261 Your Most Important Number: Increase Collaboration, Achieve your Strategy, and Execute to Win with Lee Benson | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

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[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Lee Benson. Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

[00:00:04] Lee Benson: great Mahan. It's so good to be here with.

[00:00:06] Mahan Tavakoli: Look forward to the chance to talk about your most important number, increased collaboration, achieve your execute to win. Those are three things that 

I'm very passionate about and know you have a lot of experience on. But before we get to that, Lee would love to know whereabouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted the kind of person you've become.

[00:00:30] Lee Benson: As a kid, I mostly remember growing up in Spokane. My parents struggled a lot and we moved a lot as a result. I went to five different high schools.

The thing that really impacted me was starting really early trading my best efforts for the accumulated best efforts of my neighbors or money there's a neighbor that asked me, Hey, would you come pull weeds for 25 cents an hour?

I'm sure I'll do that. I'm seven years old. I'm doing it. This is fantastic in 68, 69, that's pretty good money for a kid, you could buy a couple candy bars for that. Totally different than today. And then that kind of worked into shoveling snow then mowing lawns and delivering papers.

Eventually a dishwasher, busboy and a cook. And so I started what I call this value creation stressing journey early on and even as difficult as life was at home and in some cases dangerous. That was something I could really trust. So it really impacted how I look at creating value in the world.

And that sort of evolved into when I think about creating value in the world, it's either material value, it's emotional energy value, or it's spiritual value that sort of connectedness to something bigger. And all struggles, whether it's healthy struggle or even toxic or dangerous struggles can be leveraged to create more value going forward.

If you have the right mindset. If you have a victim mindset, then you can just swirl into the ground and not learn anything from it, and things can get significantly worse. But in growing. That was the most impactful thing that ever happened. By the time I was actually kicked out of the house, the beginning of my senior year in high school.

It was a non-event to be able to go out and afford my own apartment and just continue on creating more value in the world.

[00:02:12] Mahan Tavakoli: So at the beginning of high school, you were kicked out,

[00:02:17] Lee Benson: Beginning of my senior year in high school I came home one night. It's oops, locks are changed. They're sending me a message. My clothes are stacked up outside. I spent one night in my Chevy Blazer that I purchased, with money that I earned back then already. And then the next night I had a roommate, a two bedroom apartment, and it was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me.

 It's interesting when people say, oh, you poor thing. I say, what are you talking about? This was really good. Look how I leverage these struggles to create more value in the world. Helping myself, helping others. I've created literally thousands of jobs over the years in my different companies. It was never about me. Any dysfunction is usually about the other person. Anyway. And I learned a lot. I struggled, but man, I grew from that and it was fantastic. I wouldn't trade anything. 

[00:03:03] Mahan Tavakoli: I am sure Lee, and I wonder as a parent of two girls, whether we have changed as a society in that we are trying to be great parents. And by trying to be good, we are protecting them and keeping them from those opportunities to grow and learn so they can succeed later in life. Because I know you have been a successful business person both in aerospace and now execute to win, I imagine that ability to become had a lot to do with that future business.

[00:03:42] Lee Benson: It completely did. And to your point, I think parents with the best of intentions want to take all struggle away from the kids and therefore it'll be better. Than what I had growing up. And all we've done is we've essentially disabled them. And you go to 18, you get launched into supposedly adulthood.

But I think today a more accurate description would be you're a child from zero to 18, and then you go into the emerging adult phase. That might go all the way to 35 or 36 years old because we did. Appropriately provide struggle for our children. I think we can intentionally design struggle to create more and more value over time to where they can launch 

in the perfect world, I would love for kids to launch into adulthood at 18, they've graduated from high school and they can think critically. They're financially literate, they're as financially independent as they choose to. And every decision they make is about creating better conditions to work, live, learn, and play for their families themselves, their communities.

That would be amazing going forward. But to do that, I believe we have to start as early as possible. And start using value creation language in the family. What is your job for the family? How do you create value for the family? Oh, you know what, how do you want to create value in the world?

Because the purpose of an education is to create value in the world, not to get a diploma, a degree, a job. How would you like to create value? There's three macro buckets. Which one are you gonna resonate with? I'm obviously into music. and think about the positive emotional energy value that we can get out into the world.

Playing music, it a small venue and how it touches people and lifts their emotional energy, which supercharges everything else they do. Or you write a song that millions of people love when they hear it. It lifts their emotional energy. Look at that value you're creating in the world, and you can get compensated for that.

