558: How to Escape Non-Stop Urgency and Become Visionary with Michael Hyatt

Pete Mockaitis
Michael, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Michael Hyatt
Thank you, Pete. I appreciate you having me on.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, I’m looking forward to dig into this. We’re going to talk about visions and leaders. So, I want to kind of hear from your own experience. Tell us, who’s the greatest leader you’ve encountered firsthand and what was their vision like?

Michael Hyatt
Oh, man. Yeah, I would say probably John Maxwell. He’s well-known in corporate circles for sure but I had the privilege of being his publisher for about a decade and got to know him pretty close. And he was sort of my unofficial mentor. But, yeah, he had a tremendous amount of charisma and was always able to just be super relatable. And the thing that I loved about him the most is he led from his heart.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, we’ve had him on the show a couple of times, I’m a fan, so right on. Very cool. And I’m curious, did you have any particular moments with John that really kind of hit you, like, “Hmm, yeah, do that. Do that in my leadership”?

Michael Hyatt
Yeah, there were a couple of times. When I was the CEO at Thomas Nelson Publishers, which was a pretty large publicly-held company, I remember him telling me when I first took that job, he said, “You know, you hear people say all the time it’s lonely at the top.” He said, “I just want you to know that’s a choice. You don’t have to be lonely at the top. That’s totally a choice.” And I’ve always remembered that because I thought there’s a real reason why you need friends outside of work, and why you need people that you can relate to outside of work that can kind of understand you, get you, be an encouragement to you, and support you when things are not going that great at work.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, that’s a handy tip. Excellent. So, well, let’s dig into your latest upcoming book here, “The Vision Driven Leader.” So, I’m curious, that sounds like that’s how leaders should operate. But if leaders are not driven by vision, what is driving them?

Michael Hyatt
Yeah, the thing that’s driving them typically is the tyranny of the urgent.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael Hyatt
Most leaders I know that are leading are not driven by vision, and I think that most of them think they should be driven by vision but it’s not taught in business school, there are only about two books that I could find on the topic on Amazon, nobody’s really written about it, and because there aren’t a lot of visionary leaders in the marketplace, people just assume that it’s a special kind of charisma, or clairvoyance, or gifting, and most people just kind of go, “I don’t have the vision thing so I guess I can’t lead from vision,” so they just kind of do the next thing that comes across the plate.

And being driven from vision is a very different way to live. It’s a way to live by design, a way to run your business or your department or your division by design, because the alternative, Pete, is to drift and nobody ever drifted to a destination they would’ve chosen. And if you’re just in reactive mode all the time, then you’re really squandering resources, you have lack of focus, lack of attention, and if you can consolidate all that around a vision, it changes everything.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I’m intrigued by your assertion there that there’s only a couple of books on Amazon. I guess I think that, hey, a vision is one of like the main things you got to have as a leader, and you should craft and communicate and inspire through that. And so, you’re saying that is a rarity. And so then, I want to kind of zero in on the distinction here. So, I guess there’s a lot of books that kind of talk about vision. You say there’s only about two that do what exactly?

Michael Hyatt
Yeah, I think the issue is that people confuse it with mission, and people think that a vision has got to be something that’s short, brief, clever, something you can slap on a coffee mug or put on a T-shirt, and that’s really not robust enough to guide you. But just to make it clear, mission and vision seems similar but I differentiate the two in the book.

A mission provides day-to-day clarity by kind of defining the identity and scope of the business. And an effective mission statement keeps on you task by answering some certain questions. But a vision is really not about now, and a mission is about now. A vision is about then. A mission is typically short, something that you can repeat almost from memory, but a vision is going to be more robust blueprint of the future that you’re trying to create. So, I think it’s important to differentiate those two things from the other.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then let’s zero in. So, the subtitle of your book, we’ve got 10 questions there that focus efforts, energize team, and enable scaling. Well, I love powerful questions. So, can you lay some of them on us here?

Michael Hyatt
Yeah, like the first one is, “Are you a leader or a manager?” And this is a fundamental question, both of them are important, but they’re distinct functions. Sometimes they’re the same. Sometimes your role, they require that you have a leadership role and a management role, but let me kind of differentiate the two.

