Stop Going Backwards: How to Build a Plan that Actually Moves Your Business Forward

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It's the black hole. Took intentionally painted the inside black because if you focus on the results, you're not gonna get jack.

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[00:26] Ryan Hodges:You can't drive a car forward. Only look in the rear view mirror. You know what? No. I'm not gonna say that.

I don't wanna get I don't wanna get sued.

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[00:38] Ryan Hodges:Alright. For today, what'd you think about my topic?

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Like, what what happened in the last couple weeks?

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[01:22] Daniel Steere:Okay.

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So there's this rock about how to who's on the bus and who's off the bus. And so part of that was, you know, assessing, you know, old core values to new core values. K. No big deal. Part of that was redefining the accountability chart, and, you know, we work in pods.

So what is you know, what are the pods, and what are the roles look like? And then, you know, what are the current roles, and do they map in? And and some of it was just, you know, this person was hired for this role. We've decided that role is no longer there. And can they adapt to one of the other roles, or do they not want it?

So it wasn't just, you know, culture fit, non culture fit. It was also skill set changing dynamic mindset, etcetera. What had happened is this one individual had did all of the analysis, went backwards through the wheel appropriately, started with what's the rock. Okay. What are the results we currently have?

Who are the people? What is, you know, the the the accountability chart look like and need to be? Okay. Where we where what's the idea of what we need to do? The problem is we kept going backwards through the wheel as opposed to about face and going forwards.

And what it came down to is the HR team was just ready to hire people. And finance was like, what what are we what are we doing? And and the guy that did The Rock, he was the head of the department, and he was like, I I I'm stuck. I can't make traction on this, but everybody wants this rock done. It's an important rock.

It's one of the most important organizations. You know, why are we not you know, I I need I need I need to make moves. And what it came down to is is he did his part, and I think this is goes into, like, defining, you know, what is the goal. The goal would be for him to do the analysis and to do, like, the the things of the moves. The problem was is it wasn't his job to solve the forward movement because that came down to HR, defining the job specs, what's the cost, finance.

You know, what's the and and even some of this was just experience the team had never done before, but it was Okay. You know what? Okay. If we're gonna if we're gonna terminate this one individual because they're no longer a fit, they're a good person. It's not like we're firing for cause.

It's just it's just not working in the direction we're going. So we should probably, you know, give them some level of severance, or we should give them a 30 to 60 day notice. You know? It's like but none of that was thought through in the the you know, to present the finance. So then when it came to me to make an approval, I'm like, guys, I don't know.

So then they go to the the CEO, and and he's like, why the hell I don't like, what's this gonna cost? What's this? And, you know, then you get, like, CEOs pissed off that, like, where's the plan? This doesn't make sense. No.

No. No. No. And the guy that started the rock is like, I did all the work, guys. Like, what?

Like, he says no. He says no. You guys are pissed off. I'm pissed off. I did all this work, and we're still in the same boat 90 days later.

It was like,

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[04:40] Ryan Hodges:ding ding ding. Okay. So you went from vision to results to to culture to journey to vision, and then everybody went to result. We wanted the result out of the analysis of the rock as opposed to going, okay. And and this was a little bit of lesson learned.

The rock should have been just the analysis. Another rock should have been or milestone. Right? Again, however you wanna slice and dice it. It what I'd sent us to the problem is is we got back to vision, and instead of stopping and going, okay.

Now that we know what we we envision and we know the end result of the vision, how do we about face and what's the journey? Who do we need to execute it, and what's the KPIs to to do this? Because, like, I need to know if we're gonna double the team. If we're gonna go from 20 to 40 and then let 20 people go, there's a block of time. We're gonna have 40 people on payroll.

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[05:29] Ryan Hodges:And I was like, what's the cost of that? You know, what's Right. The onboarding journey? You know, how are we gonna make sure these people like, we don't wanna we don't wanna hire people and instantly put them on client accounts. We can't

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[05:44] Ryan Hodges:We can't do that. Like, there's a training window. There's a ramp up. What's it gonna take? How many applicants do we have in the pipeline?

Do we have the job specs done? You know, there's all these questions, and and the leadership team was frustrated that we weren't getting the result. It's like, well, yeah, you just kept going backwards the wheel as opposed to about facing going forward. After coming to the conclusion of what it was, then it came down to use Agile Scrum. It was, okay, here's the project charter.

