Ep. 1: Designing the Perfect Company (Foundational Message)
Creating the perfect company from the organizational experts MultiView Incorporated. This content is based on MVI's work with over 1,300 organizations extracting nine eighty nine data elements with nine twenty two cross calculations over twenty seven years on a monthly basis, and then systematizing the operational success patterns of the ninetieth percentile. Our intent is to get beyond the brag and the boast and simply share insights from our experience without manipulation or coercion to sell anything except helpful ideas. These messages range from intimate recordings from the Awakened Forest to concerts, national conferences, and broadcasts.
Speaker 2:Hello, My name's Andrew Reed, and welcome to Creating the Perfect Company. I'm sitting here outside in the Awakened Forest, where we have our mountaintop retreat center where we've trained over 10,000 CEOs and executives and of course, you know, worked with all of these hundreds and hundreds of organizations. And in this series of messages, we're going to attempt to perhaps communicate what we call best known success patterns. The patterns that we've learned through the course of our work with MollieView, basically measuring over 1,300 organizations on a monthly basis for over twenty seven years. Of course, that's dated right after I say it.
Speaker 2:Right? But it's from this body of knowledge over this period of time being very pragmatic is really the content that we desire to share. And this idea of best known success patterns merits some explanation because there's so many consultants or super duper people or whatever that always say best practice, best practice. And it's just like any thinking person would go, wait a minute. Do you have the whole enchilada?
Speaker 2:Are you the all being that understands all things, masters of time, space, and dimension? Of course not. So really the best we can do as beings with five senses to interpret the world, the best we can do is have best known because all topics, of course, are infinite, and it's foolish or perhaps even arrogant to indicate otherwise. The key to understanding multi view or at least one of them is to understand patterns. And, obviously, we want, you know, successful patterns, patterns that actually work on this planet.
Speaker 2:And then to be able to recognize them and then apply them to our respective companies and businesses, even from seemingly disparate industries or business sectors that you either want to have or you want to start. Because we've helped folks ranging from retail, agriculture, investment firms, health care, of course. That's probably our main thing, both post acute and acute. I mean, preparation, food services, convenience stores, fuel stops, and even the music business and city governments have incorporated many of the success patterns that we espouse. Of course getting similar results, not the same results because that's impossible because there's an infinite number of variables in every organization.
Speaker 2:So that always has to be kept in mind. But again, the directional correctness is really what you're after. Of course, with all businesses, you need a great design. And the word design has connotation of intention. The design of customer delight.
Speaker 2:That's needed in all businesses because without customers, you don't have any business. And then then, of course, we need the back end intelligence in order to manage our enterprises well. Now this message is what I'll call a foundational message. It's something that I can refer listeners back to so that we don't have to regurgitate and retell our story over and over ad nauseam. We can just say, hey, listen to episode one.
Speaker 2:And we don't have to present our credentials or certificates or data or experience, but we can focus on the success patterns. And there is intelligence involved here. And we take it as fact, at least in the multi view world, that no two human beings have the same consciousness. They don't have the same intelligence or perspective, and thus the interpretation of material is largely up to the hearer. And not to get too philosophical here, but in our view, again, the name multi view, where does it come from?
Speaker 2:Well, it really has to do with this, that each human being is a center of consciousness or sensation in a multi centered universe, which doesn't have a center, which is infinite. This statement really goes to the heart of multi view as it represents really all human organizations. We have this collective of people each with their own particular view or perception. Somehow all of these individuals or centers of consciousness or sensation have to be aimed in the same or similar direction for the achievement of some result. And such is a group enterprise.
Speaker 2:The other thing about MultiView, the name, I mean, if you look at the book of Proverbs, not that I'm adhering to any particular belief system here or whatever, It does say there is safety in the counsel of many, meaning that there's some significant of organizations that have gotten great results. There's some truth to many directions. Most of MultiView's or MVI's work has been in the post acute care sector of health care. That is hospice, home health, inpatient, palliative care, etc. We're basically CPAs and system analysts, and we are great at helping companies increase their quality and customer delight.
