129 - How to Fix Broken Accountability in Your Team

Speaker A: Hello, founders, and welcome back to the Scale HQ podcast. This week. This week, my guest is.

Speaker B: My name's Darren Finkelstein, and I'm proudly the accountability guy.

Speaker A: Darren's an author. Uh, he's written a book called the Accountability Advantage. He's got a lot of informed views. He spends all of his time working with founders on this specific problem. So if you have a team that is, like, I don't know, a bit fuzzy, missing deadlines, um, you've got this kind of quiet frustration that you're carrying more than you probably should, then you probably don't have a motivation problem with your people. You've probably got a systems issue, I. E. You have not got a system in place that makes the accountability possible and reasonable to expect. And one of the things I love about this episode is actually how simple some of his steps are. He's looked at empirical evidence, and he's broken out some of the steps that stack essentially stack the deck for you achieving any goal in your personal life or also in the work environment. So he talks about what those five steps are, and then we apply them to examples, and of course, I pull them apart with him. Um, he also has very interesting ideas, uh, around consequences. And we talked about, like, you know, if a team or individuals are missing their target or if you're setting up accountability in a team, what should be the consequences? You know, how much of them should be public, how should be private? He, you know, he's got some very interesting ideas around that that I think you'll enjoy listening to. I'm not sure we 100% aligned, but I love that. That's the point of having a good, good debate. And he leaves you with something pretty special at the end because he's giving you access to his accountability scorecard and a free coaching session. Uh, so that's worth sticking around for. Hang around at the end and you'll find that out. So if you are in the space where your team could use a bit of a kick in the butt when it comes to accountability or a better system that helps them do that better, this is the one to listen to. Quick note for you. Little technical glitch Today, unfortunately, about 11 minutes of the way in, uh, to this episode, my microphone went a bit kooky and it, uh, went a bit off the rails and making me sound a bit robot y. But it's still audible and there's been no impact whatsoever on Darren's, uh, voice. Our guest for today, uh, so you'll enjoy listening to the episode. Apologies for the Scratchy version of my voice, but it's still audible and shouldn't have too much of an impact. Just thought I'd give you a heads up. Let's dive right in. All right, Darren, I am super excited about this episode. I have been looking forward to having this conversation with you for a while because I haven't actually met. I mean, number one, I would say one of the most common questions, and I don't even know if it comes up as a question because usually it's like an inferred desire for a founder is to help people become accountable in their business, to create clarity, to create ownership and all the rest. And they don't always know quite, quite how to say that. And uh, until you, I'd never met anybody who was so directly clearly niched down in this space. So I'm really excited to, um, learn a bit of your, uh, IP today on how you help founders kind of create an environment where there's accountability, where there's commitment, where the important stuff's getting done. I obviously spend a lot of time working with founders to create that clarity, um, for their leadership teams and to build sort of structures around it. But we're likely to be approaching things from different, uh, angles, which is perfect. And so two minds are going to make a better outcome, uh, than one. So maybe you could kick us off today with telling us a bit about who you, uh, are, the problem you're solving, who you're solving it for, and then at a high level how you typically do that.

Speaker B: Yeah, terrific. And look, thank you for inviting, uh, me as your guest and also for wanting to take the topic of accountability, you know, that dreaded a word and putting it out there for all of us to pick apart and uh, um, understand what it means. So thank you for the opportunity, Sean. So my name's Darren Finkelstein and I'm proudly the accountability guy. I work with, um, ah, high performing business owners, entrepreneurs, ah, teams to ensure they do the things they say they're going to do. And what that means is that, uh, they try and avoid distractions. I mean founders, we know that can be a tough, really tough gig. And they get distracted, right? They're like firemen. You know, there's a blaze over here, so they get in all the hoses and they're starting to pour the water on the fire. And therefore they perhaps forget, not intentionally, but they get distracted and they forget about the things that they either started off doing or they had in their plan to complete moving forward. So my job is to remove Those distractions and keep. Keep them really focused on achieving the goal or goals that they have set. Not my goals, their goals. And I'm, uh, just a resource to help them, uh, stay on track, stay directionally correct.

Speaker A: Nice. And so what does that actually typically look like, Darren? Like, what is a normal engagement for you in terms of size of business? And how much do you work with the leaders versus just working with the founder? Like, what does that really look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, look, it's a really interesting question. And I've been doing this now for a little while, Sean, and my, um, you know, the. The ideal customer, if I can call it that, um, is. Is typically a founder or a business owner who wants, um, to. Wants to get shit done, uh, and is finding that for some reason the commitments they've made to themselves and commitments they've made to other members, you know, a team member or the board or, um, uh, haven't. Haven't been met. And they're kind of getting really frustrated. And when we peel that apart, we understand that it's typically overwhelmed and the breaking down of a task. And it's just, you know, there's so much going on in their head. They're trying to juggle more balls in the air at once. And uh, they're feeling really uncomfortable about that. So they just need some support to do that. It's really interesting that quite a lot of my clients are, uh, founders that don't really have anybody around them that they can share stuff with, people they can talk to, people that they can use as a sounding board. And uh, fortunately, I'm in that position where I do a lot of that as part of my work. Uh, and it's incredibly satisfying and you can really see the difference that it makes.

