Ep. 7: The Seldom Spoken Aspects of Leadership (3 of 4)
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:Welcome again to Creating the Perfect Company. And this is the third installment of the seldom spoken aspects of leadership. Again, this was a national broadcast from the MBI broadcasting facilities in Hendersonville at the headquarters. And without further ado, here's the third part. Okay.
Speaker 2:Now we're going to go into light and delightful topic of the burden of leadership. Okay. So strap on your rubber underwear for this one. The burden of leadership. First, as discussed, winning and consistently winning.
Speaker 2:We will not win all the time, but we have to win enough. Next, being pragmatic, anticipating and facing the realities of this world. Also, I'll call this accurate thinking. Rather than, hey, oh, I would like the world to be like this. I would like this to happen.
Speaker 2:No. What is the bruised reality of how human beings, you know, they wake up in the morning, they have their car, you know, what are the. And and harnessing that. Next, nearly always being up, strong, consistent, dependable. Right?
Speaker 2:The leader sees the big picture and creates the plan how to do it. A plan stimulates faith, belief in wherever we're going. Next, the leader critically evaluates its people. Or you critically evaluate your people and their value or contribution to the company. And you may like somebody, Not enough of a reason to keep them.
Speaker 2:They may have been there at your company for twenty three years. That is not sufficient reason to keep somebody. And this is where when we design clever ways of compensating people and they're not producing, they automatically eject. Creating what? A self regulating system, which is ideal.
Speaker 2:But what value are they really contributing? In their position? Do I need to reposition them? Recognizing your own weaknesses, constraints, shortcomings, willingness to take Criticism. And I'm surprised how many CEOs are not willing to do this.
Speaker 2:I I was done all kinds of things and and sometimes, you know, people get back their evaluations and go, oh, oh, that doesn't really count because my stuff is so high level. Just common people don't understand really what I'm saying, you know, or or whatever. People have all their justifications. So, the ability to take criticism, but recognizing again, nobody just has the whole thing and you know, should be hiring the smartest people you can. People that are brighter than you.
Speaker 2:Mean, I've got Nancy doing all kinds of stuff that only she can do. Bernie's over here, Jim, Alex. I mean, these are all role players in this organism, this human organism, you know, called multi view. You know, we all need each other. Even if everyone's gotta be 10 years apart.
Speaker 2:I hear MultiView Recognizing bar weaknesses. Hey, we need to backfill here. Like thirty years of And I'll just say this. We all evolve as humans Like no one else. I always tell people to work your way out of your job.
Speaker 2:You know, at the beginning of MultiView, I was doing GL work and installing the financial system, sign the support, doing the first cost report ever done. But after a while it's like, okay, that tech support, you know, okay, well, I've done a lot of that now. Let's get someone else to do this. Okay, let's start doing this aspect of benchmarking and quantification. And you just work your way out as you progress.
Speaker 2:And that applies to leadership too. All I know is it's just like down at Palm Beach, you know, I've finance and then it's like, okay, you're a programmer too. Okay, then you know, all ITs, okay, reporting to you. Oh, and resell shops. You ever did that?
Speaker 2:Oh, okay. And then hey, that becomes a success. Okay. Oh, inpatient unit. Oh, I'm not a clinician.
Speaker 2:Okay, run this. Okay. Well, that ends up being a success. Oh, how about medical records too? Know, so it seems like with leaders and whatever, and this is one I don't have a slide on this.
Speaker 2:But if you have a very capable person with tremendous personal power, you will tend to load them up with more and more and more. And there's a danger in that. Just because what? You've got their focus going in lots of different ways. Again, is it the highest value?
Speaker 2:Humility and openness, we've already talked about this. We need to be open to other views of the world and other ways of doing things. Pressing yourselves and holding yourself to high standards. That is definitely a burden of leadership, you know. But hopefully that's a habitual thing that we tend to be in integris.
