The Principles of Vigilant Leadership: #2 Strategies for Getting Unstuck: “What Must Be True” Action Planning: Show Notes & Transcript

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re talking the second principle of vigilant leadership. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

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The Principles of Vigilant Leadership: #2 Strategies for Getting Unstuck: “What Must Be True” Action Planning

Last time we spoke about Vigilant Leadership, we covered the first principle, The Landscape Reality Check. This time, we’re diving into the second principle, Strategies for Getting Unstuck: “What Must Be True” Action Planning. That is, how to action against the goals you established in The Landscape Reality Check. This involves looking at some common goals, setting up accountability checks, having a dashboard where you track & prioritize, and more. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

• What your role is as the leader?
• The truth about strategy
• Why you want people to present all the possible barriers
• Why you need to have a tracking document
• The 3 strategies you need for getting unstuck

And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

• The Principles of Vigilant Leadership: #2 Strategies for Getting Unstuck: “What Must Be True” Action Planning
  • [0:29] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
  • [0:55] What must be true action planning
  • [2:21] Goal #1: Generating revenue by expanding into new markets
  • [4:29] What can you go do now?
  • [8:06] The actions need to be clear, specific, intentional, and tangible
  • [12:04] As the leader, always tie back to the larger goal
  • [17:42] Goal #2: Win more business
  • [21:11] What must be true for a new refreshed visibility?
  • [25:02] At the end of the day, strategy is just choices
  • [28:19] Accountability checks
  • [32:47] Why you want people to present what barriers could be in the way
  • [37:40] You might reach an obstacle you can’t overcome
  • [39:09] Make sure you have a tracking document
  • [43:52] Recap of strategies for getting unstuck
  • [45:26] Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
  • [45:47] Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

What is Strategic Counsel?

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic. 

Transcript

Please note: This transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:03

Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business Podcast.  If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead  and operate in business, you are in the right place.  In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective.  This unlocks opportunity for you, your team  and your business. Now let’s get to it.  Welcome to the Strategic Counsel Podcast. I’m Anne Candido.

 

00:32

And I am April Martini.  And today we’re gonna talk about the second principle of vigilant leadership and that is strategies for getting unstuck. What must be true, action planning. Now, if you haven’t listened to the first principle, the landscape reality check, you may wanna do that before because these episodes build on each other. And specifically, we’re gonna talk today about how to action against those goals that you developed in the landscape reality check.

 

00:59

So the way to do this is  what we call what must be true action planning. Now the question what must be true is a really powerful one to overcome obstacles and roadblocks posed by naysayers who claim it can’t be done. And a lot of times those naysayers are us. So this question flips what was once impossible to a possibility simply by asking what must be true for this to be successful?

 

01:23

Yeah, and turning what you learned in the landscape reality check into action is the place where a lot of leaders do get stuck, which is why we preface this principle with  strategies for getting unstuck. And this is usually because leaders just simply don’t know where to start, especially if it requires expertise outside their wheelhouse  or there’s the overwhelm of so many options that they find themselves in decision paralysis.

 

01:49

So this action planning is about driving clarity and focus so you can take immediate action in progressing against your goals.  Yes, so let’s dive into what must be true action planning. And I think a really good way to start with this discussion is with a common goal that has broad relevance across industries. So you can just kind of get the immediate practice of it all.

 

02:13

And then you can take hopefully what you hearing through this and how we think through this process and then apply it to all your goals. All right. So let’s kick it off with a common goal that April and I see a lot that is generated from landscape reality checks. And that is to generate revenue by expanding into new territories or markets. Yep. We hear this one all the time. Yeah. We hear this one a lot. And this one, I mean, you guys probably have this one on your list as well.

 

02:40

So some of the landscape reality check insights that often trigger this  goal is the need to find new customer client consumer targets  or expand the current customer target. So it’s in some way you’re looking to grow. Now this can be very daunting for many companies as this totally changes your landscape. So as you’re  processing through the landscape reality check, the whole  idea of having them to establish a new focal point

 

03:09

or all this work and then filtering it through the landscape rally check can feel like a lot of work. And it can also feel very uncomfortable because it’s unfamiliar grounds. So trying to motivate a team to do this effectively can be quite an undertaking. You’ll get a lot of these questions that come up like, well, we don’t know how to go do that, or it’s too risky to go do that, or it costs too much to go do that, or we don’t have enough resources to go do that. So I’m sure you guys are nodding alarm because these are

 

03:39

the excuses and the challenges that we get a lot when we are posing this what must be true action planning for these landscape reality checks. So what we say then is kind of flip it. Like we said, we want you guys to kind of flip this on its head a little bit. So ask yourself what must be true to successfully enter in secure business in a new territory or market? I mean, this is not like…

 

04:04

is necessarily something that is totally foreign to you, it just may take a lot of work. And so just think about the fact that that element of it is like shutting down the process. And then by flipping it around, what opportunities get created? And it’s very tangible things like we need to have relationships with key stakeholders. We need to set up a local presence. We need to drive awareness of our company.

