Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen Paperback (27 page)

You know, one of the hardest things to do is to stay motivated yourself. And the way I’ve found to stay motivated is to make sure I have people around me always who are better, smarter, quicker, more capable. They’ll keep you on your toes. And you keep asking yourself, “Well, why are they better, smarter, faster?” Because if you can’t find any answers to those, I think it’s time to move out of the way. When you can find the answers, then you’ll find what your needs are and you’ll start addressing your needs.

—
BOB HOLLAND, MANAGING DIRECTOR AND ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER, ESSEX LAKE GROUP

Jim Collins told me that, while he was doing research for his book
Good to
Great,
he talked to an executive about how his company had become a great company, and the executive said, “To understand, you really have to understand one thing: You can delight us but you can never satisfy us.” What that means, Collins explained to me, is that “every time the bar gets to this level, then we’re done with that bar, and the bar just goes up again. It’s a never-ending process. And you go back to the question of the right people versus the wrong people. The right people are the ones who really like that.”

Our CEO of Pizza Hut, Scott Bergren, calls this being a change junkie, and it’s the best sort of person to surround yourself with. It’s also the kind of person you want to be yourself. Golf coach Bob Rotella once told me what he admired most about the great Jack Nicklaus. He said, “What I was so impressed with about Nicklaus was that he sustained his hunger for a good thirty years. He was not only unbelievably hungry when he was poor and hadn’t won anything, he was unbelievably motivated and hungry when he was extremely wealthy and successful and everyone was kissing his butt. The amazing thing was that he sustained it.”

You’ll know that you’ve surrounded yourself with the right people and
that you’re doing a good job of getting through to them when your own messages start coming back to you. I mentioned before how happy Tom Ryan of CVS/Caremark was when his employees told him that they sat in the same place for lunch every day because it was “easy and effective.” That’s how he knew his efforts to communicate the company’s new vision were working. A similar thing happened to me not long ago at a year-end investor meeting. Just a few weeks before,
Fortune
magazine had rated me number fourteen on their list of the top people in business. I viewed it as a team honor, because the only reason I was on the list was because of the hard work of our people, which is what has driven our successful track record. But what meant more to me personally was when Rick Carucci, our CFO, stopped
his investor presentation to give me his personal recognition award. He calls it his Show Me the Money Award, and it consists of a transparent piggy bank and a copy of the movie
Jerry McGuire
(where the phrase
show me the money
comes from).

If you run a marathon, you’ve got to put in weeks and weeks of training. The difference between a good runner and a great runner is, the great runner goes out on days when the good runner chooses to sleep in or stay home. When you look at someone’s career, and it’s certainly true with mine, nothing happens in a linear way. There are years where you go sideways. There are times when you go backward and get frustrated. But the ability to come in every day and try to do the best you can and try to keep moving forward, that’s what creates opportunities. Success comes in a lumpy way.

—
STEVE BURKE, CEO OF NBCUNIVERSAL AND AVID RUNNER

While it was awkward and a bit embarrassing to be recognized in front of investors, I was proud to be on the receiving end of the kind of recognition I had started seventeen years ago when I gave out my first floppy chicken. I was even more pleased to see that Rick felt
comfortable enough to have a little fun with me during an otherwise pretty formal investor meeting. After he gave me his award, he did a Letterman-style slide presentation of the top five reasons why I’d made the list, including because “only fifteen people had filled out the form” and because I’d had “lots of help from the CFO.” The number-one reason he gave was that I’d “scored high in the swimsuit and talent competitions” accompanied by a not-so-flattering picture. Investor meetings are typically pretty serious affairs, and it was nice to see everyone having a good laugh, even if it was at
my expense. I’ve learned that there’s a universal desire to be recognized, and I guess I’m no exception. It still means a lot to be thanked for what I do. It was a great example of taking people with me and of our culture working the way I’d always envisioned it would. After all the hard work I’d put into it, it was as if Rick were telling me publicly: Message received.

