Lisa Gonzalez, an expert on processes and author of the book Process! How Discipline and Consistency Will Set You and Your Business Free, discusses the importance of documenting processes in businesses. She explains that processes are often overlooked or undervalued, but can provide a framework for success and allow companies to scale effectively. Lisa emphasizes that even visionaries, who may be resistant to processes, can benefit. She also highlights the significance of holding people accountable and ensuring compliance. Overall, Lisa's message is clear: embracing processes can lead to improved business performance, emotional well-being, and even stronger personal relationships.
Thanks for listening!
Lisa Gonzalez, an expert on processes and author of the book Process! How Discipline and Consistency Will Set You and Your Business Free, discusses the importance of documenting processes in businesses. She explains that processes are often overlooked or undervalued, but can provide a framework for success and allow companies to scale effectively. Lisa emphasizes that even visionaries, who may be resistant to processes, can benefit. She also highlights the significance of holding people accountable and ensuring compliance. Overall, Lisa's message is clear: embracing processes can lead to improved business performance, emotional well-being, and even stronger personal relationships.
Thanks for listening!
Hey, everybody. And
Jeff Winters:welcome back to the growth show everyone, we've got another rose guest. And this week, we've got Lisa Gonzalez with us. So excited to have Lisa on the show. Lisa is the author of the book process, where she details why processes are important, and what you have wrong about them the process of commit, learn and act simple improving EOS tools to strengthen your process component. If say Lisa is an absolute expert on process, and she makes it fun, which is two things that aren't always the thought of being together. She is one of a kind. And even for those of us myself included, who are not processing client, this is a must listen interview. Also Lisa gonzalez.com, she does. EOS trainings, helping integrators. There's a process community, she's got it all covered from beginning to end A to Z stem to stern, if that's the thing, I'm not a canonical person. I'm excited to welcome Lisa Gonzalez to the show. Welcome, Lisa.
Unknown:Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Jeff Winters:Yeah. I know you're an expert in Eos, which comes out of the book, traction. Can you can you just talk a little bit about sort of traction, the book and EOS more broadly? And why companies should think about adopting it.
Unknown:Absolutely. So EOS stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System. And the book traction was written by Gino Wickman, who was EOS is founder. He had a partner named Don tinny, but he he was a lifelong entrepreneur, and his family had asked him to come help run his family, the family business. And so he did and found it was in need of a turnaround. So we ended up spending several years turning the company around putting a new leadership team in place and ultimately selling that business. And at the same time, he was one of the 10 founding members of a group called EO there's el all over the country, it's Entrepreneurs Organization. And he found he really had a passion for how to run teaching companies and helping people how to run a good business. And so when he sold that family business, he decided to pursue that passion full time. And so it created what today is known as EOS. And it really is just it's an operating system for how you run your business. It's not software, it brings together best practices from you know, Jim Collins and Patrick Lencioni. And Stephen Covey and just puts them together in a way that's simple and practical for entrepreneurial companies. Because we just found that of course, when you're growing a company, the the needs that you have are so much different than the needs for a corporation. And so really just simple tools to make sure there's alignment on on several things we call we say it's vision, traction and healthy. So we help a team get really aligned on vision on where they're going, and how they're going to get their traction is instilling discipline and accountability at all levels of the organization. And then healthy, some of the best part of what I get to do is because we work together with leadership teams, they become just a lot more fun to work with together, they're more cohesive, more open and honest and vulnerable with each other. And that's when we can really get down and kind of roll our sleeves up and get to work.
Jeff Winters:I love it. I can say that. We ran a OS for for many years, and it was a huge help. It's one of those things. Least Don't you think we're it's it's probably a lot of things that companies that are doing well are already doing. But absolutely, like any good book, you read it and you go, Oh, okay, now there is a framework that I can use to do all of these things, right?
Unknown:Absolutely. And that's how I actually was introduced to EOS because we had our own family business, or a business that I worked in with my husband, it was a residential or it's a residential remodel company. And we were scaling and growing. We were also in EO in Colorado. And, and just found that it brought together all of the kind of the flavor of the month ideas we would bring back with like this business book or that business book. And it just put it together in a system that we could maintain and sustain for a year over a year over a year. And so it made such a difference for us because we opened up an office in Minnesota and one in Illinois. I just saw the impact it made and I decided let me go out and teach this to other people because it was just it was significant, the value and then that's what I get to do today, which is awesome.
Jeff Winters:So for those listeners that haven't read traction or don't know, Eos, can you give us like your three top takeaways from that book. What do you love the most?