Speaker 2:We basically use six sigma ish methods. The ones that we've learned and used, for example, with one of our equity partners when we were winning the Malcolm Baldridge award in our area. It's again, it's one of the two highest quality awards in the world. Demi's award is the other one. And when we focus on quality, on customer delight, it normally produces phenomenal economic results, but it's a natural byproduct of doing quality.
Speaker 2:So you might say MBI is really a quality program, balancing purpose and profit. I'm not saying they're equal. I think purpose always has to be at the top and elevated above profit. And then your profit is a natural byproduct of doing purpose. And you wanna generate good profits rather than bad profits.
Speaker 2:And there is a difference. Our work is, I'll say this, profound on several levels. Why? Because we focus on the ninetieth percentile statistically. Again, we measure nine 80 nine day drillments with nine twenty two cross calculations from approximately 1,000 organizations per month.
Speaker 2:That's key. And then we look at these and say, Hey, who's doing great? Who's in that ninetieth percentile? And then the question is, what are they doing? And then use our intelligence to identify it, document it, systematize it really for our clients.
Speaker 2:Now, when we're focusing on this ninetieth percentile, we're focusing on what? The outliers, which by definition is always a distinct minority. It is the few. It might be out of 5,000 organizations. It might be 10 organizations.
Speaker 2:It might be five. It might even be one. And so normally when you're presenting folks with these best known success patterns, they challenge conventional wisdom. And many listening immediately cave to their prejudices and biases. And this is normal.
Speaker 2:It's expected. And frankly, it can't be helped. The new and the different challenge us and the elite of the world operate differently, and that's just the way it is. And let me say this, their results are normally structurally dictated by how they are organized and are systematized. So we focus on intelligence.
Speaker 2:And in our book, intelligence can be defined with two words, pattern recognition. You'll probably hear me saying that quite often. MBI espouses or focuses on system solutions rather than people solutions. That in itself is a huge difference because so many organizations focus on hiring the right people, the key person, the talent that's gonna save us. And truth be known, people or the people part is only half of the business or enterprise equation.
Speaker 2:Yes. You need great people. But the system solution, I'll say for even getting great employees and partners, that has to be looked at. I mean, meticulously looked at. And let me make this statement.
Speaker 2:Your results are structurally dictated by your processes and systems, and an average process or system can only yield an average or mediocre result, no more or less. You see, we're living in a self balancing world and the outputs derived come from the quality of the inputs. So as we get down the road in these messages, we're going to go deep and really the realities of human behavior because what are we? We are human beings and human organizations serving humans. Boy, we better get human.
Speaker 2:And how do we take know how, the proprietary methods and practices of our organization, and get that into the DNA of everyone that works in our organization? That can be systematized. It's not just taking a magic wand and going, man, you got it. So, again, our results are structurally dictated by our processes and system. Average processes and systems can only yield average results.
Speaker 2:And I'll just say this, we also can't be weenies and whiners that that look at things and we complain how bad it is or employees aren't as good today as they used to be or anything like that. All that is excuse to me. When we know we can take nearly anybody and upgrade them and empower them to become, I mean, much more than they realize where they're really taking advantage of all the potentials they have. And all can be part of the design of your system, your people systems in this case. Now I'm not here trying to be the two by four, but sometimes they the brute blunt reality needs to be confronted, does it not?
Speaker 2:And to me, the big two by four sometimes comes in the form of numbers. Your numbers don't lie. They are the truth about your company. And I've got all kinds of leaders that get real squeamy about this, get squishy when you take a look at their numbers and they go, well, you know, it's not so bad or or, you know, well, it's because of this. Well, Andrew, I could do quality.
Speaker 2:Had one CEO said, Andrew, we know you have all this great stuff at MultiView. And, you know, and and I could do that if I I wanted to. And I said, well, no. You couldn't. First of all, if you know about better ways of doing things than your organization is doing now and you're not, you should be fired.
Speaker 2:Your board of directors needs to haul your ass out of here or your posterior, if we wanna say it more politely. And secondly, you don't do it probably because you emotionally can't pull the trigger, or you might language it as you lack the courage to make those types of moves. Of course, you know, you win over clients with such language and all that. But your numbers are your truth, whether they're good, bad, or mediocre. And in the MBI world, the numbers are really your road map to be able to precisely direct energy and resources.
