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First Meeting With A New Direct - Results
In this episode of Manager Tools, the hosts discuss the essential elements of conducting a first meeting with new directs, emphasizing the importance of communicating priorities and expectations clear...
First Meeting With A New Direct - Results
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Interactive Transcript
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Welcome to Manager Tools.
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First meeting with the new Direct.
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Results. Here we go.
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This cast answers these questions.
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What should I cover with my new Directs?
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What are the key messages to give to new team members?
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How can I communicate my priorities?
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Well, if you want to answer these questions more, keep listening.
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Folks, this episode of Manager Tools is brought to you by Roadmap.
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Our new product available only in the Manager Tools app,
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available in both Android and iOS.
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Many have already had the Manager Tools app.
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Roadmap is a module within the app that will interactively guide you through every step of rolling out one-on-ones and feedback.
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Every step, putting in Directs email addresses, helping you send out the email to invite them to their meeting.
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How to track one-on-ones every week, every single step.
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Not just emails, but interactive help.
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It will be available October the 2nd, 2017.
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We look forward to sharing more in the week's head.
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So Mark, when somebody joins your team, pretty early on,
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you have to communicate about your key priorities.
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It's almost the first thing you have to do.
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Is that right?
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Well, if it's the first thing you have to do, then a lot of us are in trouble because we don't do it.
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And technically, this is for existing managers with teams and somebody new joins, and you want to be clear with them.
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But it's also valid if you're taking over a new team.
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In the first month, you want to get your message out to everyone,
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and we recommend that these meetings happen individually, not jointly.
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But after the first month, I think your point is after the first month,
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people get down in the weeds a little bit, and they're less open to big picture guidance.
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And the fact is, it gets lost in the details and awful lot.
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But the number one most important thing, every manager ought to be telling every director,
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do your job, get results.
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What are managers responsible for? Results. That's their first responsibility.
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And that's true for every professional, every employee as well.
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Within a context of other things as well.
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But if you're great with context and you don't do your job, you're not going to be around for very long.
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So this cast is basically in a way, conceptually our shortest ever mic, because we only have one bullet.
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And the bullet is rather than results, it's do your job.
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Yeah, and that's pretty simple.
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So, okay, thanks Mark.
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Appreciate it. We'll see you next week.
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Yeah, if we wanted to, I was going to say this at the end, but we could make this like a billbelly check of the New England Patriots press conference and say,
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do your job and then be done.
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But we know from a lot of people that folks like us to give them some scripts to help them get started for some of the things they have to say.
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So we're going to talk about why and the details of what do your job means.
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And then we'll give you some words that you may be able to use to structure your own guidance to your new directs and also to each direct when you take over a team.
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Like I said, if you don't get the job done, if you don't achieve the results your team is expected to, it doesn't matter how well you're liked or what your CV says, you're not going to be around for that long.
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And so what's interesting about that is most of us know that most of us think about getting our jobs done all the time.
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It's what we worry about most when it comes to our professional lives, the work we have to do and how we're going to get it done and how things aren't getting done and why our team isn't getting things done and what can we do to help them get things done.
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What's interesting is you say all that that probably resonates with a lot of you.
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So why then do we not routinely assume that one of the first key messages we should be sending to new directs is get the job done.
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And when you think about it, if this kind of communication were happening regularly everywhere as sort of an unspoken given like whiteboards and meeting rooms or the absence of clocks and meeting rooms or badges,
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we would have seen it. We would have heard it. People would talk about it. It would have been done to us or to people we know.
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But I've never, Mike, I don't know if you have never spoken to a single manager who has said it's something he's done, something she's done that has worked for them.
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And certainly nobody has ever told me in 25 years that they do this as a matter of routine.
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Yeah, I've never heard that. Yeah, people come to work that, you know, welcome to the team here some basics. You know, hey, you know all the stuff. Let's get busy. I want you to get you know, get busy and make a difference right away.
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And a month later, you know, there are 10 degrees off true from what the manager wants. And now it's work. Now it's not exactly negative feedback.
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But you're off track and therefore essentially inefficient relatively speaking isn't it safe though to assume that professionals know that that they got hired to do a job.
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They're getting a paycheck. Right. So I'm I'm fulfilling my end of the bargain. I'm giving you a paycheck. And isn't there kind of an implicit agreement that I'm going to give you paycheck and you're going to do your job.
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Yeah, I think that's so we worry about getting our job done. But I would say that most people know this to be true. If they sat down and thought about it.
