Carl Lewis:
Welcome to The Connected Enterprise podcast. I’m Carl Lewis, your host from Vision33, and my guest is Chuck Wachendorfer, president of distribution at think2perform. Chuck, welcome to the podcast. Please tell us about yourself, your background, and think2perform.
Chuck Wachendorfer:
Thanks, Carl. I'm a speaker, author, and executive coach. I lead the firm think2perform. We're about 21 years old, and we work with everybody from the FBI to doctors and nurses in surgery, pro and college athletes, financial advisors, business owners, and executives to improve decision-making under pressure. That’s critical because decision-making has twice the impact on performance than talent and skill combined.
I'm not saying talent and skill don't matter. They just don't matter as much as decision-making. And unlike our IQ, which we can't improve, we can become better decision-makers with practice, focus, and effort.
We make about 35,000 decisions a day. Most we don't think about—making our coffee, getting dressed, and brushing our teeth are all choices we rarely think about. But 60% of our daily decisions are conscious. We don't need to make all 35,000 decisions better every day, but if we made one or two better choices a day, that can be 700 better decisions a year.
If you've ever been to a reunion where you walk in and somebody says, "Hey, Carl! How are you?" and you have no idea who that person is, but suddenly, you go, "Oh, that's Chuck." And the next thought that comes into your mind—hopefully in your inside voice—is, “What the hell happened to that guy?”
We were all enjoying the same thing at the same point in our lives, but 35,000 decisions a day 10-20 years later takes people in very different directions. That’s what think2perform does: We help leaders become more effective at decision-making and aligning decisions in their organizations.
Carl Lewis:
That illustration of the reunion hits home because I had my 50th high school reunion last year. But you didn't just wake up one day as this mature person who can guide other people. How'd you get there?
Chuck Wachendorfer:
I'm the oldest in my family, and I was expected to lead by example. That was a lot of responsibility. I started playing more leadership roles in school and Scouts. But I also switched careers early on. I have a mechanical engineering degree, but I left engineering to become a financial advisor for American Express. It was a 100% commission job, and at one point, I found myself with no money, no food, and no credit.
I remember this like it was yesterday. I was lying on my bed, and I thought, "Maybe I'll quit my job." Then I thought, "Well, that means I have no money, no food, no credit, no job." And there were people in my office making the money I wanted to make, so the job wasn’t the problem. That was a big epiphany for me: Maybe it was me and the choices I was making. That began this journey of examining my decision-making and how I was spending my time.
You can see all these jerseys behind me. Even as a kid, I was fascinated by something about sports. Sports are probably the most visible arena where you see the impact of decision-making—and it's not always the most talented athlete who operates well and makes great choices. It's the person who manages themself well. At an early age, I was curious: “Why is someone successful, and why is someone else not?” It usually had to do with their decision-making. I began to apply what I was observing in my own life and examine things more thoroughly, more consciously.
We talk about self-awareness in the book. How do I become more self-aware? Because I was making a lot of not-great choices—but I wasn't noticing them. Leadership begins with leading oneself. You must do a better job of leading yourself before you worry about leading others.
Carl Lewis:
I’m also the oldest, with three younger brothers. I still remember when I was 15 or 16 and informed my mother that I was the oldest and it was my responsibility to blaze the trail. She said, "Blazing the trail is fine, but nobody asks you to build a six-lane freeway."
Chuck Wachendorfer:
That's great.
Carl Lewis:
You mentioned the book. It’s called Don't Wait for Someone Else to Fix It, and that's what intrigued me about the work think2perform does. Tell us more about the book and where folks can get it.
Chuck Wachendorfer:
Absolutely. You can get the book on any online retail site, stores like Barnes and Noble, or on our website at think2perform.com. The book is a toolkit. We wanted it to be a book people use. We discuss eight essentials and give people exercises at the end of each chapter to apply in their lives. It’s a call to action.
We want to help people make a positive difference in their own lives and the lives of the people around them—family, community, company, non-profit; it doesn't matter. When Doug and I wrote this book, we wanted it to impact anybody anywhere. And with the issues we're facing individually, as a society, and as a planet, we need more positive impact. We need more of us to step up. Whether it's affecting your life or your family’s life or it’s on a larger scale doesn't matter.
