Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Welcome to Momentum. Your inside track to the strategies, mindsets, and the how they did it. Stories behind World Synergys continued success. Let's unlock new levels of achievement together and join today's podcast.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Hello and welcome.
We have with us our CEO, Glenn Smith.
[00:00:31] Speaker C: Hello.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Hi, Glenn.
On engineering we have Charles Goggins. Hey, Charles. Hello, everyone, and I'm Matt Jones.
Today we are going to talk about our core value of extreme ownership.
So, as always, maybe we'll start with a quick what is extreme ownership? What is the definition?
[00:01:00] Speaker C: I assume you're asking me, Matt?
[00:01:02] Speaker B: I didn't think Charles would answer, but maybe he will.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: So it's part of our core values, and it stems from really about the concept of what does it take to get something done, something accomplished, something achieved. And the extreme ownership, the definition or concept really set home with me in reading the book from Jocko, extreme ownership, which talks about when things are diverse and things are ever changing. Specifically, references in military action where nothing is predictable. How do you achieve a mission? How do you achieve success? And it's about knowing your role, knowing what the goal is, and then being able to deal with adversity. And that's one of the core values that I think is so important for us, because it's not just getting this specific job or task done, but it's making sure that you understand why you're doing that task and what the results really supposed to achieve. So it's not necessarily just saying, hey, I wanna do this tactic where I wanna get x, Y, and z done. It's about making sure you achieve the goal, the intent of the goal, which was to achieve whatever result is.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: And we like to kinda take that in our real world. I was actually just having a conversation with someone yesterday. We were talking about tickets, but this could apply to anything that we have here.
And in reference to the ticket, I was saying we need to have the mentality of, what do I need to do to get this done right now, so I never have to touch it again? What does that mean? Because we have a tendency across the board to just send an email or kind of do a task, check the next box in the step in the flow, and say, okay, I'm done with that for now. I will wait for the next response, and then I will move forward, as opposed to, you know, I tried to call this person and they didn't answer. I'm gonna try their cell phone next. I'm gonna try to call the receptionist at the business that they're in next. I'm gonna call their mother next. Like, I'm gonna do whatever I need to do to get this thing done so I don't have to deal with it again. Right. It's my plate instead of what we tend to do, which is we send an email out and we say, in the case of a ticket, hey, client, can you give me this information? And then we're done. And we say, okay, that's it, no more. Right. We do this also internally with each other. Sometimes we will send an email out to each other, and we'll say, hey, I need this information from you. Hey, Glenn, can you send me this information?
Three days later, when you don't respond, I say, well, Glenn didn't get back to me, so it's Glen's fault that I didn't get my task done. That's the opposite of extreme ownership. Extreme ownership is, I sent Glen an email, and he didn't respond. Within an hour. Something's going on. He's not obviously paying attention to his email, but I need this information within an hour. So I'm going to call him. I'm going to text him. I wouldn't have started with an email, actually, because that's a bad example. I would have called you, texted, whatever, right? Throwing up the flags. Or if I don't need it within an hour, but I need the information, and I know you're busy. You've got a lot going on. I'm going to schedule 15 minutes on your calendar to say, hey, can we talk about this thing? I know it's not as important to you, but it is to me, and I need to get it done, and so I own it, even though I need you to help me complete that. That's part of extreme ownership, is I own this task until it's done, and I'm not passing it off to you passively and saying, well, Glenn has the next step on this, and until he does his next step, I don't need to think about this anymore.
[00:05:11] Speaker C: Right, right. And so extreme ownership is about one of the other core values, which is talks about, you know, synergy and a team environment, is that everyone on the team feels ownership responsibility to getting that again, that job, the mission, whatever that task is accomplished.
And you have to understand everyone's role and understand that again. In most cases, we're doing things in a team environment that if one team member doesn't achieve the result, it's not their fault, it's our fault. And one of the things that has recently kind of solidified in my mind, I been doing a lot of thinking about this is when we lose a client, when we lose an employee, when something doesn't work out, it bothers me, and it's been bothering me that it bothers me. And I try to figure out, why does it bother me so much?
