Leadership Torque: The Waymaker Podcast

Do you know what the mindset of your team is right now? Are those mindsets aligned? If they are aligned - are they set in the right direction? If they aren't , what are you as a leader doing to help shift those mindsets in order to transform the performance of your business?

Mindsetting is the art of changing the mindset of your organisation, and great leaders are able to build healthy mindsets in both themselves and their people. A healthy mindset - aligned on beliefs, values and habits can be the single greatest catalyst for transformation for yourself and your business.

In this article we will explore the art of mindsetting, and what you can do to help transform the mindset of your business.

What is a mindset?

A mindset is a mental model of how we choose to see the world around us.

One mind will have multiple mindsets. These mindsets vary across worldview, perspectives, principles, practices, skills, systems, behaviours and activities. In an individual, mindsets can either align or conflict (So imagine how many mindsets can align or conflict within teams and organisations!)

As humans, we typically bury the conflict until something happens that forces us to react. These reactions are driven by 'reflexes' built into the muscle of the mind. Not surprisingly, negative reflexes compound at a higher rate than positive reflexes. Negatives reflexes have a ’long tail’. 

'Mindsetting' is a verb. It is the purposeful creation of new mindsets, or the art of intentionally building a mindset for your business.

Good leaders build mindsets - in themselves and in their people. 

'Mindsetting’ is like breathing. We don’t learn to breathe, we just do it, and we don’t learn how to create mindsets… we do it involuntarily on a daily basis by osmosis, without ever intentionally thinking about it. 

The problem then is that we can build mindsets that are untrue, unhealthy and unhelpful if we are unintentional about the mindset we are building. Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway talks about the lattice of facts upon which we can build ideas. It describes very well the underlying framework of how mindsets are developed.

His primary contribution as The Listener covers three areas, Survive, Dive and Thrive. 

Survive: through creating a safe, trusting space to meet, and by giving people his full attention, eye contact, and not interrupting, offers people the opportunity to share whatever is present for them at that time, which could be concerns, feelings, ideas, challenges, etc.

Dive: listening and attention enable others to access their deepest, most creative, original thinking and to continue to stay in flow with that thinking.  

Thrive: enables people to learn how to be more present and to listen more deeply and fully with their colleagues, friends, and loved ones, especially their children, and to make a real difference to both you and their lives.

Through Colin's varied background, view of the world, and his inquisitive and curious mind, he is able to share unusual, thought-provoking, disruptive, yet grounded observations and alternative approaches to business, people, systems, and change.

(extract from Colin's website)

Let me think about?!

This is a common response many people hear from prospects when making sales calls. It’s those passive dismissives that often get thrown back at you at the end of a call to politely tell you – “we’re not interested.”

One story in particular that Ari shares is the time he made a sales call to an executive team of a large company. In Ari’s words “there was so much chemistry in that call it was like a love-fest!” By the end of the call, Ari was convinced he had made the sale. He had followed every step in the classic sales cycle… building rapport, handling objections, the close etc.

At the end of the call, the prospect said “Ari this is great we love it! Look, give us a call in a couple of weeks. Follow up with us and we’ll move this thing forward.” Ari thought he’d hit a home run. But in a twist of fate, he didn’t hang up the call properly and unintentionally got to listen in on the prospect’s conversation in the board room moments later. In essence, they made the call not to work with him, but to use him for information and engage with a cheaper vendor.

This was the pivotal moment that drove Ari to look at a new way of selling. A way that brought trust and honesty back into the sales process.

The Bubble of Vulnerability

Ari began to shift his mindset away from focussing on the sale and rather building trust with qualified prospects. It set the foundation for the next 20 years of his professional career. Unlock The Game is the result of Ari’s transformative approach to selling based on trust, integrity and authenticity.

The number one goal is not to promote your product, brand or solution – but rather focus in on, and understand the problem your prospect is trying to solve. It is only then, when you have demonstrated your genuine concern for the problem your prospect is trying to solve, that you have the trust needed to offer a solution.

So What is Trust-based Selling?

According to Ari, there has been “a brewing revolt against traditional sales methods for a long long time. for a long long time. People have been burnt, rejected, taken advantage of for years, and they know at ‘Hello’ when you’re in that game [or not]. Trust-based selling is a response to traditional sales methods. Individuals and organizations genuinely want to partner with and purchase from people they trust. Many times, people already know what their problem is and what solutions or products they should be considering. In a world where every product looks the same, what buyers are looking for is someone they trust to deliver the solution for them.

Ari says it this way: “They don’t really care about how you solve [their problem] – they just care about whether you’re the one to solve it or not.”

