“Soaking it up in a hot tub with my soul mate.”
How many of you played sports in high school? How many of you have listened to a voicemail that you left for someone else and cringed at the sound of your own voice? For some reason, we decided having a podcast was a good idea, and every time I hear one of mine I’m like…is that really what I sound like? It’s Painful!
I remember being in high school and watching film. Anyone remember film sessions?
All the guys in here who peaked junior year of high school are like… oh yeah! Should have seen my film! They called me freight train! Haha.
Here’s the thing with watching films… there’s nowhere to hide!!! The film doesn’t lie.
Here’s the thing in that first clip…Uncle Rico, the character talking there wasn’t willing to look at reality…and probably NEVER watched the film. He wasn’t willing To look at hard things and say…maybe I’m just not any good. To think critically. No, he lived in this dream land where he was the victim and wasn’t even remotely living in reality.
So what’s the opposite of that? What’s naming the hard look like?
For us…we started adding questions regularly to our team check-ins…yep the same check-ins we ask you guys to have, we put into practice every two weeks. Here’s the question we ask…
Where are we, as a business or team, NOT who we say we are?
Where are we overpromising and underdelivering? Because here’s the thing. I guarantee when you get referred from someone, they are hearing about it. Everyone who works with you already knows. So, if we’re not answering that question internally, we’re lying to ourselves. We have to pull back a bit and watch our own film as a business owner. To listen to our sales calls, which we do also, and ask…are we delivering on what we promise our clients? To look at our marketing and ask if that’s really what we offer? To intentionally make time to identify the hard things so that you can move past them or at least deal with them…and for lack of a better word, to watch the film on our business and know what we truly look like?
So here are 3 questions I want you to kick around as a team…
1. Where are you, as a business or team, NOT who you say you are?
2. What are the biggest pains in the business today (which ones have we overcome in the recent past)?
3. What frightens you as a business or what adversity is coming your way?
We assume, because of our modern loneliness epidemic, that being alone is bad, not realizing that there are healthy forms of loneliness and unhealthy forms.
The legendary John Prine wrote a powerful song entitled The Speed of The Sound of Loneliness. His lyric lends insight into a common reality for leaders, “you’ve broken the speed of the sound of loneliness, you’re out there runnin’ just to be on the run.”
After launching, incubating, or purchasing a business, the owner or founder begins running at a speed that very few can or will match in the remaining days, years, and decades of the business. For many, it is a hyper-speed, superhuman pace, unsustainable over time.
There is a sound to loneliness, a narrative, a rhythm that can be of great value to the leader, but for most, they ignore and blast right through the speed of the sound of loneliness and they continue running at a superhuman pace because it is the only way to give momentary satisfaction for our obsession of productivity.
We make excuses and say that we really do care about “quality” or “customer service”, when in reality what we really care about is that this “perfect” business we grew has no spot or blemish when placed into the care of others.
Loneliness forces us to see the warts, the blemishes, the imperfections.
Loneliness forces us to reckon with our own humanity… our limitations.
Loneliness offers an opportunity to find joy in the imperfections, or to deny that imperfections can exist and pick up the speed of our running so that we can “feel like we’re doing something”.
A dear mentor of mine told me in November of 2015, “My favorite thing about you is not your productivity”.
It stung.
I am well known and regarded precisely for my productivity and affinity for systems and processes, and my friend to a surgeon's scalpel to the thing that I embraced the most.
His encouragement felt like rebuke, and it was needed.
It would have never been heard without time and space for relationship…an ironic twist on solitude.
There is healthy loneliness and unhealthy loneliness.
There are healthy relationships and unhealthy relationships.
If you are to be an executive leader of impact, then you will make time for solitude.
Recalling the story of how Nike wooed Michael Jordan as its game-changing endorsement personality Sonny Vacarro was shocked when Nike founder Phil Knight decided to change his mind and commit the entirety of the Nike basketball endorsement money to one player. Originally against the unprecedented idea, Vacarro asked Knight, “What changed?”
Knight’s response? “I went for a run.” The story may not be true… but the principle is.
A portion of that solitude will be committed to a few, meaningful, sincere, and intentional relationships.
Relationships with people in person, and with people in publication.
Nearly one out of every two adults has not read a book in the last 12 months. That is not an option for an Executive Leader.
If Executive Leadership is creating proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see, then part of the proximity you create are towards relationships that can provide mutual sourcing for motivation and vision.
Rarely does a person develop a vision from nothing. We all generate vision from a body of source material, experiences, and inputs.
Leaders need curated input, but too often we crank up the volume of the masses in the search for a non-caloric “silver bullet” instead of eagerly pursuing the small, subtle voice of wisdom that is dripping with sustenance.
How do we know if our time is being devoted to wise solitude, whether alone or with someone, or to noisy isolation as we infinite-scroll the doomsday logs at the ready in our feeds?
The Solitude Matrix helps us to understand where we can make time for solitude; both alone and with others.
Imagine a quadrant where your horizontal axis on the top is devoted to substance and on the left and surface on the right. The vertical axis on the left side is devoted to solitary at the top and social at the bottom.
