Setting Goals for Business Success A CEO's Guide 🚀
Bill Canady shows CEOs how to set qualitative and quantitative goals that drive turnaround and growth. The most troubled companies are easiest to steer because people recognize the need for change. Define the destination, let your team shape the path, then embed goals into execution rhythms, performance systems, and regular measurement.
Chapters
Hello everyone, it's Bill again here. Next, I thought I would walk through what I consider one of the most important steps when you first get going, and that's setting your goal, right? We're going to start with a qualitative goal and we'll go to financial goal next. They are absolutely intertwined, right? You're going to come in, you got to get this business turned around. Now, first thing to think of, and this might sound a little crazy, but If you think on a continuum from a company that is on fire, it's crashing, it's burning, if it was a boat, it'd be sinking to the bottom of the earth, to the bottom of the ocean, to a company that's doing really wonderful, so if it was a rocket ship, it's heading towards the moon, the easiest one to manage is the company that's in trouble. The people know they're in trouble. They won't help. They want to save themselves. They want to save their jobs. A lot are really depending on this. If they think they're doing well, they're not really going to be prepared to listen. Now, interesting enough, within any company, people will tell you, "Hey, we've tried all this and everything you say, I've already tried." Now, that drives me crazy. I bet it does the same for you. But you're on this continuum of I am drowning to I am successful. And I like to say even a drowning sailor will catch an anchor, right? They'll do anything if they think it'll help. So, just recognize, look at where you are, look at where the business is at, and The more successful the company believes they are, the harder they are going to be to manage. So just keep that in mind. And it's also specific to the individual. So people think they're right, aren't really looking for help. So this document here is designed to get you through this on how to set this goal and recognize as the CEO, as the visionary, this is your job. This is one of the most important jobs, is setting a goal, telling people where we're going, not telling them how to get there. Now, if you're in a small company, maybe you're going to tell them how to get there. Heck, maybe you're staring at the mirror and telling yourself how to get there. But it starts with you picking the destination. And if you have any team at all, you're going to want them to have a lot to say about how they get there, because if you tell them how to get there, they're going to not believe you. If they tell you how that they're going to achieve your goal, they'll believe it because they said it. This is the way it works in life. If they're part of it, they're going to make sure it happens. So, keep that in mind as you go through this, right? So, we've already talked about this, right? It is the process for you to define, articulate, and operationalize your goal. So, there you go. Nothing fancy, but it's pick where you're going. By the way, where do you get that goal? Uh, lots of places. Sometimes it's with inside of yourself, right, if it's just you. If you got a board or, uh, LPs— LP stands for limited partners— maybe you got a spouse, whatever it is, people who feel ownership in there, you need to talk to them and get aligned around what they want. Uh, as the CEO, you may think you're in charge. I always thought if I ever got to be the CEO, everybody would do what I want. I was terribly, sadly mistaken. Having said that, understand the people who you're reporting to or who are depending on you. Let them have a voice and then make sure that voice is heard. So, so don't just play at it, actually do it. But the people who are working on your team, you set that goal. They need to understand that goal is believable. So if you say you're going to double your business and you're broke and you're going bankrupt, But I have a clear path how to get there. So, recognize you said it. You're going to get buy-in up and down and sideways with it. So, you start out with, right, it's like how, in this case, qualitative, how the organization is going to behave and communicate and execute. Now listen, this is really important. You can't go out and tell people to be honest and do everything the right way if you're lying and cheating and stealing and doing horrible things. Treat people with dignity and respect. Be an honest broker with what you do. Make sure anything you say or do, you're prepared to talk about it. My mom always said, you know, if you don't want to hear about this on the front page of the newspaper, you probably shouldn't be doing it. Well, that's true in her time, and it's just as true today. So, set the qualitative goal about how you're going to act, and we want to win, but we don't want to win by cheating, things like that. You're going to have to mirror it. All right. So, you're going to, and then on top of that, If you are working, you're getting in late and leaving early, don't expect them to get there late and leave early. So, I'm not going to keep pounding on this. I'm just going to say, it's funny, if you wear button-down shirts every day, you will quickly see, particularly if they can see