The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:04 - 00:00:32:02
Kevin Eikenberry
Do you know what your most important activities and most important drivers are for your business? And even if you do, does everyone else on the team know? as leaders, if we want to create the most value in our organizations, we have to have clear answers to those questions. And that's our focus today. Getting that clarity and using it to create better results, the results that matter most.

00:00:32:04 - 00:00:51:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Welcome to the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively, make a bigger difference for their teams, organizations, and the world. That's why we're here. I'm assuming that's why you're here. If you're listening to this podcast, you could have been with us live or in the future. You could be with us live.

00:00:51:11 - 00:01:11:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Because all of these episodes are first live streamed on a variety of social media platforms. You can find out when that's happening so you can get this information sooner. In this case, about a month sooner. the live versus content will be on the podcast. If you want to learn how to do that, you can join our groups at either Facebook or LinkedIn.

00:01:11:19 - 00:01:42:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Just go to Remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linkedin to do exactly that. Today's episode is brought to you by our remarkable masterclasses. Pick from 13 important life and leadership skills to help you become more effective, productive and confident while overcoming some of your toughest challenges. As a leader. Learn more and sign up at Remarkable masterclass.com. Our guest today is Lee Benson.

00:01:42:20 - 00:02:02:15
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm going to bring him up now so you can see him. And as Lee smiles at you, I'm going to tell you all about him. Lee Benson is a value creation expert with over 30 years of experience in the business world. He is the CEO of Execute to Win, a firm that helps organizations of all sizes accelerate the value they create.

00:02:02:17 - 00:02:34:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Lee began his value creation journey early, pulling leads for $0.25 an hour. Since then, he has founded and led seven companies, including Abel Aerospace, which he grew from two employees to 500 employees in 2000 customers in 60 countries. and exited that business in 2016. he is a sought after speaker and author, author of the new book, Your Most Important Number Increase Collaboration, Achieve Strategy, Your Strategy, and Execute to Win.

00:02:34:17 - 00:02:49:16
Kevin Eikenberry
He's been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Ink, has been interviewed on CNBC, Bloomberg, and other major media outlets, including now today on the Remarkable Leadership Podcast. Lee, welcome. So glad you're here, sir.

00:02:49:18 - 00:02:52:13
Lee Benson
Kevin, great to be here. Thank you.

00:02:52:15 - 00:03:10:12
Kevin Eikenberry
I want to start kind of the way I mean, you know, I pretty much always open with some sort of an introduction of the person. We got a little bit of a sketch, of your of your journey. But I really want you to say a little bit more about your journey. I like to sometimes say to people, when you were ten, you didn't figure you'd be doing what you're doing now.

00:03:10:14 - 00:03:24:01
Kevin Eikenberry
or at least probably not exactly. So just give us a little bit, what leads you to in this space? Obviously, you've done a lot of different things. You've, Why this work? Why this work now?

00:03:24:03 - 00:03:48:01
Lee Benson
Yeah, it's quite a journey. That's a that's a giant question. but I love talking about starting out. my first experience trading my best efforts for the accumulated best efforts of somebody else. And that was pulling weeds. And it was shoveling snow and paper routes and, dishwasher, busboy cook. In the 1980s, I played, in rock and roll bands easily over a thousand nights in clubs and concerts.

00:03:48:01 - 00:04:09:23
Lee Benson
That's how I made most of my money back then. that was kind of like a business, although I don't really count it as as a business. you know, of the seven that I've started, from scratch myself and control that, I just actually starting an eighth company. this month with a couple of my friends. First one that I don't have controlling ownership, but it's a three way, equal partnership.

00:04:10:00 - 00:04:37:14
Lee Benson
And I just love this. I love this whole value creation journey. And and, I've been working for, you know, decades now on this framework that I call holistic value creation. So it's it's three macro buckets. It's material value creation, which most people fully get that, hey, it's the money. And it's super important to cultivate that. Also, maybe even more importantly, emotional energy value creation, which I look at, is the scarcest commodity on the planet.

