The Competition Paradox: When Winning Hurts Your Team

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This is going to be a very tough episode because neither one of us is competitive.

Not at all.

Let's see, we, we have a national championship tap dancer. We have someone that devoted 30 years of his life to soccer at sometimes a national level. Uh, no, not competitive.

Two business owners, right?

We just, we're just here for the ride. Yeah, yeah. No, there's, uh, all Zen all the time. Right.

Yeah.

Whether to be competitive or whether to build collaboration in your business or how to turn those dials to figure out what that proper mixture is. That is what we're talking about this week, correct?

Yes, I hope so.

See, I put another C word in there for you.

Thank you. Correct.

I figured you'd want that. Stay tuned. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need the Business Fix.

Chrissy, clarity, all the things. Competitive culture. It's gonna be fun. I think we can have a competition about how many things in alliteration can we do. I bet I would win, just saying.

Oh, I know you would win. That's like you challenging me to a tap dance competition.

Let's do it. I can do the William Tell Overture with my feet. The first, like, I can do all of that.

That is a hell of a way to start the episode. I can do the William Tell Overture.

I can, all the way to da-da-da-da-da-da. I can.

That's an interesting little-known fact about Chrissy Myers.

My piffidemus. Personally identifying fact that I don't mind sharing. Piffidemus. You're welcome.

William Tell Overture.

What's sad is we're going to finish recording this episode and you're going to be like, show me, and I'm going to have to. And that's fine. I can—

No, no, no, no, no. I'm not. No, I think you know me well enough, Chrissy. I am not going to say Show me today.

It's gonna be when we're on a stage somewhere.

Correct, correct. That is a card. I am smart enough to know that I need to hold on to that card until it's the right time to play it.

Oh, I can't wait. It's gonna be a fun time.

Yeah, don't, don't play those cards too early. Uh, those are the things that, uh, yeah, we will be somewhere, I guarantee, speaking at some wonderful engagement. Did you know Chrissy Chrissy, go ahead and show them. Because when I say it that way, it's tough for you to deny that.

It is. I'll be like, okay, yeah, this is—

everyone's gonna be looking like, this is part of the show.

Game on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm gonna— I'm just gonna hope it's gonna be when you are wearing the most awkward shoes possible.

Probably. Note to self, always wear clicky shoes.

Okay, correct. And the reason why I'm gonna do that is because I'm competitive.

Yes, not in the slightest.

I feel like this has already come off the rails in the best way. Um, for me, I, we, I talk all the time, success is a shared thing. You talk clarity is kindness. We, we both kind of allude to those things. Like the thing that I always worry about in a business is when you say success is a shared thing, have you completely neutered competition in the business? And making sure that it's not like, I hate it when I see in businesses, and I know we've both seen this, think of it as a bicycle race. And everyone's on their bicycles and they're all pedaling to the same point. And it seems like when things get too competitive, you've got the one person that is going to stick a stick through the spokes of everyone else's bike.

Uh-huh.

They're not doing it. I mean, that's how they want to win. Yeah, that's their competitive advantage.

They have to win.

They're going to take other people down. They aren't going to bring other people up because they worry that they're not going to win. So that is, that is the thing that I always worry about when I'm building like competition. So You, I know you've got some alpha personalities that you've worked with and you've managed, which is always the, I mean, look, we're competitive. It's just part of the nature. It's why we wanna get ahead.

It is.

How do you prevent that high competition environment from turning into a complete lack of psychological safety where people like, I mean, you see people in their cars. Well, let's make an example. If you have someone at work that rides a motorcycle, they don't take their helmet off when they walk in the building.

Yeah. They're just afraid.

Correct. How do you prevent that from happening?

Yeah, so I think leaders often will confuse intensity with insecurity.

Yes.

So you can absolutely have a high-performing competitive team with alpha personalities, but if it's not structured correctly and if you are not maintaining a good environment, it can flip from performance to protection really fast.

Yep.

So you've got to be careful. So I think about it through what I would call the 3 C's of competitive culture, because Because again, if we're going to have things, they need alliteration. And we have a C theme. We've had that theme for the last couple of episodes. So 3 C's of competitive culture, competition, collaboration, and confidence. So competition. Competition isn't the problem. Misaligned competition is the problem. So—

Yes. I love it.

Does that make sense?

Yes, 100%.

