It’s treated like immutable law. A clever little trap that makes you feel wise for acknowledging the constraint.

I’ve stopped repeating it to my team. In fact, I push back on it directly.

Don’t pick two. Here’s how to think about it instead — and which leadership behaviors make it work.

1. Timeline Is Not Negotiable. Full Stop.

In a service business, your timeline isn’t a preference — it’s your reputation. Every missed deadline is a data point your clients store quietly. They may not say anything in the moment. They may even tell you it’s fine. But missing a deadline is what makes your client look bad to their customers and stakeholders and when the next project they have comes up, or when a competitor shows up, that memory surfaces.

This is where Accountability (#10) is the foundation stone. Solid as a rock. Accountability starts with personal accountability — being true to yourself and following through on your own realistic commitments — and then learning how to hold others accountable. When your team truly respects time, decision-making accelerates and ownership becomes natural.

But accountability alone isn’t enough. You also need to be Proactive & Responsive (#9). The anti-behavior here is being reactive and pressured. And here’s the thing: the emotional energy you project as a leader flows directly to your team. If you’re scrambling, they’re scrambling. If you’re calm and structured, they find their cadence too.

“In structure we find our freedom to be creative and get into flow.”

Leaders who hit deadlines consistently are not lucky. They plan deliberately. They do their #SundaySpecial. They’re never surprised by Thursday.

Which brings us to Smartly Anticipates (#8). Chronic surprise — “nobody told me” — is an anti-behavior I have zero tolerance for. High-performing Rocketeers see it coming. They read the market, they read the project, they read the room. They understand that the warning signs were always there — they just weren’t paying attention.

2. Quality Should Be Acceptable, Not Perfect

This is where people get uncomfortable, so let me be precise.

Acceptable quality is not low quality. It’s not cutting corners. It’s delivering at the standard your client actually needs — not the standard that makes you feel good about yourself.

Perfectionism is a budget killer disguised as professionalism. I’ve seen teams blow their margins obsessing over details the client never asked for and will never notice. The anti-behavior I watch for here is “Finds Excuses / Over Analyzes”— the opposite of Deliberate & Decisive (#7).

Deliberate & Decisive is my personal favorite of the ten behaviors. It’s about synthesizing information quickly, trusting your instincts, and focusing on What’s Important Now (W.I.N.). Watch for the phrase “but what about?” in your team’s vocabulary. That’s the tell. It introduces delays, confusion, and frustration — and it usually comes dressed up as diligence.

The surfer analogy applies here. Expert surfers don’t spend all day analyzing every wave. They check the conditions, make a call, paddle hard. They can adjust mid-wave. The key is committing and moving.

To define what “acceptable” actually means, you need to be a Good Listener (#4). Understand what the client is actually asking for — not what you imagine they want, not what would make a great portfolio piece. Listen. Confirm. Deliver to that standard. Then get out of your own way.

And to execute it well, you need to Empower Others (#3). Micromanagement is the enemy of speed and quality. Trust your team. Clarify the standard, give them the space to hit it, and resist the urge to hover. Leaders who empower others create teams that don’t need to be told twice.

3. The Money Takes Care of Itself — If You Do the First Two Right

Here’s the part the triangle ignores entirely: budget is a lagging indicator, not a leading one.

If you lead with budget — protecting margin above everything else — your service will suffer. Your team will feel it. Your clients will feel it. You’ll start making decisions that optimize for cost instead of for the relationship. And the moment a client senses you’re thinking about yourself more than them, you’ve already started losing them.

This is the anti-behavior of Servant Leader (#6) in practice. Self-centricity — prioritizing your own advancement or your own P&L over the team’s wellbeing and the client’s success — is exactly what erodes the relationships that pay the bills. The African proverb says it well: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

The real model is simpler: relationship and volume are how you make money. Clients stay. They refer others. Your volume grows. Your cost structure improves over time. The economics follow the behavior.

That only happens when your Rocketeers are Developing Rocketeers (#2). Growing your people is not a nice-to-have — it’s the engine of scalable delivery. A team that is constantly developing delivers better, faster, and with more consistency. Deferring development is deferring your business’s future.

And it starts before any of that with being a Team Builder (#1). The clients you’re trying to retain and grow — they don’t just experience your service. They experience your team. Diverse perspectives, deep relationships with team members, a positive climate — these are not soft things. They are how you build a team that clients want to come back to.

The Behavior That Holds It All Together: Stable Confidence

There’s one behavior that cuts across all three legs of the triangle, and it doesn’t get enough credit: Stable Confidence / Calm Presence (#5).

When timelines get tight — and they will — someone on your team will panic. The question is whether that panic escalates or dissolves. Leaders with stable confidence regulate the room. They don’t fake certainty, but they don’t amplify fear either. They hold the line.

Calm is contagious. So is anxiety. Choose deliberately.

The Triangle Isn’t Wrong. It’s Just a Trap for the Short Game.

The “pick two” mental model assumes a static, transactional view of work. One project. One budget. Fixed resources. Zero relationship context.

That’s not how durable businesses are built.

When you shift your thinking to the long game — repeated delivery, growing trust, expanding scope — the triangle stops being useful. You’re not trading off three constraints. You’re stacking the variables in the right order: timeline first, acceptable quality second, revenue as the outcome.

And you’re doing it with a team of Rocketeers who are accountable, decisive, anticipatory, proactive, empowered, good listeners, servant-minded, team builders, developing each other, and calm under pressure.

Ten behaviors. One direction.

Stop picking two.

Luck favors the persistent. Build the team, hit the dates, serve the client — the rest follows.

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Share Leadership Behaviors

Those days are now over. In today’s rapidly moving agentic world, we’re seeing pricing models bifurcate into two new streams: transactional pricing and outcome-based pricing. Transactional pricing works for businesses that can bill per transaction — like postage or a meter, no per-seat pricing needed. Outcome-based pricing is the next model, and we’re already seeing it take hold.

But transitioning from recurring to outcome-based requires relationship — built on empathy, trust, and understanding. That’s hard to do from a transactional mindset. Business relationships built on recurring revenue without clear visibility to outcomes accumulate relationship debt. The T-90 day “will you renew” QBR can no longer bridge that chasm.

I tell my team something different.

“I would prefer our team chase reoccurring revenue — not recurring revenue.”

The Difference

Recurring revenue: A customer is locked in by contract. The relationship is held together by switching costs, not by how good you actually are.

Reoccurring revenue: A customer comes back because the last thing you did was worth coming back for. The relationship is held together by trust.

One is built on obligation. The other is built on results.

One is reactive. The other is proactive and responsive.

What Recurring Revenue Does to a Team

When the whole machine is built around subscription renewals, something predictable happens.

Everyone starts optimizing for the renewal moment — not the value delivered in between. Customer success becomes about saving accounts, not helping customers. The relationship shrinks down to one conversation: the QBR.

And then the QBR gets adversarial:

“90 days out they call an emergency, bring everybody in, and try to convince you to renew. Let’s say you do renew — in the same pattern again, because those machines are built on recurring revenue. 90 days out they’ll look for... there are so many playbooks right now just to ask for discounts.”

The customer is suspicious. The vendor is defensive. Nobody’s talking about value.

Compare that to what happens when you’re focused on outcomes:

“If you manage the relationship well, you will expand and you will keep growing. And that’s reoccurring.”

The Harder Model — and Why It Wins

Reoccurring revenue is harder. There’s no guaranteed floor. Revenue is choppy. Every project has to earn the next one.

But it produces something a subscription can’t: real relationship depth.

When a customer comes back because the last thing you did was excellent — not because a contract forces them — everything changes. They advocate for you inside their company. They bring you new problems. They send others your way.