Sometimes it's, you know, it's not a right fit or whatever the situation is. But the bigger thing is that it happened that we had a situation where an employee didn't work out or client didn't work out for whatever reason. And so I look back at those things and figure out, why does it make me lose sleep?
And I try to think about, well, what could I have done to make that different? Could I have been better in the sales process? Could I have been better in the discovery? Could I have been better in the interview process? Could I have been clear in the onboarding? And I always look back and try to reflect and say, what do we need to do better? And so a lot of these extreme ownership examples are things to say, hey, someone didn't work out or this project didn't work out, but what could I have done? And I found it to be interesting. In recent times, when we've lost a client, we do this after action review, and I said, what could we have done different?
And in a few instances, and it's happening more and more, I hear people stepping up and say, you know what? I could have done this. I should have done that. And it may not even been their direct responsibility, but as a team, they're looking at and saying, what could they have done different? In Jack O'Willing's book, he talks about that in saying, in a SEAL team environment, when they had a problem, Jaco would ask the team, what could we have done differently? And everyone steps up and said, you know what, I'm sorry. It's my fault. I should have done this. And they all take responsibility, and that's extreme ownership is, extreme ownership is getting the result. And looking at yourself, what you could have done different. So, yeah, I knew this client had an issue. I knew this person was drowning.
I didn't ask the right questions in the interview process. I just kind of abdicated instead of delegating.
I could have done things better. And so those are some good examples of how we need to look at every situation in its current present time and look at what do they need to do to actually get it over the finish line.
And I think it's a great core value for us because it's not very specific in the sense that it's just, hey, if you do this, then you met the extreme ownership. It's challenge yourself on everything that you do. And recently I've been using this example of, or this expression, if it's not broke, fix it, because nothing should stay the same. If it stays the same, you can become stagnant.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. Too often we think of that as what we did wrong. Maybe we lose a client, we lose an employee. Right. What could we have done different? How about we didn't lose a client, they were happy with us.
Still, what could we have done better? Look at it on our own and say, how could we have served them better than we did this time? How can we make our service faster, better. Right. So our clients are happier and we're getting ahead of the curve, as opposed to waiting and becoming stagnant and then having to fix ourselves on the back end.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: Right. Which is another thing that's interesting about us is, you know, three years ago, we started implementing EOS and we started running these, these level ten meetings, these weekly meetings, which the intent about these meetings is not to fix what's broken in the current state, but to make the company better, to fix a process that makes us better in the future. So don't, you know, don't address these specific pains, but youre a, you're fixing the problem.
You're addressing how do I solve this problem? As opposed to how do I solve this symptom?
And those are some good examples, the l ten s that we run when we have a great meeting, we're actually fixing things that are for the future, not just fixing things that are painfully, we're aware of.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. I think one of the problems with the verbiage in EOS is that they call those issues. And so naturally, our mind goes to, what's an issue is something that's broken, that needs fixed. Right. And so maybe from this, as I'm thinking about it, I'm going to change the verbiage. We won't use the word issue anymore. We'll use a different word that indicates that we need to become better. Like, what are the things we need to do to become better? Not just fix what's broken.
[00:11:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Right. So, yeah, absolutely.
[00:11:23] Speaker C: Yeah. And so I think another facet of this, of extreme ownership is in our company and our employees is understanding the why of what they're doing and asking questions, not just do the task, not just, yep, we have a process, we have a checklist. Here are the things, but really understand what's the purpose of it, of doing these things. Because sometimes we said this, this morning before we were doing our podcast is we talked about things change so quickly culturally, things change. And so sometimes the things that we're tasked to do are still relevant, but it's different because of the culture you're in. Right. So some of the things that we did four years ago when we were all in the office are still important to engage, but it's a different way of engaging because now you're remote.
So the importance of understanding why you're doing it.
