The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People For Management with Scott Jeffrey Miller

Scott, Jeffrey Miller.

Hi, Mike. Thanks for the platform, man, and the invitation.

My pleasure.

Pleasure. For sure.

Yeah.

This is legit. This is legit.

Yeah, yeah, this is. It's great to have you here.

I feel like I'm on an actual new set studio. I've done a fair amount of that and this is representing. Nicely done. Yeah.

Well, you know, the funny thing is, is when I have production people, people.

From television come in here when I.

Demonstrate it, the system to them live. What they all say is, I can't believe you're able to produce as much as you can without having a team. And they're very envious and they immediately pull out their computer or their phone and they take notes and they want to know every piece of gear.

I'm not easily intimidated, but you have like five things going on that you're producing it, directing it and hosting it. And all I have to do is deliver content over here.

So it's going to be fun.

Thanks, man.

So I thought I'd get started. You're, as of like a couple days ago, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Congratulations on that. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Amazing.

It's amazing when you do it legitimately. Yes. Which I'm proud that we did. Right. Just with individuals choosing to buy the book organically, you can game your way onto a lot of lists. But I'm proud that our standard is high and we don't do that. And I'm honored to have my co authors and I have earned that title this week.

Yeah. So that's something that is really interesting is first of all, you've done the work for sure. And as an EVP over at Franklin Covey, you've had the good opportunity to see what Dr. Covey did by building his platform and having that as an example, but also working on your own books. So let's go back a little bit and first of all, let's talk about the two books first, what they are, who they're for, and then we're going to just dive into some interesting content. And my objective and goal is to ask you questions, hopefully you haven't been asked before. And my goal with every episode of Capability Amplifier is to give the viewer or the listener an opportunity to get a matrix style cartridge upgrade for their brain and understand how you think. So they get an operating system upgrade. Think of it like that.

That has never been the goal of one of my interviews. So you're starting out fresh.

It's good.

Bring it on, Bring it on.

Okay, begin. First of all, with the two books. Because you got two books simultaneously.

Which isn't wise.

I don't recommend coming out. Yeah, you've been there.

That's an enormous amount of work. An enormous amount of work. But when you talk about what the two books are and who they're for sure. And then we'll get into some of the big ideas that I think are going to be super.

Yeah, sure. Well, like you, I host a couple of podcasts. One of them is called On Leadership. It's for Franklin Covey. Every week I interview a major celebrity or best selling author, somebody who has a point of view on leadership. And one of the guests was Stephen. Mr. Covey, who was Dr. Stephen Covey's oldest son. He wrote a book called the Speed of Trust. This book sold 2 million copies. I have Stephen Amar on the set and I say, Stephen, was it hard for you to be the son of Dr. Covey? Right. I mean, you know, one of the most influential men of the last hundred years. His book the Seven Habits sold 30 million copies. Unbelievable. Was that difficult? And Steven said it wasn't because our dad was always about affirming our potential. He was, you know, our kind of our celebrity dad and our home dad. And I say, did you ever feel like you needed to write a book as your dad did? He said, I didn't until I did. Meaning? He said, I never had anything to say. I was a CEO of a company I was consulting. But he said, one day I realized I actually had something to say. Took a two year sabbatical, wrote the book the Speed of trust. Sold 2 million copies. It was at that interview, Mike, where I said, you know, I've been here for 22 years in the firm at Franklin Covey, raised by Dr. Covey as a pup. And I never thought I had anything to say until that interview. I said, dammit, I've got something to say. And that is that leadership is not easy. Leadership is not for everyone. You know, everyone's got a mess going on. And I think vulnerability is a leadership competency. So kind of against the traditional culture of the firm. I went out and wrote this book called Management Mess to Leadership Success.

Right.

And it basically is a story of all of my struggles as an officer in a leadership firm with leadership. But I'm not sure I should have been a leader of people wrote this book and it sold 20,000 copies in like 100 days. Not too bad. You know, a Great Book, sells 5,000 copies in a year. Very impressive. It's impressive. It just, it hit it strong. The Publisher came back and said we want a whole series. So right now I'm in the process of writing about seven more books in the Mess to Success series. Right now my next manuscripts do marketing mess to brand success. I'm writing job Mess to to career success. Kind of chicken soup for the soul kind of thing going on. So I'm really proud of the book. It's raw, it's relatable, it's not gratuitous, but it's, you know, here's 30 challenges you're gonna face not just as a formal leader but in your personal life with your mother in law, with your spouse, with your kids. And it's done really well. I'm very proud of it. The next book I co authored with Franklin Covey's chief people officer and one of our leadership consultants. It's called Everyone deserves a great Manager. Simon and Schuster published this just debuted at number three in the Wall street journalist. I'm proud it bumped Bob Iger from Disney down a notch.

