Maxwell Leadership Podcast: Adjust Your Way to Victory

Mark Cole:
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Mark Cole:
With these tips, you’ll be back to doing what you do best in no time. Just text the word MAXWELL to 55123 for your free copy today. That’s Max W E L L to 55123 to start accomplishing more while juggling less with Belay. Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that commits itself to add value to you, the leaders. Our team is doing this every single week so that you will do something and that is to multiply value to others. Hey, my name is Mark Cole and today John Maxwell is sharing a lesson on how you can adjust and adapt your way to victory. Now I can’t wait for you to hear about it.

Mark Cole:
I can’t wait to illustrate it. I can’t wait for you to really understand what I think is one of John’s secret sauces in his years and years and years of success. And that success really comes from John’s ability to read a situation and adapt to win the day in that situation. After John’s lesson, my co host, another winner is Chris Robinson. He’s gonna be joining us and we’ll sit down and offer you advice and some application on how you can apply what you’ve learned today in this podcast to both your life and your leadership. If you would like to download the free resource, we’ve got a bonus resource for this episode and you can watch the episode on YouTube all by going to MaxwellPodcast.com/Victory. So are you ready to win? Are you ready to adjust your way to victory? Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
I’ve often said, I love sports, that all good coaches have a good pre game plan. In other words, as they go in the game, they have a pregame and how they would like the game to unfold. And they practice that pregame, they teach that pregame. But once the game starts, it may not at all be like the pregame plan. Now, all good coaches have a pre game plan, but the great coaches separate themselves at halftime because now they have a half and now they see reality, not theory. Now they know what has happened, not what they thought would happen. And so they go into the halftime locker room and what do they do? They adjust. It’s their ability to, now that they know what’s happening, to make decisions based on what they know, not what they thought.

John Maxwell:
It’s their ability to be flexible, adaptable, and create an environment that allows a new game plan, a plan B, if you will, that makes those great coaches, most successful leaders have a plan B and during a crisis, maybe even a plan C. Now, there’s a profound difference. I teach this in my book on leadership. There’s a profound difference between conformity and adaptability. Don’t miss this because it fits right here in the crisis. Conformity, that’s a negative quality. It’s about blending in. It’s about being like everyone else.

John Maxwell:
It’s a weakness that’s based on fear and rejection. When a person conforms, to be honest with you, they don’t want to be rejected. So they blend in the crowd. It’s not a positive thing. Adaptability is a positive quality and it’s adjusting not out of weakness, but out of strength. It’s adjusting to succeed. It’s adjusting to give you the ability to make the changes that will make you better. I had a wonderful golf game a couple years ago with Tom Watson.

John Maxwell:
What an incredible golfer he has been in the past. In fact, my claim to fame is on number 10 at Sugarloaf. I got a birdie and he got a par, literally. And I beat him by one stroke. And he noticed. He said, john, you won that hole. And the good news, I won that one hole. And that means, means in the other 999 he wins.

John Maxwell:
But the point being, we had an interesting conversation and he told me, he said there are only five tournaments. Now, this man won a lot of tournaments. He’s one of the top 10 golfers ever. He said there are only five tournaments that on the first tee the first day, I knew that I was going to win because my swing was just good and I was just going to win. He said all the other tournaments sometime second round, third round, fourth round, I had to go back to the driving range. And I had to make adjustments because my swing got out of kalter and I had to. And I love this phrase, he said I had to adjust my way to victory. Almost all of his tournament wins were not because he kept doing the same thing, the same way, and it was just perfect.

John Maxwell:
He had to adjust him way. And in a crisis, that’s what we do as leaders. We help our people adjust their way to victory. Wow. Maybe you need to say to yourself or say to somebody that’s in the room with you right now, I think I want to adjust my way. I want to adapt my way in this crisis. I’m going to be flexible. I’m going to be fluid.

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back, man. I am sitting here. Give me a fist bump, man. Where you been?

Chris Robinson:
Hey, I’m hiding out.

Mark Cole:
I know, I know. Come out of hiding, man. Hey, I really am with here with a winner. A guy that knows how to win in a sports environment, knows how to win a business environment. I love standing shoulder to shoulder with you. I love this because it reminds me, Chris, of something you and I both have heard John Maxwell say. John quotes his friend Lou Holtz, brilliant coach from Notre Dame and several other places. He was at South Carolina, I think too.

