KF #25. Plans and Aligns Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Rob, welcome!

Rob Monson
Hi! Thank you, Pete. Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am so excited to hear your wisdom. You are privy to a lot of deep, high-stakes, personal conversations, coaching executives and business owners. Can you give us a little bit of context for those conversations?

Rob Monson
Yes, so I’ve been a business coach for eight years this month, as a matter of fact, and what I do in my role is I coach CEOs and their leadership teams to help grow and scale their companies. And I do that through helping them install systems and routines and behaviors that help them eliminate drama and focus on the right things.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds fantastic. Eliminating drama and focusing on right things are themes and powerful levers, it seems, in terms of accelerating careers and results.

Rob Monson
Yes, absolutely. And one of the big things we focus on is, “Initially, do you have 100% A-player leadership team? And how do you get to what we call an A-player leadership team? And how do you make sure and can identify whether you have non-A-players in your team? And what does that look like?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was watching your TikTok and it’s amazing. You have a tremendous number of views for coaching insights on TikTok. Didn’t even know you could find that there, but now I do. And you got them, Rob. I was watching one of your videos, and you talked about, very quickly, eliminating C-players, and that sounds a little bit spooky.

So maybe let’s define what makes an A-player, B-player and C-player, and knowing maybe first of all that some folks feel a little bit perhaps even bristle-y about the language. What about a growth mindset, Rob? Can’t we all flourish and become A-players?

Rob Monson
They do. And this is the difficult part, is in the modern era, we try to avoid labels. However, if we cannot label the behavior and the performance, we will not grapple with it and we will not grow. And so, when we talk about an-A player, it’s someone that lives the core values 90-plus percent of the time, the organization’s core values 90-plus percent of the time, and hits KPI-driven goal 90-plus percent of the time.

So, we have a subject of measurement that’s normed over time by leaders in an organization. We share our scores with each other and we grade out our teams, which we do quarterly. And then we have an objective measurement, which is how often they hit goal. In between those two things, you find whether they have an A-player or not.

And your B-players tend to be people that live the core values consistently, but they aren’t as productive as we need them yet to be. Maybe do not have the habits, routines, behaviors. Sometimes, it’s skillset, but usually it’s embedded in the other area of habit, routine, that really makes them successful. And finally, we have C-players who do not live the core values and are not productive.

And here’s a fascinating statistic. C-players drag down each team by at least 30% productivity every single time.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow! So, a single C-player can drag down a whole team by everyone by 30%.

Rob Monson
A single C-player can drag down an entire…yep, A single C-player will drag down a team’s results. It doesn’t matter what the KPI is or growth measurement, by at least 30% every time. And it’s remarkable how often that’s held up over the last eight years.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. And so, you’re measuring that based upon the attainment of these KPIs?

Rob Monson
Yes, well, attainment of the KPIs, and also, you see some behavioral practices as well that tend to fall off in terms of how they live the core values because they’re making up for this person’s lack of behavior and productivity. So that’s why, when we identify if we have a C-player in our presence, my usual question is, “What time are they leaving today?” And I don’t mean that to be…

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, ooh, Rob, spicy. Right to the quick.

Rob Monson
I learned that from an amazing coach named Dave Baney out of Las Vegas. And Dave had it spot on, which is you’re on the clock. It’s like the NBA shot clock. You are on the clock before your A-players leave. And what you want to do above all, that’s the number one reason you’re a-players will leave is tolerance for C-players.

Number one thing you want to do in an organization is preserve your A-player team and be able to remove the C-players that drag them down. And what happens again, that’s the weight that drags us down. So, most organizations, if you follow the rules that were established about 30 years ago, or the research that was established years ago by a person named Bradford Smart, who wrote a book called Topgrading. By the way, don’t ever read that book. It’s a really rough book, but the concept is great. And in “Topgrading,” the logic and philosophy is that about 25% of your organization will be C-players.

Pete Mockaitis
You say Geoff Smart?

Rob Monson
Brad Smart, his dad. Read Geoff Smart in Who. That’s a great book.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, I was going to say we had on the show, way back in the day, episode 30 in 2016, Randy Street from ghSmart, because this language of A-player is bringing me back. And he said something kind, I think, if folks are bristling out the labels, and I think it’s true. Everybody is an A-player at something. In the right organization, in the right role, they can flourish as opposed to, “Oh, you’re just dumb and worthless. So, I guess you’re out of luck everywhere.”

