ReliabilityX

Tag: Performance Management

  • Self Ownership Part 4

    Self Ownership Part 4

    The focus on attention to detail is one of the most critical portions of self-ownership. Everyone can walk by trash, but when the leader does it, it’s sending a message. The focus on attention to detail, especially in contracts, is best illustrated by the famous rock group, Van Halen.

    Rock stars are able to put seemingly insane requests into what they need from the venues they perform at, and Van Halen was no different. After all, they’re the reason venues can charge hundreds of dollars per seat, they can choose to be picky.

    They had a giant contract for whenever they’d play at a venue, which they were known for having a very specific and odd request.

    They demanded that there was a bowl of M&M’s (the chocolate candy) with ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN M&M’s in the bowl. Their contract actually had it in all capital letters.

    For years, venue managers mocked the request, thinking it was just another case of rock stars being demanding. Van Halen’s road team had a different point of view.

    Van Halen was using the largest lighting equipment that any touring group had ever used. They were so heavy, and required such support, that the road crew knew there could be deadly consequences if a light that weighed 300 pounds fell on the audience. When the road crew would get to a new venue, they could either start the day-long process of having a dozen men going through every single portion of the stage to confirm that the venue had prepared properly, or they could have one intern go check the bowl of M&M’s.

    Their insight was that if someone went through the trouble of picking the brown M&M’s out of the bowl, the owners of the venue definitely went through the prep work required to have a safe show. The road crew would do a shortened version of their prep and know the risks were handled.

    But if someone didn’t pick out all of the brown M&M’s in the bowl, then they definitely missed something else in the contract, and that something else could get people hurt or killed. If there was a brown M&M in the bowl, they went through every single item on the checklist because they knew that the owners of the venue hadn’t taken the ownership of the event as seriously as they should have.

    When the venue owner’s failed to own the task, the road crew took that responsibility over, because it might have been the venue’s fault, but the road crew would be the ones responsible if someone was hurt.

    The amount of self-ownership demonstrated by the road crew of Van Halen was impressive, which is why it’s still talked about today. The lessons from a rock band in the 80’s can still be implemented today, and you can use a similar mindset to the same effect today.

    When I consult with a company, one thing I always need to do is to bring attention to the company and the reality of their situation. The reality is most problems are downstream from a total lack of self-ownership.

    Within the company, each level of management down to individual contributors are partially or totally lacking in self-ownership. There’s usually a few frustrated, exhausted people who are trying to overcompensate for the failure of the rest of the team.

    To help bring this reality check into effect, I like to have a difficult conversation. I’ll be in a meeting with a dozen or more people across the whole company and after understanding the general landscape of where the company is, and outlining where the company should be I’ll say:

    “These are my expectations, and I know my bar is high. But how low does my bar need to be set to meet your expectations?”

    It’s always total silence after I ask.

    Everyone in the room is at first stunned because they can’t believe I actually said something like that. Next, they have to do the mental math on how much lower their standards of the processes, people and outcomes they’re supposed to be the person in charge of owning them.

    After a long enough pause to make sure it’s finally sunk in to these people that they’ve been the ones who have let the standards fall far enough that I have to come in, I follow up with the next quote.

    “If you want friends, buy a puppy. We’re here to run a business and you brought me in to do a job because it’s not getting done right now. If you want to exceed my expectations, I’m on board. But first we’re going to get to my level.”

    To quote The Departed: “I’m the guy who does his job, you must be the other guy.”

    This intense concentration on seriously owning everything you do has made me well known in my field as the go-to man for turning businesses around. Self-ownership is the foundation. If you’re not willing to totally commit to owning the process, it doesn’t matter how smart you are or how well you know the business because something will always fall through the cracks.

  • Self Ownership Part 1

    Self Ownership Part 1

    Here’s a common situation that most of us have experienced in our careers or education:

    You’re working on a project with a tight deadline, the task is do-able, but difficult. Everyone has their specific tasks assigned, and the whole team is working together on a final document to turn in. Your section is the financial analysis portion of the project.

    The sections all reference each other, none of them can stand alone and have a chance at making sense together. Three of your four teammates are working on final editing of the document the night before it’s due, when the final teammate says “Ok, I think my part’s done, we can add it in now.”

    With just hours to go, the entire team has to work through the night to somehow integrate this into the final document – hoping that it still makes sense or doesn’t contradict the other portions.

    What went wrong here?

    You did your job.

    Your job was the financial analysis. You did your job.

    What went wrong is that your job description is almost never everything that you need to do to succeed, and you thought doing your job was enough for the team to win.

    What was really needed was someone to take ownership of the project. Not just to be another line cook flipping burgers, but making sure that the napkins are stocked, food is fresh, the bills are paid, make sure the silverware is clean and 238 other things got done.

    What you needed was self-ownership.

    Self-ownership is the awareness and implementation that, at the end of the day, almost every problem is on your plate. This means there’s no one to pass the blame onto.

