The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 420: Sean Covey - Disciplined Execution, 7 Habits, & Decision Making Tools

Episode Date: May 23, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Sean Covey is President of FranklinCovey Education. He is a New York Times best-selling author and has written several books, including The 6 Most Important Decisions You'll Ever Make, The 7 Habits of Happy Kids, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, which has been translated into 20 languages and sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Sean's dad is Stephen R. Covey, the author of one of the most sold books of all time (more than 30 million copies), The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Notes: Sean played Quarterback at BYU -- Led the team to two bowl games and twice selected as ESPN's Most Valuable Player of the Game. What he learned from his time as a QB: How to prepare How to "do hard things" - "Your zone of comfort expands because the hard things aren't as hard anymore." Importance of a system - Rigorous practice, filming of the practice, reviewing of the work. Daily. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People came out in 1989... It had a tepid release and then exploded. It changed the lives of the Covey family. Sean said his dad Stephen (the author of The 7 Habits) was "very genuine... A better husband and dad than a writer. H was very congruent. He had the power of principles. There was no hypocrisy." How do you handle yourself when talking to a person who has a powerful position? "Treat the garbage collector and the CEO with an equal amount of respect." 4 Disciplines of Execution: Focusing On The Wildly Important Goals (WIG) - Exceptional execution starts with narrowing the focus— clearly identifying what must be done, or nothing else you achieve really matters much.  -- Example: JFK has one of the best examples ever: "Send a man to the moon and return him home safely by the end of the decade." It was one goal. There was a starting line and a finish line. Act on Lead Measures – Golden rule of execution: Identify lead measures. Twenty percent of activities produce eighty percent of results. The highest predictors of goal achievement are the 80/20 activities that are identified and codified into individual actions and tracked fanatically. Lag Measures are the end goal. Keep A Compelling Scoreboard -People and teams play differently when they are keeping score, and the right kind of scoreboards motivate the players to win. Create A Cadence of Accountability -Each team engages in a simple weekly process that highlights successes, analyzes failures, and course-corrects as necessary, creating the ultimate performance-management system. Goal setting - There are two kinds of strategies: Deliberate strategies Emergent strategies - "Be ready for waves that might hit you... And knock you in a better position." With goal setting, remember the phrase "No Involvement, No Commitment." Involve your team to set their own goals. Don't set the goals for them. Advice to parents with teenagers: Have a purpose as a family Set values Write a mission statement Have 1:1 time with kids Career/Life advice: Have a plan... But be flexible Live according to your principles, values, and mission statement Create a credo of your own

When it's just pressure from your boss, no one likes that. Either way, right? The boss doesn't like it. You don't like it. There's always going to be some pressure there. But if you can create a culture on your team where, hey, we're all holding each other accountable, we're in this together. I can't fail because it's going to bring you down and vice versa. That's magical. And I'm telling you, if you have a goal you're rallying around and you've got a team, and here are the lead measures, here are the behaviors we have to do on a week with basis.

And we'll get us to that goal. And here's our scoreboard to see how we're doing. that's what creates that joint accountability is the public scoreboard does. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show presented by Rixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

Text learners to 4422 to become part of Mindful Monday. You along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning 9 o'clock Eastern. to help you start your week off right. It'll also give you more details about how my book, Welcome to Management, will help you become a more effective leader.

Text learners to 4422. Now on to tonight's featured leader of the great Sean Covey, President of Franklin Covey Education. It's also a New York Times bestselling author of multiple books, including the six most important decisions ever make the seven habits of highly effective teams and the four disciplines of execution. A few of the topics we discussed. Key takeaways from his time as BYU's starting quarterback, where he led them to two bowl games.

Pretty impressive. And then what he learned from his dad, the legendary Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the greatest selling books of all time. And then how to implement the four disciplines of execution within your organization. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a great one. It's Sean Covey. Sean Covey, it's great to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome, man.

Thank you, Ryan. Good to be with you. A fellow college QB. I don't get many of these, Sean. So I have to start there. You were the starting quarterback at BYU, led the team to two bowl. games, name most valuable player by ESPN multiple times. So it's not like you were just on a roster. You were the guy. Talk to me a little bit about your career playing quarterback at

BYU and maybe some of the leadership aspects that you learn from there that you now use in your everyday life. Yeah, sure, Ryan. And it's kind of a rare breed, right? Having played quarterback in college. Yeah, it was a ride because BYU had such a a, they still have such a history, right? Zach Wilson just got, you know, drafted number two, but they've just got a history of quarterbacks. So I grew up thinking, I grew up right here by, you know, five miles from BYU, watching all the great quarterbacks and I remember watching Jim McMahon and, you know, before that,

Gifford Nilsson and Mark Wilson, they all played into pros. And then I got recruited by a lot of different schools. I almost went to Stanford, but in the end, I couldn't leave my home. hometown went there to b yu and steve young was a senior when i was a freshman oh wow i got to play under him you know watch him for a year he was phenomenal and then i finally got my shot in 1987 and uh first first time was on ESPN against air force who was having a great year and um as able to do well and uh you know had a had a couple year career before i blew up my knee but it was great i mean i think maybe the main learned was just how to be, it's just such a high level, as you know, the amount of preparation

that goes into a game, the amount of thinking and everything is really extraordinary. And so one key thing I learned was doing hard things is really good for you, you know, and putting yourself outside of your comfort zone. I was so far out of my comfort zone sometimes, you know, playing against Texas on national TV. But when you, when you do hard things, you know, you're, you know, you're you know, and do something that is way outside of what you're normally doing, your zone expands, right? So after playing football, my zone, maybe my comfort zone went from here to way out here where things aren't as hard anymore, right?

