In this episode, host Steven Pesavento and guest Lee Benson discuss the Mind methodology, a simple yet powerful system for measuring and improving the value created by a business. They cover topics such as the most important number, drivers, right work at the right time, and holistic value creation. The system empowers employees to take ownership of their roles and drive the organization towards creating value for all stakeholders.
Key Takeaways
Resources Mentioned
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About our Guest:
Lee Benson is a serial entrepreneur who developed the Mind methodology to help organizations measure and improve their value creation. He has worked with companies of all sizes and industries around the world, helping them simplify their operations and focus on what creates the most value for their stakeholders.
Are you looking for High-Performance Business & Mindset Coaching? Schedule a call now and see how we can be of service to you. http://www.investormindset.com/discover
00;00;00;06 - 00;00;08;23
Steven Pesavento
Welcome to the Name Your Number show presented by the Investor Mindset. My name is Steven Passive and joined today. I have Lee Benson in the studio. How you doing today, Lee?
00;00;08;26 - 00;00;11;12
Lee Benson
I am well, thank you, Steve.
00;00;11;15 - 00;00;37;11
Steven Pesavento
Well, I'm really excited to talk with you today because I've dove in into your content into into the book that you put together the most important number. And we've been using our company. It's been extremely powerful. We're making some shifts and we've tried a bunch of different operating systems out there. And this is the one that resonates most with me because it's so simple and it gives everybody something specific to tap into.
00;00;37;12 - 00;00;59;12
Steven Pesavento
So for all the listeners out there, today is going to be a really powerful conversation and. And Lee, what I'm curious for you, you've had a bunch of success in business. You've gone and built many businesses and now you've moved on to helping other people be able to do the same. What was that first target, that first thing that you really went after personally and kind of.
00;00;59;12 - 00;01;07;07
Steven Pesavento
Tell us a little bit about why that was kind of the first area of focus, you know, in business.
00;01;07;09 - 00;01;23;28
Lee Benson
Yeah, You know, I think the best way to say, hey, where did you get your start? I would say it was pulling weeds for $0.25 an hour. In the late sixties, when I was a little kid, a neighbor, unsolicited, asked me if I'd be willing to do that. And back then you could buy two candy bars and have change for for a quarter.
00;01;24;01 - 00;01;44;03
Lee Benson
So I did that and then that was pretty cool. What else could I do? And then I learned how to basically shovel snow. And so I got $0.50 a driveway in the wintertime up in Spokane, Washington. So now 30 minutes to do that. So now I'm making four times as much money per hour. Then I got a paper out, then for paper out, and then it was a dishwasher, busboy, cook.
00;01;44;05 - 00;02;05;02
Lee Benson
And then by the time I was actually kicked out of the house beginning my senior year in high school, I was already financially independent. It was a nonevent. And I started playing in bands and I made most of my money in the eighties, playing in rock and roll bands. So I got my start by going out in the real world, exchanging my best efforts for the accumulated best efforts of others money.
00;02;05;05 - 00;02;25;03
Lee Benson
And and I kept building on that. And I call it this you can call it hustling called everyone, but I call it this value creation struggle cycle where you struggle to develop a capability to build your internal confidence. You use that to actually create value. Now take it intentionally, take a bigger step forward. And that just kept advancing me.
00;02;25;03 - 00;02;49;04
Lee Benson
And then from the band, you know, in the late eighties, early nineties, started my first real legitimate sort of business. And then now I'm on my seven business. I've started from scratch and, and I love this journey going along. So that's really where it started is just exchanging value in the real world with real people. And I say it that way because friends and family don't count.
00;02;49;04 - 00;02;52;29
Lee Benson
In my view. It's like you don't know if it's for you. That makes sense.
00;02;53;01 - 00;03;12;21
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. You start from humble, humble beginnings. You move all the way up to having, you know, extremely significant exits in your business. Tell us about the mind mythology and why it's so powerful for business owners to use.
00;03;12;23 - 00;03;36;28
Lee Benson
Yeah, And you're you're dropping into my life right in the middle of my 40 plus year overnight success story. Right? Because it just doesn't happen instantly and all the way along. I'm always thinking, how do we create value faster as an organization? I think the number one job for every CEO is to continually increase the value of their organization founder, president, CEO, whoever is leading it, that that's really your job.
00;03;37;00 - 00;03;58;12
Lee Benson
So now how do you get every single team member fully aligned or creating value? And the way I like to think about it at a high level is we want to connect culture to value creation and value creation. It's material value, which most people talk only about that, but the more important value is emotional energy value. That's a scarcest commodity on the planet, in my view.
