By Allen Haynes • October 7, 2024 Listen to the episode. Andy Stanley (00:02): Hey everybody. Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. And before we get into today’s content, I wanted to thank Factor for sponsoring this episode. No prep, no mess meals, factor meals are ready to eat and eat in just two minutes. So head on over to factor meals.com/aslp 50 and use code aslp 50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. And now let’s jump into today’s podcast episode. Today we are talking about performance and creating high performance teams. Something every leader is interested in is something I’m constantly thinking about myself. In fact, as I went through this content that I’ve taught several times, it just reminded me of some things I need to show up on my own leadership, which I’m sure Susie will point out in just a few minutes when it’s time for her to talk. Right now, we all know strategy is essential, right? But if you can’t or if your team can’t execute your strategy, then your strategy is just another Google doc. So joining me, as I said to unpack this important topic of performance and creating high performance teams is my high performance and co-founder of the Your Move Collective. Suzy Gray. Welcome Suzy. Suzy Gray (01:17): Thanks, Andy. I really actually love this topic because the whole idea of building healthy teams and high performance teams is really different from hiring employees. A lot of people may think, oh, you’re just hiring employees for a team, but it’s actually very different. So why don’t we start there? Unpack the difference. Andy Stanley (01:33): And this is not a clean distinction, but it is just to kind of get the conversation going. An employee is basically somebody that we employ, thus employee, to do a specific job the way that we want the job to be done. Generally, they are assigned a what and a how. This is what I need you to do. This is how I need you to do it. I’ll come back and check on you later. Okay. Kind of a simplistic thing, a team member is different in terms of how we’re going to talk about it today. A team member doesn’t have a job. They actually have a responsibility. They have a what, but not necessarily a how, because part of their responsibility is to help a team figure out how and then execute on the how. So it’s a little bit different thing. And all of us think, if we look back on our careers, had jobs where we were employees. (02:16): My very first job when I was an employee was to clean the meat department of Winn-Dixie, our neighborhood grocery store. Sounds really fun. It was terrible. They told me what to do, how to do it. And then about once a month when I was there all by myself, the health inspectors plural would show up and explain to me that I was not doing it correctly. I was 16 years old. Oh my gosh. But again, I was told what to do. Here’s how you do it. And if you don’t do it right, you do it over, thus the employee. But again, a high performance team or high performance team members, it’s not so much about how, because they’re carrying a responsibility, not just a what and how. And if you’re doing something important, and for those of you listening, you are doing important things or you wouldn’t be listening to a conversation like this, you’ve got to have a healthy high performance team. You need doers, people who can execute, evaluate, and then execute again and make it better. And not to be cute, but high performance people on high performance teams do high performance things, and that’s what we all want to be involved in. But having said that, I know that I haven’t said anything, everybody listening didn’t already know which tees up the real challenge, right, Susie? Suzy Gray (03:22): Absolutely. I mean, obviously the first question everyone’s asking is, okay, but then how do you Andy Stanley (03:26): Do that? Yeah, how do you do that? How Suzy Gray (03:28): Do you do it? Andy Stanley (03:28): Yeah. How do you build a high performance team and Suzy Gray (03:31): What makes a high performance team Andy Stanley (03:33): And what makes a healthy high performance team? We have all either been a part of or watched high performers who weren’t healthy self-destruct over time, accomplish great things and then something goes wrong. So I’m convinced, and this is what we’re going to talk about for the next few minutes, I’m convinced just in my experience, this isn’t scientific. This is just kind of a sense you ask, Andy Stanley (03:52): And Andy Stanley (03:53): I’ve been doing this for a while, that there are at least four essential ingredients to a high performance team. Four essential ingredients. Suzy Gray (04:00): Well, we love a good recipe. So what are the four ingredients of building a high performance team? Let’s start there. Andy Stanley (04:06): Well, actually, I want to back up one Suzy Gray (04:07): Second. Okay, let’s back up. Andy Stanley (04:09): So first I want to tell the story of how I discovered these four things. Again, it wasn’t scientific, it was pure experience. About 20 plus years ago, I was trying to remember how long ago this was. I know it was more than 20 years ago because I remember where I was. I was actually walking around on a Sunday morning, and for those of you who are new to the podcast, I’m a pastor of a multi-site church in Atlanta, Georgia, with eight campuses that are part of our primary 5 0 1 C3, and then about 200 churches that are part of a growing