Why Your Team Is Not Taking Action (It Has Nothing to Do With Process)

23:10Jessica Kriegel:If you get clear on all that, then you've got this core narrative of who you are. And then you can tell stories about that and you can recognize people with that and give feedback when people are not like that so that you're constantly reinforcing the culture the way that you want it to be to get the results that you want to get. And what we do at our company is every single meeting that we have, we start by reciting our results equation. We say it out loud. I'll be on three calls in a row. And at the beginning of every single one of those calls, we say it again, because repetition is the key.

23:44Jessica Kriegel:I mean, I guarantee 99 percent of the people in your listening right now, they don't remember their mission statement or their purpose statement for their organization. Right. So we're totally disconnected from the why. And all the research shows that you need to care about the why in order to be effective. But no one even knows what it is. So therefore, how can I be connected to it? Well, then I mean, that's a massive conversation right there. If we know that we need to be connected to the why and the people in our organization be connected to the why, but most people don't even know what the why is.

24:16The question is, well, why is that? Like, why are people not being connected to the why? What is what is being broken or what's the break between the why that's written on a document and the why that lives in someone's heart and mind to be able to live out the why?

24:33Jessica Kriegel:Because this isn't something that they teach you in your MBA, how to write an effective mission statement. And it gets done by committee, by a bunch of executives in a hotel conference room in Napa. And they're just trying to get to five o 'clock so they can do their happy hour thing. Or it was written by the founders 50 years ago. And it's, you know, no one can touch it because they have to honor the family tree of this company. Or, you know, HR crafted it or marketing crafted it. you know, why it's disconnected is because it's usually overcomplicated and it's never repeated. So we simplify it and then we repeat it constantly.

25:08Jessica Kriegel:And then the other thing that we do, and this is something I have always done, is whenever I'm interviewing someone for a job, the first question I ask them is, what is your why? In fact, on my podcast, that is my first question for every guest. What is your why? And so in an interview format, they'll talk about their family or, you know, God or something important to them, right? Which is their kind of why. Usually they haven't thought about it and they have to kind of stumble around it, which is fine. And then I tell them our organization's why. And our why at Culture Partners is to drive results by activating your change.

25:45Jessica Kriegel:So I say, our why is to drive results by activating your change. You just told me your why. Do you see how if you came here and helped us with our why that would be fulfilling your personal why? Because if so, this is going to be a great match. And if not, we don't have purpose fit. And purpose fit is what I think is really impactful, much more so than culture fit. Culture fit is like, do I want to get a beer with this person? Who cares? Purpose fit is, are you motivated to drive results towards this mission? Because me too, let's go do it. It's totally powerful. I mean, I love it when in my organization, my agency, we had a.

26:26We call it the playbook of the company, but it was basically it was who we are, where we're going, what we're trying to achieve. And it was a document and it was and it meant the world to me. And I basically after the interview and everything, I would send him that and I'd say, I want you to read this tonight. And if you get something from it, you feel something, you're going to do great here. And if you don't, no worries, but the culture is probably not going to work for you because we had a culture, you know, we had a culture of the athlete DNA. Right. So we were looking for athletes with like that had that DNA that show up, that know how to take the beatings, that are not afraid to get back up and all of that.

27:05Right. So I needed to ensure, especially in sales culture. Right. I need to ensure that these people understood what they're getting into. And it worked. It was great. It did work. but uh the thing that wasn't there which i think is very important is the repetition yeah i thought once and then that was it can i talk about athlete dna as a tangent for a second sure i love it i'm where you're gonna you're gonna crush it i'm gonna crush it oh i knew you were gonna do this i mean you're gonna go back okay get ready ding ding ding let's go ladies and gentlemen tell me something what is the number one predictor of a high performing

27:42Jessica Kriegel:successful athlete? Number one for me that I've just that I've that I've seen when I think of athlete DNA, I want to be I want to be very clear. When I think of my version of the athlete DNA, it's very much this. Do they hate losing more than they love winning? OK, that's a fair guess. Let me suggest one. Then you tell me whether mine is more important or less important than yours? Let's go. Mine is they got to do a lot of training and practice. So you got two athletes. One of them does a lot of training and practice, and one of them hates losing more than winning. Which one's going to win the race?

