The WAY to WOW Shows
Clarity = Success
March 21, 2023
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[0:00] foreign hello and welcome to the way to wow business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and uh it may look just a little bit different today because normally I stand when I'm doing these broadcasts um but I'm sitting today I had a little bit of a an accident uh a week ago

[0:38] um got run down by a car so now I uh I have to sit uh for the next six weeks while my broken foot heals um and and when so the uh and then I can do these broadcasts standing up again so I I may seem a little bit more in your face and I I you know don't don't mean to intrude on your space uh I'll link I'll lean back a little bit how about that so in any event um this is the way to wow Show Business lessons from the military we are here each Tuesday 10 30 a.m Pacific time and

[1:15] 1 30 p.m eastern time with an hour in and for mountain in Central Time and we talk about military strategy historic figures and um and classic books on Military strategy that we can then turn into lessons we can use in order to better run our businesses and either the businesses that we own or the company's organizations for which we work so we're

[1:50] like I said we're here every Tuesday and and if this is your first time welcome if you're back again thank you for returning and I'm going to jump right into our lesson let's see where is it here it is um um all right so for the last several weeks we've been talking about military lessons that we can learn from Marine Corps warfighting Doctrine um that's not going let's try that there

[2:26] we go so as is all of what we do um on on the way to wow shows it's based on this uh concept known as the three pillars of attainment and the three pillars are self-relationships and Pursuits and we on these shows we this show we deal primarily in the Pursuits realm on Pursuits pillar in the finances realm because we're dealing with our professional lives although as I mentioned on previous episodes many of these Concepts will apply to other areas of Our Lives whether it's in building relationships or in better understanding

[3:03] who we are as individuals so um there are nine fundamentals of War fighting That We're translating into business Concepts within the Marine Corps warfighting Doctrine we started out talking about Unity of effort and and supported by concentration of power or what we would probably call resources in in the business world and you notice you'll notice that each of these groups tends to the the second one tends to support the previous one okay and then we talked

[3:38] about initiative how we don't want to sit back and and uh just see how things develop but we want to be taking the initiative in confronting the challenges of of the businesses uh with which we're working and and in order to take initiative we need to maintain agility okay and then next we talked about maintaining freedom of action um so that we so that we can have that agility right and and in order to maintain freedom of action we need to to make sure that we're we're sustaining

[4:13] our um again not our our army or our military force but in this case the team that is is uh operating our business so those were the previous three weeks I invite you to go to our you champ got you channel YouTube channel um the way to wow uh um uh on YouTube and you can watch those those previous uh shows if you like now so today we're going to talk about the last three fundamental concepts of of War fighting and translate those into business as

[4:51] well now the first one we're going to talk about today is clarity now Clarity I I would argue is one of the most important um uh Concepts we can pursue in life in fact I think I would go so far as to say that without Clarity we can't be successful because if we don't know what success means to us if we're not clear on what success means how can we attain

[5:28] it how can we achieve it the answer is we can't we're just sort of going about fairly indiscriminately I'm hoping that will hit on something that that we feel makes our lives worth living or or makes a particular Venture in which we're involved worth doing okay so clarity is is is fundamental to success in anything whether it's understanding who we are whether it's pursuing relationships um Clarity in in relationships whether

[6:04] it's a marriage whether it's a relationship between a parent and a child whether it's two friends Clarity means understanding what will build this relationship what is important to the other person what's important to me okay and in fact you you see in the other two principles those that undergird Clarity particularly in relationships but but more broadly Clarity um overall so knowledge of self and knowledge of the enemy of course that's

[6:39] a that's a war fighting Concept in business we might call it knowledge of competition in relationships we would simply call it knowledge of the other person so whether it's our spouse whether it's a again our child a friend what do we know about them what do we really know about them how hard have we worked to understand what they are striving for in life who they are as an individual okay and and that can be very diff difficult to figure out many people put up barriers

[7:17] to their true selves for for lots of reasons one is they may not like a part of themselves or they may not like themselves in general and they're afraid that if we know who they truly are we're going to reject them and so rather than give us the opportunity to reject them from their perspective they they hide their true self now um oftentimes we may do the same thing at least in parts of our Lives we may not show everybody every aspect of our life now and by the

