we are back for our second live in this series where we are going all in to what is keeping you in this place of overwhelm. And exhaustion and being stuck in the middle, physically having to hold your team together and push work across the finish line. And how do you shift from that to having that team that is empowered and allows you to pull up out of the chaos and actually run your team with ease?
So yesterday we did a full live all about. What actually is driving your team's performance, and that is your operating system. So we talked about the four elements, your strategy, your workflows, your teammate, and your culture. And today we're taking it one step further. And we're actually going in and we're going to diagnose your operating system.
Because here's the thing, when it comes to leaders who are in this space of, my team's not performing the way I want it to, I'm not leading it the way I want to because I'm having to get down in the weeds on a day-to-day basis, fighting fire drills, all that stuff the two major struggles that they have are going to be, I don't know where to start.
There is so much that I know needs to be improved, but I just don't know what to go after first. And let's be honest, I have very little time to do any improvements. And then the second thing I get a lot is, I've tried to make improvements, but nothing seems to stick. And so I'm playing this constant game of whack-a-mole of I solved this problem and then this one shows up, and then that one shows up.
So I'm like constantly running around. Playing leadership whack-a-mole. And I don't feel like I'm ever making progress, if any, either of those. Feel like you. Let me know in the comments. We're gonna make this fun and interactive. So let me know in the comments. And if I look down, that's where I'm looking at my iPad so I can make sure I'm not missing anything from you guys.
So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. 'cause those two both relate to a sole problem of diagnosing the issue. What's actually going on here. Now the second one of, the change isn't sticking. There's a second part of that one, which is like the solution we're implementing and how we're getting our team's buy-in, which I've got you covered.
We're gonna talk about that next week. We're gonna go all into solutioning and doing solutioning in a way that resonates with your team that they're gonna be fully bought into. And that actually sticks and drives real behavioral change without adding some like massive. Transformation project to your plate because nobody has time for that and they never work.
So we'll go into that next week. Let's start with diagnosing your operating system. So you are gonna leave today having exact clarity into where you need to start to improve your team. So the first thing that we need to understand is where the majority of leaders get stuck. And you're gonna see my beautiful drawing skills.
This is an iceberg, right? You can see it? Yeah. And I don't have blue, so we're gonna use purple for our water today. My husband says, I used the water example way too much. I'm sorry we used it on the last call, but it's effective and if it works. Don't break it. So anywho, what I was talking about is where leaders mostly try and improve their teams, and that is above the waterline.
So something's going on with your team, errors are popping up constantly. There's something wrong. You're having to go back and fix things. Do rework output quality. So you are either a service based team or a product based team, whatever it may be. Either the products your team's delivering are not being delivered in a up to your quality standards or the service they're delivering isn't being delivered up to your quality standards.
So output quality. The next one is behaviors. You're not happy with how your team's behaving. Whether it's how they're interacting with each other, how they're interacting with stakeholders, how they're showing up. They're not taking ownership. They're constantly coming to me with problems to solve instead of taking ownership and trying to solve themselves.
There's some sort of behavior issue that we're not happy with. The other one is things being slow. Everything takes forever to get done, or it's super chaotic. We get it done, but it's chaos. Lots of fire drills, lots of last minute, lots of scrambling, lots of everyone stepping all over each other.
It's not this smooth, simple machine that I wish it was, so whatever it may be, we're solving up here and these are symptoms. These are symptoms. So the errors that your team's making, not the problem. It's the symptom, the output, the quality of your team's output, not the problem. It's the symptom. Your team's behaviors and how they're showing up and how they're performing, not the problem.
It's the sy, the symptom and so on. What's really the problem is what's underneath this waterline, and that's the foundation. And you guessed it, if you were here last week. That is your operating system. All of your team's behaviors, their performance, all of that comes back to the system they are operating in.
If they're producing errors, it's because something in our operating system is causing those errors, whether it be super complex processes, lack of clear strategy they're not understanding how to work together. So that system is producing the errors. If they're not taking accountability over their work, it's likely not a person problem.
It's majority of the time an operating system problem. We haven't done the work to provide the strategic clarity they need to own the work. We have it simplified the processes to where it's simple for them to actually get the work done. They're spending all of their time trying to jump through hoops, which is keeping them in a space of tactical execution.
Versus that strategic individual that we desire. So all of these symptoms up here are really the root cause or the root begins at our operating system. And here's the thing for you guys who are like, I just feel like there's a million things, like everything you just listed yep, that's us. Yep, that's us.
We have all of those. That's very common. Why? Because one issue with your operating system, those four elements we talked about, your strategy, your processes, your workflows, your culture, they don't just show up in one way. They show up in many different ways. So like for example, right now, my family, we are like.
