Last week I wrote about a world champion who (literally) pooped her way across the finish line at Hyrox Beijing while a building full of grown adults, officials and health professionals stood and applauded her. I thought I’d made an excellent point about judgment, leadership and getting the people in your org to understand Commander’s Intent.
Then somebody commented on my post: “Shit happens, LOL.”
Well, thank you, Captain Obvious. I give you a thousand-plus words of leadership gold, and one reader boiled it down to two words plus an LOL.
Yes, sh*t happens. In fact, sh*t happens all by itself — no plan, no budget, nobody lifting a finger. Nobody has to schedule it. Nobody has to follow up on it. It just shows up, usually at the worst possible time.
You know what doesn’t just happen? SUCCESS. Nobody has ever commented “Success happens, LOL.” Because it doesn’t. Success has to be pushed, prodded and FORCED.
Let me give you a very simple real-life example of what I’m talking about.
I recently took on a fractional CMO engagement with an MSP, and one of the very first things I needed to tackle was getting their list clean. They had two SDRs and two outside sales reps who needed prospects to call on, but their list was a hot mess of wrong and missing information, duplicates, SPAM and dysfunction.
So, I mapped out everything necessary: What constitutes a qualified prospect, what fields need to be updated, how they should be updated and the process. Nothing too complicated — just a clean, qualified list that isn’t full of junk. We even have AI to help. I mean, this isn’t a moon landing, so it should be easy, right?
WRONG.
I have had to check and double check that it’s being done right nearly every DAY. It’s not. The list isn’t getting cleaned and the reps are complaining. Why isn’t this happening?
Well, people are updating the lists on spreadsheets and importing them wrong…or not importing at all. I fix all of this. No more spreadsheets. We implement a two-step process for cleaning and verification. Map it all out. Implement it. I check. List still isn’t getting cleaned.
Why?
Well, the CRM is working against us. It does only contact records, not company records, so we get ONE person at a company cleaned, but the other 5 records aren’t touched. They get pulled for marketing and we find out they weren’t the right person because the COMPANY record is not synced…or we just called someone else from that company last week and they said they weren’t interested. Now they’re pissed because we called them again. Okay, we’re getting a new CRM, but have marketing to do TODAY and the new CRM won’t be in place until January.
So, we fix ALL of this. Prop up the CRM. Change the process to catch these dupes. List STILL isn’t getting cleaned. Why?
Well, the interns who are supposed to be cleaning the list aren’t working for a couple of weeks…and they just told us yesterday, so we didn’t have a backup plan. What about AI cleaning it? Well, it can do some, but it can’t verify every record 100%, it can’t confirm decision makers and it can’t verify or scrape email. For that we need a person and a data source.
Fine, we buy a data source. They promise 2,000 minimum of fully cleaned qualified prospects with phone, email, address, etc. We test the list…50% of it is wrong. We light the vendor on fire and demand ACCURATE data. They comply but can only send about 50 a week. We need 150.
Five months later: We are at least gaining ground, but STILL fighting the sales reps to update records properly. Every time I clean the kitchen floor, they stomp through with their muddy boots and screw it up.
I very politely remind them: STOP F’ING IT UP!!!
They apologize but keep doing it. Not as much, but still doing it. I threaten nuclear bombs. And even TODAY — after the documentation, after the training, after the nukes — I’m still fixing it. And I’m still hearing the greatest hits: “Oh yeah, I forgot to do that.” “Sorry, I got really busy.” The best one? “Hey, you know me…I’m just trying to make a living.” (So am I. That’s WHY I need the damned list clean.)
Here’s the maddening truth: all that prodding, checking and retraining isn’t a sign that something went wrong. It IS the process. That’s what real execution looks like — the ugly, repetitive, nobody-posts-it-on-LinkedIn part.
Now, here’s another golden nugget (yes, two for one this week, same price!)
If you’re a boss or leader, you have to know that MOST people (vendors, employees) take a relaxed, laissez-faire attitude toward getting things done. In fact, they’ve developed an entire vocabulary to cover for it. I call it the Language of the Lazy.
“I’m working on it.” What does that MEAN? Working on it how? Doing what? Done when?
“I called and left a message, and they haven’t called back.” As if the voicemail was the mission. I didn’t ask you to leave a message. I asked you to book an appointment.
“These things take time.” Sure they do. They take a whole lot MORE time when the person in charge has insufficient URGENCY to GET it done. Things don’t complete themselves.
And before you forward this to your team with a smug little “see?” — I hear the Language of the Lazy coming out of MSP owners’ mouths ALL the time. It’s the belief that once you’ve started something, it should just be done because you started it. You bought the CRM, so the CRM is handled. You told your sales guy to follow up, so the follow-up happened. You hired the agency, so the marketing is taken care of.
Nope.
Real results require you to dig in and invest time to ensure proper execution.
You want the two most powerful words for getting things done? SHOW ME. Walk me through it. SHOW me what you have done so far. SHOW me the process, the copy, the blog posts and the calls you made. Is it being done RIGHT? Is it being done on time? Is there anything that needs to be changed or done differently?
And then you train…then push, prod and train some more. Push, prod and train again. And again. And again.
Ideally, hire people who belong in the “One-and-Done” Club. These are very rare individuals. You give them the general direction, tell them what you’re trying to accomplish and why, and they go get it done. You ask once and it gets done right, on time and without drama. That’s it. No chasing. No babysitting.
Most people are NOT in that club — so if you have someone on your team like this, you better hang on to them. Most people nod and accept an assignment. Then you come back and ask where things stand, and suddenly you find out they’ve done NOTHING and run into problems and — surprise — they have a whole list of questions they never asked in the beginning. So you answer those questions. Come back and inquire where they are. Same situation, different excuses, different problems, different questions. Rinse and repeat.
I HATE all of this.
But if you’re trying to scale and grow a company, it’s part of the job. You’re just not going to find an entire team of One-and-Doners unless you stay really, really small. BUT KNOW THIS: If someone on your team is SO far on the other end of the “One-and-Done” club who constantly tracks mud through the clean kitchen you’re cookin’ in, FIRE THEM. Quick, fast and in a hurry.
A lot of folks don’t know — or won’t admit — what failure actually looks like. They think failure is some big, dramatic flameout. It’s not. Failure is things left hanging. Things done imperfectly. Things never completed. Things done wrong because they didn’t look at or follow the process. Things slow-walked because there’s no urgency.
They think if they’re busy working, with good intentions, that’s success. It isn’t.
You will never, ever grow a company with you OR your people not seeing anything less than DONE and RESULTS as the lagging indicator, not the busy work or good intentions.
Nothing GREAT happens by accident. Only sh*t does that.