6 Levers Podcast (Ep. 1)
Josh: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome to the first ever 6 Levers podcast. I'm your host, Josh Aranda. Accompanied by the founders of the 6 Levers Framework, Shaun Lee and Joe Olig.
Shaun: What's going on, Josh? What’s going on Joe?
Josh: All right, Joe is going to lead us off with what we call a check-in. So basically just an informal way for teams to come together and not get right into the busy of work. So I'll kick it over to Joe and let him lead us with the check-in.
Joe: You bet. Thanks Josh. So this past weekend I had the pleasure of helping my sister move from where she was living and to her new home that she just built – beautiful – and so I thought [00:00:45] for the check-in today, we would just go back and recall a fun moving memory. Something we, many of us have moved from house to house before, and her, this was – her move was incredibly smooth. I mean, her – she had a moving company that helped her out and had a bunch of people, friends helping as well and it was just a real smooth day, which I know is not common. So I'll just kick it around. Good moving memory or funny story from a previous move.
Shaun: Hmm. I have a, I'm glad you had that funny story caveat there at the end. Cause I don't know that I had like a great moving memory and then all of a sudden you said that and I was like, I do have a funny story where I was a real big idiot. [00:01:30] I was thinking of – we were moving, we moved to San Antonio, we lived in an apartment complex and we were still getting the lay of the land.
Didn't know what neighborhood we wanted to move into and so we were moving out of that apartment complex and had some friends come help us move and I rented a big U-Haul truck and got it all loaded up and was, you know, getting ready to turn, to pull out and, and go to the, our first house and decided I would turn around in the parking garage thinking for like spacing out and realize, thinking I was driving like my car.
Joe: Uh-oh.
Shaun: And totally like scraped and busted the top of the U-Haul and the top of the parking garage, like hit a pipe, like busted it [00:02:15] like it was just a disaster. And somehow like just, I was like, well, I literally, this thing lodged in here and stuck and then just like proceeded to back up, like scraping everything and ripping a huge hole in the top of the U-Haul truck.
Joe:Oh my God.
Shaun: And the rest of the move was great. After that, everything was real smooth, but didn't start well.
Joe: Were you able to still use the truck for the move?
Shaun: Yeah, I used it for the whole time and then just, you know, went sheepishly, went back to the U-Haul place and told them what I didand I think paid some extra money. I can't remember, but yeah, it was – didn't start out well.
Joe: That's great. Thank you, Shaun. Josh, how about you? [00:03:00]
Josh: We've moved a few times in the last, like six, seven years and my last move, we were moving from Vancouver, Washington to Colorado Springs where I currently reside. And my brother used to be my next door neighbor, but he had already moved to Colorado Springs, which is part of the reason why we're moving here.
So my cousins lived up there and we had three days, like we got this big old trailer. You could load it up, but you only had three days basically to load. So anyways, we're like packing and we're loading concurrently, just like most people do. And anyways, my cousin was doing the hard work of playing like the “loading Tetris”, and I mean the trailer was maybe 10 to 12 feet tall, like really big trailer.
Like it, it went [00:03:45] pretty high up. So anyways, all of a sudden my cousin, this is like nine o'clock at night. My other cousin got a phone call, but she couldn't get to the phone. My wife got a phone call and then I got a phone call all from my cousin who was playing Tetris inside of the trailer. Anyways, he was using something that was not a ladder and not intended to be a ladder to get up into a really high spot, and so he's like basically on the ceiling of the trailer and he knocked over his “not ladder”, the thing that should not be used for ladder.
So he's stuck super high up squished between like a mattress and the ceiling of the overall trailer and he had a headlamp on and everything, so I had to like come out and like set something back up so that he could get [00:04:30] down because it was kind of a war zone in there.
Anyways, it was fun being able to rescue my cousin from the trailer.
Joe: That's great. I love that. I love that. I'm trying to think. So I've made a few moves and my most recent move was just about three blocks away, in the same neighborhood. And so the way it worked for us was we had about a month where we had keys to both houses.
And so for, you know, three or four weeks, I was just making trips from the one house to the other and for the most part that, you know, me moving sometime midday, all right, in the middle of the workday, working from home, getting like 45 minutes worth of stuff moving over to the house. And [00:05:15] at the start it was just boxes. But then, you know, you start to move like weird stuff that like is awkward and doesn't fit in your SUV, and so I think it was like two or three, you know, maybe two consecutive days.
And I'm – the first day, I figured out how to get like this little plastic children's playground, you know, on top of my car and I'm driving real slow and you know, just kind of looking around in the neighborhood and, you know, see this guy walking his dog and he kind of looks at me and he is like, Hmm. You know, kind of questioning that, that move that I'm making, I got my hand out the window and kind of making sure it stays on and you know, we get there safely and [00:06:00] then, you know, the next – or, or within a couple of days, you know, I'm still on some big stuff and so now I got a couple of mattresses from the basement and I'm driving, driving over there, and –
Keep in mind, I don't know this, this gentleman who's walking his dog a couple days later, see the same exact guy who's like watching me now move like a bunch of mattresses with my arm out the window and, and walking down. And you know, he's innate. He's, I don't know him yet, but I've now seen him many times since then, and so kind of you know, I think. The memory for me is comparing that to my sister's smooth process, very buttoned up, and she got it all done. She [00:06:45] was efficient and it was organized to myself who was just like, you know, over the course of the month, moving most of the house by myself in, in some strange ways.
That’s my fun, fun moving story.
Shaun: I love it.
Josh: All right, well, cool. Anytime we're kicking off a new episode, a new session, what we like to do is kick off with a spark, a story basically from the field that gives us some type of lens, some type of framing into the topic of discussion that we're gonna go into.
So with it being the first one, we thought we'd go with the personal story, a little bit about Mission Matters group and, yeah, just kind of frame the overall conversation. So, very germane to the overall moving topic. [00:07:30] Back in 2016, I moved from St. Louis, Missouri to Portland, Oregon. And during this move, it was kind of a tumultuous time with Mission Matters group as well.
So it's literally like a week or two after I move up there. We have boxes everywhere, still being unpacked and at the time things were a little rocky with Mission Matters Group. We had some client problems that were going on. We had some internal processes that just weren't really that great. Leadership team was somewhat aligned.
We had big goals, big dreams. We felt like we were working our tails off, but things just weren't coming together as we expected them to. So anyways, I'm putting out a couple fires during the day. [00:08:15] I have some personnel issues. I have some project issues and things just like aren't working very well, so for the last three, four weeks, I'm having to work super late nights, up till midnight, up till one, up till two. That was the norm at the time.
Well, it was, I don't know what day of the week it was like a Wednesday or something, and it's two o'clock in the morning. I had been working, I had turned on the new fireplace. We had never had a fireplace before, so it was this gas fireplace that we turned on. Well, I forgot to open up the flue, which is not a good situation with any fire. And all of a sudden, at three o'clock in the morning or so, the carbon monoxide detector is going off and my wife and my brother who are living with us, living [00:09:00] with me and my wife, run out into the room, are freaking out, What's going on? And there I am, you know, passed out. And I wake up and they see the fireplace.
And my wife, rightfully so, was not very happy with me, and she saw my laptop put in front of me and she goes, I frigging hate your job. And that was kind of like hitting, you know, the proverbial rock bottom where I'm like, Okay, this is not healthy, this is not good. Like my relationships are suffering. My company is suffering. Probably our clients are suffering because we're not showing up in a very healthy way and that was my moment when we're like, things just have to change.
And so little by little 2016, we've had certainly our bumps and bruises and you know, rocky moments across the last, you know, seven [00:09:45] years, but we have gotten incrementally and marginally better, over the last many, many years and so really this is part of the overall story of 6 Levers where I am sure everyone on this call today has a story like that where we know things can be better. It's taken a toll on our lives and our organizations, and we have to have a systematic way of getting better, of getting healthier.
And so that introduces us to the topic. That introduces us to the overall 6 Levers framework, why it's here, what it's trying to solve, and what can it do for your organization and you personally. So really the question to Shaun and Joe, again, the founders, the brain trust around the 6 [00:10:30] Levers framework, walk us through the overall framework. What are the 6 Levers, and maybe in both of your words, what is it trying to solve?
Shaun: Yeah, I'll start off here, Josh, and maybe even just to continue on your story and relate to it a little bit here, before we even, you know, go into the, you know, what's an operating system and what's 6 Levers. Just totally relate to that feeling of like your, what I, it's this picture of, you know, as a leader in how it's, you know, things aren't going well in your organization and it's infiltrated in like every aspect of your life now, right?
Like it's at home, it’s in your relationships, your family, your sleep patterns, like it's just gotten, it's just pervasive and has taken over [00:11:15] all aspects of your life and I have certainly felt like that as a leader in organization, both as a nonprofit leader and as an entrepreneur. and you know what it felt like is when I felt that many issues and problems as you just described them, right?
Like, there's all these things. there's team issues, there's lack of focus. In some areas there's complexity that feels like we can't get our arms around it. It's just difficult to know, like, what do I do to get past and improve this, this way of, I'm living and operating as a leader in my organization and many of the tools that we go to, they can provide like temporary relief.
They can be like, I can go to this seminar with my team or this workshop, or maybe if we read this book [00:12:00] together or if we have this speaker come in and those are good things, like, and they give some momentary relief, but then you're sort of like back, you know, a few weeks later, a month later to that feeling that Josh just describes like, you're back up late at night, you're back with your spouse looking at you like, When is this gonna change?
