Welcome to a special episode of the Hacking Leadership Podcast. I'm your host Lorenzo Flores, and today we're thrilled to have a very special guest with us Stoyan Jankov, the acclaimed host of the Productivity Mastery podcast and co author of The un Sexy Truth about Startup Success. In this episode, we will dive deep into Stoyan's unique perform acronym, which stands for purpose and values, effective planning,
roles and responsibilities, focus and execution, optimal energy, robust communication and mental toughness. Thanks to Stoyan for the time and without further ado, let's start the episode. So my background is finance, even if it's hard to believe. I did study a bachelor and a master in finance, but I
ended up into the movie. In this treaty, I became a movie producer and I started my own video production company in Denmark run out for five years, and then I moved to the area of what I do today working with teams and the being the more the vehicle for teams to come together and to find and identify the gaps of what stands on the way of their performance, and hopefully I share some good strategies here and there, but at the end of the day, I'm just a tool for people to come and have the
real conversations. Yeah, I love that. I think, you know, being someone who spends a lot of time kind of in that space of whether it's the connection point or it's the part of kind of being a vehicle element of how you move somebody from one space to another in their career, in
their life, in their mindset. I think it's so critical, and I love that you have a completely different, unique background and from some spaces that we don't typically hear a lot about when it comes to the leadership space, but I think that's so important because I will always say that regardless of industry, like pretty much everywhere you go, it's always the people business, you know, and especially when you're when you're asked to lead people or influence people
or bring people along. So much of that is based upon relationships. It's based upon trust, it's based upon integrity, and you learn a lot about people, but you also learn a lot about yourself. So I want to jump right into what I thought was a phenomenal, really cool acronym and Chris and I are huge acronym guys on hacking leadership. People give us the feedback all the time. We love them because it's just easy to kind of break
apart, easy to follow. But I really really enjoyed kind of not only seeing it, reading it, but when the first time we connect, you kind of broke it down a little bit for me as far as how it got here. But this acronym perform, I guess first I'd love to start with, like where did this come from? And kind of how did you land on this kind of being a thing that you wanted to go after.
So I'd been doing workshops, keeping notes, trainings for quite some time before we developed the acronym and developed the framework, and I guess I've been missing something to put a little bit of structure around it, because I'll teach all these topics, but it was difficult to remember, difficult, difficult for leaders to follow, and uh, gotta be honest, I mean mainly came from me having a cup of coffee with myself at a Starbucks coffee at a Starbucks
coffee shop. I just I was trying to make sense of things and put together the framework and it kind of made sense because I've been teaching it for years all the topics around it. So perform stands for P for purpose and values E for effective planning. Our rules and responsibilities have focused on execution or optimal energy, second R robust communication, and and for mental toughness. I
love that. I love it, and I kind of want to break it down a little bit more even because I think that you know, each one of these means a lot to everyone, and I think that the ability to not only know what they are, but to understand in your mind, like how do these actually come to life for people? So let's just start with the P, right So let let's let's start there, like when you want to expand on the expand on the P for me and then tell me a
little bit about like what that means to you. Right? So peace stands for a purpose and values and purpose is the bigger mission the calls the purpose. Why do we do what we do? What is the kind of impact we want to make as a company? And it doesn't matter if you're a small startup for people or if you're a large organization multinational organization, why do you do what you do? Are you able as a leader to articulate the
why across the different levels of the organization. Are people excited about this mission and this purpose? Do they care? Do you have this as an element in the recruitment process as well, like do we want to attract people that care about what we do? Right? So that's that's the why, that's the purpose. And values of course, the principles how do we show up? How do we act? Values is about the how? Now what do
we do? What do we prioritize when we're making decisions? I mean, you know you you and Apple right, like, you know you guys have actually been using you as an examples sometimes with the values, like the different kind of values and the order of priority of how we make decisions. Do we have just a set of values that are kind of written down and an HR department is using it for the ads, you know, job ads? Or does it actually mean something? Is the leadership taking the time to to
articulate across the organization what these values mean? Are we on the same page when it comes to the values, and Yeah, that's that's how we define this. And it sounds like a fluffy and soft thing. It is one of the that's why it's also the first letter because it's the fundamental Yeah, I love that. You know. The biggest thing to me that you said and I completely agree with, is like, how do you move something that's a purpose and values from the macro to the micro? How do you localize
that? And I think that's such an important part from a leadership standpoint of not only how do you communicate not just what the values of the purpose is. Like it's very easy to read a vision statement, a manifesto, whatever you want to call it, and say this is who we are and what we stand for as a company. But what it really comes down to is how do your leaders act? How are you bringing the purpose and values to
life every single day? Not just saying this is our values. I can tell you that our values are that we want to treat people with kindness and respect. But if I don't treat you with kindness and respect every day, I'm not living those values. That's just words on a wall. And so I think that I love that you started there. It makes so much sense to me. And I think if people and if teams don't understand, then
we owe it to them to help them understand what they are. But more importantly, if we really want to build this culture that we want here, we have to live those values in our everyday behaviors, and then we have to push up against those values and purposes when we're in those times when it's a tough decision to make, and that's really when those things really shine. So I love that you share that. Let's jump into the e effective planning? Effective planning? So how do we plan? How do we set KPIs?