you, they're wearing button-down shirts too. If you're wearing golf shirts, they'll wear that. If you dress casual, they'll dress casual. They will take their cues from you, the leader, and recognize you're being watched every day in a good way. Make sure you're conducting yourself with dignity. Make sure you're conducting yourself with the way that you would want those folks out there being, right? So, set that culture of discipline and accountability. That doesn't mean be a jerk. It also doesn't mean be command and control. And in some companies you can do that in, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on where you're setting at. People got a mind of their own and they're going to do it kind of the way they want to do it. So, create an environment that they know what to do. You teach them the tools. You teach them the process. You teach them the culture. So, when they're gone, when you're not around, they know when to do something and how to do something. If you don't have that, your expense report's going to come back and you're not going to be happy with what you're seeing. Right? Make sure you're constantly strengthening the leadership bench on it. You're going to have your own ways. We'll talk about this a lot in HR about it. You know, I believe now, like, I don't do PIPs anymore, performance improvement plans. I do them for companies, but I don't do them for people. At this point, you either want to be here and we're going to work together to do it, or we're going to separate. And if I think I need to put someone on a PIP and it's going to take me 6 months and I pay that person $100,000 a year, I'd prefer just to give them the $50 grand and go away, right? It'll be cheaper for both of us to do some kind of settlement than work with someone who doesn't want to be here. That doesn't mean you don't try to help people. Just recognize there's just certain instances where it's best to split and move on. Organize your company with clarity and communication speed. That means flat organization, all this hierarchical stuff. Let them be able to come see you, you go see them. Talk openly and honest with it. Make sure that people understand you want no surprises. Something goes on, pick up the phone, call me. That's what I tell them. And make sure when they do that, you don't kill the messenger, right? And then become a company known for data-driven decisions. I like to talk about this a lot. If you're making decisions with less than 20% of the data, you're simply guessing. You're just making it up. Doesn't mean you won't be right. Doesn't mean you're going to be wrong either. If you're having more than 80% of the data, everybody in the world has passed you. As leaders, as working in the world that we are, you're going to have to get comfortable working in the gray. And if you're not comfortable with that, figure out how to get comfortable, or maybe this role is not for you, right? Get comfortable with it. Be able to make decisions and recognize there's few black and white ones that is obviously right or wrong. It's clearly the way. You're going to make a decision, you're going to see what happens, and it's going to— you're going to take the next step forward until you get to another decision point. All the easy decisions, you know, like what color the wall should be or where we're having our Christmas party, someone else is going to make those. You don't get to make the fun ones. You get to make the tough ones. That's what sitting in the big chair is all about. And recognize you're going to do it, it's going to work out okay, sometimes better than others. And when you get to the next point, Be prepared to make the next decision. So it's okay, right? Make sure you get the data though. You don't have to have it all. And why is this important, right? So, you know, quantitative goals drive results. Qualitative results drive, is how you sustain it, right? That's what people do. So I see this all the time. I need more money. Let's jack up prices. That's a great idea to do. And it will work for a little while. If you go too aggressive with it and your customers get upset, They will leave you. You see it all the day. You do it in your personal life. You go down, you see a mechanic, and you think it should be $100, and it costs you $1,000. Maybe you have no choice, you do it, but you don't go back again, right? When you people, when you feel taken advantage of, it is really, really difficult to do business. You break trust. So make sure that you are using math and the data to make these decisions, but a little thinking is required in here, right? The qualitative, how people feel about it, listen to people. If it feels bad, it probably is bad. Now, sometimes you're gonna have to figure out how to go through that anyway. Depends on your situation. Just know the risk you're taking when you do it. So, if you don't have behavioral and cultural alignment with them, all your best decisions will stall. They'll come back and say, "I told you not to raise those prices by that much. I told you you're gonna leave." And they did leave. Now, why? Was it because you did the decision? Probably. Was it also probably because the team didn't believe you? And when the customer called them and go, "Can you believe?" They're going to go, "No, I can't believe it either." They're going to— it's going to be fulfilling a self-fulfilling prophecy here. So make sure you've got buy-in, you do the right stuff. Doesn't mean you have to have— it's not a democracy, you know. Sometimes at best it's a benevolent dictatorship. And I say that and always mean it funny. I don't know that people take it funny, but nonetheless, it doesn't mean that everyone has to agree. But go do your due diligence, right? 