Speaker 2:We tend to push ourselves. We tend to come in with the plan already made. I mean I did it on weekends. Hasn't been the I did it with a screaming wife every day. Yes, was knocking out my CPA and all this stuff.
Speaker 2:And then that ability to say, hey, that's not just good enough. This needs to be great. Whatever your standards of quality are. Leading from the front. And I'll talk about that a little bit more.
Speaker 2:I mean, for example, I'll mention again. Let's say you have an inpatient unit. Well, lot of inpatient units don't do very well. If we're managing them, they'll make money. Well, CEO, why don't you move your office down to the inpatient unit and run it?
Speaker 2:Or you have a home health division that's not working out so well. Well, why don't you run it? Or you have x part of your factory or whatever that's not working. Well, get your butt down there. Do a little Elon Musk and sleep down there.
Speaker 2:Or Sam Walton, know. Get his little plane and go into the problem spot. Okay. Leaning from the front. Holding people accountable via pain and not losing the talented people.
Speaker 2:That's a skill. It's an uncomfortable thing. It's something that you gain with practice over time. You gain confidence in how to do it. You should probably never like it unless you're got a screw loose somewhere or whatever.
Speaker 2:Being it's a skill. How do you do accountability? That is administer pain, corrective action without losing that talent. Again, some self control in there and all that. Okay.
Speaker 2:Trusting others as part of the burden of leadership. Trusting others knowing your heart will be broken repeatedly. If we're going to grow anything, we've got to trust others and they will fail you. You will overestimate their intelligence, their capable I shouldn't say capability, I think more people, they have just loads of unexplored potential. They don't know it.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times a leader will ask people to do that things that you believe they could do, maybe and maybe they had the capability, but they don't do it. Either through through lack of confidence or maybe they're just not bright enough to do it. You overestimate their willingness perhaps. So your heart's going get broken. But that's just part of the job.
Speaker 2:So, the leader must have the ability to take criticism. Again, we've talked about this. The king needed a court jester just to point out the king's shortcoming. Leadership is a lot about being able to bear the pain of your bad decisions. Because if you're going anywhere towards that ninetieth percentile, You're going to become a distinct minority in whatever business sector you're in.
Speaker 2:You are invariably going to have mistakes and missteps. But you have to own it. Okay, ask or And if it does its job, that scar is a stronger spot. That broken place. And this is just part of it.
Speaker 2:But you have to be able to bear that pain and be tough enough just to plow through. With leadership, part of the burden is there is this duty of care obligation to others. And the duty of care is really the obligation to have a genuine interest in the welfare of others. I like to look at MultiView or any of the organizations that we have equity positions or that we work with, that we are a school. We are a school of enlightenment, of consciousness.
Speaker 2:That we can provide not only great lifestyle and all this, but ideas and mindsets that will actually liberate people to to have a better experience of life. And I don't care what you're doing. You can do that. But that duty care. But it starts with this genuine interest in the welfare of others.
Speaker 2:A leader has again this obligation of winning and success. We've already talked about this. But it is an obligation. The question for a leader is: The leader needs to see and anticipate what needs to be done and do it. With perhaps the question, how do I overcome the predictable human behavior in this case or circumstance?
Speaker 2:So here we're applying basically intelligence. This is intelligence at work. Planning, anticipating the patterns of life. How do we harness them because they are predictable? So this intelligence at work, the leader has to plan.
Speaker 2:That is anticipate all the possibility, all the practical possibilities I should say, or outcomes of the decisions that they're going to make. This could happen. This could happen. This could happen. This comes to happen.
Speaker 2:What if we're attacked from the rear? What if we're attacked from the side? What if this or that happens? The point is, the leader should not be caught off guard. Whenever I'm making decisions, sometimes they make little pieces of paper that I put that if the move goes this way, then here are the three things that could happen after that.
Speaker 2:You're playing probabilities, but sometimes that outlier will get you. I'll say this, but most of the time it actually goes in the direction you plan on, even though you've got some unexpected events invariably. Don't be caught off guard. Every time a leader approaches their desk or team, they should be looking at the ROI or value. That is just assessing things.
