Thread by @laurentickner

A million-dollar lesson I learned from Jeff Bezos is the concept of “Disagree & Commit”

🧵 This 30 second thread breaks it down practically

A few years back...

👉 I was exhausted from constantly having to tell my team what to do and how to do it
👉 my income was stuck because if I was serving my clients I was not selling
👉 I was getting refund requests because if I was selling I was not serving my clients

I felt like the people who told me that my “little business idea” was stupid were right and that there was no real way out for me.

Fortunately, I do not give up so easily (you’ll know if you’ve seen me in the gym lol)

So I went on a quest to find a solution because I got real with the common denominator here:

Me.

…I listed down all the things I did on a daily basis (big and small)
…I looked at the way my team communicated (via text and call)
…I did the “bus test” (“if you got hit by a bus would your business live on?”)
And things weren’t looking so promising.
It was absolute chaos...

No wonder no one could get anything done without me.
…it would have been easy to say “well this is the situation so XYZ”
But I realised that I, myself, had created a monster.
I dreamed of a world where my employees were moving faster and in the right direction.

And then it dawned on me…
Anything that is showing up in your life right now is the accumulation of your past choices and the things you continue to accept.

My business was a mess and through continuing to operate in the way that caused the mess, I was continuing to say yes to the mess.
When you strip it back like that, it makes it seem a lot more clear that something needs to change.

The real problems were:
ONE → Lack of clarity on job roles
TWO → Failure to clearly delegate decision making
THREE → Unclear communication cadence (if you want to see what this looks like for Impact School just let me know)
…See how important CLARITY is?!

When I heard the phrase “disagree and commit” I realised that, through solving the three things above, then I wouldn’t continue to be roped back into the day to day and instead could focus on GROWTH of the business. But we all know it’s easier said than done

How could we disagree if my team did not have the confidence that they COULD disagree?
Did they know their boundaries?
Do we have boundaries?
Who is the decision maker?
How are the outcomes of decisions communicated to the team?
When do things get done once a decision's made?

How do we prioritise? (Check my last post on the VILE Framework for more on this)
Through answering all those questions my team and I were able to get to a position whereby we can have very healthy debates.
Not everyone will be happy about the outcome every time…

However, we know our company VALUES and thanks to that, we choose to do what’s best for our mission first and the company second.
My team moves fast, in the right direction, and with our client results in mind.

I’m barely needed in the day to day so I can spend time writing things like this and working on growth initiatives.
You can get there, I promise.
Follow me @laurentickner and I'll share free tips on HOW...

You may also like my free entrepreneur community whereby I do weekly live workshops breaking down a tactical marketing / sales system that will help you scale: facebook.com/groups/onlinei…

Grateful to serve you @laurentickner

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