Camille: Welcome to episode 20 of the Belief Shift Podcast.
Camille: Welcome back, George.
George: Hi. Happy new year.
Camille: Happy New Year. We haven't recorded since bef before Thanksgiving.
Camille: Really?
Camille: I think so, because then you got all crazy busy.
George: Yeah. Lots of travel.Las Vegas, India, Singapore. Yep. You were off
George: Bellevue Grid. Bellevue. Yeah. Way off the grid.
George: Snoqualmie. Snoqualmie literally was off the grid
Camille: actually.
Camille: Yes. You were off the grid. Powerless in many ways. Literally and figuratively maybe.
Camille: So how were your holidays? Speaking at which it's good. Got to see guys.
Camille: Family time was good. Yeah. That was family. Were they okay? Did they treat you well?
George: We were, man, I savita and I, my wife and I were the audience out there. My wife Sabita and I were talking about it. Afterward, we realized that it, it seemed like all four of us adults who are not grandparents were exhausted that week.
George: And it turned out well for all of us. I'm like, we didn't really over plan stuff cuz none of us seemed to have the energy to. We didn't wanna put a bunch on you and Dan. And so hanging out with you was good. It was very laid back. We were all tired, but in a good way. And we had a nice time.
Camille: Yeah. And it's always nice when you're here that I don't feel like I have to entertain. We're just gonna hang out and it's okay. And though I was thinking as we were getting ready to record, I thought, oh, this is gonna be so nice. I finally get to have some one-on-one time to hang out with my brother.
Camille: Yeah. Which I didn't do at all over the holidays, which was weird. We just didn't, we just couldn't, which was fine. But yeah, it was interesting to not have that happen.
George: I noticed that too. Getting a little bit of one-on-one time with Dan though was great. Cause we don't do it that often.
George: That was really fun. Yeah,
Camille: that was good. I'm glad you guys got to do that.
George: I don't know if you ever want to talk about his business here, but seeing him at the ground level at his business is fascinating to me. And what he deals with, you know, it's totally different area than I'm familiar with.
George: And he knows his stuff. It's nice to see expertise in action.
Camille: Yes. I think it would be interesting to have him on cuz I think he definitely underestimates his level of expertise, but he'd have a lot to say about what it's like to be married to a planner and him not being a planner and how I'm trying to help him this year. And just the idea that we both have our own businesses and what does that mean as a, like a married couple.
Camille: Pros and cons.
George: Oh yeah.
Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful small business.
Camille: I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: small business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
George: I have a question for you. Yes. So, I have a break that's defined by my company. My company was shut down the last week of the year, but you, you are your company. How did you make a break happen and how was it?
Camille: So I did make a break happen. I mean, thankfully most of my clients also want to take a break.
Camille: So it works out that people all wanna kind of step aside. The frustration for me is when I take a break, but it doesn't feel much like a break. Like the holidays were too busy for me, so I didn't feel rejuvenated afterwards. Like if I'm gonna break away from work, I wanna go be away and relax.
Camille: Yeah. And even though there was lots of fun in the holidays, I was doing a lot of stuff. So that's where it doesn't quite balance. I gotta figure out a better way to do it. Whether that means taking more time off after, before I come back to work in the new year or something. Cuz you're still busy, it's still hectic, it's just now I'm busy doing something else.
Camille: So I didn't get to just kind of chill out. So it was nice when you were here that we did have some time where we're just kind of relaxing and, but it's still not the same as when you're in your house by yourself. I mean there's days when I'm like, I'm happy that my husband is gone for the day and I just have the house to myself cuz that's like introvert refueling day.
Camille: So yeah, I gotta do more of that. Yeah, I totally get that.
Camille: Enough about these holidays. Let's get into it. Okay. I thought maybe we'd start and tell everybody that we know. We had a little planning discussion yesterday, you and I. So I wanted to touch on a few of the things that we were talking about doing this year.
Camille: No promises, but these are some of our ideas for the year. And mostly I wanna touch on these because I would love to hear from people if they have things that they would like us to talk about or types of guests they'd like us to have on. So this year we're gonna do some deep dive into the Belief Shifts.
Camille: And we're gonna start that today, actually. Just , take one of the belief shifts and just really go into it. And how do you actually use that belief shift to improve your business? Cuz they are all based on things that I think if you really embrace them, could make a so that's one thing we're gonna do.
Camille: We're thinking about maybe doing some book reviews or recommendations. That means George has to have time to read a book, so we'll see how that goes. So we might do that. We also talked about doing some tech tips. Maybe George will nerd out a little bit.
George: I always have time for that.
George: Forget the books. Tech tips.
Camille: I know, I think when I said this to you, I was like, what do you think about doing tech tips? You were like, oh, that would be like 5,000 hours of podcast recording on. And I was like, oh, you might need your own podcast just for that. But it was like tech tips or gadgets or just little things that really could help in general.
Camille: So that's one I think could be really cool cuz it could be some pretty basic stuff that really helps people. Also we talked about maybe doing some how do I do some of this stuff? So you had this idea, George, of me showing people how I do some specific aspect of planning or organizing or whatever.
