June 3, 2025 • 25 mins
In this clarifying episode, Lee Benson, CEO of Execute to Win, takes aim at two enormous problems founders face (especially when they hire coaches or consultants).
You will discover:
- Why traditional strategic planning never works sustainably (leading to Treadmill)
- Why your operating system, no matter what it's called or how much you love it, will grow your business (and what will)
- A clear definition of success for every CEO
This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stages 4,5 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz
Lee Benson is a value creation expert and CEO of Execute to Win, a firm that helps organizations of all sizes to accelerate the value they create. He founded and led seven companies, including Able Aerospace, which grew from 2 to 500 employees and a 9-figure exit in 2016. He is also a 2x Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Your Most Important Number and Value Creation Kid, which helps parents teach their kids about money and value-creation tactics.
Want to learn more about Lee Benson's work at Execute to Win? Check out his website at https://etw.com/
Mentioned in this episode:
Take the Founder's Evolution Quiz Today
If you’re a Founder, business owner, or CEO who feels overworked by the business you lead and underwhelmed by the results, you’re doing it wrong. Succeeding as a founder all comes down to doing the right one or two things right now. Take the quiz today at foundersquiz.com, and in just ten questions, you can figure out what stage you are in, so you can focus on what is going to work and say goodbye to everything else.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott Ritzheimer (00:00):
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once
(00:02):
again to the secrets of thehigh demand coach podcast. And
here with us today is yetanother high demand coach in
the one and only Lee Benton,who's a value creation expert
and CEO of execute to win afirm that helps organizations
of all sizes to accelerate thevalue they create. He has
founded and led sevencompanies, including able
(00:23):
aerospace, which he grew fromtwo to 500 employees and a
nine figure exit in 2016 He'salso the author of the book
your most important number.He's here with us today. Lee,
welcome to the show. Soexcited to have you here. And
I have to admit you had mefrom the title. What is my
most important number?
Lee Benson (00:43):
Yeah, well, good to be here, Scott, thanks for
having me and your mostimportant number. It really
kind of changes throughout theorganization, at the top of
the organization, what's theone number that's reflective
of the value of the businessand will drive the majority
the right behaviors with thesenior leadership team? So I
believe every CEO's job, everyfounder's job, is to
(01:04):
continually and responsiblyincrease the value of their
business. Now, as you cascadeout from that, you've got
marketing and sales andoperations and finance, HR,
whatever that is, they have amost important number that's
reflective of the value thatthat function was designed to
create, or should have beendesigned to create, and will
drive the majority the rightbehavior. So this can be one
(01:26):
number in a small team. It canbe 10 different teams with
different most importantnumbers all the way to 1000s
of teams and and when oneimproves, it accretes up all
the way to the top of theorganization, thereby
increasing the value of thebusiness.
Scott Ritzheimer (01:39):
Yeah, yeah. I love that. So you've used
the word value several times,and I'm actually surprised at
how infrequently this idea ofvalue comes up. And there's a
couple key ways there's, youknow, there's value to all
different stakeholders, butwhen it comes to the most
important number, are youreferring to value that the
business creates, namely, onbehalf of it, or on behalf of
(02:02):
or for its customers, or areyou talking about the
business, the value of thebusiness itself?
Lee Benson (02:08):
Well, if you increase the value of the
business, you have to beincreasing the value for your
customers, right? And so whatdo the customers really say
about the quality or value orthe experience they have when
they buy your products andservices, and it's not just
your product and service, it'salso the team and your team
and how they interact withyour customers. So all of that
(02:29):
actually goes into it. So Iwould say, if you're
continually, and I love, youknow, thinking about this way,
responsibly, increasing thevalue of your business over
time, just consistently, yearafter year you have to be
doing those other things aswell.
Scott Ritzheimer (02:43):
Yeah, I love that, that idea of
responsibility, it can rubfolks a little the wrong way
sometimes, but I think it isthe link if you don't do it
responsible, because lots offolks can, like, flip stuff. I
remember, I think it was horseSchultz talking about, anyone
can go in and make a hotelmore profitable, but can you
(03:04):
make it better? Right? It'sjust a great saying and and so
I love that idea of continualand responsible, and then
those two values come togetherin time. So another thing
jumped out in me the book.Jumped out at me in the book
was this idea of a leadershipAudit Checklist, and just what
it did for you guys. So I'mwondering if you could just
(03:26):
just kind of enlighten us whatwas in the leadership
checklist, or, sorry,leadership Audit Checklist,
and why did it make such a bigdifference for you?
Lee Benson (03:35):
Yeah, well, I think for all of us, and I've
actually started from scratcheight companies, ranging from,
you know, 10 team members toover 500 team members in each
and in the bigger ones. It'sinteresting looking at the
leaders, going, Gosh, some ofthose leaders are getting
amazing results consistently,and others not so much, like
you have the whole spectrumthere. So what's different in
their approach and so well,how they show up as a leader
(03:57):
matters. Their managementoperating system, where I
would say rituals theyconsistently do to cause great
results to happen, matters.That's the second category.
And then third, I called itfoundational readiness, which
is essentially, are you readyto grow at any point in time?
