Cheri Kuhn—Why Your Business Feels Stuck (Even with a Strong Team) & How to Fix It

Cheri Kuhn  0:00  
Here is where teams really do get stuck. They feel like they've done a good job. They have delegated all these tasks. What they haven't done is they haven't delegated their thinking. They've only delegated the tasks, so every decision is still coming up to them, and that's a big aha for my teams when they feel like they've done everything right and it's still not working.

David Bush  0:22  
Welcome to the Business Builders Playbook, the show that breaks down the systems and strategies behind predictable revenue growth to win in business. In each episode, we're diving into the proven strategies that separate the winners who scale from the losers who fail. This show is sponsored by bdr.ai the AI-powered business development platform that automates your outbound prospecting, so you can focus in on closing deals instead of chasing leads. Let's get started. All right, welcome everybody. My name is David Bush, and today I get a chance to be your host and moderator on this exciting topic. Why your business feels stuck, even with a strong team, and how to fix it, and we have a tremendous guest. When it comes down to understanding why your business is stuck or why it feels stuck, and Hannah, how to fix it, she is going to help you to diagnose it and understand exactly why it's stuck or why it feels stuck, even with a strong team. And then she's going to give you strategies, tactics, and tools to help you to break free. My guest today is Sherry Kuhn, and she is an expert on this particular topic. She has spent years, and I don't know how many sessions - we'll get into that more detailed -

Cheri Kuhn  1:33  
500 yeah, close

David Bush  1:34  
to 500 sessions. She's breaking through on the expert category of an EOS implementer. She's a certified EOS implementer, and she's had a tremendous amount of real-life experiences in real-life sessions with her clients, talking about the exact symptoms and challenges of why businesses are feeling stuck. And so today we get a chance to do a little Q and A. We had over 100 individual people that were invited in showed interest in the event. We got a tremendous amount of insights from them as to the questions that they wanted to get answered, and so my role today is to see if I can stump Sherry Coon. So, Sherry, welcome to the webinar.

Cheri Kuhn  2:14  
Thank you. That sounds terrifying, David. Can we stop Sherry? Nobody's ever accused me of being speechless. So,

David Bush  2:21  
well, that that would be hard to come by, because we know that you have so much vast experience. But talk a little bit about your journey to the place that you are today, and what got you into what you're doing. I'm curious,

Cheri Kuhn  2:34  
so you know, David actually began my professional career as a teacher, like what feels like millennia ago now, and, and I love teaching. I just didn't like all the politics and bureaucracy that really accompany that, that job. So I made my leap into into this world of entrepreneurism, and discovered that, man, I really had this knack for business. So I worked in and ran probably about, I don't know, a half dozen or so small to medium sized businesses for about 15 years, and the last one that I connected with was a small and struggling internet company, and when I got there, discovered that that visionary owner and I had this real ying and yang. What we later learned was this visionary integrator dynamic. We didn't know what that was, but it worked, even without knowing what it was, and we grew that small company from five people to 30 people in about 18 months, and anybody who's experienced really rapid growth knows that it's gosh, it's intoxicating, frankly, it's exciting, but it's also terrifying and a little bit chaotic. And so we were reading, Jeff and I are reading everything we can get our hands on to get our arms around this business, because we kept having that hit by a bus conversation. Geez, Jeff, if one of us gets hit by a bus, these 30 amazing people won't have jobs, because the whole business is here, and that's when we discovered this book, Traction, or EOS, back in 2014 and it was so transformational for us that that visionary owner was able to retire a lot sooner than he ever thought, and of course, my enthusiasm drove me to share it with every human that would, every business owner that would listen to me in the area at the time, because I really felt I had found the holy grail, and then I set myself up on that on an exit strategy to get out and do this for every other company that I could help do that, and I've been doing that now for about eight years, and I love it so much that I'm part of the coaching leadership team at EOS Worldwide, helping to coach and train other implementers, so that we can have a greater impact on the world.

David Bush  4:24  
Well, your ripple effect is obviously seen throughout the organization. I constantly see you on LinkedIn launching new EOS implementers and helping them to implement some of these principles that you've been successful in helping businesses to implement into their businesses. But let's go ahead and just jump in. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go right to the core of the topic of this particular webinar and ask the question that was submitted to us, and that is, our leadership team feel stuck despite having talented people. So, what is the most common root cause that you see behind that?

Cheri Kuhn  4:59  
So, how. Boy, when we first start with a team, we actually teach them something called the five leadership abilities that are designed to help you break through a ceiling, right? That feeling of feeling stuck, and if you can just master these five leadership abilities, you will figure out how to get unstuck, whether it's as an organization, sometimes it's as a team, sometimes you, as an individual, are feeling stuck, and those five are just quite simply the first one is simplify, and to me it's overarches everything else that we do, and boy, simple is so much harder than being complex, David. It is very hard for people to strip away what isn't essential, and we just start to add complexity to what we're doing, which absolutely is going to help you to feel more stuck than you need to be. We're not, we are less efficient the more complex we become. So, learning how to be a better simplifier and looking at everything, where am I adding complexity that I don't need to have? The second big one is delegate boy leaders. I know Confessions of a Control Freak. First article I ever wrote. So, I had a very hard time delegating, and I became a bottleneck in my organization because I was afraid to let anybody else do anything. And so, if we haven't learned where our superpower is and help everybody else understand what their superpower is, we have a great tool called Delegate and Elevate to help people understand where should you be spending your time, and where do you need to let things go, and frankly, in today's world, what do we just need to stop doing, and what can we automate? Because there's a lot, you know, it's not just delegate, it's delegate, delete, automate, where can we offload some of those things. Another big struggle for teams when they get stuck is they're they're not good predictors of their business, they're always in firefighting mode. They actually don't know how to make short term or long term predictions for their organization, for the business as a whole. They don't understand what that looks like weekly and monthly, or quarterly and annually. And if you can't predict your business well, you can't run your business well, because you're always reacting to things. The fourth one is, and it's a big one, is systemized. Do we have our processes simplified and documented, or are all of those processes in the heads of these leaders that are feeling stuck, which means every decision keeps coming through them, right? And so, so they just can't seem to break through. They're super talented, but they're they're holding it on and they can't understand why everybody else isn't getting on board, and then finally structure, and I think people underestimate the value of really having the right structure. What is the simplest and best structure for this organization that's going to create clarity and reduce complexity, because we often kind of have, especially if you were started really small of a few people, and you're growing and growing in this business, becoming moving this from an entrepreneur to an organization. If we're hodgepodging that based on what people can do versus what we actually need, and that is what I see happen. We've jerry rigged this sort of an org chart system based on what people can do, but there's no real clarity there. People don't really know what they own, so I feel like those are like at the root somewhere. It's in one or all of those five leadership abilities that people aren't doing well, and that is why they get stuck.

