Monday Morning Implementation - Support Behaviors That Turn Into Results

What is MMI? What is Monday Morning Implementation? And why am I doing it on a Thursday at 11:00 Eastern time? Well, we'll explore that a little bit. But let me just give you this kind of context and background. You know, leadership training, leadership development, we all know is a topic that is talked about everywhere on LinkedIn, on Facebook, even on TikTok these days. And the need is there. But before I jump into that, let me give you a couple of stats and I'll tie it back in to explaining MMI. Annually, there's $366 billion, B, billion dollars spent on leadership development and training across the globe. $366. $160 billion of that is here in the United States. That is a lot of money. At the same time, most organizations, it's only about 25% of them that say that the money they spent is worth it. So put that in the context. $366 billion spent, but $275 billion of that is wasted because so many organizations say that their investment in leadership development just doesn't produce a return. Now that's the background and the context. Now what does that, what does MMI or Monday Morning Implementation have to do with it? Here's the reality. Leadership development is necessary, it's great, we need it. But the way we do it provides insights, doesn't produce actual results. Because let's think about the context of this, right? You've been through leadership training, I've been through leadership training. It sounds good, the theory is sound. There's even great principles and applications that we should actually use. And let's say we got this on Thursday, this great idea of what to do in order to lead. And then we get to our office on Monday morning and crap hits the fan. That person doesn't show up for work. That ticked-off client that we have, that what— there's a host of things that happen. And even though we just got that leadership development, that leadership training that our organizations have spent so much money on, the pressure hits us on Monday morning. And most of the time, 75% of the time according to the stats, we forget about all of the stuff we learned and revert back to who we naturally are under pressure. That's where the Monday Morning Implementation name comes from because we know theory sounds great, but when crap hits the fan and we get back to work on Monday morning and we have to deal with the pressures of real life, everything falls apart, or at least 75% of the time. So although we're talking about this on a Thursday, it's really called MMI because of the pressure that we're under. And I'll get into more specifics around that in here in just a second. But here's what we need to realize is that the stats, as I already said, support it. Most leadership development doesn't do anything for us. It's not because the information is bad. It's not because the structure is bad. It's not because the principles are bad. It's because we don't change anything beyond kind of the theory. It's we get— we have to deal with the real life of work and we're not prepared to operate under pressure when most leadership training and development is created for pressure being the exception. What we have to get through our heads is that pressure is the reality of leadership. So we shouldn't be gearing it toward the exception. We should be gearing it towards this is what we need to do. Insights are fantastic. Behaviors are what bring insights to life. And we often don't focus on that concept. Lots of great material, lots of great frameworks, lots of great leadership principles. But what do we do over here on the behavioral side to make those things come to life so they actually make a a freaking difference. And that's the issue that I want to talk about today because it's such a big deal. These stats that I just mentioned, I just pulled them up just a few minutes ago. Now, are they absolutely accurate? Who knows? I got some of it from AI, so, you know, but you get my point. And I'm sure if you're in an organization, you're either the leader, HR, leadership development with HR, you know what I'm talking about and why Things don't stick. Ideas in theory don't change behavior. So what do we do? How do we actually approach this in a different way? I mean, let's think about what we usually do when it comes to training. We have an event. You have a speaker come in, you have a workshop done, and then everybody goes off motivated. Until Monday morning picks up and then the pressure, as we've already talked about, hits and things go awry. That's not the ideal way to implement any type of significant change where we're trying to engage in a different type of behavior. So there's two things that I think are incredibly important to talk about. Now, if you're watching this and you've got a thought, you've got a question, you've got a comment, you've got a disagreement, make sure you put it in the chat. David, my videographer, who's on the other side of the screen, will make sure that I am aware of it. David, say hello. Hello. But he'll make sure that I see it. I do have a screen over here with some questions. Some of them we may hold until the end of this thing as I go through this. But there's two things in particular that I think are incredibly important for all of us that are in leadership development that need our leaders developed, are in HR to make sure all of our leaders are