The mid-year check in. Pt.2

Welcome, and thank you for tuning in to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host, Ralph Owens, along with Terry Biller. In today's episode, we'll cover topics such as how metrics are a way of measuring what you manage, while learning the language of what you do is critical to your success, the power in the exchange of value, and using metrics to track your performance. Enjoy the show. Couple other thing couple points that come to mind too for me is, we said it before in the past, you cannot manage what you do not measure.

Right? So these metrics are a way of measuring the very thing that you have been hired to manage. And if you're not measuring what you manage, then you really don't know if you're winning or if you're losing. Right? So that's an important point to reiterate.

And then, it's also important to understand when you are creating your KPIs and you're creating your dashboards and you're measuring your numbers, how that fits into the overall goal and strategy of the organization. Right? So maybe you're counting those going back to the M and M example. Maybe you've been hired to examine and count these M and M's because, the M and M's, the green M and M's have been rated as the most favorite. And, they wanna make sure that they have enough good, round M and M's included in each package.

Right? So you have to go one step beyond what it is you do and understand why you're doing it. Right? So that's very important because when you start to display your metrics, when you start to display your numbers, you talk to how you are able to help achieve the company's goals by executing and performing this way. That makes sense.

Any thoughts on that, Terry?

No, I think it's great, right? Because here's the deal. You have to talk the language of the people that you're trying to move.

Absolutely.

Right. Let me understand one of the things right now. I was gonna bring in some home remedy right. So you know we were homeschoolers and one of the first things that I learned in the classical conversation format of homeschooling is to learn the language. Learn the language this right here is a life lesson.

Learn the language of anything that you're doing. If you learn the language first,

everything

from there, man, it's just going to be a much easier process. Learn what the terms are, learn what the acronyms mean. And if you can tie into the language of that business owner right of that business unit. Enter the language that will move you further than the tactical aspect of it. Right.

Because now you can relate. I can talk to you right where you are. It will give you the ability to empathize with them. It will give you the ability to galvanize, come together. It will increase your understanding.

And here's other thing it would do for you. It's a method of translation. If you understand their language, you can now take what you know technically and convert it to meet their need. It's understanding the language of anything. You know what, Like it's always a church, a Bible study in this.

You

got to know God's language.

Come on, come on preacher.

You see what I'm saying? Look, look, he says the kingdom of heaven is like this. What is he doing? He's actually translating because he understands where we are, but he's talking in a way that uses analogies that we understand to help us understand what heaven is like.

So

in a sense you can help your business unit understand what business heaven is like.

That's right. There you go.

You see what I'm saying? But you gotta understand the language.

What do

you think about that, bro?

So here's a great correlation to that. The whole time you were talking, all I kept thinking about was music. When you understand the language of music. Yes. You so you can have a person who is, just you know, they've learned how to play or they learn how to sing just basically on their own, but they don't know anything about the language of music.

And you get in a situation where you are with some very high caliber professionals who understand the language. And you don't know. You you just know how to, you know, produce a sound, but you don't know when. You don't know how hard, how soft, when the pause. Right?

You don't understand the language. You basically are fighting against what is naturally being presented to you because you don't understand the language. That's good. That is real good.

And just to take the music analogy a step further, right? Because I, of course, we've talked about Marcus on the last episodes and we talk about that quite a bit inside of what he's doing because inside of music, there's language inside of the language of music. We have reggae, we have gospel, you have rock, you have jazz. And so we've seen it. You will take a guy who's fluent in one aspect and then you put them in another genre and it's like, Oh, this guy doesn't understand the language.

We can go down the rabbit hole on this one because I'm particularly close to that because I tell my wife all the time that when you listen to skillful musicians play, they're having a conversation. And if you listen, if you listen hard enough, can hear it. Right? Especially the drummer and the bass player. Right?

There's a language, there's a conversation that's happening there. I won't belabor. I won't belabor.

But you know what? But here's the thing though. Here's the thing about that though. I think we should dig into that a little bit because of all of the relationships that it's one of the most intimate within music.

It is, it really is.

And so I believe it's important to at least deal with that because there are times in business, Where there is a big initiative happening. And we're not talking intimate from the standpoint of, you you got to know the person's business and what I mean personal business and things like that. But we're talking the intimacy of the organization and how they move. What is the character of the organization? What is the What influences this organization?

What motivates the leader of that organization? Those are all intimate things. Right. And when you get into the language of what it is that business unit or that business leaders trying to do, you will connect at an intimate level with them where they see you. And we love this word here.

They will see you as a partner. Yes. Right. We're in business. We're all looking for partners.

What is what is and we've dealt with this right there five categories, right? We said there contacts, associates, partners, mentors and mentees. What is that partner trying to do? Help you get where you want to get. Sacrificing their wants and needs.

To help promote your wants and needs understanding, though. Right. Here's where the complexity comes in. That is it's an exchange of value.

Yes. Yes.

All because you have understand the language and you can tie those language to key performance indicators to help them and you express the story.

That's good. That is good. That is really good. So defining your KPIs, which transitions directly into the next point of have you been tracking? So once you define, then you have to track, right?

My team and I track once a month. Once a month we're coming together, we're looking at all of our key performance indicators on the dashboard and we're talking about, okay, what did we expect to happen? What really did happen? And if there's a variance between the two, what caused it? Was it a one off?

Was it a trend that we're seeing over time that requires some, due diligence around how to change that? Right? The tracking of the numbers is just as important as defining what the KPIs are. Because if you're not tracking the numbers against your performance on a regular routine basis and making changes to move in the direction of your goal, then you're basically just churn, you're just on the gerbil wheel and you're not going anywhere. I mean, were your thoughts on that chair?

No, man, you just challenged me because, you know, we have some teams and, that I help do that with. And you know what? I think that'll be something that I want to implement. Right. And really start asking those guys the questions.

Right. Especially when I do see a variance. And to help them understand and drive, hey, what do you think was happening here? I think you're spot on. It's one thing to have the number.

Right. Right. But it's another thing to let the number drive action.

I said

right. And to set the expectation that we are reviewing these numbers. And this is just not an exercise. So we can roll this up and bubble this up to the board. Now we're actually using this as a method to actually get better.

Yeah, yeah. To drive performance. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. We hope that you not only enjoyed the content, but gained something to help you on your personal leadership journey. Feel free to reach out to us on X and Instagram under the handles Leadership Sovereignty. Until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.