    It’s the ability to look at a department in a company, a fundraising event for a non-profit, or the annual Halloween party for the 4th grade class and realize that even though you may not have the title of owner, if you want the project to succeed, you’re going to need to pretend that you have it.

    Most people’s first attempts at self-ownership fall flat, because they’re viewing the problem from the wrong direction. They hear about “self-ownership” and assume that they are in charge of the entire situation.

    They start out telling people what to do, frequently people who outrank them or have more experience and are rightfully put in their place.

    Self-ownership doesn’t mean that you’re the King of the Welding Department, with ultimate authority. It means that your goal is ultimately the success of the welding department, and you’ll do whatever it takes to get there.

    These two attitudes show themselves in very different ways, in both actions and the internal and external dialogue people have with each other.

    When you’re focused on taking personal ownership of the welding department, for example, the successful perspective would ask where are we right now? What metrics are we failing to hit? What causes them?

    Is the sales team setting unrealistic expectations on delivery dates, making the welding team take dangerous risks, putting the safety of the crew at risk?

    Are certain shifts not putting out their quota of production? Is this because at the end of the shift, half the workers just walk away from their equipment, leaving the next shift to clean up their workspace for an hour instead of hitting the ground running?

    Compare that mindset of ownership versus just telling the welding team they need to work faster, especially Jeff and Mikey, or they’re going to get fired, hoping that will light a fire underneath them.

     

  • Self-Discipline Part 1

    Self-Discipline Part 1

    In our previous chapters, we talked about how the topics of the three previous chapters work together. In our analogy, we’re sailing a sailboat to the North Pole.

    This is done by using self-awareness as an understanding of where your starting point on the journey is, with a focus on radical honesty, as lying to yourself is as useless as not even starting to reflect.

    Next we have self-accountability, which means that no matter where you start, it’s important to understand you were the one who got you there. You are the sum of all of the life choices you have made up to this point, and instead of being paralyzed by regret, you’ll use that to jumpstart positive change.

    Next we have self-leadership, that makes sure that we’re constantly keeping the ship going forward, and checking our compass to make sure that we’re not just going forward, but that we’re heading due north.

    What happens when you’ve got the boat headed in the right direction, you’re moving forward quickly, and all of a sudden the weather turns. Whipping winds and stinging rain push you below deck.

    Now you’re hoping to sit below deck and wait for the rain to subside, and every minute you wait you’re veering further and further off course – and you don’t even know it.

    This is where self-discipline comes into play. Self-discipline is where you make the serious commitment to yourself, knowing that there’s going to be dozens or thousands of times you want to give up, but refuse to.

    Self-discipline is the committed and conscious acknowledgement that simply put: sometimes it’s just going to suck.

    Depending on what your goals are, the self-discipline will show itself in different ways, and the ways that you’ll try to avoid them will look different, but they all cut to the core of the issue.

    If you’re a boxer who has to wake up at 5 am to (hopefully not) get punched in the face, anyone can imagine how difficult day 100 of that training could be. Not every commitment to discipline is as obvious as it is for a boxer, it could be a mom who’s exhausted from her job that comes home and doesn’t want to cook for the kids.

    If she’s exhausted and doesn’t want to cook a healthy meal, maybe once she’ll order a pizza. Then it happens again three nights later, and again the day after that. Now the kids are eating pizza and fast food five nights a week, and she’s not living up to the personal development plan she made for herself and her family.

    She had plans to feed her kids healthy, home cooked meals as often as possible. While she wasn’t training to be a Navy Seal, being a mother who wants the healthiest options for her children is absolutely something that requires discipline. It just looks different, but it comes from the same place.

    Both come from the place of taking the easy way out, right now, when you know you’re going to regret it later. A 45 second phone call to the pizza place is easier tonight, but in five years everyone is going to regret those easy decisions.

    Self-discipline is one of the most crucial steps we talk about in this book because it’s where the thoughts, plans, and goals turn into real-world action.

    Everyone knows what it takes to have six-pack abs, or millions of dollars in the bank: for 90% of the population it isn’t a lack of knowledge, but a lack of the discipline to execute consistently, even when it isn’t fun, even when it’s raining, even when your friends are doing XYZ.

    It’s a cliche, but ask any fit person about gym memberships in January. January 1st rolls around, and there’s suddenly dozens of new faces, with treadmills and weight machines having waiting lines. Then February 1st rolls around, and about 75% of them have disappeared, and it’s not because they lost their goal of 75 pounds in one month.

    It’s because it’s easy to ride off of passion. When you’re enjoying New Year’s Eve, everyone talks about how this year is going to be different, but when it’s 6 am and snowing, suddenly the gym can wait until tomorrow.

    Self-discipline is knowing that you might not always be passionate, but you always have to push through it. Luckily, we know how to set yourself up to be as successful as possible when it comes to self-discipline.