Today, we're going to talk about how to use forcing functions to grow your business.
You might ask, well, what's a forcing function?
To best illustrate this, let me tell you a story.
When we were first learning to run virtual conferences for our organization, it acted
as a forcing function.
We felt we needed many months lead up time.
We found there were so many things we didn't know about how to run a virtual conference.
We'd never done that before.
And we certainly haven't done it on that scale.
To do that, we had to go and commit to a world-class studio who could facilitate this and take
us through the entire process.
Second, we had to commit to an incredibly aggressive time frame that seemed, honestly,
seemed impossible.
We were wondering, why are we doing this?
The third thing is, in that process, because we were being so forced in such a short period
of time, we had to get our message straight.
We had to learn, how do we actually promote this event?
And what was almost the most difficult thing to do was to figure out who the right fit
client was for the event.
A lot of people would say, well, let's just get a lot of people there and figure out what
to sell them.
But in a previous training, we learned that we start with the customer and work backwards.
So we had to say, what was the customer's need?
Now, here's how strange this was.
When we first launched this, we had, at that time, a $20 a month subscription to an app
that we offered.
And we naturally thought, well, we'll offer that again.
But as we got into it and started to figure out, but hang on a second, who is this for?
We realized that there were many people in our community that wanted leadership development
products.
And so we went from a $20 a month subscription was going to be the offer.
And we flipped it to a $5,000 leadership program that met once a week for 40 weeks.
Now that was still a cheap product by comparison.
But for us, having never done that before, this was a real forcing function.
We were being forced into a whole new space we had never been before.
Not only did we have to then figure out, well, then, who should be at the event?
How do we get to those right fit clients?
What language resonates with them?
What are they looking for now?
Who's servicing them now?
And how can we service them better?
And the questions just literally overwhelmed us.
Then once we figured out who's going to be there, we had to figure out, how do we make
an offer in a way that fits our culture?
We have some unique elements to our culture in the way we approach leadership.
And so we want to make sure it fit our own culture.
And we had to then make sure that the product we provided, that leadership training experience,
would exceed all expectations.
Well, I'm happy to tell you that after four years of doing this, the first three years,
we've had over 92% rating of exceeded expectations.
How did we get there?
Well, when you're thinking about innovation, when you're thinking about scaling and growing
your business, you realize that all innovation needs at least one constraint.
Even if you have the resources and the talent, you need time as a constraint.
So sometimes artificially putting it in a short period of time helps you supercharge
and drive that to a whole new level.
Some of the most innovative, creative things come when you have very little time.
You may remember this from your college days when that paper that was due was left to the
last moment and suddenly a surge of innovation and creativity came and you pulled it off
anyway.
So it can be a talent constraint or a resource constraint or a time constraint.
Whatever it is, it needs something we call a forcing function.
Now think of it like this.
If you're thinking of a graph mathematically, how do you suddenly step change up and move
to a new level?
How do you go up the step in a very short period of time, jump to a whole different
level?
Now you're here and the transition is very short.
You know, when we did this particular event to run our first event, we learned very quickly
that sometimes forcing functions are a great gift.
Why?
Well, they provide clarity and what the forcing function does is it gives permission to do
whatever it takes to get the deliverable done.
And so, you know, the negative aspects that exist in the business are immediately flushed
out because you have to get to the core issue and get there quickly.
And so it highlights our weaknesses in leadership, in teams, in products, in systems, in our
thinking.
One of the things forcing functions are great at is the reason you function at this level.
this level and not that level are all these weakness areas.
And what's amazing is, you know, as we step up,
the forcing function then requires very clear decision
making and commitment from the whole team.
It's not just the leader with their knee in everybody's
backs trying to force him to make it all happen.
What it is, is the whole team buying in and say,
guys, what if we pull this off?
What if we actually do this?
How amazing would that be?
And so, forcing functions open up a whole new level
of innovation and organizational up-leveling.
You suddenly find collaboration, coordination,
because we're all trying to deliver this close
on impossible goal in this very short period of time.
And so, organizations then shift to this whole new level
as a result of this forcing function.
This forcing function creates a clarity
and accelerates all the processes in the organization.
It may not feel pleasant at the time,
but afterwards, the state of exhilaration
and people are just feeling euphoric of,
look what we pulled off.
You know, even we weren't 100% sure we could do it,
and yet we did it.
Now, how do you know it's a forcing function?
Well, the first thing is, it sounds unreasonable.
And secondly, it sounds unattainable.
Both the time frame is unreasonable
and the height at which you're trying to jump
seems unattainable.
And, you know, as you step into that new place
and you up-level, what you find very quickly
is to hold that new position
so you just don't fall back to where you were
requires three big changes.
Number one, a change in your systems.
Sometimes you have to create new systems
to hold that new position, that new customer service,
that new sales system, that new marketing system,
you know, that new product development,
manufacturing, whatever that new system is.
Number two, team.
Sometimes you have to move your team around
or bring in new hires or release others.
You have to make the adjustments
because the team that brought you here
are usually not the same team that can hold it here.
And so you have to up-level some of your team members.
Maybe you've been holding back for a while
on stepping up as a team member yourself.
Remember, we're a team of leaders.
It's not just a team with a leader.
So as we're thinking about that,
how do I need to step up
and what am I willing to take on as a team member?
And number three, culture.
You know, this is what we have to do.
We have to not only up-level,
but we have to make the new level our new normal.
Remember all that collaboration,
all that working together,
all that helping one another out,
getting rid of all the negative weaknesses
in our structure, in our systems?
Now, as a culture, we get to agree this is the new normal.
We don't go back to the old.
We now stay on the new.
You know, as we've gone through this,
I gave you this example
of us running Brilliance Conference for the first time.
We had to make senior changes,
you know, to our senior level in our team.
We had to come up with an entire leadership product
and go through an early release.
You know, even if we weren't sure
it was necessarily the best quality,
we knew where we were going to start.
We had, you know, we had laid out the 40 weeks,
but there was a lot of detail that didn't exist at the time,
but we built it as we went.
And we had to change our overhead.
We had to focus our overhead
on delivering this core product
and not necessarily being focused on other things,
which meant stopping certain things
that existed in the business.
You know, we had to prune out, you know,
the dead parts of the rosebush, right?
We had to get rid of the weak roses,
and we had to push all the resources
into the very best roses.
And finally, the financing side.
We had to make sure they were able
to financially pull it all off.
So when you're thinking about a forcing function,
you know, and you want to, you know,
take that on as a team,
you have to start what seems impossible to do,
the height, and what seems like
it's absolutely unattainable and improbable.
In other words, it's too short a time to too high a jump.
That is a forcing function.
If you take your team, if you as a team
go through a forcing function
and you all buy in,
you'll be amazed that your business
will take these almost step changes
into a whole new space.
And as you hold that space, making it the new normal,
your business will have scaled and never go backwards.
Thank you for listening. I hope that was helpful.