And every business isdifferent, but in my in the
aerospace example that'scoming from the book, 20% was
(04:19):
what I had put out there. Atany point in time, it'd be
ready to grow 20% right? Oh,how you show up? What are the
things you do to consistentlyget really great results? You
know, meetings, KPIs, youknow, all those things that
you do. And then are you readyto grow? And lo and behold,
once I put that in place, Iwent from, you know, when you
look at the checklist, there'sthree categories, and then
(04:42):
there's subcategories in eachone of those. And I would just
say red, green or yellow forevery leader. Once I posted
it, initially, there were afew leaders that were green,
almost across the board. Therewere a few that read across
the board, some that were, youknow, yellow and green. Within
90 days, almost everybody wasmostly green. Across the
board, because we were runningabout what we wanted leaders
(05:02):
to do, and lo and behold, wejust kept growing faster. No,
no surprise whatsoever, right?
Scott Ritzheimer (05:07):
Yeah, it's so good. It's so good. So that
folks know kind of what we'redealing with here. This isn't
like just some novel thingthat you thought of one time.
This is real world stuff. SoJack Welch told you that that
yours was one of the bestbusiness management operating
systems he'd ever seen. Andhad he used it one running GE,
(05:28):
their results would have beenexponentially better. That's
remarkable. My question foryou, kind of stemming off of
this, is, what makes oneoperating system better than
another?
Lee Benson (05:43):
So I would that's a great question. So there's,
there's two parts of it.There's the operating system
and your approach, attitudes,beliefs, behaviors, around how
you apply it. So on the on thefirst part of that question
for an operating system, Ithink simple is better. So how
can you distill it down? Makeit so easy to understand, get
(06:04):
everybody aligned around, youknow, creating value that way.
And there are a whole bunch ofoperating systems that are
pretty complex and and thenthe the approaches to applying
it, they make the processwhat's most important, not
creating value, right? Sothat's why I came up with your
most important number. I callit the mind management system.
(06:25):
And in there you've got themost important number, the top
of the organization. Everyteam that feeds up into it,
all the way to the frontlines, they have their most
important number, and thenthey they call out the best
work they can do tocontinually improve that that
is so simple, so easy.Included in the mind
management system iseverything else, strategy,
(06:45):
compensation, just everythingis in there, but the simple
structure of it, wildly,wildly easy. Now, when you
know, kind of, getting back tothe how you apply it, how you
think about it, right, wewould all be shooting towards,
you know, having a culturethat's all about creating
value. Connect culture tovalue creation. So everything
(07:05):
we do is done with the intentof making the organization
measurably better, morevaluable over time. That's
where most trip up withoperating systems. Yes, I
think, I think any operatingsystem out there, if you're
doing something tointentionally improve or
increase the value of thebusiness, you can't help but
get a little better. Becareful what you choose,
(07:26):
because if it's overlycomplex, it's really hard to
keep that going over the longrun. And and what I believe,
and I've seen this over andover again, working with lots
of companies, 1000s ofleaders, traditional goal
setting I've never seen standthe test of time ever. And
Well, when I when I go in andaudit a business, and I'm just
looking, show me all thegoals, what you're setting,
show me your strategy, how ittrickles out, and I look at
(07:48):
the goals, less than 10% ofthem are thoughtful goals that
would really move the needle,and in the process, just feels
terrible for most of our teammembers, because, hey, set
three goals every quarter, forexample, get it approved by
your manager, rinse and repeatevery quarter. It feels
terrible how and then youswitch over to the my
management system as anexample, here's the most
(08:11):
important number for the team.This is where we started. This
is where we're going. But anypoint in time we can see if
we're on track, and I was likeplaying a baseball game, we
know whether we're winning orlosing. This is my position,
and this is the best work I'vebeen called to do to help
contribute to improving that.Yeah, now it's super easy, and
you can cascade it, but itwhat you asked is such a big
(08:31):
question that impactseverybody, whether using OKRs,
40x Eos, scaling up, there'sso many systems out there, I
am super biased towards whatI've created over decades and
working with hundreds ofcompanies, because it's simple
and you don't have to changeyour language inside the
business like you have to withall the others.
Scott Ritzheimer (08:51):
Yeah, I could get myself in a lot of
trouble if we go down thatroad. I couldn't agree more. I
you know, one of the thingsthat that really gets me about
a lot of those systems,particularly for the
practitioners of thosesystems, is that the system
becomes more important thanwhatever the system's there
for in the first place, and,and, and so the systems are
(09:13):
all great. There's nothinginherently wrong with them.
