WEBVTT 00:00.605 --> 00:01.614 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jamie Cochran. 00:01.735 --> 00:02.683 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Life Babin. 00:02.704 --> 00:03.047 [SPEAKER_00]: Mead Win. 00:03.269 --> 00:05.367 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Extreme Watership Podcast. 00:06.764 --> 00:11.211 [SPEAKER_00]: The topic for this week is confusing activity for impact. 00:11.532 --> 00:14.096 [SPEAKER_00]: This is really a question of prioritize an execute. 00:14.116 --> 00:20.666 [SPEAKER_00]: And too often, we assume that just because we're busy, we're being effective or productive, and as we know that's not always the case. 00:20.726 --> 00:30.882 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about this idea of how do we best prioritize an execute, so we're not just getting stuck on being busy, but actually doing things that help to further us towards the long-term strategic goal. 00:30.862 --> 00:35.209 [SPEAKER_02]: We've definitely talked to the last few episodes about a self-assessment and the need for that. 00:35.249 --> 00:39.516 [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's what we were talking about here is measures of effectiveness. 00:39.977 --> 00:47.350 [SPEAKER_02]: And we talked about in the book history of ownership, and again in dichotomy leadership, there's only two measures that matter effective or ineffective. 00:47.570 --> 00:51.216 [SPEAKER_02]: And so, being busy, working hard, 00:51.196 --> 00:55.625 [SPEAKER_02]: None of these things actually really matter if you're not actually accomplishing the goal. 00:56.226 --> 00:57.509 [SPEAKER_02]: Are you moving toward the goal? 00:57.990 --> 00:59.152 [SPEAKER_02]: Are you moving away from the goal? 01:00.014 --> 01:05.465 [SPEAKER_02]: So you can be really busy and be working really hard but going in the opposite direction or not making progress whatsoever. 01:06.187 --> 01:11.117 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's where we just, we can't confuse the tactical for the strategic, right? 01:11.137 --> 01:11.618 [SPEAKER_02]: So we use the term, 01:11.598 --> 01:21.974 [SPEAKER_02]: tactical, which means a short term, you know, immediate goal, and we use the term strategic, which is long term, over the long distance goals that are kind of way out in advance. 01:22.475 --> 01:31.149 [SPEAKER_02]: If you're not taking a step back, detaching and really evaluating where you want to go, then you're not going to be able to move in that direction. 01:31.329 --> 01:36.778 [SPEAKER_02]: And so you can be busy, you can have all kinds of activity, but you're not making any progress towards your goal. 01:36.838 --> 01:39.462 [SPEAKER_02]: You're not actually making impact on what matters most. 01:39.644 --> 01:42.529 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is not something that only leaders struggle with. 01:42.549 --> 01:52.928 [SPEAKER_01]: I think for my experience working with different companies as my role as an instructor here at echelon front, everybody in the chain of command struggles with this conundrum of where do I spend my time? 01:53.028 --> 01:54.852 [SPEAKER_01]: What's the most valuable use of my time? 01:55.353 --> 01:56.575 [SPEAKER_01]: And I struggled with it too. 01:56.715 --> 02:02.125 [SPEAKER_01]: When I was the COO, the construction technology start up, there was a point in time. 02:02.105 --> 02:19.135 [SPEAKER_01]: where we were growing so fast and getting so busy that I had to take an honest examination of where I was spending my time because what I was discovering was I was doing a whole lot of things and then I would go home and have a little bit of time to decompress and really think about the day and what I realized was, yeah, I did a lot of stuff. 02:19.115 --> 02:21.959 [SPEAKER_01]: But I didn't really push the organization forward. 02:22.299 --> 02:27.887 [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't really do anything to take the operations department, a step or two closer to our strategic goals. 02:28.348 --> 02:34.817 [SPEAKER_01]: And I've had that exact same conversation with dozens of leaders in these different organizations that we work with. 02:34.857 --> 02:40.665 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, I know I'm doing a lot of things, but I don't necessarily feel like those things are being really productive. 02:40.685 --> 02:43.249 [SPEAKER_01]: And the word that they always use is fighting fires. 02:43.229 --> 02:49.581 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I'm spending a lot of my time fighting fires and at the end of the day, I'm really not moving the organization forward. 02:49.601 --> 02:57.035 [SPEAKER_01]: And for me, when I realized that, I had to set some very strict parameters for myself about where I was going to spend my time. 02:57.436 --> 02:59.620 [SPEAKER_01]: So at a start-up, there's always problems. 02:59.761 --> 03:02.065 [SPEAKER_01]: There's always a thousand different things going on. 03:02.045 --> 03:19.964 [SPEAKER_01]: So I had to organize my day around these different blocks of time that would allow me to address the strategic problems that I needed to be focused on as the COO and then also blocks of time where I could address the fires and the tactical problems and spend time out in the factory talking to my people. 03:20.365 --> 03:29.655 [SPEAKER_01]: But if I didn't, if I was not very deliberate about blocking that time off and sticking to that time, what I found was I was not really effective in my role. 03:30.175 --> 03:35.465 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and what you're talking about is what we say all the time in everything is it's about balance. 