Hello, Liberated Podcast fam! We are back after another great weekend. We went to the Space and Rocket Center this weekend and let me tell you, absolutely blew my expectations out of the water. Just such a cool experience. They even had meet a rocket scientist. Like, it was so cool. They had, a few retired rocket scientists in their lab coats and you could go up and ask them questions.
Like I loved it. And my little four year old son did too. He proudly declared afterwards that he no longer is just going to be a doctor when he grows up. He is going to be a doctor and then a rocket scientist and then he is going to fly planes. So, big career goals. I did let him know he can achieve all three by becoming a doctor.
In the international space station. So he's very excited about that. And so just know that when you take a liberating team's chorus, you are funding the future education for Sawyer to become a rocket scientist slash pilot slash doctor, um, cause we got a hefty college fund we're saving for. Okay. So let's get into today's topic of you can not.
Fix your team. Ooh. Yes, we are going there. So I feel like that, you know, we were put in the position of leadership because we, we're fixers. Like we are the ones who step in and get things back on track and we want what's best for our team. So we're going to do the dang work. I know you, I know because you are a liberated leader.
You want your team to be operating at its full, its potential, and you are striving day in and day out to get there. And what I see happen a lot of the times is we fall into this place of hyper fixating on how can we fix this? How can we get everything so it's operating perfectly? And we strive and strive for like this golden ticket solution that once we put in place with our team, all of the chaos, all of the whiplash from constantly shifting priorities.
All of the fire drills, all of those holes that you see in your team that are constantly weighing on you, all of the frustration, the stepping on each other's toes, the silos, they all just melt away. And suddenly you are left with this team that's operating in this like glorious fashion, like they know where they're going and they are running after that vision with conviction.
They have workflows that are seamless and they are able to execute with ease and they just work together as this cohesive and aligned unit and the results they're getting. Like, they are just making a true impact. Their work really freaking matters. And you are able to sit at that highest level, leading your team from a strategic standpoint because your team's doing the dang work like the all stars they are.
Like that's the dream. And we're out there looking for this golden solution to get there. And so what happens is, you know, we obsess over the podcasts, the books, the, the choruses, the benchmarks, oh gosh, so many times as I was coming up through my career as an org designer. I would be in the weeds with these teams and like helping these leaders understand where their team's gaps are and how we could design new ways of working to help these teams get to that ideal state and the leaders would be like But do you have a benchmark?
Can I see some benchmarks of what? other teams are doing. And let me tell you, it was so frustrating and defeating because benchmarks are just a distraction. Benchmarks are just a distraction. We love them as leaders because it feels like that golden state solution, right? If I just had a benchmark, if I could just copy and paste what that team over there is doing onto my team.
Everything would be better. It's working for them, they're getting results, so if we could just go see what they're doing and paste it onto our team, like that's the answer. We don't need to do any of this design work, we don't need to be looking into our team, we just need the blueprint that we can copy and paste.
But let me tell you. That's not how teams work. There is no golden answer because teams cannot be fixed. I want you to think about the engine of your car. So right now, the engine of your car, if something's wrong with it, if you're starting to hear, an odd noise,
it's no longer getting the, mileage it once did like, you know, something's wrong. So what you do is you take it in, or if you're a little handier, you open up the hood of your car and you start looking around and what you're trying to do is you're trying to isolate the problem. What Heart of my engine is causing the entire engine to malfunction.
And so we isolate down and pinpoint exactly which part of the engine is failing, and then we have a manual that we open up. And it tells us how that specific part operates and how we can solve the problem. And because engines are complicated. They're hard to understand, but they're still fixable.
Because they are fixed. Meaning that they operate the same way day in and day out. They do not change. One day, your engine's not going to wake up and say, Mm, today I'm only going to operate on diesel. No. When your engine was created, it was created a specific way, and it will continue to operate that specific way until one day it no longer works.
Which means you can fix it because it's consistent. It's fixed. It does not change. Your team is not that. Your team does not come with a manual for a reason. Because your team is what's called a complex system. It is a system of various parts of elements that are constantly changing. We are dealing with humans.
Humans who have different skill sets, different emotions, different experiences, different opinions. And we are placing them in a business environment that is constantly changing. Customer demands are constantly changing. The economy is constantly changing. How we need to innovate to stay ahead is constantly changing.
In fact, it's operating at a faster pace than we've ever seen before. And we are trying to get these humans in operating in this business environment to get aligned and achieve these results, but oh, by the way, those results are changing to where your engines only job is to operate to propel your car forward, your team's results, the performance metric that they're after one day, it's X, the next day, it's Y.
It's constantly changing, because if customer needs are changing, your team's, like, what it's striving to achieve are changing with it.
So we can not apply the same concepts of fixing an engine to fixing a team, because a team is constantly changing. I want you to think about your team like a garden. It's like an ecosystem. And your ecosystem, requires food and nutrients and water and good soil. It requires you to defend against, pests and things like that.
