Executive Podcast #273: New Years Decisions

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holly, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining as we kick off this new year.

Perry Holley:
We’re super excited.

Chris Goede:
Happy New Year to you, man. We’ve been doing this for several years now, and it’s just such a joy to get in the studio and talk leadership about you.

Perry Holley:
We were just being chastised by the help here, telling us to quit the chitty chat.

Chris Goede:
Jake, our producer, is like, hey, guys. And we’re like, what do you mean? What do you. Yeah, yeah. But we’re going to talk about, know, normally as people start the new year, they have all these New Year’s resolutions and they have looked back at the year and they thought about, okay, what are the things that I want to keep doing and what did I learn? And we’re going to talk about decisions today. We’re going to talk about New Year’s decisions that you can think about, that you can make that will help you this year. So before we get started, I’d love for you to go to maxwellleadership.com/Podcast. And as you think about the year 24 and as we move forward, if there’s a way that we can help you in executive coaching or facilitation around content, we would love to do that. Well, as we reflect on the year past, we all go through this.

Chris Goede:
We all do it. It’s a great exercise to do. We think about what went well, what could we have done better? What did we learn? So all of these lead to then decisions that you have to make. And you’re the master behind all this content that we create here. So obviously, you’ve been thinking about some decisions that are on your heart that you wanted to kind of bring a lesson that maybe you’ve gone through recently over the last couple of weeks as you prepare for 2024, talk to us a little bit about that.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, this one’s personal. A bit. Is that thinking about are you going to make New Year’s resolutions? Are you going to make certain goals? I’m a big fan of goals and that sort of thing. But over the last couple of months, I’ve started recognizing in me that I think I have the best intentions about what I’m going to do and my goal and what I’m trying to accomplish. But I realized that I’ll give you an example saying, are you going to work out today? And I’m thinking if I wait until today to make that decision and I wake up, I get up early and it’s cold and it’s dark and it’s a chance of rain, I tend to make a decision in the moment based on all the circumstances. And then this was just about six weeks ago. I remember this teaching from John. It’s quite a bit in the past, but it really resonated with me then.

Perry Holley:
But I completely pushed it out of my mind. And the teaching was decide once, manage daily, decide the big things that you’re going to do and then manage it. You can’t make the decision in the day, in the moment. I can’t make the decision to work out at 05:00 a.m. When it’s dark and cold and rainy. I need to have made that decision in advance and then manage it today when it’s dark and cold and rainy. Same thing I sharing with you. We travel and I’m thinking I’m going to eat only salads with Caesar, salad with chicken.

Perry Holley:
And then I’ve had a tough day. It’s been a hard week. I’m on the road and I get into the restaurant and now I’m choosing poor choices.

Chris Goede:
You’re looking at the dessert menu.

Perry Holley:
Bring me the apple pie. Then I’ll make a decision on the rest of the menu. Because what am I comforting myself? Whatever. Decide once. If I have decided once I’m going to eat a certain kind of diet, then I can manage it daily. And so no matter how I feel, I’ve already made the decision. I just need to figure out how I’m going to manage it today. Based on everything that’s going on, all the circumstances, the ups, the downs, the sideways, I just need to manage it.

Perry Holley:
I’m going to manage these decisions I need to make. So I thought, first of all, I’ll get your thought on that because I know you’ve been around John a lot and know this teaching, but also maybe we could look at in the new year, what are some decisions leaders need to be thinking about that we can make once and then manage them daily.

Chris Goede:
About the I love that you mentioned about just being on the road and traveling. Right. What I’ve noticed is that if I don’t do this, if I don’t make that decision and then have a plan to manage it, man, when we get tired in everything in life, that’s when the guard goes down and you’re just like, yeah, you know what? I told myself I wasn’t going to open the menu, but now we’re going to see what do they have? And so I love that. Right? Because I think not only when you got the energy in your a game, you’re like, good, I got this. I made this decision. But when you get tired, you got to have something in place that you can manage that.

Perry Holley:
I’m laughing because you and I were traveling together about four or five weeks ago and you had made a decision that you were going to fast. Yeah, but we were with a client and they were getting all this stuff ready, had all these snacks. They even put you in an office with mounds and mounds of snacks.

Chris Goede:
Snacks.

Perry Holley:
And they brought in these custom handmade donuts and everything within your face. And I was so proud of you because you’d made a decision.

Chris Goede:
I did.