First of all, leaders create vision while managers execute vision. Think of it this way, if you’re leading, you’re leading people somewhere, otherwise you’re just taking a walk. That somewhere is your vision. If you don’t have a vision, you’re just taking a walk. Leaders inspire and motivate. Managers maintain and administer. Leaders take risks, managers control risks. Leaders stay focused on the horizon, while managers have their eye on short-term goals and objectives. Again, both are important but the essence of leadership, the foundation, the thing that’s kind of the number one priority is vision.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then I guess a couple of clarifiers. One, can a person be both a leader and a manager?

Michael Hyatt
Totally.

Pete Mockaitis
And I imagine you’re doing some activities that are more in the leader column, and some activities that are more in the manager column, depending on the hour of the day.

Michael Hyatt
Yeah. Well, let me give you an example of where we’ll separate it in two people, but I really think this is a skillset and something that anybody can develop, and this is why I wrote “The Vision Driven Leader” because it’s my conviction that anybody can be a vision-driven leader.

But Steve Jobs is probably the most iconic biggest example, somebody that was a visionary leader. His wife, at his funeral, said that the thing that Steve brought to the table was that he didn’t just see what reality lacked, but he set about to try to remedy it. So, he saw what was missing and went about to try to remedy that.

And so, you can remember when the iPhone was introduced. Steve wasn’t just a guy that said, “Hey, let’s make an incremental improvement on the phone keyboard,” which was very prevalent at the time. No, he said, “Let’s completely eliminate that. Let’s make it software-driven. Let’s let it be operated with one finger,” and he had one button on that initial iPhone. Of course, now it doesn’t even have a button. But that was an iconic kind of vision.

Meanwhile, you’ve got Tim Cook who is really the manager, who is behind the scenes optimizing the supply chain, making sure that costs could be controlled, risks could be managed, and it took both of those guys to really develop an amazing company. But here’s the thing, when Steve died, everybody, all the press, all the tech press, people on Wall Street said, “Well, I guess that’s the end of Apple. Maybe they’ll last for a while, maybe they can coast on their momentum, but the visionary is gone.” Not so fast.

Tim Cook stepped into the role of leading that company and became visionary in his own way. It’s different than Steve’s but it was still visionary. And guess what the stock price did. Basically, the market cap of that company tripled under Tim’s leadership. So, the company has gone on to amazing heights that even Steve couldn’t take it to. So, yeah, so I think these kinds of roles can be…they are roles, they’re not the essence of who you are. Anybody could be a vision-driven leader.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a good line there. They are roles and not the essence of who you are. And so then, you say that we are often kind of caught up in the urgent and the stuff that we’re handling, and the vision is bigger and it’s kind of where we’re going. So, could you just sort of lay down a few articulations of visions for us so we can get that distinction crystal clear, like, “Oh, that”?

Michael Hyatt
Let me give you a definition. So, when I’m talking about a vision, I’m not talking about a vision statement. A statement is not sufficient. I’m talking about, and the word I use in the book is a vision script. It’s a written document that’s three to five pages in length, it articulates an imagined future, at least three years into the future, maybe five years or more depending on your industry, it’s superior to the present, it motivates you, it’s written in the present tense, and it guides you and your team in day-to-day decision-making.

And it’s organized, and I talk about this in the book, around four key components: the future of your team, that’s where it’s got to start, the future of your products, the future of your marketing, and the future of your impact. And those are just sort of the objective, measurable metrics, things like financial size, or market reach, number of customers, web visits, or something like that.

But the reason it starts with your team is your team is going to be the primary means by which you realize this imagined future. They’re going to be the ones who are going to help you bring that into reality. Your team, the people you attract, the culture that you’re creating is the single biggest driver of operating results. This is why some leaders can’t seem to make any progress in their organizations. They’re fighting against this invisible wall of culture. So, you’ve got to reimagine something different and begin to create that. That’s why the team component of that goes first.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I also want to get your view, so if you’re not at the super senior, or CEO, or just a notch or two below level, how do you envision – huh, vision – these vision scripts or principles playing out for someone who has a small team or someone who does not yet have formal direct reports but is doing that influencing across functions and such?

Michael Hyatt
Well, it totally works at any level. So, I talk in the book about when I became sort of the mid-level manager at Thomas Nelson Publishers. I was given a responsibility for one of our 14 book divisions. So, I was two steps removed from the CEO, I was in charge of this division, and I discovered, much to my surprise, a few days after I took the job, that that division was number 14 out of 14 in every important metric. They had the slowest revenue growth. It was the least profitable. In fact, it had lost money. Team morale was terrible. The division was failing.

