How Might We...?

How Might We Impact Leaders Mindset

Introduction
 
Welcome to How Might We, the podcast that explores transformative ideas and strategies for leadership. In this episode, we delve into how leaders can cultivate impactful mindsets, featuring two exceptional guests: Geoff Hudson Searle, an international business leader, author, and keynote speaker with extensive global experience, and Oakland McCulloch, a retired Army officer with over 40 years of leadership expertise spanning combat, peacekeeping, and boardroom operations.
Together, they bring a wealth of insights into the power of trust, collaboration, and mindset in shaping leadership. From the challenges of modern communication to the erosion of institutional trust, this conversation examines practical ways to build connection, foster community, and lead with purpose in a rapidly changing world.
Get ready for an engaging discussion on the privilege of leadership, the importance of curiosity and care, and actionable strategies to create meaningful impact in organisations and beyond. Let’s dive in!
 
Transcript
 
Scott: [00:00:00] Hello, welcome back to the latest edition of how might we, and this edition, we're talking about how might we impact leadership mindset and joining me are Jeff Hudson Searle and Oakland McCulloch. I know you've been on some of the other episodes, both of these people have been on before, so it's going to be an interesting discussion.
But for those who don't know you gentlemen, if you'd like to introduce yourselves to the audience and who would like to go first.
Oakland: Oh, please. I'm glad to be back. Thanks, Scott. And thanks, Jeff, for inviting me to come back. I live here in the United States. I retired from the army after 23 years on active duty.
You got over 40 years of leadership experience in combat, peacekeeping operations, disaster relief operations, and in the boardroom. And now I'm just a keynote speaker. I go around and talk about leadership and success. And as we talk about a lot, Jeff, trust. Absolutely. [00:01:00] I'd
Geoff: like
Oakland: to know
Geoff: though, you're an international keynote speaker these days, aren't you?
That's right. Right. Just
Scott: in front of that. Okay. It lets yourself down. You're not just a keynote speaker. You
Geoff: are international. Yes. It's like
Scott: a man of wisdom. Right. And Jeff.
Geoff: I'm myself. Yeah ex banker city bank head of commercial finance. That's where I started really my career and actually my, my formal education, really anything else 10 years around the world, launching fortune, 100 bands, C suite executive and CEO of both.
Public and privately listed companies. International. Sorry, international. Very international. I've worked in over 121 countries in the world. I'm also an independent non executive director and chair of Remco. I've been doing that for the last 17 years. in my independent capacity. I'm currently on the executive board of two companies, one a metaverse company out of Australia, London and also one an AI sustainability [00:02:00] business which is very much based on Europe, UK, and also in MENA.
I'm also an author of seven books and this family movie Discussion really highlights is going. I hope we'll highlight some of the important issues around, you know, collaboration, community, partnership and very much, you know, trust and what we do today.
Scott: Okay. Welcome gents. So, and you didn't say you're an author as well.
Oakland: Yeah. Yeah, I am. I've got one book out. I'm not as good as Jeff, but I got one out. You are? Talks about leadership and you know, and one of the things I always tell people is, You know, I don't mention theory at all in my book or in my talks. I talk about everyday things that everyday leaders can do to help improve their leadership ability and empower the people they have the privilege to lead.
And it is a privilege to be the leader. And unfortunately as Jeff and I have talked about several times, it's too many leaders today have [00:03:00] forgotten that it's a privilege to be the leader and you see the results.
Scott: Okay, well, you've got one more book than me, so I'm on zero, so you're okay. No books. I keep getting told I should write one, but I haven't got around to it.
Okay, so before we came on here, we were talking, I think the word that came out that interested me quite a lot was community, sort of leadership through community and what that means globally. And obviously, We'll be talking about all the elections that are happening in 2024, and they're all settled down now, so during 2024 into 2025, the results of those elections are going to become apparent and the new governments are coming into shape.
So how does that sort of pan into what we're talking about, the impacts of leadership and mindset? Yeah. So, I mean, let me kick this off. Oak and I were having lunch recently and we, we did talk about this and I think it's an incredibly important subject. Firstly, it's like, you know, when I start to think about community, I start to think about events that come through the [00:04:00] calendar.
Geoff: So we can always talk about Christmas, we can always talk about Thanksgiving, and we start talking about You know what community is. I mean, with that is a set of values, right? You know, if you look at Thanksgiving in the U. S. for instance, you start to talk about gratitude. Well, gratitude shouldn't be reserved just for Thanksgiving.
It should be something that's actually provided, given, and shared throughout the whole calendar year. Where we're failing in, in certain areas is our inability to be able to embrace community, embrace collaboration, embrace, embrace ideas, sharing. ideas, sharing, sharing perspectives and, and doing that in a meaningful way.
You know, the, the erosion of trust in, you know, is a big subject. And, you know, I've, as you know, I've been studying that now for the best part of 30 years, but what I'm finding with trust, it's just getting worse and worse without actually starting to build it. Even in a small way, we [00:05:00] start to actually build community, which then has got an impact.
You know, there are a lot of moving parts when I start talking about this, but you know, community is something that, you know, what Oak said earlier, you know, it's a privilege to lead. Well, to me, it's a privilege and an honor. And also I, I, I feel the same about my friends. I feel still the same about, you know, my close associates.
My business associates and and the people that I share with. It's an honor and a privilege to actually work with people with integrity and and we have to start looking. I mean, I don't know what you think about that. But for me, I think we need to get back to that community matters and it matters. It's not a soft subject.
But if we can start getting community right, we can start getting societal right, and therefore we can start sharing with one another in the physical 5D and not treat each other, you know, in a transactional way, which I feel that we are [00:06:00] doing an awful lot, where life is too transactional, and it's not about the human experience and community and the good things that can actually come from actually setting precedence over something like a community.
Oakland: Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think the part of the problem is that we don't have that conversation. Because we have gotten that we all have something in common you know, whether it's our morality, our values, our culture, whatever it is, but, you know, one of the things I always talk about is that the problem is, is that we concentrate on the things that we have different.
instead of the things we have in common. And if you, if you start with what you have different, you're never going to get to what you have in common because arguments, disagreements, whatever. If we start with what we have in common and we work our way out to the things that we have different, then maybe we [00:07:00] can, at least we're never going to get everybody on the exact same sheet of music.
That's not going to happen, but you can at least then make compromises based on what you have in common that maybe will benefit. The majority of the people can I ask you a question?
