230 Show the Value of What You Do: Measuring and Achieving Success with World-Renowned Expert on Accountability, Measurement, and Evaluation, Jack Phillips | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm really excited to speak you welcoming Jack Phillips. Jack is the chairman of the ROI Institute and he is a world renowned expert on measurement and evaluation. In the decades that I spent in the training industry, I became very familiar with Jack's methodologies and I really appreciate his most recent book, which he has co-written with his wife, Patty Phillips, who is the president and c e o of the r i institute.

Show the value of what you do measuring and achieving success in any endeavor, because it's really important for us in our organizations and teams to be able to more effectively measure and show the value of different projects. I'm sure you will also enjoy the conversation and learn a lot from Jack. I also love hearing from you.

Keep your comments coming, mahan@mahantavakoli.com. There is a microphone icon on www.partneringleadership.com. You can leave voice messages for me there. Don't forget to follow the podcast on your favorite platform when you get a chance. Now here is my conversation with Jack Phillips. 

Jack Phillips. Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

[00:01:21] Jack Phillips: it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on your program.

[00:01:25] Mahan Tavakoli: Jack, you are a legend in measuring impact and I have studied your work for so many years and really excited with your new book show the value of what you do, helping. , all of us understand whether it's projects or initiatives in our organizations, how to show the value of what we do effectively.

But before we get to a conversation around that, would love to know whereabouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted the kind of person you've become. Jack.

[00:01:57] Jack Phillips: I grew up in a farming family, so we had a. Strong work ethic. We worked hard and long hours so I carried that through my whole career. But my first degree was engineering and it just fits so well with me. Math was a second degree, physics and third degree, that logical, rational approach helped me because it wasn't long in my career.

I switched over into the training area and I was. Not long into that field, got a request to show the value of a cooperative education program that we had at Lockheed, I was a co-op director there, and I was actually asked to show the r o i of having a co-op program. We had 350 co-op students going on 

and the organization. So it's a logical question to ask, and it came from the chief engineer who's paying for all of it. And with my background, it just fit well because I needed a master's. Thesis At that time I was working on a Master's in Statistics and I called my thesis advisor and I said, look, I think I got a project here for us.

So that's what we did, that got me into this. So we actually completed that project. But there's some interesting things that came through that really set me on this path. First, When we finished it, we did have a positive roi and it basically showed that it was adding 

more value than we have costing us. That's good. But also we showed some things not working so well that we could improve. So when I got done with my presentation to the chief engineer and all the division engineers in the room the chief engineer said to his division engineers, let's keep this program.

He didn't tell me he was thinking about killing it, that's what they often do when they start asking what something costs and the value of it and so forth. And he says, now Jack has told us some things we need to change to make it a better program. So from that, I got my funding, I got my budget, but I've got new business partners that I need. So I walked away from that saying, Hey, if you just show the value of what you do in a very credible, logical, rational, it can do wonders for you. So that's a spark that created what we're looking at now. And we kept working with this, kept applying it in different areas, and I kept moving up the corporate ladder, ultimately became president of an an organization and, still use this.

 We wrote our first book in 1983. Unfortunately it was about 400 pages. And it had words that frightened people on the title and cover. . What we decided to do after writing almost a hundred books now, we said, look, yes, we've got lots of users. In fact, we got the most used evaluation system in the world, but that's still only just 30 or 40,000 users.

We really. The world to see this because it's not that difficult. So we said, let's write a book that simplifies it, brings it down to 150 pages with a lot of stories in there. We've got 20 stories from all kinds of settings and situations where individuals have taken the initiative to show the value of what they do and leverage it in wonderful ways.

 It's a great read. So we encourage people to get it, see what's involved. Take the plunge.

[00:05:18] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, one of the things that you say is Myth Jack is that a lot of times the people I interact with feel that it's hard to show value for what it is that they do, and they come up with explanations in their mind. They say, we work in a government agency and it's hard because the impact of what we do is so long term.

