Shandel Sutherland 00:05
Welcome to lead for clarity where we help you, your team and your organization get to their next level with clarity as you focus on what matters. My name is Shandel Sutherland, and I am here with Melanie Montgomery, and we are head deep into fall, all of our leaves are starting to fall. How's it up there in Washington, Melanie?
Melanie Montgomery 00:28
pouring down rain
Shandel Sutherland 00:31
Ah, well, we do have a little sun here in California. So that's helpful. Well, today, we are making our way through this incredible business model that we have a playbook that we take all our clients through, called the process, and we're talking about how to have sustainable growth. How do you grow? And be really proud of what you've made? How do you grow? And know who should acquire you? How do you grow and know what your succession plan should be? How do you grow and make as much money as you can, helping as many lives as you can. That's what we love to do. And I always love to share our B hag our big, hairy, audacious goal here at Shandel Group is that all of our clients win the best place to work because we want to focus on people. So Melanie, why don't you talk about where we've been and where we're going today? In this episode,
Melanie Montgomery 01:35
I'd love to Shandel Have you seen that meme that says this is what you think growth looks like. And it's like a straight arrow. And then you have the one that says this is what growth actually looks like. And it's a little squiggly line. I love that little graphic. Because it's so true. We don't grow in a straight line. But this process really helps us to be less squiggly, and a little bit more streamline so that we understand the ups and downs and that we're prepared for them and that we're able to grow in that healthy sustainable way.
Shandel Sutherland 02:08
Melanie, that's so great. We have to put that in our social media, that'd be awesome. So why don't you kind of walk us through the stages,
Melanie Montgomery 02:16
the process is a cycle of six stages that we go through through growth, and values are at the center. So we enter into the cycle and the pain stage. So we recognize that something hurts, there's something that we really need to fix or grow within, then we enter into the purposely connect phase, where we start building tools to connect to each other to connect to our values, and really connect with that growth that we want to accomplish. Then we go into the planning stage, which is what we talked about last week, which is where we really do the hard work to make sure that these changes stick, that they're long lasting, and that we're able to really make this change happen is then the
Shandel Sutherland 02:58
longest stage mountain give me an interrupt you you can keep going. But I just have to throw it out there that plants do just so hard, because you're waiting on stuff.
Melanie Montgomery 03:06
Mm hmm. Definitely. Yeah. So the next stage is progress, which is what we're going to talk through today, which is where we start to see the fruits of our labor. This is the exciting stage, we see the changes happen. But we need to keep pushing through. After we go through this stage, then we hit the prune stage where we really need to start figuring out what is not serving us right now. And what do we need to cut back. And then lastly, we enter profit, which is where we really see that change that is going to last throughout the future.
Shandel Sutherland 03:38
So good. You know, this works for business, but it also works for personal life, I got an email from a friend who said, you know, I was taking all my stress out on my kids today. And I said, All right, it's time to get and I realized she's in that cycle like she's gone through. And she's in a stressful time. So if the pain is drawing her attention, and that's all it's for, I think my advice would be okay, how do you connect back to your kids? How do you go back to your values, let's get work out of the center of it and back to what really matters to you. And then she's gonna have to do the hard work of really sustaining and planting and following through on those commitments. And at that point in time, she's gonna see that progress that we're talking about today. And I thought, boy, isn't that a great analogy? Even in our parenting? We can use this cycle and when we really go through this cycle, well, we help our clients identify milestones as we go through. Melanie, I know you're really good at this in your 12 week session. I'm gonna have you talk about that. But one of the other signs is that we have a happy culture. Like you can just like oh, these people love coming to work. I love coming to work. Everybody loves coming to work, our clients feel it, and that's what we want. The morale is up. You've got people who want to work for you, because every time they come to your business, I see people having fun. And communication is happening. That's a big sign that when we're all communicating, and it's positive, and it's uplifting, we know that, hey, we have actually hit a milestone. So do you want to talk a little bit about milestones? And how you use that in your clients, especially when you're teaching this in that 12? Week leadership course?
Melanie Montgomery 05:27
Yeah, absolutely. We use this process, even though we don't necessarily tell them that we're using this process. We use in everything that we do. And so during our goal setting, which is at the very beginning, we look at setting SMART goals. But in addition to putting in that framework, we also identify milestones, where is it that you need to celebrate? A lot of times we don't celebrate until we reach the end goal. But typically, we have this huge goal. So we're not celebrating until a month or a year later, you know, if we're making a goal to lose 30 pounds, shouldn't we be celebrating every five pounds, or every 10 pounds or every size, we really want to be celebrating those milestones so that we give ourselves a reason to keep going and that we see the progress that we're making, instead of waiting until the end. And so we identify those things. And part of the conversation is, what do you do to celebrate as an individual or as a team? Because a lot of times that stumps people are like, Oh, I don't know what I do to celebrate well, how are we going to celebrate those milestones, because identifying them as one thing, but then we actually have to do something to show ourselves and our team or an organization that this really matters to us. And this has actually been really a reflective opportunity for me as well, because I like many people hate to celebrate things, especially when they have to do with myself. So when I hit a goal, I'm like, okay, cool. I'll celebrate my team and others, it's been a good opportunity for me to say, Melanie, this is important for you to also celebrate to keep yourself on track.