That’s what’s kept ServiceRocket going for 25 years without outside capital. Not a subscription machine — a relationship machine.

A Word on SaaS

I’m not saying SaaS is broken. I’m saying the cultural pattern that comes with subscription revenue — optimizing for renewals instead of results — is broken.

The good news: the best companies are figuring this out. Palantir leads with services before deploying software. OpenAI is building services teams because enterprise customers can’t go it alone. Atlassian co-sells with partners like ServiceRocket because product-led growth doesn’t reach every corner.

Outcome-led is the direction. The recurring invoice is fine — as long as the relationship behind it was earned the reoccurring way.

Practical Guidance

1. Measure customer health by whether they’d choose you again on the open market — not whether they’re renewing. That’s the real signal.

2. Don’t wait until 90 days out to show value. If you need a QBR to build the case, the work didn’t do it for you.

3. Staff for delivery quality, not account defence. Customer success should be about making customers successful.

4. Price for outcomes, not hours. The conversation changes completely.

5. Let customers coming back be the proof. When they return without a contract pushing them — that’s working.

In this article we’ll build upon our Plan Like a Boss series to include Roles and Cadences.

Roles - How do you actually plan?

Step 1. Roles

The first thing to do is to identify all of the roles that you play in your life. This comes directly from Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits and in more detail in his book First Things First

For me those are:

• Husband

• Father

• Grandson/Son

• Friend

• CEO

• Entrepreneur

• Endurance Athlete

• (Bad)Musician

• Community/Church Member (list the specific organizations you contribute to)

Step 2. For each Role, source the calendar

For each role there are key dates that are repeating, like birthdays or anniversaries. Those are easy to add and capture. Identify and list all your key calendars.

What if I just subscribe to the school calendar, isn’t that the same thing?

NO WAY!! - this is very common, especially for digital natives to want to subscribe and let everything be taken care of by a bot or AI. See Principle 3 from the first article.

Step 3. Add as all-day events

Add these to your Planning Calendar. Use colors that appeal to you, and set repeating. After that source the key dates. E.g. if you have kids at school, get the school calendar and place dates that are important to your planning - these might be holidays and key exam weeks, for example.

Step 4. Add your cadences and trips

You also should plot down your cadences - key monthly meetings, or workshops etc. as well as your known trips - whilst you are at it, this is a GREAT way to plan out your PTO (Vacation/Holiday time). When you can see all your family and other commitments laid out, school vacation days etc, you can easily see when to optimally plan vacations - this will allow you to get the best deals as well because you are planning ahead.

The Cadence

In 2020, David Sacks wrote a substack article called The Cadence. It was very timely and there are some great concepts in his model about how to partition your quarter. Take a read of his article:

Bottom Up by David Sacks

The Cadence

Let’s face it: most startups are a shitshow. Perhaps the most pervasive problem afflicting venture-backed startups, once they achieve a basic level of product-market fit, is managing the organizational chaos that results from rapid growth. Almost by definition, this is a chronic challenge of Series A-C stage startups since the rapid expansion of the tea…

Read more

6 years ago · 118 likes · 5 comments · David Sacks

Super, Middle & Closing Months

In his article, David Sacks called each month of the quarter as the Plan, Launch, Close months. As we’re running a services company, we adapted ours to suit what we wanted. We came up with the following month names:

Super Month - The first month of the quarter. We wrap up results, do our planning, do our executive workshop, board meeting, results all-hands and other similar items. We want a lot of availability to get these items done. Align on projects to be done.

Middle Month - Let everyone get on with their projects and work, some folks plan PTO here when possible.

Closing Month - Let your team finish the quarter and ensure you are doing everything you can to help them close projects, deals and engagements.

Note that these months are just guidelines, there are times things have to move. Don’t get upset if you have to move something!

We also heavily use week numbers. I wrote a short article on this - check it out:

The Planner on the Wall

Seeing the bigger picture is what makes it all work. I used to (and still) love buying an annual planner and stick it on my wall. Back in 2018 I bought a wall planner from UTS. I loved it. So much I even took a photo of it to keep so we could one day look at replicating.

So a year or so later, we did just that. We found a company that printed wall size calendars. So we made our own.

Our leaders placed these on their walls and we had them printed on draw erase paper so you could write on them with markers.

We loved this so much we even added our Super/Middle/Closing month terminology and week numbers to our planners.

But we did run into one problem….

By the time you got to July, half of the planner was not very useful for forward looking planning. Which means we either needed to create next years planner early and have 2 or work out how to make it rolling.

So we made it rolling.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

To make it rolling I moved from the dry-erase marker to the Planning Calendar in Google.

For me this is where I used various systems and found that I like to look at my Planning Calendar a lot. In fact, my assistant and I used it as the primary tool to keep co-ordinated and in sync. A Planning Calendar is best viewed as a planner, Google doesn't have a good way to do this. Initially I used visual-planner | Google Calendar Year View, which is free but recently upgraded to Kalnext to do this Google Calendar Year View - Ultimate Yearly Planning Tool | Kalnext . The team at Kalnext have been incorporating my feature requests and it’s quite awesome now, do check it out! (notice that it looks a lot like my old UTS planner above!)

Hanging it on the wall

For me, the most effective way to keep in sync with my plan was to print it and stick it on the wall. As I shared above, we used to buy planners and use them, even custom ones and there are many versions with whiteboards or the year printed. They are nice but they have a severe flaw in that they get out of date and by halfway through the year, they are half useless. I wanted a way to have a rolling planner, so I opted to invest in a “mega printer” so that I could print in A1 size (60cm wide, or 2ft) and hang it on my wall.

I opted for the Epson “mega printer” (Epson SureColor T2170 24-Inch Desktop Wireless Poster Printer) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0877BBHLP We have one of these in our Palo Alto and also Sydney offices.

Did you say PRINT? WTF? Yup, your brain works well when you see signs in the physical plane, the material world of space and tangibles. Here’s my planner in all it’s glory, next to our COO’s planner. I walk past it many times a day and keep tuning and aligning my world.

You can see from the version that the first 6 months are loaded and the second 6 months are still forming. That’s a normal pattern.

How often do you print this? Do I print it every time it changes?

Once settled, I print this usually every 1-2 months. I use a pencil to write in new items that come up or I’m thinking about, like a potential trip and once a couple of months tick over, I re-print it. There’s no need to print it for each change!

(If you don’t have a printer like this, either use a service that can print an A1 sheet of paper from a PDF (which you export) or send to someone in one of our offices to get to you. Plan to get it done when you fly through on customer trips.). Services can do this for a few dollars (plus shipping).

Plan and adjust and plan and adjust.

Now this is where it gets powerful. When many of our leaders are doing the same process, combined with our industry/partner events and our marketing events, round tables, exec series, customer tours etc we can start to plan and adjust.

Principle 4 - Success is identifying conflicts - far into the future so you have time to adjust.

Success isn’t having a perfect plan, it’s having the ability to maneuver when new opportunities and challenges arise. We don’t know everything ahead of time, just like a surfer doesn’t know all the waves. But the ability to adjust is what it’s all about. If you have a change to an event in 4 months time, the anxiety created is nowhere near as much as the anxiety created when you find out a conflict for today.

I hope this helps! Ask me questions or send me notes, I will work towards a bunch of tips and tricks for Part 3, including how I setup for those that traveling and work internationally.

On top of this, for many years now I’ve been running 2 calendars. One looking forward into the future and one day to day. I call these the Transactional and the Planning Calendars.

The Transactional Calendar

The first calendar is the Transactional Calendar. This is your day-to-day calendar that contains your appointments, meetings, scheduled tasks, blocks and reminders. It’s your default calendar. You plan using Time: hours/minutes. You could also call this your Appointment Calendar.

