Debra’s Latest Updates
1. Annual Planning Sessions:
“So this episode is just to give you a little bit of background of what’s been going on and also just to share with you what’s coming up in the next episodes as well. So I thought I’d just share a little bit about annual planning, given it’s taken up so much of my time in the last few weeks.”
2. Client Success Metrics:
“This year has been super exciting because despite the fact we’re in an economic downturn, a recession, a stagflation, whatever you want to call it, all of my clients who have actually followed that process have actually had an average increase of about 22.86% in their top line revenue and an average of 51.75% increase in net profit.”
3. Upcoming Podcast Episodes:
“We have secured podcast interviews with the winners of the family business association awards, which means we’ll be bringing them onto the show. And we’ll be talking about how they, what the judges said about them and how they won those awards, but then asking them the really deep questions.”
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
EOS, team, results, business, share, clients, sessions, accountability, questions, episode, annual, year, importantly, people, work, greater, trust, exercise, tools
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:07
Welcome to another episode of Better Business Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry -Taylor, and I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives by creating better businesses.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:25
I’m a certified EOS implementer, an FBA -credited family business advisor, and a business owner myself with several business interests. I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them live their ideal entrepreneurial life using EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. My guests on the show come onto the show to authentically share the highs and lows of creating a successful business and how they turn things around in their business to create a better business and better life.
But today is a little different. So you may have noticed that we’ve been missing a few episodes and that has been because I’ve been right in the heart of annual planning season, which is where I work with each of my clients for a couple of days to really look back on what’s been happening in the year. So this episode is just to give you a little bit of background of what’s been going on and also just to share with you what’s coming up in the next episodes as well. So I thought I’d just share a little bit about annual planning, given it’s taken up so much of my time in the last few weeks.
So annual planning is part of the EOS process, is a two day session that we spend with teams. And generally we like to get them out of their normal environment. So we like to take them away somewhere to a beautiful setting where they can relax, where they can really take the time to work on the business rather than in the business. These two days are all about looking back and celebrating success. It’s about increasing team health. It’s about making sure that everyone in the business is on the same page.
They’ve got a really clear company vision and a plan to execute on that vision every day. And most importantly resolve all the key issues that are actually holding the business back. So issues, we talk a lot about issues in EOS and I think it’s important to remember that issues are not necessarily negatives. They could actually be opportunities, things that we actually want to do in the business. And so coming together for these two days together, we’re gonna make sure we work through all of those things. It’s an interesting time of year because in those sessions I obviously work up looking on looking back and celebrating success with the teams.
But I also do some analysis myself and I look at all of my EOS clients who’ve actually followed the proven EOS process purely for the last 12 months. And then I look at what they’ve actually achieved. And this year has been super exciting because despite the fact we’re in an economic downturn, a recession, a stagflation, whatever you want to call it, all of my clients who have actually followed that process have actually had an average increase of about 22 .86%.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:48
in their top line revenue and an average of 51 .75 % increase in net profit. So they’re pretty good figures for an environment which is traditionally supposed to be quite hard. So that was very, very reassuring. That was very exciting for me. I’ve been able to celebrate that success with all of my clients throughout the annual planning process. And I think more importantly, you those numbers are really important, but I’m also seeing that these teams, they’re really coming together. They’re really working for the greater good.
Which absolutely makes my heart sing. And most importantly, I’m seeing people actually being able to let go and spend time on pursuing their other passions, which is part of the EOS life. So the EOS life, if you remember, is all about doing what you love with people you love, making a huge difference in the world with time to pursue other passions and being compensated appropriately. So I can hand on heart say that I’m seeing with my businesses, this is definitely happening.
So what do we do in the annual planning sessions? As I said, we do look back and we celebrate success, but then we do a fair amount of work around team health as well. And so team health is an interesting one because it really is about working both smart and healthy. And for a lot of teams, we focus a lot on the smart side of it. Do we have the right people? Do they have the right technical expertise, the experience, the qualifications? But it’s actually the healthy part that really makes a fundamental difference.
