6 Levers (Ep. 4)
Shaun: [00:00:00] I think what has happened is the whiter my beard gets the shorter I need to keep it. I realized like it looks long really quick with as white as it has become.
Joe: That's great. That may be true cuz it does seem longer than normal.
Shaun: Yeah. So I could just do what y'all do, the clean – y'all clean shave and just have a five o'clock shadow. Is that – ?
Joe: Man…
Josh: I just use, like a hair trimmer.
Joe: I've been clean shaven for almost since I started at MMG, like every other day –
Shaun: Oh, really?
Joe: Yeah.
Shaun: You have like, a nice beard too.
Joe: This is the [00:00:45] third day, third day scenario here. Lazy. This morning.
Josh: My dad started growing facial hair maybe a year ago or so – not even – and he has like, kind of like, you know, like a mustache and like more of a full beard. And anyways, it's pretty much all gray and for some reason, as soon as my dad started growing, like the full facial hair, my kids affirmed – everybody calls him Papa, but now they call him Old Papa, and so they, whenever they asked to talk to my dad, they're like, Lemme talk to Old Papa, and I tell my dad that. He's like, Are you kidding me? This is brutal. So anyways, careful Shaun, your, your kids are gonna call you [00:01:30] Old Daddy.
Shaun: I know. Well, yeah. I think they already think I’m pretty old, so.
Joe: Ahh, that's great.
Josh: All right, well, shall we dive in?
Joe: Let's do it.
Josh: So the topic for today is really all about focus, and I'm just gonna recap the levers of the 6 Levers framework and kind of zero us in on the key topic for today.
So we have identity, focus, cohesion, leadership, rhythm and momentum, and so all these levers together, pulling them at different increments, it helps us bring overall organizational health. The one that we're zeroing in today is really focus.
So I'd love to kind of kick it over to Joe or Shaun, just if you could [00:02:15] define focus. Why is it important? What does it mean for an organization?
Joe: Yeah, Josh, maybe I start with a little story – I love grounding these levers in success stories. I think oftentimes we actually like go to the non-examples and think about all the moments where the lever wasn't true, but one of the like, the time, maybe the first time where I saw the focused lever at its finest and in a really, in a place of strength was back when I was an aspiring school principal.
So for the decade before MMG, I was a [00:03:00] teacher and a principal and was part of a network of schools that had just some great leadership development opportunities. And so I got a chance to be a part of a fellowship where we got to go on a handful of “excellent school visits”, were what we called them.
And I'll never forget going on one visit where I was with a handful of other leaders and got to go on a tour of the school by the principal, and the principal started off sharing, you know, context about the school's story and why it existed. All super inspiring information and, you know, got us excited about what we were about to see and just got us, [00:03:45] you know, interested in the school. But it was the way he described the school's focus for the year that left this like, lasting impression and I, it may have been because it was so unexpected, you know?
As we're going on this visit, going through classrooms, he sort of transitions from talking about story and mission to, And so our focus for the year is, and then he rattles off these sort of three super meaningful and yet succinct focus areas for the year, and sort of stopped me in my tracks cuz I thought like, I've never heard anything like this. Like you can, you don't have to focus on all of the subjects in every [00:04:30] grade, every quarter, you know, and parents and families and all of these other things.
And so it just left me feeling a little jealous because that was not my experience at the school I was at the time, or any school that I had been at prior to, but yeah, inspired about the idea that focus can have this impact even on people who aren't a part of the organization, that makes it feel like, We can do this. Right? It almost – it provides some clarity, some hope, and ultimately some focus on what you're trying to achieve, and prioritize in a given time.
So, you know, I think over the years of, we've worked with [00:05:15] so many different organizations, and far too often the opposite is actually true, right? Leaders stumble through describing that focus and so that story at that school, in Philadelphia just will always rest with me and serves a lot of times as sort of the foundation for how we think about what it can feel like to have a high level of focus inside your team.
Shaun: Hey Joe, I love that story cuz I think, you know, like you mentioned, we've – I think our experience, and really the reason that we included focus as one of the 6 Levers is because it just so often doesn't, what you just described, just is so often not the case, [00:06:00] right?. When you ask leaders like, Hey, what's your focus for the year, or in general, just like, What's your focus? Like that, like you said, there's a real struggle to really isolate to the handful of things, goals, targets that really matter and I think, you know, it's interesting to kind of talk this out maybe in a different way – Well, why is that?
And especially in like, the mission driven for the mission driven leader and I think – I wonder if it's because we're so committed to doing this, such important work that we often, like, don't let ourselves say no to things, right? Like if I say, but, But it's so important. I'm like, that thing is gonna potentially have this impact if I say no to it. Am I not as committed to the work or the mission by saying no to it?
Joe: Right.
Shaun: And [00:06:45] so you know, what we've seen however, is though like the actual, the inverse from an achievement perspective actually takes place when you say no to more things. So it's like this very strange relationship where we're unwilling to say no, because we think we're not gonna achieve something, and yet when we do say no, and we do bring a handful of things into focus, we end up achieving greater results and we end up achieving greater collaboration as a team because we know the things that we need to work on together.
