The Best-selling Author of TRACTION Gino Wickman (Part 2) | How to Run the Perfect Weekly Staff Meeting

Audio Transcription

Speaker 1:
Have you ever found yourself in a meeting that you didn’t need to be in

Speaker 2:
Used to there’s this thing called death by meeting where you could have very ineffective meetings that waste everybody’s time. Oh yes. But on today’s show, on today’s show, we’re interviewing Gino Wickman for interview part two, and he’s going to teach you how to lead the perfect meeting. I love it. How to lead a meeting that is just as long as it needs to be a meeting and engages everybody how to lead a meeting that actually results in action. I, there that’s actually four on today’s edition of the thrive time show. As Gino Wickman teaches you how to lead the level 10 meeting you can’t miss this show. Three, two, one, and get ready to enter the thrive time show.

Speaker 3:
[inaudible]

Speaker 4:
Start started from the bottom. Now we’re on the top time. You the systems to get what we got come Dixon’s on. The hooks are pretending the books, seize Brigance of wisdom and the cookbook as the father of five. That’s why I’m a dive. So if you see my woman, kids, please tell them how it’s a C and C [inaudible]. And now three, two, one. Here we go.

Speaker 3:
[inaudible]

Speaker 2:
Yes, yes, yes. Drive nation. We’re back for part two of our rendezvous with the man, the myth, the legend, the bestselling author of the book, traction, Gino Wickman. Come on to the thrive time show. How are you, sir?

Gino Wickman:
I am great. Excited to be back.

Speaker 1:
Last time we had you on the show, it was so good. I blacked out. And when I woke up, I was holding the book traction in my hands. And in that book, you taught how to lead this thing called the perfect meeting, the level 10 meeting, and I’m not exaggerating. Um, no, no hyperbole here. Great companies like Oxy fresh, uh, that has over 400 locations, great companies like Regent bank. The doctor owner has, uh, has invested in and, and owns great companies. Use your level 10 meeting structure as the, as almost like they beat the spine of their business, the, the rock of their business. If the foundation tell us about this level 10 meeting my friend

Gino Wickman:
Here, here. Well, so I created this 20 years ago, and so it’s music to my ears to hear that. And we now have almost a hundred thousand companies around the world running their weekly meetings, running their weekly level 10 meetings. And so I created it, um, kind of in a fit of rage, if you will working with my clients early on in the first two years and them kind of stumbling along with their meetings. And so I had a couple engaged me to come in and run their weekly meetings for a period of time. And during that experience, I honed refined and figured out kind of the perfect weekly meeting. And so it’s called a level 10 meeting because we have all of our clients rate their meeting quality before they start the journey with us. And the average rating is a four. And so the idea is to take that rating up to a 10. And you’ll see, as we get into this at the end of each meeting, the team rates, the meeting, and you’re looking to get a 10 every single week.

Speaker 1:
What I’m going to do now is I’m going to, uh, kind of give the listeners a brief overview, um, of the level 10 meeting. And I want to direct everybody to buy the book traction. So you can have a printed copy of that. I’ll put a link to it on the show notes, but we want to start the meeting on time. This is something. So step one, start the meeting on time. Um, you have said this and I’m just going to bring it up. Many people say, Oh man, I love the level 10 meeting, but I just, I, it doesn’t really matter to start on time. Please explain sir why we have to start the meeting on time.

Gino Wickman:
Yeah. And I’ll give a little broader context on this. And so a great meeting pulse, a great weekly meeting has five points. Same day, same time, same agenda. Start on time and on time. And so it’s all five that make it great. And so to start on, time is vital. And so we subscribed to Vince Lombardi’s quote early is on time, on time is late. And so the idea let’s pretend in this conversation, your meeting starts Monday at 9:00 AM. That means that eight 55, everyone is sitting in that conference room, small talking. And then the person that runs the meeting right at nine o’clock starts the meeting. So you don’t have people dashing into the room at the last second. You don’t have people showing up late, it’s disruptive, it’s less effective. And it’s completely disrespectful.

Speaker 1:
What I see a lot is, uh, the boss, he shows, you know, the meeting starts at 10:00 AM and it’s the same time every week. And then we, same location. We’ve agreed on all five variables are being [inaudible], it’s going to be perfect. And he likes to row in about nine Oh six and hold court till about nine and 14 about various things that he finds to be interesting. And because he’s the one paying you, you’re like, Oh, okay, okay. Can you help us with that dysfunction? How help us get into function?

Gino Wickman:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, so sadly, you know, that is a bit of a epidemic out there. And if you’re going to subscribe to EOS and follow the system, it means that you want to build a great company. And if you want to build a great company, you got to play by certain rules. You know, you’ve got to follow the system and the process. That’s what makes it great. And so with that, you have this precious 90 minutes every week as the fearless leader of the company with your leadership team. And that’s all you have. And the idea is to maximize those 90 minutes. And so the good news is with leaders that operate like that, we’re able to convince them to break those old patterns. Uh, but truth be told the ones that just want to do it their own way. In other words, they don’t want to do what’s best for the company. They just want to do what they want to do. We can help them and they just don’t move forward with us in the process. Or we fire them pretty early on the process.