Unbelievable.

Yeah, I worked at Disney because it was kind of a little bit of kind of comeuppance, right? I'm kidding. I'm a huge Bob Iger fan and I loved working there. He wrote a great book by the way. This book debuted. Well just for the record, that is.

Something that's in your bio is you started by working at Disney. I did.

I worked for four years for the Disney Development company which was the real estate arm of Walt Disney. We can talk about that if you want but this book is super practical. It's just Franklin Covey's 40 years in business. Millions of interventions, profiles, assessments. Here's six things that leaders need to do to build a great team. So it's very practical, it's an easy read. I like writing shorter books. You know most books are written and slave to the publisher they give you an advance for X number of words which is why the last half of most business books usually suck and no one ever reads them. So I'd like to write write books that are about 180 pages or so 50,000 words, not 60,000 words. I think it's a sweet spot for the busy leader now.

Yeah, I completely agree with that. In fact what I tell a lot of people is when they write their first book. Now this is for self published because it's a different model but hit 80 pages or 100 pages. I agree it's so much easier. And.

One of my friends mentors, actually the co host of this podcast Capability amplifier dan Sullivan writes four books a year, all of them are about 80 pages. So it takes just a little over an hour. He says a flight from Toronto to Chicago, where they have offices, and each one is set up. It's got graphics and cartoons or comics in it. It's got what's known as a scorecard built in. And then the principles, in other words, the values on the scorecard, they're usually eight of them, are also the chapters in the book. And then when you open up formulas.

In each of his books.

Yes.

So smart.

Yeah. And then he's got the.

Audio version of the book and a video version, but it's not him reading the book. So it's more of his take, a conversational take. And he creates this immersive environment. But the point of that whole thing to get back to you is, um, keep it simple. Short is better, and it is much better. And you're better off creating more frequent books than big books. And also it, it, it, you know, the big idea should just be the big idea.

It's true. People have so many options between their podcast and their news and their flip all their pages. People want shorter consumable things. So I think there's a trend towards that.

Right on.

Yeah.

So I, what I wanted to do is talk to you a little bit about. Let's just spend a little bit of time on each book. But I'm, you know, you've been working at a publicly traded company for how many years now?

23. Almost 24 years. I know. And as an officer for almost 10. Yeah, yeah. That's not a wear you down. Yeah.

Well, the funny thing is it's not funny. So I've had plenty of friends who've gone public and I can't think of one who said they liked it after they went public.

Definitely not.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's, you know, there's upside, obviously. Right. But there's the scrutiny and the, if you will, maybe the enslavement is the wrong term, but just the responsibility that you feel to your shareholders, to your board and your stockholders, investors and such, it's enormous and, you know, it perpetuates this cycle of what have you done for me lately? It is hard to think really long term. The boldest of the boards and officers really just kind of chuck the short term focus and say, I'm in it for the long haul and invest, don't invest. But we're going here. So I hope to see you in 10 years. We'll still be here.

Yeah. It's tricky and tough and again It's a different thing. Usually it's an exit to capitalize. But what I'm curious about is this.

Exit thing you talk of. Tell me. I'm kidding.

Yeah, yeah, yes, well, that thing. And so my model that I've gone through has been to build a business and sell it. And everything I do now I have that in mind, which is how do I build something and sell it? And I usually have an iteration time. So for example, right now after selling, it's 10 months ago, the last business I've been iterating and generating ideas and building a platform first. So the idea is build the book, build the speaking, build the podcast, get the framework. I spent about half of my time actually platform creating.

Had I met you at 31, as opposed to 51, imagine what I could have done, man. And I'd done some things, but imagine if I'd met you earlier. Where were you in my high school?

Yeah, yeah, well, where were I when I needed me?

Yeah, exactly.

But, but that is, it's like build that platform first. But let's talk a little bit about the management platform because I'm going to be the first one to say part of the reason that drives me out of my own businesses is my own companies have outgrown me and I've outgrown them as well because I'm not a good manager. I'm, I'm a visionary, fast start implementer. And as soon as an organization needs rules and bureaucracy, I need to go away because I break my own rules and I'm not a good. That's why it's like I'm not. It just doesn't work. But here you are, you've been in this organization this long, you're really building.

You're growing in such a way to allow yourself to move on or to make yourself kind of obsolete in your own organization by building teams and being a great leader. So you self replicate, that's your self replicating ideal system. So I'd like to just go through this through the lens of, okay, if I'm a one man show and I need to build this out and I'm in a business that's already in growth mode or in a public company, because I haven't, I lived very briefly in a publicly traded company twice, but not long enough to have learned much of anything. So again, I'd like to just go through the process and talk about some of the big value points inside here. Now that you've been around the block.