Three Sales Myths

For sales people and business owners who have read all the sales books over the years, such a paradigm shift to you sales approach might be hard to process. If this is the case, Ari offers three myths about sales that might help re-program your thinking.

Myth #1 – Sales is a Numbers Game

This idea permeates the sales world. It’s been around since the 1980s and came from the idea that the more contacts you make, the more sales you make. What Ari and his team have discovered is that in the new economy, it’s not about how many contacts you make anymore. It’s about how deep you go on each conversation. The emphasis is no longer how good you are and how many phone calls you make.

Myth #2 – The Sale is Lost at the End of the Process.

Traditional sales methodology suggests a sale is lost at the end of the process. That you didn’t nail your close, or you mishandled an objection. What Ari has discovered is that in the new economy the sale is not lost at the end of the process but rather at the beginning. At “Hello.”

Myth #3 – Rejection is a Part of the Sales Game.

Traditionally, based on a numbers approach to sales, rejection HAD to be a part of the sales process. The old attitude was to suck it up and grow a thick skin. That’s just what happens in sales. What Ari discovered in his research is that rejection only happens when we lose trust with our prospect. There are certain things we do and say in the process that force the prospect to put up their guard.

Talk About Problems Not Solutions

Ari suggests that when you enter a sales call, you should do so armed with an inventory of the two or 3 problems that your organization solves. then you begin the conversation acknowledging the problems your prospect is experiencing. Peeling back the layers on these problems and showing empathy for the situation, means you can begin to talk about the ROI for solving the problem and the impact that NOT solving the problem might have on the business.

There is a point in the conversation at which Ari identifies a key question that needs to be asked: “Is this a priority for you?” He is so intentional with this question that when describing it to us, he said every word with a period! Is. This. A . Priority. For. You?

Ari describes the conversation to be similar to a therapist and their patient. A patient who doesnot acknowledge they have a problem (or doesn’t want to fix it!) is the worst patient to have. So ownership is an important part of this process.

The One Phrase You Should Never Use Again!

There is one phrase that is only used in the world of sales. “Follow-up.” “I’m calling to follow-up.” “I just wanted to follow up on our conversation last week.” “Hi, this is just a follow-up call.” Ari suggests this puts the prospect in a defensive frame of mind, where they may feel on the back foot or taken off guard. Rather than the words, “follow-up,” Ari invites salespeople to shift their language. “Hi, I’m calling to ask if you have any feedback on our last conversation? Any feedback on our last meeting? Any feedback on the last email?”

The purpose of asking for feedback is to elicit the truth. You are going to determine whether or not you are a good fit to do business together. They are going to raise their concerns if they have any, or they are going to talk about their thoughts around next steps.

Most of the thoughts and ideas Ari shares in this podcast seem antithetical to the way you have always learned to approach sales. For this reason, we encourage you to listen in to this conversation and hear Ari talk more about why Trust-Based Selling is so crucial in the new economy.

You can find out more about Ari Galper and Trsut-Based Selling from his website Unlockthegame.com

The Big Idea: Introducing the Essentials Leadership Curve. Now there’s a perfect solution for Startups & Small Businesses to make business improvement - business as usual.

The Leadership Curve is the heartbeat of the Waymaker platform. By asking and answering the 7 Questions - businesses big or small can get an objective view of the health of their organisation and begin to make real, measurable changes to grow their business.

What is the Waymaker Leadership Curve?

The Waymaker Leadership Curve is a way of making sense of everything going on inside your organization. In making sense of it, you can begin to build clarity around what you're doing - while you're doing it.

Your business is a bunch of complex systems and processes working together at the same time. Each system is never working in isolation. How well, for example, does vision align with the market you're talking to? And then, how well does that align with the strategic position and growth you're actually making? And how well do those things align with the business model that's creating the value proposition for the customer? How do the customer’s journey and customer’s experience align with the experience of the employees in your organisation so you can attract and grow the right talent?

All these things are continually interacting in real-time, every minute of every day inside your business.

Waymaker takes all these aspects of your business and helps you identify and observe how these things are impacting your overall objectives.

The final area the Leadership Curve helps your business is Execution. How can we turn ideas and initiatives into goals that shift the needle on your business?

For some however, the sheer volume of data points available to business owners and employees through the Leadership Curve can be overwhelming. If you’re just starting out, a simplified curve might just be the best option for you.

So we’ve introduced the Essentials Leadership Curve.

How is the Essentials Leadership Curve different?