Unknown:What do I love the most? I love law. I love it. I think conceptually I can tell you what I love the most which is just its simplicity. So like I said everything in that book are probably business principles you've read before most of the companies running on ELS are already doing a really good job. They're just they this just helps them to be a lot more efficient. So it looks very simple. It's very practical. After I took that book, and we implemented it in our business today, there's people and there were then but I didn't know but there DLs implementers that can help you implement it. But the book was intended to be generous. And if you want to take the book and implement it in your company, you can without hiring somebody. And so yeah, the practical tools, you know, out of the gate, it teaches you, for example, how to have a great weekly meeting and use a specific agenda that just has you hit all the important high points, that you need to be paying attention to day in and day out. And then it's now today, it's just been proven. So I think that's the third point, simple practical improvement, because there's 10s of 1000s of companies running on EOS. There's hundreds of 1000s of sessions have been conducted in it. And the joy we get to get as implementers is you see from where you start with a company, we help them you know, quarterly set goals, they hit their goals, they do it quarter over quarter year over year. And it's just it's so gratifying. Like, clearly I discovered. My joy comes from when people like are grateful, and they are accomplishing their goals, because that's, that's what I get to do today. So we see the results. And and that's, that's what makes it so valuable, valuable that you get to see people get results versus it's not a lot of theory, it's just like, let's just kind of roll up again, roll up our sleeves and get this stuff done so we can get the benefit from the business that we that we created.
Jeff Winters:Yeah. And obviously a big part of traction. And EOS is process. Yes, documenting process. Can you talk to people and obviously that's your forte, too. Can you talk to folks, maybe like me, maybe maybe like me, we're recovering hater of processes, documentation, and documenting process? Can you talk to us about the importance of it, and how you go about sort of bringing light to why documenting process is so critical for any business.
Unknown:So before anyone turns off the podcast, I'll tell you why they should stay. Because I'm gonna process and so don't stay on, stay on, don't hang up because this message is for you. I just a little backstory, I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, that we, you know, probably started 10 Different businesses when I was growing up in Southern California. And so there were 10 businesses for kids and zero process. And so I grew up in a lot of chaos. And you know, just like every, just like people, you know, you don't know what you don't know, we did fine, but it definitely could have run a lot more smoothly. And I remember just the pain sometimes of our family either having No cash, no cash at all, or frustration around the dinner table. Because some order went out late or whatever it was just the stress that accompanied owning a business. And it came I personally is pretty process oriented. And I don't know, whether it was checklists or filing or just trying to make things run better, ended up going to law school and working with businesses again, and then ended up joining the business that I was referring to before the residential remodel company. Along the way, as we were scaling and growing, we also made a ton of mistakes and lost a ton of money and but this time, it was our own company. And you know, we took out money on our 401k or against our home to keep the business going, you know, in the early days. And at one point, I decided I was going to single handedly capture all of the processes in the company, and ended up making this beautiful but ridiculous, probably, you know, six inch, three ring binder with all the company processes in it, and I shared it with our team. And first of all, you know, when you do things in isolation, like terrible leadership lesson back then, like no one cared about it, maybe I got a polite, you know, acknowledgement, when I thought they were going to maybe put me on their shoulders and you know, have a parade or something. And even I didn't use it because it was just too much, it's too much detail. And so for people that are hearing the conversation about process, I want you to know when we talk about process in Eos, that is not what we're talking about, we talk about capturing at a very high level, we call it the 2080 approach very high level, how you do things in a certain department or in organization. So we take we first capture your core processes, just a handful of those you know one to five pages per process and we assign an owner to each process and so we stay so high level that um, that they can stay updated they can say usable and then we go through seven part checklists to help our teams get all their processes documented in in or under a year.
Jeff Winters:All right, a lot to unpack there. But But before I get into the nitty gritty of process because that's where people are going to turn their podcast volume up. I right Am I ever going to be a process person I'm not I feel like process people are born and not they can't be nurtured. Can I can I be changed Can you change me or is it just I'm just screwed.