We're like, fundamentallyflawed. There's something
wrong with all of them. Iforget who it was. It said,
all models are wrong. Some areuseful, but so they're not
fundamentally flawed, but whenwe drink the Kool Aid for
them, that's when we get introuble. And actually leads me
to a similar point. Becauseone of the reasons why that
(09:36):
happens, and I this is atemptation for me, with the
model that we use is the whenI used the model to create
value in my business, the onewe use now, the predictable
success model, it had amassive transformative impact
on our business. And it's likeI want so badly for folks to
have that. And one of thechallenges with that is not
(09:58):
every situation is the same.Right? And a lot of times on
the the client side of thecoaching equation, they're
going out and looking forsomeone who's done what they
want to do right in some way,shape or form, and they think
that's what will make them anexpert at helping me out. And
then on the coach side, wekind of think, well, I've done
this before. I can telleverybody how to do it, you
know, they just need to do itlike me. But you, you came to
(10:21):
a different revelaterevelation that the initial
kind of systems that you usedwere too complex or too
rigorous, I would say, not toocomplex, but too rigorous for
a lot of folks to execute on.Well, and you really dug in
over the years to find onethat actually everybody can
use. Why is that so important?
Lee Benson (10:39):
100% and to your point, businesses are
different, you know, small,nuanced difference to
significantly different. Onesize does not fit all, except
with what the, you know, thedirection that we went. What's
the value of your business? Ican look at every for profit
business, and there's going tobe a value. Your job is to
continually grow. It great.Let's figure out what that is.
(11:02):
That's the senior leadershipteam's most important number.
Yeah, cascade that out and go.That's why I did it. And I was
the kind of leader when I hadthe aerospace company 500
employees. Now, there werelots of ups and downs in the
early years. I mean, all theuphill in the snow, both ways.
Stories I can, I can give you,but, but in running that I
(11:23):
early on, I was able up to acouple 100 employees to make
traditional goal setting work.It was a Herculean effort, but
backed off for a second. Itwent away. They would start
backing off, yeah, so on. Itto come up with something that
worked really across theboard, and I think really
importantly, we didn't have tochange the language, whatever
we called it, we would just doit and and then I read a book,
(11:45):
because we were in theaviation aftermarket business.
We repaired, overhaul,manufactured aircraft parts.
We had 2000 customers in 60countries, incredible
operations. We did 95% ofeverything. And I was just
incredibly complex. This bookwas called Lean MRO,
maintenance, repair andoverhaul. And there was this.
There was a line in there. Itsaid, the most elegant
(12:07):
solution is on the other sideof complexity. It's simplicity
on the other side ofcomplexity. Yeah. So when you
cookie cutter, apply anoperating system, whatever it
is, to what you have, you'reprobably going to fail or
definitely not get the resultsyou want. But if you really
understand, as you're applyingthis thing to all the
complexity of yourorganization, you come up with
(12:29):
a really simple, elegantsolution on the other side of
that, that's where you win,literally 95 plus percent of
the time. Does that makessense?
Scott Ritzheimer (12:36):
It does? It really, really does. And and
again, I like that language ofsimplicity versus elegance.
And I forget who it wasactually from the Aviation
space. It's just driving mecrazy. But they talked about
elegance and design as beingthe point at which you can
take nothing else away, right?Which is so different than the
way that we think about it,right? We think about, what do
I have to add? What can we domore? And it's plus, plus plus
(12:58):
multiple, multiple, multiple,instead of that taking away,
that refining and thatfocusing, that I think you
guys have been able to achieveso effectively through, well,
through your operating system.
Lee Benson (13:07):
And think about it this way, most would say we
want to improve quality isgoing to cost a whole bunch
more, and you have to do allthese things. Well, how can we
improve quality while we'rereducing costs? Yeah, and that
is it. I mean that that'sthat's directionally, where we
should go, lower it, you know,improve quality of product and
service experience for allteam members, all
(13:27):
stakeholders, at a loweringrelative cost over time.
That's how we know we're doingthe right work.
Scott Ritzheimer (13:32):
Yeah, one of the other challenges with what
you've called traditional goalsetting, and I see this a lot,
particularly in establishedleadership teams, there's just
so many things fighting foryour attention. There's so
many strengths, there's somany weaknesses,
opportunities, threats, orwhatever tool you're using,
(13:52):
right? Like, there's just somany things, and it can almost
be debilitating. Like, what dowe actually need to do next.
How do you help teams answerthat question?
Lee Benson (14:04):
Yeah, well, one of my maxims is, do less better.
And every company that I'veworked with, whether it's a
startup all the way to $60billion plus market cap
organizations, I've neverfound one that has more than
about four things that create80 to 90% of the value for the
organization. So I always wantto look at that and say, Well,
(14:26):
how well are we doing thosefour things? And on a scale
from one to 10, if it's not aneight, nine or 10 in each one
of them, why are we doinganything else? And so I always
ask the question, Well, whydon't we improve those things?
Well, because it's hard, likewe've got it to this place,
and if you want to keep movingthe needle there, pushing the
bar, it's actually hard workto do, but it should be fun.
(14:47):
So focus there. Do you know,do less better, and it's
amazing how much fasterorganizations go. There's no
magic pill, there's no silverbullet. We actually have to do
something, even though we'rekind of. A culture in United
States right now where peoplejust want it without having to
do anything. Sorry, you haveto do something. And you know
what? It can be fun. And whatI found, when you get the team
(15:09):
right, you get the cultureright, you're doing the right
work. The harder it gets, theharder we laugh. That's how we
know we're doing the rightwork.