developed. There's two ideas that I'm going to turn into something practical. The first one is what I refer to as GDD or guide, don't drive. And it's not another leadership philosophy. I'll explain it in a second. And then the second part of that is how do we actually reinforce this idea of guide, don't drive as leaders is where it comes back to MMI, Monday Morning Implementation. And what does this actually look like? This is what we have to kind of get our arms around. So if having a training event, giving people motivation doesn't work 75% of the time, what do we do? How do we take a step back? And when we think about guide, don't drive, it's not another leadership training framework. This is an actual leadership operating system that we need to be thinking about. And let me explain the 6 pieces to it so that we get it. And then how do we make it practical within our business to take whatever theory you're teaching, whatever principles you're teaching, and actually make them real and make them stick? That's our focus. So, eh, if you have any type of structure in your organization, that your leadership development is supposed to actually be supporting. Some companies run on things like EOS, Entrepreneur's Operating System. Some things, some companies run on things like Rockefeller Habits, which is very similar to EOS 'cause it's where it's based off of. And there's lots of great ideas around what does it mean for the organization to win. But we need to define that differently. Now you're gonna, you probably think, well, what the hell does that have to do with leadership development? Because they need to be tied together. The whole purpose of any type of development at any level of position, leader, non-leader, skilled, non-skilled, is to actually drive results in a way that our people— it's sustainable for our people. So it's not causing turnover, we're not burning our people out and so forth. And this is kind of the beginning of all things leadership. So let's kind of walk through this. Number 1, We need to be able to define winning. And I've said this on video a gazillion times. If I walk into your organization or you walk into your organization or David walks into your organization and asks 5 people, what does it mean to win? You're likely to get 5 different answers in 90% of the organizations that are out there. They don't know what it means to win. Now, what has that got to do with leadership development? Well, let's think about it. Theoretically, leadership development is supposed to help us win. But if we don't define what winning is, how does it know where to develop me as a leader? How does that training actually impact me to achieve this thing? So the first thing is defining what does it mean to win in a simple way, meaning, hey, what's on the scoreboard? Who's got more points than others and how do you know? It's not the 10 or 15 different metrics you have in your— you know, your big analytics dashboard for your organization. What does it truly mean to win? And what are the guardrails to make sure we're winning in the right way? That is step one. I'll give you a quick example. Within financial services right now, community banks, the push for most of them is to drive deposits. So winning means increasing our deposits by 25%. I'm just making that up. But there needs to be a guardrail because if we pay too much to get those deposits, we're not going to be able to make money. The way a bank makes money is, is you loan money at a higher rate, you buy money at a lower rate, and it's that spread that fuels the bank. Every bank operates that way. Every credit union operates that way. But we've got to— so we've got to have both. Here's what it means to win. And the guardrail is we won't pay more than X for these deposits. We're not gonna take volatile deposits. That becomes very clear. Now, how do we translate that to actual leadership development? Well, we need to do a couple of things. The principles, the training, and so forth are actually a reinforcement. They don't stand on their own. But once we have winning defined, we've gotta determine what are the behaviors that actually support that winning. And this is where Guide, Don't Drive is very different as an operating system than what we traditionally think about in terms of leadership development. Right, leadership development is theory, principles. We've already established that. Behaviors bring the principles to life, or they don't. And that's why most of this training doesn't work. What are the acceptable behaviors that help us actually win from a leadership perspective. This is where it actually— this is where we default back to under pressure, as I've mentioned. So if we don't have a playbook to what behaviors are consistent for your organization and my organization, then we revert back to who we naturally are, and that leadership development doesn't actually work. So it's winning first. Defining behaviors become secondary in all of this. There is a piece we won't get into today, which I call identity. It's who do we refer back to, but that's more of an individual thing than it is an organizational thing. The next thing that we've got to think about is what we tolerate. And this is another piece where we go awry when it comes to leadership development. Because it's great to have all these principles, all these guides, all of these ways of doing things, but the question is, what are