The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines

[Season 1] How a MAP Meeting will Help You Grow

April 01, 2022 Scott Scully, Jeff Winters, Eric Watkins Season 1 Episode 2
The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines
[Season 1] How a MAP Meeting will Help You Grow
Show Notes Transcript

One-on-ones, check-ins, or MAPs: No matter how you refer to your weekly employee meetings, it's critical that you have open communication with your direct reports. You know that you can't train what you can't track, so this one hour meeting should be dedicated time to promote self-awareness, learn about project statuses, and identify top priorities for the coming week. In today's episode, we talk about the importance of these MAP meetings and the impact they have on both company leaders and their team members.


Thanks for listening!

Eric Watkins:

Welcome to the grove show where we make it easier for entrepreneurs and leaders to grow their businesses. You'll hear from real leaders with real stories about their successes and failures. So you don't have to make the same mistakes. We won't break out textbooks or talk theory only raw stories from the front lines with actionable takeaways.

Unknown:

The gross show is sponsored by Heil sound, world class microphones for stage studio, broadcast and podcast. Find your sound it Heil, sound.com and five, Reggie, are your outbound sales campaigns not driving the engagement you're looking for? Revenue leaders rely on reggie.ai to write high performing sales copy that cuts through the noise and books more meetings. Want to see how it works, head over to reggie.ai/growth show and learn how to put the power of best practices in AI into the hands of your sales team. Here's the next episode of the Grow Show.

Scott Scully:

Welcome back to the growth show. My name is Scott Scully. I am here with my partners in growth. Eric Watkins and Jeff winters. We are pumped today.

Eric Watkins:

Absolutely pumped today we are

Scott Scully:

talking about our favorite topic, a map meeting. We're gonna get into it in a minute here what what a map meeting actually is. But all three of us agree wholeheartedly, which doesn't happen often. That this is the thing. Like, if you're going to listen to every one of our episodes, you're going to come back to this one. This is the one that we would suggest implement it tomorrow, do it for the rest of the year, your business is in a totally different spot period. I don't care how successful you are today. You're more successful tomorrow, if you're doing map meetings. You guys agree?

Eric Watkins:

Absolutely. Here here

Scott Scully:

very quick, where the map meeting come from. I've always been about growth, I use different consultants just to learn along the way. One, I was just in love with the advice that she gave just the practices that she implemented in the past companies that we've been involved in. And this meeting that she helped us put in play was a meeting that was between the individual contributor and the manager. And the whole concept was that that meeting is the individual contributors, not the managers, and that it was a space for someone to be totally accountable to their actions, their behaviors, the outcomes that they're supposed to produce. And it helped align everybody in the organization towards goals and values. And it was just really the biggest step towards success overall. One of my favorite things, the reason that it locked in deep for me is that she would introduce me to different people. One of my favorite meetings that I had was with a guy, bob chapman, Barry Wehmiller. So if you're a local listener, you know about those guys, this guy's uber successful multibillion dollar organization, they gobble up manufacturing companies, bring them together. And when they're bringing them together couldn't be more important that they have like minded culture, and that they're doing some of the things same things across the organization that cause growth and success. This meeting is one of those. I got one hour to sit down with Bob asked him questions. And the thing that wanted to that made me want to do this meeting right away is to you know, they didn't call it the same thing. But this is one of the things that they had in place. I'm sold. I said let's do it. And we started to implement it. And then of course, you guys are taking it to the next level for sure. But that's the discussion today. What is a map meeting? And how's it going to change your business this year? If you implement it? Let's get into it.