The Planning Calendar

The second calendar is a new one you’ll create - it’s the Planning Calendar. This is your view ahead of your plan. This one contains WHERE you need to be and things you WANT to attend. You plan in this calendar using all-day and multi-day events. You have finite resources (Time, Energy, Attention, Money) and the Planning Calendar is where you decide where you will place these resources.

Principles:

Principle 1 - Reduce Negative Anxiety.

Ever seen someone that seems so much on top of their stuff that they are always emanating positive energy? Why is that way, when we all get the same 86,400 seconds in a day? Chances are that they understand how to invest in planning so that they can reduce this negative anxiety and instead be more present and creative.

Principle 2 - Reduce Context Switching.

This one is obvious!

Principle 3 - If it doesn’t go through your plan, it won’t go through your brain. AKA Resist trying to automate everything!

• If you automate everything then you just become a slave to the day-to-day without any control of your strategic direction, that is the whole intent of the Planning Calendar.

• Everything that is on your Planning Calendar has to pay RENT, that is it has to have MEANING to make it on your Planning Calendar, if things appear automatically then you don’t OWN it. “I didn’t put that there?” “what is that?” those questions should not occur with your Planning Calendar.

• Your Planning Calendar is for YOU. Your department may have one as well, e.g. Marketing or IT etc, those Department Planning Calendars also should not be (totally) automated and should drive what we want to achieve, and then connect into $$$ BUDGETS. (You can see if things automatically appear then you won’t have control of your spend of resources (Time, Energy, Attention, Money).

• Think about PROACTIVE items to go here, possibly some of your quarterly Goals too.

Why not just use the 1 calendar?

Let’s list a few reasons:

1. Let’s go to Principle 2 - Reduce Context Switching. Often times I’m doing planning as a distinct activity. Usually with chocolate! 🍫 - In fact, one of the key things I do when I am feeling stressed is to go back to my planner. It reminds me of traffic. Traffic can be very stressful - it’s all context. If you’re sitting in the middle of the city in a sea of red lights and honking horns and you are late for an appointment. Traffic is pretty stressful. But sitting on a lookout, casting your gaze over the city and seeing all the lights of that same traffic, it can seem peaceful and relaxing. Just like that, you can use your planner to zoom out and get the bigger picture. You’re going to be ok.

2. I can share my planner with key people without then needing to see all the details. Some examples are family members and coaches. My triathlon coach plans my workouts and he can see my planner so he knows where I’ll be and the bigger rocks on my calendar. So he won’t plan a 4 hour bike ride on the day I’m traveling.

Do you try and slam everything into 1 calendar? Give this system a try. In a future article, I’ll cover the next steps of my process.

Related Leadership Behaviors:

I’m a big fan of using phrases, mantras and reminders to capture and align my team. Every now and then, a moment happens that gets me thinking. This is one of them.

Scenario - we’re working on updating each other at a standup and one of my colleagues says “Great, you do Goal A, I’ll do Goal B! Divide and Conquer!”.

And the Theory of Constraints part of my head immediately screamed “WHAT??”.

Instead we can think about “Align and Conquer”, focus on the biggest bottleneck together, ensure we nail it properly and then align on the next. Seems counterintuitive, but it works.

When I think about a lot of behaviors I’ve witnessed in the corporate world, the desire to carve out a clear piece of work and perform in isolation. It feels a bit like self-inflicted “divide and conquer”, which is a great way to fragment your team and your performance.

“We’re going to go-live next month”

It’s December 1, and you’re thinking to yourself, “do they mean January or December?” There are quite a number of ways that this can be interpreted.

Now, in a personal sense I can see it being awkward to communicate to my wife in week numbers (although it might avoid some confusion at times!) but for now I’d be really happy if in a professional sense we up leveled to communicate in week numbers.

The above would be “We’re going to go live in Week 51”.

Taking this further, we notate this by using the standard as in this example: 2025.W03 for Week 3 of 2025, and so on. This format allows sorting and also it’s amazing for searching. (We also use YYYY.MM for monthly prepending file names - 2025.12 vs “December 2025 update”).

Week numbers are an ISO standard, use the ISO 8601 standard (there are a few options that Outlook gives).

In Google Calendar (and Outlook), you can enable Week Numbers in your calendar too.

Outlook gives you a few fancier options, use the ISO 8601 standard (which is the week with the first Thursday).

When not to use Week numbers:

• Introductory calls

• Social occasions

And when using Week numbers, assume that someone in the group doesn’t know what Week number it is. So you can say “It’s week 23 right now, so let’s target get this live by Week 27-28”. Giving the context is respectful and avoids them losing focus on you and going to their calendar to check what week number it is.

Using Week numbers helps you be a master of cadence and repeatability, allows you to plan proactively and is a giant unlock for clarity.

Over the years I’ve tried many different systems to improve my personal productivity and to align my teams behind what we want to achieve. Many of these systems use advanced techniques but they all have a core around goals or rocks, and then dribble down into tasks.

You start off writing some larger goals at a strategic level. Then you break it down as you build a plan.

Inevitably you fall off the horse on the first or second instance you hit reality and tasks come up that are not aligned with your plan. How rude of the real world!

And whilst some systems work really well for managing tasks. The process for getting the higher level projects and goals setup isn’t as well oiled in many teams (including my own at times!), especially when working across many people.

To assist with this, I use 3 buckets to help provide the context of time and importance. Those 3 buckets are: Now, Next and Future.

Bucket 1 🪣 - Now

In bucket 1 are the items that are important today, and to be done with focus, presence and purpose.

Bucket 2 🪣 - Next

In bucket 2, the Next bucket, is what we are doing after the items in the Now bucket. Keep in mind that they are may not be perfectly sorted or prioritized. More on that soon! But you do want to have these on-deck.

Bucket 3 🪣 - Future

The Future bucket is the most important. What? how can it be? The Future bucket is not just what you do after next, in some sense, it’s a backlog to catch all the Great Idea’s that you have during the day that would otherwise distract you away from doing what’s important. Note that just because something is in this bucket, doesn’t mean it will get done. In some sense, items in the Future bucket are requests for Time, Energy, Attention & Money (TEAM).

Examples

I like the simplicity of having 3 buckets to give myself and those around me context of what I want them to do. It’s easy to make assumptions or expect folks to get what is your intent, but you can help them easily. Examples:

“Let’s get back to the customer now, then work on the new module next”.

“That’s a great idea, let’s put that in the future bucket and review at our planning session later”.

Prioritizing the Next

It’s important to prioritize the next bucket on a regular cadence, for me that’s a weekly process that goes in depth, and I regularly review it 3-4 times a week depending upon workload and projects. You’ll build a sense of how far ahead you need to prioritize and communicate that, look out for the signals.

Challenges

During our team planning sessions, asking everyone to prioritize projects into the 3 buckets is also interesting exercise. Often times you’ll see more projects in the Now 🪣 then are feasible to actually complete. It’s a good indicator that you’re setting yourself up for burnout.

Give these a try and see how you go, especially when trying to align your team quickly so you can get on with what’s important now.

So firstly to answer the obvious, no, I did not use AI in the authoring of this speech!

Why? Because I wanted it to reflect my thoughts, my heart and my soul. I wanted to be of service to you and I wanted it to be genuinely from me

[Note - In October 2025 I delivered an occasional address (graduation speech) at the University of Technology Sydney in October, 2025. This post contains the main content from that address. I’m sure the full address will find it’s way on Youtube at some stage and if/when it does I will update with the link here.]

So as someone that graduated here in Computer Science and living in Silicon Valley, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about AI, Artificial Intelligence and weave that into my talk. At the same time I want to leave you with something that won’t get outdated and might actually be useful to you, even if you don’t work in tech.

So firstly to answer the obvious, no, I did not use AI in the authoring of this speech!