Other challenges seem so much easier after doing, you know, playing football on national TV a few times. That was one key thing. The second key thing I learned was probably the importance of a system. Why does BYU have great quarterbacks? They have a great system. you know, in terms of how they do practice every day and every, I couldn't believe when I got there, every single throw you make and practice is filmed and you have to review it the next day. I'm like, what?

It's crazy. That's going on with this. And the way we had run routes and the coaches would stop the play and say, get over here. You ran 10 and a half yards. This needs to be at 12 yards. Messes up all the, you know, the distance between the receivers. If you aren't running this exactly right, let's do it again. again, right? And just a systemic approach they had to teaching you how to read defenses is what made

BYU a great system. So those are some of the things. And so was this before the Covey name was kind of world famous or was it happening around the same time? Yeah, it was about the same time because yeah, when did seven habits come out? It came out in 89. Okay. That was the quarterback 87, 88 at BYU. you and my dad published seven habits in 89. So he wasn't, you know, he wasn't well known at all until that book came out. And then,

you know, it became a global phenomenon. How did that change your, because you're still in college. You blew your knee out, but you're still in college. How did that change your life? I didn't even notice it.

You know, I, my dad, well, my dad was just my dad. And I was still young. I thought he was kind of funny and weird. And,

you know how it is when you're, kid. Yeah. And, but, you know, over time, over time it did. It really didn't take off for a while. And then suddenly in the, you know, in the 90s, mid late 90s, it really took off. And, but, you know, my father's a really down-to-earth person. And he was kind of embarrassed by the success of the seven habits. Like, really? Yeah. It's like, oh my gosh, I didn't know it, I knew it was good, but I had no idea. It would be, you know, bestselling business book of its kind of all time. And, but he was, my father's really humble person and he was thrilled, but surprised by the success. So what did that teach you in that moment when you see this thing just exploding and

you see the humility still shown and not getting a head so big, you can't walk through the door? How did that impact you as a leader, both at work and at home? Yeah. Well, I'd say that my father was just really genuine. So what you saw was what you got. And he was as good, as good as he was as an author. He was an even even better husband and father. So he was congruent, you know, and you could see, I'd get up and see him speak in front of 2,000 leaders and just blow him away. And it was so genuine. There was no technique. There was no, I'm going to try to blow him away. It was, I'm going to teach them these truths about the power of principles in the work setting because I know they work. And he was because he's so congruent, there's no hypocrisy.

Not a perfect person, of course, right? He's got his flaws like anybody. But generally speaking, he was so congruent that it would give him power and integrity, right? And you could fill it in his teachings. So it taught me that. It also taught me that, you know, he would, he would, spend so much time with presidents and cabinets and trained all kinds of people, leaders from nations.

And he was never blown away by anybody because he'd always come back and say, yeah, I know this person leads a $5 billion organization, but they're really kind of messed up. And they've got, they've got some family problems. He's trying to work through. And he just basically would say, you know, everyone's got issues and problems. It doesn't matter what kind of title or position or power you have. We're all humans. We all have kind of the same challenges.

And it kind of taught me that not to be a respecter of persons, he would treat the barber who would cut his hair, which he didn't have much of, exactly the same as he'd treat, you know, a president of a nation that he was meeting with. And you'd see this as a kid and you'd say, okay, well, that's how it is, right? That's how we should treat each other is not because of title or position or power or wealth.

Everyone is an amazing human being. The most sacred thing in the world is the person sitting next to you. Yeah. I learned this. I remember I was recording with a guy named Brian Coppulman who's a creative movies and TV shows. And after we got them recording, we talked about the fact of growing up with a dad. And I grew up with a dad who introduced me to a lot of. I guess you could call them powerful people based on title.

And Brian did as well as dad. It was a senior exec with a record company. And he said, I sense that you've been taught how to speak with powerful people in a, in a way that you both feel kind of normal and be respectful. And I didn't really think of it that much. I guess it just became natural. I sensed that from you and the fact that you treat the person who is coming here to

pick up the trash can and take the trash out the exact same as you would, the president of a nation because at the end of the day were people, And I think though there are some listeners, maybe, Sean, I'd be curious to get your advice on this, that for whatever reason, they get nervous or they don't know how to speak or they just bow down and defer to someone because of a title. What advice would you give to to not do that, to learn how to communicate and behave in the setting where there are people that have power? Yeah. You know, I don't know the answer to that exactly. It's probably, you know, I always try to think and, you know, I'm sometimes I get a little intimidated by how I'm meeting with and speaking with. And I always just try to think about, you know what, they're a person. You strip away all these titles and power and they've got probably the same kind of challenges I do, maybe worse.

Right. And and then I always try to think about their family, right? And it really humanizes things. Like I wonder what it's like with. your, you know, how's your relationship with your spouse and with your teenage daughter? And I, and also start talking to people. If you're ever in a tight situation, you got to talk with someone with a lot of power and authority, talk with them about their family and watch how they'll lighten up, loosen up, become more real and genuine, right? Because, you know, the family experience is so common among all of us. Yeah. and what you have surrounding you have nothing to do with these relationships.

