THA S2 EP#2 - Meetings with Meaning: How to Fix the Time Wasters

In this episode of The Habit Architect, Michael Cupps sits down with Benj Miller, co-founder of System & Soul and a leadership coach who helps companies align people, processes, and purpose. Together, they unpack why so many business meetings become time-wasters, how company culture shows up in the way meetings are run, and what leaders can do to make every meeting count.

You’ll discover how:

• Business growth creates complexity that clutters calendars and stalls progress
• Meetings can reveal deep truths about leadership style and team alignment
• A single habit shift can transform meetings into engines of clarity, decision-making, and action

Whether you’re a CEO, team leader, or entrepreneur, this conversation will help you stop time-wasting meetings and start running ones that actually move your business forward.

Because the goal isn’t fewer meetings. It’s meaningful meetings.

This Show is sponsored by TimeBandit.io

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction with Benj Miller on Meaningful Meetings
• 2:33 Why Most Business Meetings Waste Time
• 6:08 How Business Growth Creates Calendar Clutter
• 9:43 Company Culture Revealed Through Meeting Habits
• 13:13 The 10-Minute Reset Rule for Productive Meetings
• 16:53 The Hidden Cost of Time-Wasting Meetings
• 20:38 Designing Meetings for Clarity and Action
• 25:03 One Leadership Habit That Transforms Meetings
• 29:28 Why Fewer Meetings Isn’t Always the Goal
• 32:43 Leadership Takeaways to Run Better Meetings

Transcript

Michael Cupps: [00:00:00] Hi, good morning. This is Michael Cupps with the Habit Architect. I'm really excited about our episode today. I want you to stay tuned for the entire thing, to learn about meeting wasted times meet Benj He's one dynamic speaker and a great coach, and I'm looking forward to the conversation there. So learning how to take complexity out of your business while keeping the soul in it.

Michael Cupps: So stay tuned for all of that. And as always, you can check out Time Bandit at timebandit.io. But let's get on with the show and I'm gonna introduce Benj. Go ahead and bring him on. But I'd like to say Benj doesn't just talk about systems when he's helping businesses. He also talks about soul and that's a bit different.

Michael Cupps: When you think about what we talk about a lot is just business things, but there's also values. There's soul there's interesting things about the company that can get lost as you begin to grow. And I think founders have this problem a lot because they associate with it. With an idea that they started, and as they get going into the business, complexity and processes and more people naturally are gonna take place and Benj has built a system to prevent that or to help you with that transition. So Benj welcome.

Benj Miller: Thank you Cupps. I'm super honored that you would [00:01:00] have me on here. I'm excited to talk about your new course and all the things that you're getting into around meetings. So vital. 

Michael Cupps: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but I think windows are a, you can see a symptom of the things that you talk about, complexity or complacency and things like that in companies, so we'll get to that. But why don't you talk about system and soul 

Benj Miller: In retrospect, I was a very soulful leader. I had somebody come in and help me implement some systems in my business, and that was eye-opening for me. So I wanted to do that for the whole world, but more I got into it. I found out that as you go and implement some of these systems.

Benj Miller: A lot of the companies didn't have what I had as an emphasis on the soul in my organization. So now we have system without Soul and they had to be put together. They had to be done together, and that's actually the catalyst for sustaining healthy growth in an organization. We do that through our framework.

Benj Miller: We have some software. We've got 50 coaches around the country helping companies do that at all levels. 

Michael Cupps: That's fantastic. So when you look at a company or somebody reaches out to you or you [00:02:00] talking to a CEO, what are the signs you look for that says, Hey, there's something going off track here.

Benj Miller: Yeah, A lot of times there's just frustrations because the CEO is not going as fast as he thinks that , the company should be. They're fighting the same fires over and over. He's getting dragged in. He or she is getting dragged into the same conversations. There's a term I use a lot called organizational velocity, just how.

Benj Miller: Fast. Is the organization able to move, execute, perform, and transform? And when they feel like they're stuck in mud, that's the worst feeling in the world. Sometimes they know why it is and they're having trouble getting out. Sometimes they're not even sure why. So it's great conversations. And then the uniqueness about.

