Is Celebrating Wins Important + How to Effectively Debrief 2023 | Elite Performance Podcast #43

00:00:00:05 - 00:00:15:29
Itamar Marani
Welcome to today's podcast, everyone. We're going to be talking about how to Debrief 2023 and I'm actually going to be sharing slides with you, a presentation that I work with the Arena Elite guys. So if you want the presentation slides themselves, you can walk through all the questions and you can do these debrief with yourself, with your team, whatever it may be.

00:00:16:06 - 00:00:30:17
Itamar Marani
Please click on the show notes below. We're going to have a place for you to download everything and get all the details you need. Also, if you're listening to this as a podcast, you're welcome to go to YouTube. It's going to be the link below as well and listen to the whole thing and see it over there. Have a great 2024 everyone.

00:00:30:19 - 00:00:46:08
Itamar Marani
Keep rocking. Today, we're going to be talking about debriefs. We're going to talk about why people don't do it, why they should do it. And I'm also going to be sharing with you guys our personal lessons and my personal lessons from 2023. So maybe you can take them out of yours and you can win much bigger. So we're going to dive right into debriefing.

00:00:46:15 - 00:01:04:21
Itamar Marani
So what we're going to talk about today is why people don't do it, why people think about failure, how they think about failure incorrectly. A all the times and how it's denying them a lot of success. We're going to talk about what a poor debrief is versus an effective debrief. We're going to talk about the secret sauce question and we're going to ask is celebrating wins beneficial?

00:01:04:22 - 00:01:19:20
Itamar Marani
And we're going to break that down. This is a really big one for me. This was a giant thing that a couple of years ago finally really clicked for me in how to do it well, how to not do well. So first off, reasons for not properly debriefing. Why do people not do it? So really, from what I've seen, it boils down to these following things.

00:01:19:20 - 00:01:40:24
Itamar Marani
One is lack of awareness. Two is not knowing how to technically do it. Three is that it's uncomfortable, it's not fun or some people just say, You know what, It takes too much time. Now, here's the deal, guys. What's more fun? Honestly, assessing our shortcomings or visualizing our success and filling our cup with positivity towards new goals. Which ones?

00:01:40:24 - 00:01:55:27
Itamar Marani
The more people get drawn to. It's like we have to be have the maturity and say we need to honestly assess what our shortcomings are. And if we fail throughout this year, which all of us had micro failures, we need to accept that and look at it straight on. Failure is a part of growth. Okay? This is a big thing to recognize.

00:01:55:27 - 00:02:12:07
Itamar Marani
It is not something to shy away from. Failure is a sign that you're pushing your limits, that you're not just staying in your comfort zone because you're really stumbling over your limits at times, which is great. And it also gives room for lessons to be learned. When you stumble beyond those limits, it is absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about.

00:02:12:09 - 00:02:28:00
Itamar Marani
As that old saying goes, Show me a man who hasn't failed and also a young man who's never tried. Failure to deal with it like all of us are trying to do big things in life. So it's natural that we fail at times, right? That makes sense about other people. So should make sense and be okay for you as well.

00:02:28:03 - 00:02:50:14
Itamar Marani
Like, yes, failure. Failure is sometimes painful and sometimes embarrassing, but here's the big one. Since you've already pay that price for failing, shouldn't you at least get your money's worth and really learn from it and evolve from it? So we're going to do okay. So this is why we debrief. The reality is that what doesn't evolve dies, and we must learn from our mistakes in order to evolve, survive and win.

00:02:50:14 - 00:03:12:12
Itamar Marani
Especially if you're in a very competitive niche in business. When a mistake is made, we need to look at straight in the face and ask the necessary questions in order to attain newfound wisdom and really grow. And doing this can ensure that the same mistake doesn't repeat itself and cause a tragic toll. Or basically, as that old saying goes, you can avoid paying a dumb tax for doing again, something you shouldn't have done.

00:03:12:15 - 00:03:29:14
Itamar Marani
So with that, we're going to move right into the debriefs. So there's, again, a poor debrief, an effective debrief, and we're going to differentiate between the two because this is really important. So most people either have a non-existent debriefing practice or they do a poor one, not because they're bad, just because nobody ever taught them how to do it.

00:03:29:21 - 00:03:48:28
Itamar Marani
Okay. So basically say, okay, this was passive use, big sexy issue goals. This was past years action plan. And then they have no actual reflection of the past or success or failures and then just go on to the next year. Okay, This is next year. Big, sexy, audacious goals. And this is next year's action plans. So you can see that there's not a lot of actual growth there.