Rob Monson
Absolutely. And, you know, in the modern era, because there are just so many ways now for us to make money and so many outlets, today’s C-player usually is an A-player on their own. And one of the one of the big key pieces of advice I give to people who are not flourishing and have a sort of a track record of not flourishing when you dig into their history, it’s, “Hey, you have a great skillset in this particular area and you have great behaviors in this particular area, but you just don’t flourish under someone else’s values. Go start your own thing.”

Today’s entrepreneurs were yesterday’s C-players, and A-player entrepreneurs, too. So, there’s a way to get into a great role and a great fit, even if it’s not with someone else’s organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s define some of these behaviors. It sounds like there is some variability in terms of the organizations and the cultures and the values. But, perhaps, could you zero in on a few universal or near-universal behaviors or things that comprise an A-player?

Rob Monson
Yeah, absolutely. So, we talked about living the core values and hitting KPI-driven goal, and the question is, “How do they do that?” And what we find is they are better at developing habit and routine, meaning that those who set their day in a predictable way, who go out of their way to figure out, to realign themselves to a set of key priorities they’ve established, hopefully for the quarter, “What am I doing relative to those priorities that I’m going to accomplish today?”

“Where am I stuck?” Understanding, “Where am I stuck and need help from others to be able to accomplish those priorities?” And then number three, “If I’m pacing behind on one of my key KPIs, what am I doing to catch up?”

And those are sort of the behavioral traits that the A-player tends to have in addition to some of the things that you talk about with on your podcast on prioritization and time management, those tend to be the hallmark of the A-player is they can prioritize, they can time-manage they can look at that set of priorities and say, “This is important. This is not important.”

What we see, really, really important, in this in this scenario is, one, successful people time-block two weeks out consistently. They block their time. They have their calendar blocked out with time, specifically spent to work on their handful of one, two, or three key priorities they have to accomplish for the quarter.

Number two, their heads are out of email or Slack or Teams. And I remember, like, the Slack tagline 10 years ago was something like, “Be more productive,” and those tools kill our productivity because they encourage us to respond to urgent instead of important. I’m not saying there isn’t any use for those tools, but you have to get into the same habit of Slack or Teams as you do with email, which is if you’re highly productive, you get into a mechanism where you’re responding three times a day.

I do it at 8:00 a.m., 12:00, 4:00, and spend a half hour doing it and economize my responses with AI or other tools, or I get into the trap of being stuck in email. And one of the most painful things we have to do as coaches, is remove leaders who cannot get their heads out of email because that’s not where we need them focused.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, these are some very specific perspectives. And, it’s funny, I’m imagining, this brings me back to a conversation I’ve had with a couple folks who are in the mortgage game and doing very well. And so, I say, “What’s the trick? How are you able to just really generate so many more loans, deals than the other folks?” And it’s like, “You know what? The thing is, when I’m at work, I’m doing my work.”

And it sounds like, “Well, duh.” But especially, when there are some activities, we feel some reluctance towards like, “Okay, I’ve got to go do prospecting in the sales universe. Like, oh, that’s kind of uncomfortable. That’s kind of unpleasant. I’m going to get some folks who are not pleased to be hearing from me.”

And yet it seems that, from my limited sampling, those who go do that, as opposed to find any other thing they could be doing on email or anything else, tend to flourish in a sales role, for example.

Rob Monson
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there might be some people that are very task-oriented and very relationship-oriented, right? And sometimes we have to make sure we can put them in the right role. They are good at some things. Sometimes you have to have the self-awareness to be able to realize whether you are task- or relationship-oriented.

Like, that’s why I have to minimize task for salespeople, meaning the systems do the tasks for them, whether it’s follow-up or tools they’re using. They have a minimal amount of data entry because they tend to be good at relationship and not tasks. Things that are high relationship and high tasks don’t tend to have a good middle ground unless you have extremely high-level people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Well, could you maybe walk us through a couple examples of folks you’ve seen see some transformational cool things in their career by following this kind of three-step process?