And I think out of that feeling and that frustration of how do we change this in a more permanent way and build sustainable organizational health was a – that story I love cuz it's really teeing up the motivation for why we developed the 6 Levers framework. So, maybe even before we, I say anything more and, Joe, I don't know if you want to jump in and maybe kind of [00:12:45] jump off that –
Joe: Yeah.
Shaun: – and help explain what an operating system is, maybe.
Joe: Yeah. I think what comes to mind for me is, you know, just this, when it comes to the what and the why, they're so interrelated, right? The what behind 6 Levers is it's a, an organizational framework or what we refer to as an Organizational Operating System, that helps your team operate with more intentionality and using a systematic framework. And the reason why has everything to do with what you've heard so far, right? This desire to build healthy teams, build healthy organizations, and it's oftentimes always connected back to these grand missions that the leaders of those organizations are going after, right? We've [00:13:30] got these big ambitious missions.
Joe: We want to do things to help our communities and build strong organizations, and it's just really difficult. Right? And oftentimes, the, you know, people are left to bear the burden of that challenge, whether it's ourselves, our teams, or our families and so we've just, you know, in our experience, leading organizations but also, you know, working with organizations have spent a lot of time thinking about the better way to run an organization, one that really focuses on building healthy systems that, that people can really thrive with it.
Shaun: Yeah, maybe one just thing to add here, sorry Josh, I know you're about to [00:14:15] jump in, but this idea of of, people being left to bear the burden, like you got that picture, which I'm sure is relatable to Josh at home, like making that mistake that normally he wouldn't make, obviously because of all the complexities and pressures, you know, he was left to bear the burden, right?
So all of it fell on him as the leader and, you know, what that feels like is you've gotta be a superhero when you show up and that's possible for a day or a week, or maybe even a quarter if you're an extraordinary superhero, but, you know, if we build the right framework in how we operate and the right systems and expectations around what it [00:15:00] means to show up well and be a leader and build strong teams and healthy culture, and everyone is committed to that and we're working on it, then all of a sudden, that pressure, that feels like you've gotta be a superhero every day, it's just over time, it's less and less the case and it becomes more about strengthening the framework and the way of working with each other. And that was sort of our dream. Like that was the dream to say, We don't want people to feel like they have to act like superheroes when they come into work every day.
We want them to feel like they can operate within healthy ways of working framework, systems, tools, and if everyone's committed to strengthening. It starts to feel less and less of a lift when they show up to work every day, it becomes more possible and everyone's committed to achieving [00:15:45] that.
Josh: That's great. Cool. Well talk me through each of the levers, right? So this is the first time somebody's ever heard of the 6 Levers framework. They're compelled that it can bring systematic health to their organization. Talk me through each of the levers and, yeah, if there's any stories associated with them. Joe, you wanna kick us off?
Joe: Yeah, I think, I think the place to start with the 6 Levers is that they were developed after working with hundreds of organizations where we identified six sort of common areas where they struggle, right? And so the 6 Levers, are Identity, Focus, Cohesion, Leadership, [00:16:30] Rhythm, and Momentum, and one way we help teams understand what the 6 Levers are, are by considering these two different frames or two different ways to think about what each lever is. And the first is that it's an indicator of team health.
So if we think about, you know, the goal here is to really drive organizational health and improve the overall health of our team. We point to each of the 6 Levers and say, That is a core indicator of your team’s health. Things like focus and leadership, how strong are those within your organization? And the stronger they are, the healthier your team.
But the other frame is that each lever serves as sort of [00:17:15] an actionable tool or a lever that you can pull on to improve health in that specific area. So again, you're reflecting on the overall health of your team and you're considering maybe organizational identity. How clear is our purpose, and the reasons why we exist in that identity lever, lies a handful of tools and practices that teams can pull on to implement and improve their overall identity.
So, you know, just thinking about each lever in those two ways we find is a really helpful way to get people started and acclimated to the framework.
Shaun: Yeah, and maybe just going into identity a little bit more and we can jump right in and out of these different levers here. You know, before we developed the [00:18:00] framework, we were doing a lot of strategic planning work and, and we still largely respond to that, like people say, I need a strategic plan, and we use that as the opening to say, Let us tell you about the 6 Levers framework, right? And largely out of a belief that, you know, any vision and plan needs to be situated and live within an operating system for it to be successfully implemented. That's why we do that and that's, we have a deep belief in conviction about that.
But the reason I, you know, the identity lever is probably the first one that we started to develop out and it was largely because we were doing strategic planning. We were working with teams to define where they wanted to be in three-to-five years, and we realized that were the teams that had real clarity of identity, their deep [00:18:45] purpose, their underlying beliefs that were even there before their mission, those deep shared convictions, their values, the behaviors, the way they wanted to interact with each other.
And when they thought about what it felt like and imagine what, you know, what were the characteristics of great teammates, the measurable impact they had – we call those “vitals” – they actually had some, they had some idea of what it meant to measure their mission and to measure sustainability and health.
Those teams were much more aligned in where they wanted to be. They're sort of out of this clarity of identity, you know, how do we want to advance our mission and these other elements of our identity over the next three-to-five years, versus the teams that weren't as clear. Maybe they had a mission statement and that was it. [00:19:30]
It's sort of like we can do anything under the sun, like we can – in our broad understanding of our mission. There's so many different things we could do and it became – it was more difficult to get to an aligning perspective on where they wanted to be in three-to-five years. So we saw very early the importance of just extreme clarity of identity and taking the time to slow down and align on these things, before teams get in division. And certainly, you know, as we get into other levers this will probably come up again, but as we think about cohesion and leadership, all that being anchored to the most important identity of the organization is really important.
Josh: Yeah, I think the – I know we could probably talk on each lever for, I'm sure we will, [00:20:15] 45 minutes to an hour all the time, but talk to me about some of the tie-ins. So you work with an organization from an identity standpoint. You touched on the word. Talk to me a little bit about focus and going a bit deeper in terms of how you're starting to translate and let that identity permeate through all the different activities that could go on within an organization, but what should go on.
Joe: Yeah. Well, so we connect vision to – or an organization's identity pretty carefully because ultimately your vision should really be a reflection of why you exist and where you want to go and, you know, if we kind of continue down this chronological journey that we've been on, you know, [00:21:00] focused the next place that we've spent a lot of times with teams, and we think about vision as sort of your three-to-five year focus, what do you wanna place emphasis and resources on over the course of the next three-to-five years? That's really, that's the vision of your organization but the focus lever is also all about creating focus, across your teams and across the different horizons. So not only is it where do we want to be in three-to-five years, but what is the focus or set of goals for our team at a one-year level, at a 90-day level, and are we bringing that level of clarity to all of the teams inside of our organization? It's really the focus [00:21:45] lever that helps you to make sure your identity is being brought down to the earth and we're bringing focus to what we wanna accomplish in the near term as well as at the one and three-year levels.
Shaun: Yeah. This is the lever that I think we see almost universally, like, it seems like almost every organization, when they get a little bit of understanding of what this is, you know, bringing focus to those different time horizons that Joe just mentioned and selecting a handful of priorities to focus on, you know, over that period of time where most feel like, Gosh, we need this. Like, we're so unfocused. Like we come into work and it feels like there's, you know, 40 different priorities to focus on, or the [00:22:30] team's not aligned.
Like individuals have their own priorities, but the team doesn't have priorities. So I think more than any other one, we feel we hear of teams reflect this is the one that we really need to work on as a team, so, yeah, I think to Joe's point, it's the intersection of, we, you know, we often start with helping teams to think about it from the three-year, three-to-five year vision. Just getting near, more near and near term to today to help them bring focus to all the complexity and everything that they could face.
Josh: Great.
Shaun: It's also – one other thing I'll say here is that it often helps to resolve the tension. Like the team dynamic where you have like the [00:23:15] folks that are more dreaming and innovating and the other side of the personality or communication style that's more around operations and execution.
It's such a helpful framework for like those different types of thinking and for people to say, But these are the priorities we're aligned, right? If we go pursue that new particular thing over here that you're excited about, what might that cost us for the things that we've said that we're going to focus on for whatever this period of time is?
So even just from the power of common language and tools where you, we all work differently, you know, we all have our naturally gifted and strengths. It's so helpful to take the diversity of different ways of working and put tools like this in place, to really just kind of take the emotion out of a lot of things and [00:24:00] say, this is the way that we're gonna set priorities. This is the way we're gonna make progress, towards pursuing them and understanding that if we want to try new things, we can do that, but we have to do it in sort of the very conscious mindedness of what we may not do or what it may cost, something that we've agreed to do from a prioritization perspective.
Josh: Hmm. So we touched on identity and focus. Take me through another one. Cohesion, leadership, rhythm, momentum…Where would you take us from here?
Joe: Well, the natural one to come after focus is rhythm. Think about these as sort of like peanut butter and jelly, because they're better together, right? So, you know, at the end of the day, you can have as much clarity in [00:24:45] where you want to be in 90 days to a year, but if you don't have the operating rhythm in place to monitor – how are we doing in a formal, meaningful way if you don't have the operating rhythm in place to formally review that focus at the end of its horizon and say, Here's how we did, here's what we learned, here's what we achieved. Create that opportunity to celebrate success.
Your focus will fall off, right? Even the best goals will lose steam if you don't have that rhythm to support it and so the rhythm lever is all – ensuring that activities like that, we kind of consider these activities, these essential strategic activities, [00:25:30] it ensures that those are not left to chance.