A so babies when it comes to allergies, the dusting of pollen is here and all of us are miserable. And right now we've got the sore throats, we've got the runny nose, we've got the headaches, we've got all the things, and those are all symptoms of the problem. Now we could go and run around and try and treat those individual symptoms.
I could be taking sore throat medicine. I could be taking, ibuprofen for my headache. I could be whatever it may be, every symptom we treat as this individual isolated issue, but one that's super ineffective, it's not healthy for our bodies. Or we could say, okay, what's going on here? We diagnose the symptoms and we treat the root problem.
10 times more effective, 10 times simpler, but so many of us are chasing these individual symptoms. We're trying to solve the error problem. We're trying to solve the quality problem. We're trying to solve the behavior problem, when in reality these are all stemming from something broken in your operating system.
So it's likely that you don't have 25 different problems on your team. You have 25 different symptoms of a broken operating system. So if we want to drive effective change, where do we need to start? We need to start at our operating system. We need to figure out what that root causes, because here's the thing, what happens when we solve symptoms?
So you experience a symptom. Teams not behaving the way we want. Output's not the way we want it, whatever it may be. And so what do we do? We come up with a solution,
so we throw a solution on it, whatever it may be. There's errors coming. So we add sign-offs. There's misalignment between the team, so we add alignment meetings, right? There's a. Difficult stakeholder that we're struggling to work with. So we just, hey guys, when we get the work from them, we're just gonna do some rework on it to make it the way we want it.
So we just add rework to our team's plate to, instead of handling the stakeholder, pour accountability on the team, add a status tracker, add one of the fancy Trello boards, we'll figure it out so that way we can micromanage everything that's moving through our team. And when we feel a symptom and we add some sort of solution.
But here's the thing, we're gonna feel temporary relief. That status tracker is feeling good. We got all organized, it's color coordinated. It looks pretty us doing the rework because our stakeholder isn't giving us what we need. Eh, it works like we're getting by. Like we feel good 'cause we're, we made some sort of progress forward, right?
For now, because what happens? We didn't solve the root, we didn't solve it at the system level. And so because we didn't solve the root cause, it comes back up and we end up experiencing more symptoms. It gets bigger because the difficult stakeholder, sure, we develop a workaround for it this time, but now we've conditioned that behavior.
Oh. The stakeholder thinks we're giving them what, or they're giving us what we need, like we're good. And so now it starts to seep into the rest of the work. You adding those sign-offs to prevent future errors from happening. Guess what? We didn't solve why the errors were happening in the first place.
Maybe it's that our processes are convoluted as crap, which is making it really hard for our team to get work done. Handoffs are super clunky, so things are constantly falling through the cracks. We didn't solve that, so guess what? We've added more sign-offs, which may catch it, but we didn't actually solve while the errors are happening in the first place.
This is why so many of you guys feel like you're playing whack-a-mole. I'm constantly trying to solve problems. I'm constantly adding SOPs, adding these meetings, adding this new, tracker, this new tool, this new process, this new role. But it's never enough. That is because we're solving symptoms and not the root cause.
We've got to get to the root cause. So the other thing that I want to mention is, what did we just mention there? Every single time we have a problem, we add. We talked about errors. You add a sign off, misalignment, we add a meeting issues with our stakeholders. We just add the work to our plate.
We're constantly adding, and that is just human nature. It is much easier for us to add and make it feel productive than for us to go back and audit and subtract at the root. So I always a good example is. You're feeling overwhelmed. You're in a season where it's just there's so much on my plate.
Like I don't know what to do. So what do you do? You go to Target and you go to that beautiful aisle with the planners and the sticky notes and all the different markers and pens and highlighters. And you fill up your cart and you check out and you feel like this temporary relief, right? But did we solve the problem of overwhelm?
Did we actually, audit what was on our plate? Take things off, figure out what was a priority, and what trade offs we were going to make to prioritize those things. No, we just added more to the problem because now what I'm going to go do, instead of, actually solving the root cause of needing to prioritize and simplify, instead what I'm going to go do.
Is, I'm gonna go figure out how to use this new planning system. I'm gonna go figure out, my highlighter color coordinating system. I'm going to go, fill everything in and make it all look pretty. It's a giant distraction. And even worse in our teams is every time that we add something else, a sign off, a new process, a new system, a new tool, a new SOPA, new whatever, we are adding complexity to our team's operation.
So every time you add something, it is upping the complexity, the time, the energy it takes your team to execute goes up because now they have to work her through that sign off. Now they have to, have that added work to their plate. Now they have that more complex process. Now they have to look at an SOP or RACI before they move forward.
Now they have a new role, a new individual that they have to work around. They have to figure out how to work with. Every time you add something to your team, you are also adding complexity. Yet we constantly default to adding, and that is why so many of us are in this place of overwhelm, is because we've kept on adding to solve these symptoms and not the root cause, and it's actually hurting our team versus making it more effective.