When a leader devotes themselves to surface-level conversation in a solitary surrounding (top right) it leads to the hopelessness of unchecked voices in our minds, a belief that what you see is always because perspective has no access, and solutions are fabricated many times to problems that don’t exist (or at least are not significant).
When a leader devotes themselves to surface-level conversation in a social surrounding (bottom right) it leads to an interaction that feels fake. Not a relationship, but instead an obligation. In these fake interactions, we find ourselves obsessed with “who’s got it more together”, and wanting to become the highest “spender” so we can steal the show. Fake conversations leave us empty as we leave hoping that our social standing improved during the interaction.
When a leader devotes themselves to substance-level conversation in a social surrounding (bottom left) they are actively building relationships. There is a focus on connecting with a healthy mix of emotion and empathy. A relationship interaction from a leader is comfortable with awkward silence because simple presence is valued, and there is a shared decor (SWAG, music, food, or event) that is meaningful.
When a leader devotes themselves to substance-level conversation in a solitary surrounding (top left) they achieve the hallmark of leadership; wisdom and vision. Healthy solitude allows for active listening by reading or thinking, writing to capture what they hear, thoughtful planning to map out clarity, and intentional reflection to celebrate wins and mourn losses.
Sherry Turkle defines healthy solitude as “the time you become familiar and comfortable with yourself...Without solitude, we cannot construct a stable sense of self.” (Turkle pg.. 61).
Solitude with distraction robs us of that, leaving us confused and setting us up to hurt other people. This leads to the myth of the modern brainstorming sessions to be our primary mode of breeding helpful bouts of creativity. Turkle (pg. 62) goes on to say that “Our brains are most productive when there is no demand that they be reactive...new ideas are more likely to emerge from people thinking on their own. Solitude is where we can learn to trust our imagination.”
Solitude is the healthy version of being alone
On the other hand, the philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich says, “Language...has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.”
Loneliness is painful because it allows the space for shame to be revealed. Shame in our past, shame in our present. When we medicate with the substance of busy-ness then we ensure that shame remains safely swept under the rug.
Loneliness is not the same as solitude.
Picasso said, “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible”. The human spirit NEEDS healthy alone time.
Sitting in a room listening to a variety of presentations, most of them non-engaging with slides that looked like this. HUH?
Then a physician stands up and begins to relay a series of statistics accompanied by stories.
The suicide attempts among college girls have increased from 1% to 2%...a 100% increase in a 2-year span. Nearly 1 in 3 girls have contemplated suicide.
We have a college-aged daughter and two college-aged sons…this woke me up.
After the presentation, I waited until the presenter was finished shaking hands and walked over into a quiet corner where he was refreshing coffee and asked, “What happened?”
His response, in paraphrase…” it is well documented that there is a two-year reversal in behavior among HS and college students in general…so instead of an 18-year-old dealing with 18-year-old things, you have an 18-year-old who is developmentally 16, trying to deal with 28-year-old things because of the unfiltered availability of information.”
Thirty years ago, a small subsection of people in the lowcountry of South Carolina would have known of the intimate details of the Alex Murdaugh trial… now there are people in New York, California, and Indonesia whose lives have been impacted by a very very local story.
That is 28-year-old Grown Adult information, being straight-veined into 16-year-old minds in New York City while also trying to deal with acne, prom dates, and asking, “Should I download Snapchat OR TikTok OR Tinder OR all three?”
There is a narrative that we have heard around the country as we have spoken to groups in Tampa, CLT, ATL, Houston, Dallas, LA, and Vegas….
“Nobody wants to work anymore.”
The business owners are looking at the labor pool, and looking at the modern “flexible work environment” and concluding…
“Nobody wants to work anymore.”
The key leaders are looking at the teams they are leading, and/or the people they are trying to hire and train and conclude…
“Nobody wants to work anymore.”
But let us reason together for a moment.
Really ask, do people REALLY not want to work? REALLY?
Do people REALLY want to wake up in a fog, sit around on the couch, indulge in meaningless things all day, eat dinner, watch Maury Povich and Dr. Phil, go to sleep, and do it all over again day after day after day?
No.
You know what people want? What YOU want?”
MEANING
You want to be-the-better you know you have the capacity to be!
You want what you do to matter!
You want what you do to move the needle!
You don’t want to stand around the cubicle wasteland and drone on and on about the TPS report.
To do meaningful things, things that matter, there are 3 things that I want to reiterate, remind, and regurgitate…
First, you need hard coachING and you need TO coach hard
A reshaping is needed (chucks pottery example sermon 2/26)
It offers mobility, portability…
And yet, periodically needs to be reshaped and reformed.
Pottery shifted an entire economic culture
Allowed for portable societies
The beauty of the pottery metaphor is that…
Solid, hard coaching re-forms, both as you receive and give thoughtful coaching
The alternative of this is to ignore coaching, the sound of which just sounds idiotic.
Kyrie Irving/Kevin Durant (audio)
Nothing good will be done that is done outside of wisdom and accountability
Tech will change, languages will change, empires will come and go
Wisdom and accountability have and will always be
Instead of seeking principle wisdom, We PURSUE THE BEST books, conferences, podcasts, and new strategies to find non-caloric solutions that will run themselves so we don’t have to work. THEY WILL NOT…
We keep trying to buy the BEST project management software, CRM, billing system…
The BEST software is the software that you will actually use!...it requires action
The BEST town is the town you will actually live life in…it requires action
The BEST car is the one you will actually drive…it requires action
The BEST spouse is the one you will actually enjoy spending time with…it requires action
ALL of these require YOUR choice, and YOUR action
WHY did we see a regress of maturity and cognitive capability among a younger generation?