Camille: That's a little bit more YouTube ish visually. Yeah. But I mean all of these are going on YouTube, so we could talk about it in the podcast and then have more visual stuff on YouTube. So that might be cool.
Camille: We definitely want more guests. The guests, I'm thinking in terms of just wanting to hear other business owners stories that you can learn from. But if anybody wants to be a guest or has an idea for a guest that we should have on, we're down for that.
Camille: So we definitely wanna have at least one guest a month. And then of course, our main focus will always be on strategy, planning, leadership, just all the fundamental stuff in business that it takes in order for you to have a thriving business that you can also enjoy while you're running it. So it's all this very basic fundamental stuff that nobody taught us how to do.
Camille: We just decided to start a business and here we are kind of winging it on some of these things. So we wanna make sure we're giving you that level of information and education.
Camille: That is what we're hoping to do for the rest of the year. We're in it for the year, right, George? Yes. We're gonna do like 50 episodes, no question.
Camille: All right. So we do wanna hear from you. Please go to thebeliefshift.com. There'll be a link in the show notes. Leave us a message. Say, I wanna hear about this, or, I really don't care about that. But I do wanna know about this. We definitely wanna hear from you cuz this is for you.
Camille: I mean, it's a little bit for George and I just cuz we get to hang out. But it's mostly for you, the listener. Yeah, we're making this for you. It really should be for the listener, shouldn't it? Yeah.
Camille: All right, so let's get into the actual topic of the day.
Camille: Okay.
Camille: It is that time of year when we set goals for the year, and that means we're always trying to get better outcomes than we did in the past, in our businesses and in our life, for that matter. Yes. And that's a good thing, right? We would definitely want to be getting better outcomes.
Camille: But we can't stop there. It is important that we always start with the end in mind. Like, what do I want to achieve long-term and how do I ideally want things to work? But that's just step one. And if that's all we do, so , if I just write my goal on a post-it and stick it on my computer, I'm not done.
Camille: It's still just a thought or an idea at that point. That's all it is. It might be a really good one, but that's all it is and all it will ever be if you don't start to actually do the work. So we have to at some point go from the thinking part of dreaming up all the cool stuff we wanna do to the doing part.
Camille: So today I wanted to take a deep dive on one of the belief shifts that I think really makes a difference in increasing the odds of success in achieving our goals. So this is pop quiz time for Geroge.
Camille: Hm, don't cheat . I know you want to.
Camille: Which Belief Shift do you think I'm gonna pull out of this whole list that would be most impactful in supporting goal achievement?
George: Well, given that there's a belief shift called Process over outcomes, I'm gonna go with that one as the most relevant for our process over outcomes episode. That's
Camille: you think? Yeah. See, you're just cheating. I'm all in on that. I should not show you the title of an episode before I ask you these questions, ,
George: but I know
Camille: it's a trick question.
Camille: I know. It is a trick question in a way, because I mean, really all of them are designed to help you be better at achieving your goals. All of the eight belief shifts.
Camille: But I am focusing on process over outcomes, partly because. This one has been showing up recently in my work. And so I really started to think about this a little more deeply and thought, oh, this would be a great time to just take a deep dive on this.
Camille: So I have a little client story to share with you. I've been doing a lot of work with them on their strategic planning process. We're working a new process this year for them, and one of the themes that keeps showing up in the work with them is because they haven't had a focus on this process of developing their plan and how they go about developing that plan, I'm recognizing every time we get in a conversation with the leaders, with the teams, the type of conversation they're having is incredible, but it's so obvious to me that this is the only time they're having it. So it's the only time they're really having a conversation about what their shared priorities are as a team.
Camille: Even it's just like four people. So some of these are bigger conversations, bigger teams, and some of 'em are smaller. It doesn't really matter the size or the group or where or who. It's just really obvious to me like they haven't made the connections between what their priorities are and the bigger priorities of the company and what they all should be really working on and what they all care about.
Camille: And it's been great because they're having these really cool moments of alignment, like Oh yeah, and that, and they're, yes, anding on top of their everybody's ideas, but it's this lack of connection on a regular basis that's really showing up because they don't focus on this process at all. They have been setting strategic goals every year, but not in this way.
Camille: So the theme that the, the common thing that I hear is I'm saying, yeah, well, we say we're gonna do that every year, and nothing ever happens.
Camille: Their in lies the problem. They're setting a goal, but they're not actually achieving it. And it's because there's really no focus on this process of not just setting the goal, but the, the process we're building out for them starts with the setting of these goals, and now it's moving into the process of how we're gonna actually go pursue them.
George: How did they get in that position? They're setting goals, but they don't really have a process that drives and they're successful, by some definition.
George: Successful. Right. I was like, how do they get in that place?
Camille: I would just say that their culture has always been very much a just go do it. Yeah. Kind of process. They've kind of been all over the map in terms of being financially successful.
Camille: So it's not like, oh, and the book company's doing great. Not necessarily like their lack of this process has also meant they've missed out on opportunity. I see. That they should have been able to capitalize on, but they haven't. It's not been a good thing for them.
Camille: The other thing that I see them do is in order to achieve success, make a goal, just make money. Let's just say that in order for them to make money, everybody's working way harder than they should have to. I think they kind of feel it, but it's just the way that it is for them.