For a startup or a Small Business, you may not care or have the headspace to process hundreds of datapoint within your business. Well not yet! For now, what if there was a way to just view and measure the most important elements - those things which will make the BIGGEST impact on the growth of your business?

So rather than two to three hundred data points, we’ve isolated the 27 most important data points that matter at this stage of your business development. These will help you plan the most valuable course of action to shift the needle on your business.

The Essentials diagnostic takes just 3-7 minutes to complete.
 

Can existing Waymaker users take advantage of the Essentials Curve?

Yes. Simply select Diagnostics from the menu inside Waymaker and click on the Essentials tab! You’ll see all your past data mapped on the Essentials curve. Consider it an executive summary of the Leadership Curve. Get these right and you’re well on your way to achieving alignment in your business.

The Essentials Leadership Curve is the 80/20 Rule in action!

80% of your results are going to come from 20% of your input. In other words - focus on 20%, and much of the rest of your business will be right. The Essentials Leadership Curve is going to help leaders of startups and small businesses keep things simple.

Essentials Leadership Curve is our entry-level offering on the Waymaker Platform. We have introduced a new license type which you can view on our pricing page.

How to survive, thrive & conquer your business' customer experience marketing

The big idea: how do we acquire, retain, and grow customers across every stage and touchpoint in the customer journey?

The customer experience marketing is defined as the unification of marketing, sales, service, and technology to create inspirational branded moments across every stage and touch point of the customer journey.

We unpack the importance of your organisation learning how to survive, thrive, and conquer to ultimately deliver a seamless customer experience at all touch-points: digital or non-digital.

What is customer experience marketing?

Customer experience is question 5 in the ‘7 Great Questions’ of Waymaker strategy. It helps identify what our customer experience is, how do we acquire, retain & grow our customers through brand personality which is all about the science of customer experience.

To learn more about what customer experience is, check out our previous podcasts.

Marketing, sales & service all fall into one discipline – customer experience

It’s all about…

• How do we draw customers along the customer journey?
• How do we manage their journey?
• What information, messages and content will self-serve those customers through that journey in a digital and non-digital world?

Building clarity and alignment and deliver results with Waymaker = a better organisation

With Waymaker, each quarter, your team will be taking the diagnostic and it’s going to ask questions across all the business.

The Waymaker toolkit allows us to step back and view the business from the helicopter view.

The big idea around customer experience marketing

In the area of marketing in Waymaker Curve, there is a big idea on how we build a leading marketing function, what activities or skills to we need to invest in, what systems do we need to invest in, how clear, mature or aligned are we as an organisation

We're treating marketing like advertising

The great amount of dysfunction is treating marketing like advertising.

The point of marketing is to identify problems and develop products and services to SOLVE those problems, all while continuing to develop and acquire customers for the business.

What isn't a challenge or roadblock?

It's a lack of time - not a lack of funding.

Typically, a challenge or a roadblock must be articulated in such a way that you could provide or remove this or overcome this, then the goal can be achieved.

How do we build clarity, alignment, and results?

Sign up for a free 30-day trial.

1. Jump onto Waymaker.io and take the Waymaker Diagnostic.
2. Do the Customer Experience Marketing Playbook in Waymaker Academy
3. Set your goals.
4. Use the information from your marketing diagnostic, CX marketing one-page canvas and turn your CX marketing into a digital one-cloud dynamic plan inside Waymaker using the goals you've built.

How to acquire, retain and grow customers

The big idea: how do we create a journey for our customer's that's inspirationally valuable?

Customer experience is how we use the disciplines of sales, marketing and service.

We unpack the Seven Question's in Waymaker's Growth Framework on the Leadership Curve and what your organisation can do to create a valuable journey for your customers.

It's all about how we acquire, retain and grow customers

Across organisation's, we organise their business into six interconnected buckets - or slices of pie as we like to call it. These include...

• Vision
• Market
• Strategy
• Business Model
• Customer Experience
• Employee Experience

To help you do this, the Waymaker team are well versed in helping leaders shift their teams into the right behaviours to get them to their end goal which is continuing to grow their businesses profitability.

Gone are the days...

Some of the practices businesses used in the 20th century are no longer applicable to the 21st century. We need to start thinking more deeply and differently to the way we reach our consumers.

CX fits in the bucket

It's our belief that from research and observation across many businesses from the last five to ten years that there are six things that you need to keep in balance to maintain customer growth. As your organisation grows and scales up the curve, those six things must stay balanced.

Why customer experience?

Customer experience is the unification of sales, marketing, and service on technology to create inspirational branded moments across the customer journey.

