Chris McChesney, WSJ #1 Best Selling Author & Franklin Covey Executive | How To Use Simplicity & Transparency To Do Everything Better

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scotty Clary, and today I have an incredible interview for you. I am sitting down with Chris McChesney. He is the global practice lead of execution at Franklin Covey. He is a Wall Street Journal number one national best seller with the book, The Four Disciplines of Execution. Chris leads Franklin Covey's international practice team and practice implementations. Franklin Covey, you may have recognized him from or the name rather from Dr. Stephen Covey's book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. This is the organization that Dr. Covey created and obviously Chris is a part of his organization and he's been there since day one. He has implemented the four disciplines of execution speaking about leadership, transparency, simplicity in your life, in your business. He's worked on these disciplines with state of Georgia, Maria International, Shaw, Ritz Carlton, Kroger, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Frito Le, Lockheed Martin, Gaylord Entertainment, largest, some of the largest organizations in the world, he's the one that implements these practices that he's written about and that he teaches. It's a great show. Chris is an incredible, incredible charismatic individual. He's one of Franklin Covey's most sought after and requested speakers. You will love this episode. Stay tuned. He speaks about how to use transparency and simplicity to do absolutely everything better. Thanks again for joining me. Today I am sitting down with Chris McChesney who is a Wall Street Journal bestseller. He is the author of the four disciplines of execution. He is a leader at the Franklin Covey Institute. We've had two other individuals from this organization on the show. He has more than a decade in building out Franklin Covey's design and development through these principles. He's worked in leadership and management, organized consultation. He's helped organize organizations both his own as well as as well as some of his clients grow and manage pre-pandemic but also the tumultuous times we've had over the past year as well. Chris, we're going to break down what you've done to get into the spot you're in now, where you came from. How did you align with an awesome organization? I can say that now because I've read the book. I've interviewed two of your peers and now you're going to be the third. How did you get into Franklin Covey? Let's talk about the book, how it applies to people, pre-COVID, especially throughout COVID, and I'm just really happy to have you on. So thank you. Thanks so much Scott. Well, it's interesting that you asked that question. Now I got out of Franklin Covey because this month is 30 years. 30 years with the org. I know. I tell people I started it as an Eagle Scout project. I started to talk. Actually, that's a more credible. They would not interview me and I was in college at the time and Steven Covey was the Covey leadership center. Steven Covey was right down the street. I was huge. I see the seven habits book right over your left shoulder there. Right here. Yeah. And it just came out. He'd only been out about a year and I was dying to work like this was my passion. Like I had decided this was something I was going to do and they couldn't they wouldn't interview me. And so I had this crazy scheme and I pretended to work for the local newspaper. And I told them I was writing an article on the fastest growing companies in the state. And could I interview Steven Covey? And they wouldn't let me they wouldn't let me get near Dr. Covey. But I interviewed H.R. And then the second live. I told them I needed an internship and I really didn't. But while I was there interviewing them, I said I could use an internship and they hired me as an intern. The the newspaper published my article to keep me from being a complete liar. And four months later, I got called into human resources and they said, look kid, this is what you're doing is illegal. Like we cannot not on your part. They said on our part, there's no internship. We found this out. You've just been a stow away for four months. You can't say we don't have the heart to fire you. It's funny. There's an episode of Sidefeld where where Kramer just goes to work for some company. He doesn't work for it. But I did this before Kramer did it. And unlike Kramer, they did not fire me. They hired me on in 1991 for a few bucks an hour. And that is how I got on with Franklin Covey. That's an awesome story man. I had no idea that was your story before you. You just told me now that's a great story. That shows them tenacity. Now I wouldn't wouldn't highly recommend everybody. And you're like exactly what you did. But there's some lessons there. There's definitely some lessons. And if you want to go get it. And I would say that gets people's attention. If you start writing articles on them, good for you man. So this is your whole career. Your whole careers with this organization. I left for a year to do this radical for a company in 96. And yeah, that's fair to say. This has been my, yeah, 30 years. And the education that I got as much as you'd learned from being at Covey leadership and Franklin Covey as it became in 97. And that you're surrounded. You're always pushed. We always tell people that we say, you know, you're going to get pushed and stretched. The most learning really came from the clients. We learn a lot from the organizations and the leaders that we get to work with. If you're paying attention, you can learn a lot. Yeah, no, I agree. I think that that's probably some of the most rewarding work when you work in a consulting or a leadership or an organizational consulting role. So let's tee it up just for people like a quick sentence for people that don't know what Franklin Covey is. What's the organization trying to accomplish? Why has everybody heard about the seven habits? And sort of a three six because I think a lot of people like myself before I started interviewing everybody on your team. I've read the book. I know the book, but I didn't know the whole organization. So just a quick brief on that one. Yeah. So the Franklin Covey is a worldwide. We have we have over a hundred international offices and we're a pretty significant presence in the United States. Really leadership development firm is probably a good way to capture what we do, whether it's personal leadership or organizational leadership. And if there's something that is unique about our organization, we are very focused on first principles, underlying truths. Dr. Covey was a big believer that best practices were a dime a dozen. But if you could really identify a fundamental law, a truth, you think about avionics and flying an airplane, the