So, the CEO said to me, he said, “How long is it going to take you to turn this division around?” And so, I said to him, I said, “I’m not sure but I think probably about three years.” The first thing I did was I booked an off-site retreat. I went away for 24 hours, and I just tried to get clear on what I wanted to create for the future. This is the first time I’d ever done this but I thought, “This thing is such a mess that I’ve got to imagine something different that’s going to motivate us and something that we can build toward.”

And I’ve been heavily influenced, though I’ve never met him, by Stephen Covey, and habit number two in the seven laws is “Begin with the end in mind.” So, I began to think to myself, “Okay, what is it that I want to create here?” And I started writing down everything I could think of, and I end it up, this is like an early version of the vision script, I end it up with 10 statements or 10 bullet points about the reality that I wanted to see in the future.

So, for example, let me give you an idea. So, that division had not had any bestselling books for years, and so I wrote down, “We’re publishing five New York Times’ Business Bestsellers per year.” So, literally, I wrote that down like it was a present reality. I said, “We’re publishing 48 books a year.” Now, the interesting thing was, at the time that I wrote that, we’re publishing 120 books a year, so I was essentially proposing that we cut the list by more than half because I felt like the increased focus, the concentration of resources, would better ensure the success of each of the books. So, it was a radical thing.

Another example, I said, “All of our employees are maxing out their bonuses,” because I wanted our team, I wanted us to earn the maximum bonus because I knew that would motivate people, and people can work for that because they would have the incentive to succeed because they would directly benefit if we did.

So, after that retreat, I came back with those 10 items written down, and I got together my inner circle, a handful of direct reports, and I said, “Look, I’ve been thinking about the future, and I’ve written some things down, this is kind of the beginning of a vision, but I don’t have it perfect, and I need your help. This is a rough draft. It’s wet cement. I’m probably missing some things, there are probably some things I don’t have quite right, and I need your input.” So, I involved them, I invited them to a conversation, where over the course of the next few weeks, we collectively got clearer on what it was that we wanted to create.

Once we got that together, then we shared it with the entire team. It was so motivational, everybody was inspired by it, we got excited about it, we let that be an operating document that informed our daily actions, and we worked hard. It didn’t take us three years like I told the CEO. It only took us a year and a half. We went from number 14 to number one in revenue growth, number 14 to number one in profit margin, and that division remained the most profitable division at Thomas Nelson Publishers for 10 years, for a decade, until I left the company in 2011.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, that is quite lovely in terms of once you start to describe specifically those bits in a present reality, it just naturally stirs something inside you, like, “Yes, I want that.”

Michael Hyatt
Definitely.

Pete Mockaitis
“Let’s go get that.” And, now, a few things that leap to mind here are, one, how do you deal with the potential cynicism or lack of belief, like, “Yeah, Michael, that’d be great but, I mean, come on, you know, not in the cards. Yeah, I’d love that yet here we are”?

Michael Hyatt
Yeah. Well, cynicism is really a cancer, and it’s a really hard thing to deal with in a lot of organizations because people have dealt with a lot of disappointment, they listened to leaders that articulated a vision but not rolled up their sleeves to help. It seems so pie in the sky. People have to believe it. And I think it really starts with you as the leader. You’ve got to be sold first. If you’re not buying what you’re selling, you don’t have a chance of selling to other people. You’ve got to be able to believe it, and you’ve got make it compelling.

This is like so many things in any kind of organization. It comes down to sales. We’re all in sales. I don’t care what your role is, if you can’t sell your ideas to your boss, if you can’t sell it to the people working for you, you’re not going to be successful. So, what you go to do is you’ve got to tune in to the most popular radio station on earth that everybody listens to, and that’s WII-FM, “What in it for me?” That’s the question that everybody is asking, and so you’ve got to be able to answer that question when you’re selling the vision.

What’s in it for you? It might not just be financial compensation, although that helps, and that’s why I put the one bullet point about maximizing bonuses, but it’s also for a sense of meaning. People work because they want to be connected to a larger story. They want to feel like they’re a part of something meaningful, something that’s making a difference, something that’s making a dent in the universe. And this is particularly important for the millennial generation. Millennials often get a bad rap because people say they don’t have the work ethic, they’re entitled, whatever. I’ve got an entire company full of millennials. They’re the hardest working people I know. But the reason they are is because they’re connected to a vision they believe in.

