Execution is Everything | Ep 52

Brian: 00:00:00

On today's episode, we're going to talk about how to reinforce company goals, processes, initiatives and actually get them to stick. I know with us, man, this is something that we struggle with, you know, to be completely transparent with our audience.

I think we have a lot of ideas and we roll stuff out and getting them to stick and to get employee buy in, I think is a hard thing to do. What takes do you have or what are some things that how we can take our own coaching and do it for our own company?

Justin: 00:00:38

Yeah. When you just did the opening there, I was, I was like, I don't know if we're the best people to talk about this right now.

Brian: 00:00:45

Well, this is us being vulnerable, man.

Justin: 00:00:47

Like, yeah, me personally, I've always learned the hard way, but I think what's beneficial is I'm aware of that and I'm always open to learning different ways and improving processes, whatever it is. And this is something that we're trying to figure out together.

And I think reflecting back, and we've talked about this more so recently for sure, but we've tried so many different things over the last four and a half, five years and not all of them are sticking.

And then when you look on how you roll those things out, whether it's goals, processes, initiatives, you can shoot bullets through nearly all of them. And I think some of the mistakes, and I think that's where I can focus this conversation is like the mistakes we've made and why they were mistakes.

Because when you start growing, you have to build out more like structures and processes. Sops. Yeah, I hate that word, but more sops.

Brian: 00:01:38

Yeah.

Justin: 00:01:38

It's because you have more people, there's a lot more moving pieces and people need that structure so that they can focus on their goals.

Brian: 00:01:45

Right.

Justin: 00:01:45

And do what their job entails.

Brian: 00:01:46

Yeah.

Justin: 00:01:47

But where we've made mistakes is we grew significantly the first few years.

Brian: 00:01:52

Yeah.

Justin: 00:01:53

And we didn't have those things in place.

And so now when we were trying, you know, last couple of years, we're trying to make these changes for the better and we have good intentions, but it's how we're rolling them out and executing on them that where we failed.

Brian: 00:02:06

You're absolutely right.

And I think that even with the SOP front, I think we look at it, we're both sales minded individuals, we look at it from a perspective of, okay, this SOP is not generating any revenue, so why am I working on it? That is something that in our business, I think we have to do a better job with in certain areas.

I Think we have a sales sop, we have a client retention sop. That's good. Yeah. The back end processes. I think that's something that we've kind of pieced together over time and we've used it from our experience.

A couple things that I think that we can also learn and also share with our audience is our society today is different than it was 10, 12, 15 years ago. How are we communicating, how are we rolling these things out?

And how many touches do our sales employees or all of our employees need until something is a habit or something is the standard? And I think, you know, a lot of it.

I've been a part of a lot of organizations where they roll something out and then it changes in six weeks and then it's like, okay, am I supposed to be doing this? Am I supposed to be focused on that? What am I doing here?

And I think, you know, for us, like one thing that we can learn or one thing that we can do a better job of is if we roll out an initiative, we take it through a quarter and then we communicate that and we say, hey, listen, for the first quarter, our initiative is X and here's what we're going to do to achieve this number by a certain date. I think sometimes we have a lot of great ideas and we might roll those things out too often.

And hell, I think that's kind of a good and bad thing because we talk about the ideas often and what we can do and how we can get better. And we're always trying to strive for success.

But I think sometimes it does fall on deaf ears because of the fact that we don't execute everything the way that we should.

Justin: 00:03:51

You referred to this when you just mentioned that. But you're managing this day and age.

Brian: 00:03:56

We're managing different set of people, three.

Justin: 00:03:58

Different generations of employees or the workforce. They all learn different ways. And where I failed is I know why we're making a change.

You and I discuss it decided this is definitely something we need to adjust or build out. We'll send it out or we'll do like a demo, a presentation, send out an email and then there's no follow through from the team.

It's like, why aren't they, you know, that would work for me. I get it. I know this process. But I'm also the one that helped build it. I'm also the one that like sent the email out or whatever.

You and I might know it, but it's not sticking for everyone else. So you have to, you have to reflect on where Are we missing how does our workforce learn or how do they want to learn?