They work in a healthcare institution and they say it's hard to measure the impact of what we do. And in the book you focus a lot on starting out with measuring impact. How can we focus on measuring impact and make sure that we are able to. Eventually a return on investment on projects that sometimes people have a tough time wrapping their head around.

[00:06:16] Jack Phillips: So first. When we started off, we were working mostly in business. You fast forward now about 70% of . Our customers, are in the non-business area. They're nonprofits, they're governments or NGOs. So it's shifted because those organizations have the same kind of issues.

They need to show the value of the services they deliver. So if you think about the impacts, the, what we call the business measures, they're actually in any organization. If you think about a government setting, for example, the work that anyone. As four major categories. One is the output.

That's the what, the work that they actually do. It's whether it's pushing a form from one desk to another, that's the output. Second, they have quality. That's the mistakes, error, rework they have to do. Third, the time it takes to do it. And then the cost of getting it done. Quality costs and time are there in every setting.

So we have to make sure in the public sector that we get them to think that ROI is not about profits. It's really cost avoidance. We're gonna spend some time and money on a project, and we're avoiding more costs than it's costing us. for the project. That's a positive roi and it works quite well.

It fits quite well in. finance and accounting work in terms of using their formula for that. So now we start with the end in mind, and that's a switch for some people. Typically when they have a project, it's something they wanna do different. For leadership, for example, they often seek new leader behaviors or new leader competencies.

If we see this now shifting with the pandemic where we work on inclusiveness and empathy and so forth. We raised the question. So why are you doing this? What's the consequence if I do this? What impact would it have? If there's no consequence, we have to ask the question, why do it then?

Because you'll never know. Never see any value here. But in reality, there is a reason for doing it. And you can box it into one of those categories. I get more work done. Maybe that's productivity. I can take less time to get it done. That's time. Or I can make fewer mistakes. That's quality.

But it might show up as being in compliance retention, absenteeism, incidents. There's all kinds of measures that can still fit into those categories. So we ask people to think. Why you're doing this and why is not action or behavior. Why is the consequence think consequence when you have that end in mind with a very clear business measure.

And then you decide, what do I have to do to get to that? That's my solution. Now you'll keep the focus on that because you set an objective around that. and you'll keep that in mind all the way through the project. So there's no mystery at the end of what did this do for me? Because you're starting with that measure and you're sticking with it throughout the process.

It's a business alignment that begins early and it stays in the process until we follow up. So it works quite well in the public sector. In fact, there are more of our examples of those 20 stories in the non-business than in the business. Starts off with a chaplain and I'll just build on that because you mentioned healthcare.

A chaplain was faced with a challenge that's occurring right now in our healthcare system. The healthcare system is saying to chaplains, look, if you cannot show the value of what you are doing in terms that I can appreciate and understand, and that's really money then I'm not sure I can continue to fund.

Now that's harsh. We could argue that. Why can't you see the value of spiritual care? But what they're saying is, unfortunately, we gotta have more than that. So what this person did was look, he says, I know we make a difference. I just don't have the data. So he tried an experiment.

He put some chaplains in an intensive care unit where they didn't normally have chaplains, and he compared that with a group. Patients in intensive care that matches up quite well and he compared the two groups. And so what he found is he reduced the length of stay. For those with chaplains. He asked the finance and accounting team, so what's it cost for one stay in the intensive care?

And it's quite expensive. You can imagine. So he calculated the actual roi. He presented that to his hospital administrator and he says, okay, this is what I need. This makes me feel good about this and this gives me the evidence I need to support what you're. Life changed for him. He did more studies and he's manager of chaplaincy at Memorial Hospital System in Chicago.

And he says, this makes a world of difference. He actually teaches others now on how to do this. So this, can work in any setting, in any profession.

[00:11:09] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that example on so many levels, Jack, including the fact that it's one of those things that, first of all, if I had thought about it, I would've had a hard time thinking about how to go. Ahead and measure the impact. And second of all, a lot of times we want people to just take it for granted that we are having an impact.

