Are you and your team slowing growth by overthinking every decision? In this episode, Shannon Waller shares practical frameworks to speed up decision-making without sacrificing wisdom. Learn how to use the 40-70 rule, distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 decisions, and free your team to move faster with confidence.

Download Episode Transcript

Show Notes:

• Most entrepreneurial companies lose momentum, not from bad decisions, but from decisions that take far too long.
• The speed of your decision-making sets the speed of execution for your entire company.
• People tend to make every decision using their own natural configuration rather than matching the strategy to the size of the decision.
• Visionaries often prefer to move fast with minimal information, while expert team members prefer deeper research and detail.
• Treating every decision like a high-stakes, irreversible choice creates friction, bottlenecks, and frustration on all sides.
• The 40-70 rule gives you a practical “good enough” guideline so decisions don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis.
• Less than 40 percent of the information is usually guessing, while more than 70 percent is usually slowing you down.
• Jeff Bezos’s Type 1 and Type 2 decision model helps you match the level of analysis to the real risk of the decision.
• A Type 1 decision is high-stakes and hard to reverse, so it deserves more time, research, and perspectives.
• A Type 2 decision is reversible and more experimental, so it should be made quickly so you can learn and adjust.
• Asking “Can I undo this later?” is a simple filter that keeps you from overbuilding analysis around reversible decisions.
• You can use dollar amounts or impact thresholds to predefine what counts as a Type 1 versus a Type 2 decision in your company.
• When leaders treat everything as a Type 1 decision, teams learn to escalate instead of taking ownership.
• Giving explicit permission for Type 2 decisions frees your team to act rather than waiting for you to approve every move.
• Many team members will not “ask for forgiveness later” unless you first give them permission and clear boundaries.
• Tools like The Experience Transformer® turn every decision, good or bad, into a structured learning opportunity.
• When people only follow instructions, they don’t build real decision-making capability or take full responsibility for outcomes.
• You can coach your team by asking what happens if we go in each direction, rather than just answering the question for them.
• Over time, routing all decisions through a small group at the top builds bureaucracy and slows down innovation.
• Protecting agility means designing decision frameworks that keep power and problem solving as close to the front line as possible.
• Entrepreneurial companies win by making small, reversible decisions quickly and iterating based on real feedback.
• Clear decision rules create confidence for you and your team, which leads to faster action and better learning.

Resources:

Transforming Experiences Into Multipliers
Kolbe A™ Index
PRINT®

Are you treating your Strategic Assistant® like a task-taker or as a true support partner? In this episode, Shannon Waller shares seven practical ways to build a stronger working relationship so you can save time, reduce friction, and create more ease in your day-to-day business.

Download Episode Transcript

Show Notes:

• Your Strategic Assistant is not there simply to take orders but to help manage the moving parts of your business and life.
• The best support relationships start with knowing each other’s strengths, needs, and natural working styles.
• Profiles like Kolbe, PRINT®, CliftonStrengths®, and Working Genius® can help you understand your own style and your assistant’s strengths.
• The Communication Builder is a great tool that helps you understand how each of you prefers to give and receive information, especially under stress.
• This is a relationship, not a transaction, so commitment and mutual respect are non-negotiable.
• Frequent communication creates better support, fewer misses, and a much smoother day-to-day rhythm.
• Daily huddles, project check-ins, and regular strategic meetings keep both of you aligned.
• Your Strategic Assistant should have enough context and clarity to help manage the details that keep you moving forward.
• Be willing to be managed because support partners often see the timing, structure, and follow-through more clearly than you do.
• Your Strategic Assistant is an essential “Who” on your team, often helping with the work that makes everything recur smoothly.
• Great partnerships are built on humor, grace, and a willingness to learn when things don’t go perfectly.
• The goal isn’t a short-term arrangement, but a long-term relationship that grows with you and strengthens your productivity and impact over time.

Resources:

Kolbe A™ Index

Working Genius

CliftonStrengths

DISC

PRINT

Unique Ability®

The Communication Builder

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Are you hanging on to a team member you already know is wrong for your company? In this episode, Shannon Waller talks about the real cost of waiting. You’ll hear practical examples of wrong-fit scenarios, why your best people and clients feel it first, and how to make clear, respectful decisions that strengthen your whole team.