Rob Monson
Yeah, so what I’ve seen really consistently is, to your point, not everyone’s going to elevate, right? They just don’t have the ability to be able to grasp onto new habit and new routine. And it’s something sort of deep within them. It can be caused by a lot of things. It can be caused by habits growing up, childhood trauma, there are things. ADHD is a big component.

If you know the amount of people in society who suffer from ADHD, it’s about 6%. And then the number of people that suffer from slowish cognitive tempo is about 15%. That lines up perfectly with what I see among executives, which is about one out of five suffers from something that looks like ADHD, making it harder to form habits and routines.

Pete Mockaitis
Fifteen percent slow cognitive tempo.

Rob Monson
Sluggish cognitive tempo, yeah. Dr. Russell Barkley, I believe, has talked about that. That’s someone that’s a very interesting ADHD expert. I’m someone who suffered from ADHD myself. I have very good medication at this point, and that’s helped me develop habit and routine successfully, whereas without the medication, I could not do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s define a sluggish cognitive tempo. Does that just mean I’m thinking slow?

Rob Monson
It usually just means that, you know, between the ADHD receptors, right, we’re not getting quite as much of a chemical reaction that we need to. I think it’s dopamine and norepinephrine, right, or something in those neighborhoods, the same neighborhood. You’re not getting enough that you need out of those two to be able to be as effective as you need to.

So, it becomes an executive function issue, meaning we’re not able to consistently make decisions and listen appropriately in such a way where it translates into us being able to either absorb new habit or routine, or be able to prioritize and manage our work effectively so we get through things, we accomplish things we need to, and we excel, learn new patterns as we go.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. And so then, it sounds like, sometimes you find yourself in that boat, it may just be a biological matter, something in the realm of medication, in the realm of nutrition, exercise, or kind of outside of what happens inside the office.

Rob Monson
Yes. So, to your point, those situations are very difficult to deal with. Those who are successful can, basically, with a little bit of coaching, even though they might not have had in the past, to say, “Hey, let’s really focus on blocking your time out now more effectively so you have time to be able to spend focused on your priorities. Let’s make sure that you are spending way less time in email on a daily basis, that you’re only checking it three times a day, over Slack,” for instance, right?

“Let’s take those distractions that maybe you’d walk down the hall to be able to go talk to someone and let’s get those knocked out of the way in a daily huddle.” We haven’t talked about that yet, but in a daily huddle, we usually put our executives and all of our teams in a daily huddle where they can knock out things that don’t distract them later in the day.

And if you can do those things successfully, what we find is, and about 30% of leaders will be able to do that, so probably low for a lot of people, but that’s the reality is you can get about 30% will be able to develop new habits and routines, they will be able to be successful in their role.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s talk about a few of the particular habits with regard to time blocking, and the process by which you identify, “Hey, what is the high-value thing? And how do I think about where the best place is to block that time?” Maybe just walk us through a couple examples of folks putting this into action specifically in their roles.

Rob Monson
Sure. So, the most successful way that it starts, by the way, is at a higher level than maybe all of us start with as even leaders or even doers in an organization. It starts with the leadership team coming up with a set of priorities. And once those set of company priorities are known, then we can actually tie our priorities back to the company priorities.

And can they always tie back? No. But in most cases, everyone can usually tie their priorities back to something that’s a key priority for the organization. That’s step number one, “Is what I’m working on tied into the most important things the organization has deemed worthy or important to work on?” That’s number one, “And do I have a handful of things tied to that?”

Then, usually, the KPIs or the measurements that I own are also tied to those priorities as well. Not always, but most of the time. So, it’s, “Am I devoting a portion of my week to making sure that I accomplish those priorities and the tasks related to them, rather than getting distracted by something that comes up like an emergency?”

Because the job isn’t to do the job, by the way. The job is to do the job better. And that’s where most people fall off into non-A-player land.

Pete Mockaitis
Expand on this notion the job is not to do the job?

Rob Monson
In a scaling company, we want A-players. And what I mean by that is we want to grow the A-player percentage inside the organization. And the percent of A-players is something that each leader is measured on. And again, that’s the person that lives core values, that’s KPI-driven goal. And what we want, and we pay for this as well, we’d rather have one great person than three average people. We’ll pay that one great person two times their average salary and still win.