00:03:49:05 - 00:04:08:03
Itamar Marani
Of course, they're going to learn some lessons just because subconsciously they recognize what's going on and they know they shouldn't do this or that again. But there's no real intentionality here. There's not a real like harvesting of all those lessons. It is some of it happens naturally, but that's not really effective. Okay. That's a poor one. So what is an effective debrief?

00:04:08:06 - 00:04:24:17
Itamar Marani
In fact, if you really look at it like this and this is what I learned, the special Forces of the Hidden, it's like from day one, how to debrief both hot and cold. But basically, this is a structure. So you have your desired outcome for mission number one. Then you have the battle plan for mission number one. Then you debrief Mission number one.

00:04:24:19 - 00:04:42:19
Itamar Marani
And after you debrief and you say what worked and what didn't worked, and so on and so on, you update your general battle methodology, basically all your ass ops, your strategy, whatever it may be, you recognize, Oh, this is how we need to change things moving forward. And then with that newfound wisdom, you feel, okay, this is already mission number two.

00:04:42:21 - 00:05:02:12
Itamar Marani
So therefore, this is going to be your battle plan for mission number two, taking into account our updated as ops battle methodology and so on and so on, because if you take those into account, we'll have better execution or probably get better results. Now, again, this is pretty simple, but the reason people don't do this usually is again, because they're not aware of how to do it.

00:05:02:16 - 00:05:28:15
Itamar Marani
So we're going to have all that. Right now. They're not knowing that they should do it, which now you're aware as well. But again, it's uncomfortable. It's not as fun as is visualizing your success or is it themselves? It takes too much time. Now, here's the deal. This presentation that I'm showing you guys right now, if you're listening a podcast, this is something I did with my guys in under an hour and a half an hour and a half, and they got these extremely, extremely valuable lessons to make sure they don't repeat the same stumbles next year.

00:05:28:21 - 00:05:52:06
Itamar Marani
This doesn't have to be a two day thing where you're doing a retreat somewhere you can work towards an hour and a half and debrief this. And honestly, you're probably doing less of that as well. So how do I effectively debrief 2023? These are the things that we went over. Okay. This exact questions that I asked my guys when we did the actual debrief, first thing you do is you look what were my desired outcomes for 2023, okay?

00:05:52:08 - 00:06:08:14
Itamar Marani
And then you ask yourself, what was my plan of attack strategies or the KPIs? How did I actually hope to make that happen? Now, this is really important to differentiate between the two. So those people go ahead and write. Like all my plan, like my desired outcomes, is to do more marketing. And I know that was a strategy.

00:06:08:14 - 00:06:28:10
Itamar Marani
One is that I was hoping to make more money in the business. There need to be a clear target. Number one, whatever my desired outcomes, that needs to be a very, very clear target. What are you actually trying to accomplish? Then number two is how are you actually trying to accomplish that? What was the thing that you said, If we do this, we're probably going to see success in getting to that target.

00:06:28:13 - 00:06:48:10
Itamar Marani
So that's number one. And number two, and if you didn't have these clear, that's already a big lesson number three, did you say what was the gap between my goals and what I actually accomplished is when you write this down, what was the gap between what I wanted to happen and what happened in reality? Then number four say, why did that gap happen?

00:06:48:12 - 00:07:03:29
Itamar Marani
This is when you honestly take a look at like, why did this happen? And I explain this in a little bit. Fifth, you say what benefited me in the pursuit of my goals and how can I incorporate that into the future plans. Now, this is really important. Debriefing isn't just to look at why we didn't do things right.

00:07:04:00 - 00:07:23:26
Itamar Marani
It's also understand what did we actually do really well? What are some key things that I can take into 2024 that if I keep doing these things or do more of them, whatever it may be, I can win easily. Okay, This is a big part of it. And then number six is we ask what hindered me in the pursuit of my goals and how can I mitigate or take that into account moving forward?

00:07:23:29 - 00:07:46:18
Itamar Marani
What were the things that really got in my way? Okay, so those are key six questions now. Number seven is, most importantly, is there a higher level principle at play here that can have an overarching effect in the future on my life or business? So this is usually a personal trait that isn't serving me, and it's causing me to make decisions that are in line with my desired outcomes.

00:07:46:21 - 00:08:07:21
Itamar Marani
So when you go to that, why did that gap happen? Question number four here, you're probably come up with a technical reason why did this happen? But again, if you're the head of your business, it's to figure out why did you make that happen? What is it about yourself? So what we did and everybody did this by themselves, but what we also wanted to get is we want to learn the lessons from each other.