Joe: Yeah. It reminds me of just like the, you know, because everything matters, nothing actually matters, right? It's like we focus on too many things and as a result we can't focus on really anything at all and so [00:07:30] just that – yeah, that I think that what's also lost on leaders is just the impact that creating focus has on your team, right? Like, let's just forget about Mission for a moment. We are all here for that reason, right?
That's why we're all here and so that's an assumption that we can hold strong while we go through the process of saying, And now what are we gonna actually bring focus to for the year? and when we get to that place of meaning, we haven't lost sight of the mission in all the work that we wanna do, we've just said, For this horizon or this time period, here's what we're gonna place [00:08:15] focused energy on, and really try to grow and make progress around.
Josh: Yeah, a couple things stand out. Joe, when you said you were jealous of it, it like struck a chord because when you see focus and the discipline to go after that focus, you want it, right? Like, the thing that came to mind is I got to play soccer with Tim Ream, who was on the national team for the World Cup, and the dude was so focused on like, you know, he knew what he was gonna do.
He was the most disciplined about recovery, about preparation, about practicing outside, and he played on the World Cup national team, right? And that's, I think, a really cool thing but I [00:09:00] always like, admired his discipline and focus around soccer. You know, I was in college and I had a lot of fun, but I didn't focus on soccer as much. I didn't focus on school as much either but, it was a great experience. But, it is amazing when you see that focus, you're, you're just like, Wow, that sticks with you and it doesn't, leave very quickly.
Joe: Yeah. When just hearing you say that, it makes me think about when, when those moments happen. I think a lot of times we create these excuses in our head about why they have focus, but we don't. Right? Their situation’s different. They don't have as much to worry about. They don't have the turnover we have or, you know, these [00:09:45] emergency issues going on.
What was so powerful for me was I was literally sitting in a 5-8 middle school, which was also the place that was also my work setting, serving a similar number of students, right, in a similar context. And so the context was, I for, you know, all intents and purposes was identical and so there was no excuse for me to say, Well, but their situation is different, right? They had just decided we are gonna have focus inside of our culture and we believe in the power of that.
So it's possible, you just gotta commit to it.
Josh: So [00:10:30] commitment’s one piece, but what are other contributing factors for organizations not creating focus? Like what, you know, if you had to boil it down to the top two or three reasons why an organization doesn't actually create a focus that they stick to, that they align their organization around, what are some of those things that manifest themselves in mission-driven organizations?
Shaun: Yeah, I can start here. I think one of them is a lack of clarity in what their identity is and so, you know, and when we say identity in the framework, it's, you know, pretty broad context, right? It means more than just mission values, but there's all these other components tied to it and when teams have done the work to align on what those key things are, then they can [00:11:15] tether to those things with their focus, right?
They can, like, if this is true about the unique way we accomplish our mission, if these, if we've agreed to these vitals, like the way we measure success and sustainability and achieving our mission in a measurable way, now we're looking to whatever the next period of time is that we're entering into the next three-years, the next one year, and we're asking ourselves like, If this identity truly is, then it is, right?
This is who we are, this is what we've said matters, is the foundation of why we are here, what do we want to do to move that forward to honor. That unique way of accomplishing our mission and moving those key measurables forward. Like what are the things we're gonna do in the [00:12:00] next year or three-years, whatever it might be.
In a world where that's not as clear, an organization just has a mission, maybe a handful of values. They're sort of like, so, you know, it's like you do whatever, like you do anything related to like, let's say whatever social impact area it is that you're focusing on until you've taken the time to like really get clear on that unique part of the way that you have an impact.
There's so much that is at your fingertips to go achieve and so I think what we see a lot of times is, even when they do pick – organizations do pick things to focus on. They can quickly move to something else because they're not quite sure what they should be tethering it to.
Joe: Yeah, I think that's a great one, Shaun. I think that the two others that come to mind for me are, [00:12:45] one, it's hard. This is not an easy thing to do to actually define – meaningful and measurable goals – and have the courage to stand behind them and commit to 'em, because when you do that, you inherently deprioritize other things which people may not agree with and generally speaking, you just may be you and your team. Hopefully you're setting these with your team.
You may in the end feel like it was the wrong focus and so I'd say, it's difficult and it takes practice and I think when you, when we really get into the process with teams, they start to feel that and so helping teams to [00:13:30] understand that that's normal, that it takes practice, and that if you've gone through cycles of it, you start to build some muscle memory around how to do it well, how to, you know, bring in lessons learned from the previous time you did it and you start to realize, when things change throughout the course of the year and when you're monitoring your goals with discipline, it's okay to make meaningful revisions to them and communicate that back out to your team. Right?
So the goal is not to create perfect focus or perfect goals, it's to create goals that are going to bring focus and be meaningful, and know that, that they can adjust. I think the other thing too is that we've, [00:14:15] we have a lot of bad experiences around goal-setting, meaning we've been in processes where we've set goals and then never came back to monitor them.
