The Rhythm of Business: How Systemising Execution Drives Growth and Value by Patrick Thean

Patrick Thean is a renowned figure in the realm of business management and strategy execution. He is the architect behind the Rhythm System, a structured methodology tailored to assist business owners in achieving steady and predictable outcomes. With a background in engineering and a proven track record as an entrepreneur, Patrick offers a blend of technical expertise and practical wisdom. His focus on team alignment, accountability, and the strategic application of rhythm-based methodologies positions him as a compelling resource for business owners and executives seeking to optimise their organisational frameworks for sustained success.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Master the Rhythm Methodology: Elevate your business management skills and streamline operations for enhanced productivity.
• Unlock Premium Business Value: Learn how to maximise your business’s worth for a profitable exit strategy.
• Learn Entrepreneurial Operating Systems: Discover effective systems to drive your business forward and achieve sustainable growth.
• Execute Strategic Business Goals: Gain insights into powerful strategies for setting and achieving impactful business objectives.
• Conduct Effective Executive Team Meetings: Learn how to optimise communication and collaboration within your leadership team for better decision-making.

Embracing Difficult Conversations

Embracing difficult conversations within a business setting is essential for fostering transparency, driving innovation, and addressing organisational challenges proactively. By encouraging open dialogue, challenging ideas, and promoting constructive feedback, businesses can create a culture of trust, respect, and continuous learning. Difficult conversations provide opportunities for growth, alignment, and clarity, enabling teams to resolve conflicts, tackle complex issues, and make informed decisions collectively.

Patrick Thean’s emphasis on embracing spicy conversations during the podcast reflects the importance of engaging in meaningful dialogues that challenge the status quo and drive progress. He advocates for shifting from mundane status meetings to interactive sessions focused on collaboration, problem-solving, and active listening. Patrick’s approach highlights the transformative impact of promoting open communication, empowering teams to share diverse perspectives, address tough issues, and work together towards common goals. By fostering a culture of candid discussions and constructive debates, businesses can enhance their decision-making processes, strengthen team dynamics, and drive innovation within their organizations.

Systemising the Execution of Strategy

Systemising the execution of a company’s strategy is essential for translating vision into action and achieving tangible results. By creating a structured approach to align goals, prioritise initiatives, and track progress, organisations can streamline operations and drive continuous improvement. Effective strategy execution requires a clear plan, regular monitoring, and agile adjustments to adapt to changing market dynamics.

Patrick Thean delves into the importance of systemising strategy execution during his conversation with Darryl. He emphasises the role of the rhythm methodology in helping companies move from chaotic operations to a more organised and focused approach. Patrick’s insights shed light on the benefits of implementing a systematic process to drive strategic initiatives forward, ensuring that teams remain aligned, accountable, and agile in pursuing their goals. By establishing a rhythm and cadence for tracking key performance indicators and monitoring progress, businesses can enhance their operational efficiency and drive sustainable growth over time.

Have you ever wondered about why there is so much interest in these business operating systems or business methodologies, such as the E-myth, such as the EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system? Verne Harnish’s Scaling Up? Why is there so much interest? Why are the authors producing these, these business frameworks and methodologies to help business owners scale and run their businesses?

In this episode, I’m talking to Patrick Thean. Patrick has worked with a number of these organisations, and he’s since gone on to evolve and build his own business management methodology called the Rhythm System. Now, in this episode, I’m talking with Patrick, and we’re digging into why do you, as a business owner, want to have a methodology for running your business? How is the system different from running your production system and the operations of your business? How does a system, an agile style management system for running your business and the executive team work? How does it influence the culture? What sort of culture is required to run a business methodology to get the most out of it? And Patrick made a really interesting point, and he said, this system is all about systemising the execution of your strategy.

So sit back, have a listen. Patrick’s got a lot of interesting points to make about how you can systemise the execution of your strategy and ensure that you maximise the valuation of the business so that you can exit on your terms.

