Today’s episode is part 2 of “3 Ways to Avoid Mission Drift“. This week we continue with what happens when you’ve found yourself drifting away from your mission and how to get out of that “crazy cycle”.
It’s ok to force a culture of accountability if you want to avoid drift.
Part of forcing culture is teaching your team what is right. Learn how to rehearse your vision with your team. If you don’t catch your team doing it right, they’ll forget what right is. Catch them doing it right, rehearse it, reinforce it, help them memorize it, never forget it.
Leaders must lead to the destination they want to go.
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Make every decision count.
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Stay accountable to the mission.
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Reinforce your very best practices.
Listen now to be sure you’re still heading in the direction of your original mission and not experiencing mission drift!
Full Podcast Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
destination, accountability, people, business, leaders, question, decisions, drift, heading, mission, guide, god, put, team member, focusing, purpose, happening, gave, vision, team
SPEAKERS
Chris LoCurto 00:10
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show, where we discuss leadership and life, and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks. Today we are picking up on part two of avoiding mission drift. So super fast. I will just remind you, if you did not listen to episode one, go get it right now. But just a couple of powerful things that we've discussed on the first episode, definitions of mission, vision and strategy. Super short versions; mission is your purpose, vision is the destination you're heading to, strategie's how you're going to get there. For a much further in depth definition, go back to episode one, also heavily focusing on the one in 60 rule, which is- and this is used in air navigation-for every one degree of playing veers off its course, it misses its target, by one mile for every 60 miles. If you think about that, a plane rarely just flies 60 miles. A lot of the plane rides we've all been on have been hundreds of miles. So if it's 600 miles that you're traveling, then by one degree, just one degree, then you're 10 miles off of that 600 mile destination. So with that in mind, we've talked through the first way to avoid mission drift, which is with your decision making, and how to make much better decisions that are focusing on your mission and the current destination that you have in mind. Second way to avoid Mission Drift we're going to hit when we come back right after this.
Chris LoCurto 02:01
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Chris LoCurto 03:00
Okay, second way to avoid mission drift, big piece here is constant accountability. Now, as I get into this, a lot of you may have may come from a background like I do where accountability is a cuss word to you. Many of you may come from a religious background where accountability was somebody beating you over the head and telling you all the things you're doing wrong while they've got a foot and an elbow holding back the closet of all of the things that they're doing wrong. So funny thing is, is that for those of us that are old enough accountability has had a bad connotation to it. We have been changing that for eight, nine years now, at least we have a big effort to do that. Why? Because what is real accountability real accountability is looking at something and saying how do I put in processes, people, training, whatever it is, that helps this thing be successful? So if we were to do it correctly in a religious sense, it's not to beat the crap out of somebody who's doing something stupid. It's to put things in place to hold them accountable to help them to get the things done right when they go off course. It's to veer them back onto course it's to lovingly guide and direct them, you know when they do need to get pushed on we push on them when they need to be hugged and held we hug and hold them. We we do the things that sets the person up for success.
Chris LoCurto 04:39
Well guess what? You should have that throughout your entire team or organization. So the goal here is maintaining meticulous accountability to our purpose, our mission, and our direction, our vision. So you you need to make sure that you have a culture of accountability in order to make decisions. And I'm not just talking just you, but company wide. How does the person at the front desk make decisions? How do the people on the front lines make decisions? Right? Are they making decisions the way that the culture that they came out of? Or are you helping them to understand a culture of accountability? Are they making decisions on the front lines of your business? That are in line with the company's mission? The company's purpose? Right? Whatever the purpose of existence is for that company, is everybody inside of that business making decisions that align with it? If not, we've got to do something about it. Why? Because without it, guess what, you're gonna drift. Think about it, it's not that tough to figure this one out. If I am making the best decisions possible to make sure that we are aligning with our purpose, we are aligning with our destination that we're heading towards, we're putting things in place strategically, to make sure that we get there and yet, I have people in some other area of my team or my company, that are making decisions that are not aligning, here we go again, we are now want to drift. Right? If they are making decisions that don't align with our purpose, then that's going to put something in place that we're eventually going to have to fix. So we need leaders who push back on this, this is you included, who pushed back on everyone else in the company asking specific questions. Hey, very simple. This isn't difficult. Does that decision you're making align with the mission? How many times do you ever go question a leader on decisions that they're making an ask them, if it aligns with the purpose? It's usually rare, if ever at all. Usually, we'll just ask questions about the decision itself, to try and hopefully make a great decision. But what if it doesn't align with our purpose? So we should be asking that not only so that we get the right answer, but so that we start teaching and modeling culture of accountability. Right? Ask a question, is this where we want to be going? Ask your leaders, in other words, is this aligning with the destination? Do we want to move in that direction? Now a big piece, and I talked a lot about this on the last episode is the shotgun approach that we help businesses to get out of so many times we have leaders that have good ideas, maybe they're even great, usually, they're good. And we go, man, we got to do that good idea. That's something we need to go after. Man, nothing's gonna make us money, man, that thing's going to do fill in the blank. And unfortunately, sometimes we do it to make people happy, we might be a leader who's like, "Man, if I don't allow this team member to go do this thing, it might be negative." Instead of thinking through the most important question: is it where we want to be going? Does that align with the current destination that we have in place? If it does not, why are we doing it? Just to make one person happy? So in other words, we're going to affect the rest of the company, the resources, the focus on the destination, so we can make this person happy or because we've all agreed that it's a good idea? Well, that's pretty ridiculous if you think about it, because how bad is that gonna affect us? Well, it's another degree off in our 60 degrees, right? Another question, you need to be asking, is that going to over tax, our capacity? So this decision that we're making right now, how does that affect our capacity? Now, if the question is about what you're going to have for lunch today, that's probably not going to overtax your capacity.