It's just misaligned. So when the game becomes more important than the mission, people stop optimizing for the business and they start optimizing for themselves. And that's a gamification trap. Yes. So where the scoreboard matters more than the outcome, that's not what we want to do within our organizations. We want to make sure that the outcome and we're living within the values of the organization as we're coming up with those outcomes. So that's competition. Second is collaboration. And that is if your competition doesn't require collaboration, in an organization, I think you're already lost. That's my personal opinion.

I wholeheartedly agree.

And I know that there's some people in a high-driven sales environment like, "We don't agree with you." I'm like, "And that's why people leave your organization all the time." You have got to have collaboration there because in a healthy system, the best players don't win alone. They win through the team. So, there's a reason why success is a shared thing for you and teamwork is a core value for our organization. It's about collaboration. So, If people are hiding mistakes, they're hiding information, they're avoiding asking for help because they don't want to look weak. Yep. You don't have competition, you don't have collaboration, you just have flat out fear.

You have the people wearing the—

people wearing the helmets. They're walking in or they're not even getting out of their car. They're texting of like, hey, I'm going to work remotely. And you're like, you're in the parking lot. I'm working remotely.

There's airbags in here. I feel safe.

I feel safer. And then that other C is confidence. And this is really where psychological safety comes in. And we have to remember that psychological safety is not about being soft. It's about being secure enough to say a few things. I missed that. I need help. There's a better way. So when people feel safe to tell the truth, they have the confidence to be able to speak up and say those things. They get better faster. And if your team is afraid to look weak, they were going to make your business weak.

Yes.

So I mean, if it's okay for people to not have the answer, it's okay to not have a— like, to not be able to solve it immediately. It's okay to ask for help. And if you have a whole bunch of alphas and nobody wants to ask for help, heaven help you.

Good luck with your SOPs.

Exactly.

I may have seen that go south once or twice. I got this.

Yes, it's not good.

No, it truly isn't. So, I mean, how does one turn into the other? Let's be honest, you did not start your business so you could spend your days buried in HR paperwork or Googling how to handle employee drama.

That's why I started Clarity HR. We're your fractional HR team, giving you real people, real support, and real solutions. Whether it's compliance headaches, hiring struggles, or just needing someone to take the people stuff off your plate, we've got your back.

So if you're ready to stop using duct tape and hope as your HR strategy and finally get some peace of mind, head over to clarityhr.com.

That's clarityhr.com. Simple, clear, and here to help.

I'll give you a few seconds to go to the website while we get ready to get back to the show.

So how do you get from like individual excellence and not create those silos?

Correct.

Okay, so I would say you're talking about incentive design becoming your culture design. So because often we talk about we got to design incentives, we people, people have to have targets, we have to give them a reason to want to do the job.

Yes.

Okay. People don't just do what you say, they are going to do what you reward. So we've gotta make sure we shape the path. So if you only reward individual output, you are always going to get individual protection. Yep. So if you're rewarding group output, you're going to get the team moving forward together. So let's go back to those same 3 C's. So competition, yes, we reward excellence, high performers should win, but the definition of winning has to include how they win, not just what they produce. How did you get there?

No cheating.

Did you get— or stepping on everybody else. Did you get there by tripping Bob in accounting? No, we don't do that.

That's not how you win a marathon.

No.

Is by stepping on every other runner.

Did you get there by talking to the person that does the lead gen so that you're the only person that's getting the leads generated? That's, that's cheating. It's how did we get there? Did we get there together? So then there's collaboration and you have to build collaboration into the scoreboard, into the dashboard. So if someone hits their numbers but creates friction friction for the, the rest of the team, that's not a win. That's a problem. So, the other one is like, I closed the sale. Well, you closed the sale, but this was not a really good qualified lead. They didn't have good expectations and we only kept the customer for 2 months when normally we keep them for 24. That's not a win. So, if you hit your numbers, but you're creating friction for the handoff, yep, that's a problem. And I think, Josh, you model this constantly in your organization. I mean, you're sharing success. It's success together. We're doing all the things, how we hand off, how we do these things. And I mean, at AUI and Clarity, we talk about like teamwork is that core value. So again, you model what you mandate and you're baking it into your organization. So collaboration has to be part of the framework of what you're doing. And then let's go back to that last C, which is confidence. And you know, when people trust that helping someone else won't hurt their standing, they start sharing information, sharing shortcuts, sharing wins. So that's the other part is you've really got to make sure, you know, as we're collaborating, it helps us move forward and we're building confidence, we're building cadence. And, you know, you helping someone else is helping— is helping the organization, which is truly helping you. So it becomes that cyclical. And when you do that, the organization gets faster. So if your managers are hoarding resources, that's not a personality issue, it's an incentive issue. What are you doing to create an environment where they feel like they have to hold on to their fiefdom? So people protect what you measure. Measure.