Don't you get it with want emotionally to say it is making a difference. What you're saying is if it is making a difference, and in this case, The chaplain was making a difference and chaplains were making a difference, then you should be able to go ahead and measure it and show that difference.

There is no need to be afraid of the measurement to show the value of what it is that you're doing.

[00:12:00] Jack Phillips: Yes. Just to build on that when Patty and I faced a group of chaplains, and this person that I'm talking about, his name is Doug Stewart, Doug was in this group. It was a group of 57 people. On a college campus. It was organized by the United Methodist Church and so we had 57 chaplains or managers of chaplaincy or director of spiritual care.

Most of them were in their hospital setting, so Patty and I were there to help them see the value of what they do, teach them how to see that and show that. Now, what we thought was just what you described, we thought we'd have some people. Complaining in a nice way. Of course, they're chaplains complaining that 

why can't you take it for granted that spiritual care adds value? Why should we have to turn it into money? But instead of having complaints, we are surprised. Here's what they're telling us, said, look, we know we make a difference. We see it every. We just don't have data to show it. We see it in outcomes.

We know that spiritual care affects the outpatient outcomes. We see it in the length of stay, how long they stay , in the hospital. We see it in the patient satisfaction. And that's drives the amount of reimbursement to get because we work with the families and the patients, we make sure that they're satisfied and we.

With the staff because a lot of employees in the healthcare system, you can imagine this, these days they come to the chaplain at the end of the day for some quiet time and they say, you make a difference in me being there. You make a difference in me staying with this organization and staying in this job.

So they said, look, we affect, turn. We affected the retention of your team. That's money. So what they were telling us, look, we know we make a difference. Just show us how to get to this. And that's what we did. And Doug was one of those out of the 57, 26 continued on and they're working through their studies.

And this will be hard to believe we have planned. A book to be published called measuring the ROI chaplain. Published by the United Methodist Church. So that's just one example of so many areas out there that we can work in. That's a good example to look at because , look, if a chaplain can show the value of what they do, I should be able to show the value of what I'm doing and that we would agree.

And that's why we talk about that. And we started with that story in the.

[00:14:28] Mahan Tavakoli: And one of the key points that you make Jack I think is important to. Line is that it's not just showing the value of what you do in trying to justify what it is that you're doing by trying to measure the value of what you do. You can then make revisions in order to increase the value. So this is the right thing to do.

It's not just the justification for what it is that you're doing.

[00:14:58] Jack Phillips: Yes, exactly. In fact, we suggest that the number one reason you should do this is process improvement, to make it better. Even if you've got a successful project, let's make it better next time. So it's a relentless focus on process improvement. It. Yes, you can get funding that you need. Yes, you can build good relationships, get good support, get commitment that you need, get the respect that you need, get the influence that you need, but you can also make it a better system, a better process, a better project next time.

So yes, that's a huge.

[00:15:34] Mahan Tavakoli: Now one of the places that I know you had spent some time and some books on which I wanted to visit briefly in this conversation is a lot of organizations spend a lot of time on training and development and. With training, you also go through the reaction learning, application impact, and eventually ROI measurements.

I wonder though, why it is that. . Even with training, most cases still, the only thing that is being looked at is that reaction. So in organizations, a lot of projects, people aren't looking at the impact. And even with the significant amounts of money that is spent on training, primarily the measures are still at the reaction.

[00:16:24] Jack Phillips: Yes it's exactly frustrating for us because it's not changing fast enough for us. But yes, that's a dominant method. Probably close to a hundred percent of the time we measure reaction, but unfortunately, so much of it stops there. And it's easy to measure. You've got a group of people in some kind of captive audience way, you can collect the data easily.

 So for convenience, we do that and we've gotten away with it for a long time. But the executives won't settle for that anymore. So it's not just how they reacted. But it's also what they've learned. And quickly they'll tell you it's not really what they know, but it's what they do with what they know.

That gets us. Application, but then other executives says just doing some things, being busy, I gotta see the consequence of that. That's the impact. So it is being driven by the senior executives. Our work is being driven by the top executives and particularly the chief financial officer. And I wish it wasn't that way.