A few times, I've learned a lot I think this following thought applies to everyone, and that is that leaders are not supposed to be the smartest person in the room. I don't care if you're the founder, the owner, you're getting ready to sell. You're the CEO of a company. Your job is not to be the smartest person in the room because no one wants to work for that person. I've worked for that person. It can be suffocating your job. To quote my dear friend Liz Wiseman, who worked at Oracle for 20 years, left and wrote a book called Multipliers. I think it's the best leadership book written in the last 15 years. And in her book the Multiplier, she talks about, your job is not to be the genius, but the genius maker of others. And that a key role that every leader has, regardless of size of organization. How soon your exit is public, private, not for profit. For that matter. It's to really be a talent magnet for other people. It sounds cliche.

Ish.

Mike, something I learned in the last year, and I'm embarrassed to admit that, is that as the chief marketing officer for Franklin Covey, and in my opinion, Franklin Covey is the world's premier leadership development firm, worldwide offices in nearly every country, work everywhere in the world. One of my misnomers was that I was supposed to have all the answers, that I was supposed to hire people who were smart but not smarter than me. So I strategically would hire people in who were very talented but who wouldn't eclipse me. And I'm guessing it was because of my own insecurity, perhaps my own ego move.

Right.

Totally right. And my inability to disrupt myself. And then I finally came to this level that that's not my biggest contribution. My biggest contribution is an abundance mentality. My vulnerability, my ability to hire people in who smoke me intellectually, who know SEO or Google Analytics or marketing automation much better than I do, and be comfortable with that. Be comfortable sitting around a group with people who are discernibly, palpably smarter than me in their areas. And it took me like 25 years to figure that out. Fortunately, it didn't take me 35 years. But. But I would say as kind of a call to every leader, check your ego. You might need what we call an ego enema. And really say, what is your role? Your role might be as visionary or as evangelist or as mission setter or culture carrier. It might not be. You have to touch everything in the company. Let it go.

Got it.

Got it.

And one of the things that I know you've Got you built the foundation of the book or what you called the 30 leadership challenges.

Yeah.

And first of all, that's in management.

Management mess. That's right.

That's the complication with two books at the same time. But so first of all, just talk a little bit about the leadership challenges and then tell me a little bit about.

What the solutions are.

Sure. So when I wrote this book, I got together four or five colleagues at Franklin Coffee. We brainstorm what do all leaders face. We, we had about 150 challenges up on the wall, post it notes. We thought that book will make anybody cry or want to take their life. No one wants to face 150 challenges. So we culled it down to about 30. And these 30 challenges kind of congealed into three areas. Leading yourself the first eight, leading others the next 12, and then finally getting results the last dozen or so. And so these challenges, like I said, are ubiquitous at all parts of our life. Demonstrating humility, better listening skills, setting wildly important goals, having high courage conversations, talking straight, aligning actions and outputs and creating systems and self improvement. These are not rocket science challenges. You face them in discussions with your father in law on where is Thanksgiving going to be next year. You discuss them with your brother on where should we rent the summer beach cottage to or go on vacation or Disney World. And there are discussions you have with your employees and your peers in the organization. So these challenges, I also created a card deck you can see whenever I keynote around the nation, which is actually this week, three times I pass these cards out because it's a great way for people to get tactical on what these challenges are like. Some other ones are Declare your intent. Look at card four. Declare your intent. I think this is so important. The moment there is suspicion about a person's motive, everything he does becomes tainted. Number four, turn the, turn your deck over. Those are the back.

Okay.

Declare your intent, regardless what leadership position you're in. Everyone's got a motive, everyone's got an agenda. Some of them are hidden, some of them at the surface. But you know, absent facts, Mike, people make stuff up. So a great leadership competency, a challenge if you will, is to just show your cards face up. You know, a dear friend of mine, Blaine Lee, who's passed now, said to me something profound. He said, nearly all, if not all conflict comes from mismatched or unfulfilled expectations. Think about your spouse, think about the person who's washing your car, person who's your babysitter, your boss, person you work for that great leaders Clarify expectations brutally clear. And in some cases, have the person repeat them back to you so you really know they've got the vision. Because you've been thinking about it in your head the whole drive to the office or the last six weeks or on your cruise. Whatever you're doing, because it's in your head does not mean it's in the other person's head as well. So leaders, sometimes, I think, short circuit that need to really declare your intent. In fact, use that phrase in a conversation. Mike, my intent in calling you in today is to help you with your project, not slow it down. But I've got four or five questions I've gotta have addressed, and once I'm satisfied with those, man, I'm gonna be in your boat, rowing with you. It's something I think leaders think they do well, but generally don't perform well on that. Great.

So I'm. I'm looking through the cards right now. Yeah.

Pick any you like.