Unknown:I can support you with and this and we talk about this significantly in the first part of our book which is called process. So I do you describe yourself as a vision Interview, Jeff,
Jeff Winters:I wouldn't use those terms. I'm very humble. But But yes, I think by the book definition, I probably would be described as a visionary. Okay? So
Unknown:I know that visionaries, when we start talking about process, they like, start to want to cry or turn off this podcast. And so we talk about three things that we can do to help you leverage your team when it comes to process. And you may not fall in love with process. But ideally, if we can get around a few mindsets or around process, it helps our visionary significantly stay at least engaged enough to make sure they're supporting the process work through and through, do I expect my visionaries to be you know, at the computer typing up checklist and stuff like that? No, and it's not, it won't even be a great use of your time? Do I expect them to kind of get passion around it and understand that process is the key to them being free? The key to them, you know, scaling their business, or increasing the value of their business or their revenue? Or whatever that looks like? Absolutely. Because, as you know, you visionaries are, you guys are the, you're the champions and the culture. People are the ones who bring passion to any, any project if you can get behind it. And so we share in the book, you know how to get and I can unpack that for you if you want, but how to get the right mindset? Because it's crucial for you to get on board for your if you want your team to get on board when it comes to process.
Jeff Winters:All right, so So how would you describe a visionary because there might be people listening who are saying, I think I'm a visionary, but I might not be? So how would you describe it?
Unknown:Sure, there's an excellent book called Rocket fuel, that that really describes the difference between what we and ELS call a visionary or an integrator. And a visionary is the person that comes to let's say, every meeting with 20 new ideas, they are great with big picture thinking great with problem solving, obviously, generating maybe some new research are developed more research and development for where the business is going to go. They're great on customer relationships and, and the big the big relationships. They are the people also that are not great when it comes to detail. So that's what we That's the work we leave for the integrator, the integrator is kind of the glue that holds our leadership teams together, they make sure that day in and day out happens kind of keep us on the plan that we agreed upon. Whereas visionaries when they're trying to do that they ship every let's say, 90 days of like, let's try this, let's try that and what happens is you have this whiplash and organization of just people trying to follow follow the kind of creativity of the visionary. So we in EOS companies we provide of a buffer through the integrator to keep keep the organization on course, and filter help filter to kind of the genius of the visionary.
Jeff Winters:And I confess something, Lisa, this is important. I've had many integrators or people that have worked with me who are integrator ask. I always feel like they're like tolerating me, you know, I feel like the the detail oriented person, the process oriented versus like, oh, boy, here he goes again. I feel like they manage me. They tolerate me, they deal with me. Can you speak for all the integrators detail oriented people and process oriented people and dispel that myth?
Unknown:I think that myth is 100% true. I think I think there's, here's the beauty of it. If you read in the book, rocket fuel, and I'm married to a visionary, my dad was a visionary. My favorite clients are visionaries. Because I do believe like, You are the ones that are creating all the beautiful things in this world. And then you have your team that's gonna like make it become reality. And so so the the marriage between visionaries and integrators is beautiful because you need both and so that's what that book rocket fuel talks about, that if you maximize and value each other in the relationship you can go to the moon, basically, is how I see it and so so there's tolerating and there's embracing and, and I think when each individual respects their role and their their qualities like when you own who you are, that you know, it just makes life a lot easier.
Jeff Winters:All right, so I was right, I am tolerated. Let me ask you this. This is a personal question. Can I ask you a personal question anything
Unknown:openbook
Jeff Winters:is and I asked you to put your marital advice hat on or you're having a partner gone expert you're you're being an expert and having a great relationship add on. Do you recommend that your spouse or partner be an integrator or a visionary or vice shouldn't you be opposites can opposites attract in this visionary integrator world completely?
Unknown:Think that the book Rockefeller doesn't even speak about this and I've actually spoke with Mark winters saying this needs to be your next book because I think that's God's little joke is to the one when I meet other entrepreneurs, one person in that relationship is a visionary and one person's an integrator and and I think for good reason, because so are you married?
Jeff Winters:I have I have a spouse who was like the integrate easiest integrator that ever integrated
Unknown:and I am bad as well. And I think it's because of this I think it lets you guys be or it could be the guy like the guy's the integrator, but it lets the visionary be the, you know, fun time weekend dad or parent of we're going to do this and the other people are the ones like hey, maybe we should eat maybe we should register for school or maybe we should go to bed on time. It's that it's it's such a common dynamic that it might be also the next book I write because it's it's so common. It's amazing because I'm around a lot of entrepreneurs and I, you always see you see it everywhere. And it's just it's a partnership, right. And that's the partnership you need is the visionary, the integrator. It's just, it's it's infamous.
Jeff Winters:I feel bad for my wife, though, because I am fun that, you know, I swoop in after work, we're playing outside. Oh, dad's the best. I want dad to put me to bed. I want to hang out with that. But meanwhile, if it were just dad, there would be no summer camps, there would be no school on time lunches will be in different people's backpacks.
