What It Means To Be Elite
LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PLATFORMS
Audio Transcript:
All right, welcome back, everyone. This week, Alex could not get to recording an episode, but he does send a weekly Friday flow out to his company, Mountain Leverage, every week, usually.
And I put together two of those that were both around how to be elite and what does it mean to be elite. So I hope you enjoy and take a listen.
I wanna talk today about being elite and being professional.
One of the challenges that we have when we scale, we have to, there are times we have to bring on more structure, or we have to bring on more process refinement and definition of what we're doing and those things, so we can replicate it, we can share
it, we can scale it. And those are reasonable, those are important, vital for our success as we're moving.
However, I think there's also a trap that we can fall into in those moments where we begin to become almost worshiping the process or leaning on the process like it's the magic, or whatever else.
And I think I just want to take a moment to share at least my philosophy on this and what has fundamentally been Mountain Leverage's philosophy on process.
You know, I want every absolutely every last process we need in place to be successful, but not one more. And you'll never hit that exact balance. However, think about it this way, and I've mentioned this analogy many times.
An elite military unit, if we're talking about military, there's an elite military unit and there's a professional military unit. So if you look at the United States Army, for instance, generally, the Army is a professional unit.
They're a great force in the world. Well, great. I mean, you know, we can poo poo military all you want and all this.
But the point is, from a military standard, they're a great military and they are well disciplined. They've got all kinds of accomplishments to be able to take on as a military. And they can do that with relatively average folks sometimes, right?
You just sign up, you go through boot camp, you do your thing, you learn how to fire a rifle, you learn how to do your job, you roll in.
And there's 50 million manuals and processes you can follow, and you can pretty well be sufficient and pretty well be effective in your role individually and then ultimately as a unit.
And so that is a professional military, and they can get a lot of great things done. Sure, there's a lot of waste, sure, there's a lot of things going on, but generally, that's an effective professional military.
But then you take a SEAL team or a small special forces unit, that's an elite unit.
And that unit, while they still have processes, they rely more on the individual capabilities and how those capabilities play together into a team to accomplish frenetic missions or missions with undetermined paths to get there.
So this is when you look at extractions of rescuing hostages or whatever else, right? And you can come up with any scenario you want, whether it's fictionalized in movies or books or whatever, or real life ones that have happened.
There's a lot of planning involved, of course, a lot of training and those things. But in terms of a paint by number ABCDEF process, there just is not. There is an elitism to the unit and to the individuals in that unit.
And I have long looked at and we have long focused to build an elite unit at Mountain Leverage, not a professional unit. And when I say that, it doesn't mean we don't have processes. We do, of course we do.
We're going to need those as we scale. But we have an elite mindset. So we have hired fantastic, elite, great people and we want to create space for them to be great.
So that includes some processes, of course. That includes some expectations.
But I think sometimes it's difficult for some of us, maybe all of us, I don't know at times, but it's difficult for us to separate processes as an enabler versus processes as the main event.
Like we can thrive, we can survive, we can do things, we can accomplish things without everything process ties down to the nth degree. The main event is actually the outcome, and it's the main path to that outcome.
How we get to that main outcome is through you, is through the elite people we've hired. And so, just a reminder to all of us, as we're trying to add processes or refine processes and all, of course, let's do that. That's valuable.
But ultimately, it comes down to be great, go be great. We've hired you here because we believed you're great. And you look around, look around the people you work with.
You know, there's a lot of elite folks here that are out there trying to be great. And I don't want to mute that with processes that slow things down or confuse things. You know, we are in a market right now where there's a lot of change going on.
And if we are slow to change because, well, that process doesn't say that, or we just changed the process yesterday, or whatever, kind of a who moved my cheese kind of moment, we are going to lose. We're going to lose in this market.
We've got to be able to rely on you, on me, on each other, that we can sort this out. Now, this isn't just a kumbaya, hold hands around the fire, it'll all be okay and we'll figure it out. We've got work to do, and we've got process to put in place.
I'm not discounting any of that necessarily. I just think sometimes, when we're scaling, it's easy to overvalue those things. And where I'm going to put my overvaluation on is on you.
That's our model from the start. And so how does this play in a tactical environment?
Well, I don't know, but if you find yourself confused on what the process is, or you find yourself with a process that's changed and you don't know where to go, get in there. Ask, reach out, figure it out, jump in, rely.
There's collaboration, there's action, right? Take action, don't be stunted. It's just, it's a level of elite behavior that that's what requires Mountain Leverage to work.
