Order of Man - The Power of Vision Driven Leadership

00:00:00.000 When most of us think about leadership, we think about inspiring and motivating and influencing

00:00:04.700 others, but rarely do we deeply think about our vision for a business, an organization,

00:00:10.460 or even your family. And that's ironic considering vision is the foundation of inspiration,

00:00:15.860 motivation, and influence. Today, I'm privileged to be joined by a man who has been a tremendous

00:00:20.720 leader to me on my path to build and lead the order of man movement. We cover so much

00:00:25.920 in this conversation, including the importance of a vision grid, how to effectively respond

00:00:31.200 to resistance, four characteristics of great leadership, the difference between your circle

00:00:36.220 of concern and your circle of influence, and ultimately the power of vision-driven leadership.

00:00:42.340 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly charge

00:00:47.060 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are not

00:00:52.920 easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are.

00:01:00.100 This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call

00:01:05.420 yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler. I am the host and the

00:01:10.840 founder of this podcast and the order of man movement. I hope all is going well for you guys

00:01:15.220 in the midst of this chaos that is coronavirus. I know things have changed around for a lot of you

00:01:21.080 guys. There's a lot of uneasiness and uncertainty. And even if it's not for you necessarily, there's

00:01:26.920 people in your life, whether it's family, friends, even within your tighter circle, your kids, your

00:01:32.240 wife, your neighbors who are concerned and frustrated and confused about what's going on and what's going

00:01:38.100 to be happening. So leadership is more important now, probably than it ever has been. And I think

00:01:43.140 you guys are beginning to see the importance of the work that we've been doing over the past five

00:01:47.400 years. And it couldn't be more timely, not to say that I'm opportunistic about the coronavirus

00:01:53.480 fallout, but I would suggest that we can really put the ideas and strategies and the things that

00:01:59.780 we've been talking about over the past five years into practice more so now today than probably over

00:02:05.040 any time within the last five years. So I'm glad that you're tuned in. I'm glad that you're here.

00:02:09.360 Hopefully this has served as a valuable resource on your path to become a more effective and capable man.

00:02:14.360 I would ask before we get started today, please share this. All right. There's a lot of guys who

00:02:19.300 have some downtime. They, they need some, some direction, some guidance, and hopefully this is

00:02:25.520 the tool that will provide that, or at least get them on the path. So if you have your brother,

00:02:30.020 father, colleague, friend, neighbor, whoever it may be, who needs to hear the information,

00:02:34.400 then please share this. Also, if you would leave a rating and review, all right, you've got a little

00:02:39.060 time on your hands, take two minutes of that time. If you've gotten any value from what we're doing

00:02:42.340 here, jump on your podcast app, write a review, give us five stars or whatever you think we deserve.

00:02:48.000 I think five stars, but I'm a little bit biased. And then just leave that rating review. And that's

00:02:53.760 a great way to say thanks. And it's a great way to build the movement, which is what obviously I'm,

00:02:58.260 I'm trying to do here. And with it being as important as it is. All right, guys, I've got a,

00:03:02.980 a very good one for you today. I say that every week, but every week it is a good one. So I,

00:03:07.040 uh, that's just what it is. Uh, this one is particularly important to me because it's from

00:03:12.160 a man who I've been following for a very long time. And to be able to have a conversation with

00:03:15.840 him was, was very powerful. I'm going to get to that in just one quick second, but I do want to

00:03:20.320 mention origin main. Yes, they are show sponsors, but more than that, they are friends. And I am

00:03:26.980 extremely motivated, inspired, and uplifted by what they've been doing in this time of need.

00:03:32.160 Uh, they've shut down, I want to say two or three of their production lines at this point,

00:03:36.640 and have focused very, very heavily on, uh, making masks, uh, for, for everyone. Uh, but also making,

00:03:44.540 uh, the personal protection equipment, uh, face shields in particular for, uh, hospitals, first

00:03:50.320 responders, and, and those types of individuals. Uh, so they've made some sacrifices obviously,

00:03:55.640 but they are stepping up, uh, in a, in a big way in a time of need. So check them out.

00:04:01.640 If you want, uh, you can go to my Instagram page at Ryan Mickler and look, uh, I've been

00:04:05.960 sharing what they're doing, but these, uh, face masks are very, very cool. And, uh, they

00:04:11.520 will keep you more protected than, than doing nothing. So go check out and support this 100%

00:04:17.140 made in America company, uh, origin, Maine as in the state, Maine origin, Maine.com and

00:04:21.800 check out those face masks and face shields. And of course, everything else that they are

00:04:26.060 doing, including their cold war supplement, which I take every single day. Uh, you want to check

00:04:31.220 that out as well. It's called cold war. All right, go check them out after the show for

00:04:34.920 now. Let me get to Michael Hyatt. Uh, he is an author. Uh, he's a podcaster. He's a speaker.

00:04:39.960 He's also the former chairman of Thomas Nelson publishing. So very, uh, very well educated

00:04:46.400 when it comes to publishing and writing books and things like that, which is initially how

00:04:49.860 I got introduced to him. I came across his work as I was launching order of man about five

00:04:55.120 years ago. And since then I've been following his advice. Uh, I've been implementing his

00:04:58.500 strategies for growing and leading a movement, uh, building effective organizational strategies

00:05:03.700 in my personal and professional life, and then ultimately taking charge in both areas

00:05:08.780 professionally and personally. Uh, so when his team reached out and requested to have Michael

00:05:13.920 on our podcast, of course, I jumped at that opportunity, uh, to have a conversation with

00:05:18.180 this man who has been extremely, extremely influential in my life. In fact, order of man

00:05:22.300 would not be the same if it weren't for Michael Hyatt. Uh, he's a New York times bestselling

00:05:26.100 author today. He's here to talk with us about his ideas and concepts in his new book called

00:05:30.880 the vision driven leader. Enjoy guys. Michael, I'm so honored to, uh, to have you join us today.

00:05:37.760 I've been looking forward to this conversation for a very long time. Thanks Ryan. Great to

00:05:42.640 be with you, man. Yeah. I, I, I didn't tell you this before we started recording. Cause I

00:05:46.840 wanted to kind of save this as a surprise here, but, uh, about, I want to say six years ago,

00:05:51.560 roughly you were very, very instrumental in helping me launch my first podcast, which is

00:05:57.620 completely unrelated to what we're doing here. And I don't feel like I'd be in the same position

00:06:01.760 without your indirect guidance and counsel. So I really appreciate that. Wow. Thank you. That

00:06:07.000 means a lot. Yeah. Well, you're doing great work. I mean, your, your work when it comes to

00:06:11.560 productivity and goal achievement, one thing that really resonates with me, and I'm sure a lot of the

00:06:16.300 guys who are listening is codifying these pie in the sky type theories and concepts and making it

00:06:23.640 very practical, tangible, and then easy to apply in, in somebody's life. Wow. Thanks. You know,

00:06:30.500 I can, I kind of think for me, the way I learn is I like to kind of reduce everything to almost like a

00:06:34.900 recipe, you know, that you can't fail on. So like, what are the ingredients? And that's what I try to do

00:06:39.420 in my books and my other work. How do you, uh, how do you begin to cipher all of that information

00:06:46.460 down? Cause in the quote unquote self-help space, there's, ah, there's just so much information and

00:06:51.620 a lot of it's really good. And some of it is complete nonsense. Like how do you begin to isolate

00:06:55.940 and extract the pieces of the recipe that are going to make the most sense? Yeah, that's a great

00:07:00.780 question. You know, I think for me, it usually begins with research. You know, I'm a huge researcher

00:07:05.480 and I love looking at the science of different things. And I especially like to try to kind of

00:07:11.220 go against sort of the conventional wisdom and, uh, see if there's anything to that. You know,

00:07:16.440 usually if it's the conventional wisdom, I think, okay, if that's the zig, what's the zag,

00:07:20.380 you know, is that really the whole story or is there something else or what's missing or whatever?

00:07:24.740 So that's usually where it begins for me. Then I try to reduce it down to, you know, how could I

00:07:28.920 explain this in a way that's so simple that, uh, you know, even academics could understand it.

00:07:34.260 I'm being a little facetious, but, uh, but yeah, I feel like so much of the literature,

00:07:39.540 you know, particularly the academic level is so difficult to access. And I just want to,

00:07:44.480 you know, I want to make it accessible where people can actually use it. And to me, there's

00:07:48.720 no transformation without application. So I'm always driving towards the application. What can

00:07:53.360 I do in my life? That's going to create a difference. Yeah. It makes so much sense. And

00:07:57.720 it's funny though, when it comes to the simplicity of things, I think there's a lot of people

00:08:02.140 and I, you know, when, when I run across people like this, I think a lot of the times it's an

00:08:07.280 excuse, but I see so many people overlooking the power of simplicity. Like most people,

00:08:13.020 it seems to me believe that success is some sort of complicated algorithm that is only reserved for

00:08:20.400 the select few who are able to crack it. And so they use this as an excuse, not to do very simple

00:08:25.920 things that will move the needle in a big way. Yeah, totally. And I think usually that's a

00:08:31.700 result of a lack of reflection. You know, I was a philosophy major and one of the things I realized

00:08:36.840 about two years into that, my program was that I was having a really hard time, uh, understanding,

00:08:42.420 comprehending a lot of these philosophers. And it finally dawned on me, you know what? It's not me,

00:08:47.060 it's them. You know, if they can't make it simple enough to understand, they're not doing their

00:08:51.840 work, you know? And, and I think that that's how it is in a lot of fields. You know, it's sort of the,

00:08:56.860 the implicit communication that if you don't understand this, you're not smart enough.

