Domain7

Ruthless Consistency: Learning from our Clients

During my recent visit to our Domain7 headquarters in Abbotsford, I had the privilege of meeting one of our clients, Michael Canic from Bridgeway Leadership. He mentioned that he was about to speak for the Vistage group at the American Cancer Society in Baltimore. Since I work at the Domain7 East office and am located near Baltimore, I decided to accept Michael’s invitation to join the seminar as a guest.

The topic of the day (and one of the key drivers of Michael’s company): Ruthless Consistency - Aligning your Organization to Win… Or Else. I found the topic to be incredibly interesting and helpful. It was a good reminder to keep consistency a priority in order to be successful. Here were some highlights for me:

• So many projects or companies fail because the leaders fail to create the right environment, the right focus and/or the right people.
• The right environment happens when performance, improvement and organization design are treated like one system, and are approached with a people-centric perspective.
• Failure to systematize performance, improvement and organization design, will result in inconsistency, mixed signals and proof that the leader is not committed to winning.
• On the topic of good accountability, that will affect a good environment, consider the mentality of “You are what you tolerate.” In other words, “If you can’t change the people, change the people.”
• As a leader, attack your own assumptions!
• What we do as leaders is not as important as our followers’ experience.
• “What the leader does is a means to an end, If you don’t get the desired end result, (people have purpose) change the means!”
• The focus: should be compelling, concise and clear!
• In discussing who are the right people, Michael quoted his old coaching buddy on finding and keeping the top people: “Get the studs!”

I appreciated being able to both support and learn from one of our clients through this seminar! Michael’s insights and wisdom on the topic of Ruthless Consistency were very inspiring.

Seth Godin on the value of blogging

From the Q&A time at Godin’s recent DC event:

Josh - Can you speak to the value of writing a personal blog?

Seth - I’m not talking about being some extraordinary genius. I’m just saying learn how to write down your thoughts. And a blog is the best I know how to do that because it’s free and it’s not embarrassing because you don’t have to tell anyone you’re doing it.

If you every day have to write two paragraphs about…

• what you’re thinking and why you’re thinking it
• outlining why you chose to do this instead of that
• what you’re going to do about this instead of that

After two or three or four weeks what you discover is that you make decisions differently because you say to yourself, “I’m going to have to defend this decision on the blog so I better think about it before I make it”. It causes you to walk through world a little differently.