The Mind Methodology: Getting Your Team Performing At A High Level (Even Without Stars In The Room)

When you think about this, start the mind methodology with your team, with a senior team, really get into the groove of that. And then over time, probably about six to eight meetings, you want to start cascading this to additional teams and then strategic planning really becomes more effective because you actually see what the team is capable of doing.

He's the founder and CEO of Execute to Win, also known as etw. He's one of the world's most influential thinkers on achieving extraordinary results through organizational focus, alignment and accountability. Over his 40 years as a successful entrepreneur, Lee developed his powerful yet practical approach called the Most Important number and drivers or mind methodology. Now Lee and his team at ETW help organizations worldwide work better together to improve what is most important. Please help me in welcoming Lee Benson.

Okay, thank you, Timothy.

So I am online right now and Timothy, are you good to go?

You're good brother, go.

Okay, well thank you so much. So you know that your organization can achieve even better results than you're currently achieving yet. Maybe you haven't fully figured out what the formula is for making that happen. And my goal here today is to give you a really simple, elegant way to achieve these results you know, are possible a much higher percentage of the time and with the team that you currently have today. And I believe that your biggest challenge actually comes down to three things. It's alignment, decisions and accountability. It's basically aligning all of the ideas and observations from your senior team into categories of work that they can do that will improve what's most important. And then from there deciding on which categories you'll focus on at any point in time that will create the most value. And from there assigning actions to your team members to make sure that they are doing the right work at the right time, in the right order to, to really build that culture of accountability. Now this applies to whether or not you are a sole proprietor, an early stage startup, small mid sized business, all the way up to a large enterprise. And if you're a sole proprietor, your team is actually your mentors, your advisors, the genius network members, contractors that you have. And the most common approach that people typically take is to achieving better results is that they all look for these superstars out there. And if you can field your entire team with superstars, that would be one thing, but I would argue that they're probably only about 2 to 3% of the population, so that is not possible. And hiring people that can make just about anything happen, it wouldn't matter what tools we give them, is just absolutely going to work, going through that, but that's not possible. Another way to think about it. Have you ever made something work incredibly well in your organization only to turn it over to someone else and the results almost immediately go the other direction? What's really going on there? The concept here is the right leader can make just about anything work. I've got a short story here that I'll share with you where I experienced this in a really big sort of eye opening way. A lot of you know me, I actually started an aerospace company and we grew from three employees to over 500 employees. We were in 60 countries around the world. We were in the aerospace aftermarket business. We repaired, overhauled and manufactured parts to keep aircraft flying, fixed wing and rotor wing, a lot of helicopters. And when I sold the company, we built something worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It was a fantastic journey. And this is what it looked like in 2006. If you fast forward four years, the exact same camera angle. We built a boat and a bottle. It's really an interesting comparison going from both of these pictures. We also took over two additional buildings at this time. Fast forward another three years, we're getting fantastic results. We move into this 200,000 square foot building and we were too small. As we were moving in. I took this picture on a Wednesday afternoon. We started moving in Monday. That, and we were 85% operational in three days. When I sold it, we had over 300,000 square feet in and around the airport. And we even put in a 10,000 square foot gym for the employees and told them, hey, train two days a week for an entire month. We'll pay 100% of your health insurance premium the following month. And this was such a great journey. And so the question is, will this work for others? And I literally had dozens of my CEO friends ask me, how are you getting these results? You grew so fast, created so much value. We would like to do that too. And I said, sure, happy to talk to your senior teams about this. And you can deploy the process that I put in place here, which was more at the time, a traditional goal setting process. And after two years, only one of those CEOs was able to sustain it. And the others didn't say it didn't work. They actually said they felt bad that they didn't have the drive and discipline to keep it going. And so I started on this journey of thinking about why do operating systems work and why do they not work? And the myth seems to be, hey, here's a popular operating system that others are using. If we use it we'll get the same amazing results that they got. But the reality is that most operating systems make process more important than what is most important. And kind of back to having the right leader or a star in the room. These stars will make anything work. So it doesn't matter what tools we give them, they always know what direction to turn the wrench. When they're not in the room, it devolves into the process or the activity becomes most important. If you think about it in your organizations, whether you're using scaling up could be 40x, could be okrs, there's a lot of popular ones out there. Think about what it feels like for the employees to go through that in your organization. So that's something to really sort of sort of set with. Now, before I get into the mine methodology, I want to show you a couple of examples of folks that have deployed this methodology. And this is something you can do for yourself. And the results have been spectacular. So here's an example of a local manufacturing company. They've got a pretty good brand. They deployed the methodology in April of 2020 and they were stuck for three years at $10 million a year in sales and $3 million in profit. Now that's a pretty solid number for a small business. But fast forward as of July of this year, their EBITDA is just under $6 million and on track for about 8.5 to $9 million this year. So virtually tripled the profit of the company. And the revenue through July is already over 13 million. So easily going to be around $22 million in sales this year.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So another example that I'll share with you would be a local nonprofit by the name of A for Arizona. And their most important number is access to high quality classrooms for all 1.2 million K12 students. They started this journey in June of 2020 when they formed and we've raised over $50 million for innovation and education and transportation programs, had a wildly successful legislative session forwarding policies, making it all about the kids instead of a special class of adults and and they're getting national attention from I believe around 17 states right now asking how they can do the same thing. And this is all about how they approach the work. So the mind methodology stands for most important number and drivers. And the foundation for the mind methodology, when you get into it, is every single team will have a most important number. At the top of the organization, they have a most important number. And if it's a for profit business, it's usually some version of profit, ebitda, net profit, et cetera. And then as, as you go down, each senior leader, whether it's hr, finance, operations, sales, marketing, they will have a most important number. And you cascade that all the way to the front line, whether you have one team, five teams, or hundreds of teams going through. And that most important number will be the one number that says above all others, you're winning or losing the game. And each most important number will have categories of work that the team comes up with themselves and, and those categories are to be leveraged to improve that most important number. And then we assign action items around these drivers that will drive additional accountability and really build that culture of accountability within the organization. Now when a team meets a lot of meetings, very unproductive people over check in, everybody else checks out. But foundational to this mind methodology is what we call a mind meeting. The check in. You always want to celebrate wins. Everybody in the meeting will share their biggest win in the last week or the last month since the last meeting, share information to make better decisions. And the majority of the meeting is spent improving what's most important. Now order really matters here. And when you think about this, start the mind methodology with your team. With a senior team, really get into the groove of that. And then over time, probably about six to eight meetings, you want to start cascading this to additional teams. And then strategic planning really becomes more effective because you actually see what the team is capable of doing. From there, you may want to do an intentional cultural tune up. An organization wide rollout of the methodology for additional teams. Depending on the size, leadership development becomes much more effective and surgical because you can see all of the gaps in performance and exactly where a leader needs to develop, followed by performance management and compensation strategy. Comp strategy is something typically missed and it has a tendency to throttle productive energy. So think about your comp strategy. Is it throttling productive energy or is it unleashing that productive energy? So here's a question. Imagine it is 12 months from today and your team has been focused on the most important number the entire time. What would be different? That is the power of knowing and focusing on your most important number. And if you would like to get a high level playbook on how this process plays out, please go to maxyourmen.com and download a free copy of the playbook. Timothy, back to you.

