The February 15th turn buoy is here, and what a first 45 days of 2026 it has been. Claude code, Molt Bot, AI agents bidding for humans to work them, and the Seahawks won a Super Bowl out of nowhere!

I have spent the last 15 months helping Eric Narcisco launch Tracker, a computer vision company focused on increasing the NOI for large apartment and single-family property owners and managers. It has been interesting to meet with over 150 companies that oversee more than 10,000 units and learn how much impact AI is having on their work lives so far.
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The quick answer is not much, but when you look just a little behind the curtain, you can see some big structural changes are proving out their commercial viability and will show up in 2026.

What is driving these changes?

A massive need for increasing the NOI of a property as interest rates remain high, and the ability to raise rents has stalled as much as the Patriots' offense in Super Bowl 60!

Multi-Family CRE is no different from almost any other category of CRE these days, and let's not even begin to talk about legacy SaaS companies, extra spending is out, and making more with less is in.
Which is where this crazy photo comes from.

We were talking with someone about all the layoffs and the lack of hiring of young people in mature industries, and I said, "It's like corporate America is playing a big game of Jenga, how many people can we lay off and still have this company standing?"

It is awkward but true, especially when so many companies are PE-backed, and the C-suite is focused on a less than 7-year sprint to hit the next valuation mark.

But here is the twist: the image may not show it clearly, but my prompt was to show that while the pieces are falling out of the buildings, the soil is soft and very fertile ground for the pieces to start regenerating their own stacks of success.

Is this going to work at scale?

I am not sure, but Clay Shirky gave a famous TED Talk 20 years ago in which he stated that coordination costs are plummeting, which can create a generation of lost workers and also generate generations of highly productive cohorts.

Here is the video: Clay Shirky Institutions vs Online Collaboration

It's your move, follow the post-industrial revolution of London in the 1830's generation that lived it out drinking gin at 10 am, or adapt to the new frameworks and find a way to grow with others in the new paradigm.

At Tracker, we aim to improve the lives of boots-on-the-ground leasing agents and facilities management teams every day, which in turn benefits residents and ultimately impacts the bottom line for the owner.
Getting back to the Jenga image, we are a part of that AI-induced soil that should empower more usage and overall growth for the property management industry.

So maybe it's time to not wait to get pushed out but rather build a parachute and take the leap and start building with the new tools.

Ping me with any questions or comments, and I will check back in around April 1st. These are amazing times.

Drew
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p.s. I have seen an uptick in college grads looking for help with job searches. Feel free to send anyone to www.drewsanders.com/courses/, where I have a few white papers about how to navigate this pivot from learning to doing. When they complete the questions at the end of the white paper, I will meet with them for 30 minutes for free to go through their answers.

​Standing at the edge of a new year, my hope and message for my friends is that:

You can do IT, with IT being almost anything within reason, WHEN you stay as flexible as possible to collaborating with others, and importantly, the tools others are creating.

Allocating time for learning new things can be a challenge while you are focused on paying the bills with the tools that are currently working. I get it, but the world isn't spending billions on computing power just so I can make a cool image like the one above.

The old hammer and nail are going to be turning into a nail gun in thousands of commercial settings in the coming years, which is going to improve the financial statements of companies with strong competitive advantages and require the knowledge workers of the world to constantly adapt to the new tools.

I will aim to share what examples of real progress have been achieved in my 8 Branches & Roots newsletter posts of 2026 and will always be curious what you are noticing as well.

The wisdom of the crowd phenomenon could be very accretive in 2026, so let's keep hitting the share button.

My good friend and sculptor Mario Chiodo likes to say that when you are creating, you are not destroying, so start small with some folk art, or turn some lyrics into a song, but keep adapting and keep building.

Maybe Saturday Morning is your "What is new hour", maybe Sunday at 4pm? Whenever, try to carve out a little time.

We leave you with our own compilation of my lyrics and Suno's musical chops for a fun song called "Try-Hard, The Sanders Way."

Click below for some fun tunes!

https://suno.com/s/UySkR3MQ5gmTZdbn

No AI, just a killer sunset!

We know you can do it!
Drew

The calendar flips from September to October, and suddenly, it's not just a date change, it’s a mental one. The easy flow of summer, full of listening to people outside my usual circles, narrows. My summer was a gift: engaging with different people in amazing settings, from world-class thinkers at conferences like the All-In Summit to quiet conversations with friends by the campfire. I have been struggling to consolidate those threads into a coherent narrative that could be of use to my community of friends like you.

As we head into this pre-winter sprint, the core message is that we are all in this together. Our job is to find the courage to step up and make the contribution we can make.

Holding Two Things in Our Head

I’ve been consolidating a critical idea over the past few weeks, and it’s about how we move forward without burning out. It takes the ability to hold two thoughts at once:

• You are enough. Right now. Your current state is worthy.
• You can and should raise your standard. Seek your next best level of competency.

This isn’t a paradox. It’s the recipe for forward motion powered by purpose, not by anxious energy. That anxious striving, the stuff that drains your precious fuel, comes from feeling like you’re not enough. True growth is fueled by that peaceful self-acceptance. Knowing you're enough gives you the space to look for where you can be more.
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The ability to do this allows you to move forward with purpose and not with anxious energy, which ends up draining you of precious fuel.

Does this resonate at all?

What’s In the Bottom of Your Boat?

In a recent conversation about leading yourself, my daughter Brooke and I revisited a foundational family image: the boat. Specifically, what do you put at the very bottom to create a deep, heavy, and steady keel? What steadies you when the water gets choppy?

We landed on faith, courage, and duty. Those are the essentials that create a strong sense of self and commitment when the world feels volatile.

This image emerged from what we called the Boat Talk with Ryan and Brooke. When they turned ten, I told them they were going to go on great adventures, and Sara and I were going to spend the next eight years building them their own imaginary boat. Most importantly, they were the captain when we were in their boat!

The real message was about agency: they would be in charge of their own lives and their dreams. We’d be in our own boat, and we were jointly part of a fleet. It worked. At the dinner, the night before he left for college, Ryan even mentioned in the prayer that he was ready to get in his boat and start his adventures. I cried.

This scaffolding, this feeling of being ready for adventure, is what allows them, and us, to set high standards while still knowing we’re enough. It helps us connect to a cause and find the immense bonding that comes from working through difficulties with others.

The Choppy Waters of Change

Many times, in 2025, the amount of change, its pace, and its manner have shaken people. I have witnessed great despair tied to gun violence, and how we are grappling with how we communicate anger as a society; it can make you sad and mad.

This is where courage matters. As writer Peggy Noonan has recently observed in her columns, those who are the responsible parties, which is to say, all of us who seek to contribute, must invest in our ability to have courage and not let despair dominate our thoughts. When you are shaken, you turn to that deep keel.

This challenge is showing up in business, too. My observation, validated by people like Chamath Palihapitiya on a recent Allin Podcast, is that many mature industries, especially those run by Private Equity firms, do not have the right incentives to use AI in a truly transformational way.

Which begs the question: How long is it going to take for some of these mature industries to really take advantage of the power of the new tools?

The bigger the organization, the more they talk about using the new tools, but the less likely they are to actually implement them. It feels like the roles people have at these companies are rigid, almost like a bus route that can't change on its own. New processes and paths are treated like a virus.

This tension is real: the need from the top to say you are using the new tools versus the challenge for the people delivering the solution every day. Can you trust the new tech? Is it commercially ready? The companies that have been formed in the last two years, however, do have significant advantages in being AI natives, and not having to get rid of legacy systems could be a big deal.

Our Best Contribution Could Be with Our Family

If our geography can be a type of fate, and if our culture serves as a form of destiny, then family can be the crucible where both are formed.

So, as we head into this pre-holiday season, let's leverage our strong sense of self, purpose, and commitment to listen to where others are coming from and seek a broader alignment. Let's use our gifts to help others and have the courage to take action in the face of change.