00:04:37:14 - 00:04:58:18
Lee Benson
When our emotional energy is on ten, we can do anything. When it's on, when you get a flat tire and it runs your week. And then third, the spiritual value creation bucket, which I look at as connectedness, you know, to ourselves, to our friends or families in the context of an organization. It's all the other team members. We work with our suppliers, our customers and strengthening that.

00:04:58:19 - 00:05:23:10
Lee Benson
And so I feel like every day I'm on the front lines in this laboratory to promote holistic value creation behaviors out in the world. You know, through the work I do directly with clients that my team does with clients, I run groups of, CEOs in my what I call execute mastermind groups. And it's all about that is, accelerating the value of their organizations through holistic value creation.

00:05:23:12 - 00:05:43:10
Kevin Eikenberry
So it's interesting that you ended there because that's where I wanted to go next is you used this phrase, I used it in the intro and you used it like seven times already. you said that you're you're an expert at value creation, so let's just start there. Let's start with what you I mean, you've talked about three, three different types of it just now.

00:05:43:14 - 00:05:52:17
Kevin Eikenberry
Was there anything more you want to say about what you what you specifically mean by creating value? first let's do that first.

00:05:52:19 - 00:06:14:23
Lee Benson
Yeah. Creating value in the world. I believe it feels right when it's holistic. And, you know, most people again, think about the material piece of it. There's a lot of virtue signaling going on in the world saying, hey, it can't be just about the money and it's all this other stuff. But when you look at most people's behaviors and actions and decisions, it's 90% around the money.

00:06:15:01 - 00:06:42:15
Lee Benson
And and what I'm advocating for in this framework is that, it's really important to keep it in balance. And that balance is going to be different for each individual, each organization. but the the emotional energy value created, which is a superpower for leaders, you know, they're, they're conveying that they're creating this energetic environment where every team members sort of intrinsically motivated and empowered to create more value over time.

00:06:42:16 - 00:07:05:22
Lee Benson
so really important to get that right. And and then on the connectedness side, what are we doing to strengthen the communities within our organizations? It's always interesting to me that companies have to do a survey to figure out what's going on. Like if you don't just if you don't know, like what's up with that? You know, even even the surveys, you know, the Gallup, 12, 12 question survey, which I'm sure you're familiar with.

00:07:06:00 - 00:07:23:05
Lee Benson
One of the questions on there is do you have a best friend at work? If it came back and it said, hey, we don't, have our many best friends. Made it work. What do we start? A best friends program. It's like it's it's so crazy to me. And I think it's because they're primarily focusing on cultivating material value creation, which is super important.

00:07:23:07 - 00:07:44:05
Lee Benson
But when they don't cultivate the other two, it diminishes the potential of the material value creation. And and one thing I like to say, because you use the word expert and one thing I hope for myself and almost everybody I know and care about is that they never become experts. Because most experts I run into these days, they stop learning and more importantly, they stop listening.

00:07:44:07 - 00:08:02:14
Lee Benson
And and when I look at your book, Remarkable Leadership and you talk about unleashing, you know, potential and 13 competencies in there, you're starting with learn continuously. Right. And so that it's like you have to be on the front line learning. And a lot of the experts go on the speaking tour, and they couldn't do the thing they're talking about to save themselves.

00:08:02:16 - 00:08:15:00
Lee Benson
And so I just I think we all need to keep learning. That's a first thing in your book and foundational to me, and that's why I'm on the front lines with my clients, and companies I'm invested in every single day.

00:08:15:02 - 00:08:39:07
Kevin Eikenberry
So the title of the book is your most important number. And, so let's just talk about that. what do you, I it's so I guess in some ways, it's kind of self-explanatory. Well, we need to have a most important number. Lee. what do you mean by that? What does that look like? And then perhaps, how do we find it?

00:08:39:09 - 00:09:04:11
Lee Benson
Yeah. so this concept of, the mind methodology, which stands for most important number and drivers, and that's right out of my book, your most important number that you, that you mentioned. Thank you. And it's an operating methodology to continually and responsibly increase the value of any organization in the for profit world. what's the one number for the entire organization that represents the value of.

00:09:04:11 - 00:09:05:03
Kevin Eikenberry
It.

