Stop Managing—Start Transforming Your Business

Most businesses don't fail because of bad strategy. They fail because nobody stopped long enough to imagine a better future. Leaders get trapped in motion doing meetings, emails, firefighting, and somewhere along the way, they lose sight of where they were actually trying to go. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. Of course, this is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up some core skill sets to create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that your customers and your employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And I'm really happy you're here. First of all, this is our 6-year anniversary. I cannot believe I launched this the end of March 2020. And here we are, the beginning of April 2026. It's unbelievable. I'm really happy that you're here because with me today is Ash Sadeeq. And today, we're going to be exploring how leaders can stop managing the present and start actually designing the future of their business. So, stay with us. And if you haven't done so yet, please make sure that you've subscribed to this podcast. By subscribing, you'll get notifications when I bring you fresh new content each and every week as we have been for the last 6 years. So, make sure you click the subscribe button and follow along. So, let me see if I've got you. You're working hard. Your team is busy. You get the financials and the numbers look fine. But deep down, there's a quiet nagging thought. Is this it? And it's not a dramatic midlife crisis thought. Just a subtle realization that you might be running just a better version of the exact same playbook instead of building something truly transformational. In my experience, most leaders don't fail because they lack ideas. They fail because they never created the space to be able to see the opportunities. And that brings me to our Question of the Day. So, if you fast-forwarded 3 years from today, would your business look dramatically different or just slightly more efficient? If that question hit a little close to home, then you know you are in the right place. So, feel free to grab this episode, share it on your favorite social media platform, hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership, and put your own experiences down. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, today my guest is Ash Sadeeq, a Leadership Communication Strategist and the founder and CEO of the Executive Greatness Institute. Ash has spent years helping executives and leadership teams find their voice, clarifying their vision, and communicating in a way that actually inspires action. Not just polite nodding in meetings. He's a 2-time Fulbright Scholar, a Marshall Goldsmith Certified Executive Coach, and a best-selling author of multiple leadership books including his brand new one, Start With a Vision. He's worked with leaders at organizations like Cisco, Google, Uber, and HPE. So yes, he's seen what great leadership looks like and what happens when it's missing. Ash, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you.

Marc, thank you so much for having me. And congratulations on being on the air for so long. That's amazing. Yes, absolutely.

So Ash, could you start off a little bit about— let's dig a little bit deeper into who your clients are and how you're serving them these days.

Absolutely. So, my clients are typically individual contributors or managers, directors, senior directors, and VPs at these large corporations where we are trying to crack the code on how can we inspire action within ourselves and within, of course, our teams. And that's the kind of work that I work with leaders on is how do we use business storytelling to inspire audiences and get them to actually do things that are far and beyond their sort of default setting or what's expected. How can we actually get a whole lot more mileage out of them? And that's the power of inspirational leadership conversations.

I love that. I love that. You and I were connecting just before we went live. And I mentioned that my big impetus for this show to start off with was this idea that I tripped into different businesses. Because as my role as a former Economic Development Officer, I had the privilege of peeking into so many different businesses. And there seems to be a real visible difference in businesses where the owners and operators and managers are ingrained in the everyday running of the business. I guess that's why I started this because I wanted to expose people this idea of having to work on the business, not just in the business. So today, when you think about that, when you think about this idea that we are so ingrained, we are so part of the minutiae of every day, It really does feel like we're firefighting every day. We're just dealing with crisis and so on. But we're not really thinking kind of long-term. We're just thinking, let's just have a successful day.