Thanks for your friendship and readership,
Drew

My word of the year for 2025 is Scale, as I thought I would be focused on scaling a few companies, and that has turned out to be the case.

Strategy and Go To Market Motions are my focus, and I have spent quite a bit of time on structure and scaffolding so that almost any company that wanted to scale could pull my work off the shelf and start customizing what they want and be well down the path to success.

In the worlds that I create, how a company uses each season of the year has been important, and how they use each day of the week matters as well.

Next Monday, August 18th, starts a very important 90-day season for most companies, which is what we call the Fast Fall Finish.

This is the period where companies come to grips with what is working and what didn’t work and have to decide how they are going to allocate budgets and plans for the following year.

I would like to know how you are looking at this period in your business and what you are thinking about for next year?

It doesn’t have to be a long answer, but, if possible, I would like to poll my readers on how much change they think is actually going to occur as we head into 2026.

I have a hypothesis that with all the change going on around us these past 5 years, many people have a bit of change fatigue.

We have been conditioned in the last 24 months that almost every 6 weeks, something new will come out of a hyperscaler that will make such a difference that allocating major funds to something new seems like the wrong thing to do.

The Rube Goldberg machine image I keep coming up with in my head is of all these gerrymandered pipes going in crazy directions, and no one dares make a change. The flow inside the pipes is getting more efficient, thanks to the personal productivity enabled by AI tools.

But in the next 18 months, I believe we are going to see companies start changing pipes, or buying new machines altogether, and there will be lots of old pipes lying around the factory floor as we go from Rube Goldberg machines of old to the Flux Capacitor from Back to the Future.

I am in the flux capacitor business, and my plan for the next 90 days is to meet with every company that we met with this year and listen to what type of change they think they can stomach for 2026.
I expect a ton of indecision and caution but also know that the pressure to use some of these new tools for more than personal productivity is massive.

From the CEO on down, the question remains:

HOW ARE YOU USING THE NEW TOOLS TO RUN A BETTER BUSINESS?

If I can’t get in front of a company in the next 90 days, then my offerings are not important enough for them relative to the other issues they are facing, and that goes for you as well.

So, bring on the fall, bring on football, and bring on the meetings where we listen and hopefully have rigorous dialogue on how to have a great 2026 together.

Thanks for your readership and friendship,

Drew
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p.s. Please do share what your top priority is for the Fall.

​We hope you are finishing up the first half of 2025 with a ton of momentum and are going to be able to enjoy some of the longer days and warm nights this summer.

Our weekly cadence of strategy and enterprise sales meetings affords us a unique window into the world, and we attempt to share our observations with you in an effort to increase our joint learnings of "what have we learned and what does it mean"?

What is the lead story for business right now?

• Work with the super-intelligent LLMs to increase your efficiency while keeping a close eye on the accuracy.
• Use the SILLMs to get as close to your customer as possible and learn about the problems they are still experiencing. 
• Expand your offerings to your customers in these problem areas without seeking to charge them more.
• Rinse & Repeat 
• The SILLLMs can be really helpful with this process for ideation and concept iteration. 

What else?

• The bigger the organization, the more they talk about using the new tools, but the less likely they are implementing them at this point.
• It seems like the roles people have at companies are quite rigid, almost like a bus route that can't change on its own.
• This can include really good jobs at solid companies, but the system was set up to run on the old technology systems of email, Slack, and Zoom meetings.
• New processes and paths can be considered like a virus to the system, and so THE BUS keeps going on its route, but there are fewer passengers.

Cable TV anyone??

What to do?

• If you are the CEO, use the summer to get wide and look at the entire org from a new vantage point - we can help with this :)
• If you are a senior manager, ask how the SILLM can enable your team and challenge your team to bring you new ideas.
• If you are an individual contributor, do not sleep on these tools; go through the pains of learning, as they are not going away.

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Final Thought

With the nest pretty empty and Sara playing more Legends Tour events, we are all on lots of planes and trains moving around the country. 

What do I notice? 

Kindness, people being really kind to each other throughout airports, rental car shuttles, and hotel lobbies.

We all seem to be connected to devices that show us videos of crazy things, but in the normal day-to-day, people help each other all the time, and we hope you see it too.

It won't go viral, but kindness and courtesy are wonderful currencies for solid communities, so as we celebrate the 4th of July this Friday, we hope you get a chance to say:

God Bless America!

Thanks for friendship and readership.

Drew

p.s. In the last year I co-founded a business called Tracker that allows you to scan the inside of your home using their phone, we sell it to large property owners, but for the rest of 2025 it is free to use at the app store. Give it a try if want to see how we are using new technology to help tenants and owners keep track of the condition of their assets. www.mytracker.ai 

We can hear you asking, “What is Sanders talking about now??”  What cliff?

For a while this year, it felt like the global supply chain and the economy might be headed over Niagara Falls, and the jury is out on how our current administration's actions will end up.

As one pundit said, “The Administration has to Stick the Landing,” and we agree.

No, our May Cliff is that point in the calendar year when productivity goes on a three-month hiatus as at least 20% of the workforce starts to go on a rolling vacation.

We like to joke that in the summer months, the money leaves town, but the staff stays, so we look for productive things to do with our time that can set us up for success when the world is fully back at work around August 15th.

We ensure that all the companies our clients run take two key actions with their potential partnerships or new customers in the next two weeks.

1. Focus the conversation or have the courage to Fire the idea for 3 months.

Gather up everything that was supposed to happen this year and then put it through this filter, either on your own or preferably with others.

Here is a sample:

Will we make material progress on this in the next 45 days, and who will own that on both sides? Or should we put this on ice and pick it up in mid-August?

2. Use the Final 45 days of the first half of the year to set up a longer time flank. Are we doing anything in the second half of this year or the first half of next year?

You use the Focus or Fire conversation with the projects and ideas that are in motion, but you need some help with urgency.

The 45 days before either January 1st or July 1st are the perfect time to ask another hard question. You want to focus this question on the people who are aware you exist but are not currently in a buying or partnership process with you.

Here is a sample.

Hi Bill,

We are aware of each other's offerings and needs and are not working towards a partnership at the moment. I thought I would just get a quick gut check from you and your team.

Do you see starting a conversation with us in the second half of this year or the first half of next year?

We are looking to organize our efforts and not waste your time or attention.

If neither is the answer that works for us as well, and we can drop our correspondence cadence down to once a year, as we are not offering things that are important or are unqualified in some capacity.

Thanks,
Jeff

It can be that simple. The cleaner your choices, the better the feedback.

As the great Dan Joyce said, “A no has never hurt a salesman…..but a maybe has killed thousands!”

Many people face the emotional hurdle of not wanting to upset the apple cart or challenge the relationship.

However, the number 1 emotion we have noticed over the years that occurs when you follow this strategy is relief when some clarity comes into the picture and you and your team can focus on the right areas for growth.

Time kills all deals, and once you have cleaned out your pipeline a bit, you can stop fooling yourself that magic is going to happen and get back to increasing the number of new opportunities you talk to and refining your listening skills with new customer problems.

We have other things for you to consider working on during the next 90 days and will be back to you with them in the coming weeks.

Until then, have fun cleaning the crap out of your closets and pipelines and if you want to book some time with us to plan out the second half of the year our available times are here:

https://calendly.com/drewsanders/strategy-session

Thanks for your readership and friendship
Drew

While we are marching through March together, it is hard not to be mindful that just two short years ago Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank lost all of their equity in the blink of an eye and five years ago we were all sent home to avoid getting a virus.

Let’s face it, March is when the sh*t can start hitting the fan as projections for a great Q1 come up short and the May 15 cliff looms just 70 days away. What is the May 15th cliff? It is when the summer bug starts to hit and we end up with about 20% of the workforce on a rolling vacation until school starts in mid-August.

Things get done in that period, but it takes more time.

So what are the key actions to take right now?

Even if your feedback loops are slow and lack visibility, keep the frequency up on the right actions while you still have most people at work before the May cliff.

In the area of customer acquisition, become an expert at the key moments in each phase.