What is the kind of go setting systems that we agreed to follow. Is everybody on the same page? Where are we going? Are people clear what their priority should be? Individual in the company? Which is something as a trainer, as a corporate coach. This is one of the things employees complain closed about. The leadership isn't clear enough what my priority should be? So how do we set goes? How do we identify and delegate priorities two people? And also as leaders, do we take the time to coach our
people to be better in their own time management? Which, getting back to your point, I need to be extremely good with my own time management. Otherwise why should I go and tell my people, Hey, you need to be a master of your own time. If I'm not really good at that, If I don't take the time and I gotta tell you Losso there's so many leaders that come with the same sentence stoy on, Oh these tools, Oh this idea is amazing. Love your stuff, But I don't have time
to plan my time. I'm just so busy, you know, there's so much to do, Like you don't understand that. I'm always like, really,
you don't have time to plan your time. Maybe you haven't prioritized time for planning, so now you have no time for anything, and you're just going all around the place being reactive as opposed to proactively moving the needle in the direction you gotta move it. So if there's one thing they need to get the audience needs to get from from this conversation, I would say, you have to blog time in your calendar for planning on a daily basis twenty
to thirty minutes. Put it in your calendar, create a meeting with yourself and Google calendar or you know, iCal whatever you're using, and just say or die management. And then you sit with yourself and you start reflecting what did I produce today as a leader, What did my team produce? Was the progress? Was the challenges? And then looking towards the next day. Then you look at the goals, the priorities, the objectives. How do
I get the most out of my day? How do I remove these obstacles for my team to get the most out of their day because I'm the leader and I got to coach them to get the most out of their time. So this is the area of perfective planning. Yeah. No, I love that because I had a mentor of mind show with me a long time. They said leaders vote with their time. So like, wherever you spend your
time is what you're showing your people that you prioritize. And when you have an effective planning element, it shows people that you intentionally plan your time and you prioritize the spaces and the places that you need to be. So I love that. And then you kind of touched on this a little bit, which kind of swings us right into the r which is like, now that you've kind of got a great vision and purpose is you you're really intentional with
how and where you spend your time. Now it's time to kind of define what are the roles and responsibilities that each of us have, both as a leader but also the people. So I love for you to kind of dig into that a little bit as well. And by the way, roles and responsibilities. We only came up with this area initially because we needed to make Jacrobin work the other areas. All the other we're clearly defined. It's like, okay, when you get the second R roles and responsibility, that makes
sense, But why do we need that? People should be clear on that? That was the initial you know, idea. Then we started doing workshops and we started getting the best grades, the best feedback on rolls and responsibilities. Maybe there's something here because you know, everybody has a title. Also, everybody has a title. Right, I'm the chief marketing officer, I'm the head of it. Really okay, so what do you do? What
are your responsibilities? Are you clear? What's the what's the different responsibilities that you're the last person in command? And is everybody from your team clear? What is within your responsibilities? Right? And where is the decision making power for everybody? Right? Hey, Maria and Michael and Georgia are working on this marketing campaign. Okay, who's the one that's accountable? So many organizations never take the time because they're busy to talk about these kind of things and
talking about roles and responsibilities And I love your podcast. I said it already, but but you guys talk a lot about that is about taking the time, making the time to get to know your people, to make a development plan. Right, where would you like to develop? What are the kinds of areas that you're not just good at like we want to we want to focus on your strengths. Don't get me wrong, But what are some of