Speaker A: What's the biggest, like, um, the biggest myth, I guess, or the biggest trap? Like, what's the most common thing that you see that's going wrong? That, uh, either has founders thinking about it in the wrong way or ending up in the, you know, the. The quicksand of overwhelm and confusion that. In the. Where.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So typically a family doesn't really have a plan. Um, they don't. My experience has suggested that they don't have a plan. And, uh, then they understand they can't do it all themselves because there's, you know, some, you know, cause and effect happening in their business and they realize they just can't do it all. They need to get some expertise and perhaps some external advisors of, you know, accountants and lawyers and, um, mentors. Have told them that. So then they go out and they, uh, you know, hire, hire people that they don't brief properly, they don't set them up for success. You know, they find the right person and they worry about that position, you know, that, that bringing on that person and perhaps the financial commitment that they've had to make to, to get that person, it can become a sac sacrifice. And they just put them in the role and they just hope everything's okay and off they go and do something else. And people are not given the level of opportunity to find that success, to be successful. You know, in some cases they're sabotaging them, you know, setting them up for failure before there even begins. And then they wonder why it goes sort of belly up.

Speaker A: Um, so there's also an assumption there that the salary level will bring somehow, like the clarity. Like, somehow it's like moved the ownership of like, I need to create clarity for this person. Um, but somehow, because they're paid more now, they need to create their own clarity. Why don't they have clarity? It's like, well, it's still your job. It's still your job. Which is why, you know, every founder I work with, the core part of my system is a success profile, which is not a job description. It's not full of tasks. It's absolute clarity around leg and lag indicators, objectives and key results. Like, you know, actually even the way they show up at work, like their attitudes and uh, those characteristics, like stuff that is not never in a job description. Because if you don't, as you said, if you don't create clarity around this stuff, how can you expect them to know what good looks like?

Speaker B: Uh, you are absolutely right. And Sean, the thing that really concerns me is that people want accountability in their organization for their teams, but they don't show and demonstrate accountability at the top.

Speaker A: Okay, what do you mean by that?

Speaker B: And so. Well, they don't lead by example. You know, they, they, they, uh, scenarios where individuals, um, uh, leaders of businesses have demanded things from these new employees that they're put into place, but they, um, don't follow them up for that stuff. They don't get that report that they wanted. So, you know, they're uh, doing triple somersaults to get, and they don't actually make time to sit down and talk about it. So the expectation of what that report looks like, what is it you're looking for Merck to create, what does that look like so I can be successful? Tell me what that report is that you're after, what are the key components of that report that you need? What are the things that are important to you? And you know what? Could you tell me why they're important to you? So I then get some sort of real understanding of, um, the connection of why this is so important. And individuals don't do that.

Speaker A: Yep. And I'm hearing, um, Darren, one of the things I'm thinking about is I remember seeing the lights really go on with a founder that I was working with a while ago, who's probably, probably about a $5 million business. So, uh, you know, decent sized team, maybe 30, 40, 50 people, something like that. And she said, and I could see that she, uh, just didn't have the experience in delegating and empowering others. And she never done, she'd never worked for anybody else who'd done the stuff. She'd been doing her own business since she was like, you know, 20 years old. So she doesn'. Know. Right. And I was trying to really simplify it and I said, you got to think about it like tight, loose, tight. Like everybody wants empowerment on the, how they want to bring their creativity, they want to, you know, they want to bring their best to solving the problem. But you have to be super clear on what needs to be achieved, why it needs to be achieved, when it should be achieved. That's the front tight, the hat, the middle loose bit is them actually going and doing the work and coming up with the solutions. But you also have to be tight on the back, which is. This is when we're going to talk about it, this is how you're going to report on it. Uh, like these, all the tracking and the measurements. So you can be tight on the front, loose the middle and tight on the back. But if you don't, if you just have loose and then you're wondering why they're failing, it's because you've got an expectation in your head. They don't know what that expectation actually even looks like. And you're not setting up for them for success. Uh, you're actually making their job really. And it takes a lot of extra effort, doesn't it, to do all that stuff up front. But if you do it, then it actually creates, uh, uh, rather than you having to chase one.

Speaker B: You're absolutely right. And I often wonder, you know, the onboarding process and setting out the expectations. If we did that better, we as in business did that better. Leaders, founders did that better, then they're going to get a better result at the end because team members ideally take Ownership of that. And that's what we want. You know, we want the new employee to take ownership of this situation and grab the bull by the horns and show some initiative but help us out, right? Give us some really clear direction uh, on what's the expectation, what's the requirement, why it's so important and how this kind of all fits in then if I got that as an employee I'm like, you know, if I'm really motivated to, to exceed, to over exceed.

Speaker A: If you think about like your best client and I mean best buys in like nailing the system, you know, like they're just doing all the things that you would hope they do and therefore they've got this almost unfair advantage of like they're just kicking the ass out of accountability in their organization. What do they do differently from the sort of gen pop?

Speaker B: Uh yeah, well I um, have a family office, um, that I work with, um, involved in um, property development. They ah, have a productivity meeting every morning at six and they get together half past six in the morning and all their team love it. Right. I've worked with the founders, uh, and I've also worked with their uh, uh, leadership team and they all love it because it's not just the leadership team being in there and uh, they're, the owners are there, you know, they don't, just don't need to be there but the owners are there and they're putting in as much. You know, they're the first in, in the morning, they're the last out. They're really leading by example and uh, their, their team members respect, right, they respect the fact that um, they're uh, you know it's good enough for us to do it, it's good enough for the, the founders to do it and it works really well.