28:25Well, yeah. Okay.

28:28Jessica Kriegel:I'm just trapping you in a fun thought experiment. Play the game with me. Okay. Yeah. Obviously, yeah. The person who's doing a lot of training and practice is going to probably win the race. When the world, we're constantly using these athlete metaphors to say like, that's what great leadership and what great drive creates. But like, we don't spend a lot of time in training and practice. Like it's always, we're always in the game in business. We're always on the field as opposed to like running the drills. Right. So it's so interesting to me that everyone is so into this app and my co-author Joe Terry is a former NFL athlete.

29:06Jessica Kriegel:He is a like multi, he's done the Ironman probably at least 11 times. He's done Ironman and Kona multiple times. His wife is also an Ironman. Like he is the ultimate quintessential athlete. Okay. So I'm not anti-athlete. And he also wrote this book with me. So he also believes in the power of surrender. But the thing I never get about this business translation for it is, but what about, where is the training? You know, It's always go, go, go in business, especially in sales. I'm like, I don't see the training happening anytime. So anyway, this is a tangent. That's a little tangent. But that's also, it's interesting you say that.

29:44You have a different belief than mine because you say, where is the training? Well, in my organization, the training is every single day.

29:55Jessica Kriegel:It's on the field. No, not on the field. No, we're training. We have one hour training every single day. Oh, well, there it is. We have 20 hours of training before they even get onto the field that they have to do. I have a predictive assessment that I've created. I'm going to do a plug. Salesfit.ai that will determine if a salesperson will be successful in the job within 96 % efficacy based off of all the data of my agency. and other assessments that I've borrowed off of. So I can tell you. Yeah. So I think we talk about it after. But yeah, so any business, like I believe, my belief is you would be stupid to hire a salesperson without putting them through this assessment.

30:44Because all this assessment is going to do with the worst case scenario is ensure you that if someone goes through it and they don't pass, that is someone you do not want on your team. because I can't promise you they're going to be great because I can't control what your onboarding process is in someone's business. I can't control how much training they're doing, but I can give you on a silver platter someone who is going to be very effective in your business in a sales specific role. And then it's up to you as the business owner of how you onboard them and keep them motivated.

31:18Jessica Kriegel:I mean, that's a great plug. If I was hiring a bunch of salespeople, I would go to salespeople.ai. Yeah, I mean, this is also, where did that come from? I'll just talk because I think it's important. 12 years of hiring salespeople. We've built over hundreds of sales teams, thousands of salespeople coming through. And it was one of the most painful experiences as a business owner I've ever gone through is trying to hire salespeople, specifically interviewing salespeople who shouldn't even be in the interview. What a waste of time for them, for my hiring department, for the whole HR. I flipped it all upside down.

32:00Not corporate-like, but I flipped it upside down. Anyways.

32:03Jessica Kriegel:Well, let me tell you a story. In my book, in chapter one or two, I can't remember which chapter it is, there's a story about a sales team that we turned around, which is, okay, they already had all the people on board, right? So you got what you got. Maybe you didn't do a great fit assessment. but it was a kind of, it was a software company and every salesperson was in charge of a different product. So the executive team had this brilliant idea that they're going to start doing cross-selling and we're going to, if a customer trusts Joe with that product, he's more likely to buy this other product from Sam.

32:36Jessica Kriegel:So let's get Joe and Sam to share leads. And now we're all going to raise boats together. So they had a kickoff sales kickoff conference where they were like, okay, hey, here's what we're doing. We're going to start cross-selling. And then they went back and they started saying like, okay, let's see who's cross-selling and who's not cross-selling and nothing changed. No one was cross-selling. So again, we went in and we're like, what are the currently shared beliefs getting in the way of your sales team cross-selling? And the reality is the president's club trip was still based on the top 5 % of performers.