the things that you love to do. There's a simple exercise in the book Perform The un Sexy Truth about Startups says there's a simple exercise mapping your responsibilities. You can do it, very simple. You just open a spreadsheet, okay, and then you write all the different commitments responsibilities that you might potentially
do. And like a traffic light, right, you put the green, you put the amber, you put the red, right green, all the things that you love to do. You're excited to do it, amber or yellow whatever, it's kind of okay, right, it's not so good. I don't really care, but it doesn't really bother me. And then red, these are the things I hate to do. You still might be really really good at it. I'm exceptionally in producing movies, was organizing producing project
management. I don't really enjoy it anymore. Right, But if I don't tell my team, if my leader, my manager doesn't ask me, They'll keep on giving me more of these things, and I'm gonna do things that I don't like to do, and eventually at some point I might quit because
I didn't have the real conversations. How about we shift a little bit of the culture and start being more proactive into understanding our people, what motivates them, and allocating tasks and projects, creating clarity for people everybody knows who's the decision maker, but also giving and delegating tasks that they're not only good at, they love to do them. M Yeah, I love that. I think the people passion piece is so important when you're thinking about having an effective
culture that progresses and moves forward. I think that's where a lot of times people can get assigned a role or a job and they could be good. They can have skill in that thing, and they can do a really good
job. When people have a passion for what they do and you can find the things that the sparks joy within them and they really enjoy doing this part of the job, and they start to think about your team differently, and how do you make sure that they accomplish that things that are responsible for, but then they also have the things that they really love and that just give
them that spark. They put so much time and effort into it. And so I love that you kind of broke that down and not just the roles of responsibilities of just the title of what the job is that somebody has, but also the roles and responsibilities that we have as leaders to place our people into spaces that give them some of that that room to really kind of go
out there and push themselves to acceed. And and I love that, and I think that that then naturally cascades down into now that you have purpose and values, You've been really clear about how you spend your time, You've defined the roles of responsibilities everyone. Now we can get to work, which gets us into focus and execution. So I know that's a These are very like terms that everybody knows, Like you're kind of like how deep can you go
on these things? But they matter a lot when it comes to this idea of culture. So please dive into focus and execution for me. So I want to use a quote from a friend of mine, the founder of closed dot com, stell e ft I interviewed him on the for the book and he shared with me, my biggest productivity tool is saying no. It's so easy to get distracted these days. Laws though right there's so many things we could do, we might be able to do. So how do we remain
focused? Right? Effective planning is about defining the goals, but then how do we stay focused on what matters most. When we talk about focus and execution, we often touch upon the what we like to call the five villains of focus and execution and how to avoid them. So the first one is lack of clear priorities. Then you have the shiny object syndrome many of us
can identify with that. Then procrastination, multitasking, and perfectionism. So it's all about how do we create a culture where we remain focused on the vital few things that matter most at this very moment. And just to give another something really tangible for those of you who are listening, maybe you want to try doing that. If you're an employee or if you manage your entrepreneur doesn't matter. Just sit down, have a look at your goals and try to
write down what are your top three priorities at the moment. And when I said priorities, it might be activities that you do in the company. Let's say your in sales. Prospecting could be one. It could be sending offers, could be closing deals. Okay, maybe this is the top three priorities for you? Great? What percentage of your time goes towards making a progress on these top three priorities? And be honest, you know five, ten, twenty, All right, fine, doing a little bit of accounting.