Speaker A: That's a very interesting uh, that's an interesting point because what it's making me think about is that it feels like there's a couple of parts to accountability. It feels like one is having the clarity in the system and the rhythms, all the stuff that gets rid of noise and creates clarity and you know what's expected when you know what success looks like and all the rest. But then the other side of that is okay now you've created the environment in which someone can be accountable but it's not a command and control system. You've got a person on the other side who has to step forward and you're not going to think they're okay even if they're rocking up and like they're Doing the stuff that's very different to somebody who's like owning the stuff. And when they see a problem is overcoming the problem or going, hey Darren, um, I've, you know, I'm facing this issue. I've already come up with three ways we can solve it. I think we should go this way. Well, would you agree that's very different for someone to go rocking up and going, I've got a big problem, save me kind of thing. That's a very different level of sort of accountability, but that requires people wanting to go above and beyond. And that uh, only ever happens when there's what you said, which is a significant amount of respect for the leader. Because the leader walks the talk. They don't expect anything from you that they're not going to do themselves. Like, you actually want to work harder for that person and therefore you will really go above and beyond to kind of own your role and own your space because you're excited to. That sounds like what's going on in your, in this business where the owners are rocking up at ah, 6:30 in the morning. That's amazing. I know, it's bizarre.

Speaker B: Are, and they are just so accountable. Um, what some of the challenges um, that they're facing is that um, the, I need to word this really carefully, um, that the founders, which are uh, husband and wife, need to communicate together. So they, you know, the issues they're having are uh, the, the clashing between the, uh, the two owners of the business because they don't communicate beautifully with their staff, but individually they don't communicate well together.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And so we're trying to get them to have their own management meetings now where they start, you know, they privately

Speaker A: so they can be aligned.

Speaker B: Absolutely. But, but they talk things out instead of holding onto them not saying anything. One person, you know, gives the silent treatment to the other and it's like, stop, stop, stop, stop. Your team adore you. They would do anything for you. They're, they're, you know, they're, they're rolling up their sleeves, getting really down and dirty.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You both need to, and you communicate really well with your team. You both need to communicate really well together. And I know the relationship messes things up, but you're in this together. So you either choose what you, how you want this to end.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.

Speaker B: And they're having management meetings, spending the time together and it's, it's really working out well.

Speaker A: So Darren, you must have um, stages to your methodology. Like can you walk me through what is your full system from kind of like diagnosing an issue to then somebody having completed all of the Darren steps to creating accountability in their organization. What does that look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Um, so my model has um, largely been driven by or driven from a study that was done in 2010 in the U.S. um, and the study was uh, looking at the probability, um, and key factors really ah, to wanting an individual to complete a goal, a task or a project. So what's the probability of them moving through different stages to complete that task? And uh, the stages are, and let me go through those with you Sean. You have a 10% chance of success, um, if you merely just have a goal or an idea. Right. Which is, and we, we look at something like, you know, New Year's Eve, we all have maybe have a couple of drinks and we make this resolution that I'm gonna go and run a marathon. Yeah. Really?

Speaker A: Really. Okay. 10% chance of success, that one.

Speaker B: Yeah. 10 uh, percent chance of success. If you just identify that you want to run a marathon, um, you have a 25% uh, chance of completing that probability if you consciously decide that you're going to pursue it. So that's after the Chardonnay's worked out its way out of your system and you're then still owning the idea. Um, I want to um, ah, you know, run that marathon. Um, we then have a 40% chance um, of, of completing that task. Um, if you set a specific uh, timeline for that.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So you give yourself, you know, this is when I'm going to run the marathon is by this date. Ah, and you identify the, the um, steps towards that, you have a 50% chance of completing that task. If you really write a, how you're going to do it. Ah.

Speaker A: And with a four month training plan, you know, you're going to go on Wednesday afternoons, Friday mornings and Sundays. And this is the date of the actual.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'll roll with, I'll just go through these steps and then I'll show you a really basic example of, of how this plan would work or how the, the probability um, solidifies itself because it's really quite a simple process. Um, so we then have a um, you know, 50% chance of completing that task. If we have plan, you have a 65% chance of completing that task if you've committed to somebody, you're going to do it.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: More people you tell, the better it is that uh, that things will be achieved. And typically we don't tell anybody. We keep these things quiet, we keep these things Quiet. In case we fail. We don't want to let you down. We don't want to look like an idiot, but we do that because that's what they don't stop drinking until the

Speaker A: end of the year. Not going to tell anybody that one. Just in case party comes up.