Benj Miller: What I do as a coach is it's always with the leadership team of the organization. It's not one-on-one coaching. It's we really take the approach that it's a team sport and we all have to be playing the game the same way. And so we're all trying to level up at the same time.

Michael Cupps: That's great. And I like that because if it's, it is a team sport like you said, , so if you see that, that complacency or that feeling of [00:03:00] speed, you mentioned that the CEO might say, we're not moving as fast as I'd like to move. What do you do? What does the program kind of entail?

Benj Miller: Very generically, I'll put it into three buckets. One is we've gotta get really clear on a magnetic vision and a very focused strategy for the organization. We do that with a one page roadmap that has a lot of soul in it too. It's really about who do we want to be as an organization as much as what do we want to do and why are we trying to do the things that we're trying to do?

Benj Miller: Then we have the four tools for confident execution. 'cause there's nothing worse than having a great strategy. And no confidence that we can go execute on it. And behind that is a bunch of other tools related to personal development, leadership development, culture development, the identity of the organization, team health, all of those things that are the grease that, keeps the gears moving and going faster and increases that organizational velocity.

Michael Cupps: Yeah. And what did they experience? . Are you teaching something they don't have or they know it and they're just not doing it? 

Benj Miller: It's [00:04:00] some of both, and I think you're hitting the nail on the head. One of the reasons that, cEOs especially are hesitant to hire us is because they do know the answer and there's a little bit of shame because they feel like they should have solved all these things already.

Benj Miller: But as we know, they've got a million things on their plate and they've gotta prioritize, and sometimes it takes some help. Sometimes it takes an outside voice, sometimes it takes a proven framework to come and put some organization around all those things. 

Michael Cupps: Yeah, I do a lot of work around habit building and systems around habits and even in the workplace.

Michael Cupps: But it what I find a lot of times is people know what they need to do to get healthier. They know what they need to do.

Benj Miller: Oh, yeah.

Michael Cupps: And it, so we're not teaching 'em something they don't already know. It's just trying to systemize it a little differently so they, they feel the reward sooner, I think.

Michael Cupps: And it's hard when you know somebody that's trying to lose weight. You're not gonna lose weight tomorrow. But after 30 days, you're gonna see results and then , more and it's a challenge. I'm sure you'd face the same thing with groups like that. 

Benj Miller: [00:05:00] Absolutely. So I'm curious for you, as you've been going down this meeting Rabbit hole, which

Benj Miller: is key. I could talk about it from our perspective. I just read the Trillion Dollar Coach and they talk about it in there. Meetings are like the, it's the glue that holds the whole thing together. Yeah. What do you think meetings reveal about a team's culture? 

Michael Cupps: Yeah , thanks for asking that. It's interesting 'cause I've got a big customer and I sit in their meetings and they will always have something like 15 people on it.

Michael Cupps: There'll be three people that, that actually contribute to the meeting. So what that reveals to me is that they've lost their values. They, they don't understand why they're having that meeting, so they feel like they have to invite everybody so they feel like they're part of it.

Michael Cupps: Even though they don't have to contribute. But think about that hour that you just took away from that person of actually doing some productive work. When, especially in that, in the world of AI notetakers, not everybody has to be in the room. Like it's a summary, read a summary and I think COVID set people in a wrong path because we did have meetings on Zoom and we had to, because we were trying to figure out a [00:06:00] way to manage in a new world.

Michael Cupps: But some companies just haven't left that not that company I work for now, thankfully. But the I, I've worked for some companies and they actually measured. Their day of productivity by how many meetings they had. And if you think about, that's just an insane metric. You, and there was some sort of bravery when you came off and you said, oh, I've got six back to back calls.

Michael Cupps: Okay, that just said you wasted a day, you've wasted six hours of your day doing meetings that could have been 10 minute conversations, et cetera, et cetera. So I think what it reveals is the, a complacency or a confusion on what the goal is. I think that's kind of it. And so yeah, is that, do you see the same thing.