Well, first of all, this is a really smart tool, and I was excited when you brought these in. So demonstrate humility. Think abundantly. Listen first. Declare your intent. Make and keep commitments. All right, so I'm going to pick.

All right, this is. This is mine. That I've done a challenge 10, which is making time for relationships. I will flat out say.

Four years. I didn't do this intentionally, but now I understand that I treated people like things.

Yes.

And as a manager and as a owner of a company, I was always in such a rush because, frankly, I felt like I was fighting what I called the 30 Day Monster. It's like I get past it and it's like, payroll's due, and it's like, how much? And I'm measuring cash consumption by the hour. That's how, that's how.

How fragmented I became. And like taking a meeting, for example, an all company meeting would mean taking 20 people, putting them in a room.

And I was like, that cost me per minute. Right.

And I was thinking about that as burning cash.

Yeah.

And then I compartmentalized everything, you know, and so I wasn't looking at things through the big picture now. So the contrast side of this, I think I shifted during the last two years with the last business. But that's 30 years of being an entrepreneur. But now I travel. I spend so much time not focusing on the dollar, but on the depth of the relationship and realizing that we are all one phone call, one connection away from someone feeling comfortable enough to refer us to what could be a breakthrough business relationship. And it's not that that's why we do it for. But I'll give you one example and then I want to get your commentary here, which is this weekend. So I have a client. I really like these people. And.

My wife and I developed a personal relationship with them. And in the past I've been kind of cautious about my professional relationships, my personal ones, and who's a client and all that. But they invited us to an island to be with them. And we had a great time for four days. And we had some profound experiences. And on the way, I said, like Richard Branson Island.

Keep going, keep going.

Okay, I will say on that order, yes, it was a profound experience. Right. And something I didn't expect, but it did involve, I will say, a private eye. So then what happened was while we were together, my wife says, I love these people. I really want to have a relationship with them. So what we did is said, have you ever been to Guadalupe Valley in Mexico? And they're like, no. What is that? Well, it turns out it's wine country in Mexico. There's 300 wineries right across the border from San Diego. It's two hours down. Beautiful farm to table. I mean, it's really, really nice. And so we, we went down there and took them down, stayed at this bnb. We bumped into someone from Argentina who just poured his first, his first bottles. We ended up sipping wine outside in the desert with another couple.

You dreamed this or that just actually happened this.

It was freaking amazing. And it was like 10 in the morning or drink. I mean, it was like we felt we were in southern France, right?

Yeah.

And if you wouldn't know better, you'd feel like you're in Mexico or I mean in Italy rather. I mean, you can't tell that it's Mexico. And we ended up traveling all over. The seafood's amazing. Like I said, farm to table, organic food.

It's awesome.

And once again, just taking the time for a deep, meaningful relationship completely shifted how I operate. And I've lived In this old 20 year fear cycle of running out, not having enough, not being enough. And it dictated the depth and meaning of the relationships I was in. So that was a long winded story. But I'm curious through your lens because as a leader, how do you draw the line and tell me about relationships through your lens?

Yeah. You and I are of the same generation. The story you just told, I had not been on a private island and I haven't been down to this beautiful vineyard yet. When you invite me, my wife and I will come and we'll develop a deep, meaningful relationship over farm to table wine.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think if something happens in your 50s, 40s and 50s, where you start to realize, what's my purpose? What's my mission? Have I uncovered it? Why am I here?

Right.

What's my contribution? I do think it's in your 40s and 50s, hopefully not your 70s and 80s. But here's what I learned from Dr. Covey. I mention him because I think he's one of the real deals passed seven years ago from the result of a bicycle accident and a brain injury. Wear your helmet. Remember the day on a bike.

And it was so Sad. Yeah.

And Dr. Covey said many wise things. Probably one of the most quoted men of our time, he said something that will change my course of relationships, and that is with people, slow is fast and fast is slow. And I learned that when I first joined the firm as a 23 year old or 25 year old. But it didn't really hit me in my 20s. I thought, that's cliche. Ish. But what I started to realize from Dr. Covey is that there's two mindsets. There's an efficient mindset, and then, Mike, there's an effective mindset. And they're different. His book was not titled the 7 Habits of Highly Efficient People. It was very deliberately the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And I fall square into the efficiency mindset. As you can tell, I have a lot of energy like you. I'm very productive. I check off lists. I get most things done before 7am that many people get done before noon. On a Saturday, I'm at Home Depot or Lowe's before the employees are there, backing up my SUV, loading in the flowers. They're planted by 7, 30, car wash by 8, ready for tennis by, you know, by 9. And that's fine. On certain things, plant, marry goals as fast as you want to. An efficiency mindset can work with some meetings, processes, system software, that kind of stuff. But when it comes to what matters in life, which is relationships, which is the backbone of every organization, every family, everyone's legacy, you have to slow down. With people. Slow is fast and fast is slow. And as I turned 50, I started to realize, Mike, you know what? I'm going too fast. And I've got to better compartmentalize when to be efficient and when to be effective. I've mentioned you. I have three sons, five, seven and nine. And I take my son's.