network nationally and internationally. So anyway, this is 20 plus years ago, and I was walking around on a Sunday morning at the campus where I was the lead pastor at the time. And on that particular Sunday, I didn’t have any specific responsibility. I wasn’t preaching, I was just walking around and just watching what I felt like was this extraordinary organization do extraordinary things. And I thought to myself, this is working. I mean, this is amazing. And then it struck me, I’m not sure why this works as well as it does, which is odd because I’ve been here since the beginning from the very beginning, Suzy Gray (05:12): Right? Well, that’s a very scary thought. Andy Stanley (05:14): It kind of concerned me because I had the thought if this suddenly broke and it looked like there were so many things that could go wrong, because again, if you don’t know, we have about 500 employees. But every weekend at our multiple campuses, we have literally thousands of volunteers. We’re a volunteer organization, and there are so many moving parts that depend on so many different people, primarily volunteers, doing very specific task and working together. There are multiple teams, and it’s amazing to sit back and watch it work. And I know many of you listening work in organizations where you feel the same way. But on this particular weekend, I was just overwhelmed with how wonderful it is and what a mystery it was because here’s kind of the overarching principle, and we’re going to get to those four things in a minute. If you don’t know why something’s working when it’s working, you won’t know how to fix it when it breaks, Suzy Gray (06:07): Right? Well, that’s worth repeating. If you don’t know why it’s working, when it’s working, you won’t know how to fix it. If it breaks. Andy Stanley (06:13): And the thing is everything eventually breaks or everything eventually wears down, or things kind of go off script or things drift or things start to get tired or things are working great and the people that are making ’em work get bored and decide, well, let’s do something different. We’re tired of doing it the same way, Suzy Gray (06:29): Not because it’s not working because we’re tired of it, Andy Stanley (06:30): Right? Because we’re tired and we get bored. And I’ll give you an example of that in just a minute. So again, because we’re a volunteer organization, again, there were so many things that were wonderful but at the same time could go wrong. So I wasn’t panicking, but I was thinking that if this broke, I really wouldn’t know how to fix it because I’m not sure why it’s working. And one of the reasons I didn’t know why it was working is because I had not taken time to ask the question, why does this work so well? And again, I’ve been here from the beginning, I’ve been a part of creating all of these amazing systems. So the challenge for all of us in leadership is that we’re so busy, especially when things are going well, when we feel like we’re leading a successful department or division, we get so consumed with progress, maintaining momentum, the adrenaline rush of up into the right, all the good things that we love, that there’s so much focus on further, faster. It’s easy to forget how important it is to inventory our success or in morbid terms to do an autopsy on our success Suzy Gray (07:28): Because people think of autopsies as, oh, something went wrong. We did our autopsy, versus something’s going really right. We need to autopsy it. Andy Stanley (07:35): No, we don’t think we need to do that. That’s right. Because we can’t get sucked into our own success and think since things are going well, things will always go well and things just aren’t going to always go well. So this requires slowing down, looking around and poking around, and I wrote these down. I thought that was kind of interesting. You got to slow down, you got to look around. You got to poke around and ask the question, Hey, why is this working so well? Because when something breaks, you have to stop and evaluate, right? Discover where things broke down. But again, we rarely ask why is it working when it’s actually working? So again, to our podcast listeners, if you don’t know why it’s working when it’s working, you probably won’t know how to fix it when it breaks. And worse than that, you will probably, because I’ve done this, you’ll probably do the wrong things when it breaks, (08:20): Because again, you really didn’t know the factors that were the mission critical factors. Sometimes the essentials or the essentials, the dynamics that really were behind your success. So while it’s not intuitive, it’s critical in up into the right season to slow down and look around and poke around and ask, why is this working so well? And as part of that eval to ask this question, what is the driving force? What is the driving force behind what I see working? So what is the driving force behind our success? What is the driver behind our current progress? If you don’t know the answer to that, you run or we run the risk of cooking the goose that lays the golden eggs. And again, I have experienced this. I think every organizational leader looking back and go, oh gosh, things were going well. I started messing with it, tweaking it, changing it. (09:09): We got bored. We needed to mix things up. We need to innovate, be creative. And lo and behold, I messed things up because again, I wasn’t aware of the driving force behind our success. So