This point that you're bringing up wildly important with the kids. How do they want to go forward and create value in the world? Not check a bunch of boxes and get a degree and just be a robot in the world no wonder that's not exciting for them. Let's make it exciting. Let's make their primary identity, the value they create in the world, not TikTok likes or acceptance into certain groups, right?

[00:06:03] Mahan Tavakoli: What a beautiful way to put it. Whether it is for the kids, our own purpose or organizational purpose. Now, your value creation after schooling was in rock and roll. What got you from rock and roll to become c e o of an aerospace company?

[00:06:24] Lee Benson: In the 1980s I played guitar and sang and rock and roll bands. In some of those years we performed over 300 nights a year. Lots of covers. We had originals, there was recording, there was a lot of stuff going on. And that was like running a business, you had a sound crew, a light crew rhythm sections that we changed out from time to time had a manager.

So all of this stuff, it was running a business and there was payroll to make, all of it. And then you fast forward and it's okay, during the day I'm working in a small company to, help pay the bills and earn more money so I could do more things.

 And the company I worked for during the day, we did a very specialized kind of process of electro plating. And our primary customer, 90% of our business, was with a company called Allied Signal, which today is Honeywell. And we would put electro plating on turbine engine parts, send it back.

They would grind it, inspect it, and then sell it to the airline as a repair. And we might charge 'em 300 bucks to Allied Signal at the time, but they would charge their airline, Delta Airlines, for example, $10,000. They cut us off overnight. My boss at the time said, close it or sell it. I'm done with this. I had 30 days, by the way. That's the window he gave me, I couldn't find anybody to buy it. So I went back and said, look, let me assume the debt. In total, it was about $600,000 and if I turn it around, fantastic. If I don't, you walk away from the debt. And of course he said yes. And I started with three employees and then grew that to over 500, doing business with 2000 customers in total in 60 countries around the world.

I traveled to most of those, at least over half of 'em as we're building the business. And that's what kind of launched into it. That was the first business I took over. And then since then I've started seven businesses from scratch. And that particular business that I bought, I sold it in early two thousands.

So , the other ones that really grew into these international behemoths and repair and overhaul for aircraft operators in the aftermarket, came after that first.

[00:08:26] Mahan Tavakoli: So you were very successful both in this business and those other businesses, and you mentioned in the book that every organization has an operating system. did you end up. Formulating this operating system, which eventually became execute to win.

[00:08:45] Lee Benson: As you go through the journey, I think anybody running a business, whether they're super intentional about it or they're not, that business should be designed to create value. You're solving for a problem. Somebody sees enough value to actually pay for that product or service, and the more value perceived, the more you can actually get for it.

and over time I think our goal is to continually grow our organizations just to be healthy. Not for the sake of growth itself, but to be healthy. It energizes team members and everything else. . And so as you're growing what causes that value creation to grow consistently over time and hopefully accelerate?

And what are the things that prevent you from doing it or cause you to go backwards? So I became a student of that with three employees and almost going out of business, I would say 15 times the first year, not taking any pay. It's not an unusual story, right? . It's all part of that healthy struggle, so you've become stronger and create more value going forward.

But then we got to about 8 million in sales and first year was $360,000 in sales. When I took it over, we got to about 8 million in sales. And this was after starting a couple more companies, so collectively, and we were stagnant. So I looked at all the leaders in the business and were maybe 150 employees at the time smaller and some leaders were always getting great results and some leaders just weren't.

So what were they doing differently? So created some categories like foundational readiness how they show up as leaders, how they set strategy, et cetera. And I, broke those out, made it more granular. And so for each category, I would rank the leaders red, yellow, or green. Green is they're getting it done.

Yellow is, they're on the edge, marginal red as they're not delivering in that category. And lo and behold, the leaders that were mostly green were getting the best results. Posted it. I was really big on transparency for every employee in the company to see every leader, red, greener, yellow, and every category and every sub-category.

And within a couple of months, wow, almost everybody's a lot more green. And rather than stagnating around 8 million bucks, we just took off we had one year where we went from 10 to just under 20 million. , boy, that was a fun year. Going through, setting that up.

[00:10:57] Mahan Tavakoli: That's incredible Lee. . you had every leader, red, yellow, and green. Would like to know what determined where they fell, but then. in a transparent way, communicated that to everyone in the organization culturally.