Camille: They can't see the forest for the trees. They're just in it. Yeah. I, coming from the outside, I'm like, wow, that looks a lot harder than it needs to be. Huh to accomplish what you're doing because I see this lack of process and connection and it shows up in a lot of different ways.
Camille: So another place that it's not just in the strategic planning process. So one of the examples of this was one of the teams was like, yeah, we wanna make sure we have a plan to focus on revenue. Of course. Sure. And so one of their basic things was, you know what we should do is we should really focus on improving our connections with our current customers, cuz they wanna keep those customers and keep selling stuff.
Camille: And so they said, yeah, we should talk to our customers more often. Great. But what does that actually mean? , that's not a very specific goal, like more often. One more time a year. What does it mean? Yeah. Since we got into it, one of the things that came up was, oh, we have a C R M or a customer relationship management system and we're not using it.
Camille: Huh? Do we even know if it's up to date? When was the last time anybody looked at it? And then somebody said, what even is a C R M? , they had this ability and they hadn't been using it cuz they just lacked a focus on the process for connecting with their customers. They're basically just winging it.
Camille: They're just doing it on the fly when they need to. Like, oh, we need more revenue. I'm just picturing them in their office space, just kind of like, Hey, we need to meet the number this month. Okay. You call this customer, you call them, you call them, and let's see if we can sell some stuff.
Camille: It's just like a ad hoc at the end of the day, let's just scramble and do some stuff. I can totally see that. Yeah. Yeah. So this lack of process is showing up in sort of multiple ways for them. I see. That's what made me think about this wanting to focus on the outcomes, relationship of outcomes to process, and really talk about different scenarios for this.
Camille: It doesn't matter where you're trying to get outcomes, whether it's in your business or it's in your personal life. Focus on process is how you set yourself up. Self up for success. Why was that hard to say? Set yourself up for success.
Camille: So George, I'm curious, are you setting goals right now, personal, professional, like what's happening in your goal setting Processee world?
George: As it turns out right now, I. Yes. 20,000 person company. We've been working on goals for this year, for the past few months for a while.
George: So in terms of process, we have at least enough process. Sometimes in these big companies. I experience too much process. I would say right now, my, the problem isn't that we have too much processes, that our process is taking too much time. We're not moving fast enough through it. But the, the process itself, I don't really have a big problem with.
George: We have other problems like lack of direction from leadership. So the people who are executing our process, when we get stuck, we don't have good guidance about which way to, to go and decide that's a problem. But the process itself mostly is good.
George: I've definitely been here in previous years where we just set goals and no process or just start executing with no process.
George: That's not my current problem, but I've seen it plenty.
George: Plenty.
Camille: And how does that usually work out?
George: With well-intentioned people. You end up kind of going off track and you get results that like, well I see how you got there, but that's not what we're going for. Cuz they had real no guidance.
George: For people who are trying to gain the system. It's just horrible. So for example, in our sales force we have quarterly goals and quarterly bonuses and without a process for defining how to set your bonus. What'll happen is you get to the end of the quarter and the salesperson will be a little bit low on their quota. Their manager will say, well let's just do this other thing that we do, this other component to your bonus.
George: Just load it up with a bunch of kind of dummy accomplishments and that'll be able to get you a higher bonus for the quarter, but you never thought through what those accomplishments were. So they're all made up. There's no process for really dealing with, you're just kind of throwing stuff at at them to make their bonuses work.
George: So you're wasting company money. The accomplishments aren't really focused on anything. At the worst it looks like that. It's horrible.
Camille: Yeah.
Camille: I think that's where you're just trying to do anything to hit the goal so you can, you know, check the box. And in this case, I mean, yeah, I'm trying to reward this person, but yeah.
Camille: That's not what that goal is designed to do. This is where I think small business has an advantage because they don't have a board of directors or somebody looming over them saying, you must hit this number .
Camille: Yeah. Or else, and so they can design their goals at a different level, in much more detail and not have to do some crazy moves in their business just to hit a number so that they don't get fired or that they don't miss their bonus or whatever this bad thing is gonna happen, right?
Camille: Yeah.
Camille: So I think that's where there's some difference in, for small businesses, they have to hit their numbers for a whole other reason. Right? Which could also still cause them to do crazy stuff. Like, Hey, I wanna make sure I can pay all my employees and pay the bills at the end of the day. They might have a different level of problem, but at least it's not this artificial thing.
Camille: It's like a real tangible, this is still about the success of the business itself. It's about the business staying in business, right? Yeah. And not just about can I pay somebody an extra chunk of change . Yeah, exactly. So, yay for small business owners that we have that.
Camille: Let's talk a little bit about why to value the process over the outcome, because there is such a heavy emphasis on have goals or set big goals or, you know, goals, goals, goals, all the time.
Camille: What I've seen sometimes is I've seen people take this to the extreme as focusing on process and ignoring your goals can give you this greater chance of success. Mm-hmm. And even to the point where some say, , just ignore the goals completely, just ignore goals and focus on process.
Camille: And I think that's a little hyperbolic because you can't not have a goal at all. Because without the goal, how do you know what process to establish? They're related. Yeah, of course. So you do have to start with the end in mind. You have to start with what am I actually want to have happen? And then you still need a, now a process in order to make that happen.