[7:53] way I there's nothing wrong with that we needn't be so fully open that that we're essentially naked to the world I I don't know that that's a a good policy to follow having said that um the the deeper the relationship we seek the more open about ourselves we're going to need to be the more vulnerable we're going to have to let ourselves be in order to allow that person to be equally vulnerable and then build those bonds of trust that

[8:30] come from shared vulnerability that's that's respected and protected between two people okay so a little bit of a tangent just in terms of how these principles relate to another realm within the three pillars of attainment but I think it's worth taking this this detour uh for for a few minutes um to to understand these Concepts more broadly so let's let's now go back to clarity as it applies in business so uh when we we started off with unity of

[9:06] effort okay now Unity of effort presupposes we understand what are we trying to achieve in our business we need to have that clarity in order to unify the effort toward it okay so um I I was reading about uh Tesla earlier this morning article about them in the Wall Street Journal today I I think one of the advantages that Elon Musk said Elon Musk has with

[9:41] Tesla is he has a very clear vision of what Tesla is all about Tesla is about making the best electric vehicles in the world in a way that the most the largest number of people can own them okay so he recently announced I guess uh his his next initiative which is to cut the cost of a vehicle by 50 percent so I

[10:17] guess he's looking to build or be able to sell an electric vehicle for I guess around I don't know twenty five thirty thousand dollars um I I I'm not you know discussing the merits or demerits of Tesla or Elon Musk all I'm saying is he's he stated that as a Clear Vision and he's putting all of his people behind achieving that Clarity so you can see how someone like Elon Musk uses these principles so he's got this Clear Vision make the best electric

[10:52] vehicles in the world make them the most affordable so that the most number of people can buy them and and and we can consistently beat the competition I I mean I've never spoken to him I don't read a whole lot about him I'm I'm you know supposing these things based on you know the the various articles I read about Tesla right so he has that Clarity of vision that Clarity of vision then allows him to drive Unity of effort among all the people at Tesla to gaining

[11:29] that objective okay so you see how these things almost like they go in a circle right right we have Clarity we put Unity of of effort behind it and and and so on and so on and we come back to Clarity so and by the way we can have a clear vision and we may get to a point where we need to change that Vision so it's it's equally necessary to have a clear initial Vision but also to have clarity about how well we're accomplishing that that Vision

[12:05] that goal that objective if we kid ourselves into saying I don't know we're doing fine or just a little more time or another year and we'll be there or or you know blah blah blah blah we're we're we're we're destroying we have we actually don't have Clarity what we have is is where we're putting a veil before our eyes so Clarity that's why I think Clarity is not at the beginning of um of of this Doctrine but rather it comes toward the end because once you start your main effort the key thing now

[12:42] is to be able to gain continually gain clarity as to what's happening okay and that can be hard to do you know I'm sure you've heard the expression they're so close to it they couldn't see you know their hand for their face or whatever so that oftentimes happens I know that um in my first uh successful company there were times that I got so committed to a particular path that I should have given up long before and and I just didn't have the clarity to realize I I I

[13:17] was not seeing the situation uh as it actually was okay and that that held back my progress on on some occasions okay so we need to strive for clarity at the beginning and on a continual basis in order to make sure that we are on trajectory on path to meet our objectives Okay so so that's that's clarity now Clarity is supported by self-knowledge and knowledge of the competition so in this

[13:55] case while we might say self-knowledge is knowledge of us as an individual I think we could also Define it as knowledge of our team or of the people with whom we're working in our Venture so we have to know who we are what our strengths and weaknesses are how best how best to motivate us our you know ourselves it's and and all of those things and and we we especially need to know where our weaknesses are

[14:30] okay because then we need to add people to our team who are better than us in those areas of weakness okay so if if maybe you are particularly good about the the technical side of your business let's let's take our we we've I've talked about Plumbing businesses many times before if you go back and look at at past shows so let's say let's say you have a plumbing business okay and uh you are an absolutely superb plumber right that that is your skill well so that's

[15:07] that is the basis of the business okay if you're a great plumber you can be successful but but being a great plumber is not the only aspect of a business that you'll need to make it successful you also need someone or you also need the skill of dealing with the administrative side of the business finances there may be you know licensing issues and other kind of regulatory issues you need to deal with there could be supply issues making sure you have the supplies you need in order to be able to timely provide your service all of these things

