A Step By Step Process For Extraordinary Business Success

Shannon Waller: Hi, Shannon Waller here and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. Dan, we were recording something else yesterday and we got into a conversation that we've had different times before, but the way you said it just really hit me as being something very valuable and a little different than how I think most people operate. And what you said is, "I don't want people to fail." And you were talking about the people in our organization, but also our clients, and you don't want them to fail. And I'm not saying that I think other people do want others to fail, but I think it's kind of okay, they expect it, they look at people as really individuals, but you take a very different approach. So, tell me more about not wanting people to fail.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think it goes to the topic of scarcity and the topic of envy. And I think it goes to a fundamental mindset of win-lose, that if I'm going to win, other people have to lose. I'm not entirely sure where that comes from because I've never really had that frame of mind myself. First of all, I get an enormous amount of enjoyment out of other people succeeding, whether I have anything to do with them or not. But in terms of how our company has been created, we want to blueprint everybody's participation in Coach from the moment that they join us, and I'm speaking about backstage here, I'm speaking about the backstage of Strategic Coach, is that we want that person to succeed. And we want to set up all the structures and processes in the company for them to succeed.
 
And when things don't work, my first instinct is not to look at the person, but to look at the structure and process. Were they properly trained? Did they properly understand the teamwork that was going to be necessary to be successful? Did they understand the whole object of the project that they were working on so that there were clear-cut success criteria? So if the success criteria were just met, the outcome would be that they would succeed. And I think for going into our 35th year right now, that every year we've gotten better and better of setting up the conditions for anyone new who comes into the Program as a new team member, that they'll succeed from day one.

Shannon Waller: So Dan, let's talk about how we do some of that. Well, actually, before we even jump into how, we just had a company meeting the day before we were recording this. And it was so magical. People are like, "I love this company. I can't believe this company exists. It's so different than other organizations. People are for me," to use a Collaborative Way term. And it's so different. And then when people find it and they trust it, because that's a really big thing—a lot of times we look a little bit too good to be true—then they just open themselves. They contribute like crazy. They don't have a defense budget, which is one of our company values. They don't ever have to play defense. Now, it doesn't mean that you don't do things and it doesn't always work because sometimes they don't. Sometimes projects don't happen, they get delayed, the result isn't what we were looking for. But the attitude that you're talking about is like, it's not about making the person wrong. It's about learning from the circumstance. And then how can we make it better going forward?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it always comes down to structure and process. You know, I never give much thought to how our entrepreneurial clients are experiencing the company because I'm pretty confident that it's going to be a great experience regardless of who in our company they're interacting with. It just is not something that I ever concern myself with. And the reason is because I know that our team members will be very engaging, very friendly, very helpful. And the reason is because all the structures and processes backstage of how our team members develop makes them very relaxed and very engaging and very helpful. So, when people as clients come into Strategic Coach right from the front, they say, "Where do you get all these great people?" And, you know, I've got some smart alecky comments. I said, oh, there's this secret vending machine, you know, and all you have to do is put your credit card in and out pops a great person. But there's a bit of truth to it because we've created this great, great organization that is geared to, however it's possible for us to contribute, we're going to create working conditions, working structures, working processes where a good person can become a great person.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah, it's an environment where people can be great. And there's a lack of competition, which is really interesting. So if you're super fabulous at something, you mentioned envy at the very beginning, Dan, people are actually celebrating you. Like we had Chris emcee, and Jake did The Positive Focus yesterday, and they were both fabulous.
 
Dan Sullivan: And they've been with us for a year or a year and a half, I think.
 
Shannon Waller: Just over a year for both of them, yeah. And it's so fun.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, they basically emceed and they moderated the entire process yesterday. I didn't know it until I got into the meeting that the two of them had been chosen to do it because it never concerns me that anything bad is going to happen.
 
So that means there's so much mental energy you do not have to spend on worrying about that. So that's a huge thing right there.
 
Dan Sullivan: I've got deadlines.
 