Camille: But you can't just disregard the goal completely. I get why people say that. So if you've been hearing that, like I hear this, ignore the goals and focus on the process. And goals don't matter. They still matter. But what they're trying to get you to do is to shift to a focus on just once you've set the goal, then just pay attention to the process.
Camille: And if you have the right process, it's gonna get you to the goal. That's why they say ignore the goal. If you have the right process, it will get you to your goal. So you can focus on just that process and trust it's gonna get you where you wanna go as opposed to continually focusing just on that goal.
Camille: Let's talk about an example of this.
Camille: A very simple example might be a, I could set a goal of wanting to connect with X number of potential clients in a day or a week as a way to grow my business, right? So I wanna reach out to three new people every week.
Camille: And so you could start to imagine what my process might look like around figuring out who are those people would be? What's my method for reaching them? How am I gonna keep track of all this? This is kind of related to the, earlier when I was talking about the C R m, I need some customer relationship management process here and for outreach.
Camille: And how I'm gonna manage all of that. So you can see how I would design something that would have me focused on that as a goal. However, if I set a goal of making x number of dollars a month as a way to grow my business. Now both of these are business growth goals. Both of these are ultimately about, I need to make more money in my business.
Camille: But this one I'm just focusing on the dollars themselves. So it's this end goal. This outcome that I want, but I haven't said anything about how to go about it. So suddenly the process is like, what, what process do I have for that? There's so many ways I could do that besides just reaching out to X number of clients.
Camille: There's so many different ways I could go about doing that. So now you can see where the process starts to get a little bit messy, right? So when you think about focusing on the process, this is why we say that, because if I design this, how many dollars a month I wanna make, and I'm not specific about how I want to do it, how I wanna actually increase my revenue, and I don't design a process to do it.
Camille: I literally have a goal with no path to get. I just have a money number and lots of business owners do have this. Like, I know how much money I wanna make. I haven't really been specific about exactly how I wanna make it, or maybe I know I'm going to continue to do X, but I haven't done the full thing.
Camille: I only know how I'm gonna get halfway there. I don't know how I'm gonna get all the way there.
George: I get that. In a small business, the stakes are so high. Whether you make your revenue number or not, that's your paying rent or not, you're eating it.
George: I can get why people would over-rotate on that. And it makes me think this is one thing that entrepreneurs are good at, they're good at assuming risk and withholding on that and revenue number for a while, and they're focusing on more process type things. You take the, this is a story from a movie with a story about Facebook's growth from the social network and Zuckerberg not worrying so much about the money he was gonna make, but building up the audience.
George: Focusing on, on the process of what are we gonna do to make people engaged and the, the money we'll get to later, which is kind of dangerous, but it turned out to bes fantastically successful.
Camille: And especially I think if you're a small business and you're just starting,
Camille: you don't get to keep having that small business if you don't make an X amount of money. And this is where, you know, businesses are either if you're going after funding or whatever you're doing, you know, like the Zuckerberg example is you get X amount of funding so that you can just be, you're, you're selling people on the concept of your business.
Camille: Yeah. Getting them to buy into that and then that buys you time to build the audience for the thing. Yeah, exactly. And I do see a lot of people talk in the business development space they talk a lot about focus on building an audience, focus on building. Cuz it's also a long game.
Camille: You have to have some attention to, am I continuing to grow my potential client base? Cuz without that I don't, I can have the best product in the world or service in the world and it won't matter if there's nobody to sell it to. It's definitely a challenge for business owners. We get really focused on that number and any way to do it.
Camille: It's also how I think business owners get hung up in creating a business that they end of the day, then they didn't really intend or and don't like because they end up saying yes to potential ways to make money because they're focused on the number, like, I need to hit my number, so I'm gonna say yes to these ways of making money.
Camille: And the next thing you know, they're like, oh, I, I said yes to stuff that wasn't in my original business model, but now I'm kind of stuck with it. So , because they didn't focus on the process of building a business they want and they just focused on the outcome of make X amount of money. End up with kind of this mess of a business that doesn't really connect anything together.
Camille: And when you're starting, a lot of us do say yes to work that isn't ideally what we wanna do. So that's okay if you have a plan for that, right? I have a plan for, I'm gonna shrink this part and I'm gonna grow this other aspect of my business. But I do see lots of business owner doing it without that thought.
Camille: And they just say, oh, and, and this new opportunity and that new opportunity, I'm gonna go after this and this looks great. It's like that shiny squirrel syndrome. Like I just can't stop chasing them all down. And I think that the source of that for many of them is they lack of process and an understanding for how they actually want to grow and build up a revenue stream for their business.
Camille: So they're just saying yes to the opportunities as they come up. Yeah, I get that. The other thing that this brings up, when I think about this example this is why you should value process over the outcome is that the process will help you clarify the outcomes you want.
Camille: So this last example I gave of, I wanna make X amount of money. It's a pretty vague goal. I mean, every business has it. We all have that as a goal. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but it's too vague to take action on. You need to now break that down into what are the specific objectives for how I'm gonna do it.
