Lead In 30 Podcast

How do you rate your day? Good to Great Author Jim Collins Shares System

• Russ Hill

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You track your calories, steps, and tasks but how are you tracking your productivity and fulfillment? The author of Good to Great, Jim Collins, shares his system for rating each day. Lone Rock Leadership co-founder Russ Hill shares the system and why he's a huge fan of it.

• Distinction between activity and meaningful results 
• Jim Collins' system after writing Good to Great book
• Evaluating productivity through a personalized rating system 
• Practical applications of tracking emotional and intellectual engagement 
• Encouragement for leaders to define their own metrics for success 
• Importance of aligning actions with personal and organizational goals 

Share this episode with a colleague, your team, or a friend. Tap on the share button and text the link. Thanks for listening to the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill.

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Speaker 1:

You're tracking your calories. You're tracking your steps. You're tracking how many tasks you're getting done each day, but how are you tracking your productivity? Look if you're actually moving your career, your organization, your team forward. Some great thoughts from Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great, in this episode.

Speaker 2:

This is the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill. You cannot be serious. Strengthen your ability to lead in less than 30 minutes.

Speaker 1:

It is absolutely one of the ways that you increase your value in the marketplace for leaders, for managers, executives, business owners, whatever it is that you do. Everybody's busy right, and Roger Connors and Tom Smith, when they wrote the Oz Principle, when they created the firm that was Partners in Leadership, where I got started in the consulting space, one of the things that they were brilliant about focusing on was this difference between activity and results. Like everybody's busy activity, just tons of activity, and know what? The truly successful people, the leaders that are in greatest demand, are those that actually focus on results. The most successful business executives, founders, executives, founders, the people who are growing organizations are those that focus on results. And so in this episode, I wanted to give you something to think about and something that Jim Collins said in an interview that I have studied and studied and studied in recent days, that I want to share with you and get you thinking about. Welcome into the Lead. In 30 podcast, in less than 30 minutes, in each episode, we give you a framework, a model, an experience, something to think about implementing or how you're doing when it comes to this topic or this area in your effort to effectively lead other people. Nothing impacts your growth potential, your income potential, your happiness. Honestly, when it comes down to it, your fulfillment, then your ability to lead others, whether those people, those others, are in your family, at your church, in your community, at your nonprofit, at the corporation that you lead, at the company that you just started, whatever it might be. Your ability to lead others affects everything, and so why not strengthen it? That's what we're doing in every episode, or at least we're trying to, in every episode of lead in 30.

Speaker 1:

I'm Russ Hill. I make my living coaching, consulting executive teams of some of the world's most amazing companies we love. We love the organizations that we work with. We get to choose them because we own the company and they're phenomenal. They're absolutely amazing people. I learn so much from them, and anything that's valuable that we as a firm or that I'm bringing to the marketplace is coming through, observing very successful leaders and doing that at scale over a lot of years, and you see what works.

Speaker 1:

So we're not studying I mean, there's data involved, but we're not. We're not in a college classroom studying academic principles than publishing books or or articles or white papers or videos online about what seems to work. No, these are things that are actually causing on-time delivery quality at factories to improve. No, these are things that are actually improving the patient experience. These are things that are actually increasing safety metrics in hospitals. These are things that are actually you get the point right and so we get to observe that and hopefully have a small impact in it and then share it with you. Get the point right and so we get to observe that and hopefully have a small impact in it and then share it with you. So, anyway, all right.

Speaker 1:

Um, let's see, what did I forget? Lone rockio? Lone rock leadership is the name of our firm. We've got a training, a consulting side. You can find out more about it at lone rockio.

Speaker 1:

Okay, jim Collins, you know who he is. Right, he hasn't been on the scene as, like, I haven't heard his name mentioned a lot in, I'll be honest, 15 years, 20 years, when he came out with the book good to great and there are probably a bunch of you that are like what, what are you talking about? Good to great? It was. It was really popular, gosh, whenever it came out, which was a long time ago and, uh, this is a long before I got in the consulting, uh, industry. I was an executive working at an organization. We actually it was like a book that was handed out at one of our meetings. We read it and, um, I don't know if we had some training on it or how that worked the level five leadership. And you know the right person, the, the.

Speaker 1:

The big idea out of good to great was the. You know the, the and the idea. By the way, for those of you that aren't familiar with it, um, cause I think it's I, the some of the principles totally apply today. There's no question about it, and Jim Collins is brilliant. He's a really smart guy, um, but you don't hear as much about him anymore, and when this book came out, it was about taking a good company and making it great. I agree with some of the principles that he teaches, but I disagree with some of his premise. In fact, in the interview this interview that I've listened to over and over again recently, along with several other interviews from other people, and I'll share more about why later.