I’ll give you a couple examples. Through the years I’ve chosen against the better wishes of people around me sometimes to continue managing, some difficult to manage people. And from time to time, other people I work with would say, I don’t know. Why do you put up with them? Why do you put up with her? Why do you put up with them? They’re so difficult to manage. And it’s because I recognized that the challenges they created internally were worth the hassle in light of the energy and the momentum they brought externally, that when they were in their zone with their department, their division, or even in our case with a campus, Andy Stanley (09:57): They Andy Stanley (09:57): Were so productive that their personality and their talent, they were really the driving force behind an initiative. And to make things easier in the office or to make things easier relationally by moving them out of the organization or moving them somewhere else in the organization would be to undermine the driving force. Because sometimes the driving force and the success of a division department or an organization in general is a personality or is a person. (10:28): And so those are some cases where I felt like I got it right. On the flip side, years ago, many years ago, we ignored organizationally an environment that really was a driver behind our culture of generosity and nonprofit world. You have to develop a culture of generosity because you’re dependent on the generosity of people outside the organization oftentimes. And so there was a driver, and honestly, and this goes back to something I said a minute ago, we got bored with it. This environment, we just got bored with it. We’ve been doing it the same way for many, many, many years, and it was working, but we just got tired and we got bored. So we decided to change it up, be creative, we’re going to do our own thing. If we had done our due diligence on the drivers behind the generosity of the people in our organization, we would’ve discovered that this particular environment was actually a major contributing factor, but we’d not done our homework. And so consequently, I think we’re still in some ways paying for that mistake. So again, you got to know why it’s working when it’s working, or you run the risk of making what feel like good decisions in the moment that actually undermine your own success. Yep. Suzy Gray (11:34): Wow. Alright. Well that’s a great backdrop to getting into our recipe. Andy Stanley (11:39): Yeah, sorry that took longer. Suzy Gray (11:40): No, I mean that’s helpful. I’ve got to think about that first one actually. The idea of are there people that you do need to work around because they create momentum? And how do you know the difference? That’s an important thing to think through. So I feel like that’s such great backdrop to our actual recipe. So what is the first essential of creating a high performance team? Andy Stanley (11:59): Yeah, these four ingredients, again, this is just through experience and observation. Number one, you got to have performance oriented people, right? Because we’re talking about high performance teams. You got to have high performance people or performance oriented people positioned for maximum impact. The Jim Collins things. You got to have the right people in the right seat on the bus. Suzy Gray (12:19): Yeah, I love this one. I think there’s so much more to it, and it can sometimes feel easier said than done. So how do we select those performance oriented people? Andy Stanley (12:28): Well, this is a little dicey and for our podcast listeners, you’ll take what I’m about to say in context, but sometimes this sounds a little harsh. Sometimes leadership is harsh, right? (12:38): But you have to recruit and select, you have to recruit and select doers over thinkers. Now, this is industry specific for sure, but if you want high performance people, you have to recruit performance people, doers, not thinkers. And I get in trouble again sometimes when I say that, I’m not talking about smart versus not smart. When I say thinkers versus doers, this is a personality and temperament thing. Some people are just more predisposed to thinking and planning. Others are made for execution. You point them in a direction with a goal in mind and they just get after it. The truth is, it is much easier to educate a doer than it is to activate a thinker. I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to activate thinkers, people who love to strategize and think deeply, trying to get them to actually get going and do things. I’ve just failed. So I’ve decided it’s much easier to educate the doer as they’re doing than it is to activate or sometimes motivate somebody who’s just not oriented to action. That’s just not their personality. So it’s a matter of hiring people who are wired to get things done and then educate and enculturate them along the way. Suzy Gray (13:50): Well, how do you even know if they’re those kind of people? Andy Stanley (13:53): Yeah. Well, I learned this from my administrative assistant, Diane Grant, who’s worked for me for over 25 years in her previous life before she came to work for us. She did a lot of interviewing in the medical industry. Suzy Gray (14:06): She’s a great interviewer. She interviewed me and she’s a tough interviewer. I Andy Stanley (14:11): Love Diane. And you got through Suzy Gray (14:13): Well, you got through. Yeah. Andy Stanley (14:14): Somehow we have a tendency to