Hey everybody, welcome to the level of leader podcast. My name is Michael King. I’m an executive coach that works with sea level leaders to help them perform and get the results like they’ve never have before to be able to get the clarity for their vision, make sure all their systems and structures and strategies are in place for the so they can knock it out of the park, but also to make sure that they create the best team possible. So today, we’re hopping into a lessons episode here for the level of leader podcast entitled, killing your GOOD systems to find great ones. All right, so killing your GOOD systems, so you can find great ones. First and foremost, I want to give a huge shout out to Billy Joel for blessing us with the amazing catching two from 1977, titled only the good die young now at the time when the song was written, it was it was controversial, but still at the core of the song, and it was about going after the things that you truly, really want. And sometimes you just have to swing for the fences, recognizing that there is a pathway from good to great. I remember when I first got exposed to some leadership ideas, and started falling in love with with leadership stuff. So Jim Collins came up with his book called Good to Great One of my friends that I was on staff with me when he handed me this book, he said, You have to read this book. And so I started to read it, I immediately got pulled into this, this book, and it’s such a fantastic read.
So if you have not read it, this is actually part of my, you know, my foundational library of investment when it comes to the things that I personally I ascribe to. But I remember sitting here reading this book, and it started, it really broke things down, like you know, evaluating your systems and your structures and, and diving into finding out what your problems were making sure that you had the right people on the bus and all these things. And these concepts just came to life. Because the way the book is written it was I was able to be able to see a bigger picture and immediately reverse engineer it down to smaller things that you need to be able to put into play in order for you to accomplish the big things that you were created for. So So here in the middle of all of this, I’m recognizing I’m created for greatness, I know that I can do something better. And everything just kept on developing kept on piling on on top of each other. Now, so going from good to great or even talking about Billy Joel writing, only the good die young. Here’s the thing is that these concepts don’t just work in like the songwriting world or in conceptual world, these songs in the concepts actually do apply to your business. More often than not, I’m actually reminded that organizations like to push things to just acceptable or to good levels of performance. Now, this specifically applies to our systems, and our strategies and our structures. Now, but let us be reminded that in order for us to be able to survive the best way we possibly can, and 2023, we need to embrace the fact that we need to regularly evaluate our systems, so that they aren’t just giving us the good results. But they’re giving us great ones.
So killing good systems to find the great ones. Now, we came up with a resource here at teams that coach so you can download this off of our website, you can reach out to me directly, but called The Ultimate year strategic planner. The reason why we came up with this was just because of a basic practice that we have in place for all of our senior level leaders is getting into this regular rhythm in this cadence of evaluation for themselves and also Selphie about evaluation for their organizations, it’s important that you have a system in place that allows you to regularly look at what you’re doing, because you don’t have the lag time to find out 90 days, 120 days or even even a year from now that you’ve just spent all this time working on things that aren’t giving you the return that you want. So if you’d like to have that free resource, feel free to reach out to me, and I will get that over to you as well. So the first thing I want to talk to you about with killing your GOOD systems and finding great ones is is why leaders should consistently evaluate test and change systems. So I’m gonna give you three big ideas on this. I’m not gonna go into into an incredible length on this, but we will have some more resources on our resource page. But leaders need to consistently evaluate and test and change their systems because they want to ensure that they are actually aligning with their goals, to achieve the specific outcomes that they want to implement and support these goals that they’re developing. So, over time, though, the goals of an organization have a tendency to change, which is one of the big reasons why you need to consistently making sure that you’re keeping up with a certain level of relevancy when it comes to the systems and structures and strategies that you have in place. These things have to be adaptable. to match up with your goals, but you also want to put these things in place to identify inefficiencies, why are you putting so much time into things that aren’t giving you the results that you want in the first place?
So I tell our leaders this all the time, but a really quick thing, just to kind of put into your daily routine is asking yourself these questions, what’s working, what’s not working, what’s fixable, and what’s not fixable, and why, if you can consistently answer those things every single day and get your team to be participating in those conversations, you’re going to find that you’re going to unlock a certain level of performance efficiency that will blow your mind. But invite people into those conversations, and see how you can go with that. Now, another reason is you want to to enhance your adaptability purposes. Now, the world is consistently changing, organizations must be able to adapt to these changes to remain competitive, what we find is that leaders who regularly evaluate and test their says systems can identify areas for modification, and make them more adaptable to changing circumstances. So the other one is this is to enhance innovation, to go through these four things. So to ensure alignment with your goals, to identify inefficiencies, to enhance adaptability, and then also to enhance innovation, I can’t tell you enough how sometimes we we put innovation aside, because we’re just caught up in the idea of ingenuity of working on the things that we’re already doing, and just making them better. But the world has changed, the game has changed completely. So there will be some new things that you need to bring to the table. And so learning how to flex that muscle internally. One of the biggest barriers to putting this type of thing in the places is that is that we’re afraid to evaluate test and change systems. And I think that we need to be okay with addressing that.
The reason why is that most time it’s where fear fear of changes I wrote this down is that one of the biggest reasons leaders, sometimes fear evaluating, testing and changing their systems is the fear of change. Change can be disruptive, it can create uncertainty within an organization. And leaders might be actually hesitant to change their system if they believe it will cause disruptions to the organization’s operations, or if they believe their employee will resist the changes. The second one is fear of failure, that’s just a massive thing to be able to overcome is that if you are a leader, and you have been caught up in the idea that you have to be perfect, you have to get it right every single time. That failure is actually a necessary growth mechanisms for you to get to success. And so you need to remind yourself that only one out of every 36 ideas actually ever gets off the ground. So keep swinging, go for it and the lack of resources. And, you know, every evaluating and testing systems can be time consuming, and require resources, leaders already stretched, then may hesitate to devote their time the resources necessary to evaluate their systems. And I get that this can result in missed opportunities for improvement, increased inefficiencies and decreased adaptability. Now, when it comes to lack of resources, here’s the thing is that if you know by putting something into place, like what we have with our ultimate, ultimate year strategic planner, is that you want to be able to try to look at the resources that you have in place and consistently evaluate what types of things that you’re getting a return on, I would highly encourage you to be able to recognize that everything that you’re actually putting your investment in these days when it comes to your business.
And when it comes to leading life. In general, if you’re putting financial resources towards something, you need to expect some sort of level of return. So keeping that type of thing at play to where you’re strategically using resources wise, so you can open up some bandwidth for you to be able to try some things. So please reach out to us if you have any questions, if you have some ideas of some things that you can even bring to the table. Maybe we can share those with our network here as well. And so make sure to check that out. Now, if you liked the content we’re providing at the level of leader podcast, please take some time to like and subscribe or content anywhere that you currently get your podcasts. We’re currently at about 1100 subscribers on our YouTube channel. So thank you for everybody who has done that. We love creating great content that helps leaders become the best version of who they can be. So thank you so much. Also a huge shout out to our friends with names without numbers. It’s been awesome to be able to help produce some of your music and we’re glad to be able to feature you here right on the level of leader podcast. So until next time, be safe, be blessed. Have a great day.