David Bush  8:11  
Yeah, would you say that those five are all equal? I mean, as far as like weighted value, or is there one that's more weighted that you've seen as like, well, if you don't get this one, you know. This is the first one.

Cheri Kuhn  8:22  
Well, I think Simplify runs through all of them, right? So Simplify really runs through everything. It runs through everything we do. Is it? Does it have a greater impact? That's a really good question. It definitely is the common thread that you can pull through everything that we do, frankly, and, and I think, which one has a greater impact really comes down to why the team is stuck, you know, like individually, is this team, are we stuck because we're all control freaks here, and we haven't, or and we're not willing to delegate, then that maybe becomes the linchpin thing that we can lean into, is it that everybody's doing things their own way? We have no, we have no process defined. So, I do think I don't know that there's one that would leap out at me as the big one. Something that just occurred to me, though, when we talk about delegate, here is where teams really do get - like, they feel like they've done a good job, they have delegated all these tasks. What they haven't done is they haven't delegated their thinking, they've only delegated the tasks, so every decision is still coming up to them, and that's a big aha for my teams when they feel like they've done everything right and it's still not working.

David Bush  9:37  
Yeah, I'd love to see it from the people that are watching this video right now. What is the biggest one that you think that you need to go to work on? Is it simplify? Is it delegate predictors? Was number three. Did I use

Cheri Kuhn  9:49  
predict? Yep. And then systemize and structure,

David Bush  9:51  
systemize and structure. So, based on the feedback, if you're watching this live, post it in the comments or post it in the chat. If you're watching the recording of this, post it in the comments. Yes, so those are the five things, and I've heard Sherry, that there's a term out there that says simplicity lies just beyond complexity, and complexity is kind of like this rock that you're kind of faced with, but having some outside perspective you can actually get somebody that can show you the way around complexity to get to simplicity, and it really is not that complex to move to simplicity. It's sometimes you just need an outside perspective, so that you can go, "Oh, opportunity is now here. Not opportunity is nowhere. It's not too hard and not too difficult. Let me just show you. It's spelled the exact same way, but let me just show you this other path to get there. And I'm assuming that this five leadership ability is a structure, so there's like an assessment or something that you use. No,

Cheri Kuhn  10:44  
we just teach it. It's a, you know, it's pre-visual. We help you to see the examples and help you see where it's happening. They infiltrate all the tools that we use, and you know, to help you to be better in your organization. You know, I was originally going to answer this around lack of alignment is why they get stuck, but I still think it comes back to these things, and these things are embedded in everything else that you do, so feels big. Here's a great analogy for why simple is hard. I want you to think about packing for a trip, David, and you're let's say we're gonna go to right now. My assistant is in Cancun for 10 days, lucky her, and if I know if I'm going to go there for 10 days, and I can pack as much as I want, and I can take, you know, two checked bags, I can pack in 10 minutes. I'm just going to throw everything in there. I don't care what I end up wearing and not wearing. If you tell me I can only take one carry-on, I literally have to start days in advance and lay everything out and start whittling down and really being discerning about what really needs to go, what's essential for me to have a great time on this trip that takes much more effort than the complexity of just throwing half my wardrobe into two suitcases and just taking everything with me. That's when I mean simple is hard because it's really about doing less better. How can we make sure that we're spending our time and energy on the most important things, and what are those things that are just making a lot of noise out there?

David Bush  12:12  
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Cheri Kuhn  13:24  
This is something I see all the time in the session room. You know, you hear grumblings or complaints about, "I just can't get my people to do what I need them to do, or, "I can't. You know, you hear this from that leadership team, those executives that are sitting in the room, and in my experience, not only as an implementer, but in my own businesses, often it comes down to we are not as clear with our expectations as we think we are with our expectations. So I always ask, look in the mirror first, where have we failed our people? Because we haven't made, they don't actually really know what success looks like. We haven't helped them connect the dots between what they're doing and how that's actually achieving our company's vision. One of my favorite quotes that I share with my teams is from George Bernard Shaw, and it is, "The problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred. Right? We think communicate something, and and then we come back around and we'll ask, and the clarity is just not there, you know. We teach that you have to say something at least seven times before people really hear it and internalize it and understand it for the first time. And I was terrible, I thought if I'm repeating myself, I'm patronizing them. That's so irritating, like I don't want people to do that for me, and so I let that get in my way of setting my people up for success, and that was just something I had to own at some point that had failed them terribly as their leader, and so I think I think a big part of that is that we're not doing that well, so getting clear on where have we failed and. In setting up the what the expectations and making sure they have everything they need to be successful, and then providing real-time feedback for people quickly when it's working and when it's not, so that they can course correct.

David Bush  15:17  
That's great.

Cheri Kuhn  15:17  
Now, if you're doing all those things and we're still not getting all right. Now we have people issues to address,

David Bush  15:23  
right.

Cheri Kuhn  15:24  
And then we need to not be afraid to do that.

David Bush  15:27  
Yeah, I love the four questions that says what happened, what do we want to have happen, what's missing, and what's next, like just always coming back to that, because that's what gets us to the problem behind the problem. And I love Mark Twain's quote that says it's not what we know that gets us into trouble, it's all the things that we know for absolute certain that just aren't so. And I think that that's exactly what you're talking about, is the communication piece. Is we've told them five times they should know this by now, but do they

Cheri Kuhn  15:56  
really

David Bush  15:57  
do? Patrick Lincioni, the author of The Five Dysfunctions of a team says people need to be reminded more than they need to be taught. Yeah, and maybe as a teacher you kind of get that piece of it is that it's oftentimes just in the reminders and bringing things back, and I know we're going to talk a little bit about that inside, inside of meetings, and how you run these efficient and effective meetings that makes people want to come to meetings because so much gets accomplished, and so let's, let's journey right into question number three. Is there anything else you wanted to add to the execution question?