03:35.846 --> 03:43.020 [SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't mean we forsake the tactical items, those things have to get done, but not at the expense of the long-term goals. 03:43.040 --> 03:50.133 [SPEAKER_00]: And I saw this, I was traveling, I had a long travel day, I was on airplane, and usually that's where I can get my best work done. 03:50.173 --> 03:51.576 [SPEAKER_00]: And I had spent that time. 03:51.556 --> 04:00.545 [SPEAKER_00]: on the six hour flight that I had and I had gone through my entire email inbox, I had crushed it, everything was answered, everything was cleaned up and I was feeling super accomplished. 04:00.946 --> 04:10.335 [SPEAKER_00]: And when I landed and I turned my phone off of airplane mode, I had to see an attacks from Dave Burke that asked a question about like, hey, did you ever get a chance to finish that chapter? 04:10.375 --> 04:16.281 [SPEAKER_00]: Because him and I are writing a book on extreme ownership at home and how to apply these principles at home. 04:16.261 --> 04:26.415 [SPEAKER_00]: And the second I saw it, I thought, oh my gosh, I had six hours on a plane where I could have dedicated all of my focus on something that actually helps us with the long-term mission. 04:26.915 --> 04:29.659 [SPEAKER_00]: And I had, instead, prioritized my emails. 04:30.000 --> 04:34.365 [SPEAKER_00]: None of which were that critical because I had to respond into all the critical emails up until that point. 04:34.586 --> 04:45.981 [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe I spent the first hour of that flight getting my emails cleaned up and then the rest of that time where I had no other notifications coming in and no other distractions to focus 04:45.961 --> 04:49.686 [SPEAKER_00]: And so those are the things we have to be careful as a leader is finding that balance. 04:49.726 --> 04:55.755 [SPEAKER_00]: Not getting too far away from the tactical things and the fires, but also not too far away from the strategic initiatives. 04:56.376 --> 05:04.367 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and there's a big portion of this where decentralized command comes into play too, which is if I'm the only one that can solve all these problems. 05:04.387 --> 05:09.234 [SPEAKER_01]: If I'm the only one that can put those fires out, then of course, who are my people going to come to every single time? 05:10.216 --> 05:14.061 [SPEAKER_01]: Matt and I were just with an awesome company out in North Carolina. 05:14.041 --> 05:34.446 [SPEAKER_01]: custom yacht building company and we were spending time observing their front line supervisors and and seeing kind of how they spent their day and I sat down for an hour with one of their front line supervisors who was clearly very effective in his role but during that hour long sit down when we had the door close to his office seven people came up to the window looking for him 05:34.426 --> 05:48.731 [SPEAKER_01]: Six of which saw he was doing something and walked away, and the seventh opened the door, and asked him a question that he never should have asked, which was, hey, we ran out of this yellow cable that I need for this electronic component. 05:49.252 --> 05:50.815 [SPEAKER_01]: Can I go get some more? 05:50.795 --> 05:52.917 [SPEAKER_01]: and his boss was like, yes, go get more. 05:53.498 --> 06:04.451 [SPEAKER_01]: So after our time together, we were talking through some things and I was talking about decentralized command and the need for him as a leader to be focused on driving impact and the strategic. 06:04.912 --> 06:13.361 [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, hey man, what would happen to you if when your phone blew up from all these different text messages that apparently need your attention right now? 06:13.402 --> 06:16.505 [SPEAKER_01]: What would happen if you just didn't answer them? 06:16.525 --> 06:20.650 [SPEAKER_01]: And what would happen if someone came to your door 06:20.782 --> 06:22.347 [SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, well, they would just knock on the door. 06:22.407 --> 06:24.675 [SPEAKER_01]: They would beat the door down, or they would keep texting me. 06:25.297 --> 06:27.184 [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, well, what if you just never answered them? 06:27.605 --> 06:29.913 [SPEAKER_01]: And he said, well, they would come over here, and they would try to define me. 06:30.374 --> 06:32.682 [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, well, what if you just weren't here? 06:32.847 --> 06:35.350 [SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, well, then, they would have to figure it out themselves. 06:35.370 --> 06:36.552 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, that's the goal. 06:36.572 --> 06:42.039 [SPEAKER_01]: The goal is to get them to bypass all those other steps and realize they can figure these things out for themselves. 06:42.720 --> 06:51.351 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, he had enabled that behavior by not really being as decentralized as he could, but his biggest point when I asked him, what do you struggle with as a supervisor was this? 06:51.611 --> 06:53.894 [SPEAKER_01]: He said, I feel like I do so much. 06:54.395 --> 06:58.180 [SPEAKER_01]: And yet, I'm not really moving my department forward. 06:58.160 --> 07:04.169 [SPEAKER_01]: and for him it was just the fact that he was way too centralized and his people came to him to solve every problem. 07:05.330 --> 07:09.036 [SPEAKER_02]: That's a common issue that we see so often with leaders. 