Have you ever had a mess so large that you don’t think you could ever clean it up? This mess may take the form of a hoarder’s delight, or it might look like a church that has lost all its members, or it might look like an organization with all the wrong people in all the wrong positions. What if I were to tell you that we could fix everything in two days?

One of my favorite things to do as a coach is to shift the perspective of the situation to evoke new awareness. For example, I might ask a client who has a gigantic mess and sounds hopeless, “What would it take to clean up this whole mess in two days?” After their initial shock wears off, their brain starts to go to work on the problem in a new way.

On the reality TV show Restaurant Impossible, Aussie chef Robert Irvine takes over a failing restaurant and transforms it into a successful restaurant in just two days with only ten thousand dollars. He redecorates the dining room, creates a new menu, infuses renewed passion into the staff, and markets the restaurant for a grand reopening. 

He always addresses four areas: reality, passion, leadership, and conflict.

Addressing the Internal Reality

The episode always starts with Irvine eating at the restaurant. His disappointment is paramount. He is equally disappointed, disgusted, and revolted by the food, the service, and the environment. Irvine has no questions about why the restaurant is nearly out of business. 

However, when he interviews the owners, they always blame the external factors: the economy has shifted, quality staff is unavailable, and customers can never be satisfied. They never blame themselves. They never take responsibility for the things that only they can bring to the table.

Talking to them is never enough. Irvine has to bring in people from the street to sample the food and give honest feedback to the owners. All of this can seem kind of harsh, but Irvine has to get the owners to accept their reality in a matter of hours if there is any hope of them accepting the transformation is about to give them.

A question I often ask my messy clients is, “What needs to change about you for this to happen?” I always give a long pause after I ask. The client needs to shift their mindset to change the only thing they control – their behavior. The leader of an organization must give first attention to the reality of their situation.

Reigniting Passion for the Purpose

The second thing Irvine does is cook for the owners and the staff. Irvine lives for someone eating his food and having a wonderful, emotional experience. We watch the owners sample his food, and their eyes light up with delight. Cooking great food is a passionate cause. As he reignites passion, he also creates needed urgency required for change.

Sometimes Irvine finds someone on staff with the skill required to distill this newly found passion, but often he has to find someone from the outside looking for a transformational opportunity. Passion connected to skill creates magic.

Renewed passion isn’t just required for cooking. It is also needed to give excellent customer service and keep the restaurant clean. Passion is the critical ingredient for the extended hard work necessary to run a successful business.

We tell you to never ask your client a “why” question, but what we want to avoid is the summoning of unnecessary judgment. We need to get at the heart of why our client’s desired outcomes are essential. I often ask, “What makes this important to you today?” The client needs to find an emotional basis for their work that will drive them to do the difficult work.

Stepping Back into a Leadership Role

Robert Irvine has a commanding presence. People do what he says without question. However, Irvine realizes that he will only be in charge for two days, and then command will revert to whoever will take it. He does his best to equip the owners to become the leaders of their business.

Without leadership, every individual will decide how they will do their job. This will be determined by personal preference and required effort. One thing necessary for a quality restaurant is consistency. This can only be achieved with leadership.

Someone always has to be fired. Let me repeat this because, for some reason, we want to ignore it. Someone always has to be fired. There are people who refuse to be led. If they can, they will create an unaccountable position in your organization. One major role of a leader is to create accountability. 

I often tell my clients that when you refuse to tell someone “No,” you are probably telling ten other people “No.” The client needs to see that letting down ten people is emotionally worse than confronting one person. The leader needs to have the confidence that their decisions are right for the organization and not necessarily right for every individual.

Learning to Engage in Conflict

Out of all of Irvine’s abilities, his ability to engage in healthy conflict is what sets him apart. A simple defintion of conflict is an unresolved decision. Hundreds of these occur every day. Some are more difficult to resolve than others, but every conflict needs to be resolved, and a great leader never ignores conflict.

While Irvine is an intimidating figure, we are surprised that his chief ability to resolve conflict comes from his ability to be vulnerable. He is always passionate, which increases his sense of urgency, but he is rarely angry. His focus is on the outcome, but as Stephen Covey taught, he first tries to understand.

Irvine knows you can’t always make everyone happy, but you can seek to understand everyone’s point of view. When people are heard, they are much more likely to support a decision, even if it isn’t the decision they would have made. Irvine demonstrates that even when there is so much work, taking fifteen minutes to listen is always worth the effort.

Another way I change my client’s perspective is to ask them to see the situation through someone else’s eyes. Without fail, my client will learn something new from this exercise. What once seemed like a difficult decision suddenly becomes obvious once they widen their view. Conflict is often resolved by wading into “the pool of shared understanding.” (This quote is from the book Crucial Conversations, which is must reading for leaders.)

Conclusion

What would it take to clean up your mess in two days? With these distinctions, we can channel Robert Irvine into our own Impossible episode and transform our mess into success. Irvine combines intensity with love and gives new life to petrified businesses. This is an excellent mindset for us as coaches, as we have a driving desire to help our clients transform their situations, breathing new life into the world that surrounds them.