Camille: This is why you need a strategy. What's my strategy for how I'm gonna make that money? I need to know how, and I can't build a good process for it if I'm not specific enough about what I want. A process is a good way to test, is this a really good goal for me to pursue? So I can set that goal, I can try to build a process.
Camille: And if I don't really know and or if the process is like, that's impossible. There's just too many ways. Then I can recognize that this is too vague of a goal for me to actually pursue. So it can help you get clarity and be more specific. In the last example, it was, I'm gonna be specific about, I'm gonna contact X number of potential clients every week.
Camille: That's gonna be a way I wanna grow my business. It could also be something like, I'm gonna grow my email list by a certain amount, or I'm gonna go to X number of networking events. Like these would be different ways that you would grow your business and you set specific goals for them. If all you say is, I need to grow my business and you aren't specific, maybe you try to do all of them.
Camille: Actually, what I think was more likely to happen is that this is where business owners get stuck when they're like, I'm stuck and I'm, I don't know what to do. It's cuz they had, they don't have clarity about what process to follow, what steps to take. And so there's too many options. Yeah. Right. If we have too many options, we can't make choices.
Camille: I think there was a study about this where they did a study and they set up a table with a bunch of jams at a grocery store. So they had all these different types of GMs and people could pick, and if there were too many people couldn't make a decision.
Camille: And if you narrowed the choices, then people could make decisions.
George: The paradox of choice is the mm-hmm. , the common term that we hear about it. I can't remember if there's book about it or many books or whatever. But yeah, that the paradox of choice is a problem for Americans, that's for sure.
Camille: Yes. I feel like that's in like a, this is in some nerdy book that we should probably review that. I think I've read like behavioral economics or something. What's
George: the book one of You must know it.
Camille: It's, it's somewhere in my shelf back here I think. I think like behavioral economics or something like that.
Camille: It's like by a behavioral economics professor, Daniel Elliot or somebody. Yes, actually I think that is who it is. Yeah. Yes. Sounds right.
George: My favorite example in my personal life,
George: in my experience about process versus outcomes comes back to when I was in the, in a drum bu bu corps Santa Clara Vanguard, 1985, so billion years ago in the percussion section, the whole attitude about the vanguard, the Vanguard was a top two drum corps worldwide.
George: That year we did fantastically well. It was an amazing season. And the beginning of a five year run, second place, second place, second place, second place, first place.
George: And the thing about the Vanguard was the way that the staff philosophy, we didn't really talk about winning. We've rarely talked about winning our shows. We liked winning. We didn't actually start winning our shows until halfway through the season.
George: The staff kept talking about improving and helping us learn to be better than who we thought we could be. You focus on getting better, focus on improving your marching technique, your plane technique, your ensemble your ensemble chops, all of that stuff.
George: And if you focus on that stuff, Mechanics, your process, we promise you the results are gonna take care of themselves and get, I mean, all of us, the core members bought into that cuz it was drilled into us 14 hours a day all summer long. But it's right. I mean, it's absolutely right. There were other cores that I would see and they would have a bad night and we'd hear stories about how the core leadership would punish the members by right after the show.
George: They'd have to go and do punishing drills before they got their late night snack, before they got to get on the bus and go to the next city. And it was just, it was demoralizing and not clear that it worked. And not to clear that they had an outcome, desirable outcome.
George: If we lost a show but we did a good show by our own means. We did all the things that we thought we were supposed to do, focused on what we learned that day. Everything was good. You know, we didn't worry about it because we, it was all part of this process.
George: That's my favorite example that I can think of still about success coming from focusing on process over outcomes.
Camille: I love that example cuz I think it's also connects so closely to just what I think about employee engagement.
Camille: I know they weren't employees, but all of the members of the core and how you create more engagement from them. And it's not by punishing them, right? It's by saying, here's the process, here's how we're gonna acknowledge how we're doing in that process. And that's motivating. You're like, okay, we did it right.
Camille: Of course they want to win so they know now we gotta focus on this process in order to win. You don't have to punish them for not winning. They're punishing themselves, they're there for winning.
George: This reminds me of one more thing. So the outcome I think you mentioned this is not always in our control. So we go to a show, we compete and we get a score. And that score is broken down into many different subcategories. Music execution, design of the show, the general effect on the audience, the marching execution, individual and ensemble performance.
George: There are judges on the field and in the press box assessing all of those individually. And at the end, all the core directors and the staff go to a post-show recap with the judges about why they scored the cores in a particular way, and they have tapes. And then we, the next day we'd get some sort of guidance from our section leaders about that.
George: Here's the thing, the judges are not infallible. They would give us an outcome for that night, but the staff would hear that and say, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You judged us wrong. Here's what you're trying to do with the show and what you did not notice or did not pick up on. We were going this direction.
George: And so our staff would lobby the judges say, you gave us a bad outcome. Go fix that. And so if we were focused on the winning so much and we got a particular score that was wrong because it was judged wrong, we would've been all off. Instead, they would tell us, no, don't worry about that. We got that part.
George: We'll fix the, the assessment of outcome. You worry about the process of getting there.
Camille: Yes. Yeah. And we didn't talk about this yet, so let's do it. Which is one of the reasons to focus on process and why it matters so much is one of them is that outcomes are not fully in our control.