33:06Jessica Kriegel:The dashboard in Salesforce showed who was doing best and who wasn't. And so every lead share was going to give an advantage to your competition. So it was never going to happen. The system underlying this sales team was encouraging competition, but this executive team had decided the strategy was collaboration and it just does not compute. So that's actually, man, we have so much we can talk about because this is all about culture. Like everything you're saying is all about culture. And now you're talking into a realm that I spent my entire life and decade and why I left corporate. You want to talk about an example, a story of how terrible culture was.

33:53They had a belief. I was brought into a new territory, let's call it, into a new province, a state in America to literally turn it around. because the current belief was if we all don't make our numbers, we will still get paid our bonus because we all haven't made it. So it makes it look like the territory was hard. That was a belief. How terrible is that? So then I come in as a young hotshot full of piss and vinegar, full of ego way before surrender. And I turn it, I mean, I just struck the entire thing, right? But then, Not only am I not rewarded, so what happens is I do my math and I figure out my commissions and find out because I'm the only one in the company that did this.

34:42I figured out that if I was 133.7 % above my target, I will not make an extra dollar and it will start to affect my income for next year because they're going to move my budget up. So I made it to the point where I added 133.2 % of my target. And that was it. And what I did was guess what happened? I worked one day a week. But I also left because I was bored. And it was like I can't work hard because the harder I work, I don't make more money. I'm going to screw myself next year. Terrible culture. And then if I don't work at all, I just sit back. Maybe we get paid a little bit, but everyone gets paid.

35:27broken. All of this is culture and all this is broken sales systems and people not. And I think you just said it like I loved. Oh, my God. I love when you said these people making decisions and just trying to get to the end of the day to go have their happy hour because that's all they care about. And they don't actually care about the actual mission of the business or the people in the business is the fundamental problem of corporate America. And that's how you lose top

35:50Jessica Kriegel:performers. I had a similar experience, but I didn't quit. So I was really good at my job. I I was working at Oracle, a huge technology company and kicking butt. And then I had my, I was there for a year. I loved my job. I was so grateful to have it. I thought I was getting paid really fairly. So I was as engaged as you can be. And I was the top performer. And I had my first performance review a year in. And my manager said, you know, Jessica, you're like one of those millennials. You just need to bake a little bit longer. And I was like, what the hell does that mean? And so I asked, please, please expand.

36:28Jessica Kriegel:I'd love to know what that means to bake a little bit longer. And she said, well, you're like that kid that sits in the front of the class, always raising their hand saying, pick me, pick me. It's kind of annoying because I was doing so well. I was identifying gaps in the systems and processes and trying to do process improvement and trying to help my peers and all that. And it was too much for my managers to handle because my managers were like new middle managers. And they were like, well, I don't know how to manage this. So I quiet quit. I was like the original quiet quitter. I did not leave the company.

37:00Jessica Kriegel:I stayed in the company. I worked one day a week and I went to school and I got my doctoral degree secretly. And so that's the other option that you have when you're not being fulfilled in your work and you're a top performer. Either you can leave or you can just use your time elsewhere. So we both just talked about stories about how two winners worked in these corporations that didn't serve our needs. How many other people that are – okay, this is so interesting because you didn't like the idea of the athlete DNA, but that is the athlete DNA right there is do whatever it takes to win. And then if you're not getting where you need to go, you leave the team.

37:40You go to a winning team.

37:42Jessica Kriegel:Yeah, okay. I'll give you that. or athletes when they get to the nhl whatever you know the the major leagues what do they do they just settle in they just go hey i made it we settle in but then you have what the top one percenters of all those athletes that don't settle in and they keep fighting every day the sydney crosby's the tom brady you know all these people right i mean you find out and i always say this you it's very interesting i always say this i go listen if my entire business was made up of tom Brady's, we would fail. There's a reason why there's only one Tom Brady. There's only a reason to manage.

38:16Well, not especially in sales, right? So you want to find the right mix of people and the right mix of personality and all of that. But what can businesses, let's just talk about this, like what can businesses do today that they can look at and see who are, who, what players on their team are the ones that have the ability to win, but have given up, have the ability to make change, but that are scared to use their voice or this completely checked out. What can we do today to help a business who might have these people sitting on their roster?