Speaker B: Exactly. Just keeping my options open. And you get a staggering 95% probability, um, of completing your task, your goal, your commitment, if you have a specific accountability appointment with someone who's holding you accountable. So those steps are really quite a, um, simple road. I call it the Road to Accountability. It was based on a study done by the American Society of Training and development in 2010. And, uh, it really shows that you can achieve what you want to achieve, but you can't do it alone. So let me give you an example of how simply those steps could be put into place. And this is a true story. Um, I was in the process of, um, writing my book, the Accountability Advantage, during COVID and I needed a simple author photo on the back. And I couldn't get that author photo because we were all in lockdown and the whole world had gone stupid. And I wasn't able to get my photo done until towards the end of the year, in fact, November. And, uh, this was about February that I started the exercise of thinking about what the back cover is going to look like, et cetera. And my kids said to me, um, you know, uh, so. So my 10% probability, um, would, uh, move forward because I had the idea I needed an author photo for the back cover. Okay, I moved to 25% when I consciously decided I needed to do it. And I needed to do it because I committed to publisher that I would have these photos taken that they needed to, to complete this. So my probability has gone to 25%. I had a 40% chance of, of completing that deadline because I had a. The deadline was, um, effectively November. And November was when we pre. The. Our state government predicted we would be able to be free of lockdown. So that meant I could go to a photographer studio, see a human being, get my photos taken, and everything's done. Um, so I had a 50% chance of completing that task if I had a plan. And I, you know, spoke to my, My family and my, My adorable kids and their partners and their grandkids. But my boys very honest with their dad, and they said, dad, you can't look like that for your photo. Lockdown's not been good for you, dad. And I thought, really, no way. They said, you got to do something. That photo uh, looked like a golf ball. I said, boys, I need this photo. Uh, let's be serious about this. And they said, you gotta come on, dad, lose some weight before that photo, that, uh, photo shoots you. And I thought, okay, so I need a plan to lose some weight. How am I gonna do that? I need to do some exercise. Well, I couldn't do any exercise. Cause I really. We weren't allowed outta the house. So I got on Amazon, I bought myself a cross trainer, got it delivered, and it sat in the garage. And every morning I'd go down the crop screener. Every afternoon I thought, oh, I need, you know, Covid. We sort of all had a beer or we had a wine. And we were doing this virtually with our friends on Zoom. And I thought, no, I can't drink wine. I can't love a glass of wine in the afternoon. I can't do that anymore. I really love it. I don't want to give it up. But I will give up wine during the week, but I'll have a drink socially on weekends when we do our Zoom, um, uh, get together with our friends. And so I decided I wasn't going to drink during the day. So all of a sudden I got my plan right. No drinking during the day. And I thought, you know, I was eating a fair bit of bread at that time. And I just don't need to eat bread either because that goes straight to my waist and my head and makes it even look more like a golf ball. So I had a plan where I could lose some weight. And I knew I had a deadline towards that and I knew that I had some exercise machine. So off I am doing exercise and trying to get myself fit for my photos during that period of time. So there was my plan, got me to 50%. I then had a, um, was doing a podcast during that plan, uh, sorry, during that time with a guy by the name of Andrew Griffiths. I don't know whether you know Andrew. Um, so I was doing a podcast with him called, uh, let's Kick this Bug in the Nuts. And it was a podcast to about a thousand people that would tune in. Business owners just really looking at the, Keeping our spirits high and looking at the bright side of, uh, what was going on and the unique ways people were pivoting. And during that podcast, I said to a thousand people that had tuned into us live, I'm gonna lose some weight and this is how I'm going to do it. Exercise. The no booze and the cross trainer every morning. And I needed to get my Author photo better. And I explained the whole plan to them. So here I am telling all these people what I was planning on doing. The amount of interest that people had. They would send me texts during the week going, how are you going with your weight loss? How's the exercise going? I was getting all these words of encouragement. There was none of this stuff about, you know, um, negative stuff about, you know, you do need to lose weight. And more importantly there was people just offering, how can I help?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And this is wonderful when people support you and get behind you. So if you can share and uh, commit to somebody. I committed to a thousand people. 65% Probability of completing that task was uh, achieved. And the last component, uh, the 95% was I had a specific accountability appointment with somebody. So Andrew Griffiths would be my accountability partner through this. We'd have a zoom call once a week and he'd go, darren, what were you doing this week? What's the weigh in? And everything was starting. You know, he was encouraging me through it and I got to the end and I lost the weight and got the photo and the book came out on time and everything worked, worked a treat. But we had these simple little steps and they're not that hard to come up with. And so uh, that is largely what my program centers around, those components. We want to create a plan, we want to set some priorities. Priority for me was losing this weight so I could get this book cover done. So we go through exercises where we re look at priorities. We set uh, a new uh, uh, plan moving forward and then I meet with them every week and check in on their progress. And we, I don't take excuses. Yeah, you know, some things, some things we need to work around because life isn't always perfect. But ideally, um, we're both committed to achieving that task. And uh, that's the, the essence of my program.

Speaker A: Okay, very interesting. And you know, I'm just thinking about where I was actually this morning, uh, for a program I'm launching next year. I was writing my leadership um, reporting playbook, basically how to build the right kind of one page management reports for each of your leaders and then how you have the meeting where they come together. And I was like, this is actually, this meeting is the heart of all of strategy, execution, planning, accountability. Coming together is this meeting and this format and how it gets done. And when it gets done, because of exactly what you just said, it actually ensures that the work we've done on strategy, the work we've done on the execution plan that's fed into the individual accountabilities, um, the setting up of success as to what, what the lead and lag indicators are for them running their daily business. So they're presenting on their objectives and key results. They're presenting on their lead and lag indicators the financial performance of their department, decisions that they need to be made. They've got an insight summary, they've got wins and challenges all in one page. But because that comes together, this is where you've got the people who are actually accountable telling each other and rocking up for support from each other and having thought about how they're all there to help each other because they've all done the same, they've all sacrificed together, but they're absolutely clear. And all of those. I just realized that all of those steps are, uh, the things that actually make that work. Um, particularly around the fact that, you know, you don't want to be the one who rocks up, who didn't send your report out 48 hours prior like you were supposed to, because everybody else has. You don't want to be the one. And, uh, you know, like, you need that positive peer pressure. It's positive accountability.