00:09:05:05 - 00:09:26:13
Lee Benson
And will drive the majority of the right behaviors? so if it's for profit, you know, it's going to be some version of profit or cash flow that happens to be capital intensive. You know, for example, if in your industry, a typical way of valuing your, your organization is, is a multiple of EBITDA, then great. Then that would be your most important number.

00:09:26:13 - 00:09:47:05
Lee Benson
And then everything else is subordinate to it. You know, culture everything would be in there. And then the way this mind methodology works is you have a most important number at the top of the organized, and then every function department team will have their own most important number that does those two things. It's representative of the value that team was designed to create.

00:09:47:05 - 00:10:06:00
Lee Benson
And it drives the majority of the right behaviors. And then you can cascade that out as far as you want. whether you've got one team, ten teams, hundreds of teams or thousands of teams, now you're at this place where you can see instantly whether they're winning or losing, with their most important number. Where did they start?

00:10:06:00 - 00:10:30:05
Lee Benson
Where are they going? Where they at at any point in time? and then the next question is, what's the best work you're doing to achieve your most important number goal? Now they'll all be measuring other things. There could be five things, 20 things, whatever it is. But the the rule and in this methodology is that you're only measuring it, but it helps you make better decisions to increase the value your team creates, i.e. your most important number.

00:10:30:07 - 00:10:51:09
Lee Benson
And then drivers are categories of work that are going to be unique to each team that are evergreen. And they should be, continually improving how they leverage those categories of work to improve their most important number. So I think a big part of doing your job is continuous improvement. And and you talk about that in your book as well.

00:10:51:11 - 00:11:11:05
Lee Benson
I think, this is such an easy, simple, elegant way to run at it. And what I found, Kevin, and I'd love your take on this too, is I've never seen traditional goal setting stand the test of time. It looks good on paper, like everybody's got their goals. Set your goal? three goals a quarter. Get approved by your manager.

00:11:11:05 - 00:11:33:19
Lee Benson
Rinse and repeat. When I audit goals inside organizations with zero exceptions. So far, 90 plus percent of them are just not very thoughtful. Again, looks good on paper. Let's get full goal alignment all the way down. but usually the companies successful at doing that have made it almost a most important number system like this is the number that matters.

00:11:33:21 - 00:11:39:12
Lee Benson
not all the goals the individual employees set and either happens or it doesn't. What's your what's your take on that?

00:11:39:13 - 00:12:06:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth there. And I think that, you know, as you described it in sort of waving your arms and saying all these things that have to happen, especially if it's a big organization, is that that that exercise becomes the outcome, which is the biggest problem with it. Right? So like now that we've set the goals, like we feel like we've done something, we really haven't, we only set the table for something, but because we feel like we've now done something, then nothing happens for nine months.

00:12:06:04 - 00:12:27:10
Kevin Eikenberry
If it's an annual goal or for two and a half months if it's a quarterly goal. And so I think you're exactly right. So I'd like us to talk a little bit more about the driver. So most important number am I in the drivers. so how I'm a leader in the middle of an organization. Okay. I'm not the CEO.

00:12:27:10 - 00:12:48:04
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm not a I'm not the founder. I'm not you or me. I'm a leader in the middle of an organization. How do I identify? And so. And let's say that I, that I have my most important number, or because this isn't just might be new to me today, I have a I have a clue about where that where I want that to be.

00:12:48:06 - 00:12:53:17
Kevin Eikenberry
how give me some advice about setting those drivers and give me some examples of what they might be.

00:12:53:19 - 00:13:14:23
Lee Benson
Well, foundationally, we should start with the most important number and how to design it. And one of the examples I talk about in the book, which is one just about everybody will understand and get, is the most important number for H.R. And when I start working with HR leaders, and these can be smaller companies or large companies with thousands of employees.

00:13:15:01 - 00:13:35:01
Lee Benson
and we'll start the conversation because the team should come up with the most important number that they're going to be, rallying around, if you will. So with that, what would the most important number be for H.R. And they always start with, well, it's got to be, retention or engagement. So okay. Now remember the most important number has to also drive the majority right behavior.

00:13:35:01 - 00:13:52:13
Lee Benson
So let's play with these scenarios and let's make it retention. And you hire me to run H.R. We're three years down the road. I kept 97% of everybody retention off the charts. Nobody's ever done this. Never mind that. 60% of the people can't do what we hired them to do. We kept them. So I did not drive the majority.