Why? Because I wanted it to reflect my thoughts, my heart and my soul. I wanted to be of service to you and I wanted it to be genuinely from me. In this new world of AI, I will share with you three takeaways for things that you should focus on and develop as your own skills and pathway.

The first is Leadership.

Leadership is a hard thing to describe at times. Many times we expect our leaders to be everything to everyone. But at it’s core it’s about getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. You don’t need a job title to be a leader, and graduating from this great university, you already have a good start. But lean in hard.

Leadership provides clarity when things are cloudy, uncertain or don’t yet exist. It provides a voice for those that aren’t spoken for. Use AI to help with the nuances of your thinking and analysis, but use your gut to drive your reflection and purpose.

The second is Craft.

Love what you do and you’ll not work a day in your life, Mark Twain once told us. But it’s true. Ever see a true artist at the peak of their craft and just be engaged and captured. That level of enthusiasm only comes when you build with love. For many though, the trick isn’t to “find your passion”, it is to “apply your passion”, and apply that ethic to everything you do, and then the universe will bring the right crafts to you. This leads me to the third item.

And the third item is Service.

Pay it forward and be useful. You don’t need to ask “what’s in it for me?” for every opportunity that comes your way. Instead, trust your gut. It doesn’t mean to do everything and be taken advantage of, but it does mean that sometimes you’ll do things because they feel right, or because they help others advance their cause.

My dad, who’s here with us today took a job at IKEA many decades ago as a truck driver, and each of my brothers got weekend jobs there in customer service. As the youngest I was itching to make some money and naturally followed their footsteps. I wasn’t old enough to work legally, and Dad wanted me to learn how to work hard. He made up a job washing his truck on a saturday mornings. I probably did a crappy job, but I know I tried my best and learned how to work hard for others.

I was fortunate enough to give an occasional address in 2018, and back then my final takeaway was to take the time to make things right when you get them wrong.

So today’s bonus takeaway will build upon this. And it’s to allow others to make mistakes. In today’s world, and especially in our local culture here in Australia - we’re quick to confirm the negative. We’re quick to kick someone when they’re down or to cancel them. In some cases those might be deserving, but if we take a mindset that we’re all trying to provide leadership, craft and service to what we do, inevitably we’ll still make mistakes, but it’s the spirit of mateship and helping each other get back up that will lead us all to greater heights.

My team mates at ServiceRocket have had my back many times over the years as I navigated us through some tricky situations, some caused by crazy market booms and busts, some by our own mistakes - one thing has remained constant is that the support from my family and our Rocketeers has made it possible and given the energy to get back on with leading. We remember our failures to learn, and get better, and it’s the memories of the journey along the way that I take with me and use every day to fuel the next wave.

In closing, I want to congratulate you all again on your graduation. It’s your time to go and do great stuff.

Thank you.

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The momentum of your delivery train is the lifeblood of your organization.

Short term you can squeeze numbers and make decisions, but there’s no denying the core physics principles of energy. If the decisions you make create the friction that causes your momentum to stall, you will slow to a crawl.

We can think of the delivery momentum of your organization like a train. There are 2 things that train does not do efficiently:

1. Turn corners - trains don’t turn corners very well, especially square corners!

2. Stop and Start - there’s a reason that train stations are not like bus stops. Trains are inefficient at constantly stopping and starting

So consider the throughput that your team is delivering like a train.

The more clarity you have, the further out in front that your train can see nice straight tracks and the faster it can go.

Create confusion, uncertainty or randomness: the train stops.

Have a great idea and a pivot: you are asking for the train to turn a corner - not impossible, sometimes necessary but very expensive.

choo choo! 🚂

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end

- Closing Time, Semisonic

It’s inevitable that your team members won’t work with you forever, and saying goodbye is one of the most uncomfortable things to do.

Many struggle and it’s an area that they don’t necessarily focus on in management and leadership training. I hope to provide a simple approach and mindset to help you.

This is no doubt an area where many struggle. You’re not alone. Leave things to run by default and you’ll likely create and nurture a whole lot of resentment. So take the time to get it right, and save the world some negative energy. You’ll sleep better as well.

Whether you treat your team like a Family or Sports team? - letting someone go is tough and you need to be deliberate with how you transition your team member. Get it right and you end up with a clear relationship that over time can rebuild and be positive.

Understand that for someone running a business or managing a team, you have many team members, but those team members only have 1 career. So it’s important to empathize and understand that, and treat it like it was your career.

For a leader, it’s a difficult time as well and an inexperienced leader will be too busy or avoid the uncomfortable work. For some, they attempt to pass this off to the People/HR team. But this is time where you need to be courageous, and deliberate. Lean into the uncomfortable, seek the clarity for you and your team member. Be accountable. Be compassionate.

So, of course, almost without saying, it’s key to be aligned with our Leadership Behaviors, Values and Rocketeer Promise.

OK, I’ve finished with the setup, let’s jump to the principles.

Our Principles for Saying Goodbye

Here's how I want people to feel when they leave our company.
I would like them to be able to close off their chapter with us in a positive way that they are proud of their time with our company.

1. Things they were once responsible for will be taken care of.

2. The systems and processes they built will survive.

3. Their time with us had meaning and impact.

4. They will be remembered, Once a Rocketeer, Always a Rocketeer.

5. All is forgiven, if there was any animosity or bad tastes.

As a leader, have these in front of you and ensure that you step through them and you can confidently answer them. How you implement them will be different depending upon your situation. Even if you do build a process to deliver on these principles, don’t take for granted that your process will work each time.

Remember that corporate gossip, mob mentality, us vs them, good vs evil etc are all stories that humans look for. As a leader you want to leverage wisdom and want to prioritize dignity and gratitude.

You won’t always get it right, but always aim to get it better.

And be sure to connect and keep in touch with your alum and be their biggest cheerleader as they build their careers to have a positive impact on their families and community. #rocketeerpromise #oncearocketeer

That was a piece of feedback late last year that one of my Rocketeers gave me.

It really hit me hard. Not in bad way, but in an inspiring way.

Times are changing fast, and it's easy as leaders to be stuck in the mode of telling others what to do because you did the hard yards before. The reality is, you have to earn that respect of experience again.

Because times are different.

Markets are different. Customer challenges are different. Competition is different and technology is way different.

What better way to connect with your team than to get in the trenches and learn the parts that are frustrating, so that you can help solve them.

It's your chance.

When they look at you, can they see what you want them to be?

So how do you do this?

For me, I go back to what I call my IKEA energy. That was my first job pushing trolleys and doing all I could, for anybody to earn my $3.84 an hour. I learnt what service truly was. So I draw back that energy and I remember my hands on the cart, putting one foot on the bottom rail and taking a deep push off the back to get to the other side of the warehouse and deliver the goods to the customer as soon as I could.

What’s your go to energy?

The Accountable Rocketeer Leadership Behavior has the following sub-points:

• Dependable and communicates effectively when unable to deliver upon commitments

• Confirms actions, posts and directives promptly

• Takes responsibility for their own part of relationship issues

• Exhibits personal behavior consistent with values

• Courageous when it’s difficult

• Strong integrity and respect for time

For me the basis of being accountable is respect for time. I find that if I value the time and energy that we put into the things we do, it is easier to hold accountability and keep integrity with what we stand for.

Because you want to respect that time and you value it, you can make decisions quicker and take ownership for the controllable’s that you can control. Sometimes, great leaders even take responsibility for a problem that’s not their own fault because they know that they can have an impact on moving the situation forward.

At ServiceRocket, our purpose is to be the Most Reliable partner for our customers. We can’t do that without truly appreciating and embracing this Leadership Behavior.

