Transform Leadership: Why Standards Matter More Than Goals

On today's Agent Leader Podcast, I'm going to discuss a fundamental shift that has helped many agencies move from pretty good to great to their best version possible. It's a shift knowing that although goals are important, the focus, the extreme focus, should be in something else. Enjoy the Podcast. Welcome into the Agent Leader Podcast. This is the podcast for insurance agency leaders to learn, to grow, to develop, hopefully have a laugh maybe along the way, and ultimately become the best version possible. My name is Brent Kelly. I am the host of the Agent Leader Podcast. It's my pleasure to be with you and hope you're doing well out there in the insurance agency leadership land that you're living in. I know there's so many things happening, so many changes going on as I record this. We are into a new year, 2025, but regardless of when you listen to this podcast, whether it's the beginning of 2025 sometime later this year, or gosh darn it, maybe somewhere in the future, I think it's safe to say that goals are important, right? To have established goals, whether it's for the agency, for your department, if you're an individual producer, or what are your specific goals? I don't think there's any argument that goals are important, but I do believe this. In fact, this is the purpose and the theme of today's podcast content is that if we have goals yet we have not defined specific standards to support those goals, our goals are simply wishful thinking. It's just like having dreams, oh, wouldn't that be nice? Or couldn't I achieve that? Whether it's revenue or retention or agency valuation, I mean, you could pick any goal, any metric, without standards. They're good ideas, right? Simply good ideas. So today I'm going to talk about the difference between goals and standards. And of course, both are important, but fundamental differences. And I'm also going to share some specific examples in four different areas to help you and your agency team think about this, maybe in a different context. So if you're an agency leader and you're listening, there's going to be some things here of how can I help my team understand the difference and, and of course, identify specific standards. If you're a professional, if you're a producer listening to this, the same goes for you individually. So this is true for teams or for individuals. Now, before I get into the content, I want to make a special note in 2025, and I would say, hopefully beyond, we are going to add some new things for this podcast in particular, provide you, the listener, with Downloads to tools or resources. Something that may have been mentioned in this podcast and we're going to make that available by going to sitkins.com podcast. Pretty simple. Go to sitkins s I t k dash I n s dot com podcast. So go to sitkins.com podcast. We'll put it in the show notes as well. Regardless of whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening to one of our many podcast platforms. In fact, today I've got a resource or tool that I will mention and and it will be available if you go to sitkins.com podcast so check that out. Super excited to have that this year and give you the agent, leader, listener, a specific tool or resource and we'll build as we go here that you can download and access right away. I know when I listen to podcasts and I listen to a lot, someone mentioned something, hey, I would like to see that. I would like to have my hands on that. We will provide that through this podcast moving forward. All right, so let's get into the content. Goals versus standards. Great book written years ago. Most people know it. It's called Atomic Habits. James Clear wrote the book, Very powerful, one of the most popular non fiction books written in the past many years. And James Clear has a great quote in the book. He's got many great quotes, but this is one of one of them. He said this. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Now I'm going to change that word a little bit today and kind of change systems into standards because I think there's a lot of parallel. But it goes back to what I said in the intro, right? To rise the level of our goals. Oh, what's your goal? Well, I got a big goal this year. It's great. It's great to have some direction. It's great to have a place that you want to go to. But you're not going to rise just by having a goal. You're going to fall to level of your system or your standards. I'll be talking about today. So what's the difference between a goal and a standard? Maybe you know, maybe you don't. But let me explain. In my view, the difference between goals and standards. Goals are specific outcomes you want to achieve. And generally goals are external, right? Meaning there's some tangible thing externally that you want. Goals are specific outcomes that you want to achieve. I want to achieve X. This revenue, this size of book of business, this retention, you name it, we could name any goal, but that's the goal. Important to have goals. By the way, we know there are some agencies and producers in particular that we talk to initially that don't really have any goals. They don't. Ah, we're just going to do better. So I think goals are certainly important, but here's the correlation and why the standards is so important to have with this. What's a standard? Well, a standard is a guideline on how