You can have people who’ve got all the right qualifications, who know their stuff, they’re technically very smart. But if they’re not fighting for the greater good, then we don’t get the best results for the business. So in annual planning, I do a couple of exercises with teams just to help them to improve on that team health. It’s based around Patrick Lencioni’s work that says, hey, if you want to get to a team that is really focused on results, you have to take them through a number of stages first.
And that very first stage is around trust. So trust is the building block or the foundations to actually getting your team to a point where they are absolutely laser sharp, focused on results. And an absence of trust, you know, it happens because we haven’t spent time actually getting to know each other. So in our sessions, we do two exercises. And I always like to say to people on a scale of one to 10, where one is pretty much easy, anybody can do it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 05:08
And 10, stripping, getting naked, singing kumbaya, we’re probably going to do a three and a seven. So the first exercise is very much a three. It’s just about sharing some information that people may not know about you. And then the second exercise is more like a number seven where we’re going a bit deeper and really getting a sense of what is going on with these teams. The reason I’m kind of smiling as I say this is I’ve always said that as my introduction, know, the whole getting naked and singing kumbaya, but I actually sent my husband with his permission on a course not too long time ago.
Where they literally had to get naked. So that it’s really funny to think that those things happen. I’m never going to do that in my session room, but certainly there are some courses out there that do that. So what, how do we get, what does that, how does that help? I suppose that the key thing is if you think about the work that Patrick Lencioni does, he talks about the five dysfunctions of the team. He talks about absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to.
And so we work on that base layer. each of these things actually lead up into another. If you’ve got a really trusting team, they are more likely to engage in conflict. They don’t feel like they’re to protect their patch. They don’t feel like they’re going to have repercussions if they actually share certain things. So by building up that trust within the team, we can actually elevate them up to having no fear of conflict. Therefore they will actually start to, to fight for the greater good. They’ll start to put forward their opinions, even if they don’t agree with the leader or the other members of the team. Once they have that sort of, they don’t have that fear of conflict and they’re having those really in -depth conversations and discussions, it means by the time that they actually come to a resolution and they know what they want to do as a team, they’ve actually got commitment to that. Because if you’ve actually been able to put your point of view across in a non -judgmental way and you don’t feel like there’s going to be repercussions for.
Even if the result you come up with is not necessarily the result that you were hoping for, you’ve understood how you’ve got there and therefore as a team you can be committed to actually taking that forward. Once you’ve got the commitment, can then obviously, you start to take accountability for it. If you know that you’ve made that commitment, it’s not been thrust upon you, it’s not somebody saying you will do this, but you’ve been involved in those discussions, you’ve been involved in what’s going on, you can now look at taking accountability, full accountability. And when you take full accountability.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 07:27
That is when you’re going to actually make sure these things happen. You’re going to work with your team, with the people around you. You’re going to take full personal responsibility to make sure that we actually take full accountability to deliver that. And ultimately that leads to results. So that’s the Patrick Lencioni sort of five dysfunctions. That’s the kind of work we do in the annual planning sessions in order to build team health. The other thing we do of course, is know, review the previous year. So what’s happened in the previous year? How have things gone? How did we go against the plan that we actually had?
And then we start to look at, know what does the year upcoming look like and what does the next quarter look like? So being really clear, laser sharp focus on those three to seven things that we need to do to move the business forward, making sure everybody’s clear about the company vision. we on the same page in terms of the eight questions that we ask ourselves? know, what are our core values? How do we operate around here? What’s our core focus? The why and the what of what we do? What is our 10 year target in terms of where we’re headed in the long.
What’s our marketing strategy? Who do we target? What are the uniques that we actually offer these people? What’s our proven process? What’s our guarantee? What’s our three -year picture? So bringing that 10 -year target from right up here, right the way down to the ground. What does it look like from a revenue and a profitability perspective? What are our high -level measurables? But also painting the picture. What does it look and feel like to work in this company in three years?
