What if you were to replace the term "goal" with "quest"? How do you think this shift in terminology could impact your mindset and approach toward achieving objectives? In episode 59 of the Potential Leader Lab Podcast, we explore a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of leadership: relentless repetition.

Our Discussion

Imagine if the greatest failure of leaders isn't a lack of ambition, but rather an inability to focus on what truly matters. In this episode, I'll unravel why maniacal focus and relentless repetition are the ultimate tools for effective leadership. I'll discuss how the courage to commit to these principles can counteract the overwhelm of endless priorities, leading to success and clarity.

I discuss the etymology of courage, the pitfalls of multitasking, the power of a singular quest, and the significance of patience and integrity. I'll also explore practical strategies to simplify complexity, build momentum through repetition, and cultivate a culture of clarity in your organization.

Remember, leadership isn't about doing more; it's about doing less, better, and louder. So, let's embark on this journey to unlock the true potential of focused, repetitive actions in leadership.

★ Key Topics ★

03:10 Instant gratification hinders sustainable, impactful planning.

06:28 Focus on high-value activities to prevent burnout.

12:42 Commit to one goal for clarity and confidence.

14:55 Perception of success creates an unrealistic illusion.

19:37 Prioritize meaningful tasks over many incomplete ones.

20:33 Leadership: Ask questions, embrace unknown, do less.

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Find Perry Maughmer

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/perrymaughmer

Subscribe: perrymaughmer.com/podcast

Contact: perrymaughmer.com/contact

Learning Resources Mentioned

The 80-20 Rule (aka Pareto Principle): What It Is, How It Works

investopedia.com/terms/1/80-20-rule.asp

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Perry Maughmer believes the world deserves better leadership; that in every human interaction there is the opportunity to either build others up or tear them down; and that leadership is the choice we make in those moments.

These beliefs led Perry to create the Potential Leader Lab. He wanted to offer those who share his beliefs the space and safety to explore transformative ideas, experiment with new behaviors, and evolve into the leaders they were meant to be and that the world needs.

This is a framework he has used again and again with his Vistage peer advisory groups and companies like Turn-Key Tunneling, Convergint, Haughn &  Associates, I Am Boundless, Ketchum & Walton, LSP Technologies, and Ahlum & Arbor.

Perry lives and works on the shores of Buckeye Lake in Ohio, in the mountains of northwest Georgia, and on the beach in Anna Maria, Florida with his amazingly creative wife Lisa. They have 2 rescue dogs and are intermittently visited by their 3 wonderful children throughout the year. Perry & Lisa are living life in crescendo and focused on exploring, experimenting, and evolving their vision of a life they have no desire to retire from.

Copyright 2025 Perry Maughmer

Welcome to the Potential Leader Lab, where we explore the relentless pursuit of creating a better world, one beautiful question and one courageous action at a time. I'm your host, Perry Maughmer. And today, on episode 59, we will be exploring relentless repetition, a leader's edge. So I have a question to start off, and the question is, what if the greatest failure of leaders isn't lack of ambition, but the inability to focus on what truly matters? Now, I've been working with business leaders and CEOs and people all levels of leadership inside organizations for about 10 years now, and I cannot think of one of them that didn't truly want to be successful. That wasn't what was motivation and effort was not holding them back. And so that led me to think about, well, if that's the case and there are folks not achieving what they want to achieve, what was the missing piece? What's the what's the missing component? And for me, the theme that I think would benefit folks is actually maniacal focus and relentless repetition. And I think those are the ultimate tools for effective leadership. And here's the thing, if you are overwhelmed by endless priorities, you're not leading, you're just busy.

And so I think that the I I think that the real issue here, and I'm gonna drop into kind of, I guess, it'd be psychological, emotional, metaphysical, is a lack of courage. And I'll and I'm gonna connect the dots and show you how I get there. So courage, interestingly enough, the the etymology of the word, it stems from heart. Like it the the root of that word, c o r, core, is heart. And I encourage originally was having the courage, having the heart to speak your mind. Having the heart to do the things that need to be done, Because we've always attributed that kind of activity with the heart in our bodies. And I think that that's the real issue, is I think that we lack courage to commit to the things that we know are important. And it's really important because we can't get overwhelmed with fear of missing out.

