EntreLeadership - How to Accomplish Unreasonable Goals with Kacy Maxwell and Brian Hamilton

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks with Kacy Maxwell, the executive director of marketing for EntreLeadership. Kacy shares how to set goals and get your team on board with them. He warns us to not fall into the infinite monkey theorem with our teams. Later, George sits down with Brian Hamilton, a senior vice president at Ramsey Solutions. They discuss how to set and achieve unreasonable goals. You’ll learn: •      Why your team’s trapped in the infinite monkey theorem •      The key to achieving unreasonable results •      How to set goals you’ll actually achieve •      The real reason you’re not making progress Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre •      BELAY: https://bit.ly/351P9AE Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Give us your feedback by leaving a voicemail at 844.944.1070 or emailing [e-mail] •      Strategic Planning video course in EntreLeadership Elite: http://bit.ly/3glWcKE •      Daniel Ramsey sharing the desired-future framework: http://bit.ly/3OqLX4z •      Listen to The Ramsey Show: http://bit.ly/3ErRhQp Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere with the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices: https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, how to accomplish more than you ever thought possible through a very different type of goal planning framework. And then how to get your team on board with the goals that you've set. Welcome to the Entree Leadership podcast from the Ramsey Network, where we show you the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host, George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to help you grow yourself, your team, and your profits. I want to say quick thanks to all of you who have left us feedback and voice. mails on these new segments we've been trying. We really appreciate it. Some of you really like it. And some of you, not so much. This would be an example that probably didn't knock it out of the park. But either way, please, please keep that feedback coming. We super appreciate it. And coming up,

we've got a teaching segment with our friend Casey Maxwell, Executive Director of Marketing for Entree Leadership. Welcome back, Casey. How you doing? I'm doing well, George. How are you? Good. Let's get into this. We are talking about goal setting and how to set goals, how to get your team on board. This is one of those things that we all have heard a thousand times, but it's one of those things we're not quite great at as leaders. Yeah, it's true. I'm really glad to be on the podcast. I love goals. I've always loved goals. It's one of these things that ever since I was a little kid, I loved the idea of having a goal, not because I liked goals, but because I liked knowing how to win. Thank you for being vulnerable. Right. You just love winning, Casey.

I just love winning and goals that were the way to help me do that. So I've always set goals for myself, right? New Year's goals, how to get better, how to do this. But when it comes to setting goals for your team, you have to think about it a little differently, right? I would argue that if you don't have a goal, you don't have a team, right? A team without a goal is basically a bunch of people that just work in close proximity, right? And if you are, as a leader, hoping to lead a team in a certain direction without a goal, you're kind of falling into this infinite monkey theorem.

Have you heard of that theorem? Please tell me. Okay. So the infinite monkey theorem is if you put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters and give them infinity amount of time, that eventually they would write all of the works of Shakespeare, right? Is that true? Well, it's a random thing.

Like they're just hitting random keys. So eventually, at some infinite time in the future, they're going to be able to type out the right set of letters that gives us William Shakespeare. It's ridiculous, and it's extremely low the probability that would happen. It's there. It's not zero, but it's really, really low. And how long it would take is an infinite amount of time, right? If you are creating a team and not giving them a goal and hoping that somehow all of the pieces just magically formed together to get your business going in a big direction, a new direction,

you're basically doing that. It's ridiculous. That's why you have to have goals for your team. And so when you think of setting goals, goals for your team is extremely important because it brings a lot of clarity. So when you think of clarity, people need to know where the company is going. Where are you planning to take your business? A goal helps see that. What should I do? What role do I play in getting us there? A goal helps them understand that. And what are the things that I should be working on now versus saying, I'll do that later? A goal helps them understand how to prioritize. And the last thing, it just, it brings unity, right? It helps everybody say, hey, we're all in this thing together. What can we do as a team to move this forward? As you were sharing that analogy, I thought, it's like saying, I'm going to win with money by playing the lottery.