80/20 framework. We talk about 80/20 so much. Sometimes I'm like, oh my God, it becomes like this adjective for things. But really all it means is use the data to go and look inside of your business and make the best decisions you can. Recognize things change. Your competitors get a vote, your customers, your supplier, your LP, everyone gets votes. Start with the data, be prepared to bring in new data as appropriate, and change if needed to be. If you don't have a reason to change, don't change. But if you do have a reason and it's clear, then change, right? That's what it feels like sitting in a big chair. It's not always obvious, right? Let the data drive you. Make sure you understand the best you can and, you know, try to have a culture of no surprise. I always talk about this before, you know, all the time. Be data-driven, no surprises, be on pace, results matter, right? This is what this is all about here. We will not be a company of best efforts. You can make the best decision you can. Nobody agrees with it, the customers especially, and it doesn't work. You're gonna need to make a new decision. So, but if you start out with this, it will give you clarity. It will give you a direction to go. And then you need to constantly be taking the pulse of what's going on. It doesn't mean being wishy-washy. Just keep your finger on the pulse, right? You might learn something and you'll go from there. Okay, the process that you're going to use to do it. Step 3, right? So, as we go in here, Step 1 of Section 3. Diagnose the core challenge. What the heck is going on? Go start with your data. It's what we always start with. What are your surveys are saying? What is your customers telling you? What's internal, external, right? You looked at, you got with your quarterly meetings, you looked at the execution review. So, you're looking at the data, your KPIs on a monthly basis. Are you winning or losing? Have you spent enough time to know? Have you spent too much time to know? It's always going to be different. But if you've got people around you and you're listening and you're paying attention, You're out there in the field, you'll know. You'll absolutely know with it. If you've got yourself to this point, you should have some sense for the business. Not everyone gets it, right? But you'll know if you're out there spending time, seeing what's happening, and being honest with yourself with it, right? Remember, don't blame those around you. You're the leader. You set the tone. If your team's not up to snuff, maybe you should be looking at the mirror. If you're pointing the finger at someone, there's 3 or 4 pointing back at you. Recognize it relies with you, right? So, go through and look at all the data, you know, do a 360 around you, and then identify things such as poor communication. This is generally the most one. I go around, I talk to people all the time. I do town hall sessions. I, you know, I try to be on message. I try to have a good time at the same time, and out there, and still people don't know. That's okay. That's a me problem that I have to work on. And so, it's more and constant communications, email, or using Slack where people can see Do you have misses going out? Do people know who's coming and going and all that? They don't know that when— it's funny, they don't think the best when they don't know, they think the worst. So, if the communication is not happening, look in the mirror. It's where it's most likely going to happen off of it. You got unclear accountability. I find this is one, you don't have your team organized correctly, which happens, particularly if you're growing fast. Second is they don't know what their jobs are. Or, and this is, and I do this sometimes, you're so busy running around, you'll say, hey, I need you to do this. Then you run around them and tell someone, and you're like, what am I supposed to be doing? Right? I'm not saying follow the chain of command exact. I'm just making sure everybody knows their role. You're talking to them regularly. You ask them to do something, let them go do it. If they ask you to do something, go do it, right? Be careful about how you do these things and be thoughtful about it. It has consequences, right? And if not, you get leadership inconsistency. Not gonna win with that. And I generally find that when a company is disorganized, it comes right from the top. I don't see a great leader doing wonderful things and a team being terrible. Generally, they're all hooked together, right? So, what is common, you'll see things like they get things great done day to day. They believe in it. They don't want to change and all that because it's working. Change is hard. But they can't do the big changes, strategic priorities. If you want to change the way and get them aligned strategic, pay them differently. Allow them to get paid with whatever the company is doing. You'll be amazed. They will focus around where the comp's coming from. So if all else fails, make the pay align with what you want. So if you tell them, don't call on B accounts, quit paying