1293: Get Your Team on the Same Page and Boost Team Productivity with Brian Cain and Steve Gran

Robert Plank 0:04 And we're here, and we're on the podcast with two very smart and inspiring business gentlemen. They are work strategists, Brian Kane and Steve grant. They've teamed up to author a book called Getting on the same page, creating excellence, growth and performance within your organization. And this is an amazing book. I know it's amazing because I've narrated for these guys, so I you know that I've at least read it, and it will help you get rid of wasted time, energy and resources while you drive towards meeting your goals. All of these ideas, like getting a team on, figure it out, and working together, leadership, emotional control, figuring out, workshops, coaching, consulting. It's a mess. It's a bear. There's a lot to figure out. You need some extra outside help from these two guys. So Mr. Steve, Mr. Brian, glad to be speaking with you.

Steve Gran 0:54 Thanks, Robert.

Brian Cain 0:55 Thanks, Robert, glad to be here.

Robert Plank 0:57 Glad to have you. And yeah, yeah, it's always you're glad and I'm glad. And as far as why we should sit up and pay very close attention to the conversation we're about to have, what makes you guys unique? There's all kinds of business books, leadership books and advice, but why YouTube? Well,

Brian Cain 1:13 you know, one of the things that we've done, Robert is we've developed a method, and that method really helps you get and stay on the same page with your team. What makes us unique is really that we hope you look at the four core elements of work, and we define those elements as direction, system, measurement and improvement. And with those elements, we really want to help you know what's important to work on next, and from that, we can help you see what is more important work on the business versus in the business.

Robert Plank 1:52 And this,

Jacqui Quejado 1:54 yeah, go ahead, Robert, I

Robert Plank 1:57 was just saying, like this concept of like a page, I like it because, like, you think of pages in a book, like, do you kind of you have enough there, but it's not overwhelming, right? You're not talking about like a whole master plan. It's just getting everyone on the same page. You have a couple of ideas. You have enough for it to be simple, but also, you say some stuff, you have some substance. Yeah,

Jacqui Quejado 2:17 Robert, I would say what makes us unique is our visual framework that Brian spoke about that brings these four core elements of work to life, which allows teams to just get on the same page. And I kept hearing that phrase over and over again, you know, we're not on the same page. And it really was referring to the Alignment Gap that people had, or teams had, or departments. You hear silos, all of those things. And part of my background was, you know, driving improvement work and doing things with frontline workers and all that stuff. And you found out that the executive teams, if they weren't aligned, then it just amplified the misalignment down the organization. So we would, we would joke with people, then show me the page. You know, if you're not on the same page, show me the page. So we'd start to draw it out. And when you start to draw it out, you would find these common themes over the course of time that everybody was looking at, and then that became the visual framework that you see today in work excellence. So one of the things that's unique about us to expand on that is it's just, this is something that I'm a big applied person like you can give me all the theories and all talk high level about a bunch of stuff. But does it work? Does it drive results? Does it increase performance and and so we ran the experiment for, you know, 20 plus years around these pages, and kept iterating them and tried different things out. And that's when we discovered the four core elements, and then all of a sudden we could standardize it across department, across organizations, and use the same visual framework to do that.

Robert Plank 3:59 Very great. So standardizing and visualizing is really important, because otherwise different people have different ideas in their head, right? And then that's how we have conflict. That's we have misunderstanding, and someone doing more than another or working in conflict. And so out of these four quadrants, these four core elements of the page, like, is there one that you think is lacking more than others, or is there one that's more deserving of our attention right now?

