EOS - Traction for Your Workplace Goals with Michele Mollard

(EOS Episode 19) Clarity Over Busy

• Michele Mollard

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In this episode of EOS-Traction for Your Workplace Goals, Certified EOS Implementer Michele Mollard makes the case that clarity is a competitive advantage. Michele shows how simple, protected thinking time beats frantic busyness - and shares how to run clarity breaks, turn first answers into better ones, and bring the team into smarter decisions.


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EOS-Traction for Your Workplace Goals is a Livemic Communications production.




Richard Piet:

Hi, Richard Piet. Welcome back to another EOS traction for your workplace goals. That's what we talk about, giving you some footing and some progress. And that always feels good, doesn't it? When you start to see those boxes get checked off, those goals get accomplished. Michele Mollard is a certified EOS implementer, and she is here to talk to us this time about the idea of clarity. Isn't it nice to see things clearly? Clarity is your competitive advantage. Hi, Michele. Explain, please.

MIchele Mollard:

Yes. Hi, Richard. Uh yeah, so I think we think that uh running as fast as we possibly can, I would even say through life, but let's just use business, is great. Like we're busy. And so I want to switch our brains from busy to productive and clarity and getting time for it and making time for it. And I'll talk to you tactically in this podcast about what to do, but it really is a game changer for you personally to give you clarity. But thinking about our employees as well, the more clear and the breaks that you can do and the clarity you can give gives you a competitive advantage to your people and ultimately for your business going forward. That's the bigger picture.

Richard Piet:

Yeah, I think I get that. I mean, we think about busy, uh, we think maybe we're frantic or something. And frantic doesn't mean productive. It does not.

MIchele Mollard:

The idea, so fundamentally in the world of EOS, we have these things called clarity breaks. And so I want to describe them to you and the advantage that they give you. And so a clarity break is thinking time. And I will share a very quick story. I was always thinking, I don't need that. That's a waste of time, right? And so before I had EOS, that's exactly how I felt. And now I take them on a regular basis for an hour every single week. And so the idea is me shut in a room. Sometimes I live in a beautiful beach community, sometimes I'm on the beach, but it's just me, a piece of paper, and a pen and my brain. And that's it. And it is non-interrupted, no phone. So I just have I go old school, right? I could be on my Remarkable or I could be on my Remarkable, I could pay me some money for my uh promotion there, uh, or my phone. Uh I can't, right? It distracts me. There's too many other things that I get into. So a piece of paper, a pen, getting to the monthly commitment or the weekly commitment of time alone, just you and your thoughts. And so I want to drive into that a little bit more. Sometimes when you do them in the very beginning, they seem like, what do you mean I gotta sit here for an hour? I can't even get 10 minutes of quiet time. So cut yourself some break and do just 10 minutes. And so sometimes I come into those clarity breaks with a thing that I need to think about, like a topic. Like, do I need another person on my accountability chart? Do I need to prepare for this meeting? Do I need to think about my clients? Or sometimes I come in there with nothing. And I let my brain just roll. And so that's how those are done. Uh, I can share, unless you have something stewing in your brain, uh, Richard, because you always have great questions. Um, if you have something stewing, then I can do that. But rather than then roll into what that gives us.

Richard Piet:

Yes, I did have one thing stewing, and that was how do you know in the course of the week running up to that quiet time, what you're putting in that quiet time? How do you decide that? Does that happen somewhere along the way you say, I'm gonna save that for quiet time?

MIchele Mollard:

Yes. And so it can happen many different ways. I have said, so I have a standing meeting. It's mine Sunday morning at six in the morning. I know some of the aren't early risers are like, oh my goodness, but that's where my clearest thinking time is, is my clearest thinking time. So think about that too, where your energy level is, where your clearest thinking time is as well. But I have a little calendar invite and so, um, or a calendar placeholder, and then I will put my thoughts. So during my week, I will put my thoughts saying, Hey, take a clarity break on what I'm gonna talk about for my podcast.

Richard Piet:

That was the email I got. I I think one Sunday morning when I woke up. Oh, look at this.