Scott Ritzheimer (15:15):
That's so good. Why is it that doing
less better is so much lessappealing than adding more
like not that it isn't. Butwhy does it feel that way?
Lee Benson (15:31):
Well, I think there's a couple of things
going on. I believe you haveto be passionate about
strategy and equallypassionate about executing and
and you can be out of balance,really, on both of them. And
most business leaders that Irun into, they want to
intellectualize about allthese things that you could do
(15:52):
on paper and write it alldown. And how amazing is this?
And they walk away from astrategy session that was so
great now we've solved all theproblems. And like I say in
the book, you have a strategy.Congratulations. You're 3% of
the way there. 97% is going tobe actually doing it. And the
better you get at actuallydoing it, the better you'll
get a strategy, because youcome up with things that will
really accelerate the valuethat your organization
(16:14):
creates. So yeah, I thinkthat's one piece of it, and
it's just hard. They're not. Alot of folks just aren't
leaning in to really improve.And a lot of times they don't
even, they don't even knowwhere to improve. They're
doing stuff, and they can allbe great things, your leaders
in an organization, butthey're not in alignment. And
(16:36):
you know, one of the mostvaluable things that I think I
could probably communicatehere to all the listeners is
something I call valuecreation nudging. And in
chapter eight, I just updatedthe book with a chapter eight.
It's titled, you know whysometimes CEOs fail? And the
subtitle is, does your teamreally understand? I find very
few organizations where allthe leaders understand the
(16:59):
business model, like, can youcan explain it to me? And
there's, there's a number offounders and CEOs that can't
do a very good job explainingit. So when you're in meetings
and people are talking aboutdoing things that just don't
make sense and frustrate you,a lot of times, you know, they
want to win, like very fewwant the company to
intentionally fail. A lot oftimes, they don't really
(17:19):
understand the business model.So how can they make decisions
in alignment with it? Or theydon't understand the strategic
initiatives, or they don'treally understand what
customers say and feel aboutour products and services, and
they don't understand theintentional culture around
beliefs, behaviors, traits,other things that cause
extraordinary value to becreated if they understood
(17:42):
those four things in theirbones, the business model,
your strategy, the value ofyour stuff as seen by
customers, and your valuecreating culture, all of a
sudden they'll start makingbetter decisions, and you'll
get less frustrated. So yeah,I my nugget here is, I call it
value creation, nudging. Andevery time you're in a meeting
and something isn't inalignment with what you know
(18:03):
it should be. It probably hassomething to do with those
four areas. I've never seenit. I'd have something to do
with it. Does that make sense,Scott?
Scott Ritzheimer (18:10):
It's so so good. And I love the
simplicity of that, thebusiness model, your strategy,
how you create value for yourcustomers, and a culture that
delivers on that so true. SoI'm wondering, I don't know
how you top that. Lee, so yourjob's a lot harder than mine
right now. But what would yousay as a question I ask all my
guests, I'm interested to seewhat you have to say to it. So
(18:30):
in addition to what you'veshared with us so far, what
would you say is the biggestsecret that you wish wasn't a
secret at all? What's that onething you wish everybody
watching or listening today knew?
Lee Benson (18:41):
Yeah, so I gave you one of my maxims around,
do less better. I have anothert shirt. I can get you one if
you want. It says, strugglebetter. And so the value of
struggle, you know, we asparents, you know, a lot of
parents with great intentionshave taken so much struggle
away from kids. They're noteven close to ready to being
an adult, oh my gosh. So wereally messed up in developing
(19:04):
for that and that. Now I seeadults in the workplace and
leaders. Something doesn't layout perfectly, and they act
like victims, like, oh mygosh, there's so much value
and struggle. Like, every timeit gets really hard, I'm
finally at a point at 63 whereI get this warm feeling
inside. This is going to beamazing when I come out the
other side. So theunderstanding there's so much
(19:27):
value and struggle, lean intoit every single day, get
comfortable with it andincrease your tolerance for
it, and you'll create so muchmore value.
Scott Ritzheimer (19:36):
Yeah, I have found that for the vast
majority of folks, the futureis much better than they
really believe, but the pathto get there is going to be a
lot harder than they wouldlike to know, you know, and
it's that same thing, it'sgoing to be so much better on
the other side, and when wecan recognize that what we
have to do to get there, yeah,you have to do it, but it's
(19:58):
not that big a deal. Pales incomparison to the joy that's.
In front of us. So I love thatidea. Struggle better. So Lee,
there's there's folkslistening to this and like
we've just ticked the we'venicked the surface. We've not
even begun to dug in. How canthey find more out about the
operating system that you'veput together? Where can they
get a copy of their book orfind more out about you?
Lee Benson (20:20):
Yeah, please go to our website, which is etw.com
you can get the book there, oryou can find it on Amazon or
40,000 other channels outthere. There's the written
version of it, there's anaudio version of it. And on
the website, if you want, youcan actually DIY the last
section of the book is a do ityourself section, and you can
(20:40):
get on, and it's like 12 bucksa seat, if you had one person
in a company, 12 bucks. Andyou can have the software to
do this, the courses in there,all the resources, everything
included with us. We make itsuper easy. If you want to
implement the mind managementsystem, and we have the
leadership value lab, you cansign up for that, and it's
(21:01):
just ongoing leadershiplessons that come out daily,
weekly, monthly.