00;03;58;14 - 00;04;22;16
Lee Benson
And then there's their spiritual value. Everybody plays in all three buckets in different proportions. So when I think about aligning everybody to create value, if you ask a team member, how do you create value for this organization and how does it create value for you? At best, you get a job description and they fumble through the second part, and so that's a huge opportunity missed going forward.
00;04;22;18 - 00;04;44;18
Lee Benson
So over time I develop something called the Mind methodology, and the acronym stands for Most Important Number and Drivers. Every organization has one number that above all others says it's winning or losing the game. It reflects the value of the organization. You know, usually it's some reflection of profit or cash flow in the for profit world like EBITDA or could just could be net profit.
00;04;44;20 - 00;05;07;16
Lee Benson
And it's more importantly or equally important, it has to drive the majority of the right behaviors and everything else is subordinate. And then you take that out to every function department team. They will also have one number that does those two things. And so wouldn't it be cool in your organization or any organization if you can see how they measure the value of the company at the top?
00;05;07;19 - 00;05;31;05
Lee Benson
And then every single team is really clear on what that number is, that measures the value and it's really clear on why it drives the majority of the right behaviors. So now you can see that everywhere they're on track or at risk, they're behind. Hopefully they're over driving it. You also want to see what's the best work they're doing to improve that number or the value that their team is designed to create, and that that would be the drivers.
00;05;31;05 - 00;05;53;29
Lee Benson
These are continuous improvement, evergreen categories of work that they should be really good at leveraging to improve their most important number. So I love the simplicity of it, but also the power of it, because now everybody knows exactly how, how the team is being measured in terms of the value that it creates. And then every role is unique.
00;05;53;29 - 00;06;24;13
Lee Benson
You know, you've got a role. You've got to know more than 2 to 4 outcome based responsibilities. These are the outcomes that I own in this role, and that's the best work I'm doing to help the team achieve its most important number that we're shooting for. So that's the simple way to say this is the main methodology and I deployed it with my team, with company, in companies all over the world, as small as startups, as large as 50 plus billion dollar market cap, public companies.
00;06;24;15 - 00;06;26;28
Lee Benson
It just works.
00;06;27;00 - 00;06;55;10
Steven Pesavento
Yeah. What I love about it is it's very similar to naming your number when it comes to, you know, creating your financial life that you want, right? Because naming your number is how much money do you need to make actively in your job or business? How much do you need to invest on a consistent basis? And what's that final number, which is the one number that you're focusing on is how much money do I need to earn passively that is going to fund and funnel the kind of life that I want to create.
00;06;55;10 - 00;07;23;22
Steven Pesavento
And what I love about the mine methodology is that I've used the most. I've used other operating systems in different businesses that I've run, and oftentimes I'm not a guy who loves being in the details of every single piece of process that we can possibly create. And sometimes a system like us can be arduous. It's a lot of different steps you have to track and you have to get everybody on board understanding it and and managing to it.
00;07;23;22 - 00;07;54;06
Steven Pesavento
And sometimes you can set goals, and those goals don't actually end up leading to the most important result that you're looking for in your business. Yet when you set that most important number and every other person in the company or every role is driving has a number there matching to that drives up the chain, it seems like it's very easy for everyone to understand and to have a lot more satisfaction, which leads to happiness and commitment and and the right kind of energy in the company.
00;07;54;08 - 00;08;16;13
Lee Benson
Absolutely. And every decision, every action should be through the lens of creating more value. That's it. And when my team's values increased and we measured in that one number, we might measure five, ten, 15 other things, but we're only measuring those other things to help us make better decisions to improve our most important number. But when it improves it, it creates and improves the next one up all the way to the top.
00;08;16;16 - 00;08;42;03
Lee Benson
And what you're talking about in other operating methodologies is that they seem to make process more important than what is most important. Like the the goal is to complete the meetings in a certain way in a certain minute. Number of minutes for each section of the meeting, etc.. Oh, and by the way, everybody needs to learn a whole new language around all of that, only to go look at the financial statements to see how we did in the mine methodology.
00;08;42;03 - 00;09;04;09
Lee Benson
You don't have to learn a new language. You call it whatever you call it. And and it's it's simple, it's elegant, it's powerful. It's how teams prefer to work. And if you want to test this, go to virtually any company of any size. You know, ten employees, 50 employees, thousands of employees. Go review the goals of the team members.
00;09;04;12 - 00;09;24;18
Lee Benson
And what I have found is that 90% plus of those goals just aren't very thoughtful in terms of the value they could be creating for the organization. They're doing what they think they're supposed to do in a typical process is, hey, every quarter set three goals, get it approved by your manager and rinse and repeat every quarter. That feels terrible.
