Stop Team Chaos: Get Clear Vision & Alignment Now

Episode Transcript
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Tim Staton (00:00):
Sa

(00:37):
hey, and welcome back to another episode.
I'm your host, Tim Staton.
In today's episode, we're diving into something that's both scientific and practical.
And you would think that these two topics don't go hand in hand, but they absolutely do.
It is the law of entropy and what it means for you as a leader.

(00:58):
If you've ever felt like your team is sliding into chaos despite your best efforts, you're not imagining things. Entropy is real.
It's a slow creep towards disorder, whether in physics or in leadership.
But here's the obvious truth.
Great leaders fight back against entropy.
They inject energy, they clarity and vision into their organizations so that things don't just

(01:23):
drift and move towards chaos.
They really turn around and reinvigorate things and move forward with a purpose.
And by the end of this talk, you either walk away with some strategies that you use right now
to beat entropy, strengthen your leadership, keep your team from grinding into dysfunction,
or you're going to tell me that I'm smoking crack.

(01:47):
This is Tim Staton with Tim, stating the obvious.
What is this podcast about? It's simple.
You are entitled to great leadership.
Everywhere you go, whether it's a church, whether it's to work, whether it's at your house,
you are entitled to great leadership.
And so in this podcast, we take leadership principles and theories and turn them into everyday, relatable and usable advice.

Disclaimer (02:10):
And a quick disclaimer. This show, process or service by trademark, trademark, manufacturer,
otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply the endorsement of anyone that I employed
by or favors in the representation.
The views are expressed here in my show are my own, expressed and do not necessarily state or
reflect those of any employer.

Tim Staton (02:20):
What is entropy in science, entropy is about systems losing energy and moving towards disorder.
If you leave hot coffee on your desk, it cools down. That's entropy.
At the same principle, it applies to leadership organizations.
If left alone, don't just stay neatly aligned.
They drift because people have minds of their own and they have their own priorities, and they

(02:44):
have their own things that they want to get done. And priorities get fuzzy.
Communication breakdowns and silos form, and before you know it, motivation fizzles out and
you've got a culture that feels more like survival mode than thriving.
And that's the hard truth.
It takes more energy to restore order than it does to let things slip.

(03:08):
By which means leaders can't be passive.
You have to be intentional about keeping people aligned, focused and energized.
And I say this on the heels of the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth talk that he gave to everybody,
and a lot of policies are coming out, and I'm not talking about any of those.
However, he feels that things in the military writ large in the Department of War used to be called the Department of.

(03:34):
The Department of War has moved into chaos.
It has drifted towards disorder.
And in order to get things back into order, he had to inject some energy, some focus, some vision,
and align people back to what the leader views as the right direction, which is the vision moving forward.

(03:55):
You can think about entropy in several other ways.
You can think about your house, right?
How hard does it take for your house to get dirty?
It doesn't take very much.
It just takes for you to live in it or your kids to live in it.
And you look around and you've probably got wrappers somewhere, you've probably got dishes somewhere,
you've got paper somewhere, you've got book bags, socks, clothes, you name it.

(04:16):
Things not where they were originally.
Things moved from order to disorder.
I'm sure that when you bought some clothes, you hung them up in your closet and you put them
on a hanger, then you wore them, and then you had good intentions to either take it to the dry cleaners or.
Or put it in the laundry basket so then you can do laundry.
But somewhere along the line, two socks that you had ended up becoming one sock.

(04:40):
One sock in the hamper, one sock somewhere behind your dresser, under a pillow, on the floor.
Who knows where that other sock went?
You go to do laundry, you wash them, you dry them, you come out and you got one sock. That's entropy.
Things went from order to disorder, and you didn't really have to try hard to do it.
Think about planning a garden. How many times.

