How might a bit of simplicity avoid a lot of stupidity?
Building upon a recent profile of Enphase Energy CEO Badri Kothandaraman, this live episode of The Energy Detox will help you uncover areas of your personal and professional life that could benefit from an extra dose of modesty, frugality, and simplicity.
The headline: 𝐄𝐧𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐲 𝐂𝐄𝐎 𝐒𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 '𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐃𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐩𝐢𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬' (by Chris Woodyard of Investor's Business Daily)
The goal: to (𝐆)𝐫𝐨𝐰, (𝐏)𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 (𝐒)𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 success by pondering these 3 questions throughout your day:
💡 What are the ways that a frugality focus can provide more growth opportunities?
💡 Are you aware of (and protective of) what REALLY led you to your current position?
💡 How much time are you wasting on the hunt for exotic answers to simple questions?
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the energy detox petroleum based blend of leadership conversations guaranteed to boost your professional and personal output by flushing away the hidden and often toxic barriers to peak performance. I'm your host, Joe Sinnott, a chemical engineer, executive coach and 16 year energy industry veteran helping you tap into the same resources fueling today's most successful and sustainable leaders. And today, we're looking at one leader in particular who was profiled in an Investor's Business Daily publication yesterday. And that leader of n, phase energy made some claims that frugality and thrift and simplicity are the keys to success. And this particular leader Badri, who I will avoid trying to pronounce his full name in the interest of time and simplicity on today's live episode here. He has results that prove that a focus on thrift and simplicity and being mindful of the money that his company was spending has led to tremendous results. And phase energy is up about 250% in terms of stock price from where it was when he took over four or five years ago. And so again, in this particular case, you could argue very clearly that the results speak for themselves. And the results, at least in his own words are based on simplicity, frugality, and I highly recommend you go ahead and read the article on Mr. Badri here. Because it it's a basically, it's a textbook example of a leader who has clear focus, clear vision, a clear approach, who has a communication style that really doesn't leave much question in terms of what his focus is, and what he expects from his people. And again, take all that together, and you look at the results. And they're very clear, he's been very successful. And I'm not going to take this episode to rehash everything in that article, because it's all right there. And again, that would be over complicating what is already a very simple and straightforward article. So again, I'll leave that for you to read for yourself. But I do want to take the time today, as we've been doing here on these live renditions of the energy detox, to help ask you three questions that will help you grow, protect, and sustain success. And hopefully, these questions today are a little bit more lighthearted and fun than say, yesterday's episode, where we went down a little bit more of a doom and gloom path there and trying to prevent you from having yourself or your company look much like the Hindenburg disaster from 80 or 90 years ago. So today, we're gonna have a little bit more fun. We're gonna talk about how a focus on simplicity and frugality and even a little bit of thrift can help you grow, protect and sustain success. And the first question that we're going to ask today, in terms of, again, the growth that you're hoping to achieve is, what are the ways that a frugality focus can provide more growth opportunities? How can a focus on less lead to more success and more opportunities and more options for you to continue moving forward and to continue moving yourself and your company and any of your stakeholders forward? And again, this isn't a tremendously new concept? In fact, you could argue it's somewhat cliche, right, less is more how many times in your life? Have you heard that? Well, regardless how often you've heard it, the question is, how often have you adhered to it? How often are you allowing that principle to dictate the decisions that you're making on a day to day business, whether it's in your professional life, your personal life? And if we turn to Badri here, we'll see that this has been his focus throughout his entire life growing up in India, where, again, a focus on frugality and his family and a focus on living simply and not spending any more money that he needed to to keep moving forward has allowed him to achieve tremendous success. So