Right. And eventually, you might hit the powerball for $1.9 billion. Right. But a much better way, is by saying, I'm going to live on less than I make and stick to a budget and pay off the debt and do all of these things that actually will cause you to win next week versus a maybe. And so I love the level of clarity that goals bring to you in your team instead of me as the team member feeling like, I don't understand the point of this just sitting in a word doc or an Excel spreadsheet or making the sales call. So when you feel like you're a part of a bigger mission, vision, goal that really changes the way you see work. So how do you go about creating these team goals, as you call them? Yeah, and there's definitely right ways and wrong ways to create a goal. So if you think about a goal and you create an extremely vague goal, it will actually cause more harm than not creating a goal at all.

And we'll talk about that a little bit. But we talk about goals a lot here at Entry leadership. And we believe that it falls into what we call strategic planning. And we love talking about strategic planning. We have a whole talk at Entry Leadership Master Series about this. In Entree Leadership Elite, we've got a whole course. And if we had an episode recently where Daniel Ramsey talked about desired future, which is what we say is a goal for the company.

So we really believe that this is extremely important for every leader to do. And the problem is that most leaders are too busy working in the business. So the day-to-day putting out fires, making sure things happen, to work on the business, which is what goal setting is. It's taking that step back and getting above the business to say, these two questions, you need to answer these two questions, where do I want my business to go and how are we going to get there? Now, those sound like very simple questions, but they have very, very complex answers. And so answering that for your business and giving that to your team is going to create a different level of output than just saying, guys, let's go do better.

Nobody wants that. No. And as you mentioned, you start to go, where are we going, how we're going to get there? And that how we get there, that's when each team members, KRA comes into play, those key results areas of this is what winning looks like for your role. And this is how it ties to the bigger strategy we have as a company. And so that's a huge part of it. We'll make sure to link to Daniel Ramsey's clip on Desired Future.

in the show notes as well. So part of goal setting, you mentioned we don't want this to be vague. It has to be specific. It has to have a time limit. It has to be measurable. This is the like the standard goal planning stuff that we talk about inside of Entree leadership. But then getting your team on board with those goals, that can be a much different problem. Most leaders can go, yeah, I set the goal perfectly. But getting my team rallied around it, that's a real challenge. Yeah. Yeah. And when we talk about goal setting, the things that you mentioned are part of it. And there's one other element, is you need to make goals your own. Now, that's for when you set goals for yourself. So how do you do that with the team? If you go in a room and create all these goals and come out and hand it to your

team and go, go do this stuff, that is all of a sudden, well, these are my leader's goals that I guess I've got to go hit, right? They haven't taken that ownership and they haven't internalized. Wow, I see how I'm part of this goal. And so there are certain strategies that you should use to involve your team in setting those goals. Okay. So there are things that you can do before you set a goal, send out a survey and talk to your team and say, what are the biggest problems that are affecting our business today? Gather that from the team. They're on the ground. They're making things happen. They're going to be able to highlight some of these problems that you may want to set some goals around. Also, ask for it like, what are things that you think we should do to move this

business forward? Gather that feedback and don't go just implement it and say, okay, there's our our goals, right, take that into a stratop, a strategic offsite with your leadership team and argue through, okay, what of these are the best things that we should do? So that when you land on what your desired future is, what your goals are for that next year, and you bring it back to the team, all of a sudden they're like, oh, I was a part of that. We're solving the problem that I highlighted, right? And they can also weigh in on the how. So you use that feedback to get and set that goal. And that's where do you want to go? But the how is where they can really speak into and take ownership.

Well, Casey, we've got a free trial of Entry Leadership Elite. I want people to dig deeper into the strategic planning course because I think it's one of those things where it can't just be a flyover 10-minute thing. We do some in-depth teaching on how to create the desired future, what that means for your team, what that means for strategic planning for the year. And as we wrap here, you framed up the question, where do you want to want to be? my business to go and how do we want to get there? As you work with your team on this, what is one thing a leader can do today to move this forward the next week? They say, Casey, I think I have the goal. I think I could be a little more specific. Now what do I do? Yeah. If you sit down, one, the first thing you should do, if you are a leader with leaders,

you need to bring them in to help finalize that goal, right? You may have a great idea and say, this is where I want my business to go, but if your leaders aren't on board with that, you're not going to be able to get the rest of your team involved in that. So bring them in, have the conversation, have them make that goal better. And then as you roll it out to your team, we always say you've got to put stuff in writing. So get that goal out and get it in front of your team and talk about it all the time. Because if they don't hear it, it's not going to be a goal that's going to stick. Yeah, I've heard the term chief repeating officer.