(05:01):
How many times have you planted weeds?
I have never planted a weed.
And I like to do my little garden in the backyard.
And I like to have tomatoes, and I like to have squash and cucumbers and peppers.
They didn't grow that well this year, but I got some, you know, some BlackBerry bushes, some
blueberry bushes, got all these different things.
And I constantly have to go out there and get the weeds out.

(05:24):
I didn't plant them there, but somehow they found a way in.
They found a way to get a hold of the good fruit, get a hold of the good plants and start to
take away the nutrients from it.
And unless I go out there and weed it and, you know, take the weeds out, it's going to get overgrown,
and then I'm not going to produce the right fruit.

(05:45):
The garden is going to get hurt and it's going to not do well.
I'm not going to produce as much fruit and I'm not going to have as much food or vegetables
that I want to have.
All because things naturally go from order to disorder. That is pretty simple.
And it's evident in every day in our lives.
And if we don't try to intentionally reorder things with a vision and focus alignment, then

(06:09):
we're going to be drifting out.
So think about a startup in its early days, right?
When we take it towards the business world, it's lean, it's hungry and on fire with vision.
Everyone knows the mission, everyone's pulling their weight, but then it grows and more people
come in and there's more moving parts and more chances for things to break down.

(06:29):
And that's entropy at work.
Think about, you know, Polaroid pictures and Kodak pictures and they clung to film while digital
was rising and they resisted.
The chaos of change and entry buried them.
Apple, under Steve Jobs, did the opposite.
They injected energy and disrupted themselves and thrived in the process.

(06:53):
Managing the status quo isn't enough. That's just management.
Leadership is about injecting new energy and vision.
So your team doesn't just resist entropy, they rise above it.
They thrive through the disorder, getting back into order.
And think about yourself with your personal leadership, with your inner battle, with yourself.

(07:15):
And here's where it gets more real, right?
Entropy doesn't just hit organizations, it hits you.
And it's when fear or insecurity or ego drain your energy.
It shows up through micromanaging, avoiding tough conversations, blaming others, or pretending
to be stronger than you really are, trying to mask your appearance to kind of either hinder
people from challenging you or doing anything, or that you don't like.

(07:39):
High personal entropy leaders create friction and lose trust.
You ever work for somebody and it seems like their life is just kind of falling apart and they
can't even really lead at work because they can't even lead themselves.
They have an inner entropy battle going on and they have to fight it.
Low entropy leaders, they're the ones who lead without, who lead without fear.

(08:01):
They're focused on relationships, coaching and vision.
Their teams know that they're real, that they're real human beings, and yet they also try to
get their life in order on a daily basis.
Like, you have to take care of yourself if you're going to take care of other people.
You have to get your own inner self aligned and taken care of before you can take care of anybody else.

(08:22):
If you're in a leadership position. You know this.
And if you're in a leadership position and you're not taking care of yourself and you wonder
why things around you are falling apart, it's because you're not taking care of yourself.
If you're not cleaning up yourself mentally, spiritually and physically, you're going to waste
away and go to entropy, right?
If you're not working out, your muscles will waste away.

(08:43):
If you're not reading books or challenging yourself with puzzles or brain teasers, if you're
not having conversations that spark thought and interest, if you're not reading from the Bible
or you're not reading from another religious text, if you're not Christian, that challenges
you to, to get into your soul and challenges you to be a better person at your core, challenging

(09:08):
your values and why you believe what you believe so that way you can be a better person, then
you're never going to be a better leader.
It all starts with fighting that personal inner entropy because you got to get yourself in order.
So you might be asking, okay, well, you told us all this.
We kind of know, we kind of see evidence of things going from order to disorder all the time.

(09:30):
How do we fight this?
You just said you had to have vision, put energy into it.
But what are some real tangible things that we can do to fight this?
Well, here are some field tested ways that you can inject energy into your leadership. Communicate relentlessly.
We have a big problem with thinking that because I sent an email, because I made a phone call,
or because I made a text, somebody understood what I said. And that's not true.

