Speaker 1: Hey Chandler Bolt here and in this video I want to talk about how to get everyone in your company aligned on what they should be doing and where you're going as a company. And really this is my seven keys to company and team alignment. So as your company grows and scales and builds in complexity, you can find that it's hard to get everyone rowing in the same direction. And just like if you've ever been kayaking or rafting or things like that, if you got almost everyone rowing in the right direction and then one person is rowing in the wrong direction, it can just totally mess up the flow and the speed and the direction and the precision of that watercraft, right? You've heard this and this is one of my favorite sayings as a college football coach. He says, row the boat. And so it's all about getting people rowing in the same direction. And when we do as a group collectively, we go faster. But as you grow and as you increase in size and people, there's complexity because when it starts, you know, there's you and another person or maybe just you. Well, then there's no communication problems. There's no clarity problems. You know what you need to work on. But then as you build that and build that, the complexity actually multiplies because, you know, four times four versus one person. Well, now there's 16 different ways that communication can go throughout the company. So that's why I want to talk to you about my seven keys to company and team alignment. Number one is an org chart. Now, this is kind of the fundamental thing. You've probably heard of this. We call this at self-publishing school, we call this an accountability chart. Now, I've got a separate video all about how to create an org chart at your company. But this is super important because an org chart shows who is responsible for what, both from a title perspective, from a role perspective, from a KPI perspective, and kind of at a glance, you can say, oh, okay, we've got the product team here. We've got the marketing team here. We've got the sales team. We've got finance. We've got, you know, the CEO, we've got an assistant. We, you know, it's like, this is how all these moving parts fit together. And it's a visual representation of that. And that leads me to number two, which is job scorecards. So job scorecards, I've also got another video on that. So you can check out my video on how to create a job scorecard. I think this is just fundamentally important and something that you should do before you hire every position. You should refresh for every position. But a job scorecard is exactly what it sounds. It's the scorecard or the scoreboard for each role. So there's a mission and purpose of the role. There's qualities that this person needs to have, or core competencies. There's the native genius. There's kind of the one month and three month rocks that this person needs to go after. And really, it just helps bring kind of the org chart down per person. So now me as a person, an individual performer on this team, I know what I'm doing to contribute to the whole, but then also anyone could review my job scorecard and say, Oh, I got it. Okay. So Chandler does this. I do this. The other person does that. And so it just helps really align and help create a lot of clarity per person and for the team as a whole. Number three, KPIs are key performance indicators. Now key performance indicators. These are leading numbers. These are controllables as we would call it. I've got a video all about how to create KPIs. So key performance indicators per role. And obviously this should be as part of the job scorecard, but also in really what makes this a little bit separate is that there's a scoreboard per person. So every person always knows whether they're winning, whether they're losing. Did they have a green day, a red day, green week, red week? Did they have a green month, red month? Like it really brings the rubber to the road. And then this is a reporting rhythm to help hold people accountable. Number four is clear goals and objectives. And this is with everyone having an owner and it relates to everyone on the team. And that both of those pieces are super important. And so what we do, kind of how we facilitate this process, I'm a big fan of scaling up and traction. Those are kind of my two business Bibles, but in scaling up, they have this process called the one page strategic plan. If you're a smaller company, it's the vision summary, but we use the one page strategic plan process. It's very simple. And it's really, what are the key thrusts or initiatives for this year? Three to five. What are the key initiatives for this quarter? Three to five. And what are the rocks for this month? Three to five with an owner. And then as you build and as you grow, you might have rocks per team. And, but the most important thing is that every rock or key initiative or key thrust or whatever you want to call it, everyone has an owner. So whether this is line items on a P and L, so profit and loss statement or clear goals and objectives through the one page strategic plan, each goal or objective should only have one owner. Now there's a difference between accountable and responsible. Get another video on that. Definitely recommend checking that out. So if you're accountable, you have the ability to count and scream loudly if it's not working or if it is working. And so there's only one person accountable for each rock or goal, even though there might be multiple people responsible. So that's super important. That just helps align everyone. So now we know, Hey, here's our 10 year goal. Here's our three year goal. Here's our one year. Here's our quarter. Here's our rock for the month. And everyone's aligned. And most