Here's the 8 user stories to achieve this direction that is multifaceted. Okay. A lot. Let's go. And and, again, after after, you know, 45 days of beating our head against the wall of not getting traction, it was, we just forgot to stop at vision, turn around, and let's figure out the journey to do this.

Figure out the culture component, figure out the results so that we can deliver on the vision of the original rock. And that has stalled the company. It has cost more money in the stall than it would have to execute the project and put us, I would say, 90 days behind schedule. But the reality is it's been a problem for about 6 to 8 months. And so it finally hit a level of, like, frustration where it needed to be pushed through.

But we're 90 days delayed because we went backwards through the wheel and then kept going.

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When would it be appropriate to do that? Like, when is going backwards okay?

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Okay.

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[07:45] Ryan Hodges:Where are we now? What do we have? What are we paying? What is it costing us? What is it?

What's not working?

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[07:51] Ryan Hodges:In some degree, in this one, I agree it was good result to culture. In some cases, you need to go result to journey to culture. But in this particular case that's a different one. In this particular case, it was a culture analysis because we were talking about who's on and off the bus. So it was, let's go down to the culture component, and let's assess the culture.

Like, let's just against the core values. Mhmm. You know, there was, let's just say there were 80% people that passed the core values and 20% that didn't. Okay. We don't need to assess that 20% in the journey phase.

Then we went to the journey phase, and we said, okay. What are the skill sets? What does a pod look like? And then we further groomed the list down. And then, you know, we we were in you know, let's say we ended up with 20 people that remain and, you know, 80% that need to to churn.

Now it doesn't mean they need to churn, like, day 1. It just means over time, you know, they they could evolve or they'll exit out.

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Because it sounds like you, like, just kinda kept going backwards. What was the sign that they missed that said, now's now's the time to turn around and go forwards?

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I've somehow ended up in a place that I don't know where I'm at, and I pull over on the side of the road, and I look over behind me to see where I've been. What if I pass? Right? The problem is is when I want to drive forward, I don't keep looks I I don't keep staring backwards. I don't keep looking backwards and drive back onto the road and and drive forward.

Right? Like, that's that's Right. So when you go forward through the wheel, it's when you're actually taking action or applying a plan or moving forward with a project.

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[10:10] Ryan Hodges:Otherwise, you're just going from idea to results. Right. A lot of times, it's it negates the journey. You overlap. You miss the journey, the execution, the component.

And that's where a lot of people, they just, I have an idea, and I'll do it myself. I haven't been able to do it. Well, why don't you train her? That's gonna take too long. I just wanna do it.

Well, that you're not thinking through the journey and the culture. You're just going straight to the result. Whereas, if you go, I have an idea. Alright. Why do you have that idea?

Because of this result. Okay? Is that a people or process problem? It's a process problem. Okay.

Let's look at the journey. Okay. The way up here. Okay. Let's go back up to vision, and then go vision journey culture results.

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[10:46] Ryan Hodges:So it's, again, in that retrospective analysis, reflection, looking in the rear view mirror, all those analogies, that is when you go backwards. The second you're gonna make forward progress into the fix or the right direction, you have to about face and go forward through the through the wheel.

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And this one guy stands up, and he says you know, first of all, I thank him for the courage to stand up in front of 300 people of his peers. And he said, I my vision is to sell 5 paintings this year. I'm a painter, and my vision is to sell 5 paintings. And I was like, love that. Love your courage.

Can I challenge you for a second? And he's like, sure. And I said, I bet you your vision is to be a successful painter. Five paintings is simply the result how you're going to measure whether or not you have been successful. And maybe it's 5 paintings this year and next year it's 10, and the year after that it's 20, but that's simply the number that you are using to measure the vision.

And the vision is, I wanna be a successful painter. And it was crazy to watch this guy start to smile when I talked to him about I don't think it's about the number 5. I think it's about being successful. And he's like, yeah. Yeah.

That's what I want. And I was like, okay. So great thinking. We just gotta make sure they're in the right places. So you wanna be a successful painter.

What's the journey? He's like, well, I need to carve out more time to paint in the evenings and on weekends. I need to sign up for more art shows. I probably need to travel a little bit more. I need to set aside some budget so that I can go to more of these art shows and get my stuff seen by more people.