You know, if we think about, you know, we pull in the 80-20 principle a lot with the rhythm lever and just, you know, call out the fact that certain activities are just more important than others and does your organization know what those are? Have you identified them and then once you've identified them, have you made them habit?
And so the rhythm level is really designed around making habit of those incredibly important activities and they're so closely connected with, with the focus lever.
Josh: Yeah. My son would disagree with you on peanut butter and jelly being like a focusing rhythm. He's a peanut butter and honey kind of guy.
Joe: Okay. Good point. He’s [00:26:15] all peanut butter. He's all peanut butter, he didn't want anything to do with that. We need a new, we need a better one. Something that's always better together.
Josh: Like – Yeah. I was gonna say too, when we're talking about rhythm and focus, one of the things that I always find fascinating is, you know, anytime we're working with an organization at Mission Matters Group, whether it's strategic planning or a technology implementation, one thing we're always asking is, you know, is there an existing strategic plan that we should be aware of?
And after that, whether they say yes or no, then the question typically is, How frequently are you monitoring this? And 9 times outta 10, it's like, Oh, well, we'll do an update, you know, at the end of the year [00:27:00] or before our next board meeting. So there's sometimes a cadence, there's sometimes a rhythm, but that rhythm is actually ineffective for how important that overall initiative is, to your point, Joe.
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Josh: So I always find that fascinating where like we can – right, there's heart rhythms and sometimes those heart rhythms are out of balance and we need a little shock to get it back into an appropriate rhythm. So, it's really helpful to unpack that just a little, just real quickly.
Joe: You know, there's so, so many of us associate meetings with being ineffective or, you know, unnecessary and at the end of the day, rhythms harness the power of a synchronous meeting where we bring people together. [00:27:45] But because we have such a bad taste in our mouth about meetings, we're almost, we almost just – we don't have 'em, right? We just kind of push 'em out and at the end of the day, that missed opportunity to monitor and review a strategic plan, a set of annual goals, right, is huge. Right?
And so the rhythm lever, a huge part of it is helping teams to design meetings that actually work, that are efficient, that actually feel like they were meaningful and impactful. And so it sort of, it reframes for teams that, you know, in order for us to, to not leave some of these opportunities and these activities subject to chance, we need to rethink how we think about meetings and [00:28:30] make sure that every time we stand one up, that it's been designed with some real clear intention and purpose and structure.
Shaun: I think along those lines, just to double-click on this one point here, you’re making here, Joe, is what I'm hearing you say is defining the objective of that recurring meeting rhythm, and something – it seems like a pretty simple, like a simple concept and idea, right? Most of the time we don't do this.
Like we don't, we've got this recurring meeting that we're all gathering together for, and if you were to go around the table and say, What's the, or the virtual rooms, What's the objective of us doing this every Tuesday at two o'clock? you'd probably hear very different things. So – but starting there, right? Aligning on what that [00:29:15] is then allows the meeting design aspect of it that Joe was just talking about.
Now you can do that all to serve the objective, right? It's, we've aligned on what it is. The – all, not all meetings should be designed the same way. They should all be designed to achieve the objective and, yeah.
The rhythms are, although they're not just about meetings, they are certainly, we spend a lot of times talking about meetings and running effective meetings and just kind of like flipping the script on the way people tend to think about them as being life draining and actually being able to be energizing and, and, and helping you to advance your most important strategic priorities.
Josh: Yeah, playing off both of that, both of you, where in the last like five [00:30:00] minutes I was jotting down how many times I heard design or intentionally, and you can tell that, you know, with a framework like this, the goal is not to say, Okay, plug and play. This is what you got. It's this, it's intended to be tweaked to have different thresholds of each lever that are unique to your organization so that you as a leader, as a team leader, can intentionally design the different components of your overall organization.
All right, so we've touched on a few. We have three more levers. We got cohesion, momentum, and leadership. Which one do you wanna go to next?
Shaun: Yeah, maybe we can go into cohesion here and, by the way, hope you, one of the things y'all are noticing here is that we're kind of like, Yeah, maybe we can go over here, we can go over here...[00:30:45]
The framework is not a linear process. It's meant to be modular and applied to the unique needs of an organization and there's kind of, you can start in any place. So if you're wondering, you know, why we're kind of meandering around the levers here cuz that's really how it works and they're meant to be responsive and attentive to the needs that teams have.
So with that said, cohesion. Yeah. Cohesion is really all about the power of strong teams and the systems and the practices that they commit to, to get stronger and stronger. And really out of a belief that we have that at the heart of healthy culture, our teams that are working well together, that trust each other, that are high performing, that are committed to those two things, that they're committed to how do we create environments of psychological safety.[00:31:30]
How do we practice things like vulnerability with each other and how do we, how are we committed to self-awareness, so that we – cuz we know that that ultimately makes us better teammates, so the people that we work with, day in and day out. So – but it's also things like, you know, setting common goals together as a team and just out of an acknowledgement that that level of clarity and structure and, performance goals, team – people love that and want that and crave that.
And I think the thing that we've realized in this is that you know, you can, or one of the things we've realized is that you can have clarity of vision as an organization. You can even have some clarity of identity. But when teams aren't committed to becoming increasingly [00:32:15] stronger, it's really hard to make progress towards achieving the vision of the organization.
I mean, the last thing I'll say, and just leave it up to the other guys here to share a bit is as a leader, this is the lever where you probably get sucked into the most when you don't want to spend your time like dealing with, This is where interpersonal issues live. So this is when you're not tending to this, when you're not intentionally trying to strengthen teams.
This is that reality of you continually not getting to your most important items in your to-do list because you continue to get called into major people issues because of relational problems and things that they’re working on. So, we often consider – we wheelers a few times. This is maybe one of the super levers in the framework in that it's so important [00:33:00] because it operates as an incredible catalyst.
It can also be so draining and pull you down, as a leader and a team, when, when this isn't going well.
Joe: Yeah, maybe to keep things going here, to build off of that and bring in the other lever that is very closely tied to people is the leadership lever. And this is, you know, the lever that is really grounded in a belief that everyone within an organization is capable of demonstrating great leadership in that we must not think about leadership as a role or title, but as a quality that when we all bring it to the table, it can make all the difference. We [00:33:45] refer to this as the super lever, you know, as, the thing that any organization, if they really seek to develop within, people can become their organizational superpower and, you know, it's about, it's all about how we show up, at the individual level.
And so the leadership lever is defined by first a set of what we call Essential Leader Practices. Things like vulnerability, self-awareness, curiosity. These qualities that we just know are really foundational to how we want people to show up. And so the lever's all about how do you systematically [00:34:30] develop that inside your organization and then harness it and just call it out, develop a common language around it.
Teams oftentimes want to see more of it, but don't know how to put their finger on, you know, what it is that they wanna see more of or how to build it out, right? We all, we want, we all wanna have a team of leaders, right? We know that makes all the difference when we've got just a, you know, a team of leaders and so this one's all about really recognizing the impact when that's true, and working to build it intentionally within your organization.
Shaun: One thing I was gonna say here is, [00:35:15] this feels like a good point to maybe explore some of at least one interconnected piece or connection point between a couple levers and it's, we’re talking about rhythms and the power of these, these important recurring meeting times. And one of 'em is what we call the quarterly sync, where we look back at the priorities we had for the previous quarter and how did we do, and then we also just have kind of an open conversation, encourage teams to do this on how they did working with each other, right?
What went well, what could have gone better, what are things we're gonna focus on in the next quarter. It's really critical for teams to bring, for individual leaders to bring a curious mindset, just as an example, to those rhythms, right? So it's not, we think about these things [00:36:00] sometimes and we tend to isolate them or, or segment them, but the real power of the framework is when things start to stack on one another and you start to see how they're interconnected and how, if I'm committed to growing and my own isn't just for myself. If I just start with, I want to become a more self-aware leader, I want to become a more curious leader, then all of a sudden I'm bringing that to the quarterly sink, this powerful rhythm,
And that's generating some incredible learning for the organization, right? For, for our team and related to that, like what we hope you begin to hear here is that the framework is not just these like hard, rigid structures. It's not just about goal setting and three-year goals and priorities and [00:36:45] measurable metrics and these things.
That's certainly a part of it, but we don't believe that any – you're not gonna make progress on any of that stuff, we don't believe, unless you're committed to your own leadership development and you're also committed to strengthening teams and building more cohesive teams. It's the two of these things together, which really is where we start to see the sustained organizational health.
Josh: Before we move into the last lever, maybe a question before. It, you know, we talk a lot about having this being a people-centered framework. Can we touch on that just a little bit more? I think it's exactly what you just hit on, Shaun, but expand it a little bit. Why do we call it a “people-centered framework”, and how does that actually take us into the final lever of momentum?[00:37:30]
Shaun: Well, I'll start here. I think one of the reasons we call it a people-centered framework is because there's a, just going deeper into the design component that we've been talking about, it's not a paint-by-numbers model, right? It's not a run-the-play model. There are certain aspects of it where we can certainly offer some strong guidance on processes to follow, to strengthen identity, to, you know, to establish your three-year vision and there certainly is clear guidance there, but it's people-centric in that we expect both the leaders in an organization we refer to as the key person who's helping to implement the framework.