four truths are lift, thrust, weight, and drag. Like if you understand those four principles or laws, you can go a long way. And so that's sort of if there's one theme that runs through our work, it's the understanding and the application of principles. I think probably still way to say it. Good, good, good definition. And what do you do? What's your day-to-day at Franklin Covey? All right. So I right now, they've been the last two years they've said, Chris, because I like to get in everybody's business. I said, Chris, this is your lane, Chris. We have a lane for you. You get to speak and you get to talk. And that's been really fun. So the last, basically the last two decades, I've been building a practice within Franklin Covey. So if you have ever thrown out the term intrapreneur, right, somebody that's an entrepreneur inside of an organization, that's kind of been a textbook definition of my role for the last two decades. It's been building this portion of the organization, this execution practice within Franklin Covey. And now they've said, you don't get to do that anymore, Chris. You get to, you get to, right? You get to talk. I think they took all the nonsense for me. They can handle it so now. It's very rewarding. I'm still very closely associated with the practice, but it's in more capable hands at the moment. Yeah, that's because, yeah. That's where eventually, you know, being in an organization, being in an organization for 30 years, the longest I've been in an organization is about seven or eight years. So I can only imagine after 30 years, you quasi feel like you run the show to some extent just because you've been there for such a long time. And I feel like you're a fixture, right? The organization changed so much that it's a different organization today than it was seven years ago. And the seven years before that. So even though, yeah, even though I've been there a long time, it's, it just keeps, you know, organizations reinvent themselves and they morph. So it's been, yeah, it's, it's not been, uh, it's, it's not been redundant at all. No, it's true. And that's actually sort of a testament to, I think, um, uh, how a lot of, we're going to talk about this. And I was actually, I was actually listening to your podcast with Scott, which I'm pretty sure just went live today. So listening to it was working out this morning. And, um, one of the topics you brought up was pivoting. And it's actually, that was a beautiful segue, unplanned, beautiful segue. So pivoting, staying with the times. Let's speak about, um, some of the things that you are witnessing with businesses because you deal with a lot of them, you learn a lot of lessons from the businesses that you consult with, um, how they have managed themselves over the past two years. Now God forbid, two years. Um, what are some things that you're seeing? Well, there's a high level dynamic. It's a really good question Scott. I think, let me, let me start with what's universal? What, what appears to be universal? What appears to be universal is that everybody seems to be at a pivot of some kind right now, which is unique over the last 20 years that we've been doing this work. You know, healthcare is always talking about how much change is going on there. And this industry and high tech complains about the rate and the pace of change. So there's always that change dynamic, but nothing like what we're experiencing right now, coming out of the pandemic, whether you're changing for survival more often right now, people are pivoting and changing to drive an opportunity. They're trying to take advantage of something, or their customers changing, because their customers changing, they're having to change. And so everybody seems to be in this pivot spot. Well, the interesting corollary that goes along with that right now is that on a human level, people, the people that have to drive this change are experiencing so much personal uncertainty and ambiguity and change. It's like this kind of perfect execution storm where everybody's got to move, but the people that have to do it are like, I can't take anymore crazy. Like, give me a break, would you? And so that dynamic, like when you talk about that, everybody goes, do you have cameras? Like, are you spying on us? Did you? Like, so that is the, now that it looks differently in different places, but that theme about moving, having to pivot, and with a group of people that are pretty much, yeah, I've had about all I can take right now. Yeah. So, okay, so that's about the exact situation that's probably occurring in almost every company in the world right now, give or take, right? Except people maybe that already had something that was optimized for, say, a virtual event providers or people that already were selling masks, pre-pandemic. Everybody else is trying to figure it out, right? So, yeah. So, what are some of the ways that people are surviving? What are some of the ways that you see leaders actually overcoming personal issues? Well, simultaneous dealing with mental health, stress, pressure, sickness sometimes, but also guiding their organization successfully, because it's happening. Yeah, you know, the human condition is an interesting one. People are capable of complaining under the best of times, right? We will take any luxury for granted. We have never been more prosperous as a world than we are right now, and we've never been bigger belly acres, right? Even in a pandemic, people from 100 years ago would go, what are you complaining about? Look at your lives people. So, there's this one dynamic that says, yeah, you can't make people happy no matter what. But then there's this other thing on the positive side, which is people are incredibly resilient at the same time. So, even though we belly ache, and we always find ourselves complaining about even the best of circumstances, but at the same time, I've seen a lot of really great responses. Some organizations will tell us, we're executing on things today that we have not been able to execute on. Like, this shook us out of the malaise that we've sort of been in. So, you hear that. Our advice and the clients that we're working with, we're really trying to get leaders heads around this one idea that says, look, we know you have to pivot, we know you have to execute. Can you do it in a way that doesn't increase personal ambiguity and uncertainty? Like, what if the one thing you have to execute on right now? What if that didn't spike uncertainty and ambiguity? The way that new goals usually do? What if that new thing felt like a winnable game? What if it felt like the one piece of sanity in another wise crazy world? And it's been a really nice, that's been a really nice way to utilize kind of our methodology in the four disciplines is, let's take, let's take ambiguity and, you know, gut wrenching uncertainty out of