Cheri Kuhn  16:30  
I think it all goes back to setting expectations, like, are they clear about what roles they own? Do they know what their measurables are? Do they do they know what success looks like for them each and every week, and I will tell you the right people in the right seat. Thank you, Jim Collins, for that. Will want to know if they're having a good week or a great week at work, and yet we deny people of that all the time, which breeds anxiety and all that ambiguity of not really knowing does not make for high morale in a workforce, right, and they, because they're just guessing all the time about whether or not what they're doing is having an impact.

David Bush  17:07  
Yeah, well, you've obviously been very successful over eight years, over 500 sessions. You have a process and philosophy.

Speaker 1  17:17  
Yes,

David Bush  17:17  
what is it about that philosophy that's actually making it work for growing businesses. Is there some secret sauce? Do you get some sort of magic inside of you? What's going on with that?

Cheri Kuhn  17:28  
Well, Gina would tell you it is a secret sauce, right? Gina Wickman, who created all of this, really obsessed on what separated these small percentages of businesses that were having all this success from those that were struggling, like, how are this, that these one in 20 companies are having this growth without the stress, distress, and dysfunction that the other 19 and 20 are having, and so he did his singular obsession was bottling that secret sauce and sharing it with the world, which is what he did in the book Traction, almost what, 20 years ago now, and at its core, it's just it is a way to get all the human energy in an organization moving and flowing in the same direction, that is really what EOS is, and people say, "Well, EOS work in my kind of business, I'm like, "Does your business have people? If your business has people, then it doesn't matter what your business is, EOS will work for you, and for those of you that don't know, EOS just stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System, right? It is just that way of harmoniously integrating all those moving parts in your business. And what we do, David, when we come in and we work with the leadership team, and we, we help get that leadership team, we give them a set of proven, simple, practical tools that are part of this holistic system that help them get better at three things we call vision traction healthy. We just want to get that whole leadership team. Hey, where are we going as an organization, and what's our plan to get us there? We need alignment around that. Second, is we, and we give them those tools and disciplines, so that we can actually instill that accountability. All right, and that into the into the organization, so we can execute on that vision, and then what I believe is the hardest and most impactful thing sometimes that we do is the healthy piece, helping them be more open, honest, a healthy group of leaders that actually work together as a team, not just a bunch of really highly capable individuals sitting around a table who are not actually working as a team, and what we do know, and what I've experienced many, many times, is as goes that leadership team, so goes everyone else. We get to that place where everyone in our organization, if I have 75 people in my company, all 75 people are aligned around the vision and plan, executing with discipline and real accountability everywhere I look, working better together as a team. So, at its core philosophy, it's just those three things, that's a promise we make to our clients, is you will experience vision traction healthy in your organization, top to bottom, and it's something we do for people, not to people.

David Bush  19:53  
If you were to say the one thing that gets in the way of that, it's not of your doing, but it's, you know, I know that there's a for. Is out there that there's some people out there that are committed to misunderstanding you, or they're in the fixed mindset, and they go, we've always done it this way, Sherry, I don't want to change and do it that way because of x, y, and z. What would you say those things are? What are the traps?

Cheri Kuhn  20:17  
The traps, so I just want to make sure I understand the question, so I answer it, the reasons they won't change, or

David Bush  20:23  
reason why this

Cheri Kuhn  20:24  
doesn't work.

David Bush  20:25  
The reason why they don't get vision traction healthy is the three way. Yeah.

Cheri Kuhn  20:30  
Oh, so, so I've actually been asked this many times. You know, we have this free 90 minute meeting that we offer teams that are designed to help them decide if this is right for them, right? And if I'm right for them, and I will get asked the question, when doesn't this work? Right, is that the question you're asking me, is when doesn't this work, Sherry? When it doesn't work is when the leaders don't understand that they also have to change, so the tools are awesome, and they're going to help you do better in your business, and you will get some benefit, no matter what, but if you really want to transform your business, you as leaders have to be on this journey of growth and development. Also, doing, showing up the same way you've always showed up, and adding these tools is only going to move you up a little further on this, on you know, as you're trying to go from good to great. If you really want to transform, like you as leaders. I tell people my real passion is helping people become the best version of themselves. EOS is just my vehicle for doing that. So we all have to get a little bit uncomfortable in the room. I learned from my clients just like they learn from me. If you are never feeling that feeling in the room, like that, oh my gosh, that little bit of pit in your stomach, a little bit of sweat because you're like a little nervous or uncomfortable, then we're then you're not changing or growing, and if you're not, then neither is your company. So,

David Bush  21:51  
when you have a, an organization, let's say that the person that is coming to you for help, they're they're overwhelmed, right? They're in a position where they would like to regain clarity and control quickly. What is the thing that you go to first to get them into that state where they're, I mean, again, I, I think that being overwhelmed is a choice. You can choose not to be overwhelmed and think differently, but that's that's hard for some people to accept. Where do you go with the person that's overwhelmed? They want to gain clarity and control quickly. What Jerry's go-to technique or strategy or tool?