We wrote “The 4 Timelines of Customer Acquisition” a few years back, and not a quarter of the year goes by without us sharing it with someone and asking them to pick out the different conversations and moments of maximum influence on each timeline.

Here is the short whitepaper.

Here are the timeline definitions.

1. Unaware to Aware that your offering exists
2. Aware that you exist to engaged in a buying process
3. Engaged in a buying process to having made a decision
4. Became a customer to being so happy, they refer you another customer

The more you can be curious about each timeline, the more efficient you become.

Going from Aware to Engaged is where the great salespeople separate themselves from the crowd and seldom do they do this by force. I think they ask amazing questions that center around why “now” is the right time to consider something new.

New can be scary, change can be scary, but what is even worse is praying that the some magical percentage of those currently engaged in a buying process will say yes!

Stay in the marketplace and become an expert in using the context of the moment.

If you need help in this area, book time with us here: https://calendly.com/drewsanders/strategy-session

It is early February and unless you live in Kansas City or Philadelphia you have moved on from the NFL and are well into making 2025 a great year.
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Our young hero has been hard at work listening to his customers and prospects at conferences and on zoom calls these past few weeks and is noticing that some of the buyers and leaders are starting to wonder if the AI capital spend is going to be all talk and no action.

It reminds us of the old Wendy’s Burgers commercial with the great Clara Peller asking….”Where’s the Beef??”

But our hero is focused on the problems of a specific type of buyer with some long-standing challenges in their business. Staying curious about the new AI tools has allowed him to ask his buyers, “If you could wave a magic wand over a problem and have it go away, what would it be?”

Or, “What issue (the status quo) are you living with that, if solved, would make a massive difference?”
We have two use cases where AI tools are making an impact.

Old Email Account Clean Up

If you have an old email you want to shut down but are keeping it around because you might need something, we have a new AI-powered tool for you.

Within 48 hours you can have:

A spreadsheet with every email address sorted by name.

A text document of just the sent folder that can be searched to be the basis of your own large language model.

A text document with all content from that email address that can be searched.

It may not seem like a big deal, but every day, college graduates need to transition from their school emails to personal emails, and every day, executors and trustees have to shut down emails for loved ones who have died.

Apartment Owners and Tenants have a 23 Billion Dollar Annual Turn issue.

50% of all apartments turn on an annual basis.

This number is hard to fathom when you consider the 23 million apartments in the United States. It costs the owner an average of $2000 to get the unit move-in ready for the next tenant, which means 23 billion dollars are spent each year and thousands of hours of employee or contractor time are involved.

Enter www.mytracker.ai

Tracker is a new app that uses your phone's cameras to record the interior of any property. This is nice, but the AI component is amazing.

The app automatically shares the pictures with the AI models, and you get an estimate of what it will take to repair the unit. It also includes an inventory of all the appliances and the square footage of everything, down to the carpet.

This tool will give owners and tenants a source of truth for the apartment's condition.

This tool will allow the maintenance team to inventory the appliances automatically.

This tool will allow the acquisition teams to have a dynamic inventory of an entire apartment complex within hours of walking a property.

This tool will allow leasing agents and their regional managers to seamlessly work together remotely.
The cameras are not the magic wand; the AI knowledge is. With the cost curve being pushed down, the Tracker App stands to drive both the hours and costs spent turning a unit down.

Could it even be a billion dollars of savings? That would occur with only a 4% savings?

These are just two of the examples that we are working on right now.

Our challenge and encouragement for you is to get in a room with your customers ask them what they have been living with for years, and start thinking about how you can attack it with these new tools.

If you're feeling stuck or if Big Bad Quo is still sitting on your throat, give us a call, and like our hero, we will show up with a magic wand in hand!

Conference season is in full force as the working world seeks to deploy new tools and offerings to delight its customers and hit its growth goals.

Within three weeks, we will have supported clients at conferences ranging from Healthcare to Data Centers to Apartment Owners, and everyone is looking to use AI in some capacity.

We have noticed a bit of a glut regarding all the tools that the big players are throwing in our direction. Recently, Google shared the 60 new things they had delivered, and I wanted to scream at the thought that they assumed anyone would like to review 60 changes regardless of how life-changing they might be.  It's like looking in a tool box with too many wrenches. 

The A16Z big themes for 2025 are easier to digest with four predictions, and given how large a VC firm they run, it makes sense that they have to cover many topics.

Our engagements are more personal, so we are focused on just One thing.

Killing this guy...

 We are trying to help you kill the Status Quo in one area at a time in your life, and on a recent open water swim, we came up with the idea that we need a hero, and since we all like to go on quests, we asked Grok to give us a character that was a cross between TinTin from the 1920s and Jonny Quest from the 1960s and here is what we got back.

This able-bodied youngster will be our alter ego for a while, and here is what he/we noticed in some of our recent and highly diverse meetings.
Software developers are noticing that AI tools are starting to be much more efficient in writing production-ready code, which means productivity is ramping up quickly.
The ability to scrape, sort, and deploy data on assets you own is improving rapidly, allowing you to enhance how you serve and delight your customers.
Here is an example:
I am working with some new tools to pull the over 65,000 emails I have sent in the last 11 years to create two unique assets.

1. A CSV file for each unique email address (which really Google should have been offering me all along)
2. A private large language model of all my content (which Google is offering but I would like to have them grab my emails automatically and update the LLM)

My hope is that as we help our clients solve their business challenges, we can introduce them to people we have corresponded with in the past and share the learnings we have created in the past more efficiently. It will also be great to be finally able to organize one of the largest databases I have ever created (my emails) once and for all.
It just sucks having to "START ALL OVER AGAIN" which is a common refrain we hear from our professional services clients.
It gets down to asking your customers what pains they are living with now and then having the audacity to think you could wave a magic wand and solve their problem.
That is the quest we are on now, how about you?

This year we will track when people mention "The Status Quo".
We created this image by working with the X.ai tool and asked, what would the status quo look like if the status quo were a monster?

Can't you just see this monster prowling the halls at Hogwarts?
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People and companies wielding new tools will be looking to slay this beast, and as we notice them winning, we will share their success with you.

Andy Kessler of the Wall Street Journal called out Quo today.

Where do you want to kill Quo in your life?
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Happy to join your team!
Drew

We hope you had a warm and safe holiday season and the stockings were full.

Banyan exists to enhance the success of those we are fortunate enough to know, and after 11 years, the tree of connections and relationships keeps growing.

Everyone is on their own path toward their vision of success, yet we have noticed some common traits and habits while listening. In these publications, we try to create a collective understanding of what is working now and what changes we are noticing.

Grainger is an industrial supply company that says they are “Here to serve you, the ones who get it done.” At Banyan, we aim to offer a similar service but with business strategy and tactics.

In the spirit of “Getting it Done in 2025,” here is what we noticed this year and how we think it might impact you.

Who We Listen To

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal appear to be the final two print publications bridging the gap to the digital world of podcasts and alternative format media.

The cable TV world is now feeling the squeeze they gave to the broadcast players decades ago from the streamers of Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and YouTube.

Millions of choices mean the audience is not guaranteed to be on the same page, and we all need a sorting machine that hasn’t been created yet. “What are you watching?” is something I often hear in social settings.

Podcasts have been improving and do a good job of allowing niches to exist. I noticed our habits have changed a bit. I listen to the following podcasts.

The Allin Podcast – www.allin.com for a weekly review of business and technology.

The Founders Podcast – www.founderspodcast.com for a study of human success through biographical review.

This Week In Startups Podcast – www.thisweekinstartups.com for a bottom-up look at what new technologies are being built and interviews with the founders.

I listen to podcasts when in the car and doing my chores around the house and yard on the weekends.
It is really interesting that 60 years after the world was getting information from Walter Cronkite while sitting in front of a small screen, more and more people are getting their information on the fly while they are moving and listening. Yes, people are also watching videos, but the need to be informed while remaining static is gone.

Keep Moving…

All the billionaires are back in the game.