Camille: Back again to just as a business, you set a revenue goal. We would all like to believe we are fully in control of that, hitting that number. But we're not. Things are gonna happen that are outside of our control in terms of how, you know, whether we're gonna be able to hit that or not. Covid and Covid, perfect example.
Camille: Yeah. Any number of things. It can be big or small or it doesn't really matter. The point is that you really don't have full control over that. So if you are only assessing your business performance based on that single measure that you ultimately don't have full control over, how demoralizing is that?
Camille: How are you gonna stick with it if that's the only thing you're really gonna judge yourself by? Because you don't get to go, like your example, we don't get to go and say, Hey, I deserved to make more money. It's not my fault that this Covid thing happened. I don't get to go say that and then get the bottom line of my company changed.
Camille: So we can't go make a case anywhere. We're just stuck with that outcome. And it's why you've got to have a way to assess the performance of your business based on how well. Both your processes are performing and how well you are doing and executing on those processes.
Camille: Which makes me connect to the thing that I love the most. That really made this whole process focus stand out for me was when I got into understanding lean performance improvement because that is very process focused. It's actually this connection of how to have continuous improvement with engagement of employees happening in a company as a way to elevate the overall performance of the company.
Camille: And it's really focused on are we measuring the right things? Which is much more process measures than outcome measures. And are we doing the work to continuously improve on those processes and focusing on them enough as a way to elevate the business as opposed to the carrot and stick approach to hitting some outcome.
Camille: I love that way of thinking and I think we'll talk about that more over this year as well. I wanna bring more of those principles in because there's some leadership principles and behaviors that we can talk about around how you do that. And I think if small business owners really leaned into, leaned into lean, I'm sorry, didn't mean to do that.
Camille: If we really did that there are so many ways that it would help small business owners to run much more effective, efficient, and, and just joyful businesses cuz it also is very much founded in finding more joy in the work by not making it so painful to do it. If we just let the processes happen, they're kind of painful.
Camille: Like they just show up as being awful and painful and hard for everybody and everybody will say, oh, I don't have time to fix it. And it's because you're in this painful process that you haven't paid attention to. So we will definitely talk about that more. Okay.
Camille: So let's hit some of these other ways that I think the focus on the process matters. Yeah. So in addition to, you don't have control. When you focus on the process, it does help you see that. So we talked about this a little bit, but it helps you see the progress and to stay motivated because you're focused on how am I doing in the process on a regular basis as opposed to just waiting at the end of the year to see if I achieve my big goal.
Camille: Can you imagine waiting e even if it's for the quarter, do I have to wait till the end of the quarter to see if I get to celebrate that I made my goal? Like, that's not great. I don't know about you, but I need some regular motivation and feedback to feel good about what I'm doing.
Camille: Yeah. You get that with a process focus.
George: That makes me think about physical therapy. If you've ever been to physical therapy and you have a long recovery, if you focus on my arm's broken, when's it gonna be fine? Ah, it's gonna be 13 weeks. Damnit.
George: However, a good physical therapy plan can get your focus. On your process of getting a better, and you can see progress from results, and that's motivating.
Camille: Yeah. You're looking at the incremental improvement that's happening so you can see that this work is actually working for you. It happens in so many of the goals that we set for ourselves, or we're just looking to achieve this, I don't know, some weight loss goal or money-making goal or whatever it is.
Camille: Did I do the small things I'm supposed to do that really matter and can and, and am I celebrating them? So a lot of business owners, when I asked them to do that reflection process of, well, what, what were your accomplishments? They're kind of like blank because they're focused on the big outcome and not the small things that they've been doing to achieve that outcome.
Camille: So they're not celebrating those small wins. And sometimes they'll even say to me, yeah, but that's just, that's just what I. Yeah, and those are accomplishments. Like, don't undermine your own success and ability to stay motivated by just chalking it up to just what I do. Cuz it might be just what you do, but it's not just what everybody's doing.
Camille: Cuz not everybody is doing this thing of building a business. So it's an accomplishment. All right, so other things that I think make a difference it does make it easier, and this is related to what you just said, it makes it easier to interpret feedback so you can improve. So if I'm focused on incrementally, how is my process going?
Camille: If I see there's some part of the process that isn't working, I have an opportunity to fix that. If I'm not paying attention to the process and then I miss my big goal. How do I even know what to do differently next? I don't have a process to actually change.
Camille: So in lean we talk about this as, have I set a standard process up that I know I should follow? And then if that process isn't getting me the outcome, now I can go look at the process and change it. But if I don't even have a standard process and I'm just willy-nilly doing this work anyway, I want, I don't know what to fix. Yeah. Huh. True. . So that's another reason process matters.
Camille: And then also I would say most of the goals you set are not one and done. You're not just one time trying to make this much revenue. So you want a process for how you're going after it because it a, will make your goals easier, and b is the thing you can then improve on to get more revenue next time.
Camille: I see they are just kind of winging it every year instead of , I've got a focus plan for how I make X revenue and then here's my how I'm gonna go make more revenue plan. And there's processes that supports that.