Cheri Kuhn  22:26  
So, a couple of things in that loaded question. Number one, there is no magic bullet, right, or silver bullet, or magic pill that is going to just magically unlock your life for you. I mean, EOS is a process that we take through time now. If I have, if we're on a journey together, and I have teams that, or somebody on a team, because sometimes you'll, you'll get to work, but you've got this one leader who's really overwhelmed, right? They're feeling overwhelmed for one reason or another. I think getting to the root of the overwhelm first, a lot of times I will actually start with delegate and elevate. It's an actual tool that we have you go through and write like everything that you're doing, daily, weekly, monthly, and you put it into one of these four quadrants over here, right? The things that you love to do and are great at doing, like to do, and are good at doing, don't like, but are pretty good at doing, and then don't like and are not good at doing, and challenge those teams like all that stuff that's in the bottom two quadrants. What can you do about that? Who can you delegate? What can you delete, and what can you automate of those things that are down here, so that you can spend much more of your time in where you are adding the most value, having the most fun, and getting the most energy. Sometimes overwhelm isn't even about that you're doing too many things, you're doing too many of the wrong things that drain your energy, so this feeling of overwhelm might actually just be exhaustion from having to do things that are so outside your sweet spot of doing things right. You're working outside your, your innate ability, as it were, is a great place for people to start understanding the difference between urgent and important, and this tool helps with that also. Like, are we saying yes to everything? Every yes is a no to something else. A lot of times, this is just, can we just take a big step back, because you, they're saying yes to everything. They feel a lot of this comes from that fierce or that a fear and scarcity mindset, David, that people have if they, if they don't say yes to everything, the business is going to blow up, and you know what I mean, like the stories that we tell ourselves can be pretty powerful and scary when they are in that frame of mind. So I really get them to take that big step back. What's most important right now, and what are all the things that we're doing that are not driving to this thing?

David Bush  24:50  
Can

Cheri Kuhn  24:50  
they wait?

David Bush  24:52  
I can't remember what the name of that movie was that talked about the was it the English rowing team that everything ran through a filter with. Is does it make the boat go faster? If it doesn't make the boat go faster, we ain't doing it. And so they started cutting and getting rid of stuff that just was, you know, simplifying, going away from complexity, and every little aspect that did not meet that answer. Does it make the boat go faster? They cut out, and that's what led them to winning the title, or the championship, or

Cheri Kuhn  25:20  
what it was that goes back to simplify, right? Going back, those five leadership abilities are again embedded in everything we do, and the beauty is there's still a place for those things to go. So, maybe these are doesn't mean we give up on all this stuff forever, but we park it, park it on this long-term issues list, right, on our two-page business plan that we have in EOS, called the Vision Traction Organizer, and those things will can live there until we are ready or able to do something about them, so you don't feel like you're just throwing everything out of your organization. Maybe you'll decide to do that for those things, but we have a place to keep them until if now is not the right time. Everything can't be important all the time, right? When everything is important, David, nothing is important.

David Bush  26:03  
Nothing is

Cheri Kuhn  26:04  
right. Jim Collins has often said, if you have more than three priorities, you actually don't have any priorities.

David Bush  26:12  
But that's about what I love about the work that you're doing, is that you are interceding into an organization, and you're basically becoming the voice of reason to say, you know, you know what was the Adrian Balboa in the movie Rocky. You can't win, you know, you can't win when you have that, that many different things going on. Oh, and then also, for the person that says we can't win, is that you bring in the voice of reason to say, yes, you can win. You can overcome this feeling of overwhelm, you can gain clear, you can gain control. The choice is yours. All you have to do is just take the steps and move through the process, which you have the proven

Cheri Kuhn  26:49  
trust, and trust it. You know, another reason, no matter who's coming into an organization, and I think the reason that coaching of any kind really works, whether it's on an individual level or in a team setting like that is what I tell teams often, is you can't read the label from inside the jar, and you, my leadership team, are packed inside your jar so tightly you've just lost perspective, and I'm out here on the outside of the jar, I'm just seeing all the things you're not seeing, and I can be the person to point them out, and maybe you do something with it, maybe you don't, and what's amazing is, whenever you do something like that, it's always one of these, oh my gosh, that was so obvious. Well, obvious to me, because I'm not trapped in this load that you're trapped in, in this weight of everything that's going on in your business right now. That is, I mean, I have, I have a coach, right, and she'll say something to me, and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's so obvious. Yeah, obvious, because you're not in my life, right? You have an outside perspective looking in at my life, and I think that is really powerful for teams.

David Bush  27:50  
Yeah, opening up blind spots and being able to expose those, and then also just knowing that you know there's things that I know that you don't know, and there's things you bubble I don't know, and then there's things that we know about each other, but there are certain things that we don't know that we don't know, so let's, let's talk a little bit about you. You mentioned earlier you confessed that you were an integrator in an organization, so I know that you play middle ground and you don't play favorites, but let's just say that an integrator, an operationally minded person comes to the comes to the table and says I want to get focused, I want to get clarity, I want to get visionary, is maybe not on board with as much change, so I'm curious to know, How do you merge that together and get compromises and get things to come together when there may be some differences and opinions of how things would get done, or just the dialog that takes you said the ying and the yang, that's kind of a positive, but there are times when there's a, there's a struggle between the vision, oh, the

Cheri Kuhn  28:53  
visionary and integrator are very different archetypes, typically, and so there is a lot of friction there, there's a lot of polarity, they are polar opposites, but when harnessed well, that creates a great deal of positive energy for the organization. That's why we call it Rocket Fuel AOS, because when you bring those two, those two opposing forces together appropriately, right, there has to be a lot of things, a high level of trust and respect. I mean, there has to be some things in place for that to work well. I will also tell you that typically it's that visionary that is often the person bringing me in to an organization, and they haven't realized they even need or want an integrator if they don't have a natural business partner who's already been playing that role for them, and part of their frustration when we get together is they're trying to do both, and for most people who really are visionaries, the what the integrator brings needs to bring to the table is not at all in their wheelhouse, and so it's very stressful and frustrating, and it's in part why things feel chaotic in the organization, especially for the people that are trying to report up to that visionary acting as an integrator and not realizing that. What they're doing, so it has to be the right fit. Understand, and we put equity aside, because being an owner is different than being in one of these seats, right? On the accountability chart in EOS, that's what we call our org chart, right? This accountability chart, because it's like a souped-up org chart. These are all employee seats in an organization. Owners is a separate box that sits above that. There are different owners' rules. Owners make decisions that are owner decisions. The team decisions are made if they're not in alignment or for on not on the same page by the integrator. That visionary and that integrator have to be on the same page, and we have a separate meeting cadence to make sure that happens again, that mutual respect, there's no bullying going on there, like they have each other's backs, they have to be a unified front to the rest of that team, or again, it creates this weird anxiety for everyone if they're not aligned, and so if you have a visionary and an integrator, and I have had this more than one time that can't get there right, and if it's the visionary's company, and often it is because they are a founding partner or the founding owner, they have to find a different integrator to come in and be their partner in that. I have also seen David where they actually were partners and had to not be business partners because in the process of doing EOS they realized they actually had a different vision for the organization and could not get aligned for that, and life's too short, right? So, at some point, for the greater good of everyone, right, somebody has to go.