Speaker 1:
Let’s make sure we get this folks Regent bank, the bank that dr. Zellner has invested in the bank that clay stares has invested in the bank, um, that, uh, Sean Copeland leads uses the traction program. We all know about the Epic growth of Regent bank. We all know about the Epic growth of Oxy fresh. They all use the level 10 meeting, not now variable. Number two is you want it to start off the first five minutes with good news. Why don’t you want to start off with bad news?

Gino Wickman:
Well, I think that that question answers itself, but the whole idea behind good news it’s the psychology is that it’s a segue. Okay. And so you’re going from a, get your butts kicked all week, working hard kicking ass to then segue into working on the business with your leadership team. And so a great segue does two things. It helps create that transition. And then it also brings a human element to the team which builds team health. And so the segway we recommend is good news. And it’s going around the table, like you said, five minutes or less. And each person sharing one piece of good news from their personal life. One piece of good news from their bursa, uh, business, uh, from their business life. Uh, and again, one time around the table and it just starts thinking things often is a great segue into the meeting.

Speaker 1:
Now this, I, I, I’ve done consulting for years. I’ve bought your book for hundreds of people. Seriously, I’ve done that and I’ll give it to them. And I talk about this and I, it seems like sarcasm is a great way to mask dysfunction. So a lot of times when you’re teaching someone about the level 10 meeting and the first time to implement it, we get to the good news part and somebody will call them Carl and Carl go, Oh, Geno, you want great news. Your mom ha you know, and you’re like that, that wasn’t helpful. You know what I mean? There’s that sarcasm? You know what I’m saying though? Or you see this a lot, a lot of little plumbers, doctors, dentists, they have this kind of locker room humor or good news. We’re not dead. Right. Right. I mean, it’s so talk to me about what, why good news. Can’t devolve into sarcasm mode.

Gino Wickman:
Yeah. And the other sarcastic one is I’m above ground. You know, I’m still alive,

Speaker 1:
Still alive.

Gino Wickman:
So when that happens, the leader of the organization, it’s typically the integrator of the organization. It’s typically not the visionary, that’s accountable for this, but you just have to call it out. And it’s something tangible, something good that happened in your personal life, in the last seven days and something good that happened in your business life. You just got to hold them to task because absolutely you get the superficial stuff. That’s not healthy.

Speaker 1:
Okay. And then we get into the next mode. Now we’re five minutes into the meeting. We started on time. Now we’re going into the reporting mode. So we’re going into a different mode. And now we have an in the reporting mode, we have the scorecard, the rock review, and the customer employee headlines is getting in the reporting mode. We have the scorecard, the rock review and the customer employee headlines, let’s get into the scorecard. What is the portion of the reporting mode? What is the scorecard?

Gino Wickman:
You bet. And I’m going, gonna do a little contextual point to go into that because like you said, those three things are reporting. And so the psychology and the power of this is now the team is shifting into a mode where their job is to make sure that everything is on track. And there’s nothing more important for a leadership team than making sure your number are on track. Your priorities are in track and all of your customers and employees are happy. And so you have this 15 minute window to make that happen in each one of these items is five minutes as you’re going to share. And you’ve said, um, and so with that, the idea is that you’re reporting at a high level air. The numbers on track are the priorities on track and our customer and employee is happy and where they’re not, you drop it down as an issue and you avoid any discussion.

Gino Wickman:
So what’s vital here. And the reason I keep driving the point home about reporting is what makes for terrible meetings in business are these ridiculous 90 minute long reporting meetings where everyone’s kind of reporting on stuff and discussing stuff. And so it’s this very efficient, focused opportunity to say, is everything on track? If it isn’t, let’s drop it down to IDs, which you and I are gonna talk about just a bit. And so scorecard is all about you as a team defining what are the five to 15 most important activity based numbers that we want to look at on a weekly basis. There’s a goal for each one of those numbers and what you’re doing there within five minutes or less is just confirming that we hit every goal for the week. And if we didn’t, we drop that down to IDs to solve later in the meeting.

Speaker 1:
So scorecard five minutes, five minutes or less right there, scorecard, get it, get it, get all the information. And then we move on to the rock review. What is the rock review?

Gino Wickman:
So the RAC review is if we go back to the quarterly meeting and so somewhere in the previous 90 days, that leadership team locked themselves in a room and set their rocks for the quarter, which are the three to seven most important things that the company must get done. And then the three to seven most important things that each one of those leadership team members need to get done. And what’s happening here is those are being reviewed simply from a standpoint of on track or off track, no discussion whatsoever. And any of those rocks that are off track get dropped down to discuss later in IDs. You’re just making sure that everything’s on track and if it isn’t, we drop it down.

Speaker 1:
Then we move on to the customer employee headlines again, after week after week after we’ve spent five minutes doing the rock review. Now we have to get into the customer employee headlines. Uh, wha what is the customer employee’s headlines section of the level 10 meeting?

Gino Wickman:
Yeah. And so what this is is it’s building a muscle for the leadership team and getting them good at talking about their people. Their people are again, their employee and also their customers, clients. And so the discipline is to just quickly share rapid fire, one sentence, headline, all things good and bad with customers, employees. So you’re literally saying, you know, Sally had a birthday last week. Uh, our greatest client is pissed off at us and literally just one sentence, anything that is just newsworthy or noteworthy, everybody takes it in, understands it. And now everyone’s in the loop on what’s going on with these people, but anything that is of a concern, an issue, or someone has a question once again, you just simply say, drop it down. And you discuss that customer or employee issue later in IDs in the agenda.

