Three Shocking Statistics

Hello everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at The Family Business Institute. Thank you for tuning in as always. We'd love to have
the benefit of your comments below. Thank you for that.

This week I want to talk about three shocking statistics. These were kind of mind blowing. You've heard me talk about my
peer group member, Arlin Sorenson, and these came from his blog. So now what about these statistics is important to
you? Well, as a leader, I think you'll see the import pretty quickly. It's really rather shocking. And I think if you look at the
importance and the impact here, just do the opposite of what most people do. And I'm thinking you'll be successful.

The first statistic is Arlin participated in a CEO forum and it came out in the forum that 42% of the CEOs companies, and
some of these were not micro companies, these were some big players. 42% had written strategic plans. Well, that's good,
but it means that almost 60%, some of these really big companies, don't have strategic plans in writing. Are you kidding
me? How would you function in 2020 with all the turmoil that's happened in our country and in the world without a
strategic plan that gave you guidelines and goals? I just can't even imagine it.

We know among our contractors, that strategic planning is a best practice and the people that engage in strategic planning
outperform the people that don't. And I'm sure it's true in all industries. If you look at the people that do really solid,
robust, strategic planning. I just can't imagine. How do you communicate to your team? If you're running a company and
you have 20 or 50 or 200 employees, how do you communicate your direction, your vision, your goals to those people, to
those individuals, without having it in writing in a strategic plan, in some easily digestible form that they can consume? I
just don't get it. Okay. Let me get off the soapbox for a sec.

Okay. Now, according to Price Waterhouse Coopers, this is the second stat. 45% of a company's success depends on the
CEO. Well, that's kind of stressful in a way, but it does show the importance of leadership. One of the keys, I think, for
successful CEOs is their time management. They don't allow their time to be wasted on non-CEO things. They don't allow
their time to be sucked away from them doing administrivia versus doing CEO, high-level, high impact functions. And I
want to remind you of a book that we reviewed several years ago. The impact of this book still resonates with me. It was
called Time Really Is Money by Rob Slee. You can get on Amazon, but it's a great book. And he makes the case in a crystal
clear way that to be successful life, we have to manage our time effectively.

And irrespective of what level you are in your organization, there are certain impacts, certain things that you do that have
impact. If you can get rid of all the things that don't have much impact, or you can find your way to minimize the time suck
on those, you're going to be more successful in your career. And ultimately as a leader.

Okay, the third statistic. 80% of company employees either don't know or don't understand the company strategy. So,
that kind of goes back to number one. How do you communicate with your people if you don't have it in writing? I have a
friend who's in the wholesale food business, he's a great guy. And we were talking, he was very frustrated in his job. It's a
really big company, it's an international company. And he was really frustrated, and he said the CEO did a video that went
out to all the employees. And he said the company's goal, the number one goal for the year, that was communicated to
all the employees was to maximize EBITDA.

Well, that's great for the finance department and that's great for the MBAs. What do you think the people that are loading
boxes on trucks, they don't know what EBITDA is, and they probably don't care. How can they see themselves loading
boxes into a truck? How can they see their personal impact as it relates to EBITDA? To me, that's a case where leadership
is somehow divorced from what their people do every day. They're sitting in New York City or Chicago or Los Angeles in
the executive suite, and they're somehow disconnected from the people that actually do the work of the company. That
goal didn't make any sense to me then, it doesn't make any sense to me now. I know it's a worthy goal if you're talking
about venture capital or Wall Street analysts. I just don't think it's a good goal when it comes to inspiring a few thousand
employees around the world to do their jobs better and more effectively.

Okay. Right. So ultimately, Arlin talked about the need to communicate these things: the strategic plan, the activities of
the CEO, the goals of the company, and the way you do that is you've got to preach it all the time. He says, you've got to
tell people things seven times on average. Seven times before those things resonate, before they sink in.

And we talk about it 52 times a year here at FBI, we have specific focus on vision, mission and values and we don't talk
about it seven times. We talk about it 52 times a year. It's that important I think, for all of us to keep vision, mission and
values in the front of our minds and in our hearts. That's why we talk about it every single week. So, that's a great thing.
Arlin said that you've got to have a strategy, you've got to have tactics, you've got to have goals, and you've got to be
able to cascade those down to every single person in the organization.

So, I'd like to hear in the comments, what are you doing successfully? What's worked for you to cascade those strategies
and goals down to everybody in your organization? Looking forward to hearing. This is Wayne Rivers at The Family Business
Institute.