Speaker 2:And it is always in that sequence, energy first and then resources. Because you can have, for example, a pile of money, millions of dollars. And if there's no direction of those resources, it doesn't go any place. And so having the energy, and you could say it's the health or whatever, to be able to say, here's where we're at and here's where we need to direct those resources or asset. And those are important points about MBI.
Speaker 2:The numbers tell us where to go to work. So you organize your financial statements and different quantification of your business in a way that you can easily see where your potholes are. And then what do you do? You go to work. You go to work doing what?
Speaker 2:Discovering best known success patterns. And you can get them all over the place. You can get them from other people in your industry or business sector. You can get them from observing things like nature, or you can get them from companies that study this, such as MultiView. But the job of a leader is to know where your potholes are, and then you go on the search to find the best known way of doing it and then having the courage to actually get those initiatives implemented.
Speaker 2:Now, what are some of the topics in this series of messages that we're going to be talking about? Well, let's go through this. It'll include, of course, understanding the nature of best known success patterns, vision naming and branding, accurate thinking because it's foolish to have unrealistic ideas about how to organize a business. Understanding standardization and accountability. And one thing that we're going to find out is that accountability is really where the action happens.
Speaker 2:Because if you can have standards and all this set for an organization, you can have the placards out there. But if someone chooses either willfully or ignorantly not to do one of the standards, what are the repercussions? What are the consequences? There has to be an element of pain involved with not doing the standards. Otherwise, valves are broken.
Speaker 2:Promises are broken. What marketing's promising is not done by operations and bad result. So understanding standardization and accountability. And the other thing about we can talk about standardization. Most people don't have a clue about it.
Speaker 2:People think, oh, I know how to do that or whatever. Well, then where are your results? You know? So it's about getting honest and really understanding the need for written documentation of of processes to get beyond oral narratives, use of visual controls or what we'll call IRMs, image recall mechanisms, monitoring frequent measurement, and of course you'd want to add accountability and your accountability systems in there. Other topics, processes, structures, and standardization.
Speaker 2:And of course, focusing on system solutions rather than people solutions. Compensation design. Compensation was one of the beginnings of MultiView, the very first system we put in. Again, we had a % increase in productivity, and we've seen this replicated over and over and over and over again. But most people, they won't touch compensation.
Speaker 2:Oh my god. Everyone's gonna quit. Blah blah blah. And we have never seen that happen even when they botch it up and do roll out something's half baked. Normally, you're always gonna get a better result than what you're getting now.
Speaker 2:And if you're paying just salary and hourly, I can tell you right now, you're never going to get to the ninetieth percentile. We've been measuring people for decades, and I can't tell you of a single organization that's got to the ninetieth percentile without having creative compensation systems. Let's keep on our topic list. Operating an organization as an integrated coherent whole, not silos. We see so many organizations and each department, finance is doing this, and marketing is doing this, and ops is doing this, and compliance is doing this, and HR is doing you know?
Speaker 2:And they're not aligned. We've got to create an integrated, coherent system where the whole thing operates really on a basis of mutual reliance. So when pain is felt in one part of the organization, it's felt all over. It's not siloed off like, Oh, I just broke my arm and I'm not going to do anything about it. You know, the the body system doesn't work like that.
Speaker 2:The natural world doesn't look like that. Well, should we operate an organization with an ideal that doesn't align with nature and the way the natural world works? Of course not. We want the whole thing to work together, and of course that can be done. Leadership, of course, always has to be mentioned.
Speaker 2:It's a topic I don't like to talk about. Anyone that, I'll say, even wants to be a leader, I hold them with great suspicion. Normally, the best leaders I've ever seen are folks that don't even want the job. They just do it because they have a vision of what can be accomplished, and they have at least some level of belief that that they can do it. But it's normally based on some need that needs to be fulfilled.
Speaker 2:Financial report organization, critical, so that people aren't having to go through all this data and actually dissipate focus by these huge volumes of reports. And I think it's better for the organization to really think through what are the essential things. And this is an interesting thing regarding measurement. A lot of people try to measure hundreds of different things. Normally not necessary.