I remember Sean talking to the guy who's a billionaire and we were talking and I asked about us. He had some daughters and I asked about them and he goes, oh my God, this morning it was a disaster. And he just goes into the story about how I'm like, yeah, that sounds like last Tuesday for me, you know, where you have the same type because, you know, you're trying to get him ready for school and it didn't work out and everybody's mad, the right clothes. you know what I mean? And in a way, we bonded over the fact of like, oh, yeah, we deal with the same stuff waking of having breakfast, getting them on the bus, you know? Totally, totally humanizes everybody, right? Talk about family problems. Yeah. So, Sean, I want to shift gears a little bit because a number of pieces of your work have impacted me. And I'm going to focus

on one specifically, a book that you originally wrote with some co-authors, but it's also now been updated and re-released called the four disciplines of execution or four dx and four dx is something i implemented in a job i had years ago i remember because i read the book and it just knocked me back so i love to focus now for let's let's think about an avatar a person who was leading a team within a business and maybe they're not the CEO but they're not an individual contributor they're in some sort of mid-level management role and their team may be doing fine but not not as excellent as they need to be or they want to do. Yeah.

Can we walk through these four steps, these four disciplines of execution? Maybe first broadly you could describe exactly kind of the purpose behind 4DX and what it's all about. Sure, Ryan. Well, it started with us doing a survey about 20 years ago, a friend Covey, and we asked leaders of organizations, what do you most struggle with? Number one was execution. It wasn't getting a strategy or setting goals. dealing with people. It was like getting things done as an organization. So that's where,

that's where it begins. We began a quest to try to figure it out, try to crack the code on it, and feel like we discovered something over many, many years, working with thousands of work teams, we discovered something that works. So the four disciplines is a methodology for getting things done. It's a methodology for achieving a goal or getting great outcomes. It doesn't matter if you're leading a team of five people or leading a project or leading a, massive organization, the principles work at any level. So that's, that's what it is. It's a, it's a time tested and proven set of practices that work every time because they're based on principles. So that's kind of the origin. Let's let's go, let's start and go in order. Okay.

Number one is focus on the wildly important goals. Expand, explain what this means. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's, that's the first discipline, focus on the wild, important. And it basically means this, that we generally have, we all have far too many initiatives and goals we're trying to get done. And we've learned that if, you know, someone's got typically 15, 20 goals initiatives, they'll get nothing done. If you narrow that down to one or two, we tell people, you can have two at the most, maybe one. One's better. Maybe two. You've got to narrow your focus or you just people are doing way too much. And it doesn't mean that you can't have lots

of things going on like an air traffic controller has got planes flying all over the place, but they land one at a time. And as business leaders, as a leader of any kind of organization, you've got to learn to land one plane at a time, put a disproportionate focus on that one thing or you'll never get it done. So I was a quick story. We were working with a multi-billion dollar company in Texas. It was an analytics company and we met with the CEO. They were having a lot of struggles, 115,000 employees. And we said, what are your top three goals? And he listed his top three goals. Boom, boom, boom. And we said, well, what percentage of your 110,000 employees do you believe, understand those top three goals? Because everyone does. I talk about it every week.

I send an email out all the time, but a big kickoff meeting. And then his direct reports came in a few minutes later. And we said, without being prompted, we're going to ask them to write down what they think the top three goals of the organization are. And he's like, oh, okay. So they write them down. They come back. There's 27 goals. Right.

If you added them all up, a few overlapped. Yeah. They were all over the place. And we said, well, this is why you're struggling. right here is no one really knows the key initiative you're trying to focus on. Another quick example, in the 50s, NASA came out with their lead the world in space exploration strategy, right, with Eisenhower. And the Soviets were kicking our butts at the time, and they said, we've got to go after

this. So they came up with this big plan about leading the world and space exploration. They came up with their 15 paragraphs of all the things they were going to do, beautifully written, right? So ethereal, so broad that no one knew what to do. Nothing happened. We got further behind. John F. Kennedy comes along in 1961 and says, our goal in space is to get a man to the moon and back by the end of this decade safely. as soon as he narrowed that ethereal 15 things down to one goal, man to the moon and back,

by the end of this decade, a starting line, a finish line, and a deadline. Every goal needs to be written from X to Y by when. As soon as he said that, it galvanized NASA like never before. And you read the history of this, and they were, never so engaged as they were during that time. Suddenly they had a goal to go after. So immediately, disproportionate focus on that one most important thing, they figure out life support, propulsion, navigation.

We've got everything else figured out. These three are, we can't do it. Let's figure these out. All that energy goes on those. They figure out propulsion and life support and navigation. Navigation is like hitting a bullet with a bullet, right? It's really hard. Getting off the ground, gravity, you know,

making into space was difficult. They figured out, 1969, year to spare, they land on the moon and back. We had no business being on the moon in 1969. And there's more technology in this phone by like 100-fold than everything in that lunar, you know. So it was an incredible example of focus, right? So focus on the wild and important is the idea that, I promise you, usually you have far too many goals if you're leading a group. Narrow it down to the one, maybe two things that have to get done.

It's kind of like I remember, Sean, the first time I set out to do a, we're going to write down our values as a family exercise. I did this with my family. And by the end of our exercise, we had 25 core values. Well, we had no core values if we have 25, right? If everything's important, nothing's important. I think that's a good lesson to learn here. Real quick, before I get to number two, on goal setting, okay, I go back and forth on this.

