Episode 831 - Failure Points

0:00You already know how AI is changing how everyday work gets done, how much ground you can cover, and how fast a team can scale. To stay ahead, you need the tools to give you a competitive advantage, built for this new era. Welcome to a Gentech Revenue. Adio is the CRM for this world. It meets you where you work. Compounds every customer signal into context, then acts on it across your pipeline to let you move it on match speed and scale. With agents and animations for every job in Revenue, Adio orchestrates your work around the clock, built to handle the scale of your workloads, extensible with API, and MCP, and with the infrastructure to keep up with your most ambitious agents. Loved by high growth startups like Granola, Modal, and Edget, Adio runs the work behind every win. That's Adio, the agent to CRM, the intelligent system that never sleeps. Picks up leads at 2 a.m. Catches renewals before they slip, hands you the answer before you ask. Try Adio free at adio.com slash iHeart. That's adio.com slash iHeart.

1:02The sales right there. Don't miss it. This holiday gives shoppers a flexible way to pay with PayPal pay later and turn them into regulars. Paypal open, built for all business. Get started at paypalopen.com. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads, so you can watch without Wi-Fi, background play, so you can lock your phone and it still plays baby. Oh, and it is completely ad free. Yes, I said it, ad free. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building and goal achieving. This is the seven minute leadership podcast with your host, Paul Falavelido.

2:08Hello, everyone and welcome to the seven minute leadership podcast. It's episode 831. Today we're talking about something every organization has, whether the leader knows it or not. And that's failure points. A failure point is a place inside your operation where one small problem can create a much bigger problem. It might be a person, a piece of equipment, process, everybody assumes works. A policy nobody follows anymore. It could be a vendor, a password, a key, a computer, a phone number, a delivery schedule, a piece of paperwork or some tiny step in a process that nobody has thought about in five years. And here's what makes failure points dangerous. And look perfectly fine right up until the moment they fail. That's why leaders can't wait for failure to identify them. You have to go looking for them.

3:08I want you to think differently about your organization after listening to this episode. I want you to physically walk through your operation and look at everything through the eyes of failure. Instead of asking, is this working? Ask what happens if this stops working? That question will change what you see. Let's say you walk into your office tomorrow morning, start at the front door. How do employees get inside a key, a keypad, a badge, electronic access system? Now ask the failure point question. What happens if the electronic access system goes down? Who has a physical key? Who knows where it is? What happens at 5.30 in the morning when nobody for management is there? You found a potential failure point before you even walk through the door. But keep walking. You get to the front desk. There's a computer sitting there. What happens if it dies? Can someone work from another computer or the file stored locally?

4:11Does somebody know the password? Is there a backup process? And now walk into your operational area. There's a piece of equipment your people use every day. What happens if it breaks? Do you have another one? Can the operation continue without it? Who knows how to fix it? How long would replacement take? You are now doing something I wish more leaders did. You're hunting for organizational vulnerability while everything is still working. That's leadership because the worst time to discover your backup plan doesn't work is when you need your backup plan. And don't limit this exercise to equipment. People can be failure points too. Think about the person in your organization who knows how to do something. Nobody else knows how to do. Maybe Susan handles payroll. Susan has been doing payroll for 12 years. Everybody loves Susan. Susan knows every password, every exception, every weird rule, every deadline,

5:15and every workaround. Awesome. Now Susan goes on vacation. Who does payroll? You have silence. You also have a failure point. Your problem isn't Susan. Your problem is that 12 years of operational knowledge is living inside Susan's head. What happens if she retires? What happens if she resigns? What happens if she becomes unexpectedly unavailable? If the answer is worse screwed? Congratulations. You found something that needs attention. Document the process. Cross train someone. Build redundancy. Now keep walking. Look at your supply room. Pick something your operation absolutely needs. What happens if you can't get it next week? Do you have enough? Is there another supplier? Does your purchasing person even know who that supplier is? What happens if your main vendor suddenly tells you the item is backordered for six weeks?

6:17Again, we're not predicting disaster where identifying dependency. Dependency without redundancy creates failure points. Now, go walk through your communication system. How does important information move? Email, text, software, meetings, radio? What happens when one of those disappears? If your entire operation depends on one communication platform, you need to know what happens when that platform isn't available. Here's another area I want you to inspect carefully. Your procedures. There are organizations everywhere with beautiful policies sitting in binders that have almost nothing to do with how work actually gets done. The policy says one thing the employees developed a shortcut. The shortcut became normal. Nobody questioned it. Eventually the shortcut became the unofficial process.

7:17That's a failure point waiting for the right circumstances. So while you're walking around, don't ask employees, do you follow this procedure? You'll get the answer you expect. Ask them, show me how you do this. Those words are incredibly powerful. Show me. Watch the process from beginning to end. Don't interrupt them. Don't correct them halfway through. Just observe. You may discover five unnecessary steps. You may discover an important step that disappeared years ago. You may find somebody created a better way of doing something in management never knew about it. You may also discover that your official procedure doesn't work in the real world anymore. That's valuable information. Now, here's another technique. Walk backward. Take an important outcome in your organization and trace it backward to the beginning.