Now how much of my time do I want to focus on these core priorities for me? Well, I don't know fifty eighty percent. Every company is different, every row is different. But where do you want to be? And then just ask yourself, where is my time going right now? How can I start moving towards this? Should I stop doing some things? Should I delegate? What do I do so I can commit my energy and time doing things that matter most? That's that's all about focus and execution, and
then to speed of execution. We are procrastinating so much right and often they're connected. You're not clear what you should be doing, so you procrastinate because you don't know where to start, right, But how do we create a culture where people are clear what their priorities are, they have the right productivity habits right, simple stuff time blocking right, everybody learns time block. Hey, from nine to ten thirty, I'm going to spend an hour and a
half with myself writing two pages of my future book. Okay, you fully clear on what is the objective? You set time, you scheduled it in your calendar, and then it's easier to follow through. Yeah, you know. I love and for our listeners, they know, like you just gave a great one minute hack, which is kind of get your pen and paper
out, write these things down and go do these things. And I love that because that's such an important part of this is that you know the application of these theories and these ideas really as you kind of go through them and boil them down, there's action items here that you can really do that will help to self reflect, to consider yourself, to consider your time, how
and where you spend it. And that's so critical. And I love that because I think that those are the things that we can say things like focus and execution, but what do we really mean? And then how do we create focus? And then how do we make sure that we're executing on the plan and that we have places in milestones to check in on and validation and
those types of things. So I love that piece of it. And then this flows right into the next thing, of course, and this is I'm a huge fan of this because I'm a big believer in people and leaders either you know, they bring energy into the room or they take energy out of a room. Right, there are a lot of leaders that sit in the
middle where you don't even know they entered the room. Okay, fine, right, not my style, passive, right, the type of thing, but it's such an important thing that when it comes to again establishing culture, establishing inspiration, having a leadership where you've got a positive kind of command skill when it comes to the rooms that you enter. But you talk about this
as the O inoptimal energy. So break that down for us, optimum energy the well being a few and your people creating an environment that is supportive of the mental, physical emotionals pretty so well being if everybody involved. That's pretty much about it. And again we come down to the un sexist truth, right, Like the subtitle of the book is the on sexy truth about startup success, because we know, we all know these things, but it's not
about what we know. I think there was a survey that that showed that I think several years ago, sixty one percent of American doctors are either overweight or abests. These are the people that tell you you have to eat you vegetables, you have to you know, exercise and those kind of things. So in the section of optimal energy, we broke down you know a lot
of frameworks. There's another framework energy, which stands for exercise, nutrition, excitement, our relationships, g for good sleep, and why for you time, time for yourself. So we try to kind of simplify and emphasize on what are the kind of areas or habits that you want to build in order to be at the top of your energy. Again, we can't do the work for you, but at least you can evaluate yourself from one to ten in each of the areas of the energy framework. How are you doing recently?
How have you been doing? You know, do you have to prioritize a little bit of sleep or do you have to spend more time in the gym? Do you have to spend more time with inspiring and empowering people. You know, your relationships. So energy is all about how do I feel? But but again, you got to be the leader that leads by example, you know, and create a culture. We have these things that prioritize. Let me give you one simple example, by the way, to anybody.
We started this little process, this strategy weekly weekly co with my team. I have a small remote team, five to ten people currently, and we came up with this personal development hour. So every week we'll spend an hour, hour and a half where one person from the team is going to present something connected to our personal development, you know, journaling, time management, meditation, like all things that will support you and your energy. And
this is the best time of the week. Everybody is so excited. Everybody joins. I'm actually positively surprised. I don't nobody wanted to join. Right, it's company time. I'm paying for it, right. I want people to show up and want people to share strategies how to how to feel better. I care about my people, you know. So if more leaders spend the time to care about their people, to coach them, and to provide them with an environment in which they can grow, they can feel well and
they can pay more attention to their energy. They're well being, and of course they will perform better, there's no way off. I love it, and I love the fact that my initial thought around energy was the impact the leader has when it comes to the energy you bring into a room. But what you're talking about is the actual physical elements of you having energy in general, and being able to be healthy and being able to have the time to
reflect and that type of thing. So again, it's just a it's a great reminder that even when we use common language in leadership and leadership theory, we could have completely different definitions of how we initially see the words. And that's why it matters that we that we talk about this. That's why it matters that we we find alignment and we discuss what our ideas are, because if we both go into this dialogue thinking energy means to different things and I'm