And we trying to get learning and development teams be proactive in this. Show , the value of what you do to executives. Don't wait for them to ask you. It's too late for some when you do that because you're now in a defensive position. You have a short timeline to produce some results, and you've got r o ROI on someone else's agenda.

You want to keep it on yours . That's our message with learning teams. But it's also we're technology groups. Technology groups have the same issues. You're still measuring the same five levels of outcomes on any of these projects that we're talking about. Reaction learning, application impact, r o i so to keep your IT budget going, we've got some clients.

Our record was a 2 billion. Budget for it annually. And you can imagine to sustain a budget like that, you've gotta show the value of all that technology you have. So it's not just in the soft area of HR and PR and l and d and those things, but it's in technology and marketing as well.

One of our books is r ROI in marketing because, marketing campaign, you need to see the value right through ROI for a lot of those campaigns too.

[00:18:31] Mahan Tavakoli: So one of the things I wonder, Jack, Is, do any of the levels at any point become opposite forces? And I asked this from the training perspective in that there are ways where you can have greater impact, but the reaction of the participants or people going through won't be as positive.

Are any of the measures ever, more important than others. So when organizations are looking at whether measuring projects or training, what should they focus in on? Should they be willing to sacrifice the initial measures like reaction for the sake of that impact. 

[00:19:14] Jack Phillips: That's a great question. So you see, if you think about reaction, we break it into two categories. One is experience and the other's content. The experience is, if you think about learning, it's the environment I'm in, it's maybe even the temperature. It's a lunches, it's a quality of the speaker, that's my experience that I'm going through.

We say don't measure so much there because you'll change that anyway if it's not working well. But what you want to focus on is content. It's a content that's gonna bring lasting changes. So we see that there's some content questions that are more critical than others. We find four very important ones, and the number one is, do you intend to use what?

Are involved in intent to use, whether it's technology or a new procedure or a leadership behavior program intent to use will correlate with actual use, which is what you need to get to impact. Of course. Now also, Net promoter score, as we call it, would you recommend it to others? If you find value in something, you'd recommend it to others, more than likely you're going to use it because you feel that strong about it.

That correlates with application as well. And then you've got important to you, the word important to you, your team, to good healthcare or whatever it is, your mission of your group. If it's important to. You're gonna probably use it. So that's a good one. And then finally, relevant. Is it relevant to you and your work and your needs?

Relevance. Relevance, importance, intent to use, recommend to others are four good predictors of application and impact. And those are all content related. They're based on the substance of what we. Not the experience that we're in. And so we get carried away sometimes when say, look they're in this program and they're all happy about it.

We tell our executives they're all happy with it, and we call those feedback forms happiness sheets. But being happy doesn't mean it translates into something good yet. So it's a great point that.

[00:21:24] Mahan Tavakoli: A lot of times it doesn't, that's why it's important to measure that impact. The other concern , I typically hear from executives when we're having conversations about measurement is their fear of needing to spend a lot of time trying to come up with measures for impact. and they don't want the measurements to get in the way of doing the work.

So how can executives and leaders of teams think about measuring impact in a way that is supportive, can help them learn, but doesn't become another full-time job just focused on the measurement.

[00:22:06] Jack Phillips: Think of leadership behavior and this is where it's so critical. So much of the time we think about the behaviors. We suggest that you look beyond that to the impacts, but instead of trying to understand, if I use this behavior, what's going to change in my system?

We said, let's flip it around and say, what is it in your KPIs, your key performance indicators for you and your team, what is it you want to change? What needs to go? what's important to you to increase or make better? and that's usually not difficult to see because there's some measure that's a sticky point or it's something that's so important to our organization.

It's something that I need to tackle. We try to start with a measure that's important to them, something they need to improve. So there's motivation to actually do it now, but we have to take another step, we have to say. Now, given that particular measure that's important to you,

Can you get from here to there? With this, and leadership development is a good example because it's so flexible, so powerful so needed. So the behaviors you can clearly say, yeah, it's about solving problems and setting goals, giving feedback, getting people engaged, yes. I think I can do that. So when you've done that, you've then set an objective for that. So you've got something that's important to you. You've got real ownership. You want to get there anyway. This program now is just your vehicle to get there. You've got so much ownership to get there and you didn't get bogged down trying to worry about a measure.