commission, you'll be shocked. They will not talk to B accounts and you can double down on the A's and get where you want to go. Now, is that the right thing to do? Depends on the situation. You have to figure that out. Define the goal, right? What is it that you're trying to do? Make sure that it's ambitious, not so crazy no one's going to believe, but not so boring that you're automatically going to get there. It's got to be stretchy, right? It's got to be the right amount. You got to make sure that you can measure it. You can't say, "Just be better." You can't just see it feels good, right? What is it? Quantify your qualitative goal. Sounds a little disingenuous, but that's what you want to do, right? You want to make sure people understand what good looks like. Ask them how they're going to quantify it. You don't always have to come up with the measurement. Ask them. Talk to other people there. Observe it in clear human language. You don't need some fancy thing going on. We don't need big words. Go appropriate with your company. If your company's big and fancy, maybe you talk big and fancy, right? And then, make sure that, you know, a good way to do it, this is just a formula here. This thing's been around forever, but it's just, we will be a company that, this is the core behavior, so that we get this. So, we are going to have our customers love us so they buy more from us, right? Whatever it is. Take this sentence, fill it out, and here's a great example. Will you become the company that communicates with radical clarity? Bridgepoint, I think it was, the Ray Dalio company, they are famous for doing it. They say, some people say it's hurtful, but some people say it works. It works for them, God bless, right? Radical clarity so that every team can execute the strategy with precision and speed. So, that is open and honest. I think it's a good thing, but sometimes people have a little thin skin. It'll come off a little bouncy. Sometimes. So, link it to strategic outcomes. This is really important here. If you have all these goals and you want it both qualitative and quantitative and it just sounds nice and there's nothing tied to it, it's not, it's not going to happen. The only person probably cares is you. So, tie it to the business performance drivers. Those are your KPIs. You want to have customer satisfaction. You do surveys like NPS, Net Promoter Score. You do all that. That score should be tied to how people are getting paid, right? So, clarity, As an example, clarity means you can move faster. We should see margin improvement, right? Clarity in this case would be a leading indicator. How do you measure it? You have to decide what you're being clear about. Is it a filter that you use for new projects coming in? Is it a way that invoices are prepared? Is it a way that emails responded to? Whatever it is, right? You can decide, you and your team. Leadership development. So, if you invest in your people, they stay around, and that makes you growth and scalable, right? There's always a lot of controversy about leadership development. Should we be— you're in manufacturing and your employee, you have a college retention or college payback program. They want to go become a nurse. Do you pay for it? Some would say yes, because if you don't, they're going to go somewhere else. Some would say, why would you invest in that? I'll leave that up to you. I like to invest in areas that's going to make them and my business better. So, I'm not big enough that I can invest people to go and learn a different trade. I like it be tied to what their jobs are or what their jobs are kind of coming with, where it's at. So, it needs to align for me. You can decide what works for you. And then accountability, right? Make sure that they are held accountable for what they do. This will work in cost control. If you don't have accountability, you're not looking at expense reports, don't be surprised when things creep in there. And then that will work with an EBITDA lift. So, those things are obvious how they connect with it, right? So, by having a qualitative goal, clarity, leadership, and accountability, Hits a true KPI that's important to keeping your business. So, remember, we're not in this for practice. We're in this to make money so we can reinvest. So, that's how people get raises. People are going to want raises and because life gets more expensive whether they're doing good or bad. It's just the way it is. You're not going to be able to afford it if you're not running a tight ship and growing a business. So, keep that in mind. Then, define the observable behaviors, right? That's 3 to 5. Don't make it 100. 