Dave: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the award-winning financial service in business advisory podcast challenging your old school business practices and the traditional business suit culture. We’ll hear from industry professionals and experts. Our guest will challenge you to think beyond the suit and tie while offering you meaningful and modern solutions to help you enhance your company’s growth. I’m your host, Dave Cain. I’m excited to start talking with today’s guest. This episode is going to be really unique. I don’t know that Unsuitable has dealt with this in the past. Today, we’re joined by Tim Kight, founder and president of Focus3, a leadership, development, consulting company headquartered in Central Ohio. Welcome to unsuitable, Tim.
Tim: Great. Thanks for having me.
Dave: You’ve made it your mission and passion to provide leaders with tools and training they need to become exceptional leaders in a really complex environment. Your technique is, work with athletes and business leaders from across the country. Today, you’re going to share some of your ideas in how to achieve the exceptional results for yourself and your team. Basically, we’re going to talk about success.
Tim: Awesome.
Dave: Before we begin, we’ve got to talk about the entrepreneurial spirit. Many of my colleagues have heard you speak and have spoken very highly. You’ve been doing this for a long time. You area an entrepreneur. What’s your key to success being an entrepreneur?
Tim: Yeah. That’s a great question. I think, the fundamentals of success are pretty universal no matter what you do. In a business, you better have a very clear vision, you better see where you want to go, you have to recognize a niche where there’s a genuine need and there’s a desire and a hunger for what you deliver, and you have to have tremendous perseverance. When you start something new, there’s always obstacles, there’s always difficulties, there’s always challenges operational, financial, all kinds of things. If you got a very clear vision that comes from the heart and you see a niche in the marketplace that’s real and then you persevere, I think, those are the triggers that get the thing going.
Dave: How many frequent flyer miles do you have this year?
Tim: Funny to say that I’ve got over 2 million on United. I’ve got overall. I have frequent flyer miles, right now, in United. We just cashed in some to help somebody. We’re down to 900,000.
Dave: 900,000. Keep on going as they say.
Tim: I’ll work on it.
Dave: For our listeners, while you’re listening, and many of our listeners, they multitask. They can do this. I’d invite them to hit your website, go to your website which is focus3.com.
Tim: www.Focus3.com
Dave: www.Focus3.com and I think you’ll find some tremendous tools on that website. Let’s start with, what does Focus 3 stand for?
Tim: Yeah. That’s the right question. We help our clients focus on 3 things; leadership, culture, and behavior. Our entire philosophy is that those 3 disciplines inside a business or an organization of any kind, you have to get those 3 things right. That drives everything. We like to say it this way, if you get leadership, culture, behavior right, your business can do almost anything. You get those 3 things wrong, you’ll struggle with almost everything.
Dave: What if I can only get 2 of 3?
Tim: You got to work on the third.
Dave: Is there one that arises above the other? Where do you start?
Tim: Yeah. There isn’t one that rises above another because it’s a system. That’s like asking which wing of the airplane do you prefer 50,000 feet. In some of the flies, as much as I do, I like both wings on my airplane. There can be a sequence. Our clients will start all kinds of places. They may start with behavioral side which is our factor. They may start with culture in terms of documentation, clarify, and then building what we call culture playbooks. They may start with leadership. What they discover though is that these things are linked. We were not that concerned with where someone enters the pathway. It’s just to get them going and then discover the impact of those disciplines on their business. Because it’s not a program, really.
I just came from a meeting with a prospect that hired us to go in a 2-year journey with them to build leadership, culture, behavior. They decided to call it journey to elite because it’s not a program. It’s not 2 or 3 seminars. It’s not a one book. It’s an ongoing multiple touch point, lots of reps. It’s how any skill is built. If we were going to learn how to speak Japanese and we did 3 fantastic workshops on how to speak Japanese, you can probably order a little bit of sushi and that’s about all you could do. If you’re going to learn something and partake something as important as leadership, organizational culture, and performance behavior, a lot of reps got to be involved.
Dave: Wow. Focus 3 was built on leadership, culture, and behavior. Those are pretty dynamic attributes. As I heard you say that, I thought you were going to say strategy. Why wasn’t strategy on that list? Why isn’t Focus 4?
Tim: Yeah. Because leadership, culture, behavior is how you execute strategy. We are all about helping our clients create an environment that allows them to execute their strategy at an elite level. Every company has a strategy. Literally, every organization. We work at athletics. Every athletic team has a strategy or a game plan. How well that strategy gets implemented is completely controlled by the quality of leadership, the quality of culture, and the quality of behavior. That’s our focus.