00:08:07:24 - 00:08:25:08
Itamar Marani
So after everybody did this by themselves, we started sharing time. So this we're almost going to share my lessons with everybody here. So we just shared a simple like this, and this is something great that you can do if you're doing this with a group. There's something very powerful about debriefing your entire year and doing with a group of your peers to say, okay, guys, we're going to do this together.

00:08:25:10 - 00:08:40:04
Itamar Marani
I think an hour and a half tops, I'm going to learn a lot of valuable lessons. So the things that we shared was one, what was the gap between my goals and what I actually accomplished? So for us, my company was about 300 in revenue. We wanted to hit a certain target. We were about 300 short of that.

00:08:40:06 - 00:08:59:03
Itamar Marani
Then we asked, why did that gap happen? Well, why that got happened is that we didn't focus enough on the meat and potatoes of the business. The JV's outreach Legion and actually creation of the book. We got down, we got bogged down into the weeds of less important things, and that happened because we weren't organized enough and we lost focus of our main goals at times.

00:08:59:05 - 00:09:16:18
Itamar Marani
So then we asked what benefited me, the pursuit of my goals, and how can I incorporate that into future plans. So what really benefited us this year was whenever we had forced external deadlines. So when we actually had the arena cohorts, things went really well because we were forced to be accountable. Externally when we had an alumni event, it went really, really well.

00:09:16:24 - 00:09:38:03
Itamar Marani
When we had our VIP event for the other guys, it was really, really well. And also getting an external consultant to show us the path, a small one where they explained, Is this what you need to do? And then us executing it worked really, really well. Basically finding a small win of saying, I'm going to find somebody to show us how to do it instead of hoping for a giant homerun of, I'm going to find this person to execute everything from A to Z.

00:09:38:05 - 00:09:54:22
Itamar Marani
So those were the things that really benefited us this year. Then number four is what hindered me in the pursuit of my goals and how can I mitigate to take that into account moving forward. So the big thing that hindered us this year was not having a system to keep Itamar or the business in check if Itamar loses focus.

00:09:54:25 - 00:10:10:06
Itamar Marani
So in October this year, for obvious reasons, I lost a little bit of focus and I wasn't as sharp as he was. He was, and we didn't have any structure there to safeguard us staying focused on the main things like I said earlier, why that gap happened. We didn't have a structure to keep us focused on the main things.

00:10:10:11 - 00:10:32:27
Itamar Marani
When I wasn't as focused, they needed to be and we're going to mitigate that moving forward by actually hiring a project manager probably, or having some kind of system to make sure that it's not just reliant on me staying focused as the head of the business. Now, the big one is the secret sauce. Question is, is your higher level principle here at play that can have an overarching effect in the future on my life and business.

00:10:33:00 - 00:10:59:02
Itamar Marani
And this is usually a personal trait that isn't serving me and it's causing me to make decisions that aren't in line with my desired outcomes. So for me, the big lesson was that constantly trying to get on base is better than trying to create conditions to swing at homeruns. Here's what I mean by that. I recognize that I try to go for big, giant, audacious wins because of ego instead of actually going for the small ones that will add up and actually, like, this stuff slows me down in the aggregate.

00:10:59:03 - 00:11:15:03
Itamar Marani
If I was just trying to stack up smaller wins and accomplish more than if I just had created these really giant audacious things and I can bullshit myself and tell myself, Oh, it's because I'm audacious, I like to go for big things. But I'll there's also an aspect of ego. I know it's logically not the best thing to do, but I still am bitter.

00:11:15:03 - 00:11:30:19
Itamar Marani
Last year. So why did I do that? It was probably an emotional thing. It was my ego and I need to acknowledge that and recognize that. And one of our big things for next year is not to try to only swing for the fences, but to stack up a lot of small wins that will add up to a lot of runs coming in.

00:11:30:21 - 00:11:49:06
Itamar Marani
So that's that. The five parts. These are the five questions you asked me to actually share with other people. What was the gap between my goals and what I actually wanted to accomplish? Why did that gap happen on the technical level? What benefited me in the pursuit of my goals and how can I incorporate that into future plans for what hindered me in the pursuit of my goals?

00:11:49:06 - 00:12:05:24
Itamar Marani
And how can I mitigate or take that into account moving forward? And the secret sauce question is, most importantly, is there a higher level principle at play here that can have an overarching effect in the future on my life and my business? And this is usually a personal trait of ours that isn't serving us anymore. So that's what you do for your business.

00:12:05:27 - 00:12:21:25
Itamar Marani
Now, what I also highly, highly suggest is that you do that for your personal life. You do the exact same thing. Because what's interesting is that when we also did this for our personal lives, we recognize that most of the guys didn't have clear goals or targets. The first thing you're supposed to figure out if, what did I want to accomplish this year?