And I I referenced this from a marketing perspective. We had a l ten meeting. We're talking about data that we present to the client. And what I find to be interesting is that is some of the data that we present to the client is meaningful to us, but it's not necessarily meaningful to the client. It's not necessarily explained of what's the purpose of tracking this stuff, getting to the result. And so it's hard for the client to get engaged because they don't understand it and they can't contribute. And so you got to ask yourself, so why am I presenting data that is not relevant to the individual? They can't give me any insight. They can't help me. So why am I presenting the data? And so you got to ask yourself these questions is, yep, we're supposed to present data to the client that's meaningful, but meaningful in with the intent of, how do I make this project or this company or the revenue or the sales or their lead gen more successful if they can't contribute? Because that's not their point of reference, then don't talk about it. Right. Make it so it's a contribution. But I get back to the point where I want people to be able to question, why are they doing something with the intent of. For them to understand and them to contribute and make it better.
Yeah.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: And that's the extreme ownership part of that is if it is our responsibility as individuals to make sure we do understand. And when we don't, to dig in deeper and ask those questions and find out who is it that can help me find out. Right. And if there's nobody, then we take it upon ourselves to do the research, to figure it out on our own. Right. And then in turn, train everybody else like, hey, guys, here's what I found out about this. So that we all know for the future, right, that extreme ownership part, the other part of it is this accountability, right. Accountability of yourself and accountability of others. So in the level ten s, we're supposed to have this accountability on our data that we're reporting and our accountability on our to dos that we're completing, or our rocks that we're completing, whatever that is, and we're supposed to be able to say, I did this, I didn't do this, I need help, I got to throw up the flag, right? The assumption is with a rock, for example, throughout the quarter, if you say, or throughout the 90 days, if you say you're on track for 75 days that you are doing the things you need to do, you are holding yourself accountable to that, and then not wait till day 59 or, I'm sorry, day 89 and say, now I need help, I'm not done. Right, right. You're holding yourself accountable throughout that. And same with your data. If your data is off track, whether it's your, whether you caused it directly or not, you own it. And owning it is saying, hey, my data is off track, guys, we need to fix this. What do we need to do to make this better? And either providing solutions to say, here's what I think we need to do, based on what I know about the data or saying, I need help, I don't know what to do. We need to discuss this. We need to ids it, we need to process this, as opposed to just allowing that to flow and saying, yeah, there's nothing we're going to do on this. And not talking about the issue and just seeing that your metric's off.
[00:16:13] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: And holding each other accountable to that as well. Right. That's the other part of the level ten, is you see somebody else's data is off track. They're not saying anything about it, and so you also just don't say anything about it, and you let it go.
Holding each other accountable is. Is the second part of that extreme ownership. We all own the data.
Hey, guys, what's going on with this metric? Why is it off? We need to talk about this. Let's. Anybody has the ability to say, let's drop that down and discuss it. Right?
[00:16:46] Speaker C: Yeah. And so let's just take that one example again.
The core value, extreme ownership. You're in a group, you're presenting data, or you're talking about a project or whatever, and you notice another team member is not, you know, is not pulling their weight, or they're having a struggle, or we use this term often. They're stuck. They don't know how to move it forward, and they don't say anything. And the logic of why someone may not say something is because if I call Matt out, next time, he's gonna call me out of, I don't want that. That's uncomfortable.
And the realization of that is that if you're not trying to help each other improve their numbers, then you're cheating each other because they're going to see things that you don't see. And the reality of is we're all stuck. We all get stuck in life, and life will drag you down. And if some doesn't, you know, if some doesn't point out, hey, you know, you've been missing your numbers or you've been showing lack of interest, you haven't been contributing in these meetings, whatever that is, you're gonna go further and further down that hole, whatever that makes you stuck. And I think that's another thing of extreme ownership, is true. Accountability is making the team better, making each individual better, and acknowledging the fact that they got life shit happening in the background. You don't know what that is. And if you don't know what that is, you don't realize how that's actually dragging them down and seeing how someone might need a break or they might need some help, not even work related. Right. To get something accomplished. But if you don't know, you can't help.