00:13:52:13 - 00:14:12:20
Lee Benson
The right behaviors. A better, most important number of HR would be percentage of seats filled with capable people. And then how do you define that? Well, here's a clearly defined role. 2 to 4 measurable outcomes at that person. Fitting, you know, in that role will be responsible for achieving in the list of capabilities that they need to have to have a shot at actually achieving those outcomes.

00:14:12:22 - 00:14:32:16
Lee Benson
So anybody that's meeting or over driving outcomes is capable anybody under that. They're not in that particular seat. And the value of that to the organization often goes higher and higher, as you climb the food chain to the top. Right. So, so that now now we're driving the right behaviors. We're, we're recruiting better.

00:14:32:16 - 00:14:54:20
Lee Benson
We're onboarding better, we're training better, we're giving leaders better tools, and all of it go right down the line. Go go to finance. You know what? What would their most important number be? I think generally it should be cash flow. And and when I rate how they're doing let's let's now let's dig into a couple of drivers. So we want to get all the right information out in a timely way.

00:14:54:20 - 00:15:10:05
Lee Benson
And it's got to be accurate. So that would be a driver. It's their machine for operationalizing doing that really well. Now a lot of these finance leaders, they'll put together amazing reports. I'll go and work with a client and I'll and I'll see why. It took me four hours to go through all this monthly reporting. You put out.

00:15:10:05 - 00:15:25:07
Lee Benson
But it's amazing. And I'm good at connecting dots. And here's what I would do with it. Then I go to the senior leadership team and I ask, how are you using this information coming out of finance to help you make better decisions to increase the value of the organization? And over 90% of the time I get nothing like I see what we did.

00:15:25:07 - 00:15:50:12
Lee Benson
This is what's left over. I'm doing my job, so there has to be a driver in there for education. But not not in the sense of here's how you read an income statement or a detailed trial balance. It's got to be helping leaders at every level in the organization discover the three, four, or five, maybe six numbers that are most impactful to them that they can use to make decisions to increase cash flow in the organization.

00:15:50:12 - 00:16:05:07
Lee Benson
So we're discovering it together and educating them on how to play this great game of business, if you will. So that's how you start thinking about drivers. What are the categories of work that are evergreen? There's no end to how well you can do it that you want to leverage in there, and every team is going to be different.

00:16:05:07 - 00:16:19:00
Lee Benson
So first and foremost, collaborating what that number is. And then come up with those evergreen categories of work. And we can get into how to put in, strategic initiatives, if you will, if you want to talk about that as well. Does that answer your question, Kevin?

00:16:19:02 - 00:16:45:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, we can, but I want to go back to what you were just saying about the the wonderful, beautiful, fabulous report. Right. and so, along with what you just said, right. If, if, if the C-suite or the, the consumer of the customer of that report doesn't have a good way to use it or to consume it or to use it to solve their problems, then it isn't so beautiful in and of itself.

00:16:45:06 - 00:17:12:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Right? So there's all of the piece you talked about, about, part of part of my role, if I'm in finance, is to help other people use that. I gotta make sure that I'm delivering what they really need to. And so that what you describe, that ongoing conversation thing is critical to the whole piece. So, so talk about, as you just said, a little bit more about the strategic initiative piece and how that would connect because people are listening to this or saying, Lee, this makes a lot of sense.

00:17:12:04 - 00:17:28:03
Kevin Eikenberry
And I'm talking with Levinson, the author of Your Most Important number, to make sure you get a copy and will tell you how to do that before we're done. but a lot of people are hearing this and saying, I got to see how I can start to incorporate some of this stuff in with what I'm already doing.

00:17:28:05 - 00:17:32:10
Kevin Eikenberry
And they're thinking about strategic initiatives. So how does that fit into this leap?

00:17:32:12 - 00:17:55:12
Lee Benson
Yeah. it's super important. Let me get to one more foundational thing. As I'm listening to you kind of describe this, I think it'd be helpful philosophically, the CEO's job in my opinion, is to continually and responsibly increase the value of their organization. That's their job. All right. So by proxy, everybody in the senior leadership team that's their collective job.