We've been in processes where we've set goals, we've monitored them for a quarter, but by the end of the year we forgot what they were, and so just put yourself in the shoes of that team the next year when it's annual goal-setting time. You're like, Why? We don't monitor these, they don't end up having the impact that we want them to, which is to keep the team focused and driving towards, you know, some common goals.
So we have these, some of these bad experiences, from the past that we're not exactly sure how [00:15:00] to overcome them, and so we sort of turn our head away from it a little bit and think that's just, that's not a part of our operating routine.
Josh: Hmm. That's good. Personal experiences are coming to mind when you said that, Joe. So we leveraged a goal-setting framework called Objectives and Key Results, and we rolled it out within Mission Matters Group – I think early 2018 – we needed to create some focus. We had some hiccups throughout 2017 and the first year we set them, we set some really ambitious key results. That we're not like, methodically determined, they [00:15:45] were like pie-in-the-sky and optimistic, but not realistic whatsoever and I think when we shared it from a leadership team perspective, everyone's just like, Well, this is not realistic, and so it demotivated the organization.
And so I spent the next three-years or two years, and really until Joe and Shaun helped codify things from a goal-setting framework within Mission Matters group, but it's like, man, you can also do some damage that I think, kind of amplifies what you're saying, Joe. It's like, okay, if we're not actually doing this with a really high degree of mental discipline and saying what is realistic, we end up tarnishing the whole goal-setting process so that each subsequent year, even if we get a little [00:16:30] bit better, it's still hard to adopt because of that first or few negative experiences.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't and even if it is lofty, you're still setting goals and you're tracking to it but just knowing some of those pitfalls that go into it, and I'm, you know, speaking from experience, it took a good two years to undo some of the unrealistic goals that we set in the beginning of the framework.
Shaun: Yeah. Jeff, one thing just to jump in here, I think, you – I appreciate you giving me and Joe a shout out. I don't know that we really had anything to do with the improvement of the goals as much as I would just say, you just, we just got better because we kept at it in many ways, like, it's gotten better every year because of the learning that's taken place.
Like, we even commented as a team this [00:17:15] year, like, Gosh, like we thought we had gotten as, you know, maybe as good as we could have got as a group that teaches this to organizations every day and yet here we are doing this to ourselves in setting our goals for the year, and these feel even better than they've ever been, right? And so, there's just the – I think the learning and the doing here is what I'm trying to emphasize and I think, Joe, back to your point about it being hard, the thing that I thought of when you said that is it's hard to prioritize, right? We're talking about goals are hard, but what we're talking about with focus is prioritization, right?
So picking stuff and saying like you said earlier, Joe, I'm not gonna do this. I think that's oftentimes why we end up, you see these things that are like these balanced scorecards that are so huge like, that kind of include everything under the [00:18:00] sun because – and I've been that leader. I'm not trying to – if you're that leader, it's okay. Like I've been that leader and what I thought of at the time was, Well, I can't leave anything out, right?
Everything matters. Everything's important and kinda back what we were starting before and so we end up with these monster multi-tap spreadsheets that have, you know, 38 rows on each one and again, like, Well, what am I supposed to be focusing on here, right? Which of these truly matter?
And I think the hard part is getting into the practice of picking a handful of things that matter for a certain period of time and being okay with the idea that it's not gonna be where you want it to be, but you're gonna learn, you're gonna get into it and if you monitor them with [00:18:45] some quarterly, you know, rhythms and, bring that into, you know, your more near term, weekly or biweekly, you're gonna make adjustments. You're gonna, the next time you do it, it's just increasingly gonna get better.
Josh: That's good. I'm gonna give you guys a shout out again cuz I think it's, it was a great learning for me personally last week, but – so we practice what we preach and we had a 6 Levers planning day last week. So we're determining our Q2 priorities. What's the most essential things? Let's look back at Q1. What did we learn, what do we need to adjust, and what is the most meaningful focus going into Q2 that would help us achieve our annual targets?So anyways, Shaun had done some prep work and, you [00:19:30] know, had some ideas up on the board, and then we built onto it and we had about 12 priorities that we had up on this, you know, Google sheet and then Shaun started facilitating a conversation.
We had a dialogue. We highlighted seven, and then finally we distilled it down to like four and had all 12 stated up there, which again, the temptation is to do it because everything up there looked super important and exciting, but then all of a sudden you feel this great degree of overwhelm and you feel like you're already behind before the quarter even starts and then all of a sudden, Shaun hiding rows – not necessarily saying, We can't do this, it's just not now – hiding the rows in a Google sheet gave a sense of hope that you're gonna [00:20:15] achieve the stuff that you set out to do, and it's really important so that like overcoming overwhelm and giving yourself permission to focus and say, not now to other things, is like a breath of fresh air and you're stoked to go into the next, you know, the next quarter.
Yeah. So it was really impressive.