The customer experience is not about working in departments in silos, but working as a product team, or a service team, or a team with the skills of sales, marketing, and service to draw that customer through a journey.

The customer journey has dramatically changed over the last 5 to 15 years. We have had to bring in digital elements of technology and we must understand the journey as a distinct journey and that’s the big shift.

The customer journey has evolved

The customer journey has evolved as there is now a large technology element and how technology is used to engage. Technology is used to engage because it is the foundation or every discipline in the business world.

There is technology to understand all seven questions of the framework.

There is no such thing as the technology department anymore. Now, technology permeates every department of the business.

There is science around unpacking the customer journey

The CX bucket is all about the science behind the customer journey. There is so much data around the consumers journey. We can understand the roadblocks, the steps, the triggers and so much more.

Customer experience is the science of sales, marketing, and service and behind that is technology. It supports those disciplines and it's about continuing to build the teams in your organisation that aren't just marketing, sales or service teams, but customer experience teams. You need to deploy skills of selling, marketing and service at all different points along the consumers journey.

You don't want to just limit that to three departments.

Customer experience is about saying...

"How do we identify roadblocks?"

"How do we make that journey smoother to purchase and repurchase?"

Start building a valuable customer journey for your organisation

Jump onto Waymaker Academy

1. Download customer experience resources
2. Take the Waymaker Diagnostic
3. Look at your results for CX sales, CX marketing, CX service

You’ll find growth gap areas where in your business you need to build maturity and strength to lift that skill

Don't forget to sign up for a free 30-day trial.

The big idea: shape and frame the culture in your organisation.

Mould your organisation values, principles and behaviours to shape the ultimate company culture.

As a leader, you might be unfamiliar with how to build a culture in your organisation. At Waymaker, we often find that leader’s don’t know where to start.

We unpack on how to build or transform the culture within your organisation through:

• How culture is built off behaviours
• Importance of building a culture
• Building an objective lens around culture

You don't teach culture, you are the culture

In an organisation, culture is the way we are doing things. It’s built off the behaviours of the leaders and employees.

You can’t mandate culture because that turns it into policy, and no one wants to remember a 52-page book of the company’s policies.

How do we build DNA inside culture?

Being, doing and showing.

Often in culture, we forget the process of cultural alignment. It is the process of discernment and disciple. If you can’t model it as a leader, then your team will never adopt the culture because they will just model you. They’ll never believe what you say, they’ll just do as you say.

As a leader, know that you're building culture. You can do this by building clarity of the behaviours of who you are and what you do.

In the Waymaker Leadership Framework, identity is the very first big chunk of thinking. It’s figuring out who you are in the marketplace and the community. It begins to frame how you will act and who you are encompassing. It includes the elements of who your organisation is.

Many organisations solve the same problem, but in different ways

Often, different organisations are all trying to do the same thing – solve the consumer's problem. But, if we all solved the problem in the same way, we’d never have a sense of character as an organisation which differentiates us from the rest.

Character is the very heart of the organisation. It is separating it from its competitors.

How do we create an objective lens around our organisation's culture?

The Waymaker Framework in our Academy has an excellent module called ‘Culture Shapers’. It explains the lens that brings objectivity to the intangible.

At Waymaker, we dissect culture in four lenses

1. Language
2. Symbols
3. Stories
4. Currency

Today, what does our organisation's culture look like through that lens?

The lens we’re looking through is the lens between language, stories, symbols, and currency.  

But what does the ultimate lens look like?

It all beings with objectifying culture to know where your organisation should begin, what your organisation should continue or stop. Then, developing goals.

Being practical teaches your team how to build that culture.

Start building or transforming your organisation's culture

Check out Waymaker Academy, and start using it with your clients, your organisation. The Waymaker Leadership Framework will help you build your goals and better articulate your goals and build a better culture.

Jump on waymaker.io and sign up for a free 30-day trial.

The big idea: achieve clarity in your organisations culture framework.

Build clarity, alignment and deliver results, through values, principles, and behaviours within an organisation.

As you work in organisations, you will be familiar with values and principles. However, there is often a big misunderstanding about what these mean.

To understand the bucket of values, principles, and behaviours, we unpack how to...

• Improve clarity of who your organisation is, what they do and how they do it;
• Why we have principles;
• The difference between values, principles and behaviours, and;
• How you can think about your own.

Why do we have values or principles? 

To conceptualise what values, principles and behaviours mean to an organization, we must first define them.

A value is a virtue which frames beliefs. Some examples of values may be truth, honesty, or excellence. It is something that can be believed in. 