Perry Holley:
And then you managed it through the day. Unless there’s something I didn’t see. No, you managed it through that day to honor the decision you’d already made. Podcast over.

Chris Goede:
There you go. That’s it. Drop the mic. We’re out. Have a good year. No, I’m just kidding. Well, yeah, let me come back to what you said about John, because John is big about this. John is a man.

Chris Goede:
He calls himself a boring, like, no, no, I know what I’m going to be doing, right. And I do it every day. And that’s what he says. The secret to your success is determined by your daily agenda. I’ll never forget, I’ve heard him say, if I’ve heard him say it once, I’ve heard it and say it thousands of times. If I could just spend one day with you, I could tell right away whether or not you’d be a successful person. And what does that daily agenda look like? Because how are you managing your time? How are you managing your choices? And so you got to do it on a daily basis. The other thing I love about what he says is he says that successful people make the right decisions early.

Chris Goede:
They make them early, they make them quick, and then they manage them. So he has this thing called the Daily Dozen. If you’re a Maxwellian, as we call you, and you’re familiar with John’s content, the daily Dozen is twelve areas that really focus on one’s daily routine. Some of them are around attitudes and attitude, priorities, health, family, finances, faith. But we’re going to talk a little bit about that and the decisions you make as we go forward.

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Perry Holley:
He really talked about this, making the decision once. I thought, could we look at some areas that might increase our effectiveness as leaders and learn to decide once what it is we want to do in those areas and then manage daily the three areas I just picked out, I’m kind of being, again, a little selfish. This is things I’m looking at me going forward, but I think it applies to all of us, is areas for consideration about you personally. So decisions you need to make, about you, about your team, areas that you need to make, decisions you need to make, and maybe about your business. So I’ll throw them out and maybe get your feedback on them. But one of the decisions I made under thinking about me was about, what do I need to decide about my personal growth in the new year? I can’t decide when I get up in the morning, am I going to spend a few minutes? I need to decide once and then manage it daily. But what is your thought on deciding once about personal growth?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, I think what I love about this is, and I would love for you to talk a little bit about this, because I learned this from you in the irreducible minimums. And I know that even an example with your son or someone that is not necessarily motivated every day by personal growth, but know that we want to grow. So let’s manage that decision. Talk just quickly for those that haven’t listened to us, we’ve done an episode on this in the past. Just talk about irreducible minimum and what that means.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, the learning was, and I got this for myself first, but then talking, trying to encourage my son on some growth that he was doing that he needed to do. I said, what are you reading? I don’t have time to read. And I thought that sounded like me. So the irreducible minimum idea is, what’s the minimum you could do in an area that you want to grow in that cannot be reduced, the minimum that cannot be reduced, irreducible, minimum. And the idea is that I found for myself, I love to set big goals. Tell you what, I’m going to read twelve books in 2024. Well, that’s a big leap if you’re reading zero to get to twelve. So instead of making a goal that’s so large you probably won’t do it.

Perry Holley:
Set a goal that’s so small you’d be embarrassed not to do it. And so instead of having twelve books, I’m going to say, could I read two pages a day, every day? And the magic of this is the everyday. And as John would teach, that it’s consistency that compounds over time. My life motto became small things done daily, consistently, over time, remarkable results. Small things, done daily, consistently over time, remarkable results. So if you can figure out what the small things you could do, just decide, I’m going to do 15 minutes, I’m going to manage it tomorrow, 15 minutes. I’m going to read something personally, I’m going to read something for business and I’m going to write something for me that was kind of mine.

Chris Goede:
I love that. No, and do it in a way, by the way, that fits your wiring. Let me say this right. Some people are like, you know what? I’m going to get up at five every morning, I’m going to work out or I’m going to do my 15 minutes. You might not do that if you’re a night person versus a morning person, right? And my wife and I have this conversation, I’m a morning person, but I’m worthless after 10:00 right? She is a night person, gets a lot of stuff done, but doesn’t do well in the mornings. And so we talk about this as your personal growth. Like when do you schedule it in the day? You schedule in the day that it fits your wiring in order to continue to have success.

Perry Holley:
Another decision, I think, for you on the topic of you, you need to make once and manage daily is this idea about your physical fitness, your health. I know you’ve made some commitments on that and you’re following that as a regimen. This is one of the comfort areas. I had a knee surgery this year and it’s kind of set me back and I’ve let that be a circumstance that I could still. Now I’m making it every day when I get up. My knee hurt today. No, I need to made it once just to manage it. Manage it within the fact that my knee is hurt.