00:12:21:27 - 00:12:38:18
Itamar Marani
Their goals or targets were so vague and ambiguous that it would absolutely be something they would not tolerate in their businesses. They would not say, Oh, I kind of want to make more money. But for some reason they said, I just kind of want to have a better relationship or I want to have a bit more adventure or I want to lose some weight.

00:12:38:21 - 00:12:56:26
Itamar Marani
There's these very intangible goals, the opposite of smart goals that they had in the personal life. So because they didn't set these benchmarks of what they actually wanted to accomplish, they could, in hindsight, actually introspect and say, well, why didn't I call this? Why didn't I accomplish that? As the saying goes, if there's no target, you can't hit it.

00:12:56:29 - 00:13:18:12
Itamar Marani
And if you can't actually debrief, why didn't hit to target? You're giving yourself a beautiful opportunity to grow. So I think this is really important. If in your personal life you recognize that your yearly goals aren't as tactical, they're not as smart goals, whatever it may be, as they need to be, you can really upgrade all your methodology if you actually put yourself on the hook by being specific about it.

00:13:18:14 - 00:13:38:16
Itamar Marani
So that's the personal life now. With that, we also wrapped it up by celebrating our wins, and I want to explain why we did this. So I used to be very anti celebrating wins when I was younger. I was like, I don't have time for this. This is nonsense. And using learning to grow and to move forward. And I thought this was just kind of like fluffy unicorn.

00:13:38:22 - 00:13:54:14
Itamar Marani
Let's all dance around with crystal, around the moonlight kind of stuff. But I've changed. Okay, so a measure of mine taught me this and it was really important to me. So first off, celebrating wins. It is nice to do that. I always recognized. But what I didn't understand at the time was how important it is, and let me explain why.

00:13:54:17 - 00:14:12:24
Itamar Marani
So if you guys are listening on the podcast, there's also a link to watch the YouTube videos. You can see the grass we're going to show here, but basically your emotional fortitude dictates your action threshold, and your emotional fortitude is basically comprised of how confident you are and how courageous you're capable of being. So there's a kind of threshold there.

00:14:12:24 - 00:14:37:23
Itamar Marani
The more coffin you are, the more action you take, the more courageous you're able to be. On top of that, the even more action you'll take and celebrating our wins. The reason it's so important is because it allows our confidence to be more realistically adjusted. So a lot of times we don't feel confident in ourselves and we view ourselves through the lens of who we were two years ago, three years ago, four years ago.

00:14:37:25 - 00:15:01:18
Itamar Marani
And because that's our level of confidence, we set goals that match that level of what we think we're capable of because we don't recognize what we've accomplished. And celebrating our wins has a very unique impact. We're actually readjusts where our confidence should be. So if I were to set goals, me personally, based on how I felt about myself and my capabilities in business five years ago, I would set a much smaller goals that wouldn't actually make a lot of sense.

00:15:01:20 - 00:15:24:16
Itamar Marani
But if I do that, based of what way we did all this last year, these are our wins is what we have in place already. There's the assets is what we've created. I can set much more realistic goals for how somebody like me in my situation should be thinking. I think beyond the fact that celebrating wins is nice and it's nice to enjoy this game of business in that aspect, and especially enjoy with your peers, with your friends and your loved ones and so on, and celebrate what you've done.

00:15:24:18 - 00:15:42:22
Itamar Marani
It actually gives you better performance. And for me, that's what took me over when I recognized that it's not just going to be fun, but it's actually going to improve my performance. That's when I bought into celebrating wins. And I hope for you guys that first off, you had a lot of successes in 2023 and I hope you give yourself permission to celebrate them as well.

00:15:42:25 - 00:16:02:15
Itamar Marani
First off, because you should enjoy life. It's a part of it, something that I have to learn as well. But to if that doesn't convince you, recognize that it will actually improve your performance. Celebrating your wins will readjust internally how you feel about yourself and are confident you should be. And therefore it allows you to go for better, bigger goals without feeling as stressful as it should be.

00:16:02:17 - 00:16:19:27
Itamar Marani
So that was debriefing. 2023 I hope that helped and I will see you guys on the next episode as thing before you go. I would love to hear What are your personal biggest lessons from 2023? If you'd be willing to either share them in the comments below or email them to us at [email protected]

00:16:20:04 - 00:16:35:09
Itamar Marani
I respond to each and every one of them. I'd love to learn your lessons. What held you back? How you plan to grow or just general things you said. These are main takeaways I want to take moving forward. So again, either drop them the comments below or email us at [email protected] and I reply to each and every one of them.

00:16:35:12 - 00:16:36:21
Itamar Marani
Have a great 2024 everyone.