Eric Watkins:

Great. Well, thank you for that introduction. I obviously grew up with maps, and there couldn't be a more important item that I feel like a business needs to have to be able to be successful. We set it up front. I completely agree with it. There's no BS on this podcast, no textbooks, no theory, this is what we use to run our business. I think it would be beneficial to give everybody just a brief idea of what goes on in a map what the agenda is, and sort of the layout, just so when we get into it, they have a little bit of context. So this is a weekly meeting. And I stress weekly, it doesn't get moved. It's recurring on the calendar. We're doing this every single week. You know the time and day that you're going to be meeting with your manager or with your team member. This meeting is going to be no more than 60 minutes No less than 45 minutes, if you're going over 60 minutes, you weren't focused enough, if you're under 45 minutes, you're not covering enough. So that sweet spot is just around 60 minutes. And we're going to start this meeting, it's going to be in a place where you have access, you're staring at the same thing. Typically, in this day and age, we have people that plug in their laptops to a mutual screen that you can look at. Some people may print out their items. But it's going to be a place where you're going to sit down with your team member. And we're going to start with just making this a safe place. It's such an important concept of for these meetings to be successful, that this is something that they actually look forward to every week. So we start that meeting, just checking in on them, not the employee, but the human, right. How are things going walk me through? How are you enjoying your experience? What are some things you like? What are some things you don't like, we really want to have that conversation and build that personal rapport up front. And this is an opportunity to make sure you do that every single week when you're not distracted by the hustle and bustle of the the daily activities. So after we do that, then we have the team member rate themselves in the a player competencies. For those of you who don't know, those are our values, accountability, ambition, adaptability, awareness, and attitude. So we have them rate themselves, every single map. And it's a great opportunity to build self awareness, especially in an organization like ours, where we have a lot of young employees, young managers, and it allows people to point out their own weaknesses, point out their own strengths. And it makes those conversations that much easier. Then from there, we go into the top five projects from the previous week. And we'll get into just how important these are. But the whole point of this is we left the last map and we agreed on the five most important things that you need to do to move your business forward. So we're going to revisit those, and we're going to see the impact that you had in those categories. So in each of these categories, Scott mentioned, they're aligned with our values. And then in addition to that, they're in key areas that we're looking at. So we have key results, we have key activity, we have quality of work, we have team engagement, and we have personal development. Those are the five key areas that we're looking at. And then we're picking projects in those categories. What is the number one thing we can do to improve in that area? Once we go over the top five projects, we go into the activity. So we're going to review all the activity, we use Salesforce, so we have dashboards for almost all of our metrics, they pull up the dashboard, and they walk through sort of their state of the business and explain the good, bad and the ugly, what's going on with state of activity, and what are the plans, they have to improve. And we also it's an opportunity to encourage and give some kudos to our team members who are performing really well. Then after we review the activity, we move into next week's projects. So we reviewed we learned from last week, what we like what we not like from our projects, we review the activity, all of that culminates into what are the five most important things I need to do this week to move my business forward. And we'll go through those projects, we'll make sure that we have the right things, they need to be specific, they need to be measurable. And then from there, we end the map with potential business issues. And then also feedback. So potential business issues, really important. Anything that is going to stand in the way of you moving your business forward, we want to talk about it, it's important, again, to have that safe space that they can bring those items up. And then ultimately, you know, we want to get any feedback or give any feedback that we have to the employee to end the map. I'll never forget a training that we did, Scott, and you talked about, you know, I had seven direct reports at the time. And he said, Okay, if you had seven hours in a week, how would you manage to get all this work done? You have all these things to do, but you only have seven hours? How would you do it? And I gave every answer except the right one. And you You talked to me about well, what if you only focused on maps, because if you take care of maps, that literally takes care of everything else. And from that moment, I stopped looking at maps as something as a thing I had to do. And I turned it into the thing that I needed to do. So super powerful. You know, I'm excited to get into this topic and really unpack it. Because I think, you know, I was looking up some stats, and it said 51% of managers don't meet with their teams weekly. And I just couldn't believe that because it's not the environment that I've grown up in. And this is primarily where I'm getting my experience from. And I think 51% of organizations are really missing out on a big opportunity. So excited to talk about that, Jeff.