As an additional note, I think it’s worth adding that Patrick has been the coach from Colin Campbell. Now, you may have heard the episode that we did with Colin Campbell last week around how he built his business, how we scaled it, and how he grew it with the help of a coach, because he was just in a bit of chaos mode and things weren’t working out so well for him. So we brought in a coach to help him get organisation out of the chaos of running his business. Patrick is Collin’s coach, so I thought it’s worth getting Patrick on to have a conversation with Patrick, and that’s how I managed to pull these two episodes together. Hope you’ve enjoyed them and you enjoyed the little series of the one two episode punch here.

Welcome to the podcast that’s dedicated to helping business owners prepare their business for exit so you can maximise the value and exit on your terms. This is the Exit Insights podcast presented by Succession Plus. I’m Darryl Bates- Brownsword, and today I’ve got a special guest, Patrick Thean. Patrick’s US- based, but got a long history and started his career in Singapore, but now he’s working on all sorts of different things. He’s built the Rhythm Methodology for helping business owners to develop their strategy and execute their strategy. I won’t try and say too much about it, but Patrick, welcome to the show. I’m excited for this conversation because my background is engineering and I love structure to reduce risk and mistakes and keep us productive and profitable.

Thank you very much for having me today. I’m thrilled to be here.

Great, Patrick. So, Patrick, why don’t we start like we’ve heard of, I think the idea for SME business owners, the idea of having methodology to help you structure and plan and run your business and keep you on track and on schedule. It’s not a new idea. I recall going back when I first started getting into consulting about 25 years ago. I first read the E myth by Michael Gerber. And a lot of people have heard about working on your business and in your business. Yes, just, I guess about five or between five to ten years ago, maybe in a bit longer than that. There was another wave where, especially here in the UK, all of a sudden, another book or a recent book came and was very popular, called Traction by Gino Wickman, and that was bringing another methodology to life. And Gino talked about scaling up and the Rockefeller Habits, and he brought in some of the thinking from a lot of the other big picture, big thinking advisors and created a really simple system. I’ve had Steve Prader on the podcast, and he talked about Pinnacle, but it’d be really helpful, I think, if we start this conversation and go, what is a business methodology or an operating system, as Gino calls it? And why should business owners that are listening to this, why should they be interested in some sort of methodology? Is it going to dumb down their business? Why would they want a methodology to structure and run their business? And then, more importantly, how will it be useful and how will it help them increase the value of their business when they’re thinking about their exit planning? And I know I put a whole lot there, but over to you. And, hey…

I think you were going to interview, if you haven’t interviewed Colin Campbell already, we’re going to do together.

Colin was on the podcast just last week.

Yes. So I think Campbell’s a great example. You know, your podcast is about exits. And, and I believe that the most important thing to have a methodology is to give yourself a premium exit. That is the number one reason why. And so what happens is that Colin has been a customer of mine for 15 years, and when he was running Haustopia, we installed this methodology for him, and he ended up building a systematic way to run the business. When he was going for his exit. By the way, Haustopia, as you already know, probably was already a public company on the Toronto Stock Exchange when we did this for him. But what happened was after he installed the rhythm methodology, he began to execute with consistency and have predictable results.

Right.

That is very hard for most entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs like me, like you, like everybody else, very creative. Jumping from ideas to ideas. And, you know, the art of prioritising and the art of working on your business as well as in your business is really hard to do. So you need a rhythm to ensure that you can do that, because that is the only way. You know, all these folks, from Gina Wickman to Verne Harnish and all these other folks would probably agree with me. That’s the only way to have consistent and predictable results. So Haustopia, after installing the system, sold to Deluxe Corporation for a premium, about 2.6 times their market value. That’s a huge premium. And the CEO of Deluxe, when he bought Haustopia, said that this is the kind of predictable rhythm that he wanted in his company. I would say the first reason is you’ve got to, if you want to maximise your return when you finally exit, you want your business to be ready to be sold every day, any day. And having a strong rhythm methodology to help you with consistent cadence and give you consistent, predictable results is the best way. You know, when somebody comes and says, hey, Darryl, I want to buy your business, it’s too late, frankly, for you to look at the business and go, how do I maximise the value here? Because the value of your business is based on all the stuff you’ve already done.