Self-reflection

Exercise

Think of the day-to-day effort you put into your Big Goal. How many days of the week are you absolutely
full on
toward your challenge? How many days are spent being just so-so toward your Big Goal?

What can you do to eliminate the time you spend in the So-So Zone?

•   It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. You have to sell people on your goal,
  market the change,
  the same way you would if you were selling a new product to a customer. The more compelling you make it for people, the more willing they will be to help you accomplish your Big Goal.
  
•   With any goal, there are
  barriers to success you’ll need to overcome.
  You have to make sure you’ve heard from everyone about what they think the issues are, because they might see things that you don’t.
  
•   You need to measure the progress you make toward achieving your goal to make sure you’re on the right track.
  Recognizing
  the progress you’re making along the way and those who are doing an outstanding job will motivate people to see it through.
  
•   Real success comes from recognizing that there is always more to know and more to do and that the leader can never let up. The
  change is never over,
  and that applies equally to growing your business and growing yourself.
  

To further reflect on these lessons and put them to work for you, go back through your answers to the Exercises and Self-Reflection questions at the end of each chapter. Next, answer the following questions, which will help you determine where you need to focus your efforts the most as you build your skills as a leader.

•   What are the biggest aha’s you picked up about yourself while reading the chapters in part 3, “Follow Through to Get Results”?
  
•   Of those aha’s, what are the two or three that, if you worked on them, would have the greatest impact on your Big Goal?
  
• What will you start doing differently tomorrow as a result of what you’ve learned in this section?
  

Once again, the stories that follow are from people who have been through my leadership program and have had their own difficulties in maximizing their potential in a particular area. I hope you’ll take some inspiration from how Cheryl and Keith did something about those things that were difficult for them.

Cheryl on “Market the Change”

I was really disappointed when, over the course of several years’ worth of performance reviews, I kept receiving the same feedback, which was that I didn’t come across as having enough positive energy. It really hit home for me when I was interviewing a potential new hire. In interviews, I’m always effusive about our culture, and this time was no different. I was going on and on about what a positive place this is to work, about how everyone believed in making work fun, and how that drove high levels of achievement. As I was talking, it suddenly hit home that I was a “bad ad” for the kind of culture I was supposed to be promoting as an HR leader. So a few days later, I did something a little extreme to jolt myself out of this state and to get others to start seeing me differently. At the start of a department meeting, in order to get everyone’s attention, I spontaneously started doing this
callback cheer. I yelled out to my group, “I’m fired up, how about you?” And they responded, “We’re fired up, how about you?” It was pretty goofy, but everyone laughed, and the energy level in the room went up immediately. Plus, I instantly had everyone’s focused attention, so we could start the meeting. Now I do this cheer every time I (or someone in my department) need a boost. It helps keep me positive, and I can already tell that people are responding differently to me.

Keith on “Some People Will Say It Can’t Be Done”

I’m a natural consensus builder. I love to facilitate open and frank discussions with my team. But the flip side of that is that I’m pretty
nonconfrontational. I’ve never been very comfortable with negativity or conflict, so I have a tendency to just ignore it. This came up recently because my team and I were working on a big project and we were making good progress, except for one guy who kept saying that the whole thing was a waste of time. He’d thought that from the beginning, and he’d told us all why, but we decided to go ahead anyway. He just wouldn’t let it drop. Every meeting we had about the project, he’d say something about how he could be doing better things with his time. Finally, I didn’t feel as though I had a choice; I went to HR and got him reassigned.

The big lesson for me was how much credibility I gained in the eyes of my team as a result. I’d been worried that they would think I’d been too harsh or, worse, that they would worry about the stability of their own positions as a result. But it was exactly the opposite. They really appreciated what I’d done. One of them even said that it felt as though I’d stuck up for them by getting rid of this guy, which, I realized, is exactly how I want them to feel.

My challenge to you, as you finish reading this book, is to avoid falling back into business as usual. Instead, I hope you’ll take this opportunity to do things differently and that you’ll view this, not as the end of a book, but as a launching pad for a new way of thinking and a new way of leading.