Absolutely! A lot of the time, people will tell you whether it's a small business or large business, I am busy all day long. And the one thing that I tell leaders is the fact that if you actually counteract that dynamic, if you counteract the dynamic of I am on calls all day or I have to talk to customers all day, I basically tell them that it's interesting that even Harvard Business School, most CEOs around the world, they don't take time off. And what we're finding out is that when leaders do actually take time away from the grind, they are able to step away and look at that bigger picture. And to your point, maybe there's an opportunity for achieving more efficiency or achieving better customer acquisition workflows or better revenue. But unless you pull yourself away from that daily grind, you're not going to have that ability to, as we say, travel into the future. Because I see that a lot of the time when I build my practice around the whole idea of us becoming Chief Excitement Officers, it's because to your point, people want to, yes, come every day and do work amazingly good based on the fact that they have so much operational efficiency and excellence that they have achieved over the years. But they also want to aspire to something even better. Having that aspiration in their day is important because it tells them that however good we are today, we can even get better tomorrow. And can you even imagine when that happens? What would that mean for us? And for our business and for our customers. So, it's that aspiration that has to be part of the daily way of thinking about the business. And to your point, the only way we're going to be able to do this is when we step out and work on the business and think about the business. And that's why having a vision of what that future is is so critical. And the problem is a lot of leaders, they just get in the flow of the day-to-day and they forget to step back.

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. When I speak to leadership conferences, I will talk with leaders about how— and I ask them point blank, how many of you want to be in the same position this time next year as you are right this second? And almost no hands go up. Everybody wants to evolve the business. But really, I think what happens is people just keep doing the same thing over and over again. They get so buried into the minutiae of their business that 5 years pass and it's like, what have I done? Like, why can't I shake this? So, what do you think the biggest mistake leaders make when they're thinking about this idea of growing their business? But they're thinking, oh, I just have to serve customers faster. I just have to cross things off the list faster and so on. Well, when people want to grow the business, what do you think the big mistake is now?

The big mistake that I talk with my clients about, and we actually use the metaphor of imagine having a Mustang that you spent $50,000, $60,000, $150,000 on. And you keep going out and buying new parts for the car because it's your pride. You have it in the garage. And what starts to happen every day is you want to get this car out of the garage and drive it around the neighborhood. That's exactly the same situation that we have With our skills. The things that we know how to do so well, they give us the same sense of achievement and accomplishment. And it's our comfort zone. So, unless you realize that what you're just about to do is turn on the engine in that Mustang, you're not going to be able to counteract that desire and say, you know what? I drove the Mustang so many times. I need to start thinking about what is the future look like and what kind of car am I going to be driving? Is what I'm about just to do now, is that going to get me there? Or I'm going to be stuck in the same car all the time?

So, are there any signs that leaders are stuck in kind of this reactive mode? Are there anything they should be looking out for? Any behaviors that they could identify with that goes, oh yeah, maybe this is me?

I think the best thing to do is to Think about at a minimum, they can actually look at their calendar and ask themselves, is everything on the calendar stuff that I know how to do so well? If the answer is yes, that's a giveaway. So, we want to make sure that on the calendar, there are some things on there that when we look at them and say, oh my God, how am I going to do this? I can see a lot of discomfort in this meeting. But those are probably the meetings where we are exploring new territory. We are pushing ourselves into that discomfort where we are going to be learners one more time. We're going to have lack of experience one more time. We're not going to know what the hell we're doing one more time. And that's where the excitement is.

It's interesting because yes, that's where the excitement is. But that's also where uncertainty lies. And when we're in economies where we really don't know what's going to happen with supply chains, oil prices, political situations, and so on, how easy is it to start getting excited about one's business if you have all these other kind of barriers kind of weighing you down?

That's a great point. And that's why I usually would go with my clients to this framework. from McKinsey. It's called the 3 Horizons, where to your point, Marc, what we could do is given the circumstances, we could at least say, what is the smallest piece of innovation that we can bite given everything else that's going on? Because human beings want to have a desire for a better future. And despite the circumstances where the reality says, you know what? Shut up, Ash. There's so much chaos going on in the world. How can we even think about innovations or changing things in the business? But that's really where we have to come back and say, we have to counteract our initial thought because the initial thought would be everybody else. And I do this every single day. I basically say, they want us to be focused on all the negative stuff. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to shut my phone off. And I'm going to focus on learning. I'm going to watch something on YouTube that takes me to the next level because all of that negative noise is only going to slow me down. And what I need to do is I need to at least have a trickle of hope that all of this will— all of this noise will go away and my business will start to fly ahead. And that's really where if you have even a small measure of innovation and thought process on How can we do things differently and better going forward? Much better off than somebody else's, oh my God, there's just so much negative news. I don't think our business will even survive next year. Let's just shut everything down.