 

04:29

So the list goes on and on and it could look very different for you, but you can kind of see how like, oh yeah, these are actual things that can be done.  They just may be things that actually take some work. If it isn’t immediately clear to you what to go do right now, continue to ask yourself what must be true until you get there. So for example, what must be true to get the relationships with key stakeholders if that is a key element of being able to drive the success and being able to scale. Maybe you need to get a meeting.

 

04:57

Well, what must be true to get a meeting? You need to identify who’s the right person. Well, what must be true to identify the right person? You need to do some research on LinkedIn.  Oh, okay, I can do that now. That’s something I can go do now. I know how to go do that. Now you have an action plan, then you can integrate into whatever plan system you have, and it starts with something I can go do now and then builds on what success looks like. Yeah, and we really love this one just to put a fine point on.

 

05:25

what Anne outlined here, because it allows for immediate tangibility.  And like we set up in the beginning, those action steps to go and do something right away. And we would be remiss if we didn’t say we totally get it. You all have your day-to-day jobs. You have a ton of things on your plate. And so taking the time to tackle these bigger,  meatier initiatives for your business can be really hard.

 

05:52

And so with this exercise, it allows you to think through very logically and pragmatically what needs to happen in this case against the objective of expanding into new territories or markets  and boil it down  to really specific tasks that can then build on themselves that then builds that momentum from the ground up.

 

06:17

And so on the other side of this, what we caution people against is, you know, the age old like, we’re just going to get into a room for a few days and hash the whole thing out. That’s not how this works.  We have to make sure that we can integrate steps into our already heavy workloads  that don’t feel daunting, that feel like things we can easily add in so that before we know it, we have momentum building and we don’t get stuck. Yeah. And I think this is

 

06:46

The  key here, guys, I we talked about a landscape reality check. We talked about how it’s different than a SWOT analysis. Yes. And how when we make these general goals, like we want to expand into new territories, they tend to sit there and get very stagnant because people are like,  I don’t even know how to go about doing that. What territory? Which one do we want to get into? Why do we want to get into that?

 

07:10

And then it becomes this huge thing, this huge snowball thing. And everybody’s like, I don’t want to go tackle that. That’s too big. I’m going to put that aside and I’m going to focus on something that’s more of a task that I can check the box off on  and get to you to move forward. So the whole process of this is really, as April said, to kind of boil it down  into making these tactics, things that you can do and check off the box and feel good that you’re making progress towards something.

 

07:38

But then you can easily track through your progress on this and see, okay, how far have I made it? Where am I getting stuck?  And if you know what the next logical next step is, you can then  apply the what must be true process anywhere in there or that question anywhere in there to then get unstuck wherever you are in that process. So it’s a magical question that really starts to just kind of generate that thinking in a more positive way where as opposed to like we said before,

 

08:06

people will tend to kind of get stuck or the fear sits in or the risk sits in and they don’t want to go any further. Now, once you start to get that action planning down though, it doesn’t stop there. So the actions themselves, as me and April were just talking about, need to be clear, they need to be specific, they need to be intentional, they need to be tangible, and they need to be measurable. And rewind back and make a note of that.

 

08:29

Yeah, I was gonna repeat it to you just to help for everybody to understand what we mean by this because it’s really, really important. So clear is you can clearly understand what you’re supposed to go do. There’s no like,  well, I don’t even know what that means. Like I’m gonna go research LinkedIn. Very, very clear. Like I know what that looks like. I know what I’m supposed to go do there. Very specific. I know what I’m looking to go find when I’m looking at through LinkedIn. I’m looking to go find people that I’m going to try to drive relationships with so that I can

 

08:59

I’ve started to develop that presence and build those relationships with key stakeholders. Intentional,  I know why I’m going to go do that. I know what it’s building towards. I know what I’m trying to achieve as a result of doing that. So the action makes sense to me. It’s tangible. I know everything around it. Like I can internalize it. And this is kind of like being clear and specific all in like one big bucket.

 

09:21

but it’s definitely something that I can put into a system that I then know how to track and then it’s measurable. know if I can say I need to get five, I know what five looks like. So all of those things are super important to make sure that your actions are able to be internalized and then followed up on. That means then you have to take these actions and by default assign somebody to go do the work and then give them what the expectations for delivery is. This looks like, as I was just kind of articulating,

 

09:50

in a more clear, specific, and tangible, tangible, and measurable way. If I was thinking about the LinkedIn exercise that I was just mentioning, it might look like April is gonna go conduct research on LinkedIn to identify a list that we need to connect with. Each team member will then get five people to reach out to and nurture the relationships. Progress is reported weekly with the goal of a meeting within 30 days. All of those things are now built into that. It’s very clear what April needs to go do. It’s very specific.

