How to Become a More Disciplined Leader with John Gallagher
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
In this insightful conversation with executive coach John Gallagher, I explore the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual disciplines that make leadership teams thrive. We dive into intentionality, the 7D roadmap, and how to lead with impact and excellence.
Intentionality in Leadership
John defines the most important trait of leadership teams as commitment to personal development.
Emphasizes John Maxwell’s Law of the Lid: A leader’s growth limits their team’s potential.
For individual leaders, intentionality is the single most important trait—it involves purposefully setting goals and connecting with team members.
Daily Disciplines for Leaders
Start the day with rituals that support growth and well-being (e.g., reading, journaling, breathwork, exercise).
“10 = 24” Rule: Reading 10 pages a day = 24 books/year.
Small daily actions create compound leadership benefits.
Leaders must schedule and protect time for these habits.
Weekly Leadership Practices
Hold structured weekly one-on-ones with direct reports.
Ask: What’s your biggest win? What’s your biggest challenge? Any hot topics?
Regular team check-ins to review progress and remove obstacles.
Use visible performance metrics—e.g., dry erase boards or dashboards—to maintain alignment and focus.
Monthly Review and Reflection
Monthly reviews provide a pulse check on key areas: revenue, profitability, quality, engagement.
Reflect as a team: What did we do well? What needs improvement? What should we start, stop, or keep doing?
Emphasize course correction instead of settling for missed goals.
Quarterly Strategic Initiatives
Quarterly reviews focus on strategic priorities and marketplace shifts.
Evaluate project portfolios using the 5 D’s:
Deselect, Delegate, Defer, Deconstruct, or Deliver.
Prioritize high-impact, low-effort projects.
Keep strategy agile and ruthlessly eliminate distractions.
The Importance of Deselecting Projects
Leaders must actively stop initiatives that no longer align with core goals.
Too many companies cling to "pet projects" that drain time and resources.
Streamlining boosts productivity and clarity across teams.
Annual Review and Goal Setting
Reflect on past year’s results and cast a vision for the year ahead.
Set bold, stretch goals with clarity for the whole organization.
Conduct succession planning using analogies like the football field or Jack Welch-style performance grids.
Evaluate each leader’s ability to “reach the end zone” based on performance and behavior.
Assessing Leadership Performance
Use a 2x2 grid to assess both results and behaviors (core values).
Focus on addressing the bottom-left quadrant: poor results and poor behavior.
Recognize and develop high performers in the top-right.
Real leaders are accountable for growing or transitioning low performers.
Overcoming Distractions in Leadership
Distraction is the #1 performance killer.
Without discipline, momentum is lost and progress rolls backward.
Leaders often “caretake” underperformers due to likability—this creates long-term damage and demotivates top talent.
The 7D Roadmap for Organizational Growth
Decision – Commit to growth; discomfort must outweigh complacency.
Dashboard – Define measurable metrics (KPIs).
Diagnostic – Identify barriers and defects.
Design – Create and prioritize solution ideas.
Deploy – Execute with clear, tracked disciplines.
Dwell – Reflect and course-correct monthly.
Do it Again – Restart the cycle to drive continuous improvement.
Engaging Teams in Goal Setting
Use sticky notes and visual facilitation to ensure every voice is heard.
Tie individual goals to organizational strategy.
Ownership and engagement increase when people help shape the direction.
The Uncommon Leader's Mindset
Uncommon leaders go the extra mile—like returning stray shopping carts.
They address problems before they cause harm.
Leadership is about making others’ lives better through small, intentional actions.
The Greatest Story Ever Told
True legacy is being remembered for how you made others feel.
Encourage leaders to list 5 people who shaped their life, and strive to be that person for someone else.
“Write a thank-you note to those five people,” John challenges, as a leadership act of gratitude and reflection.
Thanks for listening!
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Mike Goldman (00:02)
John Gallagher is an executive coach, performance consultant, and advisor to some of the world's leading organizations. As founder and CEO of Growing Companies Coaching and Consulting, John has served dozens of organizations and their top leaders at places like IBM, Mitsubishi, Eaton Corporation, Harvard University, and several billion dollar healthcare systems. John specializes in achieving exceptional results
in the area of people development, productivity improvement, profitability and growth. Today we're gonna talk a little or maybe a lot about helping leaders overcome distraction with John, welcome to the show.
John Gallagher (00:47)
Mike, it's great to be on your show. Thanks so much for having me on as a guest. am looking forward to our conversation today.
Mike Goldman (00:52)
Me too, me too from our prior conversation preparing for this. We just said earlier, we should have just recorded that one. It was fun, but we'll do it again and we'll dive a little deeper. So John, in all of your experience, we're gonna talk a lot about leadership today, but I wanna start with the leadership team. In all of your experience, what do you believe is the most important characteristic of a leadership team?