Geoff: Can I ask you a question about that? Because I'm really fascinated whether you actually think, you know, fundamentally, it's how we communicate.
I mean, we don't have to argue, do we? Because actually, we should be able to talk to one another.
Oakland: Well, I think that the key is the definition of argument. If you go back to, you know, the founding fathers of America, they said that we have to have arguments. That that is different than having quarrels, you know, I guess, you know, debate, argument, whatever, however you want to define that community demands that we have those debates and those arguments about the things [00:08:00] that that are going to affect all of us, and we got to do that in a civil way and I don't see that happening.
Is
Geoff: technology, is technology still that blocker do you think where we're not actually. You know, as I said, we're not in the human experience of being able to communicate, collaborate and be more of the community from a communication point of view. I mean, I, I would say I'm quite a good yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm not a hundred percent, but I would tell I'm, I'm quite a good communicator.
You know, I'm, I'm very proactive, but you know, there's a lot of people that don't even return messages. They don't, they don't respond. They believe that, you know, technology is kind of the only way that they want to operate. Send me an email and I'll decide whether I want to respond to that, you know. And Carl Honor he wrote the book In the Praise of Slow.
And he's kind of the part of the slow movement. And he's all about, we've got to spend more time with one another. I mean, [00:09:00] you know, people can pass on this earth plane without people even knowing about it if you don't communicate with people and and look when you start to look at we're not too far away from Christmas, you know, people are in isolation.
People don't have anybody to talk to. People are lonely. All this does is bring in mental stress and. And, and depression into their lives. And if we were to be able to communicate more as a community, we can actually bring some, bring some, I'm going to use the word, I'm going to bring some love to these people, right?
Joy, happiness, because end of the day, isn't that what the community is supposed to be? We're not on the earth thing just to pay bills, right? We're supposed to be, share one another and, and be a part of something, right? I've always said that I, I've always wanted to be a part of greatness, right? And the greatness.
It doesn't have to be, you know, 6 billion corporation. It can actually just be working together to achieve certain goals. And and with that, but embracing community, [00:10:00] embracing communication as part of that process.
Oakland: Well, you know, it's funny that you bring that up because my wife just put a blog out on her sub stack just last week or this week, maybe the beginning of this week.
Talking about that exact same thing, you know, and she called it building in wiggle room. And we, and she has for years been an advocate of that, of keep, you know, leave 10 minutes early before you got to go somewhere because you never know who you're going to meet in the elevator or in the hallway or in the garage or in the wherever.
And it might be somebody who needs to talk to you today, needs somebody to talk to. And, and, and, you know, right now with the suicide rates and all that, especially in the veterans community, I say, you know, you never know you stopping and listening to somebody may have actually saved somebody's life today.
A hundred percent. Yeah. And, and, and, but even if it isn't that dramatic, [00:11:00] You can just tell there's sometimes that people just need to talk, and we need, we need to slow down and listen and build that community because like you said, being a part of greatness, It isn't about you, it's about everybody.
It's about
Geoff: everybody. Absolutely. I mean, I go into my local coffee shop, and, you know, and, and people look at me, and they think I'm weird because I'm talking to the barrister who's making the coffee, right? And we're laughing and we're having, we're sharing a few things before I go to get my train, right?
But it's like, surely that is, like, the local coffee shop is the community place.
Oakland: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's so simple things that, that we got to get back to, you know, I, I was talking to a businessman here in, in Daytona and he, He has about 250 people in his company, and he was, he was telling me that none of them know each other.
Yeah. He said they know each other's names because they send texts and email and call each other. But, but if one walked down the hall and [00:12:00] stood in front of their desk, they'd never even know who it was. And I said, well, there is a way to fix that. I said, a couple of ways. One, start having some, some company get togethers, meaningful ones, like, you know, calling out people and recognizing people who have done good things, you know?
And, but I said, a simple way to do it is just have a, a no email, no phone call, no text message inside the building on Friday. If you want to go talk to Jeff, you got to get out of your seat, go find Jeff and go talk to him. And he tried it. And he said, amazing. He said within a month, people were stopping in the, in the hallway, talking to each other.
I love it. It's really all that simple. It's just getting us away, getting us away from these things. Yeah.
Geoff: Yeah. Yeah.
Oakland: I
Geoff: mean, Lisa, Lisa Petro who's the Harvard professor, she, she wrote a book called Sleeping with your smartphone. Great, great and phenomenal. Her first case [00:13:00] study in deploying her strategy was with BCG, Boston Consulting Group and she proved that she could, she could make increase performance by 25 percent by using the smartphone less and actually having one to one conversations, not just in the office.
but also inter office communication as well. And she proved it. It was a, it was a great case study.
Oakland: No, I absolutely agree. I mean, we got to get back to that person on person communication, you know, I, and, and I, I, I use that a lot when, when I was a recruiter for army ROTC here at the local university. I, I always tried to get.
The family, the young man or the young woman in the family in my office, if I could get them in my office and I could be one on one face to face. Very seldom did I, did I not get that person to
Geoff: forgive me for saying, but I'm a Green Bay Packers fan, right? I'm sorry everyone. Right. I am, but you know, the Packers have got [00:14:00] Green Bay has got a community and everything, the children come down, the, you know, the wives come down and every, and you know, the families are together and they're one, you know, and they have when they win, they have doughnut free doughnuts and everybody has free coffee and everything is together.
That's community. Yeah. That's community. You know, in, in certain cities you can walk down the road and you can't even ask anybody directions to the light. It's a muggy. Right.
Yeah.
Geoff: Thanks. Yeah. It's sad. It's very sad. Yeah.
Scott: I think, and I don't know where this is. I read it. I've read the book, but I can't remember the stats, but there's a book called how full is your bucket.
It says that when we do something good for somebody, we feed ourselves and we feed the other person. When we do something negative to somebody, we take away from them and we take away from us at the same time. Being, being not so nice to people, but they say there's 20, 000 interactions a day 20, 000 that we have as human beings with other people.
I mean, this is a while ago, this is pre COVID, so I don't know if it's changed because we're less, we're [00:15:00] communicating less, as you say, something like working remotely and hybrid working and stuff. But even if you're walking down the corridor and you just smile at somebody. Right. Rather than just ignoring them.
It's that trigger,
Geoff: Scott. It's that trigger. Just that. That if you smile, you'll generally get a smile back because it's a mirror. And they may
Oakland: even stop and talk to you. Yeah, that's right.