00:17:55:12 - 00:18:12:20
Lee Benson
To be able to do that. Now when you look at every leader in the organization, they should have a really good answer to, hey, how do you create value for this organization? You know, they give you a job description. You missed a big opportunity. But if they say, well, here's how I create value. This is my team's most important number.

00:18:12:20 - 00:18:35:14
Lee Benson
This is why we selected it. Why it drives the majority of the right behaviors. And this is the best work that we're doing to improve it. And here's my team. These are all their roles the outcomes they're responsible for I got it. That's incredible right. So I think it's fair, that we we expect and we should design, especially as CEOs of our organizations.

00:18:35:15 - 00:18:50:19
Lee Benson
the, the roles for all the leaders. So they're so clear on on how we create value and how to describe that in if I'm a non supervisory team member. And they asked me a question like, hey, how do you create value for your organization? Well I'm on this team. Kevin leads it. This is our most important number.

00:18:50:19 - 00:19:06:08
Lee Benson
Here's where we're at. We're a little bit ahead of plan at this point. We're halfway through the year. This is my role. These are my two outcomes. I'm responsible for the best work that I'm doing to help my team create more value for the organization. when we improve our most important number, it improves the next one up all the way to the top.

00:19:06:08 - 00:19:30:01
Lee Benson
And it creates two more values and organization. you know, yeah, everything's better from job security risk, you know, surviving recessions, you know, all that kind of stuff. So that that, Kevin, is I think what we're looking for that people are really clear on that. And and so part of doing the job would be everybody's improving all the time.

00:19:30:01 - 00:19:56:12
Lee Benson
You're constantly doing that. So that's just part of your job on top of your role. Now we want to make step changes in in our results. And so we have planning or strategy sessions. And in my definition of a strategic an initiative would be anything new or different enough that would cause once we put it in place, activate it, etc., to create a step change in our in our results.

00:19:56:14 - 00:20:12:07
Lee Benson
And when I get strategic planning decks from clients, when I go in to work with them, especially the bigger ones, you know, last year, one small big one, we're at $1 billion, one at $60 billion, and I see over 100 strategic initiatives. It's like, okay, well, that's there's no money.

00:20:12:07 - 00:20:16:21
Kevin Eikenberry
They got zero, they got zero, they got 100. Right. Well.

00:20:16:23 - 00:20:38:02
Lee Benson
Yes. And and for so many reasons, you're completely right on there. So I scour through it and I come back and say, okay, I've looked at it. And in all our initial discussions, there's literally only even the biggest one I worked with last year, a $60 billion market cap. There were four things that created over 80% of the value for the entire organization.

00:20:38:04 - 00:20:59:15
Lee Benson
And I said, out of these 100 plus strategic initiatives, here's about 20 that fit into those four categories, and they're new and different things. all the rest of them go in the category of please do your job. So great. Let's let's for sure do that. Now let's look at the committees and people responsible for these strategic initiatives.

00:20:59:17 - 00:21:19:14
Lee Benson
So you've got your most important number. You got your drivers. But there's going to be things that you want to put in place get done that have sort of a a finish date or an implementation date. Do you expect to get a return on? That's another list that you go through. You know, I always like racking and stacking that stuff by return on investment or ROI analysis.

00:21:19:16 - 00:21:41:22
Lee Benson
And that's going to be different for every company. How long will it take resources to do it, etc. but what we're trying for here is full alignment on everything we can do to continually increase our most important number, and then make the best decisions on doing the right work at the right time, in the right order and I'm thinking about best net return 2 to 3 years out.

00:21:42:00 - 00:21:59:15
Lee Benson
and again, every organization is going to be different. I can make a little more now, but a lot less. And you know net two years out. So I'm always weighing that. And then the third part of this is a culture accountability. So when we all say we're going to do something, what percentage of the time do we actually do it in there.

00:21:59:17 - 00:22:20:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. Which takes us back to right where you started about why the most important number helps us be clear about the behaviors. Right. so we've talked, we dove into the most important number. We talked about drivers. We've been really focused there on this part of your process. Yeah. But there's something in front of that. It's the first chapter in the book.

00:22:20:04 - 00:22:38:09
Kevin Eikenberry
I think anyone if they stop and think about something else in front of this mission, vision values those kinds of things. And, and lots of people talk about those things and there's a lot of really useful things. You get a lot of great stuff in the book, but there's something in the book that you describe that I thought was really good and really clever.

00:22:38:11 - 00:23:00:21
Kevin Eikenberry
and I'm going to read a sentence or two and then just have you respond to it. Okay. so so you're talking about creating values, not not value creation, but the creation of the organizational values. You say to create this new set of values, we surveyed all employees, asking them to write down the observable behaviors of the best performing people they'd ever worked with on their best days.

00:23:00:23 - 00:23:18:04
Kevin Eikenberry
And you use that to coalesce and to come up with organizational values. Just talk about that. How did you come to that. Maybe. Any insights? I'm sure you used it more than just in the, the example and at at a of space. Talk about that for a second.

00:23:18:06 - 00:23:37:12
Lee Benson
Yeah. I've gone through this exercise a number of times. we created, going in the Wayback machine here. So 98 ish, 97, 98, we created a list of values and other alignment tools, a mission and a vision and that kind of stuff. Y well, that's what companies do. Okay. So we're doing this because that's what companies do wrong.

00:23:37:12 - 00:23:55:22
Lee Benson
Reason to do anything and, and we we got the mission right. right enough. But we did tweak it. What I realized when I put the values out there in the top value was integrity. And we had it on, you know, posters all over the facility. at the time, I think it was probably 99 ish.

00:23:55:22 - 00:24:17:12
Lee Benson
I asked, ten of our 70 employees, how are you applying integrity to make your organization measurably better? And I got ten really crazy answers that told me why we've wasted a lot of time here. We've got a lot of expensive wallpaper. And then I thought about it for two seconds. I said, well, gosh, you know, everything we do should be done, at least with the intent of making the organization measurably better.

00:24:17:12 - 00:24:40:11
Lee Benson
Everything else is a waste of time and resources. So what are we trying to accomplish with this? And, you know, our alignment tools should pass that test. So I wanted to create the conditions where at any point in time, 90%, of our employees or 50% plus, for sure of our employees are behaving, leading and performing better than the top 10% at our strongest, most admired competitors.

00:24:40:13 - 00:24:59:14
Lee Benson
That's what we want. So how can we give everybody sort of, a guide to what that would look like? And that's when I went out and said, hey, and need your help. We're going to get rid of values completely, and we're going to go into behaviors because it's more observable, measurable, etc.. And we had 68 of our team members respond to the survey.

00:24:59:14 - 00:25:19:08
Lee Benson
I remember because it was such a high percentage and there was a huge list, but it all distilled down to six that stood the test of time. And and the first one that kind of goes to integrity was high performing team members throughout engineering at that time. do what they say they will. It's observable right? Or they're fully engaged and participate within the team.

00:25:19:10 - 00:25:44:00
Lee Benson
they present and pursue permanent solutions as opposed to dwelling on problems. They're respectful, honest and straightforward. They treat company resources as their own. I'll remember these, along with the leadership traits and the vision and the mission and the quality policy. As long as I'm here, walking the earth, because every six months, every employee came up with one example of how they applied each of the alignment tools to make the organization measurably better.

00:25:44:02 - 00:26:10:21
Lee Benson
And they would even take a shot at the ROI. Well, how how did it improve customer experience, internal or external? How did improved profitability or cash flow? And when they write that stuff down, even when it's completely off base. Remarkable, right? We know that we know right where to start developing them. This is this is incredible. And you know, like like your guest, you know, Vikram recently on, on this show, you know, you develop everybody all the time.

00:26:10:21 - 00:26:27:18
Lee Benson
They're on the bus, you develop them, in there. And that was always my my philosophy of the here we're developing it. We make a choice to do something else, and let's help them on their journey to a different or better culture for them. So, so that that's how we thought about it. And it it these can't be marketing slogans.