And you say that's not scalable. Okay, maybe it's not. I don't know what, at what number of employees will we reach that says, okay, we can no longer be elite.
I think that's ways off from where we are right now. And so if you're struggling, I get it. You know, we can all struggle here or there, but I guess I just don't want us to sit and overvalue.
We're not going to solve our goal. We're not going to reach our goal. We're not going to solve any of our challenges.
We're not going to solve everything with processes, right?
Processes are going to be a part of that, but it's going to be because we have people that are processes that help us refine, they help us optimize, they help us repeat, they help us scale, those kind of things.
But the magic that you bring, whether it's in a sale or a delivery or whatever it may be, a supporting call, I mean, there's no full script for how our support team goes and serves individuals.
They have processes, they're following, of course, but the magic is in our support techs, our people who are engaging with the people on the other side of the phone, the email, whatever it is, or in person in those cases where we're implementing and
whatnot, that is where the magic happens, ultimately. And I think, I don't think, maybe there's somebody that might disagree with me, you lean a little heavier on process, I get it. That's fine, we need all kinds to make the world go around.
I'm just, those that are struggling right now with maybe we're too stodgy, we can't move quickly enough, or those that are struggling with the process just changing, I don't know what to do.
This is what, I'm talking to you, I'm talking to me, I'm talking to all of us. Processes are important, but they are a piece of the puzzle that help us. They are not the main event.
The main event is you, it's me, it's us. We're an elite team, and we've got to rely on each other.
So that means reps, that means getting together and getting out there and working together, having those quick AARs, whether they're official AARs, or they're just, hey, what worked here? What can we do better?
That's how teams get better and better and better as a team. And so we've got a large team, which is all of us, but we have small teams, whether they're in various parts of our business. And fundamentally, the magic here is you.
We are an elite force. It is not in the process. It's not in the idea.
It's not in the software we have. It's not in the hardware we sell. Those things, they're all important.
Nobody could argue that they're not important. But what's magic is you. And I say that without puffery.
I say that without blowing something up, and I'm trying to blow smoke up your rear end. This is about what makes Mountain Leverage great, and it's about you.
And it's about then what we do together for our customers, for the market, for our partners, for the world at large. That's where this all comes down to. So it's so easy to get caught, and we got a process for that, or we just do the process.
And I'm not saying the ends justifies the means. I'm not saying we go and do silly things, of course. There's a cultural alignment with what we do, but we start fundamentally.
What is the outcome we're trying to achieve? You start with the end in mind, and then be good, be great. Go be great.
Go be great. We're elite. That's what we are.
And if you're not, hey, let's talk, let's talk. Why not? Why aren't you elite here?
What is keeping you from being elite? Is it a process? Is it personal?
Is it training? Is it organizational? It could be lots of reasons.
And if they're there, they're there. Let's address them head on. And then let's just go be elite.
The challenge is great coming to us right now. We created our own challenges in terms of building an organization that needs a certain number to be able to thrive. So that's a challenge.
And then the market provides its challenges, whether it's geopolitical with terrorists and all kinds of crazy trade wars and all that kind of stuff, economic forces, or just with what's going on with the market and what Honeywell's done with the
migration, and we got competitive insights, and the way the partner model is changing, and we're now going to accelerate that with what we're doing. All those things are going to be challenges that we're up against.
New technologies, whether it's robotics, right? All those are challenges, but they're also opportunities. But we aren't going to win those challenges or take advantage of those opportunities by adding a bunch of processes.
We're going to do it by us, by us being magical and taking the bull by the horns, if you will, or taking those moments to recognize that we're elite and we're an elite team, and not in an arrogant, you know, we're going to throw our weight around
kind of way. But believe in yourself, believe in us. And yes, let's build processes. Yes, let's try to follow the right procedure when we can and all those things, of course.
But we've got to recognize the moment we're in. We're not in a maintenance moment. That's not where we are.
We're in an entrepreneurial moment, and entrepreneurial moments require greatness, require moments, require decisions in the moment to make them with the outcome in mind and solving the problem at hand or taking advantage of the solution at our feet.
What does it mean to be elite? Well, you could spend, we could spend hours and hours and days going through all of the literature that's been written about what it means to be elite or great or whatever word you want to use that's a synonym there.
And so I'm not going to do that. I think what's important is understanding, you know, is elite just about performance? Is elite just about talent, hard work?
What is it? Well, it's all those things. But is it is it is there something more?
And I think for us and some of you probably know I know where I'm going with this. I do. I think being elite isn't just about being great at something.
It's also about where that greatness fits.
