EntreLeadership - #260: Why Annual Goals Don't Work with Brian Moran

Episode Date: April 30, 2018

If you’re constantly trying to find more hours in the day, New York Timesbest-selling author and leadership consultant Brian Moran might have just the solution: Plan to get more done in 12 weeks than most people get done in an entire year. Sound too good to be true? Not at all, insists Brian, who has helped thousands of clients shift from traditional annualized thinking to what he calls a 12-week year. And the results speak for themselves: increased efficiency, more focus, improved execution, higher productivity, and ultimately, less stress. Tune in to learn more about this game-changing approach and how to implement it in your own business. entreleadership.com/podcast Goal Tracker: Create Unstoppable Momentum from EntreLeadership 2018 Small Business Trends Report from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Our featured conversation this episode is with Brian Moran. He is the co-author of a book that has gone Gaga with so many different industries. It's called the 12-week year.

You're going to love this. It's going to really stretch you and help you. We also have some great free resources from our Entree leadership team and our friends at InfusionSoft. Well, Brian Moran came to us via Brian Buffini, who still to this day, one of our most popular guests on Entree leadership. They work together. And this book, The 12 We Here, which Brian is a co-author of, has literally revolutionized the way many businesses actually look at their productivity.

And so if you're thinking about long-term plans and the idea overwhelms you, and you can't even think five years ahead, much less five, 10, 15, or 20 years, this is going to help you. Sit back and enjoy my conversation with Brian Moran. So I think our audience knows where I'm going first. Seriously? Come on, Brian. How in the world am I going to take a 12-month year and,

smash it into 12 weeks. Let's first talk about what this concept is so that they can now, okay, let's let our brains get free after you explain what this really is. Yeah. So great question. We're not talking about taking everything you would do in 12 months and cram it in 12 weeks. We're talking about accomplishing more in 12 weeks than most in 12 months. Yeah.

And that is a big shift. Big difference. So I wanted you to clarify that right out of the gate. And how is it possible to get more done in 12 weeks than you would in a full calendar year? Ken, it's really about focus. We spend so much time diluted and diffused. And what happens in that is when we first started working with clients, you know, we worked in that annual environment.

And that environment is just too much opportunity to put things off. So, you know, I choose to do the easy stuff or the comfortable stuff, not necessarily the stuff that's really going to move the needle. And I say, well, I'll get to it tomorrow, get to it next week. And because I've got 12 months to do it, it's fine. When we operate in a 12-week year, there's a hard, deadline, right? There's a hard line in the sand. And by the way, there aren't four of those in the year that's annualized. So the first shift, honestly, is in our thinking to get out of that

annual environment. But when we put the hardline in the sand at 12 weeks, now there's a healthy sense of urgency that starts to be generated with that. And what it causes us to do is really determine what matters most in terms of hitting the goals. Some people say, wow, it sounds stressful. When you play it out, it actually lowers the stress. You're living with this sense of the healthy urgency, right? Not the stress. out stuff, not to panic, but this notion of, look, if my goals matter to me, right? If this stuff matters to me and I want to be at this spot at the end of my year, my 12-week year, then I got to do this stuff along the way, right? I got to do the heavy lifting. Yeah. So this is great.

So we're talking about really shifting gears here. So we get out of this, what are we going to accomplish? What do we need to accomplish? What should we accomplish in 52 weeks? And we go, all right, we got 12 weeks. In this 12 weeks. So is that the further shift practically where we're going? We're not now necessarily looking at what the big picture is, we're going, this next picture in 12 weeks, what has to happen? I'm just curious how you juxtapose that with a long-term vision. Yeah. So let me, can I back up just a moment? Yeah. Yeah, let's break it down. So the first thing is the realization that it's not enough to know. Right. You got to execute. Well, sure. That's the number one barrier for people, though. I say it. People go, yeah, right, but people don't get it. Because what they

know and what they do, there's a huge gap. And if people did what they do, there's a huge gap. And if people did they already know without learning anything more, they'd be healthier, they had better relationships, they make more money, without learning anything new, right? So at one level, the 12-week year is designed to close that gap. And part of the way we do that is we get out of the annual environment. But then it's bundled, Ken, and this is where you're starting to get into it, it's bundled with the fundamental disciplines that drive execution, drive high performance. And the first one is what you mentioned. It's that vision piece. So without a longer-term vision, a 12-week year, I'm laying track right in front of me.