That's kind of your job when it comes to goal clarity reminding the team. This can't just be a one and done thing. this is a part of a rhythm you have with your team. Exactly. Love it. Well, Casey, always love having you on the podcast. Thanks for joining us today. My pleasure, George.

Well, folks, it's your turn. Let us know what you think of that segment. You can call and leave us a voicemail. Here's the number for you. 844-944-1070. That's 844-944-1070. And if you'd rather email us, we've got a link to that in the show notes. So at Ramsey Solutions, Casey, we know that success doesn't just happen.

A great culture doesn't just happen. strategic planning doesn't just happen. You have to create it. You have to go after it. And with Entree Leadership Lead, you get tons of tools and resources that you need to build that world-class culture to take your business to the next level. We mentioned that course on strategic planning as well. And right now your team created a free 30-day trial for folks to jump in. Yeah, and they can log in today, create that free trial, take that course. We've got a bunch of other courses in there. And we've got a lot of tools that when you are intentional and if you have a goal to create a world-class culture, that's going to be the tool for you. Love it. All right, up next,

the goal planning framework and mindset that you need to accomplish more than you ever thought possible. All right, joining me now, Brian Hamilton, one of our senior leaders, a senior vice president here at Ramsey Solutions, to talk about how to set and achieve your goals. Brian, welcome to the podcast. Hey, George, how's it going? Yeah, this is your first time. It is. It's pretty wild. Well, we're excited to have you. This all started because you gave a talk to our own team members at what we call Entree U, Entree Leadership University, where we help our team level up in their own leadership. That's right.

And you've been very passionate about this thing called Unreasonable Planning. What the heck does that mean? So Unreasonable Planning is all about how you get world-class results. And like anytime you're shooting for some vision, that's not like just easy to go get. This is the kind of framework and approach that you're going to need to pull off crazy aggressive goals. And it came from Dave one time. They said, you know, what they thought was a regular goal.

And he said, that's kind of boring. to level this thing up and people looked at that goal and they said, hey, that's unreasonable. And he said, if you want unreasonable results, sometimes you have to act unreasonably. And so that's where the unreasonable part comes into this. I love that. So this is a framework and a mindset. Walk us through the difference between those two. Yeah. So you're familiar with like the baby steps and things like that. You've got a framework. The baby steps lay out the seven steps of what to go do with your money.

The mindset is like how intensely do you go do those steps? So, you know, step one, get $1,000 set aside for an emergency fund. Step two, get out of debt, pay off all your debt. But it doesn't, when in the pay off all your debt step, using the debt snowball, it doesn't say to go do it in 18 to 24 months, go sell everything that's not tied down, you know, go work extra, go do all these things. So you've got the framework, what's the order of the planning? And then you've got the mindset.

How intensely do you take this? And so you have to have the intense mindset for what we're talking about here. If you're going to pull off goals that, like when I say world-class goals, I'm talking world-class literally best in the world. We call them B-Hag's, big, hairy, audacious goals. So Jim Collin, B-Hag, if you're going to pull off some crazy goal and be best in the world, I'm not talking about somewhere in the good range. I'm talking about literally best. It's going to take an approach that most people aren't willing to do. This isn't an approach that most people are going to go take.