Speaker 2:Asking questions. Questions have energy. Do I have the right people in the right places and the right positions in the organizations? What if X or Y happen? Are we positioned for managed care?
Speaker 2:Are we positioned for this? Are we positioned for that competitor that's doing the MBI model better than us that's going to decimate us and half our patient volume. Are we prepared for that? What if we lose that contract? What if whatever?
Speaker 2:Is the nurse that's been with us for twenty three years still providing enough value for what she's being paid? Are we failing people because we aren't providing great training, processes and systems? Those are the ideas every day that need to be on our mind when we're approaching our desk if we're the CEO. And really, any of the subunits as well. We're we're in character a little bit.
Speaker 2:Right? Or burden, really. But character can be defined as follow through, dependability, as well as the willingness to admit failures and missteps. But I find there's all kinds of leaders that are caught up in this busy, busy, busy world. They're not responsive.
Speaker 2:They don't get back with you rapidly. And therefore these voids are created. There's frustrations in all this. They say they're going to do something. Oh, didn't.
Speaker 2:I forgot about that. I guess you should have written it down. But a lot of people aren't even smart enough to write things down. They don't keep a physical list. I'm going to put on my phone.
Speaker 2:This phone is going to remind me what I need to do. And you look at a phone logically. It's this antithesis of focus. Yeah, you can have it there, but you know, it's going to have text, it's going to have pop ups, you're going get phone calls, you're going to get emails for some of us. Don't even get them on my mind.
Speaker 2:And so you got this thing that's just taking you in all these directions and you wonder why we're not effective. Okay. Let's keep it light here. Real leadership involves a lot of advancing things that are not even asked for or they're unasked or directed. What am I saying there?
Speaker 2:I'm saying that you see something that just needs to be done. You've not been specifically directed to do it, and you just handle it. And then own whatever result that you get from you just taking the personal initiative to do it. That's a leader. That's how one of the steps moves that you can identify promotable people into leadership.
Speaker 2:Let's just say this, part of the burden of leadership. Leadership, important and significant decisions are rarely popular. Why? You're upending things. You're saying we're going to go in this new direction.
Speaker 2:We're going to put in this new quality initiative called multi view. You're go we're gonna do this and people are going to be subjected to intensive training under stress conditions when they've been used to be pamp they're being used to be pampered. These are big moves. You think everyone's going say, hey, yeah, I can't wait to get my butt paddled through that thing and I can't wait to be stressed out doing that and even though it's going to be good for me to take the medicine. That's leadership, is it not?
Speaker 2:So real leadership can be a very lonely place as it's not about popularity. And often you're taking people where they don't want to go. Okay. Like, I'm I'm using an example here. NHPCO banned me for life at one time.
Speaker 2:I gave a talk and I used to talk every year. I probably got a little bored with it or whatever. So 20 at the national conference. And I was used to being booed and everything, know, because what we're going to talk about is not commonplace stuff normally. Anyway, so I pointed out some issues about cherry pickers.
Speaker 2:You know, that some organizations are going to say, hey, let's take all these cheap patients. This person is going to cost a lot. Let's not take them. And they point out different aspects of division. Anyway, and there's a few other things, just realities.
Speaker 2:And then I was I got this letter. You know, you you're banned for life from ever. You know, coming to one of these things or whatever. And then a bunch of CEOs said, you know, I don't think that's such a good idea. So they basically forced me back in or you know they put so much pressure on the national organization that that's how I got back in speaking.
Speaker 2:And they reversed course. But you can't talk about this and said, well, if I can't talk about best known practices, things that may disrupt things, then you know, have no place. And I remember I hung up the phone again on them. And then, you know, but I got back in. So a lot of times, you're what you're saying, especially truth, you can alienate people and become very unpopular.