You started with something. It's important to you. So it's a very critical issue. We get people to think about what do you need to change? We sometimes force everybody in leadership program. Everybody work on this measure like retention, and you have your accounting manager says, I don't have a retention problem.

Work on it anyway because every everybody's working No, you just shut them out because you're trying to force a measure on them. Or they spend too much time trying to worry about that measure. But to start with something that's important to you, something that's under the control of your team, but you can improve it using whatever you are offering to them.

[00:24:25] Mahan Tavakoli: The other thing, Jackie, that I think is really important in showing the value of what you do and focusing on measuring specifically with the impact. Act that you keep emphasizing in the book is that now that many organizations are working in more of a hybrid, Environment where their people have more flexibility, 

it requires much more alignment and outcome focus and that focus on impact. So I would love to hear your thoughts with respect to how showing the value of what you do fits with the hybrid nature of work that many organizations are finding themselves in now.

[00:25:09] Jack Phillips: That's a huge issue. This is an area we work in, is what's the ROI of working remotely, for example, or in an hybrid. Environment. We got an interesting story in the book. It's a person named Paula Patel. During the pandemic, she went home to work just like everyone else.

She's with a large technology company and she was asked to come back to work. They said, it's time to get everybody back. And she was thinking to herself, Hey, I'm getting more work done. I'm really more productive. I wanna work at home. And she posed the question to the executives, if I can show you the business case for me working at home in a way that you can understand, will you consider that they said, oh yes.

We'll consider it. So she looked at if I don't get. Work at home. I'm leaving, I'm going to another company. So you gotta turn over there. Here's what it costs for turnover and I'm giving up my office entirely. You can do that when you completely remote.

 She says, you can give up my office space, and this is the savings that you have and our productivity's up. And you look at my productivity. The improvement in my productive, in what it's worth, it says, let's go on those three measures.

So here you've got a huge roi. By the way, my ROI is huge. Your ROI is huge. And let's think about the environment for a minute. If I drive to work, I'm putting carbon in. Atmosphere and I can show you how many tons that I'm not putting in the atmosphere. Tons of carbon because I'm not driving. And so that's helping environment and we know you are interested in the environment. So she says that's the ROI from the external. The mayor of our city would love the fact that I'm working at home because I'm not causing any transportation issues. So it's a positive ROI for everyone and with that data they let her continue her work.

[00:27:09] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a great example of showing the r o I specifically. In many instances, people's productivity went up when working remote. Now, one of the things I hear from a lot of leaders that I interact with is the potential. In, whether it's creativity or people bumping into each other.

Now a lot of people talk about the proverbial water cooler. I think it must have been that we must have all stood around those water coolers because executives are bemoaning the days when everyone would bump into each other at water coolers. But I do see a certain level of. Relevance to what they say in that there is something that is lost in people not interacting with each other in person.

Are there ways of measuring the impact of. The in-person interaction beyond pure productivity, which I'm sure if I'm sitting behind a computer all day at home, I can be as if not more productive than when I'm in the office environment with other people.

[00:28:22] Jack Phillips: Yes, so you raised a good point. See before the. We were involved in studies involving working at home and what you would see is a breakdown in engagement. Collaboration and teamwork and career progression. That's what can happen. See, but if you go into this knowing that can be a weakness, you work at it to keep it from being a weakness.

So you do things to stay engaged. You do things to facilitate collaboration? Technology helps us so much here with this, and you do things to make sure that the team is still gelling and still working together, and you do things to keep your career in check. and you do that through making sure that you understand your career goals and get some guidance and support from your immediate manager to help you with where you want to go so that doesn't become a roadblock.