I could end up way off course. Yeah, yeah. You're getting a lot done, but it may not be the right stuff. It might not be there. And probably isn't. Right. So it starts with this notion of looking three years, five years, ten years out, what do I want my life to look like and what does great look like?

You're going to be here, God willing, let's make it great, where there's this compelling vision, there's this emotional connection to it. And then we bring it near term to 12 weeks and say, okay, where do I need to be in to 12 weeks to be living that, to be standing that ground. So there is this connection between the 12-week goal and what I'm working on and the longer-term life I want to live. And that's part of what makes it so powerful. I love that.

Okay, because that's what I want our audience. I want them suspending some disbelief as we walk through this because it's a lot for people to handle. So they've got the go, okay, this is a big vision for this year, for Company X. This is where we want to be. So then walk us through this. How do we then extrapolate,

a 12-week plan that's going to lead into the next 12 weeks, how much do those four 12-week plans need to be symbiotic? So it's an interesting question because the very nature of four 12-week plans is annualized. That's how ingrained the annualized cycle is for people. People don't even question it. So in the 12-week year, there aren't four 12-week years. It's just this 12-week year followed by the next. So if you do have an annual goal, we like to think of that as a longer-term vision. And then from there, we lock into the next 12 weeks. We set the goal. We build the plan. At the end of those 12 weeks, one of three things is going to happen. You're going to be on pace with your longer term vision and goals. You're going to be ahead. You're going to be behind.

And you can determine what to do that. And it's not like I'm struggling with the idea, but I'm asking this question on behalf of our listener here. Right. I appreciate what you're saying. But the reality is when you're moving at the speed that you're moving, you got your first 12 weeks, then what happens? You dust your hand off and you go, okay, what's the next 12 weeks look like? Can you do it that fast? Is it that focused? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I want you to break that down. Okay. So what we're going to do is we're going to take that longer term vision. As I said, we're going to bring that near term set of 12 week goal. And then we build out a 12 week plan. And this is very different than the way most people plan. Most people plan conceptually or directionally. You can't execute concepts.

We got to get tactical, which means we get very granular. But same thing, it's all about focus. So at the tactic level, we're all about less is more. One, two, maybe three goals. Even in big organizations, when jobs went back to Apple, they had some 27 different projects. He narrowed at the four, you know. So it's all about focus at the goal level and the tactic level. At the tactic level, we're looking for a critical few, the least number of tactics to accomplish the goal. But they're written as statements of actions people can take. So get referrals, cross-sell in a selling environment. Great concepts. That doesn't execute. And so as we walk that plan out then over the 12 weeks, we'll talk about how we become more consistent with those actions.

But we're going to get to the end of the 12 weeks. We're going to have hit the goal or not. But there's always a ton of learning that happens in it. And you're going to see how the other components of that help you identify the breakdowns in the learning. So that we get there, we stop the world. This is that 13th week. The 13th week is when we're going to celebrate. We're going to stop the world.

We're going to look at how we do. what worked what didn't work. Where were we on with our assumptions? Where are we off? What's different in the marketplace? We're going to reconnect with that longer-term vision. We're going to set another 12-week goal, build another plan, and go at it again. Got it.

I love it. So, just for review, I know it's simple to you, but I want people to really grasp what you're teaching here and what's in the book. You've got a big couple of goals. I know we're throwing the 52 weeks out, so I'll never say it again. It's the last time I'll – Appreciate that. Yeah, but, you know, come on now. You've got to still – we've got to get people where they need to go.