Benj Miller: Yeah, I think and we teach one specific meeting for a team, but I think that when you do one meeting really well, it should get rid of a lot of those other meetings. We shouldn't be living in meetings because you're right, we're not, some things need to happen in a meeting.

Benj Miller: There are good reasons for meetings. I'm not a meeting hater, but. We all know, like there's certain meetings that we see on our [00:07:00] calendar that as soon as we see it, our energy just drops. And it's not just the time on the meeting, it's that energy that you carry into the day, into the meeting. After the meeting, you might need some recovery time.

Benj Miller: So let's switch it to the affirmative then. What is one habit shift that turns meetings from a time waster into a decision machine? 

Michael Cupps: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you said decision machine, because I think you're right. Not all meetings are bad. Let's, but let's make sure meetings are, we're walking out with a decision or a direction from it.

Michael Cupps: So the first number one thing I think is have an objective. What is the objective of that meeting? And once you define the objective, then everybody that you invite should either contribute to that objective or be a decision maker of that objective, right? So it starts filtering down from that.

Michael Cupps: What is the goal of that meeting and. There's nothing worse for me when I get a meeting invite and there's nothing in there, so it just says, whatever status update. Okay. Why? And so that, so I think it's really the objective and the people you invite. And then just a habit tip that I love doing is I've shortened any 30 [00:08:00] minute meeting to 25 minutes, any hour meeting to 50 minutes.

Michael Cupps: And yes, you still get it, you still get through the content that you need to get thrown and everybody gets a break. So you talked about recovery. Why not give 'em five minutes or 10 minutes after a long meeting where they can stretch their legs, go get. Coffee, whatever it is they need to do.

Michael Cupps: They just have that little bounce back into the next thing they need to get productive with. So that's my tip and I put it in a free training. It's a 20 minute training, just goes through those things and , we'll put the link on this after this show, but I urge everybody to either go through it yourself or share it with your teammates because.

Michael Cupps: One of the things I think you teach is systems, right? It's okay for one person to start doing things, right? So if we get everybody doing it, same plane, right? We know why we're meeting, we're gonna get it done, and we're gonna move on.

Benj Miller: We had a conversation just on Monday. My COO said, we were talking about calendars and we looked at her calendar.

Benj Miller: She had these like 10 minute blocks of decompress after every meeting, and she's sorry about that. My AI meeting thing did that automatically. And we're like, why are you [00:09:00] sorry? That is so wise, because there's no way you can be ready for the next meeting or the next thing. Coming straight out of the last thing.

Benj Miller: So it's don't, do not apologize that for that is strategically smart. Do you think that bad meetings are like, what is that reflective of? Is that typically starts at the top and CEO doesn't have great meetings so the rest of the culture doesn't? Or is it something deeper or do you know where that comes from in organizations?

Michael Cupps: Yeah, that's a great question. I think it depends somewhat on the size of the company, but I really think the biggest symptom is that there's a, there's an avoidance of personal responsibility in bigger companies, I'm saying. So they want everybody to collectively make decisions on certain things.

Michael Cupps: And sometimes you have to do, you have to do that collective decisioning, but it doesn't have to be a long, drawn out process, right? And so that hesitancy to make decisions may be. Fear of risk, fear of, losing their job, fear of making the wrong choice. But the cultures that I see that actually do that aggressively and say, Hey, we're [00:10:00] making a decision and we're gonna get on with it and then they'll adjust along the way.

Michael Cupps: I think they are more apt to be, to outperform their competitors, if that makes sense. 

Benj Miller: Yeah. We're, let's dig into this for a second because I think you're right. One thing I see is that people come into even a really healthy organization and they bring their baggage from bad organizations. And so they've been given this authority to go and lead in this area, but then they want permission for every single thing, or they want to pretend like something they've already decided is now up for this collaborative debate.

Benj Miller: What, how can you help shape mindset there? 

Michael Cupps: Yeah that's a great question. The baggage that they bring from previous experiences is an interesting one because that's a hard habit to break because you've, yeah. Especially as if you think about a young person that gets into a company and they're trained.