I love how you put that.

They do. Whether it's a silo or a fiefdom, they're— they're— people are protective. Like, you get resource aggressive. And we talk about it with animals, like, are they resource aggressive? No, they've got to know that, you know, it's shared resources. There are more things coming around. You get more time, more attention, more work together. Yep. Yeah.

Yep. Like, how does— like, how does competition become comparison though? Because I, I see in so many cases where people are like— I, I remember when I was in sales at Summit Racing Equipment, um, they put your— the just— they didn't put names. Yeah, but they put employee numbers down.

Yeah.

And they put the sales for the month down. Right. Okay, so who's, who's selling? And you can look, and it doesn't take but 1 or 2 months to figure out who has what employee number. Yeah, they may as well just put the names there.

Well, and that's it. Like, you don't need to do if you have a small sales team, I don't think you need to de-identify the information. No, it's the conversation around, hey, Josh has all the sales for the last quarter. Josh, what are you doing to make it work so well? Like, and if you're like, well, it's just, it's just who I am, we're like, no, tell us more. Tell us what you're doing. Tell us how, like, how are you generating your leads? Are you getting the same leads that everybody else is getting? And you're like, maybe. And so maybe you're taking more leads than somebody, or maybe you've got a good network. Like, what is going on? Like, let's share the conversation. So competition turns into comparison, I would say you've got a few red flags around it. There's that leaderboard obsession.

Yep.

Who's in charge?

We had that.

Yeah, you have anxiety around rankings. Oh my gosh, I'm number 5 out of 5. Oh no, it's like Survivor.

I didn't want to be out of the top— if I was ever out of the top 10, I was losing my ever-loving mind.

Yeah. And then you've got people celebrating wins less and comparing more. So it's like, oh well, you closed the sale. Yeah, but I didn't close 10 sales like Bob. I mean, like, there's When you get to that space, you know that competition has turned into comparison. And that's when people stop focusing on the real work and they start focusing on each other. And then you lose all of that.

Oh, 100%.

You lose direction. The other one I would say, like with collaboration, there's an opposite to collaboration too. It can become concealment.

Yes.

So, and I think that's one of the biggest red flags for an organization. And this is when people, they stop sharing best practices, they stop helping their teammates and they stop raising issues because they don't wanna lose their edge. So when you're like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna lose my edge. So then you've crossed that line of where competition is unhealthy. Yep. And then in that case, we've got confidence where confidence becomes caution. And so when people start playing safe instead of playing to win, you've lost that psychological safety in your organization. Yes. So people immediately, they stop taking risks, they stop speaking up, And they challenge decisions because they're protecting themselves. They're no longer looking at the organization as something where we all win together.

Yep.

Collaboration has died. We are, we are competing to the death. Becomes the Hunger Games. That's not what you want.

That pizza party you had was the funeral for collaboration. You buying pizza for that top sales month, that was the funeral for collaboration.

Well, and I would say too, it's something that's when you have an environment of constant competition, Your top performer of today can become your top flight risk tomorrow. And that's because, you know, I think often in high competition environments, you are a— it is a high risk for burnout. And so if you've got constant competition at 110% capacity, it doesn't create champions. It really creates that burnout. And then people are just, I mean, let's, let's move out. So what is healthy competition in my mind? Would you like to know those?

Of course.

So I mean, healthy competition should sharpen your team. It shouldn't split the team.

Yep.

Right? So comparison instead of competition, concealment instead of collaboration. No, no, no. Caution instead of confidence. Those are the things that you don't want. You want competition, collaboration, and confidence. So if you don't have a high performance culture, you have a culture that's slowly turning on itself. So you can ask yourself, do we have— are we comparing ourselves to everybody else when we're in the team meeting, in the sales team meeting? If you're hearing the chatter about comparison, okay, that's like, okay, ding, ding, ding, you may have an issue. If you have people that are concealing their best practice, how did you do that? Ancient Chinese secret. No, that doesn't work that way. Like, tell me what you— how are you closing this? Like, you, you gotta You've been working on this lead for almost 2 years and you got a million-dollar revenue to this organization. How did you do it? Yeah, they're like, well, I, I took them like donuts one day and then I made sure that I invited them to this event. Like, how— like, give us the cadence, talk about it. And then I would say the last one is really important around the confidence of your team to be able to share not just resources but share ideas. Yeah, I'm not This is what is working, but hey, this is what isn't.