It requires protection, but you have no idea what's thrown your way. Like one day it's really hot. The next day we have a winter freeze coming in and you are constantly having to change your routine, your rhythm for taking care of this garden based off of what's getting thrown your way. And that's exactly what it's like for your team.
It is our job as leaders to create and maintain that system for our team to thrive. And every day, we don't know what's going to get thrown at us. We don't know if we're getting a hailstorm or a bright, sunny, happy day.
And we have to be prepared to adjust how we're caring for our team's system based off of that.
Now, your team's ecosystem where a plant requires nutrients and soil and water and defense against, pests and things like that, your team system requires five things. And this is what we call the liberated operating system. It requires strategy. It requires for you as the leader to say, Hey, here is where we're going.
And here is what we need to prioritize. And more importantly, not prioritize in order to get there. Here's how we're going to spend our precious team's time and energy. Here's where we're going to spend our precious resources in order to achieve this destination. And it requires a workflow. It requires how you bring these diverse humans together and get them to achieve that strategy, that vision you're striving for.
It requires us to be intentional about How we break up and get this work done, who's doing what, who makes what decisions, how does work get handed off from one world to the next, from one team to the next. It requires us to reduce all that friction, the bureaucracy. From those workflows to make it insanely simple for our team to execute on that strategy, because it's all fine and dandy to have a great strategy.
But if we made it impossible for our team to get there. We're never going to achieve it and that's what's called our workflow. The third thing you need is teaming. You need for all of these diverse individuals to come together and actually be able to coordinate and collaborate around the work. They need to understand when they need to come together and when they do come together, how they Quickly understand who's doing what and how we're going to work as a cohesive unit, not just a bunch of silos we duct tape together to get something done.
It's in how we meet, how we share information. All of this comes back to collaboration and teaming. It's in how we handle conflict. When we're not in agreement, because again, you can have a beautiful destination, a strategy, you can have a seamless workflow to get there. But if your teams are constantly at each other, unwilling to work together, if they're constantly operating in silos, Working in odds with each other, then we're never going to be able to achieve that.
And then it comes into culture. The underlying values and behaviors that drive your team and how they show up. It's in do they trust each other? Because they will never break down those silos and team if there's not trust. It's in, is there psychological safety for them to run and try new things and challenge the status quo?
Or are they operating consistently from a place of fear of failure? Where they're scared to even make a move. Because, oh my gosh, I know if I just make the slightest error. I'm in huge trouble. Our culture has a huge limiting factor on our team. If it's coming from this place of negativity. And the last thing is in our leadership, how we are leading them.
Are we empowering and amplifying our team? Or have we fallen into this place of, I'm just going to step in and make it happen. Because I don't understand how to create an environment for my team to be empowered to own their work, to take accountability. So I'm just going to step in and do it because that's the path of least resistance if I just rely on myself.
But that right there is creating a culture of learned helplessness where your team learns, well, they're always going to step in and do it for me. So that must be just how things get done. Why should I even try? And so that's actually diminishing your team's potential because they are capable of owning it.
They are capable of stepping up to that plate, but we have not given them the conditions to do so. And so when we step in and just do it for them, we are diminishing their potential and what they are capable of. Our leadership, it impacts our team's ecosystem. So, where flowers and gardens need water and nutrients and sunlight, your team needs these five things.
They need strategy. They need workflow. They need teaming. They need culture. And they need leadership to survive, to thrive. And it. It's not some benchmark that is going to, to create this for you, because here's the thing, what is working for one team doesn't necessarily work for you, because ecosystems are unique to the system they're operated in, that larger system.
It is the greater company culture. It is the industry they're in. It is the type of people they're operating with. Are you working with a team who's super tenured, who, you know, Is able to think super strategically, who is super confident in challenging the status quo, or are you working with a team who is a newer, who's just getting their feet wet, who is just building that confidence that changes your ecosystem, it's in the type of leaders they have, it's in the type of systems and tools they have access to.
All of these little things affect your team's ecosystem and how you create it. So by copying and pasting what you see working from someone else doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for you because you don't necessarily have all of the conditions that they have. And here's the thing, even if by some magic.
It does work. You copy and paste over what they're doing and you make it work. It's not going to last. Because like I said, your ecosystem is constantly changing. One day it's sunny conditions and the next day it's a hailstorm. And then the day after that, suddenly it's freezing winter conditions. So where you've copied and pasted a system that works when it's sunshine and rainbows, what the heck is going to happen when it starts hailing?
If you haven't done the work to understand how to create the system for your team, you're not going to be able to pivot. You're not going to be able to adjust
the watering routine or the nutrients, or in other words, for you, your team's strategy or how they're teaming. Because all you did was copy and paste. You don't actually understand how to create a system that gets a team to thrive. So even while benchmarks may work for a second, they're not a longterm fix.