Michael Cupps: However that company's culture is for meetings, it's hard to, when you get into another culture to say, , to change that because that's how you've witnessed it, right? But I think that what you really have to start thinking about doing is [00:11:00] building a habit of accountability in each meeting.

Michael Cupps: And that could be before you show up to the meeting, or it could be when you leave the meeting and assign every task to somebody, one person not a group. You can't say, here's a task. No one you five people to go. Think about that one owner, and then they'll figure out if they need the other four people to, to.

Michael Cupps: To finish the task, but accountability has to start getting in there. And accountability doesn't necessarily mean, you're delivering your annual expectation today. It could mean that we need to get something done before next Tuesday and that it's accountability and some things are. Why aren't we doing certain things?

Michael Cupps: Let's stop doing them. So I actually use the framework of a matrix, a priority matrix where you have, do first schedule later delegate, and stop. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that framework works in a meeting sometimes if you're really trying to get action out of it. And I personally think when you start empowering individuals to do something collectively, it's gonna rise.

Michael Cupps: So the whole, the, when the ocean rises, all boats float up, so to speak. Yeah. And so that accountability measure is a challenging one, [00:12:00] but there's people I think waiting for responsibility and just their chance to show it. So I don't know if that ties into the sole aspects of what you do, but you asked me a culture question.

Michael Cupps: I'm curious about what your view is on that. 

Benj Miller: I was dying to ask you another question, so maybe I come back to that, but let me and maybe this is the culture question, but I find that if I have, especially. Maybe not the first meeting of the day, but if I've got multiple meetings, I show up and I'm ready to do business.

Benj Miller: Like you, we talked about being a decision making machine, right? Like I'm here. What are the decisions we need to make? What do we need to solve? Let's get really clear and let's knock it out. And that, that is efficient. However, I'm like trying my best to be cognizant that. Some people need more emotional connection and maybe they haven't been in five meetings today.

Benj Miller: Maybe they've been them in their computer doing their work, especially in a virtual setting. So like how do you balance like [00:13:00] freedom and humanity with efficiency? 

Michael Cupps: That's a great question. It's, it is a challenge. You're right. Some people, especially in our remote working world, there is a need for connection too.

Michael Cupps: Just to, if you and I jumped on a call and we had three other people with us there, there's a natural tendency to have that, I'll call it small talk where, how was your weekend? You know how I saw you had a workout, how was a workout? That kind of stuff. I think you do have to allocate time for that.

Michael Cupps: But you, but I think there's the structure of the meeting in which you can address that maybe you're having a meeting for those touch those touch ins that are just the objective is to get to know one another. The objective is to blow off steam. The objective is, but again, it comes in with that objective.

Michael Cupps: But like you said, if you show up and you've got a busy day, you really need a decision made. Those meetings have an objective of that. So I think you can temper that a little bit with your organization based on. What is the objective of that meeting? Yeah and I'm not suggesting every meeting has to be hard hitting every time, but it, that's really what it is when you get out of a meeting is when you do the work.

Benj Miller: You [00:14:00] just sparked something that I didn't even realize we did until you were just talking through that. But when we have scheduled meetings, like we use Zoom. And those we're pretty disciplined. Like we show up with an agenda and this is what we need to solve on, the clarity of the, this is the decisions that need to be made.

Benj Miller: But when we use just the huddle feature in Slack, it's always, and there's always a check-in kind of the human side of those ones with an agenda. We always start with that, even if it's short, small, but man, if we jump on a huddle, it's boom, bye. Yeah. It's it's the most efficient.

Benj Miller: And usually those are impromptu. And then we also have like our big Hey, we're gonna hang out for two hours on this Friday and just do team time. Because if we were in an office, we'd all spend that time over lunches or coffees or whatever that is, and we need to make sure we build that in. 

Michael Cupps: That's pretty good.

Michael Cupps: The one thing that Agile gets the agile development cycles, I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but that are, they do the daily standups. And if you think about that's the ultimately ultimate [00:15:00] efficient meeting. It's supposed to be for 15, 20 minutes. Everybody gets up and says what they did yesterday, what they're doing today, and are there any impediments?

