Executive Podcast #298: Is Complacency Killing Your Performance?

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 Holley, 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 get started, if you want to download the learner guide to today’s lesson, to be able to kind of follow along, take notes, maybe share it with your team in your next meeting, I’d encourage you to go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast. You can click on our podcast, this one particularly, and you can fill out the form and be able to download the learner guide right there. Today we’re going to talk about, is complacency killing your performance? Is complacency killing your performance? Many of the organizations we work with, and many that you probably can think of, and maybe even yours, had incredible success from 2020 to 21 to 22. Then last year in 23, it was kind of a, hey, let’s get back to normal business operations, and you begin to see things kind of level out. And now 2024 is providing some challenges. We know on some of the organizations that we worked with that they haven’t seen in several years.

Chris Goede:
Matter of fact, some of the people that are currently on their team have not seen what they’re going through or are going to go through in 24 and 25. And so this is coming right out of some work that Perry’s doing in organizations, and we want to talk about it on the podcast and share it with you.

Perry Holley:
We’re doing a lot on culture, helping a number of organizations on culture development. And we teach from a, some product content from a good friend of ours, Greg Cagle, on the four dimensions of culture. And he talks about three of those are positive, but one of those dimensions can be negative, and that is the complacency dimension. Complacency is almost always on the backside of great success. And so that’s why I said, as you were saying there, these organizations we’re working with have had great success in 20, 2021, 22, started the turn in 23, 24. We’re early, but it’s got some challenges. And they’re starting to ask on this coaching work we were doing, I said, well, what are the signs of complacency? And I got crickets. And I said, well, how do we address complacency? And we got crickets.

Perry Holley:
And I thought, I got a podcast here.

Chris Goede:
You got some work to do.

Perry Holley:
To do that. So, yeah, complacency is a challenge, and it can kill you. So we don’t want that to happen to you.

Chris Goede:
I often think about complacency as just really getting comfortable, uh, in the status quo. Um, you and I have talked about this, uh, in the past about sales teams, and this is a great example just to kind of talk about this, and I see this in some of the things that, that I have the privilege of being a part of, is that man, after you kill it, kind of one month, and you pushed really, really hard to the end of the month, that first week of the month, everybody’s just kind of, like, taking a deep breath and, uh, maybe becoming a little bit complacent. We got this. It’ll probably show up again at the end of the month, and you get in this, this mode of complacency. And so when that happens, you’re going to see from your team, you’re going to see a drop in quality of work. Maybe that might be some people, maybe not doing a great job with, with customer service, maybe around some of the customer policies you put in place, the company policies you put in place, making mistakes, maybe reduced productivity. All those things you’re going to start seeing as indicators of there’s complacency inside the team.

Perry Holley:
This particular client saw a lack of initiative. People having new ideas or initiating anything. They were kind of waiting on things to come to them, lack of engagement, kind of pulling back, just letting things happen. Energy or enthusiasm, kind of backing off. I think what you said earlier is exactly what happens is we had a strong month or a strong quarter. Well, let’s just rest on that and let’s catch our breath. No, now we’re behind on the next quarter of the next month to happen. That complacent attitude, I don’t know if you see that sometimes, but kind of, I heard it phrased an unsinkable mentality is that we’ve become overly confident on our ability to produce.

Perry Holley:
I think we’ve shown it last month. Just get out of our way. We’ll.

Chris Goede:
It’ll happen again. It’ll happen again. Yeah.

Perry Holley:
You probably heard that from sales leader yourself to say, yeah, don’t worry, boss.

Chris Goede:
Work in the plan.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, work in the plan. You got to give it time to seed itself. Yeah. So let’s shift gears in the remainder of our time. So what can a leader do to avoid this nasty thing called complacency?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, I think one of the things we want to talk about early is to really lead by example, as a leader inside the organization, promoting and talking about self awareness. And the reason I say lead by example is I think as leaders, if you can get to that place where you are taking the high road and you’re talking about, hey, these are some things that I realized during some of my studies of my own, how I’m leading, how I’m connecting with people and the self awareness. And I think if you share that, I would also then encourage you to promote that, you know, with them, I think also is to help them in a, in a right way. A gentle might not be the right word, but in a leadership way. Understand maybe some of their own behaviors, maybe some of their reactions. Remember, a lot of these things that happen are a blind spot to the individual. They don’t necessarily see it. And so there’s a right way to go about doing that.