Hey, Lee, I came in early on Wednesday because I wanted to go to your studio like the June meeting. So I miss seeing you in person this time, but I look forward to it next time. And Scott Donnell and I were out the other night and he is a testimonial for you because he told me firsthand that you came in and you've made a huge difference in his organization by paying attention to that most important number. It has put his team in a complete focus and alignment and they're excited about what's happening and they're getting great results. So much, so much that he bought dinner the other night. So come on up. Come on, Scott, why don't you just tell him a little bit and then we'll have you up to do a debrief. One second.

So this is not a paid pitch. Actually, yes it is. Can you pay me for this pitch?

I've got five bucks sitting here. Go for it.

Okay.

Starbucks. Yeah.

So.

I love the mind model and the methodology. We're using them for Apex, but we've got four other companies and we're just going to knock them out one by one and start onboarding. And I kind of see Lee's team now as my go to for every launch. So once the business is off the ground and going, it needs the driver. And I almost am like outsourcing them, keeping everybody on track and asking all the right questions. And it's just, it's hard to explain in words what it does, what happens when everyone's doing the same direction. Does that make sense, you guys? How much waste? Who here thinks they have about 20% or more potential waste going on in their organizations right now?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Everyone just raised their hand. So I've seen. I mean, we're just getting going with Apex, with them, but, you know, we've already seen people shift mindset. Some of the hardest minds to break are starting to shift. Everyone's moving in the right direction. So, yeah, this is just a simple testimony to it.

Thank you.

So we're gonna thank you for that. And Joel, will you come up and do our famous debrief for all of us? Lee, we're gonna get a debrief from Joel and I'll check back in with you.

Yeah. Well, Lee, this is for you and for all of you that are watching and our live audience right Here. Robin Sharma was a member of Genius Network. He wrote a book called the Monk who Sold His Ferrari. That's what you sounded like. You were so calm and peaceful. You sounded almost like a monk. And then look at all the businesses that you built and created. So this was a wonderful example of how you can have somebody smart, successful, and being himself. The opening, in the first 90 seconds, you had eight U's and one I. It was very obvious you were talking to us and not about something about yourself. Then you eliminated one of the objections right away, that superstars can do anything. But only 2 or 3% of the people with you are superstars, so forget about them. How do you make other people do that? I think that gave you great credibility. And then at 5 minutes and 51 seconds, halfway through your 10 minute and 19 second talk, which was very well timed, you mentioned about the mind mythology. You didn't tell us it was an acronym at that point. And it wasn't until about seven and a half minutes that we knew that it was the most important number. That was the key. Maybe that should have been the title. What is your most important number? And that would have set us up as something that we could remember. The slides were good, but there was too much information. We talked about that ahead of time. And one of the suggestions is when you're making a presentation, the only thing on the screen should be the words coming out of your mouth. If you show them too much stuff, we don't know what to look at. There's too many things going on. Slides are free, single thought at a dimension. And then the closing, you said, imagine that you knew this most important number, what would happen to you. And that's a very clear call to action and a powerful close. So you did a great job. Maybe use that mind earlier on and keep hitting it over and over and over again. And then when you gave us a definition, say it twice. So let me tell you what that mind means. It's an acronym and it means. And then say it again. Lee? Yes. Thank you.

Thank you for that, Joel.

Thank you so much for that feedback. I really appreciate it.

Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. They're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.