Well, and it's interesting that you say that because the mindset, that kind of victimized mindset is really kind of the anchor that's going to hold most businesses back. It's like, we don't know what's going to happen so we better not take a chance. And then, just like when we saw during COVID for instance, right? That was 6 years ago. Go figure! But when we saw like through COVID, the ones who kind of sat on their thumbs and were like, I don't know what to do. We've never experienced this. I don't know what steps to take, and so on. They kind of froze in place until a lot of businesses keeled over. There you go. Whereas, there were other people who were like, okay, This is happening. What can we do to adjust, right? And so, like a bakery for instance, all of a sudden sold baking kits for people to buy. They ranked themselves as a grocery store, sold baking kits that people could come in. And that's how they started supporting their business. They opened it up as a grocery store because that was considered essential. But it took a different mindset to be able to look at the exact situation.

Exactly, yes.

And so, what is that mindset? Like what is that What's that shift that leaders need to make?

I think it's a fundamental desire to beg to differ. And I think this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs by definition, they are as Apple will call them, the crazy few, where there's some level of insanity that we have to have in order for us to counteract what the default setting around us is. If everybody else says, shut the door, we will be the crazy ones that say, you know what? I'm actually I'm going to go open the door. And I'm going to sit outside my store and smile at people passing by as a first step. And to your point, if I can get this amazing idea to start instead of selling bread to sell baking kits, amazing.

Yeah.

So, sometimes, you need to open yourself up to the possibility that, oh my goodness, an idea is going to come that's going to change the day. And it's fascinating, the idea that you bring up because Unless people start thinking about how can I self-disrupt, we are in a very tough situation. So luckily, entrepreneurs are by definition people who have most of the time have gone against the tide despite everybody else advising them. You're going to have no money. You're going to lose your house. And then they still there are so many so many examples of entrepreneurs. Who have basically defied a lot of that conventional wisdom and done something amazing. And that's why we believe that small businesses and entrepreneurs are a big part of our economies. And it's fascinating that that's the main lever, whether it's in the Canadian economy or the American economy. It's those small business owners that wake up every day and despite all the negative news, they say, you know what? If it's to be, it's up to me. I'm gonna get up and make it happen.

Yeah. So, for the people tuning in, when we think about growing our business and kind of the growth perspective, basically shifting, looking forward to 3 to 5 years and saying, we're here today. But in 5 years, I want to be there. Are there any myths we should be aware of as people start uncovering like some of the challenges of that line of thinking?

I think that usually, People will balk at how much difficult things might be or the number of unknowns. But I think what we want to remind people is always remind your own success stories and look for those moments where again, when everybody else said, there is no way, and you said, oh my God, there is a way. So, having that self-confidence and belief in oneself is the starting point. So, I think we want to celebrate with people who are listening to us, who at moments when everybody else was giving up, they were the ones that said, you know what? Let's actually take the first step. And that's what most leaders do basically sometimes. And everybody's saying, oh my God, there's no way. Your question to them would be, what's the very first step that we can take? And then, we can build momentum after that. So, this idea of generating momentum happens through believing that we can make things happen. And at a minimum, let's just ask ourselves, what's the first step?

I love that. Hey, I'd love to dig in. So now that we're here, I'd love to dig into how leaders can measure the gap between where their business sits today and where it could be. And I'd like to get to that. Right after this. You remember the moment. That speaker who made the whole room lean forward, who said exactly the right thing at the right time. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens through curation. Elite Headline Speakers is a boutique speaker curation service. We find the voice that fits your event like it was made for it. Visit EliteHeadlineSpeakers.com. Elite Headline Speakers. The right voice. Your stage. When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star with the new book, Lights! Welcome back! I am speaking with Ash Siddiqui. Ash, why don't you tell us a little bit about your book that you have?