the behaviors that we're tolerating in our team? Because here's what we need to understand. Our contradiction drives culture. Here's what I mean by that. If we tolerate things that are not in tune to widening, the whole thing falls apart. If we say we're a disciplined organization and we're gonna teach our leaders to be disciplined, but we show up 5 minutes late to every single meeting, that contradiction determines who we are as leaders and as an organization. And that ultimately results in the culture that we create. The leadership development is tied directly to culture, but not in the way most people think. It's actually our contradiction that creates the culture. So if we tolerate for, from ourselves as leaders and from our teams, things we should not be tolerating, that's what creates our culture. And that's what makes all of this leadership development that we invest in not actually work. Because we tolerate the exact opposite because we're not prepared when the pressure is on. Tolerance is an issue. Then we have to set some standards of how we will operate, of what we allow and what we don't. It's beyond just toleration, but it's here's the standards that we operate in. And I'll give you an example here in just a second. And if we do all of those things, with the 6th step being understanding who we are naturally as leaders, It drives results. So it's defining winning with guardrails. It's technically understanding the identity of ourselves as leaders and our others. It's the behaviors that support success or that winning. It's the— what we actually tolerate. It's setting specific standards that we don't veer from. And those things together drive results. That's the operating system Under Guide, Don't Drive. That— and, and when we think about leadership development, it's a piece, but often we use leadership development as the solve-all for all of that. And then the behaviors don't change, the money is wasted, the results don't happen, and the investment of $275 billion in leadership development actually goes out the window. So what do we need to actually do? And there's, there's two things here. We don't throw out leadership development. We put it in, in context. But the first thing we need to do is install the operating system. The second thing we need to do is then support it through the training that we do, making sure that it's consistent to whatever organization it is. Does it actually support winning? Does it actually support the results? So we don't want to take off-the-shelf leadership development classes necessarily, because it may not actually help your organization win. So number one is set the operating system in place. Number two is make sure that the training, the development supports that, and then recalibrate on an ongoing basis. And then number 3, sorry about that, brings us to MMI, is reinforcement on a regular basis of what's expected. Now let me get less theoretical now and let me get into the heart of this. What is MMI? How do we apply it in addition to the leadership development you're doing because doing it just by in and of itself, again, the stats show 75% of the time it doesn't actually work. So MMI is really a weekly reinforcement. That's why it's called Monday Morning Implementation. And it is designed to help us be prepared for the pressure, operating within the pressure of Monday morning. And you can say Tuesday morning, Wednesday, it doesn't matter. We operate under pressure. We all know that. But what do we actually do from a leadership perspective to make sure that we're operating the best way possible? And this is not a typical, if you're familiar with EOS and what they call an L10 meeting, there's nothing wrong with an L10 meeting, but it doesn't bring in the behaviors, it doesn't bring in the reinforcement. But think about a typical Monday morning leadership team meeting. I've done this, you've done this. You go over the numbers, you go over where you're falling short, everybody has a bunch of tasks to do as a result of that, and then you check in on the tasks from last week. And when somebody hasn't done the task, you ask them what are they going to do about it, they kick the can down the road and it happens again. And you've seen this happen over and over where the same behaviors come up. No, I didn't do it, or no, this didn't work, or whatever the case is. That's why that structure by itself doesn't work. On Monday Morning Implementation, it's about reinforcing behaviors, the thing that actually matters. Consistent behaviors create consistent results. Consistent theory does not. Let's, let's understand this. There's a difference between the two. We need the principles, we need the theory, but we need the vehicle to make sure that we can actually execute on those things. And Monday Morning Implementation helps us do that. So what does a Monday morning meeting potentially look like? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever the case is. What we need to be thinking about is breaking down what that bigger win looks like to a smaller win. So for this week or the next month, what is that one thing that determines if we're winning that actually supports the overall goal for the year? One thing. I didn't say 6. I didn't say 10. The problem is, is we come to these meetings and we have 5 objectives that we're trying to achieve all at the same time. They can still be going on in parallel under that structure. But what is that one thing that we absolutely need to double down on right now for this week in particular, maybe for next week as well? What does it actually mean to win? Second, as I've already mentioned, what's the guardrail around those particular things. We can't miss the guardrail because we can start making momentum on that thing that we need to win, whether it's revenue or something else. But the problem is, is that we're doing it the wrong way, as I mentioned with the bank example itself. So what are we actually trying to achieve? What's on the scoreboard and what's the guardrails around it? This is what keeps that conversation in Monday morning from keeping off the rails. So let me give you an example. Let's say in support of our overall goal, we need to improve cross-team collaboration so that we hit revenue targets without all the friction that siloed teams create. This is real-world scenario, by the way, which is why I'm actually using it. That's our one thing that we're trying to fix, improve cross-team collaboration to hit the revenue goal without internal friction. The second is what's the behavior for this week that we need to focus on? This is making it all about the consistency of our behaviors, reprogramming how we actually operate, creating a new habit. So ask yourself the question, what behavior for, as leaders throughout the organization, if done consistently this week, would support that goal of winning? Now let me break it down into kind of simple terminologies using the exact same example, improving cross-team collaboration to hit revenue goals. Let's just stick with that for a second. What's the behavior that supports that? And usually when I ask that question, I get all kinds of generic answers. You've got something in your mind that you're thinking about right now. But in this particular case, let's say that the behavior is no side conversations after decisions have been made. This breaks down in leadership teams. We come together, we say this is what we're going to do, we all agree in the meeting, and then we go on our merry way. And then all of a sudden these side conversations, ah, you know what, I really didn't agree with what we agreed on in the meeting. Like, you know this happens. That's a behavioral thing that takes all of these leadership principles and throws them out the frickin' window that we have to stop. So the behavior that we're going to focus on in our MMI for this week, using this example, is no side conversations after decisions. That's just an example of it. Now, we know that that's not always going to happen, right? But let's just say that that is the actual behavior. There's a third piece in MMI. So number 1, define winning today with guardrails, one item. Number 2, what's the behavior that we're going to address this week? We're gonna focus on it, one specific behavior. The third thing we've gotta do is reset tolerance. If that behavior is not, is violated, let's call it, what actually happens? And if nothing happens, then we're basically confirming that the behavior is okay. If it's not a corrected behavior, it's not accepted. And when it's not talking about firing somebody or holding them accountable to that level. But if somebody opens a dis— in this example, if somebody opens the conversation in a little pod outside of the Monday morning meeting, what do we actually do? Do. It needs to be addressed immediately. So we need to reset tolerance around it. If we agree that the behavior is, we don't talk about it after we've left this room, we don't have all these sidebar conversations. When the sidebar conversation happens, we need to address it immediately. That's resetting tolerance. This is where culture actually begins to shift. The fourth thing that we've got to do in an MMI meeting, and these take about 20 minutes by the way, that's it, not an hour, not 2 hours, is we've got to lock the standards for the week. We've got to make it clear, we've got to make it very specific, and we've got to repeat it a couple of times in the context of that conversation so the team knows, that leadership team knows, this is how we're actually going to behave this week. Small changes, right? So we've set, we've identified the behavior, we've said how we're going to deal with it because we don't want to start tolerating it, and then we lock in the standard for this week to make a basic shift. That's Monday morning implementation so that when the pressure is on, we have a roadmap of how we're actually going to behave no matter what happens. And this is why we can't have 5, 6, 7, 8 behaviors that we're focusing on. But think about this and how this actually works. If we do this consistently, I'll run through it really quick. Winning means cross-team execution without friction. The behavior is we disagree in the room. We commit outside of the room. The tolerance reset is if somebody undermines a decision when we're out of this room, it gets addressed immediately by the person who actually sees it. The standard is what I call no hallway reversals. We don't uncommit once we've actually committed. And when we do this on a weekly basis, now behaviors shift. Now execution happens consistently because behaviors drive results. Theory does not drive results, and it never actually has. This is where we need to focus leadership development. It cannot stand alone. It has to fit within some type of