00:09:01.800 And I just think that's where as communicators, whether you're a writer or a speaker or a podcast

00:09:05.640 or whatever, the hard work is to try to distill it and make it simple so that people can understand

00:09:11.220 it. I mean, people are busy today. People are distracted today. And if you want to see transformation

00:09:16.500 in people's lives, you got to put the cookies down on the shelf where they can reach them and where

00:09:20.000 they can digest them and metabolize them. Yeah, that's a good point. I definitely think there's

00:09:24.740 a level of, of responsibility on both parties, the communicator and the person who's receiving

00:09:29.880 the message. Uh, it's funny though. I hear a lot of guys who will say things like, you know, well,

00:09:34.940 if they don't understand me, that's my, their problem. Actually, it's your problem because if

00:09:38.800 you're trying to get somebody to do something, it is your responsibility to ensure that they understand

00:09:44.280 because you really don't have a right to be upset if they don't get what you're trying to

00:09:48.460 communicate to them. Right. Totally. I mean, communication is a two way street and you're,

00:09:53.580 you're right. They do have a responsibility, but on the other hand, if you've communicated,

00:09:57.160 but they haven't heard whose fault that is, whose fault is that? And I think it's the person

00:10:01.140 who's taking the initiative to communicate. Uh, if people don't, if they think a concept that I'm

00:10:06.100 teaching is just confusing or wrong or whatever, you know, it's on me to make it more clear,

00:10:12.500 to make it more compelling. And that's one of the things I try to work hard at.

00:10:15.560 Yeah. Well, I appreciate the, uh, the humility and it certainly takes a level of humility because

00:10:20.480 I know for me, when I put projects, whether it's a book or, uh, a course or whatever, any

00:10:27.260 t-shirt, whatever the product might be, that's my baby, right? Like I've put a lot of time and

00:10:32.420 energy and effort. And if somebody comes back and says, I don't get it. It's very easy for me as a

00:10:37.320 man to say, well, cause you're an idiot as opposed to like, Oh wait, maybe this isn't as good as I had

00:10:43.040 it in my mind to be. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yeah. Makes sense. Well, I'm, I'm really looking forward

00:10:49.400 to digging into the meat of this conversation, which is going to center around the idea of vision

00:10:53.280 and creating vision for yourself and then casting it to others, which kind of ties into what we've

00:10:57.440 been talking about. Uh, because this is actually going to be very applicable for me as, as I look

00:11:01.880 to grow my organization from something that has been relatively successful to taking it significantly

00:11:10.460 more serious and it really becoming like a business as opposed to like just some guy in a

00:11:17.180 spare room in his house running this organization. Right. So, so I really feel like vision is a big

00:11:23.420 component of that and being able to articulate to others, but tell, tell me and those who are

00:11:28.460 listening, why you think that this is the starting point and why having a vision for what it is you want

00:11:33.780 to accomplish is so important. Yeah. I think a vision is the first and most important task of

00:11:39.880 leadership. It's where all change begins. If you can't see the future, you darn sure can't create,

00:11:45.240 you've got to be able to see it with enough clarity and in a, in a way that's, you know,

00:11:50.140 personally exciting and compelling enough to get you to start moving toward it. So that's where it

00:11:54.280 all begins. You know, I think a lot of people stay very busy today. I mean, it's not uncommon for me to

00:11:59.580 meet, uh, business owners and entrepreneurs are working 70 to 80 hours a week. And there's just a

00:12:05.880 tremendous amount of sideways energy, a lot of busy work. They're covered over and overwhelmed,

00:12:11.160 but it's directionless. It's not moving toward something. And once you have a clear vision,

00:12:17.460 you can create alignment. And once you have alignment, you can drive execution.

00:12:21.280 And what that really means ultimately, and I wrote about this in my book, free to focus,

00:12:24.660 but you can achieve more by doing less. Not all work is created equal. Not all tasks are created equal.

00:12:31.140 Some contribute to the vision. Some don't, but without a vision, you have no filter,

00:12:35.980 no way to, to discern what's important for today. Yeah. It is funny. Cause you hear this,

00:12:40.920 this trite quote of just work hard. And it's, well, if you're working hard and you're doing

00:12:45.060 the wrong things, like it isn't worth pursuing that endeavor. No, that's absolutely right. I mean,

00:12:50.420 just give an example. Last year, my business grew 62%. I'm not bragging. I'm trying to illustrate

00:12:55.640 my business grew 62%, but I took 162 days off. Now, when I say off, I mean, those were days that

00:13:03.980 I didn't think about work. I didn't read about work. I didn't talk about work and I didn't do any

00:13:08.480 work, but I was completely unplugged from the business doing other things that were important

00:13:12.780 to me. That doesn't happen when you don't have a vision. If you've got a vision, your work can be

00:13:18.280 focused. It could be directed. You know, it's just much more efficient, much more effective.

00:13:22.160 Yeah. This is really valuable because one of the things I hear a lot about from the guys

00:13:26.580 is they will say things like, how do I find work-life balance? Or, you know, how do I engage

00:13:32.600 in these endeavors that are important to me? But frankly, I just don't have enough time in the day

00:13:35.940 to do. And it sounds like having a vision might lead you to being more efficient, which frees up time

00:13:41.140 to engage other pursuits or double down on current ones and really kind of create a little bit more

00:13:47.320 harmonious balance in your life. Well, absolutely, Ryan. In fact, I would say that one of the

00:13:54.060 components of vision is that it can't just be related to work. So my new book, Vision Driven

00:13:59.520 Leader, is all about having a vision for your business, right? But I wrote a book before that

00:14:03.060 called Living Forward, which is all about having a vision for your entire life. The truth is life is

00:14:08.100 multidimensional. And all these different domains of life, whether it's your hobbies or your vocation or

00:14:13.460 your marriage or your kids or your health or whatever, all those things bleed into each other.

00:14:19.180 And so that if you have a disruption in one of those domains, it's going to affect the other ones.

00:14:22.960 If you have a health crisis, it's going to affect your work. It's going to affect your marriage.

00:14:26.220 If you have stress at work, you're going to bring that home. It's going to affect the other areas

00:14:29.460 of your life as well. So to have a multidimensional, full-orbed, comprehensive vision, I think is one of

00:14:36.080 the first and most important things that any man can do if he wants to actually change his situation

00:14:41.580 and grow into a more compelling, bigger future. Well, I know systems and processes is kind of

00:14:47.320 your specialty. Are there certain categories, we'll call them, that you focus on, whether it's

00:14:54.200 business, personal, spiritual, fitness, et cetera, et cetera? Well, I would say all that. I have a life

00:15:01.300 plan that includes a vision paragraph, if you will, about each one of those, whether it's

00:15:06.340 spiritual or my marriage or my kids or whatever. And in that book, Living Forward, I know we're not

00:15:12.640 here to talk about that book today, but in that book, one of the first exercises that my co-author

00:15:17.320 and I do, Daniel Harkavy and I do, is to have people imagine that they're at their own funeral

00:15:22.300 and what are people saying about them, you know? And so that's a way to get real fast. I mean,

00:15:28.080 because the truth is we're all going to die, right? And so people are going to say things about us,

00:15:32.560 we're either going to leave a legacy in them or we're not, you know? And, and that's really

00:15:38.560 shaped everything. You know, Dr. Stephen Covey talked about, um, to, to think about the end

00:15:44.360 from the beginning. And so that's what I try to do there with my life and the same thing in my

00:15:49.480 business. What do I want it to be? What, how do I want it to end? And then it sounds like you have

00:15:53.500 your vision as the starting point, and then you start working backwards into strategy and some of

00:15:57.700 these other tactics for making your vision a reality. Totally. Yeah. You know, so like I've

00:16:03.340 got this diagram in the book, the vision driven leader, where I talk about, you know, you've got

00:16:07.180 to have a vision and then you've got to reduce or distill that vision into three-year goals. And

00:16:12.340 by the way, the vision horizon for me is normally about three years, uh, anything longer than that

00:16:17.680 in this kind of ever-changing environment becomes a little bit, you know, guessing, but three years

00:16:23.020 seems to be the right amount, but you take the vision, you reduce it to goals. You turn

00:16:27.600 that into annual goals and then quarterly goals and then weekly objectives. And then daily actions,

00:16:33.340 the missing piece in the vision equation is typically the linkage between vision and daily

00:16:40.120 actions. And particularly today where so much of the workforce is millennials and I've got 40 full-time

00:16:47.040 employees and almost all of them with about two exceptions are millennials. They've got to have

00:16:52.940 meaning in their work. They've got to be connected to a larger story that, that this thing

00:16:57.560 they're doing on a daily basis matters that it's connected to a bigger story. And it's my job as

00:17:03.020 a leader to create that linkage. If I don't create that linkage, I'm going to have a much more

00:17:07.640 difficult time recruiting those people and a much more difficult time retaining them. But if I have

00:17:14.040 a compelling of a bigger, better future, that's making a significant positive impact on the world,

00:17:20.120 recruitment's not a problem. Retention is not a problem. Engagement's not a problem. People are fired

00:17:25.100 up and excited to come to work because they know they're making a difference.

00:17:28.600 Yeah. It's funny because you hear so many people say, you know, like, I can't,

00:17:31.480 I can't motivate these millennials. And I don't know if I'm a millennial. I think by some accounts

00:17:35.440 I am and others I'm not, I don't know where I fall in that category, but you know, it's, it's like,

00:17:40.220 you can, you can, you just need to put forth a little effort, but that isn't reserved to

00:17:44.800 millennials. Like you have to put forth effort with everybody and you should want to put forth

00:17:48.760 that effort if you're trying to inspire and lead people. Totally. And I think vision is so often

00:17:54.140 that missing component. And, and here's the thing, because there's probably people listening to this

00:17:57.760 right now who go, okay, I get it. I get it. I know I need to have a vision, but I'm just not a

00:18:02.260 visionary person, you know, or I don't have charisma. We think that that's something reserved for people

00:18:07.100 that are, you know, really charismatic, like the, the Martin Luther King juniors of the world or the

00:18:12.040 John F Kennedy's of the world or people, you know, that just, just have that X factor that can

00:18:16.880 articulate a vision and rally people around it and get them to March, you know, to it.

00:18:21.120 But I don't think it's that way at all. I think vision is just something that typically most of

00:18:24.840 us have never been taught. We have not a lot of experience with, but it's not that difficult.

00:18:30.440 And the thing I try to do in the vision driven leader is to break it down into a simple recipe,

00:18:36.240 like we were talking about earlier, earlier a formula so that everyone, every leader can create a

00:18:42.860 vision for where they want to go. If you've got an imagination and all of us do,

00:18:46.420 because we usually use it to worry, right? But if you've got an imagination,

00:18:50.360 you can actually begin to envision the future and create a bigger, better future.

00:18:55.240 I'm really glad you said imagination. Cause as we were talking, one of the notes that I made right

00:18:58.840 here is how can someone envision something that hasn't happened yet and, or they have no track

00:19:06.840 record of ever producing. And what you're talking about is imagination. Is it that, is there more to

00:19:11.740 it? Can we break that down? Well, there is some more to it. So let me just, let me just try to

00:19:16.860 break it down to a little bit. I mean, first of all, if you're going to do some quote,

00:19:20.320 visionary, then what do you got to do is got, got to do is get a part by yourself. You're not going

00:19:25.200 to do this, you know, in between checking social media and to try to do a bunch of other tasks.

00:19:29.620 This is something that you're going to have to do, you know, where you've got time for serious

00:19:33.880 reflection, time to really think time to really focus. So what I encourage people to do is, is

00:19:40.080 set aside a day, you know, maybe a couple of days, but get a part by yourself and then begin to

00:19:45.520 project in your mind, imagine yourself three years from now, and then just describe what you see.

00:19:50.520 And I, and I do it. I have a very specific format for what I call a vision script. Now this is not

00:19:58.300 a vision statement. So people get hung up on this. They think they got to come up with something

00:20:03.500 super clever, something super simple and brief that can fit on a, on a t-shirt. And most of us

00:20:10.700 just go, you know, I'm not that clever. I'm not that smart. I'm not going to come up with something

00:20:14.320 like that. And so they get stuck before they ever start. I say, no, no, no, no. It needs to be a

00:20:19.620 vision script. It's going to be like three or four pages long. We're going to talk about your team.

00:20:24.400 We're going to talk about the products you're producing, the marketing and the impact that you're

00:20:29.460 going to have on the world. Okay. So those four different categories. And in the book, I have a

00:20:34.580 series of prompting questions that if you did nothing else, but answer those questions in those

00:20:39.120 four categories, you would be very close. You'd have 75% of the script already written. This doesn't

00:20:45.120 have to be beautiful prose. You know, I encourage people the first time, just make it a, you know,

00:20:49.400 a, a rough draft, just get it out of your brain, do a brain dump because editing is so much easier

00:20:55.380 than creating this. You know, this is a content creator. You just got to get it out there first,

00:20:59.460 right? So then what you also want to do is not only imagine that you're in the future,

00:21:04.280 but you've got to write it down. Here's a great, great quote. I don't know who said it,

00:21:09.360 but it's thoughts disentangle themselves, passing over the lips and through pencil tips.

00:21:15.100 There's something about writing that creates clarity, that forces clarity, and you're going to need

00:21:21.140 clarity. You're going to need as much clarity as you can get so that you can communicate

00:21:25.260 it to others so that it'll motivate you, so that it'll motivate other people.

00:21:28.880 So write it down, write it in the present tense as though it's already happening. So the thing

00:21:36.620 about this is all the brain science shows that when they do brain scans on people, they have people

00:21:40.180 like who are vividly imagining something happening and they have people that are actually experiencing

00:21:45.120 that thing happening and the brain scans look identical. Your mind can't differentiate between

00:21:50.420 something vividly imagined and something actually done. This is why in all performance coaching for

00:21:56.540 professional athletes, a very important part of that coaching involves, you know, vividly imagining

00:22:02.680 the practice. So yeah, Tiger Woods is going to go practice putting. He's going to practice the short

00:22:07.300 game. He's going to practice driving, but he's also going to be doing all that rehearsal or pre-rehearsal

00:22:13.000 in his mind, just seeing it because he can actually do it better in his mind that he can do it on the

00:22:18.760 course. So that's a, that's an important component. So writing our vision in the present tense gets us

00:22:24.720 to begin. It's a way of hacking our belief system so that we begin to believe that it's coming into

00:22:30.160 reality. So I would say, you know, those are some of just some of the tips that I have in the books

00:22:34.440 about how to write a vision statement or visions. Yeah. It makes sense. Is there any sort of danger in

00:22:40.980 writing or at least thinking about things that may not have happened as if they already have?

00:22:47.020 Like the thing that comes to mind, for example, for me is somehow creating an internal dialogue where you

00:22:52.520 tell yourself, you know, this is what's happening and then you bring it back to reality and you're thinking

00:22:57.060 on the other side of your brain, well, no, that's actually not happening. And so now you have this

00:23:01.260 internal dialogue that's conflicting with each other. Have you seen any pitfalls or things to, to avoid when

00:23:06.860 it comes to that?

00:23:08.380 Well, actually that can be helpful. Um, let me explain. There's definitely going to be a gap. So there's a gap

00:23:13.320 between the now and the not yet. There's going to be a gap between your current reality and what you

00:23:18.200 envision for a reality. That gap can actually be important, particularly as you vividly imagine it.

00:23:23.540 And as you write this, because you're going to want to close the gap. Now you've got two choices.

00:23:28.080 You can either dumb down the vision. So it's closer to reality where you can up your game and begin to

00:23:33.280 move toward the vision. But just think about how we do anything in life. You know, um, this summer I did

00:23:38.440 a big renovation on the back of my house. I added a big den, big patio. It all started with an

00:23:43.320 architect and we got crystal clear on the blueprints. And then we got a more elaborate

00:23:47.920 construction plan so that the carpenters, so that the guys that were doing the masonry work,

00:23:53.020 laying the sheet rock, doing the painting, all that, we were all working from the same set of

00:23:56.800 plans. So there were no surprises when they finished it about two weeks ago. Uh, it was exactly

00:24:01.160 as we envisioned because we had a blueprint. So we didn't look at that, you know, at, at,

00:24:07.380 when we began the project last July and say, you know, this is a mess. This is, uh, not what we'd

00:24:12.620 like. And then just like scale back our plans. Now you have to be careful though, because you

00:24:16.740 don't, you want to set your plans or your vision. It's, it's still got to be believable. It's got to

00:24:22.100 be within the realm of possibility, but sometimes you have to grow the scope of what's possible.

00:24:28.300 You know, like, like here's here, this would be delusional. If I said to myself, okay, my vision

00:24:33.840 for my life is that I want to play in the NBA, you know, that's delusional, right? Sure. For most

00:24:43.580 of us, that's the case for most of us. You know, for, for me, you know, I'm a less than six foot

00:24:48.400 high white guy. That's just not going to happen. So, um, I think that, that there's the delusion

00:24:54.200 zone and then there's the discomfort zone. And I talk about this in my book, your best year ever

00:24:57.920 about where you set your goals and they ought to be in your discomfort zone. Same thing with your

00:25:01.440 vision. It ought to be, you know, out there beyond your reach so that it's inspiring,

00:25:06.960 but it shouldn't be so far out there that it's delusional. Does that make sense?

00:25:11.880 That makes total sense.

00:25:12.600 This is art, not science.

00:25:14.680 What are the, uh, what are the strategies or tactics that you would suggest somebody use to

00:25:19.520 grow their scope of what's possible, right? Cause I think a lot of the times what happens is we get

00:25:24.460 hamstringed in a way, uh, based on our current experiences and are the scripts, you know,

00:25:30.380 that we're running through our head, that we limit ourselves in a lot of ways. How do you begin to

00:25:34.520 expand what is potentially possible for you? Yeah. You know, one of the best ways to do that

00:25:40.540 is just to read, you know, read the inspiring stories of, uh, companies of leaders who have

00:25:46.600 made things happen. And all of a sudden you realize that these were ordinary people that

00:25:50.800 made extraordinary things happen. Everybody that's ever accomplished anything extraordinary

00:25:54.240 has been an ordinary person. And that's one of the reasons why I love reading history.

00:25:59.000 One of the reasons I love reading biographies. One of the reasons I love just reading business

00:26:03.760 stories. I tell one story in the book about a company called Swift key. You ever heard of it?

00:26:08.360 Uh, but just from the book.

00:26:10.080 Yeah. So Swift key was a, was a company that started out that did sort of predictive typing

00:26:15.580 with swiping, you know? So like it's all, it's a feature of iOS now, iOS 13, where you could just

00:26:21.420 swipe very fast and, and the AI can, can predict what you're going to do. There are three guys that

00:26:26.700 started that company. One of the guys bailed out after a couple of months, he just said,

00:26:32.040 you know, it's just too hard. I don't know that this is going anywhere. And he sold his stock

00:26:37.300 literally for a bicycle. The two partners surviving partners, like five years later,

00:26:43.560 sold the company at Microsoft for $216 million. And the third partner that bailed out said it was

00:26:50.980 like the worst mistake he ever made of his life. Right. Right. So he just, like, he just didn't

00:26:55.360 engage with the vision. He didn't think it was going to be possible. So I think, you know, to me,

00:27:01.460 exposing myself to a story like that and other stories that I tell in the book expands sort of

00:27:06.380 my own capacity to imagine what might be possible for me.

00:27:09.800 Yeah. I mean, that's the beautiful thing is I've got books behind me. I know you've got a library and,

00:27:13.840 and you were, uh, in the publishing business for a, for a long time and very successful there.

00:27:18.600 It's like, we have access to the world's greatest minds, the, the best information that was ever

00:27:25.240 available. And it's quite literally at your fingertips. It's like, if I want to read this

00:27:29.960 book, yours or somebody else's, I just pull up your phone right there. And it's instantaneously

00:27:34.820 available to you. It's, it's unbelievable. It's incredible. If you really think about it.

00:27:38.840 It really is. And I think, you know, one of the greatest choices that we have as individuals

00:27:43.340 is what we're going to put in. And so, you know, the news media would like to keep us

00:27:48.540 glued to what's happening in the news. And, and mostly the business model is designed to get

00:27:54.100 you scared and to get you clicking. Right. And so pretty much stuck in the past, what's happening

00:28:00.640 now, not thinking about possibility or what's in the future. You know, you think of every cataclysmic

00:28:05.540 thing that's come down the pike, you know, whether it's AIDS is going to destroy the world,

00:28:10.040 or we've got too many people or whatever it is, you know, all, all those problems get solved

00:28:15.600 one by one, you know, maybe there'll be a big one that, that we can't solve. But all I'm saying

00:28:20.020 is that, that we don't, when we do that to ourselves, we're not living in the realm of,

00:28:24.480 of possibility. We're constraining our possibility. And I think we've got to think more expansive than

00:28:29.160 that, uh, bigger than that. If we're going to create a future that's better for ourselves and

00:28:33.240 for the, for the people that are working with us. Well, and even maybe to flip that on its head a

00:28:37.020 little bit is we have the most impact with the circle that's closest to us. Right. So a lot of people

00:28:43.060 will think, Oh, you know, I want to change the world and I want to do all these wonderful things.

00:28:46.140 It's like, how's your family doing? Like, like, how are you leading your children? Are your employees

00:28:51.780 inspired by what you're doing? Are they able to put food on their table? Like, what is your current

00:28:56.280 sphere of influence? You start impacting that and then moving outward from there. I think that's a

00:29:01.160 significantly better way to go about it than worrying about what's going on here and letting

00:29:05.500 everything around you fall apart. Yeah. You know, uh, Dr. Covey has another model. I love,

00:29:11.100 I love Dr. Covey stuff, but one model he has is he has this thing called the circle of concern

00:29:15.840 versus the circle of influence. Have you ever heard that? Uh, I haven't actually know. Well,

00:29:20.480 well, just imagine, imagine, imagine two concentric circles, like a great big circle

00:29:24.220 that's your circle of concern, you know? So you've got the, at the time we're recording this, you've

00:29:28.180 got, uh, uh, the Corona virus, you know, that's happening in China. You know, we've got all these

00:29:33.180 people dying and so forth. There's all these things that we hear about things that we watch on the

00:29:37.300 news and we really can't do anything about those. They're our circle of concern. Then a smaller

00:29:41.740 circle inside that is our circle of influence and things that we can actually influence where we

00:29:46.340 can make a difference. And we spend so much time in our circle of concern areas that we can affect,

00:29:51.760 but occupy a lot of brain cycles, auto, uh, occupy a lot of focus and take a lot of our attention.

00:29:57.160 But if we would deploy that inside of our circle of influence, that's where we can really make a

00:30:02.320 difference. I like that. I have never seen that concept before, but it makes total sense.

00:30:07.040 I want to go back. You were talking about the blueprint for the expansion you did on your

00:30:10.960 property. Uh, I, I imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, that not everything went according to plan,

00:30:16.060 right? There was some things that came up and you said, well, we need to move that wall one foot that

00:30:19.680 way, or the window can't go there because we have the wires and it has to go this way.

00:30:23.940 How do you deal with in your vision when, you know, things don't go according to plan and they

00:30:29.060 won't, we know that they won't, but it seems like so many guys think it has to be like the perfect

00:30:33.240 thing. Otherwise it's not even worth pursuing. Yeah, that's, that's a great question. I like

00:30:39.400 the quote from Mike Tyson. I use it in the book somewhere that, uh, you know, everybody has a

00:30:43.000 plan until they get punched in the face and you know, that's how, that's how life is. Yeah. Um,

00:30:48.560 and I, you know, to use another kind of metaphor, you know, when my family, we go to the beach every

00:30:52.860 fall. And so we drive from Nashville, Tennessee, where I live typically down to the panhandle of

00:30:57.160 Florida to Destin area. And, you know, we have a destination that would be akin to the, to the

00:31:03.160 vision. You know, we know where we want to go. We've got a place set aside where we're going to

00:31:06.560 stay, but along the way we might encounter construction. There might be weather, all kinds

00:31:12.240 of things that would force us to take a tour or to reroute ourselves. But as long as you've got the

00:31:18.160 vision, you can do that. So the problem is when you don't have a vision, then it's like any path will

00:31:23.880 do because you're not really sure where you're going anyway. Sure. But once you've got the path,

00:31:27.640 you can adjust your strategy. This is a key distinction between vision and strategy.

00:31:31.880 The vision is the what that's where we're going. The strategy is the how strategy can shift depending

00:31:40.000 upon current conditions. Some strategies work, some don't, you can change them out, you know,

00:31:45.940 until you get it right. But the vision ought to remain relatively stable. You just have to adjust

00:31:50.520 your strategy. You know how we're going to get there. This didn't work. Let's try something else.

00:31:53.880 How do you know when it is appropriate to, you know, consider tweaking your vision or refining it

00:32:00.800 because, you know, priorities change. We evolve, we mature, we have new inputs, things change. So

00:32:06.260 I think you had mentioned, if I understand correctly, it's a three-year vision that kind of works its way

00:32:10.700 backwards into a one-year vision. But how do you know when it's time to like take a good hard look

00:32:15.840 and ask yourself, is this still my vision? Well, first of all, at our company, Michael Hyde and

00:32:21.960 Company, and in the hundreds of entrepreneurs in our coaching program, we advise them to revisit it

00:32:27.060 once a year. So as a part of their strategic planning process, they're going to revisit their vision

00:32:32.020 as kind of the first step in the strategic planning process. Read back through it. Ask yourself the

00:32:37.700 question, you know, is there anything here based on what we know now that needs to change? Because

00:32:42.320 the truth is, as you move through time, you get greater and greater clarity. You know, new things

00:32:48.440 pop up on the horizon that you couldn't see from your vantage point when you first,

00:32:52.180 you know, concocted your vision. And that's perfectly fine. It just needs to be, you know,

00:32:58.460 a conversation. It needs to be considered. It needs to be thoughtful. But changing the vision

00:33:03.340 is fine. What I wouldn't advise doing it is where you're changing it constantly to accommodate

00:33:09.640 opportunities. You know, occasionally an opportunity will come in and you go, wow, okay, that's a significant

00:33:14.980 strategic opportunity. I think we need to adjust our vision statement. Sometimes, especially the

00:33:20.520 more successful you become, more often than not, those are a distraction. And the thing that I love

00:33:25.660 about a vision, one of the powerful things about a vision is that it can serve as a filter. So you can

00:33:31.360 assess, and I tell the story in the book about a publishing company that I started where we were

00:33:36.300 just publishing all different kinds of categories of books because we didn't have a clear vision.

00:33:40.240 So we were doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it ended up becoming undoing

00:33:45.500 because we spread our resources too thin. We all live in a world of limited resources. And the more

00:33:50.320 you can consolidate your resources and focus them on a specific outcome, your vision, the more likely

00:33:56.300 you're going to be to succeed. So it can happen, but it needs to be thoughtful.

00:34:01.700 Man, let me hit the pause button real quick. This month, April, 2020, inside the Iron Council,

00:34:06.560 we're discussing and implementing strategies from our monthly conversations called a life

00:34:10.820 examined in the midst of all this Corona virus stuff. It's likely that you have a bit more time

00:34:17.160 on your hands than normal. And rather than waste this valuable time, which unfortunately I know a

00:34:21.320 lot of men will do not you because you're listening to this podcast. You'll understand the importance of

00:34:25.080 being effective and hyper-efficient with your time. You, you ought to be considering using this

00:34:30.420 opportunity to learn and grow, which many of you are. And that's exactly where the Iron Council comes in.

00:34:36.160 If you're looking for an additional resource, when you band with us, you're going to have access to

00:34:40.000 our monthly assignments. Like I talked about earlier, the life examined our challenges.

00:34:44.140 We do two challenges every single week. These are designed to push us outside of our comfort zone

00:34:48.580 and make us better. And then the accountability systems. And that's what everybody in the Iron

00:34:52.680 Council wants. They just want more accountability systems and tools to keep them on track.

00:34:57.080 And part of that is the brotherhood, the actual men inside the Iron Council that are going to help

00:35:02.180 you make the most out of every single day, even in a situation like we're dealing with now with,

00:35:06.860 with coronavirus. This is a great time really guys to contemplate the purpose of your life.

00:35:11.780 And then more, not more importantly, but equally important to formulate and execute an actual plan

00:35:17.700 for becoming the man that you have a desire to become. So if that sounds of interest to you,

00:35:22.240 go check out the video at order of man.com slash Iron Council to learn a little bit more,

00:35:26.520 to get the information you need to make a decision on that. Again,

00:35:29.440 it's order of man.com slash Iron Council. And I would love to have you band with us there again,

00:35:34.760 order of man.com slash Iron Council. Do that right after the show for now. I'm going to get back to

00:35:39.320 my conversation with Michael. Yeah. You know, as I was preparing for this conversation,

00:35:44.340 reading through the book and just doing my, my homework on my end, it really brought to light

00:35:48.560 this phenomenon that we have. And many of us suffer from, which is fear of missing out,

00:35:52.560 right? We see what everybody else is doing. We see what opportunities we pass by and we get really

00:35:57.880 consumed and anxious with, Oh, if I'm going to, I'm going to miss this thing that's going on.

00:36:02.600 But I found in my own personal life that as I've been clear about what I want and then having the

00:36:07.560 strategy to get there, that fear of missing out has dissipated quite significantly because I'm just

00:36:13.120 not concerned. It doesn't, it doesn't concern me. It's like, cool. They're doing that. That's great.

00:36:18.560 Here's what I'm doing. And I'm so focused on what I'm doing that I don't have time for

00:36:22.160 these other things. Yeah. Excellent. I, I've found that to be true too. The more you're focused or

00:36:27.700 locked into your own vision, you don't really have time to be looking around and seeing what

00:36:30.780 everybody else is doing other than to, you know, just cheer them on and support them or whatever.

00:36:35.140 But, uh, yeah, I don't feel that competitive when I'm looking around because I, I got too much

00:36:40.020 to do in terms of accomplishing my own vision. Right. Makes sense. One of the things that you had

00:36:45.080 talked about as well is that you use the framework that you discuss, which is these 10 questions.

00:36:50.380 And we're going to get into some of these here in a minute. Uh, you suggest that it's also used

00:36:54.820 as a diagnostic tool for your life and what's working and potentially what isn't. How do you see

00:37:00.640 this, this practice and this exercise of creating a vision as a diagnostic tool?

00:37:07.160 Well, I think first of all, you need to, um, consider the fact that if your life isn't lining up

00:37:13.820 with your vision, you know, that it's a, you can ask yourself, well, where is it not working?

00:37:19.000 You know, where is, where is my life not coming in alignment with my vision or where is my company

00:37:23.800 not coming in alignment with my vision? That means, by the way, you have to frequently revisit

00:37:27.640 this vision. This can't be a once and done, put it on the shelf, forget it kind of document. Uh,

00:37:32.840 the real work of the vision is not in the creation of it, but in the communication of it and letting it

00:37:38.240 be a living document inside your organization so that you're constantly truing up and using it as a

00:37:43.800 diagnostic for, you know, are, are we headed in the direction that we said we're going to go in the

00:37:48.340 vision? Well, let's get into some of the other factors that a good vision has to, uh, has to

00:37:53.480 have now. And, and I'm drawing a blank. You talked about the four characteristics a minute ago, but,

00:37:57.940 uh, some other things that I saw in here as I was going through this is that it has to be clear.

00:38:02.420 Uh, it has to be inspiring. Uh, it has to be practical and it has to be attractive. Can we break

00:38:08.200 down some of these factors and, uh, begin to kind of work backwards into creating our own,

00:38:13.100 our own vision for ourselves? Yeah, absolutely. So let's start with clarity. You know, that's,

00:38:18.600 uh, chapter four in the book and clarity is important because you might think you're being

00:38:24.460 clear, but you might not be as clear as you think. And I tell the story in the book about

00:38:28.200 some friends of mine flew into town and I was supposed to meet him at a restaurant in Franklin,

00:38:32.640 Tennessee, where I live. And so I was at the restaurant. They didn't show up a few minutes

00:38:37.360 later. I get a call and they say, Hey, we're a little confused. We were unable to find the restaurant.

00:38:41.360 And I said, well, where are you right now? And so they told me, I said, that doesn't sound

00:38:45.200 anywhere familiar. I said, where are you guys? They said, we're in Franklin. I said, you're

00:38:48.960 in Franklin, Tennessee. They said, no, we're in Franklin, Kentucky. Oh my goodness. So they

00:38:55.100 had, they had just Googled Franklin, you know, when they, when they left the airport and Franklin,

00:39:00.120 Kentucky is about the distance as Franklin, Tennessee. And so they were, you know, way North

00:39:04.600 of where they needed to be North of us in, in Franklin, Tennessee. So Franklin wasn't clear

00:39:09.840 enough. They needed to be specific about the state they were looking at. So I have this thing

00:39:15.380 in this chapter called a vision grid, where I talk about, if you could imagine the Y-axis being

00:39:19.900 vision and your vision is either abstract or it's concrete. You know, it's something that's kind of

00:39:25.820 ambiguous or it's very specific. And then the X-axis is communication. You're either, it's either

00:39:32.280 implicit or it's explicit. And so this leads to a grid. So you can have visions that are abstract

00:39:39.000 and implicit. In other words, it's confusing. You haven't really expressed it. You just kind of got

00:39:44.380 a hunch. And what that results in is, you know, fog basically. People don't have a clue where the

00:39:51.160 business is going. The second quadrant is one where it's abstract and explicit. So in other words,

00:39:58.580 the person who has the vision may be clear in their mind, but the way that they're expressing it

00:40:06.220 is just not coming out that great. And so they might, you know, sort of default to buzzwords like,

00:40:13.080 you know, we want to create synergy or we're going to take it to another level or disruption or get the

00:40:18.200 low hanging fruit or wheelhouses or all these words that, you know, people listen to it. They go,

00:40:23.060 okay, he said a lot of stuff, but I'm not sure what it was. This reminds me of those, uh, those

00:40:28.960 vision statements that you see on the wall of offices and you walk in and you're like, there's

00:40:32.660 lots of words on there. What does it mean? And they're like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know

00:40:36.460 what it means, but it sounds good. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. It's just a plaque. Right. And then

00:40:42.180 there, then there's a quadrant three, which is concrete and implicit where you have clarity,

00:40:47.960 but it's just not being expressed. You know, the leader has an intuition. He seems to be,

00:40:52.640 or she seems to be guided by their intuition. They seem to have clarity themselves,

00:40:56.320 but the, but the communication is implicit. They're not being explicit. The best vision

00:41:02.440 scripts are both concrete and explicit. So in other words, you get it concrete. It's very specific,

00:41:08.920 but then you express it. You leave nothing to chance. And so that's why I love having it written

00:41:15.300 that produces clarity. So I think, you know, the first step, you know, when you're, when you're trying

00:41:20.420 to get clarity around your vision is just to admit, Hey, this isn't that clear, you know,

00:41:25.040 and there's nothing wrong with that just to admit it and maybe get solicit the feedback

00:41:28.460 of other people and ask for put. And sometimes people say, you know, I think this needs some

00:41:33.420 work. Could you make this more clear? So you definitely want it clear. And that's the first

00:41:38.780 job. If it could be subject to ambiguity or if it's not expressed, it's going to be useless.