And over the last couple years, more so than any, you had these issues and there's a number of issues that we've uncovered the past five years and some are higher priority than others. So I'm assuming you're familiar with smart goals, Smart goal planning?

Brian: 00:05:00

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Justin: 00:05:01

Are they actually like relevant? Are they achievable? Is there a set timeline for them? Are they specific? Are they measurable?

You reference smart goals to any initiative, any goal, any process you want to roll out. If it's not relevant, why would it stick?

Brian: 00:05:14

Right, right.

Justin: 00:05:14

You know, if we're trying to roll out a new process that doesn't apply to really anyone but two people, sure.

Brian: 00:05:20

Nobody cares. Yeah, yeah.

Justin: 00:05:41

If you're trying to roll out a new process that you're given a one week timeline to execute on.

Brian: 00:05:47

Yeah.

Justin: 00:05:47

But really it's a two month timeline. It's going to fail. You're setting that new process up for failure.

So there's a lot of things that we've done and tried to execute on that we just failed on. Right. What are your thoughts there? Where do you think we're.

Brian: 00:06:00

Yeah, it is a different generation, just like you mentioned. I think it is. People handle things in a certain way and I think a level of expectation has to be there.

I referenced this a little bit ago, but I used to have a, or I have a friend that's a sales manager and what she used to do was anybody that was in the organization, and they were in the organization from day one until, you know, the two year mark, she would have these tests and one of the expectations of her managing style is if she sent an email to that person, they need to have a response to her within 45 minutes. Now it's not outside the hours of 8 to 5, everything's within the day, but an email response back to her within 45 minutes.

You check the box and she would send out some of these emails or send out some of these tests every now.

And as some of the people that weren't as engaged and you know this, within our industry, you have to be available, you have to be reading your emails all the time because there might be new opportunities from customers or clients to make more money or you know, in your inbox.

So one thing she would do, and I don't know all the details to be exact, but I would imagine she has like a three strike system where if you don't reply within 45 minutes, she puts your name down and that's a red flag to her, which I think is great. You know, those are the expectations. Okay, I'm reading this email now.

I'm responding back to my boss and, and saying, hey, I received this, thank you so much for sending it and kind of regurgitating some of that.

I think there's also this day and age and some of the strategies that I've heard that have worked well and I think they work well with some of the folks on our team. But saying it verbally, hey, we're going to roll out a new process. It's actually going to start March 1st. Be on the lookout for some information.

Saying it verbally gives them kind of a heads up or some Runway and then that email that comes out is going to land a little bit better and you're going to have a better retention rate from those folks that are receiving it. I also, the execution of that on a daily basis, hey, here's what's going on.

Verbally telling them, sending an email out so they can read it and then also executing that on a daily basis and what they can do and how they can help the team. I think that's a way that we can help. Now is it 100% foolproof? It's not.

But I think that's a way that we can always help out our individuals and achieve the goals that we want.

Because we might set these lofty goals throughout the year, but hell, if we're not executing on the tasks each week, we're not going to achieve what you want. Especially in our industry, there's a lot.

Justin: 00:08:23

To be said around individual goals or someone needing to establish an individual process that they might be struggling with compared to a company initiative or process that's high priority. And even then you're reflecting back where we may have failed on these. It's the email, the repetitive announcements or like verbal touches.

You're referring to the company meeting because everyone knows this by now, but we, we live in a highly distracted world.

Brian: 00:08:50

Very.

Justin: 00:08:51

There's one thing when I send an email and I get frustrated because 60% of our employees didn't do what we asked them to do.

Brian: 00:08:58

Sure.

Justin: 00:08:59

There's another thing when you might be doing a same announcement on a Monday morning and you see a handful of faces and the other people are buried in their desks. There's another thing when we have a company meeting, please don't mention that you're.

Brian: 00:09:12

Going to get me fired up here.

Justin: 00:09:13

Where we present on it. And then there's another thing when like you have there's multiple touches that you can do.

The thing is the execution, the follow through and explaining why, okay, here's what change we're making, here's why we're making it and here's how it impacts you.

I think that carries a lot of weight because if we're up there talking about AR and we have a newer sales rep that's like, I'm not even billing any clients.

Brian: 00:09:39

Three clients right now. Yeah.