07:09.136 --> 07:20.132 [SPEAKER_02]: And I remember watching a sports show years ago and some commentator said that the best ability was availability and I thought that was kind of an interesting thing to think about. 07:20.773 --> 07:23.897 [SPEAKER_02]: If you're so busy doing all these things, 07:23.877 --> 07:28.422 [SPEAKER_02]: You're not actually available to be focused on the things that matter most, right? 07:28.442 --> 07:32.247 [SPEAKER_02]: Because if your hands and everything, then who's actually taking a step back? 07:32.287 --> 07:32.948 [SPEAKER_02]: Who's the touch? 07:33.168 --> 07:39.615 [SPEAKER_02]: Who's thinking about the strategic goals and what you're doing actually to work toward those goals, move in that direction? 07:39.936 --> 07:41.418 [SPEAKER_02]: The answer is nobody, it's all up to you. 07:42.038 --> 07:47.725 [SPEAKER_02]: So your job as a leader is to say to touch and end up to stay back. 07:47.705 --> 08:08.447 [SPEAKER_02]: but you're not actually available to go meet with people when there is something that comes up when there is some oversight that that that leader needs or something that he really does need a way in on he's actually not available because he's tied up making all these other decisions and that's the way I think we we don't often think about things that way of like hey we're busy making things happen this is my job i'm a good leader 08:08.427 --> 08:10.650 [SPEAKER_02]: But that's a real shortfall. 08:10.670 --> 08:20.183 [SPEAKER_02]: I think for a lot of leaders is that they're just, they're not available to build relationships they need to at the strategic level, or to see that, hey, this team over here is really struggling. 08:20.243 --> 08:25.210 [SPEAKER_02]: I need to actually divert some more resources and ever or give them some guidance. 08:25.871 --> 08:30.938 [SPEAKER_02]: And you can't see that if you're just too busy or down the weeds all the time, making decisions. 08:31.458 --> 08:34.182 [SPEAKER_02]: I love one of the tools that we have at echelon front. 08:34.162 --> 08:35.784 [SPEAKER_02]: is the time audit that we do. 08:35.824 --> 08:46.700 [SPEAKER_02]: The time audit that you have to go through this exercise to really audit on a day-to-day basis from the time you get up in the morning and the time you go to bed at night, what are you actually doing with your time? 08:47.061 --> 08:54.972 [SPEAKER_02]: Because we talk about prioritizing execute and I have this nice little white board where I put what the priorities are supposed to be. 08:55.188 --> 08:56.651 [SPEAKER_02]: But that's not really what the priorities are. 08:57.293 --> 09:03.568 [SPEAKER_02]: What they're supposed to be is, that's the theory, the reality is how you're actually using your time is what you're prioritizing. 09:04.209 --> 09:11.326 [SPEAKER_02]: And something that I love that J.P. to know when our team says often, which is, it's not that you didn't have time to do something. 09:11.386 --> 09:13.551 [SPEAKER_02]: It's that you didn't make it a priority. 09:13.531 --> 09:22.113 [SPEAKER_02]: And when we don't properly prioritize and use our time-wise, they like that, it's a real failure of leadership. 09:22.715 --> 09:27.287 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it lends itself to activity without driving him back. 09:27.689 --> 09:30.855 [SPEAKER_00]: This is our third love combat prioritize an execute. 09:30.896 --> 09:32.479 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the principle that we teach. 09:32.519 --> 09:42.138 [SPEAKER_00]: And the definition is being able to recognize what is going to have the biggest impact on the mission and prioritizing your efforts toward that thing. 09:42.158 --> 09:49.393 [SPEAKER_00]: And the tool that we teach for this is detachment, detaching from our emotions, our ego, our own perspective, 09:49.373 --> 09:58.236 [SPEAKER_00]: So how do we properly detach in order to recognize what the priorities actually are so we can dedicate and put our time and effort towards the things that really matter? 09:58.942 --> 10:02.628 [SPEAKER_01]: The biggest thing for me is just an understanding of what is the mission. 10:03.189 --> 10:19.735 [SPEAKER_01]: If I don't really understand the mission, if I don't understand what we're trying to accomplish, I'm never going to be effective at prioritizing and executing, because I'm going to use my information, my preferences, my biases to just help me decide what I think is a priority. 10:19.715 --> 10:25.069 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's almost never going to be in alignment with what is actually the most impactful thing to the mission. 10:25.109 --> 10:32.048 [SPEAKER_01]: So for me, something that helps me stay detached is just asking myself the question, okay, here's all the things that I have on my plate right now. 10:32.629 --> 10:35.597 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's look at these through the light of what we're trying to accomplish. 10:35.577 --> 10:38.502 [SPEAKER_01]: which one of these is going to have the biggest impact to that? 10:39.163 --> 10:41.848 [SPEAKER_01]: If it's at work, there's a certain set of criteria for that. 10:41.908 --> 10:44.814 [SPEAKER_01]: If it's at home, what's my mission as a father? 10:44.974 --> 10:54.852 [SPEAKER_01]: If I don't have that well-defined, if I don't have that criteria well-defined for me, of what's my mission as a husband and as a father, I'm not going to prioritize things correctly. 