What Leaders Must Know About the Route to Results

Certain companies tend to outperform their competition year after year.? They sell similar products or services in similar locations, but something separates them.?

Now, before I tell you what it is, let's explore a real-world example.?

Chick-fil-A is one of these companies that crushes its competition. Their non-mall locations average $9.3 million in annual sales, more than double that of competitors like McDonald's ($4M) and four times the average Wendy's ($2M), Taco Bell ($1.5M), Burger King ($1.2M), and Kentucky Fried Chicken($1.4M).?

Even more remarkable is that they are only open 6 days a week, whereas their competition is open 7. While there is no denying the quality of Chick-fil-A's food or the uplifting customer service, the biggest and most significant element that separates them from their competition is the depth and quality of their leadership.?

What helps companies outperform their competition is the depth and quality of their leadership.?

How Leaders Deliver Consistent Results

When studying what the best leaders do for Building the Best, I found a formula that shows how to get consistently high results from themselves and their people. It is called "The Route to Results."

The Route to Results is simple. Leaders are responsible for setting clear standards. Those standards produce behaviors. Behaviors, when practiced repeatedly, become habits, and the collective habits ultimately lead to results.

1. Clear Standards Provide Consistent Effort

A standard defines what good looks like. I have learned from coaching and studying leaders for the last decade that good managers define what "good looks like." But great leaders define "what great looks like." In order to get consistent winning effort and behavior daily from team members, you must focus on standards and not rules.?

Average teams have rules; great teams have standards.

However, standards are what you expect, not what you communicate. Imagine that your state suddenly decided to remove speed limit signs altogether. Drivers could drive as fast as they wanted on any given road. Would you still drive 25mph in a school zone, or would you go 35 mph and just keep an eye out for children?? My guess is you would pick the latter. So the leadership principle is this:

The instant you lower your standards, performance begins to erode.

High standards raise the bar on what's expected.??

2. Behaviors Become Habits

A behavior is defined as how one consciously acts or conducts oneself. The keyword is conscious.? Each person makes 35,000 decisions a day on average. These decisions can be impacted or shifted based on how you think or feel in a given situation.?

Conversely, a habit is something done without thinking or subconsciously. Origin Marson said, "The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably in thought and act."

Marson is right, a habit is just something you do so often that it becomes the very essence of your being.?

A great example of this in your personal life is how you leave your cell phone plugged in next to your bed. When you wake up, you reach for your phone without a second thought. It's something you do without thinking. It's a habit.?

Traditionally, habits are formed over time.? Most people who agree with this believe it takes between 30 and 60 days for a behavior to become a habit. However, it turns out time isn't the only factor. How often you repeat a behavior also turns it into a habit.?

3. Habits Lead to Results

The outcome is cemented when you get a team to buy into the standards and turn their behaviors into habits.? While no leader can guarantee success, they maximize their odds of achieving positive results by falling in love with the process of the Route to Results instead of looking forward to the outcome.?

Whatever goal you want your team to achieve this year, 20% Revenue growth, 10% reduction in turnover, or $1M in new business, start with the end in mind, then define the standards that will help your team get there.?

What Leaders Must Know About the Route to Results

The route to results is proven to work.? Remember, clear standards produce behaviors that become habits, which lead to results.?

Clear standards produce behaviors that become habits, which lead to results.?

But most importantly, leadership is at the heart of the formula. What's required is leaders who dare to raise the bar, not lower it, and leaders who stand up for what is right and true.

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About the Author: John Eades is the CEO of LearnLoft and The Sales Infrastructure. He was named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices. John is also the author of Building the Best: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success. You can follow him on Instagram @johngeades.