blood oaths, prophecies and brutal life lessons (part I)

We ate like kings and queens, sipped fine wine….schemed and plotted some very exciting things coming down the pipe. {NAME}, I just got back from a quarterly offsite meeting with my management team. We rendezvous at the oldest vineyard in Victoria. Perched in a beautiful old stone and glass building overlooking the misty rolling hills of the vineyard. We ate like kings and queens, sipped fine wine….schemed and plotted some very exciting things coming down the pipe. But today, I wanna talk to you about something I rarely do. You see, you’ve probably gotten used to me strutting into your inbox talking about growing your traffic, leads and sales. Getting more clients. Kicking ass and taking names. Beating the pants off your competitors. Alright, alright, you get the picture. But something that I rarely share with you is how to build, and more importantly, lead a team. And listen, if you wanna build something meaningful you’re gonna need a team. A very smart and capable group of humans gathered around a shared mission. Pushing shoving and going to war for the cause. And speaking of war… Let’s talk about the greatest warlord to ever live. Genghis Khan. His real name is actually Temüjin… Which loosely translates to ‘of iron‘ or ‘ironworker.’ [image] Blood oaths, prophecies, and brutal life lessons propelled Khan into conquest… Amassing the largest land empire in the history of mankind. And while history remembers him, mostly, as a warmongering sociopath. He was an incredibly intelligent and deep strategic thinker. He created one of the first international postal systems. But what I believe played the biggest role in his brutal effectiveness, was the leadership and incentive systems he built within his army. His leadership style reformed Mongol tradition by replacing the nobility rank structure with a merit-based promotion system. A meritocracy. But more importantly it was the incentive system he structured. Look, when you grow past a certain number of team members it’s impossible for you to be across everything that happens in your organisation. This is where incentive systems come into play. Simply put, incentives matter a lot. They drive behaviour. And are at the root of a lot of situations we face and yet we often fail to account for them. They carry the power to distort our behaviour and blind us to reality. We can only see a situation with true clarity when we take the time to carefully consider the interests at hand. And we understand it even better when we consider how the situation might be different if the underlying interests were different. The incentives. But… just as entrepreneurs fail to understand them, they can also overly focus on them. As the saying goes… “To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The takeaway. One of the most important things to think about when building a team is your incentive systems. What behaviour are you incentivising, and does it support you reaching the outcome you’re striving for. Read that again (I’ll wait here). Because what can look like a great idea at first can have severe second-order consequences. Which I’ll share with you in my next email. And while we're not in the dark ages. And the mongols aren’t coming over the hills with flaming arrows. The consequences of getting this wrong, can literally mean life or death for your business. So, with that said, until my next email… Take the time to stop and think about how you are incentivising your team. Think about these "systems. And ask yourself “what am I REALLY incentivising here. More to unpack. Keep an eye out for part II in this series that will be popping up in your inbox shortly. To your success! P.S. How’d you like this email {NAME}? I know it’s a little different from my usual stuff. Lemme know if you want more of this style of content. P.P.S. If you enjoyed this but want more, and more specifically...want every tip, hack, technique, unfair advantage, secret…and everything that’s currently working for me today...and that I’ve used to build and lead a team of fire breathing A-player go [here](. Sabri Suby Founder & Head Of Growth Level 1, 12 River Street South Yarra, 3141 Victoria, Australia Ph: 1300 858 250 www.kingkong.com.au [Unsubscribe]( Level 1, 12 River Street South Yarra, Victoria 3141 Australia