Just Stop Already | Jon Kidwell

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by an endless list of tasks, unsure which to tackle first? In this episode of the Lead Well podcast, I share a personal experience with an executive team that was drowning in too many responsibilities. We'll talk about the vital practice of pruning less critical activities to focus on what truly matters, guided by insights from Henry Cloud's book, "Necessary Endings." I'll also open up about my own journey in cutting down my commitments, such as stepping back from multiple board positions, to better align with my primary goals and boost productivity.

In the latter part of our discussion, we delve into the crucial process of deciding what to stop doing, both in our professional and personal lives. We'll discuss assessing tasks based on their mission and profitability, and the necessity of shedding low-impact, low-profit activities. This episode underscores the immense power of learning to say "no" and creating space for impactful work. Plus, we highlight the importance of building a supportive network to encourage and assist each other in this endeavor. Tune in to discover strategies for eliminating the unnecessary and focusing on what truly drives success.

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Send your Leadership and Business questions to Jon at podcast@leadwell.com.

For more information visit https://leadwell.com

The Leadwell Podcast gives mission-driven leaders principled and practical advice to do just that, lead well.

In each episode, your host Jon Kidwell, interviews leaders with great stories, to share strategies that help leaders navigate complex, confusing, and often down-right challenging leadership, personal growth, business, and workplace culture situations.

Jon is a nonprofit executive turned coach, speaker, author, and CEO of a leadership development company. In working with nonprofits and businesses, big and small, he realized the unique challenges leaders face when they are committed to keeping the mission and people the top priority. Those leaders’ commitment to their principles and the people they lead, plus seeing the need for more leaders who strive to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons, is what inspired Jon to start a leadership development company dedicated to the success of mission-driven leaders and their organiza...

Transcript

Jon Kidwell 0:08

One of the most important decisions you're going to make isn't what you're going to do, it's what you're not going to do. Welcome to the Lead Well podcast, the podcast for mission-driven leaders, where we dive into what's most important for you to lead your business and your people well. Do you ever get the feeling like there's just a lot of activity to keep everything going, to make sure that everything gets done? I even saw just the other day it was an advertisement, couldn't think of the word is an advertisement on social media that had an AI piece that just moved all the tasks around and it took this overloaded 60 hour work week and just like fumbled it and jumbled it into 32 hours. I mean, that's actually not how things work. Like sometimes we just have to take stuff off the table and yet we don't want to. I get it. It's so hard.

Jon Kidwell 1:02

This has been something that I've been thinking about with our business, with my own life, of what has to come off the table, and it kind of came to a head. I'm sitting here and I got to tell you the story of sitting with an executive team and they're talking about not having enough resources. They're talking about not having enough time. They're talking about not having the engagement, and so they're talking about projects and what's important and what's not important and these type of things, and you can almost get a sense that they're starting to do some of the prioritization. But there's also just a lot of sideways movement and trying to negotiate and move. And well, we could just do this and we can add this thing. And if we put this in there and, like so many of us, it's just add, add, add, rearrange, move this chess piece over here. See if we can just like continue to rearrange the puzzle. And as I'm sitting there letting them work through this, I'm just bubbling up inside. I'm just ready to be like just stop. Already those three words were just ready to come out, so finally had to come and just said add, if you had a magic wand and you could take something off this table, what would it be? And all of a sudden we started talking about the things that didn't really matter. And then we started talking about the things that did really matter and it made me think and just reinforce some of the things we have to stop, because they're actually an impediment to the impact we're trying to make. They're an anchor on the activities that we are trying to do, that are most important to us, and it made me think about sometimes we just need to stop already, and that stopping actually frees us up to dive into what is most important. So there's this book.

Jon Kidwell 2:41

Henry Cloud wrote Necessary Endings. I want to share this with you. It's a quote from the book. Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them the ability to do. What a powerful reminder on just stopping and what that does for us, for what we can do, what we should do, and that's personal. But look at it as a business and all that we do. That isn't exactly the work that we uniquely do in the niche that we uniquely want to serve, on the mission that we are fully pointed our way on and how sometimes we have to stop.