Geoff: Oh, no, don't
Scott: want to do that. That's why they don't do it. It's like that. I know. I think I talked about this authenticity and stuff.
And I play, as you guys know, I play a lot around with language and stuff and about how we can, as long as we use it authentically language is really powerful.
Yeah.
Scott: And it's just adding the word really onto some sentences because we say, how are you? We don't really, it's socially accepted. Hello. It's not socially accepted.
We want the person to actually tell us they're having a crap day. Exactly. Just a polite. But if you then as a leader, just change to say, how are you really? Yeah.
Oakland: Well, yeah, I had a boss who retired a three star general. And when I first went and worked for him, we'd [00:16:00] walk past each other in the hallway and I was a captain.
He was a Lieutenant Colonel at that time. So, but he, he would, he, he, like one of the first days he said, Oh, how are you? And I said, fine. And I kept walking and he said, no, no, no. Come here. How are you? I want to know how you are. And he was asking me questions about my family, about my kids, you know just to get to know me, but he, he wouldn't accept that.
You just said fine and moved on. He actually wanted to know. And, and that stuck with me and I used that throughout my entire career. And you, you'd be surprised. How much difference that makes in, in the community of where you work. I, I back to people know that you actually care. You actually
Geoff: do. Yeah. I, I think that's the key.
You care and you, you, you, you know, I used to use another and another saying, kill, kill that negative, toxic discussion with kindness . Yeah. Right. Now I go back to what Scott said earlier because [00:17:00] he said that open, authentic, when you have an open, authentic human experience. The whole persona changes, right?
It, it might take you a little while and that's the point. It takes effort to create that and the environment to create that. But once you've created that, you have got a truthful Okay. Exchange of words, which creates sentiment, right. Which creates understanding. Okay. Well, I know it sounds silly, but to communicate should be one of the easiest things that we can do.
Right. Yeah, but we're not doing enough of it
Scott: and I think I'll take it back to what I said about understanding what we mean when we have talked about arguments and or debate however you phrase it. So for me, when we have arguments, we're trying to beat the other person when we're having a debate, we're trying to understand.
And I think that's chat with you
critical. I agree. From
Scott: a position of curiosity, not from a position of winning. And I think if we then add curiosity with care as a
Geoff: leadership. [00:18:00] Right. But to have a curious mind is to have a different mindset and to look at things on a segue into the title A different lens.
Yeah.
Oakland: Yeah. Cur well, and, and isn't that the, isn't that the key is to have that, that curiosity mindset that you wanna. Even if you disagree with somebody about something, I want, I want to know why you think the way you think. And you might, you might actually convince me, you know, going back to the debate piece, you, you might actually convince me, or at least you might move me a little bit toward your, your way, even if I don't agree 100%, or I might move you my way.
I mean, but, but unless you have that debate with an open mind, you're never going to get
Scott: there. I don't even mind if I don't move you, you don't move me, but at least I understand where you're coming from. So that gives me an understanding of you. It's important to you start to understand what's important to people and then once you get past that which goes on to that concept of principled negotiation.
Once you understand what's important for people, then we try to find [00:19:00] common solutions that mirror our values. I still go
Geoff: back to that curious mindset again because and what, what you said earlier about it's a privilege to be a leader. Right. I, I believe it's a privilege and an honor. Right. People also, you know, that are followers of leaders need a curious mindset.
They need a mindset that is out of the box in terms of thinking, if you're going to get the best out of your people, the challenges, no, I mean, challenges in a good way, the thought process provokes communication and dialogue, open dialogue, so that you can bring that kind of vision, mission, values, personality trait tone of voice, culture, it builds a culture, which, you know, if you can engage within a culture, then [00:20:00] you've got, you're addressing things like psychological self safety, wellness.
The human centered design piece in the workplace, and you've got more followers because that that high growth scenario that I'm describing is all about embracing change, embracing transformation, wanting to work with people to achieve things right and and community spirit for a better word. Wanting to do drinks, wanting to have coffee, wanting, wanting to have lunch together and, and, and to communicate and collaborate together.
What we're seeing now in meetings is that people don't just do meetings just on spec anymore. It has to be meaningful. If you've got a curious mind and you're challenging and you're thought provoking, you're going to create that curiosity and you're going to create that meaningful communication is what I'm trying to describe.
Oakland: Yeah. Well, I think, I think that part of the problem that we have today is. Because what you're describing, a [00:21:00] leader has to have an open mind, let people open debate, even against what you might think is the right way. You got to be able to put your ego aside. And look, we all have an ego. Anybody who tells you they don't have an ego is lying to you.
And we want people to have an ego because that's what drives you to be successful. That's what drives people to be the best at whatever they do. But good leaders, know when to put that ego aside and allow their team to express their opinion, their, their views, their needs. And then that's when you can make those compromises and say, okay, yeah, for the betterment of the team.
Cause that's what it's allowed. is the team will make this compromise. It is. I want it. It may not be exactly what you want, but it's in the middle where we can all live with it.
Geoff: That sounds a little bit strange. What I'm about to describe, but there was there was a record that was actually done for charity.
And I think it's, we are the [00:22:00] world. We are the world. And he got like all the famous musicians, artists. I mean, really, the really big guys together, all together in something like 30 hours to record a record. They never met each other. They got an easy and they're singing together. Michael Jackson was exit, but there was one thing when I watched the documentary, there was one sign on the door before they went into the studio, leave the ego behind you.
Right. And that was the one reason he got all of those answers to perform together. And to create one of a successful song, which went to number one, but also, more importantly, created money for the benefit. And you could argue that was community.
Oakland: Yeah, I agree. But, but you can't do it if, if the leader, if the leader and the people on the team can't put their ego aside for the betterment, [00:23:00] betterment of the team.
Scott: So it comes back, there's a book by Adam Grant called Give and Take, and he talks about the people who give without expectations of return. So I'm gonna do something because it's just, it's just the right thing to do, it's just being kind. And it can be simple. I love that book by the way, I've got it on my shelf.
It's a really good book. And I think one of the suggestions he has in it is really good, he said like, Obviously, we do now know that you gentlemen work internationally. That's been, that was at the beginning. So you work across time zones. So if you're meeting somebody and you know, they're in a different time zone, one of the give and take things he talks about is just telling them what their time zone is going to be.