Chris LoCurto 09:31
However, how many times do we again go after a really good idea and unfortunately, it pulls away from our focus, it pulls away from our capacity. It puts a salesperson in the wrong direction. It puts a team member spending time working on something pulling something, getting information, researching whatever, something that if we would have kept them focused thing that they were doing, we could be reaching our destination better and faster. So does that overtax our capacity? Next question to ask, will this help us arrive at our destination? "Now Chris, I thought we just asked that question." Nope. There's two different ways of looking at this one is, is that moving towards our destination? If it's not, then we need to really question the daylights out of it. But then there is the question, will it help us to get to our destination? So guess what, there are certain decisions that we can make, that might take a little degree of change, and pull us back towards our destination even better. Like there's sometimes we talked through like Stratplan, as we get far enough into this, some of those Strapplans are 6 to 12 months long, like rarely is it ever under six and a lot of times, it's 9 to 12 months, of a plan of really blowing up a company's capacity, getting things in place, helping them to become a stronger company, right? Sometimes we have some companies that will just knock out big chunks rapidly. Like they're able to move on certain things, while the main program still is gonna take them a longer period of time, some huge chunks get knocked out. And then what can happen is we go back to comfort. Well, we did the checklist things, we got those things done. So you know, all y'all keep focusing on the parts that you need to do. But I'm gonna go back to doing what I've been doing. Nope. Here is the opportunity for us to ask questions like, what if we hire more people? Could that help it now that we have greater capacity? We solve these things over here. That gives us capacity, maybe it gave us resources of money? You know, we got some trouble spots out of the way. Maybe we have better bottom line, right? So now what if we hired more people to help us to accomplish Stratplan faster? Does it get us to our destination faster? Does it help us arrive there? Maybe we put support people in place? There's all these types of things that we can ask on, can we get to our destination even better? Will this help us get there? If the answer is nope, it really is not. We have to, again, ask the question, then why are we even looking at it? Another great question to be asking to make sure that we are, you know holding our decision making accountable is do we have the right people in the right resources? Now if we don't have the right people, I'm going to always come back to leadership and ask the question, what is keeping you from solving this problem? Is it because your personality style is afraid to do something about this person? Is it possible that you don't know where they belong in your business as a possible you feel guilty? Is it possible you're struggling personally? If so, what are we going to do about it? Your responsibility is bigger than your own concerns and guilt, right? Your responsibility is to the business, the team, the clients. So we may have to put things in place that start guiding that person to the right results that we want, right? If we don't have good accountability pieces, we call it the accountability gap, which is the gap between doing tasks and getting to the result that we want. So we need to put things in place to make sure we give that person the opportunity to get to the right results. If they ultimately cannot. And we have done everything we need to as a leader to get them there, then we have a problem with the team member. What we discover a lot of times the lacking elements is not the team member, it's the accountability. If we put the accountability pieces in place, if we got indirect well, helping this person get to the right spot, putting in things like KRA's and KPIs, putting in things like weekly meetings with that team member, putting in things like you know, asking questions of what do you need? How can I help you, you know, what resources do not have? How do we solve this problem? Doing everything you can, what you'll discover is many times, that's a lack of accountability. Sometimes it's a lack of the right resources.