Chris Goede:
And when you do that, you know, they’re going to maybe go, hmm, yeah, you’re right. I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe I am not making as many calls, hey, maybe I am not pushing the manufacturer line like I need to, whatever that might be, and they can kind of recognize. Maybe I am being complacent.

Perry Holley:
Just occurred to me and shouldn’t have been. It should have occurred earlier since I write the content. But a few weeks ago, we were talking about a simple system for success, and I’m just, you know, about coach wooden and I thought there’s really three things in there that, that if you, if your team is enamored with status quo, status quo, the way things are, is good enough, is that they’re not thinking about, like you said, they’re not even not aware, the self awareness there. But you can help them with that feedback, coaching, those sort of things. But if you really focus on the simple system, it doesn’t matter what day of the month it is. You’re still getting in shape, you’re still getting conditioned, you still are doing the fundamentals, you still are outkin as a team. It doesn’t matter if the first day of the month, last day of the month, or the middle day of the month. We don’t back off on the fundamentals.

Perry Holley:
We do the things we need to do. So I think if they have your, if you’ve set clear goals and expectations, they’ve got measurable objectives. But I also go back to what we talked about, lagging indicators. What do we need to be at the end of the month? But what are the leading indicators? How many calls did you make? How many customers did you touch? How many teammates did you work with what are the leading indicators of success? And then it prevents them from falling into this routine of not doing the things they need to do. So, as I said back then, it’s easy. These things are easy to do. They’re just easy not to do. So helping remind people we got to keep doing the daily basics and continue our march toward the goal.

Chris Goede:
And I think as leaders, one of the great ways to do that is figure out what are the metrics tied to every single role on the team, whether it is customer service, uh, whether it is, again, sales, whether it’s operations, whatever it is. There are KPI’s that are tied to that role, and you need to measure them. And here’s the key that I want to share with you is, is we can celebrate what we did.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
We had a great, great month, a great first quarter already. But, man, now it’s like, where are we? Like right now where we are. And I used to, as a team, and you’ve mentioned this on here a couple of times, as a team, we share that around the table every week. Where are we at? What are our numbers? I used to do that on a monthly basis. Before that, we used to just kind of look at it quarterly. And one of the things I found was that we were losing sight because we weren’t looking at them every day of us becoming complacent. And so now it’s like, okay, great. So in order to get to that number with the start, with the end in mind, I know that this has got to be the monthly number.

Chris Goede:
I know it’s got to be the weekly number. And we’re going to look at, hey, I don’t care if you had a great. Last month, we just missed this week’s number.

Perry Holley:
So interesting you say that, right? Being in those meetings with you, as you put those up, I see people kind of straighten up. Go, wait, wait a minute. What? We’re behind. We’re where I’m. And then you put names and people say, where are you? And I thought, all of a sudden you got, you’re raising awareness of. And you, you’re really good about. No, don’t panic. I see here and some other things, but this is, we got to pay attention.

Chris Goede:
Got to pay attention to it. Every little thing you got to pay attention to. And what I love about that, too, is that if you can get in the mode of that with a team and as a group, you’re, you’re going to have peer to peer accountability around the table. Like, come on. Like, they got a mantra. Like, we, we missed it last, last week. We got, we got to go after it now. Some of you are like, well, our cycles are a little bit different when it comes to revenue and, and different costs.

Chris Goede:
All that’s good, but figure out what works for your business and try to keep everybody in the present of what’s going on. Maybe it’s as simple as, hey, we’re going to make sure that we, you know, from a customer service, we answered 27 calls yesterday. Well, we’re going to answer 28 today. Like, what’s that plus one? Like, try to keep them dialed into that. And then the other thing I would say is that when you’re doing that, don’t miss the opportunities during that time to make sure that you do reward what you see. Be specific about it. Hey, I saw Perry go and do this the other day on top of, or, I saw him have a goal and exceeded it last week in the present, whatever that is, because when you do that and you are rewarding that, it’s going to encourage more of that. Do it with the right motive.