8:19Let's say your company delivers a product to a customer. Start with the customer receiving it. What had to happen immediately before that? And then before that. And then before that. And keep moving backward until you reach the beginning at every stage. Ask what could prevent this from happening? That's your failure point map. You can do this with payroll, hiring, customer service, scheduling, billing, manufacturing, inventory, emergency operations, IT, and even training. Whatever matters to your organization. And I want leaders listening today to pay special attention to phrases you hear during this exercise. You will hear we've always done it this way or only Mike knows how to do that or I think there's a backup. Nobody really uses that anymore. We haven't tested that in years. I don't know who handles that. Every one of those statements should make your leadership antenna go up because you're standing next to a possible failure point.

9:28So here's the actionable part. Schedule a failure point. Walk. Put 30 minutes on your calendar. Pick one section of your organization. Walk it slowly. Look at equipment. Watch people work. Open cabinets. Look at processes. Ask questions. Follow the flow of work. Then write down anything where the loss of one person, one piece of equipment, one supplier, one process, or one system could significantly disrupt your operation. Don't try to fix everything during the walk. Find it first and then prioritize what you discovered. Ask yourself which failure would hurt the organization the most. That's where your attention goes. Some fixes may cost money. Some won't cost anything. Cross training and employee may solve one, writing down a procedure, may solve another, creating a secondary vendor relationship could eliminate another. Testing a backup system might expose a problem you didn't even know existed. And sometimes the answer is replacing something before it breaks.

10:36Leaders love preventative maintenance when we're talking about machines. We need the same mindset with organizations because organizations give warning signs to the process that only works because one employee babysits it. The piece of equipment everyone knows is getting unreliable. The software nobody fully understands the policy that hasn't been reviewed in years. The vendor you're completely dependent on the password known by only one person. The work around everyone quietly uses those are all organization a warning lights pay attention to them. Great leaders don't spend their careers running from emergency to emergency. They develop an eye for what could become an emergency. They walk around. They ask questions they test assumptions they look behind the curtains. They find weak spots while those weak spots are still inexpensive and easy to repair because failure usually looks obvious afterward.

11:37Someone always says we should have seen that coming. Maybe you could have. So here's your leadership assignment before this week is over. Take one failure point walk through your organization pick one operation. Start at the beginning and follow it all the way through ask what happens when something disappears breaks quits gets delayed becomes unavailable or doesn't show up right down what you find then fix the most dangerous vulnerable. So don't wait for your organization to teach you where it's failed your points are go find them. Leadership isn't only about responding well when something goes wrong leadership is seeing the loose bolt before the wheel comes off walk your organization look closer ask better questions and find the weak spots nobody is talking about because the cheapest failure you'll ever ever manage is the one you just prevented.

12:49This has been the seven minute leadership podcast and I thank you for listening for more Paul fall of Alito podcasts visit Paul fall of Alito dot com. You already know how AI is changing how every day work gets done how much ground you can cover and how fast a team can scale stay ahead you need tools to give you a competitive advantage built for this new era welcome to a gentick revenue adio is the CRM for this world it meets you where you work compounds every customer signal into context an ax on the wall. You can't just let you move it across your pipeline to let you move it on match speed and scale with agents and animations for every job in revenue adio orchestrates your work around the clock built to handle the scale of your workloads extensible with API and mcp and with the infrastructure to keep up with your most ambitious agents loved by high growth startups like granola modal and etched adio runs the work behind every win that's adio the agent to CRM the intelligence system that never sleeps picks up leads at 2 a.m. catches renewals before they slip. Hands you the answer before you ask try adio free at adio dot com slash I heart that's adio dot com slash I heart.

14:01Hey, this is Anthony from Raiders of the lost podcast with movies the actors get all the buzz but nothing happens without the crew behind the scenes that's how it is with guy co their your support system behind the scenes from finding you savings to handling your claim quickly. And you probably don't even think about it you know what that's called peace of mind so here's to the gaffers key grips in yes guy co behind the scenes taking care of all the hard stuff so you have the confidence to keep moving learn more at guy co dot com. What if you could have even more and more and more help to pursue your goals at LPL financial we offer more ways for advisors and their clients to thrive. So what if you could pay to advertise investing vaults risk including potential as a principle LPL financial LLC member finner s IPC. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu whether you're craving a big Mac McNuggets or sausage egg and cheese McGrittle's make it a meal and save your favorite is now your wallet's favorite to extra value meals are back.

15:03Get a big something extra with a big Mac or 10 piece McNuggets fries and a medium coke all for just $9 limited time only promotion pricing maybe lower than meal pricing. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer it's one of the many new drinks out now who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire. Try them all only at McDonald's.