like, what is he talking about? And You're like, what are you talking about? Right, we kind of have to say, like, no, let's let's align on what the definition of the word is to then be able to have the acronym comes in, which rolls right into the next thing, which is robust communication. So let's talk a little bit about the importance of communication. Do you have three weeks? Yeah? Yes, this is
the topic that we can write ten books about. It's not going to be enough, right, But I want to use a metaphor that I learned from a Hollywood cinematographer who was in my podcast. His name is Shane Herbert, and we spoke about leadership and how how is he productive as a dop director of photography And he shot the Terminator Salvation, he shot Need for Speed Wow, I mean many blockbusters, and he had two hundred and fifty people in
the camera department only Terminator. So we talk about leadership and I'm like, well, what are your challenges as a leader as the director of photography. He talked about it. He said, so, my biggest challenge as leader is to make sure that every person from my team is making the same movie wow, instead of everybody making their own movies. I'm like, what a great metaphor. Man Like it is the marketing department and the sales department and
the operations are they making the same movie? Like? We all know this. So many challenges, especially in a bigger organization, to communicate internally. By the way, robust communication, we're focusing entirely on the internal communication. What systems do we have, how frequently do we have meetings? How effective are our meetings? Right? How often do we provide each other feedback? Not just top down, but the other way around as well. And this
is one of the biggest challenges for leaders. I'm still trying to nail it myself, and knowhthough I'm putting a lot of effort. It's how do I create a safe space for the people that I manage to not be afraid to tell me the truth? In the f stoyan last week from this meeting with the client, you are talking too much and we lost the client. You need to shut up and ask more questions for example, right, right? But but I want them not to be afraid. I want them to and
this is this is what we want as leaders. How do we create such a space where people communicate efficiently like through the you have the right software, you have the right systems, you have the right structures. And by structure, I also mean how often do we do certain things? How often do we communicate verbally versus you know, in a written shape and form. How
often do we have strategy meetings and what do they include? And team of sites and how do we make them productive all these kind of things so we can improve and have a better communication. Yeah, I love that, and it's it's it's so important because see your point about the movie and the director
thing is like you all have the same client. We're trying to close the same clients toy on right, So like let's let's make sure that we're showing up and that we're all playing our parts to give the best experience possible to close it. I love that. And then finally them here we are mental
toughness. I'm really excited to learn a little bit more about this because this is something when we think about right now the workforce and mental health and how we think and how we spend time in our own heads and how do we stay committed, persevere grit. These are all things that have to do with the kind of being in our heads and being focused on making sure that we can work through the difficulties that we, of course are going to see.
But I'd love for you to kind of break us into mental toughness. Mental toughness is our capability to deal with stressors. What do we do when things don't go by plan? How do we show up. How do we stay with a cool head when everything is burning and lead our teams? And not only we stay cool, right, but we effectively keep the emotional temperature of our team at a good place. Right. I had had a great conversation with a very successful founder. Her name is Caddy Russell left, the founder
of Thunderbeam, a scale up from Estonia. She used to be the CEO of the Italian Stock Exchange, and she shared with me this story. She told me, as a as a leader, you're the CMO, the chief motivation Officer. I don't care what leader you are. That's part of your role, that's part of your job. And she shared with me this story. Also she was like when she was working in the stock Exchange, she woke up one morning and she just slept on the wrong side of the bed.
It was bad weather. She's been to Estonia from but no, and then she she you know, she was in traffic. She goes to work and her office is at the end of the corridor, so she's just grumpily walking towards her office. She gets some coffee and fifteen minutes later she got she got a visit from the head of HR Kidi what's wrong? Nothing. I just didn't get my coffee yet. The traffic was terrible. Everything is good, okay? Because I had three people that knocked on my office and
asked me what is happening? What is going on? Is somebody getting fired? There's a bigger company. Why is kiding like that? And for her that was a wake up call. I don't care how I feel. I don't have the luxury to show up with an attitude. I gotta lead, right. It doesn't mean when everything is burning, you go and say, yeah, you know, everything is fine, don't worry, No, you got you gotta. You gotta honestly communicate with people. But it has to
come from a place of strength. So how do we build build up this resilience as leaders? And how do we support our people so they can be more resilient so we are resilient as a team. That's the area of men, the toughness. Yeah, no, I love that and I love that example. And you know a lot of times with our podcast, we are asked like where do we get inspiration from or how do we get content that we want to talk about? And you said something that I just wrote down.
