Signal vs. Noise

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. This is the podcast for independent insurance agency leaders to grow your thinking, to expand your development, to challenge yourself, challenge your team, to ultimately become the best version possible. Hi, my name is Brent Kelly. I am your host and it is my absolute delight to be with you on this episode. More importantly, my delight to share with you an extremely powerful concept. You know, in the past, I have talked in previous podcasts about the idea that consistency beats intensity every time. And I firmly believe that consistency beats intensity every time. But I want to go a bit deeper where some of this comes from. Now. You know, a lot of agencies, they say lots of things, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. But here's a fundamental truth. You, as an agency leader, you as an agency leader are always communicating something. Whether it's intentional, whether it's unintentional, whether it's proactive, whether it's reactive. You are always communicating something and the reality of this. And in working with a number of organizations and agencies across the country and talking to their teams, organizations do not respond well to intention. They respond to direct and clear signals. And I'll say that one more time, organizations do not respond well to intentions. We might do this, we should do this. We could do this. We have done this. I don't know. It's just a bunch of intentions versus this is who we are. This is what we're doing. This is where we're going. And when leaders and leadership teams, they're not clear and intentional with signals, guess what fills the gap? Noise. Just a bunch of stuff. So we've talked about consistency, intensity. I want to go deeper today and really focus on this idea of signal versus noise. Now, often when I think or people have thought of consistency, one of the first things that comes to mind from an agency is habits. And I'm a believer in habits. But I want to take this from a leadership perspective. Now, leaders have to have their own positive habits, certainly. But I also believe that consistency generally for an organization is not a habit problem initially. That's one of the symptoms. I believe it's a leadership signal problem that if we're not clear on who we are, what we want, where we're going, and we'll talk about some examples in this podcast today. It's really hard for an agency team to be consistent. In fact, I think that noise just stuff that happens if we're not intentional, it creates a lot of motion, a lot of motion, which, by the way, are momentum takers from your agency. Just a lot of stuff doing A lot of things that maybe we start something, we stop something. We start something, we stop something. Whereas a signal creates and builds momentum. Now, I've shared this before, but momentum is really hard to define or describe, but it definitely exists. Whether you're a sports fan or not. You've probably watched your team, if you are, and you could just feel momentum whether you were watching on TV or you were live at an event. And you also know when momentum is being taken from you. So getting clarity in the signal. And this is my challenge for you today on this podcast. And I'll keep this fairly short, but I really want to challenge you to think deeper about what signal are you sending to your team. An analogy that I like to use in this area of a signal is a lighthouse. I mean, a lighthouse is firm, it's purposeful, and it sends an absolute clear signal. And so that's what I want to share with you from a leadership team is how can you begin to communicate a signal at a. At a higher level, clear on what that signal is? Now, I want to start with this. What the heck is a signal? What does that mean? Right. It's just a term. Well, here's some things that, that I jotted down. A signal is what is clearly and repeatedly communicated. It determines often for an agency, in this case, of what matters the most, what's most important. Because if everything's important, nothing's really that important. A clear signal helps us understand how decisions are made. A clear signal allows us to know what success actually looks like, what will be rewarded, what will be tolerated. Of course, on a previous episode, I talked about this idea that do not complain about that which you tolerate. Signal often shows up in a few different ways. What leaders repeat, what leaders protect, what leaders ignore, and what leaders allow exceptions around. So that's the idea of a signal. Now, what about noise? Well, noise is everything else. Noise is everything that competes for the attention of people. That it often creates confusion, not clarity. It shifts priorities. We started one thing, and now we're doing another thing. It often adds urgency without clarity. Has that ever happened in your agency before? Noise often shows up like this. This is how noise shows up. Too many initiatives. Here are the 47 things we're going to do this month. Or maybe you start with three and oh, by the way, two more and then three more. Noise shows up often as constant exceptions. Okay, here's what we're going to do. Well, accept this time. And now. Accept this time, and now accept this time. Noise