Wasn't that really hard for people to say, oh my God, you're going to put up on the wall that I am a red or I'm a yellow rather than green?

[00:11:23] Lee Benson: if you don't have a transparent culture that is really centered on creating value. In other words, everything we do as an organization, in my view, whether you're a for-profit or nonprofit, should be done with the intent of making it measurably better and anybody coming on board needs to philosophically be aligned with that, or this probably won't be the place to work.

And so now any idea. Thrown out whether I've got an idea that I'm super passionate about now, when somebody else throws an idea in there and I can see that the ROI or return on investment for doing that is five times what mine is. I am throwing mine to the side because we're gonna go do that. We're building a value creation machine as an organization, not a statue that we're polishing and we're afraid to call anybody out.

So best value wins the best. R o I project. I always like to say alignment decisions, accountability. Are we fully aligned in all things we can do to improve What's most important? I e create value faster. And then are we making the best decisions we can to do the right work in the right order at the right time, based on the r o I of doing that work?

And then accountability. Are we all doing what we said we would do? And so in that culture, it's not an issue at all. We are wildly transparent. Every employee by the way could see a complete set of our financials as they wanted to. And a lot of the team members on the front line, they don't want to be accountants, they don't understand debit and credit and accruals and everything else.

So we created what we called plain English versions of it. So for their department, Five rolls of tape, this many dollars all these things going down, it's like they totally got it. They would look at it and say, I can't believe we're spending that much on paint. We're wasting a lot. And they really did a great job of using that ultra transparent, distribution of data to make great decisions to improve cash flow, profitability and customer experience.

[00:13:18] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a very special culture that you had in the organization because a lot of times the organizations that I see and interact with, there's a real fear of that level of transparency where people. concerned about what others would do or think of if there was greater transparency. There is Ray Dalios of the world at Bridgewater that are celebrated but beyond. And besides that, you find very few teams and organizations where the organization feels comfortable enough to be transparent. So I would love to know. What was it that enabled you and your team to have that level of transparency before then we find out how you were able to implement the mind methodology there.

[00:14:12] Lee Benson: To the question that kind of set this part of the discussion up. If our job is to create as much value as possible. So what got you thinking about me? Personally this operating methodology and how we create value. It's a natural evolution that transparency. Is one of the keys that we absolutely have to have in place culturally if we can't see what everybody else is doing and how their part of the organization was designed to create value.

We're really limited in what we're able to do If we can't see that interconnectivity, if you will so it's an incredibly important element here on top of many other things. So if the goal is to create value as fast as possible, we're applying math common sense logic, facts to coming up with what's gonna work better and better over time.

And there's no end to how well we can do things. Everybody will go down this path. They all will, however, , if you have a senior leadership team that doesn't wanna share anything for fear, seeing the numbers will cause all kinds of reactions to happen, which is a unreasonable fear in my opinion.

It's the lowest value creating position to have over the long run. Then it's not gonna work. You won't go down this path. But if you're dedicated to creating more value over time, , everybody will come to this conclusion. However, I don't know what your experience is. I bet 70 plus percent of companies won't embrace.

[00:15:37] Mahan Tavakoli: What they do, Lee, is they put transparency or honesty as one of the values and put it up on the wall rather than incorporate it into the way business is done. So I love that element that you mentioned it's not treating the employees like kids. on an as need to know basis of information. They are engaged mentally, emotionally, in the entire process and own the process, which I think, is of tremendous value. So with this culture, you, came up with. The mind methodology, which was also the basis of starting Execute to win as an organization. And now this book, what is that mind methodology?

[00:16:28] Lee Benson: The mind methodology is an evolution into what will work to create value faster for 80% plus of all teams, of any type in any organization. Especially when a star isn't in the room. Because when you have a superstar leader, it doesn't matter what tools you'll give them, they'll figure out how to make it work and they'll get the result they see around corners, they adjust, they do all that.

But when the star leaves, the teams gravitate towards process over improving what's most important. And there's a lot of things that I've learned that haven't really stood the test of time for the majority of teams. Now, I can make lots work because I have the discipline. I'm fully engaged every day.

Most leaders don't quite have it to that level. But one of the things I learned doesn't stand the test of time is traditional goal setting. When I go in and look at an organization and you look at all the goals, 90% of them are just not very thoughtful and they're not connected to improving.

What's most important. And it feels terrible for the employees because every quarter I need to come up with two or three new goals get it right and get it approved by my manager. Oh my gosh. That doesn't feel good. Evolving over time, what worked for me early on, and it worked wildly well, wouldn't.