We refer to that person as a “navigator”. Whether it's that person or whether it's a consultant that you've hired to work with, that they are discerning [00:38:15] and listening and learning about the organization and then the framework and all the resources and tools that are there to solve the issues and problems the organization's having. And they're very thoughtfully applying them in a way that they think is going to, to fit both culturally and contextually, but also from kind of a prioritization perspective to solve what feels like the most pressing aspects that need to be prioritized first, second, third.
So the person is at the center of that, making those decisions and calls as opposed to just saying, Here's the framework, let me just put it in the organization. Organization, you just have to run this play. Right? We don't, we've seen all too often that when that happens, it can feel like for [00:39:00] very mission-driven organizations that can feel like a dilution of mission. Like it's, that's happening at the cost of the mission and so to solve for that, we empower people to match the tools and resources to the environment needs of the organization.
Joe: Yeah. In our navigator sprint, which is one of our training programs that we run, we kick off that sprint by hitting on this very point around, Shaun, one of the things you're talking about here is change, right? And how do we create change within organizations and we know that a requirement of change. The desire, the motivation to wanna make that change and that is driven by people both discerning, you know, what we might [00:39:45] want to change as leaders, but also what does our team wanna change? Where are we motivated? Where are we invested?
If we're not keeping that front and center, the change will, you know, at best, show up for a while and then fall off and so, you know, it's in the design of the framework, that we think about the people dynamic and ensure that people are front and center, you know, in terms of how we think about implementing and adopting the different levers but also, as you heard in cohesion and in leadership, they represent a huge part of, you know, two of the levers as well.
Shaun: That's great. Joe. The thing to maybe add here is if we even go back to the story [00:40:30] at the beginning that Josh shared, ultimately, at the end of the day, this all – the whole framework is intended to serve Josh having a better life. If it were, if we would've encountered Josh back then, right? Or our old selves back then, right?
We would've – It's intended to say life feels more manageable. I can connect with the people in my life in a more meaningful way cuz I'm not so distracted and overwhelmed by everything I'm facing in my work, right? There's space in all the craziness and insanity for me to focus on work that matters for me to focus on connecting with people, right? So all this to say is that all the tools and resources are intended to serve that. Intended to serve, opening up space, space to connect, space to [00:41:15] pursue the things that matter most, right?
It's all in service of purpose and ultimately, you know, maybe it sounds really aspirational, but living the type of life they want to live both at work and then as you heard from the example in the beginning, how that impacts our home. So that's why we say like, people are at the center cuz it's kind of our north star right, to say that we don't wanna do anything that starts to feel otherwise. We don't want, if we were working with a client and they were to say, Gosh, this feels like a lot of rigid structures and systems, we would say, We're not doing something right here. We – they shouldn't feel that way. Ty should feel like all of this is intended of serving something that has a much higher purpose than just, you know, some operational excellence framework.
Joe: Mm-hmm. [00:42:00]
Josh: All right. Bring us home with the last lever – Momentum.
Joe: Yeah, the momentum lever, one of my favorites. The momentum lever has been as much medicine and guidance for me as a leader as anything, but the momentum lever, it works to counteract these sort of forces that exist in the world related to running great organizations and it's, you know, we've more information than we've ever had before. Our work is as complex as it's ever been before. We've been told forever strive for perfection, strive for excellence, operational excellence is North Star, right?
And for those,if you start to think about all those [00:42:45] things, what they do is they slow teams, right? They, there's this, this tagline – “analysis paralysis” – that we constantly encounter with teams where they're not entirely sure how to move forward, you know, what should they focus on? And the momentum lever is all about creating progress in a real, intentional, consistent way and that's because we know that progress does many powerful things. It engages us as humans, right? When we see progress around meaningful things, we get – we're energized, we feel motivated.
But progress is also, you know, what we're striving for ultimately, right? It's – we really believe in the power of [00:43:30] incremental progress, and that's the journey to drive in the results that you want within your mission. And so the momentum lever is all about that and so it's really flanked by a set of mantras. Things like “progress over perfection”, one we've heard many times. A more, maybe, contradictory one – “Action, even over analysis.”
Wait, hold on. Can you, can you say that in the business world, in the nonprofit world, right? Like you say, “Action, even over analysis”, right? That gets heads turning. But that conversation around why that is one of the momentum mantras is a super powerful one to have with teams, and so the momentum lever, you know, it pushes us to think about, [00:44:15] you know, progress, continuous improvement, how do we build cultures of feedback when feedback can be difficult, and ultimately is really the engine that keeps things moving forward on a regular basis.
Shaun: Okay. Yeah, this one to me, I mean, it feels like I don't wanna say it's a purely entrepreneurial way of thinking, but I – for, in many ways it is, right? It is a way of getting an early draft of something out there, getting a prototype out there and learning from it, and Joe mentioned this.
We learned by the doing and really embracing that idea. I think where we see this often, kind of show up in the work of, as we're developing vision or even like clarifying identity, [00:45:00] we have a tool that we use called the Compass, where we bring all that together is sometimes teams will think like we, there'd be a little bit of fear of getting it out in the world, and they'll think, If we just could have one more round of revision on this, right?
And what we've seen is the longer and longer they take to design these things, they lose momentum, right? The excitement they had around their new vision, their clarified identity starts to dissipate and so we see that more quickly. They can just get into pursuing that vision and get bouncing this clarified identity off their team, they can adjust it, right?
We can, we can always adjust these things as we give feedback and we learn in, in our, in the real world and in life. So, but there's so much more learning and doing, and this [00:45:45] can be a shift, this can be a seismic shift for some people.
Other people will hear this and be like, Oh, thank God. Like I wanted to do this my whole life and someone's giving me permission to do this. So it depends on, you know, where you are from, just kind of your natural disposition, but it's very much about kind of just being willing to move forward and it's not saying like, to just the analysis piece, it's almost like you're just kind of shifting when the analysis happens, right?
You're not, you're not saying, It's okay with us not analyzing a thousand things on the front end before we do it, because we're committed to continue to analyze and learn. We trust that we're gonna get better and better along the way as, and that's how we make momentum as a team and as an organization.
Josh: That's great. I mean, right? That's a perfect tie-in too for, Okay, that's where [00:46:30] rhythms come in, right? Because if we're talking about constantly reviewing and iterating, we need to have a rhythm for constantly reviewing and iterating the things that we say we're going to, so. Again, just tying in that modularity of the overall framework is really impactful.
So one thing that the two of you talk about a lot, just in terms of the overall, goal of the 6 Levers framework, we talk about enduring organizational health for every team who seeks it, right? If we use that, if we have a bunch of listeners who are seeking it, what advice would you give? What would you have them say, Hey, if you are in shambles, what's the next thing that you would tell a leader, a team leader, a member of a team to try next?
Joe: I [00:47:15] think it starts with a mindset. You know, I'd start by saying it's, you know, kind of work to just reinstill that hope. We've all been there where we felt like it was more possible than, you know, than at times where we felt like it, it maybe wasn't and so we've seen firsthand what teams can do when they commit to it, and I think that's the second piece, is giving leaders and teams permission to focus on. This work, right? Focus on the business and not just in the business. This is oftentimes something that is, you know, limited to the annual retreat or the one season where we get some feedback to, to work on part of our operating system, right?
This is something that leaders [00:48:00] need to feel that they have permission to work on this on a regular basis and to really carve out the space to take this continuous improvement approach to it and methodically, week over week, month over month, work on it. Right?
And the nice thing is the 6 Levers framework is a framework that you can go to and pick out things that resonate with you.
Right now, we've mentioned a few times already that it's modular, right? You can start anywhere. but it does provide this great roadmap as to where you start to become more and more intentional with your organizational operating system.
Josh: Shaun, how about you?
Shaun: Yeah, I'd say, you know, to think – love all that Joe said there –but think [00:48:45] about the, like, how do you make momentum? And part of momentum is like the increasing the belief and what's possible among the team around you, right? So you're trying to like think about what can I do right now to get me on the road to enduring health, knowing that that's gonna take a while, right? To be in a place where you are now, to be that transformed organization is gonna take a lot of time and commitment.
But what do we do to increase the belief that that's possible? Because often time you're, what you're facing is a lot of headwinds and resistance and people saying, If I don't start seeing something change, I don't know if I'm with you in this whole idea, right? So think about the intersection of what could be easy to do, but also have a high impact or may be easier. But also have an eye-hand –
What are a couple things you could do? Thinking about the [00:49:30] whole framework, you know, with setting a handful of priorities in the quarter where our team for the first time and as long as you can remember, had a handful of things to focus on. Would that be the thing that would start to increase the belief that enduring health is possible?
Would focusing on maybe team building, right? And working on a tool that helps you to understand each other's strengths and communication styles, would that get you on the road? Having to be a more trusting team, right, would it be clarifying your identity in the process of doing that together? Would that start to do it, right?
Think about what your areas of greatest needs are, and again, what could get you to building belief to what Josh said about this idea of enduring health because we know it's possible. We've seen it, we've seen organizations transform, but it [00:50:15] often takes these leaders that are in teams that are committed to, It's gonna take some time. It's not gonna happen overnight. But you do want to help your team see some momentum so that they believe it's possible.
Josh: That's great. Do you have anything before we close out?
Joe: This was fun. Let's do more of these.
Josh: Yeah, we could, we could talk about 6 Levers if you want.
Joe: Cool.
Josh: All right, well if you are ready to get on the road to building organizational health, check out sixlevers.co.
And if you're ready to take some action, check out our Navigator Sprint. That should be starting pretty soon.
All right, thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you soon.
Joe: See ya.