10:55.012 --> 10:59.340 [SPEAKER_01]: And let's use that thing about time and J.P. saying about, 10:59.320 --> 11:03.510 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not that you don't have time, it's that you don't have a priori, it's not that you're not prioritizing it. 11:03.911 --> 11:15.658 [SPEAKER_01]: So if my priority is to spend quality time with my family and my sun comes up to me and says, hey dad, let's go throw the rugby ball around the front lawn. 11:15.638 --> 11:17.403 [SPEAKER_01]: It's easy for me to say, hey, son, I'm really busy. 11:17.443 --> 11:18.245 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have enough time. 11:18.686 --> 11:20.009 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have enough time to do that right now. 11:20.430 --> 11:27.148 [SPEAKER_01]: But what if I said the truth, which is, I'm just not prioritizing you right now, or you're not a priority to me right now? 11:27.549 --> 11:28.371 [SPEAKER_00]: That's a very... 11:28.451 --> 11:29.013 [SPEAKER_00]: Which we never say. 11:29.033 --> 11:29.835 [SPEAKER_00]: We never can't. 11:29.855 --> 11:32.702 [SPEAKER_01]: Ever say that, but that's literally what I'm saying. 11:32.682 --> 11:37.133 [SPEAKER_01]: by putting my focus on the wrong thing, by saying, I don't have time for that. 11:37.214 --> 11:41.464 [SPEAKER_01]: So for me, it's always a clear understanding of what are we trying to accomplish. 11:41.625 --> 11:48.362 [SPEAKER_01]: And if I just look at things through that light, it becomes pretty easy for me to find the answer of where I should be spinning the most of my time. 11:48.342 --> 12:04.714 [SPEAKER_02]: I've been trying to help my kids understand that the what they mean, you know, when they say certain things and what it actually means right in reality, and one of the things is if I ask, you know, my kids have picked up something like, hey, can you pick that up or take care of that, you know, and they're like, I didn't do that. 12:05.167 --> 12:06.148 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I get a response like that. 12:06.168 --> 12:09.731 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, all right, so what I understand is, hey, you and mom take care of that. 12:09.812 --> 12:10.712 [SPEAKER_02]: That's what you're telling me right now. 12:11.193 --> 12:12.014 [SPEAKER_02]: You and mom take care of that. 12:12.434 --> 12:13.535 [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, did I do that son? 12:13.555 --> 12:13.956 [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't do it. 12:13.976 --> 12:15.117 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm asking you to help me out here. 12:15.817 --> 12:17.980 [SPEAKER_02]: And I've got some other things going on. 12:18.000 --> 12:20.282 [SPEAKER_02]: And so, and he's like, well, that's not what I'm saying. 12:20.302 --> 12:20.922 [SPEAKER_02]: That's not what I'm saying. 12:20.943 --> 12:22.704 [SPEAKER_02]: My son often says that. 12:22.724 --> 12:27.169 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, no, no, that's actually what you're telling me is like, hey, I didn't do that, Dad, you take care of it. 12:27.909 --> 12:29.911 [SPEAKER_02]: That's the reality, the results. 12:30.352 --> 12:31.653 [SPEAKER_02]: And you like, saying, I didn't do that. 12:31.693 --> 12:33.655 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not gonna do it. 12:33.635 --> 12:35.558 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's great to think about it in that way. 12:35.838 --> 12:39.104 [SPEAKER_02]: It's great to think about what it actually means when you say that. 12:39.805 --> 12:44.312 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that really helps you put in perspective like what your priorities are. 12:44.332 --> 12:48.739 [SPEAKER_02]: Because there's no greater priority that you should have than being a parent, being a spouse. 12:49.180 --> 12:51.964 [SPEAKER_02]: These are the most important leadership. 12:51.944 --> 12:54.208 [SPEAKER_02]: positions that you have. 12:55.070 --> 13:03.625 [SPEAKER_02]: And so I think it's definitely something to think about and a lot of us don't put that as a priority or often we put work first and that's a real trap that we fall into. 13:03.726 --> 13:04.547 [SPEAKER_02]: I certainly do as well. 13:04.587 --> 13:09.396 [SPEAKER_02]: I think particularly as an entrepreneur it's very easy to do that because work never ends. 13:09.376 --> 13:25.176 [SPEAKER_01]: The truth with this prioritizing execute is if I'm prioritizing things effectively at work, it directly impacts the time that I have to be a good father, a good husband, a good mother at home, because I'm not thinking about the millions of different things that I have to take care of back at the office. 13:25.717 --> 13:35.569 [SPEAKER_01]: If I'm effectively using my time while I'm there and focusing on things that are driving productivity and not just the random putting out fires. 13:35.549 --> 13:39.754 [SPEAKER_01]: If I'm not prioritizing effectively, then what happens to my brain when I'm at home? 13:39.995 --> 13:49.106 [SPEAKER_01]: All I can think about is the things that I didn't get accomplished today, that I have to either do as soon as the kids go to bed, or that I have to do first thing in the office tomorrow. 13:49.126 --> 14:00.561 [SPEAKER_01]: But if I'm good at prioritizing, executing, I'm working through the things that I know are important, then when I get home for me personally, I feel like I have a lot better headspace to actually spend quality time with the family. 