Shaun: Josh, it reminds me of, I think, and I don't know if y'all relate to this, but I felt attention in the mission-driven organizations that I worked for of like, there was sometimes attention against like achievement and not like personal achievement, but like setting goals and hitting them and I – there was like this almost times of fear to measure something and put a number to something that, I think it was tied to this idea of like, this work we're doing is so [00:21:00] human-change-centered and we're talking about human beings and, you know, their dramatic change in their life and trying to move them from, whether it's, you know, homelessness to having a home or, you know, out of incarceration or parents that are – don't have childcare and are trying to find it or, you know, whatever it might be.
But I think the truth is like, as human beings, like we all like to achieve things, right? Like, regardless of the work that we choose, like there's something innate that says like, We set a target, we set a – and we made some progress towards it like, even if we didn't fully achieve, at least we could measure some progress towards it and be aligned.
Sometimes I think that there's – I would argue, I don't know if [00:21:45] Josh and Joe’ll be aligned with me, but I would argue that we need to be even more achievement-oriented in mission driven work because the stakes are even higher than if we were like in a warehouse making widgets, right? But anyway, this is a tension I felt. I don't know if y'all felt it at times or maybe could help me understand what it's about.
Joe: Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, I think one thing, Shaun, that makes me think of is, you know, I think the organ, the social profit, mission-driven orgs, what they, what those who get good at creating focus also get good at is being comfortable with the hypothesis of, if we [00:22:30] do this, if we achieve this, our hypothesis is that it's going to impact our clients in some way. We might not be able to measure that with, you know, true program evaluation, research-based type evaluation, but we feel based on all of our collective experience, you know, achieving a certain goal that maybe is more measurable is going to impact our clients in some sort of positive way and I think when you start to embrace the fact that because we can't measure this, that doesn't mean we shouldn't get quantitative or goal-oriented about anything.
Let's get as close to that end outcome that we wanna get and be comfortable with [00:23:15] these hypotheses that we make, you know, and go after them, you know, and make that, make that our goal orientation and, you know, I think we've talked about this before, that when you do that with rigor regularly, you know, sort of year over year, you do get closer to understanding what inputs and outputs actually drive the outcomes that a team is going after. You get better at understanding that and really evolve your ability to measure with more, maybe more precision, the impact that you're making.
Josh: I think it touches on, also that kind of like, downward spiral or that feedback [00:24:00] loop where you have negative experiences with goal-setting and what does that do to diminish how important it is to be results-oriented when we're in this mission-driven space.
I think the other thing that made me think of Shaun, is you talk a lot about focus being valuable to the degree it brings meaningful focus for your team and so if someone has a resistance to goal-setting or being results oriented, it seems like that focus isn't being tied to the work that they're doing, right? It's not helping an individual human being, understand how the work that they do on a daily basis is impacting a life, is impacting the environment, is impacting the initiative.
So meaningful focus, and that word is [00:24:45] used intentionally, we have to tie our goals as leaders, especially in the mission-driven space, down to the true impact that we're trying to create and being able to weave that story together, so.
Shaun: I love that. That just, that makes me think, I mean that totally resonates as true and probably what is happening when organizations or people in organizations are struggling to drive measurability to some of the goals that there's been a lack of clarity on how it's tied to meaning and tied to impact, right? The impact that the team has already agreed to, like, we're all here for this, like we're working towards this. If we somehow then layer in some goals that feel like they're out of sync with that top impact we have, I think that's where that tension is gonna rise up.
[00:25:30] That's super helpful, Josh, to think about it in that context.
Josh: Joe, I feel like when you first started at Mission Matters Group, you asked this provocative question of a lot of leaders, which I think ties into your story earlier on, right? So it's your first year and you're, you know, partly curious and partly asking a thought-provoking question to organizations that we potentially can serve. You know the question that I'm talking about, right?
Yeah, I mean, dive into that. Like, I feel like that's valuable, like just insight in terms of, not that we have to be like robots to recap, you know, what success looks like for the year, but doing the mental gymnastics to understand that, I think is an [00:26:15] example of focus.
I'd love to hear just kind of like why you asked that question, what it taught you and how has it translated to the overall 6 Levers framework.
Joe: Yeah. Well, I loved asking that question because, and I think you can connect it to my opening story, when you have a clear and meaningful response to that, it's powerful, right? And I think it informs how we might have partnered with those organizations.
It also brings a lot of clarity into understanding what the organization's all about, right? What’s your focus for the year? How do you define success? How will you define success for the year? What I did not anticipate was the regularity with which leaders would sort of fumble [00:27:00] over the answer and you know, oftentimes it was laced with some, an abundance of context, change going on inside the organization, but I think one of the things that it triggered for us in the evolution of the framework was this idea of vitals and priorities, right?
Because once we started to see the process that organizations would oftentimes go through when creating focus for the year, they'd sort of start from scratch every time and you'd see the opening of the conversation sort of be, you know, Well people raising up some of these measures that really always matter, but they just haven't said they always matter yet, [00:27:45] and so they're almost like, rehashing year over year the measures that they should have agreed upon a long time ago to always measure, right?