Not realizing that solving problems IS THE JOB ROLE
Because outside forces stepped in (including us in this room) and did not allow them to work the muscle of their own independence!
What we touted as flexibility became inactivity and apathy…just waiting.
We’ve done much the same in our business trying to remove people from the challenge of solving problems…
We have a tool called the Ideal Weekly Schedule…it is among the SIMPLEST tools a BOP coach brings in their toolbelt. You want the adherence level of an Ideal Weekly Schedule is?
30 minutes of pre-work
2 minutes of review daily
UNLIMITED discipline and implementation
Parkinson’s Law tells us that “work expands to the time allotted”
Was challenged to do a duel
The night before the duel, he wrote letters to friends…
Then wrote his “Mathematical Testament” that changed the entire landscape of modern math…IN ONE NIGHT
Annie Dillard - a weekly schedule is “willed, faked and so brought into being”
Give yourself a week and you’ll take a week…give yourself an hour and you’ll take an hour
EVARISTE GALOISE A POLITICAL ACTIVIST AND MATHEMATICIAN…and a man of turmoil
Less than 20% if we’re being very generous
You know what an Ideal Weekly Schedule requires?
A manufactured stricture of our time creates urgency
Instead of the weekly schedule, we look at the sub-contractor, the vendor, the customer, our own team and point our finger at them blaming our haphazard week on outside forces.
We assume all MEANINGFUL time means personal time
Assuming you believe in creation, one of the very first things we as humans were created to do was to WORK
There is MEANING IN WORK. THAT IS FULL TIME -> BEST EFFORT
YOU OWN YOUR TIME, and YOU WANT THAT TIME TO BE MEANINGFUL within the helpful expectations your business has helped set for you
Not to work ALWAYS
Not to work SOMETIMES
We were designed to work, and rest, and work, and rest…a rhythm
When we surround ourselves with the accountability of coaching (internally and externally), we are pushed to work and rest
When we lead a person who needs to BE coached, we surround them with the accountability to work and rest, work and rest
REALITY: We are trying to rest, pass it off as work and excuse it as “flexibility”
Our current narrative:
“I need flexibility to interrupt the drudgery of work to take care of life”
Let’s reframe the narrative:
“Technology has provided the flexibility to check in on life while I’m doing meaningful work, and to be fully present in life while I am resting from work”
Coaching will hold you accountable so you can find meaning in both. By which YOU can now coach others to do the same.
The Second reminder of meaningful work: happiness is elusive, joy is manufactured
Full confession - I’m teaching this as a student…not the expert
Hedonic treadmill:
“these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
TRUE STORY: We’ve achieved a lot of chaos-busting tools and coaching, and yet a failure that we have had at BOP since we started in 2015 is building an incentive compensation structure and coaching module that works for everyone
A constantly rising tide that could go up…or down leaving the business in a tough spot if it doled out its reserves.
We have never seen more than 10-15% of employees offer a sincere and non-expectant thank you for additional compensation received (bonuses, etc.)
Why?
The joy of possessing them was immediately rooted out by the numbness of expecting them
Why have we pushed so hard against year-end, random bonuses? B/c the human psyche can’t help but see it as a recurring expectation…joy is lost b/c the convenience was never found…
FLIP THE NARRATIVE IN YOUR HEAD: “All joy…make it your in-front-of thought”
James 1:2 - James was the son of an Israeli Construction worker who lived in a village town between Haifa on the Mediterranean and the modern Sea of Galilee
When they were older, his brother was falsely accused of a crime, and murdered in public
James was beheaded because of his teaching and his body buried in Spain
What was the message he taught? “All joy…make it your in-front-of (first before any) thought”
What is joy - a willful acceptance that a situation has brought you favor
Testing leads to endurance
Endurance leads to growth
Growth leads to fullness
Fullness is the opposite of emptiness which is what many of us feel now.
Choosing Joy in hard things = Satisfaction and not emptiness
WHY JOY?
ACTION:
A NEW QUESTION TO ADD FOR CHECK IN: “what hard thing happened this week that you can find joy in?”
Third, your job is to swim in a pool of problems and solve them
This was the wisdom of the great Vanilla Ice - “If you’ve got a problem, yo, I’ll solve it…”
Without a PROBLEM, there is no need for a solution, therefore no need for job roles…no need for services and products.