Speaker 2:But I think a real leader is a truth seeker. What's the best way of doing this or whatever? And like I said before, leadership is this land of broken hearts. So prepare to have your heart broken repeatedly by trusting others. But there's no way to do anything on a material scale without the help of others.
Speaker 2:And I will say this, and this goes, I should have put this with the other trust side. Trust. Trust is the basis of all good relationships. But once trust is lost, it is difficult to regain. You will spend so much energy if you have deceived somebody.
Speaker 2:Especially if it's intentional. It's one thing if it's not intentional. But even then, it's whatever you're going to spend all kinds of energy trying to regain that that relationship and it's difficult to to regain. So, trust is a big thing. We've got to have that and it's earned.
Speaker 2:It's also part of the burden is there's an interesting relationship between risk and leadership. Your best leaders have a rather high risk tolerance. So they're more okay with going in a different or a bold direction. And again, fortune favors the bold. Again, as long as they're not stupid and they have some directional correctness.
Speaker 2:Leadership is also revealed in tough times and hardships. That's when you really know what you have. When you are being decimated by a competitor. When you have had some type of just major hit experienced by the organization. I mean, it a freak out thing or is it no, here's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2:But it's revealed. Because all businesses and organizations that endure for any significant period of time are going to face severe storms. It is not, again, all up, all light, all good, all the time. No. There's times when sales are down.
Speaker 2:There's time when you have turnover. No matter how good a leader you are, then you make the bold move and you lose half your workforce. I've never quite seen it happen that dramatically, but you get the idea. There's going to be times when you change in the business or whatever. When times will get kind of tough.
Speaker 2:Again, leadership. Now, I've already mentioned this. Leading from the front. Moving your office to where the problem, trouble, or action is. You know, and getting out of your out of your desk or out from behind your desk.
Speaker 2:The leader must have strength, capability, and and again coolness under fire. Again, is really that could also could be called self control. Coolness. That's a new word. Okay.
Speaker 2:Leadership. How do you keep business interesting? And I think it's a combination of balance of a couple of things. First of all, you need predictability, dependability, regular. Okay.
Speaker 2:So you need some kind of consistent element in your business. If it's just a crap show, every time people come in, you know, I mean everyone's just running around chaos. People don't like that. They like it some element of certainty. Stability.
Speaker 2:Here's how we do meetings. Here's how we do whatever work. But they also want the interjection of something new. The surprise element. The new initiative.
Speaker 2:Whatever. So there's a balancing act to keep the business interesting because you need to retain them and people will leave when it becomes a bore. Many years ago, we had 80 CEOs fly in to one of the local colleges where we were doing a leadership conference. And I had them all, I gave them all like index cards and I said, what is your number one frustration or problem? And 70% of them that came back wrote that I held on to poor performers for too long.
Speaker 2:I think it's much better to be quick to fire people. Now, you'll make some mistakes. I've certainly made mistakes, but it's much better to be quick to fire. Then to say, well, let's just give her another little more chance because we're gonna I'm feeling a little squishy today, feeling a little weenish. Let's just play this out a little longer.
Speaker 2:So therefore, we lose more money. We have more suffering. We lose lots more good people. And we're thinking we're being kind or whatever but really we're just punting the can down the road rather than saying well this isn't working out but we're smart enough that there's a number two already identified if we're using the n value system. Boom.
Speaker 2:She gets the job or he gets the job or whatever. Ah. So that's the planning for the tack. If this happens, a replacement is already designated. How brilliant.
Speaker 2:Now, let me just say this. There are loads of people that could be leaders in your hallways right now. I can go into a small organization with 30 employees. Most people have not even paid really have job. I can go into a I mean, I get these ridiculous calls from CEOs that say, Andrew, I need X, I need Y.
Speaker 2:And I go, You mean you've got a thousand people working for you and you can't find this leadership position? I mean, I get it if someone has some kind of technical aspect that is uncommon, know, like how to code in, you know, certain computer language or whatever. That's not that many, but not for so many of your operations. There are people that know and actually want a shot at being able to do it. Someone had to take a bet on me at some point in my life.