Shaun: See ya.
Josh: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome to the first ever 6 Levers podcast. I'm your host, Josh Aranda. Accompanied by the founders of the 6 Levers Framework, Shaun Lee and Joe Olig.
Shaun: What's going on, Josh? What’s going on Joe?
Josh: All right, Joe is going to lead us off with what we call a check-in. So basically just an informal way for teams to come together and not get right into the busy of work. So I'll kick it over to Joe and let him lead us with the check-in.
Joe: You bet. Thanks Josh. So this past weekend I had the pleasure of helping my sister move from where she was living and to her new home that she just built – beautiful – and so I thought [00:00:45] for the check-in today, we would just go back and recall a fun moving memory. Something we, many of us have moved from house to house before, and her, this was – her move was incredibly smooth. I mean, her – she had a moving company that helped her out and had a bunch of people, friends helping as well and it was just a real smooth day, which I know is not common. So I'll just kick it around. Good moving memory or funny story from a previous move.
Shaun: Hmm. I have a, I'm glad you had that funny story caveat there at the end. Cause I don't know that I had like a great moving memory and then all of a sudden you said that and I was like, I do have a funny story where I was a real big idiot. [00:01:30] I was thinking of – we were moving, we moved to San Antonio, we lived in an apartment complex and we were still getting the lay of the land.
Didn't know what neighborhood we wanted to move into and so we were moving out of that apartment complex and had some friends come help us move and I rented a big U-Haul truck and got it all loaded up and was, you know, getting ready to turn, to pull out and, and go to the, our first house and decided I would turn around in the parking garage thinking for like spacing out and realize, thinking I was driving like my car.
Joe: Uh-oh.
Shaun: And totally like scraped and busted the top of the U-Haul and the top of the parking garage, like hit a pipe, like busted it [00:02:15] like it was just a disaster. And somehow like just, I was like, well, I literally, this thing lodged in here and stuck and then just like proceeded to back up, like scraping everything and ripping a huge hole in the top of the U-Haul truck.
Joe:Oh my God.
Shaun: And the rest of the move was great. After that, everything was real smooth, but didn't start well.
Joe: Were you able to still use the truck for the move?
Shaun: Yeah, I used it for the whole time and then just, you know, went sheepishly, went back to the U-Haul place and told them what I didand I think paid some extra money. I can't remember, but yeah, it was – didn't start out well.
Joe: That's great. Thank you, Shaun. Josh, how about you? [00:03:00]
Josh: We've moved a few times in the last, like six, seven years and my last move, we were moving from Vancouver, Washington to Colorado Springs where I currently reside. And my brother used to be my next door neighbor, but he had already moved to Colorado Springs, which is part of the reason why we're moving here.
So my cousins lived up there and we had three days, like we got this big old trailer. You could load it up, but you only had three days basically to load. So anyways, we're like packing and we're loading concurrently, just like most people do. And anyways, my cousin was doing the hard work of playing like the “loading Tetris”, and I mean the trailer was maybe 10 to 12 feet tall, like really big trailer.
Like it, it went [00:03:45] pretty high up. So anyways, all of a sudden my cousin, this is like nine o'clock at night. My other cousin got a phone call, but she couldn't get to the phone. My wife got a phone call and then I got a phone call all from my cousin who was playing Tetris inside of the trailer. Anyways, he was using something that was not a ladder and not intended to be a ladder to get up into a really high spot, and so he's like basically on the ceiling of the trailer and he knocked over his “not ladder”, the thing that should not be used for ladder.
So he's stuck super high up squished between like a mattress and the ceiling of the overall trailer and he had a headlamp on and everything, so I had to like come out and like set something back up so that he could get [00:04:30] down because it was kind of a war zone in there.
Anyways, it was fun being able to rescue my cousin from the trailer.
Joe: That's great. I love that. I love that. I'm trying to think. So I've made a few moves and my most recent move was just about three blocks away, in the same neighborhood. And so the way it worked for us was we had about a month where we had keys to both houses.
And so for, you know, three or four weeks, I was just making trips from the one house to the other and for the most part that, you know, me moving sometime midday, all right, in the middle of the workday, working from home, getting like 45 minutes worth of stuff moving over to the house. And [00:05:15] at the start it was just boxes. But then, you know, you start to move like weird stuff that like is awkward and doesn't fit in your SUV, and so I think it was like two or three, you know, maybe two consecutive days.
And I'm – the first day, I figured out how to get like this little plastic children's playground, you know, on top of my car and I'm driving real slow and you know, just kind of looking around in the neighborhood and, you know, see this guy walking his dog and he kind of looks at me and he is like, Hmm. You know, kind of questioning that, that move that I'm making, I got my hand out the window and kind of making sure it stays on and you know, we get there safely and [00:06:00] then, you know, the next – or, or within a couple of days, you know, I'm still on some big stuff and so now I got a couple of mattresses from the basement and I'm driving, driving over there, and –
Keep in mind, I don't know this, this gentleman who's walking his dog a couple days later, see the same exact guy who's like watching me now move like a bunch of mattresses with my arm out the window and, and walking down. And you know, he's innate. He's, I don't know him yet, but I've now seen him many times since then, and so kind of you know, I think. The memory for me is comparing that to my sister's smooth process, very buttoned up, and she got it all done. She [00:06:45] was efficient and it was organized to myself who was just like, you know, over the course of the month, moving most of the house by myself in, in some strange ways.
That’s my fun, fun moving story.
Shaun: I love it.
Josh: All right, well, cool. Anytime we're kicking off a new episode, a new session, what we like to do is kick off with a spark, a story basically from the field that gives us some type of lens, some type of framing into the topic of discussion that we're gonna go into.
So with it being the first one, we thought we'd go with the personal story, a little bit about Mission Matters group and, yeah, just kind of frame the overall conversation. So, very germane to the overall moving topic. [00:07:30] Back in 2016, I moved from St. Louis, Missouri to Portland, Oregon. And during this move, it was kind of a tumultuous time with Mission Matters group as well.
So it's literally like a week or two after I move up there. We have boxes everywhere, still being unpacked and at the time things were a little rocky with Mission Matters Group. We had some client problems that were going on. We had some internal processes that just weren't really that great. Leadership team was somewhat aligned.
We had big goals, big dreams. We felt like we were working our tails off, but things just weren't coming together as we expected them to. So anyways, I'm putting out a couple fires during the day. [00:08:15] I have some personnel issues. I have some project issues and things just like aren't working very well, so for the last three, four weeks, I'm having to work super late nights, up till midnight, up till one, up till two. That was the norm at the time.
Well, it was, I don't know what day of the week it was like a Wednesday or something, and it's two o'clock in the morning. I had been working, I had turned on the new fireplace. We had never had a fireplace before, so it was this gas fireplace that we turned on. Well, I forgot to open up the flue, which is not a good situation with any fire. And all of a sudden, at three o'clock in the morning or so, the carbon monoxide detector is going off and my wife and my brother who are living with us, living [00:09:00] with me and my wife, run out into the room, are freaking out, What's going on? And there I am, you know, passed out. And I wake up and they see the fireplace.
And my wife, rightfully so, was not very happy with me, and she saw my laptop put in front of me and she goes, I frigging hate your job. And that was kind of like hitting, you know, the proverbial rock bottom where I'm like, Okay, this is not healthy, this is not good. Like my relationships are suffering. My company is suffering. Probably our clients are suffering because we're not showing up in a very healthy way and that was my moment when we're like, things just have to change.
And so little by little 2016, we've had certainly our bumps and bruises and you know, rocky moments across the last, you know, seven [00:09:45] years, but we have gotten incrementally and marginally better, over the last many, many years and so really this is part of the overall story of 6 Levers where I am sure everyone on this call today has a story like that where we know things can be better. It's taken a toll on our lives and our organizations, and we have to have a systematic way of getting better, of getting healthier.
And so that introduces us to the topic. That introduces us to the overall 6 Levers framework, why it's here, what it's trying to solve, and what can it do for your organization and you personally. So really the question to Shaun and Joe, again, the founders, the brain trust around the 6 [00:10:30] Levers framework, walk us through the overall framework. What are the 6 Levers, and maybe in both of your words, what is it trying to solve?
Shaun: Yeah, I'll start off here, Josh, and maybe even just to continue on your story and relate to it a little bit here, before we even, you know, go into the, you know, what's an operating system and what's 6 Levers. Just totally relate to that feeling of like your, what I, it's this picture of, you know, as a leader in how it's, you know, things aren't going well in your organization and it's infiltrated in like every aspect of your life now, right?
Like it's at home, it’s in your relationships, your family, your sleep patterns, like it's just gotten, it's just pervasive and has taken over [00:11:15] all aspects of your life and I have certainly felt like that as a leader in organization, both as a nonprofit leader and as an entrepreneur. and you know what it felt like is when I felt that many issues and problems as you just described them, right?
Like, there's all these things. there's team issues, there's lack of focus. In some areas there's complexity that feels like we can't get our arms around it. It's just difficult to know, like, what do I do to get past and improve this, this way of, I'm living and operating as a leader in my organization and many of the tools that we go to, they can provide like temporary relief.
They can be like, I can go to this seminar with my team or this workshop, or maybe if we read this book [00:12:00] together or if we have this speaker come in and those are good things, like, and they give some momentary relief, but then you're sort of like back, you know, a few weeks later, a month later to that feeling that Josh just describes like, you're back up late at night, you're back with your spouse looking at you like, When is this gonna change?