Unknown:Right? Right. We'd be living, we'd be living in a boat right now. And if my husband had his way, and it's cool, because we have a fun life because of him. But also like his fun ideas, he'll have an idea. And I'm like, like, go register or buy the idea so that we can make it happen, too. So I do think it's so yeah, man, from a marriage standpoint, I don't know if your people want to hear this. But I think similarly, if you respect the differences, because I think you know, I've been married, I can't even believe it. 20 years now, it would have been funny if I was like, Well, I'm divorced, like, because then I would say like, I don't really have marriage advice. But um, but it's been married 20 years. And I think when you embrace who your partner is, and especially when it's when you're so different, it makes for a way better relationship. Acceptance is the answer.
Jeff Winters:Acceptance is the answer. I feel like we've really uncovered something here. I'm not sure we need to go further. But I'm sure we should press on and talk about a little deeper into process. So can you let's say you're a listener out there, and you've got no process, you've been able to get your company to 1520 employees, maybe even, maybe even more, and you got no process in place. I'd love to walk through the lifecycle of how do you create your first view? How do you hold people accountable? What do you do? If they're not like, like, So what advice do you give people where there's just no process in place, and they got to start,
Unknown:you know, I think I want to go back to like, everyone has an operating system for their business, it's just that everyone in the company is not using the same one. So if POS is if you're not using it, unless you have some other operating system, it's you know, it's Jeff's operating system before you so but it's just that you're you know, there's a KT operating system. So that doesn't work when we have different operating systems in a company if you want to be effective and in alignment. And the same with process. You You do have processes in your company, it's just people are using different ones. And so So if someone's starting from scratch, the way we work with teams, it's there's kind of there's we have a three step process documenter it does start with having the right mindset and getting past a few myths, kind of some biases and blocks around process, but I can talk about that later. First, we just have our team like get in a room, it's a one hour meeting and work with your leadership team to identify a handful of core processes. Most companies have, you know, people process for how you bring people in the door, a sales process for how you how you generate demand, and close on that demand between marketing and sales, a few operations processes, we go through each of them. And have you identify yours everyone has what they have is unique to them. But most companies have things in those categories finance, customer service. So we have you identify your core processes, and then we assign an owner to each process. And they're tasked with coming back with a document, like I said, one to five pages where this whether it's a checklist, or you know, ideally a checklist that captures at a high level, what that process looks like that people have a lot of SOPs and procedures and sub processes, we're not talking about that we're talking about just getting the framework to begin with, of how you get things done in a certain department a little more detail than that, but that's that's high level what we do. And then we work quarter over quarter to knock out getting you know, three or four of those processes documented over the course of a quarter so that by the end of the year, you have all of your processes documented and that's just one part because obviously you can document your processes but you got to get people to follow them as well. So that's a whole that's four other steps that we teach our teams how to do that.
Jeff Winters:Well I'm excited to dive into those but but high level for the listeners take five processes, whether it's how we get people in the door, how we sell, how we account, how we operate, pick five one to five pages checklist ideally and are we are we talking as granular because you said high level I just want to give the folks some idea as they're no doubt going to take this and run with it. Are we talking you know for example on the sales let's let's take the sales process because That's an easy one. Yeah. Is it? Is it as granular as sort of what the talk track is for the sales call? Is it as granular as if there is this question asked, here's the rebuttal. Or is it more the first step is a call, the second step is we're gonna send a proposal,
Unknown:exactly, the ladder, exactly that I was, I was, I saw, you know, some of your podcasts talk about that. So it's, you know, it's good to lead, qualify the lead, and, you know, send the proposal, close a proposal so that, when I a good example, is, let's say, one of the processes around either HR or finance, running payroll, let's say like, when you first started the company, you wrote a check to pay people. And then as the company grew, you were in QuickBooks paying people in, then you got bigger, and it's PEOs, doing payroll, all of those things are just run payroll, right. And so I don't want to know whether you're paying by cheque or by you know, PEO whatever, it's, it's the high level first, just to get you started and get the framework. And so if a person were to walk in the door, on their first day of work, and you weren't around, what are the, you know, what are the major steps, they'd have to do to know they're doing a good job, not that we wouldn't train them and stuff, but just, you know, conceptually, that they've covered all the bases for that department.
Jeff Winters:All right, so we have to document our processes here. And we do top five processes per position.
Unknown:I didn't say five, I said, five to 12 processes. So my core part we call them core processes, just saying I don't want to hamstring you
Jeff Winters:know, I'm just giving you are what we do here. So you can tell us where we're going right where we're going wrong. So we do top five processes per position for every single position. Okay. And it all lives in a sort of a Salesforce portal, so you can reflect back on. And I've got to write five. I'm Chechi Beatty, and my five all day. Like I feel like, you know not to give you the chat GPT schpeel. We all do it, but it's everywhere, I should say, but boy, oh boy, it has been a cheat code for me on process. Oh, yeah. Do you have any experience with that? Do you recommend it? Or am I shortcutting it and I should be I should be sanctioned.