And so what we call those vitals, the handful of measures that always matter, that are always important indicators of success, we call those “vitals”. That's where you start. You take a look at your vitals. You refresh 'em if there's anything that needs a little fine-tuning based on your learning, and then you set targets around those that serves as the foundation of focus for the year, and then it's, Okay if we're gonna go after these targets this year and be focused around these measures that we say matter most. You asked the question, what else? Is there [00:28:30] anything else that we want to bring focus to bring resourcing to, prioritize? Maybe because we want to grow the scope of services inside the organization or, for whatever reason, there's oftentimes a pretty, exciting response to the what else, right?
Because people want to grow. We wanna grow the mission and grow, and so that's where your annual priorities come in. So sort of what else do you wanna prioritize, and let’s create some focus in the form of some goals around those additional priorities. So I think it was in observing teams, you know, try to answer that question and go through the goal-setting process that we were able to get really clear about this sort of two-part [00:29:15] formula.
When it comes to creating focus for the years, it's your vitals and the targets you set for each one of those combined with the priorities you wanna bring focus to for the year.
Shaun: Maybe one thing, just a little bit of a going off this kind of what focus for the year and how do teams drive it here, one of the things that we see that's common as a common way of thinking when driving focus, in particular for like a year, is that teams think if they've got a vision, a three-to-five-year vision, that the only things that they can prioritize for are the things that are also in their three-to-five-year vision.
And this is also, I think like when we think about some of the bad experiences we've had, [00:30:00] sometimes it's related to this because there's a three-to-five-year vision that's sitting out there and because we live in a dynamic, ever-changing world, so much has changed by the time it – it's time to set our annual priorities in the context that Joe just, framed what they are.
So you know, there's a couple answers that one, like you can, you can adjust your three-to-five-year vision, right? So as things change around you, we encourage team in their, in some core rhythms to look at those and make adjustments as they need to, but more than that, we would say like, you're not limited by the things that are there.
So as you bring focus to the increasingly nearer horizon, whether the annual or the quarterly, then you can be responsive to things that maybe you didn't plan for in the longer term horizon and [00:30:45] just say, we know this matters for us as a team, as an organization because of this thing that we need to respond to that's occurred.
That's, you know, it could be huge stuff like COVID, it could be stuff that's just particular for your organization or your sector, your industry, right, that you need to be responsive and related to this as well, in addition to like, we think of those as like two categories. One, like what do we wanna make progress on in our three-to-five-year vision? Two, what's emergent that's popped up that we weren't aware of that we want to bring into focus, that we need to respond to?
And the other one would be like, when we think about how we operate as a team, our organizational operating system, what do we wanna strengthen in this? Whatever time horizon, what are we gonna bring focus to and when it comes to the way we [00:31:30] work with each other, how can we highlight something there?
And so we've found this way of thinking, for a lot of people can be very liberating cuz it's, they don't – the cascading exercise is difficult, right? So much changes over time that perfectly connecting everything can feel really challenging and it can order, sort of feel like you're defeated before you even start.
Certainly keeping those things as strong reference points and doing your best to say, This is my work here is connected to that over there, and this effort I have here, moves that thing forward over there. Like that is good work and we're – definitely encourage that, but you don't have to be limited to that when you think about what you bring into focus at a certain time horizon.
Josh: Man, that's really good. Yeah, one thing it's making me think of I [00:32:15] read this book about a year and a half ago, it's called The Long View, and basically it's written by this futurist who thinks 20, 30, 40 years out and basically tries to predict different things that could happen and he consults with huge organizations. I think he worked with like Exxon or these big like oil companies and everything. I think he works for Salesforce right now.
But anyways, his mindset was, we need to think about these things super far out. Really far out horizons, not because we want them to be true or think they're gonna be true, but that some piece of all those different things could be true and if that could be true, how are we gonna respond to it? And how are we gonna build up to [00:33:00] that?
And so I think that's where we get, or I personally get caught in that trap. It's like, we must hit this, you know, three-years out. But no, if your world changes, it would be imprudent to hit that. You need to adapt to that. But you have to have a framework that dynamically allows you to adjust because it's built into your rhythm routine because it's part of your focus and you can make hard decisions to Joe's. Have courage to stick to what is true now in the near term horizon. But be – have the courage to adjust for things that change further out.
But yeah, that – Yeah. What you shared, Shaun, was, yeah, really really good. I wanna flip the script on what you just said from like a more of like a [00:33:45] provocative question, like an organization trying to get out of doing something, but like, right. You talked about a three-year horizon and then having – potentially having cascading things, right? Annual goals, quarterly goals. Based on this three-year picture.
So I'm assuming you're not saying this, but right, do teams need to have a three-year vision before they should set annual goals or quarterly priorities, right? How do you respond to a question like that where an organization might not have a clear understanding of where they're trying to go, but do they need to make progress in the near term with annuals and quarter?
Joe: I think the complete picture is ideal. So we might define the complete picture that can bring focus as one that can sort of [00:34:30] zoom in and zoom out. If you think about like a camera lens, right? So like in an ideal world, you could connect your three-to-five-year vision or focus at the three-to-five-year horizon, two year, one year focus, to your 90-to-120-day focus.