interview people to death. And so this is a question I learned from her. In fact, one of the things I learned from her is I’m not a good interviewer. (14:22): Many, many, many years ago, I quit interviewing people. She sat in on some interviews I was doing years ago and she said, Andy, here’s the problem. You are trying to convince them to come work for us. They already want to already want here. I’m sitting there telling ’em how great the organization is and we’re doing this and that, and she’s sitting there like, this isn’t an interview. You’re recruiting. This is an interview. Anyway, so I said, okay, I’ll quit doing that. I’m no good at it. Anyway, so this is a question that she always asks, and I think this is so helpful when it comes to answer your question, how do we know who’s on the other side of us? And she asked this question, she says, what the question is, what have you done? What have you done? Okay, we already know where they’ve worked before. We know where they went to school. We know if they have a degree. All the basic stuff. Suzy Gray (15:11): Yeah, the resume stuff. Andy Stanley (15:12): The resume stuff. But this question, what have you done? And if they pause too long, if it takes a person a minute to go, Suzy Gray (15:21): Yeah, I did something once. Andy Stanley (15:24): Not what have I done for a living? No, no, we’ve covered that. What have you done? If it takes too long or you sense they’re kind of making things that aren’t really, things sound like things. They start just trying to put words around the stuff. That might be a pass. Because a person who is a performance oriented person, they can immediately tell you what they’ve done, the things they’ve done, because that’s what they do. And if they haven’t done anything in the past, that may be a good indicator of the future and they may be a pass. Suzy Gray (15:59): Yeah, it’s interesting. I remember Diane asked me a question. I remember her asking me that question. I also remember a question she asked me that I don’t think anybody else on an interview ever asked me, what have you done that you hope you never have to do again? Andy Stanley (16:12): Oh, wow. Suzy Gray (16:13): And that was a great question, and I’ve so stolen it and used it many times, but I immediately had an answer. And it also made me realize, okay, I need to make sure I’m not in a job that has a lot of that. I did not like that. I launched a company at Super com and planned an event. This was back when I was in telecom. And I remember all the event planning details, not the strategy of launching the company. I was kind of the division. And so it was the strategy and the execution. It was all the details of launching at a big convention. And I immediately was like, I don’t ever want to manage all of those details again. And it was, oh, I don’t love the details of event planning. I love the strategy of event planning, but I don’t love the details of it. And it was honestly probably helpful for her. I don’t know, but it was super helpful for me. So she’s great at that kind of question. It did get to what have you done, but what do you don’t want Andy Stanley (17:07): To do about, well, she was thinking about what we were hiring you to do, and if it dawned on you and her as it dawned on you, oh yeah, this sounds like that. Suzy Gray (17:15): Yeah, I Andy Stanley (17:16): Don’t want to do that. Suzy Gray (17:16): I don’t want to do that. Andy Stanley (17:17): Yeah. Suzy Gray (17:18): So luckily the job wasn’t that, but it was great question. So to me that is so good, and being the recipient and now using that, I can say that that’s a very helpful way to think about that particular part. And the second part of that is to position those people for maximum impact. Andy Stanley (17:34): Yeah. So first ingredient is you got to have performance oriented people and position them for impact. And what I mean by that, again, is I said it’s kind of the Jim Collins thing. It’s about getting people in the right seat on the bus to position people where they can make their greatest contribution. (17:48): And this is not always intuitive in terms of a job interview or those first interactions, but there is a place in every organization where a person can make their greatest contribution, not the greatest contribution compared to other people, but in terms of the way they’re wired, this is the best place for you to have maximum impact. And as we know, we can talk about this some other time, that’s when people are happy at work. This is the connection between happiness at work is when a person feels like I’m in my zone, or as Daniel Peak says, I’m in my flow, time goes quickly. I’m doing what I was designed to do. And when we can get people there, Andy Stanley (18:23): They’re Andy Stanley (18:24): Happy. We’re happy things get done. And this is where the organizational chart is. Rarely our friend org charts are necessary. We talk about that pretty often. But reporting structure, which that’s an org chart, says nothing about performance potential. The right person in the wrong place over time feels like the wrong person. It’s that quote that’s often attributed to Albert Einstein that nobody thinks he actually said. So I don’t know who said this, who said it, but it’s good. And then the quote goes like this, everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid. And that’s true. And again, as you think about your experience orchestrating an event