Jacqui Quejado 4:28 Yeah, I think the biggest one you would say, again, what Brian said is it's system measurement, improvement and direction, and if you get clear on those four core elements and get on the same page your speed. You talked about that early Robert, about the time and energy and wasting calories and stuff. If you get on the same page, then you're using all of your energy to move forward rather than just spinning. Call it the churn. You'll hear different things out there that describe it. So the biggest one today is, is, I think direction. Yeah, it's like, are you on the same page directionally? We had a CEO jokingly say, you know, using the metaphor of the sheet of music, he goes, I want to play heavy metal, but my team wants to play country. And right there you start to see the gap directionally, of what you want to do and where do you want to go. And we take a little bit deeper dive in the direction. It's like, if we have to make 100 decisions a day, why don't we make the ones just once, and then when things come up, we execute against those decisions. So how are we spending our time and energy? So the directional core element is, is a critical one today, with the rapid change of business environments and markets and things that are going on out in society and geopolitical things, you've got to be adaptive. And if you're trying to figure it out, each time you get thrown a curve ball, that's that's tough.

Robert Plank 5:53 Oh, yeah. Do you have anything to add on that? Brian, you might be Brian's muted.

Brian Cain 6:08 I think one of the things we see Robert is when organizations are not aligned directionally, then their systems are not aligned as well, because they are tied together. You know, the direction kind of sets the system, and then that helps set the tone for the measurement as well. And what are we measuring to tell us the health of the work? Yeah. And then from there, that really helps us build all four pages out. Really helps organizations see and understand current state.

Jacqui Quejado 6:39 Yeah, Robert, and I think the idea, the analogy in the getting on the same page book is, you know, if you think about music, and we talk about that, when that visual structure was finally documented and people started to use it, then music became accessible to anybody. Right before that, it was, oh, yeah, you know, you had to sit down with somebody, you had a you had a practice, right? And you didn't really know, but now, if you could read music and you knew the grid, then you could play the music. And the same analogy applies to business. If you go across departments, everybody visually displays information in different ways, right? Marketing may use PowerPoint or somebody who's data and in the problem is, is we're always missing each other, and we're burning those calories and wasting that time and energy. And if we had the sheet of music, maybe we could, instead of sounding like a seventh grade, you know, band. No offense to the seventh grade bands out there, but you know, if we're striving to be the Boston Philharmonic, how does it really sound? How does it look? How does it feel? And people talk about this stuff every day, but they don't have a common visual framework to work from that they can share information rapidly.

Robert Plank 7:55 And that whole idea of like a like a page of music, a sheet of music, I think that's great, because like, music is one of the most, you know, like, artsy, abstract things out there. Do you think, like, how the heck do I take this thing, that it can be anything and there's so much to it, and, like, reduce it to something that's more mathematical, technical, precise, and you deal with, like, the measurement and the time and the notes and the duration. And then What's also great about the kind of the orchestra metaphor that you have in that book is that people, like, they all play a different part, but everyone's on like, page five at the same time, when people do different things, but you're like, hey, we're on page five. And then, like, you're giving me, you actually do give me flashbacks to that seventh grade band practice where we kind of play a, you know, a piece all the way through, and just as a dry run. And to be like, hey, you know, we really need to focus on page number two here are on, you know, measure number eight. And we need to, like, kind of work on this, like a lot. And here's the difficult part. And so I like what you're saying here about there are decisions to be made, and let's make the decision once. That way, we're being consistent, right? We're not just kind of making the same decision again, or, like, changing our mind every time. And so when you bring these teams together, and they figure out these visuals, and they figure out, like, getting everyone to agree, like, is there a particular area where you just you find that there were surprises, where once you planned out, you said, Whoa, like we're a lot more off course than we thought. We need to get back on track. Can anything come to mind as far as, like, a big problem, or low hanging fruit that you see?