 

10:18

about what success looks like. It’s very intentional about why she’s gonna go do it. It’s tangible in the way that she knows what the work looks like and she knows what her expectations are in terms of measurables. So that’s what this kind of emphasis on this what must be true action planning  is meant to accomplish and how it helps you stay unstuck or get unstuck. Now, depending on the experience of your team, you may have to go a little bit further with what must be true with some aspects of this like,

 

10:46

Sometimes when we put in LinkedIn out there, some people have never been on LinkedIn. So it’s not as tangible, it’s not as specific. And so they’re like,  what do I do to get a response then? How do I even do this? So you might have to ask what must be true in order to then get a response. So we sound like a broken record, but we’re trying to get you to really ingrain that mindset of continually asking that question, because it can do wonders. Now, the thing to avoid here is to try to get too micromanage-y, because you can then take yourself

 

11:15

like way down into the details and it’s really hard to get out. So  have your people  use this, put it as a practice of your team and your  process for doing work and what the operating principles are for doing work that this is a core of, hey, don’t come to me until you’ve asked what must be true. And you’ve, I had a point where you just don’t know, where it’s not clear, it’s not specific  or it’s not intentional, tangible and measurable. Now we’re going to get more in the measurement.

 

11:43

part of that in the later principles, we’re not going to go too far into that one. But that gives you  an idea of then how this whole thing works from the action to the person who’s doing the work to how to make the work actionable.  And the thing I will add here is that as the person sitting in a position of leadership,

 

12:04

guiding the team through this, it’s important that your role is always to take it back to the higher level. Why are we doing this? What does it mean for the business?  And help the team connect those dots. Because  one of the areas where we see teams lose momentum is that the assumption is made that the team remembers and understands and can tie it back themselves to why we’re doing this piece of it right now.

 

12:33

And I think for a variety of reasons, like Anne’s, know, somebody gets distracted because they don’t know how to use LinkedIn. Somebody isn’t as intimately aware with the strategic planning document that you’re working against. You may have been and likely were is the lead, an integral part of developing that. Not all of them may have been. And then also just the overall exposure and experience with this type of work. It takes a good amount of time for people to, I always

 

13:02

equate it to like the light bulbs kicking in.  You have to have a certain number of years, repetitiveness in the type of work, especially when we’re talking about these types of strategic assignments.  So in order to make sure everyone is clear  on why they’re doing the things they’re doing, you as the leader should always be tying it back to, and remember we’re doing this because we’re trying to expand into new territories or markets. And in this example,

 

13:31

We needed to identify people to build relationships with so that we could have relationships in those markets or however you want to phrase it. And then the other part about this is it makes it easier for you to stay out of the micromanaging and the solving for them and allows them to go figure that out on their own. If you’re always kind of the person sitting above and placing those reminders or moments of education or just peer reinforcement to the people that are doing the tasks associated with this.

 

14:00

Yeah, I mean, it helps people to think for themselves, which is always very, important. It’s a skill that all leaders want and they struggle to cultivate a little bit. And so this is a really fantastic principle for establishing that thinking for yourself of them starting to generate more of that proactivity versus coming to you every time they get stuck and they need you to give them the next piece of the puzzle, if you will.

 

14:29

And then it becomes again, more of a dictation of how to go do something versus  really pulling the expertise  and the thinking out of your team and really utilizing the talent of your team, which then to the point, like as you were saying, April, you extend start to also figure out what could be potential distractions or outages. And so if you find like, as an example that people don’t really know how to use LinkedIn,

 

14:54

that becomes a very big opportunity to say, okay, we’re gonna have a training on how to use LinkedIn. All right, so this is a clear outage. We’re gonna get really good at losing LinkedIn. So we’re gonna have a training on how to use LinkedIn. So you can start identifying where you’re gonna have some gaps or where you might  be proactive about how you may have these roadblocks that come up. Now also too, what this does is it helps you to prioritize and make choices against your strategic plan, like you said.  So when you start having conflicts with…

 

15:21

time, people’s time, for example, and capacity, then you have to start making choices about,  do we do A or do we do B? You can start looking then at your What Makes Me True action planning, see where people are on the progress, and then kind of weighing in about what is more important to put your resources against at that point in time versus a more general, well, if we have to expand into this new territory, is that more important than we need to generate short-term leads right now?

 

15:49

And those become really impossible choices to make when you don’t have very something for specific to say, well,  where are we on the process of going into this territory? Oh, we’re in the identification stage. Okay, we could probably take another week on that to focus on a short-term need  or saying, oh, no, no, we’re critical. We need to get this meeting today in order to be able to generate this business we need here in this new territory.