And when we do that, what we expect out of that role is they will not just come in and sit in the seat and do the job. It’s they will actually excel with the job. They will be better than the role. They will wipe out portions of the role that are inefficient and ineffective. And these are things that are very clearly set as expectations up in the hiring process.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well, could you walk us through a story of an individual who wasn’t doing the things, then turned around and started doing exactly that?

Rob Monson
Yes, so I had a member of a leadership team, and this is someone who, you know, had struggled previously before I became the coach of the organization, had struggled by getting distracted by the wrong things. With her, it was, “Hey, we’re going to be focused on things that are emergencies or things that are popping up throughout the day.” And this person was not doing what they needed to do to actually systematically work through, “How do I make sure this emergency never happens again?”

And what that meant was they, and because they weren’t accomplishing their priorities, which were directly tied to being able to eliminate those emergencies that popped up consistently, they just kept running into the same issue again and again. Once this person adopted a time-blocking routine, and by the way, was she immediately better at all aspects of time blocking? No, she gradually worked up to it. She blocked out a day, a week, you know, a week and a half and up to two weeks as she did that.

And as she got, she was coached by myself and by the CEO to be able to let go of things that were not the most critical priorities and be able to stay focused on certain times of day to respond to her email, she became one of the most productive members of leadership team and is still in her role to this day excelling.

And she’s learning not only is she able to excel and sort of think past the role, which is where we need our A-players to be, she is becoming an expert at recognizing patterns. And that skill of pattern-recognition is something that is built up over time by focusing on the most critical things.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, so let’s get into some detail associated with the priority and the time-blocking, how it is done better. So, we already talked about getting the alignment associated with the organization’s priorities and getting your priorities and the key performance indicators that we’re responsible for and what are the activities that will move those forward. Are there any magical questions that you find are super handy to cut through the lesser important things and really highlight the magical things?

Rob Monson
So, what we see is that most people who are successful with prioritization, they learn to do something that we teach them, which is a priority, usually, it’s a longer-term project. It takes several weeks to accomplish.

We teach them a practice of breaking down that priority by week and putting in place one major milestone they have to accomplish related to that priority in a given week, by the Friday of every week, to be able to successfully complete a priority in the time that they’ve allotted themselves.

Now again, they’ve gone through a process of sort of aligning, “Hey, is this something that’s critical and tied into one of the company priorities? Is it tied into the department priorities that I’m a part of?” And then we go through a process again of laying it out and being able to say, “Hey, how do I get into measurable steps that I can go through and be able to be more effective at hitting on a consistent basis?”

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that. And it’s funny, I imagine, as you do that, then the emergencies become even more irksome to you, such that you’re like, “No, the mission of this week is this, and instead I’m dealing with that.” And that question you asked, “How could I make this never appear again?” feels all the more weight-y, substantial, and critical that, “No, no, I’ve entertained this little interruption, annoyance, urgent thing, dozens of times. And before, whatever, I was cool, I was patient, and friendly, and no more. No more. That comes to an end now.”

Rob Monson
Yes, they get out of what we call firefighter mode, which is, and we love real firefighters that respond to real fires, but the rest of us in our work cannot be firefighters. Those jobs are all going away. So, if you believe your job is to show up and put out the fire, or to respond to the same problem again and again and again, that job will one day be erased.

What I want to get into is a role of being able to say, “How do I make the job better? How do I get rid of things that are constant pains to me and the organization? How do I do that with my priorities? How do I make sure that I’m changing the outcome in my role?”

Pete Mockaitis
And can we hear some cool examples in practice how a particular recurring emergency fire kept showing up and how a person figured out how to prevent that from ever emerging again?

Rob Monson
So, a good example of someone being able to systematically sort of see past daily emergencies and be able to sort of put out the fire is someone who works at a manufacturing organization that I coached. And we hired, we do not have a history of hiring A-players in this organization. We did manage to hire A-players in the roles in our back shop, and we had a pretty high defect rate. The defect rate was something like 6%.

And what, literally, within the first couple of months, a couple of key A-players said, “Wait a minute, why are we making the same mistake again and again and again with how we are pulling product off the line? Why don’t we, in fact, change the process of how we’re doing that so that…” in this particular case, it’s a facade that we manufacture for buildings, “…so that it occurs in a different spot than it did previously?”