So let's get into diagnosing. Okay. How do we go through and actually diagnose the root Cause? The first thing is we've gotta collect the symptoms. So we do need to collect our symptoms and get a feel for what is going on. But here's the thing, we are not collecting symptoms by, my perspective as the leader.
Or just who's willing to come up to me and share. We are being intentional about data collection. If I was the owner. Of a NASCAR team. I don't know why we're on this example. We used it last, last episode, but we're rolling with it. If I was the owner of a NASCAR team and I just sat up in the highest part of the bleachers every race, and I watch my team, go round and round the track, and I'm like, yep, I know what's wrong.
I know why we're not renting. What, this is what we gotta do. Would that be effective? No it wouldn't because there's no way that us at that high up in the bleachers have any idea of what's truly going on, who has the best view of what's truly going on, the person driving the car, the pit crew working on the car, those closest to the work.
Us as leaders, I don't care how long you've been leading this team, I've worked with leaders who have been leading teams for the same team for 20 plus years. And they're like, I know what's going on. I guarantee you there is information you are missing because the further we work our way up the leadership ladder, the more removed we are from the work, the more we are the last one to know what is truly going on.
And I don't care how much psych safety you have in your team, there is an inherent risk for your team to come to you and share issues. There will always be an inherent risk of them coming to you and being transparent and opening up and sharing with you something that's going on, but for you, your ability to do your job as a leader, you are dependent on that information.
And so if you are dependent on having a clear view of what's actually going on with your team so you can get to the root and you can solve the right problems, yet there is an inherent risk for anyone for you to share that information. Then the last thing we need to do is hide behind some surface level open door policy saying oh, if there's a problem, they'll come to me.
If there's a problem, they'll bring it up in their one-on-one. And just hope it happens. No, because we are dependent on that information and there's an inherent risk in them sharing it. So if we desire it, we need to be more proactive about going after it. So when it comes to collecting info about what is going on, the data, the symptoms, we need a 360 degree view.
So this is exactly how I get that. So in order, my marker's running low in order to get a 360 degree view, first thing. Team, those closest to the work, that is my number one source of information. How am I getting that? One, one-on-Ones are a great time time to ask what is going well, what isn't going well?
What about how our team is operating is making it super simple for you to get results? What about it is hindering your ability? Great way to do it in one-on-one. My personal favorite way to do this, 'cause I like getting my team together is in monthly retrospectives. So every month I get my team together and I say, I put up my.
If you've never seen a retrospective Google it'll give you 5 million templates. But essentially what it is what is going well, and we, I give everyone a pad of sticky notes. We all take two minutes to write down one idea per sticky note, what went well this past month that moved us closer to achieving our vision.
Our vision is always what we are measuring against, not just what went well in general. What's your general opinion? What went well that moved us closer to achieving our vision? And then what about this month moved us further away? What didn't go well is that second column. Again, give them sticky notes.
Two minutes, they put them up. We're looking for themes, patterns, things like that. Where are people saying the same things multiple times or the same things, different ways. And then we talk about what we want to do differently. And we'll get into that here in a minute. But that is the monthly retro. I love that because I think it's just so great to involve our team.
I'm all about with them, not to them doing things to our team. We want to do it with them because that's the best change management beats a communication plan every time. So I love doing the monthly retro to get my team's perspective. The other thing is anyone who is close to the work, woo.
So stakeholders contractors, external vendors that you depend on to do your job. I'm also talking to them on a monthly basis. These are people, not that I'm just touching base with every now and then. These are people that like literally we depend on a day to day or a week to week basis. I am meeting with them solely to ask those two questions.
What do you, from your perspective, feels going well, that's moving us closer to achieving our vision. 'cause we should have the same vision. And then two, what's not going well? Then the one that many people forget. Is our partners. So yes, my HR partner, my finance partner, my tech partner, whoever it may be that supports me and my function, I'm meeting with them.
I typically do this on a quarterly basis, and I say the same thing. You know our vision, if they don't, they should. Here's our vision, here's the impact we are trying to make from a finance perspective, what do you see? That's moving us closer to the vision and what's moving us further away from an HR perspective, what's moving us closer?
What's moving us further away from a tech perspective? From a learning and development perspective? Get their thoughts. Because here's the thing, the more that we have this 360 degree view, the more that we can stop getting attached to every little piece of feedback we hear, and the more that we're gonna start seeing patterns and themes.
This is where I see a lot of leaders, particularly leaders who are newer to leadership, they get overwhelmed because so many people are coming at me with all of these problems, right? My team's coming to me with all these issues. My, people, I'm stakeholders are coming with me with all these issues.
