BNI 921: Great Culture But Not Great Results

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Welcome back to B&I in the power of one and join me again today. Back with more leadership questions in particular right now as we are in that season of changing over leadership teams. Which is an important time of year for chapters around the world. Because ultimately, the leadership is what really will be in position to dictate how successful the chapter is over the next 12 months. That team is going to make decisions that will help your chapter take steps forward or backwards and everything's a decision. Whether to do a visitor day or not to do a visitor day is a decision all of that and we're going to talk a lot more about that stuff. Last week, we started hitting on around accountability, great question around how do I hold my members accountable when their clients and stuff. And today's is very, very similar. And so it's read the questions. As I originally wrote a long email full of regional drama and acquisition details then Jatchy BT talking out of dumping all of that on you. Look at Jatchy BT making things my efficient. But and I read that line only because listen, you can send whatever you want to send it. And if it's too much, I'll cut it out. But I do want this podcast to continue to be a members podcast and members driven podcast is a million things I want to talk about. And sometimes I do, but I did that for many years and that's kind of I don't know if it was as effective and way more. Or a lot more for better English boring for me. So send whatever you want. There's been a couple of times people have sent stuff and I'm like I ain't touching that one with a 50 foot pull. Sometimes that could happen, but those are rare at best. All right. Says turns out that underneath it's really a leadership question for context our chapter has a fantastic culture and generally cares about one another. The challenges that our results don't reflect the quality of people in the room. So I spent this year serving as VP I find myself wondering whether some of the things I value most about our chapter or also the things I've been reluctant to challenge. Our chapter has great relationships and a strong culture about our visitor conversion and referral activity are significantly below where they should be. We added some members during my term, but we're still a couple of members smaller than when we started or when I started. We're being encouraged toward more structure accountability standardization, which may be exactly what we need. But as a volunteer leader, I'm wrestling with the fact that people I'm challenging are also friends referral partners and some current and some potential clients. We're known as a fun chapter with a lot of personality and flavor. How do you know when you're preserving something valuable versus protecting the status quo and how much relation capital should a leader be willing to spend in pursuit of better results. I thought it might be an interesting powerful discussion and and it is so I really appreciate it. I think this piggybacks of some of what we were talking about last week around accountability and that again accountability is something we do for somebody not to them and around culture. So the first question you have to ask in this I think last week I talked about how do we have that conversation which is why I wanted to have this this one. This is the next step is really how do we bring all of this up to the chapter in order to start making the changes we need to make. But not in a threatening way that will turn people off and not in a way that you should really worry about hurting any of your relationships at all in the chapter never mind whether they're a friend or a referral partner or whatever. And by the way I'll start with the friend piece if you're really your friends you should be okay having a difficult conversation with each other plenty of friends of mine. Who are being I members were being I members what have you that I've definitely had very direct and honest conversations with out of a place of caring. Like you're in this organization I want you to succeed you want to succeed you're telling me you want to succeed but you're not doing the things you know you need to do to succeed and all you're giving me is a bunch of excuses so you so you can have that right conversation. All right the first question in this scenario that I would ask as a as a leadership team is everybody to define the culture so this is where you could take a meeting and don't do a featured presentation don't do an educational moment take that time have some meeting time and it's okay visitors there I wouldn't be like no visitors next week we have to have a. On this conversation if you're uncomfortable with this is fine but I don't think it's going to hurt a visitor conversion. But ask everybody to define the culture write it down you know if you could define our culture in one sentence or a few words or less what would you how would you define it my bet is you're going to hear a lot of what you said which is because you've repeated it what a couple of times in this that you say we have a strong culture. We are known as the fun chapter with a lot of personality and flavor our chapter has a fantastic culture and I think somewhere else you talked about fun. It's hard to define a culture is fantastic without first defining what you want it to be so I'd start there I'd start with what is our culture and I bet you're going to hear the word fun or what. We're fun we're enthusiastic we got a lot of personality we love each other we really care about one another we're friends that's what I would imagine I could be a hero but that's what I would imagine you hear a lot of. I would then ask please write down in one or two words why did you join the chapter. Not why did you join this particular chapter verse another but why did you join B and I. And you're going to get words like make money referrals that kind of stuff. What you're likely to see is a little bit of a mismatch of why people joined and what your culture is focused on. And I would have that conversation say you know we are a fun chapter we love each other we have great characters in the room but if we're being real and honest with each other we're not really producing to the level that we should be producing. And could be producing for the results you actually joined for and we know that by the fact that you're you're losing members faster than you're getting them. And you like a why is that well because nobody nobody's going to join your chapter to have fun they have enough fun in the life that's not the driving factor for them to join and oftentimes when we're a lot of fun and we have a lot of personality and we have a lot of flavor what we actually are doing is we're actually turning away visitors. And it's not because like they don't want to have fun but sometimes that fun line and I don't know your chapters I'm just saying this in generalities but sometimes the fun chapters can make you feel really uncomfortable as an outsider. And the second of visitor feels like an outsider that's what they're going to remain so sometimes the focus on fun and stuff has an adverse effect to growing the network and when the network is shrinking my opportunities are shrinking and I'm going to feel that because my referral numbers are going to start shrinking and when my referral numbers are just starting shrinking I'm leaving to and I'm going to tell you I love you all this is so much fun you guys are great but I got and they'll give an excuse. So you have to have a conversation about why did we join what do we want to be and then how do we get there right what do we really want to be as a chapter we don't need to lose the fun your chapter can have a lot of fun but it can't be the focus of the group. Trust me the chapters that are making 25 million 20 million you know 10 million multi million dollars a year with each other are having a ton of fun they're having a