Jacqui Quejado 9:35 Yeah, I can just go into the other core element around work, measurement. Most people say, Hey, we're good on measures, the business has got the data. We're good, we're good, we're good. And then you talk to the CEO, and you know, we're not good. And then you dive in with a team around that, and you find out that they're not hitting targets, and the way they define their. Measures and the way they outlay. Look at them, it's there's so much variation there that there's no alignment. So we spend all this time. What do you mean? That's the result? Well, who, what's that? What do you mean? I don't know. All those types of things start to pop up in conversations instead of just knowing and spending all your energy going to you know your next desired state, your next future state. So we had one client sales leader, actually an international guy who was now working with a company in the States. And as you go through it, the way he defined things was completely different than the other. The way the team, because they just had, he's British, and then, you know, he's in an American company, so the way he even just spoke about different measures was a learning curve for both parties. And then you go into, when you start to go deeper into that, you find out that the way people define measures, where the source of data is bias, all of that stuff starts to pop up when previously they said we were good, and then all of a sudden you find out, as you go through some of this work and going through the core element, they're really not good, and they have a lot of work to do. And

Brian Cain 11:12 I think an important part of that, too is just setting a target. So many times, people don't have a target. They track a lot of things, but they don't have a goal. So without the goal in mind, how do they know whether they're good or bad, ahead or behind, or whether the information is either normal or abnormal? And if we can all agree upon a goal, that's step one to getting on the same page.

Robert Plank 11:38 Very nice. It makes it a lot Simple, right? You figure out these KPIs, as the kids call it, and the skull. And my mind was blown a bunch of years ago when Apple was putting out all kinds of new stuff, right? They were putting out, like the phone and the tablet and the watch, and it was a few years before the goggles, but it was always like, well, what's new, right? What's the new desktop? What's the new server? And then they just said, Hey, we just, we want to sell more iPhones. And I think they had a specific number. They were like, here's how much we sold last year versus this year. And they were like, This is what moves the needle. If we sell more iPhones, it'll lead to the other thing. I think there were some they said, like, like 10 million. Or some it was like some crazy number. But I was like, hey, the one of the, the biggest companies in the world, who knows how many employees and all these moving parts, and even they were like, Hey, we could make at all this complexity, but here's our goal, here's where we're at, here's where we want to be. And then we just have to figure out these actions that we're taking. And I love this insight that you guys both have, of that some organization or other people within it, they might think, Oh, we don't need to focus on that. We don't have a problem. And then when you guys come in, you say, hey, you know you were actually ignoring this, and you thought you had this handled, and you had to go through some of this difficult work to figure out, well, how do we measure this? What does success look like and help us really grasp this? Like, when you talk to an organization. Does anything come to mind about, like, what these goals metrics look like? Does anyone say, like, you know, turnaround time, X number of units, like, what sort of metrics keep popping up as far as what people should be measuring?

Jacqui Quejado 13:16 Yeah, it's a good it's a great question, Robert, because we can do lots of things, right? You can measure lots of things. You got all these work. Work is changing rapidly. So as you work these four core elements and you build out the page, what you start to see is what's critical to measure, what's critical to focus on, how are you doing against as Brian described, those targets, then you actually start to see things in a different way, or, you know, maybe a higher level way, and you're like, well, this doesn't match up. That doesn't match up. And then you can start to say, what are our choices? We talk about the work continuum a little bit in the book, conceptual work, strategic, tactical and execution. Well, resources aren't infinite in an organization. And how many concepts are you entertaining? And what are your choices? We call strategic work choices, which is the big choices? And then are you building clear paths forward? And are people executing? Then you got all of these things going on with people. You've got to have some foundation to go off of, and which is really those four core elements. And once you bring visibility, you start to separate all the noise and all the things that aren't important right now that the team can focus on. And then you start to build momentum. Brian talks a lot about the flywheel, lots of examples, you know, Jim Collins's book and all that. When a team starts to get that momentum and starts to use their calories driving to things and gain that success. The dynamic in the culture starts to change too as well. So it's a it's a process for an organization or an organism to go through in order, in order to hit those levels of performance.

Brian Cain 15:01 Yes, and I think part of that too is that the work system provides measurement the work that you do, how you do the work. You talked about the structure, order, flow of the work and the work system, but part of it is, how do you measure that? And so each one of the phases of work has measurement, and that helps you guide what are those critical few measures to tell you the health of that work and and whether that be, you know, at the highest level of the organization may be operational, maybe it's financial. You know, a lot of people measure top line sales and bottom line income or EBITDA, but then you really have to make a choice on what's important to tell you the health of the work. That's right, and usually there's three or four measures that really help us tell that.