And sometimes I'm not sure what's best. Yeah, sure. Because at times, if someone asked me, like, what was my goal for my show or my business or whatever, I wouldn't have been able to predict any of the stuff that has happened. But what I have worked on has been really diligent about what I would say is the lead measures of being prepared, of regularly reaching out to speak with, compelling storytellers of being good about follow-up. Like a lot of like, I think the process-oriented aspects of doing this well, but not really

thinking about an end result or an end date. What's your process? And when you hear me say that, what's your thought process? Because the JFK one is a beautiful example, right? It works great. But what do you think when comparing and contrasting goal setting and how people should do this? Sure. Well, it's a good question because I think, I think sometimes you need to be kind of flexible,

right? Especially with big life plans. I've noticed that. I'll set some goals and then a year into it like things have shifted and sometimes. What type of goals are you set for yourself? You mean business personal both? Yeah, I set business goals of kind of organization I want to build and how big it is and that kind of thing and, you know, growth goals like we want to be this size we want to write that type of thing yeah yeah yeah yeah I do that so I think you've got to be flexible you've got uh sometimes you have um a deliberate strategy Clayton Christensen uses this language you know he's the great Harvard professor elevator dilemma yeah but he talks about two kinds of strategies for your life

one is you have a deliberate strategy which means I'm going after something something. Another is the idea of an emergent strategy, which is something that knocks you off track. You weren't expecting it. So he uses the example of he always wanted to be the editor of the Wall Street Journal. That was his goal, right? That was a deliberate strategy. He was going after it. But then as he was pursuing that, someone came to him. He went to Oxford, you know, was on track to go right down this lane. And then someone came to him and said, hey, I've got this part-time job at Harvard. And you'd be a really good professor there. on a part-time basis.

And so he kind of took it part-time. And then it went really well. And he started thinking about his theories. And then suddenly this emergent strategy just wiped out his Wall Street Journal idea, right? And he ran with this. But then once he was with this new career at Harvard, he developed a deliberate strategy for what he wanted to do at Harvard, Harvard, right? So I think the idea is, it's great to have a deliberate strategy, but be ready for the waves that might hit you.

I might knock you off course to something maybe far better or more purposeful for you. Right. So an example, personal example for me is I'm working at Franklin Covey, the company my dad founded, right? Just become a public company. It's not a family-based company. And I'm focused on, you know, the enterprise side of the house. But then I run into a school, an elementary school that tries. transforms themselves completely from a school about to be shut down public elementary school

from Raleigh, North Carolina to the number one magnet school in the country with extreme poverty in 27 languages spoken to the school. And my deliberate strategy was thrown out the window and I've said, I'm running with this. I'm going to help bring this methodology they're using in their school to the world. We have it now in 5,000 schools. It's called Leader and Me. But that's a good example of kind of, it's trying to have a deliberate strategy. These are my plans, but be ready to have a wave sweep you that might take you in a far better direction for you, that you're more passionate about and more aligned to. Sometimes a tragedy will set you off on a new course. Sometimes a great success will, sometimes just an experience can do that. Not only like be ready, but I think

it's about putting yourself in the position for that wave to hit you, right? So it's almost doing your work with excellence over and over and over will i i have found and i and then the people i've studied i feel like if if you're focused on that that emergent strategy you just don't know but you want to give yourself a shot and i and that's how i felt about approaching okay if i'm going to do this i'm either going to do it with excellence or i'm not going to do it and then like it's a series of those decisions and then that can create some of those emergent waves that knock you off the surfboard or whatever into something that's better, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I think you're exactly right. Makes sense. Okay. The four disciplines is, it's not, four disciplines are not a life goal. It's not a big strategy for purpose. It's like, you know what? I'm in this situation right now and we need to, we need to solve this problem.

Typically, Wigs, a wildly important goal is somewhere, it's like a year or less. They're kind of one year or less goals that, where you just say, if we kind of get this done, you know, nothing else really matters. In the corporate world, like what would be some examples of a wig, a revenue target or what would you say, a product release? What are some examples? Yeah, it could be, we've got to increase revenue from X to X by when. We've got to increase market share this year from, you know, 5% to 9% by just.

December 31. It could be, we've got to, you know, in schools, we've got to increase reading proficiency from 55% to 75% by May 31st. Yeah. Right. Gotcha. So in the way, now let's go to number two, which is the golden rule of execution, and that is act on lead measures. You have to identify what those lead measures are and then act on them, the actual day-to-day actions that lead you to accomplishing the wildly important goal. Talk to me more about acting or creating and identifying and then acting on the lead measures. Sure. Yeah. So once you've kind of defined, this is my focus. Then it's like you've got to you've got to define and discover the lead measures. We say act on the lead measures because they're different than lag measures. Lag majors,

is where most people focus their time. And they're, they're not helpful. So if you're trying to lose weight, you weigh 200 pounds, you want to get to 180 pounds. If you're acting on the lag measure, you just weigh yourself every day, right? Like, that's not going to do anything. If you're acting on the lead measures, it's going to, you're going to track your diet, you're going to track your exercise, how many calories you're burning, how many calories you're bringing in. And those would be the leads. For a salesperson, for example, Oftentimes people don't know what to do with cells. How do we increase cells?