Speaker 1:
Now the, to do list a is the next section, that’s five minutes along as well, where you review last week’s to do’s and, and you have said, you’ve written that 90% of the to do’s need to get knocked out every week. And I just dealt with this last week with a gentleman on my team. Who’s a great American great American, we own a lot of different companies. So he can’t tell, he won’t be able to guess who I’m talking about, but he had an agenda item that was not done. And he said something to the effect of, well, I ran at a time and I said, uh, not cool. We gotta get it done because I know that Gino Wickman rule and I throw Gino Wickman under the bus. I said, listen, if Gino Wickman were here, he would put you in a vice grip with a Kung Fu lock. Nope, but seriously though, because we were going to get 90% of our to do items done. You, you, you preach the good news help us because some people have a to do list that didn’t work, nothing gets done. It just keeps getting bigger.

Gino Wickman:
Yeah, you bet. And let’s, let’s back up to the context here because I created this to do list and baked it into this agenda from experience. And so back again, as I said, I was helping clients run their weekly meetings. We would have these great productive meetings and we’d be solving lots of issues and people would commit to things, but I never captured them or taught them to capture them as action items or to dues. And so they’d commit to 10 things and we get to the next week and I realized they only got two or three out of 10 things done. All of a sudden we started capturing them a to do’s and then having them report on them the next week to make sure those two dues got to done. And all of a sudden they went from like two or three out of 10 to like eight or nine out of 10.

Gino Wickman:
And so you can just do the math on the execution, the accountability, the traction that that company is gaining. And so if you understand that power, well, then you have to bring accountability to that. And there has to be a standard. And so the one and only standard is like you said, 90% or better. And so with understanding that dynamic, if the team collectively as a whole is not accomplishing 90% of their to do’s, they have an accountability problem somewhere. And what that integrator needs to do for the team, rarely the visionary, always the integrator needs then to hold that team accountable and call it out. And if it’s one individual that keeps doing it over and over a lot of it’s a side conversation outside of the level 10, you determine the level of health of your team, but you’ve got to confront that person. And I believe in a three strike rule. And it’s typically that first conversation, it changes, but if someone can’t get their to, do’s done, uh, it’s an issue and something’s probably to change.

Speaker 1:
Now, I’ve got two final questions for you about this level 10 meeting stuff, because your book, it lays it out there, but I wanted to get into it to the listeners can hear it from you. But then I have a guy who loves your book is joining me, uh, with the COVID-19. They’ve been letting a lot of people out of, out of prison from coast to coast. And, uh, this guy, uh, he’s been released on a prison, I believe for he’s been out. He and I have both been out for about a week and a half. We were, we were cellmates. Uh, some have said we can’t, we don’t approve of this, but anyway, so, well, well, he’s a high quality guest is what I’m saying. You’re going to love the questions from this guy. He loves your book. Um, the next section of the meeting is the IDs, the identify discuss solve portion. And this is where you’re, you’re, you’re suggesting in your book that you need to spend the vast majority of your meeting, you know, 60 minutes of your meetings should be spent identifying problems, discussing how to solve them. And then agreeing on a solution. Tell us about the IDs section of your level 10 meeting.

Gino Wickman:
You bet. And just so we’re communicating so that your listener understands every other agenda item. We’ve mentioned as a five minute agenda item IDs is 60 minutes is where you’re spending a full hour with your leadership team solving the most important issues for your company. This is where the magic happens. This is what makes for great meetings, solving stuff. And like we talked about earlier during reporting, you drop down a bunch of stuff that was issues, as well as any issues that carried over from last week’s meeting. And then you just do one last round with the team and see if there are any other issues to add. And so all of a sudden you build and set your issues list for this week’s meeting. And let’s hypothetically pretend there are 15 total issues on there. What you now do is IDs those issues. It’s an issue solving track.

Gino Wickman:
I could created. It’s an acronym that stands for identified, discuss and solve. And so what you do is you take the top three issues. And so you look at that list of 15, you decide what is the number one most important issue, the number two most important. And then the number three, and you take number one and you ID ask it, you identify, you discuss it, and then you solve it once it’s solved. One goes away. You go to number two, each time you solve an issue, it typically becomes a to do there’s some sort of an action that somebody takes. And what you’re doing here is you’re working through as many issues as you can in one sitting. And so some meetings you’re only going to get through one issue because it’s a biggie other meetings you’ll get through all 15 issues. But the idea is to go at that list in priority order so that you’re taking them in priority, tackling the biggest stuff first. And so identifies as you first have to kind of rip the bandaid off and get to the real issue as fast as possible. So, you know what you’re going to discuss, then discuss it, sharing all ideas and solutions. And then the S is the solid step. You all agree on the solution and somebody takes that action and forward you go,

Speaker 1:
Anytime that I can reference ripping a bandaid off, I love to do that. So thank you for going there with me now, concluding the meeting we got to, we got to conclude the meeting. A lot of times people, they get re run over the meeting. The meeting is supposed to end at 10:00 AM, and now it’s 10, 17, and they’re still going. There’s the guy who likes to always end every meeting at 10 Oh six when it’s supposed to end at 10. There’s the oblivious of space and time guy. There’s the boss that likes to just sort of randomly ended by walking out. That’s always fun. Uh, there’s just all different ways to end the meeting that are the wrong way. How should we conclude the meeting? And why is, why should we take five minutes to officially conclude the meeting?