Jacqui Quejado 15:45 Robert, if I could, I could give you a story. So we worked with this team for a couple of years. Last year, they they really lean into work excellence method. We built visibility to their work around the four core elements. They have six measures for 2025 on their work measurement page, and all six measures are either trending to target or are already over target. And nice. The focus on those six measures has driven really, really great results out of the gates in 2025 and when you sit there and observe the team now and their conversations and how they're the alignments there, so now it's just a matter of choices and and those types of things. So they don't grind much, and they're they're really getting into a great rhythm where they're building that momentum. And the culture in the team, the leadership and the team is growing

Robert Plank 16:43 very nice. So we love the momentum. We love the flywheel. We love when things are aligned and working great and we know what our factors are. And if we have like those six items, we could say, Hey, we're hitting all our targets and we're doing great, and we're building the muscle, and we're strong, and we can still get better. And so if an organization out there says, All right, well, this all sounds great, and I'd love to get on the same page and get those four core elements figured out. But oh, it's not a priority, right? Maybe we'll do it next quarter. Maybe we'll do it next year. What's the danger in someone not taking this seriously or not applying this in time?

Jacqui Quejado 17:22 Well, I would just say, and Brian can comment too as well, Robert, you know, a lot of times we hear people and they say, Well, we have all these challenges. We got all this stuff going on. And then we ask, well, how healthy is your method? Well, what are you talking about? So you sometimes you get the blank stares, or they say they got too much on the go for them to do one more thing. And Brian and I would always say to them, you always have to focus on method first before you can really achieve your results. And if you're not caring and feeding for your organizational method, in the book, we talk about Frankenstein and all those disparate ways new leaders come in, they bring different methods, and then all the people are churning again and grinding, learning something else. So you're bringing a new tool. And there's no continuity, no consistency for the people, because the method keeps changing. In the you know, the book we talk about, if you go shopping, everybody's got the a personal method for how they like to grocery shop, right? But if I had to shop like Brian does, I I would hate shopping, right? And because we think about it differently, and that's where methods really are so important. Any successful person you look at, they have a method, and then you get to the organizational or team level, and it's all those disparate methods, and a method is the way you think, first and foremost, the way you work and the tools you use. A lot of times people start with tools. So back to you, the question of people put it off with devastating results, because it's kind of that paradox where it's saying, Well, you've got this method that isn't working for you. You're not getting your results, but you're not going to work on the method. You could get more done if you would slow down work on your method, you could actually achieve your results faster. But it's not another thing to do. It's just the way you need to work, which is always cared it's like the seventh grade band. If they're not practicing, they're not getting together, you just can't throw them together on a Saturday evening and do a concert. There's a method to building that capability and that skill set that makes sense.

Robert Plank 19:31 It does, and especially that there's like, there's personal practice and group practice, right? Like you're again, back to the flashback of the seventh grade band, when I put in an hour a day in every afternoon, it was such I just I hated it, but it was necessary to put in that discipline. And then when I got better, I hated it less, and then I took it for granted, and I stopped practicing, and then I wasn't as good. And then same thing with the group is it's it's so monotonous, but. There's no other alternative, right? We have to do we have to do the work. And then once we break through, and once it's it's kind of, we get a good flow, well, then it's fun again, but it's just like it. There's so many things in life where you forget when you're in the middle of it, when you say, you know, we've been doing, we've been kind of chugging along for so long. We've been doing the Frankenstein stuff. There's been all this conflict, and we know there's a bridge to cross, and, oh, man, it's so difficult, but it's like, Hey, you do the work, you get to the other side, and there's such a reward to get there. And so I want to make sure that we include Mr. Brian in this kind of conversation about, like, what happens if we don't do it? So have you seen anything Mr. Brian, especially story wise, of like, if a company like starts this but doesn't follow through. I mean, what can you say to make sure we take this seriously?