Well, maybe we should track them every day, right? And that's just looking at your lag measure every day. It's like weighing yourself. A lead measure you might discover is face-to-face meetings each week. I run a charity, and we have to raise a million dollars a year to keep it going. So our lead measure is we know that if we want to, to raise a million dollars we have to ask for five million dollars a year so we break that down by week and say we need to ask for a hundred thousand dollars every week and and that's our lead

major so we meet every Friday and how did we do last week well we didn't ask anyone this well we're not going to hit our lag measure right we're not going to hit our million dollars unless we do our lead measure of asking you got to put yourself in a position to ask right and so all backs up and we start doing this. And after a while, you get into a rhythm and you realize, man, if I want to hit that goal, I've got to do this lead. So that's what leads are all about. And most, again, I'm going to say most, I'm talking like 95% of businesses focus on

lag lag, they've got lags everywhere. What's the number? Yeah. That type of, you know, like yeah, what's the revenue number at when it's like, what about all of the behaviors that lead to the, I, my background, my, and, in, you know, corporate America has always been in sales jobs. So that's why I think of that. And I remember when 4DX got implemented it where I was working, when I read the book and then wanted to do it, this was the most critical part for me because exactly what you're saying. The stack

rankings were sent every day. So here are the sales. Here's number one. Here's the last person. Here's everyone in between. What's the biggest change that needed to happen was first we had to identify. What is it? Let's deconstruct what it means to be excellent in this role and sell and exceed our number. What are the actual day-to-day behaviors? And so it was like a big research project for me to study over the last few years of the day-to-day actions of the people who hit it. It took a long time.

But once we figure that out, not just one person or two people that could be these lone wolves that are really good for what odd reasons, but you have to get a feeling for just the job in itself and then study that reverse engineered, what excellence looked like in the role, figure out the lead measures. Those then became kind of the metrics that we measured, the metrics that mattered. And that's how we more systematized as you're talking about you, they did at BYU with their offense and their quarterbacks and their practice. Same thing.

It takes time, but I think it was worth it to implement what, especially of identifying and then acting on those lead measures. And then next, it leads to the third one, which we also did, keep a compelling scorecard. Why is it so important to make sure that there is a compelling scorecard? Yeah. Well, same reason why it's important to have a scoreboard at a football game. No one cares that people play differently when they're keeping score, right? Just watch a pick-up basketball game anytime you can tell if they're keeping score or not by the intensity of how they're playing.

Watch six-year-olds play soccer I did last night with my daughter. When they start keeping score, the girls play different. Six. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's the same idea. No one knows what the score is typically in businesses or in teams. Like, how are we doing? Well, I'm not sure. And so the idea of a public scoreboard is absolutely key. And you've got to have a player scoreboard. It's not a coach's scoreboard because a coach will look at 300 stats, right? Especially after a game, setting, every kind of thing.

The NBA, they've got so many dang ways of measuring people's efficiency now. It's crazy. But what players need to see are how much time, who's ahead, who's got the ball. And that's about it. So create public scoreboards in your business that show your key lag measure and your two or three key lead measures. And that's it. And you got to be able to tell if you're winning or losing within five seconds. So they need to be public.

They need to be simple. And they need to tell you if you're winning or losing in five seconds. So we teach people this. And again, most people have way too much data, right? And so it's not motivating. As soon as you create a public scoreboard, it's engaging. And the other day, I got to tell you the story, Ryan, it's hysterical. I went to lease a car.

My lease ran out leasing a Nissan Morano. I go and get a new lease and meeting with the guy. And he goes, oh, you're from Franklin Covey. I saw. I said, yeah. He goes, have you ever heard of the four disciplines of execution? I said, well, I was one of the co-authors of that book. He goes, oh, my gosh.

Well, I'm the GM here. and it reinvented my previous dealership, and I did so well there that I started, I've got this one, which is failing, and in two months we're turning it around. He goes, you got to come back here, and he went back and showed me his public scoreboard. He goes, here are all my salespeople,

and here's how they're doing, the number of cars sold, and he said, and here are all their lead measures. And he goes, for the first time, everyone knows, exactly what they need to do to sell one car. He said no one knew what they were doing before, but it's all tracked right here on this scoreboard. And he goes, this is totally motivating. They're coming back here all the time.

I got people that quit. They're coming back to sell again because they know to get one car sell. They have to do 200 touch points between email, social media, and phone calls. And here they're all tracked. Here's emails, social media, phone calls. They had a couple of items, I forget. And he said, and they've learned,

they do 200, they get a car sell. So they know for the first time exactly what to do to sell a car. And cells are going through the roof. It's all public here. And it's a healthy competition. And it's making all the difference. So that's the idea. What about when it's not like I think the world of sales is more black and white than most jobs. What about when it's and I lean towards that because that's what I did. But that's not all the end all be all. There's a lot of people listening, Sean who don't work in sales. I mean, I believe everyone's always working in sales every day. You're always selling something, ideas, yourself, whatever. But let's let's talk about outside of people who don't, like, they don't carry a bag, they don't have a quota. What about what's a,

what's a good example maybe for that person, they work in product or they work in strategy, they work in finance or something else of, of keeping a scoreboard, the lead measures. I think, I think that's important. Yeah, it is. The thing about it is you can, there'll be natural scoreboards that come up in any function that you're in. Just ask yourself, what's the wig? So if you're, you know, a quick example, Alamo colleges in Texas, in San Antonio, Texas, okay? Group of five colleges, 30,000 students, just got a couple years ago got the Malcolm Baldrude Award, first of its kind ever for community college, okay? They came up with a while the important goal after a lot of thinking.

It wasn't easy, but it was increased number of certificates and degrees earned. And here's what happened. And then Bruce Leslie, the chancellor said, okay, everybody, we're going to, this is our goal. And so how do you do that if you're in facilities? Right. So the facilities team thinking, what's our scoreboard? A couple hours into this, they, you know, they're meeting as a team. Oh, my gosh, we can do so much to increase degrees earned.