John Gallagher (01:00)
Right.
Yeah, Mike, I love this question right out the gate. mean, getting started. One of the things that I pride myself on is working with leaders who are developing their teams, ultimately put structures and processes in place to have long-term success and impact in the organization. And as I think about that in the order that goes into place, I believe that the most important attribute of any leadership team, regardless of it's the executive team for an organization or a small department team is that the leader themselves of that group is committed to personal development.
inside and working with that team. And what I really mean by that, John Maxwell refers to it as the law of the lid. Okay. Because a leader, without a vision and starting, that with their team to let them know where they're going, if they are capped out and they're not growing themselves, they're not going to be able to grow their leadership team at any level higher than they are as well. So I think it's critical that the leader themselves makes a choice that they're ready to go on that journey with that team.
Once they do that, once they make that hard choice that they're ready to go, I think they have the potential then to create ultimately what is a very successful leadership team.
Mike Goldman (02:24)
Yeah, so important. I couldn't agree more. In fact, when, you know, in my business, I coach leadership teams as a group. But when I do that, I always coach the CEO one-on-one as well. And I use that law of the lid phrase all the time too. If they're not growing and scaling, their team's not going to grow and scale. So that becomes so important. You and I are absolutely aligned on that.
John Gallagher (02:49)
Well good, you told me that there was only one right answer, so I must have had the right, that's a good, that's a great start. I got it, got one for one. One check mark.
Mike Goldman (02:52)
There you go. I always tell my idea. I'll kick you right out of here if you give the wrong answer.
So I want to ask you a similar question since we're going to talk specifically about leaders today. And of course we'll talk about teams as well, but we're talking about leaders. I'm going to ask you the same question about leadership, not leadership team. And I don't know if it's the same answer or not, but what do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leader?
John Gallagher (03:20)
Mike, you touched on it in kind of the introduction, how we're going to have this conversation today. I believe it's intentionality. Okay. Ultimately again, it starts off with a choice of that leader has to make, but they've got to be very intentional at setting the goals and working with the team to set the goals for the organization. Very intentional at building relationships and connecting with each of those team members. And I can tell you when one of the first things that I go in and work with leaders inside an organization, cause I don't like to work with a team.
to your point, you said this, I don't like to work with a team if the CEO is saying, hey, go and develop my team for me. It's got to be something where that leader is immersed and involved in that activity. And so I'm going to look at their calendar and I'm going to ask them how often, how frequently are you meeting with your team members one-on-one and developing them? And how often are you meeting with them as a team to discuss ultimately where you're winning, where your challenges are, and what type of opportunities you have to overcome.
in the organization, but intentionality is a very important word.
Mike Goldman (04:19)
And say more, how do you define that word intentionality?
John Gallagher (04:23)
Yeah. So if I, if I said it like this, good, so let's use the word, just shorten it up and say intention, good intention, which most leaders have. Okay. There's no doubt about it, but good intention without good discipline leads to excuses. Good discipline with good intention though, leads to excellence. And when I think about that from an intention, I think about that from a discipline standpoint, leaders, what are the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual activities that you must do continuously?
Ultimately, that will lead you to success. And if you can identify what those disciplines are, and intentionally I can see that on your calendar and you're making those things happen and you're measuring those things, I believe you get a chance to take your leadership team to the next level.
Mike Goldman (05:08)
So let's dive into that a little bit and maybe I'll, I'm tempted to start with the annual, but I'm actually gonna go the other way. For some reason, my brain is telling me to go the other way. When you talk about kind of that daily discipline, what does that look like for a leader?
John Gallagher (05:25)
Well, let's start off with something very basic. How do you get your day started? I mean, you know, there's, many books out there, that are, talk about, the daily discipline you have or your perfect morning or whatever those things are. But once I identify those types of things, so let's, let's just use me as an example. I believe that reading is a very important discipline for a leader to do to stay ahead. They've got to be continuously developing their own skills.
And so if a leader is investing in reading on a daily basis, that can be very powerful. Too many times I hear, don't have time to really read. And I use the math equation 10 equals 24. And what do mean by that? If I can get a leader to just read 10 pages a day in a book, maybe Mike, it's going to be your new book coming out in October, but 10 pages a day, most leadership books that you see out there today, 220, 240 pages.
You're going to read somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 to 24 books in a year. It all starts with that daily discipline of 10 pages a day. Another one of those daily disciplines for me, especially as a leader, because it's not just about the work, is taking care of self. So are there breathing exercises that I do frankly on a daily basis that help me from a self care, emotional standpoint and mental standpoint? Is there daily exercise I need to do?
to make that happen as well, to make me be the healthy leader that I need to be. So I'm looking at those types of disciplines that those leaders have to take care of themselves that will allow them, provide them the opportunity to develop their teams as well.
