“But I NEED to be there.”
Oh boy, this CEOs FOMO was kicking in hard.
But it was more than that.
This is how he has ALWAYS done things.
He has always been at the conventions.
He has always been at the meet and greets.
He has always been at the events.
But his company is growing.
And he needs to spend more time on building the business and less time on being a salesman for the business.
Now don’t get me wrong.
His hard work and presence is what built the business from three people into the 15 person company it is today.
But now he needs to engage strategic thinking about how he grows the company over the next ten years.
And in order to do that he, first and foremost, needs to judge the level of trust he has in his employees – especially the client facing employees.
Luckily there is an easy way to do that.
Using an expanded trust quotient, he is able to determine if his FOMO is more about him, or is a strategic worry about the quality of the people representing the company.
Once he and his leadership team filled out the trust quotient and sat on a strategic followership matrix, he realized that the issue was not with his sales team or with his marketing team.
It was him.
He was having a hard time changing.
And that opened the door for a discussion about the difference between tactics and strategy. About delegation. About his strategic focus. About team alignment. And about his fears – what was he reaaaallllly afraid of?
So we started a deep dive into his gremlins – the major fears – impacting his decision making.
And he realized that it wasn’t just about trust. It was that he felt like he is missing out on the fun part – seeing all the other companies products, hanging out with people and having a good time as he sees the sales and takes part in them, taking his daughter to the convention and spending time with her.
BOOM.
That last one was a kicker.
Which opened up a huge discussion about how he can mitigate the FOMO and keep a strategic mindset.
And more importantly – how he can spend some quality time with his daughter but still make it about strategic engagement and not the tactics of the sale.
So we mapped out the events over the last year.
On average he had been to 2.5 events every quarter. Each event was 1 – 2 days. Each day approximately 10 hours.
2.5 x 2 x 10= 50 HOURS a quarter focused predominantly on sales.
So, we came to a compromise. He would choose one to two events each quarter that allow him the best quality time with his daughter AND give him the ability to gauge the strategic layout of his field.
BUT, he would not go for the full event.
He would go for five hours on the ONE DAY that he determined was the most important.
Suddenly he saw that there was an extra 40 – 45 hours a quarter to spend on growing his business.
And he started to think about how he needs to see his people as strategic followers.
Partners in the process of growth he is leading.
The next time a team was getting ready for an event he proudly told them – “I trust you guys, I’m gonna sit this one out”
Everyone was in shock.
They even gave a bit of pushback “You sure?”
“I don’t even want to know the details – you know what to do, you understand the goals for the event, you know what information I need you to bring back. I trust you absolutely.”
They ROCKED IT!
He spent the time figuring out how to set the next major objective that impacts his vision.
And he took off early on the second day to take his daughter to ice cream and a movie instead – which she loved.
