Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this edition of the Mastermind for Business podcast, I'm going to share with you a couple of really simple tools that you can use. The first is the power of writing, and the second is to look at how to solve your problems in your business by treating the cause and not just the symptom.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: If you want more time, money, freedom, and have a business that's not reliant on you, then you're in the right place. Each week, Mark Creedon, along with some of the very best business minds in the world, will take you through simple, practical steps you can take to create the business you always wanted. From his own practical experience, Mark will show you how to work less, make more, and get the business you always wanted, the one that you deserve.
Now, here's your host, one of Australia's most sought after business coaches, Mark Creedon.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Mark Creedon. Welcome to the latest edition of the Mastermind for Business podcast. In this episode, we're going to talk about the power of writing that came from a book called write it down, make it happen by Henriette Clauser. We're also going to talk about how you can solve problems in your business by looking at the cause and how it is that lots of people actually don't look at the cause. Instead they look at the symptom, and then what they do is they treat the symptom rather than the cause. So let's get that underway right now.
All right, so we're flying solo today because Nick is off having a baby. Well, Nick's not having a baby, but our daughter in law, Dee, is off having a baby at number two. So. Little boy. So we're looking forward to the news on that. And then Nick will be able to join us for the next episode. I read this book called write it down, make it happen by Henriette Clauser. And, you know, it's one of the things we've spoken before in this podcast about the power of journaling. And I think I've shared with you that I love. I love journaling, and I journal most days now. Journaling, for me is a really personal experience, and there's a bit of ceremony attached to. So I love to use these beautiful italian leather journals and with lovely parchment paper, and they're all tied up. And there's an element of me being able to sit down and undo that book and open it up to the lovely piece of, you know, fresh paper. And. And the other thing is, I love using a fountain pen. I've always liked fountain pens. There's a little bit of a fountain pen geek, I guess. But I've always loved fountain pens. I read this great quote about fountain pens the other day, and it simply said, because every day, every day should enjoy, should include the joy, even if it's only for a few minutes of writing with a fountain pen. So one of my little geeky things, things, I guess, is about collecting fountain pens. So I love the Mont Blanc collectible editions, and I've got a number of those. I've got a John Lennon one, I've got a Beatles one. I've got a Rudyard Kipling one, and I've just bought a Muhammad Ali limited edition fountain pen. I'm really looking forward to getting that. And enough about me and a little insight into one of my little foibles. So the concept of journaling, I really enjoy. And as I said, I make it a real treat. But reading this book, and the book's called write it down, make it happen, go buy the book, or just listen to this podcast. We're going to talk all about it. But the concept, what happened out of reading that book was that it reminded me of the purpose and value of pen and paper. Right? The purpose and value of pen and paper. Now, I know that pen and paper is on the way out. I know that everybody uses an iPad or a tablet of some sort and or speech to text, artificial intelligence. I get that. Here's a little piece of information I do, too. I use speech to text all the time. I couldn't live without my iPad. In fact, it's sitting on my lap right now while I'm recording this podcast. But I still love the concept of holding a nice pen in my hand and going pencil to paper. And something that Henriette Clauser spoke about in the book, write it down, make it happen, was the true power of that. And one of the, one of the things, one of the little lessons that she taught in the book that I want to share with you is the concept of writing to resolution.
If you've never tried this, then my challenge to you is to give this a shot. And the concept of writing to resolution, she sort of described it as advanced Tai Chi. It's stretching your brain, right? It's just stretching you that one step further. So it's stretching your brain to right, to a resolution.
And so if you haven't done it before and you're listening to this, listening to this podcast now, please accept this challenge. Not if you're driving or riding a bike or something as you're doing this now, but when you get to wherever you're going.
Grab a pen and a paper or your stylus on your iPad, but preferably pen and paper, and start writing. Set yourself a timer. Set yourself a timer for five minutes and just write. Don't think, just write. Don't stop. Just write so it doesn't matter what you write about. And it was really interesting. We did this at, we just came off an intensive, a mastermind intensive at the Gold coast, where we spend three days with our mastermind members working on their business. And we've just come off one of those last week. And we actually performed this exercise at the beginning of day one, where we looked at getting our attendees, our members, to just write. And it was fascinating that some people really struggled with the concept of what to write, but the more they wrote, the clearer things became.