Jeff Winters:

So coming into this organization, I had always done one on ones. Yeah, we started the business. We had one on ones last time and we always had one on ones. But as I was reflecting my one on ones were sporadic, and Eric set at 51% of managers don't meet with their people weekly. I didn't. I didn't really know shame on me. I didn't really know the people in The organization weren't meeting with their direct reports. Weekly. And you're like one of those things you assume that's happening? That's not. And if I'm, if I'm out there listening, I'm going well, there's a lot of different ways to do one on one like our one on ones that important, like, why should I keep listening to these three guys wax on about one on ones. It's so important. And I use one word, because it is leverage, it is incredible leverage for you, as the owner or entrepreneur or leader of a business or leader of a division or manager of people to know that not only is the person that you're mapping with, which is a verb, right, you map with somebody which has a certain appeal to him, right, we're gonna, what are you doing, we're mapping map we're mapping, which sounds fun, sometimes it is when the numbers are good. It gives you incredible leverage to know, I'm mapping with my seven team members, they're mapping with their seven team members, they're mapping with their seven team members. And I'll finish the thought on leverage with one with one idea. If 500 people here, right, give or take, if they're all doing five projects per week, each times 50 weeks, you're talking about 125,000 projects getting completed in a year. And maybe I just met with my seven reports once a week for an hour. And because of that, and because of the system, you get incredible leverage. This is not just a one on one, this is a an operating system for business,

Eric Watkins:

you know, it's an opportunity to not only get all of those items done and actually operate your business. But it's also an opportunity for you to make sure all 500 employees are meeting with their manager on a weekly basis. And it's got to be tracked, we're going to talk about that a little bit as one of the most important things. And it's to the point in our organization where if you, you know, an employee, if you're late to a map, or you have to move a map, the employee is frustrated, because that's their opportunity. It's their map, it's their opportunity to show you how well they've been performing on the strategic initiatives that you both agreed upon. And I think when it comes to the projects and strategic initiatives, one thing that we've really adopted is, so we make sure everything aligns with our vision. So any map project they're going to pick, it's going to be aligned with our company goals. So make sure everybody is moving towards the right mission. And then from there, we start with impact. We start with, what do you want to get done? Like, what is the result that you want to achieve? And then we work backwards, what is the behavior I need to do this week in order to achieve that result. And what you get is you get 500. Team members working with intent every single week on at least five super key important areas. And I think that's huge.

Jeff Winters:

Another element of this, that Scott referenced in the intro was that it's the employees meetings, not managers meetings, most important thing, it's jarring. And I can tell you, as somebody who's new to this, this is impossible to do. Like when I was doing my one on ones prior to having this structure, I realized now I was talking like 90% of the time, like I can only imagine how annoyed these people were to like have to come in to a weekly one on one with Jeff and listen to his monologues. Because now I have to consciously stop myself from speaking. And I'll give you a couple of just major advantages that for those listeners out there, if you're thinking about adopting this structure, that are important to keep in mind or share with your organization. The first is particularly if you've got young managers, if you've got young managers, the map is a gift because the employees running the meeting. So the employees, you don't have to search for the numbers that are important. your direct reports bringing them to you every week, you don't have to ask a ton of questions around getting feedback. It's mandated in the map, you get the feedback, you don't have to worry about oh, did I connect them to the vision I don't suppose boom, you connected to the vision inherently in the map, it prompts the individual contributor to self assess, like, there's so much built into the map that's so brilliant, particularly if you got a fast growing company and you have young leaders. And that's I know what we have in spades. I bet a lot of listeners out there have the same. The map is a perfect tool for any company, but especially one where you have young leaders because it's the employees meeting and not the manager made a