container. And that container is the operating system that you actually execute on, or in most cases don't execute on. And the way to support that is continuous development of your leaders from a behavioral perspective, not from a theoretical perspective, and implementing a weekly recalibration under the idea of Monday morning implementation. If we can bring those things together, I would almost guarantee you that our wasted $275 million— or billion dollars, based on the stats that I pulled this morning— don't go to waste, and we can actually turn that into something positive. Now, don't throw out your leadership development. I'm I'm not asking you to do that. But I'm asking you to take a real deep look. Are you doing it in the context of an operating system that supports results for your organization? Or are you doing it as an actual event? Therein lies the problem. Now, if you're watching this and you've got questions, again, make sure that you actually type them in. I've got some questions that some people have already asked me because they knew that I was going to be talking about this, and I'll answer— a couple of these, but if David sees you actually put in a question, he'll bring it up to me here in just a second. So let me, let me do a— mention a couple of things before— oh, here we go. Here's the questions. But there's a couple of things that I just want to make sure that sits in your brain because I want to influence your behavior. Number 1, behavior builds culture, and it's our contradictory behavior in particular that builds culture. If you learn nothing else from this conversation, remember that. Behavior builds culture. Not pizza parties, not theory, not principles. Behavior. Principle number 1. Principle number 2, what you tolerate becomes normal. And the byproduct of normal is your culture. Again, contradiction creates culture. If you don't correct it immediately, You're signaling your acceptance of that particular behavior. What we're really good at as leaders is pushing things under the rug, sweeping things under the rug. Eh, it's not that big of a deal. I'm not going to address that particular behavior with that person. It's the first time they've done it. That is not actually smart thinking. Smart thinking is— address the behavior, make sure we reset what the standard is, because that ultimately leads to accountability. What— when we bring up accountability as leaders, and I get asked, teach us about accountability all the time, it's not that easy because the accountability or lack thereof is created through the behaviors based on what we tolerate. Toleration is not fair to our team. Holding the standards is fair to our team. Structure like EOS, Rockefeller Habits, we need to have, but that manages the work. MMI, GDD, Guide Don't Drive, actually installs the standards of which they work. And this is a concept that I want you to get. You don't drift into excellence. You actually drift into average. That's why we need— a leadership operating system. And we need to reset those behaviors weekly using MMI because under pressure, that pressure will reset it for you, and you don't want to go down that path. Most leadership development doesn't work because it's taught in perfection. It's not taught how to lead under pressure. Now, let me mention a couple of questions or try to answer at least a couple of questions. And hopefully this is resonating for some of you. It's something that I've had to come to grips with myself after having done leadership development for years and years and years, size organizations all the way across the world, and watching so much of it not stick, so much of it not make a difference, the same pain that you are feeling as a leader when you're writing that check for those individuals to go through leadership development, where you're thinking as an L&D or an HR leader, I just can't get it to stick. It's because we do it independent of a system and there's no Monday morning implementation process. So one of the questions, what's the difference between reinforcement and accountability? What's the difference between reinforcement and accountability. Accountability is a byproduct. The constant reinforcement encourages accountability in a positive way. That's what accountability was meant to be. Unfortunately, now when we hear the term accountability in organizations, it's what's my consequences for not doing the job the way that I'm supposed to? Instead of the consistent reinforcement of behaviors that are that are appropriate for the position for the organization and how we tolerate or whether or not we tolerate. Now that doesn't mean that the first time somebody doesn't have the behavior you need, you, you walk them out the door. That's not it. What we need to do is focus on the, on the idea of recovery. But too much recovery is a problem. For example, if somebody's addressing behavior that they're not supposed to, having the conversation clearly around, here is our standard, what are you going to do? What steps are you going to take? What behavior are you going to change? Not as an option not to tolerate, but giving them the opportunity to recover. Now we look at patterns. If the same recovery for the same thing happens multiple times in a short period of time, then they're really not serious about recovery in the first place. So accountability first becomes the opportunity to recover, but it's gotta