Artif. Intel. can now perform both repetitive and non-repetitive tasks
But they cannot solve problems with a human touch
Your role exists b/c of PROBLEMS, so it is unreasonable for any of us to be convinced that your role will be without continuous challenge
Fortitude: courage in pain and adversity…courage when problems persist
A new training course at USC: How to Fail: A Resilience Building Workshop
Universities across the country are seeing the need for proactive training in the area of
a) identifying problems,
b) learn from problems
c) solve problems,
d) endure thru problems
We are in a space and time where we need to embrace the power both of the problem, and finding joy in solving the problem
Billing glitch…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it
Sub-contractor no show…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it
Client won’t follow through…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it
Marketing machine is not delivering leads…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it
Sales conversions hit or miss…opportunity for gratitude that you get to solve it
It is time to boundary ourselves and get BACK to the work of solving problems where we can use Technology to allow for the flexibility to check in on life while I’m doing meaningful work, and to be fully present in life while I am resting from work
Over the next two hours we have set the table for you to either wallow in a large, easy pool of pity…or to put your cape on, take a deep breath, and go to work to solve important problems that will change your life…and in turn, you will change my life.
One of our 5 core values is WRITE IT DOWN…what is the ONE thing that jumps out at you, you want to work on?
How do your customers and clients feel after they’ve done business with you? Do they feel your gratitude? Well, let’s talk about that today!
Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.
I spent 4 days last week in Mexico with my wife celebrating our 10th anniversary! Gah, what a special time as it was just us for an extended period of time for the first time in 5 years. We’ve done a night or two getaways, but having 3 kids in 4 years meant that we always had a little one at home and so getting any more time than that was challenging.
We walked into the resort and from the moment we were there we were welcomed in a way that we never have been before. Let me paint the picture for you.
The first morning, because it was the west coast of Mexico and 3 hours behind… I woke up wide awake around 4:30 am. I’m used to going 0-60 when I wake up and it was so strange to wake up and NOT be needed by anyone. The tricky part, breakfast wasn’t served until 7 am! I remembered the concierge telling me they had 24/7 room service, so I picked up the phone and dialed it…half expecting it to ring and ring and ring. They picked up on the first ring. Remember, it’s 4:30 in the morning!
Hey is there any way I can get some coffee for two of us? Absolutely, sir! We would love to. I apologize that it will be about 20-30 min to brew a fresh pot for you and your wife, but we will have it there as soon as we can.
Great! 20-30 min later, there’s a knock on our door, at 5 am with a fresh pot of coffee, a tray of fruit, and a basket of chocolate croissants for us to enjoy. It was incredible.
I just said thanks so much for bringing it so early and they thanked me multiple times and talked about how grateful they were to serve us.
Wow…that leaves an impression.
Every time we ate dinner, ordered a drink, asked for a towel, needed anything and everything we were met with gratitude and feeling that the employees of the resort were overjoyed to be asked to serve.
So… the question at hand as I was flying home. Is that how our clients and our customers feel when we do work for them? Do they feel the gratitude at being chosen for their work? Do they know that it truly is a joy to get to do the work and serve them?
If I had to wager, I would say not!
I would say more often than not you are at odds with your clients. Left cursing them under your breath as they walk away or as you leave the job site. Maybe even thinking, if we can get through this one nightmare client, maybe we can get back to the good ones!
And some of that’s true. There’s entitlement and a lack of gratitude on the customer side. There’s no doubt about that. But I think it’s more than just that. I think that we’ve forgotten that work is a gift. That we were designed to work and create and problem solve and all of that, in and of itself, is a gift.
Because think about this for a minute. If what you were doing is easy, if it didn’t come with problems, people wouldn’t need you to do it! They would do it themselves and probably not pay someone like you to do it for them. If it didn’t require expertise and planning and calculation and learned skills, you would not be able to make a living doing it!
So maybe there’s a mindset shift that needs to happen. Next time there is an issue, can we train ourselves to be thankful… to feel gratitude for that problem. Because behind the problem itself is the reason we can build a business around solving that unique challenge! That is exciting! That’s something you can retrain your team on.
To feel joy at the challenges because each and every one of them is job security and the opportunity to support your family moving forward.
I think that’s what the employees of this resort thought. They were grateful to serve because they knew the more people they served in an exceptional manner, the more people would want to come there and a better life for their family! But not just that, I think the gratitude that was present helped them not just, “get through the day,” but helped them enjoy their days working. And there’s a huge difference between the two.
So, how do you need to shift your thinking? What problems in your work need to be seen with gratitude? And do you need to take an inventory of how your customers feel when they are done working with you? I think it’s a great place to start and a great way to enjoy your work more!
Bring it up around your team and see if it changes your culture and deliverables. Alright! Have a great day…and if I’m practicing what I’m preaching. Thank you for continuing to listen and allow us the opportunity to keep delivering content like this to business owners. It really is a gift to us and a joy to keep doing it. Take care!
If you have ever been interested to see a group of business owners conduct a communal eye roll, bring up the topic of bonus and incentives.
A few years ago we had a client who decided to reward their team from a banner year and forego distributing a substantial six-figure margin to himself and his partner. There was no expectation created for this one-off distribution.
It was a $200,000 sum that would be distributed to around 25 employees… you can do the math. Not bad.
The response?
Crickets.
Of the 25 employees, there was a thoughtful “thank you” from three, a casual “thank you” from a few more, and crickets from everyone else.
To add insult to unexpected injury, the next day an employee came in and confessed, “I just got a job offer to go make $10k more per year and I don’t know what to do…”
Candidly, when calculating an employee's compensation, most owners in businesses with less than 50 employees have not considered the additional investment of bonus or incentive outlays. When the thought finally arrives the plan is usually built from a position of fear rather than a position of joy, celebration, and sharing.