For most, and I figured that out. Just like what worked for Jack Welch at GE wouldn't work for most because they weren't Jack Welch and they didn't drive it like he did. . So again, what will work? And that was the problem I was solving for what will work for the majority of teams. And so the mind methodology is really the culmination of this evolution.

It's really how teams like to work. So at the top of an organization the mind methodology stands for most important number and drivers. And the most important number for the top of an organization should do two things. It should one, above all other numbers say you're winning or losing the game.

It's the measure of value you're creating holistically as an organization. And the second thing it should do is drive the majority of the right behaviors. And then as you cascade out you may have a small organization. It's one team, one most important number and one set of drivers. But as you cascade out, hr, finance, sales, marketing, customer service, production, whatever it is, they will have their most important number that does those two things.

And there's no end to how you can drive that to the frontline, whether it's, a hundred employees or 40,000 employees. It works beautifully. So within each team, they discover their most important number. The team has to be part of coming up with it so they fully own it. And then what are the evergreen categories of work that each team should be good at leveraging to improve their most important?

Now they'll have one most important number. There may be 5, 10, 15 other things they measure, but they're only measuring those things to help them make better decisions, to improve their most important number. And then there's this evergreen work they're doing within the drivers or these categories of work they should leverage or be good at leveraging to improve what's most important.

And it's that simple. You have a team, what's your most important number? Why is it the most important number? Defend it. How, when improved, it improves the next most important number above you all the way to the top of the organization. And tell me how it drives the majority of the right behaviors.

Now, what's the best work you and your team are doing to improve that? So now the goal isn't, everybody set three different goals and hopefully they all align and they almost never do consistently over time. Now the goal becomes my most important number let's just say it's profit for the company.

Here's where we're at today. Here's where we forecast it to be over time. And as we move along, we're either on track, falling behind, or we're ahead. And so that's setting the goal. And then every decision, every action the team takes is about improving that number. Like everything. Now it's like we walk on the field, pick your sport.

You can see the scoreboard and what's your role and what are the outcomes you're responsible for to do your part in improving that score. Now it feels right and it's evergreen. It feels good. It's easy. And the short way I like to say it is simplicity wins. Here's your team.

This is how you're designed to create value, and what's the best work you're doing to improve it? Everything is designed to do that, and you can bolt these on. It's scale and it's amazing how it works.

[00:20:50] Mahan Tavakoli: Now before understanding that most important number a little bit morally many of the organizations that I've seen over the years actually lack. any relevant numbers that they are measuring at different levels of the organization. At the most senior levels, they have a few numbers, but most teams have very few numbers. On the other side of it, I hear a lot of concern from people that resist measures and metrics. pointing to examples, whether it's the Wells Fargos of the world or the Boeings of the world, the numbers were the wrong numbers, driving unethical behavior, in some instances, illegal behavior. So how do you make sure that the number that is picked behaviors? Within the boundaries of what's ethical and what fits within the values of the organization and the laws and morals of society.

[00:21:55] Lee Benson: The point you bring up is wildly important and that's why a most important number does those two things. The one top number above all others in terms of how you demonstrate, you're creating the design value as a team, but also needs to drive all the right behaviors.

And so if you have a set of alignment tools to make up your intentional culture, a set of behaviors or values, leadership traits, a purpose it's gonna have to align with that. And a great example, I think my favorite example has to be HR and because they almost always pick Something to focus on, even without thinking about the concept of most important number as what's most important for them.

That is, in my opinion, wrong. And when I look at hr, they often say what? And we go through this, what do you think your most important number should be? And they'll say I think it's retention or it's employee engagement. Like all these things that people throw out there say, okay, let's play this out.

It needs to be the one measure that says you're creating the value you're designed to create and drive all the right behaviors. So if you put me in to run HR and retention is the most important number, I'd guarantee you three years from now, I'm gonna have 95% retention. But I bet 70 to 80% of the people in the organization can't deliver on the outcome-based response.

Parole, but I knocked it out of the park on retention, so that did not drive the right behaviors. And I'm keeping people that are horrible cultural fits and leaving a trail of disaster behind them everywhere because all I care about is that they stay. And so a better, most important number in this example would be the percent of seats filled with capable.

So we've designed all the roles very clearly with very clear one to four outcome-based responsibilities. For each role, we're clear about what it means to live the culture so we can interact with each other in a very value-creating way. And now it drives all the right behaviors because, We want a hundred percent of the seats filled with capable people.