I know.

Thank you for that. Thank you.

Private School Bill.

Private School Bill. True. I think my 5 year old's preschool tuition was more than my college tuition when I went back to going to school. But enough on that. Yeah, it's a good investment. I think what I found myself doing, Mike, was taking my boys to ice cream ice cream parlor four blocks away and trying to do it as fast as I could, checking my phone, how many books of my book sold that week and how many likes I had on LinkedIn. And fortunately I had an intervention with myself realizing, no, no, this shouldn't take as short as possible. This should take as long as possible. Slow down, enjoy it, laugh when the ice cream falls off the cone, pick it up, put it in the garbage, go pay a dollar and 20 cents for another scoop of ice cream or free most likely, and don't wig out. And I wish I could have known some of these things earlier in life.

If you're learning this stuff now with kids as young as you're doing fine, hopefully.

Dr. Covey said something so wise again. He wrote in his book the Seven Habits, he talked about this famous story called green and clean. And people who are 7 Habits devotees know this story where Dr. Covey took his oldest son, Stephen Mr. Covey, and taught him some discipline on keeping the yard green and clean. Son, I want it green and I want it clean. Pick up all the garbage, keep the grass mowed and raked. And finally Dr. Covey found himself just like harping on his son every night. And he finally asked himself, am I raising grass or am I raising boys? And I have to remember that, right? Am I raising, am I? I'm raising boys. That's my legacy, right? It's dads. So with relationships in your organization, that's what matters. This adage that people are a company's most valuable asset, that's bunk. That's nice. Some HR person said that what's most important in companies are the relationships between each other. Mike can be genius, Scott can be creative. But if we can't get along, solve our interpersonal disputes, forgive each other, pre forgive each other, then the covenant doesn't need us, move on somewhere else because I only need you. The two you can get together and figure it out, work it out and make magic.

Right on. That's good. That's good. So next question I have for you. I was just looking through the cards. I want to know what check your paradigms is all about. Tell me about that.

Yeah. Challenge 11. Dr. Covey again popularized the word kind of paradigms that pre exist him. But it's this idea that as youth, you know we are deeply enculturated to believe certain things. I was raised in Central Florida in the 80s Orlando by two upper middle class parents. I was raised to believe, believe it or not, that all Catholic priests, doctors and police officers always tell the truth and are always right. It was kind of a value of my generation and of where we lived. That's absurd. Do all Catholic priests always tell the truth?

Apparently not.

Apparently not. And I'm a Catholic in good standing, right? But I mean, apparently not. Do all police officers do the right thing?

Definitely not, right?

Imagine if I had to put that to the test. Fortunately, I didn't. I had a good experience with all three of those profiles. But my parents, one of the many warped paradigms that they incultrated in my brother and I. And everybody has them from birth. Our parents, our ministers, our principals, our teachers, our leaders inculturate into us a belief system, kind of a metaphorical eyeglasses that you see the lens through. So as leaders, you have to really check your paradigms. Do you see the whole person? Do you know their story? Do you know their fears? Have you taken the time to really understand? Do you have an accurate view of them, of yourself, of your place in the market, of your competition, of the industry, whatever it is? I think great leaders that move from mess to success are always willing to challenge their paradigm of themselves. No one is as handsome or their breath smells as good as they think, or as smart or creative or as patient or as gracious. I don't know about you, but I always get the. I hate driving home from dinner parties with my wife. It's 10:30. We've had a great conversation. She says you had to go there. You promised me you would not bring up Trump or whatever it is. Right? I think I'm funny and witting. She's like, you couldn't feel the mood at the table. Scott, you know, as I think. I think we have to just check the perceptions of ourselves that are rarely accurate or as great as we can.

We never have that conversation ever.

I can guarantee you have, have you? Not really, no. No, she's.

Wow.

She. No, we've.

Many times. I was definitely. I activated every humiliation response she could.

Okay, good, good, good.

She's hypersensitive and I genuinely believe that I'm in deep rapport. And it isn't until afterwards that someone will say, you know, blah, blah, blah. What you said there was. I'm like, what? Everyone was laughing, having a good time between laughing with and laughing.

I think we're more related than maybe we think we are.

Yeah, well, we grew up. We grow it up in the Midwest.

We did. You did at least. Yeah.

Okay, so next one that I just bumped into is protecting your team against urgencies.

That's. Yes.

Number 19.