Imagine if you could have all the greatest NBA players on the court simultaneously at their prime, playing in a mythical NBA finals. Bring the popcorn! Watching Jordan and Bill Russell match wills against Shaq and Bird with Magic and Steph flying around the court, chirping would be epic.

Well, that is what it feels like in the business world right now, as all the big players are allocating capital and making bets on retaining or gaining more leverage as the AI revolution continues. Bezos is back at Amazon, Sergey is back at Google, and Elon appears to have at least 5-billion-dollar bets running.

The good news is that we are all playing in this game, and over 2024, we chronicled what we thought were the crucial work skills professionals should be acquiring and honing to sustain excellence. The Crucial Work Skills white paper is meant to combine with our Essential Elements of Close Knit Teams white paper from 2023 to empower you to bring your best self while working with others for joint success.

One reader asked us what we thought the most crucial work skill would be right now, and in reviewing what we wrote and learned this year, it has to be the ability to deeply understand what your customer needs next. What are they frustrated with right now, what pain are they living with, and how can you help improve their condition?

We have called this tactical empathy and will be diving further into how you can improve your ability to understand your customers' needs so that you earn the right to have a crucial conversation about getting them to a better state.

You may not be a billionaire, but you are in the game of business, and 2025 appears to be another year of adaptability and flexibility as you use new tools to surprise and delight your customers.
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Bring on the new year; we can’t wait!

I have had the same conversation with clients five different times in the last week, which means I should post it on LinkedIn for the benefit of my network.

I have been encouraging them to send out an email asking all their prospects if they will be looking for their services in the first or second half of next year.

December 15th and June 15th are significant dates to email all of your prospects because you can use the calendar's full effect as a flanking mechanism to set up appointments with your target audience. Because if you ask someone about two halves of a year and the answer is neither, then are they really even a prospect??

You also get a chance to flush out the crap in your funnel, which naturally shows up as we dream up ways that a casual conversation really might mean business in the future :)

In professional services of all types, the first business meeting, where the prospect discusses and shares details, is the true leading indicator of future success.

People don't like to track it because it shows just how few they actually have in a year, but we must track it, as performance measured is performance enhanced!

This brings us back to why Dec 15th matters: You get to write the following email to your "prospect" list.

____________________________

Email Subject: Checking in on the First Half of 2025 - Should we schedule a call?

We are officially in the Holiday season, with functions and events almost every hour, so I recognize that you may not get to this email right away.

However, as things calm down around the new year, I wanted to get a quick response from you on a simple question.

Will you be looking at (insert your services) in?

A. The first half of 2025
B. The second half of 2025
C. Not in 2025

We will pattern our follow-up with you based on your answer.

Thanks so much,
Drew
_____________________________
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This type of email may be hard for you to send out, but it does tie in nicely to our recent post on When is the right time for a hard conversation question??

For all business owners, the answer is "Now would be fine".

Conflict is hard no matter what form it takes.

We watch organized conflict in sporting events, which can be quite aggressive, and we also experience a subtler form of conflict at work, where passive-aggressive behavior can rule the day.

No matter what your role is on a work team, you will eventually need to be able to work across the company channels and have a plan for dealing with conflict that naturally occurs. Even inside your department, a constant stream of conflicting ideas or personalities necessitates one’s ability to get in and out of a hard conversation.

The consulting firm Vital Smarts out of Utah wrote a best-selling book, Crucial Conversations, over 30 years ago and has trained thousands of employees worldwide. They aim to help companies have a common language for handling the foreseen and unforeseen issues in delivering their goods and services. All their research shows that how people communicate with each other matters in calm and tense situations.

Jim Collins wrote a best-selling business culture book called “Good to Great.” After a massive regression analysis, Collins identified the highest-performing or great companies and their common characteristics. Along with leaders who saw problems like a mirror and successes like a window, getting the right people on the bus was the key to success. It appears that culture matters.

Glenn Parker spent a career developing systems for team communication and collaboration at large companies and then published his work along with a short 18-question survey that allows people to learn what their dominant team player style is and how to work with others once they are aware of how that style impacts how you in a group setting. Parker’s work is helpful to a leader who is inheriting a team and reminds us of Peter Drucker’s simple observations in his white paper "Managing Oneself" that readers and listeners will sometimes struggle to collaborate well.

All this research on culture and team success is important as leaders like Jeff Bezos evangelize their 6-page summary style of communication for two pizza teams, and everyone rushes to emulate what worked for him and assumes it will work for them. We don’t think it is that easy.

You need to have a plan to lead yourself and others, and once you are the leader, you are entitled to run the system you think fits the objectives of the moment.

Our last crucial skill might appear to be an accumulation of these nuanced people skills, which start with having a full tool belt that allows you as an individual contributor to listen with compassion, ask questions with the right tone, be prepared to navigate conflict, state your points of view clearly, and work within the system that has been outlined by the leader.

As a front-line manager, you would seek to enhance these skills by further understanding how your team should communicate and which channels will be the single source of truth (CRM, Slack, email, meetings) as you work together.

Finally, if you are the CEO and are looking to recruit the best leadership team you can, it would appear important that you outline the system you have in place for operational excellence and how you intend to manage and lead the communication mechanisms for building a company culture that runs towards the problem.

Without a plan and a process for identifying Moments of Maximum Influence (MOMI'S), the more people you hire, the more variety you will get in how they handle or avoid conflict. This clutter and confusion will be hard for your early people to define, but they will feel it, and it can crush your morale when you need it most.

An intuitive leader will also be looking for hard conversations that aren’t happening inside and outside of the company and looking to unlock those MOMIs with the right communication topics and skills.

An easy way to tell when meeting with a company is to ask when the right time to have a hard conversation is:

If people look at their feet, you know the answer is never.

If they look you in the eye and say, "Now would be fine," you know you have a winner.

Click here for our full publication on Crucial Work Skills.

We can hear you remarking to yourself.

Recreation: how is recreation supposed to be a crucial work skill?

We break the word up a bit into two parts.

Re, which means to do again or repeat.

Creation which means to begin or start.

Flip it, and you have to start again.

Why should you care about starting again when it comes to yourself?

Because the process of working and pursuing a profit can be quite banal.

Schumpeter’s law of creative destruction posits that the buyer will always look for it faster or cheaper and that a new supplier will meet this demand by providing a similar product or service for less or in a shorter period.

The worker and the employer have been at similar odds for centuries. As capital-light enterprises have proliferated, more workers have now understood the employer's feelings as they start companies and then stress over the cost of an employee.

How quickly the perspective changes when it is your asset you are protecting?

Regardless of your position, it is vital to be able to put down the shovel or plow and, like Fred Flintstone of old, yell Yabba Dabba Do as you beat the street to some time off.

We do not have any strong thoughts about your chosen recreation. We have met thrill seekers who believe that it isn't worth it if they are not a bit scared, and we know others who think sitting at a poker tournament in Las Vegas with sunglasses on for hours is the bomb.

Wherever you fall on the spectrum, the key is to take yourself mentally and physically into a new state. Over the years, we have witnessed that at some point in the recreative period, other things your brain has put on hold will present themselves in a new light. Here are a few you might identify with.
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• Getting away from your team will allow you to reflect on how they are aligned with your goals and each other.
• The mountain of a work conflict costing you sleep when placed against the backdrop of a river’s edge in Yosemite might pale in comparison and you will know how to proceed.
• How your customer base is changing could be revealed when listening to another friend talk about what they are going through while sitting on a beach or after a hike.
• Is it time to set higher goals, take more risks with your capital, or sit tight and let a few things play out?

Regular exercise, weekends, and vacations are key components for any executive. No one will prioritize your time with as much understanding of your needs as you.

We encourage you to take the leap, put down your laptop and phone, put your bare feet on some grass, and engage in a little re-creation of your mind, body, and soul.

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Click here for our full Crucial Work Skills document.