And this is something that no one had ever thought of. They just kept doing what they were doing, meaning they just sort of kept wallowing in it, “Hey, it was really painful. We have a defect rate,” and rework costs companies so much money we don’t even realize it. And this was creating a very unprofitable entity, by the way.

And once they realized that, and we had all the other A-players in that role, number one, those people were thrilled and happy because they didn’t feel like they were failing every day. Number two, that organization’s profit went up by 8,000% the following year.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, 8,000. Okay, there you go.

Rob Monson
It literally went up 8,000%. That’s the craziest thing. Yep, that might be one of the crazier stories of all time, but you get your defect rate low enough, and it can just be, that’s the stuff that’s shooting ourselves in the foot. Everyone thinks they’re going to grow because of demand or competition. It’s all just stopping you from shooting yourself in the foot.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this is bringing me back memories. I had a consulting project at one of the world’s largest cookie-manufacturing plants, and it’s wild, yes. Especially in a manufacturing world in which, if margins are slim and competition is fierce, and it often is, then, yes, a meaningful change of the defect rate is huge.

And it’s funny, now I’m thinking about there’s so many things that we just kind of accept or put up with as normal, how it is, and it takes sort of an extra level of acuity, awareness to say, “No, no, time out. That’s not acceptable.”

And so how do you develop a little bit of that wise sensibility to recognize, “Hmm, this is a reality of which, you know, humanity must deal with,” as opposed to, “No, that’s jacked up and we got to fix that pronto”?

Rob Monson
Right. So, you touched on something that’s very, very critical. By the way, there’s a great website called The Systems Thinker, which is very useful, and it talks about people that are more predisposed to linear thinking versus systems thinking. And systems-thinking people tend to be able to see patterns in things.

So, one of the key things that I will ask, when I start coaching an organization is, “What are some basic things that you’ve seen over the last several weeks or months that aren’t good that you would like to change?” It sounds really, really basic, but sometimes no one, and again, a lot of organizations are poorly managed, most are, and nobody asks sometimes.

Pete Mockaitis
“Well, last time, nothing happened. I was ignored. They bit my head off. I’m just going to keep quiet here.”

Rob Monson
Yeah, the number one thing we deal with are dysfunctional leadership teams, right? And that creates that lack of psychological safety. Or, you know, you might have a manager that’s below leadership team who still creates that lack of psychological safety, and people don’t feel comfortable doing that.

But, “Hey, it’s just, what would you change? If you could, what would you get rid of that wastes your time, right, that would actually help you have a more high-level job to be able to get you promoted in the future if you could spend more time on this?” Those are the basic things that help people realize annoying tasks that waste their time.

I ask every one of my leadership teams to say, “Tell me the top five things that waste your time.” And they write them down. And then I say, “Okay, how much of that could you automate, eliminate, delegate, or simplify?” Most will come back with half a day to a full day of time savings that they can re-deploy.

Pete Mockaitis
Per week? Per month?

Rob Monson
Per week.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Rob Monson
It is a per week savings in time when they go through that process. Because again, we just don’t proactively, in a lot of cases, or the organization hasn’t created psychological safety enough, to make it a practice to routinely think about, “How do you economize time spent on low level tasks?”

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. Could you give us a couple examples of, “Here’s a time waster we identified and how we busted it”?

Rob Monson
A couple of critical things. So, I have an example of a COO, for instance, who was struggling with time management, and I asked him to write down “What are the top five things that waste your time?” He did. And one of the most compelling things that came out of it was that none of the lists were very compelling at all. And I said, “How many of those could be delegated?” And guess what his response was?

Pete Mockaitis
All of them.

Rob Monson
All of them. Yep, every single one of them. And that’s usually kind of what you find out of that process is, you know, there are a lot of low-level tasks. It can be the time you spend polling reports where you can’t get to transactional data fast enough. It can be the time spent chasing the problems caused by your B & C players that are creating in the business, right?

People, because they have a fear of letting go, are holding onto the very low-level tasks, sometimes in very high leadership positions. So those are the kind of things that tend to hold people back in how do they use their time more effectively.