Anti-Behavior: Passes the Buck

The Anti-Behavior for this Leadership Behavior is: Passes the Buck

Teflon… nothing sticks, that’s not me. Ever seen a problem bounce around from one person to another and then someone puts their hand up and just owns in and allows everyone to move on….

Our Inspiration

We leveraged the core of this Leadership Behavior from Scaling Leadership by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams along with it’s anti-behavior. And then we adapted it for our culture and The series of books and research by these authors and the underlying Leadership Circle framework is used heavily at our company and linking these together made so much sense. In that body of work it distinguishes between leaders being in the state of high creativity or high reactivity. The anti-behavior logically has a canceling effect on the creative side.

The sub-points were inspired by our Rocketeer managers along with the Leadership Circle. I’ll write more in a future post how we use this leadership framework in our company across the globe in a scalable way.

Some great resources for this Leadership Behavior include*:

• Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl

• Mastering Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Scaling Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Principles - Ray Dalio

Why do we have Leadership Behaviors? Isn’t this what Core Values are supposed to do? See my previous post below on ‘When are Core Values not enough?”, but in short Leadership Behaviors give you explicit coachable items to work with your team to help them get better. Telling someone they have fallen on a behavior is much easier to correct and improve, whereas telling someone that they have failed against values is akin to telling them that they’ve been banished from the tribe.

In my opinion, companies need to define these behaviors if they are truly invested in growing their employees to reach their potential. We outline this in our Rocketeer Promise.

When are Core Values not enough?

ROB CASTANEDA

·

FEB 9

At some stage around 2007 we got to a stage where we needed Core Values. I remember this moment clearly, Philip, a fellow member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization took my call where I started expressing issues I was having with our business. We were ~60 people at that stage and alignment was a challenge.

Read full story

*I have some amazon affiliate codes on book links, I may make billions from these and quit my job.

**Over time these posts will be updated with more links, tweaks and changes as we learn more. Nothing is ever final at ServiceRocket, and we don’t like “unveiling” things.

In today’s world, we’re asynchronous more than ever. Folks are remote and new patterns, like the ones captured in Atlassian’s Loop Framework are starting to emerge. But for me, the core concepts for this have been around for a long time.

For me, I was inspired to master this by a talk I attended as part of the EO Alchemy conference in Los Angeles in 2011 by Warren Rustand. That initial talk can be viewed here and the subsequent workshop was extremely impactful. (Warren’s book is in the list of references below).

The Proactive & Responsive Rocketeer Leadership Behavior has the following sub-points:

• Understands the power and impact of habits and continually builds new positive habits in all aspects of life

• Redesigns personal and company systems for continual improvement

• Has positive drive and energy

• Able to respond and seize opportunities

• Master of cadence and repeatability

• Effective at asynchronous productivity

For me, the journey started with gaining control of my calendar, and building a habit that we call the #SundaySpecial, which I learned from my journey becoming a triathlete at Purple Patch Fitness. They have a template for their Sunday Special on their website. The idea is simple, spend 30-60 minutes on the weekend planning out the next week in detail, and for me I do a rough glance ahead at the 2-3 weeks in front of that.

During this time, I’m questioning “where am I?” in terms of physical location and optimizing commutes, meetings (aggressively removing the ones that aren’t useful) and being proactive to get the ball rolling.

Many folks do this on Monday mornings, but by that time the starting gun has already fired - we want to hit the ground running.

For me, I can get most of my days work done before lunch, and I aim to do that, leaving the afternoon to think and untangle some of the biggest challenges.

Once you learn the meta-habit of building habits and stacking them and placing them in a cadence, the flow can build from there.

At any time when something unexpected comes up, just jump back to a planning session and get the bigger picture done. This elevation for me is like getting into a virtual helicopter 🚁 and viewing the traffic around me vs being stuck in the middle of it!

Also think about where you are when you plan and when you do your detailed work. For me, I find that I need to be in isolation to do that, with some music, some coffee ☕️ and usually a big block of Cadbury Fruit & Nut chocolate! 🍫

I’ll do a follow up post with more details about my calendar setup and such.

Anti-Behavior: Reactive and Pressured

The Anti-Behavior for this Leadership Behavior is: Reactive and Pressured.

The energy you put out is absorbed by your team, and the tension/pressure that is created by being unorganized isn’t great to be around.

Our Inspiration

We leveraged the core of this Leadership Behavior from Scaling Leadership by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams along with it’s anti-behavior. And then we adapted it for our culture and The series of books and research by these authors and the underlying Leadership Circle framework is used heavily at our company and linking these together made so much sense. In that body of work it distinguishes between leaders being in the state of high creativity or high reactivity. The anti-behavior logically has a canceling effect on the creative side.

The sub-points were inspired by our Rocketeer managers along with the Leadership Circle. I’ll write more in a future post how we use this leadership framework in our company across the globe in a scalable way.

Some great resources for this Leadership Behavior include*:

• Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl

• Mastering Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Scaling Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Principles - Ray Dalio

• First Things First - Stephen Covey

• The Leader Within Us: Mindset, Principles, and Tools for a Life By Design - Warren Rustand

Why do we have Leadership Behaviors? Isn’t this what Core Values are supposed to do? See my previous post below on ‘When are Core Values not enough?”, but in short Leadership Behaviors give you explicit coachable items to work with your team to help them get better. Telling someone they have fallen on a behavior is much easier to correct and improve, whereas telling someone that they have failed against values is akin to telling them that they’ve been banished from the tribe.

In my opinion, companies need to define these behaviors if they are truly invested in growing their employees to reach their potential. We outline this in our Rocketeer Promise.

When are Core Values not enough?

ROB CASTANEDA

·

FEB 9

At some stage around 2007 we got to a stage where we needed Core Values. I remember this moment clearly, Philip, a fellow member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization took my call where I started expressing issues I was having with our business. We were ~60 people at that stage and alignment was a challenge.

Read full story

*I have some amazon affiliate codes on book links, I may make billions from these and quit my job.

**Over time these posts will be updated with more links, tweaks and changes as we learn more. Nothing is ever final at ServiceRocket, and we don’t like “unveiling” things.

Our eigth Leadership Behavior is Smartly Anticipates. As you gain experience in anything that you do, you’re able to see the patterns emerge, enough to anticipate what’s coming ahead. Like mapping out which stones to step to cross the river, or which wave to catch. Get this one right and you and your team will be operating in flow. Here’s the slide from our internal deck:

This leadership behavior balances data, pattern matching and your ability to bring it all together. It’s a nice one that when you get right can have you receiving a lot of high 5’s 👋 and fist bumps 👊.

The Smartly Anticipates Rocketeer Leadership Behavior has the following sub-points:

• Curious, investigates the deeper reality that lies behind events

• Has a firm grasp of the market and marketplace dynamics

• Anticipates future consequences of current actions

• See’s how the parts of the system are interconnected

• Stays abreast of external environment

• Integrates multiple streams of information into a coherent strategy

• Doesn’t wait to be told

Rocketeers that blitz at this behavior are curious by nature, they understand things at first principles and their own biases. They read and consume information from many sources and map it all together to logical conclusion and they are also really good at determining what is a fact and what is an assumption. At ServiceRocket, we also invest heavily in the Black Belt in Thinking methodology and training for our team, to help have a common vocabulary across our organization to help overcome cultural friction and calibrate our team.

The training you do, the articles you read, the prototypes you build, the curiosity you have for your customer challenges and the work your team mates, industry and competitors do all feed into your pot of knowledge that you use this behavior to apply. It’s game time!

Anti-Behavior: Unaware and constantly blindsided

The Anti-Behavior for this Leadership Behavior is: Unware and constantly blindsided.

Some common phrases you might hear that could indicate the anti-behavior. “Nobody told me.”, “I didn't know.”, “Was this meeting recorded?” (and the recording never gets watched or read the notes).