Our fifth installment in the Crucial Work Skills white paper focuses on Community Involvement. A give-back component in your life is vital to a well-rounded adult experience. It also has some unique benefits that are often overlooked or poorly described. We will attempt to outline how to identify the right causes that matter to you and maximize your contribution.
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Identifying

We have outlined the process of self-discovery called Interests, Strengths, and Style previously with an eye towards your vocation and suggested you never lose sight of how the needs for your strengths may change as the tools valued in the marketplace may change.

When it comes to helping others, the process is similar. What are your current interests? List a few areas, and as you do this, consider getting out of your core comfort zone. We have found that in giving back your time and talents, there is less of a concern that you are great at something. It can be as important that you want to show up and help.  In addition, unlike a job, you are not making a full-time commitment, so this is an area in which you can dabble a bit to find the right fit.

Dabbling with different causes will allow you to expand the network of people you meet as you volunteer, which is an important byproduct of volunteering that we will address later.

What is your second strength?

In the working world, very few people can worry about a second strength; we need to maximize our contribution with our greatest strength as the market is so indifferent to our presence that we need every ounce of ability to drive revenue to create economic safety for ourselves and our families.

An unintended consequence is that we seldom get a chance to round out our skills, and this is one of the secrets of giving back: you can flex into an additional area and get better. No one is teaching you marketing if you are great at sales; they just want you to close deals. Yet, over the last 30 years, the relationship between sales and marketing has changed. It behooves a good salesperson to understand marketing and vice versa.

When you show up to help a non-profit, and they assign people to committees, it is okay to identify some of the other areas of running an entity that you may not be strong in and offer to be a grunt on that committee. The committee leader could end up being a great mentor, and you will get to cross-train, all while helping the target demographic you care about.

Common interests for the common good can create uncommonly wonderful friendships.

Not only is helping people good for the recipient, but it can also help you build new skills and have meaningful shared experiences with your fellow volunteers.

In 2004, I volunteered at the Guardsmen Christmas Tree Lot, which is one of the largest indoor Christmas Tree lots in the United States. A crew of 25 new guys had put in a solid 10-hour shift on a Saturday setting up the lot, and it was early the next day, so we had another 10 hours ahead of us. I found the local greasy spoon to get some chow, and sure enough, several of the guys I had just gotten to know were of a similar mind; it was a good place to fuel up for the day.

That Christmas season, I started making friendships that last to this day, and I am certain that even if our paths had crossed, the trust would never have been established at such a level without that year of service we all volunteered together.

In 2010, we wrote a book called The Next Gen Almanac, which outlined the potential benefits of a strong and meaningful shared experience.

We called the magic formula: SE = C = T = Opportunity

SE = meaningful shared experience (like working at a tree lot together)

C = window into the other person's character (with character being highly portable and long-lasting)

T = trust with the size of trust correlating to the meaningfulness of the shared experience.

Opportunity = Now that you trust each other, the opportunities you can create together are limitless.

Thinking back to Peter Drucker’s key questions, he suggested three main questions to ask yourself all your life: How can I maximize my contribution while I am alive? Once I have figured out what I want to contribute to, how am I allocating my time and capital? Finally, what is my next most important task?

We hope we have made the case that as you allocate your time, helping others is one of the greatest force multipliers available to everyone.

What cause that is greater than yourself are you helping?
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Click here for our full Crucial Work Skills document.

The Paris Olympics of 2024 were a global phenomenon with television and streaming ratings setting records everywhere. The performances, pageantry and patriotism were contagious as different countries’ best and brightest faces went all out for bronze, silver, and gold. It didn’t matter if it was the 40th time the star-spangled banner played or the first time ever for Botswana, there were tears of joy on the medal stand, in the crowd, and at homes around the world.

It reminded us of the great movie scene from “The Chariots of Fire” where Scotsman Eric Liddell is telling his concerned sister of the power he felt when he was running for God and his country. Ironically that movie is about the Paris Olympics from 1924 which was also a big success.

The inspiration of the Olympics is a super charged fuel that can be euphoric, but we doubt it has much staying power, which begs the question we would like to address in this edition of our crucial work skills white paper.

Where do you get the fuel that lasts and sustains for a career and a lifetime?

It makes us think of the Frederick Nietzsche quote, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

Simon Sinek published a best-selling book in 2009, “Start with Why.”

A three-year-old understands the power of asking why.

I asked why so often as a child that eventually I heard a classically bitter response, “Yours is not to reason why, yours is but to do or die.”

That quote ended up being one of several I had next to my senior picture when I graduated from high school as I found much of primary education a lesson in compliance as much as discovery.

Yet it would appear that developing an internal why is a vital exercise for everyone and it is typically easy to spot those that have done the work, because they are said to have a great sense of PURPOSE.

Developing a sense of purpose is both an individual and collective experience. You need to connect your actions into areas of strength to create the internal fly wheel that can sustain your focus and skill over long periods of time. We covered this in our last post about combining your interests’ strengths and style to maximize your contribution.

Applying your skills to magnify the contributions of others is where the magic fusion of everlasting fuel appears to be found.

Watch the spirits of a great grandmother light up when at 90 years old she holds the newborn baby for the first time. She is the matriarch at that moment with decades upon decades of firsthand experience on how to raise a child in that family. No one can possibly know the stories that she knows and the people that she knew that lived almost 150 years ago. Her chance to pass on this knowledge and love can infuse even those that are seriously ailing.

Turning back to a sport that is classically aligned with the Olympics is the rowing story from the 1936 games in Berlin. The University of Washington junior crew famously beat the varsity boat, then the Cal boat, then the east coast schools to represent the United States. At each step if they had lost the season would have been over as there were no excess funds amidst the depression. Even when they won the right to represent the country, they had to raise $5,000 in less than a week or another wealthier team would attend. ​

Daniel James Browns best selling book “The Boys in the Boat” chronicles the stories of the times and the people that made up that gold medal winning 8-man crew. One of the main challenges in making the boat “swing” was getting the athletes to feel the water and work in unison. Part of the story that resonates with so many is that it was in the rowing for each other that the peak performance emerged.

Combining your skills and contributions to a business effort to house, clothe and feed your family is a noble cause that few movies will be made about. Yet having this sense of purpose is a defining feature of adulthood. Sustaining purpose throughout life requires a natural curiosity when things change vs becoming jaded that the old ways were better.

With the internet turning 32 years old and generative AI improving daily we appear to be at the dawn of a new age for entrepreneurial actions and behaviors. Staying curious with the flood of options for new tools that can help us solve problems would appear to be crucial.

Here are some closing questions that we hope will help you create that inner fuel that sustains.

• What do you want to build?
• Who do you want to build it for?
• What pain are they living with now?
• Whose life will be better because of your effort?
• Who would be the most proud of the contribution you are making with your gifts?

Got any new fuel building up inside you as you read this......What are you waiting for?
Go for it!

Summer isn’t over for another six weeks but with half the public schools in the country starting on Monday it sure feels like it.

We are chock full of content from some interesting meetings and conversations from July which we will look to drop into our publications a little at a time, but our lead story for you is about career positioning.

It would appear that AI is allowing all of us to do more with less help and if you make a living helping others it means that you might need to keep thinking about how you can continue to surprise and delight your clients with what they need next, think about the problem they are living with now and how you can solve that problem for them.

We were asked on several occasions essentially the same question by a wide age range of professionals.
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“How do I position myself for success in the new AI driven economy?”
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We drew up a quick sketch and have the following process as a potential path to coming up with some potential answers.

Here are the actions to consider taking.
List out your intellectual assets which can be loosely defined as things you have some expertise in relative to the average person.
I might have some expertise in:

• Open Water Swimming
• Competitive Golf
• Running a Sales Team
• Leading a Company

List out your abilities that activate your assets relative to others.
I might have some ability to:

• Help an average swimmer learn how to complete their first open water swim
• Help a 9-handicap golfer become a 6 through course management
• Help a technical founder understand the right ways to manage salespeople
• Help a chairman of a company restructure a management team as an interim CEO amidst a crisis

List 3 industries that are growing quickly and list 3 people in each industry that are leaders

• Research what is driving the growth
• Analyze how each leader is positioned for success and their strengths
• Think about some potential gaps that might exist in areas that are not strengths

Contact the leaders you identified and offer to take them to lunch

• The context for the lunch is how you might be able to overlap their needs with your assets and abilities.
• When people are leading companies that are growing, they are always looking to level up the team they have.
• You want to earn the right to have them tell you what problem they are living with right now that they can’t solve.