In other words, “What can I do to make these employees feel more valued so they don’t leave!”
Most owners wish to generously share in some of the margin that has been created over and above what has been budgeted for base compensation and commission.
There is a chasm that exists that almost renders any over-and-above distribution as challenging at best, frustrating, and divisive at worst.
Owners are forced to think of the business finances in terms of the net…what is left over after all responsibilities are payed out.
Employees are often time locked in on the gross… the big numbers that come in at the top or total sales.
An employee can do math in their head and determine the total sales of either their efforts, or the total sales of the company and think, “Well, look how much I generated for the business, and all I get is my base with a little extra (or sometimes no extra at all).”
The owner looks at the math spelled out on the profit and loss statement, the cash balances in the bank account, and the budget of projected expenses and revenues for the coming year and thinks, “How in the world can we afford to pay out any additional and not be cash-strapped for the future?”
It is a silent stalemate between owners and employees, top line and bottom line, perceptions, and expectations.
How can employees see additional compensation as motivation and incentive, instead of seeing it as an expectation?
How can owners see additional compensation as a budgeted item to be shared and joyfully extended, instead of seeing it as a fear-motivated mortgage that taxes future growth opportunities (remember, marginal cash is the prime fuel for future growth).
Most owners desire and have motivation to extend extra-compensation to reward over-and-above effort and to show additional appreciation.
There are however three primary negative motivations for the build-out and deployment of these plans that usually result in a lack of health and longevity.
Owner guilt is where the owner feels unwarranted guilt for having access to the net income of the business while employees do not.
What is often missed during boom times is that the owner must use a portion of the net to stack in reserves for when the business has negative net income and wants to continue employing personnel even though the business cannot “afford” it in a particular month of the year.
Another negative motivation for deployment of extra-compensation plans is an owner’s fear that an employee will leave. It is a crucial principle that all businesses be built to weather a valuable team member leaving the roster. A business will never be bulletproof from the handicap of losing great talent… but it can be prepared on how to respond.
Businesses must be cautious about being held hostage by one highly valuable employee; it can damage morale and cash-strap a small business for future opportunities.
A final negative motivation for extra-compensation plans are employee demands in a vacuum of understanding the full scope of the business finances.
Financial literacy in a business is key to building consensus and understanding around incentive compensation and bonuses. A two step approach will aid employees in understanding the basics of business finances.
The first of the two steps to financial literacy is communicating with all employees that a dollar is not a dollar because…
A dollar out is always more than a dollar (think when you pay for a sandwich that costs $9.95…you will pay more than $9.95 with taxes, tip, delivery, time spent, etc.)
A dollar in is always less than a dollar (think when you receive a payment for $9.95…you will send the majority of that $9.95 to other people before you get to keep what is left over)
The second of the two steps to financial literacy is communicating with all employees that business finances are reviewed in a past, present, and future tense.
The profit and loss statements and balance sheets reveal what has happened (past).
The subdivided bank accounts and level two dashboards reveal what is happening (present).
Simple budgets and pro formas give insight into what will happen in the future assuming the inputs hold true (future).
Reminding employees that a significant part of financial literacy is assuming what may happen (future) and so not all hoped-for elements of compensation can be guaranteed.
Communication of preparation, purpose and payout are the three priorities of creating an incentives program that can yield the hoped for results (notice the use of “can” and not “will”...there will continually be volatility around this issue).
First, in communicating purpose, it is helpful to understand what these programs exist for.
What is a bonus? Without being punchy or rude, a bonus is simply a bonus, a cherry on top, an unexpected treat, and added benefit that displays generosity. That’s it.
Bonuses should never be extended for baseline job role responsibilities, for showing up regularly and on time.
It is not uncommon to overhear someone say, “Well, I’ve been here for 12 years, I should get…”
You have been compensated fairly and regularly for 12 years, that is what you have received. A bonus is undeserved extra. No one should ever… ever expect a bonus and should never base any portion of their personal budget on an anticipated bonus.
A bonus is a bonus.
The purpose of incentive programs is to incite (same root) an action.
Most compensation opportunities above base should have the spirit of an incentive compensation in contrast to bonus or “profit sharing” (btw, profit sharing can be a dangerous term, and in some states place the business in a vulnerable legal positon). What is the business trying to incite, to encourage, to stir up in addition to the baseline job roles and responsibilities?
Incentive compensation carries an over-and-above idea of performance over-and-above the base job role.
There are multiple ways to structure incentive compensation plans that all yield various outcomes.
A few structures of notable mention are…
A simple lump sum based on a percentage of an employees base salary based on hitting target profit
Top line percentage of sales based on total volume
Bottom line percentage of sales based on net income per sale after job costing
Monthly or quarterly target incentives based on sales, or other measurable activities
Regardless of the structure you decide, there are a few crucial questions to ask as you prepare for an incentive structure.
What will be incentivized?
How will it be tracked?
What flexibility does the program have to adjust if it is counterproductive either to the team or to the business?
How will the incentive dollars be set aside to ensure profitable payout? (i.e. subdivided bank account?)
When and how will it be paid out?
How will it be well-communicated when it is paid out to achieve the desired outcome?