[00:18:39] Speaker D: Yeah. The beauty of accountability is helping yourself and helping your team members to deal with the blind spots that you may not see from your own angle, whether it is your work style, whether it's just where your focus is on a particular project, so you don't see something going on from another angle of what you're dealing with in other areas. So it helps with us to just to see the blind spots as individuals and as a team, to be able to, as we say, increase and grow within the processes.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: The big key, too, is it's about approach. It's about how you bring this up. Right? If, for example, we're in a meeting, Glenn, you and I, and you've got this metric you're reporting on, and it's been in red for a while. If I go, good grief, Glenn, get it together. Why is your metric always read, we need to drop that down so we can fix you, whatever it is that's going on with you. Right. That approach is very different than following all of our core values within this and just saying, look, it looks like you're struggling with that. Can we drop it down and talk about it? And maybe I can help offer some advice on whatever it is that's got you stuck on this.
It's all about that approach and how we talk about it. We can hold each other accountable and we don't have to be jerks about it.
[00:20:10] Speaker C: Right. Right.
It's that adage about, you know, you see a problem, you want to address the problem.
But in this particular case, for the folks that are listening, Matt and I are on opposing sides of a table. Right. And so if I want to talk to Matt about a problem and if I shoot it across the table, he's going to look at it and he's going to hear it as being offensive, be on the defense. But if I come on the same side of the table with them and we both look at the problem together and we look at the problem saying, what do we need to do to solve this? We've talked about this before.
What's happening? Why is this problem still continuing? You know, I did this with our kids at home. There's 212 year old boys and they throw towels on the floor when the hamper is literally three inches away.
And what's the logic? They know they're supposed to throw it in the hamper, but for whatever reason, they don't identify that as being an issue because it's close to the hamper. Right. But they just can't make the other three inches. And so while it's a small thing, having a conversation, saying, I have to spend some extra time to pick that up, when you don't do it, and it's not just the towel, it's the shirt, it's the socks, it's the everything. And so they all add up and it takes away my time.
And when you guys want to go out and play or you want me to take you somewhere, I got to spend their time doing other stuff because I'm doing this and I can't give you the time that you want when you want it. So I think identifying the problem and identifying, you know, the cause of it and then the effect of it is also helpful.
You know, again, it goes back to the extreme ownership piece. Is that accountability?
It takes a lot of practice. And I, and I absolutely understand, and I agree with what you're saying, Matt, that we need to practice on how to better discuss and approach some of these problems. But at the end of the day, don't cheat somebody because you're afraid of how you're going to approach it.
If you want to go back and think about it, that's okay to figure out what's the right way to discuss it. But don't avoid the conversation because you're afraid that you're not going to say it. Right. I'd rather have somebody say, hey, you're an idiot, because look, at what you've been doing constantly, as opposed to not addressing for six months.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Well, and the other part of that, too, is if someone's holding you back because maybe you are afraid or you don't know how to say it, ask somebody else for an opinion. That's not. I know we talk about this pairing from Eric Coryell, where you talk about people behind your back. You're not talking about them behind their back. You're asking for advice on how to approach it with somebody. You can always do that, too. Right? Hey, you know, Glenn, how do I. I really gotta talk to Charles about his behavior.
How do I approach him? Can you help me with this? Here's what I see is happening. I just don't know what to say. I don't know the words to say. You can ask somebody else if you need assistance on how to do that, but, yeah, absolutely.
The worst thing is to not approach somebody. Definitely don't do that.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Right. And if you wait too long and then you approach it, it's not as relevant because they can't reference it and say, I don't remember doing that. I don't remember being that way.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Right, right. Yep.
[00:23:45] Speaker C: So it's got to be somewhat timely and how you address those issues, always.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Always.
Okay. So I think we've talked a lot about extreme ownership here. We're going to continue moving down some more core values last time, but for this time, we are out of time. So thank you very much, Glenn. I appreciate it.
[00:24:06] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Thanks, Charles. Appreciate you.
[00:24:09] Speaker D: No problem.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: And we'll talk to you next time.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us on momentum today.