A principle is a guiding rule or guideline that is built off one or many values.

A behaviour is something we do because of the principle. 

Values and principles create the alignment in worldview for the organisation. They reflect the purpose, vision and emphasis on what matters most for how the team come together to do their work.

Not setting clear values and principles may be unrecoverable. 

If you interpret the value, then you create the principle

If there’s been no discussion around defining the principles, then values get played like cards. 

Your team start adopting the values when it suits them at any point in time. This means that they are not acting to the values, they are using values to play cards to justify actions. 

It’s not enough to know your values and stick them up on the wall

It’s the principles that add meat to values. It gives us the guidelines. The framework in which to operate.

You can take two or three values to articulate a principle. 

We need to equip and empower our team

A value is a virtue or that guides our beliefs. A principle is a rule or guideline that is built on that value - the classic adage in business is that the customer is always right. 

Waymaker is built on the assumptions and beliefs of our worldview assumptions that form the iceberg of our mental models - that's the point where the value sits above the organisational structure and practices.

That’s where principles start to come alive.

Set your team up with the right behaviours to better their employee experience

There is an infinite number of behaviours that could fit a value.

We want you to create values and principles that sets your team up to know exactly what behaviour is or isn’t acceptable without having the check the rule book.

How does Waymaker help us achieve clarity around these things?

Waymaker helps you get better clarity to build alignment. We want you to be on the same bus going to the same destination and deliver the same results along the way.

If you’re working with a coach or consultant, they will take you through the conversation of values, principles, and behaviours. 

You can jump in Waymaker Academy to explore it yourself and have that conversation. 

When you’re onboarding and working with a team, everyone knows what the values, principles and values are - which become a conversation starter. The steps to this are...

1. Use the Waymaker toolkits to work through values

2. Document it, bring clarity to it inside Waymaker

During your annual or quarterly planning sessions, you can work through these elements and plan for them to be implemented throughout the organization.  

Waymaker mantra - show the way, build the system, train the leader, hold them accountable, help them win and do it

The behaviour piece is the most important thing.

The culture piece is the value and principles that people can refer to. 

Jump on waymaker.io and sign up for a free 30-day trial.

It all starts with the employee experience

The idea of the employee experience is quite different to Human Resources (HR). It is about having a mindset shift on “I wasn’t quite thinking of my people like that”. 

So we ask ourselves, what is the employee experience? 

Let’s define our terms, the employee experience is the end state of a unified physical and digital platform or experience that equips and empowers teams, particularly leaders that aim to create inspirational branded moments at every stage and touchpoint of the customer journey. It is the sum of the parts of how we retain, grow, keep, reinvent the talent throughout an organization. 

As a result, it is a different mindset from just thinking about HR. 

There is world competition for talent

There’s this dance going on between talent and people who can foster and grow that talent and pay compensation for that talent.

Twenty or thirty years ago, there was a lot less competition for talent. There was a higher likelihood that our parents spent 10 or 15 years in a row within the same career. 

Now, not only is there competition for employees and a fight for talent but there are a lot of substitutes. So, the capacity to freelance or be your own boss is an easier thing to do today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

It’s about talent rather than employees

At Waymaker, we talk about employee talent rather than employees, despite the industry talking about this idea of employee experience.

Talent needs nurturing, and whether we're onboarding new employees, freelancers, or a contractor, we must imagine the end state of a unified digital and physical platform that will empower and equip these companies to create those momentous customer experiences at every stage and touchpoint.

What are we equipping and empowering people for during the employee experience?

Answer. Amazing brand moments.

The employee experience doesn’t just exist for the employee - it is there so they can deliver amazing customer experiences and that’s why it’s question 6.

It determines how we create the talent that will create the customer experience - designed by the business model, positioned by the strategy, serving this market and ideal customer in order to accomplish this purpose and deliver this ultimate vision.

Create an equitable exchange of value during the off-boarding process 

Our talent exists to serve the customer, so it's also a value proposition for our company. Not just for the leader or the manager - the customer does not just exist so we can attract talent, but so they can obtain value we are able to provide. 

If you’re prepared to make this change, work with a Waymaker advisor, coach or consultant

Take a step back and think about what your employee journey looks like?

Jump into any of our playbooks and resources in Waymaker Academy and start setting up your employee journey.

To get started, learn where you sit on the employee experience curve. Don't forget to check out our recent blog post on 'Lead with Employee Experience'

Jump on waymaker.io and sign up for a free 30-day trial. 

The big idea: learn how to run effective meetings.

In this podcast we unpack the four meetings every organisation must master.