1 or 2 is fine, but make it few, make it real, make it measurable. And then, B, make sure that these things are actionable, they can be practiced daily, and they are visible so they can see it. A lot of times we'll have stand-up boards, we call them Glass Laws and all that. But there's basically a pegboard on the wall that says, this is how we're going to do certain things. And we measure those and every day we get there and we talk about them. So, this is really, really important. It's a great Lean tool that's been around a long time. I think it changes organizations a lot. We have this in our Lean training for you to learn about. And then, it will align everyone. So, if you're talking about it, you know what's going on, They're going to know what's expected and they will be aligned around it. So, this reinforces. So, it all builds on the other. Don't expect clarity if you don't have process. Don't expect people to do their jobs well if they don't know what their jobs are. Don't expect things to work if you can't just go and see them. Visibility, having visible leadership, having visible metrics and everything makes a big difference. You should be able to walk in any department on any factory floor and know if they're ahead or behind. Know exactly what's going on, understand the safety, the quality, delivery cost. You should be able to see all of that. So should they. You will be amazed at the impact this has, right? And then examples of radical clarity that we talked about early, right? So, every meeting ends with a summary of decisions and owners. So, who's got it? When's it due by? What did we decide, right? They communicate it monthly to all teams. That's why we have those MBRs, right? And then they, without defined metrics and accountability, we just don't do it. We don't need things that say we're going to go do things, but there's no way to get there. Make sure you have agendas, you have KPIs, you're followed up on, you have a process to go do it. And it shouldn't be one-offs. It should be, this is how you run the business. We have all those tools where you're going to learn those. It makes, it makes business run easier. I know typically when we come into a new group, they'll go, how am I going to find time to do it? How do you find time to redo it? Like, if you're constantly chasing chaos, these types of things will make a big difference for you as a CEO, You're going to set these goals and then have your operators get these in. If you don't have the lean tools and all that, we certainly have, we can use it. You probably have your own, you can use that, but there's a lot of ones out there. It's just really fit and purpose for your business, what, what is, uh, what's important. Leading indicators— most of what we measure is lagging indicators. Easy to see, were we on time last month? It was easy to see if we hit our, our profitability goals and so on. The leading ones are kind of hard. People don't know what to look at. Well, here is some that you can look at. Qualitative indicators. Are your employees happy? If they're not happy, they're probably not treating people very well. They're probably leaving. Your turnover, on and on. So doing regular surveys will let you know how they are. You don't have to have something big and fancy. A pulse survey just means it's small and you can shoot it out on the email. It's like every time today when you fly, your airline gets to send you a thing said, hey, we'd like for you to fill out this survey. It's a 1 or 2 or 3 question thing. They just want to see how it is. And plus, It gives you an opportunity to give them feedback. They'd rather you give them the feedback than post it online, online saying how bad they were. 360 feedback, boy, I've done those many times. They're always tough, right? But that's what they're there for. So, you can understand your blind spots and become a better leader, better person around. And then your peers, those that are working next to you, they'll tell you if you can hear it. They don't want to hurt your feelings, but having a formal process goes a long ways. It can be tough telling your peer, Hey, I'm not happy with you. Generally, what happens is people get so upset, they blow up and just give really tough feedback that maybe goes a little over the top, right? Then the quantitative cycle pieces of this, things like cycle times. You can have a cash conversion cycle time. If I put a dollar in, how long does it take to come out? Is it 100 days, 200 days, 30 days? So much of that depends on a lot of things. Cycle time is really important. So you can do everything from measuring decisions to what's actually happening. Takt time is another way to think about it. Project completion rates. Someone should be measuring all your projects. You should be looking at these in your MBRs. What's happening? Did you get it done? These are out there for everyone to see. And then another one's like turnover in key roles. So if you have project managers and they're turning over, it's a sign. If you have people out there who are your leaders, your salespeople, your sales manager, your operation, if they're turning over, something's happening. People generally don't leave companies, they leave bosses, right? Sometimes it's underpaid. Sometimes it's all sorts of things, but it's rare, rare that they're thrilled to death and then they leave. Can happen though, right? So, example of this is clarity and accountability, some scores of 65 to 80 in surveys by year-end. So, right, we're saying we're going to, we're going to drive our scores up. That's a huge difference, right? That's like a, Jesus, that's a, that's a 20-25% improvement there just going up. So, it's a, That is, that's a big deal. So, 15 points will make a big difference for you off of it. Okay, next one, communicate the goal. So, we do this by walking around, talking to people, we have town hall sessions. You have to figure out what works for you, but most of these things are pretty tried and true. And today, we have such great communication tools. I don't care the size of your business. Interesting, it's almost inversely proportionate. Today, the smaller your business is, the