Speaker 1:

But what you consume affects what you create, right, and so our job is to create models, frameworks, ideas and and so night, not 90, 70% of the stuff that we come up with never gets the light of day. It never gets on a flip chart in front of an executive team, it never gets in a video, it's never published because it doesn't meet the quality that we demand and that our clients demand, and so, but we're ideating, ideating, ideating right, and out of that, 30%, 20% makes its way out into the marketplace and that drives our consulting and training company. So the models that we publish or that we talk about or we do in webinars or at events or whatever else, or with our clients, those are the ones that over and over and over again, have proven to be incredibly effective. So, jim Collins, one of the things that he talks about is he believes that the power of one leader and I'm going to say this wrong, in a way that isn't totally accurate, but, um, he, he in writing good to great. One of the things he said, uh, he said in multiple interviews is he wanted to kind of remove the leader from the equation and make it more about the company. What does the organization do? That moves from good to great, and, and. So he talks over and over again about trying to remove the leader from it, and, and, and he finally came up with this level five leader idea that I haven't heard mentioned anywhere in like decades, or at least a decade, but it's just back of my mind because of um, of, of of setting this stuff recently and um, him, along with 15 other people, okay, and, and so he finally relented with some of the data and said okay, because the team around him, as he explained, said no, no, no, the leader has an impact. And so he threw in, like the fifth principle or the fifth idea in one of his books, good to greater one of the others. He said, okay, here, here's, here's acknowledgement that the leader matters. I totally disagree with that. Totally disagree with that.

Speaker 1:

And uh, I'm a huge believer, based on my experience over and over and over again in organization after organization, agnostic of industry, that actually the leader is the first thing you can take. Take an organization that's amazing. They've gone from good to great. You put a bad executive in charge of it. It derails it. Just, it happens over and over again. And the opposite is true.

Speaker 1:

We take somebody who's highly effective, what we call a third leader. You put the third leader in there, in other words, a highly effective leader, the most effective leader who scales, and it transforms the department. You're like whoa, we had all these engagement issues. We couldn't hang on to talent, we had safety concerns, everything got elevated, whatever it is, and all of a sudden it's fixed overnight, overnight. We see this over and over and over again, and so our effort to learn and improve ourselves is that we can be that kind of leader. You give us the team, you give us the organization, you give us the challenge you put us in that industry. You give us, you know, we try to come up with a service in that area or whatever else. And we can, we, we can, uh, achieve phenomenal results because we're that good of a leader not perfect, work in progress, but we're that kind of leader.

Speaker 1:

So I disagree with Jim Collins on this, but I'm kind of in the weeds on this is the stuff I geek out on just debating this. I I believe that the leading principle, the first idea, is it's the leader, it's the team reflects the leader period. You have a problem with the team. You got a leader that has an issue. The organization reflects the executive team, the culture reflects the leader period. No leader is perfect, but some of them are trying to model the right behavior and they understand the, the this principle of the team reflecting them, and so they pay extra attention to it and they spend time in their meetings and off sites and quarterly whatever working on themselves. Or they've got a coach, or they've got and not and not somebody that's just talking about all these abstract ideas like you got to focus these folks. Anyway, I'm going to. This is going to be lead in four hours if I don't narrow you down. Okay, jim Collins.

Speaker 1:

So that's a little bit about him. Hasn't been on the scene for a long time, but anyway, a brilliant guy that came up with some great ideas a while back, um, or at least some amazing stuff that made a lot of headlines years ago. One of the things that he said in this interview that I found a ton of value in is this rating system that he's developed for every day, and he's very I don't want to say critical, because you're going to interpret the word wrong he critiques, analyzes, assesses himself in a very thorough way, and so you think about this, and many of you track a lot of things right. There are lots of apps. There are apps that track the amount of calories. You're taking in One of our sons, our youngest son right now, like he the other day, he legitimately would not eat the takeout that I brought home because I didn't know the name of the restaurant, was like a work event and then we had some leftover.

Speaker 1:

We had a ton of leftovers. I brought it home and he's like, what restaurant did that come from? Like I don't know, but just it was chinese. I'm like, just enter, like this is Pao chicken, like it's the same at every Chinese restaurant. Or this broccoli beef, it's the same at every restaurant, maybe a little bit different. So just find one and then enter it in. He was like no, I can't track, he ate something different. Like this was great food, but he ate something different because he couldn't track the calories of it. I'm like, are you kidding me? We've, we've, we have derailed, but anyway he's on a big kick with that and I'm I'm proud of him for being disciplined about it. Uh, cause it's an area that he cares about and so that's awesome. Anyway. So we track our calories.