Every incentive payout should come with added communication both the celebrate the payout and to add a subtle reminder that this is over-and-above and you should cautiously budget your life based on this pay out.
One final thought, all incentive structures should be considered to be subject to change at any time, and at least reviewed and updated annually. You are not required to be held hostage by a bad incentive compensation structure…it will not only ruin the business, but ruin opportunities for each employee. Don’t allow the benefit of one to backfire and cause the detriment of many.
Incentive structures can be a value add to a business and to a team IF it is well-communicated, held with open hands to adjust over time, and generously given and received.
For six years Ashley and I coordinated the meeting of a group of young men who met weekly during the school year. Some weeks there were four, and others there were sixteen. All between 15 and 18 years of age and all at different stages of maturity.
We walked these young men through a variety of discussions, situations, and scenarios and even adapted a five stage growth pyramid for each to understand where they were at in their level of maturity.
For these young men we relayed the identification of those stages as
Boy
Adolescent
Man
Mentor
Patriarch
Upon introduction many of the young men in our group presumed that age was the entry point to each stage. Turn 13 and you become an adolescent. Turn 18 and you become a man.
One astute young man asked a resonating question around our communal fire pit, “at what age do you become a mentor?”
It was akin to asking, “at what year do you become an expert in your field?”
In 1964 US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was providing an opinion on the use of obscenity in the public square in the State of Ohio’s case vs. Jacobellis who had been reprimanded for showing what was considered by some to be an obscene movie.
Justice Stewart explains, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”
We will certainly do our best to layout helpful marks of maturity within a civil society, and yet maturity can be validated in part under the mantra of “I know it when I see it.”
My response to the young man asking at what age you scale the stages of manhood? I asked, “have you ever seen a 19 year old boy walking around in a 54 year old body?”
He understood a primary principle of maturity:
Maturity equals maturity.
Age equals age.
You can have age without maturity.
You can have some maturity without age.
You cannot have full maturity without the combination of age and wisdom.
Wisdom is a cocktail of time, understanding, trial, error, learning, teaching, consideration and circumspect, humility, confidence, and curiosity.
Wisdom gone right is shrewd and helpful.
Wisdom corrupted is deception and gaslighting.
The secret to wisdom is this…GO PURSUE WISDOM!
How do we know what to pursue, or what a wise person, a mature person even looks like?
Here are NINE marks of maturation that we can pursue ourselves and begin looking for in others. These marks do not prove full maturity, but simply a pursuit of maturity at some particular mile marker on the highway.
First, a maturing person is someone who has written and defined principles (mission, values) for their life.
We all like to think that writing things down and defining “purpose” in our lives is good for the self-help section at Barnes and Noble, but in real life we can never find time for that.
The maturing person makes time to articulate the things that drive them and the things they value.
Our family has a drive to create space and be a light through adventure, wisdom, and time around the table.
One of the more sacred spots in our day to day is any table we find ourselves at together whether it be our dinner table in Bluffton, a bleacher seat in Winston-Salem, a tray table in row 31 seat C, D, and E somewhere over the Atlantic, or a restaurant table in Cinque Terre. The table is an indicator for us to limit distractions, share peaks and pits, discuss a wide range of recent events and future plans, and to play 3 rounds of a twitchy card game.
It’s written, we talk about it, and it has become a habit at this point.
If you don’t write them down, they do not exist.
Second, the maturing person invests a bulk of time into a recurring “thing” (Reps):
Distraction has become chaos’ tool of choice in our modern battle to fight. Desire is rarely the enemy that keeps us from progressing to expert status. We have a desire to fly planes, learn a language, love yoga, travel to Siberia, or hike the Cascades.
Distraction then hijacks desire in mid-flight rendering us aloof and frustrated not being able to achieve that thing we know would satisfy and re-energize.
While at the Chick Fil A mothership in Peachtree City, GA we heard a recurring idiom that for a while felt like classic corporate goofiness and then over time was sobered up to a well trained conviction; “Full Time…Best Effort”.
It’s one thing to “be at work” all day vs. “working all day”.
While we are at work all day, distraction begins hovering like sand gnats on a warm May afternoon at a southern coastal ball field. It nips, bites, frustrates, until we either leave, or take measures to battle against.
Three hours at work is not the same as working for three straight hours.
One gives the allusion of maturity. The other implements boundaries which lead to maturity and exponential value to you and the people you impact.
When you mature to give your full time…best effort, choosing not to work in a short series of fits and starts, you are setting the stage for a mass accrual of reps in a given task or skillset providing you a valuable path to expertise and value.
Immaturity always welcomes distraction.
The third mark of a maturing person reveals a sober judgment and intuition spending time looking at a “thing” from multiple angles.
For most of my life I didn’t “get” art. People would sit and look, observe, think, contemplate, review, change angles and keep looking.
“What are they looking at?”, I would think with disdain and arrogance.
Perspective is a hallmark in appreciating great art. Today I would accept an invitation into just about any display of artistic creation. One of my favorite art displays is the small, dark Museo Leonardo Da Vinci. A two minute walk from the infamous Duomo in Florence is a unique museum displaying recreations of da Vinci’s drawings.