But if you're going to pull off crazy aggressive goals, this is what you're going to have to do. Yeah, like Dave Ramsey says, no one wins the Super Bowl. by accident. It takes an active intentionality and intensity to do that. Exactly. So let's walk through this five-step framework. Where does it start? All right. So step one, it's you have to have a goal. So that's where the B-Hag comes in. So this isn't just a small goal because small goals lead to small results. And that allows you to be in like how you can optimize and move the needle a little bit. B-Hags, when you set the crazy aggressive goal, it usually requires like disruptive thinking. So step one, you have to have a goal. And it has to be something.

that like we're all aligned to. Don't go off inside your company and have a crazy aggressive goal in a completely different direction than where your company's going. So like figure out where the company is going, figure out how you can aggressively advance that. So it has to be a goal that like we're all aligned to. And we talk a lot about mission and vision and desired future. And so your goal should align with that if you're doing it right. Absolutely. And often where people fail on this step is they have goals, but they're vague. The opposite of vague is it has to be crystal clear. It has to be crystal clear, and we all have to align to it. Did the entire team repeat what the goal is verbatim? Absolutely. That's the goal.

So there's a litmus test there. If the whole team can't repeat it, it's not clear enough. You haven't repeated it enough. So once we've defined the goal, what's the next step in the process? So step two is where you commit to it. And this is usually a step that most people skip. It's kind of like assumed that everybody's committed to the goals. I can tell you, not everybody is committed to the goals, often because step one, like it wasn't so clear. So in step two, like at the level at which you commit to the goal is a game changer and pulling it off. If you've ever listened to like the Ramsey show, people call in and they're like, I can't save money. Obviously, you talk to them as well.

And I've heard Dave over the years reframe how that caller is asking that question. I can't save money. And Dave's like, you mean to tell me if your kid was sick and they were going to die, if they don't get some procedure by the end of the month. and that procedure costs $5,000. You mean to tell me you couldn't come up with $5,000 to save your kid's life? And, like, instantly, that caller changes their posture. And they go, well, I mean, if I had to, I could. And so what's the difference between, you know, three minutes earlier they couldn't save money

and now they could save $5,000 by the end of the month? The difference is the motivation. And what level are you going to go commit to it? So, you know, hearing Dave take that call, that caller, is in like crisis mode. They've put themselves in crisis mode. And the trick here on this like goal planning framework is you don't have to be in crisis to be that intense.

You can choose to turn that switch on. You can choose to put yourself, set that posture to where, you know, over my dead body, are we not going to accomplish this goal? When you start doing that, if you have that like, if my kid was going to die, I could obviously come up with $5,000. I'm thinking of times on my team. we've set crazy aggressive sales goals. So one year, it was actually a couple years our sales had plateaued.

And we talked about what needs to be true to take no off the table on hitting this next goal. So we were talking about going from like $5 million a year and new sales leveling up to $8 million the following year. And like the team came back after a couple weeks of planning and they were like, it can't be done. Well, it seems like no is an option. So we've taken that option. What if we took no off the table? If we took no off the table, well, they went back and after a week or so of planning, they did come back. And they said, well, we found a way, but you're not going to like it.

I'm like, okay, tell me what it is. If we're going to increase sales that much, 60% in one year when we've plateaued for years, we're going to have to go from spending like $100,000 a year on our marketing to about a million. And I'm thinking, you mean to tell me, you did all this planning, and you want to go spend a million dollars a year on marketing. You don't think I'm going to like that. Well, we're talking about how to take a $5 million sales goal to $8 million. You mean to tell me if we spend a million, we can go from $5 million to $8 million. If I spend a million, we get $3 million more.

I'm thinking, how many times can we do this? And they had never thought outside of the box, there's no way we're going to go from spending $100,000 to $1 million in one year. But with no off the table, with no not being an option, they came up with an option, and it was what they thought was crazy and aggressive. And it was. Now, had they come back and said, we need to spend $4 million to make $3 million more? There's common sense in here.

But when no is an option, people take it. Take no off the table. If you're committed to a level where it must be done, that leads to new ideas, that leads to new actions. And great leaders rally their team around that and get their team to commit to it versus just, well, I said the goal, I'm paying them to work here, so they should be committed to it.