Scott Ritzheimer (21:05):
Fantastic. Lee, excellent, excellent
wisdom. I love the maxims, theT shirts, the whole nine
yards. There's just so muchgood stuff in there. Thank you
for being on the show. Ireally appreciate you sharing
with us here today. And forthose of you watching and
listening, you know your timeand attention mean the world
to us, I hope you got as muchout of this conversation as I
(21:27):
know I did, and I cannot waitto see you next time. Take care.
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once
(00:02):
again to the secrets of thehigh demand coach podcast. And
here with us today is yetanother high demand coach in
the one and only Lee Benton,who's a value creation expert
and CEO of execute to win afirm that helps organizations
of all sizes to accelerate thevalue they create. He has
founded and led sevencompanies, including able
(00:23):
aerospace, which he grew fromtwo to 500 employees and a
nine figure exit in 2016 He'salso the author of the book
your most important number.He's here with us today. Lee,
welcome to the show. Soexcited to have you here. And
I have to admit you had mefrom the title. What is my
most important number?
Lee Benson (00:43):
Yeah, well, good to be here, Scott, thanks for
having me and your mostimportant number. It really
kind of changes throughout theorganization, at the top of
the organization, what's theone number that's reflective
of the value of the businessand will drive the majority
the right behaviors with thesenior leadership team? So I
believe every CEO's job, everyfounder's job, is to
(01:04):
continually and responsiblyincrease the value of their
business. Now, as you cascadeout from that, you've got
marketing and sales andoperations and finance, HR,
whatever that is, they have amost important number that's
reflective of the value thatthat function was designed to
create, or should have beendesigned to create, and will
drive the majority the rightbehavior. So this can be one
(01:26):
number in a small team. It canbe 10 different teams with
different most importantnumbers all the way to 1000s
of teams and and when oneimproves, it accretes up all
the way to the top of theorganization, thereby
increasing the value of thebusiness.
Scott Ritzheimer (01:39):
Yeah, yeah. I love that. So you've used
the word value several times,and I'm actually surprised at
how infrequently this idea ofvalue comes up. And there's a
couple key ways there's, youknow, there's value to all
different stakeholders, butwhen it comes to the most
important number, are youreferring to value that the
business creates, namely, onbehalf of it, or on behalf of
(02:02):
or for its customers, or areyou talking about the
business, the value of thebusiness itself?
Lee Benson (02:08):
Well, if you increase the value of the
business, you have to beincreasing the value for your
customers, right? And so whatdo the customers really say
about the quality or value orthe experience they have when
they buy your products andservices, and it's not just
your product and service, it'salso the team and your team
and how they interact withyour customers. So all of that
(02:29):
actually goes into it. So Iwould say, if you're
continually, and I love, youknow, thinking about this way,
responsibly, increasing thevalue of your business over
time, just consistently, yearafter year you have to be
doing those other things aswell.
Scott Ritzheimer (02:43):
Yeah, I love that, that idea of
responsibility, it can rubfolks a little the wrong way
sometimes, but I think it isthe link if you don't do it
responsible, because lots offolks can, like, flip stuff. I
remember, I think it was horseSchultz talking about, anyone
can go in and make a hotelmore profitable, but can you
(03:04):
make it better? Right? It'sjust a great saying and and so
I love that idea of continualand responsible, and then
those two values come togetherin time. So another thing
jumped out in me the book.Jumped out at me in the book
was this idea of a leadershipAudit Checklist, and just what
it did for you guys. So I'mwondering if you could just
(03:26):
just kind of enlighten us whatwas in the leadership
checklist, or, sorry,leadership Audit Checklist,
and why did it make such a bigdifference for you?
Lee Benson (03:35):
Yeah, well, I think for all of us, and I've
actually started from scratcheight companies, ranging from,
you know, 10 team members toover 500 team members in each
and in the bigger ones. It'sinteresting looking at the
leaders, going, Gosh, some ofthose leaders are getting
amazing results consistently,and others not so much, like
you have the whole spectrumthere. So what's different in
their approach and so well,how they show up as a leader
(03:57):
matters. Their managementoperating system, where I
would say rituals theyconsistently do to cause great
results to happen, matters.That's the second category.
And then third, I called itfoundational readiness, which
is essentially, are you readyto grow at any point in time?
And every business isdifferent, but in my in the
aerospace example that'scoming from the book, 20% was
(04:19):
what I had put out there. Atany point in time, it'd be
ready to grow 20% right? Oh,how you show up? What are the
things you do to consistentlyget really great results? You
know, meetings, KPIs, youknow, all those things that
you do. And then are you readyto grow? And lo and behold,
once I put that in place, Iwent from, you know, when you
look at the checklist, there'sthree categories, and then
(04:42):
there's subcategories in eachone of those. And I would just
say red, green or yellow forevery leader. Once I posted
it, initially, there were afew leaders that were green,
almost across the board. Therewere a few that read across
the board, some that were, youknow, yellow and green. Within
90 days, almost everybody wasmostly green. Across the
board, because we were runningabout what we wanted leaders
(05:02):
to do, and lo and behold, wejust kept growing faster. No,
no surprise whatsoever, right?