My partners, my leaders are coming to me with all these issues and I feel like I'm drowning. We need to be looking for patterns and themes. So I take all of these and I keep them in a notebook. Here's the thing. If I hear something once, unless it is a major issue, like I am talking a, like there is a personnel issue that needs to be handled anything HR E.
I'm, we're solving that if it is something that's not super critical, where it's we can't come back from this if there's a mistake, like it's detrimental to our business, with the exception of those two things. If I hear it once, I am going to ask questions, I am going to understand, I'm going to listen empathetically, and then I am probably not going to write that down.
In my notebook of symptoms of major issues going on with my team, because if I hear it once, it's probably not a major issue. If I hear it again, if I hear it from another person, if I hear it from in a different way, now we have what I call patterns. Patterns lead us closer to root causes, one off things of what's going wrong.
Likely a symptom. Patterns is what we're looking for. Where are we hearing the same thing over and over and over again? Or themes? Where am I hearing the same thing? Different ways. For example, if I have people coming to me saying, I'm struggling to understand where we're going. I'm struggling to understand what to prioritize, I'm struggling to understand where my role starts and my and his role ends.
All of that. Different symptoms of a major theme, lack of clarity. I'm not doing a job, doing a good job of being, creating clarity within my operating system, my strategy, my workflows, my team, and my culture. So that is a common theme. So instead of trying to see every little piece of feedback you get as an individual problem, we're recognizing these as symptoms and we are looking for patterns and themes to get us closer to our root cause.
So once we have done the work to collect the symptoms that everyone, our 360 degree view, now we get into the most overlooked part. Most people go start running after the patterns and themes. And that's how we get into that cycle that I talked about earlier where we start adding these bandaid solutions and they don't actually drive true behavioral change.
We actually need to diagnose what is going on. We actually have to figure out what below the water line in our iceberg is causing this. And so how are we going to do that? I use our liberating team's canvas. So what it looks like. Is we have our symptoms up top.
So this is everything our team's experiencing. And then we have our four core elements of our operating system. So the first one is strategic focus. So that is our strategy. That is everything around our vision. We have a clear focus about where we're going. It's our priorities, it's do we understand what we need to prioritize to get there and the trade-offs in order to prioritize those things.
Because we don't do 15 priorities around here. We do three to five, and we have trade-offs that we have specifically denoted with to our team so they are clear. And then do we have a rhythm for keeping our team on track focused to achieving those priorities? That's our strategy. Not a fluffy deck, not a metric board, not any of that.
Okay. So we've got our strategy, then we have our workflows. So this is how work actually gets done in our team. It is our processes, like actually the work that we're doing and how we do it, the steps, the handoffs, the sign-offs, the decisions, all of that. It is roles and handoffs. I already mentioned that, so who's doing what?
I do not talk about structure. I spent a decade as the lead org designer for massive fortune 500 companies and structure is not on here. I post about, I, I say I post, I rant about this a lot on my Instagram, and that is, I believe structure is a great HR tool for showing who reports to who. I do not. It does not show how work actually gets done.
So the only element that we talk about is roles and handoffs between roles and that happens in workflows. And then with workflows we also talk about decisions. Who's making what decisions how those decisions are being made. And then down here we're talking about teaming, empower, teaming. So teaming is how your roles, your team are working together to actually execute your workflows and move you closer to your strategy.
So this is things like how we're collaborating. Yes, there is an art to collaboration. Most teams are either significantly over collaborating. We have massive fomo, we're including everyone and everything, and therefore distracting them from the true work and making it impossible to move work forward.
Over collaboration, it's a thing, or we're significantly under collaborating. We're siloed, we're all working against each other. That comes down to teaming. The other parts in teaming are meetings and info sharing meetings. Again, another thing I could rant about forever, mostly unproductive. And then the last part about teaming.
Holy moly, my allergy brain is kicking in. And here we are. Wow. That's rough. We'll come back to it. Culture, your allergy brain is kicking in and that you have sick kids at home who are not sleeping well when you forget that. Okay. So culture is our fourth one and culture is the norms and values of our team.
Those un those things that are below the surface that truly dictate how our team behaves and shows up. Psych safety, fear of not fearing failure. The ability to actually try things without fear of failure. How we actually, work together and get work done in a norm setting. So what are the expectations that we hold of each other?
What do we value? 'cause here's the thing, there are multiple ways you can get a strategy done. You can run over everyone. Or you can, be creative. You can, take your time and be super into the details or we can move super fast. There's multiple ways that we can get these things done. And that comes down to our values, our culture, our team norms.
So this is what we call the liberating teams canvas. This is your operating system on a one pager, in this case, a whiteboard. And this is how we diagnose our root cause. So we just talked about all the different symptoms up here. Conflict and feedback. I knew it would come, I knew it would come. I can't believe I forgot that one.