importantly, they can relate it to what they do day in, day out. Number five is meeting rhythms. So meeting rhythms that drive accountability and that leave room for issue solving. And both of those things are super important. So I've got another video all about how to run great meetings, you know, kind of the different meetings that we have, how we structure them, how we run them, all those things. You can check out that video for kind of in-depth process, but your meeting rhythm, it should drive accountability. So there's numbers reporting people know, Hey, I'm winning or losing. And then we, as a team are winning and losing. There's a purpose or KPI for the meeting. So if it's a sales meeting, you know, the KPI might be revenue. If it's a fulfillment meeting, the KPI might be student results or NPS or net promoter score, but there's a focus for the meeting. There's accountability for everyone on that meeting. And there's a ton of space for issues solving because if, if your team can't bubble up issues and then try to, or get next steps on solving those issues at least weekly, well, now all of a sudden that leads to lack of alignment, lack of buy-in because it's like, Oh man, we just keep doing the same things. I'm running into these same issues. And so there really needs to be room to bring up the true issues. You know, this is not a window dressing. This is actual issues. And then have discussion around those have, have conflict and then make decisions and improve things in that time of issue solving. Number six, align incentives. This is so important as I've grown. And as we've scaled at self-publishing school, I've really started to realize like the power of aligning incentives. And really what that means is when the team wins, you win. And then how do you do that for every single person on the team? And this is where honestly it gets kind of complicated. And I like to keep things simple, but it needs to just be, Hey, the compensation structures for every person on the team, when the team wins, they win. And so you don't want it to be like, Oh, we're competing for revenue or competing for this number or, Oh, that, that revenue is attributed to me, not you. Because now all of a sudden there's lack of alignment. There's lack of teamwork. We're not rowing in the same direction. We're too focused about who's getting credit for what and not the team winning. So I really, I mean, this could, this really could be a whole nother video, but just diving into, I'd encourage you to do this is stop and take a look at what is your compensation structures look like and how do you align incentives? One of the ways I do that self-publishing school, we have the profit share. So it's, everyone is aligned on the most important number in the business, which is profitability. And when the company is profitable, they win right. Individually and team-wide. Number seven, a vision for a brighter tomorrow. So along the journey, there's going to be bumps. There's going to be roadblocks. There's going to be tough times. And this is a kind of a missing component. I think in a lot of places, and it's kind of intuitive for me, at least it is now, it wasn't, it hasn't always been that way, but always looking towards what's next. And I think as a leader and as a manager, and if you have a team, it's important to always have a vision for brighter, better tomorrow. Always be thinking about, Hey, here's where we can improve. And you're painting that picture of like, we're going to do things that have never been done before. We're going to make things better. And I, you know, one of my favorite antidotes is that, you know, when you're driving in a car, there's a reason the windshield is huge and the rearview mirror is small. And that's because it's always about what's next, right? We're not made to, as human beings, look in the rearview mirror. If we spend too much time doing that, we're looking at the past and you can't change the past. But if instead we use this huge windshield that's right in front of us, we're always looking towards what's next. So I think as a leader, it's super important that we're always conditioning that with our teams is it's always about what's next. You know, maybe you've heard the sayings of asking MJ or some of the greats in any sport and you ask them what's their favorite championship that they've won. And they say the next one, right? Because it's always about what's next. And so it's super important that you create a vision for a brighter tomorrow so that it's a vision worth living for. Because, you know, a lot of times it's like, man, I might not see the end of this. Like we're in a really tough time right now. And you might've nailed the org chart. You might've nailed the KPIs. You might've nailed all the things that, and, and, you know, we're in business as usual, but I don't see a brighter tomorrow. And if I don't see a brighter tomorrow, then I'm not going to stick around for that. I'm going to leave. And so you got to have a vision for a brighter tomorrow. All right. So there you have it. Those are my seven keys to company alignment and to team alignment. I'd love to hear from you. Which of these seven is your most important or was the biggest takeaway for you, or maybe which, which is one of these seven that you need to work on in your company, with your team or in your business? Comment below right now. Let me know. I'd love to hear your thoughts, takeaways, things like that. So seriously, take a couple minutes right now, comment below this video. Let me know what you thought. As always, click the like button on this video and also click the subscribe button. So subscribe to this channel, to this podcast, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Talk soon.