The longterm fix is you, you as the leader. And here's the thing. I understand that so many of you right now are like, gosh, like some days. I, I feel like I'm the problem because I just have tried it all and I cannot get it to work. So maybe we just need somebody else to step in and make it happen. But I want you to understand right now that you are the solution, but you are not the problem.
The problem is the fact, and I will get on a high horse about this. So I'm like, try and keep this short. The problem is the fact that we have done leaders a disservice. We have not given them the education. We have not equipped them with the information they need to succeed. Right now, you were placed in this position of leadership and I guarantee you that you received zero education.
And if you received an education, some sort of training on how to be a great leader, it was very surface level. Nobody taught us how to bring a group of diverse individuals together and get them aligned. to achieve a result. No one taught us that. They simply said, hey, here's a team, make the results happen.
So what do we do? We do our best. We put together some structure of sticks and boxes and we try and make it happen. But eventually it breaks down and we have to get in the weeds and we have to physically hold it together ourselves. We physically bear the weight. Not because we're, we're the problem, not because we're not capable, because we weren't taught anything differently.
The only education we had was learning from the leaders that came before us. And some of us were lucky enough to have incredible leaders who showed us the way. But a lot of us weren't so lucky. All we had was an example of what not to do. And that's not an education. So no, I'm not saying you need to go get a master's in leadership or business psychology.
I'm just saying you need to understand and be equipped with the core concept of how to build that ecosystem for your team. How to create those five elements I talked about in a simple way. A simple, low lift way that gives your team the ecosystem they need to thrive. To understand how these five elements work together.
To bring together a group of unique individuals to get a result. To understand how you need to shift and adjust each one of these elements to achieve the goal you're after. Because here's the thing, one day you're like, I want my team to be more innovative. The first place you need to look at is your team's system.
A lot of us say like, our team needs to be more innovative, so we go out and get more innovative talent. Well, we just need, somebody with a more strategic mindset. We need somebody with more advanced skills because the only thing we know is our people because that's all we've been taught. You take people, you put them into an org structure, suddenly they produce results.
So if we want a different outcome, well, duh, we just need to get different people or we just need to blow up our org structure, right? But here's the thing, you can take the most innovative talent, but if you place them in an operating system, a system that is super clunky, super bureaucratic, super slow in a culture that has an.
distinct fear of failure that will shut down every creative idea because they're so terrified of what might go wrong. You will not get an innovative team. You're just paying a crap ton of money for this high, you know, desired innovative talent. Who will never be able to operate at their full potential because we've kept their potential by putting them in the system.
You cannot fix your system or change your system by simply putting different talent in it or shuffling around the sticks and boxes. Your team's potential is capped at how their system is operating. If you want to shift your team's behavior or their performance, you have to look at the system they're operating in.
So that is why it's so critical for us to have this skill set is because when we need to make a pivot or when we need to change something as a leader, we need to understand how to do it. And it comes back to the strategy and direction for your team, how your workflow, how you're getting the work done, the teaming, how your team's coming together, the culture, the values and behaviors of your team, and how you are showing up as a leader.
It is those things that dictate it. And so when we understand how to shift those things, that is what gives us the power as a leader to drive that more innovative team, to drive that team that is fully accountable for their work, to drive that team who's able to get things done quicker, better, faster. It comes back to your system, your system is gives you the power to make those shifts.
And then the third thing that the system does is it also allows you to pinpoint where it's breaking down because right now we're hyper fixated on the symptoms. The behaviors. My team's not accountable. My team's not solving problems. They're not strategic enough, not innovative enough. My team is chaotic.
It takes forever to get anything done. My team is super siloed and they won't even work together or my team is over collaborating and they're constantly stepping on each other's toes. And we're seeing all of these issues pop up and we're trying to play whack a mole leadership solving one by one.
But when we solve one, 12 more pop up. And the reason that happens is it's just like weeds in a garden. Weeds happen in a garden when there's something wrong with the system. Like, the system is producing the condition for weeds to thrive. I went on a small gardening kick. And let me tell you, three years in, I have not been able to grow a successful garden.
One thing that I learned is that, pests, they're attracted to plants that are weak. And when you have a pest problem, it brings even more pests. And they are less likely to attack plants that are strong and thriving.
The same thing happens for your team. The reason why you feel like you solve one symptom and then 12 more pop up is because those symptoms are not the problem. There is, those symptoms is just your team system telling you something's wrong here. Something is wrong here. Something in our system is broken and I'm telling you that, but all you're doing is trying to fix these symptoms.
And it's no better than you going into the garden and just using scissors to cut, chop off the top of the weeds. It looks good for a moment, but of course they're going to grow back because we haven't gotten to the root, the system, attic, level of that problem. You're experiencing symptom after symptom because you're not solving the root and symptoms continue to feed and populate off of each other.