Scott Scully:

huge, huge point. You know, it's funny, I think you mentioned something about this the other day, Eric, you know now where we're at, if people miss, like if a manager doesn't connect with somebody in the end, the person doesn't have an opportunity to do their map. They're pissed off. Like I I haven't had a map with my manager in a week. Right? Like they really appreciate the opportunity to come in and show their manager what they're Doing order if there's a particular issue that's going on, show their manager that they know exactly how to take care of the problem. Right? I was gonna make a comment when you're saying Being new to the map, I remember when you and I first started having meetings and Jeff bring in, you know, his reports and kind of look at me. And I'd be like, okay, just like that awkward. Like, okay, go go through the stuff. And he'd be looking at me like, What are you talking about? Reports in front of you, like, this is awkward, what the hell are you doing? You know, so it just takes a minute to kind of reset what you're used to doing. That's a huge part of our success.

Eric Watkins:

To me, the one of the biggest impacts from the map is self awareness. So a lot of young managers these days, especially in an organization, if you promote from within, as soon as they get in the management position, what do they want to do? They want to help, I want to tell Scott, that I told him this. And then because I told him this, it got this result. That's the ultimate, you know, gratification. But what what I talk a lot about with our managers is okay, so you did that, and it worked. And then you do it again. And it worked. And you do it again, and again. And again, that individual didn't become any more self aware through that process. So as soon as you're removed from the equation, those same things, the same results don't get achieved. So we talk about talk to listen ratio, the employee should be talking at least 80% of the time. And then when you talk as the manager, it should primarily be by way of asking questions. Because I've, I always use the analogy, if you were going to tell somebody to do something, they would maybe go and do it. But they don't understand why they need to do it and what right looks like when they go do it. However, if you ask the question, and ask it again, and ask it again, what we're doing is we're creating in their brain that built up inherent knowledge of how to do that process. And just think about the replication of that over and over and over. For employees that are with you for one to three years, and have to do this 52 times a year, what you start to get is independent employees, every business owners dream, right, you start to get an organization that can run itself, just because of the system you put in place. And I I may be exaggerating it a little bit. But I'm so passionate about this. And I just think it's a true, it's a true opportunity for a business to ensure its growth.

Jeff Winters:

what sold me was, I had a lot of experiences, sometimes my memories not that good. So I had a lot of experiences during one on ones where I remembered things one way, and the person on the other side of the table remembered them a different way, as kind of like, ah, that's interesting. And I not had a boss in a while. So that kind of how I remembered it sort of went, you know, I was it was my company. And then I got here, and I did have a boss. And it wasn't like what I remember what now is like what actually happened kind of happened, you know. And the map eliminated all of that ambiguity, because the map the way it's the way we do it is entirely trackable inside of Salesforce. Not that you need to have Salesforce, but here it's entirely trackable. It's a great point, actually, Salesforce, and week to week, it's exactly what you said. And you're able to see it and as I saw a stat 44% of one on ones are done with either pen and paper or no notes at all. So it's like you have these one on ones. You have great ideas, everybody high fives and they leave and nothing happens. I guarantee in the vast majority of cases with this map meeting that can't happen. Nobody's on different pages because it's all written. It's all documented. It's all in Salesforce. Last week's projects are reviewed next week, next week's project review the week after that. It's the fact that it's trackable and reviewable, so important to this to this working and scaling.

Scott Scully:

Think about that for growth. Like you have to have people super aligned. everyone's on the same page. They know, they have to know exactly what's expected of them. They have to be getting this work done. You know, in quality work. You're just aligning people to success. It's amazing what comes out of it. But I didn't think about it from there's from there's no escaping. What happened in the last

Eric Watkins:

week. Did you mark that completed?

Jeff Winters:

Yeah. I wonder Scott from the project's perspective is this is something where I truly struggled. And I didn't understand that like How big was a project week two, it sounded heavy, can you I assume everybody who's listened to this 100% uptake they're gonna Leave this podcast, they're going to implement the map across their company, maybe multiple companies at the helm? I don't see why anybody wouldn't when they go to do that, can you help people understand, like, what is a project?