Brian Cain 20:46 Yeah, I think there's a couple things there. Robert, I think, you know, as an example, we had a client that we started working with. Oh, it's been 10 or 12 years ago, and they started using the method, but they just used it at the highest level of the organization. And time went by. They got a new president in place. You know, old President left, and he called us, and he said, Hey, we really were missing something here, right? And so as they started to bring us into the organization and really bring the method into the organization, we trained 35 leaders in the organization. And while they were doing well and they were reaching their goals, what we found is that they had not quite exactly where they wanted to be, and by doing that, bring it in, into the entire organization, they've reached their goals, exceeded their goals, didn't last five years. So it's pretty amazing. You know, if you just do it a little bit. It's one thing, but how do you take it through the entire organization as a whole? And one of the things that we see is that you know some leaders, if you're having to learn every method that Steve talked about for every leader, how do you learn to interact with each other? It's very difficult. I don't want to shop the way Steve shops. He doesn't want to shop the way I shop, but if we can come together and find a common way to shop, we're going to be much better off as an organization.

Robert Plank 22:08 Oh yeah, you go get the milk, and I'll go get the bread, and we'll meet back after we've performed our tasks, and that way it gets done, but then the time and the work is optimized, and so it's great how you guys are fun, and you use the metaphors and you make this exciting, right? Because it would be real tempting to just like focus on the numbers and the structure and the keywords, which it's important. But we also need to make sure that we use our imagination and we use our brain and that we have a little bit of entertainment along with the education. And that might be why people have failed up to this point, and that's why they need to check out your very excellent book, which is called getting on the same page, creating excellence, growth and performance within your organization. And in one final push here, Mr. Steven Brian, to get people to check out this amazing book. Is there one aspect of it that people really like a lot, or is there like one really important reason because, you know, a book has as many pages and you can say, Oh, well, there's this great thing on page 75 or on page seven, but is there like one nugget in particular that you think is just so important, why someone should go and get this book right now?

Jacqui Quejado 23:20 Yeah, I would say Robert, if your feet, you know, not being on the same page as a feeling, it doesn't feel real good. You're missing you know each other. The connections aren't strong. You don't feel there's alignment. And you think about that phrase, you know, we're not on the same page. Pick up the book. It'll help guide you through that. I think it's a good, good way to get started, if you, if you see that gap in your organization, to go ahead and take that first step.

Brian Cain 23:50 And we always ask the question, where is the page? Right? When people say we're not on the same page, we just ask, where is the page? And we really that's a stunning point for people, because they just start to say, oh, wait a minute, we don't have a page. And I think that's an important part of where we are. I think another thing that we see it from that perspective is that when leaders really didn't stay on the same page, they can reach their goals faster. That's the common thing that we say, but in part of the way we wrote the book was, Why? Why you need a common method, not really about the work excellence method, but really going through and understanding the good parts about any method, not just the work excellence method,

Robert Plank 24:36 very nice. And you know, you're bringing up an important little bit of subtext there is that we all get caught in these cliches, these phrases, right? And people just use it as a way to just kind of push something off. And they use the like, you answer ask me this question, my answer is the phrase this metaphor, and then, okay, I'm off to the next thing. And like getting on the same page? Oh, we're not on the same page. Okay. What? Well, then what? Right? Where is the page? Is it a blank page? Who has it? Can we start writing on it and start making some progress? It's kind of like that phrase, well, I'm leaving money on the table. Well, where is the table? Can Can you pick it up? Can you move it somewhere else? Can you see what's on it? Like, don't just use it as the cop out. So it's great how you have these, these these meanings, these metaphors that actually mean something. And then we can say, All right, let's get everyone on the same page and work on those four core components and start to make some progress. And so if people are enthusiastic and excited about the possibilities of doing things differently, about maybe being a little more focused and organized that way we have alignment in our team. What are some next steps? Here is the logical course of action to go and check out this amazing book.