and the details of the event, you felt incompetent at times like you’re stressed out because stress is often related more of what we’re doing than how much we have to do. And the same with me in the past when I’ve taken on the details, this we’re known for great events, but people keep me out of event planning Suzy Gray (19:23): Because very, very, the details of it. Andy Stanley (19:25): Oh yeah, because Suzy Gray (19:27): Not the best use of Andy Stanley (19:28): Your club. Yeah, I’m trying to help. Let me take care of that. And they’re like, no, Suzy Gray (19:30): No back. Andy Stanley (19:30): Let us take care of that. You go back in your office and create some content Anyway. So the odds are to our podcast listeners, somebody on your staff or somebody around you, or even if you have to contract with somebody, finding somebody that is good at recognizing and strategically placing talent in the right spot, it is worth probably whatever you have to pay them or the time that you’re taking them away from what they normally do to help you do that. And when you find somebody who’s good at that, you let them do it. The Diane’s great at that. We have two or three other people on our staff that I’m like, you tell me. I play checkers. Everybody moves forward. And then there are people who play chess. They know which person needs to be in which spot in order to accomplish what we’re trying to accomplish. (20:16): So let them do that. Your organization’s always going to be at its best when people on your team are doing what they do best. This is part of back to the broader conversation. This is high performance teams. You got to have people who are performance oriented and you got to have them in the right place in the organization. We will jump right back into today’s content in just a moment. But before that, as you know, fall is officially here, which brings busier schedules and fuller calendars making it hard to eat the way you’d like. And that’s where factor comes in. Their chefs do all the work to bring you fresh, never frozen, fully cooked meals right to your doorstep. And best of all, their meals are dietician approved. So you’re getting the nutrition you need along with the flavors you will crave. So go to factor meals.com/aslp 50 and then use code A SLP 50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. (21:13): Whether you’re managing calories, maximizing your protein intake, or simply trying to eat more ballots factor meals will help you meet your wellness goals. And with 35 weekly meal options, you can choose from preferences like keto calorie smart gourmet plus or vegan and veggie to find the right meals that suit your lifestyle. Again, head on over to factor meals.com/aslp 50 and use code a SLP 50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. Again, that’s code ASLP 50 at factor meals.com/aslp 50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. And now let’s jump back into today’s episode. Second essential is clarifying the what and the why. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? What are we doing? Why are we doing it? We talk about this a lot, but this is so essential for high performance team managers sometimes don’t do this in terms of clarifying the what and the why because it’s time consuming. (22:18): And I think all of us, at some point, maybe you’re listening today and you’re going to push back on this at times it seems like it’s impossible to reduce what you’re doing or what your company is doing or what your division is doing. It seems impossible to reduce it down to one thing, but you can if you spend enough time working on it. And when you do, it’s gold because if it’s memorable, it’s portable. And in terms of high performance teams, it’s got to be portable. They’ve got to show up at work or show up on the project, know exactly what are we doing and why are we doing it, and here’s why it’s important, especially when we talk about teams. What and why really are the fuel for high performance teams? And I think I can maybe able to prove this, Susie, and this isn’t a trick question, so don’t overthink this. I’m going to ask you a question. It’s like a quiz. I’m ready. I’m ready. A live quiz with our podcast, can’t wait and think in terms of sports for a minute, that’ll make it easier. Suzy Gray (23:14): Okay, Andy Stanley (23:14): What do teams want to do or what do teams like to do? Suzy Gray (23:19): We like to win Andy Stanley (23:20): Win. That’s right. Good. That’s the right answer. That’s what teams do. They want to win. So in the world of sports, it’s clear, but when it comes to the high performance teams that work, it’s the same thing. We all want to win. We want to get to the end of some season or the end of the quarter or the end of something or the end of even an event. In our case, it felt like, Hey, we won. But you don’t know if you’ve won unless the scoreboard is clear. Or in our case, the what and the why is clear. And when the what and why isn’t clear, here’s what happens. Everybody on the team comes up with their own, what? This is what we’re trying to do. And generally we dumb it down because we want to win. So we dumb it down to, hey, we got through the whole weekend and no one was injured, we won. It’s like nailed it. Safety is important. Safety wasn’t the win in this particular case. It wasn’t the highest value. So we’re always going to redefine the win to something that we’ve already accomplished