I mean, there's so many easy sports analogies, but even if we don't go there, I think, think about a concert pianist who's world class, you know, take them and put them in the middle of a construction site with jackhammers going and dust flying and
folks shouting back and forth what to do here and trucks driving by. Their skills suddenly feel completely out of place and not maybe not worthless, but certainly not elite in that moment.
A polar bear, for instance, I mean, those are some of the most feared animals in the world in terms of their ferocity and all that.
Well, you know, in the Arctic, you look out, but in the Sahara, you see them in the desert, a polar bear, that might be a different model, different situation.
And lastly, a cactus, man, they thrive in the desert, but you drop them in the rainforest, they're just not going to thrive, they're going to languish. And so excellence alone isn't enough.
I mean, you have, again, the obvious sports analogies, there's very few players that have ever played it at the highest of levels in like multiple sports.
So take like a Bo Jackson or a Deion Sanders, for that matter, who both played football and baseball at a very high level, at the highest levels. And that's not it doesn't happen very often.
So what typically happens is, you know, you're in your you're in your lane. I mean, you're in your sport, you're doing your thing.
But even even down a level from that, a great player can be can go from one team to another, and something doesn't click. Sometimes they end up being better. Sometimes they're about the same, but sometimes they don't.
And so it matters like what's the team chemistry, the culture there, the role, the expectations, all kinds of things play into that. And so it's not just about they didn't stop learning how to play the sport, just just their context changed.
And so I do think experience alone and excellence and skill and perseverance and all the things isn't that alone isn't enough. I think you got to be in the right context. And for us, that means being both high performing and aligned with our culture.
And that's where you hear fit and performance. And so we've talked about this a lot. This is not anything new necessarily.
But I want to kind of categorize a little bit differently. I was shared a post on LinkedIn that talked about what how they referenced their people in these spots. And I while I get the ethos of what the guy's saying and I get it.
I also I want to I want to put the Mountain Leverage spin on that that makes way more sense for us and fits with how I see things. And maybe it's how you see them as well, hopefully. And if not, that's fine.
We can talk about it. But when you look at any and one of us at any time, and the important thing to note is we do kind of move around on this thing.
But generally, you've got to you got four quadrants of and think about an X and Y axis and let's play in the upper right quadrant. And then let's break that into fours. So one one axis is performance and that's the Y axis.
So that'll be the up and down. Whereas the X axis will be fit. And the further up you are, the further out you are, the higher you are in either of those.
And so let's start in the very bottom left hand corner. You know, for someone who doesn't fit here and also isn't a high performer, that just we can't we just cannot suffer those employees.
So those folks just won't we got to make sure we don't hire them. And if it turns into that, we got to make sure, OK, this is a problem. Can we coach these people up and to the right?
Or are they really just not a fit here? And likely if they're way down in there, that's gonna be a real problem. If they're not fitting here, they don't get it culturally, and they're not performing, that's a drain on all of us.
It's a drain on our energy. It's a drain on our work product. It's a drain on our finances.
It's just it's killer. So we cannot afford to have anybody in that, I'm gonna call it that languisher quadrant. We just can't do it.
We're not, you know, large companies, you look at corporations, they could carry people like that all day long. They carry a high percentage of those folks. We can't.
That's not how we're built. Remember, that's where elite team, you know, you can't a SEAL team of six or eight can't roll in with three or four of their folks, you know, completely smoking and joking and not able to complete the mission.
They need high performance across the board, as do we. So the languisher quadrant is just one of those areas. We just can't, we can't suffer.
But then let's move to the upper left hand corner. So let's say performance has increased, but you still don't fit here. It's still a fight.
It's gnashing of teeth and all that. And I'm going to call that misaligned stars. Those are high performers, but they just don't fit in the culture.
Maybe they have the talent, the work ethic, all that, but they're out of sync. And the challenge with folks that are in that quadrant is that it makes it hard on the rest of us because there's just a lot of abrasion that's not necessarily needed.
Now, we love some creative abrasion, and we need to challenge one another. That's great. But it becomes a sled, we're constantly pushing, or an anchor constantly pulling that makes it very difficult for the rest of the organization.
And that is, it doesn't mean that person is bad, it doesn't mean that person is, you know, absolutely that person could be a schmuck, that could be part of it. They're just an a-hole, and they shouldn't be here. That's, of course, that's an easy one.
But it's also folks that maybe just, you know, when we talk about the examples above, you know, a cactus isn't terrible just because they're in the rainforest, they're in the wrong environment.
They're great, they're awesome, they do all kinds of awesome things in the right environment. And so this could be something that performs well, someone that performs well but just isn't fitting here.