Mark Cole:
And boy, he just knew how to take organizations that were losing, make adjustments and turn around. And Lou looked at John one day and I heard him say it from stage another time. He says, you know, I’ve coached good players and bad players and I’m just a better coach with good players. And so I’m, I’m a better leader and, and have tasted some victory because of people like John Maxwell. Of course, Chris, you being on the team. So it’s, it’s good to be talking about adjusting our way to victory today.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, I love this topic, you know, because adjustment I think it’s critical to everything, and I love how he opens it up. We have a plan. We do have to make adjustments, but you have to get a result in order to change a result.

Mark Cole:
That’s right.

Chris Robinson:
A lot of people spend their time just planning, planning, planning, planning, thinking that it’s going to go perfect, but realizing that you have to have a plan B, you have to have a plan C. That adjustment is going to have to come.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. And we certainly working side by side for so many years, we have figured out adjustments that should be made, adjustments that shouldn’t be made. You know, as I was thinking about this lesson, and we’ll get to some discussion in just a moment, but this year I created a scenario podcast family that I think will help you as leaders in how to physically, literally adjust yourself to victory. I looked at this year as 12 individual quarters to our game. And so it’s kind of a monthly plan. You’ve heard the 12 week work plan, the strategic plan. I’ve really broken it down this year and got really. With our vision.

Mark Cole:
Our vision this year is aligning the organization with John Maxwell, our visionary’s vision. It is to work our plan and deliver our plan, and then it is creating cash margin. So we set that as a plan, and then we got these 12 individual games to win that championship. That’s the championship right there. And I’ve set up our SPRINT meeting, our P and L owners, people that own P and L. And I’ve set them up that they come in at the first Monday closest to the beginning of the month, and they give me the game plan to win that month. If we win enough months, we’re gonna win the year.

Chris Robinson:
That’s right.

Mark Cole:
And so they come in, give us their business plan for that month. What are the numbers? And then how are we going to hit our numbers? What’s the strategic plan? What’s the game plan? And then on the 15th of the month, we come in and we look at how we’re doing and we make what we call halftime adjustments. And it is working incredibly well. Now, where did I get that plan? You and I have heard John talk about his relationship with the late, great Pat Summitt, the winningest female basketball coach in the world. And Pat had this process. John would go speak to her, and then he would stay over at halftime. So he’d walk into the halftime and Pat would go back to her office and all the lady volunteers would get up at the whiteboard and they would be saying, this is what we did. This is what didn’t work.

Mark Cole:
This is what did work and this is what we need to do to adjust. They would do that for like 10, 12 minutes. Pat would come out and in two minutes she’d go, I like that. I like that. I’d do a little bit more of this and she would then play it all out. For those of you that’s not watching the podcast, you’re missing all of my hands right now because I would not be able to do it without the hands for this. So you need to watch, watch this one on YouTube. But anyway, she does all of this and then they go out and John said, the first time I saw that, it blew me away.

Mark Cole:
He said, pat, you didn’t even really tell them where they were missing. She said, I don’t need to. I did that enough in the beginning that now that they know they’re able to make the halftime adjustments and I can come in and work. And so we’re starting to do that. But I also another couple of coaches that’s impacted me. I’m a Georgia Bulldog fan and I am an Atlanta Falcon fan, which means the name Nick Saban and Bill Belichick haunt me to this day.

John Maxwell:
Right?

Chris Robinson:
Oh, yeah.

Mark Cole:
I was at the national championship to where TUA came in and became the coach, the quarterback for the entire second half. And he single handedly, because we didn’t have Georgia Bulldogs and not have a plan in our playbook to defend tua, he came in and defeated us because of that halftime adjustment.

Chris Robinson:
Right.

Mark Cole:
And I watched Nick Saban, Coach Saban, do that over and over again that day. It felt a little more painful than any other day, but it killed him. I also watched Bill Belichick. I was at the super bowl where the greatest super bowl comeback ever against the Atlanta Falcons by Bill Belichick. And once again, it was a change in the playbook that they decided they were going to win the second half with defense and the Falcons didn’t win another point and lost.