That's awful. Conflict and feedback. Teen. Okay. So symptoms. So what we do is we go ahead and we put all of our symptoms up here. So I'm going to teach you this two ways, and that is one, the way that you can be doing this. Right now on your own in a notebook or the way that I prefer to do it, because we are always doing things with our team, not to them, which is your team collectively in a room.
On a whiteboard or virtual board like Mural or Miro. So what we do is if you're doing this individually, you're gonna write down all the symptoms you just collected from that 360 degree view. If you are facilitating your team through this exercise, which I recommend doing quarterly and we do quarterly together in Liberated Leader my six to 12 month group coaching program is you're gonna bring them together.
I like to share out in an email format. Some of the feedback that I got from my 360 degree view assessment, here's some of the things I'm hearing. My team is expected to compile the same thing. The more that they get into this practice, the more they're going to do that. So we collect our symptoms beforehand, and then in here, what we're doing in the room is the expectation is everyone's already reviewed those before meetings.
We need to be reviewing our things before them. Meetings are for action, and what we do is we say, okay, here's the sticky notes everyone. I want you to write up the themes and patterns that you were seeing. And they go ahead and put those up on sticky notes, and then we look across and say, did we all have the same assessment or not?
Are we seeing the multiple of the same sticky notes? Let's group those together. That allows us to get super aligned on the root cause of what's truly the problem. Super change management. Number one, I don't have to spend five years communicating the why and creating fluffy messaging bullets around the why for the change.
My team just decided on it together and was aligned on it in five minutes in a workshop. You don't even have to call it a workshop. I know workshop's triggering for people in a 45 team, 45 minute team meeting in our team meeting. I don't have to communicate the why. We just determined the why together.
Change management 10 times more effective than me throwing fluffy bullets at them. So we go ahead and we figure out our why. Then we say based off of the symptoms, the themes, the patterns we're seeing where underneath that iceberg we talked about in our operating system. Could these be stemming from.
And so if we're seeing, again, things like I'm struggling, I have so much work on my plate. I can't figure out what to go after first. I feel constantly overwhelmed. I feel like I don't have enough time to go after the right work, things like that. Okay. Strategy. Clearly we're not we don't have enough clarity around where we're going and how to prioritize.
Something's wrong with our strategy. So we go ahead and write that in lack of clarity around,
around direction and priorities.
Let's do some other ones. Let's say you're doing this on your own. Maybe you, your team will acknowledge it as well. My team's not taking accountability. They're constantly having to come to me with questions to solve problems, whatever it may be. I like, there must be something wrong with the people, right?
Likely, not likely, has to do with some of these four boxes. So I want you to challenge yourself to say strategy. Do they have a clear vision of the impact we want to make this year? Not some fluffy statement. Have I given them a super clear vision of if there's one thing we were to achieve this year?
This is that one thing. Have I made it super clear what our top three to five priorities are and what we are going to trade off in order to achieve those priorities? Meaning all the things we are going to say are not as important as these three things. And therefore when you are doing your work, it is telling them how to act, how to behave, and the decisions they need to make.
'cause that's what a good strategy should do. A good strategy is not a deck that we compile to please, exec or hr. A good strategy exists to tell your team the work they need to be doing, the direction they need to be going, and how to make decisions. If look at your strategy, your vision statement today, does it achieve those two things?
If not, and your team's lacking accountability strategy, very likely. One of the root causes workflows. So we're talking about your team not being accountable. Let's talk about how that could be a issue with your workflows. Are workflows clear or are they convoluted as crap? Is there a ton of bureaucracy?
They have to sign off with you as the leader four times within that process.
No wonder they're not taking accountability. They're like, why should I ca why should I even do it? Another one, I'll put that one in a teammate. Another one is they don't understand the true roles. Job descriptions are crap. Let's be honest. Half of them, they were super vague. They're super outdated.
The second we put them into place. Do they actually understand what they are responsible for? Not a list of tasks. If their job description's a list of tasks they're not owning a body of work. They're a task rabbit. So when they're done with that list of tasks, they have to come to you and say, what's next?
Have we actually said, these are the three to five buckets of work you own? Own? And here's what that means. That means coming up with a strategy that means coming up solving the problems. That means doing that. Whatever workflow, have we made it clear their role teaming. So another, if we're talking about accountability, how it could come back to teaming is collaborations and meetings and info sharing.
Info sharing is the one of the biggest gaps I hear. So having worked with. Glory, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds of teams. And one of my core jobs was going in and doing workshops with teams. And what I found was so interesting is I'd have leaders come to me and say, my team's not accountable.
They're not owning their work. They're not the problem. Star solvers, the self-starters. I need new talent, I need better talent. I go and talk to their team and the team's saying, I would love to own the own my role, but I am GI being given like. One chapter in the book of information I need to do so because I'm not invited to the meetings I need to be in, I do not have a seat at the table.