(09:54):
Message sent is not message received.
So we have to make sure that we are relentless in our communications efforts.
We can't just assume that people get it.
You constantly have to repeat the vision, your clarity, your expectations.
Make sure you're clear on your expectations and check it.
Often you have to look for feedback.
You have to talk to people and seek feedback.

(10:16):
Hey, I said this, what did you hear? Hey you over there.
I said this, what did you hear?
Even something as simple, if you're going to have written communication, write it down.
One thing that I do is I write things down and then I give it to the newest person and the most
junior person by age in the office or in the organization.
Because if the newest person by age and by experience in the organization can read what I wrote

(10:43):
and repeat it back to me clearly and articulate with exactly my intent, then I have communicated clearly.
I have communicated clearly to that person.
So I'll give it to Another person.
If three or four people get it, then I know, okay, I am good.
I have communicated perfectly fine.
Now I need to keep reiterating that message.
I need to keep talking about what I'm talking about so people get it.

(11:06):
I can't just say it once.
Sometimes you have to say things so many times that you get sick and tired of saying it.
And then when you're sick and tired of saying it, someone's finally going to hear it, so you
got to keep saying it again.
And that's just part of how things work.
Then you need to build smart systems, create processes that catch disorder early, but you can't

(11:26):
let them choke out innovation.
And that's a fine line that we need to battle.
How do we build a system that keeps everything in order?
And how do we build a system that keeps things in check while also allowing people to tell other
people and leadership along the way, hey, we can do it better.
Here's how we can innovate. Here's something new.

(11:46):
Here's how we can optimize a problem.
And to quote Elon Musk, we gotta make sure that people don't optimize a thing that shouldn't exist.
We have to make sure that doesn't happen.
But we need to make sure that the process and the things that are being optimized and innovated
should be the ones optimized and innovated because they lead to overall organization, overall order and success.

(12:11):
We need to lead into change. Chaos is an opportunity.
Use it to learn, collaborate, and reimagine.
If you don't think that we're living in chaotic times, well, I'm sure it could get more chaotic. I hope not.
But we're living in pretty chaotic times.
And that's because people believe that things are in disorder and they're trying to move it back into order.

(12:35):
And you need to go with the change.
If you resist the flow and you resist the change, you're losing out on an opportunity.
You're losing out on where you can seize an opportunity and gain a competitive advantage over everybody else who's resisting.
And that can be hard because people don't like change.
People don't want to admit that, oh, well, maybe the way I was doing things wasn't right.

(13:00):
Maybe it wasn't as effective.
Maybe it's just an emotional resistance, which I would say 98% of the time, it's your emotions.
You get comfortable doing something a certain way, and then when you're told to change, gets
that little, little jolt inside you.
But like no, but I'm comfortable.
I don't want to change.
I don't want to be uncomfortable.

(13:21):
But that's where growth happens.
Being uncomfortable through the change.
That's where personal growth happens.
And that's where organizational growth happens.
And that's where great opportunities are, where you can learn, you can collaborate, and you
can recourse correct along the way. So lean into change.
Don't resist it, because change is going to happen.
It's going to happen no matter what. We're in fall, right? Or in autumn, right?

(13:43):
That's the season that we're in right now.
It used to be summer, but it changed.
And if I don't want to put on my coat or my jeans or my jacket, I am going to freeze here the
next couple weeks because it gets cold up here in New England.
It's just what it is.
I got to lean into the change.
I got to go, okay, I'm flowing with the trees and the colors of the leaves.

(14:03):
I'm going to go with it.
If I resist it, it's more painful for me instead of seizing the opportunities to enjoy the outside.
So just use that kind of like as an example.
We got two more things to talk about that we can implement to help beat entropy.
You can protect your culture.
You need to recognize effort, invest in development, and encourage balance.

(14:24):
Now, when I didn't say work, life balance, I said balance.
Because you're always going to have a intense period of focus followed by some balance, and
then another period of intense focus followed by some balance and then focus and balance and
focus and balance and focus and balance.
And you do this over a period of time, it will eventually balance out.