[15:44] and to the extent that you're not good at some of these other aspects of the business then you need people around you who are okay and so knowledge of self really becomes knowledge of the people with whom you're working in your business okay whether it's literally your company or whether it's a company for which you're working and and and you know you need to know your colleagues then what are their strengths what are their weaknesses for the people who report to you what are their strengths and weaknesses okay and how do you help

[16:21] them develop their strengths and minimize any negative impact that may come out of their weaknesses okay so in this in this case Clarity and self-knowledge work work in tandem right we need to have Clarity not only of our objectives but also of ourselves and our people okay if we don't if we don't really understand who we're working with we we can't effectively lead them okay so there's there's a kind of an ongoing uh

[16:57] conversation um in in the business world that talks about incentives extrinsic incentives and um um internal incentives I believe it is so extrinsic extent uh incentives are incentives that come from outside of us salary um title uh you know time off um uh equity in a company or bonuses those are all extrinsic uh incentives for us to perform well okay so for

[17:33] example sales is the classic extrinsic um supported job where um you know ones uh I should say like like real estate okay where your compensation is based typically on a percentage of the property of the value of the properties you sell or the price of the properties you sell anyway right so you know if you want to make more money you need to um you know close more transactions basically okay so that extrinsic reward system would seem to incentivize people

[18:08] to do more business and oftentimes it does so in with younger people though it appears that that intrinsic I think I call them internal intrinsic incentives are as powerful and maybe in some cases more powerful than extrinsic so intrinsic incentives are doing what we think is right doing what we think is worthwhile feeling like the the work we're doing has value so for a lot of

[18:43] younger people and I think this is true for a lot of you know old people like me too um we want to feel like what we're doing helps other people actually helps them okay and and that intrinsic incentive may be for many people more powerful than extrinsic incentives okay so that's a kind of self-knowledge that's important it's not it's it's critical to know it about ourselves but it's also critical to know it about the

[19:18] people with whom we work especially the people who report to us the people we lead if we don't know what motivates them we cannot help them meet their objectives exceed their expectations Etc okay so we need to have that knowledge of us and our team just want to make sure we're doing okay on top I think we are okay so knowledge of self knowledge of the people with whom we work okay and then finally knowledge of the enemy or

[19:53] knowledge of the competition or competitors right we need to as thoroughly as possible understand who are we up against and we should we need to have clarity about that as well okay so um you know again I'm referring back to this article I read about Tesla so um I was reading they they asked um the uh CEOs of I think it was Ford and GM to comment on the goals that this goal that

[20:28] Elon Musk has set for Tesla to you know cut car prices by 50 or whatever so um the the responses they got were I mean I they weren't really even responses I mean I I think the the CEO of GM basically said we're focused on providing the greatest value for our customers it's like okay you know um but someone else within the company that the reporters spoke to said in reality their benchmarking Tesla as they develop

[21:05] their own strategies or maybe it was maybe it was set about Ford Ford is benchmarking Tesla's strategy as it develops its electric car business right so what does that really mean it means that that uh I I think it was Ford I I as I recall now Ford is seeking to have a great deal of knowledge about the competition in this case Tesla because Tesla is the market leader in electric cars and that's smart they what you know they they should be

[21:40] looking at what has made Tesla successful what have they done that has made them so dominant in the electric car business without all the gloss I mean it's it's easy to say oh Tesla is successful because of Elon Musk and while that there is truth in that is Tesla only successful because of Elon Musk or is it successful because there's a team of people there and there's a culture there and there's a way of doing

[22:16] business there that makes it successful and I I know I don't know the company well enough to know the answer to that question but I would hope that GM and Ford and VW and you know the other cars stalantis these other cars manufacturing companies I I hope they do know that for their own sake right because to have knowledge of the competition especially the leading competitor is extremely important as you increasingly go head to head with them you know up until

[22:51] recently electric cars haven't really been a big part of the other automaker strategies and now they are very focused on that and I think they would be foolish to assume that Elon Musk was going to go oh well no big deal nah blow them off no I I don't think he's going to do that he's going to continue to attempt to innovate to to push his people to excel to keep their lead right and so if you want to catch up with them you need to know what they're doing and that's that's true across the board so

[23:28] if you know look at Athletics if if I I'm uh if I'm a sprinter I think I want to know you know everything there is to know about Usain Bolt right I I think he's still one of the top sprinters um in the world and the fact that he's so successful and has been successful um as late in his you know I mean he's not an old man by any stretch but he's he's not a young guy I think within the running world anymore and yet he's been amazingly successful so why is that the case right I remember reading an article about him this is a while ago and I've