Speaker B: Um, it is, absolutely. But you also need to be able to. It's like training a puppy. That sounds so horrible. I'd mean it like that, but it is like training a puppy. Right. So we're just going to reward them and we're going to make sure that's an easy task ahead, that we can remove those excuses. So, you know, you wanted me to attend to your podcast. We agreed on a date. You sent me some reminders along the way, you sent me the questions. You may it absolutely easy for me to be here on time, including the text you sent me like an hour ago to say, are we good? Absolutely, we're good. Because you wanted me to be at a certain outcome and you removed all the distractions, you removed all the reasons why, all the barriers, um, just made it really easy for me to turn up.

Speaker A: Out of those different steps, um, you talked about the first. You got to have the goal and you got to make the decision that you're going to essentially do it, um, and make sacrifices necessary. Then you've got the plan, then you're telling people, then you've got your specific accounting ability partners. Where does it most often go wrong? Um, is one of those a bigger area that you see is the place that usually needs the most work? And if so, which one is that and why do you think that's happening?

Speaker B: Interesting. So where it goes wrong um, it's a couple of things. Um, and it's usually broken early on in the piece.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So it's broken typically with the chance of success. Um, um, people often set unattainable goals. So they set themselves up for failure because what they think they're going to do in the available time or, you know, would increase my sales to, you know, 5 million this year. Okay, great. What do you need to do that? You know, I like to break it down, deconstruct the goal, deconstruct the outcome backwards to work out what are the things you need to do every day, what are the things you need to do every week, what are the things you need to. Where do I need to be at the end of the month? Where do I need to be at the end of next month? And at those milestones along the way, uh, we check in on people. We want to make sure that if it's going to break, it's going to break early, and we can then bring it back on track again.

Speaker A: Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker B: Does that make sense, Sean?

Speaker A: Yeah. Can you think of a time where. Give me an example, like, share a time with me where you're working with a client, you're working through their plan, and then it didn't work. Like, it broke. Um, and what did you actually see go wrong? Like, what was the situation? What actually went wrong? Um, and then what did you learn from that?

Speaker B: Quite often. So once we get started, it doesn't typically break.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: It's getting started. That is where the breaking point is. So I have. I have a lot. I've had people come to me and, and want, you know, me to help them start a, you know, start up their business. And, uh, we've gone down that path. And, um, We get to the part where we talk about the financial resources required to support that business growth and to do the things they want to do, even to the point where people are looking to hire additional people. And then, um, it's a big financial commitment and they're not sure of it. And I totally understand that. I want them to model this out. I want them to model the outcome before they start, and that's where it breaks. Typically, they just don't realize the resources they need, the dough they need to have behind them to invest in that particular person, um, and the ability to put new people on and be able to justify their existence. And, um, it's not an instant success. It's three months, it's six months. Sometimes it's longer than that, and people just they're just not prepared for that.

Speaker A: Is it that they're not.

Speaker B: They think it's like an instant success they want.

Speaker A: Okay, so you think so that's more about, um, unrealistic expectations than an unwillingness to do the work, like, to do the thinking because it's hard work. It's hard thinking work.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Like, actually getting really clear about what success looks like and be able to communicate to somebody else is hard thinking work. And I think there's always an element that I notice of. It's not a short. There's no quick dopamine hit that comes from that. It's like you gotta lock yourself away in a room. Don't talk to me. No distractions. It's hard thinking work. And, uh, the upside is incredible. The payoff is massive because it creates clarity, it creates confidence. It's what do we communicate with other people, all these other things. But actually the work is hard. So, uh, are you saying it's more about they often set a wild plan and then they're wildly disappointed because it was unrealistic, or is it usually more about they don't even want to do the plan in the first place and they're just going to keep shooting from the hip and trusting that they'll just figure it out as they go?

Speaker B: Um, uh, so the latter will figure it out as we go is how they start. And then once we've talked about that and looked at the different paths ahead of them, they realize that they actually need to think about this before they do it. And then modeling it, we model it out together. We sit there and, you know, we go through the exercise and then they can make decisions based upon accurate data. And quite often decisions are made on no data. Decisions are based on, you know, a conversation they've had with somebody else. Um, the advice that people get from different people is crazy, but everybody's got an opinion, so.

Speaker A: Well, that's a great example. Like, you know, m. It's very interesting what you said there because, um, you know, in the absence of actually doing the work around what clarity looks like in the first place and actually getting all the way down to what are. What are they sort of, you know, what other things do you use different language to what I did, but the concept of each person knowing what the latent lag indicators look essentially activity and outcomes look like in their job to make the. Just the business run, not the unique big work project I'm going to do this year and it'll be different next year. Like the stuff that's Just running the tk. I'm a sales manager. It's like they gotta make calls, they gotta get a certain conversion rate, they gotta do a certain number of hours of xyz. Like the stuff that just has to happen month in, month out and that will deliver the outcome. And in the absence of actually having a sensible rhythm where that data is clear, then you end up just in conversation after conversation after conversation and nothing moves, nothing changes. And you're going, God, I just need to make this person accountable. But there's no conversation about facts. It's all opinions and feelings.

Speaker B: Except, except if you command, if you know what those things are that are required. Right. I know I need to. I got a client whose sales team, uh, needs to make, uh, 50 connection calls each week, um, 10, uh, of them a day. Their team needs to sit down with them. He needs to sit with his team in the morning and say, what, Johnny, what are you planning for today? Who are those people you're calling? And let's write them down on the board. And what are you doing, Mary? And what are you doing, Darren? And what are you doing, Sean? I'm, ah, documenting those in the public environment. So they're all sitting around together and go, great, guys, I'll catch you at the end of the day. Let's see how you went.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Darren, how did you go? Sean, how did you go? Uh, and so on and so forth. You go through what they did. This is what you said you were going to do.