Dave: Obviously, I know your background with working with athletic teams and certainly, businesses of all shapes and sizes. Does Focus 3 work … I’ll just name a few, manufacturing.
Tim: Absolutely.
Dave: Construction.
Tim: You bet.
Dave: Professional services.
Tim: Yes, sir.
Dave: Medical clinics.
Tim: Yes, it does.
Dave: How about our marketing department?
Tim: Even the marketing department.
Dave: Even the marketing department.
Tim: Even the marketing department. The reason why is physics. That’s a big word for us. We study how things work. We are passionate. How does leadership work? What are the physics of leadership? Where do the physics of leadership applies same thing for that too. It’s every place, government. Every place.
Dave: On unsuitable Radio, there are certain places we can go and they give us a list. We’re going to go there for a minute. Does this work with politicians?
Tim: Absolutely. Again, it’s physics. What it is, you look today and this is coming up given in this silly season of elections and all that. I’m more certainly not going to go parties in here. I don’t want to. When you watch what’s happening in the politics today, you’re seeing lower levels of leadership, dysfunctional culture, and embarrassing behavior. You’ve seen it and we all recognize it. The fact that those 3 things aren’t being done at an elite level in our government, that’s one of the reasons why we struggle like we do.
Dave: Maybe we should do more of this at the government level.
Tim: That would be a good idea.
Dave: I think they’re going to edit this out when they edit this.
Tim: We’ll see.
Dave: How does your practice play with corporate branding and brands? Any comments there?
Tim: Sure. In fact, that’s really interesting. We don’t get into the strategy part of brand. Because other people do that really really well and we understand that. Your brand is, essentially, “Here’s how I want to be viewed in the marketplace.” We’re going to relentlessly deliver an experience consistent with that promise that we make. That’s the notion of branding. Think about this though, what’s the ultimate brand of any organization or group? How people behave and they experience their behavior delivers. That’s the brand. You can have the images and you can have the marketing material in this presence in social media. At the end of the day, how people experience the organization is really the brand.
I’ll give 2 really interesting examples. Southwest Airlines versus United or Delta or American. Anyone who’s flown the big ones for any significant length of time, consistently experiences people with a bad attitude. Anyone who has experienced Southwest Airlines on a regular basis, regularly experiences people with a great attitude. Who enjoys the better brand? Irrespective of commercials, irrespective of social media, who’s got the better brand? It’s Southwest Airlines, based on the behavior of their people and the culture they come from, built and sustained by their leaders, Focus 3.
Dave: Our team asked me to just throw this term out and just let you run with it, ERO. First of all, let’s define it and go for it. Let’s talk about ERO.
Tim: Yeah. Our cornerstone deliverable, our cornerstone discipline is something we call the R Factor. It’s the toolbox for building behavior skill. It’s this equation, E+R=O which stands for event plus response equals outcome. It teaches something very simple and very powerful about how life and work. That’s this, how many events do you get in a day?
Dave: Probably, 8 to 12 maybe.
Tim: Or more.
Dave: Or more.
Tim: Life is a never ending flow of events. The outcomes that you get though everyday are not determined by the events that you get rather, the outcomes you get to determine by how you choose to respond. You don’t control the events of life. You don’t directly control the outcomes of life. You always have control of how you choose to manage the R in that equation. We call it the R Factor. What we do is, we teach skill on how to manage your R in a discipline driven rather than default driven way. There’s a line in life and above the line is discipline and below the line is default. If we manage our response with discipline, we get the best possible outcomes given the realities of the events or situations that we face. Think about it this way, you line up 5 businesses all competing in the same marketplace for the same customers or clients. Those businesses all get the same events. They get the same Es. Who wins? The company that manages the R best wins. That’s our factor. That’s the cornerstone deliverable.
Dave: That’s your deliverable?
Tim: Absolutely.
Dave: I shared with you, maybe, 8 to 12. That was just a guess. I’m sure it’s far more.
Tim: It’s hundreds.
Dave: Especially if I throw in the events that my wife has planned for me.
Tim: Driving back and forth to work and all that stuff.
Dave: Back and forth and all of that.
Tim: You bet.
Dave: Is there the daily ERO look? Is there the weekly ERO look, the monthly, the annual? Put that in perspective if you can, for me.