Just like those pests in a garden. And the thing is, that it's likely not a million different issues. Sure, we're seeing a million different symptoms, and that's what's overwhelming to us. But it's likely that they're all coming back to one or two major issues in our system.
And if we can just do the work to dig in and say, what about our system is holding our team back, which of these five elements is causing these symptoms, then we can make those small shifts and start to see those symptoms disappear. But we have to move from trying to solve the symptom to understanding what about our system is creating that problem.
And that is why I love systems so much is because it shifts me as a leader from just like playing whack a mole leadership and throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks to putting structure around how I'm trying to improve my team. It is no longer me just running after symptoms, it is me looking at these five elements and seeing what I'm experiencing in my team, the behaviors my team is exhibiting, the events that I'm seeing, how did those all come back to this system and how can I think through systematically how to improve them.
It helps me diagnose and actually tackle that root cause. Instead of simply trying to chop off the top of weeds, this system is what gives you the power. The system is what allows you to be the answer to your team's problems because you are capable. I know you are capable because you are listening to this right now because you want what's best for your team.
You just need the tool. You just need the understanding. You just need the framework in place for you to understand where to focus your time, energy, and capacity because Lord knows you have a million other things on your plate. And if you just had a system that allowed you to focus in, to pinpoint the gap, and create those small shifts to build an ecosystem that your team thrives in.
Gosh, just imagine what your team could achieve if you knew how to build that ecosystem, to give your team the right nutrients, the water, the sunlight they need to not just hit their potential but to thrive. Like think about gardeners who, I'm just like really on the gardening example, y'all, this is the year my garden's gonna thrive.
You just watch. I know it. But like, think about. a gardener who is just like so amazing at their craft. They are so amazing at creating these conditions for their plants to thrive. They have this magical touch. You can give them a seed and what they're able to produce out of that seed is phenomenal.
Like they are able to produce, you know, the biggest, juiciest, most award winning pumpkins. We're going with pumpkins. That you've ever seen, not because that seed isn't magical or, you know, there's something special about the seed. It's because they have this talent as a gardener to create the conditions for that seed to thrive in a way that no one else can.
And that's the same thing that you can do as a leader. It's you taking the seed as your team and their talent. And if you are able to create conditions that allow them to thrive, because you've mastered those five elements, they have the strategy, the workflow, the teaming, you can create talent, a team that rises beyond what even they thought possible.
But it all comes back to those conditions because you can also take a seed, that same seed that someone else created this award winning pumpkin out of, and you can put it and plant it in the desert and that seed will never grow. It will never reach its full potential because we did not create a system that it would thrive in.
You are capable of creating teams that thrive. You just need the system. So I want you guys to take what you learned in this episode to really start thinking about my team's system. The underlying system, those five elements. And just, I want you to, really think about that this week. Really think about that and how you, what, what is the health of your team's system right now?
Is it thriving? Is it creating those award winning pumpkins or is it a desert? And how is the health of your team system? Contributing to your team's behaviors and results. That's what I want you to think about this week. And if you want support, if you're like, Whoa, this is exactly where I need to be, I want to understand this system.
You gotta be inside, unblocked. Right now, so it's January 21st right now, if you're listening to this. Right now, we just kicked off last night the first call in a four week immersion program all about understanding this system and how it drives your team's performance. And we are going through a four week immersion program where we're diving deep and I'm teaching you how to pinpoint and diagnose where your team's system is breaking down.
And then the week after that, we're actually going to be developing low lift, simple solutions for how to, shift and solve those elements in your team. And in the fourth week, we're actually going to be implementing them. And you are going to have my support every step of the way through one modules where I'm giving you all the information and tools you need to do the work, but then two through hands on support through workshopping calls through asynchronous Q& A to make sure you have everything you need to actually diagnose what's going on in your team system and start implementing those low lift solutions.
The way that this program is designed is for my leaders who are like, I don't have any time. I don't have capacity. I don't even know if I have the mental bandwidth. I boil it down to the simplest parts and tell you exactly what you need to go do.
And then I give you all the support in helping you go do that work so that you leave these four weeks having. actually seen measurable progress instead of me just throwing a bunch of theory at you for four weeks where you're like, great, I have a bunch of notes, but what the heck am I supposed to do now?
It is an immersion program because it is action focused. And not only do you have my support, but you are in a cohort with some incredible leaders who are also taking action alongside you. So it's not too late. Go ahead. And I'll drop the link to unblocked in the, Notes below if you want to jump in into this incredible cohort if you are listening to this Beyond the next four weeks.
That's okay Unblocked will be available on replay as well If you want to learn this skill set and start doing the work of diagnosing and solving your team system Okay, you guys I hope you have a wonderful week. Let's go do the freaking work