often shows up as firefighting. That is Disguised as leadership. Now, there's going to be some firefighting. I get that. But it's disguised as leadership. And it's often mixed signals. So that's the opposite of a signal. Mixed signal. It's noise that come through words and actions that aren't aligned. We say one thing, we do another. So I want to challenge you as an agency leader and leadership team. You're listening to this, you're watching this. Of why do agencies drift into noise? And again, this is about you, right in your agency. You may have different context to this. That's fine. But here's why. I often see agencies drift into noise, and I have a great perspective here that I get a chance to talk to a lot of agency leaders every week, whether they are agencies that are having initial conversations with our firm or their current clients or private clients that we work with. Here's some things that I see of why agencies often drift into noise. Motion gets confused with direction because we haven't set a direction. Any motion feels like we're going the right direction or we're doing something. Intensity often amplifies the noise under pressure. So we just make things bigger around these noisy areas. Exceptions and this. I already mentioned this. But exceptions become very loud signals. Well, it's just an exception. Remember, everybody's watching. That doesn't mean there can't be exceptions. But how often do exceptions become the rule? I'll give you an example from a producer perspective. We'll talk a lot with agencies about determining a future ideal client, what they look like, not just demographics, but psychographics. And some of that is what's a minimum account size or minimum account standard? And one of the first thing producers want to do is they want to make exceptions. Well, what about this and what about this and what about this? Well, this one time, Brent, I wrote this small client, and now it's a large client. Now, don't get me wrong, that's an example of something that could absolutely happen, and I'm sure it has. But what happens is we start making the exception the rule, and we make decisions based on exceptions versus foundational principles and things that are the majority, not the minority. And here's another reason why I think agencies drift into noise. Silence communicates. We don't really know, so we don't say much of anything, and that becomes what's communicated. Now, I share this all the time with leadership teams. If you as an individual are not being communicated to or with, do you feel better or worse about the situation? You could think about this with clients you could think about this in personal situations. I haven't heard from them forever. I'm sure things are great. No, we never think better when we're not being communicated with clearly or certainly when there's sporadic communication or maybe just silence. So intensity doesn't create signal oftentimes. Right. Well, I'll just be more intense, especially if it's not consistent. It often distorts it because we're on one track and then we go somewhere else. So let me give some examples of this and I want to. For an agency, I want to be careful of using too much of our Sitkins terminology. But I think anybody listening to this will get an idea of some of these. So what are some relatable agency examples? Well, here's an example of noise in an agency sales focus that changes every quarter. What is your philosophy? What is your focus? When we help agency teams build out a sales process or sales system, there's always flexibility. Nobody's robots, but there has to be something that you continue to build again and again and again. What would be example of a clear signal of an agency? I want to provide some examples here. It's a meeting that doesn't get canceled. What do I mean by that? Well, how about a sales meeting? If we're a sales culture now, when I say never gets canceled, I mean things happen. But I can tell you I've talked to organization initially. Yeah, we run a monthly sales meeting. Okay, well for. Well, you know, we want to catch up on things and help our producers and different stuff. Okay, fine, fine, fine. Yeah, but some months we get busy and don't have it. So then you don't have it for two months. Yeah, well then whatever. Right. So a signal is we are a sales organization that does sales things including a sales meeting, which by the way, our definition, if you're curious, is that the only reason to have a sales meeting is the producer leaves the meeting a better producer when they got there. So if we believe a producer leaves a sales meeting done right by the way, a better producer when they got there, then we probably should have consistency around a sales meeting. It should be a non optional behavior. I would give another example. In sales and service we teach and preach high performance teams that every week sales and service proactively get together primarily on a Monday to talk about key objectives and strategies and what you need from me and what I need from you. And are there any red flags? A signal is this is part of our culture and DNA. And I can tell you for some of the best agencies we Work with. It's not just about this high performance team meeting. This is an example. But