David Bush  31:39  
Yeah, well, that brings up an interesting point that I'd like to hear your feedback on. It is that I'm sure that that's a question that people have, is that will the team buy in, will the team get in alignment with the assignment, will they be accountable to this new structure and new model? So, what are some of the biggest breakdowns that you're seeing in leadership teams when it comes to getting everybody in alignment with the assignment and getting everybody accountable, because I imagine that that can create some change and some ruins with some individuals.

Cheri Kuhn  32:13  
The biggest breakdown I see, and especially in when it comes to alignment, is when people aren't actually fully bought into what we decided the vision of this organization is, so we have this tool called a Vision Traction Organizer. It's a two-page document that answers the eight questions: What are your core values, what is your core focus, 10 year target, your marketing strategy, three year picture, one year plan, rocks in your issues list, and that really is the vision and plan. It is our roadmap for what this organization like, who we are at our core, what we stand for, who we serve, what we do, right. And then how we're going to, how we're going to achieve this big result that we want. And I've seen it, you know, when issues don't get solved, like when we have to talk about stuff forever, it's because we don't have alignment here. We have false harmony, we have people saying yes in the session room and signing off on each of these sections, because every quarter we review it, we make sure that we're still aligned as a team and make adjustments occasionally when we're not. So, if you've got a player on that team that actually cannot get on board with that, that is when you see, because they're always running interference subtly, often you know, a little bit of just too much discussing of things, like they're just weighing us down, and that's happening because clearly they actually are not fully bought in, and they haven't either voiced that, or they have, and we talk about, you know, we disagree and commit, we're not always going to get our way, if they can't do that, then hopefully at some point somebody on that team realizes that, and we help that person go be successful someplace else, right? This isn't the place for you to be, so that is why the number one reason why we, we see that happen, where we see this breakdown at the leadership team level, and something else that you'll learn in Lynch Yoni's book, you know, he talks about commitment, that third rung on the ladder, that's this is where that starts, that disagree and commit. This team has to be in lockstep, even small little fissures and disagreement up here at the leadership team grow and become big chasms further down in an organization, and you, that's what where silos come from. So, it's so important that this team is in lockstep, and if they're not, we either get there or we change the team, so that we can be there. I will tell you, David, and this is probably going to scare some folks 100% of the time. I get changeover on the leadership team inside the first year of an implementation, 100% 100% either because we started pretty small and we added people, so sometimes it's just that, like, I'll have a lot of people that are afraid to, they don't know who to bring, so we start with just two, and we add, but more often than not, there are some that, you know, who got you here isn't always who's going to get you there, or they learn in this journey, yeah, this isn't, I don't actually share these core values, or this isn't the company I want to be a part of, I don't agree with this. A direction, and that's okay. It's not about judgment. Like, again, go find a place where you can, right? Your life will be better if you do

David Bush  35:10  
well. If everything was working the way it should have been working, then they probably aren't necessarily coming to you. There's obviously problems and challenges. There's a cause, and a yeah, an issue that needs to be resolved, and if that issue is an individual or individuals, then they have to be addressed to make the business. Would you say vision traction healthy? Healthy,

Cheri Kuhn  35:30  
yes,

David Bush  35:30  
yeah. Those are those are sort of part of the sacrifices that, again, what are you committed to? Are you committed to growing your organization, or are you committed to being best friends with, you know, the childhood friend that you hired to become, that

Cheri Kuhn  35:41  
you hired, yeah, Joe, that sits in my sales seat, you know. And when people complain about lack of accountability, or they can't get people to follow up or follow through, you know, we go back to that, my original statement. Well, were we clear? Do people really know? But this other thing I say to my teams over and over and over again, I'm sure they want to punch me. You get what you accept 100% of the time, so like, well, it sounds like we're allowing that to happen. What are you doing about that thing if you're not getting, if somebody's not hitting that measurable, or they're not getting on board with whatever process that we have? What are you doing about that? Complaining is not a strategy, and you will get what you accept 100% of the time, so until we are willing to actually, when we set a standard, no matter what that is, whether it's how we show up for core values, whether it's how we do our core processes, and we don't, and like, and we allow people not to do it, then that's what we're going to get again and again and again.

David Bush  36:40  
Yeah, this next question, we're halfway through the questions, and I haven't stoked yet, so you're doing pretty good. If anybody else has some questions on the live audience, go ahead and submit those in the Q and A. If you want to do it anonymously, if you want to put it into the chat, you can put them there, and we'll get to them as time allows. The next question is, Why do so many organizations struggle to implement systems successfully. Here's the kicker: even when they know that they need one,