Perry Holley:
It’s cold, dark and rainy, how am I going to handle today’s physical fitness? But your thoughts?

Chris Goede:
I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago with an executive, and we were talking about this. I saw his personal board as I went into it was awesome. Right in his office, he’s like, here’s my family and my family and personal goals for this year, which was last year, and one of them was weight loss. And he was tracking it, and he just has it out there for everybody. I was like, oh, tell me about that. So we started talking, and he’s like, he said, I decided that I wanted to make a decision, and then I needed to walk every single day. And I know you big tracking your steps and all this kind of stuff. And he said, man, what I found was the commitment that I made to this, and I had more energy.

Chris Goede:
It reduced my stress, right. But I had to have it scripted, and I had to have a plan so I could manage when I was tired. And the plan was this. In the world of all of these Zoom meetings, he tried to get out as many Zoom meetings as he possibly could and went back to the good old fashioned phone, and he would put his headphones on and he would walk. In all of his meetings the day that his greatest steps he had was 52,450 steps. And I was like, say that number again. I think the most I’ve ever had is in the. That’s probably when I was on vacation, right? Doing a tour.

Chris Goede:
And so he’s like, yeah, no, I made a decision that any meetings that I can move, and when I have those meetings, that’s my trigger. That’s how I manage. I get up and I go walk. And he said, if the weather is bad outside, I get on my treadmill and I walk. And so he’s like, I don’t feel like it every day. Which leads me to this phrase that I’ve used and have lived by for a while with my kids, even with me, it’s like, hey, you can’t feel your way into acting. So back to this example. I can’t feel my way into going, okay, I have a meeting where I am on the phone.

Chris Goede:
I’m going to go walk. No, he’d already made that decision. And so what you got to do is make sure you act on how you manage that. And then, oh, by the way, once you get started and you know this, once you get started walking away, man, I feel like, this is great. I want to keep doing that. So, anyways, absolutely need to figure out how to do that.

Perry Holley:
Let’s move the topic to things about leading your team and are the decisions you need to make once and manage daily. The first one I would throw out would be determining proper priorities for the team and for yourself. But if you’re not clear on what the priority side wants, what the priorities are, and then manage daily how to execute those priorities. I get in trouble when I wake up and start to think, well, what’s important today? I need to already know what’s important today and then manage it today.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. When it comes to this, I will sometimes use percentages of time, sometimes I’ll use lists. But none of this happens. Let me back up just a minute. None of this happens unless you’re being very intentional about meeting and connecting and communicating with your team. And so what I want to encourage everybody is, as you look through this, is to make sure that you guys have proper alignment in your priorities, is to communicate them back and forth periodically. Hey, what do you think your top three priorities are? Hey, what percentage of time are you spending on this? We have an initiative right now, Maxwell leadership, where one of the things, it’s a big priority for us. And so my mantra is 70% of your time should be thinking about implementing or whatever around this idea.

Chris Goede:
If it’s not, let’s have a conversation about, let’s talk about it because I want to make sure that we’re managing your time and 70% of it is focused on this. And that’s kind of the mantra that we’re using. And so, absolutely, I think it’s important.

Perry Holley:
When it comes to that decision four, which will be the second one under managing the team, I think that you should decide once and manage daily how you are going to build relationships and connect with people on your team. I guarantee you when you wake up in the morning and get to work, you are going to be highly distracted, highly pushed. There’s going to be lots of things coming at you. If you haven’t decided that connecting and relationships are important and manage it throughout the calendar of the day and the week, it’s not going to get done and you’re going to end up at the end of a period, a month, a quarter, the year, and figure out why my team is so distant, why I’m not connected. So I need to figure out how I’m going to manage that daily.

Chris Goede:
One of my things I love to do is talk about college football. And I have a guy on my team who, man, it’s just been something that we’ve done for a long time. We get together and just catch up in college football and whatnot. And because my schedule has kind of gotten a little crazy, we haven’t done it. And so I literally looked at my calendar, and I was like, okay, that’s it. And so I was very intentional about, how do I manage this? Right? How I manage it, to your point, I’m just going to put it on the calendar. So I found the first available day, put it on the calendar, and I made the decision I needed to reengage. I needed to reengage around that.