Carl Lewis:
If you're the CEO of a business, especially your own, there’s no end to the work you can do. They work long, hard hours.
Chuck Wachendorfer:
Yes.
Carl Lewis:
There's more work than they can do themselves. How can leaders create an environment that's not 100% dependent on them and their ideas every day?
Chuck Wachendorfer:
We work with a lot of entrepreneurs and founders. And if you're any good at software, or you’re a plumber, lawyer, financial advisor, doctor, whatever, you go from being a one-person enterprise to having a team of people. And leading a team of people, no matter what type of business it is, is different than being a solo entrepreneur. We help people make that transition.
How do I go from getting paid for doing things to getting paid for getting things done? Getting things done is working through other people. To work through other people, I must be able to push decision-making down into my organization and my team. If I'm the business owner, I want to know people will make decisions consistent with how I think about where I want to take the business. So, they must know some things: The vision ("Where am I going with the business?") and the values ("What do we stand for?"). If they know that, they can say, "Which of my choices best aligns with where we're going and what we stand for?"
Many entrepreneurs and founders miss that step. They have it in their heads, like, "I know where the business is going because I started it. I know what I want it to stand for because they're my values." But sometimes it stays in their heads. We help them crystallize it. Even large companies, Carl. They have corporate values and a vision statement, but we ask executives, "What's the company's vision? The corporate values?" They don’t know.
Even though it's on a plaque in the lobby or in their newsletter or website, nobody really knows. And the point of knowing the vision and values is to use them in making decisions. What any founder or senior executive wants is alignment. Alignment gives us traction, but if the frontline people don't know where we're going or our values, their execution will be subpar. We’ve found that most people want to be better at their jobs than their company needs them to be. The problem is that nobody ever asks.
The book also discusses connecting your individual vision and life values to where you're going as a company. "How good do you want to be here, Carl, at this company? Where do you want to take your career? What are your values? How do your values connect to the company's values?" That's where engagement really occurs. People don't say, "I want to be average," or "I'm just biding my time." They say, "I want to be good at my job," or "I want your job." As a leader, I say, "Okay. Let's talk about how you can be good at your job or get my job."
Now I've got their attention. I'm getting them engaged, which is what most leaders want. And speaking to the book’s title, leaders need more people seeing and fixing the issues. They don't need their team saying, "Carl's got it. He must see the problem." Leaders have enough on their plates, and they need everybody on their team.
There are levels of leadership. Level one is ‘I take direction.’ Level two is ‘I take direction and I identify problems.’ Level three is ‘I take direction, I identify problems, and I come up with solutions.’ Everybody in your company should be a level three leader.
Level four is mobilizing people around that solution, and level five is crystallizing vision and values. If you're a founder, entrepreneur, or CEO, you must be a level five leader. You set vision and values, and the people who work directly for you must be level four leaders. You might not act on the level four leaders’ solutions, but you want them to come up with ways to solve it. Because the people closest to the work usually have the best idea how to solve it—not the people three or four levels removed.
Carl Lewis:
Yes. As a leader, if you don't invest in others and they don't start making decisions, it's hard to make traction.
Chuck Wachendorfer:
Absolutely.
Carl Lewis:
Chuck, I've interviewed hundreds of people. I find that CEOs who’ve been in business for 10-15 years or are second-generation get into this role and feel lost, like, "I'm not who I wanted to be anymore." How do they get what they want and remain true to themselves? Like, take a vacation or go home at 5:00 pm occasionally?
Chuck Wachendorfer:
This is about leading by example. I want people to want my job. Whether I'm a business owner or a senior executive, the only way my company grows is if people want to take on more responsibility. And who can blame them for not wanting my job if I work all the time, have a miserable family life, have no balance, am an alcoholic, or whatever? No one wants that, and I’ll burn out.
I have a responsibility, if I want to grow the company, to have balance in my life because everybody's going to look at me and want my life or not. I want them to think, "This guy isn’t just successful in business—he's got a great life outside of business." That's hard to do.