Speaker 1:

Some of you track your steps, you track your workouts, you track your running, you track whatever. Um, you're tracking tasks that you complete all these different things. But how do you gauge, how do you measure? How do you track your productivity? Like, am I focused on the things that matter most, and I said at the beginning of this podcast activity versus result, right Results, right. Said at the beginning of this podcast activity versus result, right of results, right. So less effective, less successful people met. Measure their effectiveness. Did I have a good day at work? Was that was a? Yeah, super busy, I got a lot of the tasks done. I had 19 things on my to-do list. I eliminated 18 and you get this dopamine hit because you're like, yeah, I got a lot done, but did you focus on the right thing?

Speaker 1:

We've got a first principle in our firm that talks about ROI. Did you prioritize? And we use the verb publish, which just means ship, which could mean email, which means print, which means do. Whatever it means. However you interpret it, it's broad. Did you prioritize and publish or ship or do things that have the highest ROI today? That's a really interesting question.

Speaker 1:

So, not volume, but impact, and so many people measure. So think about it like steps. Okay, great, you did a, and I'm going to make up a number. You walked a thousand steps and so you're proud of that, but did you walk the right steps? You tracking with me? You understand what I'm getting at and so no, you don't want to fall into the trap of I checked all those boxes and now I feel really good because I got those 10 things done. That's like the basic level of effectiveness, like that's 22 years old and still figuring it out and not really idea. I mean, I'm still figuring it out and I'm 85 years old, but you know so, you don't know so that. But that's the basic. That's kind of the entry level. Oh, I'm just tracking tasks. Then, as you elevate and you become more effective and more impactful in an organization in your career, you go oh, it's not the volume of things that I got done, it's did I get the right things? The ROI of what I focused on today, and and then you get to the next level.

Speaker 1:

This isn't this episode, but I've been talking about a lot lately in the last few episodes. Did you focus on and get done the right things? And the way to get that done is by reducing the amount of noise, discussion, chatter in the organization, because we have so many meetings. I'm not going to spend too much time on this because I just did two episodes on it, but it's on my mind, as you well know if you've been listening. Um, we. We spend so much time talking about the things we need to get done that we leave very little time on many of our teams and many of our organizations to actually execute. And so we're.

Speaker 1:

We're working on efficiency. Right, that's a popular word right now in society and and it makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but efficiency comes from working on the right things reducing the amount of noise and discussion not to an unhealthy, not to an inappropriate level, cause you got to have alignment, you got to bring people along with you, but you're, you're, you're finding that sweet spot. So I'm reducing the amount of time that I spend in meetings and I'm spending some time there, and then I'm spending time on executing. And then am I executing or doing the things that bring the biggest ROI for who? For the organization I work for, to help us achieve the results that matter most? On my own personal growth, on where I'm taking my career, because I am not my company, I am not my position and man, did I get that wrong for like 15 years, totally defined my individual worth and value in the marketplace, exclusively with the organization or the team that I led and I went and which, which diminished my value and it reduced the size of my world and and and, and and and limited how much impact I could be having, because I you know what I mean. Anyway, I won't go down that rabbit hole, okay.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about Jim Collins and how he evaluates, tracks, rate his day. This is so good. You can come up with something else. Maybe you know something better or different that you use. So here's how he does it. Um, and he he said, uh, in this interview that he was tracking his emotional and intellectual engagement, so in effectiveness, productivity, towards the things that matter most, by a plus two to negative two rating system. Here's how it plays out he rates the day plus two if it was a deeply fulfilling and productive day. So that's emotional and he calls it intellectual engagement. I think that's like a lame term, um, so I would say engagement and productivity, fulfilling and productivity. So in other words, did I really enjoy the day, did it fulfill that? I did it speak to my purpose, did it speak to all of that and did I get crap done? That was important, that had a high ROI on the results that I'm trying to achieve personally, professionally, as a team, as an organization. He rates the day plus two. He rates it as a plus one if it was generally positive, made some progress. So plus two is like man crushed it. Really effective day, not volume of things done, but I worked on the things that are going to have impact. I made progress on them. I'm close to the finish line, by the way.