 

16:15

we’re gonna have to find some other way to fulfill this issue we’re having on the short term side. So it helps you to have some criteria for how to make these decisions, which can be really difficult decisions to make in a moment for any leader. Well, and I think it also builds flexibility for people so that they don’t end up in those moments of paralysis, right?  Because like you said, it can be really tough to make those calls if you can’t…

 

16:40

very easily see what the snowball effect of that is going to be. So people will just sit and not make decisions  instead of like you just said, having the roadmap of being like, well, that can sit for a week, but this can’t, and this will be the trade-off. And again, it’s not at that like super high level, which I think is so unfair to ask of people, right? To make those trade-offs without all this data. Whereas now when you’re working through this very tangible intentional plan,

 

17:07

You have all of the points at your disposal to make those trade-offs and feel confident in the decisions you’re making. Yeah, because you can see how the can’s going to get kicked down the road. Yes. Where a lot of times in those moments where we sacrifice a long term for the short term and then we’re like, oh, shoot, like three weeks comes by and you’re like, oh, if I had known then what I know now, I would have made a different decision. So absolutely. Yeah. I think that’s a really, really important point.

 

17:35

All right, let’s take one more example just to make sure people really got it. Here’s another goal that me and April here a lot. We want to win more business.  We’ve seen this on  action plans.  I mean, 90 % of action plans have won more business and that’s all it says.  so  first question he and April ask is what must be true to win more business? Well, as people are looking at their landscape reality check, as they’re thinking about

 

18:03

why they want more business. A lot of the things that kind of come up is, or what’s getting in their way of getting more business is said differently,  is like usually some sort of formidable competitor, like they’re struggling in order to win this business from this competitor or win their market share of the business within their category. So that’s a common one that we see a lot, or  maybe that.

 

18:28

competitor has been at it longer and you’re new and so you’re trying to just kind of get your foot in the door  and you need to win more business in order to be able to generate the revenue that you need for your business as a whole in order to grow and be healthy. So there’s definitely some landscape reality check things that kind of trigger this one. It’s usually, I feel like it’s usually we’re behind or we’re on our heels  or like you said, someone’s beating us.

 

18:56

Yeah, answer to more business. Yeah, yeah, for sure.  All of those definitely  are instances in the landscape related check that generally generate that angst of we need to do something differently here. So again, we ask what must be true to successfully win more business then, which ironically is a question that not a lot of people ask because what they will do is they’ll skip this part and they’ll just default to  one what they already think they know what other people are doing. So it’s a

 

19:25

a follow of, if so and so is doing it, then we must just go do that and we’ll be all set. Or they pick something that looks like a easy win or a quick win, like skew chasing or getting some sort of lead gen technology or something that feels like, oh, this is a silver bullet. Before you go do any of those things, I’m not saying some of those things aren’t the right thing to go do, ask yourself- We have to make sure first. have to make sure they’re the right things.

 

19:55

Ask yourself what must be true to successfully win more business. Now, the thing is when you ask these questions or this question, the post to kind of short circuiting all the way to the actual tactical actions, you get a little bit more thought provoking responses like we need more brand recognition or awareness or we need a new refreshed positioning or positioning is not compelling enough.

 

20:18

And by the way, this is one that is happening a lot right now as the markets are getting very, very saturated with a lot of me too. And on her Tidebox for one second says AI has a lot to do with that. Don’t get caught in the AI trap that is diluting all these messages. And now you look and sound like everybody else.  And off Tidebox right now.  Another one is build reputation. This is a big one that when businesses are actually starting to kind of

 

20:47

think about how to win more business, that is like at the crux of a lot of them, which is we just don’t have the reputation, we don’t have the credibility, we don’t have the thought leadership, we don’t have the trust, we’re not getting the word of mouth. So again, this is not like how to solve it at this moment in time, but trying to give you enough detail and enough of the thought process to be able to apply it to whatever goals that you guys have. So if we’re gonna kind of drill it down, continue to drill down, let’s take like the new refresh positioning.

 

21:15

and think about then what must be true for a new refresh positioning. Competitive analysis to understand the opportunities is a big one. Well, then what must be true to do that? Well, we need someone to do this for us. Okay, well, what must be true to do that? Well, we need a recommendation for a strategist. So once you kind of get to that point, it’s like, okay, we know what to go do about that. Everyone’s gonna go seek out recommendations and bring options to the team meeting next week. And we’re gonna decide on the direction forward and we’re gonna assign a person to follow up. Again.