I heard an interview years ago with Christine Lagarde. She used to run the International Monetary Fund, which lends billions of dollars to third-world countries. And she's a successful attorney and mother of three. Her husband was an ambassador for France. And the interviewer said, “Christine, you have all these accomplishments. Is it possible for somebody to have it all?"
I'll never forget her answer. She said, "Yes, just not all at the same time." Our lives are a marathon, not a sprint. It's great for me to want to build my business, but eventually I need interests outside that to be fulfilled. I say this personally. I had great business and financial success early in my career, but it was at a price, and I had to gear back. I left American Express after 17 years and took two years off because my life was so out of balance.
You don't have to take two years off if you can learn to pace yourself, but that’s easier said than done. Simple and easy are not synonymous. It’s a simple concept that’s hard to employ. That’s something else we do at think2perform—help executives and business owners develop their people and achieve balance in their lives.
Carl Lewis:
I felt similar at one point, and it was a move. I moved to Southern California, something clicked, and I stopped the bad habit of working late. I went home at 5:00 and spent time with my wife. That was it. And things started turning around because the timing was right.
Chuck Wachendorfer:
We interviewed Randy in our book. Randy's a successful guy, still in business for himself, and he was my client. He was telling me how he thought he had about five years left. Randy's only in his late 40s, but he says, "I can't keep doing this. I don't have it in me." I asked what was going on, and he said, "I have 15 balls in the air all the time." I said, "Why don't we work on handing some of those balls to people who work for you?" And Randy said, "But that's my job. My job is to do these 15 things."
I said, "Do you think some of your people want your job?" He said yes, and I said, "Maybe you're denying them an opportunity to see what your job's like. What if you handed off some balls and created growth opportunities for them to learn new things and be challenged?" He thought that was a great idea. He'd never thought about it that way. But that's normal—we do what we've always done. If I’ve always worked 100 hours, I want to work 100 hours. But you can't do that indefinitely and expect to have any satisfaction outside of that. And someday you won't be able to work 100 hours, so you must develop other people and give them opportunities to grow. It also helps us live a life outside of work.
Carl Lewis:
Always a good thing. You wrote this book with your friend, Doug Lennick. And he wrote a book in which he said, "Business success should be built on the bedrock of moral values."
Chuck Wachendorfer:
Yes.
Carl Lewis:
Can you give us context? For me, growing up when I did, I see that whole bedrock moral value thing as a bit lacking in today's business world.
Chuck Wachendorfer:
The firms that get all the attention are the ones that violate those moral values. And Doug's book you're referring to, called Moral Intelligence, was published in 2005. It looked at businesses that followed a moral code and how successful they were. He took nine years to write it. He found that businesses that followed moral values performed better over time than those that didn’t. The list is long. Bernie Madoff, Enron, WorldCom, and plenty more. They'll sacrifice adherence to a moral code to drive profitability and growth, but it's not sustainable.
Doug identified four common moral principles: integrity, responsibility, compassion, and forgiveness. Regardless of location, skin color, gender, religion or lack thereof, etc., humankind believes in those four moral principles. Integrity is doing what I say, standing up for what's right, telling the truth. Responsibility is taking responsibility for my choices and admitting mistakes and failures. Compassion is caring about other people. Forgiveness is about letting go of mistakes—yours and others.
All four of those contribute to business success. When I operate with integrity, I build trust. When I operate with responsibility, I inspire others. When I operate with compassion, I retain relationships. And when I operate with forgiveness, I inspire creativity. Most companies want to grow, but sometimes we have to try new things. When we try new things, we make mistakes. But if we can't forgive ourselves or others, we stifle creativity.
And forgiveness isn’t the absence of consequences. There will be consequences. If I make a mistake, there's a consequence. If I hit somebody while driving, there’s a consequence even if I didn't mean to do it. It’s about letting go and moving on. Lily Tomlin has a great quote. She said, "Forgiveness is about letting go of all hope for a better past."
Carl Lewis:
I like it.