Jon Kidwell 3:30

That it took me back to a time when I had to do this, when there were so many things and I could no longer rearrange all the things, I could no longer carry it on my back. There was some delegation that had to happen, but there was just some stopping as well. It was a Saturday morning kind of you know what I mean like a teetering on that edge of not just being tired but like emotionally spent, actual burnout, the emotional fatigue and disconnect of I just can't do this anymore. I'm starting to build resentment. That's about where I was and I looked at all of the things and I could not rearrange it into the calendar, into the life, into everything. It was taking me away from my new daughter. It was taking away from my wife. It was taking me away from the activities that I knew were important at work.

Jon Kidwell 4:20

But the busyness meant that I was actually doing things and I just I had to stop and I'd made a list and I started was actually doing things and I just had to stop and I made a list and I started delegating some things. I'd write people's names down to it, but shifting that just kind of shifted things. There were also items that I just had to get really clear on and stop in that same season Really hard, not saying that their stuff's not important. It just wasn't aligning with the work that was most important to me and it was no longer profitable returning anything to what I was trying to do through our work in that and I actually ended up pulling myself off of six different boards which, like now saying it, it's like, well, yeah, that's ridiculous, right, and I brought it down into two that were most important for life, for work, for things I care about, causes, but also for that connection and the partnership collaboration that we needed for work. Again, looking back, being like, oh, I was on eight and I pulled out of six of them, like great, but then we also stopped doing programs and in a business, that's hard, right, you look at it and you're like, well, that's a 5,000, 50,000, $5 million reduction that we are going to do. But what a great reminder that places like Netflix have kind of cannibalized themselves and created new revenue streams that Apple showed us when Steve Jobs came back, that they actually brought it down into like four products from 50, some odd products, and then they ballooned out on the other side, and so we have examples.

Jon Kidwell 5:51

But that fear at least my fear is what keeps us from going from. That is, but can we do that? And the problem that I found with making fear-based decisions, especially with keeping things going, is that it only leads to future frustrations, and so there are things that we need to stop, and it doesn't mean that we don't care. It doesn't mean that they're not important for others and for somebody else to maybe pick up. It just means that it's not ours to do in this season and that we need to say no and stop some of the programs, some of the events, some of the activities that are no longer producing what we hope that they produce.

Jon Kidwell 6:32

So how can we go about doing this? Well, here's just a little kind of framework idea that I think about, and it's just an up and down and across matrix, right? So if you take a piece of paper and you draw a line up and down and at the top you say hi, mission, right, this is directly connected with why the business exists, or what I am aiming at in my life and then all the way down, at the bottom of that same line, you draw a low mission or write out low mission and then draw one that goes across. So you got a nice plus sign axes. And on the left-hand side you draw and write low profitability and in terms of business, yeah, money, but also just, is it return? Is it profitable, is it good? Is it returning things to your life or is it not returning things to work and to what it hopes to do. Money is a piece of it, but profitable really is good and health and thriving. And so you got low profitability. Then you have high profitability. So low profitability, high profitability, high mission, low mission. And then start thinking about what quadrant things fall into. And if it is low mission, low profitability and you place it in there, that is an immediate sign that it's time to release. That.

The Impact of Stopping

Jon Kidwell 7:46

Stopping could look like just stopping it altogether. It's a Friday, we're done, no longer doing that, and sometimes that's not the healthiest and most caring way to stop. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Sometimes that looks like building a plan to stop that gradually over the next week, month, three months, whatever that might be. Sometimes it actually looks like releasing that to another individual through delegation and in handing that responsibility to them or to another organization. Like how wonderful to release something and partner with somebody else to make sure that that work gets done, but knowing it's no longer ours to do so.

Jon Kidwell 8:25

Just like I'm stepping into saying what are some of the things that I need to stop in life, just stop already in life and in work and saying what do we need to focus on most so we can be most impactful for the people we serve, the leaders that we help. I invite you to just stop already with me and look at. Is it high mission, low mission, low profitability. High profitability and it is low, low.

Jon Kidwell 8:48

Let's stop. Let's support each other in that, because one of the most important decisions any of us can make isn't what we're going to do, it's what we're not going to do, and when we eliminate what is not important, we actually create the space, the room that we need to be able to focus on the most important things that do produce that advance, the mission that give opportunities to people, produce that advance, the mission that give opportunities to people and that will allow us to create even greater profit, money and otherwise on those things that we are meant to impact the most. So I wish you the best in stopping. Reach out to me and tell me how it's going. Text me if you need support. Drop it on social media and take this and share it with a friend so that you can build that network of stopping support that you need around you. Go, stop something today and when you do, be well, god bless and lead on.