Ideally, that complete picture does form over time, as the organization is ready and has the capacity to bring focus at all three of those horizons and at the same, and for the reasons we can imagine for this, you know, understanding of where are we trying to go longer term without trying to over cascade and get [00:35:15] sick, by the elevation change at times of trying to go back and forth.
The overcascading thing, as you know, is like an uber pet peeve of mine and just that process, and all of the tools that are designed to only create cascading goals is pretty painful. But you know, if you don't have the three-year focus and you start with annual goals – we've seen tons of teams do this – you know, short term, they start there and they realize the benefits of it. They realize the impact of creating focus at that one-year horizon, and execute it for a year before saying, Hey, this was great. This really created focus for the [00:36:00] year. I'm get, – this is what oftentimes actually happens.
Then they say, Okay, what are our goals for this year? What are our – what do we wanna prioritize on top of our vitals, and then the question comes up, Well, where do we want to be in three-to-five-years? And so then this real organic process happens where they say, Okay, well let's actually – I think we have the space now to zoom out and have a similar conversation about where do we wanna be in three-to-five-years, and create some directional focus there as well, and then go through their annual goal-setting process with that new vision in mind.
But I think that also speaks to the power of kind of a more modular framework, a framework that's driven by [00:36:45] where's your team drawn right now? Where are they finding energy? Is it, because for some teams it might also start at the quarterly level. Like, we can't see past the fire hose blasting water in our face. We just need to create some focus for the next 90 days and so they might go through that same process where Quarter Two of doing it, they're asking themselves, Well, it'd be helpful if we knew where we wanted to be at the end of the year to create quarterly focus. Maybe we should try to do that as well.
Shaun: Yeah, and I think related to this, we've often talked about the importance of like, the three-year horizon, which we, which we encourage more than. The five-year horizon.
And we would certainly allow a team to do that for, if their [00:37:30] reasons made sense for their, but is – to think of it as being more like directionally aligned, right? So it's less about all the details of like, all the things we wanna accomplish and where we want to be and more about like, what is the picture of where we wanna be in three-years from a handful of strategic objectives that we know will probably – we're gonna have to adjust over time based on things changing in our world, but at least it gets some alignment on where we want to be at that slightly longer term horizon, that that becomes one way to bring focus to our annuals.
That being said, I totally would agree that so much of this is about momentum and like, and [00:38:15] what makes sense for an organization if they're ready to jump into annual goals and do that in a more meaningful way than they have before, I certainly would – I don't think any of us would suggest, Oh no, you can't do that. You first have to have your three-year in place. We would say, Hey, if there's momentum and desire and energy there, do that, right? and then when the time is right to then say, Let's get clear on where we wanna be in a longer time horizon.
I think our – we would say from experience that will probably emerge, as they bring more discipline and collaboration to that process. But you certainly do not have to have the three-to-five-year horizon in place first. Yeah.
Josh: What I appreciate about the intentionality and like the overall design of the framework and that, [00:39:00] right, it's more about momentum, right?
It's about small, little habits over time will bring organizational health for the long haul and I think that's sometimes what we get mixed up in with these like operating frameworks or different strategic planning processes. None of 'em are bad, right? They're all good, but we have to think about the long lasting effects, the residual effects of some of the things that we're implementing today.
So what I appreciated about the way that you'll all approach us and make it accessible, it's like, Hey, if I wanna get healthier as a person, maybe health or improvement or momentum for me is sleeping 15 minutes more a day, and that's it for the next quarter, and d maybe I master that and all of a sudden I start drinking, you know, a [00:39:45] liter of water a day.
You know, it's one of those things where I think, you know, we sometimes we're like, We have to do this all right now and be better in every area right now, but if we play the short game, we'll have short lasting results, but if we play the long game, we'll actually have enduring organizational health as opposed to momentary performance improvements.
Joe: Yeah, Josh, that makes me think about this, you know, I think we've talked about this before on the pod, is the connection between sustaining focus and ultimately finding value in a goal-setting process, a prioritization process or what we call a, you know, a focus-setting process, the role [00:40:30] of monitoring and the impact of monitoring.
Meaning, when we say monitoring, we mean pulling goals or priorities, back up with your team. All look at and discern, How are we doing against these goals? What progress are we making? and in looking at them in a formal and rigorous and meaningful way, when the moment you do that a handful of times in a row – you do it three weeks in a row – the goals start to be more meaningful to you.
You'll find that you've probably revised a few. You'll find that you've created a few wins and you're feeling engaged by those [00:41:15] wins. you'll, you'll find that you're gonna have to deprioritize something that isn't gonna get done anymore because you've got clarity of your goals.
But that doesn't happen unless the team comes together and monitors them. And I'm talking about five, you know, five minutes, right, Shaun? Pulling 'em up, whether it's on track, off track, at risk, whatever status update you wanna give to it, you go through that, you build a muscle memory around that and you start to believe in the power of the focus.