Yep.

So your business is the combination of all decisions you have made, small, big, good, bad, and you have arrived today because of all the decisions you’ve made. So I want to put companies on a rhythm so that they will make consistent decisions consistently, literally force them to work on their business. Because when life gets busy, you forget to work on your business. I’ve walked in the shoes of many entrepreneurs myself. This is my fourth business over here in the US. My very first business was a ink 500 business. We got to number 151 on the inc 500. So I know what it feels like to be crazy with my hand on fire, running from one thing to another and somehow getting it all done.

Well, we want to help companies execute their strategies and win big, just like Haustopia did.

Yeah. And Patrick, you’re reminding me in what you’re saying, is I’ve spoken to a lot of business owners who, on this podcast, who have prepared their business and got it ready for exit and they want to get out of the business. And it’s a consistent theme that I get when I’m talking to business owners who are starting to think about this journey that they need to get out of the franticness, the chaos of being in the middle of the business and being at the center of all the decisions. And it’s amasing how consistent the message is that I need to bring some structure to my business and the way I run my business. Because what we see is the number of we know as business owners that we need to systemise our business. And I think how that’s interpreted often is that, well, I’ve got to systemise the operations and even the ISO 9000, they’re primarily around the operation side of the business. And what I think I’m hearing from you is to get that consistency, repeatability and reliability in your business. And that’s one of the mantras we have. Consistent, repeatable, reliable. Yes, you need a systemised structure and a systemised way for doing your operations, how you do your sales, how you do your marketing, how you do your production or build your product, even if that’s a service. But what I think is the additional overlay is that we need a business management system as well. Is what’s that rhythm, that cadence for meetings, for following up, for KPI’s, for strategy. And that’s what we’re talking about here. It’s that methodology for systemising the management function and the leadership of the business.

Yeah, I’ll take you one step further. It is about systemising the execution of your strategy. So I would say that, you know systemising the business…

Systemising the execution of your strategy.

That’s correct.

That’s a key point. That’s a key highlight.

Because I’ll tell you this thing about systemising your business and not being the center of chaos. I agree with that. But a lot of people miss the boat because if all they do is create, process and systemise their business, they have really missed the boat. Because to really do well, you’ve got to make sure your team is focused, aligned and accountable. Because you could have systems, but you could also approach a business in a way that is scattered and instead of having three or four really focused priorities and having the clarity to help people align and know what they’re supposed to do to help get that done and then holding them accountable in a way that is in a coachable fashion, you know, accountability, typical flavor I see people call me up and say, Patrick, I need you to help me hold this guy accountable. And by then, it’s usually too late. Usually what that person really meant was, Patrick, I need you to show me how to give this guy or gal the consequences of screwing up. That’s what they really mean. By then it’s a bit too late. For me, accountability is helping people understand what is their part in executing the strategy, their part of the strategy, whatever goal they have, and then holding them accountable so that you can inspect what you expect, collaborate and coach so that we can achieve the goal. So to me, accountability isn’t a hammer that you can go, Darryl, you screwed up. Whack. It’s more like, hey, Darryl, we have this goal to achieve on Friday. It’s Monday today. How you doing? And inspect what you expect. And if we need to make some adjustments, if I need to get Jack over here to help you a little bit so we can arrive on Friday successful, that’s great accountability. So I think that, you know, as you mentioned about entrepreneurs trying to get out of the center of chaos, a lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of abdicating as they get out of that center of chaos versus delegating, and that is huge. Abdicating, by the way, is, Darryl, here’s the job. Enjoy yourself. Let me know how it is and let me know when it’s done. That’s abdicating. Delegating is, Darryl, here’s the job. Here’s the criteria of success that I would expect. Do you agree with that? And then once you’ve agreed with that. How do I help you? How do I check in with you so that there are no surprises that whack me on the side of my head so that I can even help you get there. So that’s delegation versus application.