14:01.132 --> 14:06.159 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and to properly prioritize an execute, there's a lot of different tools that people can use. 14:06.199 --> 14:08.483 [SPEAKER_00]: And people have to find their own tools that work for them. 14:08.523 --> 14:14.251 [SPEAKER_00]: And part of our job, as leaders, is to also help our team better prioritize an execute. 14:14.271 --> 14:15.213 [SPEAKER_00]: So there's a lot of different things. 14:15.253 --> 14:19.579 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, me personally, as I think about some of the tools that I use, time blocking. 14:19.559 --> 14:27.387 [SPEAKER_00]: I know that if I get up in the morning, especially before some of my colleagues on the West Coast wake up, I've got a couple of hours that I can knock out emails. 14:27.428 --> 14:31.192 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I prioritize the first part of my day to get emails done. 14:31.612 --> 14:40.081 [SPEAKER_00]: And usually what that means is that I may not get to emails later in the day, but by the time I get to the next day, someone's already figured it out, and I don't have to solve the problem. 14:40.382 --> 14:41.182 [SPEAKER_00]: So I time block. 14:41.202 --> 14:44.886 [SPEAKER_00]: I decide, hey, this is the time I'm going to spend on getting back to emails and responding. 14:44.926 --> 14:48.250 [SPEAKER_00]: And here's the time that I'm going to spend on these other projects. 14:48.230 --> 14:55.027 [SPEAKER_00]: Another thing that we use with our team at echelon front or at least some of our team is we started a no meeting Friday. 14:55.488 --> 15:00.421 [SPEAKER_00]: And the purpose of that was that we found that we were having all sorts of meetings. 15:00.541 --> 15:03.308 [SPEAKER_00]: That's why I caveat it by some of our teams follow this. 15:03.528 --> 15:04.551 [SPEAKER_00]: Some don't at all. 15:04.531 --> 15:08.238 [SPEAKER_00]: Our operations team, Jen Tarantino, she follows this. 15:08.359 --> 15:11.585 [SPEAKER_00]: She is very, she will not set up calls on Fridays. 15:12.046 --> 15:18.899 [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason is because she found for herself and her team that they would have, back to back calls sometimes on a Friday. 15:18.960 --> 15:20.643 [SPEAKER_00]: And what happens at the end of a call? 15:20.803 --> 15:21.705 [SPEAKER_00]: There's action items. 15:21.765 --> 15:23.308 [SPEAKER_00]: There's things that now need to get done. 15:23.368 --> 15:25.813 [SPEAKER_00]: She would find herself at three o'clock on a Friday. 15:25.793 --> 15:30.442 [SPEAKER_00]: sort of inundated with now the added things to her to do list from the calls earlier in that day. 15:30.502 --> 15:39.820 [SPEAKER_00]: And now she's going into her weekend when she wants to prioritize the headspace and the availability to her family sort of riddled with all these things she needs to get done. 15:40.180 --> 15:46.232 [SPEAKER_00]: And that would sometimes stress her out over the weekend or cause her to do work on the weekend, which we certainly don't want our people doing. 15:46.713 --> 15:47.835 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, 15:47.815 --> 15:50.261 [SPEAKER_00]: She decided, hey, we're not going to do calls on Fridays. 15:50.581 --> 15:54.631 [SPEAKER_00]: And what that allowed them to do is we're going to prioritize these conversations Monday through Thursday. 15:54.972 --> 15:59.923 [SPEAKER_00]: And that means Friday, we're going to spend our day getting everything tightened up and cleaned up from the days before. 16:00.043 --> 16:04.153 [SPEAKER_00]: So we can go into our weekend, focus on the right priorities. 16:04.133 --> 16:25.568 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the other tools that I use and and we have a tool for this additional front is our now next later pad and we use this I put I have one of my bedside tables so when I'm going to bed or I wake up and sometimes early or in the middle of the night and I've got that thing that's going on in my head it's causing me to maybe struggle going back to sleep or causing a little stress I can write it down knowing I'm not going to forget about it. 16:25.548 --> 16:29.932 [SPEAKER_00]: And then every morning or at the end of my day, I'm looking at that list. 16:30.152 --> 16:31.393 [SPEAKER_00]: What do I need to be doing now? 16:31.853 --> 16:33.095 [SPEAKER_00]: What's next and what's later? 16:33.175 --> 16:38.359 [SPEAKER_00]: And prioritizing it in that fashion allows me to focus on the things that these are high priority. 16:38.379 --> 16:40.021 [SPEAKER_00]: These are now situations. 16:40.401 --> 16:42.763 [SPEAKER_00]: The rest come if I get these things done first. 16:43.444 --> 16:54.373 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a really great tool because then at the end of that, as you cross it out, you go to the next day and you move anything else that you had on the next or later up accordingly based on their priorities. 16:54.353 --> 17:02.642 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever tool we need to use to help us to attach, these are the tools that help us to better prioritize for ourselves, but also for our team. 17:03.128 --> 17:18.013 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that I see leaders fall into as well is they just take all the different priorities that they're receiving from their chain of command from their bosses and they never even ask a question about them and they never try to build alignment around the priorities. 17:18.373 --> 17:25.525 [SPEAKER_01]: They just take it on board, they take it on board, they take it on board and something that I try to get them to understand is there's always at least a room. 17:25.505 --> 17:28.911 [SPEAKER_01]: for a conversation around is this really a priority. 