to achieve those goals. A standard is a guideline on how to achieve those goals. So here's my goal. Well, what are the things specifically I need to do? And again, I'm going to give four different scenarios today on standards versus goals, particular in terms of a producer. I think those are pretty easy to quantify. They'll be helpful for you as the listener. But overall, I'll just give you one example right now, right? You may have a pipeline goal. My goal is to have a pipeline in either my department. My book that looks like X, right? This many people in my pipeline. Well, a standard is. I've got a specific process or system to make sure that pipeline is being filled up every single week. So there is a difference. And again, we're going to get to some tangible examples of this, but I want to start off before I even get into those and just talking about establishing what we call the Sitkins Group. Wins. W I N S. Establishing wins. I think we all want wins. Well, WIN is an acronym. I love acronyms. We love acronyms at Sidkins. Hopefully this is an acronym that you will remember as a listener. But what does WIN stand for? W I N. What is normal? What is normal? Now, one of probably one of many previous podcasts I've talked about culture because we know how important culture is for insurance agencies. Culture. My definition, our definition at Sitkins is language. The language and behaviors that are normal in your agency. The language, what people say and the behaviors what people do that are normal. So establishing WINS is what is normal. Now, here's a shocker to all of you that are listening right now. Great performers make great behaviors normal. Good performers make good behaviors normal. Average performers make average behaviors normal. Poor performers make poor behaviors normal. And you can think about those in your agency today or think about yourself. Now, maybe you have a mix. Maybe you have some great behaviors and good behaviors and average behaviors and poor behaviors. But those all, in essence are your standards, right? Based upon your behaviors. Now, one of the concepts that we continue to preach at the Sitkins Group is that our beliefs drive our behaviors and our behaviors drive our results. And too often we see agencies and professionals skip the beliefs and the behaviors and go right to results. I want this result. Of course you do. But what are the core behaviors that are going to make that result predictable and in some cases, even guaranteed? If I or we do these specific behaviors consistently time and time again, and they become our standard of what is normal for me, our department, or our agency, we feel very confident that we will achieve our goals. Remember, going back to the James Clear quote, and I can rephrase this, you may not always hit the goal. There is not a guarantee, but you will fall all the way to your lowest level of standards. Right? So part of this is understanding what are your specific standards. And of course, the beliefs, behaviors, results starts with what the beliefs. Do you truly believe that these standards are important? Do you truly believe that these standards are behaviors what will allow you to achieve your set goal? Because too often we see misalignment that our behaviors don't really match the results we want, our beliefs don't really match our behaviors, and we wonder why we're struggling. So for you as an agency leader, when you start to think about this, okay, what are the agency goals? What are the department goals? What would be an individual goal? If you're leading or managing individual producers or just yourself as a professional, and you go, okay, what are the results I want? What are the core behaviors that become my standards? And do my beliefs, does my mindset support those said behaviors? Because that is part of the standard as well. A standard is not just something you do. It becomes an identity to who you are. Let me say that again. A standard isn't just the thing that you do. That's the behavior. The standard, holistically, is also the identity of who you are. Now, I use a ton of sports analogies because I love them and I love sports. And I think sports are a great example in so many ways of business and life. But you think about some of the best cultures in sports, professional, collegiately, doesn't really matter. The best cultures have high standards. And you'll often see people who have performed lower in the past suddenly become part of a new organization, a new culture that has absolutely defined standards. It doesn't say, hey, do this thing. If you feel like it's do this thing. If it makes sense for you, you do. You. No. Those great organizations say, this is who we are, and this is how we do things. I had a recent guest. If you didn't listen to the Prior podcast I've got a ton of interviews. I had Jill Wagner Kelly and she talked about even in terms of leadership, that one of the concepts that had been very powerful, if you're judged by your worst performer as a leader or would you do things differently? The answer for most people is of course, yeah, you know, I got six people doing really well, or at least above average. Two really have struggled for a long time. And you know what, that's just the way it is, the way it's going to go and they're going to flounder for a little bit and we'll just see eventually if they figure it out versus no, we have specific