[24:05] never been able to find it since but he evidently takes off two or three months kind of in the fall of each year fall winter of each year where he he doesn't train he eats what he wants he does gain weight for a while and then he gets back into a strict um regiment training regimen and gets back into Tip-Top shape and he's good to go so for him evidently that cycle of of intensive training was sort of intensive rest and and and and and uh de-stressing if you will that seems to have brought

[24:40] him a great deal not just of success of course but of longevity and maybe maybe that's a better way to approach the competitive World in which he he operates him which he runs then you know 365 day a year training which could lead to over training so um and I I I don't know I'm not I'm not you know I'm not that that big a runner um all I'm saying is knowledge of the competition is crucial as we figure out what do we need to do to be competitive

[25:15] within the industry that we're in so we can't sit back on our Laurels these days and if you think you have no competitors in the industry that's probably a short-sighted view okay railroads thought they had no competitors in the industry they had it all locked up and Along Came Trucking and Airlines and private vehicles and it decimated parts of their business right and so there's always a competitor out there it just may not be completely obvious to you

[25:51] well so so that brings us to the end of our uh nine principles of Marine Corps War fighting Doctrine we've translated them into business principles so I encourage you to watch all four episodes they're they're each uh roughly a half an hour and I think you will find an excellent foundation on which to build your business so let's let's just I'm gonna review them one last time before we go here so Unity of effort oops oh I

[26:26] went one too far Unity of effort supported by concentration of resources ability to take the initiative supported by having agility maintaining agility okay maintaining freedom of action so that you have agility and sustainment that allows for freedom of action so you're not constantly having to go to go back to you know point one in order to you know launch your next uh initiative within your business and then finally flarity Clarity from the start and

[27:01] Clarity throughout the time that you're involved with your business or the business for which you work which presupposes knowledge of self which could which is both you and the people with whom you work and knowledge of competition knowledge of your competitors both their businesses and key individuals within those businesses I'm going to leave you with one quick uh um uh story if you will about this idea of knowledge of the competition during the D-Day invasion uh in World War II

[27:38] the Normandy invasion one of the things that helped make it successful was General Patton did not take part in the actual Invasion but the Germans were so convinced that he was because they were convinced through their you know knowledge of him as a general that he was the best General the Allies had the best Field General the Allies had anyway they they they held back a certain part of their military power in reserve waiting for wherever Patton was going to hit the

[28:13] beach and in doing and and the Allies created a whole fake Army around Patton to feed into that belief by Nazi Germany right and because they they had such a deep knowledge of of the enemy in the case of Nazi Germany it that was actually their downfall right so we we need to have not only deep knowledge of the enemy but also or in business we need to have not only deep knowledge of our competitors but also of our competition so we don't get so hung up

[28:48] on how an individual uh behaves or what their potential is or what they do are able to do is but that we we have a broad enough picture to see how we may be getting out flanked by a com by a you know a larger competitor well we're focused on just this one aspect and and and in the case of World War II the Normandy invasion that is part of why the Allies were successful um on on that that fateful day June 6 1944. so that's what I've got for you today um we're coming up right on 30 minutes

[29:23] so I thank you very much for joining me this has been the way a while business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel we are here every Tuesday 10 30 a.m Pacific 1 30 p.m Eastern an hour in for Central and mountain time so please join us every week and on Wednesdays at um 12 30 p.m Pacific 3 30 p.m Eastern is the way to wow show people making money and tomorrow my guest is going to be Anna Rook she is a an amazing

[29:58] entrepreneur who has built up a fascinating business devoted to essentially Wellness I'm not sure that she would describe it quite that way so I'm interested in talking to her and and getting her take on how she describes what she does um there may be other people out there doing it Anna is the only one that I know of um and and and and and quite wonderful she travels all over the world spreading her message so I invite you to join us tomorrow you can go to Eventbrite and

[30:33] join us live or join us on any of the social media outlets on which we live stream and that is LinkedIn Facebook Twitter and of course YouTube and and be sure to check back on our YouTube channel to look at past episodes lots of great information there wonderful guests who will give you terrific ideas on how to increase your business success and your professional success so thanks again for joining me and signing off just want to say Marie darling you inspire me every day and you are and

[31:09] ever will be my bell so thank you so much and look forward to seeing you tomorrow and next week