Yeah. And that’s come up before, and I’m reminded of a book I read and I forget the author, but the title is Who will do what by when? And it’s a brilliant little parable style book that talks about exactly this. It’s this accountability, and we talk about business as being a team-based sport and team-based accountability. And it really brought home the point for me, the point that you just made Patrick around, hey, when you ask me to do something, Darryl, can you do this for me by Friday? And I go, yep, I can do that by Friday. Or Patrick, no, I can’t do that by Friday. You’ve asked me to do these other things. I can’t do it by Friday. Is Monday. Okay. And so I go back and I. Or I try and renegotiate and you go, yes, Monday will work, or, no, Monday won’t work. Okay, so what are my other priorities? Do I need to rejuggle to get this new task done by Friday? And if it gets to Thursday, I need to get to you and say, yes, Patrick, I’m still on track to be able to deliver this by Friday or, Patrick, panic, I need help. I’m just not going to get this finished by Friday. What can we do? And if I alert you before the due date that we agreed to, I’ve got good karma, so to speak. But what most of us do is that we just don’t do it. It slips through the net and we hope you don’t notice. And then three weeks later you get cranky and go, Darryl, how’d you go with that? And I go, oh, look, I just got busy with work and never got done. And then we are faced with negative energy, whereas if I address it front on and go, I’m not going to make it. Patrick, can we renegotiate? Yeah, we’ve got positive, we’re dealing with it with positive energy before the deadline so before any potential problems occur. And that’s what we’re talking about here, is accountability, is just owning my task of whether I can or can’t do it and committing to what I can. And if I can’t step speaking up, up front.

Yeah. Now, that’s hard to do. I call it a spicy conversation.

Yeah.

The reason why I call it that is, you know, I’ve been to so many boring weekly status meetings, I’m sure you’ve had as well. But people are going around the room providing a status one at a time. The truth about That people aren’t listening because people are more focused on reporting out. So you’re speaking, and I’m thinking about how I’m going to report out. And then you got to. After you’ve reported out, it’s now my turn.

I report out. after I report out, the next guy’s talking and I’m not listening to him, either because I’m either relieved or pissed off, annoyed, scared, anxious because I just reported out. And either my boss liked it, I’m like, oh, my God, that was a good one. I’m not listening anymore.Or I’m thinking, God, he’s gonna, I screwed up. I gotta, I gotta. So I’m thinking about myself. I think that is the most expensive meeting of a company. You got your executives together in a weekly meeting and you wasted on status. So in our ?Rhythm Methodology, we provide you a system to actually provide status for your goals ahead of time. We insist that your team reads it and responds to it to some degree. And then on Monday or Tuesday or whatever your status, your status meeting is, we want to change that into what I call a weekly adjustment meeting. It’s a wham. It’s a weekly adjustment meeting. And now you are listening and collaborating and helping people do exactly what you just said. Hey, we noticed, Darryl, that this goal that you think you’re going to get done in two weeks is a little, is running a little bit late. Actually, you said it. You highlighted it in your status that I’ve reread.

So in this meeting I want to help you figure out how to get it from red or yellow back to green. We call that PTG. What’s your path to green? And so that process totally rejuvenates your weekly meeting into something that’s powerful, that helps people with focus, alignment and accountability. So at the end of the day, the importance of really connecting back to your strategy and then making sure that you can get it done. And execution to me is about achieving the commitments you have made. Whatever commitments you have made, if you make too many commitments, you better decommit or uncommit. And whatever commitments you’ve made, you better understand what it takes to actually do it and get there.

Yeah. Okay, so it’s about, yeah, it’s execution is about getting stuff done. And so what I’m hearing with your methodology, with the rhythm methodology, Patrick, is the subtle difference there that I haven’t seen before is instead of going to a meeting and just going, here’s where I’m at and making it live in the moment, you’re treating it. I think similar to the way board meetings run, where we give the status reports upfront, we expect everyone to have read it. So we give them enough time to read the status report so that they come to the meeting with questions and a mindset of going, okay, how do we solve problems? What do we need to do so that there’s no surprises in the actual meeting? Have I understood that correct?