Gino Wickman:
Yeah. And so this is where you’re putting a tidy bow on the meeting. And so using our hypothetical example, we said, the meeting is Monday at nine. Well, that meeting must end at 10 30. It’s a 90 minute meeting. And so at 10 25, whoever is running the meeting and we need to talk about the two roles in terms of running this meeting. Uh, but whoever’s running the meeting at 10 25, regardless of where you are on the issues list or the issue. If you haven’t completed the issue, it just simply rolls over the next week. They say, okay, time to conclude. And you’re going to do three things in the conclusion. Again, it’s so vital because you’re putting a tidy bow on the meeting. Number one, you recap all of the, to do’s so that everyone knows what they’re committing to for the next seven days.

Gino Wickman:
So you can make sure you get that 90% completion rate. Number two, you discuss any cascading messages, which means based on everything you discussed in the last almost hour and a half, is there anything you need to share with anyone outside of that meeting either a customer or an employee? And if so, you quickly decide who’s going to tell them, how are we going to tell them what are we going to tell them? And that becomes a to do. And then you all quick rate your meeting. And so you all go around the table, lightning fast, rate the meeting, one to 10, 10 being the best. And you should always get at least an eight. If you’re not everything, at least an eight, you just have to ask, so you can self, correct, but you really should be getting 10. That’s what makes it a level 10 meeting, but bare minimum is an eight and then 10 30 comes and everyone’s back to the real world. And the reason the meeting can not run long is because then your meetings are collapsing on top of other meetings. Other meetings are starting late because you’re late and it’s completely disrespectful to everyone else in the organization.

Speaker 1:
Now, uh, it’s now time to bring on our, our, our guests to join our guests. Here we go. This guy he’s been out of prison now out of the Illinois correctional facility for several

Speaker 2:
Nice. Uh, he and I were cellmates there. This is a clay stairs has been a longtime client of mine. He’s a former school teacher, turned millionaire investor entrepreneur, and he’s a, an investor in Regent bank. They bank the dr. Zellner and Sean Copeland own. He’s bought many copies of your book. He’s helped to make Wickman ultra rich and successful Gino makes about $2 per book. And so you’ve helped genomic at least $200, I believe, but 94 clay stairs, me Gino, Wickman,

Speaker 6:
Gino Wickman. It is such a pleasure to meet you today, sir.

Gino Wickman:
Pleasure to meet you as well.

Speaker 6:
Yes, I, uh, as clay was saying, uh, early on, I think 2012 was when, uh, I started the leadership initiative and it was not long after that, that clay introduced me to the book traction, and it has been highly, highly, uh, influential book in my company, as well as I use it with all of our clients as well. And, um, I’m really appreciating this conversation today on the level 10 meeting and stairs, you ask, you ask away any questions you have for the Wickman. Okay. I do. I’ve got a first question is, uh, in, in your book when it comes to the, uh, the meeting pulse and everything, we’ve got an annual meeting, we’ve got a quarterly meeting, we’ve got a weekly meeting, I’ve got a client that I’m working with, uh, and they’ve got about 400 employees. They’re on target right now to hit about five to $600 million.

Speaker 6:
And they do a monthly meeting with the leadership, not wait, could I go monthly date? They, there are some weekly meetings they have, but as the whole team, and they’re in three different States as well, but as a whole, they all get together and do a monthly meeting. And so question to you is a, as their coach, do I continue to coach down this path with a, with a monthly meeting? And if so, what does that monthly meeting look like? And, or do I just say, yeah, we got to get out of the monthly meeting, go to the quarterly.

Gino Wickman:
Yeah. Great question. So here’s what I would suggest first thing to do is to picture their accountability chart. Okay. And so in EOS, we call it an accountability chart, uh, otherwise known as an org chart, but the accountability chart is kind of an org chart on steroids. And so if you picture that, what you will see at the top of that accountability chart is a clear illustration of who the visionary is for the organization and who the integrator is. And so that’s typically the CEO and or president or COO, something like that. And then you will see illustrated the major functions that report up to that integrator. Okay. And so to pause there for a second, those major functions, the people sitting in those major functions are what we call the leadership team. And that’s typically three to seven people. And so what’s vital. And what we teach and what is almost non-negotiable is that that leadership team needs to do a two day annual needs to do a one day quarterly.

Gino Wickman:
It needs to do a 90 minute every week level, 10 meeting. They need to do that every single week from there. Then you look to each one of those major functions and let’s say, marketing sales, operations, finance, or the functions. Okay, well then each one of those leaders with their teams need to then be doing a weekly level, 10 meeting. And then you literally can carry that out to the entire organization. If you have 10 people in the company, while it all stopped there, obviously if you have 10,000 people in your company, obviously this goes on for a few different layers, but it’s ultimately a small team of people based on that department. As you, as you look down that org chart, as you look down that accountability chart, and they are each, each one of those teams are in a weekly meeting post in the belief and the philosophy and the power of it is that each team is pulsing every single week.