 

21:44

You can see it’s clear, specific, intentional, tangible, and measurable. We know what we’re gonna go do and we know why we’re gonna go do it. Now, just a little bit of a caveat. I we’re giving you these examples in a vacuum just to kind of get you in the right mindset, but obviously you would look across activities and make sure you are driving economies of scale. For example, you might need a strategist for this specific activity, but maybe you need a branding expert for another specific activity.

 

22:10

So you basically then will say, well, maybe I just need  a strategy led agency in order to do all this work. So it’s not meant to be myopic and kind of taking it in pillars. You definitely want to look across and see where you can drive that value  through your investment in your resources. Yeah. And I would say that comments like that last one  sometimes cause overwhelm with people because then they’re like, well, I’m doing the thing, but now you’re telling me to look bigger again.

 

22:40

Again, this is your role as the leader, right? We do get the question actually, the thing that I was thinking of as Anne was talking about, sometimes the leaders are like, well, what is my role in all of this? This is again, one of the places where you stay out of the doing of the things. Like Anne said, we’re giving you myopic examples that are really specific and in the weeds so that you can contextualize very quickly what we’re telling you you need to go and do. You’re role though still,

 

23:09

is to be the overall strategic lead.  So if these things are humming along and you’re able to give these assignments to your team, this is another place where then your job coming back out  is to look across and have awareness of either the various initiatives or pillars of the strategic plan you’re working against,  or what each team is working on,  or what other parts of the business may have as needs by working with your peers and having some of these conversations.

 

23:38

And so those items make it a whole lot easier to take something like, okay, do I hire just a strategist to do a competitive audit or would we be better served to hire a branding agency that can tick a lot more boxes?  You’ll be able to, again, more clearly see what the answer is.  If you continue to lead, sit on top like that and then make sure your quote unquote tasks include things like this type of assessment and having the pulse on what’s going on.

 

24:08

But again, not being in the weeds of the doing because that’s when the blinders go on and that’s where you can find yourself in a situation where  you instead hire a strategist to do a competitive audit when there was broader level opportunity. But I just bring all that up because this is another place where people,  see leaders kind of start to fumble or be on unsure footing.  If you can maintain that level, then things will really honestly and truly just show themselves to you. You’ll have a better instinct. You’ll see opportunity.

 

24:37

again, making this a positive exercise, all the things that Anne set up  versus hearing something like that and being like,  oh no, how am I supposed to decide that? You’ll have the data, the tools and the insight at your disposal. Yeah, I think those are all really good points because really at the end of the day, guys, strategy is just choices. Yeah. That’s what strategy is. Now, the  whole goal and the hard part about strategy is making the right choices.  Yeah, well.

 

25:04

So this thought process is meant to try to build that in because what’s going to happen and why a lot of people get stuck. Remember back to the original questions. It’s too expensive. I don’t have the resources for this. All those sorts of things that kind of get us to stop in our tracks. This helps you to justify all of those resources and needs in a very objective manner. So like I said before, if you’re going to short circuit all the way from, we need to win more business to I need then a

 

25:33

some sort of lead generation CRM system and that’s going to cost me, I don’t know, $20,000. All the big questions like, well, why? What is it doing for you? How’s that going to build the business? And a lot of times we don’t know. We just hope it will, right? Because somebody else has used it or they advertise really well or we had a intro discovery call and it sounded really good. But when you’re like trying to figure out, this really worth the investment? You go back to this one must be true action plan. It’s like, okay, well, if I’m really about like,

 

26:03

again, driving some sort of differentiated message that’s gonna help me drive leads. Is that the way to go do it or does my what must be true get me down a different path of how I’m wanna get there? If it does get you through the same path, great, you can check the box and said, okay, now I have that justification, especially if I need to go ask for more money. It’s like, well, yes, we need that because.

 

26:24

I’m going to I need this and that’s going to get us to this and that’s going to get us to this and that ultimately is going to get us what we need, right? You start to connect the dots for people, which helps to bring that strategy to life and then helps people say, oh yeah, I can understand why you need the resources. I understand why you need the people, the new agency, the money,  whatever that looks like that always seems to be like the hardest thing for people to in businesses and leaders to acquire as they’re trying to move their business.

 

26:49

So think about it in those terms too and realize this process can take you five minutes. I mean, it’s not necessarily a long drawn out process like April said, where you’re going off site for a day and trying to figure that out. You can walk through it as quickly as we articulated it because a lot of you already know it. And if you don’t, if you’re stuck, then it’s like, okay, well, what must be true to get unstuck? Maybe you need somebody who’s going to help you figure that out, right? So  just kind of embrace this as a method of trying to

 

27:19

really establish the workings of your strategy about how to go take action on strategy so your strategy just doesn’t live on a page. Well, and I would say, you we said from the beginning that this will allow you to build from the bottom up. And so to the point of this example and this, you know, contextualization of how do you make these choices,  if you are spending your time each day,

 

27:42

intentionally focusing with things like, okay, I need to meet with my peer group once a month, each of them. need to  have however many meetings a week to assess where the team is. I need to have one to a few hours to check where we are on all of this. You’ll have that information. So to Anne’s point, that’s why you’ll be able to immediately do things versus sitting and being like, I have this big thing to tackle and I have no idea how I’m going to get started.