00:26:27:18 - 00:26:53:02
Lee Benson
They can't be wallpaper. It has to be something we can see our teeth into. And most importantly for the folks listening in here, have a reason for doing it before you even develop it. You know, for example, our mission statement to kind of close this out, I wanted to tell our customers in a compelling way why they should do business with us and tell every employee why they get a paycheck, because if we don't do this well every day, we don't get paychecks.

00:26:53:04 - 00:27:16:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Right to me. To me, that's that's the dual purpose and the dual test of your mission. Right? If those two if those two things are if it's if it's compelling and attractive to customers and clarifying and meaningful for your team, then you've really got you've really got something it may not be the one that you need or want ultimately, but if you got those two things, you got something powerful and useful.

00:27:16:10 - 00:27:32:09
Kevin Eikenberry
I want to shift gears before we finish leave. Yeah, just a couple of things for us before we chat, before we finish. I always ask this question, and I don't always know the answer, but in this case, I think I do, or at least have a pretty good guess. So the question is, what do you do for fun?

00:27:32:10 - 00:27:34:00
Kevin Eikenberry
I think it's behind you.

00:27:34:02 - 00:27:49:18
Lee Benson
Well, I'm in my music studio. I, I have a newly, recently formed sort of band here, and we're halfway through recording for an album, having a lot of fun with that. And I love to exercise, go out hiking virtually every day, listen to books.

00:27:49:20 - 00:28:06:15
Kevin Eikenberry
Awesome. Well, since we're talking about books and in in the the longer video that you sent me, that was more than, than I shared with everybody earlier, you mentioned as well that you'd like to read what's something you're reading now or that you've read recently.

00:28:06:17 - 00:28:35:14
Lee Benson
so, Laura Dodsworth wrote a book, called Free Your Mind and really interesting, you know, like the the most powerful line out of that book. And I'm just finishing it up right now. Control your mind or somebody else will, and and I and I like that. And there's a lot of, sort of antidotes in there, or skills or tactics to make sure that you, you keep control of your critical thinking and where you want to go and have the right filters.

00:28:35:14 - 00:28:43:09
Lee Benson
And in for example, my filter is value creation. Will this create value in the world? Yes or no. Holistic value in all three categories.

00:28:43:10 - 00:29:00:00
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that. before we go, the question you've most wanted me to ask, I suppose probably is how can we learn more about your work? We've been talking about the book, which is at the core of much of your work, but where can we learn more about the work? Where do you want to point people? How can people reach you?

00:29:00:01 - 00:29:01:07
Kevin Eikenberry
What do you want to say?

00:29:01:09 - 00:29:22:14
Lee Benson
Yeah, please go to our website, which is ET com. You can find the book, your most important number there or in any one of 40,000 channels. That's about operationalizing value creation and organizations. And there's another book I wrote called Value Creation Kid The Healthy Struggles Your Children Need to Succeed, and that's about operationalizing value creation within the family.

00:29:22:16 - 00:29:25:00
Lee Benson
So excited about that.

00:29:25:02 - 00:29:54:02
Kevin Eikenberry
Awesome. so thank you for that. And again, everybody ate.com. we'll have links to those things in the show. Notes as always. before we finish, everyone know I have a question for all of you who are listening, whether it's live or whether it's later, and that is the question I ask you every single week, which is now what what action you're going to take as a result of this conversation, I'm confident that you have some new ways to think about value creation.

00:29:54:07 - 00:30:18:03
Kevin Eikenberry
Maybe the idea that you most want to take action on is the idea of holistic value creation. Maybe you have some new thoughts about what how you ought to be filtering and considering your strategic initiatives. Maybe you are reframing how you think about some of the work, whatever it might be. My hope is that you don't just sort of soak this in, but rather you take action.

00:30:18:03 - 00:30:29:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Because unless you take action on what? We got no new value. To use Lee's words will be created. so I hope that you will do that. And Lee, thanks again for being here. It's a pleasure to have you.

00:30:29:21 - 00:30:33:19
Lee Benson
Thank you Kevin, I enjoyed this conversation and everybody.

00:30:33:19 - 00:30:50:06
Kevin Eikenberry
If you enjoyed it, then tell somebody else. And if this is your first time, make sure you subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts so you don't miss next week's. Because there's always a next week, and there's always a next episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast. Thanks, everybody.