They are the

• Leadership team meeting
• The one-one-one for people development
• The daily huddle, and
• The sales meeting.

How do other business leaders run their meetings?

Jeff Bezos has a diligent and unique approach to internal meetings.

The Amazon founder requires the leader to write a good memo with clarity of recommendations and supporting documentation.

At the start of the meeting, participants are given 30 minutes to read and think about the content - in silence. Then discussion can be explored and decisions made.

Bill Gates famously said, "You have a meeting to make a decision, not decide on the question".

Peter Drucker brutally observed that the ideal number of meetings in an organisation is zero and an overabundance of meetings is a symptom of a sick organisation.

Run an effective leadership team meeting

In the podcast we explore the Leadership team meeting and unpack the basic structure.

Too many meetings talk about what has happened or what you're doing to do.

This creates a problem.

The real benefit of a group of leaders meeting is to isolate roadblocks to goals and spent time solving problems together removing roadblocks.

With that in mind, we've set up the leadership team to leverage the data insights of Waymaker.io with a simple leadership team agenda.

A great leadership team meeting of an organisation, unit or team does four things:

1. Shares the wins and positive progress from around the business
2. Stays on top of business health
3. Creates accountability for individual goals
4. Removes roadblocks for individuals to reach those goals.

Item 4 is actually the most important part of the meeting and most time should be spent on that.

Get the Leadership team meeting and 3 more meeting frameworks in Waymaker Academy Effective Meetings.

Use Waymaker to run effective meetings

Waymaker enables strategic alignment on teams of 2 to 2,000+.

Waymaker is the intelligent business strategy platform that helps you build the organisation of the future, today.

Find your growth gaps, build your roadmaps, align your team with OKRs and see exactly what is needed to win your quarter.

Sign up for a free 30 day trial of Waymaker.io

Waymaker is a software platform and a methodology with tool-kits, that when applied will help you be a better leader and then build better leaders.

Let's bust a myth, we don't have to be experts to talk about leadership. This can be a conversation you can have in your organisation, at whatever level of leadership you're at.

Leadership & management are different things, but never exclusively apart

Our view at Waymaker is that leadership and management are two very different things.

But, they are never exclusively apart. In the podcast we talk about how we often default into talking about that person as a 'manager' or a 'leader'.

This sets up a false idea of what leadership and management is.

A human leads and manages at the same.

At different times they're flexing the muscle of leadership, or at other times flexing the muscle of management. Sometimes together to do the heavy lifting!

What is leadership & management?

Leadership is simply getting someone or a group of people from point a to point b. Management is doing the right things, in the right way at the right time, along that journey.  This is the thinking that sits at the very heart of our framework, The Experience Curve.

Great leaders can exist at all levels inside an organisation

Hierarchy is deceptive. Great leadership and great management can and should exist at every level of the organisation. There is not just one group of people who are leaders at the top of the organisation, rather, the skills and systems of leadership and management can and should be developed at every level.

Leaders lead people, people manage systems

In the podcast we explore the principle that as people we never manage people and we should never lead systems.

Rather, leaders lead people and people management systems.

If you are inspired or passionate about leadership and management, all users of Waymaker.io can access the Leadership & Management course and playbook in Waymaker Academy.

If you're working with a certified Advisor, ask them to facilitate a leadership & management session using the Leadership & Management course tools and canvas.

This will help you establish a leadership culture in your team, that can builds leaders.

Our goal is to build a platform that helps any team, anywhere, any size, leverage the whole of team to find gaps, build a better roadmap and deliver their goals that matter most with greater effectiveness than ever before.

Most importantly, thank you to all the Waymaker’s who have provided input and feedback over the last few months.

We’ve made hundreds of small tweaks and changes in the platform since launch but there are three significant improvements to mention today.

A faster, easier diagnostic

The Waymaker Experience Curve diagnostic is now up to 50% faster to complete on all devices.

The diagnostic is a key tool that helps leaders and teams rapidly plan strategic business improvement activities.

15 - 25 minutes of Q&A in the diagnostic helps teams rapidly surface valuable strategic initiatives by asking and answering the 7 Questions.

We’ve updated the questions, the data processing, and the UX.

Our goal was to have the speed for users to take this and based on the data we’re seeing from users; most are taking between 20 - 25 minutes to complete. 

See: https://waymaker.io/features/diagnostic/

Confidence scores power your confidence to deliver

Our goal analytics on OKRs roll up all key result progress to an objective progress score. This was the standard user experience on launch.

Now, we allow the user to set a confidence of goal delivery.

Why?