MIchele Mollard:

Yes. But I also sometimes go through the week and thinking that's what it's gonna be. And then something more important that I'm more stuck on takes precedence. Okay. And so it could be as an employee that something came up or a client that came up. Um, I think about um, again, if you're running on EOS or very familiar with it as you listen to this, something that's wrong in my scorecard, right? And so there's plenty of podcasts as we go through here. I know we did one last time. I know there's one coming up uh soon about it. Uh, but I might take a clarity break on something that's holding me back personally, professionally, in the business with some of my employees as well. So it can be programmed and thought of, but sometimes it needs to just be organic because it's a bigger problem than that. So I take it by priority of stickiness.

Richard Piet:

All right. So there may be a point during the week where you say, okay, and this is another deliberate planning of time in saying, I'm in this now. That could be some kind of squirrel or rabbit hole that could distract me, but I'm gonna save that for Sunday at six. On we go.

MIchele Mollard:

On we go. Absolutely. And so what it does for us is not only does it give us the thinking time to figure out the solution, but sometimes if you're running very harried, you are checking the box, and whatever the first answer comes to the solution or the problem, excuse me, is the one we roll with. And we're not giving it enough time to think about. I there's a saying out there in the world of improv is yes and yes, right. And so yes and what else? And what else? And so when we're in here asking, what else, what else, what else? We're driving it deeper. And so if you have a great thinking partner, these are great, but sometimes it's about us just kind of getting some alone time to do it. And so it's not always whatever comes first solved. Like if I'm in there for an hour in my clarity break and I have an idea, I'm like, oh, great idea, done. I'm done with my clarity break and I'm moving on. It's not. I stay in it and say, and what else? And what else?

Richard Piet:

That's pretty wild if you think about that for a second. We are hungry to solve that problem. Correct. And the first answer, okay, solved. Maybe not. That could be a huge uh diversion to the solution.

MIchele Mollard:

Correct, right? Uh, and I think we come up with different alternatives. And so if the solution could be possibly three, then we could take that to a teammate or a team and say, hey, I have this problem. Here's what I thought about, and then their rendition gives you support to one of those three or a yes and and blends the two of them, right? Like you never know where that's really going. And so it not only gives you that result, it also gives you the result of if I am showing up to my team. So if I'm a leadership team member, a head of a department, and I have thought through that, the confidence that comes from me when I'm presenting that solution, because I've thoroughly thought through it with all the alternatives, shows up with my team and how it's received. Right. So sometimes it's like, just do this, do this, do this. They know it's just coming flying from my mouth and potentially are reading between the lines saying Michele didn't think this all the way through. And even they have different options. And so when I think it through, when I've spent the time to really have clarity breaks and take the time to do that, I'm thinking about all the other options. And so I could even say with confidence to my team, I've thought about this, I've thought about this, I've thought about this. What else do you guys have? And so the whole thing is, and what else? And what else?

Richard Piet:

Wow. And now you're stimulating input from the team having put forward a level of confidence that shows, I presume, and gets them on board.

MIchele Mollard:

And that's the competitive advantage part, right? So clarity breaks, right? Clarity that gets you a competitive advantage or it leads to a competitive advantage, is the competitive advantage of me as a leader, then my team engaged with me. And then my team has the competitive advantage of thinking through problems as opposed to me always taking on the problem or the situation and coming up with the solve. And so they become an intricate part of the solve, even if they're not in my clarity break, but they could be in the conversation. And then how what does that feel like? Empowerment on their end, right? What does that feel like to be a part of a solution that they then see, again, out with the rest of the staff or with a customer, depending on what team you lead, right? But hey, I have a problem with this piece of machinery on the manufacturing floor. Take a clarity break. Here are the options, scoop them in. And then they see that implemented that they were a part of. There's a competitive advantage. Our people are a competitive advantage. We just need to figure out a way to ignite them. And you can take a clarity break on that. How do I ignite my employees to be competitive advantage, right? There's so much greatness around this.

Richard Piet:

So the example you used is a pretty practical example. There's something wrong on the floor, and we got to have a clarity break and figure it out and get the input and so on solved, let's presume. But I would imagine bigger things come out of some of this too, right? This is to say you might end up with some rocks, you might end up with some kind of longer-term goal.