Speaker 2:And say, know that snot nose Reed guy. You know, he's kind of a spunk, plunk, plucky guy, you know, let's let's give him a shot. I mean, let's not even get any more money. Let's just say, you know, try this and see if it works out. So be quicker to fire and beware of holding on to people too long.
Speaker 2:And but and I'll say at that point, gotta take out the mirror and say, man, I'm being a weenie here. Okay. I'm gonna keep going. Let's talk about leadership. And there's a few more, sections here in in this.
Speaker 2:And I'm again, don't know how long this will go. It won't go that long. So, I'll get it going. But, I don't want to leave anything out. Because I don't want to to do this again.
Speaker 2:Leadership conditions for success. So a leader is inherently a manager. And what a manager does is a person that can direct energy and resources to create conditions for success, because you can't control people. And it's always in this order that you direct energy first and then resources. Again, I use the illustration of money.
Speaker 2:You have a million dollars sitting in the bank. That money doesn't go anywhere or to any purpose without the energy of a leader to say, hey, I wanted to do this. Put it in this or whatever. So that's the number one thing that you you regulate and manage within yourself, within your organization. But to create these conditions for success.
Speaker 2:Again, a manager can't control other people. A manager can't make a person a success. You cannot make another person a success. And I've been under that spell or delusion so many times in my life. And then I get slapped in the face and go, are you gonna get this lesson finally, Andrew?
Speaker 2:Okay. So, a professional manager or leader understands what they can control as well as what they can't control. And this leads us to this idea of conditions for success. So the job of the manager or the leader is to provide conditions for success. And that's really what you're doing in an organization.
Speaker 2:And that's going back to the illustration of the garden, the seed. The seed which is your employee that you plant. Again, you can't control if they're gonna win the prize or droop over or die or or whatever. So, what are some of those conditions for success? Well, first is just providing people standards about their job.
Speaker 2:What are the standards of the organization so that people can self regulate and own their behavior and performance? Great place to start. What's what are the standards? But I go to most organizations. What are your standards?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know. You know, they're not really written down. You know? Well, are they are they five? Are there 24 of these?
Speaker 2:Are they 16? No. We don't really them. Okay. And we wonder why we have screw ups and stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay. Next, knowledge deficits are eliminated by a system seven. That's, of course, an MBI system or in Six Sigma it would be called intensive training. We want to transform the desire to do well into a certainty that we are well trained. And so, because our quality is going to be no more than the quality of our people systems.
Speaker 2:So we want to eliminate all knowledge deficits. So, it impossible for there to be knowledge deficits as far as the job. Next condition for success, the compensation system. Tells the employee via every paycheck or immediately whether they are in or out of standard. And this helps them again self regulate on their work.
Speaker 2:Work is simplified on all levels and tools are provided to support success. Especially of your centralized computer system. Like in healthcare, it would be an EMR. Right? An electronic medical record, you know, or whatever.
Speaker 2:Because if people get frustrated with the tools involved, well, you're gonna lose those people. Okay. Five. Work is organized in its natural order. You know, so that, you know, if if you have something, an item, let's say it's in the trunk or whatever, that's using your work.
Speaker 2:The things that are used frequently are in the front. The things are not that you have to strain your back to get to are in the back. Again, there's a system of process. But these are conditions for success. Eliminate as much as possible discretion at the operating level.
Speaker 2:Yes, we don't want people to think too much about routine and normal things. You know, like when you have codes in the computer system. Well, don't have every possible code that would ever happen. I mean, that exponentially increases your screw up factor. Minimize it to maybe three or four.
Speaker 2:Get like In N Out Burger or whatever where there's just a few things on the menu and your error rate decreases, you know, just substantially from from this. Number seven. Extraordinary clinical leader provides praise or extraordinary manager provides praise for excellent work and addresses non standard performance or behavior without delay. Clinicians or employees with poor attitudes, non standard work are removed so as not to disrespect the hardworking and standard honoring employees. There's a lot wrapped up in there.