Scott Ritzheimer (05:07):
Yeah, it's so good. It's so good. So that
folks know kind of what we'redealing with here. This isn't
like just some novel thingthat you thought of one time.
This is real world stuff. SoJack Welch told you that that
yours was one of the bestbusiness management operating
systems he'd ever seen. Andhad he used it one running GE,
(05:28):
their results would have beenexponentially better. That's
remarkable. My question foryou, kind of stemming off of
this, is, what makes oneoperating system better than
another?
Lee Benson (05:43):
So I would that's a great question. So there's,
there's two parts of it.There's the operating system
and your approach, attitudes,beliefs, behaviors, around how
you apply it. So on the on thefirst part of that question
for an operating system, Ithink simple is better. So how
can you distill it down? Makeit so easy to understand, get
(06:04):
everybody aligned around, youknow, creating value that way.
And there are a whole bunch ofoperating systems that are
pretty complex and and thenthe the approaches to applying
it, they make the processwhat's most important, not
creating value, right? Sothat's why I came up with your
most important number. I callit the mind management system.
(06:25):
And in there you've got themost important number, the top
of the organization. Everyteam that feeds up into it,
all the way to the frontlines, they have their most
important number, and thenthey they call out the best
work they can do tocontinually improve that that
is so simple, so easy.Included in the mind
management system iseverything else, strategy,
(06:45):
compensation, just everythingis in there, but the simple
structure of it, wildly,wildly easy. Now, when you
know, kind of, getting back tothe how you apply it, how you
think about it, right, wewould all be shooting towards,
you know, having a culturethat's all about creating
value. Connect culture tovalue creation. So everything
(07:05):
we do is done with the intentof making the organization
measurably better, morevaluable over time. That's
where most trip up withoperating systems. Yes, I
think, I think any operatingsystem out there, if you're
doing something tointentionally improve or
increase the value of thebusiness, you can't help but
get a little better. Becareful what you choose,
(07:26):
because if it's overlycomplex, it's really hard to
keep that going over the longrun. And and what I believe,
and I've seen this over andover again, working with lots
of companies, 1000s ofleaders, traditional goal
setting I've never seen standthe test of time ever. And
Well, when I when I go in andaudit a business, and I'm just
looking, show me all thegoals, what you're setting,
show me your strategy, how ittrickles out, and I look at
(07:48):
the goals, less than 10% ofthem are thoughtful goals that
would really move the needle,and in the process, just feels
terrible for most of our teammembers, because, hey, set
three goals every quarter, forexample, get it approved by
your manager, rinse and repeatevery quarter. It feels
terrible how and then youswitch over to the my
management system as anexample, here's the most
(08:11):
important number for the team.This is where we started. This
is where we're going. But anypoint in time we can see if
we're on track, and I was likeplaying a baseball game, we
know whether we're winning orlosing. This is my position,
and this is the best work I'vebeen called to do to help
contribute to improving that.Yeah, now it's super easy, and
you can cascade it, but itwhat you asked is such a big
(08:31):
question that impactseverybody, whether using OKRs,
40x Eos, scaling up, there'sso many systems out there, I
am super biased towards whatI've created over decades and
working with hundreds ofcompanies, because it's simple
and you don't have to changeyour language inside the
business like you have to withall the others.
Scott Ritzheimer (08:51):
Yeah, I could get myself in a lot of
trouble if we go down thatroad. I couldn't agree more. I
you know, one of the thingsthat that really gets me about
a lot of those systems,particularly for the
practitioners of thosesystems, is that the system
becomes more important thanwhatever the system's there
for in the first place, and,and, and so the systems are
(09:13):
all great. There's nothinginherently wrong with them.
We're like, fundamentallyflawed. There's something
wrong with all of them. Iforget who it was. It said,
all models are wrong. Some areuseful, but so they're not
fundamentally flawed, but whenwe drink the Kool Aid for
them, that's when we get introuble. And actually leads me
to a similar point. Becauseone of the reasons why that
(09:36):
happens, and I this is atemptation for me, with the
model that we use is the whenI used the model to create
value in my business, the onewe use now, the predictable
success model, it had amassive transformative impact
on our business. And it's likeI want so badly for folks to
have that. And one of thechallenges with that is not
(09:58):
every situation is the same.Right? And a lot of times on
the the client side of thecoaching equation, they're
going out and looking forsomeone who's done what they
want to do right in some way,shape or form, and they think
that's what will make them anexpert at helping me out. And
then on the coach side, wekind of think, well, I've done
this before. I can telleverybody how to do it, you
know, they just need to do itlike me. But you, you came to
(10:21):
a different revelaterevelation that the initial
kind of systems that you usedwere too complex or too
rigorous, I would say, not toocomplex, but too rigorous for
a lot of folks to execute on.Well, and you really dug in
over the years to find onethat actually everybody can
use. Why is that so important?