04:16
the question for you is, what things are out there that whether they're financial or whether they're costing you time or energy or focus? What are the things that might be holding you back from growth, and from a leadership standpoint, there's myriad examples of things that could be holding you back, right? It could be as soft and generic as a desire to please people and to make people feel good and happy when, again, your goal isn't to make them feel good and happy. Your goal is to help them move closer to success to sustained progress. And that in turn will lead to happiness. Sure, but in the short term, your focus might have to be on being blunt, and being straightforward, and making it very clear that they're going to have to do more with less and this is an approach That Badri takes in his day to day, it's very clear in this article, that is how he communicates with his people. He's very straightforward. And when he sees a problem, he lets them know about it. You know, he refers to himself, as you know, an engineer who, you know, doesn't like to live in gray areas, right? I mean, he's gonna be pretty blunt. And he's not gonna, you know, go and tell people just what they want to hear. But at the same time, as a business executive, he's very clear that he is going to revel in the success of the company, he's going to enjoy it, he's going to celebrate it. But he recognizes that in order to get to that ladder thing that you know, celebration, if you will, you need to focus on being blunt, and being simple and avoiding all of the very many distractions that are out there, both financial, and both again, in terms of time and attention, that can prevent you from growing and can prevent you from moving forward. So ask yourself today before you head into the weekend, what are the ways that frugality focus that focus on getting rid of as much things as possible that might be holding you back? What are the ways that a focus on frugality today, I can help you have a better day and help you, you know, again, enjoy yourself more and help you have a more successful into your day here as you as you head into the weekend. My next question is, from a protection standpoint, are you aware of and protecting what really led you to your current position, your current role, and again, going back to this profile of Badri here, the CEO of N phase energy, it's very clear that he remembers full well, what brought him to end phase energy. He was excited, energized, if you will, by the technology that inphase had was unique, it was different. And yet, that got him excited, he saw the potential. And that's what really brought him on board, he said, Hey, look, I see the nuts and bolts here, I see that I want to be a part of this, you know, and it wasn't some big fluffy thing here. And some nice talking points about culture and people and all the things that may very well be true. And that, you know, you hear many times when there's a profile of a new leader of a company who, who has, you know, checks all the boxes, and all the things that he or she is excited about the new company, usually, again, it's about people or if they're moving to a new city about, you know, the new city and all that excitement, but no boundary continues to focus on the fact that no, they had a good project, that product had something that was differentiated, you know, this is a solar company here neglected to mention this far. And, and again, the idea of this company is that they have micro inverters. So all their solar panels, all have this ability to convert the direct current from the sun, sunshine, basically, from the sun into the alternating current that, of course, can be used to power homes and, you know, power you and our business, whatever the case might be, which is different from some, I guess you might call macro inverters where you have a whole bunch of solar panels, and they're relying on a single point to convert that energy. And again, this was a differentiator, he recognized that and he still recognizes it, he's not over complicating or, or again, over, you know, using flowery words, if you will, to, to turn what got him to his current position into something that really isn't true. He's keeping it simple. And he's remembering what got him here. And that, in turn, continues to allow him to grow his business, because he's focused on what was energizing, and what was exciting, and what was, you know, really a passion for him when he got started. So the question for you today is what got you to your current role. And it might not just be the the role that you're in at work, you know, if you're a business owner, or you're a leader within a company, we're also talking about the role that you might have as a husband, a wife, a parent, a, you know, brother, sister, whatever the case might be, whatever role you might have in your community, what got you to that point?