goal setting and performance right now. This is a really, this is a really nice time to do that. So, that's kind of been our angle and how we've been working with people. So, let's, let's, let's queue up the four disciplines and what they're actually, so four disciplines are four disciplines that are focused on executing, executing in a business context, in a leadership context. This is obviously what the, you know, this is the book that you just re-released. Today, actually, today, we're recording it on Tuesday, April 20th. Yeah, so, congratulations. That's exciting. It's very exciting. So, actually, so what's the, what's the re-release about? Like, if people have already checked out this book, what is the re-release? And then I actually want to go into some of the more tactical stuff, but I'm just curious, what's the, yeah. So, the, if you're familiar with four disciplines, the re-release, about 30% new content, really a lot of focus on where to use this approach and where not to use this approach. This is not, you know, vitamin C. This is not good for what ails you. This is heavy medicine, right? And where do leaders apply these disciplines and where not to? How do leaders of leaders we go into much more detail on how organizational leaders apply this? We do a lot with leaders that are finding themselves managing projects and they're not project managers. How do you apply the disciplines to a project, go instead of a performance type goal? And then finally, sustainability. A lot of organizations have been at this for almost a decade. How do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it alive? So, those are kind of, I guess, the headlines or the highlights of how, of what's new in the second edition. And there's valid points because I can, I can tell you from personal experience, the, the leaders of leaders point is something that nobody really, nobody learns in school, the very difficult thing. It's one of the most difficult things to figure out. And then also, just the project management piece when, again, another leader of leaders things when you're managing tasks that if you're in sales and you love selling and you move into sales manager and you move into director sales and you move into VP sales, well, now you have to manage projects. And now, and actually that's one of the reasons why some people don't like those executive roles because there's a lot of leaders of leadership type requirements and there's a lot of project management type requirements that is so far from the actual act, right? Yeah. Anyways, good advice and we'll get into it. I'm glad you said that about leaders of leaders. I'm glad that, because the one of the co-authors of the book, Jim Hewling and I, are actually starting right now. We had the same thought you did. We're starting right now another work on leading leaders. And we don't know if that's the name of the book. It's a damn good name and it's the most difficult thing. There's a whole chapter on this and we, we, we had to cut this chapter short. We had so much on this topic and we, we had to say, it's got, we said the same thing you did. There's not a lot out there. There's a lot of leadership in a general sense. But in terms of the specific dynamics of when you're a leader and you have to lead another leader, that is not, at least, at least we've not seen a great deal on those unique dynamics. So that is something that we're looking at right now. Oh, it's a good, it's a good topic and I know that the, the audience here, some of them, everybody here is career focused trying to build something themselves. So I would just say, if you aren't leading leaders right now, regardless of whether or not you're starting a side hustle, building something, you're an entrepreneur and you want to build something in an organization, there will be a point where this will be applicable in a career. I mean, I'll be today. But figure it out. So you don't have to go through hell and trial by fire when you're actually living it. Anyway, so we're going to, yeah, this will be the reward of success. Exactly, exactly. You won't be leading leaders. That's right. That's, yeah. Okay, so we're trying to remove ambiguity. We're trying to take on tasks that ambiguity so that everything's clear. Everything is comforting. We see the end result. We see the vision. So first of all, how do we do that? And then how do we apply Sadie's four principles to executing when we have that clear vision? So first, how do we get rid of that ambiguity? Yeah, so let's do this. Let's, let's put up sort of two obstacles and then let's maybe walk through the discipline. So the one obstacle is it's not that people we think this, but it's not that people necessarily resist change. We think people resist change because it looks like they're resisting change a lot. What they resist is uncertainty. People initiate change quite a bit. So it's, it's really unfair to say that it's a human dynamic to resist change. What people resist is the uncertainty that often comes with change. Okay, so if you said uncertainty is sort of one issue. And then the, here's the second issue that gets in the way of execution. And it's, it's urgency. It took us a long time to sort of see this. This was hiding in plain sight that any goal that you're trying to achieve, any strategic priority, anything that's really important will always compete with the day job. And we've given the day job a nickname called the whirlwind, right? So this day job, this whirlwind always feels urgent, immediate. Oh, I've got to get back to so and so. Oh, I promised I might have that done. Oh, I've got to do this. Oh, I've still got seven unanswered emails. Oh, oh, oh, right. And so we're working all day long. And you can live in the whirlwind and not move on anything strategic. And, and here's the other problem. In the moment when a human being is confronted with a choice between something that's happening right now, or spending energy on something far more important, but less urgent, the human default does not go to importance. The human default goes to urgency. This is the great barrier to strategic execution. We're not wired for it. We are wired for immediacy. So you think about those two factors, this, this resistance to uncertainty and this, this whirlwind of urgency that we have to execute through. So if you just think of those two things and then the, what are the, what are the four disciplines? All right. Well, the first one is called discipline ones called focus on the wildly important. And it's a decision that a leader or an entrepreneur, a professional person makes when they say, I am going to give something disproportionate energy. I'm not going to ignore it doesn't mean I got to ignore everything else. Everything else can go into whirlwind, but something's going to get disproportionate energy. And I'm going