17:29.452 --> 17:35.023 [SPEAKER_01]: And then to try to build alignment with your chain of command over what really is the biggest priority here. 17:35.384 --> 17:43.058 [SPEAKER_01]: And I learned this lesson really by accident when I was running one of the last phases of our initial selection pipeline called Buds. 17:43.038 --> 17:59.578 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm responsible for a lot of different things, and every Friday our commanding officer who was phenomenal would come down to my office, and we would just have like a 30 minute sit down talking about training, how the class was doing, how we're doing, you know, just shooting the breeze, and he came down one Friday. 17:59.558 --> 18:20.047 [SPEAKER_01]: And we had our conversation, and at the time, what I was using to help me prioritize was what's called the Eisenhower decision making matrix, which is basically generalizing how or before he was president Eisenhower would basically put just across in the middle of a piece of paper, and then he would break those quadrants out to important, not important urgent and not important, or not urgent. 18:20.147 --> 18:23.372 [SPEAKER_01]: So if it was important and urgent, it was getting done right now. 18:23.352 --> 18:24.153 [SPEAKER_01]: That's it now. 18:24.433 --> 18:25.355 [SPEAKER_01]: That was that you're now. 18:25.495 --> 18:28.999 [SPEAKER_01]: If it was not important, not urgent, like he probably wasn't doing it. 18:29.019 --> 18:30.441 [SPEAKER_01]: He was probably giving that phone. 18:30.461 --> 18:31.783 [SPEAKER_01]: No, it's delegating it. 18:31.803 --> 18:34.246 [SPEAKER_01]: So I was using this for my priority list. 18:34.827 --> 18:36.529 [SPEAKER_01]: So my skipper comes down. 18:36.609 --> 18:41.455 [SPEAKER_01]: We're having a conversation and the vibe and tone is just a little bit different than it normally was. 18:41.515 --> 18:42.977 [SPEAKER_01]: And he's a little bit disconnected. 18:43.377 --> 18:45.340 [SPEAKER_01]: And I notice he's like looking over my shoulder. 18:45.840 --> 18:47.503 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a little bit awkward. 18:47.643 --> 18:49.505 [SPEAKER_01]: We in the conversation, he leaves. 18:49.565 --> 18:51.047 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, what was he looking at? 18:51.027 --> 18:55.880 [SPEAKER_01]: and I turned around and realized that I have my decision making matrix on the board behind me. 18:56.401 --> 19:01.275 [SPEAKER_01]: But like an idiot, I had written important, not important urgent and not urgent. 19:01.295 --> 19:06.268 [SPEAKER_01]: And in the column of not important and not urgent was something that he had asked me to do. 19:06.248 --> 19:13.797 [SPEAKER_01]: So now I'm like, oh my goodness, you know, I'm gonna get called up to the bosses office here in a second and it doesn't happen It's a Friday. 19:13.897 --> 19:19.123 [SPEAKER_01]: So now I'm thinking, oh he's he's taking this to the extreme He's let me sweat this all week and long. 19:19.784 --> 19:27.413 [SPEAKER_01]: I coming on Monday doesn't mention it Comes down that next Friday Conversation was normal again, and I asked him I said, hey 19:27.393 --> 19:34.483 [SPEAKER_01]: You were a little bit disconnected and it seemed like irritated last Friday and he was like, yes, and I said, was it because of my board and he goes, yes. 19:35.224 --> 19:37.387 [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, hey, well, again, we had a good relationship. 19:37.408 --> 19:38.729 [SPEAKER_01]: So I could have this conversation. 19:38.790 --> 19:41.694 [SPEAKER_01]: I said, well, why didn't you talk to me about it? 19:41.834 --> 19:49.405 [SPEAKER_01]: And he said, when I looked at all the other things that you had going on, I realized that what I had asked you to do was not important and not urgent. 19:49.425 --> 19:51.528 [SPEAKER_01]: And then he said, you still have to get it done. 19:51.568 --> 19:57.096 [SPEAKER_01]: But just, you know, you have some time to get it done. 19:57.734 --> 20:02.419 [SPEAKER_01]: There's at least room to have a conversation around these priorities and try to build alignment. 20:02.479 --> 20:10.648 [SPEAKER_01]: So when I was the operations officer of a seal team, very busy job, any time my commanding officer came in and said, hey, I need you to get something done. 20:10.908 --> 20:13.090 [SPEAKER_01]: I made it my goal to try to build alignment with them. 20:13.711 --> 20:17.295 [SPEAKER_01]: And I would typically say something like, hey, sir, here's what I'm hearing you say. 20:17.315 --> 20:20.458 [SPEAKER_01]: This is my new number one thing that I'd be focused on. 20:20.999 --> 20:21.419 [SPEAKER_01]: That's great. 20:21.579 --> 20:24.282 [SPEAKER_01]: I can get it done, but I just need you to understand. 20:24.262 --> 20:27.068 [SPEAKER_01]: what this means for the other things that we have going on. 20:27.669 --> 20:29.774 [SPEAKER_01]: This is now not going to get done on time. 20:30.315 --> 20:33.482 [SPEAKER_01]: This thing that you ask me to do for one troop is not going to be ready. 20:34.003 --> 20:35.767 [SPEAKER_01]: So I can get this done. 20:35.787 --> 20:37.691 [SPEAKER_01]: I just want to make sure we're in alignment. 20:38.252 --> 20:39.455 [SPEAKER_01]: And a couple of things would happen. 20:39.655 --> 20:41.038 [SPEAKER_01]: One, he would either go. 20:41.423 --> 20:46.153 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, hey, actually finish those two things first, and then you can get to this cool, we're an alignment. 