better you're at Zoom or Teams or Google Meet, whatever you're using. So, we have great tools out there to take and follow up on and make sure you're launching these things. We have a bunch of training on town halls and you're getting out there. Answer those questions. Don't just tape them and send them out. Taping and sending out is better than nothing, but it's more just like a VSL at that point. It's a sales letter. They want to ask questions. So, do it for 90 minutes. Do 30 minutes, 45 minutes of you and your team talking about what's happening. And do this equal amount of time on Q&A and push for those questions. They can send out surveys before you have it. If you're hearing things and they're not putting in, put those questions in for them. People want to know. They want to make sure they can ask it, right? So reinforce why it matters and how to connect to the strategy. This is you connecting the dots for people. Don't expect them to be able to do it. If they do, they'll think of it as worse, not better. I like to tell stories, right? I think it makes things relatable. Make sure the story is appropriate for your company. So, if you are really rich and famous, you're driving Ferraris in Monte Carlo, but you're running a call center, that's probably not the story I would tell. Make your stories relatable, for goodness' sake, right? But tell stories nonetheless. People like good stories, and it makes you human and lets them learn a little bit about you. They learn as much about you, about your stories, as you do about them. And then cascade it through, through it. So, when we do a town hall, our expectation is the presidents of their businesses take that data we use, modify it so it's appropriate for theirs, and redo a town hall. And then the next segment down, which is the local one, we do it in the month after that. So month 1 is the corporate, month 2 is the business unit, month 3 is the site, then back to month 1 again, right? New quarter, we start it all over again. It goes off really well with that because not everyone's going to be able to make these meetings. Not everyone's going to take and be able to be on them. And if they're a direct labor, they're out running machines, you're probably not going to shut down the whole factory to hear it, right? So, you have to find a way so people understand what's going on. If they're going to take and do it on their time, pay them for it. Let them do it during the work hours, right? This isn't— don't make it miserable. So, they can understand what's going on, make it kind of fun. I like doing town halls locally, then having like a barbecue afterwards, or having lunch brought in, or breakfast, or whatever it is. Break— make sure they go first. And if you can, make sure you're serving them. It's fun. You'll get to say hi to everyone. So, you know, I write books, and so when I go in, I'll bring the books and I'll sit down. Anybody wants a book, I give it to them. I sign a little note. I ask them about the self. It's a way to meet people. And so, whatever you got, whatever your thing is, get in there, rub elbows, be a human being, for goodness' sake. So, how to take and do it. So, kickoff announcement, this is what's going on. Quarterly reinforcement update, those are the town halls that we have. Monthly behavior highlights, whatever it is, right? Put it in, Celebrate successes, talk about what's going, make it appropriate for what you're doing. If you are doing it on a global basis, you might be really up, uh, kind of early or up late to do it because you're, they're 12 hours ahead of you. So don't expect them to be up at midnight, you be up at midnight, right? Step 7, embed it into the execution cadence, right? So do this stuff, get it on a calendar. We like to schedule out a rolling 12 months. In fact, we like to do a rolling 18 months. It's hard to do But you get these big rocks, these big actions in there, it will work for you. It'll work for them. It'll work for you. Then you put everything around it. I like having all my meetings on the third week. So, week 1 is, all right, we got to close the books. Week 2, everyone can look at— this is by month— week 2, everyone has a chance to look at the data, understand it, go deep. Week 3, we can report it out. I tell people not to travel in that week if possible. And then week 4, we start all over again. We get ready to close the month, right? So, we want to finish strong. That's for the leadership team that's going on. The local sites, and they're only going to be bothered on one day and maybe an hour or two of the third week of the month. They know what it is. They know where it's at. So, it's not all over the board. Schedule these things out. Then people know when to take vacations. They know when to do it. You don't have them on holidays and things like that. So, put your review progresses in, button it up. You'll be happy you did. And they'll be happy you did. Treat it like any strategic KPI, right? Track it. Go through with this on it. Marisa is a qualitative, but this all holds true for quantitative and qualitative. It doesn't matter. Just this, the point of doing this is qualitative really is important, right? And then your integration point, you can also do your talent reviews, performance management, and leadership development programs, right? So, as you're going through, so we run our annual talent review. We look at all these