Unknown:I can think we could be sanctioned. Anyway, I just have a sense people want to sanction you anyway. But I've got a sense already. So I think it's what it does, it gets rid of that blank page syndrome, right? It just gives you like, I just give me a place to start. Ideally, you're editing from whatever chat is giving you from there. But if it's giving you a framework, I don't see a problem with it. I do see a problem with this. However, if you don't have an existing process, you're not really capturing your processes, you're creating processes. And that's a whole different thing. So what we teach our teams to do is, you know, go observe how a process is done. So if it's your own process, it's fine if there's like your smaller team, but if you have a team of people you're trying to capture, you know, how are they building the widget, you need to go observe and ask them questions and be like non judgmental and kind of vulnerable, and then capture it or get, you know, have a feel the best people alongside you, alongside help you write it. Sometimes I have my team's just dictate like, it's because not everyone likes us to sit at a computer and type, right? So just tell me what you're doing and dictate it and like into your phone, like do you know a video, or then then someone can write it down for you too. So just a few things that get you away from just the mind block that sometimes people have just having to type something out.
Jeff Winters:I think that's a great tip using chat GBT or video or audio recording something, something to beat the blank page in there. Because it is intimidating to know that you got to write a five page process document if you've never done it before. And now you got to present it to the leadership team. Exactly. You got to start right.
Unknown:Yeah. And then absolutely. Your next point is spot on is then presented to the leadership team. Have everyone review it, see if there's anything missing. And then that's your first cut. And it's this is absolutely a journey you're never done. And so we work with, you know, your your calendar. And there's another part we talked about, how often are you going to update it? If it's annually or quarterly or whatever, we get that on the calendar as well, because you're going to get great feedback on the process, you're going to see figure out new ways to do things. And so we need to make sure we're always updating those processes, which is a lot easier to do when it's five pages versus the 500 that I created 20 years ago.
Jeff Winters:Yeah. And look, if you're listening right now, and you're yawning, or you're thinking, oh processes, I don't need it. Well, you're wrong. I'm here to tell you, you're wrong. I screwed it up. So stay on, this is important stuff. And your teams will thank you for it. And there's integrators at your company that are process oriented, that are dealing with you, and they're not happy about it. So this is
Unknown:something to add to that, Jeff, you know, in writing the book, I interviewed tons and tons and tons of visionary for the book, the book is written for visionaries, and so many of them said If only I had known, you know, I had I had visionary say I didn't like being told what to do, which I get it because that's your personality, for many visionaries. And I didn't think my team wanted to be told what to do either but our people are desperate for leadership. And and, you know, that's one of my visitors and other ones like I don't know why I resisted this So long once I took it on, we able to we were able to scale, you know, in ways that couldn't even have imagined. So unless you like to be interrupted all the time, or have your managers interrupted, or keep on hiring and rehiring for the same position, or you know, remake your product 100 times, it's not being done consistently. And the list goes on and on about the benefits of process. And, and I'm being sarcastic, obviously, because you deserve I think, when someone launches a company, you've taken a lot of risk, and you deserve to take it to the next level where you can kind of communicate best practices to someone have it captured, so you can go on and do the other super cool stuff you should be doing as leader instead of, you know, putting out fires causley, because you have your processes documented.
Jeff Winters:Love it. Alright, so we've got the processes documented, how do you go about ensuring that they are being adhered to?
