Leveraging Leadership

Simplifying Success: Remove Obstacles to Achieve Objectives

• Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 162

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In this episode of Leveraging Leadership, Emily explores the concept of removing obstacles to achieve goals instead of just adding new strategies. He uses examples like eliminating junk food to meet personal health goals, cutting unnecessary meetings to help a team meet deadlines, and simplifying pricing models to close more deals and beat competitors. It's all about identifying what's blocking progress and taking it out of the equation.


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Who Am I?

If we haven’t yet before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want. 

 

Time Stamps:

00:00 Introduction: The Obsession with Adding More
00:41 Flipping the Script: Removing Obstacles
01:10 Personal Goals: Health and Fitness
01:43 Removing Junk Food: A Healthier You
02:09 Team Goals: Meeting Deadlines
02:46 Eliminating Unnecessary Meetings
03:05 Company Objectives: Beating Competitors
03:31 Simplifying Pricing to Close Deals
04:17 The Power of Removing Barriers
04:33 Concentrating on the Biggest Obstacle
04:40 Takeaway: Identify and Remove the Biggest Obstacle
04:56 Conclusion and Contact Information

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A lot of us are looking to accomplish goals and meet objectives, and we often obsess over what we have to add, do those things. What are the tools or the strategies or the to-do list, or what do we have to add and put in place to get this new thing to happen? Oftentimes it is flipping that script and saying, here's the path forward. Here's our plan. The plan is sound. What gets in our way? What's the roadblock? What's the challenge? What's the obstacle? And how do we remove that? And if we just remove that thing, then the path is clear and this thing goes on its own. And we meet the goal, we meet the objective. And this can happen at a couple different levels, right? It can happen at a personal goal level. You've got team goals, you've got company wide objectives, and this principle takes place in all of them. What do you need to remove? Okay, so personal goal example. Let's say you want to lose weight or you wanna get, uh, fit, you wanna be healthier. An additive step would be, I will need to go to the gym more. I need to go to the gym at least three days a week for 30 minutes, whatever it is. If you flip the script and say, you know what, what really gets in my way and really prevents me from hitting my health goals is some of the crap I eat. Like I don't eat the healthiest. I don't make the best choices when there's crap all around my house. So you might say, let me remove. The junk food in my home, and that will solve my problem. And so it might be, instead of relying on daily willpower of like walking by, I don't know, like the twine or brownie or cookie or whatever, it's like those things just. Don't go in my house, like those thi, those just things aren't allowed in my pantry. And that can be the thing you remove and that's the thing that's preventing you, or the biggest factor in preventing you from getting healthy. All right. Second example. So team goal might be we, let's just say like we're trying to hit our deadlines, we're trying to meet our milestones. We have these milestones that are along this long-term goal, and we just need to hit those things and meet our deadlines, and then we will accomplish our long-term goal. What is the biggest thing preventing you from doing that now? What is holding your team back from doing that? It might be something like, oh, we have these, these endless, unnecessary meetings, right? We have meetings about meetings, about meetings, about having meetings, about the meeting we just had about the meeting. We're about to have this meeting could have been an email, it could have been a slack. All these, all these classic things, So it might be the thing that's preventing us is these unnecessary meetings. Don't get rid of meetings altogether, but maybe consolidate that down to the essential meetings or maybe repurpose and combine a couple different meetings. And if you do that, you are home free. Your path is clear. Third example would be the overall company objective. This, this one might be like, we wanna beat our competitors, right? That's a classic one. An additive step might be we need to build more products and services, so let's build like our, you know, r and d team and engineering team. We're gonna build proprietary products and services and be a differentiator in the market. Is that a valid answer? Yes, absolutely. What would flipping the script on that look like? It might be stepping back and saying, what is preventing us from closing deals right now? Like, what is preventing us from displacing competitors right now? Oh, we have a great product. People know about it. But when they get into the conversation with us and they get into the sales negotiation, we have like some pretty complex pricing when we get down to Brass Tack and we lose people at that stage. So it might be identifying, oh, that's what's preventing them. Let's remove that, and then this whole floodgate of deals opens up. So it might, let's simplify our pricing. Maybe less variable stuff, maybe less stuff based on usage. It's a flat fee, whatever it is. And you don't have to do anything in terms of building a new product. You just remove the thing that's preventing. You from getting deals right now and you're home free. Alright, so with all these examples, success isn't necessarily about doing more or adding more. It's often about removing and just removing, like, okay, this thing is preventing us, or this is the biggest thing that's preventing most of what we wanna have happen, happen. Let's concentrate on that. How do we move that out of the way, even if it's like moving it outta the way a little bit, not entirely, or doing less of that thing. That could be enough to make sure you accomplish your goals and objectives. So the takeaway for this episode would be look at your biggest objective right now and what is the biggest thing that could derail that. And then tackle that. Tackle, how to remove that. And that's your takeaway. If you have any questions or any comments on this episode, please feel free to shoot me a note at Emily at Next level. Do Coach. Otherwise, I will catch you next week on leveraging Leadership.