Mike Goldman (07:00)
And so important and it's so easy to make the excuse, wow, it was busy today so I didn't get to read or I didn't get to meditate or I didn't get to exercise or I didn't get to journal or whatever the discipline is. But the daily was like, well, so wake up 45 minutes earlier. There's a pretty easy answer. Now I say that like I do it perfectly every time and I screw it up too, but.
You know, what I find is if, and there is kind of a ritual I follow in the morning, which includes journaling and part of journaling is not a to-do list, but it's kind of, know, what are the three most important outcomes that I'm committed to achieve today? Or the four most important outcomes, or some days maybe it's one real outcome. And I find the days that for whatever reason where I don't do that, and thankfully those days are pretty rare.
John Gallagher (07:30)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Goldman (07:52)
Those days don't go as well. I may work hard, but at the end of the day, I look back and I'm not sure whether I was productive or not. So sometimes it is those simple daily things.
John Gallagher (08:03)
I think it is. And you you, you touched on a word and use the word, ultimately perfect. First of all, I don't go in working with a leader to tell them, these are the things you need to do. What I'm looking for them to help me with is if I do these tasks, these daily tasks, their discipline, sometimes I refer to them as drivers, to ultimately receive the outcomes that they're looking for. But if you go through a month and let's say you did, you had a daily goal. You wanted to read 10 pages a day for 30 days, but you only got there.
15, you only do that 15 times in the month of, month of June. Okay. That's just a starting point. Ultimately, you then have a weekly discipline of reflection. says what went well for me this week, what could have gone better? Or you reflect on a monthly basis that allows you to take a look and get you closer to that. We're not going to be perfect, but you know, the infamous Vince Lombardi, uh, who, uh, the former football coach, long time ago, the Green Bay Packers says, I may strive for perfection and never get there, but on the way.
I might get to excellence. And that excellence, as I teach others, only happens on purpose. I got to have it in my schedule. I got to say I'm going to do it. And then I got to measure myself to it.
Mike Goldman (09:09)
So let's keep going with this. And I like this idea of looking at the disciplines. We talked about daily, and certainly that's not an inventory of everything, but you gave us some thoughts on what that might look like. What about weekly? What are some of the, and you already talked about reflection might be something you're doing weekly on, did I hit my daily goals? What else should a leader be thinking about on a weekly basis as a regular discipline?
John Gallagher (09:23)
Mm-hmm. Great.
Well, again, back to that intentionality component. If they're now developing themselves, but they're also developing their team, you know, I see the need to work with their individual team members, at least on a weekly basis where they sit down with them for some time period. could be 15, 30, 60 minutes, whatever that means. But they're ultimately as the leader looking to them and saying, where has been your biggest win in the last week? What's been your biggest challenge?
And ultimately is there a hot topic that you need to discuss with me? Cause if you don't have that intentional meeting, look back to the word distraction you talked about, what you end up with is somebody knocking on your door and saying, you got a minute? They do that on Monday morning. And we know that frankly, that minute never lasts a minute. goes into 15, 20 minutes and it doesn't work. But if you've got that intentional, regular governance time with each of your direct reports where you're listening to them with some of their challenges, that can be very powerful.
And then ultimately what allows you to do as the leader is not to do the work, but to find out where they need you to help remove barriers, things that are getting their way, whether it's a political type barrier or whether it's a relationship type barrier that they might need support in, or frankly, a process barrier. They need a structure or process or a tool to do their job better. And if you're meeting with them on a regular cadence to get that done, I think that that provides something that's even more powerful. Reviewing your results as a team.
on a weekly basis should be something that you're doing as well. I know that ultimately you'll get your financials normally on a monthly basis. That's probably a monthly review. But again, what were some of those commitments that you had, whether it was a number of phone calls you're going to make or relationships you're going to build or widgets you were going to build. Ultimately, I see folks who do that powerfully by tracking on a dry erase board.
and they're just looking at those results every week so that they don't have to wait until the end of the month to find out if they're going to make it or not. I used to have my teacher in the lean manufacturing space. He would tell me he could walk around the shop floor, and I believe it, and he could look at all the performance boards where people were measuring hour by hour how many pieces they were making, and he could walk that and figure out within plus or minus 5 % what the financial results were going to be for the month just by walking around and looking at the performance.
And that's when you really start to get good with that discipline. And you don't have to wait till the end of the month to get the information you need.