Speaker 2:Because I found if you focus on the important ones, you may have one measure that satisfies 30 or 40 other measurements that you can get rid of if we focus on the thing that's the most important. Complaints is a great one. Just the number of complaints in an organization. And then there's people development, and this is really probably the big enchilada. And I'll just say this, all people systems need to be based on the realities of human behavior.
Speaker 2:So if you go into any of our libraries, you're gonna find tons and tons of books on human behavior because that's really what it's about. Again, we're human beings and human organizations serving humans. We gotta get that. And an organization, of course, is a collection of people. It's a multi view.
Speaker 2:And we break people development down into the four main processes. Our talent attraction processes, our talent selection processes, our talent development processes, and our talent retention processes. All those need to have really their own focus. We gotta be able to attract hot dog, hot rodded people. And then of those that want to get in this elite club, how do we select them so that we're not wasting our time training barren earth, people that are never going to work out?
Speaker 2:How do we efficiently and effectively transform them and get the DNA that we want into their blood. And then we have to retain them because it does us no good to train people in our proprietary practices only to have them leave and then possibly use those best known success patterns against us. Most of the time, they won't do that because, first of all, they probably didn't really grasp the significance of the best known practices and, you know, they're probably dumb. But on the other hand, I've seen some folks, they looked at, you know, we would go in and we have a service called Magic where we go into any organization that wants to increase its consumer delight, its customer delight or, you know, get their back end offices aligned or operate as this integrated whole. I remember one organization that we were working with and I was going through the materials And we had a couple of our magic consultants there and what have you.
Speaker 2:And CFO took a look at the CEO and said, this is never gonna happen. And this gentleman went out and just started his own company and just made it an epic success. So he just said, Okay, these patterns are going to take me where I want to go. Here's the playbook. Bam.
Speaker 2:So you do wanna retain your talent so that you don't lose them. And once in a while, you may have a real winner that maybe is operating on a whole different intelligence than yourself and that can happen. I mean, I know that's that happened with the Kellogg guys when, you know, Post came out of that. And it's happened in multiple industries, that's just part of it. Much of MBI's work is profound, I might say.
Speaker 2:And I think this has to do with the large volume of work that we've done with hospices or end of life care companies. Because, you know, this is where the customers are really the patients and families, the moms and dads, and they're in one of the most vulnerable times in their lives. They're facing the great certainty when it's our turn to die. And in our mind, our thinking, our belief, there is no room for screw ups or service failures in this business. There are no redos.
Speaker 2:It's not like we can screw up and then say, Hey, John, get back in the body. Let's try that again. It's over. So we hold such organizations to a much, much higher standard than we do others because there's no way that you can do it again. Our return policy sucks.
Speaker 2:However, with this said, this meticulous consideration of the customer experience is the driver of our work. We've helped organizations in so many different industries, business segments to improve such quality. And I can't help but believe that at the end of the day, MBI has enormous karma dollars all built up as we've served approximately half of all the deaths in The US populations over the last couple decades. They've all been touched by the perfect visit, perfect phone interactions, all this. Because and you say perfect.
Speaker 2:You know, some of you may be questioning even the title of this message. Perfect organization. Andrew, that's not possible. I'm saying increase your standards. Increase your your thinking.
Speaker 2:I mean, are you going say, hey, we're going to design mediocre customer interactions? We're going to do, you know, mediocre visits? I don't think so. We need to be committed to quality, and perfect is. Now perfect let me define this.
Speaker 2:Perfect in our world is defined as this, to the standards of the organization. So perfect equals to the standards of the organization. But I'll say this, with this work in the end of life area, this background helps us serve any organizations who genuinely wants to increase quality and create these meaningful, impactful customer experiences or delight, as we like to say, and create these long term relationships. Because all organizations are relationship driven. And as we start this journey, I'm not trying to impress you.
Speaker 2:I've found that if I try to impress people, I don't. So we're just gonna put it out there the way it is, be as real and authentic as we can without the brag, the advertisement, the exaggeration. Because to us, all forms of, like, stretching things is a lie. Right? And if we're trying to get at the truth of things, we've got to get real.