Brian Cain 25:49 Yeah, well, feel free to just check out the book. It's on Amazon in three different forms. But also, if you'd like, you can send us an email to info at work excellence.com Give us your name, your email address, company name, and, of course, your mailing address, phone number, and we'll send you a signed copy. And Steve's going to talk about the organizational assessment as well. Yeah,

Jacqui Quejado 26:10 Robert, we also have a tool on our website under the resources tab, which is an organizational assessment that's based around the four core elements and the work routine, which is part of the work excellence method and teams can just click on the link and take the assessment, and then, you know, they can take it and share that with other people they work with, or they could get a group of people to take it and see how aligned, how much they are on the Same page across those four core elements. It takes about 30 minutes, Robert to do so, and

Brian Cain 26:45 we'll be glad to get on the phone with you and review that assessment with our teams meeting, if you like, as well.

Robert Plank 26:51 Very cool. And so this is important stuff, right? It's not just theory, it's not just abstract. There's a little bit of fun and play to it. But this is really important, and it could be the missing key to your organization's success. It's really important to get that organization departments and teams on the same page, improve your organizational cultural and customer value. They have this proven work excellence method, and it's one thing to dabble a little bit and get some ideas and say, Okay, well, that that's nice, what Stephen Bryant had for me. But what about actually putting your money where your mouth is, or vice versa, and saying, Well, hey, let me fill out this assessment. You go to works, work excellence.com, there's the Resources tab, there's the organizational assessment. You click on the button and he started answering some of these simple questions to actually see where you're at. Is it slightly awkward? Is it slightly painful? Well, of course, but nothing compared to the pain and regret of not taking action and wondering just what the heck's going on? Why is this so difficult? Why is my team in conflict? Why are we not hitting our metrics? Why are we not growing a million different questions. Well, the first step is to figure out how has have others solved this problem? What's their method and how he can get your team on the same page? So we said there's that org assessment at work excellence.com you go to you send an email to info at work excellence.com you tell Steve and Brian your phone number and mailing address, and they will send you a signed copy of this very amazing book. It's called, getting on the same page, creating excellence, growth and performance in your organization. Steve and Brian introduce work Excellence, which is a method designed to empower everyone from C suite to frontline employees for strategies that foster collaboration and create lasting impact. We all need it. We need help with it. It's called getting on the same page. And before I let you guys go, it's time for the the scary, frightening part of the show where I try to put you both on the spot. I ask for a fun or interesting quote or lesson that has served you in the past. So what comes to mind for you guys, as far as a helpful quote or lesson for us?

Brian Cain 29:09 Brian, go ahead, well, I think we mentioned it earlier. You know, the big the big quotes that we say to everybody is, are you on the same page? And we always hear this, we're not on the same page. Have we get on the same page? And we just simply ask, where is the page?

Jacqui Quejado 29:27 Very nice. And I would say, Robert, I think the key piece for me is visibility matters. Visibility matters for everybody, because if you can't see it, it's really hard to get on the same page. So visibility matters.

Robert Plank 29:44 So get it written down. Draw that doodle. Figure out what the org chart, the flow chart, the written words are. Get it written down that way. Everyone can see it that way. They can revisit it that way. They can visualize it. It's so important. To get on the same page as Mr. Brian Kane and Steve Grant told us their website is work excellence.com go there, check it out, and definitely read their book. You'll be glad you did. And thank you, both, you guys, for being here, being real, telling us some stories, helping us out. I really appreciate it.

Brian Cain 30:16 Great. Thanks, Robert. Appreciate your time.

Robert Plank 30:23 thank you for tuning in to the marketer of the day. Podcast, marketer of the day is managed by d f y podcast, claim your 12 podcast boosters at d f y podcast.com/free, you.