Ideas in the Wild: How Benny Ausmus is Helping Organizational Leaders Move Toward a New and Better Normal

Thousands of books about business and leadership are published every single year, but we seldom have time to digest that knowledge, let alone put it all into action. Organisational change is rarely simple, but Benny Ausmus’ new book The Transformational Leadership Compass makes the process as clear, accessible, and practical as possible.

Through simple, jargon-free language, the TLC system helps leaders bring their peoples’ heads and hearts together on the journey towards a new and better normal. With practical insights from fourteen areas of research and practice, Benny developed the TLC system to create lasting change in even the most resistant, dysfunctional organisational cultures.

It has succeeded in IT consultancies, yogurt factories, flying trapeze schools (seriously), telecommunications providers, schools, accounting firms, renewable energy companies, recruitment firms, real estate agencies, and more. I recently caught up with Benny to learn about what inspired him to write the book and his favorite idea he shares with readers.

What happened that made you decide to write the book? What was the exact moment you realized these ideas needed to get out there?

I think it was one week when three clients in the same week approached me and asked me to write a book. I’d spent ten or so years designing and developing organizational transformation programs and leadership development programs. There were a lot of methodologies, slide packs, programs, and curriculums that we’d collected and put together over the years.

But this one particular week in 2018, everybody just decided to ask me all at once to write a book and I thought seriously about it. Somebody put me on to Tucker Max from Scribe, and I remember listening to the episode of the Aubrey Marcus Podcast with Tucker on it.

Soon after that, I found myself on a call with Tucker and told him my background and my book idea. He just immediately called me out and said, “Yeah, you’re scared of writing a book and you probably won’t do it because writing a book is a very bold and courageous thing to do.”

So, I quite liked that challenge, and I decided from that point that I was going to write a book, so I got on a plane to Austin. I sat with the Scribe during their Guided Author workshop, and for the next two years, I worked on writing it. It was important for me to get the ideas out there to scale my business, but to also contribute to the field that I work in and the leaders we help.

What is your favorite specific, actionable idea in the book?

My favorite idea is the Transformational Leadership Compass (TLC) installation. The idea here is to understand how the north star, vision, mission, values, culture, management systems, team building, and fast rhythms of communications all fit together to make change and transformation work for the leader. In the book, we provide the language that you can learn and share with others, to bring them on the journey, to make your organization better, to make the environment and the conditions that you work in better and to make your bottom line much better.

What’s a story of how you’ve applied this idea in your own life? What has this lesson done for you?

The TLC methodology can be applied, of course, to a large organizational transformation. It can be applied to a small business transformation, and it can be applied to the transformation of the individual. In fact, you’ll find in the appendix of the book, an exercise of building your own TLC and what this involves is looking through each of the categories of TLC and running an audit and assessment, and a reflection of where you’re up to in life and where you want to go.

What this gives you is a map to change, not just one small element of your life, but understand how that change links into everything else. So, this tool of map-making allows you to create a much better strategy. At least four times a year, sit and redo my own TLC for myself.

I’ll go through all of the categories, reflect on where I am, and plan for where I want to be. I also do that for big changes with my consulting and coaching practice and business. So, the most applicable idea in my own life is using the TLC to plan and strategize, and for my business, it’s using this methodology to create a strong, dynamic strategy for growth.