Cheri Kuhn  37:07  
right, they struggle. So, you're what I'm hearing is like this leadership team, like we've got it and we're bought in, but we can't figure out how to take this everywhere else, because it's not as effective if we don't get everybody on board. Couple of things, I, I feel like we don't communicate the why people need to like Dan Pink, I don't know if anybody's ever read Dan Pink's book Drive, but in it he really talks about what truly motivates humans is autonomy, mastery, and purpose, so we have to help people connect the dots about how what they're doing and why it matters, and why it matters, but with them, what's in it for me? Why does this matter to me? So, I think we don't do that well. If you approach any kind of change management, whether it exists or anything else, without that, I think you're sinking your ship already. You need to find your champions. There's going to be some early those early adopters. 20% of people are early adopters, who are those champions that we can embrace and help become our champions in this journey with us. And remember, this is something we are doing for our people. If you aren't going into this as I'm doing this to my people, or they feel like you're doing it to them, they will read. I mean, that's none of us want that. So this is where connecting the dots and helping you understand this is for you. Think about a great, and I know we don't have time to dive into what this great level 10, but that is what we call our meeting, and we call it a level 10 because when I do a 90 minute meeting with a team, one of the quick questions I ask them is, on a scale of one to 10, how effective are your internal meetings, and my answers vary anywhere between a two and a five or a six if they're doing all right, and I say, well, I'm going to teach you how to do this better, and if we do it well, we're going to elevate your level four meeting to a level 10, right? That's why we call it a level 10, but eventually these roll down to everyone, and I said, Where else has anybody ever worked where they are part of a weekly cadence, and as an employee on a team that has their boss, their supervisor, whoever that is, they are not only allowed but expected and encouraged to elevate issues, ideas, opportunities, and challenges and get them solved week in and week out. They have probably never had a platform where that is the expectation and desired want from everybody on the team, so that we're tapping everybody's talent in our organization, like what a gift is that to give to people. So, again, I go back to, are you understanding what the intention of these tools are, and are you making sure that we're doing them for our people? I think once the people can shift that mindset and really get on board with that. Getting everybody enrolled and engaged is a lot easier.

David Bush  39:46  
Yeah, and a lot of business owners, leadership teams don't understand the enormous value that's associated with reducing friction and getting energy flowing in a certain direction, because you just mentioned it with. Daniel Pink's book is that people will stay with an organization with less pay than what they could get at another organization if they enjoy working there, if they have purpose and drive and fulfillment, and they feel like that there's collaboration, and they get a chance to contribute and make improvements to the organization, they feel valued, and that's a huge,

Cheri Kuhn  40:26  
it's gigantic. Yes. Oh, turnover is so expensive. I think if people actually understand how much turnover costs them, they would do a better job of investing wholeheartedly into their people to keep all the right people in the right seats in their organization.

David Bush  40:39  
In your experience, what do you feel are the top two to three critical success factors that separate leadership teams that consistently gain traction, pun intended, and those that stay stuck in the mud, even though they may have a good team.

Cheri Kuhn  40:56  
Gosh, I think number one, first and foremost, is their actual ability to be open and honest with one another open, meaning like, because a lot of people can be honest, right? Like, I'm going to tell it to you straight, David, but then David tells it back to me straight, and I'm not willing to listen, I'm not open, right? So, are we really open to other people's ideas and ways of thinking? We don't have to agree with them to be open to them, can we remain curious? I tell my teams, if you start to feel frustrated or irritated by somebody, you've stopped being curious about where they're coming from. Those two things can't live in the same space. So, open meaning, we're really curious, we're open to feedback, we're open to being wrong, we're open and honest is whatever we're thinking or saying that we're just saying it. I think about if we have, as a leadership team, are better at not putting issues between us. That issue is the dragon. We're all dragon slayers, and we're going to come out there and we're working on this issue together, even if it has something to do with me. It's not about me. Let's put the issue out when we're solving this issue together and raising those issues immediately and not letting them fester, so really great teams are like they're they're just unafraid to put anything and everything out there and get and are just so resolved in resolution, like absolutely we have to get to a solve, and we don't just want to solve the symptoms, because we're actually going to have the real conversation to dig in on what's really the issue here, and make sure that we are tackling those week in and week out in those weekly level 10s that we just talked about. That is what health teams gain traction, you know. Those weekly level 10 meetings are designed to make sure that our vision is on track, right? That our scorecard is on track, that our rocks, like the weekly level 10, make sure that all of this work that we've done behind the scenes to set up our vision and plan for this organization is happening when it's supposed to be happening, that we're focused on the most important things week in and week out, and we're just, we're unabashed and unafraid to dive in and do that and do it really, really well. It's, it's really that if everybody could do that, David, I think you would see teams bust through through that ceiling again and again and again.

David Bush  43:15  
Yeah, and you know that the secrets you said that there's no secret sauce or there is no magic that's in what it is that you're doing. It's in applying the principles on a consistent basis, day in, day out, dealing with the drama, dealing with the person that maybe tries to dominate the meeting and causes the meeting to go off track. And go, nope. We have processes, we have principles that we're sticking to, and you're there to guide them through that process. So I want to take a break from the questions for just a moment, and I want to talk about a story. Maybe you can bring one from the top of mind someday, anonymously, of course. We don't want to out anybody, or if you have permission from somebody to share kind of where they were before they met Sherry, and then where they are now, what were some of the things that could you give us, like a real-life scenario of what it looked like, and the transformation that took place.

Cheri Kuhn  44:10  
I'm sorry, David, I was so busy looking at the Q and A just now that I..

David Bush  44:16  
no worries,

Cheri Kuhn  44:18  
just back up 30 seconds and ask me that one more time.

David Bush  44:21  
Yeah, just when it comes back to like a transformation story, client without outing anybody, without their progression, is there any story that you could share that kind of talks a little bit about some of the things that we talked about, and and what were some real-life scenarios that you were dealing with when you first initiated the contact with the organization, and then what has happened since then.