though, unless as leaders, we’ve set the win out there to know this is the win and high performance teams want to win. And if the win isn’t clear, (24:23): Then we’re all celebrating different things if we’re celebrating at all. So if the win is blurry and vague, we’ll just figure out the wins that suit us and we generally devolve to the easiest win. So leaders have to define the win. And this is one reason why in our organization, I think we’ve talked about this before, that we have embraced the four disciplines of execution, that strategy book, because teams need active scoreboards connected to actionable and I guess executable strategy. So a scoreboard is important. A live scoreboard is important. Again, every sporting event, where’s the scoreboard? The scoreboard is where everybody can see it, can see it, the players and the fans. And when we think about high performance teams that are trying to accomplish a what with a why behind it, there needs to be a clear scoreboard. And that’s what the what and the why are. So the clearer that is, the easier it is for teams to execute. And maybe as important the easier it is for them to know if they’re winning Andy Stanley (25:20): Because Andy Stanley (25:20): Teams want to win. So going back to the what and why, if what provides the direction, then why provides the inspiration. So what is the direction? Why is the inspiration, why informs a team as to why what they’re doing matters? What’s at stake? What goes away if they go away? Is our community poorer if our organization goes away, what’s at stake? Pat McMillan years ago wrote a book called The Performance Factor, and I have a quote here that I kept around. He writes this. He says, A clear, common, compelling task that is important to the individual team members is the single biggest factor in team success. Now, this is a big statement Andy Stanley (26:03): That Andy Stanley (26:04): A clear, and this is why we’re talking about the clear around what and why Andy Stanley (26:07): A Andy Stanley (26:07): Clear common that is. We have this in common compelling. That’s the why something’s at stake. A clear, common, compelling task that is important to the individual team members is the single biggest factor in team success. So this is a really big deal. And again, as leaders, it’s our responsibility to bring that kind of clarity to our team, especially if we want them to be a high performance team. Suzy Gray (26:29): That is definitely a big deal. And that actually brings us to the third essential, doesn’t it? Andy Stanley (26:33): Yes. And the third essential to creating high performance teams is to organize to the what? To (26:40): Organize to the what, in other words, to reorg or to organize in terms of the organization to the what are we here to accomplish? And if that really is what we’re going to accomplish, then we need to organize or make sure our organization is organized to the what. And the reason is organizations do what they’re organized to do. If you ignore this, you just create extraordinary frustration for team members. Organizations do what they are organized to do. If we don’t organize to our, we’re setting out to accomplish what doesn’t get accomplished, because organizations do what they’re organized to do. Suzy Gray (27:20): And you said that is actually pretty tough. Why is it tough? Andy Stanley (27:23): Well, because this oftentimes requires change in the organization. Suzy Gray (27:27): Okay, well, change is tough. Andy Stanley (27:27): Yeah, there you go. All change is difficult. We all resist pretty much all change for the most part, especially again, when we’re in our little hamster wheel and we’re doing what we’ve been trained to do and hired to do, and this is what I get paid to do. And now wait, wait, wait, what? You’re going to change this? Yeah, because otherwise we can sit through a wonderful vision cast with PowerPoint, but then when it’s over, we all go back to our cubes and our offices and do what we’ve been doing. We’ve always Andy Stanley (27:50): Done. Andy Stanley (27:51): And the organization continues to do what it’s organized to do. (27:54): So reorganizing, of course, it’s change or reorganize or even making significant tweaks to the organization is not fun. But organizations don’t do what’s written on the walls and on PowerPoint presentations or organizations do what they’re organized to do. So we have to create an organization where the lion’s share of the time, and again, this is the challenge. If what isn’t already in alignment with the organization, we have to create an organization where most of the time and the resources are allocated to the what. And if we don’t, we’re going to force our high performance team members to work around the organization because the organization is not working for or with them. And the truth is, I know for me, and I think for you and probably for many of our podcast listeners, we’ve all been in situations where we felt like, I guess the best way to say it is that the organization was conspiring against us. They’ve asked us to do something, and yet the organization is like a headwind. Suzy Gray (28:55): Yeah, it won’t allow you to do it, but it wants you to do it. Andy Stanley (28:57): It wants us to do it, and why can’t you do it? And it’s like, well, because the organization, there’s Suzy Gray (29:02): Processes and structure in place. It allows me not to do Andy Stanley (29:04): It, right? The organization