20:46.814 --> 20:50.201 [SPEAKER_01]: Or he would say, hey, you know, no, this is the new number one thing. 20:50.261 --> 20:54.450 [SPEAKER_01]: I need you to get this done, and I'm willing to bump the timeline for those other two things. 20:54.791 --> 20:55.853 [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome, we're an alignment. 20:56.394 --> 21:01.525 [SPEAKER_01]: Or sometimes very rarely, he would say, my least favorite thing, which was, you gotta do them all. 21:01.505 --> 21:11.322 [SPEAKER_01]: So not fun to hear, but now at least I understood why we needed to get those things done, and I could go and talk to my operations department, my staff, and just let them know. 21:11.422 --> 21:15.229 [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, this is why we have to spend a little bit of extra time in the office tonight. 21:15.369 --> 21:18.655 [SPEAKER_01]: It's that important, and I could build alignment with them as well. 21:18.775 --> 21:24.846 [SPEAKER_01]: So one of the things that will help with this kind of clearing up what is really a priority is 21:24.826 --> 21:30.659 [SPEAKER_01]: There's this tendency to just take everything on board without asking questions and building alignment. 21:31.020 --> 21:36.692 [SPEAKER_01]: And there's always at least room to have a conversation and try to build alignment on is this really a priority. 21:37.077 --> 21:39.420 [SPEAKER_02]: People think that's what's doing a good job looks like, right? 21:39.460 --> 21:41.963 [SPEAKER_02]: I'll just take this on, I'll take that on, I'll take this on, I'll take that on. 21:42.624 --> 22:04.171 [SPEAKER_02]: And if anything, and it's long front, our biggest weakness, we have an amazing team, some of my absolute favorite people in the world that we get to work with that will take on any challenge and work themselves into the ground and get that challenge done and stay up all night for days on end or drive across the entire country, without stopping to make something happen. 22:04.612 --> 22:06.274 [SPEAKER_02]: That's an amazing quality. 22:06.254 --> 22:17.624 [SPEAKER_02]: But the thing that we have to do is recognize that that is a weakness of ours is that people have a hard time saying I'm over-tass and under-resourced, and I can't get that done. 22:17.644 --> 22:19.126 [SPEAKER_02]: All right, hey, is that important in this? 22:19.806 --> 22:26.652 [SPEAKER_02]: And we have an outstanding record marketing, Kim, who does a great job of laying that out for us. 22:27.153 --> 22:30.115 [SPEAKER_02]: And she's had many conversations with me when I'm like, hey, let's do this. 22:30.136 --> 22:36.261 [SPEAKER_02]: We can run an advanced FDX, and we can add this event, and we can launch this new online course. 22:36.241 --> 22:40.806 [SPEAKER_02]: And she lays it out in a big sales spreadsheet of like, hey, here's all the things that we're doing right now. 22:41.948 --> 22:48.175 [SPEAKER_02]: Is what you want to do is that more important than this, because I'm going to have to pull people off of that in order to get this done. 22:48.536 --> 22:56.485 [SPEAKER_02]: And from a detached position, when you step back and look at the bigger picture, which is what's so hard for any of us to do, you realize like, oh, no, no, that's not important at all. 22:56.545 --> 22:59.168 [SPEAKER_02]: Compared to what you're working on, that should be the priority. 22:59.569 --> 23:04.695 [SPEAKER_02]: And so I think that's a really important thing for us to do as leaders is to stay detached, 23:04.675 --> 23:22.532 [SPEAKER_02]: and we have to rack and sack was priorities for people because they're down in the trenches and if we're down in the trenches, if we're confusing activity for impact and we're saying so busy that we're jumping from thing to thing to thing, nobody's taking a step back and thinking about the bigger picture and what the priorities should actually be. 23:22.512 --> 23:31.467 [SPEAKER_01]: Jocco did that for me, my first six months at the company, our first master, my first master with the whole team, he pulled me aside and he said, hey, how's your travel pace? 23:32.088 --> 23:33.871 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm hard charging new guy on the team. 23:34.071 --> 23:36.956 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, it's great, and he goes, how's your travel pace? 23:37.517 --> 23:40.041 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, it's solid, and he's like, how's your travel pace? 23:40.081 --> 23:41.263 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm gone a lot. 23:41.243 --> 23:46.532 [SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, OK, listen, man, you know, you have to determine what right looks like for your family. 23:46.893 --> 23:53.725 [SPEAKER_01]: We have so much work in so many companies that we're trying to help that you could be on the road 24-7 if that's what you want. 23:53.826 --> 24:00.638 [SPEAKER_01]: But if that's not what's in alignment for you and your family, there's no pressure for us on the team, for you to be gone all the time. 24:00.758 --> 24:02.401 [SPEAKER_01]: There's different things you can do from home. 24:02.842 --> 24:03.623 [SPEAKER_01]: You can take calls. 24:03.703 --> 24:05.867 [SPEAKER_01]: You can work on different projects that we have. 24:05.847 --> 24:11.159 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was helping me pull out of that mindset of, you know, when someone calls, I just say yes. 24:11.419 --> 24:12.542 [SPEAKER_01]: I say, yes, let's do this. 24:12.602 --> 24:20.119 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was a great reminder for me of a great example for me of like, hey, just what you're talking about. 