Yeah. Okay. So
Scott: three o'clock in the UK, which is going to be this time you're I'm doing something to help them. Doesn't really help me find out. And those type of, again, I think a lot of this could be very small steps that we can take that can have a huge impact on even say really to somebody or say, Oh, by accepting find as an answer and asking those questions, it is an investment of time [00:24:00] on our part.
to deliver that because we have to go and find the time zones out or we have to give that person five minutes to listen to them and stuff. So we do have to invest time, which is one of the big reasons that when I talk to people about and leaders about this, but I don't have time. I don't have time, which comes back to make time.
Yeah. Slow down to speed up.
Oakland: Always slow.
Scott: Yeah. Always.
Oakland: Yeah. Because you, you have time for what's important to you. I mean, that excuse, I don't have time. I don't ever buy that. You have used your time in some other way, which may not be as important as what we're talking about. So you, you, again, it's mindset shift that, okay, I got to figure out where my priorities are.
What's important. What's really important. And that's where I'm going to. set aside some time to do that. Because, yeah, you're right. I mean, it really is that simple. And it's those simple little things that you do that start that ball rolling, that then can make a [00:25:00] big difference.
Geoff: Those tiny steps that you talk about.
builds trust. It's, it's small, there's small tiny steps that builds credibility all the way through. It's a part of the process. Actually, you could argue and say, actually, what you're doing is you're, you're, you're being an active listener. Okay. Really? Actually, I do believe in empathy and I do believe in compassion.
Okay. I understand you, which then I think builds on to how you communicate. And ultimately, that builds into a level of trust and purpose within the relationship.
Scott: I think the thing is these, these small things go back to that 20, 000 interactions that every single one will build a reputation for you as a leader.
positive. Very few of them are going to be neutral. There are going to be positive or negative. And I think it's those small steps we can do. But the key thing is the consistency of doing them. We can't just turn on off you guys. You say, there you go. We've got to, there are times when you've got to say, no, I'm right.
I'm the boss. This [00:26:00] has to happen. Absolutely. No, absolutely.
Oakland: Yeah.
Scott: But there are other times of being aware of it and say, right now, we've got time because we're not in a crisis because this isn't happening. I value your input. Let's go. Yeah. But not accepting fine as an answer is something you can consistently do every time you meet somebody who says fine.
And it won't take long before people say, I can't say fine to this person. They're not going to accept it. I'm going to, I'm actually going to have this conversation with them.
Geoff: I agree. My, my old boss used a very good analogy. He said, look when I go home to see my wife, I tell her I'm going to buy flowers.
She responds, don't, don't tell me again, you're going to buy me flowers. Buy me flowers,
Scott: you know, actions and words. So, and the key thing is, I think I was watching a YouTube clip of Stephen Covey, Mark Covey about he was talking about trust and he said to accelerate trust, you tell people why you're going to do something, you tell them what you're going to do and you deliver on those promises.[00:27:00]
Yeah, you set the expectations, but the why is important, which comes back to that mindset. Which means we've got to be also open and transparent. I hadn't said leadership isn't about or I can't trust them. I can't talk to him. I can't tell them stuff. We have to tell people stuff. I believe
Geoff: we live in a very complex environment, a very fast world that is about the treadmill, geopolitical, complex issues.
regulatory issues, economic issues. It doesn't matter which way we look. And the question I sort of said I would like to stimulate is if it doesn't come from the place of truth. What's the point where you're wasting your time if what you're saying to somebody isn't Isn't based on the truth. It's based on false deceptions and lies with short terms and no one can win Well, that's the point if we're as a society Can start actually being more open more transparent [00:28:00] more authentic We're going to be more engaging to others and we're actually going to do great things together because we're coming from a place You That we all recognize that's trusted.
Scott: I think you just look at the, now, somebody will say something and somebody says, that's just fake news. And they're just like, oh, fake news, fake news. This is that. And we, there's, so there, we, even as you say, at the political time, we don't have debate anymore. Somebody just said, yeah, that's just, it's politicized.
They're trying to do something. And the, the, nobody actually tries to uncover, you know what, let's just sit down and have a conversation. I think politics, political leaders aren't helping the situation.
Geoff: Isn't it the old days that we always looked up to government as, as, you know as a benchmark and, and, you know, businesses would measure, would measure, you know dictatorship as a model of operating a model of working now, now business, you know, like we all seem to be lost islands because we don't have anybody to look [00:29:00] up to.
Even, even in sport, we don't have those ambassadors that are true ambassadors. To what we do, you know, so I think what we have is small groups of people that are doing their best, their best against, against a tsunami of various distractions and various interactions to, to provide good and to spread the word and to, to provide that authenticity and that model of working.
But actually that's also disparaging when you think about it. You know, because we used to have, we used to look up to government, we'd look up to business and, and we would model that in the right way. But there are very few governments, business leaders in the world today that you could you could actually attribute that to one.
And two, a lot of those leaders are making very unquestionable decisions about things that do affect our lives. Yeah. I think, you [00:30:00] know, I think you hit it right on the head, Scott. I think it's the consistency and the transparency. So I think part of the reason that we don't have trust here in America, we don't trust anything.
Oakland: I mean, we don't trust our government. We don't trust the department of justice, the election, you name it. We don't trust it. And I think a lot of that is because of the lack of transparency of what You know, we don't know what it does and why it makes its decisions and it wouldn't be that hard to make it transparent.
So, so that begs the question, why isn't it transparent? Which then leads to the lack of trust. And so I think we gotta, we gotta work on that. If, if we want to make this world better, we gotta, we gotta fix the trust piece. Because you're exactly right, Scott. We don't, we don't. you know, somebody puts up that the first thing that comes to your mind is, well, that's not true.
That's against
Scott: what I believe is not true. And I think there is an opportunity though, because [00:31:00] of the institution, the erosion of trust in institutions, the opportunity of individuals or leaders is to actually say, well, we can trust has been decentralized. It's a way from, It's moving away to more. And that's why social media, I think, and people, you've got influencers and stuff that there is opportunities for individuals to have a bigger influence around trust.
And Jeff, as you were saying, go with that and have that and actually say, do you know what I can make more of an impact now, possibly than I could have done before of things like social media and tech is it's causing us some problems without a shadow of a doubt, but it's providing, it's providing opportunities for individuals to have a much bigger voice input.
presence, influence and presence you've had before. And you just look at, again, you can look at what's happened around the world. And last year you can see individual 100 percent rising and having a huge influence. Yeah. It's going on. So there are some opportunities, I think, for people to actually cut through it all and build that reputation of trust because people will generally say, you know, this [00:32:00]person has been open and honest.