Chris LoCurto 14:30
Do they have the right resources to accomplish the things that we want? In my early days in business, I found there were times that we would put somebody out to try and accomplish something, and we barely gave them any resources to accomplish it. And we wondered why they weren't out there making millions of dollars, right? So when you push back on other leaders, to make sure they're asking these questions, then what starts to happen is you start to create this culture of countability again, there's a lot more to it than this. You've heard me talk a lot about the different accountability pieces. What are we talking about right now creating that culture? By driving these questions by making leaders think, by causing them to ask these questions by causing them to focus on solving these questions with really good answers, then we create the culture of accountability. If we don't do that, if we do not create this culture of accountability, then we're going to drift back into our comfort zone, back into the knee jerk reactions and shooting from the hip. You know what this is like, right? I think we've all experienced this. Before we took our mission and vision seriously, we're just trying to survive, keeping our head above water right, before we were just drifting. It's okay to force a culture of accountability so that you avoid the drift. The more accountability you have inside of your team inside of your business, the less chance that you're going to drift away from your mission. All right, when we come back, the third way to avoid drifting off course, and achieving your goal.
16:24
Hey, it's Joel Fortner here. I'm the Vice President of leadership development on Chris's team, and I oversee our Next Level Mastermind business coaching program. Most business owners and leaders lack a clear path to succeed in business. They question whether they're making the right decisions, if they're focusing on the right things to really grow their business. If this is you, you need a coach in your life. Coaches help you make better decisions, navigate uncertainty, lead more effectively, and grow your business without sacrificing your life and your family. In their first year, our clients typically see an average of 67% increase in gross revenue, and an average of 138% increase in net profit. And regained hours of time, our clients stay in the program for three and a half years simply because of the results they get. So if you're ready to run your business at the next level and see the growth you've been wanting, then visit chrislocurto.com/mastermind. Again, chrislocurto.com/mastermind, today.
Chris LoCurto 17:26
Okay, the third way to avoid mission drift, and we call it rehearsing vision. Now, vision is a destination or heading to leaders, I'm going to put a bunch on you right now. Hello, in my mind, I'm going to put a bunch on you. Hopefully you receive it as super important. And I'm going to all biblical on you right now. So probably most of us know the story of the Exodus from Egypt when the Israelites came out of Egypt. And if you don't, essentially what's happening is the children of Israel have been in slavery for over 400 years, it is obviously not going well. Their cries are reaching up to God, God sends in a phenomenal leader to pull them out and lead them into a different destination. So I want you to imagine the power of imagery. So in the Bible, we have this phenomenal story of the Exodus starting in obviously Exodus one where we start to read about Moses and and what's happening within the new pharaoh and the whip that's on the back. And you know, all of these things that are happening and God guides this man he A, sets him up to redeem this nation by raising him up in the household and understanding the household of Pharaoh. And then when he takes off later on in life, he spends his second half of his life on the back side of the wilderness out in the desert. And then God brings them back to release his people from this bondage from this slavery that they're in and guides them out of this terrible situation into the wilderness. So I want you to think about millions of people that are leaving the land of Goshen that are leaving Egypt and they're heading across, out into this desert land. And what God does is he takes these millions of people, Israelites also foreigners as well. We see that he takes them all the ones out, he rescues them from slavery. He rescues them from Pharaoh in his armies crashing down on them. He brings them salvation from this process and guides them to this mountain experience. And in that mountain experience, here's what God does. Now, people screw this up all the time, we've had a lot of bad teaching since the three hundreds AD is actually even from Marcy on and 100 AD That the instructions that God gave to Moses or bad, we have had this horrible teaching that what happened on the crosses, is it made those terrible instructions null and void. And that's not what happened at all. And that's not what God did. Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice for the things that we did wrong. But here's what God did with those millions of people who just came out of a slavery mentality, who came out of this hopeless mentality, he guided them to an area. And the first thing he did was he told them and taught them who he was. God gave them an incredible insight into who he was, through this process, what he stood for, what he was all about. And then he gave them instructions on how to be who he wanted them to be.