Mike Goldman (11:53)
I want to go back to the one-on-ones and I'm so glad you brought that up because so many leaders that I work with initially make two mistakes. One mistake is they say they don't have time for the one-on-ones so they don't do them or they schedule them and they blow them off or they have one-on-ones but there's no structure. And I remember Marcus Buckingham who wrote a bunch of great books like First Break All the Rules and
Now discover your strengths and nine lies about work. I saw him do an interview a number of years ago and he said something that I use and loved. He said, you know, there's all these debates on how many direct reports should somebody have? Should it be a flat organization? And you can have 15 direct reports. Should you have no more than four people report? You know, what's the right answer? Of course there's no perfect answer. But he said, how many people
John Gallagher (12:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mike Goldman (12:45)
Can you have productive weekly one-on-one sessions with every week? And if the answer is you could do that with 20 people, well, you know what? Maybe you could have 20 people reporting to you. If your answer is, don't have time to have regular weekly sessions with anybody one-on-one every week, then you should have nobody reporting to you. And I agree with that. That's how important I believe those one-on-one sessions are.
John Gallagher (13:05)
Hmm
I think they are as well. When they tell you, don't have the time for that, I'm going to say, sit down and let's look at your calendar because you don't have time not to do that. Back to that law of the lid. If you're not working with them and understanding where their challenges are, one of two things is going to happen with those team members that you have. They're going to grow on their own. Okay. And they're going to either leave your organization or ultimately they're going to slide back because you're not recognizing, you're not giving them the time they need to grow as well.
So if you don't find the time to be intentional and sit down and review that with them, you're going to get exactly what you deserve with your team members. But if they get out ahead of you, they're going to leave. They don't leave businesses because they find the grass greener on the other side. They leave because they're not getting the support that they need to, to continuously grow in where they are.
Mike Goldman (14:01)
So we talked about daily, we talked about weekly. What about monthly? What should the disciplines be?
John Gallagher (14:05)
Yeah, so I think that the
monthly tends to be those disciplines of again, the review looking back. Ultimately you're saying how did we do this month with regards to revenue? How do we do this month with regards to profitability? How do we do this month with regards to quality and people engagement, those high true north domains of quality, cost, service, and people. You can look at those as outcomes because you usually don't get the outcomes on a daily basis.
But you can also review at the same time. Now we can sum up the weekly meetings and say, did we hit the disciplines that we committed to? Well, what it allows you to do again on a monthly basis is to reset for the next month as well and reflect monthly as a team and say, what did we do well? What could we have done better? And next month, what do we need to keep doing, start doing or stop doing to turn this thing around? Oftentimes we miss a metric. We miss a metric like revenue or a miss a metric like
profit and we say, Oh, let's let that go by. Well, I'm coaching organizations. It's not, I want the checkbook balanced. You know, if we can make one change happen, how do we get that miss back over the next 11 months ultimately so that we can still achieve our results? I'm not willing to give it away once the month goes by. How do we get it back? So it allows us to reset, not necessarily lower the goal, but how do I get that back in the future? So it's a good time to reflect and it's a good time to set action for the next 30 days as well.
Mike Goldman (15:30)
What about quarterly?
John Gallagher (15:32)
Well, quarterly, I like to review strategic initiatives on a quarterly basis. As an organization, you can do anything you want. You just can't do everything you want. Okay. I've been too many times where I go in organizations and say, tell me what are the important projects that you're working on? I went to an organization that 50 salaried employees and they listed out 45 projects that they are working on as a staff. like, there's no way you can do 45 projects effectively. Let's take a look at your metrics.
and bounce them off of those strategic initiatives, making sure they're having the impact on the metrics that you wanted. Okay, so I want to review those strategic initiatives. I want to understand is there some change in the marketplace that would require us to frankly put a pause on one of these activities or accelerate another activity or go in a different direction, but let's make sure we're working on the right things. And ultimately each one of those strategic initiatives, and I'm not talking about metrics.
like initiatives where you may be implementing a new software system or you may be implementing a new problem solving methodology, whatever that is, but you're ultimately asking these five different questions based on the results. Do I need to deselect this activity? It's not working. Do I need to delegate this to someone else to make it happen? Do I need to defer it because of the marketplace? I need to push this out for six months and stop putting resources on it that are not getting us anywhere.
Or do I need to deconstruct it? Do I need to make this initiative a little bit smaller to making sure, to make sure I'm doing on the right, all the right things. And then make sure you have ownership ultimately for that activity that you're talking with as well. You, you as the leader or the executive sponsor, but your teams that own those projects, do they have the resources they need to get it done?
Mike Goldman (17:16)
Yeah, I could remember back first half of my career was in management consulting, working for these big consulting firms. If you weren't a multi-billion dollar company, we wouldn't even look at you as a client. we would, these companies would spend millions of dollars on us creating these five year plans that with these big binders and beautiful graphics and, you know, at some point PowerPoint, some of it was pre PowerPoint, I think, but, just, and, and,
John Gallagher (17:21)
Hmm. True.