It's transparent. I know where they're coming from. But
Geoff: you are right when you think the word consistency, you know, is really what everyone's looking for being consistent in the words in the what you say in your actions, you know, and, and if you want to build. Around that, it can only, it has to be consistent.
It's a tone of voice, it's a personality trait, it's, it's, you know, mind. It's, it's everything you do in life, you're measured by, you know, your last response, really, when you think about it.
Oakland: Yeah, my wife, my wife used to say, you know, when she, she was in charge in the nurse. When she was a nurse and in charge of the floor or the ER or whatever, she always said that her, she would tell her people that your first response can never be, no, it's well, let's look at that.
And then [00:33:00] let's actually look at it. And I may have to tell you, no, but that's not going to be my first response. And nor will that be your first response to somebody who asked for something. And that that's again, the consistency of. Let's, let's, let's debate it. Let's talk about it. Let's figure out, like Scott said, what, what is, what is your interest?
What is it that you're trying to do? And is that an interest for the whole community or is it just you being selfish?
Geoff: I've got something here. You know, there's a, there's a very interesting quote. You may have heard it. People say people may forget what you said, but they never forget how you make you feel.
Oakland: Absolutely.
Geoff: Absolutely. And that, and that really goes back to the very core of what we've been discussing. When you think about it,
Scott: because, yeah, go ahead, Scott, and just say, I mean, that thing about having that consistent behavior of nervous, your first response isn't no, you can consistently do that or never accepting fine as an answer.
You can consistently do that. And they're [00:34:00] examples of how we can, what we do, but consistency in a never changing world. Where do we get the consistency if the world
Oakland: is changing? Yeah, well, I think it has to be morals and values. That's what the consistent is. Anytime you got to make a decision, you got to go back to your morals and your values, which, you know, in the end, it's culture.
You know, the core culture of your organization, go back to that and make decisions based on that. And I think you'll be okay. If we explain to people why we've decided as well, absolutely the why, you know, when I go around, talk to people, I say, look, when I was a young man. in the army as a lieutenant and somebody told me to do something as long as it wasn't immoral, illegal, unlawful.
I never asked the question, why? I just did it. I said, yep. Yes, sir. And I went and did it. This generation wants to know why, and there's nothing wrong with that. It just took a couple of [00:35:00] years for this old man to figure out that there's nothing wrong with it. But I have found out that if you can convince them of the why, They'll do anything you want.
Geoff: I I look at the boards of directors and I look at what you've just said about morals and values. And I'd also, I look at the word I, you know, ethics, and I've also built ethic ethics committees on boards as well. And the importance of that, because when you're, when you think about corporate governance, everyone says the word corporate governance, but, and they might have a term of reference, which they, they basically want to apply themselves on.
But actually actions, the actions behavior is really how, you know, no big surprises if you don't enforce that in, in a, not enforce, but regulate that within a culture. Within a culture. Okay. How do you expect your senior management teams and your leadership teams to actually behave if you're, if you're acting irresponsibly and and corporate governance again, it's not once a month because you've got a board meeting.
[00:36:00] Corporate governance is 365 days a year, 24 seven. Okay. And, and, and again, it's if you look at really what trust is, Okay. Trust is an output of our behavior. But if you look at how we're behaving as a society and within societal behavior needs to change and, and, you know, communication, I think is a massive part on.
You know, on how we shouldn't we shouldn't have to. I mean, look, if you think about ESG, if you think about sustainability and all these other, actually, we shouldn't have to have a regular trees or jail frameworks around all of these things, because if we if our behavior was correct. We wouldn't need them.
We've got, we've got enforceable regulations because we're not complying to behaving in a certain said way. So, if we can fix behavior, we can fix [00:37:00] trust, we can fix collaboration, and we can deal with the why. Well, you know, I think you hit it right on the head there, Jeff. And, you know, so many companies and organizations have their defined culture or their values, and it's on the wall, so everybody can read it.
Oakland: That isn't a culture and that isn't values. You have to instill those things and enforce those things and encourage that type of behavior on a daily basis, not just put some words on a wall and say, that's my culture. That's my values. That's worthless. Absolutely. It makes them all look nice.
Scott: That's pretty much, I think there's two things here that I mean, is one of the things about behaviors is like, Jeff, change your behavior is great or encourage people to change behavior because we can't make anybody do anything. All we can do is influence people to make choices. Yeah. I agree with that. I agree.
Oakland: I agree with the [00:38:00] influencing factor. Yeah. And a way to do that, Scott, is with that consistent behavior. That's how you influence people. But I think also looking at behavior is, it's, it's, I can't remember, I'll say it, but I'll have to give credit to a giant guy called John Capel who's I've worked with who showed me this model and his situation plus attitude equals behavior.
Scott: So when we're looking at changing and encouraging people to change behavior, we've either got to look at the situation, can it change? If that can't change, what's my attitude towards the situation? And then those two combined will create a behavioral shift. So I think what we're talking about really is the attitude change.
We're in a business to make money. We're in a business to be sustainable. Okay. What's our attitude towards what success looks like? What's our attitude towards what's the priorities that we need to deliver as leaders. And if we can just shift that little bit, which again, it goes back to what we're saying in the beginning about the mindset.
Geoff: Right. Absolutely. Everything is mindset. If you look at Audrey Hepburn, who I think was one of the most successful female, female [00:39:00] actresses in Hollywood, she always said impossible. Well, actually that means I'm possible. And that was all about mindset. If you look at the successful NFL man coaches and managers in the game, it's all mindset.
That's the difference between the ice ball of getting getting a play and a win in minus 35 degrees of cold weather or losing the game.
Scott: Yeah, Colin Montgomery. I remember as a golfer when I was a kid, it was the world. Yeah,
Geoff: I remember Montgomery. Yeah.
Scott: I won a major. And it's the, and they say it's just, and it's just in sport.
And. Elite sport is not just about your talent. A lot of it is about how you approach things and, and psychological.
Oakland: Absolutely.
Geoff: Absolutely. Although I'm, I used to play tennis and I haven't played for a while, but I, I could be 40 love down. I could still win the game.
Oakland: Well, I, I think, you know, and, and that, that kind of reminds me of the [00:40:00] famous Henry Ford quote, you know, he said, he said, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
Yeah. I love that. It's all about your mindset.
Scott: Slightly, I mean, yes. And I think one of the key things for these, goes back to what you were saying, is one of the questions I talk a lot about these is, and they say, When you hear I can't do that, you say that's fine. Okay, so what can you do? Just that one question when people say that.