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: This is what you actually did. Why is there a difference between the two? If there is one, and we need to break, we, uh, need to get, uh, down and dirty and understand why there's a difference and remove that. So it's not a habit. Otherwise, if they get away with it a couple of times, I'll just keep doing it. I'll take the most people, not everybody, but most people take the shortest, shortest way they can.

Speaker A: Yeah. And they will test, you know, any new, any like sales reset or like there's gonna be a new activity level and this is gonna be the thing that's immediately gonna get tested. Like next day.

Speaker B: That's gonna be absolutely. It is gonna get tested. But, uh, we also need to have some consequences.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So let's take actually the example they've just gave. So you got the sales team, they're over did some connection calls and they get to the end of the day, um, how do you think about the consequences? And also how do you think about the consequences? Um, privately versus publicly, like what happens in the public environment versus happens in the private environment with the individual if someone missed it by a country mile.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I like people to set their own. So I like um, penalties and consequences to be set in a public forum. So in other words, the sales group together. So everybody's in this together because it's not about singling out an individual. It's about setting the uh, you know, the plan for the group. Um, I like the idea of them setting their own, um, consequences. Okay. And so, and, and, and the first lot of consequences. Love it to be something humorous. So pick, pick. Let's pick a chore in the office. Um, you. I had one team. One of the people in the team that I was working with. Um, one of his pet hates was health and fitness fanatic. Um, hated all the. There's a sweet jar in the lunchroom and disliked the fact that it was a, ah, was full of sugary things.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And his penalty, his consequence for not doing what he was gonna do was to actually buy the packets of his stu. Top it up, enough supplies in there for a week. And his whole team knew about it. So it was light hearted. But it had a message behind it. Um, you know, I, I quite like, uh, individuals who, you know, there's people who have very strong political views and you know, uh, particularly when we had the Australian election not so long ago, um, you know, you'd have somebody saying, hey, the particular party and go, okay, well if you don't do that task, maybe you could make a donation to that political party. Just a hundred bucks.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: A bit of hurt money, but something that's gonna. They're gonna talk about. They'll remember that. I had a, uh, really, really. I have a really close friend of mine who's uh, uh, an owner of a very large real estate agency practice. And we're talking about sales motivation between different organizations. And we, we, him and I had this thing where if, uh, we talked about the number of clients in my program and if I had Achie, um, uh, if I didn't achieve a certain number that was set, what was my penalty barracks for the opposition football team. And so I had to wear his football jumper in the queue at the ticket so I could go and buy a life. Sorry, let's start that again. I had to wear my football jumper to his team's membership sale and I had to buy an annual ticket which cost me me 200 bucks in. In my football jumper. And so it was quite a scene and it kept me. It worked for us Everybody enjoyed it, no one got hurt. Little bit of hurt money. Something we can all have a bit of a fun and games with and then we start to move it more serious.

Speaker A: Okay. So, yeah, I'm. It's interesting, um, it's an interesting area, right, Because I guess there will be a lot of philosophies that say praising public, um, and obviously everybody, like when you're doing stuff that's public and it's on a board or it's, you know, it's in the okrs, it's presented in town halls or you know, whatever the format is where it's kind of public, there will be a bunch of philosophies that say, well, praise in public, but do any of your kind of corrective coaching or remediation or consequences do it in private. But you've got a different view on that. What made you come to that philosophy?

Speaker B: I, you know, if I look back at my own career, I was a sales cadet years and years ago after, I mean I, uh, wrote about in my book, I was asked to leave high school in year 11, I think it was, um, and didn't go through to university. Um, look back at it pretty proudly now. Um, but in the day it was quite a moment. Um, I then got a job in sales and I was a sales cadet for a big office supply company. And we used to have sales meetings every Monday morning where we'd all turn up in. And there's probably 50 guys. They were all males in those days. And we're talking of, I have to show my age now, but early, early 80s, late 70s. And uh, they're all guy. We'd all smoke out the front and you know, we'd all have blue shirt, blue suits, white shirts, red ties. We were just clones. And uh, every morning they'd reach out. You'd have to read out your, your percentage to target. And there was a big wall, a big board behind us. And I have like all. It's like a board with all these holes in it. And there was like a golf tee with an elastic band and it was Finkelstein. No first names. Finkelstein. Yes. Um, what's your percentage? And I'd have to read out at 25%. And you know, if we were at week four and 25%, I'd get a client. Sorry, no, you'd get a clap if you were, uh, 26%. 25% is what they paid you to get. Less than 25% would be dead silence,

Speaker A: I'm falling dead silence.

Speaker B: Everybody's looking at you. And that's, that's the environment I grew up in. Right. You know, how do you reckon that

Speaker A: would go down, uh, in current day?

Speaker B: Um, well, I think it goes down pretty well. Cause it's about how you deliver that message. And if you can do it in such a way where the group's all in this together, we all know what our roles are and we're there to encourage and support each other. If you're under your target, then what can we do to help you? It's not just your problem. It's my problem as the leader. So how can I help you? Can I do stuff with you? Can we get one of the other team to join you? Uh, um, and to mentor you and support you and catch up with you and hold you accountable.

Speaker A: What's your philosophy then on um, is there a correlation to your philosophy on individual versus team incentives? So let's just say bonuses. Um, do you like to see mostly, you know, a bonus built around team success or mostly around individual or a blend of the two? Like, how do you, how do you like to think about that?