to, and not only am I going to narrow the focus, but I'm going to, it's a little bit like focusing a camera. I'm going to bring it into focus. I'm going to give it a starting line. I'm going to give it a finish line. I'm going to give it a deadline. And there's a whole science around how you do that in organizational setting and how you do that between levels. But that's what the first discipline is all about it. The first discipline is all about targeting, getting really clear on, well, let me, let me give you a quote. I really like this. This, this was something that was said to us 20 years ago by the gentleman who's now the president of Chick-fil-A. He was VP of operations at the time. His name is Tim Tisopolis. And he said, when I meet with a leader, so you got one of the, yeah, one of the planets really good operators, right? He said, when I meet with a leader, the first thing I want to know, where is that leader putting disproportionate focus? Where are they spending? Like, I don't want to know your seven priorities. I want to know number one. I want to know what's your big bet. What's your plate right now? Otherwise, I know if they don't have that, they're on the defensive. They're just, they're just trying to put out fires, right? They'll put out fires. They just want to get through the week, right? And he says it really helps me know where a leader's head is. And I think that little statement started to influence the way we use the discipline. So I got discipline one is about what I'm going after. Discipline two is called act on the lead measures. So if discipline one is about the principle of focus, discipline two is the principle of leverage. It basically says, look, I'm just, I've just identified something that by definition, I can't move. Otherwise, I wouldn't have identified. I've just deliberately picked this really important thing that's really hard. And so if you think about a rock that's too heavy to move, yeah, and then you picture a lever. If you get a fulcrum, you get a lever under there, right? And you know, what are the characteristics of a lever? Well, a lever, unlike the rock, you can move it. The lever is influenceable. And when the lever moves, the rock moves. So the lever is predictive. And so for 20 years, we have been, I had our heads into this idea of where's the leverage. Okay? So the classic example that everybody gets is weight loss. So people know, okay, if losing weight is the heavy rock, I've just not been able to accomplish. Right? Diet and exercise really are the lever. Right? I could act, I don't always act on them, but I can. Right? And they're predictive. If I stay with it, it works. Right? We don't believe it worked, but it works. Right? So it's predictive and influenceable. And what we found is that in every field of human endeavor, if you can get the targets low enough, down to where the work is happening, you can find leverage points. You can find what we call lead measures. Now, a lead, so a lead measure predictive and influenceables, not the same as a predictive indicator. Just one little distinction on this. If I was trying to grow corn, right? And crop production was my wildly important goal. That's what we call the targets in discipline one. We call them wigs or wildly important goals. My wildly important goal or my lag measure, right, was crop growth, like similar to weight loss. A predictive indicator of crop growth would be rainfall, right? We had a lot of rainfall. We're going to have a good crop growth. Okay. Well, you can't control it. Okay. Very good. It's got right. It's predictive, but it ain't influenceable, right? Lead measures are not predictive indicators. Lead measures are true leverage. They're influenceable and they're predictive. All right. So getting, so you might have an organization with eight, nine different teams. Each team, we really limit you to one wildly important goal per team per work group at a time. This is what we found. People can handle the day job plus one, right? So they got one wig. The team has been very involved in creating the lead measures discipline three now. It's called keep a compelling scoreboard. And it's really about for me, it's about throwing the game on switch. Like that's that to me, that's a that's a tangible, it's a binary switch when someone goes, all right, it's live game on, right? And I engage. And the hypothesis that you've created a discipline one and discipline two doesn't put it into motion, but the minute you go game on and for us, that's been a scoreboard. So we have an app for DX OS that we've got over a half a million people on right now utilizing and in very simple terms, it's not like, it's not like a business scoreboard. It's not like a spreadsheet. It's not like, well, like a coach, we think of it this way, it's not a coach's scoreboard. You need those, you have those. This is a players scoreboard, okay? So if you think about the scoreboard at any athletic event, it's much more like that than it is the spreadsheet they hand the coach at half time. So that's discipline three. Does the team, can we take what we did in disciplines one and two and can we make it go game on? And the discipline four is create a cadence of accountability. And that is every week, right? Every team that owns a scoreboard, each individual making commitments and then reporting the next week, like in addition to the 100 things I got to do this week, what's the one or two things that are going to ensure we do the lead measures? Like if my lead measures are diet and exercise, right? What would a commitment be? We'll do diet and exercise. No, no, no, no, we know that. My commitment might be it's going to rain next week. So I'm going to get that gym membership because I hate running in the rain. Or I'm going to go to Whole Foods because I've got these recipes, but I don't have ingredients, right? And I've got to, right, I've got to, right, want to make sure that I'm not eating junk and that I'm hitting that calorie lead measure. So discipline one, get the focus, discipline two, get the leverage, discipline three, game on, and then discipline four, if you've ever heard the adage force against leverage, that's right, that's applying that force. So what we found is by doing that, we're able to drive activities into an otherwise schedule of urgency and do it in a way that it doesn't feel overwhelming to people where they're like, I don't even know where to start. So now we have breaks it down. Yeah, so this is, this is the formula to overcome that inherent human need to focus on the urgent and then align it with that North Star metric, those business goals. This is the formula that allows you to action, it's actionable now. All right, this is, I like this a lot. I like this a lot. So this is, this is what you have been working on with organizations to pivot, successful. Yeah, but