Chris Goede:
We have a lot of fun doing it. And so in order to help me manage that, one of the systems that I put in place is to just go ahead and put it on the calendar and block it out and protect it. So there are little things like that that I think you can do, but it’s so important to make sure that you’re doing that even with your people things, right. Even with that connecting, just go ahead and schedule it on your calendar. Even if it’s just the management, by walking around. Right. I know we’ve shared some leaders that they just don’t do well with that. So they put it on their calendar at the certain time, get up for 15 minutes, go walk around, see what’s going on.

Chris Goede:
It may be painful for them, but they manage it, and that’s how they work through it.

Perry Holley:
But what’s cool is that by you putting it on the calendar, you’ve already made the decision. This is important now. Could something happen on the day with that? Yes. But you won’t cancel. You’ll reschedule, because now you’re managing it in the day, not trying to decide how am I going to get it into my day. I’m going to manage it in my day because I’ve already decided it’s important. Let’s transition to the final one about leading your business. Are there some decisions you could make once managed daily? One of them I suggested was modeling, how am I going to model the core values of my organization daily? I think this is another one that I get into the rush and hustle of the day, and then I may just run right through some stop signs that my core values would say we shouldn’t do.

Perry Holley:
But if I’m clear, I’m committed to, I’m making a decision on the core values. How am I going to manage those in the rush and hustle of my day?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. Remember, what you do speaks so loudly that your team can’t even hear what you’re saying. And so you need to make sure that you are living those out on a daily basis. One of the things that I try to do is I try to use it in my language, right. Like, one of our values is exceeding expectations. And if I see something either a team member has done peer to peer, maybe team has done for the client or whatever, I will say, hey, man, I loved when you exceeded expectations right here, or growth is one of ours. Hey, man, I see so much growth in you. So for me, the way that I go about it daily is try to use our core values in my common language that I use throughout the day.

Chris Goede:
I’ll do it presentations, and I just try to kind of put it in there. I don’t always remember what our core values are right off the top of my head. So what do I do to help me with that? I made the decision I want to do this. So I actually have a little card that sits right next to my computer screen that I can see it that then goes, oh, yeah. I said I wanted to do this, and I’m going to use this in my language. And so let me use this when I communicate to x, y, and z, as long as it’s authentically tied into something that’s happening. But I try to use that in my common language.

Perry Holley:
Finally, the second one under leading the business, I said that leaders must make a decision to communicate the vision daily or on a regular basis. I think if I try to get into the day and I haven’t decided what is the vision, how am I going to communicate that? It kind of comes haphazard. I’m not clear. And so I think I’m going to decide once I’m going to really figure out how to communicate the vision and then manage it daily through the rush of business to get that vision in front of people’s eyes and ears.

Chris Goede:
And let me just add to that, because I think you said it extremely well. Make sure that as you do that, you connect what they’re doing to the bigger vision that you’re communicating. You’re communicating the vision of that team while you’re also communicating the vision of the organization, which they should be in alignment. Help them connect those dots. That’s the key to that, is making sure that you’re thinking about, hey, how does what Jake does right here on our podcast align with the fact that we want to make sure that everyone deserves to be led? Well, what does that mean? Right. It’s because we’re going out to millions of people because of what they’re doing. And so how do you communicate that and then make sure that you tie that together. Well, as we wrap up today, man, on these decisions, we all have decisions we have to make.

Chris Goede:
And maybe you’re listening to this, you’ve already made some New Year’s resolutions, as they call them here. And so you made that decision. You made that choice. Now, how are you going to manage that on a daily basis? Because that’s how they end up failing. That’s how they end up slipping away. That’s how they get to a point to where you and I are on the road and retired. And you know what I’m like. I’m not having a chicken salad right now.

Chris Goede:
I’m going to have the biggest burger and fries and milkshake that you could possibly have. Little things that we do lead to big things. And as Perry mentioned in just a little while ago, he said, from John Maxwell, consistency compounds. And so, man, we just got to do the little things on a daily basis extremely well.

Perry Holley:
I have the best of intentions, but when I get into the rush of the moment, the hurry of the day, the need for comfort, whatever it is, my excuse may be, I’m making decisions on the fly. It’s not good. Well, thank you, Chris, for the insights. And thank you all for joining. If you want to learn more about our offerings, about the family of podcasts that we offer, if you’d like to leave a comment or a question, you can do all that at maxwellleadership.com/podcast we always enjoy hearing from you. Very grateful that you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.