Mike Goldman (17:45)
They looked great. Everybody loved them. was ownership for about a minute or two. And then three, five months later, they sat on a shelf and gathered dust because the world changed. But they weren't going to do planning again for until for another literally for another two or three years. They'd say, we need another strategic plan. Then companies got smarter and they were doing it every year. But the smartest companies, John, I think, to your point, are planning every quarter.
John Gallagher (17:53)
Yep, that's right.
Mike Goldman (18:11)
because the world changes too fast to think you're going to come up with an annual plan and follow it all year. So I love that you talk about, not that you're identifying those new strategies every quarter, sometimes you are, but man, you're going back and looking and adjusting and planning your priorities every quarter. I love that.
John Gallagher (18:11)
Mm-hmm. yeah.
Yeah, you got to be
ruthless. mean, that's the thing that we too many organizations, they get these pet projects rolling around and nobody wants to say, Hey, we're not going to work on that. Or once we get started, we're too far into it. So we can't stop now. No, just disagree. If you wouldn't have invested in it six months ago and you then when you won't invest in it, you wouldn't invest in it now, then stop that project. I mean, stop pouring good money after bad and something that's just not going to work for you.
Mike Goldman (18:52)
Yeah, and you said two things that were important for the quarterly. talked about one of your Ds there was Deselect the project. And I think when we talked about monthly discipline, you said like a start, stop, keep kind of exercise. And I love that. In fact, I modified the start, stop, keep exercise. And I just call it a stop exercise. I, know, yeah, and every time I get together with a leadership team, and I'm sure when they get together without me,
John Gallagher (18:58)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Right? I mean, some of those stops are the most important ones you can go to.
Mike Goldman (19:21)
every time they're adding stuff to their to-do list. Because they're smart people, they're coming up with new ideas, new things happen, but it's not very often that they take stuff off of the list. So to your point, you have to proactively take stuff off of the list or you wind up, like you said, with 45 different projects going on, which is probably 42 too many. What about annually? What are the important disciplines annually for a leader?
John Gallagher (19:43)
Absolutely.
Sure. Yeah, there's a couple of things annually, because I think it's both a people and an organization time for review. So ultimately it's a chance to reflect on the performance for the year. And my preference is that you don't wait until the last month of your fiscal year, because it helps you to set the budget for the next year. But you're reviewing the past year, how we're doing on the results that we set, the goals that we set as an organization. Again, what did we do well? What could we have done better as a team, as a leadership group, and as an organization overall?
So you're, you're also looking to cast the next year's objectives. is there something new that's going on inside the organization? but that's very important such that you set those new goals and hopefully you have a growth mindset in that you're looking to, have some double digit growth opportunities to challenge yourself inside of that space to stretch a little bit. So one is to set your, goals for the, for the next year that allows you to inform your budgeting process.
you know, depending on the size of your organization creates a presentation for your board or for your leadership team that says, this is where we're going next year. It creates and cast a vision for your team. So they understand the impact and where you want to go as a team as well. But the second piece that I really have folks work on on an annual basis is the assessment of their leadership team. Not just the ones that are inside that room, but the next level down as well with regards to succession planning.
Where are each one of the leaders in our organization and are they growing? I often use a football field analogy when I work with this group, but I'll have them place in essence, each of those team members on the football field where they think they are today. Are they at the 20 yard line or the 30 yard line in terms of trying to drive the ball down the field and then ask them the question in the next 12 months or 18 months, how far do you think this leader can get you if you work on their development? Can they get you to the 50 yard line?
Or is this someone that can get you to the end zone and score a touchdown? Cause if they can only get you to the 50, you got to understand as a, as a leadership team, what are we going to do to help develop that person? Or what are we going to do to make a change and put somebody else in that seat? If we're getting mediocre results. The other exercise I've done, uh, much like a Jack Welch matrix, I create a two by two matrix where the bottom, the X axis would be the results. They either don't get results or they do get results. The Y axis is behaviors.
They follow the core values of the organization. They either do or they don't. And ultimately you're obviously looking for those who get results and who are in the behavior column at the plus side as well, the top right corner. Many times organizations will find themselves with 15 to 20 % of their leaders in that bottom left quadrant. They don't get results and they don't exhibit the behaviors that you're looking for as a team. That's a huge opportunity in both of those quadrants.
You better be recognizing the plus pluses, giving them the opportunities they need or the next opportunity they need to grow. And you better be addressing the behaviors and the results of that lower left quadrant, holding them accountable inside of that space. I'll never forget a conversation I had with a leadership team and a large healthcare institution. And I did this with the chairman of the board, this exercise. And I just asked him, know, spot straight out. said, where, how, what percentage of the leaders in this organization do you believe?
are in this lower left quadrant where they don't get results and they don't have the behaviors that you're looking for. And he said 50%. And I was taken back. I was as a consultant, as a coach, and I had another colleague in the room with me. kind of made eye contact with him. So we carried on with the conversation a little bit. And I just said at the end of the meeting, I said, I just want to confirm now after we've had a chance to discuss this, do you still believe you have 50 % of your team in the lower left quadrant? He says, yeah, I think so now.