Unknown:Absolutely. And that's, I think it's the least paid attention to part of this conversation. Because a lot of teams have processes documented, whether it's, you know, work, if they're disorganized, that's a different thing. So, so we talked about the three steps of getting them documented, identify your processes, document and simplify them and package them. And I just want to close the loop on that. When we package them, it's where they all going to live, you said yours are in Salesforce, there's a couple of companies out there, train you will and playbook builder that you know, have like super cool ways for people to keep their stuff in one spot, you can do YouTube and keep your stuff on YouTube. And then the second part is getting them followed by all and so the four parts, we did four parts. So that check was for us. The first one is you have to train your people on the dock and on the process. And so training can look like anything you can have on the job training, you're gonna have a company wide meeting, but train anyone who's going to touch even one part of that process. We've discovered, even when I was doing this in our own business several years ago, that, you know, when our finance team had certain deadlines, and and people didn't even understand how the finance team worked. When we started documenting our processes, and understanding it, we realized, Oh, so many other stakeholders need to understand that but the deadlines they have for either approving bills or invoices impact these deadlines. And so when you share your processes, and you do training with everybody, it also just gives us mutual respect of understanding how other departments work, which is, of course always beautiful. So we train train is the first step. The second step is the importance of measuring. I don't think any of this stuff is alive unless you put it on a scorecard. And so measure some of the major activities on that core on that process checklist. We in ELS use a weekly scorecard just to make sure you know, are we and we measure for three things are we measuring for we can measure for compliance, like are people doing the thing we've asked them to do? Just and it could be a simple way to measure it doesn't always have to come from a CRM? Are they so we can have different compliance with measure frequency? Let's say we need we know that takes four proposals a week to get one sale a week? Are they sending out those for proposals for proposals a week? And we can measure for results? So are they getting that one cell a week? But whatever it is, we are? Are we getting the results that we expect from this process. And keeping on the scorecard is such a great way to make sure that your processes don't die and get ignored. And then we have to manage our people to it. As leaders and managers, we have to step into holding people accountable. So if someone's not hitting their metrics, or not getting the results or or not using the process in general, are we holding them accountable? And that doesn't mean you're going to fire them? It just means you know, do we need to do more training? If they're not hitting hitting their goals? Do we need to have a coaching conversation? Or you know, or put them on some kind of plan or whatever it looks like, but are we doing our job in our part to hold people accountable to get results? And then we update we update? Like I said at least annually, if not more frequently, because we want to make sure we stay ahead of the competition. So we review and see, is there a way to make this process more streamlined? Is there software out there to help us I mean, we're updating for 1000 reasons plus just the feedback we're getting. And so the process owner, who's the Accountable owner for a process, if it's your sales process, it would be your sales leader is accountable for keeping all of that alive. And again, a calendar is your best friend here because it's it's what's going to keep this moving forward or you know, Asana or some checklists or task list
Jeff Winters:like that. I'm going to tell you some it's gonna shock you, sir, you're going to be a guest, your mouth is going to drop Oh, I have had more than one more than five more than 10 experiences where we are measuring more of the compliance and I'm talking to someone who reports to me and they tell me the process is being followed here. The metrics is great. And then I decide after several months to go check it out for myself. And this is the part that's gonna shock you. It isn't there or maybe it's kind of being done with it's they're complying but the quality's low. Yeah, it's like how often Should leaders be diving into the organization and going to the front to see how the work is being done themselves? Or do you say Jeff, you micromanager, you don't get it. Let your people tell you what's right. And trust him.
Unknown:I think a scorecard is a great, a great tool to let you know when you need to dive in deeper. And so if some, if someone's metrics are off a great opportunity to say, Well, hey, let me see what's going going on and get more information. And so it's that trust, but verify, that can never hurt, right? Because if it's if it's all working awesome, you get to give a great big August, you don't get a hug, but you get my five and say, good work. And and, or, Hey, you're doing so great here. How can you help me help other people do the same. And if it's not working, that you needed to look, so it's a no lose situation for sure. I used to think managing was the same word is micromanaging. And today, teach our teams like no managers need to inspect and verify and you can be a leader and you can be a manager and that the combination of the two drives accountability. And sometimes you do have to roll up your sleeves. Yeah, that's my that's my phrase, they roll up their sleeves with somebody who doesn't really get involved in the details.
Jeff Winters:I'm feeling good about getting more involved in the details. You're rolling up your sleeves, I'm getting more involved in details. It's great. I love it. So as it relates to holding people accountable, this can be tricky, right? Because sometimes you have people that are hitting results, but not following process. I'm sure you've run into these scenarios. What do you do you got great salespeople who are blown out but not following a process? And then you've got some that are not blowing it out? And following the process? Like how do you reconcile that?
Unknown:It's often on? How do you reconcile it? I guess a you could see what is that person doing that's helping them be successful? And do we need to update our process so we can replicate that? Do we need to capture you know, maybe capture their scripts and their words and, and bring everyone like a rising rising tide help everyone else get better what they're doing? There are, you know, again, even going back to the visionary integrator conversation, and I think salespeople in general is a great example where they're often independent spirits too, right, that don't want to follow a process and don't want to be told what to do. And so if we can capture, that's why we're trying to say high level, this is what this needs to look like. And because it helps everybody and helps you know, all departments if we all are operating the same way. The other value, if you follow processes, when things do break down, or when things are successful, we can no go back and look and see, review, review what you did, so we can replicate it or not replicate it. Whereas if you're just doing your own thing, I can't, I can't I don't know where you're gonna begin with our issues.