Camille: If you don't have that, you're just kind of wing it and you're just hoping it's gonna go well, you're gonna get tired. That's the hard way to do it.
George: It does sound tiring actually.
Camille: Yes. It's very tiring. It's hard, I think for business owners who aren't familiar too with just the idea of what does good process look like because to you, what something you said earlier in this conversation, you can have too much process.
Camille: You can overprocess things. If you're going into this and you're wary cuz you're like, I don't wanna have too much process because it feels restrictive or it feels bureaucratic. It feels like too much overhead. I hear you. It's possible. Yeah. Most of the small business owners I run into, that's not their problem.
Camille: Yeah. Their problem is lack of process because they're an entrepreneur and they're free spirited and they wanna just do things the way they wanna do them and they don't yet have that experience of how a good process can be freeing for. That sounds counterintuitive to them. So if that's you, I want you, I hope you're just , maybe perked up some curiosity about this and how could process actually help me have more freedom in my business as opposed to feel more restrictive?
Camille: Because that is what happens. It's hard for people to maybe conceptually get until they've experienced it. Once you experience it, you're like, oh, I totally get it now. I see how this happens. So if that's a point of resistance for you, just try to put on that curiosity hat and explore this some more in terms of how it could help you.
Camille: This is essentially why the whole lean performance improvement methodology even exists and why companies have worked so hard to embrace it. But it's also why it's been really hard for companies to embrace it because it doesn't really come naturally to us.
Camille: Yeah, I see that.
Camille: Anything else you can think of? George, did we miss anything in terms of like, the value of focusing on process over outcomes?
George: There's one more thing that comes to mind. I don't think we've missed anything. I agree with all this. It sits very well with me personally, probably cuz we think very similarly.
Camille: It's a good thing you're the co-host on the podcast and being with me, so. Yeah. Yeah. You're you're still passing the test. I have not fired you yet.
George: The other thing about it for me, and we've talked about this in a previous episode, is the ability to teach others and to pass on.
George: So if you have a process, when I think about how we manage the work within my team, I have a process set up and I teach the process to people so they understand, look, here's the whole framework, what we're going after and how we do it. It's good in a lot of ways. If I ever go somewhere and I need a successor, I can hand the process over the successor and things can go along more smoothly.
George: If I'm teaching people the process, it's easier for 'em to get buy-in on the whole thing and they understand where we're going along. So the, the teachability aspect of a process is better than a goal because if I just get people the goal, that's not enough. That's doesn't come with any context. But the process necessarily has context.
Camille: Yes. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you brought that up because it, this came up in some themes around with this client that I'm working with on their strategic plan was that they're lacking a good onboarding process. And as I hear that and I know them, I'm hearing also, yeah, you also lack just clarity in the process.
Camille: Like it's hard to onboard somebody if you weren't clear exactly how they should go about doing that work and what those expectations are. So to your point, if you plop somebody into the job and say, your job is to make sure x number of widgets get done. They're like, but how? How do I build the widget?
Camille: Somebody show me what to do. What's the standard process here? So in another episode we will go into more of this from the perspective of standard operating procedures or SOPs. Like what are all the tools and the ways that should be defining your process, internal processes in your business, and then all the value of that.
Camille: How do I use that in an onboarding process? It really will help. It relates to the idea for small business owners of that challenge of having high turnover. It's like, oh, so and so left and they finally just understood how I think and how to do everything in my business. I mean, Katie and I were just talking about that.
Camille: She's doing an SOP on how to do the whole podcast thing cuz she does all that behind the scenes. Yeah. Yeah. So somebody's gotta document that. So at least there's a, here's the standard process for how you go through it. So yeah, that's such a good one. It's so important for being able to have that onboarding process go well.
Camille: Yeah. Okay. So last couple minutes, we have , one last point that I wanna make before we close this out on what people should do is, I just wanna touch on it, and I think we'll do a whole episode on this, but I just wanna touch on the value of measurement here. There's two types of measurements you can think about when you think about process and outcome, which is, I can either measure the process itself or I can measure the outcome I want. And you should do both.
Camille: But typically we focus on an outcome measure. Again I need to make X number of dollars. That's an outcome I want. I want x number of dollars. Yes, by some date. But what you really should focus on is the process that's gonna get you that outcome. So what can, and this is what we tend not to measure very well, is what can I measure in the process to see if I'm on track?
Camille: In the examples we talked about today, it would be, did I make X number of potential new client contacts in the quarter? Like if my goal was to do five of those, did I do it? If I didn't, then I can probably, you know, look at my long-term outcome goal and go, oops, it's probably in jeopardy. Unless I said yes to a bunch of other crazy stuff, I shouldn't have probably said yes to
Camille: Yep. So think about when you're setting goals .To think about the process goals. So we'll talk about this. In another episode, break those down. How do you use them? What are good examples? What should small businesses measure? We'll get into that later. Anything else you wanna add to that?
George: I would just add that if you look at any publicly traded company's quarterly results call you'll see proof of this. Like Tesla, right now, Tesla is doing financially great and they're getting beaten up in the market and they're getting beaten up in the market partly because they're CEOs being a doofus with this other non-energy related company.