Gino Wickman:
And if you understand the power of the agenda, I just laid out. All of a sudden information is flowing top to bottom throughout that organization no less than every seven days. And so all that said, that’s what we’re prescribing. The only time I see a monthly meeting and value in a monthly meeting is when the mid managers need to come together, because there’s a lot of value in bringing your mid-managers together for education, issue solving, et cetera. And so that’s when I see on occasion 25% of the time, my clients, they’re bringing mid-managers together for a monthly meeting,

Speaker 1:
Gina, Gina. I hate to ask this question. Uh, and it’s probably obvious to our listeners. I know our listeners did they, they would never do this, but to some, some people who listen to other shows need to hear this, okay, when should you not have a weekly meeting and should basically devolve into an organization that communicates strictly via emails, where you CC as many people as possible, and you just fire off an endless stream. When, when do we need to cancel the weekly meeting and move into the reactive emails that we, you see, see everybody, when, when, when do we need to do that?

Gino Wickman:
I love how you ask loaded questions. They’re so easy because the answer themselves. So what’s great about that question though, is what you described is what most of our clients look like when they come to us. And then we get them in this weeding weekly meeting pulse. And it’s solves that problem. So never is the answer,

Speaker 1:
Whatever

Gino Wickman:
This powerful week meeting Paul’s to sheer chaos

Speaker 1:
Now. Okay. Now stairs, I’m going to give you the floor now. Here’s here’s the rules. Okay. We have five minutes with, with, with the wizard of Whitman. Okay. Do you know what may have five? We have five, five, five minutes, five questions. You got to come in hot. It’s a rapid fire. Rapid fire. Here we go with clay stairs. Get your suffering. Here we go. Here we go. Set. All right. I’m sick. I’m rushing. Number one. Who, who leads the meeting?

Gino Wickman:
Great question. So that gets to the two roles. So there are two roles to make this great. Number one, the person leading the meeting, like you’re saying what you want is to never rotate the meeting runner. Okay. And so the person that should be running a level 10 is the person who is genetically to run meetings. These are people that secretly love cutting you off, and they’re very organized and they’re great at holding people to tattle. That’s number one, number two, there’s then the person that is managing all of the documents, because the level 10 agenda is a dynamic document, and that’s the person that’s entering the two dues updating the issues. And so you have the person running it and the person managing the document. And that really needs to be two separate people. Cause it’s really hard to do both.

Speaker 6:
Okay. Question number two, looking at the people analyzer that you have, let’s say that we’ve got a CEO, he’s looking at his team. Uh, we’ve got the people and people, analyzer people, land Elizer. It’s a land Elizer. Lanolin Lee S and uh, the people analyzer. And, and how often is in, in your view, how often does that CEO need to go to his people? Analyzers that once a year is that once every three years is that once a day, how often is he going to that? And I’ve got a follow up, which will be number three, but go ahead.

Gino Wickman:
Yeah. And so let’s, I’m gonna give you two answers because the first answer is let’s pretend the company is fully running on EOS and all the tools are in place. From there. The people analyzer is going to come up two times first, it’s going to come up annually and any kind of a performance review. So at a minimum, it’s going to come up annually. Ideally, it’s going to come up with, come up every 90 days and ache quarterly conversation that we urge our clients to have. So again, worst case annually, ideally every quarter in that quarterly conversation, that’s number one, number two is going to come up whenever there’s a people issue. And so if we go back to this level 10 agenda and customer and employee headlines, when there’s an employee issue that comes up during the level 10 that’s when the people analyzer comes out to run that person through the people, analyzer to make sure they have the core values to make sure they get it. One had the capacity to do the job and where something’s falling short. Somebody has an actual to go correct that.

Speaker 6:
Where are you at one point, did you know Wakeman one deduction to cholesterol back to you? Okay, I’m going to move to the next question I’ve got is on your accountability chart or the org chart. And, uh, I, I know just from reading your book, there’s, there’s the classic on the, on the org chart on one side of this thing, you know, you’ve got the CEO at the top and then on one side, you’ve got, how do we bring business into the company? So that’d be your sales and marketing. And then like in the middle, the middle middle pillar that we have is now that we have business in, how are we going to service those clients and those customers. And so that’s all of your production and so on. And then over on the other side, we’ve got a third pillar, third pillar with the third pillar, which is pretty much how do we make sure that the other two pillars have all resources.

Speaker 6:
So that’s where your finance and your human resources and all that stuff, you know, the admin and everything’s going to be over there. Um, what about a few things that I’ve hit a number of times with clients is when they want to make that next level highly complicated. I mean, they’ve got like 12 pillars. They want, they want to make it complicated. Yeah. There’s just, there’s a lot going on pillars of growth. There’s a lot going seven principles we believe in. And I love the way you’re saying we, you require people that are doing traction. You require them to fit into your model. Talk to me a little bit about that. You know, what kind of language do you use to require? And, uh, when are some times when you have seen that it is important to have multiple pillars coming off of the top there.

Gino Wickman:
Yeah. Perfect. And so we call those pillars. You’re describing, we call them major functions. Okay. And so again, the best way to think about it as picture an org chart, and you see those boxes on an org chart, right? So the major functions are what you’re describing and, and rule of thumb. There’s typically three to seven major functions. It’s rarely as many as seven. And so what happens if they’re getting up to 12, they’re making the organization way too complex, but the other real secret truth that’s going on is they have an accountability problem. And so we always get them to start with three major functions, which you just described. Number one is sales and marketing. Number two is operations. Number three is finance and admin. And you start there. And from there, you customize it. And so sometimes finance and admin will split into HR.