Yeah. You should be. You should have a podcast. We have a great podcast voice. Protect your team from urgencies. This is all about. Leaders need to understand the difference between what is important and what is urgent. And there's a difference. And I think a lot of leaders, a lot of entrepreneurs, they've gotten where they are because they're either they're workaholics or they have such a great idea, or they have contagious energy and they're working nonstop and they build sometimes an urgent culture. And that's fine. Sometimes having a bias to action is what differentiates you from your lazy competition. But the difference comes in that people can't thrive in a non stop urgent culture for long. They can do it in spurts, they can do it in bits, but they need a break. And leaders need to know, when are you creating an urgency addicted culture? Because most people that like urgency like to save the day, like to rush in and feel that dopamine squirt in your brain and get that satisfaction of saving the day. The big challenge is oftentimes the leaders of the problem is they have a brand new idea, then another idea and another idea. Now your people have 15 ideas and you've not taken the time to differentiate one which is the most important. Genius idea. Right? Right. Great. At the expense of good. So I think leaders should ask themselves too, when is having this urgency proclivity a bias towards action? Good. And when is it drowning your people? I love a good crisis, and I've been known to cook one up if one doesn't exist. Because I want to feel validated. Because in most organizations, who you give the $100 Visa gift card to is the person who put their product in their trunk and drove seven hours through the night to the client, not the person who checked off all the systems and got it right to prevent the urgency. Be careful what you reward. Got it. Got it.

Good. Good stuff. So I want to get a little more.

Tactical for a moment. Not that we haven't been tactical here the whole time, because this has been really, really good stuff. But I'm curious about some more stories.

That you're experiencing and some distinctions. So Franklin Covey's been. How long has it been publicly?

40 years. 40 years as a company? Yeah.

But it's been publicly traded about 35 years. Yes. I had no idea. Yeah.

The Franklin Quest company merged with the covey Leadership Center 25 years ago. But Franklin Quest was public prior to that. That's right.

Now I got it. Now I remember the reason, all of it. So this is. Yes.

But you've always operated inside a public company, at least with them and Disney too?

Well, actually, yeah, pretty much. So, yeah, I joined the Covey Leadership center for about five days prior to them being acquired or merged with Franklin Covey. So my entire 30 year portfolio has been working in public companies. Wow. Yeah.

So I'm curious the distinction between the two, because if you've been operating public and a lot of clients, obviously Franklin Covey are not going to be publicly.

You're not. Right, right.

So what are the key distinctions you see from a management leadership perspective through your lens right now? Because we live in a very interesting, evolving time.

Yeah. So I think one, I think transparency as a leader. Because in a public company, especially with what's happening with Sarbanes, Oxley, the MeToo movement, I mean, public companies are increasingly the most transparent entities around. As a public officer, we're very deliberate around what we can and can't say, but for the most part, unless you're disclosing proprietary information, our job is to make sure everybody understands our revenue, our profit, our cost of goods, our margin, how their job is connected. I think in private organizations, because it may not be necessary or appropriate to share that level of information, owners and leaders tend to hold back.

Okay.

They tend to be much more guarded with information because it perhaps is their own business. But the problem with that, the more guarded you are, the less people understand the why behind the what.

Yep.

So I would really advise leaders in private companies to be very deliberate about. Are you explaining to everyone how their job, how, what their project they're working on, connects to the goals of the organization, the profitability, why it's important to them. You know, this is a cliche, but this idea of why behind the what is probably a key lever of engagement when people really understand what they're working on. Here's a good example. When I was working in the education division at Franklin Covey, one of my mentors, Chuck, had created an alliance with the usoc, the Olympic Committee. And so we'd created some content based on some Olympic athletes who were selling it. And Chuck had spent a year on this project. We learned about it for the first time when he walked into the office with a USOC official and said, here are all these products we want you to sell. Them. And I can remember being a bit of a cantankerous jerk asking all these why questions. I had no idea, why are we doing this? What is the purpose? How did this, what was the initiation behind this? What's the vision for this? And I had enough to sell. I didn't need one more thing to drown my clients in. And so I think Chuck, who was a dear friend of mine and a very strong mentor and a transition figure in my life, had Chuck backed it up a little bit and had us involved in the process. That adage, no involvement, no commitment. Yeah. Had we been more involved at an appropriate level, I think we would have sold the pants off that product. That product died and failed within a couple of months. But none of the sales team, at the end of the day, people who were responsible for putting in front of clients were really passionate about it or understood the why behind the what. And so I think as leaders, you have your levels of transparency. Check them. And are you hoarding information that if you were to divulge some, could really get the, not just the minds, but the hearts of your people connected to the purpose.

Okay, next up. I was curious too about breaking points that you see in organizations. And when I say that it's like when management really breaks down and what your advice is, where do you see the biggest breaking points and at what point? So scaling. For me, I went through many times when I broke my infrastructure, broke the company, outgrew the people I had working. And I didn't have the courage, for example, as to when to let people go or when to hire new. But I'm curious what your perspective is.