And and I'm gonna get to some some data later talking about how how much time we spend on our on our smartphones, and we spend, seeking out new and interesting ways, shortcuts, hacks, whatever the the newest thing is to get us where we wanna go, when in fact, I think we already know. And if we if we have the courage to stick with the decision until we can gather the data, the evidence, until we can complete the experiment. If we use explore, experiment, evolve as our foundation here, is that and I'll give you an example that in your organization or you personally might have started something. And since it's, you know, early in the year, that's probably fresh to everybody's mind. Right? We started something personally or professionally. And we're already at the point even, you know, less than 30 days in, we're probably already at the point where we're looking for another option. This isn't working. We want something else.

So there's a couple things that work against us from a from a societal standpoint, and that is, you know, that that need for things to be instantaneous and transformational instead of taking time. And I and if we're gonna come up with a plan, we also, at the forefront of that plan, have to figure out how much time it's gonna take before we can expect to see results, meaningful, sustainable, scalable results. And we can't veer off the path until we have data or evidence that it is or isn't working, because I'm the last person to tell you, you should just keep doing something if it's not working. But you have to define for yourself when will you actually know if it's not working. And, I've worked with several, you know, different organizations over the years and and and essentially or especially from a marketing perspective, most people will tell you if they start off talking about we're gonna do a plan or a program. We're gonna do this advertising, this marketing. Most of them will tell you, I need 90 days to set a baseline. Like, if you have no baseline for this, then we're gonna have to take 90 days to actually set the baseline, then we can start to evaluate if it's working or not.

And I think I think that's the issue here. Anything that we do, we have to set up those things. When will I know that we have a baseline on which to compare results with? Now, if you already have one, awesome. If you don't, then you have to put the time in to find one. And we cannot and must not chase what other people are doing because they are not us. And our success will be will be based on largely on our lived experience, how we interpret the world. Because we have we have this, what I'm just gonna call this curse of too much. And we have an illusion of productivity.

We think that just doing lots of things means that we're working hard, that we're productive. And we have this I guess, it would be a modern obsession with multitasking, and the illusion that we're making progress with no purpose. And so, that's really what we gotta fall back into. What matters? What what what do we wanna do on purpose? Because what we we we get we get swayed, we get taken away from the things that matter most. I mean, this is nothing more than the 80 20 principle, the Pareto principle. Right? It's 20% of what we do generates 80% of our results. And they they've proven this. This is scientific.

Right? They've proven it on many different fronts year over year after year. And by the way, this was started back in, I believe, was 1700. Guy's name was Vilfredo Paredo. Right? So he figured out that 20% of the people owned 80% of the real estate or the land. And so, if that's the case for each of us, and we know that a and it does it's not 80 20, it doesn't have to equal a 100. But if a much smaller percent of your effort generates much more of your return, a, doesn't it make sense then to figure out what that small percentage of things that you do might be? And then, b, how do you do more of them? Because the scariest part of that formula isn't that, it's the reverse. The scariest part is the converse of the formula which means 80% or a much larger percent of what you actually do everyday generates you 20% of your results. So just think about that in context of you.

If you sat down and looked at everything you did, what are your high value activities? What are the things that move the needle for you? What are what are your and and again, you call them what you want. But another way to think about this is a point of leverage. What is what are the things you do that provide you the most leverage towards the things that you want? What do you want most? Not what do you want now. What do you want most? And the cost to be honest with you, the cost is high. The cost of a lack of focus are things like burnout, mediocrity. And and and then if you're leading, god forbid, because your people are following your example, so now you have a scattered you have people that are scattered and burnout and trying to achieve because people that are scattered and burn out and trying to achieve because they're following your lead. They're following you as you jump from one thing to another and come up with the latest, greatest, new idea, shiny nickel, you know, idea of the month, whatever you wanna call it. And it ends up giving everybody in your organization whiplash.

And I call that organizational whiplash. Because here's the thing, it's like when you snap a tau. The the real crack comes at the end of that tau. That's where your frontline people are. So the people up on the front of that don't feel it as much. The people at the bottom really feel it. The people on the outside really feel it. So here's what we gotta do.

We we have to we have to create the superpower of any leader is a maniacal focus. Right? A maniacal focus. And here's here's the verbiage. And again, I'm I'm gonna we're gonna talk about words. Right? Words create worlds. And and words do matter because what we say creates our reality. The words we choose create our reality. So you have to be very careful the words that you think and the words that come out of your mouth.