I am not included in decisions. And if I do get to quote, make the decision, it's overridden. I, my leader is getting emails that I'm not on. Half the time I'm operating without the information I need to actually own it. So now I'm like what's the point if you are playing a giant game of telephone where you are the one in the meetings, hearing the information, telephoning it back to them, and then taking what they say and telephoning it back to who's in the room.
Your people aren't the problem. It has to do with our operating system and their ability to have the information, the seat at the table, the exposure they need to take accountability so you guys can start to see how we could have gone after the symptom there. We could have said, our people are the problem.
We need better people. We need different people. We need, more status trackers and sign offs to keep them accountable to their work. Meanwhile, they're operating in the system that's making it impossible for them to be accountable. And so when we roll out these new, status dragers or whatever it is to quote, solve the problem, we've made it 10 times worse.
'cause we've made it way harder for them to do their job. And we've discredited them because we're not recognizing everything stacked against them. This is where we go next after we do our symptoms, whatever those themes and patterns are. What I like to do is give everyone on the team some sticky notes.
If we have a bigger team, I divide them up into pairs two or three, and I say, based off of these patterns and themes, I want you to think about what is going on in our teams operating system that is driving these behaviors. Whether it's errors, whether it be specific issues with our. Output with how we're serving people.
How, chaotic it is that we're doing work, whatever it be. I say, how do you think our strategy, our workflows, our teaming and our culture are contributing to that? And so they go through and they go a good way to do this. What I like to do is put individual flip charts. So I have one flip chart for strategy, one for workflows teaming culture.
You get the point hung around the room or you can do them on different mural boards. And then I have the groups go to one board at a time. They get. Five-ish minutes to put all their ideas down, and then they rotate through to the next board. So once we're done, or again, you can do this by yourself the first time or two to get used to it, and then I recommend moving to your team because with them, not to them but this just gave you a great root cause assessment of here's the symptoms we're feeling and here's exactly where our operating system, what's truly driving these behaviors.
And so then what we do is, and this is my favorite thing, I talk about this a million times. I'm sorry. If you've been in any of my, one of my programs, you know what I'm about to say? I give everyone on the team some sticker dots. So you, it can be the sticker dots, you can get a staples or target, or it could be just whatever stickers you have on hand.
Everyone gets two or three. And I say, now, based off of the symptoms we're feeling, these are symptoms that should be detracting, our ability to achieve our vision. What do you think is the biggest culprit of that? I want you to put your sticker on the sticky note that coordinates with that, and so they go ahead.
They put their stickers on the sticky note. Guess what? They just did? They just gave you a prioritized list of exactly where we need to focus. Whether that be, that broken workflow that's driving them crazy, the sign-offs that are making it hard for them to do their job. Something about how we're teaming and collaborating together, our lack of priorities or whatever it be with our strategy, something about our culture, they just prioritize it for you because we're gonna look for the sticky note that has the most stickers and then we're gonna go from there and I put them into rank order.
And that right there is what we focus on every quarter. I. Who, whatever the top two to three, depending on how big they are, we are going to focus on those two to three over the next quarter. And then the following quarter, we're gonna do this activity again. I'm not saying we have to solve it and we'll talk about this next week when we go into solving, I'm doing another live all about low lift solutions that actually drive true change.
But we just need to make an improvement on it because here's the thing, if we make a 15% improvement on something, guess what? Next quarter, it may no longer be the like top priority and that's great. Let's let that improvement settle. Let's let them get used to the change and let's jump to something else.
We love that. That's awesome. We're making these small shifts. So this is how we diagnose. Now, if you are like me and you're a super data nerd and you're like, stickers is, I want like percentages and like something I can benchmark off of, don't worry. I've got you covered. Either in the link in my bio or I'll try.
Once this goes onto the replay, goes onto my profile. I'll go ahead and drop the link in there as well. I have a, it's completely free, it's a team audit. And let me it's awesome. But it allows you to assess your four core elements of your operating system and it actually gives you a pie chart of like where your biggest gaps are and your biggest strengths are.
And it actually gives you percentages for each element. So it's like strategy is, a 15%, it's a critical gap where culture is 75%. It's a core strength. It gives you true rankings and puts them into order so that way you understand like where our benchmarks are and every quarter you can see if you're making progress or not.
Those in Liberated Leader, they get access to one that they can send out to their team, so they're able to send it out to the team and collect responses as well. But even if you do that, even if you take the operating system audit and you get the fancy printout, I still recommend going through the operating.
Canvas model because one, it's super great for, again, change management, getting your team help, having them help create and identify, what the problem is and be engaged in creating the solution. But it, the detail and the conversations and the information that you get. This is so good if you are wanting your team to start to own, problem solving and making improvements in your team and start to have an eye for where these gaps are instead of just constantly coming to you complaining, do this activity every quarter, because they will not build that muscle unless we, as the leaders facilitate them through the process of doing it.