Right. So point is, three, four big goals. And then we're going to attack maybe one, maybe two of those, maybe just one in the 12 weeks, correct? Yeah. So it's really hyper-focused on execution. It's hyper-focused because, and here's the reality of that. There's a limited capacity that each of us have, whether it's an individual or an organization of 100,000, to work strategically. There's always day-to-day. And even if you have the capacity, what we found, Ken, is when you start to get more than three goals, it gets really diluted in your brain. and it's hard to kind of hold that together.

All right. So I'm going to jump up into the book, Chapter 5, because we kind of just did a little, nice little drive-through summary, get everybody's brain on track with you. One week at a time is the title chapter of Chapter 5. I think this is good. What does this look like?

We're in our 12 weeks, week one. What are we focusing on? What should it look, feel, sound like? So we've got a longer-term vision. We now have a 12-week focus plan. Limited number of goals, limited number of tactics, but they're the important action. When you get in the book, you realize that we address two things.

We address thinking and we address actions. So one of the things people have to get in their brain is that we don't control the outcomes, we control the actions. The goals are the outcomes. We don't control those. We desire them. We influence them. We control the actions. So we built this plan with goals and tactics.

Each one of those tactics has a due date of a particular week. So in week one, where I go to is in a sense I create a weekly. plan, but I'm not, here's the difference again, I'm not creating it out of thin air. I'm not sitting down with a blank slate. All I'm doing is taking that 12 week plan and translating what's due in that 12 week plan, week one. So now I have a very focused weekly plan, which I calendarize. And that's how I win the week. If that stuff gets done, I had a great week, regardless of the outcomes, whether it drives any outcomes or not, if I get that stuff done in the weekly plan, I had a great week. If I get all the other stuff done and this doesn't happen. I've lost a week. So it's an incredibly powerful tool

about clarifying for me what matters most each week. And by default then, if it's not in the plan, it's secondary. Okay. And that's what I love about this plan. I'm kind of want to interrupt this process of question asking to tee you up to talk about this. In looking at this plan, preparing for this conversation, this is not another goal setting book. This is about execution. Yeah. That's what this entire process is, right? It's, it's about, clarifying, simplifying, and then just get her done. Getting after it. Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting. It really shapes our mind. There's some science behind this, too. Oh, yeah. What you've done here is craft a very simple, but as you said, powerful process that retrains our brain. Isn't that what this really is?

Habits? It is, because our actions are always an outgrowth of our thinking. If the thinking shifts, the actions change. Maxwell Malts, I think was the first guy to say, hey, if you do something for 21 days, it becomes habit. And I think we've all seen, well, sometimes that's true. Sometimes it's not. It depends on the underlying thinking.

So as we shift the thinking, so shift the actions. All right. So let's jump into our audience knows I like to do this. Just pick chapters, tee up and let you run. Chapter 8, very interesting chapter title, accountability versus ownership. I liked that. It challenged me. I went, what?

Wait a second. Who says accountability and ownership are different? Why are they versus each other? Talk to me about that. So what we've found is that in society, the prevailing view of accountability is consequences. It's negative consequences. I mean, think about anytime someone does something wrong, right, anytime you hear that word accountability, it's affiliated with bad behavior, poor performance, negative consequences.

Someone's going to smack my hand. Someone's going to, an athlete does something he's not supposed to do, right? Commissioner comes out and says, we're going to hold them accountable, and then what happens? They find them and they spank them. It's that negative consequence. And that's the view of accountability. And the sad part of that is that's not a consequence. accountability. Accountability is not consequences. It is ownership. It's the realization that I always,

always, always, always have choice and then taking ownership of those choices. How does this 12-week way of doing things push this? When you come to the realization that an accountability as ownership may be the most empowering concept there is in terms of living life you want to live, but if you think about that, if it's really about ownership and choice, then it takes us back to vision, doesn't it? Right? What do you want your life to look like? And then it takes us to the plan. If that's, what are you willing to do to get there? And the other pieces in that process, because there are no have-toes in life.