Look at the areas we're in charge of. Are they comfortable for people to steady in? What can we do to improve steady areas, right? What can we do? And so they came up with their own scoreboards. The head guy went back and showed me, scoreboards they came up with, right, and facilities to increase degrees earned. And then the health department, right, the health clinic there said, why they start thinking about this, what's our

scoreboard? Well, how come people are dropping out? They're dropping out for all kinds of reasons. Why do we always wait until they drop out to go and meet with them and try to help them? Let's identify the at-risk students now. Let's meet with them now to prevent them from dropping out later because they typically drop out for emotional reasons, right? Social-emotional reasons. I break up with my girlfriend. I have a fight. It's not usually academic reasons.

And so they came up with their own scoreboard of meeting with all, identifying all the at-risk students and saying, we've got to meet with every one of them before Thanksgiving this year. right they have their own scoreboards totally engages them so you just just ask yourself the question here's the well important goal of the group i'm working with right and every function has a different angle on it product development what can i do yeah right well i'm going to have milestones i have to achieve those are my lead measures i got to hit this milestone by this date so i can launch on this state, which will help the overall goal of launching, you know, increasing market share. So that's the idea.

Yeah, I think too from a leadership perspective, one of the roles is to help people. So especially if you're at the very top and you set this big vision or mission or you set the wildly important goal to work with those leaders and teams to help them create their lead measures, to help them create their scoreboard so that they. feel a part of it. They feel they're going to be empowered and bought in to what it is. And what is my role? They may think, well, I'm just a random employee. No, no. This is actually my role. And this is how we keep score. And I can actually see it. It's right there of how I'm contributing to this giant goal that seems well beyond me. I think that's from leadership perspective. That's what I'm

thinking of of our job as leaders is to make sure we help people understand their role to us hitting our wildly important goal as well as how we're going to keep track of that and the cool parts of the scoreboard. I think that's really important, which leads then, Sean, I think, to number four. Create a cadence of accountability, right? Holding people accountable. Talk me more about creating a cadence of accountability. Yeah, we did a survey hundreds of thousands of people one time and asked, how often do you meet with your manager to discuss your goals? And, well, the question was, I meet monthly with my manager to discuss my goals, and 15% could say that. So the reality is there's not a lot of accountability.

And when there's accountability, it's typically boss to subordinate, right? Which isn't the best kind. The best kind of accountability is we hold all, we hold each other accountable. It's team-based, it's culture. You committed to do this in the team meeting last week, and you didn't do it. and your peers are looking at you saying, come on, you know,

we're all on this together, right? Does that happen at Franklin Covey? Like this party? Are these meetings like they happen in your meetings? Yeah. We, we recommend,

we call it a wig meeting. We have them every week. Well, the important goal meeting. It's different than a staff meeting. A wig meeting is look at your scoreboard, look at your lead and lag measures and ask yourself, how can we move the needle?

What needs to change? And we make commitments, right? And people are holding each, not you as the top dog, but others are holding each other accountable. You don't need to say a thing when you're the boss and there's a scoreboard and we're all looking at it and somebody kept their commitment or didn't, right? They won't miss it the next week.

Curious question about football, Sean, on the best football teams I've ever been on winning teams that won a lot and I've been on teams that are losing records as a quarterback that's painful to admit. It's true. Look at the records there. You can see it. The biggest difference, the biggest difference between the teams. that won and the teams that didn't. Obviously we had talented players, but outside of that is the players on this team where we won,

held each other accountable even more so than our coaches. And this team, players had kind of infighting and didn't really do that. And that's what I noticed. And in a way, I'm grateful for having the experience of both ends of that spectrum, of winning all the games and losing too many games. it's because the the team cared enough to hold each other accountable. And I felt like I can't I can't let them down. I'm committed to this. And I think that that was a big, a big aspect to why we won so much as well as why we also lost so much on the teams that weren't winning.

What do you think about that? I think it's right on. I think it's exactly right. I think when it's just pressure from your boss, no one likes that either way, right? The boss doesn't like it. You don't like it. And there's always going to be some pressure there.

but if you can create a culture on your team where, hey, we're all holding each other accountable. We're in this together. I can't fail because it's going to bring you down and vice versa. That's magical. And I'm telling you, if you have a goal you're rallying around, you know, our goal is to reduce the cost of manufacturing this piece by 25%. And you've got a team. And here are the lead measures. here are the behaviors we have to do on a week with basis.

And we'll get us that goal. And here's our scoreboard to see how we're doing. That's what creates that joint accountability. The public scoreboard does. If you don't mind, just a quick other story, Brian, is. So we work with schools with four disciplines. So Maria Hotels across the world uses the four disciplines of execution. You can go to the person running the restaurant and say,

show me a while the important goal and they'll take you to the back room and say here's my wig and like you said it's powerful because they developed it wasn't handed to them it was like hey we want to increase customer satisfaction what's your part of that and they they get together watch the brilliance of those 15 people running that restaurant right yeah they'll know exactly what to do it gets it's you know it's local knowledge this is democratic right it's not top down so Anyway, we do this with Marriot hotels. We do it with 5,000 elementary schools across the world. One elementary school, Martin Pedersian Elementary in Louisiana.