Speaker B: Well, it depends on, um, the environment we're in. So look, I spent before I, um, uh, opened up my, uh, accountability coaching practice. I had my own entrepreneurial business for 15 years and we sold that and exited prior to that. I worked for Apple for 10 years. And uh, we would get paid individually, uh, performance against target, and we would also get a percentage paid against our group's success. And you know, it's a team sport, but it's individuals in most cases carrying out this work. And I think we need to, um, if we want to keep it as an individual thing and every man for himself attitude, then pay an individual for their results. But if we want to encourage the teamwork and encourage collaboration and support, then, and we need to reward our people as a team and to have a mixture of both, I think works really well. Yeah. Uh, because at the end of the day I need to carry my end of the deal and my colleague needs to do the same. And then we, we, you know, we, we achieve our group number.

Speaker A: My favorite one, and this was, I mean it's easier, it's always easier, of course, in a sales team because, you know, everything's very quantified and whatever. But my favorite one, which I don't know, and I'd expect it 20 years thinking, you know, redesigning, thinking about training, leading sales team, so doing compensation design. Like I've done a thousand different models. I've tried absolutely everything. And this one I Sort of. I started to get frustrated when I was a, uh, you know, as a CEO and I had multiple entities. One of the things that it used to really annoy me was that every year that you wanted to put up your prices, it was like a battle. You're thinking, you spend all this time thinking about how am I going to communicate this price rise to the sales salespeople? Because their incentive is for the price to be cheaper and for it to be easier for them to sell. My incentive is for the price to go up so we can a meet the market or beat the market or maximize margins. And so this is, but there's like a, there's this divide, eruptive like anti magnetic thing happening around price. And I was like, I've got to come up with a way where we both win. So I remember I had this one education brand, I want to talk about which one it was, and they had an average sale price of $3200 dollars. And my cogs were fixed, they weren't percentage of revenue, they were fixed dollars. So I knew that if I put my price up $100, all of that $100 was going straight to the bottom line. If I put up $500, all the $500 was going straight to the bottom line. So I said to the team, I'll tell you why you have an average team result of 3200. You've been doing it month in month out for, you know, months and months and months. Every hundred dollars that you, um, achieve on a team average above 3200, I'm going to take 20% of that money, I'm going to put it back into a team pool and then that team pool is going to be split and distributed based on your individual contribution. So if the team doesn't hit the number, there's no bonus for anyone. If the team hits the number, now we're in bonus eligibility territory. And then your individual contribution will be what you get from that based on how many sales you did. And I have never seen salespeople push price harder than that group of people. They were like, within 60 days they have the price at about 4300. They're like, Sean, we've got to put the price up. We've got to put the price up. Here they were all angling with the price ticket up. It was amazing.

Speaker B: And what's in it for me exercising.

Speaker A: But what the thing I liked about it the most was if, um, I think everybody had to. And the qualifier was everybody had to be at least 80% the target or 85% the target or something. So when there was a laggard, everyone was going, we've got to help this person. Come on. Like, can someone give them a few deals?

Speaker B: Can we help you?

Speaker A: We'll stay back and do calls with you. Like, everyone was trying to make sure everybody got over the line. So they got the pool. But then their individual, um, you know, performance actually determined the amount of money they got. It was a very, uh, creative exercise, but it was one of my most fun, um, putting it together because of that balance between the two. But I think it's an interesting thing around. Okay, we bring it back to the conversation about accountability. Um, what did it do around the way this team reported and engaged around the target that was different to before? Well, now all of a sudden they were. It became a 10 sport for the first time in that team, whereas before I'd have been an individual sport.

Speaker B: Individual sport. Now if we can then take that Sean, and say to that team, um, you know, there's eight of you in that team. We're going to split you up into accountability groups, um, and you're going to meet your accountability buddy, you know, every week.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And we. And at the end of every month, you'll do that three times in the month. And the one time in the month, um, we'll get a group to get, get all the people together and we'll then present to each of the, uh, each of your team what you've done. And uh, it's a great way to make sure that everybody, you know, communicates what they're doing. Um, because I just. The amount of organizations I've worked with where interdepartment communications and understanding what another department does and seeing how it fits in and seeing why what they're doing is so important to what I'm doing, it's extraordinary. But we're all in the same place. But we're, it's like we're not.

Speaker A: Yeah. Now that's very interesting that you say that because I'm realizing it's like, I think I mentioned the program that I'm in the building out all these playbooks for. Um, one of the core components of that program is accountability pods. Um, it's groups of founders in four. So four founders that they haven't met before. They're not sort of, you know, haven't been engaging with. They're together for 90 days because they've made a 90 day commitment. The commitment to public, um, everybody in the community can see the public commitment, but the Accountability part is there to make sure everybody gets over the line and to hold each other account and they can problem solve inside that group far more effectively than making it reliant on me or my team to kind of solve everything.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And they learn, get to learn so much from each other.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, big time.

Speaker B: You know, they're sitting there, um, sharing their scenarios, their concerns, and uh, everybody gets a really nice perspective on of what the value everybody brings and the different stuff that they're dealing with.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. Um, Darren, I got two questions for you that I wanted to ask. One is if there was like one belief or one habit or one question that you wanted, like everyone to walk away from today thinking about, um, that you think would really help to shift their mindset and make them more likely to succeed in creating a culture of accountability in the organization. What's the thing that you want to get into that? Their head.