Solving that problem is your pathway to maximizing your contribution to a successful company which in turn will increase the chances you earn a spot on that team.
Professional services has employed millions of people in the United States and paid for plenty of mortgages and college tuitions, but the puck is moving and it is time to understand how to reposition your unique assets and abilities to fill in gaps on fast moving companies vs being the last person working at the CVS store while the machines fill your prescription and everyone uses the self-checkout….

Well, that’s the Half!

What did we learn, and what does it mean?

For 25 consecutive weeks we have shared our Friday Few Observations for that week looking to help all of us process the latest inputs so that we can properly allocate our time and capital.

What have we learned?

Small little options to improve a process are everywhere and we expect them to be less than $20 a month.
Our winner in this category was the Wave AI Notebook which we use daily to record, transcribe, and summarize all our business correspondence via phone and video.

Larger solutions have slowed way down as corporate buyers are wary of moving too quickly when a much better deal may be available in six months.

To personalize this, think about buying a laptop today, are you sure it has the right NVIDA chip with the right memory from Micron?

Now think about if you had to buy 5000 laptops.

The pause is real and if you are planning your second half revenue goals, it is time to have some hard conversations internally first and then put the problem to your buyers and work through it together.

The corporate buyer will never tell you this unless they are prompted, and it is in their best interest to do so.

What does all of this mean?

If we are in a time where the small is getting adopted rapidly and the big is taking more time, break off a piece of your full offering that is snackable and use it to acquire more customers even if you are making less on a per customer basis.

It is natural during a time of uncertainty to be a cautious buyer and with a presidential election pending we think the uncertainty is going to increase in the back half of the year.

You can figure out how to improve your margins on the smaller revenue later and once you have an established business relationship with that new customer you can use your tactical empathy to learn what else they need help with and grow the relationship.

That is what we have noticed, what about you?

​While crafting our vision for 2024 we have been called back to the mental discipline of a United States Medal of Honor recipient. 

Carrier Air Group Commander Jim Stockdale’s plane was crash landing over North Vietnam in 1965. He was 40 years old and knew his age and rank would be held against him and in the 30 seconds that he parachuted down from his aircraft and into the middle of an angry North Vietnamese village he estimated he would spend the next 5 years of his life as a prisoner. The torture Stockdale and his fellow captives endured was inhuman and led to the creation of the Stockdale paradox he penned upon being freed after 8 years.

Whilst sequestered in our home in April of 2020 we published an article about what we could all learn from the Stockdale paradox and the principles of endurance and persistence. Looking at the 4-year anniversary of that experience in the face we think it rings as true today as it did then. We wondered then and still wonder today if the pandemic is really a 5 to 7-year calamity. 

All the major institutions like the federal reserves and the federal governments made decisions that while having certain short run impacts created medium term consequences. It has been a turbulent time for business owners and their employees. As we turn towards year 4 post covid the Stockdale paradox would advise us to not think about a terminus date like 2025 or 2027 but rather to be convinced of our ability to survive and make living at this time the defining moment in our careers and all the while stick to our daily basics. 

What are the basics?
 
We wrote a book about the basics called “The Next Gen Almanac” in 2016 and will be highlighting the essentials in our 2024 editions of Branches & Roots. We created a quick diagnostic for the key areas of your life so you can easily handle what life throws at you and keep adapting and moving forward. Here are the categories.

• Faith – How to feed your mind, body, and soul.
• Fuel – How to create your own energy.
• Work – How to align and apply your interests, strengths, and style in your career.
• Network of relationships – How to make a positive impact in the lives of those you know.
• Recreation – How to refresh and restore yourself with diverse pursuits.
• Community Involvement – How to enrich your life and that of others with causes greater than yourself.

In 2023 we compiled a leader's guide to team success with the "Nine Essential Elements of Close Knit Team," and our aim in 2024 is to empower you and your teams with the right information for individual competency and make it easily accessible when they need it. 

Look for some fun announcements in this area in 2024 as the new AI tools continue to allow all of us to productize our offerings in new and hopefully impactful ways. 

Thank you for your readership and friendship in this our 10th year as a company, let’s put the pedal to the floor together in 2024!

Drew & Sara

“It’s time to start setting some goals” he bellowed…
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This wasn’t a meeting for work, this was in the middle of sprint workout at the local masters swim practice.

It was a Wednesday and after a warm up we had gone 8 25’s fast and then were doing a 200 recovery and the coach leaned in and said, “it’s time to start thinking about your goal times for the 3 sprint 50’s we are doing next”.

Sprinting a 25 is 13 to 15 seconds of pain, a 50 all out is double that plus a few seconds. 30 seconds of pain lingers…3 of them starts to make your extremities feel like they are laced with cement. But there he was, that nice coach who shows up each day to help you take that harder tack into the wind of indifference which is your exercise effort, only this time he was leaning in a bit.

“So what’s it going to be Drew?” 30 or 31?

I was thinking 32 sounded nice especially because at the end of the 50's sprinting was an all out 100 which was double your 50 time plus 4 seconds. Your fellow swimmers in the lanes around you are also dancing with their best self at that moment and while the inclination to hedge slower is normal, a zest for the moment took over and we all took the lower range for our 50’s.

The times are called out by the coaches for all to hear as we come flying in to the resolute wall and pop up for air, (you don’t breathe the last 10 yards of a sprint which hurts a lot). The coaches are paying attention to every second and encouraging you all the way. The last 50 stings but it is a “last one, fast one mentality” and you get 150 yards to recover so suck it up buttercup and go for it.

With most of the workout behind you and only a minute or so of pain left the b.s. starts to fly between the coaches and the swimmers. We have fully bought into this pain train and we all pick the lowest choice possible for our 100 Sprint.

Now to battle with the water and our burning lungs. There is no all out 100 relative to a 25, there is some pace to it, but not much. You are right on the verge of collapse from the second wall and the final 25 is a conversation that you would not want your mother present.

“1:04 Drew, great job, way to go!” My head is spinning, chest is pounding and the pool feels like it is a 100 degrees, but I am the gladiator who is standing over the dead tiger sword raised high. “Are you not entertained!!”

Floating on our backs, we warm down for 50 yards and then get out and thank the coaches for their help in creating this pact of climbing the hard fun hill together. Within minutes the pool returns to its restful state, completely indifferent to the role it played in our quest or the outcomes we sought.

Was this effort worth it? I have no idea, the feedback loops sometimes are too long, and yet mentally we know this dance helped us all.

Turning to your thoughts for 2024, how are you going to rig the game of life or work to be around those people both in and out of your pool who help you “set some goals” and then have as much fun as possible going all out to achieve them?

The fall of 2023 appears to be a time where many of our clients past partnerships are slowing down and yet the growth machine must still eat.

What to do?

Seems like a good time to whiteboard a few new channels that could be receptive to your value add service.

Why do channels matter? In our experience it can have a lot to do with the first 5 minutes.

Two options here:

Cold reach out -

"Hi, we would like to interrupt your day and help you understand why we can make your life better with our product or service"

Channel reach out -

"Hi, we have been vetted and approved by (insert association or company) to help make your life better with our product or service."

Both are interruptions but the return on effort for your customer acquisition team can be massively different.

Running an effective Channel Partnership (CP) is a different matter but we wanted to share that now is the right time to be in the market place talking to potential CP's as everyone is scrambling to find growth amidst our higher for longer interest rate environment.

Which begs the hard question -

"What is your plan to thrive and survive for the next three years with these headwinds?"