100%. Because yeah, that like it's interesting. There's a couple of other marketing firms I told you about the one earlier that we're talking to because we're like, hey, what's working? What's not? Why should I spend money on stuff that's not working?

Exactly.

Trying to be collaborative.

Let's all figure this out.

Yeah, let's figure this out together.

Yeah. So how does internal competition impact the actual machine?

Oh, that's a great one.

Yeah. Does it make the workflows faster or does it create Friction and shadow workflows that kill ROI. I'm excited about shadow workflows.

I mean, I alluded to some of that too with like the, the coaching correct thing. That's how they like— people start to, oh well, the actual SOP is in a dusty old HR file. What we do on the floor is quite a bit different. Um, to me, the, the number one thing that so many people look at is they offer an incentive and they're like, here's the incentive to do better, and they don't realize that it 100 undermines their mission or their core values. I see it all the time. Oh yeah, they— I mean, we talked— when we talked about the mission statement and how no one cares, that's the number one way that no one cares. Hey, here's our mission statement, here's how you're incentivized. They are 180 degrees from each other.

Um, but we offer you pizza and unlimited PTO that we never approve.

Correct, correct. Correct. So to me, I— the, the thing I, I love, the, the, the rising tide raises all ships, success is a shared thing, all those, all those hunky-dory stories. To me, the non-zero-sum scoring, so designing competition so one person's high score does not come at the expense of someone else's.

Yes.

Um, you can do that in sales as long as you have boundaries, as long as you have those items in place. Once again, if I win the operational— you need to make it so if I win, the operational debt down the line should decrease. It can't get worse. That's the only way that you can win. The next step is, to me, is quality score, cleanliness of handoff, quality of work, things of that nature. So we've— I mean, we realize, like, when I look at, like, let's say YouTube thumbnails, if someone wants to bring me a new design on that and it is— it looks like my 5-year-old niece did it, I, I, no, just because you brought me 4 new designs this month. Yeah, I'm not going to reward that because once again the quality wasn't there. Now if you bring me the high quality, if you bring something that's got something new to it, if it— if you bring me something that's got maybe there's an animation to it, something of that effect, then yes, okay, I want to reward that quality, but I want to reward that and making sure that it's not taking away from the output also. You got to make sure it's balanced. Um, I have a great example of this is when I was at Summit Racing Equipment. I was, as I said, one of the top salesmen consistently. They would look at my phone and be like, my phone numbers, and then be like, Josh, you're, you're not taking enough time with a client. And I'm like, okay. They're like, your talk time's way too fast.

Because I know what they need and they— that's why they call me.

Correct. Um, but they just said because I was outside of the center of the bell curve, I was a problem. And I'm like, no, no, no, I've got stuff organized for this. I do. And they're like, you're not helping the customer. And I'm like, well, wait a minute here. I got the most letters of commendation sent to the president. This—

ask the customers. Sounds like they like me, right?

They did. They— because they, they sent— like, the one month I got 5 people writing handwritten letters. This is 25 years ago. Handwritten letters to the president of the company saying, Josh gave me great service. But yet I wasn't doing it right. So once again, that was that competitive thing where they just weren't looking at it right. Um, to me, the, the thing that I look at with the, like, from an SOP thing, looking at that in terms of you can make it competitive in terms of who's working on things to refine them, who's making things to be better. Now granted, this doesn't need to be a scoreboard like, hey, Bob, congratulations, you've changed 4 SOPs this month. That's not what we want to do either. What we want to do is we want to incentivize— and this is where some of the competition comes in— we want to incentivize the return on investment for it. How have you removed optional debt from someone else? Now that, hey Bob, you did that 4 times last month. That's amazing. Yeah, that's a way like Bob made everyone's job easier.

Yes.

I'm, I'm pretty good about rewarding that and making sure that that's the thing. Um, like, the other piece to that is if you have that high performer— I was in grade school, I was the kid that got my homework done before the teacher was done assigning it.

Same.

Um, if you have that worker that does that and they help someone else, yes, you have to reward that. Just as much, if not more, than what you reward the competitive aspect of it. Because once again, that is showing that the collaboration has value. Yes, it's too easy to reward the competitive sides and not the collaborative side. So you've got to make sure that it, that it works to incentivize both of those. The other thing that I mean, we referred to the, the collaborative the collaborative piece. Yeah, I saw competition and it was out of the fear. It's out of the lack of confidence. Also, when I was at a certain automotive retailer, it would be during the spring, the phones would be ringing off the hook. There'd be a 10-minute hold time. Marketing's like, look at what we have done, look at our brilliance. Sales is too stupid to be able to pick up the phone. Sales is at fault why our sales numbers aren't up. Then come fall, when everyone's shoving their car back in the garage and everyone's buying parts for it.