Jeff Winters:So all right, follow up. Here's what I do. Tell me if I'm wrong, would you at least set me straight. So my philosophy is, you could do it your way, and hit your numbers and get your metrics. Or if that's not working, you got to do it our way. But I will let top performers go outside the process if they're consistently winning, because the end of the day, I've found that like trying to model top quartile performers or top decile performers, sometimes it's a fool's errand sometimes that a process like that person is just crazy good, and ain't gonna be able to mimic that. You think I'm crazy? Should I tell those top performers to get in line,
Unknown:I think like, this is where I've seen it come up, it's typically on the administrative side. And maybe you don't often those top performers aren't following through on the process that impacts other departments. That's where I've seen it. I don't know if that's your example. And in that case, it's not really being thoughtful about a team member that has certain objectives, they have to hit right, because you're doing your way. And so you're like, I'm not turning my checks in until the end of the month. And, and so there's other people, because I'm not going to come to the office. And so I that's where I have seen it show up is more administratively. So I can't speak to you know, if they're selling it, you know, they're doing something else that doesn't impact other people. I don't know if I really care, I do think it'd be a great opportunity to capture what they're doing. But um, he I don't think I have an opinion on that other example, but certainly, when we let top performers not comply with kind of processes that other people need, that doesn't that doesn't work, right.
Jeff Winters:Yeah, really good point. Like it or not, we're in a virtual world, we know this. Any changes to process auditing or how you go about ensuring compliance in a virtual world versus an in person world?
Unknown:I think at the end of the day, the results, you know, results. And that's, that's fortunately, that's online also, so we can see if someone's getting the results that we need, and if there's any type of breakdown there, so nothing I can think of right now. I think the benefit of allowing people to do certain types of training, I think, particularly in a virtual virtual world. And, you know, so many of my leaders are concerned that people aren't getting the benefits of kind of water cooler talk and observing, you know, and training through that. And so it's yet another reason why diving into your processes and capturing how we do things in our in our organization will benefit our clients and our and your companies. Because because people aren't around each other just to learn from osmosis. So we got to capture that, that knowledge and put it somewhere.
Jeff Winters:So, all right, we've probably got listeners that are spanning the gamut, you know, billion dollar companies all the way down to one to two people. When do you say, Okay, now is the time at this employee count at this revenue range? You have to have process? Because, look, you could get by with a few people without them right? Or do you say no, you got to have them off the bat day one,
Unknown:not day one, because you don't have your processes yet in place. I think, if you want to grow, that's when it's time, you know, and, and grow is all relative. So if I know, I don't want to be, you know, working eight hours a day, 60 hours, you know, or 12 hours a day, six days a week, six hours a week, and someone else is going to have to cover me, how do I capture that information and people get away with you know, I can just tell, you know, Mary, I can tell Bill how to do it when I'm not around. And it works for a while. But as you continue to grow, you know, the game of telephone results in the kind of the same outcome where you're not getting consistent consistency. And so I think if you're interested in growing, the sooner you can capture them, the better. But I don't have like a at this revenues, right, because it depends what you're selling. But
Jeff Winters:understood, fair enough.
Unknown:So you me like I have you know, even I'm sorry to interrupt you, I know, if you have an assistant, right, and you want to start delegating work to them. You got to capture your processes, or you're just going to keep repeating yourself and having to tell them and tell them and tell them and it's really hard to be able to remember what you're telling them. There's a study that showed that people forget something like 90% of what they learn within the first 30 days, and maybe 70% of that happens in the first 24 hours or vice versa. But whatever it is, people don't remember stuff. And so they have to have a place to go back to including me. So they have to go back and like keep reading, reading so they can remember what you taught them and have a place to
Jeff Winters:go to. Yep, totally, totally agree. Do you have a thought on whether or not I mean, you talk about documenting processes and writing but you also mentioned a number of different tools. You Kerr written video audio, we've got people that learn different ways absolutely come down on on like the mechanism?