And what happens over time, let's be frank, performance typically suffers because folks typically don't want to be in an environment they don't dig, they're not flourishing.
Maybe they don't get the support from their teammates, maybe their teammates are unable to support them well because they don't really know how to engage.
And so that's the challenge when someone is in that misaligned stars quadrant, that upper left quadrant where performance is high and culture is, and fit is low.
But now, let's traverse down to the bottom right on the far out where fit is very high, but performance isn't high. And I'm going to call those harmonizers.
So we've got languishers in that bottom left, we've got misaligned stars in the upper left, and then we've got on the bottom right harmonizers. These are folks that they're culturally aligned, but they're not quite at peak performance yet.
They get it, they get it here, but there's room for growth potentially. There's just not that level of execution needed. Maybe they're in the wrong role.
Maybe there's just a, maybe it's a new, maybe they're new in their career or new in their job, all kinds of things that that.
So this is an area where, you know, obviously we want to coach and champion one another so that they move up, you know, they move up in performance and they keep the fit. That's great.
The challenge here, and again, this is not because people aren't performing, it doesn't mean they're terrible. It doesn't mean they're not smart. It doesn't mean they're not awesome and all the things.
It could mean, again, it's a new role, it's a challenge, something's going on. You know what, sometimes something's going on in all of our lives where our performance suffers, and that's an ebb and flow of life as humans, and that's all part of it.
And so there's lots of things that could happen in this quadrant.
But where we get into trouble as a company is if we hold on to people in this quadrant who aren't trending upwards in terms of their performance, whether that's role shifting or it's skills or it's mindset or whatever, right?
Or personal situation, whatever it may be.
If we tolerate that, I guess, as a company, we can't carry very many people here either, because those folks will frustrate the high performers because they work with people they like, and they're like, oh, yeah, you're like me, you fit.
And they'll start running out into the battle. And that person, that harmonizer, can't really fight in the battle. And so we feel unsupported.
And it really rubs the high performers, those that are elite, it rubs them wrong and it wears them out. Maybe it doesn't just frustrate them, but it grinds us all. So we cannot tolerate languishers.
And we really struggle. We've got to coach and work hard to get misaligned stars aligned if they can. And likewise with harmonizers.
We've got to work to get to get that performance up there so that they can. Because it's sometimes easy for companies like ours to hang on to harmonizers because we like them. They fit, they say all the things, they're cool.
We look at them and say, hey, that's one of us. And then their performance doesn't measure up. And what happens in between is often they're gap creators.
We talked about that months and months ago. They can be gap creators that the rest of us are filling their gaps. And that's hard for the rest of us.
So harmonizers are folks, again, they're not bad people necessarily. I mean, they could be. They could be just sneaking around in here and do their thing.
I don't know. But generally, I don't think we got to deal with that. But we do have folks that might be aligned culturally, but just haven't found a way to produce at a high level, at an elite level.
And so anyway, so all right, so we've got we've got languishers at the top left. We've got misaligned stars. And then at the bottom right, we've got harmonizers.
And at the upper right, you might guess those are flourishers. Those are people who both are performing and fit in our culture. They're thriving.
They're flourishing. They're in their element and they're at their best. So, you know, when you look at this, I hope this makes sense to you.
It's about trends. You know, we're all kind of we all kind of move around. This is almost like looking at a Petri dish with bacteria.
Things are moving and whatever. You know, we're always moving on this quadrant. And I think we all want to move to the upper right.
I mean, if you don't want to move to the upper right, you're probably in either the languisher category or the miscellaned star. So if you're hearing this, you're like, I don't want to be a flourisher. Yeah, okay.
You probably want to consider something. But I think we all want to go there. But there's going to be things and challenges and seasons that make it hard at times, and I get that.
But generally, you know, you don't want to be a harmonizer or a miscellaned star. And certainly, you don't want to be a languisher. That's easy money.
But we want to be flourishers. And the more one of us, and here's the beauty of this, it's not just about you. I mean, it's about you.
That's great. It's about me. It's about whatever.
But it's not just about you. It's about all of us. And so the more of us that are flourishing, that's where that champions piece comes in.
We champion one another, and we flourish more.
So think about some of the things we're doing today, some of the projects you're working on, whatever it is you're doing, an initiative, a job, a role, a task, whatever it is, and you have to collaborate or work with somebody on our team.
And they're awesome. And when you're working with them and they're awesome, don't you want to be a little more awesome? Isn't the outcome a little more awesome?