Gino Wickman:
It potentially operations can split into customer service, account management, things like that. Sales and marketing can split into two distinct functions, marketing and sales, regardless. It’s never going to be more than seven on that line. And so from there, we’re always taking a simplified approach. We’re keeping accountability in mind. And so let’s pretend hypothetically this example, I’m walking through, they realize they have five major functions. Then those five major functions report up to the integrator, also known as COO or president. And then that reports up to the visionary also known as the CEO, entrepreneur, founder, etc. What’s important to understand in this conversation is I created the EOS for a 10 to 250 person privately held entrepreneurial company. And so, you know, if you’re up to a thousand employees and you become bureaucratic and, and, and, and, and you’ve now become matrix and siloed, it’s very, very challenging. Our largest EOS client does 3 billion has 6,000 employees. So it can work, but it can only work if you can stay agile and entrepreneurial and open minded. And so anyway, long story short, hopefully that indirectly

Speaker 6:
Now real quick, I want, I want to make sure we’re keeping score here. That’s a mega point for Gino Wickman. That’s why he came on the show. He wanted to make a point. Yes, that’s a deduction for you stairs. [inaudible] you to know the Greece, the country of Greece is not one of Gino Wickman’s clients. They become bureaucratic. They’re not into accounting. Is that a lot of, there’s not a lot of accountability. Whenever they have a accounting mistake, they just print money. So I want to make, get that out there. Some people are saying is Greece the country of Greece, one of Gina’s clients. No. And I give myself a mega point for pointing that out because people wanted to know that, Oh no, you you’ve dug yourself quite a hole here. And you have two final questions with the wizard. I still have time. Now you do.

Speaker 6:
Okay. See, I was thinking that we have the golden baby on the show for one final time. He made a poor life choices here. Okay. So here we go. Okay. I appreciate that. You know, okay, here we go. How about this? We’ve got a, we’re doing the level 10 meeting. We’re coming to the, to do’s and man, we really are pushing for that 90% of those to do’s getting done. But rather than 90%, we’re finding that we’re really tapping into a consistent 9% getting done. They’re just not happening. And, and what’s, what’s your move as a coach, when you, you know, you’re talking to somebody that’s paying you money and they are not doing the action steps, this is a good question on a consistent basis. What’s the language help help me. If, if I, if I was standing here, just picture me in, in like a hood, I’m a little paddle on, I might even have a little, a little ponytail, something like that thing going, but if I’m your paddle on, teach me the language, what are the words to use to move? You can curse too, if you need to, to, to, to, to move somebody to action.

Gino Wickman:
Yeah. Fantastic. I can honestly say I’ve never seen 9% completion. So I’m first of all, terrified for your client that you’re dealing with. Um, but, uh, but here are the words. And so it’s, first of all, reminding them that the standard is 90% and it is non negotiable to come in any less. And if they’re coming in any less, they have an accountability problem. And so when there’s an accountability problem, the integrator needs to call that out. And I look right into the eyeballs of the integrator. Okay. So that we’re, we’re pinning the tail on the donkey here. So that integrator now knows that they are accountable. And then I say, and so let’s pretend it’s not the entire team that’s coming in short. If they’re doing 9%, it probably is like, I’ve never seen that, but it’s typically one or two culprits. And then I just simply say, and so if the team’s doing a great job, but you have one or two culprits that are not, then you need to have a conversation with them outside of the meeting and let them know that it’s the standard, it’s non negotiable and they need to hit 90%.

Gino Wickman:
So it was one or two people sitting there, get the message loud and clear. The integrator gets the message loud and clear. And 2000 sessions, 20 years, hundred and 35 clients that have solved the problem. Every single time.

Speaker 6:
This right here is audio of a former clay stairs client. One of your early clients that they did, he got 9% of his action items done here. Let me poke. It could be audio. And by the way, you get a point there. And mr. Gino, Wickman and stares, I hate to do this too, but of course it was too easy. He could go down the wrong layer zero. This is audio of one of clay stairs. First clients who get 9% of his action items done. This is a dinner party that clusters was hosting. First client. Here we go. Me, keep it up real fast here.

Speaker 7:
Here we go. It’s happening? I don’t know how you got this video. This is client sipping the soup. How did you catch? I didn’t, I didn’t even know the camera was there.

Speaker 6:
Hey, Carl, what’s up? Nothing much, Billy. I shake got out shun today. Oh yeah. You think so. I fell asleep by the pool for a few hours. Did you fall asleep or did you pass out? [inaudible] that’s a rough, rough climb. It’s a rough meeting, Billy. Billy. Okay. Do we have time for one final question for the great Kwan Gino? Whickman the golden baby. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit genome, right at the very beginning of this is an exciting, uh, I just got a picture of you as the golden baby. I hope you’re okay with that. The respect is not left, just so you know, I still highly respect you even as a goal to be the title of his new book. I love it, but, uh, but Geno, I love this part always early on with a client when we are tapping into, uh, goals and purpose and vision and core values, um, for you as a coach, uh, and, and having been involved in so many different businesses, what value is there in having real clarity in your company with the core values and the goals and the vision and the mission?

Speaker 6:
Is that, is that really important or shouldn’t we just start selling something? I mean, come on. Shouldn’t we just hop in and start doing things. What, what, where do you answer that question? How do you, how do you approach that? Just the value of the core values?