So you're taking your. Perceived weaknesses going in and working hard to try to turn those into strengths if you can, or least not inhibitors. So yes, you can do that. By the way, we don't even have a water cooler, but we hear that conversation all the time. I don't think I've ever had a water cooler around my office, but we do use that term.

You have this image of everybody standing around the water cooler talking about company issues, but more than likely they're talking about football scores or politics or something like that. Anyway,

[00:29:53] Mahan Tavakoli: There's a part of it that I think we all long for the good old days, whatever those good old days were, and maybe as in your case and mine, I don't ever recall going to a water cooler and hanging out with a bunch of other people and having meaningful interaction. But the point that you made, Jack, that I really wanna underline because I know organizations that operate very well.

Virtually is that when you know what the potential weaknesses are, which could be the personal connection, interactions some of those aspects, you can work at it. So you can be more intentional with the kinds of conversations that you, think were happening around that water cooler.

So intentionality. Can overcome that. Now you've spent most of your life on measurement, Jack, and this book is a great way for all of us as executives in organizations to focus on how we can show the value of what we do. So for the managers and executives listening to this, if they haven't started with this process specifically, , in addition to reading the book, what would you urge 'em to do?

What can they start with in order to start the process of showing the value of what it is that they do?

[00:31:20] Jack Phillips: Obviously the book is the start and we've got. Some tools at the website that supports the book, some case studies, we take some of the case studies from the stories that are in the book and show you more detail in how they did this. So you can learn more. We've got one day workshops that support it and we've got a process that we've been doing for a long time.

It's called R ROI certification. If you really want to build serious capability in doing this for you. And your team, take that certification now. Typically a leader doesn't want that much, but you can get probably what you need just for this book just thinking this way, for any project I have, anything I'm pursuing, I'm thinking about what's the reaction to it?

What do everyone have to learn to make it successful? What will they be doing now and what impact that will have, and is it going to deliver more value than is costing me? So you are thinking ROI on your projects, and a leader can use this to show a value of their major project.

They often generate or are involved in, but also you can expose your team to it and just get a culture of accountability here because you really want everyone to focus on what they do in this way. We have this concern that we think that doing things is our ultimate accomplishment.

We are quite busy with outcome. Of value to the organization and quickly, executives would say no. It's not what you're doing. It's the consequence of what you're doing and we have leadership providers that sometimes say our senior executives want leader behavior.

I'd say I'd like to talk to them because I think what they want is the. Of new leader behavior and when they go clarify that's usually what, yeah. We wanna make sure that they deliver the results. So we've gotta get people to move beyond thinking activities is where we need to be.

It's really the consequence of those activities. So get started with it. The book is a good start. And there are tools that can support you along the way. You can get as deep into this as you want to, but we thank the book with, for most leaders and managers that'll get them where they need to be.

Try to build that culture of accountability within your team and can make a big difference in the success of your whole team because everyone's focused on the results that they need impact.

[00:33:48] Mahan Tavakoli: A different mindset Jack, and I think the mindset by itself is of real value. I love clay Christensen's work including on the jobs to be done framework that he kept talking about what you have done with this process. over the decades that you've been advocating is taking that jobs to be done and breaking it down so we can think about the reaction 

the learning, the application or behavior change, the impact, and then R O I, because that's what at the end of the day, people are looking for. That's the job to be done, and just having the conversation around it, can be beneficial for. The individual, the team, and the entire organization moving them in the right direction.

So in addition to your book, are there any other books or resources you typically find yourself recommending as leaders want to focus more on impact and return on investment and measuring it rather than a lot of what is typically looked at, which is a lot more activity orient.

[00:35:08] Jack Phillips: Yes. First I want to mention this. Work itself, it follows that chain that you just talked about and we forget that sometimes. The last week I gave a keynote for our conference in Dubai. It was a SHRM Conference, the Society for Human Resource Management. It's a SHRM Meina conference, and so I was there with Marshall Goldsmith and we were both giving keynotes.

My keynote was about, How to make sure your performance management system delivers results. And we start with just what you were describing. If you go back far enough in time we thought a good performance evaluation. We looked at the attitude of this person, Hey, got the right work ethic, right attitude.