also, but yes, we've been looking for it for some time. Yeah. People working on some ages, yeah, 20 years. We've been refining. We've been refining. We remember what I said about Franklin Covey and principles, like these are the principles, focus, leverage, engagement, accountability. I love it. Okay. So what has that been doing for organizations in COVID that are trying to pivot? Let's let's work through some examples or your experience in case studies with ever you want to go into so we can, you know, see the result because yes, these are great. They make sense. You've probably used them on companies. Yeah, one of the things we've been amazed with is how universal they are. So, you know, we've had organizations that are trying to create a new fiber at Kimberly Clark, right, which is like weird science. Like you're trying to create matter that's like never really, you've never even seen before, right? And you've got these research and development engineers. So I'm one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, you've got one of our co-authors, BJ Walker, goes around now. She's sort of famous at her own right. She goes around state government on ridiculous problems. She used the four disciplines 15 years ago to reduce, check this one out, reduce repeat cases of child abuse. She lowered it by 60% across an entire state. Georgia went from having the biggest backlog of social services cases to having no backlog at all. Like she's a weapon. And so like the application of this was way broader than we first, like we were thinking, you know, we want to have a more consultative sales approach. We were thinking, you know, it just pure like business terms and it's amazing in those in those areas. If you do it right, like it's like anything else. You got to do it. How do you do it? How do you do it right then? Application. Well, all right. So how do you do it? Right. That's a lot. That's a lot of what's in the second book is like we put this thing out there, right? It sold a million copies and we got people trying it, right? We have our consulting practice. So we have a number of people, you know, a big chunk of what we do is helping people with this, but there's a lot of people doing it on their own with the book. And we learned, wait a minute. Oh, we know what we said, but what we said isn't always what they heard. So the second book gives us a chance to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, so when we say wildly important, we don't mean your biggest goal. Like we know rev, we know that profitability is the wildly important goal in a sense, but that's not what we meant. What we meant was what's the targeted objective? What's the specific objective? It's it's increasing subscription revenue in first time buyers. That's the wildly important goal. Like we were, we were talking about what's the most critical chapter in the book. That's your wig. They would give us the title of the book and we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't, if you start with the title of the book, there is no lead measure for that. Like it breaks down. So there were just these ways that we started pivoting around. So I would say, how do you do it right? You know, getting tactical with it, you know, really picking your battles, truly focusing was a critical piece. Lead measures, let the teams own the lead measures. Even if you're sure as a leader, you know the answer, you ruin it. If you in this sense, if you just give them the answer because you took all the engagement out of it, let them crack the code, let them own it. Like one of the things we say is this is for four disciplines is for goals that you can't accomplish just because you're the boss. Like if you can fix it, if you can mandate it or buy it, then mandate it or buy it and be done with it. Okay. For the excess for the stuff, you can't mandate and you can't buy. If you can't mandate it and you can't buy it and you've got to get the hearts and minds of your people involved, that's where this stuff really makes an impact. So how do you utilize your people? So there's like there's like little subset rules inside of each one and people, people aren't always great at at the first time they try it, but it's like any game you learn, we think of it like a game. Once you played it a couple of rounds, you're like, oh, I got this thing now. I know what to do with this thing. So don't give up on it. If you get frustrated, don't give up on it. I could see that because this, like you said, if you can mandate it or if you can mandate it or you can buy it, do that, but this is meant to align the team, to bring the team in, to get them to see the vision, to get them to see the goals so that everybody can execute, right? There's congruence. But there's 80% of your work is like already locked in like the day job, right? And then all the fight, you know, all the investments we make, all that's boss decisions. So four disciplines is for that like 20% of the effort where we say we've got to have a breakthrough. Yeah. That's the big deal. But when it's a breakthrough, that's where these rules apply. No, I was going to say it's a big deal when you're trying, especially in a pandemic environment, when you're trying to realign the org towards something that could save your business or your org. But one of the things when you're doing major realignment is getting that buy-in and maybe not everybody read the book and maybe you say, hey, go check out the book and they don't, they don't want to read the book and they don't buy into it. So what do you do? What do you do when your team's not buying into it? So we wrote a, wrote an article recently kind of for non-book readers called the five traps that leaders fall into. And it was sort of like without getting into the full methodology, there's just some things that leaders can be very clear on, even if even if you haven't fully dove into the full methodology. So we would say, so let's maybe, let's do this like don'ts. Like here are the things you don't do. So there is no fullness of execution, but as a leader, don't do this. So first of all, don't gang tackle goals. Don't overgoal the organization. Now you may have a lot of changes that you can make. And excuse me, there may be a lot of changes you have to make. And if you can buy some of those changes, okay, we're going to need new equipment in the back room. We're going to need, we're going to need to hire a new marketing partner. We're going to need, right, we're going to need to buy that ad campaign. We're going to need to, right, stuff I can buy. And then stuff I can mandate. Okay, we need a new structure. Okay, we're going to have the ICAs reporting to the RPLs. And you know what I mean? We can, we can, we can, right, those things, yeah, we can handle the number of those. But when it comes to breakthroughs, when it comes