What I find in organizations, I’ll come in, and most people, I’ll tell you right off the bat, most people are at about 30% of what their true capacity is. And people say, “How is that possible? How is that humanly possible given how much I’m working?” One, we’re not focused on the right things. Two, we’re not focused on the process of automate, eliminate, delegate, simplify in how we look at work.

And, three, we’re not doing the time management things I was talking about earlier. So, when you get all those things going in an organization, you see that people have a completely different level of output and behavior, not just with themselves, but with each other if they’re an A-player.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, Rob, I’m curious, can you tell us any other key tips, tricks, do’s, don’ts that we haven’t covered yet?

Rob Monson
So, there are a couple of things that when we talk about habit and routine, and what we find is that, consistently, if people are not doing something daily or, at the minimum, weekly, it will not form into a consistent habit.

And so, what we want to do is, with one-on-one coaching, we try to get that into a weekly behavior, meaning you are in a one-on-one coaching session with your supervisor all the time, as much as possible. By the way, some of the worst times I’ve had in my career is when I did not have a consistent one-on-one with my supervisor.

And there’s a huge difference between organizations that will do consistent one-on-one coaching and those that will not. So, one of the things I encourage people to do is, if you’re not having a one-on-one with your supervisor weekly, I would ask for it, first and foremost. And I would get feedback on what I’m working on for two reasons. One, stay focused on the most critical things. Get aligned around that.

Two, “Behaviorally, are we both seeing the same thing? How are you growing? Where do you need help and support?” There’s a massive difference when people get both quality and quantity in coaching. And the organizations that do not do consistent one-on-one coaching, they’re always in my bottom three in terms of year-over-year results if they do not one-on-one coach on a weekly basis.

So, it’s like, “Hey, if you’re an organization that won’t coach you, that your boss keeps giving it up, you’ve probably got the wrong boss,” they’re saying, “Hey, I can’t get to your one-on-one this week because something else is distracting me,” I’d find another job.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, that has been my experience, that I have experienced way more learning growth development when I did have that regular recurring thing in conversation happening. And I like what you had to say about a habit. I’m reminded of, I’ve got fond memories in consulting with a teammate named Blair.

And whenever we were returning from the client trip, it was understood that he and I would be taking a cab together from the Chicago airport, Midway or O’Hare, back to the office. And folks would be like, “Oh, well, we can all get on the same cab.” And Blair would say, “No, Pete and I,” he’s from New Zealand, “Pete and I will be on this cab. We’re going to be chatting.” And so, I loved it because I felt like I was a priority for him, so I felt tremendous loyalty.

As well as it was a nice, we talk about habitual, it was a nice groove. It’s like, “Okay, this is a sensible time. We did a bunch of work at the client site. We’re now about to have more of a chill Friday with, whatever, filing expenses or whatever. And so now, while it’s fresh, we’ll talk about what we observed during the course of working at the client site week after week after week,” and it was gold.

Rob Monson
Yeah, absolutely. And what you find is that most people will say, “Well, I have no time,” or, “I have no time to coach.” And the real answer is you have no time because you will not coach. So, what we try to do is get people’s mindset around that.

And if anyone listening to this, if they’re in a coaching position, and if you’re in a manager role, that’s the job, unfortunately to some people. I mean, fortunately, for people that want to do it, that’s the job. But a lot of people will go, “Well, I don’t have time to manage my team.” Well, that’s the job.

Now you do get into these really unfortunate things like ratios when they’re managing more than, I mean, eight people is kind the maximum anyone can really coach effectively. Like, eight is a burn line. People get to 10. Weird things like insomnia and anxiety go through the roof in the leader. So those are the things you have to look out for.

You can appoint team leads or do other things to solve for that situation without, by the way, having to pay more in a lot of situations. It’s just, hey, give someone a coaching assignment. Remove the 10% of their week that was focused on those tasks that could be automated, eliminated, delegated, and simplified, and give somebody an assignment to coach their team member. That’s a great way for people to build their skills and capabilities over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, so that’s one critical key, weekly, behavioral, habit thing is these recurring one-on-one coaching bits. Any others that you would elevate to similar criticality?

Rob Monson
So, you heard me talk about a daily huddle. And this is something so you might have heard of Vern Harnish who wrote the book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up. I was part of an organization that had a daily huddle several years ago, and we grew and scale like wildfire. And a couple of things I never heard because of that daily huddle were, “Hey, no one’s ever told me about that,” or, “Hey, we don’t know where someone is on this particular project or priority.” We were always on top of those critical things.