Speaker B: The thing I want to get in their head is that everything needs a plan behind it. Before we take on something, um, we need to understand, um, what sort of priority is placed on this particular action and see how that fits in with all the other stuff that we've got do. Make sure then once you've identified that it's, uh, it's a priority for you, um, give it the time that it needs to be successful and create a plan for every step along the way. And if you can get that plan checked in at every step, then before you, you know, something that's breaks, we can identify it early and you know, work, come up with a workaround ground.

Speaker A: But, uh, sounds like the other thing would have to go with that then is I imagine you then have to teach founders how to say no quite a lot because as you said, every. And this is what I like about the planning. It's like, well, if you have to do a plan well, you don't want to do a thousand of them, so you want to do less of them. And therefore you want to choose less things that are important. And equally everything that you start has a maintenance cost. And so you can't get people to be accountable if you just keep starting stuff and then wondering why it's all like sort of falling. It's like a, like a landing is sort of like falling off.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Let's not add on to your list. List of. Let's not add on to the list of things that you've got to do until you remove some of the things that are on there. Yeah, but you said it touched on about saying no. And that's the one area that I singularly spend most of my time with my clients is, um, getting them to understand the importance of saying no and how to say no with dignity, with empathy. Because saying no people struggle with. And it's such a good entree for these. This

Speaker A: for those who can't, uh, who are not watching us today but are listening.

Speaker B: Tell us what you're holding. I wrote the book called no Building a Life of Choice Without Obligation. And I wrote that book because I spend so much of my time, Sean, with, um, individuals who say yes to so many things. And, uh, they end up saying yes to the things that are important to somebody else but not important to them and not a priority to them. And saying no isn't a rejection. It's about a redirection to what truly matters. And, uh, if we can say no with a level of empathy and we don't hurt the other person and we make it in a really respectful way, more people would say no. People don't know how to do that because they've been wired. I was wired by my parents. Generational thing my parents used to say to me. Can't say no to things.

Speaker A: Say yes and figure it out later. Uh, correct.

Speaker B: M. But I realized that saying no, uh, helps me do the things that are important to me rather than the things that are important to somebody else.

Speaker A: That's very interesting. Yeah. Because think about that. Even if you're listening to content or you're watching content and someone goes, oh, uh, this is like, this is super important. Everybody says everything's super important. This is super important. That's super important. This is super important. So actually having that filter is a very interesting way of thinking about that. To go, is that important to me or is that actually important to them based on their context, their, ah, model, their history, their trajectory? That's a very interesting question. Um, M. Okay. And so my final question for you, Darren, is if a founder was like, you know what? I like the cut of Darren's jib. He's had some sensible things to say today. And I want to get started. I want to, you know, I've got an hour this week. I'm going to, like, block out an hour in my diary and do something, um, to take some of what Darren's told me, and I'm going to do something with that hour. What should they spend that hour doing?

Speaker B: Good question. They don't need an hour, they just need to take. So I have a scorecard, um, called the Accountability scorecard, and we can Test how accountable someone really is. Um, answering 26 questions, yes or no answers, um, and then they'll get a full report from me of the things they can implement to turn that around. I would do that. That and then on the bottom of that is some suggestions and my best thinking of what they can do, um, to increase their score in those areas that they didn't um, quite, you know, uh, meet the level. I've had like 6,000 businesses take this. So, um, the scores are worked out based upon those averages. Um, and if on the bottom of that report they get from me, they can click on the link and they can book a free 15 minute session with me and uh, and I'll do a zoom call with them and we'll have a chat about whether it's for themselves or for a team member or somebody that uh, is near and dear to them. Very, um, happy to do that. So the accountability scorecard is what I would do.

Speaker A: And where would you send them to do that?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I would send them to um, uh, the, the best places my website. Tick those boxes,

Speaker A: tick those boxes.com edu thank you very much for um, your generosity of time and spirit and knowledge today. Darren. You know, I think I really like that you have that actually that that model, which is obviously based in some empirical evidence, is so simple that how big the increase is in the probability of your likelihood of achieving something when you've not only got a goal. And every founder can resonate with this. They probably had goals with like, oh, I'd love to exit the business in five years. Do you have a plan to exit the business in five years? Do you know what's required? Have you reverse engineered that from like the. That's what I spent a lot of my time doing is reverse engineering success with founders. And then have you made a real decision that you're actually going to do what it takes to achieve that you're going to make the sacrifices? Everything has a cost. Are you actually willing to bear those costs? And that's going to mean saying no to some stuff. That's going to mean saying yes to some new things. And then do you have plan to do it? Have you told people, have you assigned accountabilities and do those people have income? Like these are actually pretty. They're not easy things, but they're simple things, um, that are clearly uh, going to significantly increase the chance of success uh, in achieving those goals in the first place. It makes a lot of sense to me.

Speaker B: Thank you for that. And it is really simple and I think it needs to be simple. Everything else we do so complicated that, uh, simple. Every day of world the week, let's. Let's go with that notion that let's just keep things as easy as we can. Everything else in our life so bloody hard.

Speaker A: I love it. Well, thank you very much, Darren, for your time today, uh, folks, I really hope you enjoyed what you got out of Darren. Shoot me a note, let me know, um, at, uh, shaunscalehq.com what you got out today. If you've got any questions for Darren, let me know and I'll forward those through to them and I'm sure he'll come back to you, and otherwise, uh, jump on his website and do his accountability. So ball card. Thank you so much, Darren.

Speaker B: Terrific. Thanks for having me, Sean.

Speaker A: Cheers, mate.

Speaker B: Bye.