is not wind in my sails. Again, it’s a bit of a headwind. And when that’s the case, eventually leaders just leave. I think now dysfunctional people, they’re going to stay because they’re comfortable with that kind of stuff. But your key people, unfortunately are going to leave and look for opportunities where there is an organization organized around what they’ve been hired to do. Our organizations are all structured around something, right? There’s something eating up the resources and to change it, we have to identify it and bring all that stuff out into the open for everybody to see. And it’s never any fun, but it is absolutely necessary for high performance people to at peak efficiency, the organization has to support the what and the why. Suzy Gray (29:46): Alright, so our first three essentials are select performance oriented people and position them for maximum impact, number one. Number two in our recipe is clarify the what and the why. And number three is organize to the what. So as we bring this home, what is the fourth essential? Andy Stanley (30:01): The fourth essential is something we do talk about all the time because it is so central to leadership and it’s so central to our organization. So number four is orchestrate and evaluate everything. Suzy Gray (30:11): Yeah, that is something we talk about a lot. And so Andy Stanley (30:12): Important. Yes, exactly. Orchestrate and evaluate everything. Orchestrate means. This is how we do it here until further notified, orchestration creates predictability. Susie, it’s why I don’t know your favorite restaurant, but one of the reasons you love your favorite restaurant is there is some predictability to it. It’s orchestrated in terms of the environment, the music, the seating food, the food, the wait staff. It’s orchestrated. Somebody has decided, this is how we do it here. Until further notified, (30:43): Michael Gerber describes orchestration this way. I love this definition. He says, orchestration is the elimination of discretion or choice at the operating level of your business. I’ll read that again. That orchestration is the elimination of discretion. That is you don’t get to decide, you don’t get to change it, you don’t have the discretion, you don’t have the power to change it, the elimination of discretion or choice at the operating level of your business. Again, this is what makes it predictable. Orchestration in some ways is the playbook. It brings consistency, as I said, predictability to the processes in our case to environments. And when it’s done correctly, this actually, and this is such a big topic for another day, when orchestration is done well, it actually makes the organization feel more, not less personal. And sometimes the feedback we get in our nonprofit organization is, Hey, we’re here for people. People matter. We’re all about people. Absolutely. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And sometimes there’s the assumption that a system, because the system feels like a system that it’s not personal. Suzy Gray (31:49): It can feel sterile, Andy Stanley (31:50): It can, but great systems feel more personal, more personal than the chaos of giving everybody discretion to do whatever they want to do because they want to make it feel personal. And the example we are all most familiar with is wherever we shop online, somehow they know exactly what we want and exactly what we need. It is so personal and there’s no person on the other side. Nope, there’s nobody. There’s Suzy Gray (32:16): A good system. Andy Stanley (32:16): There’s a great system that makes it feel personal and there’s no person there. So great orchestration actually brings a sense of, Hey, I know who you are, I know what you need and I’m here to help. So orchestration and evaluation, Suzy Gray (32:30): And we’ve recently talked about evaluation, and that actually makes things more efficient and less complex because you’re evaluating how it’s working and continuing to make it better, making Andy Stanley (32:38): It better, make it better. Suzy Gray (32:39): Oh, that’s so good. All right, so summarize our four ingredients for us. Andy Stanley (32:43): So create high performance teams. You got to select performance oriented people and position them for maximum impact. You got to clarify the what and the why. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Number three, organize to the what so that the organization doesn’t get in the way. And number four, orchestrate and evaluate everything. If you do that, chances are you’re going to win because your teams will feel like they are winning and they will know when and why they’re winning. Suzy Gray (33:12): Oh, that’s so good. Well, that is all the time we have for today. Thank you for listening. And before we leave, we have one ask, and that is to subscribe. By subscribing, you’re going to help us grow our audience, which allows us to keep improving and bringing you great guests and great content to help you as a leader go further faster. Also, be sure to visit the Andy stanley.com website where you can download the leadership podcast application guide that includes a summary of our discussion, plus questions for reflection or group discussion. And be sure to join us next week for our reverb episode where Andy and I will dig even deeper on this topic of creating high performance teams right here on the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. Comments are closed.