We're developing leaders, we're giving 'em tools. We're revising our onboarding process. How we really roll out culture. Culture isn't these expensive wallpaper plaques all over the place. It's something meaty. We can really connect culture to. Financial results with and we're looking for evidence that employees are applying culture in a way to improve customer experience and or profitability.

So now it's starting to drive all the right behaviors and go one group to the next. And it's so much fun and energizing to have this conversation and then just watch what happens when teams really sink their teeth into, wow. I know exactly how we create value for the organization and what I can do to actually improve it.

Everybody starts acting like the c e o of their own role. It's fantastic. And all this gets designed as it's laid out and you can map the whole thing out and every team. Needs to come up with their own stuff. They have to be part of making that happen. But if they get it wrong, what a great way to be a super coach to go in there and work with them.

[00:24:51] Mahan Tavakoli: And I imagine the conversation around what should. That most important number is of real value to the team as they are trying to see what the most important number would be. So it helps by itself add to the clarity that the team is looking for.

[00:25:14] Lee Benson: It really does. Cuz it gives 'em direction. I can really do this. I feel good. As a team member and a team, we're accomplishing challenging things. That's working. But if you were to ask an employee a leader or a non-supervisory team member, how do you create value for the organization?

If they're not applying the mine methodology, they just start giving you at best a job description list. And once they apply this methodology and you ask a leader, they would say, By improving my team's most important number. This is a number. This is why it is, this is how it drives the right behaviors and the majority of the right behaviors.

And this is the work we're doing to improve it. And here's my goal. Here's we're at today, here's where we're going, here's why I think we're gonna get there based on doing this work. And if you ask a non-supervisory team member the same question, I'm on this team, my job is this, here's my role, here's a few outcome-based responsibilities I have.

all geared towards improving that most important number for my team. That is powerful. And you don't see that in most organizations when you ask that question.

[00:26:17] Mahan Tavakoli: It adds a lot of clarity and I can see that. So what do you do, Lee, to make sure that this doesn't become another version of numbers gameplay in the organization? I've seen in many instances where organizations have had measures and people have gotten into. game playing of trying to max out to those measures.

So you mentioned, for example, percent of seats filled with capable people, which I can see would be of real value. But then how you determine whether people are capable or not, leave some potential gray areas, so on and so forth. So if people. Compensation is tied to it, or whether they're green or yellow is tied to it. There might be an incentive by some to say can we shift a little bit how we view people? So we end up viewing more of them as being capable. So how do you make sure that this doesn't become a game? Playing with the numbers, it becomes something that truly aligns the team to achieve that most important.

[00:27:28] Lee Benson: The foundation for all of this is creating value. . How is your team designed to create the most value possible? And when they pick the number and they describe how it drives the majority of the right behaviors, they need to objectively prove it. And if I'm the C E O, I am asking my leaders to objectively prove that.

So I've got the main functions in the organization and of our top most important number isn't improving, but they're all green. Then we're doing something wrong. And so it really exposes the game playing really quickly. Then each leader needs to make sure with their direct reports, they have teams that they're making them objectively prove that these most important numbers meet the test and they're doing really good work to improve it.

And even if it's the right number, they could be sandbagging the number. I've seen large organizations where it's more of a conglomerate and one sets a goal at 20% growth and they in profit and they only hit 19%. They get no bonus. Somebody else sets the goal at 3%.

They hit 3.2%. They get the big bonus what is wrong with this? So that could be a whole other discussion you and I could have for an hour on compensation and how to get that right. Cuz I really like to incentivize every employee in the organization to help every other employee generate another dollar in profit.

And another incremental improvement in customer experience. Unfortunately, compensation, especially incentive pay, they completely miss that opportunity and create all these individual programs. Lots of silos, lots of dissension throughout the organization. Hugely missed. And boy, I learned that lesson the hard way a long time ago, and I completely modified how I do incentive pay, where everybody's incentivized to help everybody else win.

And the only danger in doing that is some people can just ride along on the coattails of everyone else, and you just have to be strong enough of, as a leader or leadership team to make the necessary adjustments. But I'd way rather have that than all the dysfunction associated with getting incentive pay wrong.