Da Vinci was a prolific illustrator drawing fine details of human anatomy, mechanical machinery, and novel tools. Many of these drawings were never manufactured into tangible instruments. The da Vinci museum displays actual (in some cases life size) creations of da Vinci’s drawings like a tank, a flying machine and others.
These tools in essence jump off the page into real life and the museum gives you a unique opportunity to look at aa Vinci’s mind and work from multiple angles and perspectives. What might have seemed hideous or impractical on paper is now meaningful and unique when built in real life.
Maturity is making the time to walk around and see the various angles of a thing not in hopes of proving your opinion, but instead to reformulate your convictions with great understanding.
The fourth mark of a maturing person is situational awareness; the ability to “read the room” knowing who is in the room, when to act and how to act.
Walk down a terminal in most major airports and he will be nearby, the guy with the bluetooth headset talking as if Nine Inch Nails are playing a live set at the next gate down and he’s got to make sure the person on the other end can hear everything he has to say.
Your response, “READ THE ROOM”.
Solitude is helpful, isolation less so. We (yes, even introverts) live in a communal society with shared spaces. It serves us well to read the room and respond in kind to the dynamics of that room.
If people are tired, frustrated, jet lagged, in a hurry, delayed, short-fused and in need of space and peace, probably best not to add volume to that chaos. Read the room.
If people are energized, fired up, ready to storm the hill and score the winning touchdown, probably best not to reveal your inner Eeyore. Read the room.
There is a time and place for everything and the maturing person is willing to reveal their “true self” in moments where their true self will be invited and welcomed.
Read the room.
A hallmark of situational awareness is the ALL important SELF-awareness. Spending time discovering the inner workings of yourself will open up a world of insight and aha’s as to why you are the way you are, do the things you do, and act the way you act.
Maturity in self-awareness never uses what you have discovered as a crutch to excuse preference. “Well, I’m an ‘S’ on the DISC so you shouldn’t ask me to do that.” Or, “I have no Tenacity on the Working Genius so you can’t expect me to have that done so quickly.”
Profiles and enneagram numbers are helpful; these are third party tools that give us objective insight into the intangible parts of our personality. As you learn, the mature person asks, “what are the things that I naturally love to contribute, and what are the things that I need to be aware that I am not as prone to so I can push through those areas when needed?”
Maturing people realize that Jim Rohn was right, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
In fact, you are likely the average of the five books you read, the five foods you eat, the five songs you listen to, and the five things you spend your money on.
A new rhetorical question that we are going to begin adding to our hiring process is this, “if I asked you to setup a dinner with the five people you spend the most time with, would you be excited for me to meet with them?”
Life and business necessarily intersect. Who you are out there, is who you will be in here.
Run with chaos out there, and you will want to burn the building down here. Run with wisdom out there, and you will want to build up the culture in here.
Who are the five people you spend the most time with? Would I enjoy dinner with them?
The sixth element of a maturing person is they feel compelled by gratitude to reinvest the wisdom they have received into others.
This reinvestment is less about waiting until you have hit a threshold of wisdom to start giving that wisdom away, and more about immediately teaching the wisdom you have to the people you interact with immediately.
Did you learn something today? Use it today and teach it today.
Seneca, the Roman Philosopher said, “while we teach, we learn”.
Benjamin Franklin said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”
In just a few minutes, I will involve you in an exercise that will help teach the things I’m learning so that we can all grow and perpetuate the wisdom to our co-workers, partners, families, and friends.
The maturing person is always teaching out of the gratitude they have for being taught.
The seventh mark of a maturing person are the stress-tests they’ve endured.
Our family loves to hike, to walk along trails in the woods with no distractions and to simply look around and take it all in…to see what is out there and allow our minds to voyage into peaceful places.
My son has a bazaar tradition when we are hiking in the woods, if he sees a tree he thinks is dead or dying he will work to “truck the tree”. He’ll give it a few pushes casually to see if the tree is vulnerable and off balance; to see if it has some “give”.
After a few pushes he then makes a highly scientific judgment call to determine that tree’s “truckability”. Can he make that tree fall if he were to deliver a linebacker like form tackle to its trunk?
Mis-judge the tree and the tree wins whilst you get an Uber ride to the Orthopaedics office. Judge correctly and you feel like a dominant predator of the woods knocking down trees with your bare shoulders.
The maturing person has been pushed, pressed, and had tested through a variety of trials and tests both personally and professionally. It is unreasonable and naive to think that you will live life on Lake Placid, where your waters will always be smooth and your skies will always be blue.
That testing is a gift because it breeds and develops endurance. Endurance then works itself into hope, into a light at the end of a tunnel that is opportunity, life, conviction, belief, and satisfaction. It is said that having hope will never disappoint.
The maturing person will be aware of their response when they are rejected, or when they win.
Notice the maturing person may or may not respond perfectly to rejection or to winning, but they are aware of their response and the impact that response has on themselves and on others around them.
Rejection is fertile ground for shame. Brene Brown has been studying shame for decades and describes shame as an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”
Each of us has unique shame triggers, events that happen that open the door for that intensely painful feeling because our flaws have been revealed.
You could have just received a stern response, a cross glance, a critique on your work, a roll of the eyes in response to your contribution, or a harsh pushback from a client.
Maybe your Dad only calls when he needs something or your Mom still treats you like you were 8 years old.