be based on being clear on what we're gonna tolerate, what the standards are, and what the standards specifically of that behavior is. Consistent behavior creates consistent results. So this idea of reinforcement encourages positive Accountability. Second question that comes up all the time, Steve, this sounds awesome, I don't have the time for it. Well, let's think about that one for a second and dissect it. You don't have the time for it, why? Because the pressure is hitting and now you're scurrying to do this, or this person's not behaving the way they're supposed to, so you've got to go address that. We need to get ahead of the game. We live in a reactionary leadership world because we're not taught on how to deal with it under pressure. MMI in particular, which sounds like, I don't have 20 minutes on a Monday morning or a Tuesday morning and so forth. If done consistently, modifies behavior, creates a standard, and when a standard is created, it completely, in a positive way, it completely changes the culture. Now it frees up your time. MMI and GDD is not about adding more work. It's replacing the work you're already doing with something that creates greater efficiency. Now, third question, how do you prove that this stuff actually works behind they show up and they attend this MMI meeting on a weekly basis? That's actually probably the best question. I just had this conversation, this is live, 3 hours ago with an organization that is implementing or trying to implement EOS. And part of EOS, again, I'm not knocking EOS, I am absolutely not knocking L10 meetings, but what happens with so many organizations that try to apply EOS is that they go through the motions without actual results. So their L10 meetings are very structured, and I'm encouraging structure even behind MMI. But it's really about going through the motion of, here's where we are, here's what we did, here's what we didn't do, now let's go. Very different behind recalibrating behaviors. You can see the results when behaviors stick, the pattern of toleration of the behaviors, no longer is there, and it starts to support what winning means based on whatever result metric that is important to what winning is. That's how you know it works. Not the motions, but the behaviors. When behaviors change and become consistent in the right direction, results are consistent. And you and I both know the ultimate determination on if this stuff works is on ROI of your organization. Are you hitting the things you need to actually hit? Now that's a lot of information in a very short period of time, but hopefully we're starting to address the pain that all of you are starting— or have been feeling for a long time, that I have felt for a long time. Here's just a couple of quick takeaways, and then there's one thing I want to encourage you on. Number 1, training creates insight and we need it, but GDD, Guide Don't Drive, and MMI in particular, Monday morning implementation, creates the behavior that allows us to leverage the insight. Reinforcement creates accountability. We don't want to just hold people accountable. And the weekly cadence that we go through with MMI meetings in particular, that churns the behaviors into the defaults so that execution actually scales, but not through control, through individual ownership. Now, what does all this mean for you? There is one thing that I just want to encourage you to consider. And that's the operating system itself. Most organizations say, you know what, that sounds great, but how do I implement this operating system so I get the value out of the dollars I'm spending on training? If you go to the Loewes Leadership site, loewesleadership.com, if you go under Pathways up in the top navigation bar, there's one particular pathway that is called GDD Foundation. It's 6 sessions. This is not leadership development. This is how to implement a leadership operating system. How do we implement the right behaviors in your organization? Because the behaviors in your organization are different than the behaviors of my organization. This is basically a crash pathway. I'm not going to say crash course because it's not a course. It is a crash pathway where you develop for your organization your operating system so that as you invest in leadership dollars, you have an operating system to plug it into and you can have more discernment of where you need to develop. That would be step number one in being able to do this. We've just launched that. We've launched it within many other organizations and we have seen the winning turn into results. And we've seen the investment in leadership development within the organization go from 25% success rate to some instances 80% success rate. We can't continue to tolerate this waste of dollars. Focus on your operating system, support it through development that plugs into the operating system, and your results will actually happen. Thank you for your time. Hopefully that gives you some things to think about. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me. You can do it right here on LinkedIn through an InMail message. You can do it through text or phone, 734-837-8500. I hope this gave you something to think about, and if it raised questions, make sure you reach out and ask. Thanks for joining me again on this Monday morning Implementation Live, MMI Live, even though it was on Thursday morning. We'll see you the next time.