Chuck Wachendorfer:
Those are the four universal moral principles. Not to be perfect, but to commit to in our lives and businesses.
Carl Lewis:
What drew me to your book is the title. This exact phrase is something my father said when I was growing up: "Don't wait for someone else to fix it." He meant it in myriad ways. He believed in taking responsibility for your stuff.
You have eight principles in your book. Can you summarize them for us?
Chuck Wachendorfer:
Sure. First, identify your ideal self. Who do I hope to be on my best day? That's knowing my values. When you ask people if they have values, they act insulted, like, "What do you mean? You think I don't have values?" That leads to the second question: "What are they?" And that's where it gets kind of fuzzy. People say things like honesty, integrity, or family. If I know my values, I can use them to guide my decision-making.
Second, know your real self. Part of the human condition is making mistakes. No one’s perfect, but if I want to change my behavior or become a better decision-maker, I need self-awareness. Back to when I was laying on my bed with no money, no food, no credit—I realized it was my fault, so I had to pay more attention to myself. How do I do that? How do I improve my self-awareness? We talk about that in the book. We give you an exercise called the ‘freeze to improve our self-awareness.’ We’ve all established patterns in our lives; some help us, some hold us back. You must decide which is which. For me, maybe exercise. I don’t do enough. Or, when I get emotional, I make poor choices. It could be many things.
Third, act with integrity and responsibility. Integrity and responsibility are interrelated. If I tell the truth with honesty, it requires responsibility. When I do those two things, I inspire other people and build trust. As Stephen Covey says, "Where high trust exists, things move faster and are cheaper."
Four, be empathetic and compassionate. Empathy is recognizing how other people feel. As a leader, I want people to act on some things we've decided on. First, I must help them change their behavior to do new things. Sometimes, people get stuck emotionally. They get stressed or uncomfortable or anxious, and that can become paralyzing. If I don't recognize that, I can't help them get unstuck. If I recognize you're having a hard time, I’ll ask you about it. "Carl, what's going on for you?" "My wife just fell ill," or "I got in a car accident," or "I'm not sure what you're talking about. I don't understand how this relates to my job." Then, I can act with compassion and help you get unstuck.
Five, decide wisely. The book offers a model you can use. We call it the ‘four Rs’ (recognize, reflect, reframe, respond) to begin making better choices, individually and as an organization.
Six, learn agilely. Let go of what you know. We've heard change is constant. To take advantage of change or anticipate it, I need to let go of what I know.
Seven, achieve purposeful goals. The key is achieving purposeful goals, not just setting purposeful goals. There's a methodology we talk about in goal achievement that involves knowing my key activities. Key activities are things I must do to achieve my goal. We've heard the acronym SMART, for specific, measurable, achievable, results-based, time-bound. That's fine. But what matters in goal achievement—not just goal-setting—is knowing what I must do. In any health goal (e.g., lowering cholesterol, losing weight, running a marathon), there are only two key activities: diet and exercise. And where most of us fall is not knowing the key activities in life. Again, with health as an example: How much diet and how much exercise are we talking about?
Then, we must ask ourselves the acid-test question: "Am I willing to do that?" Because if the answer is no, then what I have is a dream, not a goal. If the answer is yes, I can begin to make progress on that.
Eighth, empower others. That’s about how we think about developing other people to make decisions consistent with where we want to take our organization, our family, and our business and accessing best efforts through engagement.
Carl Lewis:
That sounds like an interesting read. Chuck, if a business leader, CEO, president, etc., wants to change how they operate and reframe themselves and others, how do they start?
Chuck Wachendorfer:
Start with yourself. That's where we start the journey in the book. By paying attention to your real self, you'll notice when you're consistent or inconsistent with who you hope to be.
For me to be more effective with other people or influence their behavior, there’s a leadership logic chain. It begins with me managing my own behavior, which includes me making different or better choices grounded in self-awareness. Aiming to be my ideal self and knowing my real self lets me do a better job of leading by example. I’ll become more influential—and the other six will flow from there.
Carl Lewis:
Thanks so much, Chuck. This has been a great conversation. And for all of you out there, until we meet again, stay connected.