00;09;24;20 - 00;09;45;06
Lee Benson
But if I'm in a role and I own a couple of outcomes and my team is to climb that mountain and I can see where we're at on the trail and I contributing to it, that never goes away. And the goal changes in terms of the, the, the amount of it, the scope, because over time you're increasing this, you know, cumulative value that you're creating.
00;09;45;08 - 00;10;04;11
Lee Benson
So wildly simple, wildly powerful makes it much easier for a team members to state. When asked the question, How do you create value for the organization? I'm on this team. This is my role. That's our most important number. And this is why it is it drives the majority right behaviors. And this is the best work that I'm doing to improve it.
00;10;04;13 - 00;10;12;04
Lee Benson
Now, wouldn't that be wildly powerful of every team member had a good answer like that. Like, oh my gosh, it is just incredible.
00;10;12;06 - 00;10;33;26
Steven Pesavento
So to me, as a guy who is big marketer, love marketing, love sales, they're very numbers driven. I can take the number of leads and I can directly bring that into how many phone calls to how many clients come in, what the average value of that client is, how much money is being earned in sales. That makes perfect sense to me.
00;10;34;03 - 00;10;59;10
Steven Pesavento
What's your recommendation when it comes to the operating side of the business or the fulfillments side of the business? How do we measure those numbers or determine what the most important number for that department is? When some activities happen once a month and some activities are ongoing, how do we really track that? The operations team, let alone the individual contributors, are doing what they need to do under this methodology?
00;10;59;12 - 00;11;19;15
Lee Benson
Yeah, well, you pick a function and it's important or department. It's important to have the team members collectively come up with their most important number. And you start out by saying, We want to come up with the one number above all others it says are winning or losing the game and will drive majority of the right behaviors. So if we were to pick operations or fulfillment on a product.
00;11;19;15 - 00;11;47;08
Lee Benson
So I work with a lot of manufacturing companies making all kinds of different things, and we sit around and we say, okay, well, what what should be the measure of the value that we create? And they often settle in on gross profit. So sales, we'll sell it for whatever they can. Hopefully you have a pricing policy that says something like We're going to charge the highest possible price we can while being the best value alternative and encourage future business.
00;11;47;08 - 00;12;07;05
Lee Benson
We don't want to leave anything on the table. We don't want to charge a dollar more than we can because we'll lose business. So once That's right, it doesn't matter what it costs us to do that or to make the widget or products, our job is to make it for less and less and less over time and continually improve quality and reliability at the same time.
00;12;07;05 - 00;12;24;20
Lee Benson
But whatever that product is, so gross profit in this case becomes the most important number. And then you start looking at drivers that will go in there. So what are the drivers that go in? So process would be a drivers. So what are all the steps we go through to make each part of the assembly that goes together?
00;12;24;20 - 00;12;46;17
Lee Benson
Is there any waste or is there any common ality? So we don't have 30 different scorers and we get one, we get at one to do the same job. We have training and development as a driver that we're constantly improving. I think culture is important. That kind of permeates the entire organization. We have supply chain and materials that go into it, facilities, layout.
00;12;46;20 - 00;13;12;27
Lee Benson
So now gross margin, we're tracking that and some will fight you on that. Well, we can't control everything because we don't, you know, control purchasing and how they bring it. But you can influence them. And if this is your most important number and you're collaborating, not working in silos with other functions in the organization that should be at the hip with you, kind of like sales and marketing should really be at the hip and not separate pointing fingers like I've seen a lot of companies.
00;13;12;29 - 00;13;19;24
Lee Benson
Now all of a sudden we can really do meaningful work to improve that gross margin, most important number. So that makes sense.
00;13;19;26 - 00;13;41;22
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, I know that makes a lot of sense. And from another perspective, in one of my companies, you know, we're we run a private equity firm. We go out and we buy projects or businesses or real estate, and we invest that cash. And so the operations teams are responsible for getting all those documents done and then making sure that updates are going out and the clients are happy and fulfilled.
00;13;41;29 - 00;13;57;21
Steven Pesavento
And so there's a bunch of different activities that end up going towards is the company operating well? Are we fulfilling on that service or or the the experience, the feeling of those people have? I could see it being a little bit different than a product company.
00;13;57;24 - 00;14;20;20
Lee Benson
Oh yeah. But you still have outcomes that you can measure in most important numbers that you can come up with. And clearly drivers or categories of work that can be improved for each one of them. I've never I have seen on many occasions where folks would say, Oh, we're just different. You can't measure what what we do and you always can always, you know, get get in there.
00;14;20;23 - 00;14;42;18
Lee Benson
Sometimes I think leaders don't want to be held accountable and that's why they start from that position. However, I've never seen a case where we couldn't come up with the most important number. One of my favorites really is is finance. So as companies get a little bit larger and they've got a CFO and I'll go in and the CFOs will have these amazing reports that their team puts together.
00;14;42;21 - 00;14;58;16
Lee Benson
And the first thing I do is I go ask the senior leaders and then I can go to middle managers if I if I get good answers at the top, but I almost never get good answers at the top. And I ask them, well, how are you using this information to make better decisions to improve cash flow and brand and profitability?
00;14;58;18 - 00;15;21;21
Lee Benson
And I don't get very good answers. They just okay, that's what we did. This is what's left over. And then I'll scour through the reports and I can spend 4 hours and I can find everything. And I'm really good at connecting dots, and this is how I'd use it to make decisions. But I would say, you know, in these cases, the CFOs grade themselves and their teams and a plus because of the quality of the reporting.
00;15;21;23 - 00;15;50;21
Lee Benson
I agree I am a D minus or an F because they missed a huge opportunity because their most important number I typically agree with is cash flow going forward and their job is to educate every leader in the organization, not just on financial literacy in business, but to help them discover the two or three numbers that that mean the most to them in terms of how they can make decisions to improve cash flow and profitability.
00;15;50;24 - 00;16;10;21
Lee Benson
That makes a gigantic difference when you do it. And so once they start not just educating, but helping every leader discover the few numbers that make the biggest difference that they can impact. Watch the cash flow jump 20, 30, 40, 50% within the next 12 months, like like clockwork. It's just so cool.
00;16;10;24 - 00;16;44;28
Steven Pesavento
Well, it's so powerful because once you empower or one part of that organization to use this methodology and then they can use that information that they're the best at to then go and power other people to help support driving that number. They're the ones who are responsible and accountable to the number that they own. So it's their responsibility to then go back out and figure out, Hey, how do I change other people, other people's actions, or give them the information to allow them to discover what change is right for them?
00;16;45;00 - 00;17;05;10
Lee Benson
Yeah, and a lot of times they they had no idea like, oh my gosh, we spend that much money on that thing. I had no idea. We don't need to do that or do it that way or whatever it is. And I'm always actually not surprised anymore that sales and marketing don't work closely together in a lot of organizations that I start with.
00;17;05;10 - 00;17;24;20
Lee Benson
And you know, marketing to me is all about and there's so many different businesses, right? But marketing to me generally is about qualified leads. What's the definition of a qualified lead? And average closing percentage that grows over time should be part of that definition. And then what does sales do with it? And they should be so at the hip.
00;17;24;20 - 00;17;49;21
Lee Benson
And I even think delivery of service or product should should be at the hip as well was sales and marketing because, you know, people tell two friends if it's not a good experience around the product or service. So it's all tied together. You know, to that end, I think everybody's in sales. You know, for example, the receptionist is the ambassador or one of the ambassadors of first impressions and the maintenance team.
00;17;49;21 - 00;18;15;08
Lee Benson
If you have something big enough, they're the ambassadors of second impressions. When people walk through the place, you want customers that feel great about doing business with you. You want to create a lot of emotional energy value in a positive way with all the team members because what it feels like to work there and, you know, there's so much that goes into this concept of holistic value creation for all stakeholders the material emotional energy and the spiritual side of it.
00;18;15;11 - 00;18;37;19
Steven Pesavento
I think what the system really does is it just makes everything really simple, much simpler than trying to think about all the different activities that are potential and allow people to be able to navigate down to what are the true priorities that move the needle in the business and allow great, smart, creative people to use that skill and feel empowered to do so.
00;18;37;26 - 00;18;43;01
Steven Pesavento
Will you talk a little bit about right work at the right time?
00;18;43;03 - 00;19;06;07
Lee Benson
Yeah, right. Work right time, right order. Given the limited resources every organization has, I don't care how big a company is, they all have limited resources. And my friend before he passed, Jack Welch, who ran General Electric at the time, built the most valuable company in the world. He never had the resources he wanted. I mean, it was so interesting having that discussion.
00;19;06;07 - 00;19;28;24
Lee Benson
When you have over 400,000 employees in a market cap of over $400 billion back in the late nineties. And so here's here's a concept to think about. A and I can't wait to get your feedback on it. And it's simply this do last better and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what company I work with, especially as they get bigger.
00;19;28;26 - 00;19;52;27
Lee Benson
They have all these different strategic initiatives and priorities they want to go after. But with zero exceptions so far, there's usually no more than three or four primary drivers that create 80% plus of all the value in the organization. And so let's go rate how well we do those primary drivers first, discover what they are and then how could we do those better?