Michael Cupps: And you don't have to do it daily depending on the job responsibilities, but that's an interesting construct for that really productive check in and go and, because it's gonna. Probably list out the impediments or somebody needs to take those on as tasks to get rid of them. 

Benj Miller: Yeah. Yeah. I read a quote by you.

Benj Miller: I was wondering if you could unpack this. You don't fix your calendar by hopping. You fix it by deciding one block at a time. What does that mean? 

Michael Cupps: Yeah. It's it's that complacency in saying, let's have another meeting. We've all been in it, right? You're let's have another meeting about that, or, we didn't get to our conclusion today, so let's have another meeting tomorrow or next week.

Michael Cupps: And so I, like I said, that one culture that I was a part of, they judged their. Pro productivity by how busy their calendar was, and I was actually searching for, I just need a couple hours to go actually do the work that we've talked about in these meetings. And so I think the real thing that people need to get [00:16:00] confident in is saying no to meetings, right?

Michael Cupps: If you are not, if you are not required, if you're not a contributor or a decision maker for that topic. Then opt out and ask 'em politely for the meeting notes. Could you send me the meeting notes afterwards? I'll catch up. Or and it's hard, especially for Gen Z and younger people because they haven't been trained to do that.

Michael Cupps: But sometimes saying no is the best, biggest yes you can do. And I think that's what I meant in that quote. 

Benj Miller: That's good. That's good. It reminds me of Elon Musk is famous for saying if you're not contributing to a meeting, just walk out, like in any of his companies, leave. 

Michael Cupps: Yeah, exactly. And what an empowering thing that would be.

Michael Cupps: And there's some cultures, you and I have probably coached in 'em, that they would go, they would frown on that. Why? Why did he leave? But as good as he think he is, that kind of attitude, and that's too bad because what he did is said, I'm choosing to go be productive somewhere else.

Benj Miller: Yeah. I think, yeah, and that just feels weird too. Like socially, yeah. I think a better approach is probably asking on the front end Hey, what's the contribution you're asking of me in this [00:17:00] meeting upfront? And if there's not a good answer, then maybe just don't show up.

Michael Cupps: Exactly. . Yeah. I agree with you. There is the kind of, the courtesy and the rules of kind of just being polite, that there's other ways of saying no than just walking out. But, Musk has made us. History of being bold like that. 

Benj Miller: Yes. You, he swings the pendulum so far that you're like, I'm not going that far.

Benj Miller: But maybe I could move a little further. Yeah. I love most big thought leaders that create some controversy that there's some truth in what they're saying. We need to move a little further, but maybe not all the way. 

Michael Cupps: Yeah, exactly. 

Benj Miller: So can we go to some of the like. Principles in the course. I don't want you to give the whole thing away, but the course is free.

Benj Miller: So I guess we can with obvious, obviously we're here talking about, but we've above for everybody to grab it afterwards. We'll give some details on that at the end. But because you've put a lot of time, energy research into this, but give us some of the principles. Maybe take us back to why was this you've been in the habit architect space for a long time. [00:18:00] Yep. Why did you gravitate toward meetings and put so much time into helping in that realm? Yeah. 

Michael Cupps: There's two reasons. One, I have a big customer and I've said in so many of their meetings that nothing gets decided, and there's so many people.

Michael Cupps: When I look at the human capital, when you look in Zoom and you can see all the attendees. You realize that, wow, 10 of them didn't even say hi. They didn't even check in. They're just sitting on the call and they're really doing anything. Or maybe they're multitasking, et cetera. So that was one thing that just grinds at me.

Michael Cupps: I just think, gosh, there's, free those people up to do what they can go do best for the firm. And then secondly just, I just get some, so many people tell me if I could just get out of some meetings and, I just started digging into that and saying, it, it is, if you just think about the time spent in meetings, A CFO would lose his mind or her mind.