38:49Jessica Kriegel:Yeah. So number one, you can identify who has the competency to do the job. So if it's sales, sales, right? But then also So who has the potential to grow? And that's in the eagerness, the learning, the curiosity, the extending themselves beyond the basic job decision description. And then there's accountability. I mean, if I could infuse one thing into my daughter to become the Tom Brady of whatever she wants to do, it would be accountability. And people hate accountability. People hate being held accountable and they hate holding others accountable because it It feels like punishment because the only time we hold people accountable is when something goes wrong.

39:36Jessica Kriegel:So something went wrong. Who's accountable for this? Who's in trouble? And when you're in a corporation or in any, even if you're in a small business, when you are at fault for something that went wrong, you are at risk, right? I don't want to be the person that dropped the ball because when it's time for promotion or raises, I'm not going to be as considered. So we hide, you know, and we avoid accountability. So one of the things we talk about in the books, Render to Lead, is to encourage accountability is you have to change the definition of accountability. And the way I think about accountability is it is a personal choice to focus on what I can control to drive the results.

40:16Jessica Kriegel:So rather than... I want you to stop. I think it's so important what you just said, and I need you to stop. I need to say it again, and I need you to say it slower because it is so important. The true new definition of accountability is. Accountability is a personal choice to focus on what you can control to drive the results. A personal choice of what you can control to drive results. Yeah, to focus on what you can control. So how do you do this? Let me give you the steps to accountability now. First, you got to see what's going on. Okay, you've got a problem. There's an issue. Great. So see it.

40:59Jessica Kriegel:There's four steps. See it, own it, solve it, do it. First, you got to see it, the context, what's going on. Then you have to own it. And that requires asking the question, what about this can I control? And there's so many times in business where there's a problem and we want to blame. We want to point fingers. That's not my job. That's not my fault. I didn't see the email. I'm going to wait and see if this really happens. ignore and deny, right? That's like the blame game. And so to take accountability, if the definition is to make a personal choice to focus on what you can control is to say, what about this can I control?

41:37Jessica Kriegel:Forget the blame game. What about this can I control? Then you solve it from that space of thinking about what's within your influence. Now, what else can I do? And then do it, what can I do by when? So if you're, let me just give your, I know I've been talking for a while, but let me give your leaders four questions you can ask your employees to drive accountability in your teams. So you're a leader. You got a bunch of people not taking accountability. You don't even want to say the word accountability because it's a bad word. Instead, they come in, they got a problem. You say, what's going on?

42:10Jessica Kriegel:Let them talk. Then say, what about that can you control? Get them to focus on what they can control. Then what else could you try? Get them to solve it. And then what are you going to do by when? and now they're going to do it. And you've just helped them take accountability without being the bad guy, without even saying the word accountability. Well, I also, what was going through my head when you were saying that too, is you also the old saying, right? Is those who battle who those who plan the battle don't battle the plan. Say that again. Those who plan the battle don't battle the plan. Yeah, right.

42:48Jessica Kriegel:Exactly. You're getting like, so my death, I like, I have this concept, I want to call it definition. I want to say my concept of what true leader, which I have yet, and I want to be very clear, like I am working towards trying to get to maybe I don't, is that the ability to get somebody to do the thing you want them to do, but yet make them believe, think and feel it was their idea and they're excited to get it done. That's a good definition. It's similar to mine, which is to create movement. You know, the one caveat I would add to your definition is to get the thing that you want them to do.

43:27Jessica Kriegel:If you focus on getting them to create the results you want that to create, it's better because they might do it in a way you never would have thought about might be better than the way you would have done it. Amen on that one. I, I, amen on that one. And yes, and I agree a hundred percent is to create the results so they can have the autonomy and the creativity within that to get it done. A hundred percent. I love that. Had the keyword belief in there. So to get the result, you said belief and to have them believe in it. Well, it is to believe that they, again, right. It goes like, if they don't believe it, they're never going to do it.

44:06If they come kicking and screaming, it's never going to get done and it won't get done with the right creativity and execution. As you were talking about the five things that you can do right now, another quote that came up for me, and I want to say it, and I want you to tell me what it means to you when I say the fish rots from the head first.