it's true is that the best agencies do this as part of their culture and their DNA. It is a clear and loud signal. We, we are an agency that our sales and service proactively communicate. And there's many reasons for that. What's an example of some noise here? Give an example. A process that suddenly disappears when things are busy. Well, this is our process until we get busy and then we stop doing it. I mean, I will give a selfish example of this. It's interesting to me that oftentimes when agencies get busy, one of the first things they'll abandon is sales training and development. Yeah, we're just. We're too busy to get better. Really interesting, because it seems to me that you're missing the point. Right. And so the noise is, well, we'll do this until it's inconvenient or not exactly what we need or things change or things get busy. Right. That creates noise of like us. It's not that big of a deal. Right. What's an example of a signal? A protected KPI or I could even go back to a process that is certainly driving decisions. There's clarity around it. So that's a signal. One of the things that we're looking at, a key metric is, and one thing that we'll use at Sitkins is revenue per employee, for example. What is that? Why is it important? Are we continually talking about that from a leadership team and why do we talk about it? I'm not going to go overly deep in this because there's a lot of functions outside of profitability, sales and service capacity. So examples in is that a signal or do we get off the track and we. We get into noise? One thing that I see as noise, by the way, is that we praise reactive firefighting. You won't believe what happened. I mean, we had this big mess and we were able to come the last minute and fix it versus saying what would be some signals we could do to do our best to make sure that doesn't happen again. Now, please don't get me wrong, there's always going to be some firefighting. It's called life. It's called the real world. But again, the signal is how we're proactively handing stuff. The noise is let's just keep cleaning messes up. Right. Because that's the signal is calm, repeatable execution. That's rewarded. All right, so here's some things I want to get into. Leadership disciplines if you want to strengthen the signal, the clarity of your message in your organization, here's some stuff I want to share with you. This is really, really important. Number one, reduce noise before adding a signal. What do I mean by that? Kill stuff before you add more stuff. Kill stuff before you add more stuff. One of the things that we talk about in our leadership program is the one thing, right? And we got that from Gary Keller in his book the One Thing. What's the one thing? So that by doing it, we'll make everything else easier or necessary. You know, what else we talk about? What's the one thing we need to stop doing? You know, agencies, as they grow and evolve, there's always another thing and another thing and another thing. And I get that. But guess what? You ever step back at your business and go, why are we still doing that? Well, because that's the way we've always done it, or, well, we've just done it for a long time. So we'll just keep doing it because we're familiar with it. So I would just challenge you and think about this as a leadership team. What is the signal we're trying to send? Great. What is the noise or something we need to stop doing? I'll give one more example in this area can go into producers. Oftentimes we'll talk, and I mentioned earlier about minimum account size, but we'll talk about potentially looking at accounts in a different context. In fact, one of the things that we'll say is maybe there are some accounts you might want to trade down. Maybe it's in the accounts that you, you want to look at differently, right? Or better yet, maybe we want to expand our books so that we have higher accounts paying us more money. Right? These all go together. And I'll ask producers oftentimes this question if you want to get out of debt, financial debt, this is analogy, by the way, what's one thing you could do to get out of financial debt? And I'll hear things like, well, you know, consolidate loans and pay more in the monthly payment or lower the interest rate, which are all truthful things. Here's the best way to get out of debt. Stop borrowing money. Right? Same is true, right. When you talk about reducing the noise before the signal. So just stop doing the thing that's getting you in debt in my analogy. Right. Number two, make the signal repetitive and boring. Now, I've shared this before. I'm going to say it again. One of my favorite messages I ever received from a mentor was once, you think as a leader you set a message that's important. You said it too much too often. You're finally getting close. I can tell you, the agencies that we work with that have a high level of success, there's a number of factors in this, right? It's not just one thing, but one of the things that I do see is consistency. Consistency that becomes boring. Boring in their messaging. Guess what? It becomes part of the agency's DNA. Everybody's saying the same type of thing. You also need to protect the signal under pressure. Now, I've mentioned this earlier. I'll