(14:47):
Your focus and balance will have more time.
But you can't be in focus and in balance at the same time. It doesn't work.
So be in focus when you're supposed to be in focus and be in balance when you're supposed to
be in balance and protect that as a culture.
Recognize those people who are doing well.
Recognize people who are supporting the culture that you want to have and then invest in them. Develop your people.

(15:13):
Make sure that you know that you have their back and you want them to grow.
You want them to succeed.
When you do that, you're going to further fight things going into disorder.
The last thing that you can do is check yourself, right?
You can check yourself before you wreck yourself.
If you're drained, fearful or reactive, then entropy is winning inside you.

(15:36):
You need to reset yourself, recalibrate, and lead with positive energy.
We don't have time for Negativity.
There's a time and a place for correction.
There's a time and a place for being direct, and there's a time and a place for. For grace.
And we need to put all that stuff in there.
And oftentimes I see leaders holding other people to a standard that, that they don't even hold

(15:56):
themselves to on a personal level and on a professional level. So check yourself.
If you feel drained, if you feel anxiety, if you feel reactive to what's being done around you,
you're reacting to chaos, you're reacting to disorder.
You need to be that order to push the vision forward and say, this is the way we're going to go.

(16:18):
I got disorders happening, but we're going to move towards order.
We're going to pick things up, we're going to police things around us, we're going to reorganize,
we're going to regroup, and this is the direction that we're going to go into.
And when you lead with that and you lead with that energy, people will follow you.
People will recognize, like, oh, man, I want to follow this guy because this other guy's super

(16:43):
negative and yelling at everybody.
This guy seems happy, and I really want to work for him.
He seems like he knows where he's going.
I just want to follow it. So let's do it.
And the last thing I want to say is, I don't know who needs to hear this, but I'm really sick
and tired of people talking about how, like, what people before them did that wasn't good. Like, just stop.

(17:06):
Everybody knows all the bad things that happened before you arrived as a leader.
You can't blame everything on everybody else your whole entire time.
We need to have some just blatant, just move forward conversations. Time starts now. Time is now. Yesterday happened.

(17:27):
The past is the past. You can't change it. Stop talking about it. Stop dwelling on it. Stop bringing it up.
You inherited what you inherited when you stepped into the job, into that CEO role, into that
executive suite, into that leadership role.
You have what you have.
Stop blaming it on the past. Move forward.

(17:50):
This is the direction into order and to success that we're going to move.
Let the past be the past can only anchor you down if you hold on to it. Let it go. Move forward.
So the last thing we could do is check yourself again before you wreck yourself and your whole organization.
If you're feeding into the disorder and chaos, stop it. Just stop. Move forward. People will follow you.

(18:17):
So what's the whole point of this? Entropy is natural.
It's a natural law that when left alone, every system falls apart. But leadership is unnatural.
It's about fighting against the current.
I used to have a really good nco, not commissioned officer who used to tell me, you know, if

(18:38):
you keep swimming against the current, you're going to get burned out and eventually the current
is going to take you away.
I said, nah, but I'm a salmon or a salmon, right?
I swim up the stream, I swim against the current because that's where all the goodness happens
when I get to the other end.
So you can be like everybody else and go with the flow, or you can be unnatural, go against

(19:01):
the current and and put things into order.
Whether you're leading five people or 5,000, your job is to be the energy that creates order out of chaos.
As always, thank you for stopping by and checking out this episode and listening to it.
I really hope that you enjoyed it.
Before we go, I'd like to ask a favor of you if I could.
If you could please share this episode with one or two people who you think might like this topic.

(19:25):
If you haven't followed or subscribed on the platform that you're listening to and hit all the
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If you got some value out of this episode, please leave a review or a comment so we can help
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here today, but may not have found our show yet.

(19:47):
Again, thanks for stopping by. I'm Tim Staten. Staten, the obvious
sa.

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