Speaker 1:

What is that? What is that principle? Gosh, darn it. I can't remember right now it's not in front of me. The principle that talks about we will fill the amount of time given to us. We will take all the time, um, that is available to us to get something done. Oh gosh, I can't think of the principle. It's not. Some of you are thinking about it as I'm talking about it. Yeah, anyway, I believe in that. So if you my point in that is if you give yourself hey, let's take three months to work on that and in reality, we could get it done in two weeks, you're going to, you're going to fill on that and in reality, we could get it done in two weeks. You're going to, you're going to fill three months if you give the team that much time. So my suggestion to you, based on what I've seen work most effectively in my own life and in the careers of others that we coach or consult is give yourself less time than you think. Give the team less time than they, than they want. Otherwise you could say we'll take a year and a half on that Yup and you're going to take every minute of it. You're going to fill it. So give yourself less time.

Speaker 1:

So, plus two deeply fulfilling, highly productive day. Plus one generally positive, made some progress, was fulfilling, was fulfilling. Zero, neutral. I love that. A neutral day Didn't go backwards, didn't go forward, just kind of maintained. A lot of us have neutral days, don't you think zero that's such a powerful score rating for a day Zero.

Speaker 1:

Today was a zero, negative one, a somewhat negative. Didn't wasn't fulfilling, maybe had some, you know, things going on that were a big challenge, affected you emotionally, psychologically, whatever it might be, physically, um, a lot of sickness going around at the time. I'm recording this right, it's that time of year. So negative one is a somewhat negative or unproductive day. Didn't really make a ton of progress, made very little on the results that matter most. Negative two a bad day no progress, really Wasn't fulfilling and didn't make any progress. Roi on today very low.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to use this so I'll report back in a little while and maybe there's another system, maybe I'll tweak it away for me. That works better for me, but I love the suggestion of rating tracking your um. I would call it fulfillment and productivity. Am I, am I? Am I working on things that speak to my purpose? Am I, which for me is creating, having impact, um, helping facilitate movement with the organizations and the teams and the leaders that we work with, or making a difference? That's fulfilling? And then, are we moving the needle? Am I moving the needle on? The results that we've identified are most important, what we call TKRs right Team key results. So plus two man today crushed it. Like right now I'm recording this podcast after 5 pm, so the day is almost done. And so how would I rate today? I'd put it and you don't have any context for this I'd actually put today as I need more than one and two, because today isn't a two, it's totally not a two.

Speaker 1:

I did not move the needle enough. I got some things, but I could have gotten a lot more done. I I wasn't efficient, I wasn't productive enough. There's no question about it. I could have moved the needle more. I had some work that was creative, that I needed to spend some time on, and so that slowed me down a little bit and I got that done and then had to do version two and I got it done faster than anyone that I know, which is I'm not trying to be egotistical, it's just a strength of mine. I got this piece of creativity production done and I think it looked good. It was a solid B plus a minus, which is what we needed, um. But I could have made even more progress in this evening.

Speaker 1:

After, uh, after dinner with the family and whatever else, because I love what I do Doesn't feel like work, it's engaging. I'll probably spend another hour or two. That's generally what I do anyway, um, in the evening or whatever else, if it, you know, if it, if it fits in well, um, so I've still got a chance to move the needle, but I guess I'd put today as a plus one. It wasn't neutral, I definitely made progress, but I want like a, uh, like a 0.5. That's kind of more what I feel like. So maybe I'll make this a, a one to five scale and a one, but that's too many options. Yeah, it's too many, I don't know. Anyway, you get the point, my, my, what I wanted to share with you is this rating fulfillment, rating, productivity as it pertains to results and ROI.

Speaker 1:

I think tracking that, measuring it some way and you don't have to do it every day I mean some of you will be into that. I know I won't. I won't do it, there's no way, I'll be accountable to that, but I can do it generally and it might just be thinking about it. It might be writing it in a notes app or whatever else. That would be interesting. I don't really. It might be writing it in a notes app or whatever else. That would be interesting.

Speaker 1:

I don't really that's how I journal. I don't write sit down and every day, but rating it, I think is super valuable. So something to think about. You're tracking steps, you're tracking calories, you're tracking all these different things, tasks and everything else, but are you tracking fulfillment and productivity, r-o-i and everything else? But are you tracking fulfillment and productivity R? O? I think of the impact on an organization, on your career, on the results that matter so much. If you and others around you were tracking that fulfillment and productivity and then the ROI and then making adjustments, that would be huge. All right, that's what's on my mind in this episode of the Lead in 30 podcast.

Speaker 2:

Share this episode with a colleague, your team or a friend. Tap on the share button and text the link. Thanks for listening to the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill.