Surprising Business Lessons About "Busy" Entrepreneurs

Shannon Waller: Hi. Shannon Waller here, and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. Dan, a really interesting idea came up in a workshop the other day that one of our colleagues was in. There's a whole conversation around being busy and how some people are using it as a badge of honor, but in fact it's not. It can actually be incredibly inefficient. So this whole kind of, "I'm so busy. My calendar's so full" is actually not a good idea. I'm super curious as to what your thoughts are on this, because you shared some things in our Free Zone workshop yesterday. I just think there's some good mindset thinking that's an opportunity here.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I think it's a nice binary situation that you've set up. And what I've discovered is that people who are busy, what they're really after is that other people see that they're really busy. In other words, I think busyness is based on social, what I would say, ambitions. And they do it in a whole bunch of ways. Other people arrive on time, they arrive 15 minutes early and are busy when everybody walks in. And at the end of the workday, they've been busy all day, but they always make sure they're busy for 15 minutes after everyone leaves, because probably their boss hasn't left and their boss was in early. So the boss notices that they're the first person in and they're immediately really busy and they're busy all during the day, and then the boss is still there when everybody else leaves except the busy person.
 
And what they're trying to do is to establish their value by always being busy, but it doesn't have to do with any kind of results. It doesn't have to do with any kind of results. And it's like a fork in the road, because I think it starts young in life, and the other people are strictly results oriented. So their whole reason for being in motion is really because they want to achieve a certain result, and as they get better at this, they do it by being less busy, because they want the result and then they have to spend a lot of time, they have to spend a lot of activity actually getting the result. But then after a while they say, "There's only part of getting the result that really involves me, so why don't I immediately start doing teamwork with other people, where I get them engaged in the result, getting the result would be good for them, and we work together as a team, and I just do my part? I just do my part."
Sports is a really good example. If you look at the great basketball players, the great hockey players, the great football players, what you notice is they kind of loaf, except when a crucial result is possible, and then they go into full motion. So they're conserving energy until the energy will produce a result. I went to see about three or four games with Michael Jordan, and Michael Jordan didn't do much early in the game, but the person guarding him or the number of people guarding him were very busy. Whatever Michael Jordan did, they were on edge and they were using up energy and usually they had to get a substitution, and all he was doing was gearing himself to try to stop Michael Jordan. Then later in the game, Michael Jordan still had a full tank of gas and the other guy was almost on empty, and he would just score 20 points in like five or six minutes.
 
And that was the result that broke the back of the other team and won the game. And they won six championships. His last six years with the Chicago Bulls, they won six championships. But it was amazing how he didn't waste any energy. I think busy people are just wasting energy, but they're not really clear about teamwork, because what's really important is they be the one who's seen as being most busy. So it all depends on what you're judging your performance on. If you're judging it on other people's perception: "I got to fire some people, but I wouldn't fire the busy person because they're in early and they stay late." So what they're doing is making sure that they're not the antelope that gets caught by the lion.
 
Shannon Waller: In Africa, they call gazelles fast food. They actually call it McDonald's, because it's fast food.
 
Dan Sullivan: They're snacks. So I think it's a defensive position here. Your goal in your job is not to be fired.
 
Shannon Waller: Which is so true and strikes me as my perception of corporate or any kind of larger structure bureaucracy. What I find fascinating is it's not an offensive strategy, and it's not one that's focused on productivity or leverage or results. As you said, the social ambition, that's a very-
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it's a social ambition. And I think the person who's results oriented is achievement oriented in the sense that they want to be seen as the person that you have to have if you're going to get the result that everybody wants. They're the crucial person in all walks of life, in all different activities where results and achievements are actually possible. I don't know what the brain structure is of the two people. I do know I was born very, very results oriented. So you conserve energy, you make maximum use of other people's skills, and you just go for the result that really is the best measurement of a great achievement.
 
Shannon Waller: Well, it really strikes me, Dan, that it's what your system supports. In your fabulous new book, "Geometry" For Staying Cool & Calm, one of the things you talk about is nobody's in charge, but the rules are. So depending on the rules that you set up in your company, it will either reward being busy and social ambition, or you'll actually reward results and accountability to those results. It's interesting, and I think people who are very good at looking busy probably struggle in the results-oriented system, and other people are like, "Oh, finally I found the place where I can just-"
 
Dan Sullivan: And usually there's comment ... "I don't even take my Free Days." And there's a lot of people who don't take Free Days because it's dangerous that they not be seen on any workday. "Where's so-and-so?" "Oh, they're on Free Days." And immediately they say, "I miss the busyness. I'm used to having that busy person around me." But I think you're bringing up a good point that you use corporations, but I think large bureaucracies, you get a lot of this. And you get promoted on the basis of your busyness because the purpose of the organization is not to get results, but to be seen as busy. The whole organization wants to be seen as a busy organization. So large governments, I think anywhere where there's not a very good measurement of whether the money that's being spent for the individual or the money that's being spent for the overall organization, that actually getting results would be dangerous to your future because you're making everybody else look bad.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah. It's like in certain very highly regulated environments, if you come in and you're the upstart and you can sweep the floors faster or pack the boxes faster and everyone else is like, "Slow down, no need to rush, it's all good." Put in your time.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, they'd tell you to go through the door that's the elevator shaft.
 
Shannon Waller: And they're not happy being shown up, that's for sure. Well, that's obviously the worst example of that. So entrepreneurs fall into this trap too. They fall into that if they've come from that background or they're family rewarded, hard work, head down, and then they can set up their companies that way as well. So there's a real cost for entrepreneurs when they are focused on being busy rather than being productive.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, there's a cost of them. They cost a lot. And then the other thing is, there's a cost to them of not producing any results. Eventually, I mean, there's a reckoning of budgets, because this more happens where people are working in a fairly large organization, but there's never any discussion about what the large organization does that's actually valuable outside of the organization. Bureaucracy is where the backstage has no understanding of what the front stage is. And entrepreneurial firms, by nature, that's got to be your first consideration, that you're seen in the outside world. So there's a nice distinction here. The busy person is strictly in an inside world, but the overall activity of the entire organization has nothing to do with any kind of result outside of the organization.
 
Shannon Waller: That's a great distinction.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah.
 
Shannon Waller: And if I think about someone going into a corporation, limited experience many decades ago, but it was like everyone was concerned about their department or their individual career progression. That's what they were focused on, not usually the overall company. And that's one advantage that entrepreneurial companies who are almost always much smaller, you get connected to the marketplace really quickly. You know whether or not all of the busyness and activity actually got you somewhere. This is why I love our Two Economies model, Dan. It's the Time and Effort versus Results. And the goal in the Results Economy is actually to minimize the time and effort and to maximize the results. And it's a mindset shift.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, it really reveals why things succeed as individuals fail, and individuals succeed in groups and organizations and countries, whole nations. It's very, very clear to me that from the current war in Ukraine that all the money that was set aside for Russian military budget was devoted to people going through the motions, but you could see right off the bat that their equipment was 30 years out of date, their training was 30 years out of date, but they had a lot of ribbons and they had really fancy uniforms, and they have big parades where they have a lot of people marching down the street, but that's not really what your military is for. Your military is really for showing up in a particular place when something's really at stake with the best equipment, with the best training, with the best leadership. And it shows up anywhere where there's a confrontation, that the one who was strategic and was efficient and effective and totally prepared always wins.
 
Shannon Waller: I like that. So I'm just thinking about how to put this into play. If someone finds themself in that busyness trap or they realize that they've set up their organization to reward the busy people, but not necessarily the most productive results-producing people, what actions would you recommend that they take, Dan? What's the way to kind of turn this ship?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, have goals. Have goals, goals that require a commitment, that require courage, and require increase in capability and a resulting jump in confidence. The more capable and confident you are, the bigger the goals that you'll take on because you accept that you have to be committed and you have to be courageous. But those aren't measured in busyness.
 
Shannon Waller: Yes. There does have to be something measurable about this.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, it's all measurement. There's no progress without measurement.
 
Shannon Waller: No progress without measurement. And I always love in terms of the workshops and your coaching, Dan, it needs to be an event that happened or didn't happen, a percentage, or a number. That's really how you know. And oh, just to share an experience, I was meeting with one of our team members around her quarterly goals. And one of the things that have been driving me slightly crazy with this structure I've been working with is, like, getting the plan finished was the goal. I'm like, no, putting it into play, getting feedback from the world, from the marketplace, that is actually the goal, not finishing the-
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, getting results.
 
Shannon Waller: -the blank plan. So we had this just really great conversation and I just nod to you for this one, I'm so locked in with this way of thinking. It was really easy and fun for us to get super clear on what are the measurables. And I coached the team on it, actually, on Monday at our meeting. So it was actually easy once people got it. It's like, oh, 80% success, or eight out of 10 weeks, this is going to be at the standard that you want or this is going to happen or didn't happen. And it was really energizing because people all of a sudden had something tangible as opposed to something vague to focus on for their quarterly goal. So getting really specific, well, SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, realistic timeframe. It's a work in progress, but it's quite energizing when you do it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, just thinking of reports from other entrepreneurs, especially people who have been in companies where they were an employee, it doesn't happen too often because entrepreneurs, I think generally there's exceptions to this, but they start early on the entrepreneurial path.
 
Shannon Waller: And they make really lousy employees.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. They make really great team players, but they make really terrible employees. I was just thinking of what is measured in the busy world is emails and meetings. The number of meetings you had and the number of emails, the number of meetings that produce no result, and the number of emails that produce no result. Meetings to plan the next meeting.
 
Shannon Waller: Right. And then meetings before the meeting, and then meetings after the meeting to debrief what happened.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah. Well, and you had a conversation with Cathy Davis yesterday and you asked her, you said, "Cathy, when's the last time we had a meeting?" And the answer was-
 
Dan Sullivan: We couldn't remember when we had a meeting.
 
Shannon Waller: No.
 
Dan Sullivan: But the number of projects we work on that actually produced great workshops, we have a lot of communication on that, but very, very seldom does it require an actual face-to-face meeting, even by Zoom. It just requires, "This is achieved, this is achieved, this is achieved. I see the structure now and it's got this number of tools, thinking exercises, and I got three of them in and I'm working on two of them, and they'll be ready on Monday." It doesn't take a lot of time. We're all trained to do really well what we do best. And when you get really good at something, it doesn't take a lot of time and motion to make it better.
 
Shannon Waller: A hundred percent. At the very beginning, you do put the time in to learn your craft. Michael Jordan had practiced a lot of hours.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, we're all stupid and ignorant and incapable when we start anything new, but if you have a commitment and you have courage, then your knowledge grows, your understanding grows, your capability grows, and your sense of measurement really grows.
 
Shannon Waller: Well, and I have a regularly scheduled time with Cathy, but I'm always in awe of how much we can produce in 10 or 15 minutes. We'll finalize two speeches, a webinar, and a workshop in 10 to 15 minutes.
 
Dan Sullivan: And all of them are front stage.
 
Shannon Waller: 100%.
 
Dan Sullivan: And we're paid for that.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah, and we're both really good at what we do, and we've been in teamwork for so long that it's just so fast and so efficient and it doesn't look busy. It's just a joy to kind of work in that kind of results-oriented system, because that's the focus, not the time and effort it takes to get there. And in fact, the goal is to do more in less time with less effort, which is rewarded, which is fantastic. All right, Dan, this is awesome. So have goals, have measurables, be accountable, employ great team-
 
Dan Sullivan: Have teamwork.
 
Shannon Waller: Yep, and get really good at what you uniquely do. And that's a good recipe for being productive versus busy. Thank you so much.
 
Dan Sullivan: That's a take.