44:31Jessica Kriegel:Leadership cascades into the organization.

44:36why is leadership such I've I've it's hard for me because I know now I'm coming from a personal my own experience so I'm not I'm not being pragmatic here but like when I look at majority of corporate America or the even the businesses that I've worked with in small small businesses the leadership is such poison and they don't see how it's destroying their culture of the business, yet they want to grow and get to the next level, but they will not address the thing that's stopping them, which is usually themselves.

45:15Jessica Kriegel:Because the system has been built to be one of competition and scarcity. So we started this by saying you can either lead from ego, fear, and scarcity, or love and abundance. And the system of capitalism is one steeped in fear and scarcity. And so we all get trapped into that way of thinking because of the construct. So you could be a great person who is a frontline worker in your new job, thinks when I'm a leader, I'm going to come from love. But then you get up there and now your boss has higher expectations of you. And you still have to prove yourself because there may be three senior directors, but only one VP position.

45:57Jessica Kriegel:And so you're looking to your left, you're looking to your right, like you guys are going down. And we are in competition with one another within one company. Even though the leaders put teamwork and collaboration on the value statement, it is a system that has been built to compete within one organization. So we get trapped in it without even realizing it. It's a dysfunctional system. And so to come from love and abundance and service is the opposite of what we should be doing, quote unquote, to win. But believe it or not, it actually works. Like I was working with this one company, I did a keynote in the Bahamas, and it was FinTech.

46:36Jessica Kriegel:And they had a sales team and a marketing team that were there together. It was like the sales kickoff. And they were in so much conflict. I mean, the sales team was like, marketing never gives us enough assets. Marketing team is like, sales never gives us until from the field. And they were both frustrated and in conflict. And I said, what would it look like to lead with love right now? To be of service, to worry only about what you can give and not what you want to take. And we split the team up into two. And I had the marketing team spend a whole bunch of time asking the question, how can I serve you to the sales team?

47:13Jessica Kriegel:And then the sales team asking question, how can I serve you to the marketing team? And then, okay, so now we got a bunch of information of what the other side needs for me. Then you take accountability and you say, so the belief I want you to hold sales team is that we've got your back. What experience do you need from us to hold that belief? And then they're going to say, well, I need you to give us these assets and turn these things around faster and blah, blah, blah. And then you ask the same question back. Well, the belief we want you to have marketing is that you are supported in the way you need to support us by getting you the things that you need, whatever, right?

47:53Jessica Kriegel:What experience do you from us? The marketing says, well, I need you to put all your requests through this portal instead of, you know, sending us emails ad hoc. And I need to be able to read the Zoom notes from your calls with clients so that I can gather data that way. It's like, great. I do all those things. Will you hold a new belief about us? And so you just come from service and you actually start listening and being less defensive instead of complaining, which is the blame game of all the things you're not getting. music to my ears i've always said if i owned a physical like if i had the business where everyone was in one location marketing and sales would be in the exact same room in fact marketing would be sitting beside sales and sales would be sitting beside marketing because those two have to work together for effectiveness so i i agree and there is there is a cultural I don't know where it started, but there is definitely a cultural belief marketing is against sales.

48:50Marketing says salespeople suck. Salespeople say the leads suck. And it's just it's not effective. So any of my businesses, that's not how we ran. We've rather we either run with the marketing team or we run in a different to a different business that wants to run with us as a marketing team because it's all one. And I think that goes to the whole all departments are one sales, marketing, operations, fulfillment. I mean, it all has to be cohesive into one. I mean, we were we've we've gone way past our time here. I I think we just touching the surface of so many things we can talk about for people that are listening.

49:25Where can they get this book? I'm going to order it myself. Where can I find Surrender to Lead?

49:31Jessica Kriegel:It's sold wherever books are. You go to surrender to lead dot com and we will send you. You'll have links there. You'll also be able to get down, download those, the results equation builder that we talked about earlier, as well as some other toolkits that you can use as you read the book to help you on your journey. And one last final question, circling it right back to you. What's your why? My why is to serve God and others. Awesome. Thank you so much for being with us. Thanks for having me.

50:10Let's go.