MIchele Mollard:

For sure. Yeah, there's really great uh questions to think about. Like I think about uh in my clarity breaks now. Do I have the right bench? Meaning, am I building the team deep enough? So I go a lot to my strategy, my vision traction organizer, and look at that and say, what is the goal for the year? And then can I, again, like you said, take rocks from that? And so sometimes I take clarity breaks around my rock and just one rock, just look at it. Don't look at them all, just look at one rock and be like, what do I got to do? Rocks are the biggest priorities that I have to do this 90 days to get my business unstuck or moving forward. And so I can look at that and be like, how do I spend enough time with that? Because again, I can tactically just skip right through it and solve it, check the box and say, I'm done, as opposed to really uh treating it with respect, if you will, to give it the time that it deserves. So anything along the few, you know, like thinking about an expansion, right? Do I want to build a new building? Do I want to buy the land and build the building? Do I want to have a whole nother product line? Those big questions really can be answered and potentially need two clarity breaks around it. Sometimes it doesn't always come. So the bigger the thing, the more time we should spend in it.

Richard Piet:

Now you anticipated just what I was thinking about. What if you get through the clarity break and you don't have the answer yet? It just means your 10 minutes or your hour wasn't long enough.

MIchele Mollard:

Yeah. And I think, you know, of course, if you are in the zone and you have the time, stay in it, right? If I'm at the beach and no one's bothering me and I don't have a meeting at seven o'clock in the morning, which, you know, it's probably the gym, and I probably will not go there and stay in my clarity break, to be honest with you, a little insight under Michele. Um, but it but if I'm rolling, stay rolling. If you can, stay in it, because there's something you are so close to something. Um, you know, I kind of always say that, like when when people stop doing something, you don't know how close you are to actually being so close, right? And so I would just share, just if you have an extra half hour, give it to it. Uh, if you have an extra hour, give it to it. Uh if you're exhausted at the end and say I'll have to come back another day, that's okay. Just make sure you get back to it another day. Because sometimes our brains are tired. Because as we're just like, okay, I I don't have anything more to think about. I just don't. There's no more, you know, kind of gas in a gas tank. Yeah. Um, and so, you know, what are we doing there to be able to take that forward? Sometimes we're just stuck.

Richard Piet:

Yeah. And I suppose we shouldn't feel badly about that. If there's no gas, uh, you know, take a minute and go fill up and do what you got to do and come back.

MIchele Mollard:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's no shame in it. And sometimes, honestly, I think I've got it solved and I go into the next clarity break, moving on. And guess what? That one comes back with a new idea. I've had that too. Uh, so sometimes we do think it's solved, and it's like, huh, hey, that was even a better idea. And you know, we just get better at it, and yeah, we definitely cut ourselves a lot of slack. To me, besides setting the time allocated in your week and the pen and the paper and your brain, there's no other rules around it. Those are the two rules. Spend time alone, do that. After that, let it bob and weave and go wherever it needs to go.

Richard Piet:

Somebody's listening to this and they're saying, I don't, uh, I I can't shut my phone off. I can't stop looking at my email. I I don't have time to do that. Uh, you probably heard that.

MIchele Mollard:

A million times. Uh I'm trying to think. Actually, I'm going to grab this um quote back here as we're doing this. So John Wooden was a phenomenal basketball coach. And he says, if you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again? And so the same thing for the clarity breaks is potentially if we're not making time for it, we might not be making time to do things right. And so you may just be going back and doing it again because you didn't make time for it. So really it's about making time for it and making the dedication. And again, start with just an hour once a month and then try to go every other week and then try to go weekly or a half hour. Small things, progress over perfection is just a really way to good think about that, whatever time you can put towards it. But that would be my saying is make time for it. Once you get into the routine, you build you build the habit, you'll love it. You'll love it.

Richard Piet:

It came right back around to where we started in the sense that if you make the impetuous choice in your decision making, the first thought that comes through, oh, that's that's the solution. If it isn't, you're gonna come back and do it again anyway. Anyway. And that's uh double the work. I'm not fluent in Spanish, but my grandmother used to quote her mother who would say something about the lazy working double, and it sounds more eloquent in Spanish the way she used to say it to me. But that was a fraction of the idea here. We're not being lazy necessarily, but we do need the clarity break. We definitely need it. Say that saying one more time.

MIchele Mollard:

Yes. Oh, from John. So John Wooden, if you don't have the time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it again?

Richard Piet:

And that is what we leave you with on this episode of EOS Traction for Your Workplace Goals. Subscribe, won't you, where you get podcasts. And there's a library of these episodes that Michele has done uh going back away. So if you haven't heard those ones, we invite you to do that and more to come. So thank you, Michele. Until next time. Until next time.