Episode 278: The Bottom Line - Lug Nuts

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders. These podcasts are going to be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business. I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it.

Just get what you need and go.

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Hey everyone. So this past week we had a little bit of a struggle. Honestly, we had some mistakes that were happening with certain things. And, you know, a lot of times you won't necessarily— I mean, if you listen to other podcasts, listen to— go on social media, etc., people are going to tell you all the successes and all the wonderful things, but sometimes they don't actually give you behind the scenes of what happens whenever, you know, the crap doesn't go the way that you want it to. And so I shared this with my EA and thought I would share with all of you. And actually ended up sharing it with some of our clients. And so it's this analogy of keeping lug nuts tight versus tightening lug nuts. And so let's just imagine for a second you're the race car driver and you race Formula 1. That's obviously popular on Netflix right now, or it has been. And you're going around Brickyard and your business is the Formula 1 car itself. And you go around the Brickyard and you notice that the wheels are getting wobbly. and you realize that, uh, hey, we got some lug nuts that are not tight. So you go around and you go in on the mic and you tell your team, hey, I'm going to pull into the pit stop, you guys are going to need to tighten these lug nuts. And so they do, so they tighten the lug nuts, and then you take off, you begin to catch up, go around one more lap, and you realize, oh, I got another wheel that's wobbly, and you have to pull into the pit stop. You get the analogy, right? So Ultimately, that's kind of like trying to get the business to go faster to be able to hit the goals or the targets that you have set, but you're constantly having to tighten lug nuts versus what are the things that we can do to keep lug nuts tight. Now, I have become and did become a very operating system, playbooks, systems and processes person. I don't really use that language, but it's not how I was over a period of time. In fact, I was and still am to this day pretty entrepreneurial ADD in the way that, that I approach things. And it's actually through creating an operating system with a structured way to create playbooks and fit those assets into the operating system. That was the big unlock for me personally. Now, this past week, you may say, well, didn't you mention that it's actually been a really challenging week? It has. We had a number of mistakes that were made, and some of them were small things, but the wrong time went out on an email. It's supposed to be 9, and it went out at 8. And then there was just other certain things, and the email didn't go out in some, some cases. And so everybody is going to say, well, you know, You just gotta have systems and processes. Well, to a certain degree, that is true. And I absolutely think that systems and playbooks are wonderful for creating consistency, but they don't necessarily always result in excellence. So what is it that keeps problems fixed? What is the thing that keeps lug nuts tight so we're not going around the track one time, constantly suddenly having to tighten the lug nuts? Well, it's expectations, it's accountability, and then ultimately it really does come down to culture. Now, some of you may be saying, well, I mean, gosh, that's profound, but it really is about a certain level of expectations. And I would even point specifically to core values. And, uh, we have a core— one of our core 4 is first-class experience. And you begin to point to and say, this performance, these mistakes do not live up to the first-class experience. And sometimes core values become kind of maddening because you say, man, I've set this expectation, these standards of how things need to be, and we're not living up to it. Ultimately, I think the first place to start is, do you then have a playbook? Do you have a specific system that's documented in a playbook that says this is how this should go. And a lot of times, a lot of business owners do not have that. In this particular case, we did. It was just not being adhered to. So it wasn't the fact that there wasn't a structure, that there wasn't a system that was documented in a playbook of what certain things, uh, should be, what the weekly workflow would be, but actually it was just not execution on it. And so it's the culture and the expectations and the standards that you lay out to say, these are the standards that we have. It's not good enough. And it, and it, and it then ultimately comes down into coaching conversations about, you know, what mistakes happened there. Were there— did I not give a long enough timeframe? There was a couple of them that I say, hey, that was a, that was a quick turnaround. That was a tight turnaround for the team. And so, you know, I'll expect— I'll personally will accept responsibilities for that. But in some cases, they were just whiffs, they were misses. And so, uh, you have that conversation, you tie it right back to the expectations, the standards that you have set, and the core values. The one specifically of it being a, uh, a first-class experience— that's one of the core 4, uh, that we have. But it has been helpful for me over the past week. Um, now I don't know when this episode's going to drop. I'm recording this, second week of July. But it has been really helpful for me to think, wait a minute, we are tightening lug nuts. We're constantly saying, oh, okay, I'll fix it, I'll fix it, I'll fix it. That word was actually being used. I'll take care of it. You heard that before. And so it's a, we're going to go tighten that lug nut, we're going to go fix that email, we're going to make sure that that goes out on time, that the trains leave on time, that all the planes take off and land on time, etc. Versus What are the things that we need to do? Is there a system or a process or a playbook that's missing to make sure ultimately that the lug nuts stay tight versus constantly having to tighten the lug nuts? That has been very helpful for me over the past week as a really a thinking time exercise. As a matter of fact, I actually did a thinking time exercise and saying, what do I need to have in place? Is there, is there a playbook missing? But if there's not a playbook, Is there a conversation that needs to be had so that we can keep lug nuts tight instead of constantly tightening lug nuts? Hope that served you. See ya.