And I think out of that feeling and that frustration of how do we change this in a more permanent way and build sustainable organizational health was a – that story I love cuz it's really teeing up the motivation for why we developed the 6 Levers framework. So, maybe even before we, I say anything more and, Joe, I don't know if you want to jump in and maybe kind of [00:12:45] jump off that –
Joe: Yeah.
Shaun: – and help explain what an operating system is, maybe.
Joe: Yeah. I think what comes to mind for me is, you know, just this, when it comes to the what and the why, they're so interrelated, right? The what behind 6 Levers is it's a, an organizational framework or what we refer to as an Organizational Operating System, that helps your team operate with more intentionality and using a systematic framework. And the reason why has everything to do with what you've heard so far, right? This desire to build healthy teams, build healthy organizations, and it's oftentimes always connected back to these grand missions that the leaders of those organizations are going after, right? We've [00:13:30] got these big ambitious missions.
Joe: We want to do things to help our communities and build strong organizations, and it's just really difficult. Right? And oftentimes, the, you know, people are left to bear the burden of that challenge, whether it's ourselves, our teams, or our families and so we've just, you know, in our experience, leading organizations but also, you know, working with organizations have spent a lot of time thinking about the better way to run an organization, one that really focuses on building healthy systems that, that people can really thrive with it.
Shaun: Yeah, maybe one just thing to add here, sorry Josh, I know you're about to [00:14:15] jump in, but this idea of of, people being left to bear the burden, like you got that picture, which I'm sure is relatable to Josh at home, like making that mistake that normally he wouldn't make, obviously because of all the complexities and pressures, you know, he was left to bear the burden, right?
So all of it fell on him as the leader and, you know, what that feels like is you've gotta be a superhero when you show up and that's possible for a day or a week, or maybe even a quarter if you're an extraordinary superhero, but, you know, if we build the right framework in how we operate and the right systems and expectations around what it [00:15:00] means to show up well and be a leader and build strong teams and healthy culture, and everyone is committed to that and we're working on it, then all of a sudden, that pressure, that feels like you've gotta be a superhero every day, it's just over time, it's less and less the case and it becomes more about strengthening the framework and the way of working with each other. And that was sort of our dream. Like that was the dream to say, We don't want people to feel like they have to act like superheroes when they come into work every day.
We want them to feel like they can operate within healthy ways of working framework, systems, tools, and if everyone's committed to strengthening. It starts to feel less and less of a lift when they show up to work every day, it becomes more possible and everyone's committed to achieving [00:15:45] that.
Josh: That's great. Cool. Well talk me through each of the levers, right? So this is the first time somebody's ever heard of the 6 Levers framework. They're compelled that it can bring systematic health to their organization. Talk me through each of the levers and, yeah, if there's any stories associated with them. Joe, you wanna kick us off?
Joe: Yeah, I think, I think the place to start with the 6 Levers is that they were developed after working with hundreds of organizations where we identified six sort of common areas where they struggle, right? And so the 6 Levers, are Identity, Focus, Cohesion, Leadership, [00:16:30] Rhythm, and Momentum, and one way we help teams understand what the 6 Levers are, are by considering these two different frames or two different ways to think about what each lever is. And the first is that it's an indicator of team health.
So if we think about, you know, the goal here is to really drive organizational health and improve the overall health of our team. We point to each of the 6 Levers and say, That is a core indicator of your team’s health. Things like focus and leadership, how strong are those within your organization? And the stronger they are, the healthier your team.
But the other frame is that each lever serves as sort of [00:17:15] an actionable tool or a lever that you can pull on to improve health in that specific area. So again, you're reflecting on the overall health of your team and you're considering maybe organizational identity. How clear is our purpose, and the reasons why we exist in that identity lever, lies a handful of tools and practices that teams can pull on to implement and improve their overall identity.
So, you know, just thinking about each lever in those two ways we find is a really helpful way to get people started and acclimated to the framework.
Shaun: Yeah, and maybe just going into identity a little bit more and we can jump right in and out of these different levers here. You know, before we developed the [00:18:00] framework, we were doing a lot of strategic planning work and, and we still largely respond to that, like people say, I need a strategic plan, and we use that as the opening to say, Let us tell you about the 6 Levers framework, right? And largely out of a belief that, you know, any vision and plan needs to be situated and live within an operating system for it to be successfully implemented. That's why we do that and that's, we have a deep belief in conviction about that.
But the reason I, you know, the identity lever is probably the first one that we started to develop out and it was largely because we were doing strategic planning. We were working with teams to define where they wanted to be in three-to-five years, and we realized that were the teams that had real clarity of identity, their deep [00:18:45] purpose, their underlying beliefs that were even there before their mission, those deep shared convictions, their values, the behaviors, the way they wanted to interact with each other.
And when they thought about what it felt like and imagine what, you know, what were the characteristics of great teammates, the measurable impact they had – we call those “vitals” – they actually had some, they had some idea of what it meant to measure their mission and to measure sustainability and health.
Those teams were much more aligned in where they wanted to be. They're sort of out of this clarity of identity, you know, how do we want to advance our mission and these other elements of our identity over the next three-to-five years, versus the teams that weren't as clear. Maybe they had a mission statement and that was it. [00:19:30]
It's sort of like we can do anything under the sun, like we can – in our broad understanding of our mission. There's so many different things we could do and it became – it was more difficult to get to an aligning perspective on where they wanted to be in three-to-five years. So we saw very early the importance of just extreme clarity of identity and taking the time to slow down and align on these things, before teams get in division. And certainly, you know, as we get into other levers this will probably come up again, but as we think about cohesion and leadership, all that being anchored to the most important identity of the organization is really important.
Josh: Yeah, I think the – I know we could probably talk on each lever for, I'm sure we will, [00:20:15] 45 minutes to an hour all the time, but talk to me about some of the tie-ins. So you work with an organization from an identity standpoint. You touched on the word. Talk to me a little bit about focus and going a bit deeper in terms of how you're starting to translate and let that identity permeate through all the different activities that could go on within an organization, but what should go on.
Joe: Yeah. Well, so we connect vision to – or an organization's identity pretty carefully because ultimately your vision should really be a reflection of why you exist and where you want to go and, you know, if we kind of continue down this chronological journey that we've been on, you know, [00:21:00] focused the next place that we've spent a lot of times with teams, and we think about vision as sort of your three-to-five year focus, what do you wanna place emphasis and resources on over the course of the next three-to-five years? That's really, that's the vision of your organization but the focus lever is also all about creating focus, across your teams and across the different horizons. So not only is it where do we want to be in three-to-five years, but what is the focus or set of goals for our team at a one-year level, at a 90-day level, and are we bringing that level of clarity to all of the teams inside of our organization? It's really the focus [00:21:45] lever that helps you to make sure your identity is being brought down to the earth and we're bringing focus to what we wanna accomplish in the near term as well as at the one and three-year levels.
Shaun: Yeah. This is the lever that I think we see almost universally, like, it seems like almost every organization, when they get a little bit of understanding of what this is, you know, bringing focus to those different time horizons that Joe just mentioned and selecting a handful of priorities to focus on, you know, over that period of time where most feel like, Gosh, we need this. Like, we're so unfocused. Like we come into work and it feels like there's, you know, 40 different priorities to focus on, or the [00:22:30] team's not aligned.
Like individuals have their own priorities, but the team doesn't have priorities. So I think more than any other one, we feel we hear of teams reflect this is the one that we really need to work on as a team, so, yeah, I think to Joe's point, it's the intersection of, we, you know, we often start with helping teams to think about it from the three-year, three-to-five year vision. Just getting near, more near and near term to today to help them bring focus to all the complexity and everything that they could face.
Josh: Great.
Shaun: It's also – one other thing I'll say here is that it often helps to resolve the tension. Like the team dynamic where you have like the [00:23:15] folks that are more dreaming and innovating and the other side of the personality or communication style that's more around operations and execution.
It's such a helpful framework for like those different types of thinking and for people to say, But these are the priorities we're aligned, right? If we go pursue that new particular thing over here that you're excited about, what might that cost us for the things that we've said that we're going to focus on for whatever this period of time is?
So even just from the power of common language and tools where you, we all work differently, you know, we all have our naturally gifted and strengths. It's so helpful to take the diversity of different ways of working and put tools like this in place, to really just kind of take the emotion out of a lot of things and [00:24:00] say, this is the way that we're gonna set priorities. This is the way we're gonna make progress, towards pursuing them and understanding that if we want to try new things, we can do that, but we have to do it in sort of the very conscious mindedness of what we may not do or what it may cost, something that we've agreed to do from a prioritization perspective.
Josh: Hmm. So we touched on identity and focus. Take me through another one. Cohesion, leadership, rhythm, momentum…Where would you take us from here?
Joe: Well, the natural one to come after focus is rhythm. Think about these as sort of like peanut butter and jelly, because they're better together, right? So, you know, at the end of the day, you can have as much clarity in [00:24:45] where you want to be in 90 days to a year, but if you don't have the operating rhythm in place to monitor – how are we doing in a formal, meaningful way if you don't have the operating rhythm in place to formally review that focus at the end of its horizon and say, Here's how we did, here's what we learned, here's what we achieved. Create that opportunity to celebrate success.
Your focus will fall off, right? Even the best goals will lose steam if you don't have that rhythm to support it and so the rhythm lever is all – ensuring that activities like that, we kind of consider these activities, these essential strategic activities, [00:25:30] it ensures that those are not left to chance.