Shannon Waller: You've got stuff to do. A lot of entrepreneurs really worry about those things and then they're the ones that always have to take charge of the meeting and always have to run it whether or not that's something they have energy for. So just the amount of mental energy, peace, creativity that gives back to you and to Babs and the team leaders too, actually, is pretty phenomenal. This environment that allows people to be great. But let's talk about envy. 'Cause I think-
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I was going to go back to that topic because it all has to do with whether you have an envious spirit or not. There's a lot of misunderstanding that goes on between the two words "jealousy" and "envy." Most people use them interchangeably and actually they're radically different. And jealousy means that you aspire to be as good as someone else. OK, you're jealous of their performance. But what it means is that you would like to be able to perform the way they do. Or they have great achievements and you're jealous of their achievements because you yourself would like to have those achievements. That's the jealous person. And it can be good or bad the way that it's performed. I mean, a bad person being jealous probably won't be jealous, they'll be envious. But what envy means is that someone else performs in a great way or they achieve things in a great way and you want them to lose it. You want them to fail. Not because you want it for yourself. You're motivated mostly that you don't want them to have it. You don't want anyone around you to really enjoy and be able to experience great success and great outcomes. You want to prevent them in any way you can from actually achieving something that actually makes you feel inferior, because the envious person feels inferior from birth.
 
Shannon Waller: Right. So they want to pull the other person down. It's an active diminishment of somebody else. Depending on how successful, it's like an attack on someone else's success.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It's an attack on anybody's positive outcome.
 
Shannon Waller: Interesting. You use the word envious spirit, Dan, which I think is a great way to encapsulate that, because would it be true that you either have an envious spirit or you don't, or can people grow out of it? What are your thoughts on that?
 
Dan Sullivan: It depends on the circumstances. I think that when you're young, a baby, you know, a child, I mean, there is a spirit that you're born with, I think, a certain kind of outlook, a certain kind of attitude that you're born with. But I think that's very, very much subject to the circumstances that you're born in. So you may grow up in an envious world, you know, where your parents are envious people. Both of my parents were really great people who my memory is that they both came out of family where envy dominated their siblings and they moved away. Both of them moved away. They were like immigrants in the 1940s. They moved 60 miles away, which was sufficient in those days. It's like moving 500 miles away today.
 
But I was always struck how fair-minded and positive both of my parents were towards their children, especially, and towards other people. You know, they were admiring of other people. And I never heard my parents badmouthing any individuals outside of the family. But when we went and visited, which we did infrequently, their families, I was so struck by how harsh and cold and negative the circumstances were. So anyway, I mean, that's just early childhood memories on my part, but I was very, very struck by the fact that my parents didn't really badmouth their siblings, but they also didn't visit them very often, and they didn't come up as topics of discussion. So my parents were protecting us from the environments in which they grew up. And I thought that I've carried over that spirit to how Babs and I operate as founders of a company, that I don't know the conditions that people come out of when they enter into Strategic Coach. But if they've been in toxic environments where envy dominated, they have a three-month period to take advantage of an entirely different kind of environment. But if they try to bring the environment that they come from into the company, they'll be rejected.
 
Shannon Waller: Yes. And I think it's really critical for a company culture and core values to be very clear on this point, to not tolerate envy because it's incredibly toxic. As you said, it's so healthy for the individual, but it can bleed over. And the people it impacts, interestingly enough, are your top performers because that's who gets targeted.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, and the other thing is that I don't want to have to think about how any team member in Strategic Coach is interacting with our entrepreneurs. And we make a point of having our team in all the workshops in the course of a year. Every team member, to the greatest degree, we want them sitting in workshops and interacting with all of our... I don't know what the percentage each year of the total team is actually interacting with the clients, but I would say it's a high 80%, high 85%.
 
Shannon Waller: Like in terms of everyone being in a workshop, it's well over 90. But even the portion of our team members whose role it is to interact with our clients is really high, which is really fun.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I don't want to give any thought to whether that's a good experience or not. The way we want them to interact with our clients is the way we interact with them.
 
Shannon Waller: Yes. So there's incredible congruency. And our business is helping people be successful, not failing. So it's very important that we can't be like cutthroat backstage and like, oh, be lovely front stage. It doesn't work that way. We need to be very congruent with that. So Dan, let's talk about a couple of the ways that we help people, you know, in terms of making sure that they're trained, that they understand the teamwork required, they understand the objective of a project. What are some things that, because you're actively involved in this teamwork as well, what are some of the things that you do to make sure that people are successful in your interactions with them, that they don't fail?
 