say it again, right? One of the things that happens is that under pressure, we lose sight of the things that are most important. I gave the idea of, gosh, we're getting too busy to get better. So ask yourself your question. Are there certain things that when busy seasons come, they start to reveal what's really important, which may not be the actual signal we're trying to accomplish. And we also need to audit or manage or measure the loudest signals. What are you celebrating as an agency? Whether it's monetary, whether it's applause, whether it's some form of recognition. Right? On the flip of it, what are you tolerating? So audit your loudest signals. What are we as leaders, again, communicating not just in what we say, but how we appreciate, applaud, reward the things that are happening in the agency. Sometimes the boring things doesn't seem like they should be applauded, but they should, right? We've been really consistent in this area for a series of time. So here's the idea. Clear. Signals shape beliefs, beliefs drive behaviors, behaviors compound the results. The thought I want to share with you here is this. Your culture is built by your loudest signals, not your best intention. And there is definitely a difference that I started this podcast today. Your culture is built by your loudest signals, not your greatest intentions. So I want to share with you this before I give you some. Some thoughts to leave you by. And hopefully you've taken some notes. And again, I don't want to spend a ton of time on this, but reframe maybe how you're approaching your communication, both internally and, of course, externally. But if this signal, this noise, conversation, maybe it's hitting home and you're like, well, you know, our agency makes a lot of noise. We're really busy being busy. We do a lot of things for a lot of people. You know, we're moving a lot of different directions. I don't know if it's the right direction. Maybe sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. I just want you to know you don't have to figure this out alone. You know, one of the things that we offer is perspective for agencies, helping them think a bit different, challenging with some questions. And I would just ask you this if you are a growth minded, a true growth minded agency. We have a private client program. It's limited to a low number of private clients. We're very close in who we work with. We're very specific in who we work with. But if you'd like to have that conversation, go to sitkins.com/book a call. There's no pressure. It is perspective for you and your agency. We'll get to know you a little bit, see if there's an opportunity and if there is, we'll conduct an assessment on your agency to learn more about you. No pressure, but perspective. But I will say this. If you're a dabbler, if you're, eh, I don't know, probably not a good time for you to book a call. If you're an agent that says we want to truly be our best version possible. We want to challenge our thinking. We want to become better leaders. We want to be more consistent. We want to add more value to the marketplace. We don't want to settle. We want to get an outside perspective on opportunities that we might be missing. Then go to sitkins.com bookacall it's simply a conversation. Love to see if there's a fit. So here's what I want to close today. Two questions for you to consider. Number one, if someone joined your agency tomorrow, what signal would they pick up first? If a person were to join your agency, what signal would they pick up first? It's such an important question. Is it clarity, a very direct signal, or is it noise? And maybe it's somewhere in between, but just, just think about that. So if someone were to join your agency tomorrow, what signal would they pick up first? Clarity or noise? Because here's the bottom line. Leadership isn't about saying more. I'll just say more. It's not. It's about saying less with greater clarity and more effectiveness. Less is more. And something I've shared this week with a few agency leaders because it just came up in a number of conversations. I always think of one of my mentors, John Maxwell, great author and speaker. He said, you know, Brent, I like to put the cookies on the bottom shelf. It's really easy to make things complicated. It's really easy to add a bunch of steps and processes. There's a reason when we work with agencies that every time we talk is we get down to one, maybe two things. Why? What's the signal you're sending to drown out the noise? I appreciate you being a listener of the Agent Leader podcast, always looking for a rating or review or feedback, and I wish you and your agency all the best in your success. Thanks for listening. Hey there Agent Leader. Brent Kelly here want to take just a few seconds to remind you that now is the time to create your true, best version possible agency. If you go to sitkins.com bookacall sitkins.com bookacall we'll get to know more about your agency, conduct an agency assessment and provide your agency with a customized plan to help you avoid some of the pitfalls, frustrations, challenges and roadblocks to get your agency to true ultimate freedom and become its best version possible. It all starts by going to sitkins.com bookacall.