00:41:43.120 Yeah. Not only before we get moved on from there, I mean, not only because you said,

00:41:48.000 you know, it doesn't hurt to, to, to ask and to be aware of that. Not only does it not hurt,

00:41:52.860 I would imagine it's encouraged because if you're not doing that, you're, you're leaving all sorts

00:41:57.320 of blind spots available that will inevitably produce miscommunication. Like, like the story

00:42:02.120 you shared, who do you totally. And in fact, go ahead, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say,

00:42:08.480 you know, I think the way I encourage leaders to do this is get by yourself and come up with a rough

00:42:14.200 draft. Then go to your team, whoever your inner circle is. Maybe it's an executive team. Maybe

00:42:19.420 it's just a few friends, whatever it is in your organization, but share it with them. You're not

00:42:23.820 Moses coming down from Sinai. You know, this is West cement at best. Uh, and just say, Hey, look,

00:42:30.000 I've had some thoughts about where I want to take the company and I need your input to make it better.

00:42:33.960 Hmm. Then fold in their input. They will see things you didn't see. They will, uh, if it's

00:42:39.200 the right kind of environment, if you've created a culture where it's safe for descent and they can

00:42:43.060 give some pushback, that's great because out of that kind of vigorous debate comes the best vision

00:42:48.320 scripts. Then from there, then you can roll it out to your entire organization. But so it's a

00:42:53.900 process. It's going to get refined and it's going to get more clear over time. Is there any risk in

00:42:59.840 asking too many people for their feedback? Because it seems to me that if you get so many

00:43:04.420 opinions and inputs in that were, uh, conflicting and different, that it might water down a very tight

00:43:11.880 focused vision, uh, statement or script for yourself. Yes, absolutely. This here's the worst

00:43:18.760 way to do it. Do a vision by committee. Right, right. You end up with that, that by the way,

00:43:25.400 that's basically called, well, that's how we end up with bills in Congress. You know, we end up with

00:43:31.340 these unwieldy things that can't be administrated and can't be funded, you know, without putting

00:43:35.820 money on it. It's just crazy. But, um, but yeah, to try to do it by committee doesn't work. That's

00:43:41.840 why I think this is, uh, uh, an issue of leadership. You know, it starts with you as a leader. It's not

00:43:47.240 that difficult. I explain it in detail in the book, but, uh, do it yourself. Then bring it to your

00:43:52.540 leadership team. That's, that's my preference. In my case, it's my executive team. And then beyond

00:43:58.120 that, then we're rolling it out. We're still open to feedback, but it's more set in stone at that

00:44:02.540 point. So occasionally like this last year, somebody brought up a very good point, something

00:44:06.980 they thought we were missing in the team section about diversity. And so we said, you know what?

00:44:12.580 You're actually right. We need to have something in there. So that was good input. You know,

00:44:16.520 they weren't involved in shaping it, but it was still a good kind of check and balance because we

00:44:20.500 wanted them to own it. And we want to make sure it's possible for us as a leadership team to miss

00:44:24.340 this stuff too. Right. Right. And I liked that. You talked about this idea of, uh, I think you

00:44:28.740 called it safer descent is what you called it, where, you know, it is open and available for

00:44:33.540 somebody to critique or bring to light something that you may not have seen yourself. I think a lot

00:44:38.500 of us pay that idea lip service. Like we say we're willing to do that. But then when somebody

00:44:43.760 actually suggests something, we come down hard on them or make them look like a fool or try to

00:44:48.400 humiliate them in front of everybody else. And you undermine the words that you were saying.

00:44:53.800 Oh man, I can't tell you. That's like the, one of the worst, but most easy to commit mistakes. You

00:45:00.180 can, you can make in business or in leading any organization, the safer you can make the environment

00:45:05.740 for descent, the safer you make it for yourself. Because here's, here's reality. You're going to screw

00:45:12.060 up. You're going to make mistakes. You don't have 2020 vision and other people are in your

00:45:18.620 organization to help counterbalance and see things that you don't see. I remember I used to have this

00:45:24.220 guy on my team that was like the ultimate naysayer. He was a web developer and he always seemed to see

00:45:30.400 the negative side of everything. And so my daughter who works in the company said to me, you know, I just

00:45:36.060 think we should get rid of him. He's just a negative influence. And I said, absolutely not. Are you kidding

00:45:40.460 me? Do you know how many times he's saved us? And I said, granted he could use some coaching.

00:45:45.980 So I went to him and I said, look, Andrew, here's the thing. We want to hear from you because you

00:45:51.200 see things the rest of us don't see, but you might wait till a little later in the process, you know,

00:45:56.020 so that you don't kind of take all the air out of the room at the beginning, right? Let people

00:45:59.360 brainstorm, you know, let them think about this and then we can talk about it, but we want your input.

00:46:04.540 I do not want to shut that down in any shape or form. Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a very,

00:46:08.940 as a very mature response. Like, Hey, here's the value that he provides. Now let's equip him with

00:46:15.120 some other tools that actually might help him be more effective in his life too.

00:46:20.120 That's right. Yeah. Well, let's move on to the second component. And, and, and these aren't in

00:46:24.800 order based on what I wrote down here, but I I've got inspiring next. So do you want to hit on that

00:46:29.240 or something else? Yeah, no, inspiring is good. So, um, whatever a vision, whatever else a vision is,

00:46:36.180 it needs to inspire first you, you know, in other words, if this is not a future that you get excited

00:46:42.940 about moving toward, scrap it and start over. Because if you can't be inspired yourself,

00:46:49.620 if you can't be excited about the vision, your chances of getting anyone else excited are zero.

00:46:55.740 People are going to read that. They're going to smell that inauthenticity. They got to know you're

00:47:00.060 genuinely enthusiastic. You're fired up about making this a reality because the truth is it's

00:47:06.300 going to take a lot of work. It's going to consume a lot of resources. It's going to take extraordinary

00:47:10.680 focus to pull off the vision. If it's the vision that, you know, is really compelling. So you've got

00:47:17.280 to be excited about it. And when you share it with other people, you can't read it in a monotone.

00:47:22.560 You've got to be inspiring when you read it. So one of the things that we do when we review our

00:47:28.840 vision script, and we do it on a regular basis, it's like I said, it's not one and done, but at

00:47:32.880 our annual team meeting where we get everybody together, we report on the results from the last

00:47:36.460 year, which we do once a month, but we do it once a year. We get everybody together. We celebrate the

00:47:40.640 year, talk about our wins, review the financial performance, hand out bonus checks, everybody's

00:47:46.240 fired up. But then we review our core ideology. So we revisit the mission, the core values,

00:47:52.560 and especially the vision. So I stand up in front of the organization and I read it and

00:47:58.560 I read it with excitement and I'm genuinely excited about it. I'm not having to like, you

00:48:03.680 know, manufacture the excitement. I'm genuinely excited about it. And if I'm not, that's a

00:48:09.540 tell to me that the division needs some more work. So I had somebody come up to me after

00:48:15.060 we did this, this in just in January, right after the first of the year, I had one of our

00:48:18.900 customer service people that had only been with the company for about three years come

00:48:22.480 up to me with tears in her eyes and said to me, that was so inspiring. I love that. I

00:48:27.560 never really connected what I was doing with this bigger vision, but now I see, now I see

00:48:32.020 that what I do matters. It really matters. And I said, absolutely. It does. That's what

00:48:36.680 you want from an inspiring vision statement. So you've got to have something that inspires

00:48:41.220 you, but inspires other people. And that's the secret also. And, you know, is to make it

00:48:47.100 attractive and being able to sell it.

00:48:48.500 Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I think, I think people want to be led, like we are

00:48:52.860 genuinely craving leadership. And I think a lot of the reason for that is because so

00:48:57.900 many of us are familiar with the absence of leadership or horrendous leadership that

00:49:03.800 when we actually have somebody who can lead effectively, who has a direction they want

00:49:08.520 to go, who can share why that's important and rally the right people in the right places,

00:49:13.900 like that is inspiring. That is motivating. And that's things that I would want to follow.

00:49:19.680 That's things that you would want to follow. That's, that's what we're looking for as human

00:49:22.560 beings is direction and, and, and, and confidence from our leaders and our people.