 

28:11

All right, so now that you know what you’re gonna go do,  the next part is you’re have to have some sort of accountability checks.  But just to kind of hit on a couple of the key points here and just have that real reality check here is that  we all get busy as leaders. I mean, that is a common occurrence. If we weren’t busy, then I think everybody would be wondering why  we’re working there and how much  investment  is really warranted if we’re just sitting there twiddling our thumbs. You’d be out of a job.

 

28:41

Yeah, basically. And so it’s very easy to kind of fall off on making sure that you’re reviewing progress when you said you would. remember, you know, with those measurable specific action items, you have to teach your team that they need to deliver on those. All right. Otherwise, if you’re going to let things slide and if you’re like, oh yeah, what did happen  on that April? Did you get that list and you didn’t check it at the meeting? You’re going to teach your team that the milestones and deadlines are no big deal.

 

29:11

And you lose at that point the integrity of the team to really progress  and make any kind of traction on your action plan. Now, when you can uphold that, then your team starts to realize that, if my boss and my leader is going to hold me accountable, I have to also maintain integrity. And that means people do what they say, they say what they mean.  And you start to have a process of accountability, right?

 

29:40

Now that doesn’t mean that every deadline has to be a live or die deadline, but there needs to be a discussion and potentially consequences if people continue to fail to follow through. Again, you can use the what must be true here, what must be true in order to get my people to deliver  on what they’re supposed to deliver on and that could warrant a whole host of responses.

 

30:01

A big one that we’ve been dealing with right now is flexible work schedules where,  and this is like for the reality, reality is that people are working from home and they’re not delivering on things that they said they were going to deliver on, right? What must be true might be, well, you need to bring people back in the office so they are held more accountable. That’s just one example, but you can see how you can use this process in multiple different places in order to make sure

 

30:26

that you are holding people accountable, but accountability starts with you. And if you are not gonna be accountable to yourself, to the process, to making sure you’re following through, then your team is not gonna do it either. A couple of things that are important here is if you are not willing to hold your teams accountable, you won’t be able to sit at that higher level because you will be micromanaging the folks that work for you and around you and whatever.

 

30:52

So it’ll become much more of a task master sort of philosophy. The piece about that is, I don’t know really any high performers that do well in that situation. And so if you start going to that level, that really demotivates  people. In those moments, you may think that you’re being supportive or helpful or whatever,  but if you can be proactive and teach your team members to be proactive,

 

31:22

then accountability becomes a whole lot easier. And the reason that I bring up proactive is, know, Anne said, not every deadline has to be live or die. And that’s true. But what can’t happen on the other side of that is someone can’t miss a deadline and not tell you that they’re gonna miss the deadline. If there are measures of accountability and you’ve done all this work and set up this process that we’ve been talking about all the way through,  people should be very clear on what they’re supposed to be doing.

 

31:49

And so they should know well in advance if there are milestones or things that they’re not going to make or that they need help again with you as the leader to make decisions on which things can be completed and why.  So just hear us on the fact that it’s very, very important, but just make sure you’re being real and honest. And then the last thing I will say is also having others hold you accountable, even if that’s people that report to you, because it does start with you. And so making sure that you have the tools.

 

32:19

the team, your own leadership, peers in place so that you can be successful and show yourself as an example to the team. Yeah, absolutely. The other really important point as you’re going through the process is don’t gloss over the barriers, risks, and roadblocks. Now, a lot of people, when you get into this process of what must be true,  may feel like it’s uncomfortable then to pose a barrier or risk or a roadblock, right?

 

32:47

You want people to continue to say, well, what could get in our way?  that is very- testing and learning here. We’re testing and learning. And that is very legit.  this whole process is not to ignore that those things are  real big realities. It’s just to put them on paper so that we can address them and we can acknowledge them and we can figure out what must be true to get through them, not to ignore them. All right. So again, a lot of times you’re going to hear things like the one things I said before about

 

33:14

too much time, too much money, don’t have enough resources. A lot of other things we hear is like, management will never approve this, they’ll never let us change all this up or whatever those like, again, roadblocks or barriers could look like. That’s great. Address those, put them on a piece of paper and then start asking what must be true to actually then get through these roadblocks. Now, the thing that we’re gonna say here too is that,

 

33:41

This is not a magic bullet that all of a sudden everything is going to be possible. There are going to be things when you’re going to be sitting there and you start to put the run must be true pieces in place and you’re going to get to be like, yeah, that’s just not doable. That’s not doable right now or we’re just not willing to take that kind of a risk. You’ll get to that point, but at least you’ll have some objective criteria for which you made that decision.

