[Music] a lot of our uh clients when they first come into a strategic coach they'll ask me the question you know if there were just three things that i should really focus on in my first year in strategic coach what would it be and i said well right off the bat i have to tell you i've been you know i've been coaching the program now since 1989 and i have to tell you the first thing i'd go right after is the impact filter okay and i'll tell you in just a moment what the impact builder is okay and they say what would be number two i said i think number two would be the impact filter and they say oh okay what's number three and i said i think it would be the impact filter and it's sort of like in real estate they ask you know what's the most important thing about real estate and it's location location and location and the the impact filter is a tool uh and it's in um you know very early in the program you know it's the very early workshops when you come into the program and it's a communication tool for entrepreneurs to communicate um you know especially new projects where you have a new project and you as an entrepreneur are totally bought into the idea that your company is going to do this new project and you want to get it across to your team members in such a way that they just totally understand why this is important they totally understand the difference this will make and they know exactly what it looks like when it's finished but then you you let them actually determine the way in which it's going to be completed okay so what i consider my job as an entrepreneur is not to tell other people how to do things my my role as the entrepreneur is to create great breakthrough projects for the company and then allow other people's skills to actually execute what i have so for me to kind of put them in the best possible situation for them to be very excited about the project and to buy into the project but then to use their best skills and their best thinking to actually complete the project and i do i'm not a manager i don't i don't really have good management skills i have great visualizing skills and i'm very very good at picking new capabilities new events inside strategic coach that move the company forward and babbs who's my lifetime we're married and we run the company she's she's excellent uh in the same way in relationship to the organization of strategic coach so she visualizes great breakthroughs for the company and my job is to visualize great breakthroughs for the program okay so it's kind of she she's responsible for the theater and i'm responsible for what's on stage and we each keep coming up with new ideas first of all everything's a project in my life everything going forward is a project it could be a new exercise in the pro program it could be a whole new workshop for a whole quarter it could be a special two hour event it could be a podcast it could be a video interview it could be an audio interview it could be a book so so i've got these projects and all my projects are tend to be projects that have an impact on the world they have an impact on our clients they have an impact on prospective clients who might be interested in strategic coach so everything that i do in in coach has to do with communicating ideas so to communicate great ideas and great possibilities outside the company i've got to be able to do that inside the company okay and this is the impact filter is what i use it's got three parts to it really the first thing is you define what the project is then you say the project uh why the project is so important in other words why are you doing this okay what difference is this project going to make and then uh you know what's what's the ideal outcome what's the ideal outcome that you see now here's the thing about this first part of the impact filter is to sell myself on the project so what i've established as teamwork with all my team members and strategic coach is that if you just hear me talking about something in the future because i'm sort of a talker and if you just hear me talking like say you know we're in a meeting and i started talking hey i'm thinking about something you can completely disregard it you don't have to pay any attention to to anything that i say okay because you know i just make up stuff and i want to hear myself talking and maybe interact with someone you know on it but if i say it you don't have to do anything about it you don't have to put it on a list you don't have to ask me about it or anything i'm just talking okay but if it shows up in the form of an impact filter it means i'm 100 committed to it okay and i will never ask you to start something unless it comes in this form okay so the first part of it right at the on the upper left hand side is that uh i'm really sold on it and down at the bottom you'll see a thing called best result worst result okay and best result means that i'm so committed to it that if we don't go forward and actually achieve this then i think it's we've lost it's almost like a defeat because i got all excited and i'm really excited and i've thought it through and i'm not bothering you till i've been you know working on it for a month but now that i'm writing this down and now that i'm sending this to you as a probably a pdf it's a hundred percent okay and then on the right hand side now i want to show you not what you have to do i i want to show you that when this project isn't as complete here are the success criteria so when this project is complete and i always put a date on it you know when i when i wanted this is true this is true this is true this is true so that you know exactly what the finished successful project looks like and uh so i've been using this um 15 years 20 years i don't know exactly you know when it but it really has a huge impact and because i'll send it to someone and here's the other thing i do is that when i send it to them i give them two days to think about it all i ask them to do when they receive it is just send me a just send me an email saying i got your impact filter and uh you know i'll be back on the day after tomorrow i'll tell you because i don't know how to get things done so i'm a starter of things and i know what the ending of things looks like but i don't really really know what it looks like between the start and the ending but i have great team members around me who really really know how to get things done so i'm just going to put them why this is really important and what it looks like when it's finished and then i depend upon them to come up with the execution game plan how this is going to work and invariably it's not just one person there will be a lead person so i'll send it to a lead person and that lead person will you know connect with two three other people and say dan is working on this and this is this is why it's important and this is what it looks like when it's finished so how do you think that we should actually get this done and this is happening during the two days before they get back to me and then sometimes the lead person the project leader so the person who gets it first is the leader on the project and they might do an impact filter and send it back to me but their impact filter isn't on the project their input impact filter as on the game plan how it's going to get done and that's great and i'll look at it and we'll we might have a 10 minute meeting a 15 minute very seldom more than 10 or 15 minutes and they said uh this is really interesting and i just want to let you know that we've already done part of this and we can take advantage of this and i said that's great that's great this is why it's important is what it looks like when it's finished if you can come up with a better ending i'm all ears i would say average year i do 150 of these on just about everything and but what it means is that people aren't confused when i'm just talking off the top of my head you know that i'm just i'm just meandering and they don't have to bother you know that yep this isn't if dan's just talking about it it's not on any list but i get the impact filter it's go ahead and i'm open to suggestions on maybe achieving the same breakthrough through another way but i i am totally convinced of the outcome i am totally convinced of the value if we achieve something in this direction but i'm i'm completely open for it and what it does is it it cuts down just three things i'll just finish this off with three things about the impact builder number one the problem with most communication is all about content but there's no context and what i have to do more than anything else is not the what that i have to communicate that's pretty easy to communicate it's the why it's so important so they can make a judgment of what the priority is okay and if there's a collision we got too many priorities they'll come back and talk to me and they said you're going to have to make a decision here this is really important but you've already given us two other things that are really important so give us the order here okay and that's great that's great and so that's the first thing the second thing is i don't tell people how to get results they know how to get results i'm just telling them that i want to use your best capabilities and your best knowledge to get this result okay and and the thing is i'm going to get it one way or another so you might as well you might as well be with it and the other thing is there's almost no need for ongoing meetings to clarify things after this once we get past a couple days and we've gone back and forth everything's crystal clear and everybody just goes for it and um they know exactly what success looks like you know and so and we celebrate you know and i'm very grateful and i'm very applauding when the job gets done so and i can do this forever and so can they [Music]