It's not all about seasons.

The phones are dead and sales is going, those idiots in marketing can't— like, how am I supposed to make a living off of this? That is where you have that competitive piece, and it's that protectionist piece. Yeah, they, they aren't willing to work together. To me, it— you have to be able to find that, hey, look, here's what we're seeing, Is there anything you guys can do with this? Yeah, there has to be that conversation to it. Otherwise you end up with one hoarding all the information like, we're going to make marketing look bad.

Exactly.

Or we're going to make sales look bad because we, we have to protect ourselves. Once again, this is the stick and the spokes. Yeah, I'm not— I don't need to ride faster. I just need to make sure that their bicycle has a flat tire.

Yeah, that question.

Yeah.

So I was having this debate with somebody and I'd really like your take on it because you're the sales and marketing person. Should sales report to marketing, marketing report to sales, or should they always be adjacent?

They should report to one person.

Okay.

The way that I look at that is they should report to operations. Nice. Because that is the one who has the— like sales is going to do sales things. Salespeople are naturally competitive. They should be.

Yeah.

Um, if you do not have a naturally competitive salesperson, you probably have the wrong salesperson.

Yeah.

Did you get that sale? No, but it's okay.

They're really nice, right? They're really nice person.

I met the other salesperson, they were great, they deserved it, right? No, no, they did not. Kill, kill, kill. They had a better presentation than I did, so they just— no, that is not the salesperson you want. They need to answer to market or they need to answer to operations.

I like that.

Because operations is the one that, I mean, is going to lead over marketing saying, hey, sales is telling me we need to do this. And then once again, hey, sales, marketing is saying that they're trying this. Yeah, you need one. If you have that person at the head of that, they're hearing both sides of the story. Otherwise you get one side of the story and you get people just shouting their side of the story. It turns into— it turns into a political debate almost. You just have two people shouting at each other, not listening.

I agree. I was— yeah, it was a conversation about, you know, I think our head marketer is going to report— our fractional CMO is going to report to head of sales. I'm like, that doesn't sound like a good idea.

No, that's a horrible idea. Sounds like a recipe for failure. That's— they need to— they both need to report to the same person.

Agreed.

And they need to talk to that person at the same time. They need to be in the room together when they're talking.

Yes, I like that.

Especially if they're— if there's— once you have the trust built, fine, it's different. But initially they need to be in the room talking. We were just talking about other stuff, like we're not going to say anything that I wouldn't say to the person.

Yeah.

Until you have that trust built between sales and marketing.

Okay.

You have to— you have to be that. To me, like the thing that I also see in marketing is Well, that was my idea when it goes well. Of course, all that I can think of is there's a— The Office addressed this beautifully, you know, you know what I'm talking about, the golden ticket episode. Um, this goes like, oh my gosh, this is amazing, this is all mine, oh my God, this is gonna cost us a lot of money. I don't know who did it. I see that all the time. Yeah, um, I see that all the time in companies, and it's like, look, I mean, assign stuff to people, but make sure that everyone is invested in its success. Um, or, I mean, you're going to end up with that competition. You're going to end up with— and I've seen it so many times— other marketers sticking sticks in the spokes. Um, that's the analogy I'm just gonna— I've stuck.

I like it. That's a good one.

Yeah, I mean, it's just what it is. You see people walking around tripping each other and you're like, what? Like, we're trying to go to the same place here. We're all carrying the same thing. The other thing that I try and look at is the shared success metric. Instead of looking at who did the most, move the competition to who removed the most bottlenecks for everyone else. I alluded to that earlier, but how can you, how can you make this the best for everyone?

Best team player. Yeah.

Yeah. Once again, it can be removing bottlenecks for yourself. Awesome, that counts. That 100% counts because no one knows your job better than you do. But finding ways to do that— the, the— to me, there's this consistency thing that, like, creating a contest around a system's health instead of a short-term, like, um, who can sell the most this week.

Yeah.

That, like, those are the recipes for the toxic, toxic disasters.

Yes, they are.

Um, when you've got that, because once again, you've got, like, in the, the prime example of this, Girl Scout cookies.

Yes, I, I, it totally agree.

It, it truly— I mean, wonderful organization.

Great, they are.

But when— if you want to see a toxic sales culture, look to the Girl Scouts.

I would say the parents of Girl Scouts, right?