So, we get everyone into a daily huddle where they’re there for five minutes a day with their team members. There’s usually a minute per person on the team. It might go a little bit longer than five minutes if it’s a bigger team, right, 10-people team, 10 minutes. But, “Hey, what are we focused on the next 24 hours? Where are we stuck? Where am I with my KPIs? And what do I need to do to get them back to green if they’re not?” And that’s basically it.

Pete Mockaitis
And one thing I love about that is just the basic accountability. There’s no hiding out when that is occurring. It’s like, “Oh, Rob, it seems like you’re not doing much. Well, lucky us, we have some resource available to give you some stuff.”

Rob Monson
Yeah, and you get the non-A player responses at first in organizations which are, “Well, that might be like micromanagement.” No, we’re just going to manage the company. Most people don’t even run their companies effectively. We’re just going to have basic alignment every day. It’s going to take a couple minutes. It’s going to free you up throughout the rest of your day.

And the one thing that really changes you, and this is what’s really silly when people fight putting in place a daily huddle. At the end of the day, the five minutes of prep that you take for that particular meeting is what changes you. And again, it’s part of that habit routine we talked about earlier. It’s, “I know what I’m supposed to focus on today. I know where I’m ahead and where I’m behind. I know where I need help.”

That little thing, fundamentally, allows us to put all the other systems and tools we put in place to grow organizations. And people will fight it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly. Yeah, you’ve got that perspective. It’s like, “Oh, I said yesterday I was working on this thing, but I’m about to end my work day with very little progress on that thing. And so, I’m going to have to fess up to that tomorrow. That sounds very unpleasant. Maybe I’m going to kick it into gear here.”

Rob Monson
It’s a little bit uncomfortable. And I remember back in the day, I worked at a company called Compass in Florida, and we help big universities take degree programs online, and Dan Devine was our CEO, and it was a little bit uncomfortable. And Dan was a super nice human being, by the way. But it was professional. You walked into the meeting and you were ready to go. And, by the way, being ready to go and being professional are not bad traits to be able to grow your behaviors, capabilities, how you treat other people on a daily basis.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on. Well, Rob, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Rob Monson
One of the things I’d like to say about pattern recognition, just very, very quickly, is that that is a skill that not everyone has.

Our A-players tend to have it, meaning 25% of the population will tend to have it. It can be developed over time and you have to be able to ask yourself some really key questions, which are, “Hey, what are the effects on the ecosystem around me? Have I seen this before? Have I seen anything remotely like it in my past that I can compare what I’m looking at right now to?”

Those are things that we don’t do that often in business, but those are kind of some of the key questions we have to ask ourselves to try to get more into systems thinking or pattern-recognition mode over time. And so, people can get better at those areas, but it can be a struggle if we’re more of, “Hey, this straight line gets me from point A to point B and it’s hard to think outside of that.”

There can be some great linear A-players though, to be very, very clear. I’ve worked with people like that in the past and they were amazing at keeping someone like me in the right spot when I needed it. And so, you can get some very, very highly effective A-players that are linear thinkers. They might not be as abstract as everybody else and they’re not dumb. They just think differently than the rest of us. They’re very precise in how they think about their day, their week, their month. And they don’t deviate from that too much. That’s fine.

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

Rob Monson
“Plan your work and work your plan.” And I believe my boss, Suzanne, back in the day at Compass, heard that from Johnson & Johnson. That’s one of my favorite quotes of all time because, really, that’s the essence of how to do successful work is, “I plan what I’m going to do and I fight toward it, and I get better at prediction.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Rob Monson
So one of my favorite studies is the research that Bradford Smart did, Brad Smart did, back when he created the hiring process for GE, back when GE was GE, and that’s what we refer to as “Topgrading.” There’s probably a better name for that in the modern era, but that’s the same process that Geoff Smart, basically, shows us in the book Who.

But the research behind that was very accurate. And what it says is that 25% of the organization will be A-players, meaning, again, those people that live the core values, hit KPI-driven goal, 50% will be Bs and 25% will be Cs. And the crazy thing about that, when you actually tie in everything else that we talked about today, is that you could have 25% of your organization walk out the door tomorrow that were C-players and your happiness and productivity would actually go up.