That's exactly. It doesn't work like that. Yep. So we've defined the goal. We committed to the goal. What's the next step? Step three is where you connect that goal down to activities to where you believe it's going to happen. So like step one, we've got the goal. Step two, we've committed. Now step three is like where we actually put together the plan. This is tactical. This is tactical. And when I say believe, that's a key word there because there's like different confidence levels that we have in our plans.

Usually when we start coming up with a goal, and especially if it's going to be a B-Hag, often we've come up with what the goal is. and we don't really have a plan. Well, a goal without a plan is a wish. And so that's where people start. It's okay to start there. But how intensely are we going to take this planning? That's what we've got four confidence levels on this step that give you four different feelings about what's my chance of actually hitting this goal. So the four feelings, you've got hope, think, believe, and no.

So usually people start off in hope. And that's where we have the plan, you know, we have the goal, no real plan. And that's, I hope this works. I hope this works. Now, hope is a great thing, but if your whole plan requires hope, you are not setting yourself up for success. So let's use Ramsey style, money style, like, I'm going to go get out of debt. This is where, like, you've got callers calling into the show. I'm going to go get out of debt.

Great. Love it. Love the goal. The key question that you have to ask to figure out which stage you're in here is, well, how are you going to do that? So you might ask that caller, oh, I love it. You're getting out of debt. How much debt do you have? and they go, I don't really know.

Well, how long is it going to take? I don't really know. But we committed to it. We're all in. We're going to do this thing. Well, if you don't know how much debt you have and you don't know how long it's going to take, you're hoping you're going to get out of debt. The second confidence level is think.

And things should really have a question mark. It's like, I think I'm going to do this. And that's where you can start to break the goal down a little bit. So the caller might go, I've got $48,000 a debt. I'm going to pay it off in 24 months. That's $2,000 a month. Okay, mathematically, that makes sense. Sounds good.

Well, how much are you currently paying towards your debt each month? I don't know. Well, what are you going to do to, like, come up with extra money to get out of debt in 24 months? I don't really know. I'm going to work more. I'm going to spend less. Well, how much more, how much less on what kinds of activities?

If you can't connect the dots down to the level that you're explaining the activities, that's going to drive the outcome, that's when you're thinking. On paper, mathematically it works out, that's when you get to the think level. The third level is the believe level. And that's where you're trying to live. You're trying to live in the believe level. So this caller might go, I'm getting out of debt. I've got $48,000 worth of debt.

I'm going to pay it off in 24 months. That's $2,000 a month. I'm already doing $1,000 a month in minimum payments. I just need to come up with an extra $1,000. So here's what I'm doing. I'm pausing my retirement contributions. So we teach people on this step, gazelle intensity, temporarily stop investing while we go get out of debt.

Love it. So that's like 300 bucks a month coming in. I'm going to go change my withholdings. I keep getting a stinking tax refund. It's like $2,400 every year, which is like the average refund out there. If I change them, I'll get $200 more bucks a month. I'm going to go work extra. I'm going to drive Uber, Instacart, whatever it takes.

You work five hours and one night, you'll make about $100. So I'm going to work one night a week for four weeks out of the month. That's $400 extra. And then over here, I'll take my eating out money from $200 to $100. We'll use the cash envelope system. When the money's gone, we won't spend more than that. So I'm going to do this. I'm going to pause retirement, change withholdings, work extra, this amount, and cut back

in this area. And you add up those different activities. You add them all up. That's an extra $1,000 a month. If you keep doing your $1,000 a month of minimum payments and you add those extra four activities, there's actually like a belief, oh, if you really do those things, then that result will happen. That feeling's a lot different than I don't know how much dead I have. I don't know how long it's going to take. I don't know what I'm going to do extra.

So then the confidence comes in like, are we actually executing on them? And then you get to the last stage, and that's the no level of confidence. Like, I know this is going to happen. At the no stage, you kind of start asking like, well, all the stars seem like they have to align to take your thousand bucks a month of minimum payments and your thousand bucks a month of extra you said you have to do that for the next 24 months have you ever heard someone's 24 month plan go exactly according to plan like all the stars line the star's never a line so when you're at the no level you've built in so much margin you're attacking it so aggressively something would have to go drastically wrong to not hit the plan so this is where you might go I'm not just going to do two thousand bucks a month I'm going to be like 2300 bucks a month I got some extra activity build in some extra margin. I don't want to do this in 24 months. I want to do this in 21 months.