What that says is that either the team is very poor or that chairman of the board is having a dereliction of duty with regards to what he's responsible for to make sure the organization has the resources they need to be successful. That's probably one of the most extreme cases that I've seen, but I like to talk to folks at the end. Let's assume they had 20 % in that lower left quadrant, one out of five. said, imagine if that, what's the difference your organization, if you just had 10 % in that lower left quadrant.
what the impact could be if you move them in another direction or make a change inside the organization because it's not linear. It's exponential in terms of the results that can happen when you put the right people in the right seats.
Mike Goldman (24:20)
Yeah. And there's a great philosophy from Kip Tindell that I always quote, who is the founder and CEO for many years of the Container Store. And he talks about his one equals three philosophy. One equals three says one superstar performer equals the productivity of three mediocre performers. And by the way, you're talking about people on the lower left that are not even mediocre.
John Gallagher (24:43)
Right. And not even more,
Mediocre. Yeah, exactly.
Mike Goldman (24:45)
But man,
I tell people like, if you take that equation, that means you could pay your superstars double what you pay your mediocre performers and still get a better return on investment. So I love that. fact, you mentioned my new book earlier coming out in October, it's all about what you just talked about. The whole book is focused on measuring that kind of performance and dealing with it. So that's near and dear to my heart.
John Gallagher (24:56)
Absolutely.
Hmm.
Mike Goldman (25:12)
When, when John, when we look at all of these disciplines and, I loved, I didn't know we'd go in that direction until you answered the question earlier. And I'm like, yeah, let's look at it daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. When you look at all those disciplines and I don't think any of those are rocket science, but obviously knowing what they are and doing them are very different things. What, what do you believe?
is the biggest thing or maybe the biggest one or two things that hold leaders back from implementing those disciplines and becoming the leaders they need to become.
John Gallagher (25:48)
Great question. And I wonder if this is in your book as well, but it's something that I often talk about. There's many different ways. Again, I say distraction is the biggest enemy in terms of performance inside of an organization. You know, one of the things that I talk about often, these disciplines done correctly. If I roll, you know, if you imagine rolling a ball or rolling a rock up the hill and the rock is the problem, but you're improving it. And over time you're pushing it up the hill and you're reaching closer to your goals.
And then we get distracted as an organization to start working on the next team. We walk away from that rock and it rolls back down the hill. And frankly, sometimes it doesn't just stop at the bottom of hill. It rolls back further and we end up in a worse space. So the disciplines allow you to put a wedge in that performance, okay, that holds the ball where it was with the effort that you put in place. But if you don't put the standard work in place to review those disciplines visually,
to watch those metrics on a regular basis and understand what you measure, you can manage, you're going to find yourself back in another position. So I think organizations don't do a good enough job at setting smart goals, timely, Measurable that they can, they see that happen because they're like, we'll get that done. Especially we'll say midsize organizations somewhere in neighborhood of 50 to a hundred employees. You know, they're like, we'll just, we'll just do okay. But we move to the next project.
and don't realize why our results backslide inside the other areas. So that distraction is one of those things. But let's talk about this from a pure leadership standpoint and relationship. Oftentimes, one of the things that gets in the way is a word I like to use is caretaking. And that's not necessarily a good word in terms of caretaking. But someone might be sitting in that lower left box, but frankly, they might be somebody that people really like.
And so what I ended up doing is I ended up doing their work to try and get things done. And so I can't get my work done or worse than that. I allow poor performance from that individual. Okay. And I rationalize for them. And we know what the word rationalize is. That's rational lies. Okay. We make stuff up for them to cover up for some of their poor performance. And again, back to that evaluation of the ones in the top right quadrant, they're going to get tired of seeing that you're caretaking for that individual or individuals.
and they're either gonna backslide themselves into another quadrant or they're gonna leave.
Mike Goldman (28:09)
John, you've got a 7D roadmap. Hit that for us at a high level because my understanding of that is that might give us some of the tactics we need to make sure we're following these disciplines. So tell me a little bit more about the 7D roadmap.
John Gallagher (28:25)
Yeah, so let's kind of walk through them again. It starts off just like I started off the very beginning with regards to the leader, but it's all to me, it's all to me the decision that the organization makes that they need to do better. One of the things that I talk about within that decision and I'll get to the other six here real quick, but you know, one of the quotes that I use is that an organization has got to realize that the displeasure of remaining the same is greater than the discomfort of the change itself.