Benj Miller: Absolutely. Absolutely. If they really knew 

Michael Cupps: how many people were on it and what was getting done, they would lose their mind. So I just thought, just a little deep dive on it, and I really kept it simple. I'm, there's no reason to over. Think it, there's [00:19:00] just simple ways to make a meeting better and it is thinking about who you're inviting, what's the objective, things like that.

Michael Cupps: So I in the course I talk about what a bad meeting looks like and what a good meeting would look like, and then I give you a sample agenda that you can just drop into Outlook or Google, whatever email system you use to set up calendar invites. Think about that objective and think about who you're inviting before you even send it, because that is when the meeting is set in, how it it's gonna be designed.

Michael Cupps: And then the, there's a few other tips in there, but the last one is that meeting map or that kind of priority matrix, so people walk out with. They know what to do before the next meeting, before the next whatever it is that you're solving and each person or has an assigned task, whatever that may be, and not each person, but people that need the task are assigned to one person, not just generically, Hey, we need to think about that market analysis, right?

Michael Cupps: You gotta be that. Benj owns the market analysis and Cupps owns the PowerPoint presentation for the customer, whatever it may be, right? At least then we're on, we're set. We may not have made the decision, but we [00:20:00] made the decision to get the work done and how we're gonna do it, right? And so that's what the course goes through, and it's a simple thing.

Michael Cupps: There's some downloads in there. It's your typical digital course where I talk about stuff. I walk through a Google doc that goes through these tips and it was designed to be very quick and shareable, if I make every meeting better, then hopefully my peers will start doing the same. And so just share it, do that.

Michael Cupps: So it's, would that align with some of the stuff you're doing in system and soul? 

Benj Miller: Absolutely. We teach the, one of the first things we do, one of the four tools for confident executions is this weekly sync meeting. And we have a very prescribed agenda, which people squirm when they hear that. And there's time allotments for that.

Benj Miller: And I equate it to going to the gym for the first time in a long time. Like it's very awkward and if you give it. Three or four weeks, you it's gonna feel better. And if you give it three or four weeks, more weeks, you're gonna wonder how you ran a team and a company without it. . And when, and exactly like you said, when we teach this, everybody's I can't do one more meeting.

Benj Miller: And I'm like, timeout, [00:21:00] this is the meeting. And you like, this is the meeting. There shouldn't be. Maybe you're like on the leadership team and then you lead your department and so you have two. But this should get rid of 4, 5, 10, depending on how bad company is of these other meetings because we're so effective at having this one and we put the things that pop up on the agenda for this one, and we work through the agenda in an efficient manner.

Benj Miller: We make decisions, like you said it's critical. And I think the weekly sync meeting. And then the other meeting is that is often forgotten, rarely taught, is how do we do one-on-one coaching on whatever the timing is that, on that. But we're kind we teach at least at a minimum quarterly.

Benj Miller: And I think that the. Leadership, personal development, health culture will only grow as strong as those one-on-one coaching meetings are. So [00:22:00] I, I think meetings really are where, like the company is either bleeding efficiency or bleeding waste. And so I love that you, dug in deep 

Michael Cupps: I'm glad you said that about one-on-one 'cause that fascinates me too.

Michael Cupps: And. What's interesting about a one-on-one, and I'll equate it to the annual review thing but if you're doing annual reviews, you're doing it all wrong. You should do these one-on-one, right? But what's interesting about it is the more input that's done before that one-on-one, I think it's, I think it's more valuable, right?

Michael Cupps: So if there's data that's needed to assess the job that they did, or the job that they need to go do. It just makes it more valuable and I think the more prep I, what I get cringe is when a manager shows up to a one-on-one and says, oh, how did your week go? Or something like that, right?

Michael Cupps: And instead of having a very prescriptive saying, how did this, a very specific action go, how did this go? Or what are you doing about this project, et cetera. I think it, I think that it goes into that with good one-on-ones can change the shape of a company. I think. 

Benj Miller: The principles [00:23:00] are the same.