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But they don't act on it, which if you know something and don't act on it is as if you don't know it or it's not a priority.
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I think probably the single biggest way this manifests itself is fear. Fear of failure. We've said before that there are two motivating human emotions.
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They are love and fear. It's interesting that when people try to compare work and home at some point it begins to break down.
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And we generally don't recommend that managers call their teams like family. And we don't recommend that you use analogies about how your team your director like kids.
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And the reason for that is because the primary motivating emotion you have at home is love. A family stays together because of love and other things as well.
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The primary motivating emotion at work is fear. And there are an awful lot of books written on Amazon about how you have to love your direction. We talk about love.
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But there are many psychologists and professionals who suggest that we ought to change the motivating emotion at work to love. And of course the answer to that is you're never going to do that folks.
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Because if the motivating emotion was love they wouldn't have to pay you to go there. So you're right Mike. We all think about it at some level.
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But you've seen the start of our conferences when we do an effective manager conference. And we are talking about why we recommend the Trinity one-on-ones feedback coaching and delegation.
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And we start with the underlying principles. One of the two things managers responsible for in the first one is results. And we have people depending upon the organization some organizations nail it immediately.
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Oh, it's results get the job done. But I would say two thirds don't. Oh, you know, what's the first thing a manager is responsible for listening.
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You know, development of your employees. I mean, think about that Mike. I mean, we can talk you and I can talk about this for hours. Obviously imagine a manager telling you imagine if I worked for you long time ago before we started the firm.
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And you said, Hey, I've been noticing you've been doing some stuff and you're a little off track on things. Let's be clear about something more. What you think your primary job is. And I said, Mike, that's easy. It's developing my team.
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I mean, would your head explode a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, right. It's like really. And here's what would happen. I believe here's what happened in 90% of the cases. You would say back. Well, no, actually look, dude, I think that's important. But I think your first responsibility is to get the job done. And I would quickly say, because you're my boss. Oh, well, well, of course, that's right. Sure. Yeah.
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I mean, get the job done, of course. But the way I do that is by caring for and developing my team. And I would have covered things up, you know, appropriately. But deep inside, you'd be like horseman doesn't get it. Right. Right. He's lost track of the North star.
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I mean, we all worry about it. We all fear it. We all talk about it every day. But it sort of goes without saying. And sometimes the things that go without saying need to be said. So yeah, you really ought to say it. And as you'll see, there are parts to get in the job done that matter that are worthy of digging into the North star.
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So what we're saying, folks, is you sit down and you tell your new direct that results come first. Okay. It's not team. It's not care for each other. And these things sound so harsh when you can find a billion websites that say, you know, it's all about caring for teammates and so on.
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But everybody's first responsibility is get the job done. That means it behooves us to be crystal clear with our directs about what their job is.
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And speaking to which if you don't know what your boss requires of you, there's a cash for that. It's called getting your results from your boss.
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And that's more of a problem than might be obvious from just skipping through that. And we don't have time to go into it. But it's an issue.
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I've never done it. But once I tell people your first responsibility is results. I then say that often creates a problem for many people in this room because you couldn't say the way in the US anyway, you could say the pledge of allegiance, whichever kid knows.
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You couldn't do it. And people like, no, no, I'm pretty clear about my results. What I've never done say, okay, we're going to take a 15 minute break. We're going to really dig into this.
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I want everybody right now off the top of your head to write down three or five of the top responsibilities you have in a way that I will be able to read it and understand what your result is, what your goal is.
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I'd be willing to bet 20% of any group, which is shocking when it's the most important thing. And you should be able to write it down that fast. It should be second nature.
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It should be the thought you have all the time. You know, eyes on the prize, fix your eyes on your goal and don't let go of it no matter what.
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So what we're going to do in this cast is give you a framework for how to talk to your directs about results being more important than anything else.
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And we're going to use three key areas that are obvious around results or sub areas of results. And those are priorities, deliverables and deadlines.
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So here's how the discussion might sound with your directs. And of course, if you're a licensee, you can download these show notes and copy and paste these into a script that you use for a couple of days at home to get ready to have this conversation.
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And after you've done it 10 times, it'll be second nature.
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I'll tell you what I think do your job means.
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It means first, knowing your priorities. We all have too many things to do. Whether you realize that or not, a lot of people don't realize it because they stress about how much they have to do.
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But actually, that's by design. Nobody's going to ever be able to design every job perfectly balanced between work and time available because well, you can't.