I said, yeah. That that makes a ton of sense. I don't understand this world very well, but but that all makes a lot of sense. What about the culture side? Tell me about the the emotional journey that you're gonna have to go on.

And he said, I'm gonna have to get a lot more comfortable with rejection. And I was like, wow. Like, that is you're so right. If you're going to if you're going to be a successful painter, you need to do these things, but you also need to be prepared for rejection. And if you do those things, I think you've got a pretty good shot at selling 5 paintings this year.

And I loved that interaction because he had gone he was clearly a results guy. Right? He started with results, but it redirected him, got him to start with vision, walked him through the wheel in the right direction. And I just love his honesty about the emotional side because if because for me, and I think for a lot of results and vision oriented people, that relational, emotional journey, we just want to skip over that. Like, it's gonna be great.

I'm gonna go to all these trade shows, and it's gonna be great. People are gonna love me. I think we we overlook that and oftentimes end up tripping and stumbling over it because it's just easier to do it myself than to engage the team. I'm assuming things go well and when I get rejected, I get depressed as opposed to saying, sweet. I got rejected.

That's totally what I was expecting to happen. That means I'm on track. That means it's working. And I appreciated that while it was a personal example, I think it applied really, really well to what I've seen in so many organizations that I've worked in where we kinda have a fuzzy vision. We really care about the results.

Maybe we talk about the process, but we just skip over the culture and then either get mad at ourselves or get mad at our team when the results don't show up on or ahead of schedule.

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Interesting thing is that same scenario holds true if you've got a 100 people in your organization. You got a 1000 people in your organization. You got 10,000 people in the organization. When you expect those results without going through those other two components, like, it's just gonna be stagnant. Or or you you can you can push results.

Don't get me wrong. And then what you're gonna have is you're gonna see the stock price drop when it catches up to you. Right?

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They're not willing to really spend the time to figure out what the journeys were really gonna take and the process part. And so that journey to culture transition tends to be the the black hole where a lot of projects, disappear and die because they they've not thought that part through.

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[16:34] Daniel Steere:Uh-huh.

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[16:43] Daniel Steere:Yeah. Yeah. That's true. One of the biggest challenges that I see in working with a lot of organizations is that it's really easy to see things inside of an organization that you're not a part of. And when you're in the system, it's really hard to see the system.

So let's let's talk about if you're inside of an organization. Let's talk executive. Let's talk manager. Let's talk frontline employee. How would you know if you were going backwards through the wheel?

If if you're stuck and you're doing it wrong, what would that feel like?

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I would say if you are frustrated, you're not getting the results you want and you are frustrated, then there's probably yourself or those around you are going backwards through the wheel, especially if there's a lack of clarity, a lack of direction, an expectation of a KPI with no clear direction. That's not gonna cop out. There are cases where it's like the the the journey is figuring out making the clarity. So it's not to be confused where you have a vague vision and the the journey is to to add clarity to it. So it's I'm taking that off the table.

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[18:05] Ryan Hodges:If if that's not the objective, then you're probably going through it backwards. Because when you're going through the wheel forwards, it's hard work, and there can be frustrating components behind it. But there's exponential reward and enjoyment. You start having more fun with your colleagues. You start having more fun in your work.

You start having more enjoyment in what you're doing. You see it's not instant. You know, you gotta go through the, you know, the green line, components, the hard parts first. But once you get through the other side, you start hitting from the back of the culture or I'm sorry. Yeah.

Culture to results. Life gets easier and things move forward and faster. But if you're in molasses, if you feel like you're just, like, stuck in the molasses and it's slowly hardening and getting harder to move, you're probably going through the wheel backwards.

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We all know this doesn't work. We tried this last month. We tried it the month before and the month before, and it hasn't worked yet. Why are we trying it again? Yep.

Yep. Yep. Yep. And I wonder if that's if that's probably more of what it feels like to the individual employee of going backwards through the wheel. Right?

We wanna hit this particular revenue target, this particular NOP target, whatever the result is. So let's get fired up and let's go get it. It's like, unfortunately, it it usually doesn't work out that way, at least not consistent.

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[20:19] Announcer:I like that. That sounds good.