So the worst case becomes you hit your goal. Best case, you hit it even faster and bigger than you thought. That's exactly right. If you're planning that it's all going to finish on December 31st for your annual goal, man, you've got a lot of risk built into your plan. And so, like, one of these confidence levels, you'll know you're on track when you're, you should be living in that belief stage. If you're in the hope stage, you've got about a one in 10 chance, 10% chance you'll hit your goal.

at the think stage, probably a 35%, maybe a 1 in 3. At the believe stage, that's where you've got a 70% chance of hitting your goal. That means 7 out of 10 times you're going to hit that goal. It's not that you'll only hit 70% of it. And if you're operating in the no level, the no level, we're probably about a 95% chance. That's where something, you know, the market would have to change. Something would drastically have to shift that you couldn't have seen coming. And that's, you know, 19 times out of 20, you're going to go hit that goal.

If you're doing this, you can do this for business or you could do this for personal. If you're doing this for business and you've got like an annual goal, we teach people around here. You've got to live in the believe stage for the year. And that first quarter needs to be more at the no level. We need to know Q1's going to work and believe the whole year's going to work. Yeah, so a lot of this is committing to it, tracking the results and tweaking along the way if things aren't working. And that's where we're getting into the next step. I love it.

So those are the first three. What is this fourth step? So step four, GSD, get stuff, pick your favorite S done. This is the execution part. And if you have connected the activities to the level of which if you do these activities, this goal is accomplished. Now it's time to go like, do what you said. And so often the teams that miss their goal, I find don't create enough urgency at the beginning. They lay out this plan.

They say, these are the activities that need to happen. And it's like a football team that you're watching that's behind and they go in the fourth quarter and they're like doing the two minute drill. Here's how it normally goes. The goal, step one, it's not clear enough. Step two, we haven't committed. We've assumed everybody's committed. Step three, we came up with some plans, but they weren't like down at the believe level. And we just started going, going, going, going, going.

Well, in fourth quarter, in a football game is when you find out you're off track. You need to score two touchdowns in about three minutes. and you start throwing Hail Marys. And like you've got the hurry up offense. You have like ran out of time. And so you start doing all these risks. Desperation rarely gets you to success. Yes.

So the solution is where you take what you would normally do in the fourth quarter and treat the first quarter like it's the fourth quarter and start quick. Often teams that don't hit their goals, it's because of one of two things didn't happen, maybe both. Number one, the goal wasn't clear.

Or number two, you didn't break the goal down into short-term model. What I like about this is that it points a mirror back to the leader. Yes. It's not, well, the team's not doing enough. Usually that points back to the leader going, I didn't make it clear enough. I didn't get them to commit enough. I didn't connect it to the activities well enough.

And so I love that personal responsibility on the leader's side. The opposite end of this, I'm talking about short-term milestones. The opposite end of the spectrum there is output. It's not that we're not doing a lot of work and putting a lot of stuff out there. But if you haven't broken down the goal, how do you know you're doing output on the right kinds of activities? If the goal was, I want to go run three miles in 21 minutes. Well, it's pretty easy to start doing the math and say, okay, three miles and 21 minutes is one mile every seven minutes. Putting their short term milestones in place allows you to start running that race.

And then when you see that first milestone that you're coming up when you look down to your watch and you're like, oh crap, I'm eight minutes into the race, not seven, which means I don't have 14 minutes through the last two miles. I have 13. I can't keep going at this pace and hit that end of your goal. So I can't run a seven-minute mile for the last two. I need to run a six-and-a-half-minute mile. So when you've laid out those milestones, it's not just the leader coming top-down saying, you guys are off track.