Cheri Kuhn  44:45  
So, a couple, you know, some good and some maybe that looked bad on the surface, but really are good for the right reasons. I have a team, so most of our teams are with us two to three years, right, and. They don't need us anymore. They ever graduate me, OS. They just graduate meeting in Blender, but some like to keep us around forever. And I have a team, and I love this team, and they have been with me a very long time. And there are only two people on the team that have been there the whole time. The rest to the other four or five seats have changed out several times over the last five or six years, and the what was hard for them, and I see this a lot, and why it's taken us so long to get here is in addressing people issues quickly, and so this team has taken a long time to get to where I actually feel like they have the right leadership team in place, like I'm super excited for where we are, but seven years in, David, to get there, and I want to contrast that with one of my other teams that I've only been with for about a year and a half that did not shy away from that at all, like immediately we started to see coming in those first couple of session days. Wow, like we have some right people, right seed issues on this leadership team that we're not afraid to address. That is where you know people are willing, often not often, more often to address the right people, right seed issues below the leadership team. They are so reticent to call it out on that leadership team, which is where it has the greatest impact to do good or to do harm in an organization. So, this other client very quickly, the six people that showed up to our first session, which we call a focus day, four of them are gone inside the first six months of our implementation, not just gone off the one, is in a different seat in the organization, just wasn't right for that team. The other three are not in the organization anymore, and it has taken them a long time, well, a few months to kind of rebuild that team, but because of that, and their acceleration in the morale inside the organization has changed dramatically in a short amount of time, dramatically more people on board, because I'm here to tell you, if you suddenly, if you know you've got a people issue on your team, other people have known it longer than you, especially if you're like the owner or the boss, you're getting the best of those people, and so, like everybody else is wondering what is taking you so long to solve this people issue, so where I see teams really do the best, and then I'll share one where I told you sometimes you get owners together and they realize they absolutely have a completely different vision of an organization and had to go through a very painful owner breakup, right, that's really like divorcing a business partner, and it was terrible, and it was languishing. It happened pretty fast, like we realized by vision building day two, which is our third session, that this was an issue and wasn't going to happen, or that they weren't ever going to get on the same page, and it was causing what I talked about where we can't gain any traction because there's no real alignment around the VTO. There's this false harmony in the room because clearly one of them was not on board with the vision and plan that the visionary had for the organization and had to part ways. We fleshed that out pretty quickly. Both of them are going to be better off, but it didn't make it any less painful and terrible at the time when it happened. It's just I go back to, if we can just name the issue and agree to come together to solve the issue, even when it sucks in the moment, we're going to be better off for it on the other side of that moment. And it's always a privilege and an honor to get to be in the room, David.

Cheri Kuhn  48:40  
Oh, I have a real quick, a client from many years ago, still somebody I talked to regularly, a bank, so even banks can do this, a private bank. After our second session together, vision building day one, the CEO, who sat, they didn't really have a visionary, but he sat in that seat, had a massive heart attack, and died, like it was terrible. I get the call pretty quickly, and we left that session on such a high, and everybody was so excited, they were so aligned, and and when the CFO called me to tell me what had happened, and he said, you know, Sherry, if we'd, if this had happened, you know, three months ago, we'd had no idea what was important to him. We would all be wondering what, what our, what we're to do, what our priorities are. And even though we'd only done two sessions, everybody was really clear about what the current priorities were for the organization, about what the long-term vision was, because we had done that much of the work, and so you know, even as tragic and as terrible as it was, at least everybody felt like they knew what to do. So, even after just a short amount of time early on in the journey, you know, what a, what a testament to getting alignment with a team,

David Bush  49:59  
yeah. Legacy plan to be able to have that in writing and cast amongst all the key stakeholders, so we're in the power round here. We got 10 minutes left. We got a couple questions from the audience, and so Robbie says, Sherry, I've heard from Vistage yesterday, quoting Jim Collins, that 90% of the CEO's focus should be on arranging people and the right people in the right seats. Do you agree with this focus, and if so, why do so many companies not have an HR funnel?

Cheri Kuhn  50:25  
I love that, Robbie, and I know Robbie, so taking away the word CEO, if I think about the integrator, because I see that this would be an integrator job to do that, I don't know, and Jim Collins, I also want you to realize works with like giant companies of 1000s of people, so you can actually hire in a lot of people who share your core values and are great talent and figure out when you have seats for them, different than the companies I work for, right, that are 10 to 250 employees, maybe we don't have the bandwidth to just because I've read Jim's books and he's like, you just need to hire like Bank of America just hired the great people and then figured out what to do with them later. Most of my size companies don't have that sort of resource that they can just go out and have a bunch of extra awesome people that that fit everything they need and then figure out what to do with them. Mine can only hire when they actually have a seat to fill, so I don't know that I agree that that's 90% of their time, Robbie, but what I do agree with is that your most of your entire job as that seat owner is to make sure that you are what we call LMA, leading and managing in a way that drives accountability, but that's really about making sure that you're mentoring and coaching and that the person who owns each of those seats is absolutely the right person to do that, and that they are getting everything that you need from their people, you're helping them to become great leaders and managers. So, I think most of your job is absolutely on the growth and development of your people. I do 100% agree that that is where you will have the greatest impact as somebody sitting in that seat.

David Bush  52:03  
Great. Next question is, most sales teams I've been on have a daily cadence. I don't think that those meetings are often to solve issues, which are the focus of most of the EOS meetings, which is rightfully so. But the daily sales calls are good for morale, culture building. So, how do you reconcile time wasting, culture building and issue solving,

Cheri Kuhn  52:23  
so definitely I think even with a sales team, you still have a weekly level 10 that is your time to do that, right? You are checking in on like all the things that the weekly, and Robbie's very familiar with what a weekly level 10 is, so doing that and making sure that we're solving issues. If you want to have a sales huddle where we're checking in on our leads, like we're just doing a quick 10 minute, where's everybody at in our funnel, in our pipeline? Is there anything any of us need to know? So I work with several auto groups, and they have a quick sales huddle every single morning. Who's on the board? Who's coming in today? Like that's not the kind of stuff that's waiting for that weekly level 10. We're diving into some other issues. I always go back to, are we finding value, and is everyone engaged in that time that we're spending, or would that time be better spent somewhere else? This is not a one size fits all for any team, and figuring out what that cadence is for you and what makes the most sense is what I would always encourage.

David Bush  53:17  
All right, well, I got three more questions here, so I'll ask, from what mindset shifts do leaders need to make to move from reactive management to intentional, intentional discipline execution.