And so what I want you to do is start by just writing. So just write for five minutes, then stop, put the pen down, and have a look at what you've written. And maybe there's a whole bunch of rubbish in there, but if you read it a couple of times, there will be some lessons in there. So one of the guys at, one of our mastermind members at the intensive did this exercise, and he wrote all sorts of things about going fishing and listening to Johnny Cash and listening to Tracy Chapman, how he thought she sounded more like, you know, a man singing a whole bunch of silly stuff. But one of the things he got out of it was the importance of calling his dad, because as he just let his mind wander and he opened the synapses and he led his hand just right without thinking. So he allowed his consciousness to just, just to stream then interesting developments and aha. Moments, awakenings came out of it.
Once you've done that, try doing it again tomorrow. But pushing on for ten minutes, and then the other thing you can do is you can think about all of the problems that you've got in your business right now, but start writing about solutions. So you can write down, this is a list of problems I've got. You put that to one side. Now I'm just going to think solutions. What are all the solutions that might be open to me? And don't stop writing. Set the timer for five minutes or ten minutes, and just keep writing. Fascinating to see what you get out of it. I'd love to hear, by the way. So markropol.com dot au, let me know what you got out of that exercise. But we found, one of our members also found that by following that little process, he realized that he was playing too small, that he was playing cautious in his business, that his business had a whole lot more potential than he had given it or himself credit for.
So the way to open up your thinking, you know, it was Henry Ford who said, whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right.
And so what we need to do is look at ways that we can open up our thinking, and a great way of opening up your thinking. In other words, opening your mind to possibilities.
A great way of doing that is to actually write and try writing and writing and writing. And as Henriette Clauser says, the concept is of writing to resolution.
It's really interesting. I don't want you to think about boundaries. I want you just to continue to write and just see what solutions you come up with.
Whether they're issues that are in your private life, issues with relationships, or issues in your business, whatever it might be, it's fascinating to see what comes out of it. So exercise number one is just to write to resolution. Set yourself a timer. Five minutes. Start writing day one. Day two, see if you can extend it to seven minutes or eight minutes or ten minutes, or, you know, go to write. If you don't want to work on time, decide that you're going to write to the end of the page. Then when you get to the end of that page, push on. I'm going to write to the end of the next page, and then push on. I'm going to write to the end of the next page. And you'll end up with. You'll end up with a whole bunch of writing, and some of it will be of no use whatsoever. It might just be a little bit interesting, but what will come out of it will be some breakthroughs. And as I said, I'd love to hear what those breakthroughs are. So step number one is simply write to resolution. Try that writing exercise.
The other thing that came about out of that, and I spoke to a number of our members, is that because the theme of the intensive was around clarity. And so we wanted to make sure that we were getting clarity around our business. And what we need to do is in order to, to become, to have a business which is less reliant on you, in other words, less dependent on you. For you to step away and scale your business to that point, you have to make sure that you are focusing on the right things. And the things, the issues that are being addressed in your business are actually the right issues.
And in the next episode of the Mastermind for Business podcast, we're going to talk about the value of timing and sequencing and patience in that process. But for the moment, what I want to talk about is just how you need to get clarity on what the issues are. And what I see a lot of business owners doing is going about trying to solve problems, but what they're actually doing is solving symptoms. And I'm going to give you five areas where that happens. And as you're listening to this, I want you to think about which of these one, it, two, three, four, or maybe even all five areas apply to your business right now. What's going on in your business that fits within these five most common areas? And then to listen to the difference between the symptom and the cause, let's get that underway. Now, number one is accountability or agency. And all that really means is, do you have people in your business who just aren't being accountable? Right. They're not stepping up to the plate. They're not really doing what you need them to do.
And the other one is agency, where people aren't taking responsibility. It's not my fault. So what do we often do is we often treat accountability with tighter deadlines? Well, we're going to have closer reporting protocols. We're going to ask people to come back to us within shorter timeframes. You're not being accountable. I'm going to manage you more closely.
I'm going to micromanage you. I'm going to supervise you. There's all of these sort of tighter controls.