Dan Sullivan: I don't actually on a daily basis interact with that many team members because I have very specific projects that I'm working on. I'm working on new workshops, creating new workshops, and then I'm creating the new tools that are in workshops, and then I'm creating new books, and we're in a process of creating 100 small books, which are Coach-related books, but mostly entrepreneurial-related books every quarter, and you're a very key team member on this. So I have the workshops, I have the workshop tools, I have the books, and then we have major books. We've had three of them in the last five years that have become excellent marketing tools, and that was with an outside writer and with an outside publishing house. So that uses up a lot of my focus and a lot of my attention. And then we do podcasts. I mean, in the last year, I think the number is 167 podcasts. In 10 years, we'll probably produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 podcasts.
 
So if you take those separate projects, that's pretty well my time. So there's lots of team members that I'm interacting with who are involved in that. But what I strive to, in all my teamwork interactions, is the other people know exactly where I'm coming from and what I'm trying to achieve. And we have great tools, we have The Impact Filter, we have Certainty/Uncertainty. But going back to the very beginning of everyone's involvement in Strategic Coach, we have everything in Strategic Coach that creates every single activity that we do in Strategic Coach that has a Unique Method which shows the steps you go through to be successful in that activity. And right from the beginning, every member of Strategic Coach, we work with them to identify what their Unique Ability is. And when we use the word "unique," we mean unique, that we want to see where you're one of a kind, where you bring something totally special to the company. And we want you to focus on that, and we'll work with you to gradually free you so that all of your time at Strategic Coach is totally within the area where you're just absolutely unique. But the second part of that is you then have to agree that you'll do teamwork with other people's uniqueness. So we keep them out of any area of activity where they don't feel confident, they don't feel capable. We just want them to be in the area where they feel totally confident and capable, where they can be totally relaxed and easy to work with.
 
Shannon Waller: Well, and there's so many studies that have been done that show that someone in a fear state, they get super focused on survival. But when they're in a relaxed, confident state, they're so much more creative. And our company counts on that. We need people's creativity because we're always doing new stuff. We need new solutions and new ideas. So anytime there's any pinch points or tension, we look to strategize those as quickly as possible. And I think, Dan, this is what's interesting. So many people, this is not just clients, but outside of Coach, this is a very counterculture way to look at things because you have to be able to do all of these things, you have to have core competencies. I've heard this from corporate and bureaucratic people. And, of course, we hope you're really excellent on a few things, but you have to be able to do all of this super well, as opposed to really like, where are you one of a kind? And how can we free you up from all those stuff that you're not good at, you don't like doing? That would seem like pampering to most organizations, but it's not here. I mean, we need people to be intelligent, but we really do want to push them towards doing what they're superb at.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, the word pampering is a really interesting one because you only use the word pamper in relationship to parents and children. It's an unequal relationship that we're the parent and you're the child. And I don't see myself as a parent in the Strategic Coach. I see myself as someone who has a particular kind of Unique Ability that I will grow and grow if I'm surrounded by other people who have Unique Abilities. So I know people will, when they're introducing me, "This is my boss," and I said, "Well, that's a word that exists in your mind, but I don't see myself as your boss. I just have a particular type of Unique Ability which I can continually develop and grow if I'm surrounded by other people with particular types of Unique Abilities." So it's really the team that I get to create with other people that matters to me. You know, and I know I'm good at what I do. I know I'm unique in certain areas, and I don't spend much time thinking about it.
 
Shannon Waller: It's such a growth mindset, first of all. And there's like no pain involved in this way of operating, Dan. It's all growth. It's all teamwork. It's all creativity. It's being relaxed, confident, capable. It's a very powerful all from the starting point of not wanting people to fail.
 
Dan Sullivan: No, no. Well, the other thing is that when I'm not working, I like reading detective stories, which are all about wanting other people to fail somewhere along the line. And I read history books, and I read about geopolitics and everything else. So when I'm not working, I don't want to be thinking about work.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah. And having people do their Unique Ability, being super clear is a way to do that.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, Babs and I, we take the equivalent of 22 weeks of Free Days a year. It's 155 days. And so there's only 210 days every year that are actually workdays. And during the 155 days, I don't want to be thinking what I'm doing about, what I'm going to be doing in the 210 days. I just want to have this separate world. So we have another team leader who you know really well, Cathy Davis. And I said, "You know, the greatest compliment I can give to you, and I hope you take it this way, is I never give any thought about how you're doing what you're doing because I know it's going to be great." And it is. And she knows for a fact that Dan's not thinking about me right now.
 