Chris LoCurto 21:42
So imagine this, you're coming out of this hopelessness, this slave mentality, you're walking through the desert, you're not really enjoying that very much you get to this mountaintop experience, or this mountain experience, I should say, because they were on the bottom. And God reveals a couple of things, who he is, how to follow Him and be His people, which by doing so revealed, who they are. So God revealed who he is, and then through this process revealed who they are, he gave them all kinds of instructions on how to become a nation. He gave them all kinds of instructions on how to follow Him and not follow the pagan gods, how not to do the things that the pagan gods- or the people who were worshipping gods that didn't exist, but they carved out of stones and trees and all that kind of stuff. How not to follow those he gave them, feasts and festivals that were his not theirs, his that there to follow in perpetuity. He gave them all of these strategies, all of these step by step initiatives on how to become the people of God, who was with them? Not just the children of Israel, Gentiles, people who were following in believing in Jehovah God. Right, the one true God. So what do we see? God has laid out this amazing vision, with all of these instructions on what to do to become a nation to become the people of God. So now, let's make this analogy. Personal and applicable to your business. It is your job as a leader to what? Make your team successful. It is your job to paint a picture of what is possible. As far as a destination, it is your job to paint a picture as far as goals that they need to hit a strategy of how to get to that destination. And then it is your job to rehearse that vision over and over again. There's an old statement, if vision isn't being shared every 21 days, then it's dying. You have to continue to share; hey, guys, this is where we're headed. Hey, guys, remember, this is where we're going. Hey, guys, remember, this is the destination we're moving toward. If you don't, then it's not surprising on some of the things that we hit in the other two sections, how easy it is for people to make decisions, to go in a different direction, how easy it is without accountability for people to go in a different direction. But when we share the vision, and we help people to understand it, and we help people to know their part, and we help people to see the strategy for them to get there. And then can get there and it can keep us from drifting off of our purpose, leaders need to celebrate the victories all along the way. Many times the children of Israel set up memorials to commemorate the victories that God had brought them through, that God had helped them with, right? What are you doing to make sure that you don't just keep pointing people in the direction of a destination, but that you celebrate as they get there? Or along the way? What are the victories that your team is experiencing? I can tell you, some of the best things that we share inside of our team is the victories that our clients are having. It is fantastic for our team who is boasting it to help people have life change, to actually hear that people are having life change. It feeds us, it feeds us spiritually, it feeds us emotionally.
Chris LoCurto 26:08
It is something that is powerful to help us remember why we're moving in this direction. Leaders need to instill processes and practices that reinforce where we're going. Guys, if you're not putting things in place, that show this is the reason we're heading this direction. This is why we're going this way, here's how we're getting that way. Here's the things we're utilizing to get that direction. If you don't put things in place, if you don't instill those processes in those practices, then you can't be surprised if they're not doing the things that get them to that destination, right? So as a leader, help them be successful by instilling those processes and practices. So what's the point? If you don't catch team doing it, right, they'll forget what right is. If you catch them doing it right, if you rehearse it, if you reinforce it, if you help them memorize it, guess what? It will stay top of mind. And then you have a really good chance that they're not going to forget it. That they're going to know, this is where we're headed. It's not even in question. And the great thing is, when you have team members that are that focused on mission, that are that focused on direction, it almost becomes self-guiding self-policing. Right? So self-guiding; I know where I'm headed, this stuff is pounded into my brain, I know exactly what I'm doing self policing; if I see somebody else pulling off of the vision off of purpose, then I can guide them back to it. Because I understand it. And I know my part and I know I can see their part and I can guide them back into their part. So if all you do is just critique your team, if all you do is just criticize your team than I can promise you, what you will find is people doing the least amount they possibly can to accomplish both your purpose, I should say all three, your purpose, your destination, and your plans on getting there. If you reinforce the good, then you're going to see more of them accomplishing exactly the things you want to do. If you do this, then instead of drifting away from our purpose, then instead of ending up in a shotgun approach, then instead of ending up a degree to 30 degrees off, what happens is we accomplish the very mission that we set out to do. So you cause mission drift if you're a leader. Leaders must lead to the destination they want to go. If you do not fix the things that cause mission drift, then you're the one responsible for the mission drift, do the things that you need to do. Number one, make every single decision count. Number two, stay accountable to the mission. Number three, reinforce your very best practices. If you do the things we've talked about in the last two episodes, you will keep not only your business, but your whole team, your clients, your resources on the right path. Well folks, hopefully this has helped you today to keep away from drifting away from your purpose. Hopefully for a lot of you, this is reinforced the purpose that you have in place and very possibly for a decent number of you, this has caused you to question your purpose. Do we have the right purpose in place? And if not, what do we do about it and then how do we make sure we accomplish it? again, as always, we want you to take this information, we want you to change your leadership, we want you to change your business. We want you to change your life. And join us on the next episode.