[00:29:30] Mahan Tavakoli: That is an outstanding point, Lee, and in all of my experience I've seen. Well-intentioned initiatives, go wrong when the organization's incentive structures are not aligned and therefore get people, departments to play games rather than add value for A, as you mentioned, we can have a long conversation about compensation, so I would love to find out. , Is the mind methodology something that can be embraced and implemented by teams within an organization, or does it always need to start from the very top?

[00:30:12] Lee Benson: The answer is both. Ideally, you wanna start at the top. If you're not fully aligned at the top, what are you cascading out to the front line? , and that's where you run into a lot of missed opportunities when it comes to creating values in organization. However, if I have a team, it's so much easier to manage the team when we get together and have that discussion around what's our most important number.

That is that one number that says we're winning or losing the game and we all agree on it. What are the measures that we can make good decisions from? And that's super important because most teams will measure. 10, 15, 30 things. And when I ask 'em the question, how are you using these measures to make better decisions, to improve what's most important?

They got nothing. It's like they're just stuck in this activity mode, measuring for the sake of measuring no wonder a lot of people don't like numbers. And then what's the best work we can do to improve it that makes it so easy for somebody to lead a team. . And I also think it's important to define very clearly each role within the team and what are the one to no more than four measurable outcome-based responsibilities for each person within those roles, and what's the list of capabilities they should have so they can achieve those outcomes?

Now, I just made my job wildly easy, and in fact it's always interesting to hear senior leadership team say, oh, we don't have time to do. When you actually do it, it uncovers, this is not an exaggeration. Sometimes 60 to 80% of their capacity cuz it's so much easier to lead and manage. You're almost never trying to get the lay of the land.

You can see exactly what's going on everywhere and be more of a SuperCoach to help them accelerate the value they create rather than having all the silos and the misalignment and the extra work that comes with that. . So yes, if I had a team, this is the only way I would do it. Even if I was setting in a giant company that wouldn't, embrace this because they're just stuck in their old ways, if you will.

Preferably at the top. But it can go anywhere. And I used to refer to it as team out work cuz you can start any team and people start to notice and go, I want to do that, I want to do that. And you just start going out and in a very positive way, infecting the rest of the organization with a value creation.

[00:32:25] Mahan Tavakoli: And lack of alignment causes a lot of friction, a lot of waste of time. Teams take the time to clarify these objectives and align around them. It opens up time and reduces some of the friction that would normally exist. Now, would all types of teams and organizations. Be able to get to that one single number. You mentioned nonprofits can do this. How about government agencies non-government organizations? Is it something that every type of organization can come up with that number or is it particular specific to primarily for-profit or nonprofit? Organiz.

[00:33:12] Lee Benson: I believe any team anywhere. I've never seen an example of where you can't land on a number. I've seen lots of examples of people saying, oh, that could never apply to us, and that once we start working through it, they say, oh my gosh, this is amazing. We have clarity we never had before. Every team should be designed to create value, and it should be super intentional, ideally.

And it doesn't matter what it is, and whether it's a government organization, it could be a county, a city, a state, federal government. Why was that agency or function within government designed, how does it create value? Ultimately at the highest level, we want to continually improve customer experience, which is the citizens that live here and, within the country and make it easier and more intuitive.

And then on the other side of it, continually get a better and better return on taxpayer investments. So for every. Incremental piece of services that are provided over time, that should cost less and less relative to each citizen that's getting those services. So at a high level, and then you just start cascading all that down all the way through.

That's not generally how they seem to operate but I've never seen an example anywhere where you can't find a most important number. Come up with great work that those teams can do to leverage to improve what's most important.

[00:34:36] Mahan Tavakoli: It allows and enables everyone to. Get a sense of their contribution. I think one of the things that's really important is for vast majority of us, we want to contribute and make a difference. And sometimes people lose motivation when they don't know what black hole their contribution is going into. This is a great way to get greater engagement because people want to contribute, and this way they know that their contribution is making a.

[00:35:08] Lee Benson: Yeah. I love the way you said that because virtually every time when the team doesn't know what's most important, they'll drift and get involved with activities that won't improve. What's most important or create value for the organization 

[00:35:23] Mahan Tavakoli: lee, I would love for you to break down example of how this would work. The. Senior leadership team comes up with a most important number. How does it break down to of the departments you mentioned hr, marketing, sales, and then how does it break down to the individuals so we can visualize it better?

How this would work in an organiz.

[00:35:51] Lee Benson: Sure. When we start working with a new client, the very first thing we do, no cost, no obligation whatsoever. We wanna make sure it's culturally right for them and for us, or any of our certified facilitators out there, is that we do it to our experience where we do their work with our methodology. And for me personally I'll always start those sessions with what would winning look like at the end of this.