Everything's a little more awesome. All of a sudden, their flourishment is helping you flourish, and your flourishment is helping their flourishment. And it just works like that.
So it's almost like a, it's almost like a, like not a black hole, that'd be terrible, like a flourishing hole. So the closer you get, it's like magnets.
It's like it's pulling you up into the right because there's more of us up there, more of us pulling. And so I, you know, this is important to me. So it's not just about, are you awesome?
Or it's not just about, do you get what's going on here? I mean, there are some folks that sit in that harmonizers that are here because they love our culture and they love what it does for them. And that's great.
We want them to have that, the goodies that come from this culture, but they might not be putting in enough work, enough high performance work to make it make sense. And so we're carrying them.
They're here for the Flourish Fridays, woohoo, you know, but what are they doing on Monday through Thursday? And the occasional Friday, or Saturday or Sunday, or whatever it takes.
You know, that's something, you don't hear me talk a lot about, but yeah, we create Flourish Fridays because we have a team of high performance people that would work every stinking day of the week and grind themselves into dust if we didn't.
And so these things we put together are not a perk to attract people who want to coast. These are things put together to protect the people that are here that want to go out and win, and they want to go out and be great.
And so that's how all this comes together. And so you're hearing this stuff, and you're like, I don't understand any of this. Well, we should probably talk.
If you're hearing this, you go, yeah, hell yeah, this is what we need to do. Then let's keep flourishing. Let's keep going to that upper right.
Let's find our way there. We're going to need to be, though, all the challenges that we've talked about at a time, all the challenges we're facing, we need to be elite as an organization, and we need each of us to be more and more elite.
We need us in that upper quadrant of flourishing.
So again, it's not about titles, it's not about role, it's not about all that stuff, it's not a permanent status, it's not something you are necessarily, I mean, you can be elite, it's something you maintain through continuous growth and through
constant reconsideration, and that's what we're learning and improving over time. Even the best athletes in the world have to train, have to adjust, have to improve, the game changes, the rules changes, their body changes, all kinds of things are
going on, their teammates change. So it's an ever-evolving thing. And so I guess, you know, to kind of close, I just ask, you know, maybe ask yourself, am I in the right context here to flourish, or am I putting in the work to stay elite?
You know, am I putting in that work to perform at the highest level? You know, how can I help my teammates thrive and flourish? So, yeah, I believe, look, I believe we have a team full of flourishers.
I do, I think we're well beyond, way, way, way beyond the industry average, if there was one that tracked this way. I do, I think some of us are growing into that space, either from the misaligned stars or the harmonizers categories.
I think some are trying to find their fit there. The key is alignment. You know, with our culture, our standards, our shared goals, all those things, it's alignment there.
And so, I don't know, are some of you stuck in the misaligned stars or the harmonizers? Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
I mean, we've got to have as many of us as we can, trending and growing towards that flourishing quadrant. So anyway, let's keep pushing. Let's keep pushing.
Let's keep going. Let's keep championing one another and striving to be elite, not just as individuals, but as a team. And ultimately, I see it every day.
I'm seeing more and more of it. And it's probably why you're hearing more of this of me. So if you're asking, why is he saying this today?
I'm not saying it because I, you know, I'm trying to motivate a bunch of people who I don't think are great. I'm saying it because I'm seeing some greatness. I'm seeing that coming together.
I'm seeing those moments, the spark, the things that make me excited about being at Mountain Leverage. I'm seeing that I'm seeing more and more and more of it. And, you know, I am I am seeing some exposures as well.
Some folks that might be in that, you know, misaligned stars or that harmonizing and maybe even in languishing, unfortunately, but it's more about I'm seeing the magic that's coming together.
And it's exciting me and it reminds me why we put this culture together, why we've continued to nurture it and grow it in this way. And it's easy to miss.
And so for those of us that are that are in this moment and are having this moment, I just thought, hey, let me explain through this.
This is more than just we're going to create a nice company that's fun and got a great culture and all that kind of stuff. We're going to go we're going to go knock, knock it out of the park.
And at the same time, we're not just going to go be high performers. We're going to do it in the right way. And we're going to do it where we we champion one another.
And we've created a unique culture that doesn't work for everybody. But if it works for you, look out, right, we're powerful together.
Alex Reneman is the founder of Mountain Leverage and Unleash Tygart and host of Flourishing w/ Alex Reneman. For 20+ years he has worked as CEO of Mountain Leverage, honing the concept of flourishing and experimenting with it in the business. In July of 2024, he decided to begin to share this idea with others, which led to his podcast, social content, and the plans for other initiatives in the future.