Lee Benson (10:39):
100% and to your point, businesses are
different, you know, small,nuanced difference to
significantly different. Onesize does not fit all, except
with what the, you know, thedirection that we went. What's
the value of your business? Ican look at every for profit
business, and there's going tobe a value. Your job is to
continually grow. It great.Let's figure out what that is.
(11:02):
That's the senior leadershipteam's most important number.
Yeah, cascade that out and go.That's why I did it. And I was
the kind of leader when I hadthe aerospace company 500
employees. Now, there werelots of ups and downs in the
early years. I mean, all theuphill in the snow, both ways.
Stories I can, I can give you,but, but in running that I
(11:23):
early on, I was able up to acouple 100 employees to make
traditional goal setting work.It was a Herculean effort, but
backed off for a second. Itwent away. They would start
backing off, yeah, so on. Itto come up with something that
worked really across theboard, and I think really
importantly, we didn't have tochange the language, whatever
we called it, we would just doit and and then I read a book,
(11:45):
because we were in theaviation aftermarket business.
We repaired, overhaul,manufactured aircraft parts.
We had 2000 customers in 60countries, incredible
operations. We did 95% ofeverything. And I was just
incredibly complex. This bookwas called Lean MRO,
maintenance, repair andoverhaul. And there was this.
There was a line in there. Itsaid, the most elegant
(12:07):
solution is on the other sideof complexity. It's simplicity
on the other side ofcomplexity. Yeah. So when you
cookie cutter, apply anoperating system, whatever it
is, to what you have, you'reprobably going to fail or
definitely not get the resultsyou want. But if you really
understand, as you're applyingthis thing to all the
complexity of yourorganization, you come up with
(12:29):
a really simple, elegantsolution on the other side of
that, that's where you win,literally 95 plus percent of
the time. Does that makessense?
Scott Ritzheimer (12:36):
It does? It really, really does. And and
again, I like that language ofsimplicity versus elegance.
And I forget who it wasactually from the Aviation
space. It's just driving mecrazy. But they talked about
elegance and design as beingthe point at which you can
take nothing else away, right?Which is so different than the
way that we think about it,right? We think about, what do
I have to add? What can we domore? And it's plus, plus plus
(12:58):
multiple, multiple, multiple,instead of that taking away,
that refining and thatfocusing, that I think you
guys have been able to achieveso effectively through, well,
through your operating system.
Lee Benson (13:07):
And think about it this way, most would say we
want to improve quality isgoing to cost a whole bunch
more, and you have to do allthese things. Well, how can we
improve quality while we'rereducing costs? Yeah, and that
is it. I mean that that'sthat's directionally, where we
should go, lower it, you know,improve quality of product and
service experience for allteam members, all
(13:27):
stakeholders, at a loweringrelative cost over time.
That's how we know we're doingthe right work.
Scott Ritzheimer (13:32):
Yeah, one of the other challenges with what
you've called traditional goalsetting, and I see this a lot,
particularly in establishedleadership teams, there's just
so many things fighting foryour attention. There's so
many strengths, there's somany weaknesses,
opportunities, threats, orwhatever tool you're using,
(13:52):
right? Like, there's just somany things, and it can almost
be debilitating. Like, what dowe actually need to do next.
How do you help teams answerthat question?
Lee Benson (14:04):
Yeah, well, one of my maxims is, do less better.
And every company that I'veworked with, whether it's a
startup all the way to $60billion plus market cap
organizations, I've neverfound one that has more than
about four things that create80 to 90% of the value for the
organization. So I always wantto look at that and say, Well,
(14:26):
how well are we doing thosefour things? And on a scale
from one to 10, if it's not aneight, nine or 10 in each one
of them, why are we doinganything else? And so I always
ask the question, Well, whydon't we improve those things?
Well, because it's hard, likewe've got it to this place,
and if you want to keep movingthe needle there, pushing the
bar, it's actually hard workto do, but it should be fun.
(14:47):
So focus there. Do you know,do less better, and it's
amazing how much fasterorganizations go. There's no
magic pill, there's no silverbullet. We actually have to do
something, even though we'rekind of. A culture in United
States right now where peoplejust want it without having to
do anything. Sorry, you haveto do something. And you know
what? It can be fun. And whatI found, when you get the team
(15:09):
right, you get the cultureright, you're doing the right
work. The harder it gets, theharder we laugh. That's how we
know we're doing the rightwork.
Scott Ritzheimer (15:15):
That's so good. Why is it that doing
less better is so much lessappealing than adding more
like not that it isn't. Butwhy does it feel that way?
Lee Benson (15:31):
Well, I think there's a couple of things
going on. I believe you haveto be passionate about
strategy and equallypassionate about executing and
and you can be out of balance,really, on both of them. And
most business leaders that Irun into, they want to
intellectualize about allthese things that you could do
(15:52):
on paper and write it alldown. And how amazing is this?