Seems like it's time to stow the jib and start taking out the smaller sails to efficiently tack and adapt.
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We are happy to help with the brainstorming.
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Organizations are still processing the rapid increase in their cost of capital which has served as a whiplash to people and their teams. When your cash is paying you 4%, you look at ideas for progress and growth through a different lens, it takes more rigor. When your floating debt is going from 2% to 7% or higher you start shedding weight in a hurry. This rigor and shedding can lead to job cuts, real estate being foreclosed, and long-standing relationships being put through the fire of an RFP. All of this has made for a choppy and dislocated 2023 for company leaders.

We think the economic turmoil is going to continue well into 2024 and with that in mind offer up a lesson we have noticed in sport that might help you have a hard conversation more easily at work.

We are calling it our final element because the main feedback we received on our Essential Elements of Winning Teams was that we were missing the benefits of shared suffering. It was in the research of shared suffering that we noticed another nuance for the leader, their players understood the many layers of their vocal tone better and this became a competitive advantage.

The 2023 England Women’s World Cup Team

Sarina Wiegman is Dutch born coach for the English National team that is playing Spain in the World Cup Final this Sunday. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted that she has been the secret ingredient to England’s recent success. The article also traces the formation of her coaching philosophy to University of North Carolina Coaching great Anson Dorrance and his focus on having every practice be a “competitive cauldron”. Another quote from Dorrance could be taken the wrong way. “Every practice, for me, is a fight.”

A fight, is this the NFL PreSeason? Cue the annual clips of the offensive and defensive lines hitting each other in the head with bare hands while wearing helmets…

Is Anson suggesting that the players are fighting against their best selves?

As Joe Ehrmann outlines in his best-selling book InsideOut Coaching competition means to strive with others.

As you are striving there is skirmishing and fighting and watching the Women’s world cup it is clear the ball is under duress and the players are fighting for possession.

Now take this same coach and listen to him talk about his secret ingredient to winning at the time 22 out 24 NCAA championship finals games. The competitive fighter goes to great lengths to articulate in writing to each player how much he admires them and appreciates how much they care for the team and each other. Grab some tissues, it will make you cry, he cares that much. 

Coach Dorrance appears to have mastered the art of creating a competitive cauldron that the best players seek out. They are willing to withstand the physical and mental heat to pursue their best collective selves. Then as the season culminates, he is able to call upon that commitment and effort and honor it which galvanizes the players to each other in that championship moment.

The viewing public shows up for the championship with the eyes of an expert and yet may miss all the subtle cues that the players are sharing with each other as they resonate around solving what the other team is presenting. The coach is also deeply engaged in adapting to the championship moment and has in their arsenal all the emotional tools as rock solid trust has been established.

Coach Wiegman is in that moment right now. The championship game is days away and while she may not be writing letters, our bet is she is memorializing in some way the journey and the sacrifice the players and their families have made together.

We can’t wait to watch the final.

Nick Saban Continues to Get it Right – The high achievers and the mediocre players don't get along.

Coach Saban has the trophies, but he also has the tone. Listen to this short clip and then read this article. He is pragmatic and persistent. It is almost like listening to John Wooden. Coach Saban is creating an environment for his high achievers to outlast and outplay the mediocre players and he establishes that in spring practice.

There is an important nuance to creating these highly competitive environments that many coaches miss. It is the tone that accompanies the message. The wrong coaches laugh and mock the losers, which kills the majority of the athletes drive to go all in. The right coaches honor the commitment and effort which allows those not on the bus to understand why they weren’t selected and hopefully choose to reapply their talents elsewhere or recommit to that effort.

We wrote a white paper for coaches to hand to players being cut from a selective team which is here. Getting Cut Updated Feb 2023.pdf

It comes down to the leaders’ voice which is hauntingly outlined in this video by Dr. Jim Loehr who has been a leader in the coach development field for decades. Like it or not, we carry around the voices from our parents and past coaches and leaders and without work, you may not like which voices come out at the hard moments. Dr. Loehr suggests we work on our stories. 

When is the Right Time to have a Hard Conversation?

Our long-time readers and clients will know this call and response and answer “Now would be fine”, and yet if you haven’t worked on your tone and established a cadence for keeping each other accountable, when the challenges show up, your people might leave you.

We hope these stories empower you to lead your team up the hard fun hill this fall and into 2024 as we continue to navigate difficult economic times and if you need any help crafting a vision or implementing one, please let us know.
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Thank you for your readership and friendship,

The first four months of 2023 has been a blend of let's go, what's that, and oh no!

Let's Go!
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Three years into the pandemic the working and active world is looking to kick it into high gear and go. Unfortunately we can't shed the inflation bug that appears to be harder to kill than COVID. Our monetary policy guru's are using blunt force instruments all in the name of the greater good and it has never paid to fight the fed. Regardless, all the companies we work with are like a pack of Alaskan Sled Dogs after a full night's rest. 

What's That?

OpenAi's ChatGPT releases have been hard to ignore. The first question we asked ChatGPT was what makes a good team? In seconds a very delightful 7 point answer arrived. Further study has revealed that creative and curious people who previously could not code software. Will soon be able to work with apps like the ones we have on our phones to become more creative and productive in their own areas of expertise. Tasks or opportunities that used to not be worth the effort will now be possible. Old competitive advantages will be weakened and at the same time new opportunities will emerge. We are staying curious and listening.

Oh No!

Rest in Peace Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. While the financial media writes your obituaries with a disturbing indifference and an air of superiority like they knew this was inevitable, these two enterprises were solid corporate citizens of their communities. They were a part of the solution for their customer base and had best in class employees. They will be missed and are examples of how a standard business practice that works with one Fed policy can become fatal when the Fed pivots. One lesson we have all learned is that Banks lend out their customers deposits and brokerage firms buy securities in your name and act as a custodian. Never more has that difference been in such stark relief. 

Enterprise Sales & Marketing Observation

If things are slowing down now for the sales team it might be because the buyers that were going to make decisions in your category in 2023 have now worked through their processes and you have either won or lost. Larger decisions often require committees to meet and we have noticed that between now and Labor Day someone is always on vacation. Here are a few key actions that appear relevant now. 

• Reach out to all currently engaged prospects and ask them if they are looking to make a decision in 2023.
• This "long time" flanking question will challenge them to assess if they are actually engaged in a buying process or not.
• Work with their answers to start setting up your timeline for making a decision from between the middle of August to the middle of November.
• If they blow you off, consider leaving them alone until August as clearly something else is higher on their priority list. 
• Start ramping up the awareness about your category to your entire prospect base that is not engaged in a buying process.
• Provide valuable information to the market about your category for free to entice them to move your category into the top 3 areas to review in the second half of 23 or the first half of 24.
• Your offering can't win if they are focused on another issue.
• Never miss a chance to take the emergency of the moment and position your goods or services appropriately.

When your team applies these actions at this point in the year they will have plenty to do while the summer lull appears. 

Close-Knit Teams - Soft Release

We have posted our latest white paper, "The NINE Essential Elements of a Close-Knit Team" on our website. It is our free resource for anyone who is looking to build the type of work or sports team where people actually want to go to the reunion! If you get a chance to review it or engage with our ideas in any way we would love your feedback. Hopefully it allows you and those you know the best chance of collaborating with others successfully. 

Thank you for your readership and your friendship,

Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal can wield the pen. As a writer we rejoice in how he holds the reader’s attention in a format that has been losing market share to other forms of communication, namely video and dare we say it…Podcasts. 

It is not a coincidence that we highlight Gay’s recent article about Jalen Hurts on the 10th anniversary of starting Banyan Tree Strategies. Gay highlights the quarterback's resolve, professionalism and character after leading the Philadelphia Eagles to the very edge of Super Bowl glory. Hurts was climbing what we call the hard fun hill, he collaborated with others on a quest, he took on the yoke of leadership, he made the sacrifices, and failed. 

Or did he? 

That is not how Hurts describes it. He said that he either wins or learns. 

Wait, isn’t that just a platitude, something managers put on the wall that everyone snickers at as they pass by? 