He said, the emotional temperature of the team. So I'm taking that away as a note. So you heard it here first. Everyone. This is an exact example of when somebody says something that I'm like, that's interesting. Let me dig into that, let me get my thoughts on that.
What does that mean? How does that show up in leadership? So do not be surprised, and I will give you the credit story on and whatever this shows up, whether it's an art, whether it's a podcast episode or a newsletter for LinkedIn, You're going to hear this terminology about the emotional temperature of the team. And I'm going to give you the credit for that because
I really appreciate that. I just want to say it's not mine. I think we're just passing it on to be I interviewed this lady, an amazing author and strategy consultant. You should get her on the show grat. Her name is Richla ma Grt. She's a professor in Columbia Business cool and I heard it from her, but she was quoting somebody. All right, all right, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna find the cascading of where we got the quote from, and then how this is cascaded through the theory.
But I love that this is what this is all about. This is all about I think sometimes, you know, one of the reasons why I love listening to leadership podcasts talking to other people that are in leadership theory stuff is because there's so many times that there's there's a way that somebody describes something or a phrase or a word that you're like, That's what I've been thinking the whole time, but I've never been able to assign something to it or be
able to make it such a clear message. And so like, this is one of those for me. We're like, you know what, I know exactly what that means, but I've never had a chance to really express that. So I'm gonna dig deep. So I will make sure that we pay forward all the credit to the cascading of this idea. Happy to be the messenger. Man, I'm actually including the same phrase in my upcoming book. So hey, I love it. Let's let's do it. Let's blow it
up. Let's blow it up. So astoyan, thank you. I want to cap real quick, so the perform acronym and again, this is it's been a gem of a show. If you're not taking notes, like I am, and I'm sure story is like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm writing stuff down, I'm typing because I really like a lot of the content in the show. Go back and listen to it, pause, check it out. But for the recap, So the perform acronym P is purpose and values. E is effective planning, ours, roles and
responsibilities, F as folks and execution. OH is optimal energy. R is robust communication, and M is mental toughness. Again, thank you so much for sharing story on any last minute words you want to share, Maybe a couple of places people can find you, website, social media, that type of fun stuff. Absolutely, just want to wrap up with the performance. The knowlogy well again, you guys know this stuff. Everybody knows this areas. But the cool question is how well are you doing in each of these
areas? One simple exercise we do and we motervate for teams to do, but you can do it yourself. Once you explain your team what these areas means. You give them a piece of paper and you say, I want you to assess how are we doing as a team in each of these areas from one to ten? How are we doing in purpose and betters, how are we doing in effective planning? Be honest, just just write the numbers down and then you compare the numbers and you talk about it and you'll be
amazed. I did it once with my team. I do it quite often, but once I did it, and I remember one of my interests was like, you know, we were sharing on effective planning and my INTERNT goes and it is like, I think it's a four. Oh, the productivity coach gets a four. But it was like, it wasn't that we were not really planned. Ugh, it was that we were not really communicating with her what the plan is. So you find all of those gaps and then
the point is, let's be honest and let's let's be practical. What do we want to change? What exact specific things are we going to do so we can perform better sustainably from here on. So just to wrap up with this with the perform methodology. But where can you find me? Get in touch on LinkedIn, stoy and you can find my name. You can type it, uh, you know you can. You can go and find my
podcast Productivity Mastery. I'm so looking forward to host LOSO listening to leadership advice from leaders like the founder of Free Book, the president, the former president Starbucks, Unicorn founders, amazing leaders like Loso. So yeah, you can go and get a copy of the book if you if you like what you hear, and if you think that could be useful in practical perform the sexy
through the both startup success. But in any case, drop a note on LinkedIn say hello, let me know if anything I can support you with. And final final make sure to subscribe to Hacking your Leadership. You're gonna thank me later. It's a great podcast. If you haven't subscribed yet, do subscribe, Share this episode with a friend and let's keep performing. Absolutely, thank you Stoyan. I appreciate it, and same to all of you.
Please go right now and check out the Productivity Mastery podcast with stoy On again. It's amazing, amazing content. Highly recommend it at Hacking your Leadership and I think it's just something that's going to help you continue your own leadership journey. So and with that, we hope you all have a wonderful day and we'll talk to you all next time.