Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
John Manning is the president of MAP Consulting and the author of the new book called The
Disciplined Leader: Keeping the Focus on What Really Matters.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Manning on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: You are a disciplinarian and you wrote a book about discipline. It’s
kind of a funny topic I think especially today because in a lot of various, that’s considered
not something people really want to talk about too much but you seemed to just be shouting
it from the rooftops. Why is that?
John Manning: In doing research for the book, the first thing that I found out about discipline
was that when I asked about the subject of discipline and leadership, that people give
answers all over the board. So when I asked my trusted colleagues and co-workers, I said
“How would you define discipline and leadership?” and it was amazing some of the answers and
to point your question, some of those were [inaudible 0:01:30]. People remembered being
a child and being disciplined by their parents so there were even some negative connotations
around discipline.
So we thought it was important to define that upfront and we define discipline and leadership
as really somebody who uses a consistent application of certain mindsets and actions that are vital
for success and there are a couple of keywords in there. The idea consistently, you can think
of habits, you know being consistent at good habits because we found that good leadership
was rooted in the idea that they consistently apply good habits in their leadership. So
when they were leading their team everybody knew who was going to show up everyday. They
were predictable in their behavior and it become an environment where a success was
created and alignment through that idea that the leader was following certain habits and
good practices in driving the company forward.
Douglas Goldstein: The premise that you had is that there is a certain system involved
and I think that goes counter to what some people would say as being more of a free thinker
and opening up your mind and trying to explore. How can that the two come together?
John Manning: I think that when you think about the idea of what your talents or abilities
are or those things you’re talking about opening up your horizons, I think those are
all important parts of not only in leadership but in like overall but the idea of not seeing
discipline is something that put walls around that but more of a vehicle to do that effectively
because you can have talent, you can have charisma, you can have all those abilities,
God-given abilities or things you developed and skills but if you don’t find a way to
harness that through some system, it’s hard to really reach your potential and so that’s
what the idea of this premises, that it’s not something that contains somebody but it
really gives them the vehicle to move ahead.
Douglas Goldstein: It seems to me if we maybe use a military metaphor that in the army,
the sergeant is in charge of the discipline but the general is the leader and I think
they are two very different roles. How do you relate to that issue? How can it be that
if people want to be real leaders and revolutionary leaders, it’s true they hire sergeants to
do the discipline but do they also have to be on the disciplinary page?
John Manning: To that question, I think that both need to be disciplined. In your example,
a sergeant in the military, he is providing that structure and that discipline for the
troops that report to him and he is in command of them and he is focused on what his vital
few turns probably at the beginning around conditioning the idea that his troops are
combat ready and all those things that are put in place to do that. Now flipped that
to a general, he’s got to be disciplined but at a strategic level. He might be focused
on different things but he still has to apply the right habits and the right mindset for
his job. So the idea is if he’s not disciplined and he’s not living per example, how can
you expect that for the people who are below him. And so even though he is more strategic
in nature and thinking about the big picture, he still has to apply whatever his vital few
are, his vital few habits that makes him successful at that position.
Douglas Goldstein: You spoke about what you referred to as the vital few. Could you define
what you meant by that?
John Manning: All the questions I’ve been asked at the book, that’s the question I
get asked very most. So people always say I conceptually get the idea that focusing
on what really matters the vital few so let me give you a couple of examples. You have
your vital few in your job, you have your vital few at a company level or organization
level, you have your vital few in line. So the vital few in the job could be things like
“I’m responsible to drive sales. I’m responsible to drive revenue” and when you’re
focused on activities to accomplish that, you’re focused on your vital few. But in
business today, people are so busy doing so many things that we call the trivial many.
There are days where maybe people leave work and they go “I didn’t get a thing done
to accomplish my goal.” So that’s an example of it at a job level. In a business level,
you’ve got a vital few. It’s the things that really matter. It could be a product
quality, it could be delivering outstate in customer service. It’s those vital few at
a company if everybody aligns to him, they’ll create success at a company.
It’s the 20% of activities that really drive 80% of your results and it’s really rooted
in the Pareto principle. Pareto is an Italian economist and he coined that phrase but it
really applies to business. Even at a life level, you have your vital few that you need
to focus on. If you’re watching TV, you probably say to yourself “That’s not one
of my vital few” but if you’re talking about things like your family, your health,
your business, your finances, those are the vital few you have at life and people who
do a better job of focusing in on what really matters even if their life tend to grow and
develop
and succeed.
Douglas Goldstein: You said
that good leaders have good habits. One of the
issues that I find is that when I talk to clients about developing good financial habits,
sometimes I feel like I’m just speaking to deaf ears, no one really wants to do it
and I think it’s something that you either learn when you were a kid or you weren’t.
Are you able to teach people to develop good habits?
John Manning: I don’t know if we can teach them good habits but we coach them around
good habits. Both lays out in three areas. It’s really building to lead and manage
yourself, your team and then your organization but let’s go back to yourself. There are
certain fundamental things that you have to start with yourself and to your point, you
appear on the mirror for example and realized where am I in life in terms of my values,
what I find important, how do I communicate, how do I develop relationships, how am I taking
care of my family, how am I doing on my finances and really take a good look at yourself because
if you don’t build a good foundation, you can’t really extend your impact to others,
you can’t extend your impact to even your own family, to your organization you’re
working for or the community. So I think it really starts with taking a good look at yourself
and I think the starting point on that and you probably agree with this being in the
financial world is to really filling the plan and planning the fill. It’s really about
understanding even at a life level, what’s my plan. We do coach clients on a life plan
and I guess that’s where we are going. We have a format and a process to take them through
and a lot of times I’ll do this with their spouse. We’ll talk about their business
professional goals but we also talk about in terms of where they want to go on a personal
level and that touches in the [inaudible 0:10:43]. We talk about what are the financial goals,
where they want to be, what does retirement look like and I’m sure you experience this
yourself but that is a discipline process to take them through and it sort of gives
them that blueprint for all of a sudden I have all these dreams in my head but now they
become reality. So that’s probably one of the things how we coach clients around that.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people follow you and follow your work?
John Manning: The book The Disciplined Leader: Keeping the Focus on What Really Matters is
available on Amazon and if you would like to know more about our company, you can go
to www.mapconsulting.com, I got a blog there you can subscribe to that I put out a new
blog every week and we really appreciate if you visit our website.