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This is the second episode in a series about having the right team and plan for your business. This episode talks about the necessary ingredients of a plan. Motivation, collaboration, and action.

Podcast Transcript:

Joshua MacLeod:
If I’m going to bring a product to fruition, if I’m going to bring a business to fruition, if I’m going to bring a new service to fruition, there’s four necessary steps. First, we got to have the right plan. Then we’ve got to have motivation to accomplish that plan. Then we’ve got to have the right collaboration, the right people to accomplish the plan. And then I need to actually do the work. I need the action to accomplish the plan.

Podcast Announcer:
Welcome to the Growability podcast, teaching business and nonprofit leaders a more excellent way to run a business. Visit growability.com for your leadership, coaching, consultation, and business collaboration needs. This is the second episode in a series about having the right team and plan for your business. This episode talks about the necessary ingredients of a plan. Motivation, collaboration, and action. Here are your hosts, Joshua Macleod and Bernie Anderson.

Joshua MacLeod:
If you have the right team, if you have the balance of buckets, fountains, pourers, how do I know that I have the right plan? There are four ingredients to accomplishing tasks. The first category is plan, it’s planning. What is the plan? Somebody needs to have really good strength in planning. The second category is motivation. If I have the best plan in the world, but nobody is motivated to do it. It’s not just having the right plan, but it’s actually having the motivation to accomplish the plan. So the second column is like the motivation. The third is collaboration. Collaboration is making sure that the people to work on the plan are actually the right people. And here’s where we would… We’ve just talked about fountains, buckets, pourers. In this execution of this great plan that we’re motivated to do, do we have the right fountain, do we have the right builder, do we have the right pourer?

Joshua MacLeod:
And then finally you have execution, the action, let’s actually go out and do this thing. If I’m going to bring a product to fruition, if I’m going to bring a business to fruition, if I’m going to bring a new service to fruition, there’s four necessary steps. First we got to have the right plan. Then we got to have the motivation to accomplish that plan. Then we’ve got to have the right collaboration, the right people to accomplish the plan. And then I need to actually do the work. I need to action to accomplish the plan. To give you an example, let’s say we’re talking about a social media need for an organization. So we’re selling tires in our local community and we want to start having a social media presence so that people who don’t drive by our tire shop will know that we’re out there.

Joshua MacLeod:
The first thing is we need a plan. Like the CEO of a tire company comes to his team and says, “Here’s the plan post on social media and give me new customers”. That’s not a plan. That’s not going to help. Like how… What are we going to do? So somebody in the group says, “Okay, well, I guess we should think about the type of things that we want to post on social media. So maybe we could post three different types of things? So we could post something about our core values. So our core values are friendliness and cost savings. We’ll post something that is about our core values. We could post about an event in the community that we support. So the March of Dimes is doing this or the Food Pantry is doing this. And so we want to support that. We’re going to go talk about something in our community that we’re supporting.”

Joshua MacLeod:
And then third, we can share something about our product. Here’s how to avoid a flat tire and here’s the benefit of rain tires. So it takes this, “Hey, we need to post on social media” to “We have a plan to post on social media”. So any post that goes out, it’s going to be something about our core values, something about our community, or something about our product or service. So now that’s great, but nobody wants to do it. So now I’ve got five people sitting there and they’re like, well, nobody’s motivated to implement that plan. So what we do is we say, “Hey, if we have a successful social media campaign and it increases our sales by X amount, then everybody gets X amount bonus. And if we get a thousand subscribers, then we’re going to have the pizza party”. So those are kind of like motivations that are reward based.

Joshua MacLeod:
Sometimes motivations are just accountability based. “Hey, I’m going to check and make sure that you did your thing on Tuesday”. You know, different leader styles. You can have motivation that is like a reward or you can just have motivation that’s like accountability. But if you don’t have motivation to accomplish a plan, you’re not going to accomplish a plan. The third thing is okay, who on our team is the best at coming up with the values or the products or the community events?

Joshua MacLeod:
You need to have somebody that comes up with the concept, “This is what we’re going to do”. You need to have somebody that is going to produce it, “Well here’s the photo we should put with that. And we’re going to put this filter on the photo and we’re going to make it look nice”. And then you have the technical of, “Okay, we’re going to post it on all these different platforms. Here’s this platform, here’s that platform, here’s that platform”. The big question is, who’s the best idea person that we have for what we should post? Who’s the best production person of actually producing it? And then who’s the best like fulfillment of checking the analytics and making sure that we get the report? So I got to have the right people doing the right thing. So, that’s the collaboration.

Joshua MacLeod:
And then finally you have the action. You know, we’re going to have three posts a week and this is the playbook for… These are the three graphics that we’re going to have. And then this is the playbook for, this is the reporting. The execution people actually just do the work. So, that’s just social media. Well in a business, I not only need to have my social media have a plan and a motivation and collaboration and action. But I need my accounting reconciliation have a plan and a motivation and a collaboration and action. And my entire yearly marketing strategy needs a plan and a motivation and collaboration and action. Every aspect, every branch in my business needs to have a plan, motivation, collaboration, and action.

Joshua MacLeod:
In your team, who’s a good planner? Who’s a good motivator? Who’s a good collaborator? Who’s good at doing the work? Discovering that and making sure that you put the right person in the right seat. That’s why it’s really, really important to have really good assessments and strengths and personalities, and know who on your team should be doing what task and are they assigned in the right role?