Because the words you think only only impact you, the words that come out of your mouth impact a lot of other people. So, you're creating a world with the words you choose. So, here's what I want you to do. If you get nothing else out of this, 20 minutes we're gonna spend together today, I want it to be this. Stop using the word goal, objective, whatever, however you refer to it, and use the word quest. So I want you to think about, what's your quest for this year? Because as far as I know, not too

many people go on multiple quests at the same time. Right?

Because if you're going on a quest, if you're Don Quixote and you're tilting at windmills because you're gonna kill all those giants, that's your one thing. Right? And that's all you do. So if you figure out from a quest standpoint what is what is the thing that has to happen. Because quests, if you have that maniacal focus on what matters, it becomes very easy to figure out what to say no to. Because it's either a hell yes or a hell no. Because if you're in the middle, it's just hell. So you have to be you have to use your words. So think about it in terms of a quest.

If you were If I ask you, you had to write down what's your quest for this year? What's the one thing that's gonna drive everything else? Because also, quests aren't easily fulfilled. You don't do them quickly. Then they're gonna direct resources. They're gonna direct energy and focus and money. And if that's the case, because that's all the resources we have, we have energy and we have money. Where am I spending those things? And if I'm spending them on my quest, I'm not gonna have a lot of it left over to spend other places. So I don't have to say no because I'm entirely focused on this one thing. And that'll also help you to delegate, automate, or ignore distractions ruthlessly.

Right? Ruthlessly eliminate distractions. And then you measure your success by a progress on the quest. What are you learning? How are you evolving? Not a laundry list of tasks that you do every day. Focus is a matter of deciding what things you're not going to do, and that list should be much longer than the things you are going to do.

So choose words carefully. Alright?

So let let's talk about this because if I here's the other thing it does for me as a leader. If I have a quest, if I have this one thing, I can I can now leverage the power of repetition?

And it's really, really important. Because

leaders, in order to provide clarity about what's important, you have to be willing to be redundant. You have to say things over and over and over again. And if you're if you're not tired of hearing yourself talk about it, your team hasn't heard it enough. You can have very few messages that you wanna that you wanna preach during any course of any year. If I'm on a quest and everybody join me on that quest, the quest is all we talk about. We don't talk about multiple quests. We don't talk about stopping this quest and starting another quest. It creates a culture of clarity in the organization because people know what you're gonna talk about.

And then, it's just like you you turn in, and I've given this advice to many leaders, you turn into a politician. And I don't mean this in a bad way, but there's lessons to be learned here. Because you know, when politicians are interviewed and asked questions, you know how they respond? They don't respond to the question. They respond to the question they wish they were asked, not the question they were actually asked. And so, if you've got a quest and you've communicated that quest to everybody in the organization, then you make every question, conversation, or comment about that quest. Every meeting, every decision, every conversation, every question becomes a way to reinforce the quest. Because that's how you that's how you create a culture of clarity, is repetition and redundancy. You have to repeat yourself, and that's another reason why you can't have 27 quests.

You can only have one. Now, if you achieve that quest halfway through the year, then feel free to create another one. But you have to give people clarity and confidence that you've committed to something because commitment then provides clarity and confidence. But if but if we commit, quote unquote, to something on January 2nd, and then we decide January 27th, it isn't working, we're gonna commit to something else. And we're gonna commit to something else on February 7th, and then on March 3rd, and so on and so forth. How do we even know if any of it worked? I mean, if you're if you're doing anything, an experiment when you do an experiment, you know, explore, experiment, evolve. If you do an experiment and it doesn't work, you don't change 7 variables in the experiment. Because then if it does work, you have no idea which variable it was.

So this takes time and commitment and consistency and confidence. It also takes something most leaders lack, which is patience. Because if if I say an experiment is, I believe if I do x, I will get y. Right? So if I don't get y, I'm only gonna change one variable, and then I'm gonna test again. I'm gonna do another experiment. Because then I'll I'm gonna test each of these variables. I can't just throw it away and start all over, because I

haven't learned anything. I can't apply that learning. So this takes this takes patience.

Right? And we have this this false narrative, a sense of urgency, and we gotta move fast and we gotta do all these things, which we have to move at the right pace. But we have to move with a sense of intention, not a sense of urgency. So, the inner work that a that a leader has to do here is a commitment to prioritization and their own repetition.