Gino Wickman:
Yeah. Well, let me give a broader answer because you’re describing many aspects of the vision, traction, organizer, VTO, a tool I created that helps an organization capture it’s vision and the long, and the short of it is it’s getting that three to seven person leadership team, 100% on the same page with those core values, with that core focus, with that 10 year target with that marketing strategy 10 year, one year. So with that, it’s getting them to all agree. And once they all agree and are in sync and are on the same page with the vision, the plan where they’re going, how they’re going to get there, everything is better. Issues are solved faster. They’re much more focused. And then when you, like you said, get to selling the selling is better. Resources are more aligned or more efficient. There are accomplishing a lot more in a lot less time because the opposite of that is they don’t have a vision. They don’t have a plan, not in sync. The culture’s not clear the core values aren’t clear. And so it’s this very messy infighting, inefficient, um, very complex monster that they’re all trying to manage and move forward.

Speaker 1:
Beautiful thrive nation. I tell you what, this would this right here.

Speaker 8:
Is it an incredible interview? Incredible guest here, Gino Wickman. If you, you know, something

Speaker 1:
People have suggested some of the members of our production team have said, we should tell guests, tell our listeners that they are, their minds might not be functional if they don’t pick up a copy of [inaudible] book traction. So some of our leadership team has said, I know I’m the leader, but some people have said, we need to attack the people that don’t buy his book traction. We need to question their intelligence. We’re not going to do that though. I’m just saying that book is an incredible book. Very good. And some would say every entrepreneur needs to have it, and you need to keep it as it’s like a reference guide on your, on your desktop or available on the bookshelf at all times. Gino Wickman. Thank you for writing the book traction. Thank you for being on the show here now twice. We just cannot tell you a thank you enough.

Gino Wickman:
My pleasure. I want to say again, like I said, in the first interview, you guys are absolutely nuts. You keep me on my toes. I would urge your audience to also watch my YouTube video of me teaching the level 10 meeting. It might be a great reinforcement. So if you just Google my name, effective meetings or level 10,

Speaker 1:
I’ve gotta be, I’ve gotta be like 200 or 300 of those views on your, on that a YouTube video. I’m showing that with clients all the time, great video Gino. I appreciate your brother and I hope you have a great rest of your night.

Gino Wickman:
We’ll do you guys do the same?

Speaker 1:
Thank you. And now, with any further ado, here’s the audio of Gino Wickman teaching you how to lead a level 10 meeting.

Speaker 9:
So here’s how to have world-class meetings at EOS worldwide. We teach every client something called a level 10 meeting. We call it level 10 because every business owner we’ve interviewed, we asked them to rate the effectiveness of their meetings on a scale of one to 10, on average, they rated a four. So if your normal, the effectiveness of your meetings is somewhere around a four. Here’s how to get it to a level 10. As I illustrate the level 10 meeting for you, a couple of things I want to make note of the reason it’s so effective and why it’s world-class is frankly it’s a time management tool, you and your leadership team coming together for the precious 90 minutes. I’m about to show you is going to save you time. You’re literally going to save two to three times. The amount of time you invest in the level 10 meeting as a result of avoiding train wrecks, the left hand, knowing what the right hand’s doing, miscommunications being avoided and being more effective and accountable with that said a great meeting.

Speaker 9:
Pulse has five points. A great meeting needs to be same day, same time, same agenda, start time and end on time. And so here we go. I’m now going to show you the psychology, the philosophy and the flow of the perfect level 10 meeting. So here’s the level 10 meeting. First of all, the meeting starts on time. What a concept as Vince Lombardi taught us early as on time on time is late. So if your meeting is Monday at nine, am you and your leadership team are there at eight 55, small talking, ready to roll. Whoever runs the meeting at nine o’clock on the button says, okay, everyone, good news. And so you’re going to start your meeting off with good news. And so what good news is is it’s a segue. It helps a leadership team transition from working in the business all week to on the business.

Speaker 9:
It also brings a human element by sharing both personal and professional good news. And so when I talked about the psychology, the philosophy and the flow of huge psychology is just that human element that you bring good news takes about five minutes. So it’s pretty rapid fire around the table after good news, you then go into reporting mode. And so the next three agenda items are all about reporting. And so the psychology here is you’re now going into the mode where you’re making sure that everything that is important in your business is on track. You’re making sure that your numbers are on track. Your priorities are on track and all your people are happy. And so here’s what I mean. You’re going to first review your scorecard to make sure that all your scorecard numbers are on track five quick minutes, you’re then going to do a rock review.

Speaker 9:
And you’re going to review to make sure that every rock you set for the quarter is on track all of your priorities, five quick minutes there. And then you’re going to share any customer or employee headlines. And what that is is you’re sharing good and bad news about customers and employees. One sentence headline. So you’re all in the know. And what’s going on with all of your people with that set again, we’re in reporting mode, any number that’s off track, any rock that’s off track or any customer employee headline that requires discussion, or it’s an issue that needs to be solved. You just simply drop it down, drop it down, drop it down. And during this reporting while the idea is no discussion, you’re not solving anything. You’re just reporting 15 quick minutes, because five minutes on customer employee headlines, and you’re just building the issues list, which I’m going to come back to for you in just a moment.