Unknown:That's such a good question. So when we document for the leadership team, typically people will just put it in a word or a Google Doc or something so that people can review it, and get on the same page. And that's typically the the kind of the initial step, then there's the packaging for the end user. And that can look like anything that can be just think about where the person is going to be using it. So if you're training someone who's going to be online, you know, is it a video? Is it screenshots? Is it you know, flowcharts the best, you know, the best visual, hopefully, for our listeners is, think about McDonald's, you know, there's no notebook telling you how to make a burger, right? I mean, I'm assuming it's like, it's, you know, it's bread and butter and cheese and lettuce. And that's all people need to know. And it's the end user. That's not all people need to know, but it's for the end user to make a burger. You know, that's, the images work too. And so yeah, I mentioned a couple of companies that I just got to know as I was writing the book train you will and playbook builder, and people can do their video of how like the training and it goes into a spot online where people can go into any time it'll even nudge them to remember remind them to do the training. So there's paid for services through that and or there's other services you can do it on YouTube and the value of video whether you're using a company or not, and I dealt this I'm like making up this number but in a minute you can convey like 30,000 words or something compared to like what you would type and so video is tremendous for because because people can see your body language and your intonation and all of that which you can't convey with you can try to convey through typing but but it takes a lot longer so
Jeff Winters:I always thought it was trained you all
Unknown:it's train your ears T It's trained you like a manual train you'll
Jeff Winters:take my version of the future sponsor probably by the way train you will I always thought it was trained you all but now yours makes way more sense I
Unknown:think I spoke with the founder and I think he said in the south he captured maybe that Web site because people always thought his train y'all like Draco manual Manuel.
Jeff Winters:I will let him know that Jeff winners from the growth show really prefers train you all I know that I will
Unknown:be a sponsor because he says they're super cool company. So I I'd love to
Jeff Winters:seem like it. Alright, so I want you to picture a client you worked with, you worked with him on process, but you left and you were like, Oh, I bet if I come back here in a year, this is going to be a total catastrophe. Let's say you went back to that client a year later, what would you have seen to sort of fulfill your vision of that becoming catastrophe wherever they fall,
Unknown:I think not prioritizing it, letting the business the busyness of the business get in the way, because they have the tools. And so now my clients have a map. So they know, you know, by the end of the year, this is where you're going to land and it helps them a lot more versus leaving them to their own devices to like, make it a priority. So now they map in advance, like by the end of the year is where we're going to be, whether it comes whether it's the documentation or the training, or you know, putting out their selector, their measurables. And so yeah, that makes a big difference. But I think just like any company, we let we start working, you know, in the business and stop working on the business, and this is definitely on the business stuff that people just keep pushing down down the road and it's the thing that's going to help you you know, be free of your business at some point or scale your business or sell it for multiple, you know, higher multiples. Gino Whitman has mentioned that his clients sold for and I mean, Gina Whitman talks about this E Myth person talks about it, Michael Gerber. When you have to properly document your processes, your business has so much more value in his companies. Now companies have sold for five times more multiples than then traditionally they have sold for because they have documented processes. And it doesn't take much it just takes chipping away quarter over quarter and you get it done pretty quickly.
Jeff Winters:You heard it here first, leases guaranteeing it if you have documented processes, your enterprise value. Oh
Unknown:yes. See your lawyer. animes. Like no. Okay. Disclaimer, throw a bunch of disclaimers. Katie?
Jeff Winters:Yes. Many many disclaimers. All right, Lisa, last question. Before we wrap up, I want to give you one more chance for all the for all the folks out there who are still not sold that they have to do at least I want to give you one more sales pitch for why us visionaries need to cave and embrace the process. Go ahead.
Unknown:So I think I've mentioned this the benefits, I'd love to to cover like what like common mindsets that visionaries have, like they think maybe they're not process oriented. And you'll see like you absolutely are how you've grown your business, it's just you haven't written it down. But you figured out what work and duplicated it and you can and and and we're just asking you to capture it or have someone captured for you. And there's a concern that process is going to destroy your freedom for a lot of engineering. So you're gonna turn your people into a bunch of robots. And you know, that's not the case either it's actually going to give you freedom what's killing our freedom as leaders is you know, having to redo a product or you know, deal with an unhappy customer or not have money to grow and cashflow and so it is absolutely the key to your freedom. If you if you just get get behind it enough to get your team rolling and be like a champion of it. And the ROI on it. I will guarantee this ROI on it for your emotional health. Ideally, I will guarantee it is is everything so just it's just baby steps on a journey to getting your freedom you actually deserve as a leader.
Jeff Winters:Lisa is guaranteed many things unequivocally enterprise value will go up number one your emotional health and improve number two and you will have a happier longer marriage Lisa's guaranteed. Exactly. I like that one a lot. There you go. All right. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us. This has been an amazing conversation. Get in your processes people document hold people accountable. Your business will be better. Your emotional health will improve and your marriage will last long. Thank you Lisa.
Unknown:Awesome, great spending time with the gross show was sponsored by creative sweets big agency flavor bite size price