Download Episode Transcript

Show Notes:

• Once you know someone is a wrong-fit team member, your only strategic option is to take action, not wait.
• Delaying a tough people decision implicitly tells your best team members that you’re willing to tolerate mediocrity.
• Keeping a wrong-fit person costs you twice: your best team members lose morale, and your clients feel the drag in service and results.
• Your A-Players will eventually ask themselves why they should keep going above and beyond if you allow B and C performance to stand.
• The right team culture feels like an all-star team where everyone is growing, contributing, and pulling in the same direction.
• There are different levels of wrong-fit—from the new hire who can’t do the job to the long-term “legacy” team member your company has outgrown.
• High producers with bad habits, poor teamwork, or misaligned values are often the most expensive wrong fits in your organization.
• If someone’s values clash with your culture, they’ll build their own agenda inside your company.
• People who stop growing eventually slow down your entire company’s growth, no matter how long they’ve been with you or how nice they are.
• Legacy team members can hold the business emotionally and operationally hostage if you don’t intentionally capture their knowledge and evolve the role.
• Clients can usually see wrong-fit behavior before you act, and they’ll quietly question your standards when you don’t address it.
• When you uphold your standards and let a wrong-fit person go, your best team members often feel relieved and more loyal.
• Taking decisive, thoughtful action—legally, ethically, and gracefully—protects your culture and signals to everyone that you mean what you say.
• Moving a bright person into a better-fit role is a powerful way to protect your culture, keep great talent, and honor their Unique Ability®.
• Thinking about a people issue doesn’t create progress; taking clear action is how you learn what works and what doesn’t.
• Your job as the entrepreneur is to build and protect a high-standard Unique Ability® Team that can deliver the top-quality experience your clients are paying for.

Resources:

Multiplication By Subtraction by Shannon Waller

Kolbe A™ Index

Unique Ability

Process Suite

Do your A-Players know how much you value them? In this episode, Shannon Waller explains why top talent is often the easiest to overlook and the high cost of taking them for granted. She also shares a practical five-part formula to ensure your best people feel utilized, appreciated, and rewarded so they never want to leave.

Download Episode Transcript

Show Notes:

• Your A-Players are the top 10 percent of available talent for a role, consistently performing at a high level while fully living your company’s core values.
• A-Players make your life easier by consistently delivering easier, faster, better, and cheaper results, which is exactly why they’re so easy to unintentionally take for granted.
• When you overlook your best people, they often take on more and more responsibility, leading to burnout, resentment, and eventually disengagement or departure.
• Top talent will leave if they don’t feel seen, appreciated, rewarded, or fairly compensated for the extraordinary value they’re creating.
• The real financial cost in most companies isn’t A-Players’ compensation, but the time and energy spent managing misaligned team members who don’t live your values.
• Retaining A-Players starts with treating them as an opportunity, not a given, and being intentional about how you invest in their growth, rewards, and future with your company.
• Appreciation is a performance strategy, so make a habit of specifically acknowledging the results and effort your A-Players make in language that really lands for them.
• Reward your A-Players with meaningful financial recognition tied to their results, remembering that their excellence is already saving you money and complexity elsewhere in the business.
• Maximize your A-Players by giving them real opportunities to grow, learn, and expand their capabilities so they can see a bigger future for themselves inside your organization.
• Refer your A-Players internally by championing their reputation, talking them up to others, and making sure the rest of the organization knows how great they are and what they contribute.
• It’s also important to protect your A-Players from being dragged down by B- and C-Players because top talent wants to work with other top talent and will leave if you tolerate drama and low standards.
• Treat retaining A-Players as a core entrepreneurial strategy because when you take great care of them, they take great care of your company, your clients, and your freedom.

Resources:

Topgrading by Brad Smart and Geoff Smart

Multiplication By Subtraction by Shannon Waller

Unique Ability®

Every entrepreneur knows the cost of team drama, but few realize how much they’re unconsciously feeding it. In this conversation, Shannon Waller explains how to move from victim-based reactions to an empowerment mindset, using simple coaching questions that turn conflict into progress and leave your team more capable after every challenge.