Absolutely. So, you mentioned the Start with a Vision book. And one of the things that I have found that helps a lot of leaders is being very intentional about how do we actually manage and lead to what the future is. So definitely, starting with the vision is about what we want to achieve for our business. And that's very critical. And a lot of the time, sometimes we have to self-correct. course correct and bring things back to where we need to take the business. But the thing that really would make a difference as well is this idea that's in this book, which is the idea of meeting with self. The idea of making sure that as a business leader, you take time out every Friday afternoon preferably, where you sit down and you think about the upcoming week, the upcoming weeks, and you look at your calendar. And as we were talking earlier, just do like a self-check. Is everything on that list of actions things that you know how to do so well? Just like that Mustang that you have in the garage. It's so beautiful. But in order for us to create a better future is for us to start to walk away from the things that we know how to do so well. And what this book does, it basically gives you a daily, monthly way of looking ahead and thinking strategically. So, thank you, Marc, for that because I think that is a key lever for a lot of leaders is when they are able to step away from the grind and think about how can they as leaders be what Jim Rohn calls the significant variable. Every business leader today wants to be a catalyst for creating a different level of value for their business. And it really comes down to who the leaders are in that business and whether or not they see themselves as the significant variable. The person that can actually come and talk to us about, you know what? There is an even better future than what we have now. And the way we're going to work about it, as you mentioned, Marc, despite all the geopolitical challenges that we are facing today, we are going to look for even the smallest piece of innovation that we can bring to the table because that's what's going to generate excitement for us. And not only us, for our customers and partners. And that's really where this daily exercise creates an opportunity for you as a leader to become a significant variable. The person that challenges the status quo, brings some fresh ideas to the table. And then, of course, at that moment is willing to say, you know what? I don't think I have all the answers. But I want us to have a discussion around what we could possibly do to change.

I love that. I love that. So, we talk about kind of this future focus of what our businesses could be. But at the same token, we don't know what we don't know. So, how can leaders measure the gap between where their business is today and where it could be?

Of course, the one thing that a lot of people don't do of course is the idea of going on listening tours. So, we definitely recommend that leaders on an ongoing basis, schedule time to speak with their employees about how are we doing. Very simply, we ask 3 questions. What's working? What's not working? What could be better? Very simply, using that conversational tone to go to your employees and basically say, I'm actually curious. What's working? What's not working? What could be better? And If you look at your top 10 customers and you go out to them and say, I just want to grab some coffee, talk about how we're doing. How can we do things differently? What's happening with their own business? What's changing for them? And how what we do can also change in a way that serves them better. You know what? Most of other business leaders don't do what we just described. So, if only a small percentage do do so, we have so many benefits to see for them.

There seems to be that when people make kind of that decision of kind of, oh, here's a potential future that we could be exploring, that in itself will create a tension. Is that tension itself a catalyst for the transformation as well?

It definitely is because the model that I developed, which is the tension index, it's about thinking about when you have these sort of meetings with SILFA every Friday, definitely you're going to come up with a lot of ideas. And that's going to create tension within you as an individual. But then, when you talk to your team members and you find out which of these ideas you could pursue, again, that's going to create a desire for how can we go from where we are now to that vision that we are thinking about. And of course, we have to think about what moves do we need to make in order to make it happen. Because of course, we have to think about the impact of these ideas on the organization, how much change management we have to do. Even if it's a small business, a lot of people are very comfortable with how they do things so well. And then, you come up with a new idea. Of course, they have to reshuffle and readjust. And we have to think about what it's going to take for them to be successful one more time.

It is funny because when somebody starts a business, there's nothing but uncertainty. Somebody's got an idea. Somebody's got a vision. And somebody's driving that forward. And somewhere along the way, we go from this idea of like, let's challenge all the Let's challenge what we believe. Let's challenge our abilities. Let's challenge our capacity. And now, it's like, okay, well now that we've solved that, let's get complacent. And let's, oh, this feels so good, right? But then, years into it, years into it, you realize that what got you there is not what keeps you successful.

Absolutely. And I think that's a great point because maybe as you're saying, In that weekly meeting or monthly meeting with self, you could literally have something similar with your team where on the agenda, you can basically say, what is it that we are giving into from a complacency standpoint? Because we are so good at it now that we love it so much that we don't even see it. And asking everybody in the room to play the devil's advocate. So, that's a great point. And then, sometimes organizations will invite some customers to be part of that conversation.