Our Inspiration

We leveraged the core of this Leadership Behavior from Scaling Leadership by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams along with it’s anti-behavior. And then we adapted it for our culture and The series of books and research by these authors and the underlying Leadership Circle framework is used heavily at our company and linking these together made so much sense. In that body of work it distinguishes between leaders being in the state of high creativity or high reactivity. The anti-behavior logically has a canceling effect on the creative side.

The sub-points were inspired by our Rocketeer managers along with the Leadership Circle. I’ll write more in a future post how we use this leadership framework in our company across the globe in a scalable way.

Some great resources for this Leadership Behavior include*:

• Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl

• Mastering Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Scaling Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Principles - Ray Dalio

• Black Belt in Thinking - Viago

Why do we have Leadership Behaviors? Isn’t this what Core Values are supposed to do? See my previous post below on ‘When are Core Values not enough?”, but in short Leadership Behaviors give you explicit coachable items to work with your team to help them get better. Telling someone they have fallen on a behavior is much easier to correct and improve, whereas telling someone that they have failed against values is akin to telling them that they’ve been banished from the tribe.

In my opinion, companies need to define these behaviors if they are truly invested in growing their employees to reach their potential. We outline this in our Rocketeer Promise.

When are Core Values not enough?

ROB CASTANEDA

·

FEB 9

At some stage around 2007 we got to a stage where we needed Core Values. I remember this moment clearly, Philip, a fellow member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization took my call where I started expressing issues I was having with our business. We were ~60 people at that stage and alignment was a challenge.

Read full story

*I have some amazon affiliate codes on book links, I may make billions from these and quit my job.

**Over time these posts will be updated with more links, tweaks and changes as we learn more. Nothing is ever final at ServiceRocket, and we don’t like “unveiling” things.

A lot of this leadership behavior is really about learning how to synthesize lots of information quickly, trusting your gut and realizing that the most important resource you have is time.

The Deliberate & Decisive Rocketeer Leadership Behavior has the following sub-points:

• Directly addresses issues that get in the way of team performance

• Is efficient at decision making

• Able to focus on What’s Important Now (Asks “W.I.N.?”)

• Makes tough decisions when required with respect

• Effectively uses a backlog and discovery to avoid wasting time

• Calls out ineffective meetings

In a previous post, I shared detail about KOLBE and how to understand your team and their default behaviors. Take a quick look at that post.

In our company, like most technology companies, folks have a high tendency for being Fact Finders. They love to gather information, and more information, and more information so that they can be sure, that they are right and not being blindsided. That makes sense right?

It does, but when this takes you so long that you miss the wave, then you’re actually going backwards. And a great leader knows when to make a decision, provide clarity and move forward. Knowing that they can course correct if more information comes in as they go.

The Surfer 🏄‍♂️ and the Perfect Wave 🌊

I love to share this analogy with my team to explain this behavior. I love the ocean, and swim a lot of open water. I have tried surfing a few times and loved it, but I am terrible at it. There was some key lessons

The unprepared surfer goes to the beach at a random time and doesn’t check the weather, tides or forecast. That’s not always fun because if there’s no waves then there’s no surfing.

The best surfers have a sense of the tides and conditions, check with their peers and get out there. Once they are surfing, they have to quickly pick which waves to surf.

The surfer DOES NOT sit there from 9am to 5pm and analyze every wave and then at the end of the day, say “OK, the wave at 2:15pm was the one to catch”.

In our lives, as leaders we have to make the best decisions possible, based on what we know right now. And be prepared to pivot.

Use the GPS model to quickly have your key data available. Make decisions and know you can course correct.

And importantly, put your fear of being wrong aside.

Anti-Behavior: Finds Excuses / Over Analyzes

The Anti-Behavior for this Leadership Behavior is: Finds Excuses/Over Analyzes

Look out for phrases that deflect accountability, or that add confision. Such as “but what about?” The more questions that are thrown into the mix here cause delay, confusion and ultimately frustration for your team.

Our Inspiration

We leveraged the core of this Leadership Behavior from Scaling Leadership by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams along with it’s anti-behavior. And then we adapted it for our culture and The series of books and research by these authors and the underlying Leadership Circle framework is used heavily at our company and linking these together made so much sense. In that body of work it distinguishes between leaders being in the state of high creativity or high reactivity. The anti-behavior logically has a canceling effect on the creative side.

The sub-points were inspired by our Rocketeer managers along with the Leadership Circle. I’ll write more in a future post how we use this leadership framework in our company across the globe in a scalable way.

Some great resources for this Leadership Behavior include*:

• Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl

• Mastering Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Scaling Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Principles - Ray Dalio

Why do we have Leadership Behaviors? Isn’t this what Core Values are supposed to do? See my previous post below on ‘When are Core Values not enough?”, but in short Leadership Behaviors give you explicit coachable items to work with your team to help them get better. Telling someone they have fallen on a behavior is much easier to correct and improve, whereas telling someone that they have failed against values is akin to telling them that they’ve been banished from the tribe.

In my opinion, companies need to define these behaviors if they are truly invested in growing their employees to reach their potential. We outline this in our Rocketeer Promise.

When are Core Values not enough?

ROB CASTANEDA

·

FEB 9

At some stage around 2007 we got to a stage where we needed Core Values. I remember this moment clearly, Philip, a fellow member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization took my call where I started expressing issues I was having with our business. We were ~60 people at that stage and alignment was a challenge.

Read full story

*I have some amazon affiliate codes on book links, I may make billions from these and quit my job.

**Over time these posts will be updated with more links, tweaks and changes as we learn more. Nothing is ever final at ServiceRocket, and we don’t like “unveiling” things.

A lot of this leadership behavior is really about ‘walking the walk’ as Andy, one of our Rocketeers is a big advocate for.

The Servant Leader Rocketeer Leadership Behavior has the following sub-points:

• Acts with humility, relatively uninterested in personal credit.

• Gets the job done with no need to attract attention to themselves

• Leads in a way that others say “we did it ourselves”

• Balances community welfare with short-term profitability

• Lives an ethic of service to others and the world

• Champion for ServiceRocket making a positive impact in the world

Rocketeers that excel at this behavior put others before themselves in the day to day. Note, that this doesn’t mean that they are martyrs. They certainly look after themselves, but they have a high degree of empathy for others and self-discipline. They are honorable and have high integrity, even when nobody is watching.

Back in my IKEA trolley-pushing days, these would of been the type of people that return their carts back to the holding bay vs leave them lying about.

Teams that work for a leader that have strength in this behavior will regularly give each other kudos. They know that it’s not important that they themselves be recognized for every single step - but they call out and recognize others. Paying it forward.

Anti-Behavior: Self-centric

The Anti-Behavior for this Leadership Behavior is: Self-centric

If You Want to Go Fast, Go Alone. If You Want to Go Far, Go Together. African Proverb

Our Inspiration

We leveraged the core of this Leadership Behavior from Scaling Leadership by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams along with it’s anti-behavior. And then we adapted it for our culture and The series of books and research by these authors and the underlying Leadership Circle framework is used heavily at our company and linking these together made so much sense. In that body of work it distinguishes between leaders being in the state of high creativity or high reactivity. The anti-behavior logically has a canceling effect on the creative side.

The sub-points were inspired by our Rocketeer managers along with the Leadership Circle. I’ll write more in a future post how we use this leadership framework in our company across the globe in a scalable way.

Some great resources for this Leadership Behavior include*:

• Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl

• Mastering Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Scaling Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Principles - Ray Dalio

Why do we have Leadership Behaviors? Isn’t this what Core Values are supposed to do? See my previous post below on ‘When are Core Values not enough?”, but in short Leadership Behaviors give you explicit coachable items to work with your team to help them get better. Telling someone they have fallen on a behavior is much easier to correct and improve, whereas telling someone that they have failed against values is akin to telling them that they’ve been banished from the tribe.