That would be my argument. Yeah. Okay. It's always a choice. Yeah, I agree. 100%. I think you're absolutely right. Okay.

Chapter 11. Intentional imbalance. I love this. This is countercultural as well. It is. Yeah. What does it look like? What are you asking us to do here?

So the notion of life balance, as we dug into that, is really a misnomer. I mean, I think it leaves you feeling like you're going to spend equal time in every area. And even if you could do that, I don't think it's going to create what you want. Right. So it's really about intentional imbalance. Being intentional about where I spend my time and how much. And there's different seasons in life. Right.

So it's being more conscious and more aware and intentional about, I'm willing to spend more time here. I'm willing to spend less time there or whatever that is. Because if I'm not intentional about that, society is really just clamoring to tell you where to spend your time, where to spend your dollar, where to spend your attention. Just the notion for me of trying to balance everything was like there was something wrong with that. And it was really about, I'm not going to spend equal time in all the areas. It's never going to be that way, right? But let me be in tension about where I do spend my time and how much time I spend there. All right, I want to put you on the spot because we kind of generalized, okay, what this 12-week philosophy looks like,

but let's just create a small business. And you say, okay, just generalize. Just generalize, speaking, this is what, if I were to sit down with this person and do the five-minute speed dating kind of thing here in the studio. So let's say we brought in somebody who they run a sign business. Okay. Plummer, I don't care. You pick it. Yeah. Okay. Small business. You got a lot of manual labor. They're going out installing. So I'm just trying to give you at least some characteristics. You're a service business. Okay. Your workforce, right, is largely out on the job in the field. they've got to come up with a 12-week plan. They've never done this before.

Sure. They get this book, and you're going to sit with them for five minutes, give them a couple things that they're going to do right away that help them create a practical 12-week plan. I'd start with vision before I even did plan. Sure. And I'd start with personal vision before we even talk about the vision for the print shop. Because especially as you, the hourly employees and every associate needs to connect

how by the print shop being successful enables the life I want to live. So we're going to start to do some work. work with personal vision, and then we're going to move to what's the vision for the print shop. From there, then we're going to bring that near term and say, okay, if that's where we want to be long term, where do we need to be in the 12 weeks? And that's going to set the goals. Then what we do, Ken, is we use a process called mind mapping to figure out the tactics. We put the goal in the middle. We just spit out everything we can think of that would help us hit the goal. So let's come up with a fake goal. Yeah, so let's say they've got a sales goal of a million

$1. Okay, great. We're going to put that in the middle page. We're going to brainstorm everything we could do to drive sales. Now, here's the reality. What ends up on that page is not tactical and conceptual. And if we tried to do it all, we'd fail. So we're going to pick the critical few. The way we do that is we say, okay, if we could only do one thing on this page, what would that be? And then we're going to ask the next question. If we could only do one more, what would that be? And then we're going to stop, because if that'll get the job done, we don't need a third. But we're going to keep that process going until we determine, yep, that's the right number and then we need to turn those concepts into tactics because most the concepts have multiple tactics and again tactics are actions that someone takes there's statements of an action that someone can take so you're going to have this list of stuff it might be social media all right that's a concept tactically what do we need to do with that and that's going to spell out it might be three tactics it might be eight and each one of those someone's going to be assigned and there's a due date it happens once in week one and it's done or it happens every week for 12 weeks And that's how we're going to build that plan out.

All right. Good. Great stuff. Very good. Very good, good, good. Okay. Keeping score, Chapter 16. I think this is huge.

I just don't think we keep score like we should. Yeah. We want our teams to keep score. I'll tell you, we're watching our teams on the weekend. We know what the score is. Yeah, absolutely. But then as leaders sometimes, we're not keeping score across the board or in specific areas where we need to be keeping score.