 

34:07

And that people can align to that decision. That’s another really great thing about what this does is it helps to drive alignment. Cause everybody can be very clear about the basis for the decision making. So  use that process, the bot must be tree process to really assess those barriers, risks and roadblocks. And you might surprise yourself that you might have some creative solutions that come from that. When you start to pull the talent and the expertise from the team. One example I can think of.

 

34:35

is that one of our clients wanted to extend their customer service hours, but they couldn’t find anybody to work off hours in their current time zone. they hired somebody virtually in another time zone where those hours where their regular work hours. So when you start to think about these things, you can start to really assess like, hey, is there another way to solve for this that we’re not thinking? It starts to get the brain juices going in a lot of different ways, looking for the opportunities versus looking for reasons why we shouldn’t go do it.

 

35:05

Yeah, and I mean, a couple of things that came up for me as you were talking, Anne, is number one, it is really important that people keep bringing things to you and bringing things up. You want to make sure it’s not in a way of like it starts to become an excuse, right? Like, I just don’t really want to do this. So I’m going to throw up barriers. And if you have this infrastructure in place,  that really shouldn’t be possible anyway.

 

35:28

You don’t want people to worry that the momentum and the energy and the culture is so good and you’re chugging along. And so they’re afraid to raise their hand and say, Oh, I’m not so sure that this is going to work. And here’s why. So you do want to perpetuate that culture of let’s communicate. Again, back to my point about proactivity before, if you see something, don’t let it become a big thing. Let somebody know, let’s figure it out together. Let’s find another way. have other options.

 

35:57

So do make sure that your people feel empowered to do that and to bring those things up. The other thing that I will say is most,  well, really good strategic plans have multiple pillars that you’re working against. And so it’s not uncommon for you to get to a point on some of it and be like, okay, well, we’ve done a really good job of working through all the things we’ve talked about today  and now we’re here. And there’s just some big decisions that have to be made based on everything that we have uncovered.

 

36:26

And so then you may get to the point where it’s like, okay, this part of the strategic plan is where we want to invest right now.  This is really good work. This is a phase two, or we’re going to try this one and see how it goes. If that’s not going so well, we’re going to lean into this other pillar.  So none of that is meant to be like bad news or it wasn’t worth it or any of that. We encourage people to really internalize that all of this work makes everybody smarter.

 

36:53

It helps people be more committed to their role in the business.  And then it also allows for really smart strategic choices against the business and what’s right for it. And instead of, again, just kind of making guesses or throwing things out there, getting distracted by the little things, you can look at those choices and say, ah, we did a really good job with this. And so therefore these barriers or risks or roadblocks that are coming up.

 

37:20

those are natural things, now we just have to make some tough choices. And it just becomes about that instead of,  shoot, we’re stopping the train, this is negative, we’re not sure where to go now, or we did all this work and now what? what? Yeah, and that kind of stuff is going to happen regardless, right? So I think that’s a really good point is, again, you may reach a barrier roadblock that you can’t go through. Yeah, absolutely. And it starts to, again, call into question whether the effort was worth it. But at least

 

37:50

you have progress tracks along the way to continue to weigh in whether or not the work is actually worth it. Yeah. So it’s not just like generalized, like agglomeration of effort that nobody’s quite sure  if it’s making any progress or not. So it becomes again, more tangible. It becomes a little bit more specific so that you can weigh in along the way when it makes sense to you about, all right, is this work still worth the effort or not?

 

38:20

And then as you were thinking,  I’m sorry, as you were talking, I remembered one of my favorite roadblocks, is, well, we did that before and it didn’t work.  I was going to say before, but this is the way we’ve always done it, which they kind of go hand in hand. Yeah, that was the way we always done it. We never done it like that. don’t do things like that or that’s not the way this company works.  I’m sure you guys, you were  articulating, you’re like, oh yeah, I’ve heard those before. And these are the ones that we hear too.

 

38:49

All those are definitely in row box. They’re not, again, not to be dismissed, not to be ignored, but to be addressed at  the right time. Now,  this is impossible to do unless you have some way of  tracking your progress, like I just said. So you need to have some level of dashboarding where you track and prioritize what is going on. So whatever system you use, whether it’s a project management system, which can be something very sophisticated to an Excel spreadsheet,

 

39:18

When I was doing this at P &G, I had an Excel spreadsheet and I called a red, yellow, green document which listed all of our activities and it’s red was where we’re behind schedule, yellow was we’re tracking, but we’re not done yet and green was it’s done and it’s ready to go. And then that document continued to evolve as progress was being made. It doesn’t have to be super fancy. It just has to be something that everybody can look at, internalize and assess and then align to.