Geoff: Well, I would like to say that Henry Ford also said the plane takes off against the wind, but it still takes off.
Scott: Yeah. Are we just going, are we, this is the, are we going to end this on who's got the deepest quote? Are we going to restrict ourselves to a country or a person? I think one of the best quotes for culture, it goes back to a lot of what we're talking about.
A culture is defined by the worst behavior management allow.
Oakland: Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Scott: What we say is acceptable, but either not challenging.
Geoff: I would like to say that I think that when we start talking about [00:41:00] mindset, there is a paradigm shift that needs to take place in all leadership because leaders and how they behave and how they act has a direct influence, as we've already discussed, on the people.
And the reason why we've got so many disconnects is because we don't have the privileged and honored leaders that are, have followers, and more importantly, have direct reports that believe. And we've got probably one of the worst employee engagement. track records in commercial business. We've got probably the worst productivity hole I've ever seen in my life.
8. 8 trillion, 11 percent GDP. As I said before, that's more than Amazon, Apple and Google's turnover all put together. There are some horrific statistics from a research perspective that we can see. The one thing that [00:42:00] can change this is mindset. Right. And the question is whether our leaders of our Fortune 100s, FTSE 250, or even SMEs or startups, it doesn't matter.
It's, it's, it's always sitting with the chief exec or the founder. It's mindset. If we can change, if you have 10 things that are wrong, if we can change one of those aspects. We can affect change and we can affect transformation. Look, you can't bandaid some of these problems. You've actually got to start fixing these problems if we're going to make that societal paradigm shift that we all talked about during this conversation.
Scott: I think it's just that I'd like to put in. both from Gallup because I like Gallup because I do strength stuff. I am biased and I'll put that straight out there, but I do with this massively evidence based. According to them, 51 percent of people, it was either women or people in America are actively looking for new jobs, half the workforce.
And [00:43:00] the variation of employee engagement, 70 percent of variation of employees engagement is down to the leader. Yeah. I'd like to just give you another statistic when I did the trust report. Which is the IBM report that we carried out, 69 percent of everybody that was interviewed for that survey said, one, they did not believe in their chief executive officer.
Geoff: Or two, their line manager, 69%.
Oakland: Well, and I think that's the, all those things that you're talking about is, the reason for this great resignation that we we're seeing in the Western world is that people are fed up with it and 50, 51% of the American population's looking for the next job because they're tired of being treated the way they're being treated.
And it's all because, you know, in, in the Army we had this saying, and, and I, and I lived by it, and I did when I was in the army. In the civilian world, you know, [00:44:00] mission first, people always, okay, we got to finish the mission, whether you're a businessman, whatever, you got to make money. I got that. But if you, if that's the, the be all end all, and you don't take care of the people, you're not going to make money, or at least not as much as you could.
So you're not going to be a successful. So take care of the people and you'll be surprised what the, what the payoff in the end is. And we got to get, that's the mindset we got to have. It's a ripple effect. Is
Geoff: it, if you think about high growth versus low growth mindset, You can't compare toxic narcissism over here or collaboration and superior growth.
The companies that have affected a high growth organization, okay, have positivity, have engagement and have their performance numbers are second to none. I mean, I can look IBM, Uber Eats, you know, Ikea, all these companies adopt a high growth [00:45:00] Energetic approach to their employees, their engagement and their success stories on the other side
Oakland: that builds the trust and trust is the key.
But, but you know, I, I think that, you know, going back to what you said, Jeff, you might have 10 things wrong. And I think that a lot of businesses, a lot of leaders say, okay, I got to fix all 10 things. Well, you're not going to fix all 10 things, at least not right now. Pick one of them, fix it. And when that's fixed, go to the next one.
Go at it one at a time, a little bit at a time, because there's no way that you're going to get a buy in to fix 10 things with the people that you lead.
Geoff: What you're describing though is penetration. So if you, if you're able, rather than touching, you know, 10 things, pick that one, penetrate it and, and, and effectively performance manage it.
Because if you can fix that one silo, okay, you redesign it and continuous improvement [00:46:00] and you start on the second. So, you know, it's a process. It's a crisis. Absolutely. We're too much in a rush sometimes to try and fix everything and we end up actually fixing nothing. Really? When you think about it.
Scott: I think that's the silver bullet.
So although we say we do one thing that fixes everything, which is highly unlikely, it's a combination of stuff. But I'd, all I'd like to add to what you were saying is, and Jeff is fix the thing that's kind of the biggest impact first.
Yes.
Scott: The one that will influence, because there's certain things you'll look at that we talk about low hanging fruit and stuff.
But I say, what's the one that underpins others? So by fixing this, we're already starting to have an impact on the other ones. And then that's, you're looking for that connectivity of stuff. And so this, Yeah,
Geoff: but we're also in order to do that, we're looking for the right judgment call from the right set of leaders, because depending on who's actually going to review what that one Silo is that has the most impact may not be the one silo with the impact and [00:47:00] a lot of leaders will look at Their skills and what they believe they can do within the organization Rather than what's what's actually going to be good for the organization
Oakland: Doesn't that go back to the communication piece that if you got a lot of communication engagement If you got good communication with the people in your organization, they're going to tell you what the most important thing is You
Geoff: Yeah, correct.
But in all, not in all cases, do you get really good communicators at the top of the parade? Very seldom. That's, that's where it all falls down. Yeah.
Scott: I think what you were saying at the beginning as well is what we need to fix is it in my interest or isn't the greater interest of the community. And sometimes I say that, so yeah, this isn't my department, so we'll struggle a little bit longer, but if we do this, it's going to better the whole organization.
Yeah. Can we, can we sit ourselves, can we be more selfless?
Oakland: That's the key. It really is. As a leader, you've got to be selfless. You know, it, it isn't about you. It's about the people and the organization that you have the privilege to lead, [00:48:00] period. And we got to get back to that mindset. And I don't see a whole lot of that mindset out there today.
Geoff: No, I don't. I'm not seeing it. And as I said, I am seeing those a lot of leaders with some very unquestionable decisions that they're making, which is impacting the world in ways which I'm not necessarily sure is good for societal. It's good for everyone. And then there's another issue I'm seeing. I'm seeing globalization kind of fade.