Okay. It's complacency. It's the lure of success. We're doing good enough. Don't worry about it. Just relax. And the inside of an organization that's going to continuously grow, they've got to have that continuous improvement mindset, a little discontent for the status quo, if you will. But so it's first making that decision that they want to grow. And then ultimately it's creating the dashboard after they make that decision. So what are the metrics? What are the key performance indicators?
that are going to help them measure whether or not they're winning or losing. After they have those metrics that are set, they're smart, they can measure, then they need to ultimately do a diagnostic. So what are the things that are getting in our way? What are the defects in our processes that are keeping us from achieving these goals that we want to do right now? That could be a plus delta type activity. Again, what's going well, what isn't going well. That could be a fishbone analysis. A lot of different ways to look at that.
in terms of creating that diagnostic and different tools. it's certainly because too often we want to jump to the solution first when we don't know what the real problem is that's keeping us from getting there. So after we do a diagnostic, after we do an assessment with where our challenges are, then we want to design a solution. Okay. This is something I think of this. So I talked about, can do anything you want. You just can't do everything you want, but you're thinking about ideas. If I, if I exercise three days a week, then I am going to lose weight. If I eat.
less french fries, then I'm probably going to lose weight as well. Same thing goes on for an organization also. If I do certain things, then I'm probably going to be moving toward my target and understanding that. So I'm designing solutions, but I'm also prioritizing them at that stage. Whoever said all ideas are good ideas didn't run a business very much. We got to be able to process in terms of what the effort is to make that idea and what the impact on the metrics are.
So it's another, it's another matrix. want those things that are lower effort, higher impact that we're going to go forward with, with regards to assessing those ideas that are in the design. And you got to deploy it. That's where the disciplines come in. How are we going to measure daily, weekly, and monthly that we're doing those things? Okay. So that's the fifth step. The sixth step is dwell. It's reflect on some periodic basis. I talked about a monthly, which I would suggest that at a minimum with regards to a team.
What's going well and what isn't going well back to again, the keep, stop inside of that step six and step seven. Once you think you're done, you've just begun step seven is do it again. Okay. So it's a cycle. It's not a process that ends at a certain point. It's going through that process again, starting right back at, Hey, we got the decision again. We got to make to start moving forward and got to get better even further. often use double the good half the bad as something that organizations should be shooting for.
or they'd be thinking about perfection, but ultimately, you know, looking to say, how do I cut the gap in half each year moving toward perfection versus trying to get to perfection and putting your organization into a panic zone because the goal was so far out there, they can't see how to do it.
Mike Goldman (31:57)
And how do you specifically work with leaders and or with teams to implement these things?
John Gallagher (32:04)
Yeah, they think I own a stock in 3M because I love to get these ideas on sticky notes and put them up on the walls and be able to move them around. That's there's value in being able to move them around. But first of all, it is a team. It's not just sitting down with the leader and saying, your goals. No, it's putting the team together and say, let's work on the vision that the leader is set and help the leader, him or her to in essence set their metrics going forward. Because if I can get them engaged and bought into that process,
then I'm going to have much more chance of success because they're going to feel connected to it. And so another thing that sticky notes does inside of a facilitation exercise, oftentimes one person will blurt out an idea and two other people say, yeah, that's what I thought it was. That should be the idea where sticky notes allow us to get, Hey, you write down your ideas and I'm going to have each of you present them one by one so that I hear everybody's voice in this process. They get a little frustrated and they see wallpaper up on the walls, but when they're done, they're like, wow.
don't think we ever would have gotten there if we didn't have that exercise to have everybody's voice involved in it. the sticky note, I don't own stock in 3M, but the sticky note and Sharpies are things that allow everybody's voice to be heard to connect. And then that team can start to cascade it down to their teams with a very similar process. Ultimately that if you get it down to the lowest level employee in the organization, they ought to be able to tie a string to their goal that they have.
all the way up to the organization's goals and walk their way through it and get a connection. If they can't get a connection all the way up to the organization's goals, then we may have the wrong goal for them. Because we want them, first of all, to have knowledge of what the organization's goals, but also to understand what their impact is on the organization as well
Mike Goldman (33:46)
So do you work with a team throughout the year to actually do these things or do you teach them how to do it and then they go and do it themselves? How do you normally work with a client?
John Gallagher (33:58)
That's a good question. It's great. mean, those that I do my traditional consulting with, I have a length of client engagement that I work with them on average about 44 months. So I'm teaching them a process and methodology. I'm a facilitator through that journey. And I often have someone in their organization who's responsible for learning because I'm not designed to be there forever, but it ultimately becomes if it's lean, Kaizen philosophy, the sensei is there to see one, do one, teach one.