So they have to have the courage to simplify. We have to

have the courage. The the hardest part isn't choosing what to focus on, it's letting the rest of it go. Innately, all of you know what's important. If I ask you what was most important to you, you could rattle off 2 or

3 things. That isn't the issue. The issue is letting all the noise go.

It's it's cutting it's it's it's getting rid of the noise from the outside. And and we somehow believe that being successful at points in our life that there are infinite possibilities, when in reality, there are not. We have this illusion because we have access to data and information and social media platforms where everybody shows their best self. And when I say best self, I'm talking about organizations as well. We promote our organization, the very best, all the happy smiling employees, all the wonderful customers, all those things. And so when we're on there, all we're seeing is everybody else's best. And so, we think, oh my gosh, we're failing. We have to change.

We have to do this. We have to do that. We have to keep up

with the Joneses. And we believe it. We're smarter than that. You're smarter than that.

I'm not saying I'm not saying these things are inherently bad. I'm saying we have to know we have to know where to compartmentalize them. And we have to have courage to simplify the message so that we can provide clarity to other people because courage leads to clarity,

and it gives other people confidence. That's what we're trying

to do. We're trying to instill that, but we need patience and discipline to do that because we have to stick with our quest long enough to see the results before we make any changes. I mean, integrity, by its right definition, is just doing what you say you're gonna do. My actions meet my words. So I said I'm gonna do this and I did that. If I if you see me act in alignment, then that's I have integrity. If I don't, I don't. So leadership integrity depends upon us doing what we say we're gonna do.

And and part a fundamental part of that is patience. It contributes to many, many things, emotional resilience, stress management, enhanced decision making. The ability to endure delays and setbacks cultivates a calm, composed demeanor fostering personal growth. I've always told everybody I work with, great leaders bring the temperature down in

a room. They don't ramp it up. People feel at ease and calm and confident when a

great leader walks in the room, Because they know that person is crystal clear on what commitments they're gonna make. And then, part and partial to all that is delayed gratification. There's been tons of studies done on this. You can read about them on your own, but we have to develop impulse control. You have to lead yourself first. You gotta tell yourself, no, we're not gonna do that. Because resisting that temptation of an instant gratification can yield significant benefits later on. Keep people on course.

Keep them focused on what matters. Keep them focused on the quest. Keep them focused on the quest. This is this thing you're coming up with, this this mantra, this rallying cry, whatever you wanna call it, is something you're gonna repeat over and over and over again. Something that means something long term. Something that's scalable and sustainable.

So, here's our here's our key takeaways. Right? Maniacal focus simplifies complexity. Your job as

a leader is to make the world easy to understand. And you essentially do that by the language that you choose, and the quest that you establish for your people, because that enables them to simplify a very complex, uncertain, ambiguous, and volatile world. Repetition builds clarity, alignment, and momentum. The only way people get better at doing anything is having that bad. So if you drill all the way into the organization, you're gonna go on a quest, and you need people to be really good at something, you need to get them reps. They need to do it over and over and over again, no matter what field you're in. It's only way we get better. Repetition is the only thing that builds consistency and clarity and momentum, because it gives us self it gives your people self efficacy.

They have belief in themselves, because they've seen themselves do it. They have an observed competency in that thing. But you can't do that if you keep switching things on them. If throughout the year, you have 7 different initiatives, everybody's developing different skill sets to make these initiatives work. They're never getting enough reps, so they aren't gonna be very good. You're you're continually putting them in

the j curve, and that's not a fun place to be. So here's what

I would challenge you to do. This week, cut your cut all take all of the things you're planning on doing and figure out what the quest is. Because it'd be better to achieve one thing than to get 10 things a third of the way done. So have the courage as a leader to simplify down what matters most to you and your people. And then, whenever you achieve that one because you have clarity around what it looks like when it's done, you know what done looks like, then and only then can you have another quest. And I guarantee you, there everybody's gonna have a big psychological deep breath if you're able to do that, because people would love that. They wanna be successful, and they wanna know what what they're where they're going. Because it gives them confidence and clarity about their lives.

And so just remember, you know, here's the thing, leadership isn't about doing more, it's about doing less, better, and louder. So with that said, I'll leave you with this. Remember, it's not about having all the answers. It's about asking big, bold, beautiful questions, and showing up with intention every day. Until next time, keep pushing boundaries, embracing the unknown, and daring to do the work that truly matters.