This guy loses on one of the largest stages and has the courage to say: “I never lose, I win or learn.” 
Talk about mind control. 

He also went on to say something we have seen time and time again on close knit teams but that most people think is a myth. We have spent the last 10 years helping companies, nonprofits and sports teams debunk the myth that character doesn’t matter, but the myth persists. 

When asked why he apologized to his teammates Hurts responded: 

“I don’t do this to be loved. I don’t do this to be hated. I don’t do this to seek anyone else’s approval. I do it for the guys in the locker room. I do it for all the time we’ve invested into this.” 

Boom, mic drop, see you at OTA’s and practice hard NFL, the Eagles will be back. If you don’t think every single player wants to rally around that kind of leader you are crazy. In a salary cap world with billionaires throwing around millions of dollars Jalen Hurts’ character is one of few sustainable competitive advantages a team could have. The myth is that character doesn’t matter, it is about the money, and the more money you spend the better the players you get, and players make plays. But that only gets you to the quarter finals. Winning the title takes and demands character. 

The key to this riddle is that character is contagious but is only maintained by stacking consistent actions on top of meaningful shared experiences on a daily basis. Developing these systems and working with people like Jalen Hurts for the last 10 years has been inspiring. 

Will Jalen Hurts be a good husband, father, or friend? We don’t know but a final quote from him gives us a window into the answer. When asked about winning or learning he offered this response: 

“The beautiful part about it is everyone experiences different pains; everyone experiences different agonies of life. You decide if you want to learn from it. You decide if you want that to be a teachable moment. I know I do.” 

At 52 and 50 years old and 30 years into working in professional services we can really relate to the ups and downs of providing for a family while helping others. Banyan was born out of the challenges of ageing industries being disrupted by technology. Ask any doctor if they are making more than they were 10 years ago and they may do more than chuckle in your face. The gross margin for the financial advisor, insurance broker, or CPA has been plummeting. We formed Banyan to get closer to the client and cut out the middleman. 

In the last 10 years we have helped 40 different companies solve problems in the areas of strategy, execution, and building a culture where character counts. Every business, every idea faces the challenges outlined in Schumpeter’s law of creative destruction. There have been plenty of wins, but there has also been a lot of what Jalen Hurts calls learning. 

Looking ahead to 2023 we are going to celebrate our 10th year by using our eight newsletters to recall the top projects and solutions we were fortunate enough to work on with clients in the hopes that it will help others. We aim to publish a long format white paper on the “Nine Essential Elements of Close-Knit Teams” that we wrote about in our newsletters last year. Finally, we have been circulating an advent meditation privately over the last five years, and after some encouragement will be looking to turn it into a small book called “O Holy Night” that we will release this November. 

Our aim in the next 10 years is to help you create the sustainable competitive advantage that comes from being a leader of character no matter the setting. Most of our industries are just as competitive as the NFL, which means developing character will count. We close by republishing a poem written in January of 2015 as we rallied the troops to climb our collective hard fun hill. 

We hope you enjoy it and thanks as always for your readership and friendship. “No hill for a climber!” 


There Is Something

There is something awesome about standing at the base of a mountain.
A 365 day climb.
The question before you is which route shall you take?
Is there a new path to consider?

There is something refreshing about standing at the base of a mountain.
A chance to do it just a bit better this year
The question before you is what will you stop doing?
A curious mindset could help.

There is something risky about standing at the base of a mountain.
Past climbs have taken a toll.
The question before you is will you let past risks scare or hone.
Now is a time for going.

There is something unknown about standing at the base of a mountain.
Adventures abound at each fork.
The question before you is will you revel in that moment?
Seek those who have zeal.

There is something honorable about standing at the base of a mountain.
Your gifts were given.
The question before you is how will you share them for the benefit of all?
It is time to climb.

We wrap up our series on the Essential Elements of Close-knit Teams by looking at the power of ceremony and ritual to cement the bonds that can last a lifetime. How you say hello and how you say goodbye have been proven to make a lasting impact, and with a work or sports team it matters even more. The buzz of doing it right feels great and the sting of doing it poorly can last a lifetime. 


Saying Hello

We began the year by highlighting Owen Eastwood's work on how to bring people from widely different cultures together. His book “Belonging” drives home how important it is to have ceremony at the beginning of a season or when a new person is added. Instead of the new person being the "low-man" or paying a new person tax, they are welcomed as an important member of the community. 

Getting off to a Good Start

As the leader of the team, you are weaving several different common threads together each year. You make sure that everyone can connect to the aligned vision, understand their role, and feel at home. You also give them room to push themselves and have a major say in how they are going to pursue their best self. Finally, you equip them to take that best self and combine it with others to make a collective effort that can compete at the highest level possible. The best players usually want to get better and love to work with and for people who help them improve. As you allocate the time between culture, effort, and skill you are weaving a collective rope that bonds everyone involved with the mission together.

How do you Build a Flywheel that Sustains the Right Culture?

The leader seeks to create a safe place first and then should facilitate a discussion on what matters most and how the team will take the key actions towards the agreed upon goal. Reid Hoffman wrote about the way they scaled LinkedIn in his book “The Alliance” amidst the challenges of a Silicon Valley work culture which was talented but prone to job hopping which undermined their mission.

One way to connect people to a common vision is to give them a say in what the values of the team are. We have adapted the alignment and value process they used into a “Groups2Teams” process that can take between 1 and 2 hours. When a leader facilitates this process, the team ends up owning the values because they chose them. 

Jack Clark, the head coach for Men's Rugby at Cal has taken this to the next level by attaching a question that each member can ask themselves to hold them to the standard of that value. We call this a dynamic question because it activates the value and helps your team self regulate whether they are a unit of 10, 1,000 or even 100,000 people. Here are a series of videos Jack did with some other coaches at the What Drives Winning Coaches Symposium. 

Once a team has a common way they will act it becomes much easier for leaders from within the organization to emerge. These leaders will embody the values on their path to accomplishing the stated goals. The correlation between action and success only emboldens the culture. The leaders are often called captains and the coach that can empower captains has a major competitive advantage. Captains take recruits on their campus visits. Captains recruit people from other companies to join the team. Captains drive the herd to cull the wrong behaviors that can sabotage a team’s success. Captains drive and build culture and over time as they age out or move up in a work environment, they are a major part of the organization's stored value or flywheel of culture.

Saying Goodbye and Building out the Alumni Network

Hoffman also addresses the reality of people leaving your organization and takes a page from the university system by calling it an alumni network. This connection may seem like a stretch at first because many people leave a company on different terms than they left or graduated from their school. However, alumni fit the goal that the company should have, which is to honor those that move on in such a way that they might be a good resource for future employees.

In a sports team context, the end of a season marks the dissolving of a class or year and should not be missed regardless of the outcomes on the field. Championship teams can pass around hardware like trophies or rings but just as important is how the players grew individually and collectively. The armed forces sports teams are seldom national champions and yet after their tours of duty are finished every potential employer knows the values those players will bring to the interview or job.

Over time different teams or companies will build out a competitive advantage in recruiting because the alumni network will help the leaders select the right players more often. Bo Schembechler was the head football coach at Michigan and had a great line about recruiting.

“If you miss the right guy and he goes across the street, he might beat you once a year, but if you take the wrong guy, he ends up beating you every day in practice.”

Your alumni network should understand what your “our kinda guys” or OKG is. With more nodes of intelligence out there the leaders have a better chance of digging down to the softer skills like heart or drive that can be missing on a video or a resume.

All these benefits are part of the reason it is so important to memorialize the commitment made, the relationships built, and the shared memories that were experienced at the end of a season. Companies can do this on a calendar basis with much of the same effect. The cadence of reflecting and honoring the past contributions can be a force multiplier as you move forward and seek to improve in the future.

In your organization regardless of your station we hope these elements are ones you can adopt to facilitate the creation of a closer-knit unit as you seek to be a force multiplier for good.

Thank you for your readership and friendship this year.