people, talk about their things. We use 9Blocks, all the same tool anyone else does. We have all the training for these. But you integrate this communication and what's going on into these talent reviews. It's important. You want people following along. It's how the information gets out there. Remember, if you don't put it out there, they're going to make it up and it'll be way worse than what the reality is, right? Then, step 8, measure, reflect, and recalibrate. At quarter and year-end, take a step back. We do this on our QBRs. What's happening? What's going on? Measure everything. Look at the measurements. If it's red, Figure out why. Use the Pareto principle, 80/20, and start dealing with the big bars, the tall bars in it, and knock those down. It'll make a big difference, right? And then the key questions you want to have: is this having any impact? Is anyone feeling this, right? What evidence shows behavior has changed? What barriers remain? And this is just talking about it, getting it out there. And then when you walk out of that meeting, go back to the SMART goal. Make it specific, make it measurable, make it active or actionable, and so on, right? Make sure you're going to take and you're going to do this. And as you walk around your factories, your warehouses, you talk to people on Zoom, don't be afraid to take and talk to people below you, right? You may skip level meetings, people on the factory floor, people in the warehouse, go out there and talk to them. All right. So, number 4, the accountability framework, right? So, set the qualitative goal. Whose job is that? CEO. That's you, my friend. Make sure you're on it. Communicate the intent. Your role here is to do the why. Why did we choose this? Answer those questions. Hopefully, it's more just because you said so, but it should be tied back to some strategic goal of the business. Model the behavior. You lead by example. Build leadership alignment, right? That's making sure you spend the time to get your leadership team aligned. If they're not aligned, probably not the right leadership team. Probably need to think about that, right? Or your goals are bad. So, it could be either one. It's how plugged in you are. If you did this right, you build them together. Track and reward progress, right? Your job is to celebrate those wins and enforce accountability. Ability, right? This is a condition to work here. At the same time, don't be a jerk about it. Make sure you're celebrating and all that. But if someone's not doing it the right way, they're not demonstrating, they're not examining, they're not exhibiting it, modeling it, pull them aside. Go, hey, this is important, and they've got to get them in line with it, right? Don't make it some kind of, you know, bizarro thing. This is common sense stuff generally, but you want it so everybody understands it clearly. And if people aren't falling in line, you got a problem. You're going to solve it. You got to figure out what the problem is, right? And this will sustain your culture. And your job here is to tie your progress to annual objectives and compensation. So, they've got qualitative and quantitative goals. The quantitative ones are hitting the numbers as we know them. The qualitative ones are around culture. Make sure, even though they're separate, that they're tied together. Make sure it goes this way. All right. So, examples here, right? Build a culture of accountability. You know, leaders communicate with it. Team owns the outcome, not the activities. Just trying is not enough, right? We actually got to get the outcome we want. And every project has a single owner. The classic thing is one throat to choke. It sounds kind of harsh, but it's true. You want somebody that you can ask, they can ask, and we know this is the person we can go to to get these things solved. Metrics you look at around clarity scores, right? About 15% of it's going to come from that. On-time delivery, 20%, and feedback and alignment around 25%. So you're looking for measurements that's going to take and drive these. So closing notes, right? Setting qualitative goals is just as important around the quantitative. Let me tell you why. As we said at the beginning, people can learn the tools and processes. They have to understand the culture when to apply those tools and that it's done in the right way. So everybody wins, but we win with honesty and dignity and ethics. So we can be proud of what it is. We don't want these victories that come by cheating, right? So, this is an act of leadership, not management, right? This is leadership. This is you, starting with you, modeling what you want. And it defines where you're going, what you're becoming, not just what you're producing, right? And finally, a great CEO sets both the destination standard. You say, this is where we're going, and you act the same way you're asking everyone else to. And this is how you get things done. So, I hope this was helpful. This is very important. And you know, the things you're doing, believe it or not, everyone is paying attention. You are the model for this and they are going to emulate like you. And so, if you find as a whole, the organization doesn't follow, start with the mirror. Look at yourself, figure out you, and then the organization will follow. All right. So, listen, this is great. Thank you for paying attention. Let's go get them now. Have a great day, everyone.