Whatever that is. If it was today, it would be the end of next year. And then what would winning look like at the end of the following year. And it's interesting how during that discussion, I've never seen alignment yet on what that looks like. It's wild. It's haven't you had this conversation?

So do that. . That's how we start. And then, okay, great. Now what would be the one number that does those two things? Let's just go with a for-profit example. If they're not capital intensive, it's usually whatever they call profit, net profit, e ida whatever. They're capital intensive.

Often it's cash flow, as we both know. You can make a lot of money at the bottom line, go out of business cuz you run outta cash. So great, we've done that now. Let's just assume an organization of a couple hundred employees or more. What are the drivers or categories of work that the senior team should be good at leveraging to improve our most important number that holistically affect the organization?

So those drivers can be things like your operating methodology, which is what we're talking about here today. How well are we leveraging that to create value faster and faster, I e improve our net profit number. Culture, how are we driving that intentionally to create more value and improve our most important number?

Could be leadership or just team member development. Those things holistically affect the organization. Strategy is a good one. How well are we leveraging strategy to improve our most important number? So that's the way you think about it. At top level, it's holistic. . And then as you start going out, we already talked about hr, but let's just pick one more as an example.

Finance. And C f O this is totally common. For me, when I go into a little bit larger companies, to very large companies let me look at all the reporting that you put out. And these CFOs will put out the most amazing comprehensive reports. I can spend hours going through it, find everything I want, takes a long time to connect the dots, but I know what I'm looking for and wow, this is really good, and this is how I would use this information to make decisions that will improve our most important number.

So what's the most important number for finance and I think it's cash flow and we want to distribute information that helps everybody make better decisions to improve it. But not surprisingly anymore, when I ask the senior leadership team, how are you using this data, coming from finance to make better decisions, to improve your most important number?

Almost never did they have anything. They're just not, it's just oh, that's money, or we didn't. And so when I pick which I really like for finance cash flow is the most important number. I believe their job is to help leaders throughout the entire organization discover the numbers.

That will help them make better decisions to improve cash flow. You can't give them the reports and go, oh, they just don't understand this stuff. No. That's not good enough. Like one of your drivers is going to be financial education for leaders, and a huge part of that is going to be. Helping them discover that 1, 2, 3, maybe five or six at most numbers, that when they see those, oh my gosh I can make a few changes here to really drive improvements in cash flow.

And then same thing, what are the other categories of work they obviously need to deliver accurate financial data on time. That's a driver. How well are they leveraging that and actually doing it? So you can go one department to the next. Pick a most important number that really matters.

And almost always the first one they pick even at the top, there's rarely agreement, but almost always the first one they pick when you get below the top is never the one that's going to be right. But we have to go through having that conversation and then you can cascade that all the way through.

So if I'm a leader, this is how I'm thinking about it. If I am a direct employee non-supervisory employee, I'm on a. And so now everything I'm doing, all the tasks that I'm being given, a lot of people like to think in terms of goals, but it's really a team goal. So my team's main goal is improving that most important number and keeping it on track, and hopefully even beating it.

So everything I'm doing is about moving in that direction. And when I get evaluated from a performance standpoint, as a non-supervisory employee, I only have three. I have a shared most important number goal that my whole team shares in, and then I get rated on how I contribute to it. Two, I have my outcome-based responsibilities, goals.

So for my role, these are the things I said I would deliver on, and I'm either delivering or hopefully over-delivering, but definitely not under-delivering. So I get rated there. And then the third goal is my culture goal. How effectively am I applying culture to measurably improve the organization, or more importantly, improve my team's most important number?

That's it. And if we're doing this right, what does it feel like for them? I think every team member, including leaders, should know exactly what's expected regarding their job and the outcomes we're looking for, and exactly where they stand regarding their performance a hundred percent of the time. So when it comes time for this performance review, we actually call it in the mind methodology, a performance snapshot, because it's a snapshot in time of where they're at.

There's no surprises. They already know what their scores are, and you spend the majority of your time talking about how to accelerate creating value, with that individual. As opposed to being surprised about, in a performance review, they typically learn, oh, I thought I was doing great.

I wasn't doing great. There's no surprises here when you go through it. So clarity for the leaders, clarity for the non-supervisory employees they know where they stand and what's expected a hundred percent of the time. So I say it feels a whole lot better than most organiz.