Chris Goede:
But that’s going to be one way to keep complacency out of that leader, that individual, or that team.

Perry Holley:
I love that. And then for me, I thought about encourage professional development. And so we’re big on everybody having a development plan. But I think, you know, you mentioned a few weeks ago about those unseen hours. What are you, what are you doing to prepare and to get better? And are you preparing for today or repairing what you didn’t do yesterday? And so what is your daily agenda? And I thought, if you do not have a daily commitment, even just a few minutes to do something small every day to grow yourself, it’s easy to kind of fall back and say, well, I kind of got this and I’m good enough, or I’m okay. And I heard a speaker once say that people on his team thought that they were doing the best they could do, and then he changed the question to, but are you doing the best that can be done? And I thought, hmm, I really like that. To say, yeah, we are. I’m doing the best I can do, but are you doing the best that can be done?

Chris Goede:
That’s a statement right there.

Perry Holley:
The answer is always no. The answer is always, I can do, like you said, 1%, one more. Can I do that and take it to the next level? And that will keep, if I’m doing this professional development and challenging myself, it will, I’m guessing it will keep me. It helps me, I know, to stay out of the complacent mindset that I’m pretty good at this. I really don’t need to. You know, I spent an hour this morning reading on some things that I hope I get a chance to share with someone. I don’t know, but I know that if I pour it into me, I’ll be able to pour it into you, and I’d be able to come on this podcast and pour it into our listeners. So if you’re not pouring into you, you can’t get what you don’t have.

Perry Holley:
So keep challenging yourself.

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Chris Goede:
Another principle we want to bring to you is promoting work life balance.

Perry Holley:
What?

Chris Goede:
And I think Perry personally wanted me to talk about this because this is not one of my strengths, but when you think about it, your people are going to experience burnout if you don’t figure out what this looks like for them. Now, I said that very strategically because I said, what does it look like for them? Because everybody, it looks a little bit different. And if you don’t figure that out, you’re going to get into a point to where they’re going to burn out and they’re going to be complacent. And that’s the point behind this. And so you need to have a little bit of creativity, a little bit of flexibility to be able to help them figure out what that looks like for them and for their responsibilities so that they can manage stress better. Avoid burnout also. Now, let me. I’m going to share two examples around this with you guys, just to kind of give you a little bit of look behind the curtain for Maxwell leadership, but then also something that I’ve done just recently to help in regards to one of my team members.

Chris Goede:
So I’m hesitant to share this because Barry’s gonna be like, don’t ever send me an email during this time, then obviously, you know, here at Maxwell leadership, we’re a faith based organization. And one of the things that our leaders decided to do, because, by the way, leaders, if you say, hey, no, don’t work on the weekends, don’t work past 05:00 but you’re sending emails and you’re communicating, which maybe that’s the only time you can. By the way, sometimes my days, I literally am back to back in meetings all day long. I don’t even see my emails until I get home. And I know that I gotta look at, so I gotta do something. And so I just am doing it to, to survive. And you may be saying, well, I do the same thing. And so we decided that because our people feel like, well, because we send emails on weekends, they should be sending emails.

Chris Goede:
And so Mark Cole, our CEO, I said, tell you what, we’re going to start honoring the Sabbath. And when the sun goes down on Saturday, you are not allowed to text, email, communicate, work, whatever. And I pause right there because, I mean, I may still work, they just don’t know about it, right? Like, that’s a personal choice.

Perry Holley:
You hit the send later button.

Chris Goede:
And sometimes maybe I, because of technology issues, I didn’t do it right. And the things are sending until Sunday night, you know, at sundown, and we don’t always do it perfect. And sometimes we get away from it. There’s different seasons or whatnot. And so then I challenged my team to do the same thing. And some were like, oh, I already do that, which is great, but others are like, oh, like, I, yeah, that’s good. I don’t need to see an email coming from you because then you go, should I respond? Chris needs my answer or whatever. And so that’s just one little way that, again, we tried to figure out how do we do work life balance.

