Designing Love (and Purpose) Into Our Routine
Making sure we can dedicate close to twenty percent of our time to the things we love - those things that really connect with our clear purpose - can often be a huge challenge in itself. Even when we have some level of control over what we do and when, the responsibility of leading nearly always involves things flying at us that were not detailed on our schedules! Getting those most critical and purpose-related tasks squeezed can be a heavy lift. With that being the case, how much more difficult can it be to ensure we’re able to draw a line from many of our other tasks - let’s call them our less than ideal tasks - back to even the clearest purpose? Remember, we can’t love everything we do…
Once we have clarity around how we can connect many of the tasks we don’t necessarily enjoy back to a clear purpose that really does drive us, we can’t expect everything to automatically fall into place. In the fifth lesson of our Emerging Leader Development course, we emphasize the importance of creating systems for ongoing growth as a leader and share this quote from the late Jim Rohm; “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they may have planned for you? Not much!”
Even in a leadership role, we can quickly fall into someone else’s life plan - and that can just as easily be getting caught up in someone else’s wants (or drama) with them having nothing resembling a plan in place for themselves, and certainly not for anyone else they’re pulling into it! Make no mistake here, I’m not about to suggest that avoiding traps like this while sticking strictly with our own plan is simple. In fact, I think it’s nearly impossible. Nearly impossible… We what can do, though, is be intentional about building systems and routines that help protect our time and keep us dialed in on fulfilling our clear purpose yet still allows us to serve the teams we’re responsible for.
I know I mention it frequently, but I can’t stress enough how much learning to understand my unique behavioral style through studying The Model of Human Behavior combined with the results from a scientifically validated DISC assessment has helped me recognize what I’m wired to do well and what things will require more energy or focus. Coupled with how that same base knowledge has helped me communicate more effectively in nearly every situation, I’m not sure I can point to a more useful tool. That said, I’ve been able to get even better results personally since adding a pinch of the chronotypes I learned about from Daniel Pink a few years back. Since that’s far more in depth than we can go here, and can vary greatly from person to person, I’d suggest you check his book, WHEN - The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing or a few of the lessons Cindy and I shared around that idea in our Leading At The Next Level program.
Regardless of what tools you use to build the systems and routines that help you keep your purpose deeply ingrained in your daily agenda while limiting the chance of being pushed aside by things that seem urgent - but aren’t always all that important - being intentional about creating and maintaining those systems is crucial! Then, as leaders, we need to be just as intentional about ensuring those systems help us build experiences that fulfill our team members’ purposes as well as our overall organizational purpose.
Designing Love (and Purpose) Into the Organization
As leaders, the systems we create to help us manage our own routine and workload are critical - especially if we’re going to have a real shot at keeping even the clearest purpose top of mind. But we DO NOT have the luxury of stopping there! Building similar routines into our entire organizational culture also falls in our lap; if we don’t do it, can we really expect anyone else to? One of the pesky phrases I’ve heard John Maxwell say for more than twenty years comes to mind, “Everything rises and falls on leadership…”
We’ll change gears later on and take a very specific look at what we need to do as leaders to ensure every individual on our team has a clear purpose of their own AND makes a direct connection between that and our organization’s purpose. For now, I want to challenge you to just consider how you can design the love and purpose we’ve been looking at, the kind that Marcus Buckingham says serves as “the most powerful force in business for driving behavior,” into the general routines that exist throughout your entire organization.
In chapter thirteen of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership on “The Law of the Picture,” John Maxwell shares that “the temptation for any leader is to merely communicate about the vision.” He goes on to warn us that “vision has a tendency to leak” if we’re not keeping it in front of our teams ALL THE TIME! Part of the responsibility we carry as leaders is making sure each team member not just understands the overarching purpose of our organization, but how their daily work connects with that. (Remember, we’ll dig into that in more detail soon…) And the reality of it is that we’ll need to talk about it over and over and over again if we want to be sure any particular leak doesn’t allow it to completely drain from the daily picture they’re a part of.
Since we’ll go into more detail on the specific action steps we can take for this separately, I’ll just add one more thought on the idea for now. We can’t afford to assume that every individual team member will connect with any one thing we share about the organizational purpose. Just like every leader is wired differently, our team members are every bit as unique and each behavioral style will require a different approach in our communication for the message to be received exactly as we need it to be.
When we can do this effectively though, and keep our teams rallied around a clear purpose they can connect with (and possibly even love), we can indeed predict the behavior that follows; remember that 57% increase in discretionary effort I’ve mentioned a few times? That’s where we can begin really seeing the results of designing love and purpose in the organizational routines! Then we can get just as intentional about designing the same into what each customer or client experiences.
Designing Love (and Purpose) Into the Experience
Since most leaders will have far more interaction with their teams than they’ll likely have with the majority of the clients they serve, it definitely deserves the detailed look we’ll be giving it later on. But designing love and purpose into how our organizations operate will most certainly spill over into what each individual we serve experiences. And if we’re intentional about it, we can design just as much love and purpose into what anyone we interact with experiences!
As part of a recent session with our IMPACT Leadership Academy, we challenged each participant to detail how their daily activities tied back to and exemplified the mission, vision, and values of their respective organizations. Since this was something so few companies dig into at all, let alone routinely or in any real detail, it wasn’t easy but everyone wasn’t able to get there. From there, we asked if the clients they served knew their companies’ values and could see them represented through their behavior. That got a little tougher!
In chapter eight of What’s KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!), I share something John Maxwell said I’d need to do if I was going to use his material. He said that “80% of the population falls short of what’s expected of them. Around 15% do just what’s expected and stop right there. Only around 5% will ever do what’s necessary to exceed expectations.” He closed that part of the conversation by asking that I always work to exceed expectations anytime I used the material he had put his life into.
That was in August 2015 and I’m confident that the eighty percent he referenced then has grown. In fact, I shared John’s number with a friend recently and he referenced this post-Covid era as “The Great Incompetence.” I won’t detail our entire conversation here but I can assure you that I can see exactly why he’s come up with that phrase - and ties right back to more than eighty percent falling short of expectations and even less than five percent being willing to exceed expectations!
Now let’s connect all that to the experience we provide for the clients we serve… I believe we should be talking about our values constantly, with everyone we interact with. I also believe that we should be tying those values to the behaviors we use and the behaviors our team members use - both good and bad; how they model those values or how their behaviors aren’t congruent with our values. In doing this, we should also be deliberate in identifying what our clients expect from us. If they expect something that’s just not what we’re equipped to provide, we need to make sure they understand that. But when we can provide what they’re looking for, it’s our chance to exceed their expectations. This may be in terms of the specific product or service we deliver, or maybe it’s just in how we go about delivering it.
When we can keep our values visible and be sure anyone we deal with understands how the actions we take tie to those values - and connect with our clear purpose - we’ll be well on our way to creating an experience that exceeds expectations, one a customer can truly love! And while we’ve looked at quite a few reasons so far detailing why having that clear purpose is so important, we haven’t really dug into how we identify our own definite major purpose so we’ll work through that soon!