Justin: 00:09:40

And then a month down the road he pops off and his AR is atrocious. Well, it's. You have to tie it to why that is important to them and why it's important to the company.

It impacts you and this is how it impacts the company. So when they're just refusing to take action on something that we're pushing as a company, it's a problem.

Brian: 00:09:59

Yeah, I think there are some times like we'll send stuff out or we'll communicate and there won't be a ton of response or I think we do that from the expectation piece of like, hey, we're giving you this information. I need you to read it and act on it. As opposed to you coming over to my desk and being extremely inefficient.

I always love to answer questions at the same time. Like I just spent 12 minutes typing up this email for you to read and then why are you coming over to ask me another question about it?

Now we're 19 minutes deep.

I think from an efficiency perspective and the way to do that, I think as anybody who's a leader listening to this show, I think that's a way that they can help themselves and buy back their time. Which is a phenomenal book by David Mortel.

Justin: 00:10:41

Yes, it is. Let's talk about something else. We've rolled out a few incentives.

They weren't a huge priority for you and I, but they were a big priority for everyone else. We've tried a few of those here and there the past couple years and we shot ourselves in the foot.

Brian: 00:10:58

I try to forget what the names are. What were some of those names?

Justin: 00:11:00

I don't want to just talk about them.

Brian: 00:11:03

One thing that we're referring to is, you know, we tried a couple things called summer hours and it's flexibility with individuals in the company that are performing right. So if you're not performing, you don't get this flexibility.

But the summer hour is, you know, you get to dictate or you get to leave at 3:00 on specific days in the summer. Now that's if your revenue metrics are up and your, you know, operations metrics are up.

Justin: 00:11:27

Are you talking about the third time around?

Brian: 00:11:29

No, we've only tried it twice. We've only tried it twice.

Justin: 00:11:31

But the point I want to get.

Brian: 00:11:33

Yeah.

Justin: 00:11:33

So, like, people want it. We listen to feedback. People want some more flexibility. We're in a hybrid world, apparently now.

Brian: 00:11:40

Yeah.

Justin: 00:11:41

We offer the flexibility. But where I think you and I struggled is it wasn't really an incentive for us.

Brian: 00:11:47

Sure.

Justin: 00:11:48

It was for our people.

Brian: 00:11:49

Yeah.

Justin: 00:11:49

And we didn't figure out the details or like, make sure it was rock solid before we rolled it out.

Brian: 00:11:55

Agreed.

Justin: 00:11:55

We just kept saying we're offer flexibility. We're going to do, you know, remote work.

Brian: 00:12:00

Yeah.

Justin: 00:12:00

And then we just like, yeah, sure. Wednesdays it is. Or Fridays it is.

Brian: 00:12:05

Yeah.

Justin: 00:12:05

And it's like, well, hold on, there's some people that should be in the office.

Brian: 00:12:08

Right.

Justin: 00:12:09

But then we, we point at ourselves and we're like, well, shit, that's our fault.

Brian: 00:12:12

Yeah.

Justin: 00:12:13

Because.

Brian: 00:12:13

Agreed.

Justin: 00:12:14

It was communicated correctly.

Brian: 00:12:16

Executed.

Justin: 00:12:17

It wasn't executed with the right measurables.

Brian: 00:12:19

For sure. I agree, man. I think that's, you know, we live and learn.

And I think that was one of the challenging things when we got a lot of pushback when we pulled off the summer hours, we said, hey, we're no longer doing summer hours. Got a little pushback, you know, and it's. Those are the challenges.

Justin: 00:12:34

We took responsibility.

Brian: 00:12:35

Yeah. I mean, we have to. Yeah. So I think we try some things out and sometimes we fall flat on our face. And I think we've. We've done that twice.

But, you know, you live and learn.

Justin: 00:12:43

Yep.

Brian: 00:12:44

So I think, you know, to recap a lot of this episode, I think to make company goals and processes stick, I think it is a couple of those things where you have to set the expectation. You have to execute on a daily basis and you have to follow up with these things with our employees all the time.

It's not something that it's a set it and forget it mentality. This day and age attention spans are seven seconds, and it's not going to stick with pretty much any employee out there.

So make sure that you're doing those things and make sure that you're following through on a daily.