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Doesn't matter. We just need to talk about it. What do we talk about? Absolutely shit. We talk quickly about each other, about the thing, about this, that, the other, and then what's the end result of that meeting?

Know what to do. There's no action.

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[20:49] Ryan Hodges:You're probably stuck in a backwards loop.

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I talked to my son. What do you wanna be when you grow up? I wanna be a YouTuber. Okay. I don't love that.

But what's your plan? Well, I'm just gonna be a YouTuber, and it's gonna be awesome. And I'm gonna make 1,000,000 of dollars. And like, no. No.

No. Like, what are you going to do? Like, what's the plan? What's the steps? And they just don't seem to be able to think about all of the steps that would have to go in.

Who's gonna help you? And what's the culture and the values? It just that journey, it's it's kind of a, I wanna be a YouTuber, therefore, I'm going to make 1,000,000 of dollars, and it's just gonna happen. It's kinda sad when I see it in my kids, but it's it's even more sad when I see it in my clients.

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Because on the on the other side of a p and l is humans. We're social emotional beings. Right? There's, EQ on the other side, and I think it's it's the EQ side is what interconnects the journey. Don't get me wrong.

There's there's logic in journey. But, like, in the case of what you're talking about, especially in a business, is people map out it's actually kinda funny. I was I was talking to someone this morning about it. Because I was like, wait. Wait.

Wait. You know what's funny? Is everybody expects a result from everybody else, but as soon as it's their, like, strength, it's like, woah. Woah. Woah.

Slow down. We have to think through this. We gotta run this plan. We gotta do this. But, like, they will journey their work to death.

But what they do is they don't take the bigger journey or other people's journey into account. And that's where the policy comes in is, to some degree, some people are. They think they're going through the wheel, but they stop at the you know, they go they they kinda start from vision. They start the journey, and then they go to result.

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[23:08] Ryan Hodges:Because they thought through their component or they protected it.

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[23:12] Ryan Hodges:But as soon as they went to I mean, you saw this inside one of our meetings where, oh, we gotta do all this work. And then it's next thing, you know, it's like, where's marketing at? Why aren't it done? Why aren't it done? Where's it at?

Where's it at?

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[23:24] Ryan Hodges:That's another one is is is it's the EQ. It's the social emotional intelligence of understanding there's not only the journey, but there's the interconnected journey in case of your son. Right? Like, have you talked to mom and dad about what being a YouTuber looks like and what kind of content they will allow? Like, he could have mapped it out the entire journey of I'm gonna do this video and that video.

Kinda funny you said that because my son did this when he was when he was, 12 several years ago. Is he mapped all this stuff out, and it was like, bud, you gotta be 13 before you can be on YouTube. Oh.

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[24:06] Ryan Hodges:Well, in in in that with that, that goes back down to it was it was in a it was in a it was a great plan, great idea, but too much in a vacuum, which ultimately became vision into result.

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[24:40] Ryan Hodges:Well, you know, one of my favorite ones is why are we worried about step 8 when we're on step 1? Like, you you've wasted nothing pisses me off more than anything than wasting time and resources. Mhmm. Especially times. That's the one thing we can never get back.

Right? Especially when somebody takes like, I love it when people think a few steps ahead, or they can think of it, like like, what what is step 10? Like, what's the end goal? What's the result we're trying to hit? I love that.

We need that.

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[25:06] Ryan Hodges:But when people worry about step, you know, 67910, when really step 1 is somebody else, and their job is to figure out, you know, step 1 to step 2. It's like you wasted so much time and energy about something that's not even in your your sphere of influence. That's gonna change the moment step 2 gets done.

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[25:26] Ryan Hodges:So, you know, that's kinda goes back to don't worry about tomorrow's problems. Today's has enough. Mhmm. I think a lot of people confuse. Well, I'm thinking through the journey.

No. You're worried about the result at the expense of the journey. And so when you truly understand the journey and you got, okay, the vision, step step 10, you know, that's the end destination. What's the measurable? Okay.

We got roughly 10 steps, and here's the the the results we're gonna achieve because we did an analysis, went backwards, right, going forward. We know Right. Achieve. Okay. Who like, what's the journey here?

Who's got the first step, and what can I do? I can't do anything until step one's done because it's unclear. Then your job is to wait. Like, go on to the next priority. Go on to the next task.