Speaker 2:But here we're talking about accountability. That you do not give up false praise. I don't tell people they're doing a good job if they're not doing a good job. I say let's have a talk. Hey, do you know what the standards are here?
Speaker 2:Of course. Why aren't we doing them? But you do without delay. And because if you allow sub performers to remain at the organization, you disrespect the hardworking. And suddenly, they disrespect, first of all, you as a leader because you're a wiener.
Speaker 2:And it's like, wow. So this person will tolerate that. And we always have to be careful what we tolerate. But one of the worst things we can do is allow sub performers to survive in a culture. That is not a healthy culture.
Speaker 2:Because, I mean, I'll use my clinical illustration here. So you got a nurse, brand new in the organization. She's, you know, she's knocking out five, six visits a day. No problem. Boom, boom, boom.
Speaker 2:Great attitude. And she looks around. This person is doing two visits today. She's doing the morning visit and she's squeezing in the afternoon visit. And they're being paid the same.
Speaker 2:Well, what does your snappy new clinician say? Wow. You know, is that a motivator? No, it's a demotivator. And she's letting that get by.
Speaker 2:Why am I busting my can when that's being tolerated? So in this case, the clinician would start to disrespect the leader, then disrespect the entire organization, and then you lose them, and they go to work for your competitor. And this is a superstar. That's the price you pay for not addressing the standards, not upholding the standards, and it's part of conditions for success. Better to have a smaller talented team than large and sloppy.
Speaker 2:Okay. Eight. The leader is inspiring, life changing person. Through teaching of what? Accountability or owning one's life.
Speaker 2:Nine. The student employee receives attention. Normally on a day to day basis or at least enough that they feel significant. Again, is all conditions for success. Each employee, each clinician in this case receives a ride along every sixty days minimum.
Speaker 2:This physical environment is intentionally created to be conducive and support success. And there we go. That's not a comprehensive list, but it's enough that we get the idea that we have to set people up for success. But so much of that success comes to that 70% principle of that leader. Making sure these things are done.
Speaker 2:Again, staff want to believe that they are talented and are well trained. And we have transformed this desire from a want into a certainty. System seven with all its steps. This creates what? Quality eliminates the possibility for knowledge deficits through what?
Speaker 2:Self learning modules for any topic we want. Tell, again, the physical demonstration of it. Show, imprinting in the brain, the images that drive so much of our lives. The testing, because if people can't do something intellectually they can't do it. The testing, evaluating of learning.
Speaker 2:Then step five, practice, demonstrate. And six, evaluate that practice, that physical acting out of. Then the certification. That's a condition for success. Okay, confidence.
Speaker 2:Is an aspect of a condition for success or you can even call it quality of a leader. You need it. People get it. The reason the only reason I can get up in front of us and talk the way I do with some air of authority, which I hope is not off putting or whatever. But I have visited hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of organizations just to the point of having four physical breakdowns.
Speaker 2:I've seen so many. And it's really from doing this for a long time that you gain some authority and some confidence. And watching the patterns over and over. Nancy and I were just talking about, we put in these success patterns. Practices as some people say, and they'll always produce a great result.
Speaker 2:Not the same result, but a similar result because it's pattern based. So, how can you and that's why we have confidence in what we teach. But how do you increase your confidence? And probably the best way is successful practice. And if that successful practice is not on actual clients, but is done in a safe synthetic place, much better than destroying a relationship or putting a bad taste in a client's mouth.
Speaker 2:So, again, conditions for success. Intentional creation of a workplace is one of the most underutilized ideas in most organizations. I don't allow people to put crap on the walls or whatever. I mean, I went I had one new guy come one time, and I just ripped everything he had on and says, we just don't do that there. Course, you know, he was gone the next day, but Okay.
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.