In with the geopolitical piece just fading away I mean There are things that need to be addressed and we can I think we can only do that if we're communicating and talking together You know i'm sure there'll be a lot said at the world economic forum in davos Next year on the subject and more, but hopefully we've got the, we've got the leaders that will lead and we'll make better judgment, better decisions for each country so that we can actually start doing things in the right way.
Again, we'll see.
Scott: Okay. Well, on that note, that we're hopefully that [00:49:00] WBF, I don't mind them talking as long as I do something as well. Yeah, exactly. Goes back to what you said, like, yeah, just talk, talk, talk, but do something. Do something, yeah, exactly. Do something, because I think that's what people want. They just want some action.
Action. I
Geoff: want action. We all want action, right?
Scott: I might disagree with what you're doing, but if I understand why and I bought into the, and I understand the principles that are driving it, I will probably accept it and move with it. And if I don't, and if we don't communicate openly, all we do is leave a space for people to say, well, why, why are they, what are they hiding?
Yeah. This trust just, you're just feeding distrust that we know exists.
Oakland: I think our institutions can't exist the way they are right now. It can't. Society can't function with the way it is right now, with the trust level, the way it is right now.
Geoff: On boards of company, we've seen CPOs arrive, you know we now have the chief [00:50:00]trust officer being moved in to try and rebuild trust at board level.
For the organization. I'd like to see more of that. I think that if that's something we have to do and we have to have a trust framework within the organization to manage behavior and collaboration and and, you know, and so forth with certain frameworks, then so be it if that's what we have to do. But I would like to see that influence.
To grow that if I had a wish for 2025 that that would be probably not far from the top of my wish list because you know, I think that if we've got to do that, then let's then let's invest and do it right now. Let's not play at this subject. Let's not consider trust as a soft word. Actually, I can show you correlation straight to the bottom line as a direct result of mistrust within organizations.
So I think we need to embrace that within culture. We need to brace that within corporate governance in my, in my professional opinion. And, and, you know that's what I would like to see [00:51:00] happen going forward.
Scott: Okay. So we can do that. Can't we? It's new year coming up. Exactly. So what's your wish list for next year then?
So Jeff, you've said like taking trust and
Geoff: No, I'll just, I've got one more thing. Oak's coming over for the IBM. He's going to be the international speaker at our event. Next year? Yeah, June 26th. I'm very excited about Oak coming over. So yeah, he's going to be joined by Mr. Justin Crum, who's a UK Colonel, and I'm going to have them talking leadership and serpent leadership and community and And and and hopefully we're going to talk more about entrepreneurial leadership and mindset and and doing things.
So I'm very excited about that. So I just add that to my wish list. And that's good.
Scott: We're going to have a lieutenant and a lieutenant.
Yes, we are. Lieutenant and a Lieutenant. I'd like to add the colonel on the end. I
Geoff: will add I would stand in the middle [00:52:00] of
Scott: them.
Geoff: I would just stand in the middle. Yeah, exactly.
Scott: You say tomato. I say tomato, but there we go. So what would you like to say? One thing that you'd like to see next year? If we could.
Yeah,
Oakland: I think we got to. I would like to see leaders making decisions based on the good of the organization and the good of the people, not just themselves and not just business leaders, politicians, leaders at every level. And I, and again, I don't see that right now. It's like Jeff was saying, you know, questionable decisions.
If you look at it really close. It's probably in their best interest, not in the best interest of the organization or society or the country or whatever it is that they're leading. And we, so I would love to see leaders start making decisions based on the good of the people and the organization, not themselves.[00:53:00]
I think mine, I would love
Scott: leaders to be more curious with care. So curiosity and compassion. Yeah. Empathy. So just understanding. So on that note for our 2020, we can actually meet again in 2025 and says, did any of this actually happen? And then it doesn't actually happen. So I'd like
Geoff: you to diary this time, this date in your calendar, Scott,
Scott: the three of
Geoff: us can actually debate what actually did happen in 2025.
Yeah,
Scott: exactly. I just hope culture and people become much more central to how organizations work. As customers, clients, and the people who work in them, and not just about short term money, that would be quite a shift. Yeah, it would be. I'd say about what success looks like for us, and who we serve in it.
There we go. Okay, gents, it's as always been an absolute pleasure, and thank you very much Geoff, and thank you very much, Oak, for your time. And I might be there on the 22nd of June as well, so I might, I might 26th actually. You can be there on the 22nd
Geoff: if you like, but I mean, you know, I could probably be having some drinks [00:54:00] pre the event on the 22nd, but I could do that as well.
I could do that as well.
Scott: Yeah. I'm quite happy with that one, that's not fine. That's okay. I've written it down to the 26th in my little notebook here as well, so Obviously, it's landing at six o'clock this morning and still. Right again, so thank you very much, gents, for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Ho Might We Create Inclusive Leadership

This episode I have three distinguished guests chatting about inclusivity and leadership.
My guests are Mark, Gary and Douglas - see below for more details about them
Mark Freed 
Mark Freed, a trailblazer in diversity and inclusion, co-founded E2W over two decades ago when he left a successful fintech career to become the type of husband and father that he always wanted to be.
Mark grew E2W to become a community with a reach of more than 15,000 women in Financial Services, aiding institutions with best-practice recruitment and retention of diverse talent.
Wishing to accelerate change, Men for Inclusion was born, and Mark shares his own lived experience as to why inclusion benefits all men, providing more opportunities and breaking free from outdated stereotypes.
Mark's distinctive voice is not just heard within this community. He’s a vocal advocate for workplace inclusivity, and recently provided evidence to the UK Government
Treasury Select Committee during their 'Sexism in the City' inquiry, and collaborates on initiatives like the Women in Finance Charter and the Diversity Project.
Mark brings a refreshing perspective to the industry, making him an engaging and
insightful commentator for journalists seeking a fresh take on diversity, allyship,
recruitment, and workplace culture.
 
Gary Ford
Gary Ford worked as a technologist within Financial Services for over 35 years. He was a Managing Director at JPMorgan where he co-founded their male allies programme for Women in Technology. The programme was rolled out to thousands of men globally and was ultimately launched across the whole firm.
For the last 10 years Gary has actively promoted gender equality. He’s been the male ally advisor to Women On The Wharf, and was a winner of the WeAreTheCity Rising Star award in the Men for Gender Balance category.
In 2020, he co-authored his first book,
'The Accidental Sexist: A Handbook for Men on Workplace Diversity and Inclusion’ (Rethink Press), showcasing his commitment to fostering inclusivity in workplaces.