to, oh, this is a goal, either they're, they're either going to be into this, or it's not going to work. Don't do more than one of those per team at the same time. Mm-hmm. So that's if that's right. That's like a leadership law. Like even if you don't buy into our whole methodology, like don't violate that law. Do the other one. Don't substitute concepts for targets. It's very easy for leaders to get attached to concepts, right? We have got to be more consultative with our customers says the boss in the memo that they forget about 30 seconds after they've read it. Right? That's a concept, right? What's a target, right? How do we, how do we be more? Okay, you know, how many accounts do we have where we, we're talking to multiple contacts at that account? Okay, I don't know. I just do that out, right? But, but what, like concepts don't execute targets execute the language of execution. So be sure that whatever you're pushing isn't a concept. It's a target. That would be something you don't do. Oh, here's another one. Don't confuse. Don't confuse persuasion with engagement. Okay. Oh, it's a good one. It's a good one. In other words, like I'm a leader and I like I'm so guilty of this as a person as a human being. I am so guilty of this. But don't live under this myth that if I can just condense them how right the answer is they'll do it. That oddly has very little to do with whether they'll do it. Those that there go brilliant, Chris. That's fantastic. Family, key to our future. And then they'll forget they ever talked to you and they'll go back to the day job. You don't persuade, right? It's more about can I involve them? Can I engage them? Will, can I get them to help me find the answer? As opposed to, you know, convincing them that I'm smart and I'm a good boss and my strategy is good. Like, geez, I had to learn that one the hard way. And people I work for will tell you, yeah, we're not sure Chris has really learned that. Well, no, it's tough though, that's just these like there's just these they're just some sort of higher level laws about right when it comes to when it comes to execution. No, I was just going to say that's probably the hardest thing to do. It's to it's to get people to buy in and you always have and I actually didn't I didn't mean get leaders to buy in. I actually meant get your team to buy in when you have like naysayers on your team as well because that's incredibly difficult. If you haven't shown the results, they yeah, the fault to what they've been doing. That's right. And so one thing on that we've realized too is that if you look at an average team, you have sort of a spectrum in terms of the something we call an adoption curve. Right. So they'll be let's say we got a team of 10 people. This is this is like a wild generalization, but you'd be surprised how often it's okay. Okay. Okay. Right. So you got a team of 10 people and you're trying to do something new. You got two of them that are right in there and supporting you right out of the shoots. You know more than set it. They would matter. They might have been doing it before you set it. Okay. Those are what we call the models. We'd love to model everybody after them. Then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got two people. They're not going to do it no matter what you with me right there. We call those the never's. So you get the models on one end. You get the never's on the other. Yeah. And inevitably you've got these six folks in the middle who are the not yet. They're not yet there, but they say all the right stuff. They're like, yeah, I get why you're doing it. I understand it. Totally support what you're doing Chris, but then they don't do anything. All right. So you got see got models, not yet and never's. Here's the irony. Most leaders fixate on the never's because they're this visible example of what you don't want. And they fight with you and they argue with you, but the truth is the never's are no different than the not yet. They're all not doing anything. Yeah. And we fixate. And so the first thing we tell leaders is let go of your energy around the never's. They're never coming over. Promote them to customer. But don't give that your energy. And by the way, and so then the second place that leaders tend to focus after they're done focusing on the never's is they focus on the models because the models are so rewarding and they're so exciting to be around. And there's such a validation of your great strategies. But guess what? The models are already doing it. There's no opportunity there. All your opportunity is with the six. Those are the people to get the least amount of attention. So one of the mantras that we have an execution on to your question sky is move the middle. Don't right. If I got to work with the never's, I got to deal with human issues. And I got to deal with why you didn't get the promotion. Why I got the promotion. Why you didn't get the promotion. Why are you disagree with this? All your gear. Like no, like don't give that your energy right now. Your number one objective is the six people in the middle who could be doing it. We have the ability to do it, but are so lost at the day job. And that's a great place to start. Matter of fact, this same the same bell curve works across franchises where you have hundreds of units working for you, move the middle. You're always going to have, we tell leaders this, you are always going to have variability. You're always going to have pockets of great performance. And you're always going to have, whether you are a Marriott or whether you're the worst hotel company in the world, you're going to have great performers and you're going to have variability. But leaders just because you have variability does not mean you have to accept the shape of your curve, right? You want to move where you want to be is you want, you want seven modeling, one still in the not yet and two never's. And you get all the results you can handle with that formula like that. So that's just it's a mindset around how you tackle those objectives that require that human buy it. That was a very high level cursory cut, but no, it's a good advice. It's good advice because I know that that's there's there's just speaking from experience like these are the issues that I've dealt with in my career and I see other people struggle with leading leaders and getting buy in. And the only thing that we actually didn't touch on that's also a huge pain point when you're trying to strategize in an organization, you have some sort of leadership position, you have to figure out how to manage up. And that's another thing if you read this book and you love this stuff and how do you manage it? I don't know as a whole other show maybe, but that's also a pain in the ass, right? All right, let's do it because that's also useful for people. And just this is more