 

39:46

Scorecarding is really important so that everybody knows what their goals are, whether they are short term on a day to day basis, to a week basis, to a month, to a year, but however you decide that you want to scorecard against, it gives people motivation to work towards those expectations of what looks like success. We’re having some level of reporting, like how regularly are you going to report so that you guys can have those discussions, you can monitor progress, all those things we were talking about, whether or not…

 

40:12

You know, the work is still warranted. We don’t know, we need new resources, whether we have gaps. Is it everything that we thought was true in our landscape reality check turning out to be true? Have we learned something new in this process? As April said, a lot of this is testing and learning, but continuing to maintain that vigilance over that landscape and how you are impacting and what kind of results it’s generating and then optimizing accordingly. I mean, the purpose all here, guys, is to drive focus so that you know what you’re doing.

 

40:41

And you know why you’re doing it because a lot of times that can also be a little bit of the diluted effort of like trying to do too many things as well as not showing what we’re doing is the right things. Yeah. And this is one where if I go back to accountability and I’ve been the police there a lot lately, so it’s very top of mind,  but people get nervous here about having to actually put things down, right?

 

41:08

But the way that you need to think about this and, you know, a big part of our conversation today does really revolve around mindset and making this positive and actionable for people. If you don’t have a dashboard, it’s going to be impossible for every single person working on this plan to keep track of all the things that they’re doing. And to stay calibrated. Yeah. And that was the other part of what I was going to say. You’ll have some people that’ll go create their own, but it’ll live on an island.

 

41:38

And you’ll have some who will swirl because they aren’t project managers and they really can’t keep track of all the different things and prioritize and everything in between.  And so the communication here needs to be, this is not meant to be a way that we can punish or a slap on the wrist or any of those kinds of things.  It’s one place where we can all see everything that’s going on.  And at our different levels, we can be tracking what we need to.

 

42:05

so that each of us can go in and do our jobs in a much bigger way than any of us can do independently to reach these goals. If you don’t have this, like Anne said, you’re never gonna get there because you don’t have one place you can go to say, okay, in real time, where are we on? It can be a really specific thing. It can be a much bigger thing. It can be a cross-functional thing. Where are we on? Whatever those things are right this minute.

 

42:32

And that is what will help with the momentum, keeping things on track and then real time decision making.  But I just, think it’s important just to state that this is a place where people are like, Ooh, I don’t know that I want my name next to all of that. Or,  Oh, this feels like a whole lot of stuff for us to tackle  when really it’s just another tool  to help everybody do their job, stay on track and have it in their head what they’re supposed to be doing to get to success for themselves and for the business. Yeah. I think that’s really, really well said.

 

43:02

Yeah, the alignment, the calibration, that being able to  assess, again, whether or not the work is making progress or not, and trying to  just to manage the human emotions that come with that. So everything is there. And I’ll tell you guys  who have leaders who always like to be in your business, this is a really fantastic way for getting your leader out of the business because they don’t have to come and check what’s going on all the time. They already know.

 

43:30

So finding a way to be able to  do that, even updating in real time,  it can be very, very helpful to  keeping your boss  out of your business.  Yep. Because if you don’t do that, then the questions start to be raised also on the other side. That is right. All right. So just to sum this up, so these principles can hopefully just take hold in your head. Again, like I said, this is the principles of vigilant leadership. This is number two, strategies for getting unstuck.

 

43:59

what must be true action planning. So we went through several of the common goals and we articulated the need to use this question, what must be true in order to start really thinking through how to make your goals a reality in a very, very tangible,  a very clear, specific, intentional and measurable way, which means starting from the ground, working them back to a place of what we can do now,  and then  laddering and connecting the dots to how that

 

44:29

ladders to your bigger goal so that it’s very, very clear  as you are  articulating those to align both for your team and then upper management where gaps could happen, where  there could be things that are going to be roadblocks and barriers and any kind of thing that could get in your way, where you might need additional training, all of those sorts of things. This helps to really develop all of that.

 

44:55

mindset as well as actionability and create that highly effective team that you’re looking for. So also don’t forget, accountability checks are very, very important here. Make sure you’re holding your team accountable, making sure you’re holding yourself accountable. And then also making sure you have a dashboard where you can track and prioritize is going to help you calibrate and make sure that you’re continuing to progress and you can make those decisions and those choices, which are going to be best for your business, both short term and in.

 

45:25

the future.  And with that, encourage all of you to take at least one part off for insight you heard and put into practice. Remember, Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action.  we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further?  Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com.  We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business  and make sure to follow or subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform!