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 Another fun topic. I mean, I was excited about culture,

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 which we talked about for quite a while.

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 But you gotta have goals, Kristen. I do.

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 (Laughs) We've gotta have goals. We do have to have goals, which brings us to our next topic of goals.

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 I have to admit, this one surprised me a little bit. When we started People Spark Consulting, focused on getting people, your employees, your teams, all pulling in the same direction,

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 we were thinking about that in terms of,

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 a business has defined where they wanna go. It's a matter of aligning their people and motivating and engaging their people to go to that point. And we were at that point, I think it was fair to say, thinking about, hey, then we'll just come in and help build the people practices, build the HR practices to help support those goals. Right, and what we found was

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 that the goals weren't always as defined as we thought they would be. And in some cases, they didn't exist. More cases than I would have expected, even for the size of organizations that we were meeting with. Yes, for sure. And I think when we first started,

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 we meet with clients and we talk about what's happening in their business, what's going well, we talk to other stakeholders, and it became really apparent about goals. We would talk to business owners and business leaders about their goals, and we would either hear we don't have them, or

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 would be general goals, like we wanna grow by 10% next year.

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 Or in some cases, we have these really clear goals and everybody knows them.

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 Yeah, well, I think in more cases than not, there was a lot of

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 more money than we did last year. So they were just very broad stroke goals that were not specific, remember my favorite word. It is one of her favorite words, yes.

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 That it was just interpreted that our goals were making more money, returning more to our patrons at the end of the year,

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 and just staying in the black. Yes. Yep. Or grow. Or grow. Just grow. Just grow.

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 And so we spent a lot of time with that. And

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 think about this in terms of culture. When we first started to talk about culture, our first discussion was around how do you know that there's a gap? So Erin, how do you know that there is a gap

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 goals?

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 So I think part of it, what you were just talking about there is as you're meeting with people and even asking them a question around what are the goals of your department, what are the goals of your location, what are the goals of the broader business,

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 going beyond somebody's initial response. So if it's hey, grow, that's our goal. Or do better than we did last year, okay?

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 Asking them again, kind of

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 does that mean?

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 How do you know that you would have achieved that? Kind of what are the specifics behind it? And if you're getting into that second or third level question

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 somebody can't answer it, I think that's how you know that we've got some work to do here.

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 Well and even, I like how you posed it as ask.

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 We were working with one client at one point who felt he was very clear as a business owner, was very clear on his goals.

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 And when we asked the question of his next level managers,

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 it was crickets, like silence they couldn't answer. So I like the, it's not whether or not you feel you've communicated your goals, it's whether or not your team can share them back

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 to know whether or not that there is a gap there.

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 Well and I think as business owners too, and a lot of, in so many instances, we are in our own heads that it seems so obvious to us what the goals are. Of course we know that we need to finish at a certain percentage above where we did last year, or we wanna cut a certain

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 item on our expenditures by a certain number, or we wanna do this or that, and we can get really specific. And make that assumption, and that's the key word here, make that assumption that everyone else understands it to the level that we're talking about. Because chances are we have not communicated to that level of detail. And in many instances it's because our businesses are very personal to us. So we may not have communicated the need for that kind of specificity with

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 those leaders before. And so as a result,

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 they end up without having that level of clarity in their goals.

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 She gets bonus points for saying clarity, by the way. Because of course it all, it comes back to clarity. And I make a joke about that, and it's true.

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 You know, I even think about,

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 it was a few years ago we were reading a book, and there was an example that really stood out to us, that really resonated around kind of the importance of goals and the impact of goals.

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 related to a study that was down, that was done by the Max Planck Institute of Cybernetics. That is right. The fact that I screwed up the word done and down, but I could get out the word cybernetics, really says something there.

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 But the study was about, it was done in 2009, and it was whether or not somebody, if they were told to walk in a straight line, and had no landmarks, no

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 thinking about it in terms of gold, no indicators, could they walk in a straight line? So no sun in the east, like rising in the east, setting in the west, none of that. Nothing. So think of a field at night,

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 a bare field.

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 And if you said to walk in a straight line, could people? Now not surprising, the answer is no. More surprising is that people were walking in circles as tight as 66 feet.

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 All the while, here's the kicker for me, all the while thinking they were walking in a straight line. Which, and as we read that, it started to resonate with us, and how we started to see that in our businesses, that a lot of the more general

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 or the broad sweeping goals,

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 were like saying, walk in a straight line without those landmarks, without that end that we wanted to have, and how many times employees then are walking in circles.

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 Thinking that they're doing the best for the business. Thinking that they are headed in the right direction. Right. Feeling like they've done a lot,

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 to find out that you've been walking in circles, and we haven't made any progress to that end goal. Well I think what's important to know there too, is that people want to know how they're doing. Yes. And so when we don't give them a clear landmark, or a clear milestone, they're left to their own devices thinking that they're doing the right thing, of what they think is the right thing. And we've not given them the opportunity to know how they're doing. And I see this sometimes,

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 I think of some clients that we've worked with too, where with multiple business units within an organization, and we may not always, we see some organizations, they don't share the goals or even the results, beyond just that department. And so people are left kind of on an island by themselves, only

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 how they're doing, not knowing how it's contributing to the broader organization. And as I think about the things that make up employee engagement, it's knowing that you're part of something bigger,

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 knowing that you are part of

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 to the overall success of the organization. So that clarity, it's not just giving somebody a clear milestone to shoot for, it's helping them see how they're contributing to the broader success of the organization.

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 So the broad brushing goals, like make more money than we did last year, grow, be in the black.

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 We hear a lot, right, the focus on margins, we either wanna sustain or grow margin,

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 is like saying, walk in a straight line, without the milestones or that end goal.

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 What does that look like? So if we say we need to have that clarity, so that people know where we're headed, they have the milestones, and they know how they're not only supporting to the bigger picture, but how they are impacting it, and what progress they've made, what does that look like? Well, I think that's where it's important for a business leader, whether that's the owner, whether that's the leadership team, to define that across their business units, across their departments, what does that mean? So if I think of some of the different cycles that we go through, when we might be having a bad year in feed, or we're anticipating a bad year in feed, what does that mean then, if we're anticipating that things are gonna be more challenging in a particular area, of what I'm going to need then from agronomy, what I'm going to need then from retail, what I'm going to need from energy, and it doesn't mean that everybody has to contribute exactly the same thing, and sometimes I feel like that broad brush is our way of saying,

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 okay, everybody has to contribute this amount, when in reality, we know that different parts of the business are going to have ups and downs in different cycles, and that that's okay, and let's define that overall.

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 I can even think back to, gosh, in the last five, six, seven years, we've seen those different cycles peak and valley at different times already, so. Which is also fascinating, I'm getting off topic here, in those organizations that have those different departments or business product service areas,

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 when you're not anticipating or creating that goal for the organization as a whole, it almost starts to pit.

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 Yeah. Pit those groups against each other, so all of a sudden they're like, oh, we're shouldering the business.

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 I have to carry this part of the business now, because of course they're having terrible grain prices right now. Right. Yep. So this is a way to counteract even that kind of infighting within those departments, by having that bigger picture and being able to communicate which part each group, team, department plays. And what's fun about it, too, is that once you've

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 able to define those goals to a specific level, within each business unit, now I can start to look at what does that mean then, if I have a people leader, like what are the things that I need to see that I can measure, ideally,

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 from that person that's going to contribute

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 to that particular goal? What does that mean for a store associate in the retail side of my business? What can they do to meaningfully impact that particular goal? And what I think

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 been eye opening for the last several years since I learned this,

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 is that if you look at

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 workers, regardless of level, regardless of industry, so this is not ag specific,

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 44% of American workers don't know how the work they do every day impacts the business, so nearly half.

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 So as somebody gets higher to leadership or management, they're closer to where the decisions are made, so that number is, of course, gonna drop, or should,

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 assume, should drop some, where they are seeing the impact they can make to the business.

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 And then what that looks like across the rest of the average then is that as you get further away from where decisions are made, more people, more people in your organization, the bulk of who's connecting with and contacting and touching your customers, doesn't know how the work they do every day impacts the business. So whether this is your bulk delivery driver, whether this is your spreader, whether this is a retail associate, propane driver, we need to make sure that they understand our goals, particularly, so that they can see what they can do

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 to impact the business and see how what they're doing is connected back to it. Well, and really what that means, and we've talked about this in terms of what makes a good goal, a good goal should drive behavior. And a good goal should drive the behavior you want to see. And we hear a lot about, you know, goals need to be smart.

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 Yes, because smart

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 are driving behavior.

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 Not every smart goal will drive behavior. So it's are the goals specific, I used your word, are the goals specific enough to drive the behavior that we want to see? And I think that's where we have really challenged

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 business owners and leaders to look for that. Because when we say things like, we want to grow by 10%,

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 and then we ask, if your goal is to grow by 10%, what behaviors are you going to see from your employees? Then they list so many. I mean, even just from a sales perspective, you're prospecting and you're finding ways to partner in a marketing sense with other organizations, and then you're calling on your current, and in the list of what you can do to grow 10% is huge.

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 And it results in people walking in circles. Yes.

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 Having discussions with business leaders about how do we take that to the next step? What is the most meaningful thing? That if you did this one thing, would help you grow by 10%. And we've started to really see some themes around that,

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 especially when we're working with co-ops.

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 Co-ops, having discussions, you mentioned this in a previous episode about

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 we cross-sell. Right. And we worked with a co-op at one point who said, our differentiator, what separates us, what keeps people coming back, is the fact that we know our customers intimately.

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 And if we could leverage that, we'd get a lot further. Well, that is cross-selling between their different departments and their different groups. There hadn't been a goal around cross-selling. So what does that look like if you have a goal around cross-selling?

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 We see that in other aspects around feed. We were talking to a business leader once about feed, and they wanted to grow by a certain percentage.

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 And when we really got down to it, it was the biggest impact we could make to hit that goal is to provide more feed product service to our current customers than offer new ones.

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 So the comment that I heard back from the VP of Feed is we should never cross another feed delivery truck as we're delivering to our customers because we wanna have that full animal life cycle. We wanna understand the true needs. And when you get to that level of specificity, the behaviors are much more specific. You're gonna start calling on your current customers more and not spending as much time prospecting because that's where there's the biggest opportunity. Well, and I think one of the things that you said right there that's really important is around getting to that level of behavior. Because take something like cross-selling. There's plenty of emotion that comes up when you're trying to explain to different departments the reason why they should be cross-selling.

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 And there's the feeling of I don't wanna give up the relationships that I've built and potentially put at risk to bring somebody else in to try to sell something else. So getting to a level of behavior and getting really specific around what it is, whether it's just one product or it's just one particular service or one particular behavior just simply having the call. So it might not even be the sale itself. It's simply getting into the

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 behavior of bringing somebody else along with me on those sales calls

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 at a certain period of time to build that relationship without trying to force the

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 and we were talking about the goals for their particular business and we were really drilling on the

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 general manager quite a bit

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 he was like, "Oh, you know, well, when somebody comes in, we want to be able to greet them by name." I said, "Cool, that's wonderful."

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 again, how's that gonna get to a bigger average ticket or kind of a number of ticket count per day?

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 And he said, just kind of as an afterthought as he was getting challenged on it, he said, "You know,

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 approach somebody or if I ask somebody if there's anything I can help them with when they first come into the store, they immediately say no, right? They don't want to have to engage with anybody in the store right away. If I can ask them, what can I help you find? Or what is it that you're, what types of things are you looking for today? Or what questions can I answer when they're in the aisle already looking at potential products right there? I have a much better chance at converting that particular customer to a sale." So the behavior that I would love to see, and he's like, "I don't know how to measure this." And I said, "We'll get to that part later."

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 But if I could just have all of my sales associates know that I want every single customer to have somebody ask them a question in the aisle,

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 that specific behavior, I am confident, is going to lead to higher ticket count and higher average ticket value.

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 And we were just like, "Oh my gosh, that is it. Like this is the behavior we're looking for." Because if you think about even just

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 you can share that with employees, to say the one thing I need you to do is that every customer, yeah, of course I want you to greet somebody by name, that is not gonna be a differentiator from any store that they go into. If they go into an aisle, I want somebody not in a stalking kind of way, right? I want somebody to make sure that when they have stopped in the aisle, you have an opportunity to ask them, "What can I help you with today? What questions can I answer for you?" We're asking them an open-ended question while they're in the aisle.

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 I know that that's going to be helpful.

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 How, when you got to that level of specificity, how did the business owner respond?

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 He, it was so funny, because he was just kind of looking at it, and he's like, "Is that it?" Like, "Is that what I'm," we're like, "Yes, that is exactly what we're looking for." Like this, this is the kind of thing, it's clear.

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 Employees are gonna understand it immediately. They're not having to guess or try to look for landmarks to know what it is that they need to be doing. I don't need them worrying about what the average ticket value is at the end. I need them worrying about making sure that they can ask a customer a question while they're in the aisle.

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 Well, and that, so that to me is fascinating, because usually it's a, one, something more obvious than what a business owner would anticipate, and two, what I've also seen is how motivating it is. I was working with a general manager of a co-op who had convenience stores. And so we were talking about the convenience store. In my mind, I was thinking about what is success for the convenience store look like.

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 The convenience store, by the way, had been shouldering,

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 and had been seen as shouldering, they were the moneymaker,

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 and how the success of the co-op depended on the success of the convenience stores. And I said, great, what has the biggest impact on the convenience stores? And what I heard a lot was things like, well, there isn't a lot we can do, because margin is already set for so many of the products that we're selling in the convenience store. Great, which one has the biggest, where do you get the most margin, and where do you get the most

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 of flexibility or ability to change product selection and impact to increase that sales? And he said it was their kitchen,

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 where they had the biggest impact. Okay, so this isn't necessarily increasing sales across the convenience store. This is how are we increasing sales for the kitchen? And it was fascinating to watch his face as we had that discussion of, oh,

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 and then he could see the vision of it. And he started going to marketing. Okay, so when we're looking at them, the layout of the store, we need to make sure that we're making the layout in this way. When we're having people that are coming up to the pump, we have to get them into the store. When they get into the store, we need to have employees who are saying, did you know this is the special at our kitchen today?

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 Because that was the biggest impact. And that, to me, it's energizing, it's motivating, it's something people know that they can do. That's the impact of not walking in circles. Yeah, well, and you know that you're not a victim to whatever is going to happen, because I'll hear that too,

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 especially in this industry of, we don't really know what the year is going to be like. So, right, it could be hard for us to try to set goals because I don't know what the crop's gonna look like. I mean, there's so many factors. It could be the weather. I don't know what the weather is gonna be. It could be all of these different things that impact it. And it's, okay, we get that. Those are all going to be variables. What are the things that are within your control that somebody can do to impact the business? Set the weather aside for a minute. We all know that the weather will impact it one way or the other. I know that commodity prices are going to change that financial impact too. What I need to do is figure out those behaviors that I need to see from my team members every day. And so that's where the, I love seeing people when they can get into that level of clarity to get specific with their team so that they're not feeling like they're victim to whatever might be coming their way that's out of their control.

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 I would go back to your original statement of ask. Yeah.

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 To identify

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 If there's a gap. If there's a gap there, right? That

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 are employees seeing? What are employees understanding?

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 especially if you're in a position where you're setting the goals for your organization,

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 first off, write it down and look at it and say, if I were to give this to any one of my employees who might not be anywhere close to the decision making level that you are in with your business, would they know what to do with this?

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 And now start to challenge yourself around what are the behaviors that somebody can do

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 that can impact it. So if I have one of my warehouse associates, what can they do that can impact this? What can one of my feed delivery drivers do to impact this goal? Because there's I think where you'll find a lot of that goodness.

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 I talk about motivating and tying it.

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 What you said just brought me back to a conversation that I had with a general manager at a feed mill

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 where the goal is to grow the business.

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 And

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 behavior that he was currently seeing is people only doing the bare minimum, taking the longer breaks,

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 doing one step at a time, so it was very slow paced. So when we started to get to, okay, the overall business goal is around profitability, increasing volume, yes. When we got to that specific,

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 now what does that mean for the people in the mill?

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 Making it more specific in terms of their goal is to decrease unplanned downtime. Right. Because they may not see the impact that they're having on margin because they're not buying the products or on sales because they're not selling the product. They're making the product. Quality is a huge part about that. It's decreasing unplanned downtime.

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 And that will drive a specific behavior. So that could actually take us to our next topic

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 of how we really take that big picture and translate it into the roles that we have in our businesses. Awesome.

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