A goal might be at 70% progress, yet the owner may now have new information which means their confidence of full delivery has changed to 10%.

The opposite applies too. You may have only achieved 15% progress on an objective, but your confidence based on the current situation is 100%.

Can you see the difference between progress and confidence?

Confidence scores help you adapt to changing circumstances immediately. 

Explore your data with a powerful new Explore dashboard

The Explore dashboard gives the leader and team amazingly simple access to the most powerful data.

Know the progress and confidence of execution in your business in just a few clicks.

You can view your data on progress and confidence by role, team, user, function, status.

We also have pre-built quick lists for All OKRs, Needle Shifters (OKRs that are top priorities) and Multi Quarter OKRs (mid- or long-term goals).

The Explore dashboard makes team meetings very simple and powerful to track performance, progress, confidence, roadblocks, or success.

This applies for all OKRs completed, in progress, committed or in backlog.

Find out more here: Learn - Waymaker.io

Goals that work actually take a lot of work to write well. But, with practice using a good methodology leaders and teams can create wonderful goals that create wonderful outcomes.

We are going to explore a basic science of goals to help you set goals that work and know when they don't.

We'll cover:

• Goals
• Alignment
• Metrics
• Leading and lagging metrics
• A goal setting methodology called OKRs.

Goals put a doorway to ideas

A goal is an open door to an idea.

When we put a goal over an idea it will bring focus to broad range of options by narrowing an outcome. The goal then becomes the open door a big idea can flow through, stop at or miss.

If we hit the goal and move through the door, we enter a new space, a new level ready for new opportunities.

If we think about goals like an open door, then they become inviting.

Goals create alignment

Putting a goal in place aligns the energy of the team into alignment.

Goals almost force teamwork. The right goals will encourage a team of people to work together.

Without a clear goal, they will almost certainly not work as a team.

Alignment happens when all of the team know the goals the business needs to achieve, whilst their own goals are aligned to supporting the broader outcomes.

Goals shift the needle on metrics.

Good goals shift the needle on many metrics.

What is the difference between goals and metrics?

A goal is not a metric, but a good goal should include a metric.

A metric is a measure of something.

A goal is a desired change in that metric.

Are all metrics equal?

No.

All metrics are not equal.

To set great goals we must recognise that a metric is an indicator.

It will indicate if a goal is on track or off track.

There are two buckets of indicators.

1. A lagging indicator or metric
2. A leading indicator or metric

What are OKRs?

OKRs are a goal setting methodology.

OKRs stands for Objectives and Key Results.

OKRs are a wonderful goal setting methodology that is purposeful and practicable. They will help you write a good goal.

We recommend and use the OKR goal setting methodology as part of the execution tool-kit in Waymaker.

Jim Collins and Jerry Para wrote, "Building a visionary company requirements one percent vision and 99 percent alignment…"  

Research tells us around 70% of current employees are not fully engaged In the work (GALLUP)

If alignment is so important, why do so few achieve it?

It’s really hard.  It's complex.  It involves many, many moving and interconnected parts.

They don’t understand the skill set and tool kit to do it.  

Peter Drucker, our hero of business said, “Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art”

Tom Peters, went on to say, Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence - only in continuous improvement and constant change.

How does Waymaker solve the alignment puzzle?

Alignment is a three cord rope

1/ Alignment in what the business does and why it does it. That's a vision aligned with a market problem, which is aligned with strategic position, aligned with a valuable business model, aligned with the right customer experience and the most effective employee experience. 

2/ Alignment in when the business is going to do things. That's alignment in what will shift the needle on the business at what time.  What must happen this quarter, before next quarter or next year? 

3/ Alignment in who is doing what today, this month, this quarter and this year. That's goal alignment across teams. Who is doing what and when it's going to get done by. 

How do you know if you have alignment?

There is a really simple measure.  It is simple, things gets done, by whoever needs to do it, regardless of the job description.  That's when you have alignment. 

How do you know? 

You can see it in your data in Waymaker.

Read more here on Waymaker.io

When listening to customers, we found they wanted an effective way to find the gaps in their business and determine which ones deserved their attention.

The diagnostic unlocks insights across the framework.

Principle 1 – Depth of shift increases the level of shift

Changing what we do, does not change who we are. But changing who are, almost always changes what we do.  

That’s why beliefs & mindset lead to skills and systems, which shows patterns, trends and behaviours over time which ultimately outworks itself in daily activities.  

Principle 2 – Organisation alignment is a four-dimensional activity. 

Height, width, and depth of alignment over time.  