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And you certainly can't when you consider varying levels of ability of each person in the role.
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And this company, every company, every organization changes often enough. You'd have hundreds of people sitting around doing nothing but reanalyzing jobs all the time if you wanted perfect work, time, balance in every role with every person.
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So that means every role in every organization in the world essentially is and when it taught when we talk about responsibilities is a choice between overworked and underworked.
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And believe me, if you think about it, you'll come to the same conclusion. Underworked is far worse.
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It creates situations where people create work for themselves to appear busy. And that work would be low value because it probably doesn't align with the organization.
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And it would also compete with the necessary work they're being paid to do. Plus, of course, either the pay would be a lot less or the company would have terrible productivity if everybody had less work than they had time.
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Because productivity is not how hard you're working. It's whether or not you're working on things that are contributing.
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And if you don't know it, productivity is the internal measure that best correlates with profitability. So for a corporation like ours, that would matter.
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So overworked is the choice that organizations make. It's how it is. There's no sense complaining about it. It's how all grade organizations, even just organizations that are surviving, it's how they're built.
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In fact, most people notice people who talk about how busy they are all the time, but they get infuriated by people who sit around and don't do anything, which should give you a good idea about why organizational line is actually about overworked.
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So the fact that you have too much to do is normal. The primary result of that is that you get to choose what you work on. You've got free will.
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But hopefully your free will is guided by the results that the organization says matter to it. And it's my job. I represent the organization to you. That's my role. It's my job to make those clear to you.
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If you want to work on something else, you may be making a choice to take time away from those key results. And your results that are aligned with mine are the ones that contribute ultimately to the organization success in the minds of the organization.
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And look, it's good that you're always having to choose because you'll never learn to be good at choosing what matters and what doesn't unless we let you start choosing. That's why you part of why you have too much to do.
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You may never have heard it put this way before. But you've been acting like overwork is normal and you like it in one way because you've probably been in jobs where you didn't get all your work done every day.
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By definition, then you've been choosing what to do and what not to do every day at work. So you have to choose your priorities and by priorities. I mean what you choose to work on. I can infer your priorities from your calendar, from your diary, from your agenda, from the kinds of things you send me.
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If you don't know your priorities, you start choosing poorly. Those choices get harder. So get your priorities clear in your own head and spend time on them.
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If you don't know what they are, ask me because that's a very high priority conversation for me. So we'll talk as soon as possible. And you're welcome to come to me once a quarter with list.
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I'm just here the things I'm working on thinking about working on, think that a line and don't and I'll cross some stuff off to make it easy for you.
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Another reason we want you to have more work than you can do is see if you can be creative enough to figure out how to get all that work done in a reasonable work day.
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Maybe you have an extra gear and I'm not talking about an extra gear that affects your family. I'm talking about an extra gear that allows you to get 10% more work done in an 8 or a 10 hour day.
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But you wouldn't be able to do that if you were underworked or precisely worked. In fact, you would be disincentivized to do it.
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Okay, something else about getting your job done and results is deliverables.
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So know what you owe to whom and buy when and make sure you do what you said you're going to do.
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The acceptance of a deliverable from me or anybody else creates a professional obligation to meet the deliverable or communicate effectively to change it.
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Get in the habit now of being a professional doing what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it, whether you want to or not without debate.
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If you don't understand what your deliverables are, ask. A lot of times we all get busy and we all sort of think everyone kind of agrees in a meeting that somebody's responsible for something but it's not clear and the thing they're responsible for is unclear as well.
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She was just asked or if you don't want to ask and if you remember I told you please ask in an early one of these first meetings.
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If you don't want to ask send a note back and say, hey, look, I think I got deliverable acts. Here's what I think it means.
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And early on, not asking questions here is often seen as a way to show you're a quick learner. Hey, I know I got that. I got that. It's good. I understood that.
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But look, don't kid yourself. We've all been in new situations. We've all felt that sense of not having our barons, not understanding context.
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So be careful. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Now's the time.
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Look, deliverables matter. Folks who have her reputation for meeting their deliverables are also known as folks who get things done.
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When you don't meet your deliverables, you're going to become known as somebody who makes excuses. Nobody likes that person.
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Lastly, third point, deadlines. Too many of us are too lackadaisical about deadlines here and everywhere else I've ever been.
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Think about how many projects you've been a part of where all the deadlines were met and the project came in on time and within budget.