And they walk away from astrategy session that was so
great now we've solved all theproblems. And like I say in
the book, you have a strategy.Congratulations. You're 3% of
the way there. 97% is going tobe actually doing it. And the
better you get at actuallydoing it, the better you'll
get a strategy, because youcome up with things that will
really accelerate the valuethat your organization
(16:14):
creates. So yeah, I thinkthat's one piece of it, and
it's just hard. They're not. Alot of folks just aren't
leaning in to really improve.And a lot of times they don't
even, they don't even knowwhere to improve. They're
doing stuff, and they can allbe great things, your leaders
in an organization, butthey're not in alignment. And
(16:36):
you know, one of the mostvaluable things that I think I
could probably communicatehere to all the listeners is
something I call valuecreation nudging. And in
chapter eight, I just updatedthe book with a chapter eight.
It's titled, you know whysometimes CEOs fail? And the
subtitle is, does your teamreally understand? I find very
few organizations where allthe leaders understand the
(16:59):
business model, like, can youcan explain it to me? And
there's, there's a number offounders and CEOs that can't
do a very good job explainingit. So when you're in meetings
and people are talking aboutdoing things that just don't
make sense and frustrate you,a lot of times, you know, they
want to win, like very fewwant the company to
intentionally fail. A lot oftimes, they don't really
(17:19):
understand the business model.So how can they make decisions
in alignment with it? Or theydon't understand the strategic
initiatives, or they don'treally understand what
customers say and feel aboutour products and services, and
they don't understand theintentional culture around
beliefs, behaviors, traits,other things that cause
extraordinary value to becreated if they understood
(17:42):
those four things in theirbones, the business model,
your strategy, the value ofyour stuff as seen by
customers, and your valuecreating culture, all of a
sudden they'll start makingbetter decisions, and you'll
get less frustrated. So yeah,I my nugget here is, I call it
value creation, nudging. Andevery time you're in a meeting
and something isn't inalignment with what you know
(18:03):
it should be. It probably hassomething to do with those
four areas. I've never seenit. I'd have something to do
with it. Does that make sense,Scott?
Scott Ritzheimer (18:10):
It's so so good. And I love the
simplicity of that, thebusiness model, your strategy,
how you create value for yourcustomers, and a culture that
delivers on that so true. SoI'm wondering, I don't know
how you top that. Lee, so yourjob's a lot harder than mine
right now. But what would yousay as a question I ask all my
guests, I'm interested to seewhat you have to say to it. So
(18:30):
in addition to what you'veshared with us so far, what
would you say is the biggestsecret that you wish wasn't a
secret at all? What's that onething you wish everybody
watching or listening today knew?
Lee Benson (18:41):
Yeah, so I gave you one of my maxims around,
do less better. I have anothert shirt. I can get you one if
you want. It says, strugglebetter. And so the value of
struggle, you know, we asparents, you know, a lot of
parents with great intentionshave taken so much struggle
away from kids. They're noteven close to ready to being
an adult, oh my gosh. So wereally messed up in developing
(19:04):
for that and that. Now I seeadults in the workplace and
leaders. Something doesn't layout perfectly, and they act
like victims, like, oh mygosh, there's so much value
and struggle. Like, every timeit gets really hard, I'm
finally at a point at 63 whereI get this warm feeling
inside. This is going to beamazing when I come out the
other side. So theunderstanding there's so much
(19:27):
value and struggle, lean intoit every single day, get
comfortable with it andincrease your tolerance for
it, and you'll create so muchmore value.
Scott Ritzheimer (19:36):
Yeah, I have found that for the vast
majority of folks, the futureis much better than they
really believe, but the pathto get there is going to be a
lot harder than they wouldlike to know, you know, and
it's that same thing, it'sgoing to be so much better on
the other side, and when wecan recognize that what we
have to do to get there, yeah,you have to do it, but it's
(19:58):
not that big a deal. Pales incomparison to the joy that's.
In front of us. So I love thatidea. Struggle better. So Lee,
there's there's folkslistening to this and like
we've just ticked the we'venicked the surface. We've not
even begun to dug in. How canthey find more out about the
operating system that you'veput together? Where can they
get a copy of their book orfind more out about you?
Lee Benson (20:20):
Yeah, please go to our website, which is etw.com
you can get the book there, oryou can find it on Amazon or
40,000 other channels outthere. There's the written
version of it, there's anaudio version of it. And on
the website, if you want, youcan actually DIY the last
section of the book is a do ityourself section, and you can
(20:40):
get on, and it's like 12 bucksa seat, if you had one person
in a company, 12 bucks. Andyou can have the software to
do this, the courses in there,all the resources, everything
included with us. We make itsuper easy. If you want to
implement the mind managementsystem, and we have the
leadership value lab, you cansign up for that, and it's
(21:01):
just ongoing leadershiplessons that come out daily,
weekly, monthly.
Scott Ritzheimer (21:05):
Fantastic. Lee, excellent, excellent
wisdom. I love the maxims, theT shirts, the whole nine
yards. There's just so muchgood stuff in there. Thank you
for being on the show. Ireally appreciate you sharing
with us here today. And forthose of you watching and
listening, you know your timeand attention mean the world
to us, I hope you got as muchout of this conversation as I
(21:27):
know I did, and I cannot waitto see you next time. Take care.
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