Bernie Anderson:
So having the knowledge of not just yourself, but having the knowledge of who Bob and June and all of the other people in the office, kind of where they are, that really makes for a strategic way of getting things done in the office. I mean, you just know, “Hey, I can go over here and count on them”. June over here is a, she is world-class collaborator. And I need to work with someone like that. These are the strengths of the people in our organization. These are the things that they are out of this world at, it just makes collaboration and getting things done in the office so much easier.

Bernie Anderson:
So Joshua, how do we bring all of this together? Someone who is maybe listening to this live Lunch & Learn today may be kind of like, “All right, I get the fountains, buckets, pourers.” I get, are okay… “So there’s a plan, motivation, collaboration, action. Those things need to happen”. Maybe there’s someone today listening to this at their lunchtime saying, “I need to determine today, who are the people in my team who are planners, motivators, collaborators, action people”. How do they do that? How do we put all this together?

Joshua MacLeod:
This is where there really, really are incredible tools in the marketplace that every leader of an organization should implement. If you have not done StrengthFinder profiles for every person on your team, you’re just, you’re missing out. If you have not done DiSC assessment for every member on your team, you’re really missing out. They help you understand who’s a B, like I’m getting a B here. And who’s an A plus? Until you do some profiles, which really involves a lot of friendly interrogation of people to find out like, what makes you tick? Why do you enjoy this? What are your motivators? Where do you feel like you’re best at collaborating? And then backing that up with some scientific data, of your StrengthFinders test says this, your DiSC profile says this, your fountains, buckets, pourer profile says this.

Joshua MacLeod:
The quick answer Bernie is, hire us. We’ll come in and do a personality profile, a strength profile, and then team training about how to communicate, how to work better together. And then really just help you discover gaps in your organization where you might have really good people, but they’re not really a symbiotic strength set. Most businesses are fundamentally under utilizing the talent that they already have, simply because they haven’t been able to articulate what that talent is and what that talent looks like. Doing proper team assessments, doing proper personality assessments, does more than just kind of a snapshot of, “What are our strengths and weaknesses as an organization?” It also brings a common language where we can now improve on that as we grow as an organization.

Joshua MacLeod:
Actually, any consultant that comes in and says, “Oh, we’re going to go fix your problems”, and they don’t start by interviewing everybody on your team? Then they’re only going to give you a great fountain. There’s going to be no bucket building. There’s going to be no pouring. They’re going to just come and say, “Well, here’s where your problems are”, and then you’re left by yourself to go clean up the mess. We don’t do that. We look at your team and say, “Hey, what are your strengths on your team? What are the personalities on your team? Where are the gaps?” And then we work with you team and your vendors to actually overcome those gaps and actually build health into your organization.

Bernie Anderson:
It is super powerful to not only give leaders information that could be very valuable to them, but give them information and then say, “All right, here’s how you’re going to be able to use this in your situation”. I’ve seen where, I mean… I’ve been in a work situation, an outside consultant comes in, and gives us all this information. And it’s nice. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, it’s like day camp or something, you know? You just… You get this thing, and it’s cool, and I don’t really know how I’m going to use this? But no, I mean, it’s like having someone that’s going to actually walk you through, “All right. This information really is valuable and here’s why it’s valuable. And here’s how you can actually put this to work in your team situation, starting today. This is how you need to do that”.

Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding in the market about what personality profiles and strength profiles are supposed to do. When people take those tests, they take those tests looking for the result of, “Oh, I am this”. So I take my Enneagram and it’s like, “I’m a three, or I’m a six, or I’m a nine”. Or I take my StrengthFinders, so, “I am this”. That’s not the point of any personality profile. The point of any strength profile or personality profile is to know how to leverage a particular personality or strengths in a given scenario.

Joshua MacLeod:
So it’s not the, “I am this. So I can go tell my wife, oh, I’m a this. So isn’t that great?” No. You have these tendencies, you have these strengths. So in situation A, apply X, Y, Z. In situation B, apply A, B, C. In situation C, apply this. Knowing how to leverage the strengths and the gifts that you have in a way, going back to our early conversation, that fully maximizes the teamwork, and loving on your team, and the value you bring to your team. That’s the point of a profile assessment.

Joshua MacLeod:
So if you don’t apply the knowledge, it doesn’t really help you. It actually can hurt you because you just you’ve given yourself a label. That label might even be wrong because you don’t even have a maturity in that strength, you just have a propensity towards that thing. It’s not just being able to look and go, “Oh, a tool, a sword”. It’s like, no, no, no. You’ve got to figure out how to pick up that sword and swing it around. So, yeah.

Bernie Anderson:
Yeah. To be able to look at your team and say, “All right, do we have the capacity?” … So you think, “Oh my gosh, we can do this great idea”, but the way to check to see if you have the capacity to do that is, “All right. So is there a plan, is their motivation, is their collaboration, is their action? Do all of those things come together and do we have the people with the strengths that are needed to make this thing?” Like, let’s take this idea and make it come to reality by utilizing your whole team and not just you being the guy, you know?

Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah, exactly.

Bernie Anderson:
Yeah, so.

Joshua MacLeod:
Okay, well-

Bernie Anderson:
All right.

Joshua MacLeod:
We’ll see you next week. Another great episode. Thanks Bernie for all you do. For you leaders out there, if you want to follow up with us, please check out growability.com. We would love to help in any way that we can. Hopefully this podcast is helpful, or this live Lunch & Learn is helpful, and the future podcast is helpful. Have a great week.

Podcast Announcer:
Thank you for listening to the Growability podcast. The mission of Growability is to equip leaders to flourish in their life and work by developing vision, rhythm, and community. To discover if there is a more excellent way to run your business, visit growability.com and speak with a certified Growability coach. Subscribing to this podcast helps Growability equipped leaders throughout the world and we appreciate your support.