standards and we, and I want to help you achieve those standards and live up to those standards on our said culture in our organization. And if not, it may not be a good long term fit. In fact it probably isn't. Right. So that's why the difference of just saying goals and standards. And by the way, have you ever, as a leader or you as an individual ever had an assigned goal? You put a goal out there, you didn't really talk or think about it for a long period of time, maybe even a year, you got to the end of the year and you go up, didn't quite achieve that goal. But good news is next year is a new opportunity to, to fail at that goal as well. Haha. Right. But that's what happens because we haven't established the standards, the few basic things that are going to be critical for me to achieve the set goal. Right. Said goal. All right, so let me, I said I'd provide some examples, let me provide a few because some of this may say, ah, it's a bit abstracted, goals and standards and whatever. But I just, I really want you to think about your agency and do your standards align with your goals? Do you have standards? And if you don't, how do you expect to achieve your goals? And then I just hope we might. It could. I always talk about the three of brothers. Should have, could have, would have. Right? That's what happens when you have goals without standards to accompany them. So let me provide a few examples. Now these are producer predominant examples. Obviously we work a ton with producers. We work with the sales leaders, we work with the agency leaders, we work with the service team professionals. We have all these conversations together holistically for an agency. But at its core we want producers to succeed because producers succeed, the agents succeed and grows. And you could do more things with more opportunities, more freedoms. I think you probably know that all Right. So let me give you a few examples here. Here's a goal and I've got to make sure I explain a bit of these terms because these are a bit sitchinized terms that we use in our programs. The some of you might know our programs involved, some of you may not. So if not, I want to give some context. But one of the goals that we have or we would suggest that an agency has is there is a weekly high performance team meeting between sales and service. So on a weekly basis, we proactively have conversations on key items, key areas, could be based on clients, could be red flags. What's the most important thing this week? We've got all kinds of resources and things that we share and how to communicate this at the highest level. But it's a weekly high performance team meeting. That would be a goal. Hey, our goal is we're going to do a weekly HPT meeting. That's a goal. Here's a standard. And again, I'm speaking from a producer standpoint, right. The standard is that every week before the next HPT meeting, by the way, we high performance team meetings don't have to be on Monday, but that's what we recommend. Right. Before you get your week going Monday, you have a high performance team meeting. Here would be a standard before the weekends. For example, Friday, I'm going to make sure that I reviewed the agenda for Monday's high performance team meeting, prepped my notes and ready to discuss that math. Sounds simple, but I'm telling you, in many cases it doesn't happen. Even for those agencies that are doing high performance team meetings, you show up and you go, okay, now what are we talking about? Where are we at? And you're distracted. And guess what you do, you annoy the service team professional. They feel like you're wasting time and you feel like you wasted time. You didn't accomplish you and you had a pointless meeting. Right? So that's one example. Goal. We're going to have a weekly meeting standard. I will show up prepared, review the agenda and ready to discuss before the meeting, typically the week before. And if you're having a meeting Monday, we're going to do that Friday. So there's an example of a difference between a goal and a standard. Here's another goal now with our producers, if you've heard of the Sitkins group for a while, we talk often about a producer perfect schedule or producer peak schedule that consists of 10 appointments a week, right? This consistent 10 appointments a week. If you listen to podcast, we talk about this in terms of the green Zone producers getting in the game. And these are appointments with clients, future clients and centers of influence. Right. So every week let's have 10 appointment with appointments with clients, future clients and centers of influence. And I'm going to add a fourth one on here because it is part of the green zone, pipeline development or pipeline activity. So I'll add a fourth one there. So there's four categories. I've got a meeting with a client, a future client, a center of influence, or I'm doing pipeline work that's scheduled in my calendar. And again, it could be a number of different things you're doing for pipeline development. That would be the goal. That's my goal. Ten appointments a week, more time in that green zone that I heard Sitkins talk about. Here's the standard. This is a difference. I'll just think about the standards. I don't end this week until I have my 10 green zone items already scheduled for next week. Well, gosh, Brent, I mean, what if I get to the end of the week and I've only got two