personal than the four disciplines. There's one there's one insight we know from four disciplines when it comes to managing up. First insight is be very aware of where you have a concern versus where you have influence. You know, that seven habits book over your left shoulder, his predominant model in there is the circle of influence, circle of concern, model, right? People who are highly effective do not put energy against things just because they concern them just because you don't like it, just because you're angry with it, just because you think it's stupid, just because it hurts you. But the whole world has fallen into this crazy victim mentality. That is just giving energy to the circle of concern, right? The circle of influences, all right, what can I actually influence? Where is this leader actually listening to me over which results do I actually affect? And the rule is when people put energy against their circle of influence that smaller circle, it gets bigger. When people put energy against all the things that concern them, their circle of influence gets smaller. You can watch. That is the number one most, in my opinion, most useful mental model for managing a career, putting energy against your circle of influence, okay? So that's rule sort of, that's the dominant rule with number one. One of the things that you can do when it comes to managing up is understand the agenda of your leaders. Be less concerned about persuading them and be more concerned about understanding them. All right, maybe I don't like what you're doing. But let me understand why, like people are really useful. You can feel as you listen to people, the greatest need of the human soul is to be understood. When you take the time and you invest in a leader that you think is crazy, what you fight first of all, they'll give you the time if you're really interested in understanding them. And you don't have an agenda other than to understand what is it they're really trying to accomplish? They'll talk to you. Right? So you feel your influence start to expand, right? As you first of all, you recognize where you're going to give energy and second, you really invest in understanding them. Third, when it comes to what you do, even though a leader, let's say a leader has got ridiculous number objectives that they're piling on top of you here this all the time. They want me to do this, they want me to do this, they want me to do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can think of more things, they have more things on you as well. They can only think of 12. That's why you got 12. If they could think of 20, you'd have 20. All right, here's the rule. Even though they can put all those on you, mentally put all those things just in the day job. Give it whatever you can, do the best you can, but you leaders, you still get to pick what's the wig. Within your own circle of influence, you get to say within your own team, you get to say, hey, I know they want us to do these 12 things, but guess what? We're doubling down on subscriptions for first time users. And we think it's going to have a halo effect on a whole bunch of other stuff. We have we have a plant manager at Frito Lake Tellus after we presented the four disciplines. He said, I just got plant manager of the year. He said, I didn't know anything about your four disciplines. He said, but last year, and that's kind of where I got the 12 from. He said, he said, they gave me 12 critical objectives, but our team only focused on one. And we were plant of the year. Because the one thing that we hit had a nice halo effect. They don't know that we didn't spread our energy evenly across all 12. So anyway, that's just some top of mind. You still get to what doesn't matter who your boss is. You still get to apply these principles within your circle of influence. And the best way to manage up is what Dr. Covey teaches around habits four, five, and six. You know, and have it five. That's code for think win win, seek first to understand and center jobs. Yeah. Very good. Very good. No, very good advice. I appreciate you filling the gaps. I don't remember what four, five, and six, or I've taught my. I was like, oh shit. Yeah. No, that's good. That's good. Okay. So we went through a lot of stuff with the book. I want to just ask a couple rapid fire just about your career and some less than you know. Before we before we move off, is there anything else that you wanted to just plug, speak about book otherwise that we didn't go into? No, this is this is great. We're very accessible. If you're if you're if you'd like more on this, if you want to do we do a lot of virtual conferences now. We do live. We're getting back into live conferences. Chris McChesney 40x.com. If you if you if you if you're interested in having if you need a speaker or that sort of thing or you think this is a good topic. And then also the the the just Franklin Covey.com the website for any of the tools on this. If you interested in the app, you can learn all about that at at Franklin Covey.com. Nice. Nice. Okay. So if you I'll put some you're going to send me some links or we'll get some links. I'll put them in the show notes too. So you can go check that out. Thank you so much Scott. Yeah. No, no, it's my pleasure. Yeah, thank you for coming on. Okay. Some quick some quick wrap of fire. One piece. Yeah, for sure. No, no. So one piece of advice that you'd give somebody who wants to pursue a career in. I was going to say similar to yours. You have to define your career though before you give advice on how to pursue it. There are a lot of people that want and I wanted to do this 20 years ago. So what's yeah, go ahead. It took a while. My one piece of it. First of all, I followed some mentors. Jim Stewart around execution. Stephen Covey, Mahan Kalsa. Like I I found the people that were doing the work that I really wanted to understand and I found ways to support them and help them and learn from them. So I heard it when I was in college. There was a speaker and the speaker said stand on the shoulders of giants. And man, that that was some advice that paid dividends for me. I'm going to add an appendix to that. What you said was not only to learn from them, but you helped them. And I think that's where people miss the mark. They don't offer any value and they just say, Hey, can you jump on a call? Can you teach me something? And some people will do that. But you really want to stand out because if the if the person is worth the time, there's a hundred other people asking them that as well. So sometimes you got to write an article about them. I was going to work for Stephen Covey or I was going to go to jail. Yeah, no, I don't think it's cool. A quote attributed to Einstein, which is there there are a few problems that can withstand the constant onslaught of human thought. It's a good