Speaker 9:
Once you’re done reporting, you’ve extracted all the relevant issues. We then bring a little accountability into your life with a, to do list. Now watch this very important to know the, to do list is baked right into the level 10 agenda. The level 10 meeting agenda is one document that you’re managing as a leadership team. It is a dynamic document where two dues are going on coming off, going on, coming off every week and your issues are going on and coming off every week. So again, a very dynamic document with that said five quick minutes, reviewing all of last week’s to do’s to make sure that they all got to done rule of thumb. 90% of your to do’s should be dropping off every week. If they’re not, there’s a problem somewhere, typically an accountability problem, but nonetheless, everything you committed to last week, 90% should be done from there.

Speaker 9:
After five quick minutes, we then go to the portion of the level 10 meeting called I D S IDs is the issue solving track. We teach every client, the IDs stands for identify, discuss, and solve. When you go to your issues list, you populate that issues list for the week you prioritize. What is the number one, number two, and number three, most important issues. Never start at the top and work your way down. I always focus on the most important issue. You take. Number one, and you first identify what is the real issue here before you start solving anything it’s vital. You all agree. Here’s the issue. And sometimes you have to dig, dig, dig, dig down to the root, to get to that issue. But nonetheless, you first identify once you’ve identified, you then move to discuss, and that’s where you and your team openly.

Speaker 9:
And honestly discuss that issue. Every option, every solution, every idea, then we push to solve. The only reason you’re talking in this portion is to solve issues. And so you take number one, you, I D acid, once it’s solved, that issue comes off. The issues list, dynamic document, typically a to do or to is created that needs to get done in the next seven days to as our seven day action items, we then go to number two and we, I D S it, when two is solve, becomes a two, do we go to three IDs some weeks you’re only going to get through one issue. Some weeks you’ll get through 10. You never know, but as long as you’re taking an order of priority, you’re doing the right thing with that said, you have a full 60 minutes for IDs thing. Once there are five minutes left in the meeting, you then conclude the meeting.

Speaker 9:
And in the conclusion, wherever you are on IDs conclude the meeting at 10 25, five minutes left, you do three quick things. You recap the to do list. You discuss. If there are any cascading messages that needed to be cascaded out to the rest of the organization, and you quick rate your meeting, one to 10, how did you do today? 10 being best. This is going to help you and your team start to self, correct? You should be getting an eight minimum eight is the minimum standard. And so if it’s not an eight, you just simply get to ask why and start to self. Correct. And then at 10 30 on the button meeting ends on time. So your meetings aren’t collapsing on top of other meetings in the organization, back to the real world. That’s how to have a world class level, 10 90 minute weekly meeting with your leadership team.

Speaker 10:
And now, without any further ado, free food.

Speaker 10:
Why does this keep happening to me? I don’t know whose prayer break together too, but I’m breaking into somebody’s prayer saying, Lord, why do I keep going through the same things over and over again? And the Lord sent me here to tell you the problem is with your default, until you change your default, you will always go back to being who you were before, because you have never changed your mind, your trains, your friends, you change your address. You change your phone number. You change the songs. You say you change everything else, but you didn’t change your mind. There’s nothing powerful,

Speaker 11:
Nothing as powerful as a joke. Cause I’m going to take leave and where they got up. They used to help out the homeless. Now they drop him like a pen. We take it open. It’s on time now. Oh, you ain’t? No, [inaudible] took my whole life around. Hey, [inaudible] Hey, now let’s go pick it up. Nothing like your pass. It looked poppy. You cannot tell me that. Like you cannot stop. [inaudible] my mind. Trust me. Ain’t no going back to come in for that. [inaudible] we take it open it’s all the time now. Oh, you ain’t? No. How big Oh, optimistic. Oh, tell them, Hey, Hey, the kid came a long way from [inaudible]. I’m going to keep a real conundrum. So other women try to respect the why he’s one. I won’t do your dance. Gone through your dance. If you really want to change God, I have a plan in place. Even when they sit down, I’m going to take you upstairs, throw your hands up, say it with me. You become a man.

Speaker 2:
Come your thoughts become your actions. So be intentional about where your passion is focused. There’s no focus, focus. We only be able to once man, and you can’t press the rewind, but you can make it a peat on to the next level. Like your head up over 300 was going to Minnesota, moved to Oklahoma, incorporated to my rhyme stuff. It’s time to show you how a former step recruited kids turn out the routes with that. They recommend Rococo in their cash to match a Minnesota [inaudible] as our rap on hip hop beats, bring in rabbits and tax. Even know that I’m black. I can play up folk in music, but I ain’t been in the hot. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Straight to wok dynamite,

Speaker 11:
Nothing as powerful as a chain, better controls. Cause I’m gonna take me from where they gotta pay. Ready? Used to have a lot of homies. Now they drop it. We take it all the time now. Oh, you ain’t know who we bought the five now, big overwhelming optimistic. Oh man.

Speaker 10:
The problem is not the fault until you train your lead mom, you will always go back to being who you are. Big bar. None, because you have that much shame. Your mind, your trade, your friends, you’re trying to address you. Change your phone number. You train some songs. You say you train everything else, but you didn’t change your mind. There is nothing

Speaker 7:
As powerful as a change.

Speaker 1:
Here are the rest of TD Jakes, incredible life changing and mind altering sermon, nothing as powerful as a changed mind today by looking up TD Jakes on YouTube and typing in nothing as powerful as a changed mine. That is a biblical miracle brand.