Cheri Kuhn  53:29  
So, this feels similar to kind of what we talked about before, right? Like, really understanding what's important and what's urgent. Again, our weekly level 10 is really designed to help us keep our eye on what's important right now during the week, understanding what, what you not only what you own as a leader, like what numbers do I own in this business, what am I accountable for making sure is successful, and then again elevating issues right away, if we are never going to move away from reactive mode to that intentional disciplined execution. If we're not elevating things immediately, we have this great tool called a scorecard. In an EOS, our scorecard is not a financial dashboard full of lagging metrics like it is in most organizations. It's actually a dashboard of activity-based things that are going to end, but if we do these consistently, week in and week out, we'll give us the numbers that we set up right for our long-term plan, our revenue, or EBITDA, whatever it is that we're tracking. And so, if you have a really great scorecard, I tell my teams, you will stop being firefighters and you will be smoke detectors. That's what it's there, it's the rumble strip to let you know when something is at risk, so that we can then dig in and get to the root of why it's at risk and solve it before it becomes a real problem, and we end up in the ditch. That is what that tool, more than any of the other tools we have, is designed to help you do this better, to help you design to stop being reactionary. Because holy crap, I can't believe. Of this just happened because you weren't tracking something to let you know that this is where you were headed,

David Bush  55:05  
yeah,

Cheri Kuhn  55:05  
and most teams don't know what those levers are, David, they actually don't know the levers, the activities that are driving the results, and so that's a little bit of a trial and error process to figure that out,

David Bush  55:15  
yeah, and when you go into our organization, you know, we've talked about some of the challenges that can kind of be bubbling up when you go into an organization. I think about the movie Liar Liar with Jim Carrey, when he goes in and he can't tell a lie, and so he goes in there and he says all of these things that are negative about each individual person inside the organization, and I can't imagine that that's anything like what you're doing, but when you're going out in there and you're helping teams to build real accountability, which is not maybe been the culture they've been, you know, unconsciously competent, or they've been unconsciously incompetent, they didn't know what they didn't know, or they knew that they were incompetent at it, but it didn't really matter, because the market demanded in the success of the company was already in existence, and so it didn't have to have extreme accountability to do what it had been doing, but to grow you have to have real accountability. So, how do you do that without creating tension or a lot of resistance in the organization and upsetting the apple cart?

Cheri Kuhn  56:19  
So, I think a little tension is good, David. Think about a rubber band. A rubber band is only useful if it's stretched a little. If it's too loose, it won't hold anything together, but if it's pulled too tight, too much tension, it'll snap and break, right? So, as leaders, we're trying to find that right amount of tension, so that people are showing up, they feel like that little bit of, oh, I've got to perform, and I've got work to do. Like, they should feel a little bit of pressure. If you're not feeling any pressure at work, you're probably not bringing your A game, or you probably don't care. I do feel like there needs to be a little of that. It just can't be so much that we break people, right? We move them into that discouragement phase, or burnout is what happens, right? When that rubber band snaps, I go back to when I said this is something we do for people, not two people. So, how good of a job are we doing at connecting the why to what we're doing, helping people understand? This will actually give you more autonomy in this organization when we implement these tools and disciplines, because you will be free to be who you are with inside these. Like, we hired you because you're great at doing the work and understanding, like, the, you know, our core process isn't the minutia of every single step, it's just the, the major, like, the guardrails, because we need you to show up to do all your human stuff, right? That's why we brought you into the business, and so I think when you do this really well, teams will embrace it, and again, you're always going to have a few that don't make it. There are people in organizations that have been hiding in the gray EOS. There's a light bulb in our logo for a reason, puts a big giant spotlight on everything. There is no place to hide if you are actually not the right person in the right seat. That's now very obvious to everyone. So those people are either going to self-select out or we're going to help them select out. One of my clients says we're going to promote them to customer, right? So, like, there is going to be that opportunity to clean house. I mean, you need to expect turnover. We tell teams expect at least 20% turnover when we get started. You have people that are hiding in your organization right now, and they won't be able to hide anymore, and all of your right people, right seat will be so grateful that they are no longer carrying the weight or having to walk on eggshells for people who are not.

Speaker 2  58:32  
Yeah, well,

David Bush  58:32  
we're at the close, so we got two minutes left. So, talk about how organizations work with Sherry. What does that look like? What's the next step? Where do they go for more information?

Cheri Kuhn  58:44  
Well, they can visit my website or visit my LinkedIn. If you just go to EOS Worldwide and find me, I am here locally in the just north of Seattle Market. I have a lovely space in Bellevue. I am always happy and willing to just have conversations with people. I'm never going to sell you anything you don't want. Like, I happen to believe this is the best thing for any small business, but it might not be right. It's not right for everyone. And so I think just just picking up a phone, I'm happy to do that. Send me an email. I think they'll have all that information for folks to do. We do this great free 90 minute meeting for you and your leadership teams, that is kind of the movie version of the book Traction. So, if you've been interested, or that book's been sitting on your shelf, Visionaries, I'm talking to you for the last five years, and you've yet to crack the spine, I can give you the movie version of that for you and your leadership team, and help you understand exactly what it looks like to work with us. And when we get done, you're going to be able to answer three questions for me: Is EOS right for us, is Sherry right for us, and do we have the discipline to do this work, and that needs to be a hell yes all the way down the board. And if one and three are a yes and two is a no, then let me help you find somebody that is the right fit for you.

David Bush  59:51  
Very cool. I told you folks I wasn't going to be able to do it. I tried my best. And thank you for all of those of you who submitted questions, and if you're watching the recording of. Is please request more information using the information in the video description. If you're watching this on social media, please reach out in the video description and go and contact Sherry. She's got a really cool organizational checkup tool that she has on her website that you can go to. It's really cool. It just does a really nice little self-assessment opportunity, and it really provides a lot of great information for that free 90 minute meeting. So, Sherry, once again, thank you so much for showing us how to break through, regardless of all the things that are standing in our way. It was very educational and entertaining. It was well.

Cheri Kuhn  1:00:33  
Thank you, David. Thank you

David Bush  1:00:36  
all. Take care, everybody. Have a great day.

Cheri Kuhn  1:00:38  
Bye bye.

David Bush  1:00:41  
Thanks for tuning in to the Business Builders Playbook. If this episode gave you some plays that you can start running in your business today, hit subscribe and share with another revenue leader who's tired of the pipeline grind. Building predictable revenue isn't something you figure out alone, whether you're looking to automate your prospecting with bdr.ai or you just want to talk through the growth challenges you're facing, reach out. We help business leaders just like you to build systems that actually scale. And if you're ready to stop being your company's highest paid prospector, let's have a conversation. Reach out to us@bdr.ai Until next time, let's keep building,

Unknown Speaker  1:01:18  
you.