Benj Miller: It's what is the agenda? Let's get intentional about what, not just we need to have a meeting, but what is the meeting? How are we gonna run the meeting? What's the, what's a good meeting look like? The objectives of the meeting, what's the follow up from the meeting? The takeaways that, that people are owning.

Benj Miller: Both of those exist in, whether it's a weekly meeting, whether it's a coaching meeting, any of those, they're the same. And I think just the intentionality around meetings, especially, if you're gonna have a weekly meeting back to the CFO question, like once a week with your team for 90 minutes with your, at a senior leadership team level, probably your five or six highest paid employees like.

Benj Miller: That ticker adds up really quick. So it makes a lot of sense to get really good at it. 

Michael Cupps: And I think if you went and really talked to people, as a leader, you went to your team and said, listen, if we can have this one sync meeting a week, I'm gonna take four other meetings off your calendar this week so you can do your job more efficiently.

Michael Cupps: I think most of 'em say, I'll sign up for that. I [00:24:00] want that. I want one meeting instead of five. And I think if we just have those candid conversations, sometimes. People will get behind it and get more focused for that sync meeting. Are you seeing that in your coaching? 

Benj Miller: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Benj Miller: I'm gonna steal the way you just said that as a sales pitch, but because I don't sell it that way. But I think that, but that is the reality of what can happen when we do this well, there's the old adage that a task will take the time that you allot for it, right? And.

Michael Cupps: Work experience time allocated, was that? 

Benj Miller: Yep. That's the principle right there. And I find it true, it's true for myself. I'm whatever it is at my desk. But a lot of CEOs, are, man, I'm a slave to this thing. I'm working 60, 70 hours a week. I need more hours. They go to more hours, not more efficiency.

Benj Miller: In the 60 hours they're putting into this thing. What if you could actually be that efficient? Or more with 40 hours. What do you need to do less? I remember early in my CEO years, [00:25:00] it happened three years in a row where the week that I was on vacation, the company had the best week ever.

Benj Miller: And I'm like, is the answer me going on vacation? Because we can make this work and there's some truth to that. Like just went. Who knows what I was disrupting, who knows what I was interrupting. Not that I'm the sole cause or problem or reason either way, but I think when we just give space for people to do what we hired them to do, give them the tools, the clarity of the task, the autonomy to go work, and really a lot of the conversations we need to have as leaders and managers is around the results that they're getting.

Benj Miller: I have a personal theory that. We don't hold people accountable because of what I call clarity guilt. 

Michael Cupps: Yeah. 

Benj Miller: We know. We haven't given them the clarity of exactly what's expected to be able to hold them accountable to the results. Yeah. And same thing shows up in a meeting like you're saying like, Hey, this is what I'm expecting you.

Benj Miller: You own this. Come back in two weeks with this deliverable. Whatever it [00:26:00] is, this is the metric we're gonna be tracking. And nothing should be a surprise. 

Michael Cupps: Yeah, exactly. That's fantastic advice and I love the. Gil's comment there. So tell me I'm just curious a little bit more about system and so who's your ideal customer?

Michael Cupps: Are you working with big companies, small companies, medium sized startups? What's Your 

Benj Miller: startups are hard, so let's exclude them first. When you're in founder mode or stage one, systems are your enemy. You've gotta go fast, you've gotta try a lot of things. You've gotta fail as fast as possible.

Benj Miller: We don't want to create. Systems around failure. We wanna create systems around what's working. So it's really, once we find that we enter stage two, and usually it's around employees, 'cause employees tend to create the complexity, revenue changes depending on industry. If I'm a home builder, I send a, sell one, $2 million house, I've got $2 million in revenue but I've got no complexity, right?

Benj Miller: When we talk about employees, that's where stuff starts to break down. That's where founder mode starts to fail. And so what we want to do is [00:27:00] work with the organization to transition them from founder mode to leader mode. So what does it look like from that? That founder who has amazing gifts, we don't want to.