Six and one half doesn't matter. But that, that is 100% it. The thing that I always worry about when it comes to this competitive culture is if it is this non-stop competitive driving culture. When you were tap dancing, yeah, you ever get burnt out?

Oh gosh, yeah. Burnout, injured, like I don't want to do this anymore.

Yeah, yeah. Same, same with soccer. And it was because, I mean, granted, there's, there's certain people— I think you and I are in a minority of people that are like, okay, I see what the goal is and I'm driven enough to get there. A lot of business owners are. Yeah, 98% of their employees are not.

That's why they don't own the business.

Correct. And it's like when you are pushing people that hard to be competitive you are pushing them towards that ragged edge of burnout.

Well, and I would say too, as you set targets, if you have a freak of nature in your organization in a position—

I know where you're going.

Do not set the targets where that person is the only person that can hit. Oh, well, that's normal. Like, you just like—

You sometimes have to— you differentiate between mean and median.

Yes. And it's the same. I mean, we're talking about like whether it's public education or anything, you have to figure out, you know, what is the right target for the average or for the ideal person that you are putting in the role, not the person that can— I mean, you have one person that can sell $10 million in sales in a year. That's fantastic. The average is actually $500,000, right? So you've got— and then you're like, I don't understand why nobody can compare to this person. And it's like, then you're frustrated. You've got to understand when you have something that is extremely rare, when it is rare, and then how you incentivize that can sometimes be different too. So that's the other part. It's like you've got to be willing to say like, everybody's, everybody's a widget. No, they're not. You've got to be able to figure that out. When you get confused as to how to deal with that, if you get an extremely high performer and you're like, I don't know how to incentivize them, call an HR consultant. They'll help you.

You know one, don't you?

I know a couple. Just a few. Smattering.

That being said, smattering, love that word. Something that I want to talk back and forth about here. One way that I like to set up competition is against themselves. So instead of against other people in the organization, so they're tempted to stick a stick in Bob Spokes. Say that 5 times fast. Is instead of them tempted to do that.

Yes.

Like, do you like the, hey, let's compete against who you were last month?

Yes, I like progress over person.

Oh, I like that.

Really important. So when people are competing against each other, someone has to lose.

Yes.

But when they're competing against themselves, everybody gets to win. And not that I— we have to be— yes, I am a millennial, shut up. No, I knew where you were going.

You knew where I was going.

I'm married to a Gen Xer. I saw the look. I'm like, stop it. It's not everybody gets a trophy. It's creating an environment where everybody wants to move forward faster. And that's it. You— I don't— I do believe that there are winners, but I do not believe as an organization that there has to only be one winner. I believe that the whole organization as a whole can move forward. So, progress over person. So you got to shift from peer pressure to personal progress.

It's interesting, the two things that I like with that is we are competing against other businesses.

Yes.

Not against ourselves.

Exactly.

So if you can do it as a better than last week, great. That is, that is a huge thing.

Yes.

Because like, to me, okay, I lift weights. If I constantly compared myself with other people in the gym, oh gosh, Right. Same, right? Um, it would just— I would, I would— you would find me typically in the gym crying. Um, that's not the case. I have over time, and, and granted, I feel like I would make some other people cry too, which is like, that's the good feeling.

Yes.

But we don't— like, you don't want to have to manage all of that within your business. No, you just want people to feel better than they did last week so that way your business is better than it was last week.

Yes.

I mean, you talk on your, on your podcast, 1% better.

1% better. What's the one thing? And if you're talking about like, if the, if you've created a scoreboard where it is, we got to beat somebody else, we got to beat Joe in the team, then you're going to create secrecy. And that scoreboard beat last month. I mean, when we're doing it all together, you get sharing. I am totally fine if we are, we are mortal enemies with our competition. Yes, I'm totally okay with that. We call them Satan. We call them other names. We do the thing we like. We are, we are cutthroat at AUI and Clarity internally in how we talk about our competition.

Right.

We'll also collaborate with some of them occasionally.

Same, same, same.

But when it comes to each other, it's how do we help each other? Yep. How do we work together? I mean, we have, we have cut the people in our organization who were brilliant jerks and just said, I am the only person that can do it right.

Yep.

Yeah.

So here's the next one, and I, I want to say this correctly: sales versus operations. In this corner, weighing in at 4,562 pounds, we have sales department. In this corner, weighing at 4,898 pounds, we have the operations Department. Let's get ready to rumble! How do you keep that from happening?