And that’s another key too. It’s got to be their vision. It starts with you as the leader, you can’t outsource this, you can’t delegate it, it’s got to start with you, but in the process, it’s got to become ours. It’s got to become a collective vision, otherwise people are going to be disengaged, and they’re going to be cynical, and they’re not going to work towards the fulfillment of it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, once we’ve got it situated in terms of we’ve got a draft, we got some inputs, we’ve got it fleshed out and revised based upon that, what are some of the key questions and next steps to turn that into specific actions that starts bringing it closer to that vision?

Michael Hyatt
Yeah, one of the things I talk about in the second part of the book, I talk about, “Is it clear? Is it inspirational? But is it practical?” This has got to translate into your daily actions. And here’s what the linkage looks like. There’s so much emphasis on most corporations on execution, “We got to execute. If we could execute better, we can accomplish more.” Well, here’s the thing, if the execution isn’t based on a vision, you’re going to create a lot of sideways energy, a lot of unproductive fake work. But the vision acts as a filter. It enables you to separate opportunities from distractions.

And so often, the more successful you become, distractions show up masquerading as opportunities, and this is why people get overwhelmed, like companies have too much to do, why people work in 70 to 80 hours a week. The vision focus is that effort. But once you’ve got a clear vision, then you can ask yourself the question, again, the three-year time horizon, “Based on that, what do our annual goals need to be for this year so that we can achieve that vision over the course of the next three years?” I recommend seven to 10 goals on an annual basis. That’s got to be further disseminated or distilled down to two to three goals per quarter.

Then, from that, we come down to the weekly priorities. And everybody’s got to have weekly priorities that are based on those goals, and I recommend no more than three. Probably you got a thousand things you could do this week, but what are the three most important? And then, finally, what are your big three daily tasks? The average person has, and we’ve done a lot of research on this, but the average person who uses a task management system has 15 tasks on any given day that they have to do. As a result of that, they wake up feeling overwhelmed. Even if they get eight of those done, more than half, they end up with seven that are unchecked, they go to bed defeated. They’re playing a game they can’t win.

Instead, if you take sort of the Pareto principle, that 20% of the effort drives 80% of the results, there’s probably 20% of those 15 tasks that are really going to move the needle, that are the high-leverage activities that really, really matter. So, 20% of 15 is 3, so identify your three big tasks for the day, declare it a victory if you get those three done, and do that day after day after day, and you’ll incrementally move toward that vision. And that’s exactly what my coaching clients do, that’s what the leaders we consult with do, and that has made all that difference, and it links that vision with daily action.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’ve given me some fun data there, those 15, and I guess, in practice, most of the time, people do not accomplish all 15, and then you do have those carryovers that are frustrating. And so, I’ve thought a lot about the 80/20 Principle and I am…it’s funny how you talk about do those three and you get to declare a victory. Sometimes I wonder, it’s like, “Well, there’s those three things, but what about the amount of time? It’s like have I really earned a victory if I did those three things in one hour?” And so, take it.

Michael Hyatt
Yeah. Well, I was going to say, it’s not about how long it takes. Here’s the thing, success is not about how much you accomplish, it’s whether you’re accomplishing the right things. And this is the question that real leaders ask, they’re not asking, “How much could I get done?” but, “Can I get the right things done?”

And as it turns out, there’s not that many things you have to do to contribute toward the vision. Now, let me just give you a case in point. So, I have about 500 business coaching clients, many of those are business owners, some of them are entrepreneurs, some of them are just leading inside a corporation. But on average, people that are responsible for revenue in my business coaching clients, on average, in the first 12 months in the program, using this kind of vision-driven approach, their business grows by 62%. On average.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael Hyatt
That’s interesting all by itself. But here’s what makes it even more interesting. On average, they shaved 11 hours off their work week. They’re able to achieve more by doing less because they’re not fixated on all these stuff that doesn’t contribute to the vision. They’re focused on the stuff that contributes to the vision and to the future reality that they’re trying to create. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely, yeah. Well, that is exciting for all the overworked people experiencing that. All right. So, we’ve got the crafting the vision, breaking it down into the particular activities. I want to hear, when you are going about communicating this, what are some of your top do’s and don’ts for conveying it effectively with other people?

Michael Hyatt
Well, the first thing I would practice is something I call cascading communication, but it’s got to begin with a written vision statement. So, it’s not enough to just have this rattle around in your brain, let it be vague, or ambiguous, or just kind of floating out there. You’ve got to express it, and so that’s why I always say you’ve got to write the vision. That will force clarity. By writing it down, that forces clarity. So, you’re going to end up with a vision script, again, a document that’s three to five pages in length.