All right. And we've talked about that many times on this show about how we need to be talking to our customers for many, many different reasons. But at the very least, understand what it is that they understand they're buying, right? To understand what you're doing for them. In your notes, you mentioned this TIE framework. Is that the tension index you were just talking about?

Yeah. So, the tension index is essentially definitely about sort of identifying opportunities where we can make some where we can make some improvements in the business. And then, what results from the tension that we create with these ideas is we go to the next stage. And the next stage is what we call the TIE model. And the T stands for tension, the I for inspiration, and the E for excitement. So, the goal here is to say to leaders, you are the one that's going to be one of the early evangelists. So, we want you to look at that tension as the opportunity. We want you to get excited about, oh my God, can you imagine? Not what if, but what when? Let's just jump into the future and see the Promised Land, get excited about it, and then come back and say, you guys cannot even imagine what it looks like. I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes. And I can't wait to take you there. And that excitement, because then we want you to be the evangelist. We want you to go around the organization And talk to people and understand what are their concerns as we think about that transformation, that change. And what could we do together to make the change a whole lot more feasible and bring everybody along so they feel that they're shaping it with us rather than feeling that it's happening to them. They feel that they are doing it together for sure.

And I love that thing as well because the very last thing of your TIE Framework is this excitement. Well, when people are co-creating, you can't help but get excited. Yes, yeah, absolutely. So, Ash, for the people tuning in, if this is resonating with them, how can they get in touch with you if they want to reach out and work with you, or get your books, or whatever?

Absolutely. So, one of the key destinations is communicatewithclarity.co or ash@executivegreatness.com. They can reach out on LinkedIn as well. But definitely, yes, an initial conversation is usually the starting point. And for everybody listening, I'm definitely open to a complimentary 1 hour to anyone that reaches out and says, I am coming based on the conversation I had with Marc.

I love that. Thank you very much. That's very generous. Ash, I get a sense that this is not— when it comes to like this idea of growing and innovation and so on, this is not a let's stop what we're doing and turn on the fire hydrant mythology of making huge changes all at once.

Yes.

What should steps look like when people realize that there is opportunity, that they do want to ideate change, and then They want to be able to test and fail forward.

I think it's a healthy exercise for leaders to find what is the right cadence of introducing new ideas in the organization. Is it every quarter, every 6 months? And what would be the ritual of successfully doing so? Like we were talking about the idea of co-creation. Maybe, it's the way it's going to start to happen is you gather information from your listening tours. And then, you come back and present them to the leadership team. Make sure they have a chance to share it with their employees. So, I would say find what the best cadence is that works for your organization. And then, make sure that it's part of just how we run the business, right? So, the fact that you will have every 6 months an opportunity to take a look at the list of potential ideas and innovations and also discuss with your leadership team what's the best way for us to sort of cascade them out so that it happens in a way That gives everybody a chance to be successful.

What I love about this whole philosophy, Ash, is that it's no longer encouraging leaders to rule from the roost or to adopt a mindset of my way or the highway. It's really this idea of leadership with a lot of humility, a lot of trustworthiness because you can't go to your team and say, tell me all your ideas and let's do something magical, and then stomp all over it. And so, this mindset shift for the people who are— and I'm the last of the baby boomers. But I still know that there's still a ton of carrot and sticking managers out there who are like, if I want your idea, I'll tell you what it is. How do we overcome this and how do we spot it?

I think that's a great point because one of the things that happens for us, for most leaders, this idea of going to the promised land and seeing how the future looks like A lot of the time, because of the fact that they're actually able to envision what the future is, what starts to build not just tension but also impatience. And they come back and they want to see it today. And they don't realize that there is a bridge we have to cross. And that bridge, when you look at it, you see people walking on it together. In order to make that change happen, it's only going to happen through people. That's why my friend Shefali at Uber, she's an HR leader. She said to me, Ash, these leaders, some of them don't realize that the only way you're going to get this stuff done is through people. And of course, our business owners here listening to us and entrepreneurs, they realize whether it's a team that they have hired into the organization or they're working with them through partnerships and networking, they realize the only