Scott Scully:

Yeah, I mean, it's gonna depend from industry to industry. But let's say that it's one of our STRS. And they hold four accounts, and they're having difficulty with one of the accounts, and it's in the IT industry, one of those projects could be something aligned with either going out and, and doing a project to get to better understand that individual IT company, or maybe the language within that space altogether, like, they just need to be a better salesperson in the industry as a whole. So that could be something or maybe they're not putting in the activity, you know, the right amount of dials or phone calls on a particular account. So there could be a project, literally around upping the activity with a particular account to cause better results. Those are a couple of examples.

Jeff Winters:

But all got to be done in all can be and must be done in a week, right? That's the critical Yes, point there.

Scott Scully:

And the biggest problem people are going to run into, and we still do it, right is just the project, like, people are just coming up with random things, right? Go read a book, you have to be able to do it in in a week, it's got to align with the five most important basically behaviors within the position. It's got to be measurable. But it's something probably worth saying write down on a week, totally measurable within that week that they accomplished and aligned with one of the five key behaviors within a position. It's an improvement point. Right? I mean, it's literally somebody being super aware of where they need to improve. And, and, and telling you a project that they should do, so that they can go take care of that problem. So So Eric, and I are having a map, and I didn't make my dials, Eric, and, you know, maybe typical meeting, or a place where they don't have maps is like alright, buddy, what the hell? You're supposed to make this many dials, why didn't you do it? Now, now, it's like, somebody's totally accountable to come in into this map being prepared. They know they're gonna review activity showing that they haven't made the right amount of dials, and then they're going, they're responsible for showing you that, and then basically, telling you what they're going to do about it. And then as far as the new managers, then it's easier, right? Because they're the bad guy. It's, it's easier until I guess, the next week or the week after, if they're still not leaning into the the issue and accomplishing the project, then that's when the conversation comes in. But we've found when you agree or like, more often than not, when somebody's eyeballing the issue, where they're low, coming up with the project, that most times the next week, they come back having accomplished the project,

Eric Watkins:

absolutely, absolutely. At the end of the day, anybody we hire, they want to be the best, right? They want to improve, they want to want to get better. And it gives them an opportunity to really not only do that, but as their manager, give them a high reputation to live up to which I think is important, as they fall short of a goal, giving them that encouragement to be able to hit it this week. And I think one thing that's really important when it comes to projects, when we talk about are they measurable, is two things. One strategy we've used that's worked is to make sure they bring proof, not proof in the sense, I don't trust that you did the project. But think about anything you're going to do if you were if you had to come up with proof, you have to either come with the email that you wrote, or the report that went up based on your activity, or the training session that you attended and what you took away from it. It forces them to think critically of I don't I can't just pick something to pick something. I actually have to pick something that I'm going to show that there was a tangible improvement. I think that's important. Another pitfall that we've fallen in along the way is maps become all the new ideas and I would not I would make sure your people no more simple than complex is always better. So in the easiest way to do that is focusing on the impact. I need to drive appointments this week. If what's going to drive appointments this week is huge. smiling on every single pitch that you have, that's fine, like that. So it's good to do it, it doesn't have to be anything super complicated. It'll put you in a better mood, and maybe you'll set more appointments. All that matters is that impact that we're trying to accomplish and being creative to be able to get there.

Jeff Winters:

The one thing about the map meeting that is, that was so surprising to me, when I first stepped into the building was like, everywhere else, I'd been the one on ones the first thing to get cancelled, oh, I have something to do, oh, let's cancel the one on one, I can't, oh, we don't even need that one. You go months without having a one on one. Here. That doesn't happen. The map doesn't get canceled, the map is sacred. And you all have done such a what I what I would think is a brilliant job of making sure that it's been woven into the reward system for every employee in this business. Because it's part of how you're judged. It's part of your we alluded to it earlier, we'll get to it in a later episode. Another I think, brilliant original concept of the a player score, like, it's so important that it is a material part of how well you're doing your job in this business. And I challenge anybody to find me another company where the frequency that you have your one on one is put on such a pedestal.