Right? You start to, cuz you start to see the value that it brings and ultimately, That's, that's what this is all about, right? It's about the purpose, the impact that, that it's supposed to bring to the team. And if all it does is at the end of the [00:42:00] year, feels like it holds people accountable to something they set out for 90 or 360 days ago.
Well, what's that? What's the point? Right? That's gonna feel like the cheapest end of quarter, end of year review. you can imagine, because, you know, you didn't, you didn't come together as a team to monitor it. So just wanna call out the, yeah, that the moment you decide to lean in here at whatever horizon and whatever team, it really needs to come with the understanding and assumption that you are gonna monitor this if you want to really see the value.
Shaun: Joe, this reminds me of something that we see so often happen with teams when they, when they do embrace this idea of [00:42:45] focus and a handful of priorities and a handful of vitals targets. Is that it, it ends up fueling one collaboration, right? Because there's, cuz they know that there's only a handful things that they're working.
They become much, much more hyper-focused on the things that they need to work with each other on, right, and then that in hand can then fuel innovation, right? Things that – what's amazing about the process when you bring focus into it is like we think there's things that we're going to achieve at, at the end of like we say 90, 90 days from now, a year from now, what will success look like?
How will we know we've done this? What will be true? And then many times what happens is we accomplish so much. Right, and it's not to say necessarily even that we like [00:43:30] whatever we measured it, it's always in the green, and we got 120% every time. I'm not saying that, I'm saying sometimes it may be like 60 or 70, but then if we ask the question, well, what else happened as a result of our focus that we didn't even predict would happened?
But because we were focused, it increased collaboration and innovation on the things that, you know, that just meandering path got us there. Knowing the result we wanted to work towards, the impact we wanted to result for in end up achieving these wild results that are just so much fun to, for teams to look back on and like in a retrospective and say, Look at all this awesome stuff that we accomplished together.
Joe: Yes, Shaun. I love that. Shaun, I love that the, like, I, I can think of [00:44:15] specific teams where the com, the additional value point has everything to do with the cohesion and the relationships amongst the team because they did that, right? Because of what you described there. When they're coming together, they're being.
Discipline together. They're being, you know, they're monitoring with meaning. They're, they're collaborating more. They wind up on the other side of the quarter of the year looking at each other differently. Right. With a different sense of, you know, trust and relationship. And, yeah. I love, I love bringing that, some of those external, you know, sort of effects of focus and sticking to it.
[00:45:00]
Josh: That's one thing that I was processing when you were talking, Shaun, is that. Right. Again, I'll go back to we use a framework called objectives and key results. So you write an objective and then you have more of a metric that you're tracking against. And one question, or one framing that Shaun will typically do is, did we achieve the intent of the objective, right?
Sometimes we're just putting a result or something, empirical to track against. That is an indicator of us achieving our overall outcome that we're trying to see in the – and I think the fewer that you have, it allows you to have context on the things that you're setting so that you can actually answer the question that Shaun asked at the end of the [00:45:45] quarter of, did we achieve the intent of this objective even if we didn't hit the result?
And so again, going back to that overall focus. We feel like we're making progress, right? We see what we're doing and we can adjust. We can have that cohesion, we can have a dialogue around it and not make it more of like a hammer, like, we didn't achieve this and we failed. It's no, let's actually have a thoughtful and intentional dialogue around this and figure out how we get a little bit better going forward, in the next quarter.
Shaun: Yeah, Josh? I think so often, like what I'm trying to do in that conversation, And I think we all try and do this is to like hearken back to the time. Like what did we, in not just what we intend as sometimes I say what was the spirit of it as well and what I'm [00:46:30] trying to say there is like, we didn't, we had an idea, we had a hunch, we had some things that we knew we needed to focus on, but until we got into like actually doing the work, the level of clarity we needed, it wasn't fully crystallized yet, right?
And so now it's become more crystallized as we've got into doing it. and the question often becomes at the end that I think we all ask each other is like thinking back to that moment and the spirit of what we were trying to achieve and move forward here, it ended up looking a little different or maybe quite different.
But did we meet the spirit of what we were trying to do here, and if we say, I mean, by the way, this isn't, some people might hear this and think, Oh, Shaun's encouraging, like shirking out of achieving the goals or whatever, letting himself off the hook [00:47:15] and I'm not trying to do that. If you know me, I'm a pretty achievement-oriented, driven person myself, and so if nothing else, I'm trying to be kind to myself with questions like that but, I think it's a healthy thing for teams to consider. Like, did we – things might look different than we imagined, but did we meet the intent, like Josh is saying, of the spirit?
Josh: That's great. All right. This is one of my favorite parts because I feel like I learn quite a few things in it.
One of the key levers of the 6 Levers framework is momentum, right? We want to be “progress even over perfection”, right? We don't want to just have paralysis because we're trying to make everything perfect and so, the last question for the two of you is, What's some practical [00:48:00] advice for an organization who has no focus or maybe knows that they need to work on their focus, you know, what would be that next thing or that super tactical thing you would have them do, if you could?