Speaker 2:We've got get steely eyed. Just like looking at our numbers, we've got to say that's who we really are. That's where we really are. And when people embellish things, we don't get at the truth. So I just put that out there.
Speaker 2:That's the way we go at things, whether it's a positive reality or negative. And we're also not going to be needy. There's millions of people that have this needy thing. Subscribe. Like me.
Speaker 2:Blah blah blah. Well, I'm just gonna say this. The hell with your algorithms. We're gonna put out quality messages or at least ones in this format when when they happen. And we will be delighted if both of our customers or fans listen.
Speaker 2:Oh my. So that's that. And we're really not trying to sell anything here. And I I hope that's come across abundantly. It's really about, again, creating that better company, that better organization.
Speaker 2:And ultimately, what? Having a better experience of life. Because it really doesn't do us very good to do all these business endeavors, and we end up with a crappy life. Right? So that's that.
Speaker 2:And and let me just say this. This is just our variation of perceived truths. And because, really, they're they're already out there. And so I'm not saying, hey. Everything here is unique and has never been seen before.
Speaker 2:It may be packaged a certain way. And really our job is just to add our special flavor or spice to it. And hopefully it'll appeal to some segment of the population. And as we start to wrap this up, you may notice that our language is normally not very dictatorial, saying you must do this, you should do this, you should never do this, you know, all that. And sometimes people get a bit carried away.
Speaker 2:And I think all of us know that when people make these overly confident statements, that it's not quite right. So you'll hear from us the word perhaps, maybe, often, I suspect, normally, usually. This allows a bit of a gap or an exception, a little space for the unknown because, again, we just have to know that we don't have the enchilada and bring this bit of humility to things. So we try to avoid words like always, must, should, never, words of certainty because we know we live in a world that is obviously otherwise. Really, to tell you truth, it's a combination of both certainty and uncertainty, and there's a type of interplay or game between the two.
Speaker 2:But, again, I would hold suspect anyone that has too much confidence because that kinda shows that person in some light as a fool or one that, you know, maybe hasn't truly considered things because, what, all topics are infinite. And you always have to beware of the all light, all good, all sweet people either because they're only getting the half of life. The dark side, negative, is just as useful. I mean, the manure of a bad tragedy or experience, a lot of times, is fuel for something new, and that's just part of the ecosystem of this world. And if our words have a faint air of authority, that's because it's just it's based on our experience.
Speaker 2:Often hard earned lessons involving pain, seas of tears, and a lot of suffering. But that's, again, that's a necessary ingredient or nutrient, I should say, you know, the evolution of any individual as well as a company. Pain is a great teacher. Okay. So with that said, I can't promise you the holy grail or that we've received some direct authoritative communication with Providence regarding the questions or topics discussed, but I can say that we will provide some directional correctness.
Speaker 2:And if an organization is open enough to these things, and you might want to have your leadership team listen to these periodically, that there's again these patterns. I'll get back to it. That's what it's really all about. And that directional correctness that, Hey, there is something to standardization. Hey, there is something to accountability.
Speaker 2:Hey, there is something to compensation. Hey, there is something to leadership development. And we may not know exactly what to do, but if we start going in that direction, we know that we're going to get a better result. In the back of the Executive Conference Center on top of the mountain, we have a bust of Voltaire. Voltaire was arguably one of the five brightest human beings to ever walk on this planet.
Speaker 2:And this is what he had to say about, quote, knowing it all. To have doubt is an unpleasant condition, but to be certain is absurd. So I figure if this came from one of the five brightest people to ever walk on the planet, we certainly should have some humility about things, and that includes all of the factors, the best known success patterns that we need in our organization. From a place of love and appreciation for all expressions of life, this is Andrew.
Speaker 1:We hope you are having the best day of your life. If you need something further, just visit one of the Multiview Incorporated websites or contact us through social media. Smoke signals, carrier pigeons, telepathy have not proven reliable. All calls are answered within three rings by a competent real person. Thank you for listening.