Challenges on that. What's that look like? What do you challenge us on that in the book? Yeah. Ramsey does a great job of it. Yeah. You know, you're walking the office. We have scoreboards everywhere.

Scoreboards everywhere. So there's this notion of lead and lag indicators, right? And people get confused about that. The lag is just the end result. If my goal sales, then I'm tracking sales. That's a lag. If it's weight loss, it's pounds. They call it lag because, you know, can the time lag, right?

And then there's lead indicators that give us an indication of the probability that it's hitting it. So the first thing is in organizations, we have to determine what are the lead and lag things, right? What are the key measures that we need to track? And again, here, we're looking for the critical. few. You might come up with a list of 15. What are the three, four, or five? And we're going to lock those down and we're going to measure those on a weekly basis. But now, here's the thing. There's one lead indicator that's the most powerful lead indicator people have and they don't even know

about it. And that ultimately is a measure of your execution. Because again, we control the actions, not the outcome. So with the 12-week year, we are going to track our results, our key measures. We're going to score our execution. And we're going to do it by individual. So everyone on that team, imagine now we got a 12-week plan, certain tactics have people's names, that translates to that weekly plan. What's in my weekly plan is just the stuff that has my name for this week. At the end of that week, I'm going to score my execution. Of the things I had done, what got done, I'm going to calculate the score. I'm going to know kind of as the leader of my area, right, of my performance, whether I'm in the 30 percentile or the 90 percentile or wherever I'm at.

So there's this clarity around what matters most. That's the plan. There's this transparency now that starts to happen. Am I doing what I said was most important? And the cool thing about that is with thousands of people on the system, we've learned you don't have to be perfect. If you're running somewhere 80%, 85 plus week in a week out, in most cases you accomplish the goal. Now, it doesn't mean 60 won't accomplish the goal. It just means the probability is less because we have people that operate at 60% and have hit the goal.

but it's just less likely. A little bit earlier, I had you explain that accountability versus ownership chapter. You did such a great job laying that out. I'm just curious how much scoreboard keeping and scoreboards everywhere impact ownership. Well, here's the thing. It's an interesting question because my experience is that if you don't own it, those scoreboards are scary, right? When you take ownership of it, that's just feedback.

And it's not always going to be pretty. But you're looking at it because now, think about this. can you've got the lead and lags and you got the execution score. You have everything you need to know to make adjustments. Because if there's a breakdown, we're not hitting the goal. It's one of two areas. It can't be anywhere else. It's either in the planned content or it's in the execution.

And most of the time, I'd say almost up to 90% of time, it's the execution. But what do people do when they're not hitting the goal? They go change the plan with the 12-week year. You don't do that. You work on why aren't we doing what's in the plan? What am I choosing to do that's not in the plan? And why am I choosing to do that versus what's in the plan? So we start to confront the breakdowns where they're at so we can take corrective action sooner.

And staying in that example, the reason you don't want to change the plan in the middle of the 12 weeks is essentially you don't have time. And on that 13th week, then we're going to really measure it. That's when we know, was the plan a little false? And if you're not executing it, you don't know. Right. You've got to execute it. And candidly, every plan's flawed. Right.

The only way you know what works and what does is you've got to go out and implement it. So the 12-week year at one level is a system that you create this vision that's compelling. You build this plant. And then you go out in the marketplace, succeed or fail as fast as you can. Come back, tighten it up, go back out. And so it's about making smaller adjustments more frequently. And that's how we're able to accomplish more in 12 weeks than most of 12 months. Yeah, I think that's one of the awesome byproducts of this plan is you really create a nimble organization.

Yes? Yes, absolutely. I know you won't brag on yourself. but I want our audience to understand, like, this isn't just a New York Times bestseller. You're taking this, and this is in a lot of companies. You're consulting. You're making this thing happen. How is it working?

