“Branding is not about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, but it is about getting your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problems.”

“They branded themselves so well that anybody who wants a tissue, you ask, do you have a Kleenex?”

“What is it that you do, the three things that you do, that your competition don't do?

If you can identify those, then you can message those to your customer base. But if you can't identify those, how do you expect your customers to know?”

“Last time we talked about the vision and the people and the data, when you get all three of those in place, you get a transparency in your company that is really helpful for ferreting out the issues and discovering what you're not doing as well as you could be doing.”

“Transparency from the standpoint that the company sees clearly what's going on. They're not living in a fog because they don't have good data.”

“And so part of that is having the right vision, going in the right direction, with the core values that are important to the company.

Having the right people who have bought into that same vision and core values, and then have data that measures how well they're doing toward that end. So if they're, when you have those three in place, you're going to see issues pop up. So how do you deal with those issues?

And the way that I think you're best served is when you take these issues and create a list, just keep them on a list, and then pick the top three. What is the number one most important issue I need to fix in my business? What's the second most important?

What's the third most important? And then attack at number one.

And what people need to be reminded of is that this list that Johnny's speaking of will change all of the time. And so you need to constantly be adjusting it.

“What do you do with interruptions?

On the issues list? Yes. You just, you don't let them interrupt unless the issue that interrupts becomes more important than the one you're working on.

If that becomes the most important issue, you then reassess and adjust. But don't, don't let people, as we say in the business, throw something over the wall that you got to deal with. It's not important to you.”

“To try to help people with issues in their business. When you have issues, you prioritize them, and then you do what I call IDS them. You identify them, and not just the top surface issues, but dig, dig, dig, dig down and find what is the cause, the root cause of this issue, and deal with that instead of the results of the root cause.

And then once you identify it, then you discuss it among your team members. And you don't politic for a solution. You just discuss.

You get all the thoughts out there and ideas out there. And then once you have heard it all, then you make a decision about how you're going to solve the issue.

What if things aren't working right? And you have this list. And one item is still there all the time.

If the item is still there all the time, you're not digging down to the root cause solution. If it keeps coming back up, you've got to go down and find...

Reassess it then.

Yeah, reassess it. Figure out what it is really that's causing the issue to come up. Not just that the issue itself is there[…]”

“And then once you get these issues list, one of the things you're going to find out to get rid of them is to set up processes that are then going to be followed by all. The processes that are set up in any company need to be done the same way for every company. In my company, all the estimators estimated the same way.”

“These processes were documented, written down, and then they were followed by all. So you got issues, don't come up as much, because the process was set in place to solve some of the issue problems.”

“When I coach people today and help them implement the EOS system, Entrepreneurial Operating System, one of the things that we try to do is we try to help them identify rocks that are quarterly issues and to-dos that are weekly issues. And if you can get people on a 90-day cycle where they are able to solve issues over a 90-day period that are big issues for the company, the more they do that, the better they get. And the better they get, the quicker they solve their problems and the less damage that is done.

So I think it's really important for business owners to have in place a plan that allows them to gain traction toward their vision. Because it's so difficult to have a vision and you have no way of getting there. So what we do first is we teach them how to have a good traction before we talk about vision.”

“It comes from Stephen Covey's book where he talks about the example of your day and what takes up time of your day. And he puts a cylinder, a glass cylinder, and in this cylinder, he puts huge, big rocks first, and then he puts smaller pebbles in, and then he pours sand into that. And then he fills the rest of it up with water, all the way to the top, so there's no room left in that container.

The rocks go in first, because if you don't put them in first, you can't get it all in there. If you took those same exact ingredients, and you put the small rocks and the sand in first, and fill the water in, when you start trying to put the large rocks in, they just don't happen. And the large rocks are the big significant parts of your company that have to be addressed.

And they create a splash if you put them in after the water.

That's right. You just create a mess is what happens. And so teaching people to identify that and be successful is what I think is important.”

“So what we might talk about is just how these parts and pieces fit together and how this will help organizations clarify, simplify and achieve their vision. And ultimately, that's what we're all after. What is your vision for your company?”

“And knowing where you're going. That's right. So, the first point would be to have vision, the right kind of vision for your company.

And having everybody in the company sharing that vision. And if they aren't sharing that vision, you want to get rid of those people. You want to take people who are not the right people and get them out of the company.

The best vision statements that I've ever developed have been by having the input of every employee and what they would change in it, what they would like to see it represent. And then kind of take in all of that and put it together.

So when it is put together, then everybody has to buy into it. It may have a little bit of mine and a whole lot more of yours, but it's important that we both buy into the vision as the right vision for the company. So then when you have that vision, when you're hiring people, when you're firing people, when you're evaluating people, reviewing people, all of that can be done on the basis of the vision of the company and how people are contributing or not contributing[…]”

“So then having the right people is important. Then it comes to data, measuring those people, measuring their outcomes, measuring the different parts of the company so that they know where they had a good day”

“So every week, the beginning of every week, the field managers would get a breakdown of how long it would take to get a certain part of the job done and challenge the people to do that. And the ones that did it got bonuses most often, made the most money for their men and for the company, and had the greatest, delighted customers.

So the database part of all of this and the process that you've taken people through, it's not a negative in any way. It's a tool.

Oh yeah.

And so you've been making use of that.

We never used the data to beat up on people. You should have gotten this done. We never did that.

Yeah, because a lot of people do that.

Yeah. And there are times like, if it's raining, you're going to get less concrete poured. Or if it's a cold day, your productivity goes down.”

“The most important items are dealt with on a quarterly basis and they do that every quarter. And then the meetings, so that everybody was in this meeting and they had the same location, the same time, the same agenda, with for 90 minutes. And you had a strict agenda you went through.

And this meeting got you in the habit of doing the right things. They would solve issues and solve rocks. So you see how it all ties together so that your traction is getting you to your vision because you're solving issues and problems and rocks.

And it makes a big difference for everyone's thinking. And certainly for the business to grow.

And a rock doesn't always have to be negative, Hal. Sometimes it can be very positive, like in Collins and Porras and their book Bill Palaz, talk about beehags, big hairy audacious goals. That could be the rock.”