I like this. But that gets us nowhere necessarily. And then it's what they know. They got degrees, they got skills, they got certifications. But again, if it doesn't transform into something else, that's not worth much. So then it's what they do, we. Focus, our performance appraisal on what people are doing.

But these days we need to be at the impact level. Our performance management system has to be dominated by those KPIs at the measures, and there's even an ROI that. It's too frightening to even think about it, but we are getting a lot of requests saying, look, I need to hire a new person, but my boss says, unless you can show me the ROI of this new person I'm not going to approve it.

He says, can you show that? And we said yes you can. So I don't think we're gonna get there in my lifetime that we'll be doing Performance appraisal. What ROI are you're delivering but it's an interesting concept because most people I think, do deliver more value than you pay them. And 

that's a positive ROI you're getting out of this person

[00:36:53] Mahan Tavakoli: jack, I love that. I had never superimposed this, the performance management.

Process of the reaction that this person has, the learning that they have, how they are applying their knowledge, the impact that they have, and then the return on investment. That is a different way of even performance management. 

[00:37:21] Jack Phillips: Yes. And let's go to your point about what books there's a great book to read that connects right with that issue as well. And it's called. Your what matters. It's by John Dore. It's a New York Times bestselling book. It's just a needed reference book for anyone. John Began his career in Intel and he started working with a system called Objectives with key results

they call them OKRs. And it's really setting good, clear objectives with key results tied to them. Very specific. And he learned this he was successful within Intel and he got this system from Andy Grove, who was his c e o later of Intel and was a remarkable c e o there.

But John kept working this and he finally took it a venture capital firm called Kleiner Perkins and said, look, we already helped startups with this. Some of his early clients that they supported and started up. Google, for example the co-founder of Google, Larry Page writes the forward in this book and he says, look, I don't write forwards to books, but I wanted to write this one because John Dore with the O K R system, he would teach us made the difference.

And we learn this. So we give a lot of credit to this. Yes, we had good talent, we had a great idea, but the focus we needed came from this. So I'd say that's a must read. Measure what matters. John's thinking tracks so much of what we do. We wrote a book on Beyond Learning Objectives is the name of it.

And another book is 10 Steps to Successful Business Alignment. Both those kind of get to the same issues that John was, but John does a much better job putting that together. So the must read and there's a lot of others out there, but we'll drop with that.

[00:39:06] Mahan Tavakoli: You are very modest, Jack. I do love that book. Measure what matters. Mention Andy. Quite often. And then John Doer's work actually had conversations both with Doug Deline, who is a C E O of BetterWorks, one of the biggest O K R platforms. And then DRE Park Knot. Who is the C e O of Workboard, which is another one of the largest O K R platforms.

So I'm a big advocate for that. And both what John talks about and measure what matters and what you and Patty talk about in show the value of what you do and your other books really helps us rethink our approach to work. And I think. Very helpful, whether for individuals, teams, or organizations of all sizes, and I appreciate all the great work you have done for decades, Jack, most especially this book that makes the concepts a lot more accessible.

So Jack, how can the audience find out more about you and your book, show the value of what you do?

[00:40:12] Jack Phillips: That book's available wherever you buy your books. Amazon would be a good place. The publisher is Barrett Kohler but you'll find that in some of the bookstores, so get the book. By the way I would offer this. If you get the book and you're disappointed, drop me a note.

Keep the book, I'll refund the price you paid. I've offered that for all of our books by the way, we have yet to refund any books, but we're prepared to do that. And if you wanna reach out and discuss any of these issues, I'm at jack@oroiinstitute.net. jack@roisinstitute.net and our website, ROI Institute dot.

It's got lots of detail around that, and there's a landing page for that book. It's got a lot more tools and templates and case studies and issues around that book as well.

[00:41:00] Mahan Tavakoli: What an absolute pleasure. Jack, really appreciate you joining me in this conversation for partnering leadership. Thank you so much, Jack Phillips.

[00:41:08] Jack Phillips: Thank you. Take care.