In my opinion, companies need to define these behaviors if they are truly invested in growing their employees to reach their potential. We outline this in our Rocketeer Promise.

When are Core Values not enough?

ROB CASTANEDA

·

FEB 9

At some stage around 2007 we got to a stage where we needed Core Values. I remember this moment clearly, Philip, a fellow member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization took my call where I started expressing issues I was having with our business. We were ~60 people at that stage and alignment was a challenge.

Read full story

*I have some amazon affiliate codes on book links, I may make billions from these and quit my job.

**Over time these posts will be updated with more links, tweaks and changes as we learn more. Nothing is ever final at ServiceRocket, and we don’t like “unveiling” things.

I love this Leadership Behavior and the work that I did with Graham Betchart I have written about previously and helped us develop an athletic mindset at ServiceRocket and really understand the important role that anxiety plays in our lives and the impact it has on our performance.

The Stable Confidence / Calm Presence Rocketeer Leadership Behavior has the following sub-points:

• Composed Under Pressure.

• Understands the role anxiety plays in performance and actively works to identify and eliminate negative anxiety.

• Is a calming influence in ambiguous, difficult & heated situations.

The underlying model for this Leadership Behavior is the Yerkes-Dodson Law that shows the relationship between stress and performance. Often at times we think we want the least amount of stress in our lives but in fact what we want is the optimal amount of stress in our life. Enough urgency and motivation to get up off the couch and get it done, vs so little stress that we’ll sit on the couch with a bag of potato chips and watch Netflix.

Source: Wikipedia

So why is it important to understand this curve?

The key is the right hand side of this curve and being able to know when you’re in the high anxiety/arousal section. That is, when things are too much.

And when they are, what do you do. How are you composed? How do you maintain composure? How do you practice this?

If you were an athlete, it’s preparing for race day, for that last second shot, for the 2-minute drill. For us in the business world, these moments happen every day - especially when you’re leading in times of change.

Anti-Behavior: Lacks Emotional Control / Easily Triggered

The Anti-Behavior for this Leadership Behavior is: Lacks Emotional Control/Easily Triggered.

It’s hard at times to keep your cool, something happens that ticks you off and you’re immediately filled with the need to react verbally or with a bang on the table or whatever else.

At times like this, there’s a few things that can help: The first is that being curious and asking a question of myself helps use a different part of my mind. The second is taking the time to empty my lungs and then take a deep breath. Sounds simple, it is. But simple isn’t easy at times!

Our Inspiration

We leveraged the core of this Leadership Behavior from Scaling Leadership by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams along with it’s anti-behavior. And then we adapted it for our culture and The series of books and research by these authors and the underlying Leadership Circle framework is used heavily at our company and linking these together made so much sense. In that body of work it distinguishes between leaders being in the state of high creativity or high reactivity. The anti-behavior logically has a canceling effect on the creative side.

The sub-points were inspired by our Rocketeer managers along with the Leadership Circle. I’ll write more in a future post how we use this leadership framework in our company across the globe in a scalable way.

Some great resources for this Leadership Behavior include*:

• Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl

• Mastering Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Scaling Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Principles - Ray Dalio

Why do we have Leadership Behaviors? Isn’t this what Core Values are supposed to do? See my previous post below on ‘When are Core Values not enough?”, but in short Leadership Behaviors give you explicit coachable items to work with your team to help them get better. Telling someone they have fallen on a behavior is much easier to correct and improve, whereas telling someone that they have failed against values is akin to telling them that they’ve been banished from the tribe.

In my opinion, companies need to define these behaviors if they are truly invested in growing their employees to reach their potential. We outline this in our Rocketeer Promise.

When are Core Values not enough?

ROB CASTANEDA 🇦🇺🇲🇹🇸🇻🚀

·

FEB 9

At some stage around 2007 we got to a stage where we needed Core Values. I remember this moment clearly, Philip, a fellow member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization took my call where I started expressing issues I was having with our business. We were ~60 people at that stage and alignment was a challenge.

Read full story

*I have some amazon affiliate codes on book links, I may make billions from these and quit my job.

**Over time these posts will be updated with more links, tweaks and changes as we learn more. Nothing is ever final at ServiceRocket, and we don’t like “unveiling” things.

Good Listener! This one is one of my favorites, and by now you might know that they are all my favorites. The Leadership Behaviors help me measure up each day so that I show up best. It’s a dance of the four quarters, bringing the energy you need at the right time. Being a Good Listener, you want to create a safe and fair space.

We use the word 'Discovery’ at ServiceRocket a lot. Both internally and also with our customers. When we engage and start a project or working on a task, engagement or problem we start with curiousity. We invoke the word Discovery. For us it means that we are clearly acknowledging that we don’t know everything, and that we might find out something we don’t. That’s important. If you and your ego walk into a scenario that you know everything then there’s a lot that could go wrong. I’ve found that out the hard way many times!.

When you listen, it’s not about just ensuring you have kept the notes. It’s about alignment. You are meet the person that you’re communicating with where they are at. And then you can walk on your journey together.

For many of us, we’re guided by our gut, our paste experiences - both good and bad. It’s important to elevate yourself above the situation at the same time as being present. For me, this allows me to try and counter any assumptions I’ve made and assume that everyone is working towards what they believe is the right positive thing to do. Over the years I have some to realize that in the business world most folks are doing what they believe to be right and you won’t convince them they are wrong by telling them so. But if you walk next to them, you can often show them a different pathway.

Sometimes you have to just pause. Let things rest. Nod your head and take a breath. Listen and process. Create that space for things to unfold. Peel back some layers.

I’m deliberate about our company value Talk Straight, and that isn’t just about telling people what I think, it’s also being clear about my own vulnerabilities and blindspots. When you, as a leader, as the one with power takes the first step to create that safe space as a Good Listener, you’ve allowed others to rise.

The Good Listener Rocketeer Leadership Behavior has the following sub-points:

• Listens openly to criticism and asks questions to discover.

• Restates the opinions of others to help alignment.

• Examines the assumptions behind actions before passing judgement.

• Assumes positive intent.

• Understands and demonstrates the power and preciousness of vulnerability.

Leaders play an important role in empowering voices of individuals and minorities by the action of listening. In some context, we are all minorities.

Viktor Frankl's quote lies the essence of this Leadership Behavior, “Between the stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom and power to choose our responses. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”.

Anti-Behavior: Inattentive & Poor Listener

We think Anti-Behaviors are a clear way to communicate what we don’t want. And to try and be explicit. Have you ever been talking to someone and know that they are just waiting for a break to get in what they want to say? Or have a feeling that they are pre-judging you before you have ever spoken? A big part of being a good listener is also the environment, the safe space that you create for others.

Our Inspiration

We leveraged the core of this Leadership Behavior from Scaling Leadership by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams along with it’s anti-behavior. And then we adapted it for our culture and The series of books and research by these authors and the underlying Leadership Circle framework is used heavily at our company and linking these together made so much sense. In that body of work it distinguishes between leaders being in the state of high creativity or high reactivity. The anti-behavior logically has a canceling effect on the creative side.

The sub-points were inspired by our Rocketeer managers along with the Leadership Circle. I’ll write more in a future post how we use this leadership framework in our company across the globe in a scalable way.

Some great resources for this Leadership Behavior include*:

• Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl

• Mastering Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Scaling Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Principles - Ray Dalio

Why do we have Leadership Behaviors? Isn’t this what Core Values are supposed to do? See my previous post below on ‘When are Core Values not enough?”, but in short Leadership Behaviors give you explicit coachable items to work with your team to help them get better. Telling someone they have fallen on a behavior is much easier to correct and improve, whereas telling someone that they have failed against values is akin to telling them that they’ve been banished from the tribe.