Download Episode Transcript

Show Notes:

• The classic Drama Triangle shows up anytime people fall into the roles of victim, persecutor, and rescuer in their relationships and workplaces.
• Entrepreneurs are especially vulnerable to the rescuer role because they see people struggling and want to jump in and fix things.
• Rescuing feels helpful in the moment but quietly reinforces victimhood and keeps team members dependent on your time, energy, and problem solving.
• The Empowerment Dynamic replaces victim, persecutor, and rescuer with creator, challenger, and coach so everyone gains more agency and responsibility.
• Seeing yourself as a creator means owning your part in any situation and focusing on the outcome you want instead of the problem you’re facing.
• Framing people or circumstances as challengers turns “persecution” into a stretch opportunity that provokes learning, growth, and better thinking.
• Showing up as a coach means asking provocative questions and offering support instead of taking over and doing the work for someone else.
• The core messages of the empowerment roles are “I can do it,” “You can do it,” and “How will you do it?”, which keep power and action with the individual or team.
• Great entrepreneurial coaching is “bossy with love”: direct, future-focused, and challenging, but delivered with genuine care and confidence in the other person.
• Language is a useful early-warning system; victim, persecutor, and rescuer thinking all show up first in how people describe what is happening.
• When someone puts all the authority outside themselves, you have an opening to coach them back into ownership.
• Asking “What would you be willing to do differently next time?” shifts people out of blame and into practical, self-chosen next actions.
• Your real job as a leader is not to solve every problem but to help other people take effective action toward the bigger future you’re building together.
• Taking responsibility does not mean being perfect; it means being able to respond, own your contribution, and commit to a better approach next time.
• Most people are quick to extend grace once someone has fully owned their part in a breakdown and clearly stated what they will do differently.
• Coaching yourself first—especially where you feel like a victim or persecutor—makes your leadership more authentic and significantly reduces drama in your company.
• Asking for help is not weakness; it’s a courageous form of self-coaching that brings in the right “Who” before small issues become full-blown drama.
• ​Moving from the Drama Triangle to The Empowerment Dynamic creates a culture where people expect challenges, learn quickly, and solve problems together.
• An empowered team that sees itself as creative, challenged, and coachable will occasionally fail but can rapidly diagnose what happened and come back stronger.

Resources:

The Karpman Drama Triangle

The Power of TED by David Emerald

Kolbe A™ Index

Shifting From Victim To Creator with The Power of TED Author David Emerald

Are you treating your team like a line item—or like your greatest multiplier? In this episode, Shannon Waller shares why a small, smart investment in your team’s self-awareness and capabilities can pay off in better decisions, less drama, and a lot more freedom for you as the entrepreneur.

Download Episode Transcript

Show Notes:

• Investing in your team’s growth is one of the simplest ways to hit bigger goals without working harder yourself.
• Profiles like Kolbe and Working Genius® give team members self-knowledge that leads to greater confidence, mutual understanding, and improved communication.
• When people feel like an investment instead of a cost, they naturally bring more creativity, commitment, and initiative to the business.
• Entrepreneurs who invest in their team create multipliers who run with ideas instead of dependents who wait to be told what to do.
• The right kind of training gives you clear thinkers, confident decision makers, and proactive problem solvers instead of order takers.
• Knowing your team’s strengths and striving instincts makes leadership feel lighter and more natural because you stop trying to force people into the wrong roles.
• Role alignment protects you from one of the most expensive entrepreneurial mistakes: smart people stuck in the wrong seats.
• When team members spend most of their time in their Unique Ability®, your culture gets more energized, collaborative, and attractive to top talent.
• Focusing on strengths instead of fixing weaknesses speeds up progress and keeps your best people excited about growing with you.
• Using profiles strategically shows you exactly where you need complementary capabilities instead of pushing yourself to be good at everything.
• When people are self-aware, they move through tough moments with less drama and more clarity, so the team can stay focused on results.
• Developing “leaderful” team members means people at every level provide direction in their area of expertise instead of waiting for permission.
• Treating people as entrepreneurial partners rather than employees shifts them into owner-like thinking about results and client impact.
• A well-developed team is a safer and more predictable investment than a marketing campaign because you can see the behavior and results up close.
• Capability-building gives you back time as team members take on complex, draining tasks and solve problems without escalating everything to you.
• Networked, interdependent teams allow capable people to act autonomously within clear roles.
• Investing in your team is one of the most powerful retention strategies because people stay where they feel seen, valued, and developed.
• Even simple, low-cost assessments can quickly pay for themselves in better decisions, saved time, and fresh opportunities.
• You don’t need to implement every profile or tool at once; pacing your investments keeps the focus on doing great work, not constant workshops.
• Bringing in experts to deliver assessments and coaching lets you upgrade your team quickly and efficiently without derailing daily operations.
• Building a Self-Managing Company® requires self-managing, self-aware people who are well-trained, trusted, and energized by the roles they play.​

Resources:

Kolbe A™ Index

Working Genius®

CliftonStrengths®

DiSC® Profile

PRINT®

The Predictive Index

Unique Ability®

The Team Success Handbook by Shannon Waller

The Self-Managing Company by Dan Sullivan