When the whole team understands the goal and they understand the milestones, you get the team starting to look up at different milestones along the way and going, oh, crap, we're off track. And then they start rallying around the awareness. And that awareness causes them to start doing all kinds of stuff that they wouldn't normally do. So we've defined the goal, committed to it, connected to activities, we're executing on

the plan. What is the final step in the framework? Yep. Final step five is accountability. When you've done step three, you've connected it to activities, and then you've done step four, you've broken down those activities into the short-term milestones. You are either on track or off-track. It's like either red or green. I kind of hate the yellow status, yellow like we're close. For me, we're either on track or off-track. And that's where we need to embrace the accountability, not avoid it. Most people try to avoid this. So I'm talking about make it crystal clear.

We're not yellow on our goal. We're either red or green. And so when you come in to give status updates on your goal, most people don't give them regularly enough. At work, if you're doing annual goals, at least these updates need to be weekly, not monthly. So when someone's coming in to give their status update, there should be three options. I'm either on track and here's what I'm doing

to keep it on track. I'm off track and here's what I'm doing to fix it. Or I'm off track and I don't know what to do to fix it. That's okay.

But here's what I'm doing. I'm putting these three people in a meeting later today to figure out what to do. We'll come back in next week with an update. Yeah, the worst thing you can do is sugarcoat it

when you're off track. Go, well, I think we're kind of on track. That's that yellow. And you go, we'll figure it out. I got it. Yes. But you don't got it. Yes.

A yellow, I don't know if I would like yellow better than what I see often. Often what I see is people call something green when it's not. And often it looks like, we call them like a watermelon status. It's green on the outside, but it is red on the inside. If you come in and show me your plan and you show me your status and everything's green, me as the leader, I'm actually spending a lot of mental calories to think, are you aware if you're on track or off track? Often people are way too optimistic.

They hate the spotlight of like, I don't want to, I don't want to put myself out there and feel like I'm off track. I don't want to tell you the bad parts. I just want to tell you the good parts. And people do that. Me as the leader, I'm thinking, do you even know what's on track and off track? But if you come in, and it looks like there's blood all over the paper, it's half red, half green, instantly, I'm feeling better because I'm thinking, well, at least you know what's on track or off track.

Now I can spend my mental calories helping you with the parts that are off track. To bringing other people in. We need help. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Yes. So as we wrap here, if a leader has 30 minutes this week, they haven't done a great job kind of putting this kind of framework together. They have a goal, but it's kind of squishy. Where would you say to spend that 30 minutes they have this week?

If you only have 30 minutes, I'd write out these five steps, set a goal, commit to it, connect it to activities to where you get to the hope, think, believe no stuff. Step four, execute, get stuff done with short-term milestones, and step five, the accountability. and I'd rate myself on a scale of, you know, the low end and the high end I'm giving you on each one of these and try to find out where you are on each of these five steps. I think you could do that in 30 minutes. With set the goal, is the goal we have this year? Is it vague or is a crystal clear when it comes to step two, the commitment? Is our commitment level assumed or is everybody taken no off the table?

So we're in that spectrum. Step three, how do we feel about our plans? Are we like at the hope level? or are we the plans are so clear, we're attacking them so aggressively, we know they're going to be done. And then you get to step four, the execution. Are we at the doing lots of output? Or are we, we have such short-term milestones laid out? We'll know if we're off track, day one.

And then you get to step five. Are we avoiding accountability? Or have we embraced it to the point where everybody's coming in half red, half green all the time and not afraid to admit where they are? Well, Brian, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think it's going to help a lot of our entree leaders out there commit to those goals and be more successful in them this year. So, thanks so much for being with us today. Thank you, George. If you enjoyed today's episode of the show, be sure to follow and subscribe and give us a five-star review. And of course, share this episode with your team, with a friend, someone who needs to hear it on social media. That helps us

impact more leaders like you. Of course, you can always follow us on social media at entree leadership. And just a little plug here. If you like this show and you want to plan for your money, be sure to check out the Ramsey Show on the Ramsey Network or wherever you listen to podcast. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.