[00:41:57] Mahan Tavakoli: What an outstanding example Lee. First of all, you mentioned the c f o example. I have seen it so often in organizations where there is lack of clarity. In this instance you mentioned, for example, cash flow would be their most important number. part I love is that it's not just that clarity for the cfo, F O and the CFO's team, if cash flow is your most important number now it. Your responsibility to communicate to others they can support most important number, which is another thing that doesn't happen in most organizations, including in senior teams. As you said, there are big reports. Email doubt in many instances, still printed out also, and put in front of people where people have access to all the information.

Don't necessarily know what to do with it. That is your most important number. Then take the initiative to help others understand how they can contribute to that most important number That brings a level of teamwork into it, which I love. And then clarity down to the individual performer level where there is the opportunity and clarity to know how am I to our team's most important number. then if I am, I know it, and I can get coaching on being able to contribute to it more. So it becomes a great way for alignment and full mind and heart engagement of the team members.

[00:43:37] Lee Benson: Yeah, absolutely. Said something there that I think is really important. It's around what you can control and what you can influence is what I'm getting from it. And a lot of folks would say I only want to be held responsible for what I can fully control. And I think we need to think in both camps, it's what can we control and what can we influence?

And in the c f o example, what they can influence. Is so much bigger than what they can directly control. And if we understand that our ability to create value as leaders exponentially expands.

[00:44:15] Mahan Tavakoli: Outstanding. Before we get to how people can find out more about your book and execute to win, would love to know Lee, are there any leadership practices or other resources that you typically find yourself recommending to leaders as they are thinking specifically around. Of clarity, alignment, accountability, which is becoming a bigger issue that I'm hearing about.

[00:44:40] Lee Benson: There are so many one, I think one of the biggest challenges. There and I've learned to never underestimate people's ability to not connect the dots. And so you've got all this stuff in front of you, it's right there. Just look at it, connect a couple of dots, and you can create value faster.

So with that theme, I highly recommend John C. Chambers book connecting the Dots creatively and his definition of leadership is they get. Totally agree with that. My definition of leadership if you're gonna be a leader within an organization, what does it mean to be a leader?

They get results and they foster an environment where every team member is intrinsically motivated and empowered to create more value over time. That's what it means to be a leader within an organization. My best definition of leadership that I've ever heard is eating and dreaming at the same time.

The best leaders do both. They get great results with what they have to work with. They're excited about what they have to work with. They don't complain about limited resources, and at the same time, they're doing things today that will get an even better result in the future. And the best leaders do both, and they do 'em in the right balance.

[00:45:47] Mahan Tavakoli: Outstanding perspective and recommendation with John Chamber's book. So how can the audience find out more about Execute to Win and Yulee?

[00:45:58] Lee Benson: What I recommend is going to the mind methodology.com and getting a copy of the book. You can find it on Amazon or 40,000 other channels, and that's the best way to really understand what we're doing. You can get the hard cover, soft cover. I recommend the audio book because I do 25 minute interviews after each chapter for even more background and insights.

When you go to the mind methodology.com, you can sign up for our free monthly newsletter. You can have access to our leadership library. You can start joining different communities that we have and learn a whole lot more about what we're doing. But reading the book, that's the first super easy step and I recommend the audio.

[00:46:41] Mahan Tavakoli: I enjoyed reading your book, and you also have. Explainer videos on your site, which I also really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your book, your most important number, increased collaboration, achieve strategy, and execute to win. And thank you for the conversation, Lee Benson.

[00:46:59] Lee Benson: Thank you, Mohan. One thing I'd like to do after every team meeting is ask the question, what was your biggest take away from the meeting? And so I'm curious, Mohan, what was your biggest takeaway from this discussion that we just had?

[00:47:12] Mahan Tavakoli: I appreciate you asking, and for me, what you mentioned about the role and responsibility really resonated because, Just last week I was talking to A C E O who is frustrated with his C F O because the CFO F has been around four or five years, does a good job in just. Tracking the numbers, telling people how they are doing, but is not taking what the c e O was talking about a leadership role. Now, in this conversation, I more clearly see the kind of leadership role A C F O like him could take when you have clarity on your most important number, that is not enough. do you enable others to support you to achieve that most important number? So for me, that was a real highlight, Lee.

[00:48:06] Lee Benson: Fantastic. It was great to be here with you, Mahan. Thank you so much.