I think two points. I think generally leaders are pretty poor at having high courage conversations. You know, you talk to your spouse about it, you talk to your business partner, advisor. But sitting down with someone and having a high courage conversation like this. Mike, I've called you into my office today because I can see you having a great career here in my organization. I've got your back. And you're exhibiting some behaviors around not collaborating with it and supply chain that if those behaviors keep up, we're going to have a problem so big that it might result in me having to actually terminate you from the company. I'd like to discuss three of those behaviors, ask you, have you seen them in yourself? And talk about how you and I can work together to get you back on the right path. I mean, that is a high courage conversation that too many leaders cannot have either because they go too far and just eviscerate the person because they haven't role played it or practice it, or they're cowardly inside and they think they're going to hurt the person's feelings, or they're not naturally good at this and they end up beating around the bush and obfuscating. But a balance of courage and consideration, this can be a turning point in your company. People should know where they stand with the boss at any given time. Not every minute, but perhaps once a week. Sit down and have a high courage meeting. These four things you are killing it on, please keep that up. These things you're doing are really frustrating me and they're hurting your brand. I want you to fix these and I want to see immediate improvement. Most people will find that to be a transition point in their career and they will thank you later on. It'll be awkward. They won't like you for two days. You're not there to be liked you. You're there to be respected and to build a business. Have high courage conversations. Second, I think is the ego of leaders. I think there is a pomposity, an arrogance, a hubris that develops. That's right, demonstrate humility in leaders. I think too often leaders see humility as a weakness. It's the shy, retiring leader that doesn't have the courage. No, actually leadership is a strength. Leadership comes from confidence. Confident leaders are humble leaders. They're the kind of person that can get up at the quarterly team meeting and say, you know what? I think this strategy that I cooked up and I announced at our meeting isn't working and I'm taking responsibility. We all have some culpability, but I'm not sure it is the best idea to go forward with. And I'm here to acknowledge that and discuss it today. You know, I interviewed Clayton Christensen, who is a famed author and innovations professor at Harvard, and his co author, Karen Dillon, she's the former editor of the Harvard Business Review. They co wrote a book called how will you Measure youe life? It's a genius book about taking business principles and applying them in your personal life. In this book they referenced a study that said that about 93% of successful organizations, success as defined by hitting some economic measure, end up achieving success with what they call an emergent strategy versus the deliberate strategy. It was a different strategy halfway through. The strategy that they won with was totally different than the one that they started with. And I think it takes that humble, nimble leader, the votable leader, to say, you know what, we're gonna take a new direction. Who's got a Better idea. It doesn't mean you solicit a democracy. It doesn't mean you agree with the last person you met with. No one wants to work for the person that, you know stands for nothing and falls for everything. But do you have that emotional maturity, the intellectual agility and the humility to say, you know what, this isn't working And I cooked it up. Where should we go? Got it. I think it's a breaking point.

That's great. So as. As you were going through this, I had a little aha moment about your book. Great story, by the way. Thanks. And as you were describing the process and where things break down, I was looking through the cards here and what I ended up doing is pulling out the cards that I thought were most relevant. And I just realized that one of the ways you can use the book and these cards is anytime you've got a challenge, just kind of flip through them really quickly and see which apply to the challenge I have. So again, as I listen to you, I grab demonstrate humility, balance, courage.

How are you at that? Are you humble? I suck at it.

Yeah. So interestingly, I do have a big ego, but most people I know who've worked with me or for me for a long time, no, I'm the first one to say I'm wrong. And I really do my best to make people around me a star. Now my ego gets in the way because I usually know the answer to a lot of things. I'm good at solving a lot of problems and I get frustrated with unresourceful people.

But.

I know I've heard that on a regular basis and I'm very coachable. I will always listen to a coach, even if it's from someone who works for me. I make it okay for them to open up and tell them what they.

You make it safe to tell the truth. That's one of the challenges. Yeah. Keep going.

Thank you. So humility then balance, courage and consideration. You did talk about that. Make it safe to tell the truth for sure. And then I grab make high value decisions, which I know that anytime I'm stuck in a loop and I'm not productive and I'm not getting stuff done, it's because I'm not making enough high value decisions. Right. You get stuck in those on that mic. Yeah.