Maturity is not never feeling rejection. Maturity is being aware of how you feel when you are rejected and then intentionally using emotional tools to grow from that rejection instead of self-medicating with rage, anger, return shame, substances, or loneliness.
Victory and winning are equally as important. When you win, how do you win? Maturity will always lead with humility, joy, satisfaction, and gratitude. Maturity will never thrive in an environment of arrogance, stand alone pride, gaslighting, and trash talking.
Humility is the currency of the wise. On par with self-awareness, Shakespeare “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
We are told it is the “foolish things of the world that are used to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”
A ninth mark of a maturing person is how they respond to authority, to coaching, and to the less fortunate.
The coaches you remember are the coaches that were hard, the ones who demanded more, and who were convinced that you had more to give.
Dr. David Crutchley was a professor of mine in graduate school. I studied more for his classes than I did anyone else’s in the history of my education. I never scored above a B minus on any exam or paper I turned into him.
Frustrated I tried to reason with him as to why I earned higher grades. His response echoed, “I would rather you get a C in my class and walk away having truly learned, than for you to ace my class and to learn nothing.”
A life of 5.0’s and 10 out of 10’s on everything is a life that is ultimately not helpful towards resilience.
Karen Arnold, a researcher who followed 81 High School Valedictorians came to an eye-opening conclusion:
“Even though most (valedictorians) are strong occupational achievers, the great majority of former high school valedictorians do not appear headed for the very top of adult achievement arenas….Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries . . . they typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.”
This is not license to not work hard, to not grow in diligence, and to not give great effort. This is motivation to seek and appreciate hard coaching, serious feedback, and honest insight.
Remember, the launching point into a life of wisdom is to simply GO LOOKING FOR IT. If you find someone willing to do the hard, emotionally taxing work of giving you honest feedback, GO SIT WITH THEM and go get wisdom.
Wisdom will be the road sign to maturity.
Before English was widely spoken in the far corners of the globe, Latin was the lingua franca for much of the European world from the days of the Roman Empire into the middle centuries.
Latin stands at the root of many of our English words and offers us contextual insight into the flavor of our language.
Some Latin words proved so powerful in the fullness of their meaning that we simply adopted them without alteration into our common language.
Such it is with the financially laced Latin phrase pro forma.
With past-centric financial statements like profit and loss and balance sheets, it is helpful to see what-was in the lifecycle of our business.
With the power of subdivided bank accounts and the Level Two Dashboard merging the perspectives of real-time cash, real-time receivables, and real-time payables, it is helpful to see what-is in the current state of our business in real cash.
We need the what-could-be picture to help us with a complete past, present, and future snapshot of our business.
The pro forma is a common financial statement with powerful insights.
Pro forma literally means “as a matter of form(ality)”. In other words, if you want to know the hypothetical future of an element of your business, especially a financial element, then create a form or a formality and run hypothetical scenarios.
The pro forma allows for such scenarios and provides powerful insight. The downside is that it takes time and focus. It feels unproductive because it is a future that is not promised.
It is the perfect work and effort given by an executive leader looking to have proximity to the business.
The good news for a pro forma is that when you have the initial foundation of calculation built on a simple spreadsheet, you can continue running scenarios with often nothing more than a few tweaks to the calculator each time.
Here are some of the key areas you would implement and utilize a pro forma:
Determining the compensation of a new hire
Discovering impact to the bottom line through any role (new or existing)
Uncovering future revenue and or expenses projections based on anticipated sales
Future plan your product inventory (or billable hour inventory in a service business) and availability based on seasonality
To simulate a variety of “what if” scenarios with business finances, personnel, and production
A simple pro forma is often the first step to answering the question, “what would happen if…” If we hire that person? If generated that revenue? If we stocked up on that inventory? If we saw a 10% reduction or a 20% increase in sales?
There are a few basic elements needed to build a simple pro forma calculator for your business.
First, you will need to define the purpose of the particular pro forma calculation. An example purpose may be to answer, “What is the financial impact to the business of hiring a new person?”
Next, define what categorical outcomes the pro forma will provide… what is the ultimate result or number you are looking for? In our example, the “financial impact” means looking at the net income of the business if we hire the person and they receive a compensation of X and produce a work-product of Y.
Once you have your ultimate result defined then begin to work backwards to fill in the gaps of values (inputs) you will need to know in order to calculate a final result.
Typical foundational cells or values to include in a compensation pro forma are:
Base compensation values
Incentive compensation (bonus) values
Any other expenses (overhead, etc.) values
Type(s) of product or service(s)
Average ticket price of product(s) or service(s)
A spread of months and years to run your scenarios (Year One/Month One, Year One/Month Two, etc.)
Pro formas can actually be quite addictive as you become equipped with greater objective information to make decisions in a constantly moving subjective climate.
A pro forma is best situated within a business that runs the RPMs of great leadership.
A culture of repetition ensures that the necessary communication feedback loops are in place to regularly run pro formas for decision-making.
A culture of predictability ensures that the results of the pro formas find a home in the decision-making process.
A culture of meaning ensures that the decisions made based in part on pro forma generated data is properly and appropriately integrated into the day to day aligned with the vision, the mission, and the values of the business.