You would be surprised, I have worked for, with teams, from frontline people loading bags on a plane to the most high tech digital teams. And they tell me, oh, my, my team won't be able to do this. They just load bags onto a plane. They won't, they're not strategic enough to do this. Heck, yes, they are.
They are so excited to get in that room and talk through what's going on. The problem is we've never given them a simple framework to do it. We've never facilitated them through it in a way that's easy and allows them to pull out the information they've already been willing to or so excited to share.
And this is why I love this canvas so much. So often when my leaders and liberated leader take this forward to their teams, which we do on a quarterly basis, their teams always come back and are like, that was so simple. And I don't care if they're a finance team through to an operations team, they all say That was so simple.
We are not locking them in and doing miserable workshops that achieve nothing. It's a 45 minute conversation and your output is gonna give you prioritized exactly what you need to go after. So your homework for this call, and yes, we have homework because learning things does not make things better on our team.
We have to actually implement and take action on what we learned. So you've got two options here. One at bare minimum. If you are watching this, if you're watching the replay, if you're listening on the podcast, you go take the operating system audit. The link is in my bio, it's completely free. Go take it and you get your baseline.
If you wanna be an overachiever, which I know you are you're watching this and we're at the end, so I know you are. We're gonna say, how can I take my team through this operating system canvas? How can I get them into a room? I already either, it's 45 minute meeting, it's an existing team meeting we have in the next week or two.
We are gonna make it a priority and have them go through this activity and talk about what about our strategy, our workflows, our teaming and our culture are giving us the biggest pain point from preventing our vision. What is causing all those symptoms that we're feeling? And we're gonna get our prioritized list of exactly what we need to be focusing on and what better time to do this than at the start of Q2.
So now you will go into the remainder of the quarter with your top TH two to three priorities of exactly what you need to improve your team over this quarter. And if you're like, okay, great, I'm glad I have my priorities. But how do I actually go about solving them? I got you. Next week we're gonna do our live all about the low lift solutions that we talk about.
I call them 1% improvements. This is what I teach in Liberated Leader and. If you guys are on live, you guys can drop in some of your gaps and we'll go through those live as well. And the way that we do 1% improvements is all about creating true behavioral change that actually sticks, because let's be honest, how many of us have implemented things that went well for a week?
Two weeks a month, and then it was like we reverted right back to the status quo. The way that we teach 1% improvements is all about creating change that truly sticks and your team is fully bought into. So we're gonna start, that's gonna be the next live that we do next week. And if you're like. Holy crap.
This is awesome. I want more. We are rolling. Enrolling for Liberated Leader now until April 14th. Words are hard. So the next cohort we're, we'll start April 14th. You have until then to get signed up. The spots are limited and once we close this cohort. It's closed until I open up another cohort. So once you join Liberated Leader, it is a six to 12 month group program all around your operating system, our Liberated leader operating system.
So putting together that foundation, your strategy, your workflows, your culture. Your teaming, stripping out all the over-complicating, overthinking, overworking and over-engineering that traditional corporate leadership teaches us. I'm gonna teach you how to spot all of those. I call it the corporate Kool-Aid.
We've been fed, we strip all of that out and I teach you the radically simple ways that we can change those up through the Liberated leader operating system. Thinking about how you're doing your strategy and priorities. I have solutions for that. We go deep into every element. So what that looks like is once you join, you get put into Camp Liberated.
It is a four week small group onboarding program where every week we're diving into one of your four core elements of your operating system, and we are auditing it, removing all that corporate Kool-Aid, all that overcomplicating. All the overthinking, all the bureaucracy, all the political bs. We're taking all of that out and I'm teaching you the foundations of what true, effective, simple, easy, self-managed team, empowered team looks like for your strategy, your workflows, your teaming, and your culture.
So just in those four weeks, you're gonna walk away having audited your entire operating system and have already started to lay some of those foundational shifts. Then you move into Liberated Leader, which is the full six to 12 month program. You get that quarterly planning session like I talked about, where we do this activity together quarterly basis.
So that way me and you are looking at what's going on with your team. I'm helping you prioritize. I'm figuring out exactly what we need to do, but we take it a step further and that is I'm actually helping you come up with the solutions you need to go implement. And I'm not talking ideas. We have a plethora of ideas.
We have the Liberated Lab, which has gosh close to 200 at this point. Different small bite size solutions you can go apply with your team. So if you're like, my team struggles to prioritize, we are constantly struggling with the amount of work on our plate. I have a complete section of different small solutions you can try with your team to improve prioritization because.
Teams that are not one size fits all, and anyone who's telling you like, here is a copy and paste solution that's going to make prioritizing for your team 10 times better. I call BS because I have worked with teams across 40 plus functions from librarians to nursing, from frontline baggage to cutting edge digital teams.