I think that's so important because the choice that's coming at us right now is unprecedented. And next week it'll be bigger. Right. We're not going to have less choices next month, next year. As a leader, entrepreneur Founder of any kind of leadership position I recommend to people. Ask yourself that question every hour in the hour. Like every day I wake up and I make sure that I am making the highest value decisions of my time. How that return can help Franklin Covey. They're my employer and I found myself asking it every hour on the hour. Is this podcast? Is this webinar? Is flying to San Diego. I'm spending time with Mike. The highest use of my time in this half day. I need to be in Atlanta tomorrow. Right. I have a lot of writing to do. I could have gone in the day early. I have clients down there. And so with leaders, if you'll just take that kind of rudimentary exercise, make a plan every hour, in the hour for one or two days. Ask yourself, is this or this? This or this. You'll build a discipline and realize maybe you were lured into some things, maybe you did some things that you said you would, but you really shouldn't back out of them. You'll build a cadence and a muscle that will increase your return.

I love it.

Very good.

Well, the last one I had here was challenge 29 is lead through change again.

It's so easy to sit around and bitch, and that creates a bad precedent. And I know even my closest, highest level friends who are super smart, we've got 15 year relationships. I catch them or me getting into old bitches. Yeah. Versus just creating one thing that that Dan Sullivan does at the very beginning of every meeting and also at the very beginning of every meal. So before a strategic coach, we meet for dinner the night before, usually. And it's the exercise is called positive focus. So what he has is every single person go around Robin, and talk about something amazing that has happened either today or this week that you're super proud of. And we do that with our family dinner, the three of us.

Now we do it too. We call it best of the week.

Oh, great.

It's a great exercise. What was your best of the week.

And that is probably one of the most powerful disciplines, is always starting and then also ending every dinner, every meeting with what's your biggest positive takeaway or gift that you received?

It's good conditioning, right? Keep your mind. You know who's good at that is John Gordon. Oh, yeah. I interviewed the energy bus guy's written 17 books, nine bestsellers. And he will tell you he was a miserable person, super negative. And his wife just said, I love you, but I can't live this way. And he just really kind of chose to turn his mindset around says easy, right? Does hard. But the power of positive thinking and gratitude. Nothing is more impactful on your mindset than having a deeply deep sense of gratitude for even the small things you have in life. Right?

It's absolutely true. Absolutely true. So I think what I wanted to do to wrap this up, I know first of all, I've got links to the books in the show notes for sure. And also I'm going to put up a link right now to learn more about you, which is@managementmess.com great, great. And I've got that up on the screen right now for folks. Otherwise you can visit the website. But do you have an ask you'd like from our audience here? Because I always like to ask that if you had a big question.

Yeah, I do have an ask. And the ask is not something for me, something for them. It's deliberately choose to be a leader or don't. There's no shame in being a great individual producer. In fact, 90% of the population is very pleased, just kind of bringing their all their creativity, their work ethic and getting in and getting out. Too often people are lured into leadership. They think they want to earn more money or it's the career ladder. Not everyone should be a leader of people. I've told you, I'm not sure I should have been a leader of people. It can be unrewarding and it can be demoralizing and not very.

Inspiring sometimes. And there's also lots of great benefit of being a leader. But deliberately choose to be a leader and go in eyes wide open. Be very clear. The skills that make you a great individual producer oftentimes are the opposite skills. You need to be a leader of people. Because what happens is too many people get into leadership and realize I hate this, and then they flame out or they leave their jobs. And now you've lost as an organization, your leadership pipeline and your best producer. So my ask to everybody is don't be lured into a leadership role. Be led in and it's okay. No shame saying, I want to go become the best and individual producer as a digital designer or a dental hygienist or whatever it is, and get in and get out. Right? Beautiful.

All right. Well, what I have to say to you is thank you. This is a lot of fun. First of all, it's been great getting to know you. And one of the funny things that happened here, just to be totally transparent with our audience, is you reached out to me on LinkedIn.

I did.

And it was kind of a cold intro. Even Though it was totally cold. Somehow I think we've crossed paths, but I know I had with the organization, but. Yeah, you and I had.

Not personally.

Yeah.

But something I've learned, people can't help you if you don't ask. And so I'm pretty bold, and I've got lots of no's, but I've had more yeses than no's. And so it's something I would say to people. Don't show any fear. You and I have talked off camera now for an hour. We have so many different things we could help each other with. Just, you know, because we're abundant people, because we're generous people, and we're grateful for people who've helped us, too.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I think that's my big takeaway is what a great moment. Because it wasn't long ago you asked. And my initial reaction is. Right. Another author who wants to schlep his books on my podcast, Management Leadership. Yaw.

Yeah. Does the world need one more management book? Yeah.

Right. They do.

One more. Yeah. Well, the good news is, first of.

All, your content's awesome. You're awesome, and I'm looking forward to doing more. And I'll tell you what, let's talk about this Guadalupe Valley trip.

My wife is delightful.

Okay.

Yeah. She'll make up for me. Oh, good. Thank you, man. All right. Yeah.

It's been a great pleasure. Thanks.

Thank you.