say well I'm too busy for that
You may need to hire someone to offload stuff from you so you can do this
critical function of being the coach. What are we doing? Why are we doing it?
Can your team answer those two questions with the exact same phrase across the
board? Or do they have to stumble? Or do they have to talk for five minutes? So I
love that this clarity will produce so much. That simplicity will drive so much
speed in the organization. It's almost like a magic pill. Every time we've done
this in an organization, it's extraordinary what's come out of it. So
when we have, you know, this level of simplicity, then it tells us if we're
making progress. It informs us and tells us how to do our jobs. How to, you
know, how to be ladies and gentlemen serving. It tells us how to serve. And
finally, it directs us on how to build the business. We know how to contribute.
We know we want to get other great ladies and gentlemen to help us serve
ladies and gentlemen. We want to learn new techniques, new processes. We want to
simplify the process of serving ladies and gentlemen. So I hope that was really
helpful on getting really clear and let simplicity drive the speed in your
organization by knowing exactly what are we doing and why are we doing it.