Chris Goede:
The other one is when I talk about getting creative, I have a team member right now that I have the privilege of leading. And one of the things that we have noticed is that there is a draw where back from where she’s originally from and where she moved from, and there some incredible family dynamics going on. And, and, and so the stress and, and all the work that we carry, which is a lot of work, is, is causing a little bit of that burnout. Not saying that that team member is complacent at all. At all. But what I am saying is we were aware of it and we noticed. And so I’m like, how do I create a little bit of work life balance in order to not go to this place. And so we got creative and we said, for a season, right now, this is what I want your work schedule to be.

Chris Goede:
And it’s going to be creatively here, and it could be creatively there. But I want you to have the freedom to be able to do that depending on what is going on there that is drawing your attention. And it was a really good conversation. It was actually brought to my attention by another team member, and I vetted it out and worked through some things. And so just because of getting outside the box to figure out, how do I, even though we all work many more hours than 40 hours a week, how do I help this team member have somewhat of a work life balance, the way they needed it, not the way Perry would need it, or maybe the way I would need it, all different. And so going back to my first initial point is, think about that. What does that look like for your team members? And if your system allows, get creative and figure out. And when you do that, you’re not going to have complacent employees.

Perry Holley:
I don’t think I had considered the effect of burnout, because we’re driven, driven, driven, driven. Every month you finished that month. Now, what have you done for me lately? And that whole attitude of start over, start over, start over, is that burnout. So what can you do? I like your examples to say, what creative can you do? I know one of the organizations we serve, at the first of a month, they come in and they bring in a breakfast or a lunch for everyone. They have a kind of a social time. They thank people. They celebrate what happened. They talk about the goal coming forward.

Perry Holley:
They ask, what do you need? They get resources aligned, and then they get after it for the next month. They also do some offsite things during the quarter, maybe go to go karts or throwing axes or topgolf or something, to let people fellowship without having to be working. And then I think one thing you’re hitting on is noticing and paying attention to what are the family dynamics? What are the home dynamics that could be suffering? Can you help them not work for a bit? But, you know, like you said, it wasn’t letting you off the hook for your commitments. It is. It is spacing, giving you permission to shut down, shut down on Saturday sundown to Sunday sundown, shut down and take your time, have your evenings, whatever it is, to encourage people to do that.

Chris Goede:
So that really leads me to how do we develop and promote engaging kind of company culture through this? And one of the things that I would encourage you to do is don’t just celebrate the big wins. How do we celebrate the small wins? How do we build that momentum of small wins? Because when you do that, it will counter complacency in the teams when they feel that momentum. Like, we’ve all been there before, when you have a good, you know, when you, when you’re on stage and you’re communicating what you love to do in front of large audiences. Right? Like, it’s like, man, like, I got that one. I’m go do another one. And I’m gonna do, like, small wins along the way will create an environment where the employees feel valued and empowered and motivated. And this will absolutely help with complacency. So as I wrap up for us, and then I’ll throw it to you to kind of close, this is a significant issue in the workforce.

Chris Goede:
And Covid coming out of that has created some of these dynamics because of, you know, people working remote and being on site and, hey, I want to do this and I want to do that. And, hey, I just feel like we don’t have the right mission, the right purpose. It just changed. It really has. And I think a lot of you listening would agree with that. And so what we’ve got to do is we got to get really specific around what is causing the complacency that you feel like, what is the root cause of it. And then we’ve got to promote a, maybe even just like a continue continuous improvement process to get out of that, whatever that might be. And for every leader, for every organization, it’s going to be something different.

Chris Goede:
And so I don’t want to make any suggestions of what that could be. I just want you to be aware of it because this is real. This is absolutely, as Greg defines in our course that you teach, Greg teaches, we all teach to organizations around the world, around this. Complacency is something we have to fight as organization and as leaders and in the workforce, it’s going to happen. And so we just got to figure out, why is it happening, not, you know, not just the symptoms, but why is it happening? And then attack that root cause of it in order to create a better culture.

Perry Holley:
Perfect. Great input. As a reminder, if you go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast, you can learn more about our offerings. Get the learner guide for this episode. Also see the other in our family of podcast offerings. You can also leave us a comment or a question there. We love hearing from you and very grateful you spend this time with us today. That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership executive Podcast.

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