quote. I like you want to do something. You keep working the problem. Maybe you don't get the thing you're after, but you'll get something close. Yeah, good. I like that. Okay, what's what's a myth about leadership that you'd like to debunk? I think the one that I was talking to a minute ago that the key to leading people is persuading them. Good. Good. I think it's sort of an unstated myth. You know, the key to leading people is valuing them and engaging them and listening to them and letting them influence you and persuasion is kind of a byproduct of all of that. And it often happens with people who still disagree with you. And they're like, yeah, if I was in your shoes, I wouldn't do what you're doing, but you're really a great person. You've really helped me and you're sure I'll support you, Chris. I think you're crazy, but I'll support you. So that's what it looks like. It's a good lesson. It's a good lesson. Okay, resource could be book podcasts that you'd recommend people go check out. The other book right over your left shoulder. Let's move one down to from seven habits to atomic habits, man. James Claire. That's a good one. Dude is on it. That's why I got my kids reading. We're gonna have a dinner this this this with their home. And they know the only people that get to go to that dinner are the people that have read the book. I have seven children. So they know, you don't go to cheesecake factory. I like that. I don't know if that's persuading or if it's just like mandating. You don't have to read the book, but also when we go to cheesecake factory, we're talking about atomic habits. Yeah. And cheesecake factory is damn delicious. So I wouldn't miss that. All right, a lesson you tell your younger self. Really be okay with failure. Really be okay with failure. That it's gonna feel like failure most of the time. And you know, if you can just stay in the game, even when it looks like you're failing, right? It's the quitting. That's the real failing. And emotionally it feels bad. Feeling does not feel good, but all growth seems to be on the other side of that. I like that. I like that a lot. And then last question, what does success mean for you? Had this conversation with my oldest with my daughter yesterday. So you're good. You set up for this. I really like, first of all, let me tell you, I like the journey and I keep reminding myself that I like the journey. Like it's okay. Even though, even though everything isn't where you want it to be, it's okay. Like maybe the, maybe loving the journey is success. Maybe there isn't a point where you get to the top of the mountain. And you say, all the kids are happy. And the business is rolling in on its own. And you've got the perfect life balance. And you know, you know, I have a big water skier and I've been able to ski consistently at, you know, all six bullies at 34 miles an hour. And then maybe there is no summit. Maybe success is really loving the journey. And I sounds a bit cliche, but I'm kind of there. I think that it sounds cliche, but it's true. Because I know people that at every level of their life, they've been successful to, they've been the definition, the classical definition of success. And you make 100K. And there's more. You make a million. And there's more. You make 50 million. And you're still doing something else. You exit your company and all of a sudden you're building a new company because now you're bored with your life. Like people never stop. And I think that's really the, I watched a YouTube clip on Floyd May Weather, watching boxing YouTube clips lately. And it was never enough. Like I thought, you know, come on, 100 million, 500 million. Really? Wasn't, you know, he, he still wanted to scratch that. It's got to be about, it's got to be about the journey. It has to be. And, and people that are struggling, it's, I don't want this to come across as unsympathetic to the reality that a lot of people deal with. Yeah, yeah, I know that too. But seriously, there is no end. So I, I'm aligned. 100%. Get to a point where you're happy, where you're safe, where you're healthy. And then that should be your benchmark. And then from there, enjoy the journey. But hustle to get to that point. Somehow Spotify put a song on my playlist or, or you know how it'll give you suggested songs and stuff. Yeah. One of the title of the songs is called The Richest Guy in the Cemetery. Yeah. I don't want to be the, who wants to be The Richest Guy in the Cemetery? Like, like, that's the song, right? With just about that. And that if, yeah. Now, but let me say this too. One of the things I've told my children is that I don't care if they struggle in their careers. But I don't want them to be complacent. Like just like there's no, you know, maybe there is no summit. At the same time, I think settling is an equally bad sort of a problem. Like, I think, I think this whole mortal existence of ours is really wired to growth and stretching is a very good thing. And I think part of enjoying the journey is not to be stagnant. Like, I've told, I've told my kids, I've got some sun and laws now as well. I've got a bunch of adult children. And I've told all of them, like, I want something, I want something that will really challenge you to your core. Like, maybe you'll make money, maybe you'll struggle, whatever, you'll probably do both, probably make some money, then you won't make some money, right? Then you'll make some money, then you won't make some money, right? Whatever, right? But like, I like people being tested. And I love the growth that comes with that. That's part of the, that's part of, I think that's a really important part of the human journey. Yeah, I agree. And I think that it's not just philosophical or theoretical because you see people that retire and they die. They die when they retire. They die when they have nothing else to do. Yeah, that's right. We're not built to your age. Like, right away. Yeah, right, right away. It's not, doesn't take long. It's an 18-month like death sentence a lot of times. Like, you have got human beings are built for progress and growth and contribution, right? And we, right, we attribute really fast if we're not careful. Yeah, yeah, no good advice. Okay, last thing before we close up, where do people connect with you online? Do you have socials that you want to plug in the show? Yeah, LinkedIn is my favorite. Yeah, just, just, just, uh, Chris McChesney on LinkedIn. And, uh, and then that, if you want to reach out, my business manager, Nick Smith, he's great guy. He responds to all the inquiries on, uh, on the website, uh, chrismicchesney40x.com. And you can get me through the Franklin Covey website as well. And, um, just Scott, it's been a pleasure, man. I really enjoyed our conversation today. It was, it was, it was, it was unique conversation. Thank you, man. I appreciate that.