24:20.520 --> 24:22.243 [SPEAKER_01]: You got a lot of hard charging people on your team. 24:22.404 --> 24:24.328 [SPEAKER_01]: It's very hard for them to say no sometimes. 24:24.393 --> 24:27.118 [SPEAKER_00]: It's cool that Jack will have that conversation with you because it's easy. 24:27.218 --> 24:30.624 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes, you know, Jack will make the joke or like, oh, you guys celebrate weekends. 24:30.864 --> 24:41.563 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you go on vacation and he can throw that out there sometimes, which inadvertently and not his intent might put pressure on our team to say, well, we can't take weekends. 24:41.583 --> 24:42.544 [SPEAKER_00]: And we can't take vacations. 24:42.564 --> 24:46.992 [SPEAKER_00]: And we have to work all the time and we have to be careful as leaders. 24:47.225 --> 24:57.564 [SPEAKER_00]: for how we're messaging things and so I think it's awesome that while he might joke about not taking weekends, he's also taking time to ask you that question and making sure you understand that you get some control over this. 24:58.225 --> 25:05.078 [SPEAKER_00]: And I've seen this happen before with people in traditional leadership positions, where they're asking their team for something, thinking, oh, this is simple. 25:05.338 --> 25:07.883 [SPEAKER_00]: But they don't recognize their 25:07.863 --> 25:13.110 [SPEAKER_00]: title or their position, and we have that situation once where it's happened many times. 25:13.170 --> 25:14.471 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm guilty of it, too. 25:14.491 --> 25:19.298 [SPEAKER_00]: But I remember, like, you had asked someone on our team for some number, and it was something super simple. 25:19.378 --> 25:22.802 [SPEAKER_00]: You just were curious about, like, hey, you know, can I just get the numbers for this? 25:23.182 --> 25:24.905 [SPEAKER_00]: And you thought it was a super simple task. 25:24.925 --> 25:36.199 [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember this person, because it's you, they spent two days gathering together all this data and putting together a chart and a dashboard and leaves, like, oh, I just was kind of like a rough estimate. 25:36.179 --> 25:45.900 [SPEAKER_00]: But those are the things we have to be really careful of because sometimes as leaders we're asking our team for things, not realizing that, you know, we think of ourselves as like, oh, I'm just Jamie Cochran. 25:46.120 --> 25:47.523 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just asking a question, no big deal. 25:48.164 --> 25:56.061 [SPEAKER_00]: Not realizing that that person on the team that maybe I don't know as well as I do others is looking at me as, oh, she's the chief operating officer. 25:56.041 --> 26:05.377 [SPEAKER_00]: and has a different perspective and is thinking that my opinion on this or my request is of the highest importance because Jamie asked me or Lath asked me or Jaco asked me. 26:05.817 --> 26:19.180 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have to be mindful of that with our team not only how we're prioritizing for ourselves, but how are we setting up our team for success and ensuring that we're not circumventing their priorities by asking questions that they may take the wrong way because of our role. 26:19.160 --> 26:24.828 [SPEAKER_02]: What we tell leaders that we work with is focus on the things that only you can do. 26:25.369 --> 26:29.094 [SPEAKER_02]: Focus on the things that only you can do and try to delegate everything else. 26:29.655 --> 26:34.582 [SPEAKER_02]: There are going to be some things that you might wish you could delegate that you can't delegate because there's nobody else to do that. 26:35.103 --> 26:40.290 [SPEAKER_02]: But if you can try to focus on the things that only you can do, 26:40.270 --> 26:43.914 [SPEAKER_02]: That's what you can do to contribute to the overall success of the organization. 26:43.934 --> 26:51.544 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's that will put you in the right situation and you might not have anybody that you can delegate to immediately, but you can start to work toward that. 26:51.664 --> 26:53.166 [SPEAKER_02]: And that can be a goal that you're working toward. 26:53.186 --> 27:00.895 [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that's six months or a year down the road, but you can start to work in that direction where you can focus on the things that only you can do. 27:00.993 --> 27:04.319 [SPEAKER_00]: That brings us to our immediate action drill for the week. 27:04.339 --> 27:11.092 [SPEAKER_00]: The first thing I want you to do is take a moment to figure out what are the top three long-term goals that you're trying to accomplish. 27:11.573 --> 27:15.340 [SPEAKER_00]: And then for that week, write down the top three priorities for the week. 27:15.821 --> 27:18.546 [SPEAKER_00]: And then each day, as you sit down to get your work done, 27:18.526 --> 27:36.072 [SPEAKER_00]: But before you start right down the top three daily tasks that you're going to do on that day and make sure that as you're looking at that list that your daily tasks those top three priorities align with those weekly priorities and hopefully align with the long term goal and if you can do that you can more properly prioritize an execute. 27:36.653 --> 27:44.044 [SPEAKER_02]: That is going to enable you to stay detached focus on what's most important and when you do that you can lead. 27:46.387 --> 27:51.013 [SPEAKER_02]: So until next time, eat yourself, eat your team, and win.