Episode 43 - Accountability for Business Owners and Leaders
Craig Anderson :
Hi, welcome to Q&A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Craig Anderson.
Lou Quinto:
And I'm Lou Quinto.
Craig Anderson :
Today, Lou and I are going to be discussing how a small business owner can improve accountability. One of the biggest challenges and opportunities when you go out on your own is there's no one to tell you what to do, which is great, except there's no one to tell you what to do. So if you don't pay attention, you start to lose track of, "Am I really shooting to hit all my longterm goals?" So today, we're going to break it down into three areas of how you can help to build and improve accountability for yourself as a small business owner.
Craig Anderson :
The first area we're going to talk about is vision and objectives and how those can help you become more accountable to yourself. The second is mindset and getting your mind wrapped around the long term for your business. Then the last piece, when all that fails, finding accountability partners and the various ways that you can do that. So Lou, why don't you go ahead and kick us off with vision and objectives?
Lou Quinto:
Well, it sounds so basic. How can you be held accountable to something personally, or if you've got a mentor, if you don't have a vision and objective of what you want to do? I've been in business now myself for over 25 years, and that vision, that objective is what keeps me accountable. It's the beacon, it's the lighthouse that's standing there on the shore that keeps me going, to make sure I'm going in the same direction that I'm supposed to do. If you don't have a good vision and objective, not only having a good vision and objective first, but also constantly reviewing that objective and that vision to make sure that it's in place with what's going on today and it hasn't been static, like for me, over 25 years, things changed. In order to be accountable, you really need to have that ... I'll call it objective, a goal. You need to have that goal of what your business, what you want to provide when it comes to services, when it comes to products.
Lou Quinto:
After that, you have to sell your services and your products, that requires then good planning. Those plans also become part of that accountability. But if you don't do that, then you can't be accountable to anything because we have no measurement.
Craig Anderson :
Right. As the great philosopher Yogi Berra said, if you don't know where you're going, find yourself someplace else. That's what really happens, I'm shocked. I do my work with business owners to help build business plans for them, one of the hardest questions is, what do you want your company to look like in three to five years? It's tough when you're a small business owner, depending on where you're at in your cycle, you may be very wrapped up in so much of just getting the work done, but you've got to set kind of a standard or a ruler say, "Am I moving in the right direction?"
Craig Anderson :
We've talked about this before, Lou, just in trying to adjust your business through the changes in COVID. If you don't have a plan, how do you know how far off you are because of the pandemic? You've got to have some kind of measure against which you can check your progress. So it's an important piece, but it's amazing how many people don't really think it through. They're just worried about, "Hey, I'm just trying to get through this month." And if you don't have that North Star, it's a problem.
Lou Quinto:
You said it. Perfectly. Most small business people who aren't sophisticated enough, because as a small business owner. I'm in charge of my books, I'm in charge of my finances, I'm in charge of sales, I'm in charge of marketing, I'm in charge of delivering the product. The one thing, the measuring is what's in my checking account, what's in my bank account. For many people, that becomes their accountability. Am I going to make bale this month? Can I pay the rent? Can I pay the credit card bills off? Do I have enough money for new web design or something like that? You said it perfectly, that tends to be, finances tends to be the one objective and the one vision that most small business owners have that causes them to not be as successful as they can.
Craig Anderson :
Yeah. Well, and you teed it up perfectly for the next topic, which is mindset, and ... because I always like to get it in because it is my word for the year. It's about being intentional about the long term, right? It's not that you're spending 80% of your time thinking about the future, but you are carving out time every day, every week to think about where am I taking this business for the long haul to put in perspective the actions that you're taking today.
Craig Anderson :
There's a methodology I've followed for going in and doing your goals for the year. It's really important once a week just to go at a high level and check through what your goals are going to be for the next two or three years for the business and maybe do a deep dive into those every month, just to keep it in the front of your mind about where it is I'm trying to go. I don't know how you do that for yourself or how some of your clients do it, Lou, but that's helpful to me
Lou Quinto:
You scared a whole bunch of people off right away when you started talking about two, three-year planning. They're worried about the end of the month, they're worried about next quarter. So I always tell people when I first got involved ... Yeah, you wanted to have that two, three-year plan, but also you need it to survive. Particularly as an entrepreneur, you're taking a risk by going into business on your own, and you need to make sure that that current life jacket or life vest is there. That means I can afford to do what I'm doing and still survive.
Lou Quinto:
What I always tell people that are going into business for the first time is two to three years out scares you. Start with the next quarter and come up with the plans for the next quarter. Then once you get used to the next quarter, then go to the next six months and then go to the year. Then once you're used to the year, then you can start looking out two, three years.
Lou Quinto:
Don't think all of a sudden, you're going to sit down and come up with this business plan for three years because I promise you ... and Craig, you know, as well as I do, it's going to sit in a drawer because it really is like a Stephen King novel to many new business owners or even business owners that have some tenure. That two to three-year plan, particularly during these COVID times, is so scary to them. They just want to make it through the next quarter. They want to make it till December 31st.
Lou Quinto:
If two to three years scares you, do the next quarter, do the next six months. You need to grow into that mindset. You're going to learn to walk before you can run. Do next quarter, do next six months, then do the year.
Craig Anderson :
Yeah, a lot of times what I tell my clients, and again, I don't help them build any kind of business plan that's so thick, it looks like a Stephen King novel, all ours are built on one page, but where I try and get their mind to is look, we're in Indianapolis, we're going to Houston, Texas. We know we're going to Houston, Texas and that's what we want to keep focused on. We're going to take out a map and we're going to go out to Google Maps, we're going to plan a route.