Dude, you’re hired. When can you start?

Okay, so there’s a nice subtle touch. And it’s about engaging the leadership team. Because let’s face it, what do they want to do in meetings? They want to throw ideas around. They want to reach some agreements and they want to move forward. They don’t want to just sit back and be bored by, by egocentric meetings about, let me tell you how good I am and let me try and out position myself on you.

So, Darryl, let me share with you. What you just said is what all CEO’s and owners want. What you just said. But that’s not what the other people want. I’m sorry. Most of what the other people want, if not instructed, is an opportunity to share how great I’ve done.

Yeah.

I was worth the payroll check you gave me, boss, and I’m valuable to you. And look what I’ve done. That is subtle and that is human. That is human.

Yes.

The boss, the owner, the president, the CEO, they want to know how we can do better. But if you’re the one providing status, if the focus of the meeting is status, then you want to promote yourself. You want to know, not in a bad way, but I want you to know that I’ve done my job, buddy. I want you to know I’ve worked hard, blah, blah, blah. Really, I think this weekly meeting of your executive team should really be about How do we as a company move forward? How do we as a company achieve the goals that we set? Because guess what? The competition isn’t inside in this room. Competition is out there. So most companies inflict upon themselves wounds that their competition celebrate.

But really, they should be thinking about, hey, how do I push this goal forward if you’re failing in that goal? Actually, your failure is my failure. How do I help you? How do we collaborate? How do we get that together? How do we not just get things done, but get the right strategy executed? Because I’ve seen so many executive teams working on, executive team members work on the wrong things. They’re working on priorities that. Why are you doing that? We cancelled. We cancelled that project a month ago. Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t get the memo. Well, actually, you did. You just so much invested in it, you didn’t want to let it go. Let it go, you know, and let’s work on something. So, and that’s human. That’s not bad. That’s not people being bad or selfish.

That’s just human. And that is us not letting go of stuff that we’re fully, highly invested in. So I want people to be highly invested in the goals of the company, get very focused on the goals of the company, get aligned to it, understand what their part is in getting it done, and then enjoy what I call enjoy the journey of accountability. Because accountability, I cannot emphasise enough, is a bad word for most people. You use the word accountability and people flinch. But I’m saying accountability, done correctly, should be you and I walking down the right strategy path together, getting the right things done together. I’m your manager. Let me help you. Let me help you versus beating you up. So it’s changing the flavor of how we work together so that we can actually focus, get aligned, and get accountable to getting the strategies done.

You raised some important things there. And as you were saying, manager, even the word manager, it’s a really old word that says I need to manage you. Whereas it’s in modern day workplaces, especially SME’s, they’re very team oriented, where it’s very much we, we need to get this done. And I think you’ve raised a question for me that I’ve seen in some businesses, and it’d be interesting to see how you handle this with your methodology. You get, say, the marketing manager, it doesn’t matter. A functional head is part of the executive team. And they go, look, while I’m in the executive meeting, here’s the team I’m involved in. We’re a team as the executive team. We’ve got the head of marketing, the head of people. You might have the head of finance or systems and operations, for example. You’ve got that team with the CEO at that top team, and there’s a team. Then they go out and they go, well, I’m the head of marketing or the head of whatever my function is, and now I need to run this team. And these are the guys, the team that work for me. And when I ask them to do stuff, I want them to perform really well. What is their first team, Patrick? And where should their allegiance lie? Should their allegiance be to their, their first team as their functional team, or should it be to the executive team?

I teach that your first team is the executive team. And when I shared it with a lot of team members or executive team members, they’re surprised. I asked the question, who’s your first team? And usually they believe that the team they lead is their first team. But if they have that thinking, it actually subtly, unconsciously creates silos. This is my team. I need to protect my team. But frankly, when I get them to switch their thinking to, oh, my goodness, the first team is my executive team. Now they’re more focused on getting aligned at the executive team level. And by the way, if you are not aligned to executive team level, a one or two degree misalignment here. When you go down the path of your teams and the teams that report to your team members, that alignment just splinters out big. So a small deviation here goes into a large deviation out there. So your first team is your executive team, and you need to get aligned with those people.