It's pretty much all poverty in the school, 100% in free and reduced lunch, you know. And they figured out their well important goal was attendance. If we could only increase attendance, it would change everything. Yeah, we'll work on math scores and reading scores later. If they just come to school, that would be more than anything else, right? So they start focusing on this, make a public scoreboard, have weekly accountability, you know, where they review it every week. This last week, we did this. Every class reviews it.

The kids are meeting with each other every week. They hold each other accountable. They have accountability buddies. So one class, Mario, he's in second grade. he wakes up second grader wakes up one morning his mom won't wake up she was at a party late and she won't get up so he remembers he's got accountability that day for their attendance in their class he goes out in the freeway and hitchhikes to fool some truckers driving by sees his little kid um had seen him before because he lived in the air

you know, picks up the kid and drops them off. When they drop them off, they say, you know, what is the kid's name? You're dropping off. And he doesn't know it. Principal comes and says, who are you? And he told what happened. And then she went and interviewed Mario. And she said, Mario, don't, you shouldn't talk to strangers like this, number one.

But why did you want to come to school? He goes, because, you know, our goal is 98% attendance and I couldn't blow it. Right. Wow. And so he had hitchhiked to school. And even though it was kind of a dangerous situation, it just shows you the kind of motivation people get when there's accountability and a public scoreboard. But that school did phenomenal.

They shot up on their attendance. The next year, they applied it to reading scores, proficiency, unbelievable gains in reading proficiency. What is the same methodology. Sean, what about for a, there's a, leader listening now who's like, I love this. I'm in. But their culture is not really one built of holding each other accountable. It's more top down, your boss to the employee type accountability. What are some of the ways to embed this into the culture? I know it doesn't happen overnight,

but what are some ways to get us started on that path to get this into the culture? Well, I would say you'd start with, you know, the idea of no involvement, no commitment. If I were a, you know, a new manager and coming into an organization, let's just say I've got 15 people on my team, I'd sit down with them and say, okay, here is what our, you know, our company is trying to achieve. What is our role in that? Let's come up with the wildly important goal. And I would take a couple hours and I would debate and, and, and, you know, our company's trying to achieve. And as a team, we'd come up with something. And I'd try to put it into an X to Y by when format.

And I'd just start with one thing. There's a day job that'll always be there. You know, just to keep the lights on, you've got to do certain things. Those don't go away. But you kind of, we call that the whirlwind, right? And that's why most people don't get goals done as a team because you're so busy just keeping things afloat, doing all the reports you have to do already and such. It just keeps you away from doing that one thing that might make all the difference, right?

like improving attendance. But you got to kind of have to pull out that most important thing out of the whirlwind and say, we're going to give this some time and focus, maybe 20% of our time. 80% is going to be keeping the business going, right? I would do that first. I would have probably another session where I would do the same thing on coming up with the lead measures. They're hard to find.

They're oftentimes hard to find. You've got to dig deep like you talked about, you know, leading a sales team. have the team come up with scoreboards. Again, so you're building all this together and then setting up a cadence of accountability on a regular basis. So just you watch how this changes cultures. We set out to design the four disciplines to help achieve a goal. What we found is that it did that, but even more so, it created engagement off the charts.

All this done as a group. It's not the leader saying this. It's not the leader saying here it is and they kind of lay it on the table. No, you'll have your ideas and you can veto. We always say, don't dictate. You can veto, but don't dictate. Got you. If the team comes up with something, I don't think that's going to work and veto it.

But don't come in and say, I've come down from Mount Sinai and here's our goal, right? It's not going to work either. Watch the creativity of people. And I always try to align your goal with the, you know, everybody has somebody about. above him, right? Right. What's where this department, that's part of this division, what's this division's goal? You're going to align it to that.

You might want to go to that person and say what's what's most important, right? Right. I found too when I'm handed the goal without any say, I'm not nearly as excited as when I played a role in creating the goal, even if it turns out to be the same thing. I've I've done it. I've done it both ways as the leader and as someone who's been handed that goal. And I've also messed up and just handed it to other people. And I found when James Kerr, who wrote Legacy says, you know, the New Zealand All Blacks, who he studied for a full year writing

that book. And he just talked about the fact that they're all about empowering them to set and create their own goals because you're more apt to achieve and exceed a goal if you set it yourself. And so I know it's not always perfect and possible. I get it. There are going to be naysayers saying, go, you don't understand my company, Ryan. I get that. I've heard those. emails but i'm saying it if at all possible empower bring the team along with that goal setting process and that i think the chances of of hitting it exceeding it go go go go go way up if they're involved as opposed to be like here you go find a way to get that done totally totally you know these principles work right no involvement no commitment i mean these the principle of focus

the principle of no involvement no commitment the principle of people play differently if they're keeping score, know how you're performing really quickly, right? Yeah. The idea of you've got to hold each other accountable, team accountability instead of boss to sport and accountability. Can I, Sean, can I take a left term before we finish? Because I have to as a dad. You also written the seven habits of highly effective teens.

A lot of people listening to have teenagers or they will. I know we're not going to do a debrief of the entire book. So I'm just going to hit it quickly now. um what are some general pieces of advice for parents who have teenagers if they want them to be effective at life yeah well i wrote up the seven habits of high-effective teens when i didn't have teens they were young now that i have them i take back everything i said you sold a lot of books man there's no such thing no such thing as an effective teen but yeah the book is about these principles applied to teenagers the seven habits you know and

teaching kids hey take initiative have some plans habit to begin with the end in mind think when when you know always think about mutual benefit and this this is packed full of stories of their peers basically failing and succeeding right yeah but what I've learned as a parent is having worked with teenagers and parents a lot. I had to narrow it down to a few things. I'd say one, have a purpose as a family. I think like what you did,

Ryan, is it doesn't really matter what you come up with, but come up with a family mission statement or a set of family values or what is our family all about? I think that's one key thing. And it's kind of maybe corny and hooking your kids will laugh at you when you say it the first time. For sure.