Shandel Sutherland 07:05
Melanie, I think I've got an inspiration. At our weekly tactical meeting, let's set a goal. And we'll all celebrate each week for our milestones. How's that?
Melanie Montgomery 07:15
That sounds terrible, but I love it.
Shandel Sutherland 07:20
Thank you for being honest, I was thinking the same thing. Oh, Melanie, that is hysterical. I love it. You know, in my practice of working with entrepreneurs, this is the problem. Like, honestly, in every executive team. So the executives, I'm working with the entrepreneurs, if they're more solo, this is the issue. And it's because they have the gift of forward thinking. They're always thinking about what's next. And it is a gift, like not many, many, many people have it. But when you do have that, you have already achieved that in your brain and you're ready for more you don't live in the present. But gosh, I'm telling you 80% of the people love to celebrate milestones. And so this is a real learning curve for people that are entrepreneurs and owners and executives, because they're very much thinking about the future. So I hope that they will really take this harp, if you've been following us, you know that in each one of these stages, we have an action for you. And we put it into the acrostic or acronym, whichever word you like, we're still debating it, of Act, and the A's acknowledged success. So that's what we've been talking about. And you've got to celebrate progress. And I know folks like Vern Harnish and Patrick Lencioni. And Jim Collins, my gurus, if you will, the guys I follow talk about having a thematic goal. And when you have that goal, you're always talking about it, and then reach it, you got to celebrate it, and you got to have milestones along the way. The next thing we have to do is we got to follow through on it. So sometimes I've done this before Melanie, I've set all these goals, and then I completely forgot I was tracking them and I don't celebrate them like you and I've been talking about, and then make sure that as our team members meet their milestones, like are you tuned in to the milestones of the people that report to you? And are you following on with them? So let's go on to the C, which is check in and I'll let you take that one, Melanie?
Melanie Montgomery 09:22
Yeah. So during the check in time, we need to make sure that we're not letting up on the gas. A lot of times we get into this check in and we're like, everything's great, this is perfect. We're changed. People were changed organization, and we let up and then the change starts to dissipate. So we need to not only celebrate but keep going and keep pushing. And we really need to make sure that we're trying to figure out is everyone on board with this change, and really looking to see is everyone in our culture making that shift? Are there people that have some discontentment and I know Shandel You have a really great matrix for this You want to share that with us?
Shandel Sutherland 10:01
Yes. And if you think about a two by two matrix on one side is contentment, the horizontal would say is healthy or unhealthy. So we got contentment, discontentment, healthy, unhealthy. And what you'll find is healthy contentment is the same as healthy discontentment like those two ended up intersecting what is not good here is unhealthy contentment which was what you were just talking about, where we're like, Hey, we've arrived and you know if we're using this we're like, No, you haven't you haven't gone through pruning, you're not making a profit. So no, you haven't sorry, but we're doing good. So we you celebrate the milestone, but you have not arrived, right. And then the other one is a healthy discontentment which handles the acknowledged stage where you're never satisfied, you're never celebrating. And so any one of those unhealthy yeas really are what we want to emphasize. But what we want people to see is that healthy contentment, healthy discontentment are what we're aiming for. Because we need both here. And that's where we have to discover and weed out discontentment. And we have to make sure that our contentment is there, but it still wants to grow.
Melanie Montgomery 11:22
I love that framework Shandel. It's so important to remember that we can be happy with where we are, and still know that there's room to grow. So often in my career, I've encountered people who will refuse to give the highest mark on an employee survey, because they say nobody's perfect. And that goes back to this healthy contentment and healthy discontentment of we can be happy with where we are right now. And know that we can get better. And so celebrating that we're at the top of the range is not necessarily saying I'm done. I'm gonna walk away and be perfect and never change again.
