I am sitting in a session with a client and we are making sure to flush out all the issues.
The sales and marketing director is going through his list as I write them up on the board. He finishes his list by saying, “And I need to be on the Issues List as well.” This gathered a few looks but I told the group that we had bigger fish to fry so we were not going to dive into solving any of the issues just yet.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a morning appointment with a business owner and an afternoon appointment with an executive (from a different company).
The two meetings couldn’t have been more different.
I recently had a slightly humorous, but nonetheless, very forceful reminder of the power of repetition when communicating with your team.
In the world of EOS®, we subscribe to the premise that you have to say something seven times to be truly heard.
A few years ago, I traveled to Green Bay, WI to see the Bears play the Packers on a Monday night.
My son and I made the trip with my wife’s brother and his son, who live in the LA area but somehow are huge Packers fans. When we arrived at the stadium on Sunday afternoon for a tour, my nephew said, “Look at the clock.” I said, “Okay, it’s 1:15.” Then he said, “Look at your watch.” I saw it was 1:00 and remembered about “Lombardi Time.”
Recently, one of our client teams found themselves facing a difficult decision.
They realized that two functions they’d always kept separate really belonged under one leader. Keeping them separate created unnecessary complexity, causing extensive debates about overlapping resources, workflow and priorities. Combining them would eliminate confusion, increase speed and quality, and make the company more responsive to its customers. That part was easy.
The hard part?
My son didn’t like what he heard from me, so he went to his mom and got the answer he wanted. We call this “the end-run,” — it also happens in business.
For example, have you ever experienced dissension in your organization where employees sided with one leader over the other? It’s like a reality show where alliances are created to overtake the other party.