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What's funny about that is it just doesn't happen.
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That's because we all have good reasons to be a little late to justify being a day or two late to not worrying about our little piece of a big piece of work.
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But our culture here is just all of our behaviors added up. Culture is behavior and meeting deadlines is either the way we behave or it's not.
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If we all slip things a little all the time, our culture is essentially one of being late to our customers and not meeting our obligations.
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That affects our reputation and reputation is easy to lose and hard to regain.
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So, meeting deadlines is part of your job. It's part of achieving results.
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So meet them. And look, I know you're going to miss deadlines. I am too.
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But it's a choice every time to miss a deadline. Make that choice rarely.
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And when you do communicate aggressively about the choice you've made, doing your job includes not only completing tasks but also letting others know that the task is done so their work can be combined with yours.
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It's part of being part of something larger than yourself.
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One final thing. All of this happens in contacts with other fundamentals, family, ethics, relationships.
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Doing your job doesn't mean don't draw this conclusion. It doesn't mean putting your work in front of your family. It doesn't mean behaving unethically and pursuit of results.
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Or at the expense of relationship with your colleagues. I expect you to meet all those standards as well.
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So, as an example, you can't just get mad at a colleague because they haven't done what you're asking to.
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You have to build relationships with them so that they have enough trust in you that when you ask them to do something and they say yes, they intend to do it, and they expect the same thing from you.
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It's not just results on tasks and deadlines that I've given you, but that your colleagues have given you as well.
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To be trusted, you must be trustworthy.
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So, I expect you to get all this done in the service of results and within the context of family and ethics and relationship with your colleagues.
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And frankly, I know you will. I'm really glad you're here. Let's get to work.
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I like it. And let me push back on you a little bit because those of you who are familiar with disc will know what I'm talking about when I suggest that sounds like a very high D speech.
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And for those who don't know disc, very patent-esque, very Margaret thatcher, very like that wasn't patent-esque.
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Was it? No, a high D like just like right wouldn't go into priorities and that's okay.
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But he'd say just get it done, right? Yeah, get it done. Yeah. But look, by that logic, the implication is that high D's think about getting the job done much more so than high S's do.
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Folks, if you don't know what disc is a high D is it take no prisoners make it happen get things done kind of person.
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And a high S is a warm fuzzy people first.
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Didn't father didn't mother kind of boss mom a bear kind of thing.
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But that's not so.
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Disc styles don't tell us about somebody's interest in getting the job done.
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They tell us how they go about achieving it and clearly it's in different ways.
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If you're effective, all effective people get the job done regardless of their disc behavioral tendencies.
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And so it would be good for high D managers to keep in mind that even those effective high S managers know that caring for their people and worrying about them is really their way of getting results.
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The point I think that's really interesting here is there are high S managers who have not told their most important thing to do is get results.
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And without that North star they end up thinking about taking care of their team and defending their team and protecting it from organizational influence at all costs senior people at all costs exactly.
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Yes, your D's don't do that now.
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These problem of course is they tend to be less connected with their teams which can be bad.
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So if you're thinking that was a high D thing you're missing the point that's a high A to Z thing results trump everything in organizations.
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And that's why often you see high D's at higher levels of the organization and higher percentage than would appear normal.
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And that's because they prize results and results are prized by the organization.
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Okay enough that was an interesting side light let me let me summarize border.
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So folks we're recommending you actually take time to tell new directs to focus on the work and get it done and to make sure they know that results matter more than anything else.
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And before I get email please folks don't tell me that marks and results are more important but you know gosh what about ethics and family I already covered that.
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Okay yes we have to do this within an ethical framework you cannot lie cheater steal in order to get results.
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And you have to do this in a normal work day you don't need to work 80 hours a week you don't even need to work 60 hours a week for most of us.
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So we recommend you tell your directs that results matter and that that means knowing their priorities knowing their deliverables knowing their deadlines and achieving them.
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Sometimes the things that go without saying need to be said and as I alluded to earlier we're recording this cast in 2017 the NFL's greatest team for the past 20 years has been the New England Patriots coached by Bill Bellachick.
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He's famous and you can look at YouTube for it for telling his team do your job.
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And I think there's actually a 2017 long form video from ESPN or Sports Illustrated about the Patriots winning last Super Bowl and it was his speeches do your job.
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Why is that important because that's what champions do?
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Okay thanks partner.
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Thanks everyone that's it we'll see you next week.
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Have a great one so long.