00;19;52;29 - 00;20;18;24
Lee Benson
And in an all cases, if you rate and rank them, they'll say from 1 to 10 and how well we're accomplishing each of those foundational drivers that create the most value. It's it's a 4 to 6, you know, in that range. So why are we doing these 30 other things? Let's every strategic initiative, every strategic priority should be something to help us do less better, which drives the primary things that create all the value in the organization.
00;20;18;27 - 00;20;20;11
Lee Benson
How does that resonate with, you.
00;20;20;13 - 00;20;40;14
Steven Pesavento
Know, it it makes so much sense and it really simplifies things. And I think this idea of the drivers is something that's really powerful as well, because those are the actions or the skills that somebody needs to have to do well in their job. Could you kind of break that down how somebody would go about understanding what the drivers of a role or department might be?
00;20;40;16 - 00;21;05;09
Lee Benson
Yeah, if if we were going to go through sort of this hierarchy, you would have the most important number for the organization all. And then you would have this structure. So you've got all these different, you know, teams, functions, departments that need to be in balance to achieve the value as an organization that we want to create within each of these functions or departments or teams.
00;21;05;12 - 00;21;30;12
Lee Benson
You have roles and, and every role should have clearly defined outcome based responsibilities. And as I said earlier, it's never more than 2 to 4. Never. There might be a list of 15, ten, 25 capabilities that that person filling the role needs to have in order to achieve those outcomes. Now that we've done that, we've got outcomes, we've got structure, including roles.
00;21;30;14 - 00;21;55;12
Lee Benson
With these responsibilities now we sort of backfill with the people. Now we go on to a team and the team has the outcome defined as their most important number. We're here, we want to go there at any point in time. Are we on track, at risk or behind? And now what is the work we should be really good at doing in order to leverage, improving and hopefully even over driving our most important number at any point in time.
00;21;55;15 - 00;22;20;04
Lee Benson
And if you went to marketing, you could easily come up with the drivers in their, you know, total addressable market and fully understanding that would be a driver. We there's no end to how well we can really understand all those pieces and pick the strategic addressable market that we really want in there. You've got the brand, you know, that goes in there, how you go through that, you know, there's just so much that goes in.
00;22;20;04 - 00;22;42;24
Lee Benson
But these are evergreen categories of work that that marketing team in this example with would, would leverage. Now when you set strategy for an organization, again, do less better, what drives a majority, the value in the organization and what are the strategic initiatives which would be doing something today or starting something today that will get us a better result in the future?
00;22;42;24 - 00;23;06;16
Lee Benson
Strategic initiative is not, Hey, please do your job. Everybody should do that, including continuous improvement. But something that's truly different enough to give it will give us a step, change or better result in the future. Those are strategic initiatives and then those cascade through marketing has their initiatives, sales has theirs, delivery of service or product has theirs. You know, finance, supply chain, they all they all get theirs.
00;23;06;19 - 00;23;24;01
Lee Benson
So there's there's the evergreen work and then there's the things you're going to do or put in place to get better results in the future. It is. I don't know. That sounded complicated when I went through, but it's it's really quite simple and and easy to sustain, too.
00;23;24;03 - 00;23;44;28
Steven Pesavento
Yeah. Because when you actually get clear on what's driving the business and you start measuring that in a consistent way, you can see, oh, well, in this area I'm only a four out of ten, but there this is the most important area. How do we get that to a six? How do we get that to an eight? And we can track our progress in that direction.
00;23;44;28 - 00;23;56;22
Steven Pesavento
And if these rates things and these drivers, we're continuously focusing on them, then we can put the right resources in the right place at the right time to get the right result that we're looking for.
00;23;56;24 - 00;24;18;07
Lee Benson
Yeah, yeah. Racking and stacking the work. And you know, in a lot of your podcasts, you talk about, you know, sort of an ROI approach. That's what I got out of it and what, you know, what's the return If you have 100 things or 20 things that needs to be improved and, and we need to take a bigger than normal step so we can call them part of our strategy is to address these things.
00;24;18;10 - 00;24;46;03
Lee Benson
Well, what would be the value of addressing each one of those that helps you rack and stack? And usually we have a list of 22 to 4 will have more impact than all the others combined. So it gets you really in that ROI return mindset. It gets you thinking about it in the right way and in, I believe because most organizations don't have an intentional way to create value that they that's that that's the same across the board.
00;24;46;03 - 00;25;06;17
Lee Benson
They hire the best they can and hope for the best. And so if you have ten leaders, you have ten different ways of leading. If you have 100 leaders, ten little to significantly different ways of leading with the mind methodology, it's a common approach to creating value that universal. It works pretty much everywhere. But because most companies don't have that, it becomes really interesting.
00;25;06;17 - 00;25;25;06
Lee Benson
Where intellectually stimulating is, as they say, you know, to talk about it and and in a way less so to actually go do the work and I would say and I'm sure you've heard versions of this before, we need to be at least as much in love, if not more, with the work of achieving the goal than the goal itself.
00;25;25;08 - 00;25;54;22
Lee Benson
And that's why I think a lot of times the magic doesn't happen is because they they love talking about the goal and what they're going to do and what's possible way more than actually doing the work and of of achieving it. So how do we create a culture that connects it solely to value creation? And everybody loves doing that work and it's not a set it and forget it is a continuous journey of, you know, increasing the value that each team, each team member and that organization creates.
00;25;54;24 - 00;26;28;29
Steven Pesavento
What I really love about it is that because it's simplifying everything from upper management all the way down to anybody doing any role in the company, it makes it much simpler to be able to manage and rate and assess how individuals are doing so that we're not making decisions on is this person a good fit or not, just based on a feeling, right where we're able to set a very clear expectation that that individual is then able to work towards and it ends up leading to a better way of leading the individuals within a company.
00;26;28;29 - 00;27;00;27
Steven Pesavento
Because oftentimes what I've found is that either got someone really great in the role or you don't you're not sure is it them or is it something else that's in the process? And without having this way of being able to consistently rate, regardless of who's in the role and regardless of who is leading or managing whatever part of the company it's in, it gives something that both leadership and anybody who has boots on the ground is able to have a very clear understanding about how the company's operating and what can actually be done to make the change.
00;27;01;00 - 00;27;21;17
Lee Benson
Yeah, absolutely. And team members want clarity and most of them don't have clarity around that. They want to know, I believe, the outcomes they're going to be responsible for. And because we don't do a very good job of that on average across the world, I think that's why most are afraid to commit to being held accountable or certain certain things or outcomes.
00;27;21;19 - 00;27;43;01
Lee Benson
But if we're clear on the outcomes, the capabilities they need to have to achieve the outcomes and by the way, that capability leads drives your training and they know how their team was designed to create value. My experience says that 6 to 8 out of ten that you otherwise would have to let go because of performance you'll save and a solid middle performers.
00;27;43;04 - 00;28;04;09
Lee Benson
And just imagine the exiting conversation of you unfortunately have to have that where they you onboard them and you say hey here's the couple of outcomes that you're going to own. Here's how we're going to measure it. And we're investing in you to give this return to the company. And we're going to keep our end of the bargain 100% and pay you everything we agreed to and keep our deal.
00;28;04;12 - 00;28;21;04
Lee Benson
What do you think about that? And they always typically say, well, yeah, I can absolutely do that. I have those capabilities. You know, that's great. Now, if this is the goal, hopefully you can overdrive it. But it was always below this line, This won't work to make a change because this is too critical for the company. Do you understand that?
00;28;21;04 - 00;28;38;22
Lee Benson
Yep. Yep. If it falls below that line, then something's wrong with me. No, nothing's wrong with you. You gave it a shot. It just didn't work. This is the minimum. Okay, got it. We totally agree. Now, fast forward. Maybe it's a month. Maybe it's a year or six months and it's below the line. And you in that you sat down with them.
00;28;38;22 - 00;29;00;22
Lee Benson
Hey, thank you so much for giving it a shot. This isn't working. We talked about this. Yeah, you're right. I appreciate you really trying. Can. Can we help you find another job? Maybe in the organization or outside the organization in a policy that I love is that if a team member leaves for any reason whatsoever, with very few exceptions, we should follow them for at least a year after they leave.
00;29;00;25 - 00;29;09;21
Lee Benson
Hey, how's it going? And where did that work? It's. It's the right thing to do for a lot of reasons. And I could. I could go tell you lots of.
00;29;09;21 - 00;29;14;20
Steven Pesavento
So please, please tell us more about that, because I don't think a lot of companies are doing that.
00;29;14;23 - 00;29;40;24
Lee Benson
Yeah, I, I figured this out in the late nineties my aerospace company or companies at the time were a lot smaller than when I sold it in 2016. And our largest customer was American West Airlines and we had an employee that just wasn't a cultural. He was not being, you know, respectful to a lot of other employees. And one of our behaviors that we all agreed to abide by was to be respectful, honest and straightforward and he just wouldn't do that.
00;29;40;24 - 00;29;57;29
Lee Benson
So we let him go, went to work for America. West Airlines got into the air quality department and flipped the switch in the computer and turned us off. And they at that time, they were our biggest customer. They were 700 plus thousand dollars that year and it was just gone. So we had to go replace it. And it was it was tough.
00;29;58;01 - 00;30;15;22
Lee Benson
And while that was going on, I would hear secondhand from others that he was wishing he'd come back and work for my company, Abell Aerospace. And I said, you know what? I should have stayed in touch with him. He still wasn't the right cultural said that it probably would have made him feel better. So put the policy in place.
00;30;15;22 - 00;30;36;02
Lee Benson
Fast forward even the most disgruntled employees I had, one will leave and she was really disgruntled, I call her. How's it going? She's yelling at me and phones going back and forth in my ears like, Yeah, I get it. It wasn't a good cultural fit for you. How's it going now? And oh, that's great. And she ended up getting a job at America West excuse me, at American Airlines.
00;30;36;05 - 00;31;00;19
Lee Benson
And within a year she's in their supply chain department and she's sending us work. If I wouldn't have followed up with her. One, it's the right thing to do. This wasn't personal. It just wasn't a good fit. Verrilli are either of us, and she's in a great fit now. At a time when I was having those conversations and and then we figured out a way to work together it's the it's the caring is thing to do.
00;31;00;19 - 00;31;23;04
Lee Benson
This gets into that category of emotional energy, value creation. You're totally fine, but I'm neither her nor I are totally fine or perfect for every environment. So let's get into a culture that that really resonates with us. And I still stay in touch with her. Shoot, That was as a long time ago. I mean, it push in 20 years, you know.
00;31;23;04 - 00;31;31;28
Lee Benson
So it's I think I just think it's really cool. It's a great way to stay connected. It's the right thing to do. And it really elevates positive emotional energy value.
00;31;31;28 - 00;31;58;24
Steven Pesavento
And I think it's one of those things that people are kind of afraid to do. They think, Hey, we should just have a clean break, move on. Maybe they get so busy they don't do it, or maybe there is a real disagreement. Somebody is like, Oh, they're upset about it, and there's maybe a fear of actually reaching back out and just saying, hey, you know, it wasn't a good fit, but I want to check in, see how you're doing, how your life is, maybe even putting that ego aside, that you might need something from that person.
00;31;58;26 - 00;32;05;07
Steven Pesavento
But actually just going out there and making that call, just being kind of a good steward out in in, in the community.
00;32;05;09 - 00;32;24;18
Lee Benson
Well, all of that stuff comes back, right? I didn't do it so we could get work wherever she went. I didn't know where she was going to go in this in this instance. It's just the right thing to do, especially with social media and everybody putting bad reviews and all that. Why even start down that road? I just I just think it's a it's the right thing to do.
00;32;24;21 - 00;32;34;09
Steven Pesavento
Yeah. And when you do the right thing, that that ends up coming around, whether it's at that point in time or at somewhere else along the way.
00;32;34;11 - 00;32;56;20
Lee Benson
Yeah. Yeah, it really does. Yeah. Lots of good examples around that where it works. And I made it a requirement that if a team member was let go, whoever that leader was that that they reported to, they would have to follow them. But if, if they were really disgruntled it would skip all the way to me as CEO with 500 employees.
00;32;56;23 - 00;33;34;25
Lee Benson
I wanted to take those. And then I'd like to just offer to the listeners to change perspective around leadership capability when it comes to having these difficult conversations. The highest level leadership work you can do is going in and creating value out of an uncomfortable, typically uncomfortable situation for team members. And the first conversation you should want to have every single day is the one where you might have to fire somebody or, you know, get a team to start playing better together in the sandbox, whatever that is, or save a joint venture that's that's going down the tubes.
00;33;34;28 - 00;33;57;03
Lee Benson
That's where you should lean in. And I think about the work I do in my company. Execute to win re t w I work with leadership teams every single day. I stay on the front lines in the highest level. Leadership work I can do is organizing all these different personalities, levels of business, maturity into this value creation machine that accelerates the value of their organizations.
00;33;57;06 - 00;34;19;11
Lee Benson
I never complain about anyone. It's a journey. It's not a set it and forget it. And you know, I and I love your podcast you know Steve around passive income and getting to a place where you don't have to worry about that. There is a there's a piece inside that comes from that 100% agree. I also add to that and say, I want to be actively creating value in the world.
00;34;19;11 - 00;34;48;14
Lee Benson
I want a combination of both and. I don't have to work for the next 100 years. What I have set aside. I'm doing this because I just love this lab, this value creation laboratory. That's the world. And whether it's in families, communities, organizations. I'm hitting all of them with what I'm doing here. And and I don't want to I don't want to be the person that talks about this stuff and is it's been so long that since they actually did it that they couldn't do that thing to save themselves going forward.
00;34;48;14 - 00;35;10;22
Lee Benson
So I love the combination of both passive and still actively creating value in the real world with real people because, you know, the whole country and global culture changes constantly. And I want to I want to stay fully connected to it. But don't be yeah, don't be afraid as a leader too. You should. This is the first thing you should want to do.
00;35;10;24 - 00;35;41;16
Steven Pesavento
Every jump into those difficult conversations and grow. And, you know, I couldn't agree more. I think the the idea and the concept of having your passive income be able to cover the whole lifestyle that you want to so that you can make that decision to go out and do the things that you really care about. I find that most people who are successful, or even if they have unlimited amounts of money and income coming in, that just allows them the space to be able to focus even more on the impact driven work.
00;35;41;21 - 00;35;59;15
Steven Pesavento
And that impact your work can make them a lot of money. It can make a lot of change in the world. It can do a variety of different things, but it gives people the ability to break free of the system that a lot of people think they're stuck in. Fortunately, a lot of business owners have recognized that they can get out and do things, but they run into challenges.
00;35;59;21 - 00;36;12;12
Steven Pesavento
The kind of challenges that your system helps them break free of. So I think it's really, really powerful to to be able to acknowledge that and recognize, well, what's the next level? How do I grow here?
00;36;12;15 - 00;36;32;04
Lee Benson
Yeah, 100%. And I think everybody needs to stay in the game, whatever it is. And I think of it like taking my brain to the gym. I get to go and take my brain to the gym every single day and do this really meaningful, higher and higher level leadership work to pull these teams together, create more value for their for their organizations.
00;36;32;04 - 00;37;11;18
Lee Benson
And that that's a lot of the work that I do with my team. I also run CEO mastermind groups that I call executes, and I'm working with up to eight CEOs at a time in a number of groups. And it's completely different in terms of value creation than vestige, ego or YPO. All of those make McKay renaissance, and I've been part of different groups like that for over 40 years with overlap in that we know so much about each other's business because we use the mind methodology to hold each other accountable and peer into their businesses that we get to use The 80% of our brain power to really help them.
00;37;11;18 - 00;37;29;29
Lee Benson
And our perspective in the room with with 6 to 8 CEOs is that we've been metaphorically we've invested over half of our retirement money in this conglomerate. We want to make sure we get a good return of retirement. So what do we want to know? What do we want to see? What risk are we avoiding or not paying attention to?
00;37;30;02 - 00;38;03;22
Lee Benson
And the results are significant. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I've got a number of them. Within 18 months, they were worth, you know, under a million bucks. Now over $25 million in climbing. And so it's just that intentional focus, whereas in most of the other peer advisory groups, the people are usually great the community can be great. But if you're in the mode of significantly increasing the value of your organization, there's no mechanism for them to really see what's going on inside your business on a consistent, sustained way.
00;38;03;24 - 00;38;22;08
Lee Benson
And so with that being the case, you bring a problem. And and since they can't see in the business, usually the problems in my experience are a symptom of something else going on. It's not the root cause. Well, in this format we jump on the root cause immediately, and that's why we create value so much faster than the others.
00;38;22;10 - 00;38;34;00
Lee Benson
Not for everyone. Some people I've just I want to maintain where I'm at in my lifestyle. I don't really care about growing the business that's different. But if you're going for it, wow, this is this is like pure magic.
00;38;34;03 - 00;38;52;04
Steven Pesavento
I love that because community is so powerful. But when you can actually pair with a system and process of coaching and consulting so you can actually solve those problems, I think there's no better way to to be able to grow than to be able to bring other people in who can help advise you. So let's share with the audience.
00;38;52;04 - 00;39;00;15
Steven Pesavento
Where can people get a copy of your book and follow along for additional resources or other value that you might be able to offer now?
00;39;00;15 - 00;39;24;15
Lee Benson
Thank you. If you want to learn more about this value creation work that I and my team are doing, go to EW.com and you'll learn about the work we do to help install or facilitate the mind methodology within organizations for profit and nonprofit. You can pick up the book there, but you can also get the book in literally 40,000 different channels.
00;39;24;18 - 00;39;48;03
Lee Benson
The audio book which I narrated, I recorded 25 minute interviews after each chapter, so you get even more background and insights that you can send books that way. And then you can also learn about the execute CEO mastermind groups. And if you're interested in joining something like that or having us help you with your organization, it'll link you right up there on the website to get in so we can help you with that.
00;39;48;05 - 00;40;07;07
Steven Pesavento
It's amazing. Leigh, this has been such a pleasure. I appreciate you for sharing the lessons by taking the time to go and write a book. You know, when you take years and years of experience and you simplify it down into a format somebody can buy for 20 or $30 that has millions and millions of dollars of value. I couldn't recommend enough.
00;40;07;09 - 00;40;13;03
Steven Pesavento
Do you guys go buy a copy? Thanks so much for listening today. And we'll see you guys on the next episode.