Shandel Sutherland 11:59
Boy, that irritates me too. And my husband is really bad at it. And I'm crying as well. Nothing is perfect. I'm like, I'm not saying perfect. We have this debate all the time. It's hysterical. Alright, so the other things we do and check in is we got to simplify and streamline. So this is a great time, like if you think about in the progress stage, things are well you actually have cash flow. And if you think about a field, you actually see these green little sprouts coming up. If you're a parenting, your kids are actually becoming real peaceful at home, they're actually obeying on the first time they're doing these things. Okay, well, now it's time to simplify and streamline things like we don't get things more complicated. We know that prunings coming up. So we need to just start simplifying and streamline because here's the magic to this, we actually have our amygdala is under control. We're using our logical brain during this stage, it's one of the good ones, it's one of the ones that are easier. And this is a time that we invest in our employee engagement survey, make sure like just what you were saying, Melanie, that we have people in a good state and we can still learn. But what can we learn? And I think that leads us right into that tea. So do you want to take the tea and the act because it fits right in here?
Melanie Montgomery 13:23
Yeah. So that T is take, feel and take a breath. So we want to make sure that everyone is healthy and ready, and that they are ready to go into that harder stage. So we want to really outline expectations, make sure that everyone understands what to expect in the pruning stage. Sometimes we get there and we start cutting things back and we start making changes and our team feels like oh my gosh, what's happening, there's bad things going on. And so we have to really let them know what to expect. So there's not that panic when things start to shift, or we start to cut back different components. And again, we just really want to invest in our team and give them all of the tools to continue this work and continue through that prune stage.
Shandel Sutherland 14:09
If you think about it, like this is the fertilizing stage. This is where you're making sure the water and the sun are plentiful, because we have that little green sprout that is taking all of that in and you know, Melanie, many of our clients right now are doing this because they're doing really well but they know you know we've got a war looming. We've got you know, winter looming, we've got weather live, we have all these things looming. And for our clients that have been working on this process, like they're not scared at all, because they know, hey, I've already done the work. I've got my values in place and I'm ready for the storm. And that's where I love being I remember in the recession of 2008 I had a client who called me in a panic going huh, he goes I should should I be laying people off? It was like, Oh, hey, he's already done that like you have already done all the work, right the process. And it was so awesome because he actually grew during that time. And that's what we want people to be ready for in this progress state. And it's so funny because a year ago, Melanie over a year ago, we did our program on recession proofing your business. And it all still stands because we were already in progress and anticipating it a year before it happened. So I would suggest people go listen to our series on recession proofing your business. All right. So what else can we tell people about the progress stage before we land this plane,
Melanie Montgomery 15:37
I think I just want to hit on communication just one more time. It's so important to communicate, especially in this stage, we want to communicate the when the milestones maybe we do some sort of celebration party, whether that be for a team or organization ourselves, do something to really communicate what your team has accomplished, what you have accomplished and what it means so that they really understand. And also then communicate what is coming next. All times when we make changes within our organization, whether they be good or bad. Everyone panics a little bit because change is scary. And so when we can get ahead of that and say, here's where we're going, here's where we're going here. And if we have to cut back here, this is why and reinforce that positive growth. Instead of people feeling like Oh, we did all these wonderful things. And now they're taking things away, we have to help them understand what's going to happen, so that they're on board and that we don't take some back steps. So Communicate, communicate, communicate here with everyone, whether that be yourself, I think that if you're an individual working on goals, it's so powerful to get other people invested, tell your boss, tell your partner, tell someone in your life that you're doing these things, so they can help celebrate you, especially if you're not good at it yourself. And just communicate over and over. And like we've talked about so many times, if you feel like you're communicating enough, you're probably not so do it more, because I think you never can really communicate enough or too much.
Shandel Sutherland 17:09
Not so good. I would just think that's beautiful, highlight it, maybe we should have the C be check in and communicate so good. Well, as we land this plane, I'll just add one more thing, I think in our current state of events, and where we're happening in the world today and 2023, that people need to take this seriously. And we're gonna talk next time about pruning. And I think if you if people really invested in their people right now, they calm the fear. They didn't overreact. Instead, they acknowledged how well they're doing that kind of check in How's everyone feeling about where we are as a nation and where we are in the world. They take some fuel, take a breath, lead, lead, lead, lead, let your people know that you've got this, that you've got their back, and that we're doing well, and we are going to go into a pruning stage. And that's part of the growth cycle. It's awesome. So let's not all freak out. Like that's why I am excited about next time, Melanie, me too. All right. All right, everybody, you can find us at Shandel group.com. And remember, we love you listeners, like we do this for you. It's all about you. If you have questions, we want to answer them. It's an unknown time. And believe me, I have been doing this for over 20 years and I have two recessions behind me. Well plus COVID. That's three. So we're going to be fine. Let's talk about how to get your you set up for what comes next. And so we just want you to be confident and we want you to be peaceful during this time. If you have any questions you can send them to podcast at Shandel group.com and we'd love to answer them. So as always, we adore you and we want you to be the best you can be