Absolutely. So, Patrick, just, I guess, closing the circle again, we were talking about your methodology. We’ve gone, one of the key things around the rhythm methodology is that with your executive team, your team meetings, and I assume this structure is replicated, the various teams, is that we produce reports of progress to share with the rest of the team before the meeting so that we can arrive at the meeting ready to discuss and bring you ideas. I assume that part of that means that whatever projects we’re working on, we reset every quarter or every defined time period so that we can keep our focus and know that we are working on the right things and we agree as a team, what are the right things to be working on for the next quarter so that we’ve got the right sort of, I guess, size of time bites, bite size timepieces so that we don’t get bored and lose focus. And quarters are generally thought of as a good time size. Is there anything else around the rhythm methodology that stands out as being, I guess, different thinking or variations of some of the other?

So we have this thing called a rhythm of work. And like I said, we are very focused on executing your strategy. So our rhythm of work says you need to make sure you’ve got a long term north star goal, a big, hairy, audacious goal, and then we want to make sure that you got a good three year plan and on an annual basis, you’re reviewing that. And so we put you on a rhythm where you have an annual plan and then a quarterly plan. The quarterly plan is what we call the execution plan, and I call that your 13-week race. We want to be tight, tight, tight on your 13 week race. And at the end of your 13-week race, you create another 13-week race. So you’re very, very focused, very, very agile on choosing what you’re going to do for the next 13 weeks. That is in alignment with your strategy for the year, which is in alignment with getting your overall strategy for the next three years, your growth moves done. I think that’s critical. I think that sometimes when you get too agile, you really need both some people say to me, Patrick, you know, all these three year goals. And I say, well, you’re wrong because you need to be agile, but what are you being agile towards?

If you’re running towards something, what are you running towards? Don’t just work your butt off. You got to know what you’re working towards. So we put this rhythm of work together for you. Your goals are documented in a systematic way. We red, yellow, green it. Green is the goal. Red is unacceptable, it’s failure. Yellow is in between. Super green is the stretch goal because all your A players want stretch goals. And then we document all this in our software because when you’re working with more than say, 100 people or so, it’s really hard to get the message out to be to be accurate in your clarity, in your communication. So everything goes into a software system and that is the system that people use to provide a status on a weekly basis before they come to the weekly adjustment meeting. At a weekly adjustment meeting we have spicy conversations. Okay? I jokingly like to say we got eight guys or gals in a room. We all have the same opinions. I’m sorry seven of us are cost saving opportunities. So we need to have spicy conversations. We need to help each other see things. It’s human. I’m going to try and hide something cause I’m scared. You need to help me and say, Patrick, how’s that going, buddy? Not trying to hurt you, but trying to help you. How’s that going? How they’re. I don’t know. I mean. Okay, let’s talk about it. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s a safe space. So that’s kind of the cadence and the rhythm. And we want you to do this every single week because how do you have a great year? You only have a great year. You can have four great quarters. How do you have a great quarter is you have 13 great weeks one week at a time. That’s how you get it done.

So, Patrick, you talk about spicy conversations. My experience is that most people are scared of having spicy conversations, not just at work, in life. They’re scared of upsetting people, offending people, having contrarian views or alternative views. And we tend to take the easy path and just agree and nod and agree.

Yeah.

And I think that’s perhaps amplified or more so the case when it’s in a work environment and we’ve got a boss, we’ve got someone we report to. We don’t want to often protocol is that we don’t contradict the boss. We just do as I say. And so the culture isn’t open for spicy conversations for fear. What will people think of me? Will I put my job at risk? I need this job. You and I know that if that happens, we don’t get the best out of people and we don’t get the best outcomes. But how do you overcome that? How do you create that environment, that culture, where it’s okay to have spicy conversations?