Oh, okay, you weren't ready for that, were you? Okay, let's, let's bring it back to 3 shared anchors, 3 things. So expectation, what are we promising the client? Execution, what can we actually deliver consistently? And experience, So what does success feel like for the customer? Because I know that, I mean, Salesforce operations, it is the classic internal tug of war.

Yep.

But it's not really a people problem. It's a priority problem. So if you are answering expectation, execution, and experience and you have those clearly defined, I think it takes away that internal tug of war between sales and operations. And if you have clearly defined SOPs, I'm going to steal what you do. Clearly defined SOPs. You don't have this problem.

100%. What I was going to say with that is, to me, if sales has things that is required of them in order to complete the sale, guess what? If you've done this right, operations doesn't have a whole heck of a lot to gripe about. And if operations does have something to gripe about, they can go back and say, you didn't do Section 3, Part A.1.

Yes.

It can, it's defined.

Well, and I would say too, as you define it, operations defines it for sales and sales does it. Operations doesn't get to play loosey with the football and say, well, you didn't do it right. If I am doing it exactly the way that you defined it, you don't get to complain to me. If you want to modify it, let's have a conversation. Does it sound like I had this conversation a couple of weeks ago between sales and operations? I'm like, why are you mad at them? Because they handed this off. I'm like, they did it exactly exactly the way that you asked them to, right?

Oh, it may be difficult, it may be uncomfortable, it may not look pretty, but this is exactly what you wanted.

And they fought— they followed your defined process. If you don't like the process, it was yours. You need to change it because they're just asking, tell us how you want us to hand this customer off. It's not in the system. It is in the system. It's in that screen. Oh, they didn't do the email. Yeah, they did do the email. They didn't do— it's like you forgot what your own SOP was.

I try not to do that. That's embarrassing when I do that. Oh damn.

Yeah, I forget about that. Yeah, they did it exactly right. If you don't like it, let's talk about it and what needs to change. If you're a small business owner navigating the world of marketing or looking to establish yourself as an industry expert, you already know the power of a great podcast.

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Does— and this is, this is a question that I've got a short, like a story to. Yeah, but no, no, no, no. So I want to, I want to hear your point first to it.

Okay.

The sales dashboard that I talked about, like, at Summit where there was just all the employee numbers and like, yay, nay?

Oh, I don't have a problem with sales dashboards. I have a problem with how we interpret them. So, I mean, data doesn't create the anxiety. It's interpretation. Interpretation creates anxiety. So I would say you've got like 3 Ps of performance data. So Purpose, perspective, psychological safety, because we've got to keep saying psychological safety. So purpose, why are we measuring this? Perspective, how should this be interpreted? And then psychological safety is, is it safe to not be at the top yet? Is it okay that we're still trying to figure some of these things out?

As soon as I saw this question, I went to the Doorman Fallacy that Rory Sutherland talks about a lot, where he says all these fancy consulting firms come in and say, oh look, your doorman's $65,000 a year. We get rid of them, we install an automatic door, and then suddenly you're, you're like, oh look, you're saved $65,000 after the door is paid for itself. And you don't realize that now you've got vagrants walking in. Your top customers are no longer being greeted at the door.

All your packages are getting stolen, right?

Stuff is getting stolen. Like like I said, there's homeless people living in the lobby. The problem is, is so many dashboards like that don't tell the whole story. Yeah, they tell a number. And the problem is, is people— like, once again, people saw my talk time and said, Josh, you're not helping the customers. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. Look at the full story here.

Yeah.

Like, my surveys have all come back as the dude's awesome. Um, why, why are we talking about the— yeah, so that to me is the, the big piece with that.

Yeah, you have to narrate the numbers.

Yep, 100%. Um, that being said, uh, what's the secret weapon test?

Secret weapon test? Oh, that is asking your top performer to teach their secret to the rest of the team.

You ever done that?

I have. And, and sometimes it has worked and other times they've been like, no. And those people don't work for me anymore.

I love that because the willingness to do it is one thing.

Yes.

Not everyone, not everyone was going to be able to execute on the sales stuff the way I was.

Exactly.

But I was willing to show them what I did.

Well, and that's it. Like, I— there's been times where people say, how do you do it? Well, this is just how I do it. And they go, okay, I can't be you, but it's how can you take some of the things How can we work together? It's not, it's help me understand. And if they're not willing to help understand, I'm not asking them to teach it. I'm just asking them to explain it.

100%. And that truly is, that is the way to get there. And that to me is kind of like, if you have a culture that does that, you are rewarding that assistance. You have to find a way to do that. To make it so it's beneficial for them to help others. Because you got to realize it's not kneecapping them.