George: And that's actually telling the market, wow, we're not sure this guy is a good manager. So everything he managers now we're skeptical about. But that aside, one of the reasons they're doing very well on, on revenue, but they missed their production target. Which is not an outcome, that's a process thing.
George: And so the street will look at all these things. Any given publicly traded company, you'll look at the results and maybe you'll see the headline is Company beat their sales estimates by this, over that. But then there's all this other story about, and this indicator is this and this indicator or this and this, and that's why the stock went up.
Camille: I think that's a great example. It does show up everywhere, and if you're looking at the right, , measures, then you can make smarter decisions. But we very often are looking at the wrong ones.
Camille: So in closing, here's my just general guidance for everybody on what you can do with all this information.
Camille: So first is obviously, I hope you're setting a strategic plan and some goals for your business for the year. Mm-hmm. And when you do that, go, then look at what would my process be for achieving that goal? Which is that how I'm gonna do it. And then let that help inform setting better goals or objectives.
Camille: So usually there's like a goal I wanna achieve that's big. And then there's some key like smaller goals or objectives that would help me get there. Again, back to the, I wanna make X amount of revenue. There might be three targets I've gotta hit in order to make that happen around how many clients I contact and how much I grow my email list or whatever your method is for growing your business, you're gonna have some very specific things.
Camille: So look at your process to help you inform a better specific way to achieve your goals. That will immediately show you how clear the path is from here to what that outcome is that you.
Camille: So use that process to assess if that goal is specific enough. And if not, then rewrite it or the outcome goal, you don't necessarily need to rewrite, you just need to write a more specific process goal.
Camille: So make sure you're doing that step and then make sure throughout the year that you are measuring progress on process. So this is where I think if you wanna think about the ignore the goal, once you've set the outcome goal, you can kind of forget about it. Yeah. And now just focus on the process. Yeah.
Camille: And measure your progress toward process. So every month, every quarter, you're asking yourself, am I doing the right work in the process for that outcome to happen? And just keep focusing on that.
Camille: And then if you find that the process you're doing, you're following the process perfectly, but it's not helping you achieve the goal, then you can go look at improving the process. But if you don't do that, then you have no idea what to fix.
Camille: So that's my guidance. Set those goals. Design a process to achieve that goal. Use that process to assess, make a mu much more specific goal for you, and then focus on measuring progress on the process. That's my thing.
George: That's awesome. May I add one more story?
George: Of course, you may. I don't know why, but this reminded me when I was taking piano lessons and I was in high school, I was pretty good at a regional level and kind of at a state level player. I remember going to Seattle with my teacher, with our teacher, Sue Gat, and we were getting ready for some competition. I was entering, but I really wasn't very good at practicing. I realize now. I didn't know how to practice properly. I just had kind of a lot of brute talent, and I loved playing. But I remember her trying to tell me this and I didn't get it at the time.
George: We would walk by practice rooms and hear some of the other students play, some students who beat me ,who were better piano players, and all they were doing was playing scales and exercises, that's all. They weren't practicing their song. And I would spend a lot of my time practicing the piece that I was gonna perform.
George: And she was saying, Hey, listen, George, listen to these guys. Are they playing their selection? No, they're just doing exercises, is because they were spending all their time focusing on the same thing. Their process, their practice, and letting the performance of the piece take care of itself. And I didn't get that until I was in college and had a different set of teachers.
George: It wasn't her fault, it was my fault, but this is exactly where I was focused on outcome. And, and so I would practice the wrong things, focus on the wrong things, versus these other kids were clearly process oriented and they kicked my butt. Hmm. Musically.
Camille: I didn't even know that about you. I would've assumed you were very process focused to get as good as you got around playing the piano.
Camille: I think I had like more of a mix of that when I was learning it, but yeah. That's so interesting. You were just good by brute force.
George: Up to a point I would definitely surpris my, my theory was great. I was all about process for the music theory, learning how music worked and composing all that stuff.
George: But when it came to performance after a certain point, I just didn't have a good way of practicing fundamentals. I didn't have good ways of thinking about it.
Camille: There you go people.
Camille: All right. That's all I have for the day, for the pod.
Camille: Awesome. Thanks George. It's nice to have you back.
George: Nice to be back. I love this topic too. You know, if people have problems with this, if only there were a person they could go to to help coach them on how to focus on process over outcomes. Yeah,
Camille: I don't know. Do you know anybody like that? I really don't.
Camille: We really should find somebody who's like an expert in this stuff. Yeah. Maybe get them on the pod and interview them. . Oh my gosh. So funny.
Camille: Reach out if you have questions and you need help with this and you're not sure what to do and you can just leave us a voice message belief shift.com.
Camille: You'll see a little widget. You can click leave a message and tell us what you think or tell us what you have questions about. Tell us what you need help with. If you come up with a good question that you need help with in your business, maybe I'll just do it right here on the podcast and so you get free coaching just like that.
Camille: That'd be awesome. I know. It would be awesome. So yes, would love to hear from people if they're like thinking about this process stuff but are running into some issues cuz it can be a little bit tricky. Yeah. But. If you really focus on it, it'll get easier. Just like everything.
Camille: All right. Thank you everybody, and we will be back in your ears next week.
George: Cool. See ya.