And I'm not asking to give away secrets or names, but I mean, explain how this is really working. Give me a transformation story. So we work with everybody from individual solopreneurs up to, you know, all state. Oh, sure. We do a lot of work in financial services. And largely there because it's easy to measure the opportunity. outcomes. And so we can measure the impact. You know, there's a lot of great examples in the book, but I'm thinking of an individual recently that we were working with, and they're up 300 percent.

And they're in their first 12 weeks. Now, you think, boy, that guy had to be a loser before that. No, he had a very successful business. And the impact came because of the focus and the consistency on the most important actions. Because what happens for most folks is some weeks they execute, some they don't. And you'll grow with that. You know, that's that 10 to 15 percent. curve, nothing wrong with that, but it's not what you're capable of. And the difference between that and exponential growth is not longer hours. It's not harder work. It's more consistent on the activities that really matter. What are you seeing, because I want leaders to hear this, what are you seeing when an organization implements this? When it comes from leadership saying,

hey, we're going to change the way we do things. When this is a stark change, and I guess many times it is. Yeah. Should be, right? Yeah, it usually is. Yeah. So the rub between leadership and the team, because we know people in general just don't like change, what's an effective way to communicate and implement this entirely new process?

I think that's important. Yeah, I love it. First is what we've seen is that the leader has to be committed. It's not one of those things you go, okay, I want many people to do this. Hey, I'm thinking about this. Right, right. It's always leader-led anyways. Right.

Right. But when the leaders committed, what that means is we do the vision work. So people get fired up about that. But not everybody's going to get on board. Some people don't like the transparency of the 12-week year. Because with the 12-week year, when the team is on it, there is nowhere to hide. So the challenge with that is if you're heavy-handed, that's going to be a disaster. If you think about accountability's consequences and that's how you manage, that's going to be a disaster.

If you understand accountability's choice, we stop trying to hold people accountable. we hold them capable. We connect the actions to the vision and all. Now we come up alongside of them. We confront the breakdowns. I like to talk about how the 12 years of guilt-free zone. I can't change last week. I can certainly learn from it. I had a disaster week last week. That's going to happen. What do I do different this week? How do I get back on the plan? And the way I win the week is execute the plan. And so I'm thinking about, you asked for an example, I'm thinking about a group we had worked with. They had five salespeople on the team. In the first 30 days, one quit. In the first 30 days, one quit. in the first 12 weeks a second quit.

And they had saved about $125,000 in payroll, and they were up 30% in 12 weeks. So guess what? Those people weren't contributing anyways. What the system did was shine a light on that and fleshed them out. Now, some of the people will step up. But the ones that won't,

it's going to be real clear that it's a bad fit. Yeah, see, again, I sense that that was the case. Yeah. But again, that's what's so great about this process. He is Brian Moran. The book is The 12-week year. Get more done in 12 weeks than others do in 12 months. Why wouldn't you buy this book?

Seriously, like, why wouldn't you just go, all right, I listen to that conversation. Now, I got to dig into that. I don't know. I don't know why in the world you wouldn't try this. I think this is a proven process. I don't think it. I know it. And I think you all should run and go get the book.

Get it wherever books are sold. Also, Brian, tell them. I've got a special deal. I know. I knew you did. I'm Tying you up. Tell them. Beautiful.

So if you go to 12 weekyear.com forward slash Ramsey, you get two options there. One, you can get a free video introduction course. So I'll go into more detail and unpack a little more for you. The other is you can get the book at a discounted price plus the videos, plus some sample plans and some other goodies like that. All right. One more time. Hit the website.

12weekyear.com 12weekyear.com forward slash Ramsey. There it is. Brian. Thanks for being with us, man. I appreciate you hanging out in our news. studio. Big thanks to Brian Moran again for being with us. I know that that helped you. Speaking of helping you, the Entree Leadership team, as we have come to expect, gives you a great resource every episode. This episode, we're going to give you the gold tracker. This is

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