And I would say, you know, we're naming that score. We're not just the scoreboard, right? We have to explain what winning actually means. We have to define our expectations.

Correct. Yeah. It's revenue for the company. That's what— that is the scoreboard.

Yes.

And oh, should I make a football analogy for you?

Please.

Are you okay?

If you make it soccer, I'm going to be mad.

It's not football. Football is— individual tackles have an effect on the score.

Yes.

They are not the score.

No.

Sacks have an effect on the score.

Absolutely.

They are not the score. And you should keep track of those numbers, but you should also tell people that, hey, revenue and profit really is the score. Gross profit is the score. It's not How many phone calls did you make this week? Yeah, yeah. Uh, the other thing that I, I always feel too is you, you have to, you have to be clear about the rules between— like, if you're a lot— if you allow your salespeople to corner cut or competitive people to corner cut, yes, they're going to. I did.

I did too.

That's how I got ahead.

Do it all the time, right?

My problem, right? Why, why what, like, you're— and it's funny, they— and I'll use the summit example again. They're like, you need to slow down. And I'm like, so I can make less money? Yeah, why, why would I do that? They're like, well, you need to. And I'm like, tell me, need so you can make less money? Right, right. What, why, why? Um, so yeah, to me it's making sure that you're competing on the things that are actually getting you to what you need to go to. Um, the kind of a last statement with this here. Yeah, healthy competition should elevate, not isolate.

Yes, it's very simple.

I, I, I— yes, 100% with that. Um, one quick, like, quick shot topic: Employee of the Month. Yeah, what are your feelings on this?

I mean, it really depends on what you're rewarding. So recognition works when it reinforces culture, not when it feels random. So you've got to be purposeful in what you're doing. Tell me why you're doing it. And if it's just because they made all of the sales, you can't— no, I don't like that.

I, I hate it. Yeah, I absolutely despise the Employee of the Month. You know why? Because it's either Bob every month, because Bob is the rock star. Or it's a participation trophy. We gave it to Bob 4 months ago, so we can't give it to Bob again. Who else? And we gave it to the second and third performers. Who can we give it to this month? And people see, like employees see through that.

They do. Now, if employees are nominating and their work, if it's more collaborative, if this is a way to create collaboration in your organization, I am a huge proponent of it, but there's got to be purpose around it.

Yeah, no, I, I, I, if it's the, if it's the team player award or something like that, sure. But once again, you're typically going to have one person that you're going to be giving that award to every month. And after, like, after Bob's won it 6 months in a row, frankly, I don't care. I know it's automatically Bob's.

Well, and I would say, to, to be very frank, these are the types of strategies that work in very large organizations that need to build culture across multiple states. Yes, multiple regions. This is not for your 10-person small business. No, stop. I'm sorry, it's bullshit. Don't do the bullshit thing of employee of the month when you got 5 freaking people. It's just dumb. Sorry, I had to swear. We don't do it.

No, I, I wholeheartedly agree. It is that, like, because once again, it's Bob. Yeah, Bob's just the rock star, or it's the—

it really is the business owner. It's me. Every month. Really? No, you don't get to be Employee of the Month. That's why nobody wants to work for you.

I don't know, but I am. I'm, I'm awesome at what I do.

So am I. I'm never going to make myself Employee of the Month. No.

People have told me I've got an ego. I do not have that much of an ego. That being said, seems like a great place to wrap it up. I had to enter this in. Because I need to try and say this because we covered Chrissy's 3 C's of competitive culture: competition, collaboration, and confidence.

To go with the 3 C's of leadership: clarity, consistency, and care.

Yeah, but like, we need to— we just need to have an all-C episode where every word that we say, we're not allowed to say anything unless it has a C in it.

That could be fun and scary at the same time.

No, it wouldn't be. I can tell you right now, it would not be. No, if you'd like to see that though, go to businessfixpodcast.com, give us that suggestion, give us a review on the platform. Let us know if you would like to hear us do an all-C episode or an all-D episode or an all— maybe we pick out like a Q episode.

Yeah.

Oh, X. Um, yeah, no, we'll play— I'll play the xylophone for the William Tell Orchestra that you're gonna tap dance to.

Yes, we'll do it in Xenia, Ohio. It'll be fun.

The next episode, the real reason why hybrid work still isn't working as well as it should, because, well, you're probably making a mistake with it. I've made a few mistakes with it.

Doing it wrong.

Yeah, I, I may have.

Okay, thank you.

Do us a favor, take care of yourself. If you can, take care of someone else too. We will see you very, very soon.