Benj Miller: Strangle them. We want to harness all of that energy and put a support structure in place that they can keep bringing all that energy that they brought in founder mode. So anything, 25 and up 25 to 75 is a sweet spot. But I break that rule all the time. My largest client has like 1300 employees but in that sweet spot is where you're trying to figure everything out. Really , really fast. The faster you can get through figuring those things out and making that transition, then life just, the sun comes up, bunnys start bouncing. There's rainbows everywhere. Eh, we're never to that place in business 'cause there's always the next problem.

Benj Miller: But we have the tools to talk, tools, people, and structure to go solve the next problem. Instead of getting stuck by 'em. 

Michael Cupps: Yeah, it's interesting you, I, when you said that, I thought of a teenager, right? So you've got the infant years and things like that. And then when you're a teenager. It's been a long [00:28:00] time since I've been a teenager, but I have

Michael Cupps: and so you can just see that their brain is working a hundred miles an hour and there's so many things coming at 'em, whether it's school or friends or this and that, and especially in the world of social media, there's that complexity enters in when they're a teenager and you have to figure out how to eventually become a young adult.

Michael Cupps: And so that, it sounds like that's the kind of the area that you're finding companies that are, they're past that initial stage, but they're, and now they're just trying to figure their way into the. A big companies. 

Benj Miller: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And early stage, that founder mode needs to hire a lot of people that can do the tasks.

Benj Miller: And founders tend to know what all needs to be done. They're running on their gut, not data, not metrics, not systems. And so it's Hey, you go do this, you go to this, you go to this. They build theirselves as a bottleneck. I used to think that was bad. I think now I just think that's part of the process.

Benj Miller: As long as they have some consciousness that's what they're doing and they're going to have to undo that, it's probably actually the right thing to do. 

Michael Cupps: Yeah. That's great. Great. observation, the time flew by. [00:29:00] As we kinda wrap up a little bit about how people find you. I know there's a ticker scrolling, but how can peoople find you.

Benj Miller: The best place to find everything is benjmiller.co, BENJ miller.co. And from there you can get to my LinkedIn. You can get to System and Soul you. I've got a daily leadership tip email. It's super short. You can read it in less than 30 seconds. It's just a reminder or a thought or challenge question that you know.

Benj Miller: I wrote it three years ago. It's on repeat, so it's, I get the same thing that I got last year on the same day, and I'm like, dang, that's good. I needed reminded of that. So it's really just a reminder of all the things that we're supposed to know and think and do as leaders in organizations.

Benj Miller: So that's a great free tool for everybody to grab and follow. 

Michael Cupps: Absolutely. That's great and and you can find your own LinkedIn and I'm sure you've got all the other channels going and YouTube. . You've got a podcast too. You want to mention that? 

Benj Miller: Yeah, sure. We do Sessions by System and Soul.

Benj Miller: So it's our System and Soul podcast. And what we try to do, we've been through. Several iterations of this, and in this new [00:30:00] season called Sessions, what we're trying to do is bring as much of what we learn, experience, and do in a session room with the senior leadership team and communicate that publicly.

Benj Miller: So it's a lot of Hey, here's my reflections on some of the sessions that I've had with. Clients, some of the tools that we're using once a month. Mackenzie, my co-founder and I, who's my co-host on the podcast, we bring our, like hot take of something we heard or listened or read, and we just banter about it and

Benj Miller: some of those are some of those are my favorite. 

Michael Cupps: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much for sharing here. I think the lesson for everybody that's listening is time is it's not just valuable, it's the foundation for leadership. And your organization helped you turn that into. To what it looks like in a system and soul group.

Michael Cupps: And then we did talk on meetings. I urge everybody to think about the next meeting you're sitting in or you're planning. And go take our training. It's easy, it's 20 minutes and share it with others. But, it's. It's gonna bring your organization more clarity and more energy to what they're doing.

Michael Cupps: If you're not bearing down on 'em with [00:31:00] meaning, after meaning, that's unplanned. So that's fantastic. I thank you so much, Benj for being here. Everybody, thank you for tuning into the Habit Architect. We always enjoy it. Please do go to your favorite podcast and subscribe, follow whatever the mechanism is so you get, get notices when every episode drops.

Michael Cupps: So thank you very much and have a great day.