Episode 851 - Every Shift. Every Week. Every Month.

0:04 Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Falafelito. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 851. I want to give you something today that you can actually take to work not a leadership theory, not another complicated management system. I want to give you a rhythm.

0:41 And by the time this episode is over, I want you to be able to repeat it in your head without writing anything down. This is it. Every shift, once a week, once a month. That's it. Every shift, once a week, once a month. Because one of the biggest problems I see in leadership is that Managers spend their entire day reacting. Someone calls off, a customer complains, a deadline gets moved, a piece of equipment breaks, somebody needs an answer, your boss sends an email, and you look at the clock and somehow eight hours disappeared. You were busy all day, yet you never really had the chance to lead. So I started thinking about leadership differently. What are the things a leader should do intentionally every shift?

1:31 what needs to happen once a week, and what needs to happen once a month. If you build that rhythm into your leadership, you stop depending on memory, mood, or whether you happen to have some free time. So let's start with every shift. Every shift, you need to see your people. I mean, actually see them. Walk through the operation.

1:57 Say good morning. Ask, how things are going, look people in the eye, pay attention to the energy in the room. You can learn more from walking around your workplace for 10 minutes than you can from staring at a dashboard for an hour. Every shift, you also need to check the operation. What's happening today? Who is working? What are the priorities? Where are we vulnerable? What needs your attention before it becomes a problem? If you run a hotel, walk the lobby. If you run a restaurant, walk the kitchen in the dining room. If you manage a warehouse, get onto the floor. If you lead an office team, get out of your office. And if you manage remotely, make intentional contact. Leadership has to touch the operation. Every shift,

2:51 recognize something that is going right. Leaders become professional problem detectors. We notice everything that's wrong. The paperwork wasn't finished. The customer waited too long. Someone missed a deadline. The room wasn't cleaned properly. And that's fine. Those things matter. You also need to catch people doing the job correctly. Hey, I saw how you handled that customer. I noticed you stayed late to finish that. That handoff was excellent. 10 seconds.

3:23 That can change somebody's entire shift. In every shift, ask yourself one question before you leave. Did I make this place better today? Not, was I busy? Not, did I answer all my emails? Did my presence as a leader make the operation better? That's every shift. See your people, check the operation, recognize good work, and make the place better.

3:52 Now we move to once a week. Once a week you need to zoom out. Your daily leadership keeps the machine running. Your weekly leadership tells you whether the machine is heading in the right direction. Once a week, look at performance. Pick the numbers that tell you something useful. Sales, overtime, customer complaints, production, staff, and quality. Whatever matters in your business.

4:20 You don't need a 40-page report filled with corporate jargon, you need enough information to answer a basic question. How are we doing? Once a week, have a real conversation with somebody on your team. Not a performance review, not a disciplinary meeting. Talk to somebody. Ask them, what are you seeing? What's getting in your way? What do we need to fix? You might be amazed at what employees know that never makes it into the management meeting. Once a week also, Fix one small problem. This is where leadership gets interesting. Find something stupid, a form nobody understands, a process that takes six steps when it should take two, a piece of equipment that's been broken for two weeks, a recurring customer complaint, a scheduling problem everybody complains about.

5:15 Fix something. Imagine what happens if you fix one irritating operational problem every week. That's 52 improvements in a year. You don't need some massive corporate transformation initiative. You need leaders who keep fixing things. And once a week, teach something. It could take seven minutes. Share a lesson from something that happened today. Review a standard. Explain why a process exists.

5:48 Coach someone through a mistake. show a newer employee how an experienced person approaches a difficult situation. Training doesn't always need a conference room and a PowerPoint. Some of the best training happens standing beside someone during the work. So now we have our weekly rhythm. Look at performance, have a real conversation, fix something, teach something. And now let's go to once a month. Once a month is I want you to get away from the daily noise and look at your organization like you're seeing it for the first time. Walk in through the front door. Look around.

6:31 What has become normal that shouldn't be normal? And that's a powerful leadership question because leaders develop operational blindness. That broken chair has been sitting there for six months. Nobody notices it anymore. That policy stopped being followed sometime last year. That employee has slowly become disengaged. That customer complaint keeps appearing.

6:57 That process hasn't made sense since 2022, yet everyone keeps doing it because that's how we've always done it. Once a month, look for what your organization has stopped seeing, and then review your people. Who is growing? Who needs coaching? Who deserves more responsibility? who has quietly become one of your most dependable people, who haven't you talked to enough.

7:24 You should never suddenly realize after somebody resigns that they were one of your best employees. Pay attention before the resignation letter hits your desk. Once a month, also review your standards. Are we still doing what we said we were going to do? This matters because standards rarely disappear overnight.

7:44 They fade. Someone stops doing something and nobody corrects it. Someone else notices they stopped doing it too. A few months later, the new behavior becomes normal and then somebody says, we've always done it this way. No, you haven't. Nobody held the line. Your monthly review gives you an opportunity to catch standards while they're slipping instead of rebuilding them after they're gone. And once a month, look ahead. What's coming?

8:16 What could hurt us? What opportunity are we missing? What needs to be ordered, scheduled, repaired, hired, trained, communicated, or planned? Leadership can't live entirely in today. Someone has to be looking through the windshield, and that's you. So here's the entire system. Every shift, see your people, check the operation, recognize good work, make the place better. Once a week, look at performance, have a real conversation, fix something, teach something.

8:56 Once a month, look at the organization with fresh eyes, review your people, review your standards, and look ahead. That's a leadership operating system you can actually remember. And here's what I love about it. You can teach this to your entire leadership team. Put it on a card. Put it in your manager handbook, put it on the wall in the leadership office, ask about it in meetings. Eventually somebody shouldn't need to look at the card. You say, what's our leadership rhythm? And they answer every shift once a week, once a month. That's when leadership starts becoming part of how the organization operates because great organizations aren't built from occasional bursts of incredible leadership. They're built through repetition.

9:47 People know what happens here. They know what leaders pay attention to. They know the standards aren't disappearing because management got busy. And your leadership becomes predictable in the best possible way. way. Your people know you're going to show up. They know you're going to pay attention. They know you're going to coach. They know you're going to recognize good work.

10:10 They know problems aren't going to sit around forever because everyone learned to live with them. That creates something every workplace needs. So tomorrow when you walk into work, don't try to remember 50 leadership ideas. Just remember this. Every shift, once a week, once a month. Build the rhythm, teach the rhythm, repeat the rhythm until your entire leadership team can say it without thinking. Because when good leadership becomes routine...

10:49 Good operations have a much better chance of becoming routine, too. This has been the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening. For more Paul Falavolito podcasts, visit paulfalavolito.com.