ton of fun but fun wasn't in the equation when talked about their culture. You know if you go to a 100 member chapter you asking about their culture I don't think fun is the first word you're going to hear are they having fun of course there that's an end result of doing everything else well. So I would start there I would start collectively again what do we want to be this year where do we want to go what's our goal. And then you backtrack into say okay if our goal is to do more than what we've done. What do we need to change? What are the things that we need to focus on? And now you're having a collective conversation. This is how, no matter where your chapter is, this is how I would do it as a leadership team. It is not, hey, we're coming in and dictating to you out of the gate, this is the way it's going to be, because you will get pushback. It needs to be a collective conversation. What do we want to accomplish? You know, you can present as a leadership team we met and we think these are our goals. What do you think of these goals? Get everybody's buy-in, okay? This is going to require us to do something different. Here is some of the things, what are the things that we need to do different and get people to say? They'll talk about, we need to add more people. We need to increase our activity. We need to be more accountable to each other. We need to do these kind of things. And then you should add stuff in there that you discuss as a leadership team. Maybe it's, we need to increase our skill sets. We need to be very careful about how we're presenting our chapter each and every week when people do visit to join, right? And so you can highlight like, hey, you know, we have a lot of fun with each other but everybody's coming in from the outside, doesn't know the inside jokes. They don't know, you know, they will perceive the goofy part of it. I'm just, you know, the things that we think are fun might not be perceived as fun to an outsider. So maybe we need to look at, you know, how we're handling certain situations, how we're not. What are the non-negotiables? We can't lose that we don't want to change about it. So that we want to, you know, we want to keep but we might need to, you know, either amplify or whatever. Get everybody's buy-in to that. And then you say, okay, we want to go here. We hear, we're all saying these things. So it's on us as a leadership team now to be focused and hold each other accountable to these things, whether that's, and you should be breaking down the metrics from your attendance percentage to your power of one scores, to your, you know, inviting numbers, to your conversion numbers, like have a subset goal for each of these. And then now everybody's on the same page. So when you have to have that first uncomfortable conversation around accountability, you can say, hey, listen, you know, we all talked, you were a part of it. We all said this is what we need to do. You're slipping behind a little bit. We're here to help you. How do we help you get back on track? And, you know, know that we love you. We want nothing more than for you to be super successful but in order for you to be successful and for the team to be successful, again, these are the expectations. Do you think you can meet them? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I've been bad. I'm gonna get back. Okay, we're just gonna follow this up with an email so that we all remember and we're good to go. And then when she doesn't, now it's ASU. We talked to you already, we're still behind. How can we help you get on track, right? And then eventually you're coaching them out or you'll have to let them go if they're just absolutely reluctant to do it. The chapters again, they make the mistake come in with a hammer and they go, this is the way it's going to be. This is what you need to do to be a part of this team. If you don't do these things, this is what's gonna happen to you. Are you all on board? Okay, good. And then they start moving and then somebody doesn't do it and they go, boom, we told you you didn't do this or you're out and now you're going to have a revolt. And you have a culture of fear. That's not accountability. That's fear and people do not want to be a part of that either. The acronym, and maybe I'll do a podcast on this, but the acronym that we're talking about in our chapter, success trainings right now, is people want to be a part of a safe chapter. And safe stands for first and foremost supportive. I want to be a part of a group that I believe is supportive of me and wants me to succeed, cares about me, cares about my success and is paying attention to me. I want to be a part of a group that's accountable. That is a culture of accountability. Because again, I join for the results. And I need to be held accountable to get those results and I need you to hold the other members accountable because if you don't, that affects my results. And I want that leadership team that's running my chapter to be accountable to me and the rest of us to follow the program to do those things. I want to be a part of a group that's focused, that has goals, that knows where it's going and it has a strategy to get there. I don't want to be a part of a willy-nilly, whatever we'll see what happens, who cares, type of group. Again, I'm investing time. I'm investing money into this experience. I want results. I need to be a part of a group that's focused on results. And then I need to be a part of a group that's actually effective, that actually works. And when you have a culture of fun versus accountability, it ain't gonna work. It's just not gonna work. It'll work for some. The ones in a good, well-developed context here, but it's not gonna work for everybody. And I think in this example, again, I go back to, yeah, we've added a few new members, but we're smaller than when I started. That means they ain't working. It's just not working to the level that you guys want it to. And maybe, again, I don't know your chapter, but maybe the fun stuff became the priority. And that's what we need to change. And again, it's not on you, just like in the other one. It's not on anyone individual to implement that. It's a team thing. And by team, I mean, everybody in the group should be a part of that discussion. And then the leadership team as a whole needs to follow what the group said and implement that accountability and hold everybody accountable to it for the success of everybody. Nobody joined B&I to have more fun. They're not coming in saying, "Man, thank God I found you. I am just not having enough fun in my life." They didn't join 'cause they didn't have enough friends. And they didn't join 'cause they just had too much free time. The chapters that start acting and prioritizing those things first are the ones that are doomed for failure over time. You wanna have a ton of fun? Make a ton of money with each other. You know what I mean? Get this so that everybody's coming to B&I fired up 'cause they know this group is building their business beyond even what maybe they thought possible. Trust me, you're gonna have a ton of fun. So yeah, hopefully that helps. Hopefully that gives you some things to think about, especially if you're in a leadership team role or you're about to be in a leadership team role. Have the open honest conversation. Get everybody's buy-in to where we wanna go and what it takes and then you can hold them accountable to it 'cause they were part of the discussion. Don't come in and just be like, "We've decided that this is the way it's going to be and you're gonna get on board or off real fast." Because more of them will get off board and probably real fast. And that's not gonna help you or any of them either. So as always, if you've got follow-up questions to this, comments anything, go to B&I-Power1.com. You can leave it on the podcast, Spotify, Apple Podcast, however, help us, help more people, share the show and appreciate you all. Have a great day. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)