You’re going to practice cascading communication which means that you’re not just going to like go back, get your entire department together, or your entire division, or your entire company, and then just read it. No, that’s not the way you want to do it. You want to submit this, first of all, to a small, small group, your inner circle. Then you want to roll it out to the next level down, and then the next level down. This gives an opportunity for input, so if you’ve got some glaring errors, or some things that you’ve absolutely missed, or don’t have quite right, you’ve got a chance to correct those before you roll it out to a broader group.

So, each time you roll it out, there should be a little bit less change. But even when you roll it out to the entire group, and you’re standing in front of whatever organization you preside over, whether, again, that’s a department, or a division, or the entire company, you basically want to say, “Look, we’re crafting, we’ve crafted and we’ve worked on a vision of the future. This is a reality that we want to create. And we, as a leadership team, or a management team,” or whatever you call it inside your organization, “we’re committed to this future, but we can’t do it ourselves. We need your help. There may be things here that we’ve missed, and we want to invite you to contribute to that and to give us some feedback.” So, you want feedback.

And, by the way, you’ve got to reframe negative feedback as something that’s truly helpful. If somebody sees something you’re missing, I would much rather know from a teammate than to roll it out into the marketplace and figure out when the market doesn’t accept it, or you embarrass yourself, or fall flat on your face. So, you want to involve everybody in that process, so it does involve cascading communication, that’s one thing.

Second thing, it’s not a one-and-done kind of thing where you finish your vision script, you make a big announcement, “Ta-dah!” and then you put it on the shelf and forget it. No. Here’s the thing. Vision leaks. Andy Stanley talks about this in his book on vision, but vision leaks. What that means is that in a daily grind, as we’re trying to work through all the tasks, and we’re trying to deal with all the incoming stuff that we’re reacting to, it’s very easy to forget where this task you’re doing fits into the bigger story. That’s why leaders, true leaders, have to be the voice for the vision. If they’re not giving voice to that vision, the vision might as well not exist. The only thing that keeps it alive is you constantly repeating it.

Another story, 2009, I was in the teeth, the midst of the great recession. It was a horrendous time. Our sales have fallen by 20% that first year, the entire industry had fallen by about…the book publishing industry had fallen by about 20% that year, I mean, it was rough. And I remember complaining to my executive coach, I said, “I am so tired about talking about the vision. I feel like it’s kind of a lost cause at this point. We got to re-strategize, and I’m tired of hearing myself talk about it.” She said, “Well, I’ll tell you what, when you’re tired of hearing yourself talk about it, you’re half done. This is the time people need to hear the vision because people are discouraged, people are not seeing the results of their work. They need to be reminded why they’re working, what’s important, what you’re trying to create.”

So, I rolled up my sleeves, redoubled my effort, and kept preaching the vision. I had to keep it alive, and I really think that was the only thing that got us through the great recession, was the belief that we were creating a future that was bigger than the recession and would come to pass once we got through the other side of the recession, which we did.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, very cool. Well, let me follow up on your point with regard to that this applies to all folks at all levels. So, how do you recommend you apply some of these questions, or principles, or approaches when you got no direct reports whatsoever? Do you make a vision for yourself, and a plan for yourself, or how do you think about those matters?

Michael Hyatt
Absolutely, because you’re still presiding over an area where you have responsibility. And if you’re responsible for any kind of results, you can have a vision for what those results can be. So, to give you an example, our social media manager has zero direct reports, but she’s got her own vision script about what it is she’s trying to create for us in terms of our social media channels, in terms of she’s got an outside team, very small team of contractors. She’s got one contractor that she’s working with, that’s her team. What’s her product? Well, it’s the posts. What’s the marketing? How does she do this? What’s the impact she’s wanting to have?

But for her to get crystal clear on that, the alternative, again, if you don’t design the future, you’re going to get to the future. You’re just going to drift into it and you’re going to drift to a destination that you didn’t design using one that’s not desirable. So, I really believe that everybody at every level needs to have a vision for what it is they’re trying to create in their role, even if they’re just a solopreneur, even if they’re one person in a department with no direct reports, or they have a small department or a division. It doesn’t matter. You still need vision. Begin with the end in mind.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Michael, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Michael Hyatt
Well, I would say that inevitably when you’re coming up with a vision, you’re going to experience resistance, there are going to be challenges. Just because you come up with a vision, it doesn’t mean that, all of a sudden, like magic, this begins to start happening. Steven Pressfield wrote an incredible book called “The War of Art.” And one of the things he talks about in that book is the resistance. And anytime you purpose to make an improvement, I don’t care whether it’s trying to lose weight, improve your marriage, improve your business metrics, whatever it is, you’re going to encounter opposition.