In my opinion, companies need to define these behaviors if they are truly invested in growing their employees to reach their potential. We outline this in our Rocketeer Promise.

When are Core Values not enough?

ROB CASTANEDA 🇦🇺🇲🇹🇸🇻🚀

·

FEB 9

At some stage around 2007 we got to a stage where we needed Core Values. I remember this moment clearly, Philip, a fellow member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization took my call where I started expressing issues I was having with our business. We were ~60 people at that stage and alignment was a challenge.

Read full story

*I have some amazon affiliate codes on book links, I may make billions from these and quit my job.

**Over time these posts will be updated with more links, tweaks and changes as we learn more. Nothing is ever final at ServiceRocket, and we don’t like “unveiling” things.

To me, empowering others is the ultimate way to show and share leadership and help your organisation scale. There is so much nuance in this Leadership Behavior, it sounds so simple and logical but practicing and mastering it requires a lot of skill and trust.

I’ve worked for and with many leaders in the past, and always been inspired by those who earned my trust by how they operate, how they go about the details and by how they treat people, regardless of their station.

And that’s important to me. My parents arrived in Australia without much, I’ve written about my Dad in an article here. Growing up, I’ve seen a lot of ways that folks who have power have either used it to reinforce their position or to lift others. The latter is by far more inspirational!

At ServiceRocket, we’re built in fairness, so we want leaders that understand how to give others a go. Allow them to try and support them when things don’t go well, sharing their knowledge and leadership lessons along the way.

Earning trust without buying loyalty is one that has some nuance. There are leaders that earn your trust because of how they operate, not because they hold power over you or pull favors.

The Empowers Others Rocketeer Leadership Behavior has the following sub-points:

• Negotiates for the best interests of all

• Shares leadership

• Walks the talk: Is a good role model for the vision they share

• Allocates resources appropriately to avoid Rocketeer ‘burn-out’

• Earns trust without buying loyalty

We’ve built this Leadership Behavior into many of our internal systems as well, the ability for anyone at any level to suggest new product and innovation ideas, and to have a voice and present at our monthly company all-hands.

Anti-Behavior: Micromanages

We think Anti-Behaviors are a clear way to communicate what we don’t want. And to try and be explicit. Nobody likes to be micromanaged, and a highly micromanaged environment stifles creativity.

Our Inspiration

We leveraged the core of this Leadership Behavior from Scaling Leadership by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams along with it’s anti-behavior. And then we adapted it for our culture and The series of books and research by these authors and the underlying Leadership Circle framework is used heavily at our company and linking these together made so much sense. In that body of work it distinguishes between leaders being in the state of high creativity or high reactivity. The anti-behavior logically has a canceling effect on the creative side.

The sub-points were inspired by our Rocketeer managers along with the Leadership Circle. I’ll write more in a future post how we use this leadership framework in our company across the globe in a scalable way.

Some great resources for this Leadership Behavior include*:

• Mastering Leadership

• Scaling Leadership

• Principles

Why do we have Leadership Behaviors? Isn’t this what Core Values are supposed to do? See my previous post below on ‘When are Core Values not enough?”, but in short Leadership Behaviors give you explicit coachable items to work with your team to help them get better. Telling someone they have fallen on a behavior is much easier to correct and improve, whereas telling someone that they have failed against values is akin to telling them that they’ve been banished from the tribe.

In my opinion, companies need to define these behaviors if they are truly invested in growing their employees to reach their potential. We outline this in our Rocketeer Promise.

When are Core Values not enough?

ROB CASTANEDA 🇦🇺🇲🇹🇸🇻🚀

·

FEB 9

At some stage around 2007 we got to a stage where we needed Core Values. I remember this moment clearly, Philip, a fellow member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization took my call where I started expressing issues I was having with our business. We were ~60 people at that stage and alignment was a challenge.

Read full story

*I have some amazon affiliate codes on book links, I may make billions from these and quit my job.

**Over time these posts will be updated with more links, tweaks and changes as we learn more. Nothing is ever final at ServiceRocket, and we don’t like “unveiling” things.

As a leader, if you’re not taking an active role in developing your team, then somebody else is - and that isn’t going to help your organisation scale.

We all yearn for mentors, for belonging and to be part of something big. Those early mentors play a huge role in our careers and I bet you can, as well as I can, remember those along the way that showed interest in our own development.

We want leaders that do that.

We want leaders that do that deliberately, by habit, because they know that if their team members are clear about where they are going, their interests and development, that they can then be focused on the task at hand.

The Develops Rocketeers Leadership Behavior has the following sub-points:

• Helps Rocketeers create development plans.

• Helps Rocketeers, learn, improve, grow and change.

• Provides appropriate feedback focused on professional growth.

At ServiceRocket, we use a great simple tool called Small Improvements - we’ve been using it since it first came to market (we were proudly their first ever customer!). What we love about this tool is that we have scheduled quarterly 1:1 check-ins between our managers and their Rocketeers. It’s pretty common these days, back then it wasn’t. But what isn’t common is how it’s approached.

We take a strong coaching-led mindset to this process, and we’re looking at ways to help the Rocketeer learn and grow, aligned with our Rocketeer Promise

In order for us to truly make this Leadership Behavior come to life, we had to build our Career Pathways system at ServiceRocket. I wrote about that here Job Families, Levels, Titles and Career Paths), in short, this was a re-think and restructure of all the jobs. I think it’s essential. Because, think about it, if your leaders are planning careers and you don’t have those career pathways, then where are your leaders going to lead your team?

Anti-Behavior: Hasn’t fully planned/developed their team

We think Anti-Behaviors are a clear way to communicate what we don’t want. And to try and be explicit. In this case, a leader that says “I’ll do that later” to thinking about, listening to, planning and prioritizing their teams development plans isn’t helping to scale the organisation.

Our Inspiration

We leveraged the core of this Leadership Behavior from Scaling Leadership by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams along with it’s anti-behavior. And then we adapted it for our culture and The series of books and research by these authors and the underlying Leadership Circle framework is used heavily at our company and linking these together made so much sense. In that body of work it distinguishes between leaders being in the state of high creativity or high reactivity. The anti-behavior logically has a canceling effect on the creative side.

The sub-points were inspired by our Rocketeer managers along with the Leadership Circle. I’ll write more in a future post how we use this leadership framework in our company across the globe in a scalable way.

Some great resources for this Leadership Behavior include*:

• Small Improvements

• Mastering Leadership

• Scaling Leadership

• Principles

Why do we have Leadership Behaviors? Isn’t this what Core Values are supposed to do? See my previous post below on ‘When are Core Values not enough?”, but in short Leadership Behaviors give you explicit coachable items to work with your team to help them get better. Telling someone they have fallen on a behavior is much easier to correct and improve, whereas telling someone that they have failed against values is akin to telling them that they’ve been banished from the tribe.

In my opinion, companies need to define these behaviors if they are truly invested in growing their employees to reach their potential. We outline this in our Rocketeer Promise.

When are Core Values not enough?

ROB CASTANEDA 🇦🇺🇲🇹🇸🇻🚀

·

FEB 9

At some stage around 2007 we got to a stage where we needed Core Values. I remember this moment clearly, Philip, a fellow member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization took my call where I started expressing issues I was having with our business. We were ~60 people at that stage and alignment was a challenge.

Read full story

*I have some amazon affiliate codes on book links, I may make billions from these and quit my job.

**Over time these posts will be updated with more links, tweaks and changes as we learn more. Nothing is ever final at ServiceRocket, and we don’t like “unveiling” things.