00:49:28.360 Well, you know, I think of two of the greatest speeches ever. One of them was a JFK speech about

00:49:34.820 the moonshot, you know, about putting a man on the moon within a decade. And the stakes were

00:49:39.620 high because the Soviets had the upper hand, you know, if they got to space, you know, first got

00:49:43.960 to the moon first, if, and somehow they weaponized that, that was going to be a serious problem in

00:49:48.380 the cold war. So he created this vision of getting to the moon. Now here's, what's interesting about

00:49:53.520 it. Nobody had a clue how to do it. Right. Technology wasn't available. Even NASA resisted him. They

00:50:00.800 thought, what is he saying? I mean, there's no way we can be able to pull this off, but they did.

00:50:05.740 They did it within a decade. Sadly, he wasn't alive to see it, but it actually happened. It

00:50:10.240 was a compelling vision that galvanized the country and mobilized the NASA workforce and

00:50:16.220 gave meaning to their work because they took it seriously. You know, it was the commander in chief

00:50:19.780 saying, this is what we're going to do. Another speech that still blows my socks off when I listen

00:50:25.000 to it is Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech. I have a dream because he paints a vivid picture of a

00:50:32.260 different reality. And it gives, I mean, still, when I listen to that, it brings tears to my eyes.

00:50:37.980 That's an inspiring vision. You know, when it moves people, and I have this as the subtitle of

00:50:42.760 this chapter, you know, that moved people move people. You know, when you're moved yourself by

00:50:49.700 something, you're in a position to move and to motivate people. And I really feel like, Ryan,

00:50:55.720 people are going around today desperate for inspiration. We're living in an inspiration

00:51:00.440 deficit world. People are looking for inspiration. There's so much that's discouraging and so much

00:51:06.220 that just, you know, throttles back your inspiration. And to be an inspirational leader is an opportunity

00:51:12.180 to stand out and have a competitive advantage against all your competitors and to really make

00:51:17.160 a difference in the lives of the people that are working for you.

00:51:19.280 I honestly believe that this perspective is one that sets great companies apart from average,

00:51:26.300 mediocre, so-so companies. It seems to me that as we move further into technology and automation and AI

00:51:34.580 and the processes and systems, that it would be very attractive to go that route and assume that

00:51:41.660 the human element is a distraction or it gets in the way. And what I've found to be true is that

00:51:48.560 when you, when you think of it like that, it certainly can be because you're undermining your

00:51:52.040 own efforts. But if you think about it differently and think, no, this is the great leveraging power

00:51:56.920 and you treat people the way they deserve to be treated, it's significantly better than technology

00:52:02.980 or automation by itself.

00:52:07.140 Totally. I couldn't agree more.

00:52:09.480 How do your, the, the two speeches that you had just suggested, so JFK's and Martin Luther King Jr.'s,

00:52:14.880 how, how, how do those stack up with regards to the attractive component of this? Now, obviously,

00:52:22.900 you know, you'll listen to those, you're inspired by them. They, they're beautifully worded. They're

00:52:28.040 eloquent. They're, they're spoken with, with, with meaning and significance and enthusiasm. Is that what

00:52:34.280 you mean by attractive? Is that it's packaged well, or is this something else?

00:52:39.620 Yeah, it's partly the, the packaging of it, but there's gotta be substance there as well.

00:52:43.860 It's got to be a future that everybody wants. You know, if it's, if it's not something that

00:52:50.100 people actually in your company want collectively, because I really believe I'm creating this future,

00:52:55.640 not just for me, but I'm creating it for health. I think that we all want, that's attractive to us,

00:53:00.740 that we're drawn to, then it's just not going to have any power.

00:53:04.680 How do you reconcile differences in opinion? Because you are the captain of the ship, right? So it's,

00:53:10.100 it has to be, obviously, I would say, correct me if I'm wrong, that first and foremost, like it has

00:53:16.200 to be compelling to you. It has to be something you want, but there's going to be situations where

00:53:21.340 you're casting a vision and there might be a department head or, or an employee who believes

00:53:26.500 that the vision you're casting is at direct odds with what they're trying to do or jeopardizes their

00:53:32.860 potential job. Like there's gotta be some conflict in here. And how do you begin to deal with that?

00:53:37.460 Yeah. Well, what you want is a vision that's attractive to the right people.

00:53:41.660 Good point. Good distinction.

00:53:43.580 So it, it's going to be a filter. It's going to be a filter in recruiting. And frankly,

00:53:48.220 it's going to be repellent to people inside of the organization that just can't sign on.

00:53:53.080 And, you know, hopefully you can create a soft landing for those people, but if people can't stand

00:53:56.840 up and salute, then there's probably a place for them, you know, outside the organization. But,

00:54:02.260 you know, certainly I want to try to accommodate within reason. If there's something that's just

00:54:05.460 something I haven't thought about, but I can sign on to, then I may, I may want to incorporate that

00:54:10.880 into the vision. But if my leadership team is firm on that, that vision, and we're going to go that

00:54:16.040 direction. And somebody says, you know, I just, I just doesn't resonate with me. Well, you know,

00:54:20.460 life is short. Find somewhere where you can sign on to a vision that resonates with you. And if it's

00:54:25.640 not here, find somewhere else.

00:54:27.920 I like how you frame that because early on, so I've been doing this for about five years and I had a

00:54:33.060 financial planning practice prior to this. And I've had people within this organization leave

00:54:37.800 and in my immaturity, I, I got upset about that. Right. So I took it personally. I, you know,

00:54:48.000 secretly, I didn't want that individual to win. I think that's a very immature and egocentric way of

00:54:53.440 looking at it. What I'm hearing you say is I actually care about you. And even if you don't happen

00:55:01.180 to be with this organization, I still care about you and I still want you to win. That to me is

00:55:07.680 the distinction between being spiteful and trying to get revenge on somebody because they don't want

00:55:13.280 to be part of what you're doing and actually like releasing into the world, doing it tactfully with

00:55:17.960 a position of care.

00:55:19.920 Well, and, and certainly I could relate to that kind of emotion of just kind of feeling betrayed

00:55:25.660 or whatever, but yeah, you know, the philosophical for me is stewardship. I feel like everybody in my

00:55:33.840 life is on loan from God. And so, you know, the employees that I have, like, like we just lost

00:55:40.240 one of my senior content creators last week was her last day was last Friday. Phenomenal.

00:55:46.580 She was the first employee I hired in this business that I have now.

00:55:50.500 Oh, wow.

00:55:50.860 She, uh, was extraordinary, but she got this amazing opportunity, uh, to go to work, to run

00:55:57.400 an entire content team for, uh, another person whom I also really admire. And I just, I just,

00:56:03.680 I, all I could do is rejoice. You know, I thought, thank God we had her for the years that we did.

00:56:08.860 She made a huge contribution. I said to her at her going away party, I said, your fingerprints

00:56:13.440 are all over this organization. They're indelible. They will never leave. And I said, you've always

00:56:18.240 got a place back here if you want to come back, but we're going to be cheering for you and rooting

00:56:22.740 for you because I'm just grateful for the gift of the time that you gave us. And I think you're

00:56:28.340 going to go on to other greater things. And I just want to leave people better than when I found

00:56:32.200 them. I want to leave them more equipped, more knowledgeable, um, more able to pursue their own

00:56:37.060 dreams when they leave. And that may sound a little bit idealistic, but that's really my heart.

00:56:40.840 Well, and you know, there, there's that side of that and that's, that's wonderful. And another

00:56:44.840 side, and this is not why we would do this or engage in this behavior, but you know, you also

00:56:49.100 leave the door open for other opportunities. She may want to come back, or there may be a connection

00:56:53.800 that she has that would never have been able to be made for you. Had you not left that in the mature,

00:57:00.360 respectful, gracious way that you did. And, and it's easy. Like it is so easy to be pissed off.

00:57:06.800 It's infinitely harder to be gracious in, in the time that you did have with somebody. So I really

00:57:11.700 liked that distinction. Well, I have seen companies turn friends into enemies by the way

00:57:17.840 they treated them when they exited, you know, and I being a part of a big corporate environment. I

00:57:21.960 first got into that, you know, I would see somebody leave there, decide they're going to leave the

00:57:25.740 company and somebody from facilities would march to their office and take their computer and, you know,

00:57:31.920 box up all their stuff and escort them out of the building. Like they were a convict and you know,

00:57:37.400 that does nothing but create bitterness and resentment. And there's no loyalty there. If

00:57:42.640 there was any, you know, it's gone by the time they, they leave the door. So yeah, it's gotta,

00:57:48.460 again, you gotta think what, what is the end game here that we're trying to create and think of the

00:57:54.000 end from the beginning. Well, and I, and I like that because I think there is based on what you're

00:57:57.800 saying is an eternal perspective, not just a temporal one, an eternal perspective into how

00:58:04.200 we lead our organizations, how we work with other people, the good that we do in the world.

00:58:08.280 This goes on for eternity. It does. And I'm accountable, you know, I'm accountable to God.

00:58:14.000 I'm accountable to the people that have gone before me. And that's something I take into every day.

00:58:19.020 Nice. Yeah. I like that. Well, you know, I want to be respectful of your time. There's one other

00:58:22.820 factor here. I just want to maybe touch on it as briefly as we, as we need to, but still hit it.