And the issue is that when it comes to issues of accountability, or agency for that matter, remember, agency is about taking ownership. That the way that we're treating that is actually treating the symptom. And because the symptom is people not being accountable or not having agency not taking ownership. Whereas if you drill down to what's really going on, probably the real cause is fear. The reason why, I mean, let's be clear. There are going to be some people in your business just never going to take accountability. They're never going to take responsibility and they're never going to have agency. That's a fact.
One of the questions you might want to ask yourself is why they are in your business.
We'll move on from that and come back to that in another episode. For the moment, if we're talking about how do we get somebody to step up in the accountability and agency area, we have to stop treating that symptom of lack of accountability or lack of agency. And we have to treat the root cause, which is predominantly either fear or that they operate from an external locus of control.
So have a think about somebody in your business right now who's not engaging in accountability or agency. Where is their locus of control? They often blaming other people. Do they see things as everybody else's fault? Do they fail to acknowledge that there's things about them that need to change? And if all you're doing is putting more restrictions or controls, tighter controls, tighter management, maybe more micro management on them, all you're doing is treating the symptoms as opposed to helping them to understand the difference between internal and external locus of control by asking them, okay, I understand that, that there's this issue that didn't work out the way we wanted it to. What was actually within your power? You keep saying this is not something that was within your control or this is somebody else's fault. Okay, what was within your control? What could you have done about it?
What could you have done differently? Let's post mortem this thing. And then the other thing is fear.
So it's about, and I see this all the time, right? People don't take accountability or they don't take agency because they're afraid of making a mistake. They're afraid of stuffing it up and they are afraid of the consequences. So what we do is we put tighter controls on them, drag them even tighter, which actually just makes them even more afraid. So we're compounding the issue of accountability and agency because we're putting more control on the people, which leads to even more fear. Or we threaten them. Listen, your job depends on this. Or if you don't get this right, I'm going to have to reconsider your position or you won't be eligible for promotion or whatever it might be. And so they become so ingrained with this level of fear that they are paralyzed by it and they're unable to move forward. My question to you is to think about somebody in your business, either past or present, who has not stepped up to that accountability or agency level that you need them to be. And to ask yourself this question, were they just lazy? Did they operate off an external locus of control? Or were they really afraid?
Was there a reason why maybe they thought their job was on the line?
Were they afraid of taking, you know, it's like a little kid, when you ask a little kid, did you do something? And they go, no, no, it wasn't me. Why? Because they're afraid of getting into trouble.
I've said this a hundred times, your team are not vastly dissimilar to kids.
So they're afraid of getting into trouble, which means you actually need to stop and have a look at your management style. How do you manage people? You got to start treating the cause and not just treating the symptoms. The second problem, so we had accountability and agency. The next one was expectations. Expectations. Not just being. Just not being met. So number two is expectations.
And the question there is, think of a time when expectations weren't met and how did you deal with it? It's often where we put in, say, an incentive program.
And the problem is with an incentive program, although I support them, I love the concept of an incentive program. But the problem with an incentive program is more often than not, all we're doing is treating the symptom. So people haven't met an expectation around a delivery timeframe or a delivery quantity or whatever it might be. So we go, I know, let's incentivize them. If you get this done within the timeframe, you'll get a Friday afternoon off.
Great.
If that is actually the cause of the issue.
If the cause of the issue is that they just not prioritizing things well enough. But what if that isn't the cause? In that case, all you're doing with the incentive program is treating the symptom again.
And maybe the cause is one of these three things. Maybe it's that there's not a strong enough link between what they're doing and the purpose of the business or their purpose within the business. Number two, maybe you are micromanaging or they are being micromanaged. In other words, somebody isn't letting go. They can't live up to the expectations because somebody actually won't let them do it. I've seen them time and time again, and we had some examples at our mastermind intensive last week where senior team members were there and they were sort of going, yeah, do you know what? I know I haven't lived up to expectations, but the truth is you won't just. You just won't get out of the way. You won't let me. You micromanage me at every step. You won't let go. So I can't. I can never live up to your expectations because you're always occupying that position.
It's like a car race. You want them to be in pole position. They can't occupy pole position if you're in it. If you won't step aside and let them take that position.