What works for one does not work for the other. And that is why in Liberated Lab for every different section in your operating system, I have multiple different small little solutions that you can go apply. Here are, five different ways that we can prioritize. Not eat the elephant or anything cheesy like that, oh, just audit your calendar. No. Here's actually how you work with your team to prioritize and make trade offs. So that's the Liberated lab. I got totally distracted because I love nerding out about the lab. It's like my baby. So yeah, on that quarterly call we go through what are the biggest gaps with your team?
We select the solutions and now. Just in that one call, you're ready to go implement for that quarter. You know exactly what you need to be focusing on. You have the solutions, you have all the tools, templates. I am the template queen. If you need a tool or template, I have one. If not, I will make one to make sure you are fully prepared.
That also includes things like this canvases, mural boards that you can go and take and facilitate with your team right away. Activities to do with your team. Not cheesy team builders, things like this that are actually productive. So that is what we do in that quarterly planning call. And then you get two monthly calls.
So the first one is a strategy systems based call, where we're saying based off of those, three to four things, we decided where your biggest gaps and the solutions to apply what's working and what's not. Because let's be honest, how many times have you gone to apply a solution and you got somewhere in it and it got super convoluted?
This happens all the time with all those DIY trainings, or you heard something on a podcast or you read something in a book and it sounded really good and then you went to apply it with your team and you're like, holy crap, what the heck's happening? Or when you pay millions of dollars for a nice consulting deck and it's looks really pretty and then they leave and you're like, oh my God.
Yeah. I know that happens. So that's why we have our call that is solely focused on, Hey, how much progress have we made on our plan? What's getting in your way? Where are your biggest gar barriers? What's going on with your team? Maybe are they pushing back, are they not? And we solve it together. So then there's no excuse that we are not driving change forward in our team.
And then the second call every month is mindset. Like I said. We have been fed corporate Kool-Aid about overcomplicating work, overthinking work, bureaucracy, politics, all of that our whole lives. And so we come together as a cohort for our mindset call where we dive deep into everything mindset related.
Where is the mindset drama coming up? Where are, you trying to shift your mindset, do things simpler, easier, better, faster, less politics, less bureaucracy, and you're feeling pushback or resistance from your leader, the greater organization. We talk through all of that. So that's our mindset call.
So those are the MA major calls and flow of liberated leader that doesn't even cover everything like. Our master program. So those are deep dive curriculums. You get access to all of those existing and future. I also love to do master classes on different topics that are coming up. So for example, right now a lot of my leaders are talking about service design.
So they are, cus some of them are customer service facing teams and they're thinking about how they can improve the customer experience. So we've been thinking about doing one on service design here soon. I really. Customize it for those in the cohort. So if there's a common theme coming up, I love to jump on a master class nerd out on a virtual whiteboard, a little bit fancier on those topics so they can go and take it and apply in their team.
So you get the master classes, you get all the content or programs, curriculum, you get liberated Lab, which is that 200 di almost 200. We're not quite there yet, but we're getting there. Solutions. And you get access to those calls and me in your team. Three times a month. Not to be Telegram, that's what I'm missing.
So we have a group private telegram where you're in community with leaders who are also trying to do the same work in their team. So they are challenging the status quo. They're trying to make things simpler, better, faster, more human so they can actually lead in a strategic way that allows them to live a full life.
They have the same goal, and if you could surround yourself with a community of people after the same things, it's 10 times easier to achieve it. This is your opportunity to brainstorm with benchmark, with ideate, with, get feedback on, Hey, did anyone else try this experiment in the Liberated Lab? I love that they send pictures of here's my output, here's the whiteboard session that I just did with my team.
Like we love nerding out well over a good whiteboard session so that all help happens in Telegram and it's just a really great space to benchmark with other leaders. That is the liberated leader in camp liberated. It is that group program that you have until April 14th. That's when the next cohort kicks off indoors close.
Do not forget your organization, if they have education funding, anything like that. You can use that for liberated leaders. So part of the leaders in there are self-funded. Part of them are corporate funded. Part of them did a month or two self-funded, and then got corporate to fund it because they saw the results.
You can ask corporate to help fund that, and in fact, if you go to the link in my bio and click on the Liberated Leader tab, go down to the FAQs and you'll find a link to a letter template. Already filled out for you all. You gotta do copy, paste it, send it to hr, send it to your leader to go ahead and request funding for Liberated Leader as well.
If you have any questions at all, hit me up on my dms, I'd be happy to talk through what is going on with your team. What specifically your cha, your dealing with what your challenges are or if you're like, I tried this activity, here's the output, here's what I'm working through. I'd love to hear that as well.
Until then, I'll see you guys next week where we are diving into the actual solutioning to this part.