You know, if we think about, you know, we pull in the 80-20 principle a lot with the rhythm lever and just, you know, call out the fact that certain activities are just more important than others and does your organization know what those are? Have you identified them and then once you've identified them, have you made them habit?
And so the rhythm level is really designed around making habit of those incredibly important activities and they're so closely connected with, with the focus lever.
Josh: Yeah. My son would disagree with you on peanut butter and jelly being like a focusing rhythm. He's a peanut butter and honey kind of guy.
Joe: Okay. Good point. He’s [00:26:15] all peanut butter. He's all peanut butter, he didn't want anything to do with that. We need a new, we need a better one. Something that's always better together.
Josh: Like – Yeah. I was gonna say too, when we're talking about rhythm and focus, one of the things that I always find fascinating is, you know, anytime we're working with an organization at Mission Matters Group, whether it's strategic planning or a technology implementation, one thing we're always asking is, you know, is there an existing strategic plan that we should be aware of?
And after that, whether they say yes or no, then the question typically is, How frequently are you monitoring this? And 9 times outta 10, it's like, Oh, well, we'll do an update, you know, at the end of the year [00:27:00] or before our next board meeting. So there's sometimes a cadence, there's sometimes a rhythm, but that rhythm is actually ineffective for how important that overall initiative is, to your point, Joe.
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Josh: So I always find that fascinating where like we can – right, there's heart rhythms and sometimes those heart rhythms are out of balance and we need a little shock to get it back into an appropriate rhythm. So, it's really helpful to unpack that just a little, just real quickly.
Joe: You know, there's so, so many of us associate meetings with being ineffective or, you know, unnecessary and at the end of the day, rhythms harness the power of a synchronous meeting where we bring people together. [00:27:45] But because we have such a bad taste in our mouth about meetings, we're almost, we almost just – we don't have 'em, right? We just kind of push 'em out and at the end of the day, that missed opportunity to monitor and review a strategic plan, a set of annual goals, right, is huge. Right?
And so the rhythm lever, a huge part of it is helping teams to design meetings that actually work, that are efficient, that actually feel like they were meaningful and impactful. And so it sort of, it reframes for teams that, you know, in order for us to, to not leave some of these opportunities and these activities subject to chance, we need to rethink how we think about meetings and [00:28:30] make sure that every time we stand one up, that it's been designed with some real clear intention and purpose and structure.
Shaun: I think along those lines, just to double-click on this one point here, you’re making here, Joe, is what I'm hearing you say is defining the objective of that recurring meeting rhythm, and something – it seems like a pretty simple, like a simple concept and idea, right? Most of the time we don't do this.
Like we don't, we've got this recurring meeting that we're all gathering together for, and if you were to go around the table and say, What's the, or the virtual rooms, What's the objective of us doing this every Tuesday at two o'clock? you'd probably hear very different things. So – but starting there, right? Aligning on what that [00:29:15] is then allows the meeting design aspect of it that Joe was just talking about.
Now you can do that all to serve the objective, right? It's, we've aligned on what it is. The – all, not all meetings should be designed the same way. They should all be designed to achieve the objective and, yeah.
The rhythms are, although they're not just about meetings, they are certainly, we spend a lot of times talking about meetings and running effective meetings and just kind of like flipping the script on the way people tend to think about them as being life draining and actually being able to be energizing and, and, and helping you to advance your most important strategic priorities.
Josh: Yeah, playing off both of that, both of you, where in the last like five [00:30:00] minutes I was jotting down how many times I heard design or intentionally, and you can tell that, you know, with a framework like this, the goal is not to say, Okay, plug and play. This is what you got. It's this, it's intended to be tweaked to have different thresholds of each lever that are unique to your organization so that you as a leader, as a team leader, can intentionally design the different components of your overall organization.
All right, so we've touched on a few. We have three more levers. We got cohesion, momentum, and leadership. Which one do you wanna go to next?
Shaun: Yeah, maybe we can go into cohesion here and, by the way, hope you, one of the things y'all are noticing here is that we're kind of like, Yeah, maybe we can go over here, we can go over here...[00:30:45]
The framework is not a linear process. It's meant to be modular and applied to the unique needs of an organization and there's kind of, you can start in any place. So if you're wondering, you know, why we're kind of meandering around the levers here cuz that's really how it works and they're meant to be responsive and attentive to the needs that teams have.
So with that said, cohesion. Yeah. Cohesion is really all about the power of strong teams and the systems and the practices that they commit to, to get stronger and stronger. And really out of a belief that we have that at the heart of healthy culture, our teams that are working well together, that trust each other, that are high performing, that are committed to those two things, that they're committed to how do we create environments of psychological safety.[00:31:30]
How do we practice things like vulnerability with each other and how do we, how are we committed to self-awareness, so that we – cuz we know that that ultimately makes us better teammates, so the people that we work with, day in and day out. So – but it's also things like, you know, setting common goals together as a team and just out of an acknowledgement that that level of clarity and structure and, performance goals, team – people love that and want that and crave that.
And I think the thing that we've realized in this is that you know, you can, or one of the things we've realized is that you can have clarity of vision as an organization. You can even have some clarity of identity. But when teams aren't committed to becoming increasingly [00:32:15] stronger, it's really hard to make progress towards achieving the vision of the organization.
I mean, the last thing I'll say, and just leave it up to the other guys here to share a bit is as a leader, this is the lever where you probably get sucked into the most when you don't want to spend your time like dealing with, This is where interpersonal issues live. So this is when you're not tending to this, when you're not intentionally trying to strengthen teams.
This is that reality of you continually not getting to your most important items in your to-do list because you continue to get called into major people issues because of relational problems and things that they’re working on. So, we often consider – we wheelers a few times. This is maybe one of the super levers in the framework in that it's so important [00:33:00] because it operates as an incredible catalyst.
It can also be so draining and pull you down, as a leader and a team, when, when this isn't going well.
Joe: Yeah, maybe to keep things going here, to build off of that and bring in the other lever that is very closely tied to people is the leadership lever. And this is, you know, the lever that is really grounded in a belief that everyone within an organization is capable of demonstrating great leadership in that we must not think about leadership as a role or title, but as a quality that when we all bring it to the table, it can make all the difference. We [00:33:45] refer to this as the super lever, you know, as, the thing that any organization, if they really seek to develop within, people can become their organizational superpower and, you know, it's about, it's all about how we show up, at the individual level.
And so the leadership lever is defined by first a set of what we call Essential Leader Practices. Things like vulnerability, self-awareness, curiosity. These qualities that we just know are really foundational to how we want people to show up. And so the lever's all about how do you systematically [00:34:30] develop that inside your organization and then harness it and just call it out, develop a common language around it.
Teams oftentimes want to see more of it, but don't know how to put their finger on, you know, what it is that they wanna see more of or how to build it out, right? We all, we want, we all wanna have a team of leaders, right? We know that makes all the difference when we've got just a, you know, a team of leaders and so this one's all about really recognizing the impact when that's true, and working to build it intentionally within your organization.
Shaun: One thing I was gonna say here is, [00:35:15] this feels like a good point to maybe explore some of at least one interconnected piece or connection point between a couple levers and it's, we’re talking about rhythms and the power of these, these important recurring meeting times. And one of 'em is what we call the quarterly sync, where we look back at the priorities we had for the previous quarter and how did we do, and then we also just have kind of an open conversation, encourage teams to do this on how they did working with each other, right?
What went well, what could have gone better, what are things we're gonna focus on in the next quarter. It's really critical for teams to bring, for individual leaders to bring a curious mindset, just as an example, to those rhythms, right? So it's not, we think about these things [00:36:00] sometimes and we tend to isolate them or, or segment them, but the real power of the framework is when things start to stack on one another and you start to see how they're interconnected and how, if I'm committed to growing and my own isn't just for myself. If I just start with, I want to become a more self-aware leader, I want to become a more curious leader, then all of a sudden I'm bringing that to the quarterly sink, this powerful rhythm,
And that's generating some incredible learning for the organization, right? For, for our team and related to that, like what we hope you begin to hear here is that the framework is not just these like hard, rigid structures. It's not just about goal setting and three-year goals and priorities and [00:36:45] measurable metrics and these things.
That's certainly a part of it, but we don't believe that any – you're not gonna make progress on any of that stuff, we don't believe, unless you're committed to your own leadership development and you're also committed to strengthening teams and building more cohesive teams. It's the two of these things together, which really is where we start to see the sustained organizational health.
Josh: Before we move into the last lever, maybe a question before. It, you know, we talk a lot about having this being a people-centered framework. Can we touch on that just a little bit more? I think it's exactly what you just hit on, Shaun, but expand it a little bit. Why do we call it a “people-centered framework”, and how does that actually take us into the final lever of momentum?[00:37:30]
Shaun: Well, I'll start here. I think one of the reasons we call it a people-centered framework is because there's a, just going deeper into the design component that we've been talking about, it's not a paint-by-numbers model, right? It's not a run-the-play model. There are certain aspects of it where we can certainly offer some strong guidance on processes to follow, to strengthen identity, to, you know, to establish your three-year vision and there certainly is clear guidance there, but it's people-centric in that we expect both the leaders in an organization we refer to as the key person who's helping to implement the framework.