Don't try to do somebody else's job. Don't try to overengineer it. And I think that's where we got into such like an IQ based society is we wanna overanalyze and over think and over, and we feel like there's value into that. And it's like, all you're doing is wasting time, energy, and slowing everything down.

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[26:28] Ryan Hodges:And it's even worse when managers and leaders do it. Right. Because

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It's like, okay. Step 1. Everybody on step 1. And, again, there there are probably times when it is appropriate to swarm an issue. But most of the time, understanding, okay, who's on the hook for step 1?

What's that gonna take? When's it gonna be done? Do you have everything you need? Okay. Let me get out of your way.

And I'm gonna prep for step 2 and the hand off to me as opposed to everyone just trying to kick the ball at the same time. And you end up with, like, 6 versions of step 1, and then nobody knows which ones they're supposed to work off of.

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And I I was literally this is, like yeah. No. It was yesterday. Production team is is building these strategies. Like, guys, like, our CPA or ours or our cost of customer acquisition is, like, a $100 because we're spending, you know, days of of, of production time, you know, high caliber production time up in sales audit process just to do an analysis to give guidance and direction.

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[28:02] Ryan Hodges:Well, but if we don't if we don't, if we don't, you know, do this, then the client's not no. Nope. That's a journey problem. You're trying to push your results at the expense of the journey. And because we're trying to do that, we're actually not hitting the result we desire because we've made our costs, you know, our human capital dependency and process convoluted.

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We need to go clockwise, vision, journey, culture, results. I don't know about you, but I have seen that sometimes I have to go clockwise more than once because I'll have a vision, I'll define a process, a journey. I define the the culture, roles, responsibilities, and I get to the results, and I realize that they don't they don't line up. It's like, well, that journey is not gonna get that result. I'm gonna have to do either more or less or different.

And so sometimes you have to go back through the wheel again and say, okay, if I really want to be a successful painter, how many trade shows do I need to show up to to sell 5 paintings next year? And that's where I think going the correct way through the wheel can help get everybody aligned. And we can start having much more honest conversations and not point fingers, but just say, okay, hey, is it realistic to assume that you're going to sell one painting at every trade show? Maybe that's a fair assumption. Maybe that's unrealistic.

I don't know. But right now, we're assuming that we're gonna have a 100% hit rate, and that seems a little suspicious. Let's talk about that assumption. And that's a much easier conversation to have as a team when you're going through the wheel the right direction than a lot of the toxic finger pointing that I've been a part of in various organizations.

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Do we have all the people? Okay. Okay. We got, okay, we got all the people. Okay.

With this journey, is it gonna deliver the results? Okay. No. It's not. Why is it?

Because this so, yeah, you, yeah, you you constantly have to check it. But the problem is is when you don't go through it one time, you don't have anything to bounce against. Yeah. I think that's that's kind of the point you were making is if you go through it once, then you can sanity check it versus when you keep going backwards or you go backwards through it, you have nothing to bounce against. You have no you know, you might have a journey in your head and the culture may be yourself as a, you know, independent contributor, but that doesn't mean you thought through what's my process?

Who do I need help with? What are the results? Okay. Is this feasible? Let me iterate again iterate again.

Okay. Now I'm gonna take action. It's just planning.

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[31:14] Ryan Hodges:Planning 101. But when we don't plan, then or we're reactive to to change. Right? Like, well, I'll put that off. We procrastinate, delay.

I don't wanna deal with it. I'll make it up when I walk in the door. Then you're just then you're just redlining all day long. So

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[31:34] Ryan Hodges:You can't drive a car forward. Only look in the rear view mirror. You know what? No. I'm not gonna say that.

I don't wanna get I don't wanna get sued for telling people to do that.

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[31:51] Ryan Hodges:Don't actually drive your car forward looking only in the rearview mirror. Please don't do that.

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[31:57] Ryan Hodges:If you if you have the desire to do that, please surrender your keys now.

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[32:06] Ryan Hodges:Yep. Alright. I think that's, I think we can call this one for today. Any final thoughts? Any final closing remarks you'd like to add there?

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[32:15] Announcer:Make work not suck. Our podcast that talks about exactly that, our process, vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, co host Daniel Steer.

Join us each episode and make work not suck.