08:32
How did you get there? And to the extent you're able to choose your path, why did you choose it, and if you can remember that, and if you can protect that memory, it's going to do a heck of a lot of good for you, as you try to bring other people on board, and you try to generate excitement. But on the flip side, if you're a leader, who begins to start, you know, rewriting, rewriting history, right, and doing sort of a retroactive look on things and, and tweaking the story, and having this revisionist version of how you got to where you were, that doesn't quite reflect the truth and the reality of where you might have been 235 1015 years ago, then again, it's going to come out in your communications, it's going to come out in the way that you act. And the things you say, when you're trying to build morale and build engagement, it's going to come across as quite frankly, and authentic. So again, take a lesson from Badri, remember and retell and protect what it is that actually got you to your current position before you worry about your next steps before you worry about trying to say something that isn't quite true and isn't quite representative of what energized you in the past and what likely is still energizing you today. And the third and final question for today's how much time are you wasting on the hunt for exotic answers to simple questions. And I like towards the end of this profile on Badri that, again, it focused on the fact that you don't need exotic answers. You don't need to focus on exotic solutions when in many cases the answer of course is right front of you. It's simple. And when you're focused on simple things, when you don't have extraneous costs, when you don't have this desire to layer on complexities, well, what does that mean? It means you're probably in a much more sustainable position, and on a much more sustainable path, and you would be otherwise. And again, this is not a point that I need to rehash and overcomplicate and make to sound more exotic than it really is. It's really as simple as if you want to sustain success and momentum, you need to cut out any of the crap that could be holding you back. And you need to cut out the desire and quite frankly, the the natural tendency for many leaders and for many organizations to layer on additional complexity. And you need to identify all the ways that that complexity can slowly creep into your organization. And, you know, some of the most common ones that I see, of course, are the invitation to outside resources to outside consultants to outside advisors, who are going to come in and have may, perhaps the best of intentions, but they're likely going to come in with new ideas that might not fit clearly with what your core mission is. And again, that's not to argue against the value and those outside resources, because there's tremendous resources, tremendous value, tremendous power, and bringing some of them in I myself, of course, now, as an executive coach, I am an outside resource. In fact, my independence and my sort of third party nature that I bring to organizations is one of the things I tout, it's one of the most valuable aspects of what I do. But at the same time, if you're not on guard against the potential for outside resources that aren't complimentary, but instead add complexity, instead of trying to leverage your existing resources and your listing talent and, you know, existing technology, as Badri did when he stepped in, if you're not focused on resources that are looking to strip away the complexities, instead of add additional complexities. Well, again, you're setting yourself up for a situation where you are not going to be able to sustain success. And certainly you're not going to be able to turn around a company in the way that Badri was able to turn around and phase energy. So again, ask yourself, are you tempted by an exotic solution that might have some sexy headline and some sexy marketing campaign? Or are you content with a relatively frugal, simple and non exotic approach to leadership, to your business and to the product that you are producing? There's a lot of being said, I encourage you again, to go and read this profile piece.
12:22
I think, you know, you can do and you can do an hour, probably dissection of this and teach the whole leadership course, on many of the things that Badri touches on, he touches on communication, he shares his his focus and his vision on company strategy. Obviously, he talks a lot about the importance of being focused on two things, one, the cost of doing business and the cost of your goods, and to the pricing and what you're charging to your customers. And then one of the other big things and again, I at the risk of going a little bit too long here on Friday, on the heels of what was a longer episode yesterday, I'll need to kind of restrain myself, but I loved how he reverse engineered success, if you will, you know, he knew he knew what his focus was, he knew what his goal was, he knew why he was there, and and phase energy to begin with. And what he did was he worked backwards, he worked backwards from his customers and the conversations he was having with them. And then he worked backwards and continues to engage with the producers, the installers of his technology of the solar panels, and he continues to engage them. And he continues working backwards to his own workforce. And again, what do they need to do? How did they need to reshape themselves? Where did they need to find areas of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and he works all the way back to really what, again, is a very simple goal and a simple mission. And that is to be as profitable of a company as possible, and then to share that profit and to share that success with all the stakeholders. And again, it's a relatively textbook example of how all the different pieces of you know a conscious leader of someone who recognizes the full picture and understands how he or she is connected to that full picture. It's a perfect example of an individual who gets it, who's conscious, who's aware, and who has found, quite frankly, a couple simple approaches, a couple of simple mindsets that don't leave people questioning where his head is at. And really, you know, they don't leave them questioning what the goal of the company is, what the goal of the board of directors is, and really what the goal of the shareholders is. It's great, it's simple, it's clean. And again, it is a key to long term sustainable success. So all that being said, hopefully you stopped listening to listening to me a minute or two ago and decided to actually go and read the article. But if you are still listening, allow me again to thank you for engaging here with the energy detox. I've enjoyed continuing these daily detox iterations if you will. And as always, if you have feedback, questions, suggestions, feel free to reach out to me directly on links din or go ahead and visit the energy detox COMM For more of these conversations and more of these recent energy industry headlines or profiles in this case that could help you become a more sustainable leader.