We refer to that person as a “navigator”. Whether it's that person or whether it's a consultant that you've hired to work with, that they are discerning [00:38:15] and listening and learning about the organization and then the framework and all the resources and tools that are there to solve the issues and problems the organization's having. And they're very thoughtfully applying them in a way that they think is going to, to fit both culturally and contextually, but also from kind of a prioritization perspective to solve what feels like the most pressing aspects that need to be prioritized first, second, third.
So the person is at the center of that, making those decisions and calls as opposed to just saying, Here's the framework, let me just put it in the organization. Organization, you just have to run this play. Right? We don't, we've seen all too often that when that happens, it can feel like for [00:39:00] very mission-driven organizations that can feel like a dilution of mission. Like it's, that's happening at the cost of the mission and so to solve for that, we empower people to match the tools and resources to the environment needs of the organization.
Joe: Yeah. In our navigator sprint, which is one of our training programs that we run, we kick off that sprint by hitting on this very point around, Shaun, one of the things you're talking about here is change, right? And how do we create change within organizations and we know that a requirement of change. The desire, the motivation to wanna make that change and that is driven by people both discerning, you know, what we might [00:39:45] want to change as leaders, but also what does our team wanna change? Where are we motivated? Where are we invested?
If we're not keeping that front and center, the change will, you know, at best, show up for a while and then fall off and so, you know, it's in the design of the framework, that we think about the people dynamic and ensure that people are front and center, you know, in terms of how we think about implementing and adopting the different levers but also, as you heard in cohesion and in leadership, they represent a huge part of, you know, two of the levers as well.
Shaun: That's great. Joe. The thing to maybe add here is if we even go back to the story [00:40:30] at the beginning that Josh shared, ultimately, at the end of the day, this all – the whole framework is intended to serve Josh having a better life. If it were, if we would've encountered Josh back then, right? Or our old selves back then, right?
We would've – It's intended to say life feels more manageable. I can connect with the people in my life in a more meaningful way cuz I'm not so distracted and overwhelmed by everything I'm facing in my work, right? There's space in all the craziness and insanity for me to focus on work that matters for me to focus on connecting with people, right? So all this to say is that all the tools and resources are intended to serve that. Intended to serve, opening up space, space to connect, space to [00:41:15] pursue the things that matter most, right?
It's all in service of purpose and ultimately, you know, maybe it sounds really aspirational, but living the type of life they want to live both at work and then as you heard from the example in the beginning, how that impacts our home. So that's why we say like, people are at the center cuz it's kind of our north star right, to say that we don't wanna do anything that starts to feel otherwise. We don't want, if we were working with a client and they were to say, Gosh, this feels like a lot of rigid structures and systems, we would say, We're not doing something right here. We – they shouldn't feel that way. Ty should feel like all of this is intended of serving something that has a much higher purpose than just, you know, some operational excellence framework.
Joe: Mm-hmm. [00:42:00]
Josh: All right. Bring us home with the last lever – Momentum.
Joe: Yeah, the momentum lever, one of my favorites. The momentum lever has been as much medicine and guidance for me as a leader as anything, but the momentum lever, it works to counteract these sort of forces that exist in the world related to running great organizations and it's, you know, we've more information than we've ever had before. Our work is as complex as it's ever been before. We've been told forever strive for perfection, strive for excellence, operational excellence is North Star, right?
And for those,if you start to think about all those [00:42:45] things, what they do is they slow teams, right? They, there's this, this tagline – “analysis paralysis” – that we constantly encounter with teams where they're not entirely sure how to move forward, you know, what should they focus on? And the momentum lever is all about creating progress in a real, intentional, consistent way and that's because we know that progress does many powerful things. It engages us as humans, right? When we see progress around meaningful things, we get – we're energized, we feel motivated.
But progress is also, you know, what we're striving for ultimately, right? It's – we really believe in the power of [00:43:30] incremental progress, and that's the journey to drive in the results that you want within your mission. And so the momentum lever is all about that and so it's really flanked by a set of mantras. Things like “progress over perfection”, one we've heard many times. A more, maybe, contradictory one – “Action, even over analysis.”
Wait, hold on. Can you, can you say that in the business world, in the nonprofit world, right? Like you say, “Action, even over analysis”, right? That gets heads turning. But that conversation around why that is one of the momentum mantras is a super powerful one to have with teams, and so the momentum lever, you know, it pushes us to think about, [00:44:15] you know, progress, continuous improvement, how do we build cultures of feedback when feedback can be difficult, and ultimately is really the engine that keeps things moving forward on a regular basis.
Shaun: Okay. Yeah, this one to me, I mean, it feels like I don't wanna say it's a purely entrepreneurial way of thinking, but I – for, in many ways it is, right? It is a way of getting an early draft of something out there, getting a prototype out there and learning from it, and Joe mentioned this.
We learned by the doing and really embracing that idea. I think where we see this often, kind of show up in the work of, as we're developing vision or even like clarifying identity, [00:45:00] we have a tool that we use called the Compass, where we bring all that together is sometimes teams will think like we, there'd be a little bit of fear of getting it out in the world, and they'll think, If we just could have one more round of revision on this, right?
And what we've seen is the longer and longer they take to design these things, they lose momentum, right? The excitement they had around their new vision, their clarified identity starts to dissipate and so we see that more quickly. They can just get into pursuing that vision and get bouncing this clarified identity off their team, they can adjust it, right?
We can, we can always adjust these things as we give feedback and we learn in, in our, in the real world and in life. So, but there's so much more learning and doing, and this [00:45:45] can be a shift, this can be a seismic shift for some people.
Other people will hear this and be like, Oh, thank God. Like I wanted to do this my whole life and someone's giving me permission to do this. So it depends on, you know, where you are from, just kind of your natural disposition, but it's very much about kind of just being willing to move forward and it's not saying like, to just the analysis piece, it's almost like you're just kind of shifting when the analysis happens, right?
You're not, you're not saying, It's okay with us not analyzing a thousand things on the front end before we do it, because we're committed to continue to analyze and learn. We trust that we're gonna get better and better along the way as, and that's how we make momentum as a team and as an organization.
Josh: That's great. I mean, right? That's a perfect tie-in too for, Okay, that's where [00:46:30] rhythms come in, right? Because if we're talking about constantly reviewing and iterating, we need to have a rhythm for constantly reviewing and iterating the things that we say we're going to, so. Again, just tying in that modularity of the overall framework is really impactful.
So one thing that the two of you talk about a lot, just in terms of the overall, goal of the 6 Levers framework, we talk about enduring organizational health for every team who seeks it, right? If we use that, if we have a bunch of listeners who are seeking it, what advice would you give? What would you have them say, Hey, if you are in shambles, what's the next thing that you would tell a leader, a team leader, a member of a team to try next?
Joe: I [00:47:15] think it starts with a mindset. You know, I'd start by saying it's, you know, kind of work to just reinstill that hope. We've all been there where we felt like it was more possible than, you know, than at times where we felt like it, it maybe wasn't and so we've seen firsthand what teams can do when they commit to it, and I think that's the second piece, is giving leaders and teams permission to focus on. This work, right? Focus on the business and not just in the business. This is oftentimes something that is, you know, limited to the annual retreat or the one season where we get some feedback to, to work on part of our operating system, right?
This is something that leaders [00:48:00] need to feel that they have permission to work on this on a regular basis and to really carve out the space to take this continuous improvement approach to it and methodically, week over week, month over month, work on it. Right?
And the nice thing is the 6 Levers framework is a framework that you can go to and pick out things that resonate with you.
Right now, we've mentioned a few times already that it's modular, right? You can start anywhere. but it does provide this great roadmap as to where you start to become more and more intentional with your organizational operating system.
Josh: Shaun, how about you?
Shaun: Yeah, I'd say, you know, to think – love all that Joe said there –but think [00:48:45] about the, like, how do you make momentum? And part of momentum is like the increasing the belief and what's possible among the team around you, right? So you're trying to like think about what can I do right now to get me on the road to enduring health, knowing that that's gonna take a while, right? To be in a place where you are now, to be that transformed organization is gonna take a lot of time and commitment.
But what do we do to increase the belief that that's possible? Because often time you're, what you're facing is a lot of headwinds and resistance and people saying, If I don't start seeing something change, I don't know if I'm with you in this whole idea, right? So think about the intersection of what could be easy to do, but also have a high impact or may be easier. But also have an eye-hand –
What are a couple things you could do? Thinking about the [00:49:30] whole framework, you know, with setting a handful of priorities in the quarter where our team for the first time and as long as you can remember, had a handful of things to focus on. Would that be the thing that would start to increase the belief that enduring health is possible?
Would focusing on maybe team building, right? And working on a tool that helps you to understand each other's strengths and communication styles, would that get you on the road? Having to be a more trusting team, right, would it be clarifying your identity in the process of doing that together? Would that start to do it, right?
Think about what your areas of greatest needs are, and again, what could get you to building belief to what Josh said about this idea of enduring health because we know it's possible. We've seen it, we've seen organizations transform, but it [00:50:15] often takes these leaders that are in teams that are committed to, It's gonna take some time. It's not gonna happen overnight. But you do want to help your team see some momentum so that they believe it's possible.
Josh: That's great. Do you have anything before we close out?
Joe: This was fun. Let's do more of these.
Josh: Yeah, we could, we could talk about 6 Levers if you want.
Joe: Cool.
Josh: All right, well if you are ready to get on the road to building organizational health, check out 6Levers.co.
And if you're ready to take some action, check out our Navigator Sprint. That should be starting pretty soon.
All right, thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you soon.
Joe: See ya.
Shaun: See ya.