So let me give you a spicy conversation. I’ve always observed, I’ve always observed that the fish rots from the head down. And therefore, if the leader of the company, if the CEO has not helped to create an environment where the culture embraces this kind of conversation, it’s not going to happen. There is a great story of Alan Mulally when he took over Ford and he was in the executive team with his executive team meeting. And he asked, he said, I don’t want to hear all this stuff about what’s going right. What are the issues? Everyone’s quiet. He said, okay, well, next week I expect to hear about issues. And next week happens. He asks the same question. Everyone’s quiet. He says, I need to hear something. And from the dead silence, somebody speaks up and says, we have an issue. And here’s the issue. And what Alan did was he did not yell at the guy because usually we get mad, we go, what the hell are you talking about, Darryl? How can you do that? Okay, well, that’s the last time I’m going to share something difficult.

Yeah.

Instead, Alan  thanked him. He said, thank you. So I call this the gift of red. I think that when an employee or a member of your executive team shares with you something is red in our methodology. You need to silence your, your prehistoric brain here that wants to fight a flight and relax, smile and say, hey, Darryl, thank you. Because you just shared something. It’s going to blow up in my face three weeks from now. You just gave me three weeks to work on it. Right? So I should thank you now, if, Darryl, if you continue to fail and give me bad results week after week. After week, that’s an HR issue. But that’s not an issue we should handle in our weekly meeting. In a weekly meeting, it should be about how do we get to that goal. We should make the weekly meeting very safe. If a leader wants his or her people to share candidly and they’re not doing that, I would ask the leader to self examine, start with yourself and ask what you are doing that is not encouraging the environment that allows candor and spicy conversation. So I think it starts with yourself as the leader. How are you behaving? Are you embracing the difficult conversations? Are you getting mad and yelling at people and punishing the messenger or even the culprit? It doesn’t matter. Even if the culprit, even if it’s someone that you’re frustrated with, guess what? You as a leadership taking care of that frustration. It is your fault that you are frustrated with that employee. It’s not his fault or her fault. As the leader, it’s your fault. You should take care of that. But you should create the environment where people feel safe to come in and say, hey, I’m so sorry this thing isn’t working because the first time you blast me out the door, not only is that the last time I’m going to report something difficult, but the people around me, your executive team members, are watching and they’re going, wow, Patrick just blasted Darryl out. I’m not going to be stupid. I’m not going to share. So I think your culture has to be created or maybe adjusted so you. Get candor in your meetings.

Yeah. So it starts from the top. If you haven’t got that environment and you want that environment, you’ve got to look within, look in the mirror and figure out why you haven’t got that. How do you react as the leader, as the owner of the business? Two bad news. Do you welcome it? Do you invite it to celebrate it so that you can work on it as a team together, and then step by step that will encourage others to replicate that behavior, is what you’re suggesting?

Yes.

Patrick, look. That’s brilliant. Is there any other key points that you want to raise? We’ve got a few minutes left or just not long. We’re coming to the end. Are there any other key points about the Rhythm Methodology that you think it’s really important that people want to know about? We’ll put the links on the website of where we put the blog post for this, this episode. But are there any key points or anything that you want?

I’ll give you one tip for everybody. Everyone thinks writing goals is done when they can say, I want to take a vacation to Seattle, I’m done. That’s my goal. Okay. Everyone thinks they’re done, but they’re not done. They’re not done until they have specified. What success looks like. I want to get this. I want to have a vacation in Seattle. I want to get there by next week, Friday. I want to spend a week there. And what the vacation should look like is I want to have wonderful time with my daughter. Okay. I’ve now spec’d it out and I visualised it. So most of the time when people don’t achieve their goals, surprisingly, when they set that goal, they didn’t take the time to visualise and see how that’s done. So over. Over. You know, I’ve done this for 17 years, 18 years now. And I’ve been surprised how difficult it is for anybody, not just executives, but it gets harder the higher up I go in organisation, ironically, because I think executives tend to manage bigger things now versus getting tight on some small things. So setting goals, you got to get tight. You got to be able to say success looks like this, failure looks like this, and exceeding my expectations looks like this.