Tim: Yeah. What our factor is, what E+R=O is, it’s a lens by which to see the world and to navigate decision making. That’s really what it is. The technical term in cognitive science is heuristic. It’s a simple system for looking at situations and making decision. It has moment-to-moment application. You can look across the day and say, “What ease do I anticipate today and how would I respond?” You can look across the week. You can look strategically. It really has a very broad application.
Here’s the thing, how many people have a system like that whereby they see the world and then use that system to make intentional purposeful decisions? We know from our studies, not very many people. The heuristic that most people have is the decision making reference point is, what habits do I have that are most comfortable and what emotion do I feel at the moment? That’s how most people make decisions. What E+R=O says is, step back from that and let’s be more intentional, purposeful, skillful. In other words, more discipline driven in the way I see events and choose my response. We are constantly working with our clients and all those sectors and domains you mentioned to be very purposeful about the decisions that they make. ERO is this framework, this system, this lens that people as a framework to look at situations and be intentional. It’s amazingly powerful because it’s simple, it’s clear, and it’s actionable.
Dave: E+R=O, is that my operating system?
Tim: Yes, for decision making. Yes.
Dave: I can get rid of DOS now.
Tim: Yeah. It’s funny you say that. E+R=O is the operating system for the human brain. Just like DOS or some other operating system works for the computer. Your physical brain is the hardware. E+R=O is the software, the operating system. You give it input. You program it. It’s an apped analogy.
Dave: As we talk about this internally, I’m talking to myself about this E+R=O. I’ve heard you talk about people talk to themselves all the time and that’s okay.
Tim: Yeah. Again, it’s psychological fact that we are constantly running an internal narrative. We all have constant self-talk. That’s just the way the human brain works.
Dave: In E+R=O with the coaching of your team or our team, how do you get people to do the R? How do you get exceptional results?
Tim: That’s the whole training, obviously. That’s the skill. Again, let me go back. There’s 2 different ways to go about life above that line or below that line; discipline driven, which is above our default driven which is below. Here’s the interesting thing, everyone responds, everyone chooses, everyone acts, everyone does stuff. The question is, are you doing stuff with intention and purpose? Are you doing it based on impulse and autopilot? The first thing is, give them the system. Teach them to look at life through the lens of E+R=O and recognize whether they’re discipline driven with intention and purpose or they’re default driven. The first thing is awareness. Let’s have a framework and then be aware.
We teach 6 competencies, 6 disciplines for managing your R in a discipline driven way. That’s that toolbox that gives people the capacity then to respond with intention and purpose.
Dave: As an employer, I obviously want to make sure I’m hiring above the line people who are capable, willing, and want to operate above the line. Is there some testing that your clients do in that phase?
Tim: Let me back up for a second because the application of our factor in a business is profound. Think about this for a moment. We believe this deeply. The ultimate performance is variable in a business as the way employees manage the R. It’s more important than strategy. It’s more important than IT. It’s the human capital that makes or breaks a business. Because every day, events are flowing through that company, every day it stops happening, and everyday people are choosing how to respond to that stuff. The output of a business, the outcomes of a business are completely contingent upon how people choose to respond. I tell this all the time to our clients, “Your single greatest performance resource, your greatest performance variable is how people choose to manage the R.” The bottom line is this, behavior produces results. Business plans don’t produce results, behavior does. Budgets don’t produce results, behavior does.
The mistake that have been made over the years is, companies pour an enormous amount of energy into strategy development and then they don’t pour energy into developing the behavior necessary to execute the strategy. Not just a swing and miss. We are constantly responding to that inquiry in the marketplace where companies are struggling because they say, “I’ve got this great strategy” or trying to change in response to the marketplace and our people are resisting. Yeah, because you haven’t trained them. You haven’t given them the skill to manage their R Factor in an intentional purposeful way. Does that make sense?
Dave: Yeah. Sure. Again, somewhat related question is, as far as your team and developing the leadership team, do you start the E+R=O with the young leaders in the business? Is that where you start?
Tim: We typically start with the senior team. We start with the executive team. That’s where we like to begin. The reason why, I don’t think we all know is that they step the tone. Whenever you implement any initiative like this where you’re trying to build skill or strengthen the culture or initiate and sustain some change, what’s the first thing that everybody in the business does when they look to leadership? Do they buy in? What do they think of this? I’m always very uncomfortable when some executives come up and heard me speak some place and they say, “I heard my son Brian speak in a company and say, ‘you guys are awesome, the people in our business really need what you teach.'” We always kind of, “I believe that. What about you? What about the leadership team?” That’s where we start. You think about, the R Factor of the leaders of an organization has a huge impact.