00:58:26.560 And this is this idea of, of practicality that has to be practical. Otherwise, you know, what's the

00:58:31.640 point? Yeah, it really needs to be something that the vision needs to be something that you can

00:58:38.600 actually implement. So for example, let me just give you one of the, uh, statements inside of our

00:58:43.960 vision script that has to do, uh, with our team. So we say our employees experience reasonable autonomy

00:58:52.240 planning and executing their own work without the impediment of overbearing management,

00:58:57.380 stifling bureaucracy, or procedural red tape. We encourage innovation and experimentation.

00:59:02.520 If something doesn't work, we learn from it and move on. So how is that practical? Well,

00:59:07.900 that informs our policy. So for example, we have a policy that we call the no, the no hassle software,

00:59:13.100 uh, policy, which means if people feel like they need a piece of software for their equipment,

00:59:18.600 they don't have to get approvals from three levels of supervisors. They don't have to do

00:59:22.520 anything. If it's under $500, they just buy it. And our people are responsible. And so that's how

00:59:29.780 that manifests itself at a practical level, a vision that manifests itself as a practical level. So

00:59:33.940 you, I think you've always got to be asking yourself the question, is this going to guide people

00:59:37.780 in the practical decision-making and in the policy implementation?

00:59:41.060 How do you see yourself as, because one of the distinctions that you make and you go through

00:59:46.280 this is the distinction between leader and manager. Do you feel like you are, you personally are both

00:59:52.560 of those things, one more than the other? Like where do you fall on, on that spectrum?

00:59:58.040 Yeah. So the distinction that I make in the book, and I talk about the difference between

01:00:01.580 JFK and a really good manager, like, uh, George HW Bush, who didn't quite do the vision thing or didn't

01:00:07.980 understand it. But, uh, I would, you know, the, the visionary or the leader's job is to create the

01:00:13.780 vision and to inspire the team and get them all, you know, rowing in the same direction,

01:00:18.000 heading toward the same destination. The job of the manager is to mobilize the resources,

01:00:24.420 coordinate the effort, create the alignment, get everybody moving on the execution toward vision.

01:00:29.520 Both are important. And I don't mean in the book to denigrate, you know, the manager

01:00:33.580 in deference to the leader, because both of them are important. I consider myself more of a leader.

01:00:38.600 And certainly early in my career, I was more of a manager. You know, I wasn't the guy coming up

01:00:42.820 with the vision and it was good experience for me to have to be a manager. But today I've got a COO

01:00:49.460 happens to be my daughter, my oldest daughter, and she's really focused on the management and I'm

01:00:53.880 focused more on the vision, but we're in a transition because we've announced already my

01:00:57.760 succession. So in two years, I'm going to become the chairman, make her the CEO. She will move to the

01:01:03.820 visionary and will replace her with a COO with more of the management person. So she's beginning

01:01:09.000 to spread her wings on the vision thing now and actually much better at it than I am.

01:01:14.540 Hmm. Well, congratulations on that, uh, that decision. That's going to be exciting. And I'm

01:01:18.900 anxious to see what the, uh, the next chapter holds for you. It's, uh, it's pretty inspiring

01:01:22.340 to watch you lead from the front the way you have. Well, like I said, I want to be respectful of your

01:01:26.720 time. Um, let me ask you a couple of questions and then we'll wind things up today. Uh, the first

01:01:30.920 one, I'm actually really anxious to hear this cause you, you were asking me if there's, uh, any PC

01:01:35.220 type things you need to worry about. But that question is, what does it mean to be a man?

01:01:40.920 Yeah. So how would I answer that without consideration of the PC, uh, part of this,

01:01:45.160 the political correctness part of this, I think as a man, um, men initiate, you know, I think that's

01:01:50.660 the, that's the main thing. You know, I think sadly in the modern era, you know, you think of a man,

01:01:55.880 oftentimes a stereotype of a man is a couch potato that's reacting, responding, seeing himself as a

01:02:02.600 victim. That's not my view of manhood. You know, being a man means I take initiative. I take full

01:02:09.080 ownership of my life. I don't have the right to blame somebody else. I have to own everything in

01:02:14.240 my life and be responsible for it. And I think also being a man means that you're not just responsible

01:02:19.780 for yourself, but you're responsible for other people. I take my family responsibilities very

01:02:24.240 seriously. I take my responsibilities for my, my company very seriously. So being not only taking

01:02:29.900 initiative, taking full ownership, but taking responsibility for other people. So I'd say those

01:02:34.280 three things. That's excellent. I think, uh, the fact that you do those things from, from my

01:02:38.600 perspective, looking in as, as a big reason why people follow you, why I follow you and why so many

01:02:42.860 people are impacted by your work. Um, thank you. I want to give you an opportunity to tell the guys

01:02:47.420 how to connect, including something that we just didn't dive into too much, uh, which is the vision

01:02:52.780 scripter. Cause I think this is a powerful tool that men could really use and harness to, uh,

01:02:58.180 start producing and identifying their own vision for themselves.

01:03:01.880 Yeah. Our, so our goal is to help every man, um, come up with a vision, you know, and not leave it

01:03:09.180 to somebody else or think that they don't have the qualification. So we've created a tool called

01:03:13.180 the vision scripter tool. And in fact, when you buy a copy of the book, you get the vision scripter,

01:03:18.800 uh, tool with it and some other cool bonuses along with it. So, you know, you can find out

01:03:23.780 more about that at michaelhyatt.com or you can go to the vision driven leader, uh, com. I think

01:03:29.320 that's the right URL. Uh, this is actually the first interview I've done on the book. So we might

01:03:33.080 need to double check that, but you can put that in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. We'll definitely make

01:03:37.180 sure we get it right for the guys, but I think you are. Cause I was reviewing some, some

01:03:40.100 documentation. I think that's accurate. So, but we'll make sure we'll confirm that.

01:03:43.300 Fantastic. Well, Michael, I want to let you know, again, I started this by, by paying you the

01:03:48.800 compliment that I appreciate all the good work that you've done. Uh, I've been looking forward

01:03:53.080 to this conversation for quite literally years and you did not disappoint. I have so many other

01:03:57.800 questions I want to ask. Uh, maybe we'll have to do a round two at some point or, or, or dive into

01:04:02.560 something a little bit deeper, but man, I just really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're

01:04:06.440 busy. Uh, I know you have a lot going on and it means a lot that you join us today.

01:04:10.300 Well, thanks Ryan. It was an honor and a fantastic conversation. So thanks for some

01:04:15.700 great questions. Thanks, Michael. All right, guys, there you go. Just wrapped up with Michael

01:04:20.860 Hyatt. Hope you enjoyed that podcast as much as I enjoyed the conversation with Michael. Obviously

01:04:26.160 he's a man who knows a lot about leadership. He knows a lot about vision and casting vision,

01:04:30.620 uh, organizational frameworks and strategies. He's very, very effective. He's very, very efficient.

01:04:35.460 And I have personally used just about every program and platform and strategy that he has

01:04:41.160 available as I've been building this, uh, this order of man movement. So if you're inspired by

01:04:46.020 what we've done over the past five years, then you are definitely going to be inspired by the man who

01:04:51.120 inspired a lot of the work that we're doing here. So, uh, I want to give credit where credit is due.

01:04:56.820 Make sure you go connect with him, pick up a copy of the book, the vision driven leader. You will not

01:05:00.040 be disappointed. It's a very, very good read, and it will help you formulate some plans for

01:05:04.940 leading, for taking charge, for building the type of life that you want guys on this party note.

01:05:09.720 I just want to thank you for being on this path with me. Could not be where I am without you.

01:05:14.640 Obviously it takes this brotherhood, this fraternity, this organization, this order

01:05:18.740 to do what we do. And I'm so honored to be standing shoulder to shoulder with you in the,

01:05:22.840 in the fight and the battle to reclaim and restore masculinity. It's not much of a fight today.

01:05:26.420 And I'll tell you why it's because you men who are, uh, espousing and adopting the virtues and

01:05:33.540 principles that we talk about and have for the past five years are doing your work. And the people

01:05:37.780 are seeing the benefits of having genuine, strong, bold, assertive, uh, responsible men in their lives.

01:05:45.100 And that's why we don't hear about things like toxic masculinity, uh, in these times of crisis.

01:05:49.860 So keep doing what you do. I really appreciate it. I'm inspired and motivated by you as well.

01:05:54.100 Uh, again, if you would make sure you leave us a rating review and also check out the iron

01:05:58.900 council, our exclusive brotherhood. You can check that out at order of man.com slash iron council.

01:06:04.540 All right. I'm going to be back tomorrow with my cohost, Kip Sorenson, still trying to come up with

01:06:09.340 a, uh, a nickname for him. Maybe you guys can help out with that, but we'll be back tomorrow. And of

01:06:13.720 course on Friday for the Friday field notes, but guys, until then go out there, take action and come

01:06:18.120 the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're

01:06:22.780 ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join

01:06:27.520 the order and order of man.com.

Order of Man - March 31, 2020

The Power of Vision Driven Leadership ｜ MICHAEL HYATT

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