We need an objective standard measure over time to objectively compare growth, maturity, and clarity whilst things change inside and outside the organisation.  

We need an objective standard measure across the breadth organisation’s functions; vision, market, strategy, business model, cx and ex.  

We are super excited to announce Waymaker Academy.  Visit: https://waymaker.io/academy

In this episode we introduce Waymaker Academy and it's collection of 'bit sized brilliance' courses that help every team and leader to grow.

Our purpose is to provide practical, quality and easy to digest education & playbooks that leaders, teams and advisors can use every day.

As always we take a little deep dive into what the business principles are relevant and how you can apply them today.

The big idea of this episode:

"Education is knowledge …. but education with distribution is transformation."

We go back in time and look at why the man who invented the modern book died a pauper. Guttenberg is hero who died thinking his invention was worthless.

Why? He made no money from it.

What was the change?

The change was when other printers took the technology to Venice - the crossroads of the merchant world.  They then used the ships as distribution to create news networks, publishing houses and create new jobs on a sustainable platform.

Education is knowledge .... but education with distribution is transformation.

Subscribe and listen as we introduce Waymaker Academy with some bit sized brilliance... or at least bit sized interesting stories!!

What is a strategic command centre?

A place where real time information can be absorbed & analysed for decision makers to make the most important and most effective decisions quickly.

Ideally, the situation room is:

• Apolitical
• Representative of all departments
• Always on
• Able to operate anywhere
• Strategic but highly focussed on tactics to solve problems
• Receives information in
• Clearly communicates instructions out

What has the White House got to do with this?

If, ‘to the victor go the spoils’, then ‘to the loser goes the lessons’.

We discover how it was JFKs failure in the ‘Bay of Pigs’ Cuba crisis that led to the creation of the now infamous White House Situation Room.

Every business needs a situation room, we explore how Waymaker.io can be that for you.

How can Waymaker be a strategic command centre?

Waymaker helps leaders find gaps across the whole of the business.

We do this through Waymaker’s Experience Curve Diagnostic which guides users through identify what business activities need improvement.

Waymaker's Experience Curve is a sense making framework.

A sensemaking framework is simply a framework or window through which we can make sense of what is around us.

The Experience Curve was developed, to help leaders make sense of the organisation around them.

Sadly, in today’s marketplace so many leaders fall under the weight of hyper-fast disruptive change.

Leaders & teams needed a new way of making sense of the situation around them, what improvements are needed and what the most effective course of action will be.

Many frameworks are useful as a drawing or diagram on a whiteboard.

However, in today’s world cloud software accelerates our ability to receive inputs, process data, create outputs and execute with a speed never before available to us in human history.

Waymaker is the software that brings the Experience Curve framework to life and makes it easier for leaders and teams to deliver strategic compounding growth.

View Waymaker's Experience Curve

The six functions every organisation must mature are:

Vision  

Solve a problem, set a vision for a better future.

Market

Define market and focus on an ideal customer, building a great reputation.

Strategy

Establish a valuable position in market and defend with long term strategic competitive advantages

Business model

Optimise an innovative business model to create a wonderful value proposition.

Customer experience (sales, marketing and service.)  

Deliver an engaging customer experience to find, win and grow a valuable customer base.

Employee experience

Build a winning culture through a high-quality employee experience.  

The seventh item on the diagram above is ‘action’.  

There is no point being clear on the six functions, or even aligned.  If a team cannot effectively execute.  

We do that by asking and answering 7 Questions.

The 7 Questions

1. What is our vision, is this driven by our purpose and what’s holding us back from reaching it?

2. What is our market, who is our ideal customer, what do they value and what perceptions do we need to build?

3. What is our strategy, where is our growth focussed and how do we improve our positioning?  

4. What is our business model, is it creating value, what metrics tell us this, and what practices improve our value proposition?

5. What is our customer’s experience, how do we acquire, retain and grow customers through our personality and what improvements need to be made?

6. What is our employee’s experience, how do we acquire, retain and grow talent through our principles and what improvements need to be made?

7. What are the one, two, or three things that if delivered in the quarter of half will shift the needle on the business?

Read more here: Waymaker.io

So, what was the discovery?

8 observations that wildly successful teams did. 

Awareness: Develop situation awareness

Clarity: Ask the right questions

Alignment: Come to agreement on the right answers

Focus: Deliver what matters most  

Maturity: Build skills and systems 

Curiosity: Hold the mindset of an explorer to become a transformer

Rhythm: Use rhythm to build momentum, this will create torque

Accountability: Own outcomes. 

Waymaker builds the skills and is the system to apply the 8 principles of growth.