People don’t do that. When people can decide what the goal is, they think they’re done. And I would say if they just miss the most important part of the work, which is to say, this is how I expect it to be done, this is what success looks like. And because if you don’t define that well, it is impossible now for you to give me objective status on how you’re doing, because then it becomes, well, I feel good about it. Well, what does that mean? And so there’s so many conversations I’ve had with executives and CEO’s and owners where they would say to me, this guy isn’t performing well. And I’ll ask him what the expectations are. Now go ask the guy what they thought the expectations were from his boss, and they have different expectations.

So I would tell them that when that happens, the poor guy working for you already failed before he even started his race. If you and him have different expectations, that poor guy has already failed even before he started his race.

Yeah. So we need to be clear on what the expectations are. And the only way to do that is, are you saying that we actually need to write them down? We need to get them out of our head, because that process of getting that vision, that goal, if you like, of having a holiday in Seattle and then starting to define it and get some clarity around it. The only way we do that is we get it out of our head and write it down or type it or what have you, but while it’s in our head, there’s no clarity to it. I’ve spoken to a lot of people over the years, and I go, well, can I see your business plan first? I have you got a business plan? They go, sure. Can I see it? Well, it’s in my head. What’s in the business plan? Well, I’m going to grow the business. Okay, how are you going to grow the business? And then it’s when they stumble, because they haven’t got the clarity. They know they want to grow it to 5-10, 50, 100 million, whatever it is, but they don’t know how they’re going to do it. They’ve just got this fantasy of what they want. And it’s. And it’s not a real vision. So you got to get it out of their head on paper. It used to be a paper in digital format and write it down to get that clarity so you can communicate that expectation totally.

And if you would ask me that question, I would say my business plan is in rhythm. I pull it up. I’d show you our three year goals. I’d show you the one year plan. I’ll show you the four quarter flyover, which is the visualisation of the plan. I would show you the next 13- week race. And for each and every goal, what is the red, yellow, green success criteria? And if we were in the middle of the quarter, I’ll be able to show you how my team’s working on it. Which of the priorities are red, which are yellow, which are green? If you click one more time in, you’ll be able to see the comments and the notifications that are going back and forth, where the team members are working collaboratively, asynchronously and collaboratively. I have team members which are all over the US. You know, I’ve got team members in Denver, Colorado. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’ve got someone in Seattle. I’ve got. I’ve got people all over the. All over the US. And they put their goals in they provide status. They get aligned and therefore united. And then they can see and be helpful to each other, whether you’re in a different time zone. I even have someone in Hawaii. So, you know, so. So they can collaborate and that’s how the plan gets done. It doesn’t get done. If it’s stuck in your head, it doesn’t get done.

Brilliant. Patrick. Look, I really appreciate you sharing your insights on how we can build a business system, a methodology, the rhythm methodology, that will keep our management team, ensuring that they execute on their strategy, and thus we execute on our strategy. Our business is going to be worth more. As a final point of wrapping up, Patrick, is there one key thing that you really want listeners to take away from our conversation today?

Yeah, I think that you’ve got to slow down a little bit. You said it earlier, the E myth teaches us to work on our business. Right? And most people, I’ve learned this, that if I don’t put you on a cadence, we call it the rhythm of  work where you made time to work on your business, write down these goals and put it in our system where it can now be worked on by the rest of the team. It won’t get done. And it doesn’t matter how small you are or how big you are. You know, I’ve had people say to me, well, Patrick, I’m too busy. I’m like, you think you’re busy now? Think of how you’re going to be busier when the company is, you know, when a company is, you know, a year from now much larger, or three years from now much larger. If you don’t make space for this you will never get done. And to me, it’s like you have a stream of water and you put a couple of big rocks in the stream and all the water flows around it. One of the big rocks you need to put in the stream is to create this rhythm of planning, execution, doing. We call it think plan. Do you got to think plan do every single quarter. That has to be the big rocks in your stream where the water flows around. Otherwise, you’ll never have time for it and you will not get a premium exit when you sell your business.

Beautiful, beautiful. Patrick Thean thanks for sharing your exit insights with us today.

Thank you, Darryl, for having me. Thank you.