So my challenge to you is to ask yourself, has this been somebody who hasn't really been meeting my expectations? Have I tried to incentivize them. And if it hasn't worked, I mean, if it's worked, fantastic. Let's not break what's not broken, right? Let's not fix what's not broken, I should say. But the thing is that if it hasn't worked, if you've tried something like an incentive program, and as I said, I think incentive programs often just treat the symptom and not the cause. If you've tried that and it hasn't worked, then you have to ask yourself, well, maybe I am treating the symptom. Maybe I'm not treating the cause. Is the cause that either? And I said there's three things, right. A failure to link to a clear purpose.
Daniel Pink talks in his book about how your team really want to have a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose and autonomy and want purpose. They want to know why they're doing what they're doing. There has to be a strong link that you've made between their role, their task and the ultimate purpose of the business. And if that link isn't strong enough, remember that there's always a very strong incentive in human beings to maintain the status quo. As humans, we generally don't like change. I was chatting with my mate McDonalds and SAS patrol commander the other day about this point. As human beings, we don't like change. We'll get Mick onto a future episode to talk about leadership and change management. But generally speaking, humans don't like change. People are very strongly internally incentivized to maintain the status quo. So if you want them to do something different, you want them to step up and you want them to meet a whole new set of expectations, you have to do something different. And what you've been doing, if it isn't working, then you are probably treating the symptom and not the cause. Do you have a strong enough link between what they're doing and the ultimate purpose of the business?
Are they being micromanaged? Are you or their manager not letting go? And the third point is assumptions. Are there incorrect assumptions being made? In other words, are you assuming that they've got the right set of skills? Are you assuming that their heart's actually in that job? Are you assuming that they're motivated by whatever it is that you're offering? And that's true of an incentive program as well. So I've seen incentive programs that are all around money when in fact money was not motivated. How can you set up an incentive program without knowing what it is that's actually going to motivate your team? Because maybe it's not money. Maybe it's flexibility. Maybe it's time off. Maybe it's time with family. Maybe it's supporting family. Maybe it's a charity. I don't know. But you have to.
You have to know what it is that's going to motivate them so that you can help them to live up to those expectations through that motivation. And so maybe that's one of the assumptions that you could be making. It could be around their skill sets, could be around their passion, or it could be around their motivation. And you have to look at those points because that's what treats the cause. Otherwise, it's a bit like having a. Having a headache and just taking a pentadol.
Sure. In the vast majority of cases, you know, it's a, it's a stress headache or whatever it might be, and the headache goes away because you've taken a penadol.
You know, there's some cases where all the pentadol does is just mask the pain, doesn't actually let you deal with the root cause. And that's what I want you doing in your business. Let's talk about number three. So number three is really whether or not there's some conflict going on in your business or a bit of a cultural issue. Do you have a blame culture in your business? Do you have gossip and politics going on? Have you been treating that with either forced group sessions or maybe team building?
Don't get me wrong, massive supporter of training and coaching, obviously, and having people have group sessions, group conversations, group discussions, team building sessions. Love it. Fantastic. We should all be doing it. The question is, if you're doing that, it's not working again. Are you just treating the symptom and not the cause?
And I think that often there's. There's two types of people in a business, right? There's. There's champions and martyrs. And you've got to be really careful because the champions are the ones that we often praise, but they have a bit of an over exaggerated or overestimated value in themselves. And we've got to be really careful that we're not idolizing them and giving them more attention than they really deserve, when, in fact, there are people around them that are making them look good and they're just claiming all the credit. And the similar thing goes for the martyrs. You know, the martyrs that sort of take responsibility. They self sacrifice. And in history, we've sort of worshipped martyrs. But the problem is they often cover up the truth or the negative impact of poor, poor performers in their business. That's okay. I'll deal with it. Just, I'll take care of it. Oh, that was my fault. You know, all of this sort of martyr behavior.
So if you've got a situation in your business where there's a blame culture, there's a gossip culture. The culture is just not working the way you would really like it to. In terms of interpersonal communication, I'd start to look at this. Is there an element of fear going on? Again, we come into that fear concept, what are they afraid of?
What makes them blame other people? What makes them stop? You can see the link here between the accountability and agency, right? What makes them take ownership? What makes them stop taking ownership? What makes them not be accountable? What are they afraid of? What are the consequences that they fear? And how can you remove that fear from those potential consequences? And then the other thing is, are there actually champions and martyrs within your business, and are you applying the wrong, you know, the wrong level of treatment or attention to them?