On the, the traction page side, of course, we’ve got the last three questions. What’s our one year plans of breaking that three year picture down even further? What are the three to seven things we absolutely must get done in the next year? Breaking it down further into 90 day rocks. What are the little distinct pieces of work we need to get done that supports our business as usual on the scorecards that we actually are moving the needle every day in the business and making it better. And then finally the key issues list. So we have the, parking lot for those things that we’re not dealing with this quarter.
But that we know we have to do in the future. So we just make sure in this annual planning session, everybody’s absolutely 100 % on the same page for those eight questions. And then we look at our issues and we go, right, what are the key issues that we actually need to be resolving? So we will make sure that we work through and deal with the ones that are appropriate to deal with right here, right now. So when we leave that session, everybody’s had a chance to celebrate success, increase their team health. They’re all on the same page in terms of the vision and the plan to get there. And we resolved all the key issues.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 09:48
And it means they can go back into their day -to -day function, being really clear on what they’re accountable for, what needs to be done and how they’re going to get there. It’s a real joy to actually facilitate these sessions. mean, honestly, I can’t tell you how much joy I get out of seeing these teams working really closely together, seeing them celebrate their successes and ultimately seeing the results at the end of the day. I mean, as I said, we’re in a recession right now, we’re in an economic downturn. There is still opportunity out there. And if you’re laser sharp focused on what is important and you know what needs to be.
You can still come out growing both the top line, but also increasing your profitability as well. So that’s what I’ve been up to. I just thought I’d share that with you because it’s really exciting. And that’s why I haven’t been available to do any podcasts because I have literally been pretty much in back to back traveling between Melbourne, where I do a lot of my work, Sydney, where I’ve got a couple of clients and of course here in New Zealand as well. So that’s what’s been happening in terms of what’s coming.
I haven’t been sitting around doing nothing. We have been working on lining up guests for the upcoming series. And so we’ve got sort of three lots of stuff going on. The first is we have secured podcast interviews with the winners of the family business association awards, which means we’ll be bringing them onto the show. And we’ll be talking about how they, what the judges said about them and how they won those awards, but then asking them the really deep questions. So how did they get to where they are? What have been the challenges they faced?
How they’ve overcome them, how they’ve continued to grow their business and how they’ve continued to involve their family business members in a healthy way in that environment. That’s coming up. We’ve got a number of those lined up. We’ve also got some more episodes with Adam and myself where we will bounce off of each other and answer some of the most popular questions about EOS. But more importantly, we’ll also share real life examples and stories as well. Because I think that where the real value comes from is actually not just the theoretical stuff, but actually how do people apply these practical pragmatic tools.
And what are the results they actually get from them as well? The pitfalls that we’ve seen, some of the challenges that people have faced as well as how they got around that using the EOS tools. And then of course, we’ve got some amazing EOS experts and non EOS experts who will share their tips and tools for various areas of specialty. So we very much focus on EOS, but outside of that, you know, what’s your strategy? How do you use certain tools? What’s happening in the AI world? All these things that you want to know for your business.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:12
And finally, some more EOS clients coming on board and actually sharing their stories. know, how did they actually create a better life through creating a better business? What were the tips and tools they can share with you? How has their life changed because of it? They’ll be coming on and sharing that with us as well. So that’s a quick overview in my usual fast paced way. I’ve been busy, but busy having fun, busy celebrating success with my clients.
I’ve got some amazing guests lined up and some really great stories to tell. So please do stay tuned in. We’ll be back to weekly episodes from now on in. And I hope that you are enjoying this. I’d love to hear from you. If you are, it’s always really good for me to get some feedback about what you’d like to see covered. Getting questions you’d like to have answered, anything that you want to share that can ensure that I’m giving you value from these podcasts. I think we’re up to our 180th episode now. So it’s been going for a while.
And much as I love doing the podcast, for me, it’s more important that I’m actually helping you. So if you’ve got any ideas, what you’d like to see, what you’d like to hear, just let me know and I make sure I will incorporate it into future episodes. In the meantime, have a great rest of the week and I’ll look forward to hopefully seeing you back on here in a week’s time. Thank you.
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Certified EOS Implementer New Zealand
Certified EOS Implementer Australia
Certified EOS Implementer UK
Certified EOS Implementer NZ