Scott Scully:

The whole reason we're sitting at this table, is we wanted to make it easier for people to grow. Right? It's a nightmare, sometimes just you can get out of control. But if you're sitting there in an environment where people are joining your team, they're expecting you to grow, they want the next opportunity, and you don't know how the hell you're gonna get there. The stem map is everything. It's everything. If done the right way, if you had seven direct reports, like he said, if done the right way, they're completely accountable to doing their work coming to the map presenting, you're having flow back and forth, they go away for a week, they come back again, they get their most important things done. And you'd literally run a company and seven hours a week. Like if you're doing it at a professional level, you could probably run a company in seven hours a week. Is that fair?

Eric Watkins:

I think that's

Unknown:

I'm not saying we've reached that point

Eric Watkins:

as well. Yeah, we're not we're not quite there. I think we could always improve and get better. And I think for those of you listening out there, you could be going through these things. You could be listening to this podcast and wondering, Where do I start? Right? We do one on ones. But I really like what you're talking about? How do I start this out? And we talked about it a little bit. We feel like if you really did these top five things, it would be a great start for your business. So

Scott Scully:

who are we are we about ready to get into the a player action item? A

Eric Watkins:

player action item? Yes. The takeaway anything the nation is sweeping the nation? Yeah, one week at a time. This is almost like a mini map. I won't go there. Yes, can write

Unknown:

your maps tomorrow? You're gonna you're mapping with the audience

Eric Watkins:

mapping with the audience. All right. Okay, so the a player action items this week, the top five things, you heard this podcast, you want to implement something in your building. Similar, these are the five things we suggest you need to do. Number one, weekly, we talked about it, you have to commit to weekly one on one meetings. For every manager with their direct reports, it creates an environment where there is going to be accountability on a weekly basis. And those weekly goals that get hit are going to add up to those big monthly quarterly annual goals your company has number two, consistent format. We talked about 500 people and the power of all those projects, five projects a week per, and that those projects adding up over time. If they're all doing it in a different way in a different format, you're not going to get that laser focus and the impact that you could with a consistent format. Number three, this is not the manager's meeting, the talk to listen ratio, we're talking 80% individual contributor, at least, this is their spot to present their business, brag about all of the good work they're doing. And the manager should sit back, encourage them and ask questions where necessary. Number four, safe place for communication. I can't say this one enough. If this becomes a dangerous place, for team members, they're never going to look forward to maps, it's not something they're going to want to do on a weekly basis. This needs to be a place where individuals can come into the map, good, bad, ugly, they can say whatever is on their mind, and they can have a conversation with that manager. And they know that regardless, they're on the same side of the table with them and we're all trying to improve and develop together. Number five, you have to be able to track. You can't train what you can't track we talked about that that's the same that we live by here. And you have to be able to track it for a lot of reasons, one for yourself. So you can have a note of record of the conversations that you had and what you agreed upon. But to when you go back to review last week's projects, it's actually hard to remember the projects you had if they're not written down, and that keeps everybody accountable.

Scott Scully:

Love it, take those steps, put them into action. Growth is possible. I think I'll just close with saying if you're not listening to the show, you might not grow. Oh. Oh.

Jeff Winters:

Hi. Oh, sounds gonna be so happy that was said to that microphone.

Eric Watkins:

Thanks for listening to the growth show. Leave us a review and let us know how we're doing or if there's a topic you'd like us to cover in the future.

Unknown:

The Groeschel is sponsored by abstract Marketing Group, whose outsourced sales and marketing services provide you with everything you need to close consistent business for less than the cost of a full time employee separ consulting, let us schedule your sales appointments. So you don't have to abstract cloud solutions leveraging the power of the Salesforce platform to solve complex business problems with straightforward solutions.