The thing about gossip, gossip thrives on a lack of information.
So if you've got real gossip going on in your business, best thing that you can do is when we treat the symptom of that, it's, oh, I need to stop gossiping. How we treat the cause is by having structured communication, making the invisible visible, getting things really clear, having an improved information flow and communication within your business.
And it's the same as the blame game. So if we're talking about that culture and interpersonal stuff, have a look at it again. What are they afraid of? Do you have champions? Do you have martyrs? If you've got gossip, what's, you know, how do you deal with that? Is by having some more structured communication.
Number four, problem number four is sales, profit. And again, when profit and sales go down, we often treat that with training, right? Oh, we need to get some more sales training.
And training is good, don't get me wrong, but it has to be at the right time and in the right order. And in another episode of the Mastermind for Business podcast, we'll talk about patience, timing, and sequencing, but it actually has to be at the right time.
So when it comes to training, if you've got an issue with your sales, I would be looking at three things I'd be looking at, do I have the right process in place?
Do I have the right people implementing that process? And then if you get those to write, then you can bring the training in. So training is valuable, there's no doubt about it. But if all you do is throw training alone without having to look at those first two things. You're just treating the issue, the symptom of the issue, which is a decrease in sales as opposed to the cause of the issue, which is maybe you don't have a really clear sales process. Maybe your scripts and dialogues are rubbish. Maybe times changed and you're still trying to sell on the old ABC always be closing concept. Maybe you haven't updated your sales process for the market that you're dealing with. People are so much more informed, smarter, better advised. Now, are you still trying to sell new things in an old way?
What have you changed about your sales process?
What about your salespeople? When was the last time you looked at them? Are they still trying to sell old things or new things in an old way?
Are they the right people? Are they really people that love selling? Are they people that are motivated by selling or did they fall into a sales position?
You know, I've spoken so many times to people running a business. They have a sales department and they complain about their salespeople. The truth is they're just not salespeople. They shouldn't be there. They're great administrators or they're great technicians, but they shouldn't be in a sales role. And then we complain about them being there and what we do. What do we do? We throw more training at them.
Training in the wrong sequence. So training is great. The right training at the right time is amazing.
But training being thrown at a problem like that is just treating the symptoms, not treating the cause and the causes really about understanding, do we have the right process and the right people?
Finally, there was the issue of so what do we do? Let's have a quick look at what those things were. We had, it spoke, we spoke about accountability, expectations, conflict in culture, sales or profitability.
The number five is when people are just too busy. I didn't get to that because I was too busy or you're too busy.
And what we do is we offer them more working hours or we get them to work overtime, or we put more staff on again, potentially treating the symptom. If you've got team members that are just too busy, what I'm I'd doing be doing is looking at what are they doing with their time?
What are they doing with their time? Are they actually spending their time on the highest and best use? Are you trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole? Are they the right people? So what you want is the right people in the right seats on the bus or another way is what you want is the right people doing the right things at the right time. So if you're constantly getting feedback that we're just too busy, and all you're doing is employing more people or maybe training or we'll get them a time management course. Well, actually, time management courses pretty much bang on what you should be doing potentially. You're just treating the symptoms, not the cause. What you need to be looking at there is those people are too busy. Are they actually spending their time at the highest and best use of their time?
Five areas. The most common problems we see in business and the most common mistakes that business owners make because they treat the symptom and not the cause. I want you to start treating the cause and not the symptom. We're going to look a little bit more about this. We're going to look a little bit more about time management and making sure that we, those sort of zones that we've got, we are operating in the right zones. In coming episodes of the Mastermind for Business podcast. If you identify some of these issues in your business and you really, really love someone to help you move past them, that's exactly what we do for our mastermind members all the time. So metropolmastermind.com dot au have a look at it. Love to have a chat to you about it. If you know someone in business who you think would benefit from listening to this podcast, please share it. Like it? Subscribe because that makes it so much easier for other people to find it. And that helps our mission to help as many business owners as we can spend more time in their life, less time in the business. I'm Mark Creedon, your host until we speak next, please make sure you spend time with those who know the most.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Thanks for joining us on the Mastermind for business podcast. If you're ready to have a business that you're not a slave to, check out metropolemastermind.com Dot Au or have a chat chat with Mark and the team at all the w's, see what's possible today.