But we developed one. and it's just a one-liner and it's in our we it's on our wall in our family room and it means a lot to us what's it say uh it's personal oh you can't share well i can i can well i can share it yeah it's uh it's the idea of it's living for the grand reunion and basically it means um we're all part of one family i lost a daughter a few years ago she's 21 and it's the whole idea of all being together again living in such a way that we can all be together again right yeah thank you for sharing that yeah um but i think that's a i think this you know that's one of the key things i've learned is have develop a family mission statement or set of family values and stick with it we

did it when i was a kid my dad said hey we're going to write a family mission statement we all laughed he said it again we laughed again said it the third time we started developing one we came up with one and it was about basically our home is a fun as a place of fun relaxation um learning growth where we can um all participate and something like that but it didn't matter how about what it said it was the process we went through that made the difference and then the second thing is have one-on-one times with your kids yeah um you just got to discipline yourself to do it and you have family Tommy time with everyone, but have one on one times too. That's different when there's two versus three people and just find a regular time,

like to say, I'm going to do a date once a month with my teenage daughter. And what do you want to do? Oh, you want to go to this concert? I'm not looking forward to it. I'm going, right? Or whatever it might be, those would be the two pieces of advice that have for parents. It seems like just having being purposeful and intentional with that. And then it's a commitment.

I think you have to commit like every day. Just like with your relationship with your spouse, it's a daily commitment that takes work and thought and effort. And if you just wander around not really having a purpose or a mission and you're not committed, well, no wonder that things aren't going to go well a year from now, if that's what you're doing. It's because of those those 365 days of not. having a purpose or or being committed to it. I think that's a big part, my big takeaway from what you're saying of, of how to do that. I know it put you on the spot, which is a tough question. Because all of us here as parents are like, I can't give any parent parental advice. You don't

follow me, but, but no, I really appreciate it, Sean. And it's, it's just been fantastic talking with you. One more final question, which is there are a lot of people who are now current college graduates and they're they're going out into the world they want to they want to leave their mark they want to positively impact other people what are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give some you'd give to a person at that stage of life yeah well i've got a daughter just graduated from college last week wow nice from it just started okay so i don't know my uh My general take would just be, I think have a plan for sure, have a plan of what you want to do and then be willing to change your plan to something new comes along or something better comes along. I think that would be one key thing.

Live, just live according to your principles. Have a set of values. Write them down. have a personal mission statement. And again, I have a credo of your own. I do this with teenagers all the time. And we have them go through a mission statement workshop where they develop a personal mission statement.

This can be a very powerful thing. They have to dig deep and kind of determine what is their voice? Voice is the overlap of what you love to do, what you're good at doing, where there's a need in society and your conscience. Because sometimes your conscience is like, what is life asking of me, right? Well, what is that thing that I've always felt I needed to do?

And sometimes it's, you ask yourself questions like this, and like one lady said to me, I feel like I'm the glue that holds our extended family together. That's what life is asking of me, is we've got lots of problems of our family and I'm the peacemaker and I'm going to play that role, right? But I think that's what voice is.

If you can find, it sounds like, Ryan, you've found your voice doing the show, what you're good at, what you love to do, where you can make a difference and where your conscience says you need to be, right? You can find that sweet spot. That's a beautiful thing. And so just be in search of your voice,

look for places and have that be your criteria. It's more around contribution. I think if you think about instead of just looking at money and these kinds of things, look at what kind of contribution can I make? What can I make the greatest contribution? Those will be some things that, you know, keep in mind. Oh, beautifully said, Sean, I really appreciate you being here. I highly encourage. I've personally implemented the four disciplines of execution. So check it out. It's worth your time as well as Sean's other books. You can see them all out there.

Thanks so much for being here. And I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. I'd love to do it, Ryan, and we can keep talking football. Talking football for sure. All right, man. Thanks so much. Okay. Thank you.

Take care. We'll see you. What a thoughtful and kind, intelligent leader, Sean Covey is. Thoroughly enjoyed talking with him. I hope you did as well. A few of my kids. key takeaways. First, no involvement equals, no commitment. People are more apt to exceed the goals if they are their goals. Like James Kerr told me on this podcast and wrote in the book

Legacy, individuals and teams have a better chance of hitting and exceeding their goals if they are the ones setting them and they're involved in the process of putting them together. And then the four disciplines of execution, focus on the wildly important. To act on the lead measures and you have to define the lead measures before you act on them, keep a compelling scoreboard, ensure that everyone knows a score at all times so they can tell if they are winning or not in five seconds. And then create a cadence of accountability, the best teams I've ever been part of,

the players were willing to hold each other accountable, not just the coaches and or the senior executives in a business. And then when we talked at the very beginning about our uncommon common commonality of being college quarterback, Sean, leading his team at BYU to two bowl games as a quarterback. He said doing hard things is good for you. It helps you understand that your zone of comfort can expand. And the only way to do that is to push yourself to do hard things.

Love that. Once again, I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. And I am very grateful that you continue to spread the message, that you're telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leaders Show with Sean Covey. I think it could help you become a more effective leader. It could help you become better at executing.

And because you continue to do that, you are continuing to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.