Shannon Waller: Well, and to your point earlier, you don't think of it as a parent-child relationship. It's colleagues, it's peers, it's people who have Unique Abilities that are complementary to yours. And then you trust people in their area of Unique Ability. So it makes total sense from that logic. Very, just very different than how most people look at companies. Before we leave this topic, Dan, I'm sure some people are thinking, "But not everyone's a great person." Or, "Not everyone can be great in our system" is another point of fact. So does everyone stay with Coach that we ever hire? No. We have standards. Sometimes people's Unique Abilities are not a fit for the company, or they're not willing to take their Unique Ability seriously, or be in great teamwork with other people. They reject the tools would be another criteria that's important to hit, or they have an envious spirit.
 
Dan Sullivan: It starts with envy. It's very, very interesting. Envy was historically, was always discussed. And if you look at great literature, you look at history, it's a well-recognized factor in human affairs. That envy plays a big part and it has two sides to it. It's envy of other people, but the other part of it is avoiding the envy of other people, of actually not exhibiting great performance or not exhibiting great results because you're afraid that other people will be envious of you. You brought up the issue of, well, not everybody's a great person. I said, well, I don't focus on whether the other person is a great person. I just focus on whether we can create the conditions, we can create the structures and the processes where any good person can decide to be a great person.
 
Shannon Waller: Ooh, I like that.
 
Dan Sullivan: Choose. Choose to be a great person, you know, and everything else. And I don't think that's predictable.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm. That's good. So you're willing to test and experiment and try?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, to the degree that we can set it up from our side, I want to make it 100% that if the other person is willing to perform in a great way, they can do it.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah. I like that. I think we've got at this point in our history, we've got incredibly robust processes for that. We have a lot of confidence in both our selection and onboarding and training development processes because we want people to grow. That's how we're going to grow.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And the ultimate proof that people aren't envious and they're not operating is that they innovate new things that everybody applauds them for. New ways of thinking, new ways of performing, new ways of organizing, new ways of getting things done faster, easier, cheaper, more productive that add to the marketplace power of Strategic Coach.
 
Shannon Waller: I love it. So Dan, if someone wants to take action on this idea, which is to my mind, it's a little bit of examining your own thinking as an entrepreneur. But what are some things that people can do to increase the success factor and diminish the failure factor in their own organizations? What are a few things you'd recommend?
 
Dan Sullivan: One, don't want other people to fail. I think I'm a pure spirit. I've never actually ever gotten any enjoyment out of other people failing.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: Okay. I mean, I just don't derive any enjoyment or pleasure from other people failing, regardless of who they are.
 
Shannon Waller: Which means that you're not feeling inferior. You don't feel a need to pull other people down. You're unique.
 
Dan Sullivan: I'm a unique rabbit. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, each of us is a full universe of experiences. To the degree that I can manage myself and improve myself, I just want to be the result of anyone dealing with me that it's a positive experience.
 
Shannon Waller: 100%. I love that. Dan, one of the other things that you do, and it's just been brilliant in terms of your teamwork, is you do an Impact Filter. And that's something that's available if someone doesn't have it on strategiccoach.com. And you're so clear on what your idea is, the best result if you, we do take action, the worst if we don't, the success criteria. Like, you do not leave people guessing about what success looks like with you. And that turns out that people often don't know what success looks like. So the fact that you filter your ideas through, you only put through the good ones that you discern, and then pass it off to the team, everyone can just go check, check, check, check, check, and they can feel really confident and relaxed with you.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, and they're not looking for my approval. They're just looking at the criteria that's laid out. If you do this, you do this, you do this, it succeeds. And that's all you have to do. And anytime there's a breakdown or there's a miscommunication or something goes off the tracks, my first instinct is, okay, let's review how we set this up. It's not the other person failed. Because I can work on the structure and the process. I can't work on the other person.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah. And you have tons of control over the structure of the process. Oh, so good. Dan, thank you. There's a graciousness to this mindset and your attitude and it just, I mean, having I've been working with you since 1991, I've got to experience all these things and the amount of flourishing that it creates for individuals, which then gets created for our clients and just good happening out in the world is pretty spectacular, simply from the fact that you don't want people to fail. So thank you.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, and it's simple rather than complicated.
 
Shannon Waller: It's certainly not. And it's also not dramatic. Like you're talking about envy. All I can think of is Shakespeare and all the plays, all the court dramas, all the, you know, it's not dramatic, but it's so much more effective.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, Shakespeare is not Shakespeare unless there's envy as a central theme. I mean, you don't have a drama without envy.
 
Shannon Waller: I love how not dramatic our company is. Fabulous. Thank you so much, Dan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Thank you, Shannon.