Chris Robinson:
Wow.

Mark Cole:
Now what is the commonality to that? They know how to adjust. Real leaders know how to adjust their way to victory. And I’ve watched great players do that. You play enough sports, you’ve done the halftime adjustments, no doubt, right?

Chris Robinson:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love that. I mean, especially in the sports world where you can see the momentum go, you can see that tangible momentum go from one thing to the next. The same thing happens inside of business environments and what’s happening inside of our organization by being able to make those adjustments. There’s a new fire that comes out when you hit that reset button, what’s done is done. That’s, we’ve worked that plan. That plan’s not working or it is working and we can go forward or we can make these adjustments and continue to charge forward in the same direction but with a lot more intensity.

Chris Robinson:
So I love the reset and the refreshing of the thinking versus doing the same old thing. Doing the same old thing. Doing the same old thing.

Mark Cole:
That’s exactly right. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Chris Robinson:
You know, Mark, talk to me then. You know, we’ve talked about plans and making adjustments. Tell me about a time where you had a plan, you made an adjustment and you won in business.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So you know what’s funny is I have a real relevant example. We had an event called Exchange. Many of you in our podcast family has been to that event. You’ve been to.

Chris Robinson:
Incredible, incredible event.

Mark Cole:
Incredible event. 2020 plus year, 24 years actually of success with that event. And the last three events has felt like it was. We were being challenged to get the exchange type experiences in new cities and new environments. And so we made a decision going into the 2024 exchange that we were going to wait until 2026 to have our next exchange reassess if that was going to be the last one. But in the meantime we were going to interject a to do the Exchange is a three and a half, four day experience and it’s very instructional but it’s also very experiential. And so we were, we decided we were going to craft three separate experiences over just a 24 hour period rather than getting people to come in and camp out in a city for four days. We just finished it right here as we’re in studio.

Mark Cole:
We literally just finished it. You missed it. I hate missing you.

Chris Robinson:
I’ll be there.

Mark Cole:
In fact, Chris came in and said, Mark, how what? How was the Maxwell Masterclass? I said, Chris, it was terrible because he had to miss it. He had a very important family commitment that he had. I said it was terrible, it was terrible. I said, now that I’ve lied to you, it was absolutely insane. But it was an adjustment. And I’m going to tell you, not only was it a financial win for us, not only was it a more palatable experience for high level leaders, but the people that were attracted to it was greater and the deliverable was greater. And so we adjusted it. That’s a 24 year success cycle that we adjusted.

Mark Cole:
People looked at us like we were crazy. It wasn’t failing, it just wasn’t succeeding at the level that it could and so we paused it, put ourselves into a new game plan with the same concept, and it was a huge win. Now, here’s the lessons from that one. Always be challenging things before the numbers prove challenging. The numbers were not challenging, but we were working harder at this event than we had at any other time. If we were working to make it successful, was it successful? Was there great brand loyalty? Could we have filled it again? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. But the labor and the mental and the thinking and the sense of anticipation was not the same. When those components are out, you need to check things that you’re doing, not when the numbers are failing, but when the energy towards success is causing more work than less fulfillment.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah, I love that. Well, because what happens is that you found a place of potential complacency. Even though it had worked, you could keep working it, but you challenged what I redefined complacency as is a secret place of satisfactory success. And I think that’s what holds a lot of people back from making adjustments on what. What’s good to become great is because secretly, deep down inside, oh, my goodness, I like it. It’s okay. It’s easy. But being able to have the foresight, to be able to change while things were good versus wait until they get bad, that’s a big, big win and adjustment in the plan.

Mark Cole:
About it.

Chris Robinson:
Love it.

Mark Cole:
No doubt about it.

Chris Robinson:
Now, talk to me about the flip side, because, you know, it’s easy to talk about the wins, but tell me about a time that you adjusted the plan and it just didn’t work. You just lost.

Mark Cole:
Oh, man. So how many of those do you want to hear, Chris? Do you want to. You want to rest of the time? No, seriously, when you ask that question, it goes back to a similar answer that I give when people say, what’s your greatest business failure? And it’s because I called an audible for a plan. We put a plan in place, and it just didn’t work. John was writing the book Intentional Living. Great book. Brilliant book. In fact, if you ask him today, what’s the book that you feel like is your best, that wouldn’t be appreciated the best? And he always says it’s intentional living.