appointments scheduled? Well, you better fill the other eight with something that's green. Right. Maybe it's a networking event that you missed and you forgot about. Maybe it's some reach out and relationship development. Maybe like I just mentioned, it's pipeline work. In fact, five for newer producers. I would say I've only got three blocks filled. Good. Your other seven are going to be easy. They're all pipeline development work because that's going to be super, super important. Right. But then the idea is, oh, my goal is 10. Oh, I didn't hit it. No, next week I'll hit 10. I didn't hit it. Next week I'll hit 10. I didn'T hit it next week. And again, you've got to have your own goal here and some of you aren't familiar with the producer. Perfect schedule, it's fine. But just understand the fact that we're going to be intentional and proactive on scheduling appointments that get me as a producer in the game, AKA the green zone. That's the goal. The standard is I am not going to leave that week until my next week is already done. That I'm showing up with a game plan and I've got a plan of action that I'm, that I'm working from. How often do we see producers show up on Monday? Okay, I got a sales meeting and a meeting here and I better check some emails and I got some responses here and I think I've got an Appointment on Tuesday and then there's one Wednesday afternoon. I think there's this event on Thursday morning. And then I don't know, by Friday. I'll figure it out. And most of the week is live, kind of just reacting to stuff. You got a few things, but most of it is just busy activity things versus focused productive work. Going on a bit deeper in this area. But this is an example of the difference between a goal and a standard. All right, here's another example. These are all, by the way, if you listen to this podcast and you had your producers do these four things as standards, man, it is absolutely transformation in your agency and with your results. I talked about the beginning of this podcast. Before I wrap paper, I want to make a note again for this episode. One of the tools that I am going to include go to sitkins.com podcast and again sitkins.com podcast, a tool that we're going to add in there. You go to that website, you put your name and email so we know who you are and you're going to get this tool. And it's our best version possible Tracker. Why is this important and why does this correlate with the content today? Well, because there are certain things, behaviors that you and in particular, this is based on production or producers that you can track that will make your success predictable and in many cases guaranteed if we do these things. So this tracker is going to have six items that are listed that we see the best performers do. It doesn't mean you're perfect at it, by the way. It means you're tracking it so you can measure it and manage it and improve it and make the course corrections week to week. You know, one of the things you think about certainly happens with goals is by the time you get your feedback or results from some big goals, it's already happened. That's why you have to start over again. We're a best version possible. Based on our book Best Version Possible by Roger Sickens and myself. A tracker allows you to go, gosh, I had two weeks in a row where I really got off course. I need to get back on, right? I, I, I, I, I've, I've gotten a little off. Hey, that happens. The difference is are you going to stay off course for the rest of the year or the quarter or whatever it is, or are you going to say, okay, I can make that shift, I can get back on track. So go to sipkins.com podcast. You will see the downloads. We'll continue to add these and grow these throughout the year. And as we build these podcasts, but I want to give you all the agent, leader, audience, something tangible that you can go take a look at. And by the way, if you have any questions on the tracker, want to learn more about what we do with agencies. We work with agencies that are growth minded and growth agencies. If you are a status quo agency or a good enough agency, I'm not trying to pick on you, but we are not in a good position to have a conversation. Right. We're not going to, we're not going to mesh for both. But if you're an agency that goes, you know what, for example, there's some standards that I know that we need, we need some help, we need some third party validation. We need to make sure that we're truly developing our people and we've got a unique process we can put together and that we're communicating well internally and externally. All these things that go into it. That's what we do. We help agencies move from good to good enough to great to best version possible and get best version possible results. So again, we're here to help you reach out if you have any questions. But with that, I want to thank you for listening. If this podcast has provided value, I'm going to do the podcast thingy and say like, subscribe, share. Looking to grow this audience. Why? Because I truly want to help agent leaders and agencies become that best version possible. And this is a great place that by the way, costs agencies $0. But I love doing it. I love providing value. I'd love to get feedback. And Again, go to sitkins.com podcast to check out the tools and resources. We'll talk to you soon. I wish you all the best in your success.