Craig Anderson :
Now, we may find there's accidents out there, there's detours, there's going to be things that kind of move us off our primary course, but we can't lose focus on is we're going to Houston. We've got to have faith that we're going to get there. That's why I think the challenge is not so much the long term goal. It's trying to figure out how to get from A to B, to C, to D. If you think you can map out every single detail like that on a three-year journey, that's a pretty tough thing, but you never want to lose faith about where you're trying to get.
Lou Quinto:
... other part, I'll just see, because you use so many road examples too. A lot of people need to look at this COVID situation as just road construction. They're waiting in line right now in traffic. You'll get through. We always get through road construction, but if you come into the COVID is the end all, the be all, you're not sleeping well at night and you're just tossing and turning, you're getting the resume polished up because you're thinking, "I ain't going to last in this and I'm going to have to get my resume out. I'm going to have to get a real job," you need that mindset. This is just road construction right now.
Craig Anderson :
So that gets us to the next, the last topic is accountability partners. How can you build different levels of accountabilities to help keep you locked into ... who's the one who sits down and says, "This too shall pass."
Lou Quinto:
There's informal ways to have that accountability, Craig, as you know, and there's also those formal ways. Those formal ways are hiring people like you and me for executive coaching that you become accountable to. There are some informal ways too. Friends, people, associates that aren't competitors of yours in the business and getting together with them and really making it almost like, "I'm going to make you an accountable to this and I'll make you accountable to what you want to do also." It's like when people are exercising or they want to lose weight or they want to quit smoking, they find someone that they can sit down to that once I say it, "I'm going to lose 10 pounds," it's out there. So if I want to grow my business, it's out there, but you've got to say it to somebody because if you just say it to the wind, it's going to go away in the wind.
Lou Quinto:
So you've got to have, even if it's just a trusted friend that you can sit down with that's going to hold you accountable, and every week or every other week, just say, "How's it coming?" I mean, that's that informal that a lot of business owners need, and you can get it sophisticated by having a board of accountability, trustees, as I like to call them, where you get somebody who maybe hold you accountable for your marketing because they're a marketing expert. Or you've got someone who's holding you accountable for sales because they're a sales expert. What you're doing is you're trying to build this cadre of people that are going to hold you accountable to get the job done. Because if not, you're going to put your head down at night and all you're going to worry about is what's tomorrow going to be like.
Craig Anderson :
Exactly, Lou. As your business evolves, you're going to have different opportunities for those accountability relationships. You may start out with a business partner or another business owner. That may evolve into a coaching relationship, which may evolve into group coaching. Then as your business really starts to grow, you may, as you note, have an advisory board.
Craig Anderson :
I think the key piece for anybody to have in this is make sure the people you are choosing to be accountable are actually going to hold you accountable. They need to have the hard conversation with you, to hold you accountable to the goals. Maybe there's even consequences. Maybe it's just, if you don't hit it, you got to buy the next round of golf or the next round of drinks, but make sure that they get you into a position where there's some consequence for you if you don't hold accountable to your goal.
Craig Anderson :
If your accountability partner's just like, "Oh, it's okay. Life is hard, it's really tough. I know, man," then you don't really have an accountability partner. You just have buddy somebody to commiserate with. So it's really important to make sure the people you choose are the right people to hold you accountable, whether that's on the one-to-one basis or a board.
Craig Anderson :
Lou, what are your key takeaways today?
Lou Quinto:
Okay. When it comes to what business owners can do to be more accountable is going back to, well, as you said, it's that mindset. I truly believe it's a mindset. I spent years talking about critical thinking skills and it comes down to mindset when you're trying to solve a problem. And truly, running a business is like trying to solve a problem on a daily basis. How do I get better? When it comes to that accountability, you need to have that long range plan. Don't start with the three to five years if you've never done it before. Let's do year. Let's look at where we want to be in 12 months. To put that mountain in front of them at the very beginning, their mindset's not going to grow because they're going to revert back. The minute anything happens, it's going to be, "What do I need to do right now?" they're going to lose sight of that longterm vision.
Craig Anderson :
Yeah. The piece that I do like to talk about our takeaway for me today is getting at least part of that vision and mission and objectives out there in front of you. I appreciate what you're saying, but you have to have some sense of where you want it to be. Maybe it's not the right number of dollars, maybe it's not number of employees, but get some idea of where you want to be and start putting that out there. Because if you look at Good To Great where he talks about having faith in that vision of where you're going to go, knowing you're going to have trouble on the way but always having faith that you're going to get there, and that's kind of from a mindset perspective, what's going to help you through the troubled times.
Craig Anderson :
I don't disagree with you that it can be tough, but that's why you hired me, to help you work through all those things and really start thinking about it long term. So great, well, why don't you take us out, Lou?
Lou Quinto:
Okay. Well, we hope you've enjoyed our episode today on how small business owners can improve their accountability. If you liked this episode, please click on the like button, share it with people that are in business for themselves and they want to be able to improve their business. Accountability is one of those areas that they can do.
Lou Quinto:
If you don't like looking at both Craig and my face all the time and you want to just listen to our wonderful voices, all of our episodes are available at your favorite podcast platform. So until next time, I'm Lou Quinto.
Craig Anderson :
And I'm Craig Anderson.
Lou Quinto:
Oh, don't forget. Keep your hands washed and keep your distance.