We really emphasize that, if you’re in leadership, the way you manage the R shapes how others manage the R. Or I’ll put it in another way from the leadership perspective. If it’s not happening in you, it’s not going to happen through you.
Dave: The reason for the question, I know, a great response is that in some organizations some of the leadership at the top is just accustomed, they’re comfortable, they’re on cruise control, operating under-
Tim: Below that line on autopilot
Dave: Below the line on autopilot has become their operating system. Sometimes, teaching them a new system is, maybe, a waste of time and energy.
Tim: That’s my job to get their attention. That’s what I get paid to do. That’s what I like to do. That’s what I’m passionate and energetic to do. We also have come to the spot on our business where, when we sit down with a leadership team and we share this system with them, if we get push back from the leadership team, we don’t take the engagement. We say no. Because E+R=O is the physics of how life works. If someone says, “I don’t like that framework.” I know what I need to know about whether that project is going to be successful or not. I can, pretty much, guess what’s going to happen in that company a few years from now. If people want to change, they want to grow, they want to get better, we can help. If they want to stay the same, they don’t need anybody’s help. They’re stuck.
Dave: The word, “I haven’t heard” and I love this because this word is very tired for me and it just doesn’t resonate anymore. It’s the word, “accountable.” Now, we’re talking about above the line. That resonates. I think you’re probably seeing that with your clients.
Tim: Yeah. The word, “accountability” is actually in our leadership model. E+R=O is our behavior model. Accountability is something that we help leaders do. We recast it because I think the reason has gotten tired and old. I think it’s been misdefined. If you tell people today that we’re going to increase accountability, that’s not usually a good news. It’s thought of as punitive and punishment.
We’ve studied the physics of accountability. What is that? Here’s what it is. Accountability is really paid attention on what’s going on and then taking appropriate action, responding to what you see. If a leader is going to “hold people accountable,” that means that she pays attention to them. She watches them. We say that a great leader is a master observer. The second thing in accountability is when she sees what the people are doing, she gives them feedback. Not once a year in an annual review but constant on an ongoing basis. People love that. That kind of accountability, people like that.
Here’s 5 things every employee wants to know; where are we now, where are we going, how are we going to get there, what do you want me to do, how am I doing. Every employee wants to know those 5 things; where are we now, where are we going, how are we going to get there, what do you want me to do, how am I doing. If you answer that question because you paid attention to that employee, that’s accountability and that’s performance-oriented accountability. We recast it. What we think it’s original intent and our clients love it.
Dave: Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. I feel like we’ve just scratched the surface of the E+R=O. We’re going to have to schedule you to come back and do another podcast with us because I’m sure our listeners, the feedback we’ll get will be fantastic with that.
Tim: Awesome.
Dave: Before we wrap up, we always like to ask fun question, put you on the spot a little bit. I intend-
Tim: I didn’t get any e-mail about the fun questions.
Dave: There’s things we keep to ourselves.
Tim: We’ll see how I do.
Dave: We intentionally did not talk about Ohio State football because that would’ve taken up the entire podcast.
Tim: You have a good chance of that. Yes.
Dave: We’re going to test your E+R=O. You’re a coach of a top 10 football team. Last regular season game, Saturday, after Thanksgiving, noon start. It’s snowing a little bit, swirling wind. It’s late in the fourth quarter, you’re down 2 points. A minute 10 left, no time outs. The ball is on the 32 yard line. You’re faced with-
Tim: Going in or coming out? I’m not going …?
Dave: No. You’re on the opposing.
Tim: Got it. Near the red zone.
Dave: Your choices are, kick a 49 yard field goal or go for it. It’s 4th-and-2.
Tim: 4th-and-2.
Dave: 4th-and-2.
Tim: I’d go for it.
Dave: Go for it.
Tim: Yeah.
Dave: Are you passing or are you running?
Tim: It depends how good my O line is. If my O line is good, I’m running the ball.
Dave: Then you’re kicking.
Tim: Then I’m kicking.
Dave: There you go. Perfect. Tim, thanks again for joining us on unsuitable. Great presentation. We want to thank our listeners for joining us. Again, I encourage our listeners to simply go to www.focus3.com and they can find out several tools and the things that your company is doing around the country.
Tim: Great.
Dave: Again, I appreciate that. Also, for our listeners, please feel free to hop on our website. That’s www.reacpa.com for bonus articles and insights. Don’t forget to subscribe to unsuitable on Rea Radio on iTunes or SoundCloud. Until next time, I’m Dave Cain encouraging to loosen up your tie and think outside the box.