So they see me doing it and then I let them be up in front of the room after a certain period of time and I observe them doing it. Okay. And then I know they become an expert so now they can teach it to somebody else in their organization. So I often, I love to refer to it as the Nanny McPhee. When you need me but don't want me inside your organization, then I must stay. When you want me but don't need me in your organization anymore, then I got to go.
because when the student is ready, the teacher will arrive and they'll get those things done that they need to.
Mike Goldman (34:59)
You've also got a podcast and interestingly enough, I'm asking you the questions today and tomorrow we're going to record your podcast and you're going to get to ask me questions. And it's called The Uncommon Leader. What does it mean to be an uncommon leader?
John Gallagher (35:05)
That's right, we're going to flip the script on you.
Love that. You look at those disciplines, right? The way we talked about you look at these different methodologies that I've talked about. And when I think about uncommon, I love to refer this to a story because it's just a little bit of that one more extra. I use a shopping cart analogy inside of a parking lot at a grocery store. When you're walking around and you see these shopping carts that are sitting and wandering aimlessly inside the parking lot.
That's common for folks to leave those in there because, it's going to take me an extra 50 steps to take it. I can just leave it here just as easily. I'm not going to realize what the problem is, but the uncommon leader picks someone else's problem up. If you will, it makes a difference in the world and says, I'm going to go ahead and take that back to the shopping cart, corral or inside the store. Because I know that if that cart stays here, if that problem stays around inside the organization, it's liable to cause another problem.
So that uncommon leader can see just a little bit further than the common leader can see. And they're going to take that extra step. It's one more rep in the weight room that they need to do. It's one more step in the parking lot to return it and make a difference for someone else. The uncommon, the common leader is kind of focused on self. The uncommon leader is saying, what's the difference in the world that I can make through this activity.
Mike Goldman (36:35)
So in going with that theme of making a difference, the last thing I want to ask you before we wrap up is when we initially talked, I wrote down greatest story ever told, about how to make sure to ask you about that. What does that mean when you talk about the greatest story ever told? What does that mean?
John Gallagher (36:53)
Yeah, it's a methodology that I use to have leaders ultimately design, if you will, their life plan. But let me give you the example behind it. I mean, I think about the greatest story ever told. First of all, as a man of faith, I believe that the greatest story ever told was the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And we just went through that in terms of recording this close to Easter time. And so don't want to get too, it's funny, I saw that movie from 1965, the name of it for the first time this week was called The Greatest Story Ever Told. I'm like, I hope they don't think I tried to.
steal that as I go forward. either way, don't think they're worried about it. If it was made 1965, 60 years ago that I use it now, but I think about it in terms of impact, in terms of legacy. And I use this exercise that I take leaders through and I asked them, I use a quote that says, you people won't remember what you did. They won't remember what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel. And so I ask them, you know, can you name the last five Pulitzer Prize winners in science? Because they wrote, right. And they said a lot and they were successful and rarely can anybody name.
one Pulitzer Prize winner, or in terms of what they did, I asked, know the last five most valuable players of the Super Bowl? Because they're very famous, right? They've been, they make a lot of money and you would think folks can remember that. And even those that are sports minded often forget who the last five Super Bowl winners were. So the quote is correct so far. They won't remember what you said. They won't remember what you did. But then I asked those individuals, tell me the names of five individuals who've made a positive difference in your life
in your life, not the last five years in your entire life. So they may go back 50, 60 years, depending on how old each of them are. And it goes down immediately, really fast. Some of them from a long time ago. And I talk about that as a leader. said, you want to talk about the impact you want to have. Someone else is going to be asked that question one day. And they're going to write your name on their list. And to me, that's the greatest story ever told as a leader is that I've had an impact on an individual.
So all the way back to that word intentionality at the start. Can you identify those five individuals who are going to write your name on their list? Go out and start building relationships with them today. Because if you can do that intentionally, whether it's just having coffee with them or whatever that is, go out and do that. That's the greatest story ever told. And then, oh, by the way, those five people that you wrote down who have had a positive impact on your life, write them a note and thank them and let them know that you.
appreciate what they did for you and how they made you feel. Because that's something as a leader, and we can talk about profit and revenue and all those things all the way along, but the greatest story ever told is when you make a difference in somebody's life, absolutely.
Mike Goldman (39:29)
Love it. That's great challenge to kind of end this with. So John, if people want to find out more about you and the work you do, where should people go?
John Gallagher (39:40)
I thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Love what you're doing with this podcast. Let me just say that to start and thank you for the opportunity to share with your listeners. Easiest place to find me is coachjohngallagher.com. You'll find all the information there you need to connect with me on the different social media platforms. You can find the podcast and my weekly champions brew blog as well that I talk about and add value to others ultimately designed to inspire, encourage and equip you to be the leader you were called to be.
Mike Goldman (40:07)
I always say if you want a great company, need a great leadership team. John, thanks for helping us get there today.
John Gallagher (40:13)
Mike, thank you very much as well.