I have a client that I’ve worked with recently, actually started them several months ago, and they’ve done a great job. This is going to be a very well-known nationwide brand in the very near future. And they realized very quickly, the CEO realized they had people that were not living the core values and were not productive in their midst, and they quickly changed that outcome. They did try to coach up, that didn’t work, so they quickly removed those who would not elevate.

And guess what? Everyone’s happiness has gone up dramatically, the organization is now going towards its goal tiers. Here’s the number one thing. The A-players have not left. And that’s what we want more of.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Rob Monson
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Pat Lencioni. And I have every leadership team member read that, and I wish I would have read it even sooner than I did. I read it several years ago, but wish I’d read it even earlier than that. It would have really helped me understand what my role is on a leadership team.

And that is you are on the leadership team first. You’re not the head of marketing. You’re not the head of sales. You’re not the head of operations first. That’s where we get into the most trouble as leaders is you think you’re the head of the other team first and you come to the table as their advocate and not coach them through obstacles. That’s where you get into the biggest challenges.

Pete Mockaitis
Pat was on the show. He was awesome. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Rob Monson
There’s a great toolset that I’ve used consistently lately, which is an assessment of ironclad emotional control in leaders. And one of the key behavioral characteristics we find in Sam Walker’s book, The Captain’s Class, is that leaders on sort of dynasty, very successful sports teams had some very similar characteristics. And one of them was ironclad emotional control.

And what we do is I give them a really quick 12-question assessment to see where they are with their own Iron cloud emotional control. And that’s created, not only in myself, but in my team, some of the greatest improvements in self-awareness that you’ll see as leaders. So, that’s definitely been a favorite. Multipliers assessment is also a favorite tool, by the way, if we’re talking about team members. And if anyone’s talked about it in the past, Liz Wiseman Multipliers is a great tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, she was on the show.

Rob Monson
Liz Wiseman, the multiplier assessment, there are some quirks with it. There are some questions that I would word completely differently, but it is the fastest dose of self-awareness that you’ll put a leader through. And it’s pretty cool when they realize that, “How much did a previous leader multiply out of me? And how much did one that was diminishing get out of me?”

And if they realize they want to be like the one that multiplied more out of them, it’s a pretty fast change for those that are willing to do it

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Rob Monson
My favorite habit is I get up. I look at everything I have to do that day and I say, “What is the one thing I’m doing tied into my top three priorities for this quarter?” And make sure that I have time, energy and effort focused on those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they’re retweeting and commenting up a storm on TikTok, etc.?

Rob Monson
Yeah. So, yes, there are. Yes, there are some things that resonate. And sometimes, again, it’s that things resonate because they defy conventional wisdom. And one of the things that defies conventional wisdom is to be able to remove your C-players immediately. So, for eight years, in dealing with 35-plus, almost 40 CEOs, I have not, in eight years, ever heard the phrase, “I should have held onto that C-player longer.”

And what that means is, we usually, so mid-market CEO problem is way different, by the way. I mostly deal with mid-market CEOs, way different than the big bad CEO problem that a lot of us, we might have our impression of in our mind. We have a lot of really, really, well-intended mid-market CEOs that are members of EO, YPO.

By the way, great tip for your audience, if you want to find organizations that want to find A-players, look for organizations that are in your local EO or YPO chapter, the CEOs are in that. Those who are in peer learning groups are usually way more self-aware and open to A-player hiring, paying more for the right person in the right role than others that will not.

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

Rob Monson
One, they can follow me on TikTok, @robmonson12. Two, they can find me on TenfoldAdvisors.com. That’s my website as well. So, if they’re interested in learning anything more about what I do, that’s where they would go.

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

Rob Monson
The one challenge I would leave everybody with is the email challenge, which is find a way to get yourself out of email or Slack. Really try to set a habit and routine. That’s the fastest and easiest one. It’s, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to respond. I’m going to get in here three times a day rather than have the dopamine hit of doing it all day long,” so that you can spend more time focusing on more critical things.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Rob, thank you.

Rob Monson
Thank you. I appreciate the time and getting to know you, and hope that was helpful.