Joe: Yeah. I feel like I should go first so that Shaun doesn't steal my answer, but because I'm curious to know what Shaun's answer is. I will let you have it and then force me to –
Shaun: I just felt like a wave of – you get to listen for a second and then he is like, Oh, you don't get to listen, you have to go –
Joe: Gotcha.
Shaun: Yeah, I don't, I mean, I feel like what – anytime where my head's at right now on this is the framework – the city level’s framework – is big. It’s a – [00:48:45] it's meant to help you – you know, a framework for the, all the ways of working in your whole organization, all the teams, and I think you could look at it if you start to understand it and listen to a number of these episodes and dive into our materials and content, and you could feel like, Oh, where do I start? Like, what do I do, right? There's so much and how much of it do I have to implement for it to feel like it's beginning to make an impact and our organization is starting to transform?
And I think what we know to be true is that if you can adopt a couple of things, it's gonna – you're gonna feel like a significant difference – pretty early and pretty quick – and one of those things is exactly what we're talking about. It's just adopting the idea of, Can I [00:49:30] set some short-term priorities? So could I – could we just align together and say for the next horizon – whether it's a year or a quarter, whatever – We wanna start, like, what would be our three to four, big priorities to focus on? and by the way, you can do this if you're an – this is not limited to an organization. If you are a team leader listening to this right now, like you can do this, right, and you don't need permission.
Like you don't need anybody to say, There's a new way that we're working in our organization. Just go do it. Just go show up the next day or whatever's appropriate with your team and say like, Hey, I'd like for us to – I have a conviction about why we need to be more focused in order to do that. I'm wondering if maybe we could set a handful of priorities for the next quarter or maybe for the next month, however you [00:50:15] wanna start doing that and then I'd say the thing with that, which is so important, is bring in a monitoring rhythm, right?
So monitor it somehow, whether it's in your weekly or biweekly. If you're thinking quarterly and you've got a monthly, start somewhere, right? So pick a handful of priorities and then agree to a way to monitor it as a team, so that you cannot lose sight of it, right? So that you don't bring focus to something and then you get to the end, you're like, Oh yeah, how did we do? Right?
So the combination of, pick a handful of things and agree to a monitoring rhythm, that is a great place to start.
Joe: So that's the right answer, and that's exactly what I was gonna say, thank you for sharing that. So you – you gave me, you know, a good three minutes there to think about. So then what would be next?
Yeah, think of another one. Good. I think so, I think the [00:51:00] next one is to carve out a handful of sessions for your – you and your team. Again, kind of to Shaun's point, whether you're a member of an executive team and you're trying your scope is the entire organization or your, you know, what we'd refer to as a core team, a program, department, functional team, and go through an exercise where you answer the question, what are the handful of measures that define best define – indicate or define success year over year. The answer to that question we would refer to, we would say, are your team's vitals.
And it is – it's going to be messy, and I say, carve out a handful of sessions [00:51:45] because you're gonna wanna sleep on it, you're gonna wanna come back to it with new ideas and new thinking, but if you carve out maybe three, one-hour sessions where you lean into answering that question, and then wherever you land, you've got a good draft, a meaningful draft, right, and try to set targets for it.
So now try to say over the course of the next 12 months – maybe nine months if your end of your year is a little bit nearer than that – and try to set a goal around it and at the end of the year, you'll have a better understanding of how successful you were and you'll be all the more prepared to go through a goal-setting process, [00:52:30] for that year ahead.
Create some vitals. Know your vitals, people.
Shaun: Well, I was just gonna say, Know your vitals, Joe. Totally agree with that. The other thing I would say from a little bit more of an intangible for the leader is be encouraging, like, when you're starting this process, cuz it's gonna feel messy. Like we talked about, you may even get to the end, like if you picked some vitals or priorities and started monitoring them, get to the end of the period and then you might feel like, Eh, we only accomplished 25% this first time around.
It's gonna continue to get better. So if you're a leader who's sponsoring or being the champion of this to roll it out, just continue to [00:53:15] bring some encouragement and positivity, knowing that, it's gonna take time to, to get better, but you're gonna see that incremental improvement as you keep at it.
Joe: That's good stuff.
Josh: All right, well, if you'd like to learn more about the 6 Levers framework, everything that we have going on, you wanna dive deeper into our content, check out sixlevers.co, and if you were up for a little bit more introduction and just an overall overview of the 6 Levers framework, check out the Navigator Sprint coming up, and thanks so much for listening.
Shaun: Oh, one more thing. You can – we'd love it if you'd give us a review. As a podcast, it'll help more people see it.
Josh: What do they say on YouTube? “Smash the subscribe – ” ?
Shaun: “Smash – ” [00:54:00] I don't think you can smash a review, but maybe people can figure out how to smash a review. Yeah, smash the five-star rating and also please give us a review so more people can find this podcast.
Did your job for you, Josh.
Josh: I know, thanks. It's not the first time you've done my job for me.
