Notes from "Thoughtfully Ruthless: The Key to Exponential Growth" by Val Wright

You are the single greatest barrier to spending your time as you want to.

 

There are three critical ways to becoming more ruthless in a thoughtful way with your energy:

1. Be sure you are in your perfect job doing perfect work.

2. Check your ROE.

3. Burst your bubble.

 

The thoughtfully ruthless success loop will drive the behavior change you are looking to achieve by following the six steps to thoughtfully ruthless changes:

1. Build awareness: Have absolute clarity about what you want to change and why.

2. Define today's and tomorrow's positions: Know exactly where you are starting from and what your destination is.

3. Align priorities and accountabilities: This is the highest failure point. Those who can influence the change need to be committed and have it as a high priority against every other potential distraction.

4. Identify accelerators and decelerators: Consider your accelerators and decelerators as well as what conditions, triggers, situations, or people speed up or severely hamper your ability to achieve your goals. This may take 10 minutes or a month, depending how honest you are with yourself or whether you have ever given this any thought before.

5. Dramatic dialogue: Unless you are great at talking to yourself in the mirror, often you need to engage someone else to help you see what you can achieve and help you understand what is getting in your way and how to adopt new habits. Use your manager, a mentor, or a coach to provoke, diagnose, and reflect with you.

6. Reinforcing change: Change efforts fail when there is no reward or positive confirmation at the end. The opposite of CODN, cost of doing nothing, is your COS, cost of success. Knowing this and watching it play out positively will help make change stick.

 

Leaders who are brilliant at demonstrating their brilliance consistently:

1. Find it easy to talk about results

2. Share stories that demonstrate quantifiable impact

3. Concisely communicate

Don't use a sentence when a word will do.

Don't use a paragraph when a sentence will do.

Don't use e-mail when picking up the phone will do.

Don't let meetings take 60 minutes when ending early will do.

Don't call a meeting when speaking quickly to two people will do.

4. Have a strong positive inner voice

5. Are great storytellers

6. Shamelessly speak

7. Use metaphors and analogies

8. Appropriately talk about their enviable inner circle of advisors

9. Are happy to laugh at themselves

10. Share and learn from their mistakes

 

 

THIRTY WAYS TO SAY NO

No! Not Now, Not Ever

1. I am not available then.

2. I cannot give that the attention it deserves.

3. That will not work for me.

4. Thanks for the offer, but I have to decline

5. No, thank you.

6. That is not possible.

7. I cannot say yes to that.

8. I would rather not.

9. I am already focused on ABC.

10. I can't.

11. It sounds wonderful, but I have to say no.

12. Thank you for asking, but I need to decline.

13. It's absolutely not possible.

 

Not Now, but Another Time

1. That could work if it can be in June, but not this month.

2. If it is important that I attend, let's plan for next week.

3. I would love to attend, but I cannot make that date.

4. It is not a priority for me right now.

5. I have other priorities I have to put first.

6. I cannot do that until October, but a member of my team could sooner.

7. I would to meet you, but until my product launches, that needs to be my priority. Let's get back in touch after November.

8. I am not prioritizing that right now, but next year perhaps.

9. I have made a commitment to x for the next month. Perhaps next month?

 

Not That Way, but My Way

I. If your goal is this, how about we approach it this way?

2. Why did you choose that way? Are you open to other ideas?

3. I could say yes if you are open to approaching it a different way.

4. If you explain why that is your solution, I will explain an alternative.

5. My experience tells me that won't work, have you considered . . .

6. I don't want to do it that way. Can we try this instead?

7. I am interested, but I want to do it my way, is that an option?

8. I agree with what you want to do, but I want to change how it's done. Is that possible?

 

WARNING: Worst Phrases to Say When You Mean No and You Want to Say No

1. Yes.

2. I will consider it.

3. Perhaps

4. Let me think about it.

5. Interesting . . .

6. Maybe.

7. Let's talk about it.

 

? Say no as soon as you know you don't want to do or can't do something. Delaying it wastes energy and decreases the likelihood of alternatives.

? Use a presumptive close. Don't ask a question such as "Shall we meet next week?" Instead, say, "Let's meet on Wednesday."

? It is easier to say no and then change your answer to yes than it is to say yes and then have to say no. If you are unsure about your answer or availability, say no.

 

 

 

Nine Ways to Create Silence

1. Start with you.

2. Schedule fake meetings.

3. Create silence sessions in meetings.

4. Silence in the car.

5. Start and end every business trip alone.

6. Ask permission to think for a moment.

7. Listen to the silence.

8. Be a little bit random.

9. Book a recurring meeting with yourself.

 

Eleven Ways to Control Your In-Box

1. The Opener
2. Take Your Time
3. Use Auto-Signatures
4. Only Let in Customers, Employees, and Investors
5. Make It a Team Effort
6. Don't Dump Your To-Do List
7. Try the Phone
8. Stop Saying Thank You
9. Incessant Knock on the Door
10. Use the Online/Offline Mode
11. Don't Open It Unless You Are Going to Respond

 

Seven Critical Exemplary Board Processes

1. Strategy refresh every Year

2. Board exposure to key senior talent

3. Succession plan discussion twice a year

4. Individual one-on-one connections

5. One-year executive launch plan for new CEO and new board members

6. Meaningful meetings

7. Annual CEO and Board Performance Evaluations

 

Crucial behaviors that every board member needs to exemplify:

1. Candid

2. Transparent

3. Thoughtfully ruthless

4. Mutual respect

5. Crystal-clear communication

6. Proactive

7. Flexible backbone

8. Self-aware

9. Fully engaged

 

Five Critical Elements of a Galvanized Team

1. Strategic clarity— Everyone on your team is clear on the future direction of two or three years and how you will get there.

2. Aligned clear priorities—Your priorities individually and as a team are clear

3. Deliberate decision making— Everyone understands who makes what decisions, and the outcomes are clear to everyone.

4. Inspiring communication—Everyone across your organization hears multiple ways and multiple messages at the right time to inspire and guide decisions.

5. Exemplary leadership pipeline—There is an abundance of available talent to take on the next level of leadership and expertise roles, and proactive planning takes place.

 

Five Crucial Behaviors of a Galvanized Team

1. Candid—Everyone is comfortable saying what they think with positive intentions.

2. Aspirational —There is a common future focus and optimistic view of the future.

3. Curious—When an opinion or fact is counter to your own, you seek to understand before reaching a conclusion.

4. Reflective—As a team you create time and space to reflect on successes and understand why you were successful as well as why it didn't go according to plan.

5. Thoughtfully ruthless—As a team you are deliberate and intentional about where you spend the team's time and energy and the collective resources of the whole organization.