Mark Cole:
He said, because it is truly what I did starting very young in life, I just became intentional in everything that I did. I live intentionally, and he does. And so John has a statement. He says, God loves you, and I have a wonderful plan for your life. In other words, John’s saying, I have the intentionality enough for everybody. I can be intentional for all of us. But in this particular time, the book was really good. We knew it was good, and we felt like we would make the book a movement rather than letting the book create the movement.

Mark Cole:
We were going to create a movement and let the book augment the movement. It’s not the way it works. I know that now. But we wanted to create all these intentional acts of living well and helping people around you. And so we created this entire movement that we wanted to have this 30 day challenge that we had that we were going to do. I know you remember because you probably lost a lot of money on it, because you remember because we started this whole thing and what happened is we let the technology of the movement drive the vision rather than the technology serve the movement when it happened. And so we put all of these stipulations and all these requirements on people to create a movement rather than to let it morph and move together with these intentional acts of kindness. We tried to force fit intentional acts of.

Mark Cole:
Of kindness. And you can’t. You can’t check a kindness off on a box. I was kind today. Be kind today. Mark, you, you. You got to teach people that that feels natural, not forced. We forced intentionality.

Mark Cole:
And 30 days into that book launch, after it was too late because the book was launching, I realized what we had done. We had allowed tools, systems, and technology to drive a vision rather than serve a vision. And we lost it. I lost it from the get go. It’s another way. It’s always, I guess for the rest of my life will be one of those things. I squandered John’s favorite book in the launch, but letting the technology and the systems drive the vision. Wow.

Chris Robinson:
I love that. I love that. And you know, he also talked to this one about blending and so tell me about a time where you blended and you wish you would have adapted.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, boy, I love this statement that John made there. There is a profound, profound difference between conformity and adaptability. You know, I’m in the middle of it right now. I know that. I know that John’s legacy will be better, will be brighter, and will be bigger many years after he’s decided he’s done or after he’s looking at us from afar and just going way to go. I know this. It’s just so much momentum you and I get the privilege of working, working closely with 56,000 plus coaches and all over the world. It’s kind of your day job.

Mark Cole:
Right. And he’s doing it today. Right. And so I know because of those legs to the Legacy that our future is better, brighter and bigger. I know it. And so the way we’re going to continue as a content creation company, as an experienced company, the way we’re going to do that is by expanding our thought leaders and our content creators. And I’ve got the strategy and so got the business plan, but I tried to blend it at a time and the timing is off. And so I spent about three years really working to get that off the ground, trying to be adaptable.

Mark Cole:
But really what I was doing was trying to conform today’s strategy or really tomorrow’s strategy to yesterday’s systems.

Chris Robinson:
Wow.

Mark Cole:
And so I was trying to blend it and trying to force fit it in the way that we did it with John would be the way cookie cutting, we would do it for everyone else. And I realized that by trying to blend, as John talks about here, that conformity really will kill adaptability. Conformity will try to win every time. When you try to do it the way you’ve done it before and then bring in adaptable innovation, conformity will win every time. So it’s a timing issue for us. It’s a realizing it is the right, right thing. But we’re trying to blend it. And by blending it too soon, conformity is winning.

Mark Cole:
And so we took a step back and said, okay, how is this supposed to look like as an adaptable way to do it rather than a conforming to yesterday’s strategy? And it’s fun. It’s fun. It’s painful, but it’s fun. It’s much more fun to tell you about the first illustration that you gave, because that would, that wouldn’t work. But, but I’ll tell you what is fun about it is learning the lesson that you can, through adjusting, capture the victory. And we’ve learned a lot through the process. But what we’re doing right now, it’s exactly what John’s talking about. We’re adjusting our way to victory.

Chris Robinson:
Right?

Mark Cole:
Yeah.

Chris Robinson:
And I love that we get the opportunity to do it with John by our side right now.

Mark Cole:
Correct.