And it may just be in the form of something that’s not direct or personal, just challenges in the marketplace or whatever, or maybe just people that oppose your vision. But, regardless, the value of a vision is when you get into that messy middle, when you’ve invested too much to quit, and you’re not sure you have the resources to finish, it’s that vision that gives you the tenacity to stay in the hunt, and follow through, and not quit, not bail out before you realize it. So, this has a really practical consequence for staying engaged when you want to quit.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Michael Hyatt
Yeah, I would say one of my favorite quotes about writing that’s apropos to a vision is “Thoughts disentangle themselves passing over the lips and through pencil tips.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Michael Hyatt
I think the research that I’ve done in my book “Free to Focus,” which is my last book, was the importance of actually limiting the amount of time you work so you increase your focus and your productivity. One of the things I discovered in that process is that once you work more than about 50 hours a week, you actually go backwards in terms of productivity and accomplish less. So, all these people that are out there advocating what I call the hustle fallacy, you need to work 70 or 80 hours a week, or like a loan you need to work 80 to 100 hours a week, they don’t have the science on their side. People that are more productive and accomplishing bigger results are people that are putting firm boundaries around their work and have a life outside of work.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s the magic number or the range?

Michael Hyatt
Oh, 50.

Pete Mockaitis
Fifty, all right.

Michael Hyatt
Yep.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Michael Hyatt
I’m typically a fan of the last book I read, and one of the most recent ones I read that I really loved was Jason Fried’s book “It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work.” He advocates some of the same kind of concepts. But if I had to point to a book, one of my favorites of all time is, I’ve already mentioned, is Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Michael Hyatt
The tool I’m using the most right now is a tool called Dynalist. Have you ever heard of it?

Pete Mockaitis
I think I’ve seen it listed but I’ve never used it. Tell me more.

Michael Hyatt
It’s an outlining tool. I used to use a tool called Workflow. And I tend to think in hierarchical outlines, so whenever I’m trying to create content, that’s where I start. But Dynalist is kind of like Workflow on steroids. It’s got a lot of features that Workflow is missing. But, yeah, I love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And a favorite habit?

Michael Hyatt
My morning routine. That’s crucial. Having a morning ritual that sets me up to win is critically important. And of my morning ritual, there’s a number of things that I do there. I think my daily practice of exercise while listening to either podcasts or audiobooks is critical to both my physical maintenance and my intellectual growth.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget that you share, you’re really known for, people kind of quote it back to you often?

Michael Hyatt
I think the whole thing about self-care and investing in yourself, that if you want to accomplish more, you’ve got to drive the roots deep and plant the tree on firm ground. And I think a lot of leaders don’t do enough of that. They’re run rugged by their work. They’re not reinvesting in themselves. You’ve got to fill the well if you’re going to have anything to share with other people.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Michael, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Michael Hyatt
Well, first of all, to find out about the book, you can go to VisionDrivenLeader.com/awesome, we’ve created a special landing page for your listeners. And there, if you buy the book, “The Vision Driven Leader” from any outlet and bring the receipt there, you can turn it in, we’ve got a number of free bonuses there including the Audible version of the book. So, if you buy the physical book or the Kindle and come there, we’ll give you the Audible book that you can listen to as well for free.

Also, the Kindle edition of my last book, and then a tool called the vision scriptor tool which will take you by the hand and walk you through the process of creating your first draft of a vision script for your department, or your division, or whatever you preside over. So, again, that’s all at VisionDrivenLeader.com/awesome. For all other things related to me, my podcasts and my other products and tools and blog and all that, it’s in MichaelHyatt.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Michael Hyatt
Yeah, I would say you’ve got to be, if you want to succeed, if you really want to grow, if you want your career to progress, you’ve got to be a vision-driven leader. It’s essential. I don’t care at what level you are, if you develop a vision, if you develop the habit of developing a vision, if you’re being vision-driven, that’s going to make you stand out and give you a competitive edge against everybody else that is totally in reactive mode. You’ll create bigger better results, you’ll get noticed, and you’ll get promoted faster.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Michael, thanks. This has been a treat and good luck to you.

Michael Hyatt
Thanks, Pete. Appreciate it.