Chris Robinson:
Because when John does make that time that he’s no longer doing this or passes away or whatever the case may be, we don’t have that insight and that knowledge to be able to tap into his wisdom and continue to have that guidance of his vision, his integrity, his character, everything in order to keep us going. So, I mean, it really is just truly an honor and privilege to just serve so many people and at a time such as this.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. And I would close with just a couple of things as it relates to adjust your way to victory. There is intuitive adjustments, and John is extremely intuitive in saying, man, I know your numbers are saying it looks good, Mark, but intuitively, I smell something. Something’s not working. And when you do it, that’s intuition. And we have for years developed a team that had flexibility, that had loyalty, that had adaptability that would change on somebody’s intuition with no tangible results on why we need to change. And that is a unique task, to mobilize a team to change based on an intuition that can’t be seen, felt, taste, touched, smelled at this point. And it’s good.

Mark Cole:
But there are those of us, and we’re starting to realize that there are those of us that can. With intelligence, with data, we can begin to make changes because the data is not lying. Don’t be afraid of adjusting yourself off of intuition. Don’t be afraid of Justing yourself off of analytics that will tell the story. Be afraid of feeling like yesterday’s playbook will work today. Be afraid of that. If it’s too good to be true and it’s still working, consider it too good to be true because it’s going to stop working soon. Too many people don’t adjust themselves, and they wonder why they are now not winning, and it’s because there is a resistance to adjustment.

Mark Cole:
I am not going to tell you, don’t adjust unless you can touch it, taste it, feel it, you can analyze it to the point of saying we’ve got to change. Because I think analytics will absolutely help adjustments. But I also don’t want to change the fact that Nick Saban sitting in the locker room saying, hey, the current personnel and the current playbook is not working. And intuitively, I think the new guy can come in here and make this thing happen. That intuition that I’ve watched the greats and I’ll call the coaches, I’ve talked to today, the greats, the great Pat Summit, the great Bill Belichick, the great Nick Saban, they knew how to create these halftime adjustments. And I watched John with all of his intuition on how to do that. But don’t let that discourage you. If you don’t have that intuition, you just need to have a resolve that adjustments is what’s going to bring the victory, not a static playbook that never changes.

Chris Robinson:
Yeah. Love it.

Mark Cole:
Love it. Hey, so let me tell you this right here. There’s a couple of things I want to tell you about. We have a product. I always want to give you a next step. And so today, our team is made possible. The High Road Leadership digital product. This is a brilliant content that John just recently released in 2024 and you can go be a part of that.

Mark Cole:
They cut it in half so you can make that digital product a part of your growth strategy this year. And so go into the show Notes, click the link and you’ll find a way to order that. Put in the, put in the promo code podcast and we’ll give you that discount. The second thing I want to tell you is there is a episode that we did recently that I was really reminded of today as we were prepping for this. It’s called how to Improve Every Day. And in this how to Improve Every Day, it will help you build a system around adjustments. So it’s a great add in to today’s podcast. And then finally, let me say this before I even go to Sanni, who gave us a great comment on Courage to continue.

Mark Cole:
Your comments really help us. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I just went into YouTube recently and just started looking at your content comments. And in fact, one of your comments was, hey, you lost me at minute 2427. You even gave me the place that I lost you. And I just want to encourage you that we use a lot, lot of edifying comments. We use a lot of just the affirming comments. But I want to tell you, give us your questions, give us the things that we can do to improve it, because those comments make a difference as well. You just met a guy just the other day in Walmart, right?

Chris Robinson:
I did. I was going in Walmart and I was getting some fishing poles and a guy walks past and he says, wait a minute, I know you. I said, well, great. You know Chris Robinson, he goes, Maxwell Leadership. And that was JR At Wall JR at Walmart. Listen to the podcast.

Mark Cole:
Come on. Junior loves it.

Chris Robinson:
So.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, I love it. JR thank you. Thanks for. Thanks for reminding me that I need to get Chris back here. He’s been delayed too long. Sandy, your comment on Courage. Courage to continue. We’ll put that episode link in the show notes as well.

Mark Cole:
But Sandy said, this episode is so epic. I’m about to step into a new sphere and I think this is just what I needed to hear. Thanks to Maxwell Leadership Podcast. Sandy, I want to hear how this is going and how you are doing. So give us another comment, see how it’s going. Thanks again, everyone. Hey, go lead well, bring powerful, positive change because everyone deserves to be led well.