Gary’s not just a co-founder; he's a driving force behind Men for Inclusion, bringing a wealth of experience and a passion for creating transformational culture change.
A compelling and knowledgeable industry commentator, Gary provides insights and data that will interest those fostering inclusive workplaces through DEI employee
engagement and inclusive leadership.
 
Douglas Lines
Douglas Lines is a digital first leader with a successful track record of growing and transforming businesses as well as innovating and commercialising new digital business models including successfully launching a global EdTech start-up amongst others. Douglas has been enabled by building a design thinking school in collaboration with Duke and Stanford Universities, appreciating the application of new technologies and having mastered business model innovation and cultural transformation practices.A purpose led and values driven senior business leader, executive committee member with substantial global commercial experience, operating principally in financial services. Pedigree business acumen underpinned by successful delivery of large complex transactions & portfolio managed businesses from > £1m to £8bn. Highly articulate communicator, C-Suite negotiator & influencer; comfortable engaging with all stakeholders. Motivated mentor & people leader who removes barriers to delivery & celebrates team successes, empowering personal goal development & cohesive team service delivery.
 
Mark's LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-freed-3a496a6/
Gary's LinedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/garypford/
Douglas's LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglaslines/
Men for inclusion website - menforinclusion.com
IBEM website - https://ib-em.com/
 
Transcript
 
Scott: Hello and welcome to the latest edition of how might we and I've got with me , this week, we've got Douglas, Gary and Mark, and we are going to discussing how might we create inclusive leadership, . And that's not just related to work, but leadership in general and communities, ourselves, our families and with us.
So welcome, gentlemen. How are we all today?
Mark: Great.
Scott: All good. Doing
Mark: good, doing good.
Scott: I'll give you a hint. We're audio. So nodding doesn't help. We are on audio. So the people need to listen to us, but there we go. Okay. So welcome gentlemen. So if we'd like to go in around Robin, just a quick introduction about yourselves.
And then we will start the discussion. So as we've had a quick chat, we'll do it in the same order as before. So Gary, would you like to go first? Yeah, thanks, Scott. Gary Ford [00:01:00] former technologist within the financial services industry previously a managing director at JPMorgan Chase author of a book, The Accidental Sexist, and the co founder of Men for Inclusion with Mark.
Okay. Thank you very much. And a nice segue into you, Mark, if you want to introduce yourself, please.
Mark: Hi. Yeah. Mark Freed. So joint founder of Ment for Inclusion with Gary. A long career in financial technology and Turned to become a passionate supporter of gender equality 25 years ago when I left Credit Suisse to set up a firm called E2W which has been at the forefront of promoting gender equality in financial services for the last 25 years.
Scott: Thank you. Welcome. And Douglas again, welcome back.
Douglas: Thank you, Scott. Always great to be back with you. And my name is Douglas Lyons. I am a financial services executive of 25 years experience having been at the helm of a large corporate bank and commercial bank. And [00:02:00] absolutely a people leader. I think over that span of that career, I have witnessed and learned a tremendous amount from, from all the teams I've been privileged to work with and the leaders I've been privileged to work with.
I am an international thought leader on a number of areas, an author of a book on innovation. I'm a subject matter expert in business model innovation. But I'm equally a thought leader around executive leadership and the skills and capabilities of executive leadership into the future. And again, that very important topic that you mentioned of both inclusion and trust.
I am a founder of RBEM Group Limited based in London, and I currently reside in London.
Scott: Okay. Welcome back, Douglas. I'm sure we'll have another interesting and fruitful discussion. So, Gary, the title of your book, Accidental Sexist. Tell us a little bit about it.
Gary: Yeah, sure. I mean so I guess that my kind of, you know, starting point for this [00:03:00] is whilst I was at JPMorgan, I started getting involved in kind of gender equality and diversity inclusion initiatives by being asked to sponsor women in technology, which was a gender group that JP Morgan set up to attract and retain more women in technology, a sector that traditionally struggles with gender and arguably still does.
And so I certainly found myself in a room with about 50 women. I was often the only man, a deeply uncomfortable experience, if I'm honest. And we were trying to explore why it was that women didn't want to work in tech. So I began to hear kind of additional barriers that women were facing, which up until that point had been completely invisible to me.
And I thought of myself as a decent leader. I was a managing director there. I had around 250 or 300 people working for me. I thought I knew how to do it yet. There was things happening that I was frankly not seeing. So and I thought if I'm not seeing it, I'm sure there's plenty of other men that, you know, equally blind to some of these additional challenges.[00:04:00]
So we set up a male allies program alongside a guy called Stephen Koch. So when I left JP Morgan, I kind of thought this male allies idea could be interesting to other, other people. So. The Accidental Sexist was born out of that. I met a woman called Dr. Jill Armstrong, who was our third collaborator in the book, and I think, Douglas, you may have had the same experience.
Like the, the writing a book, you know, as a, you know, as, as a group is a really, really rewarding experience. So and Jill brought a lot of academic research to that book. She, she'd done a three year research program onto gender equality, diversity, inclusion at Cambridge University. So the book's about kind of three things.
The first is this fact that women face additional barriers in the workplace. And actually women of color face, face them even more. Which echoed, you know, the, the female experience when I was at J. P. Morgan. But Generally speaking, the fact is that most of these barriers are kind of quite unintentional, right?
Most, [00:05:00] most managers, leaders in the workplace go into work. In fact, most colleagues in the workplace go into work most days and they want to do the right thing. But because we are brought up to think in very deeply gendered ways, these, these, these mistakes often get in the way. And it's not unlike unconscious bias.
We just think accidental sexism is a better reframing because We can learn from mistakes, right? And we can, you know, we can look to improve and, you know, when we make them, which even now Mark and I often call each other out when we make these mistakes, because you, you, you just do, you have to kind of recognize that if the intention is good, then we, we need to help people learn from them.
So that's the first part is really just identifying the fact that there's extra barriers. The second thing is about what Steven and I learned from trying to roll out a male allies program. There weren't a lot of. Kind of, you know obvious references at the time. And then the final half of it is like, you know, how all the kind of things we picked up from running that [00:06:00] program, but about the things, the practical things you can do, which actually became practical things I think you can do in any kind of, you know, leadership, discipline, how you hire, how you how you promote, how you develop people how you create an environment.
in which all team members can, you know, work to the best of their ability. So that's, that's the summary. Sorry, that's quite a long summary. I apologize for that, Scott, but hopefully you get the gist.
Scott: The gist and the gist. I did indeed. Okay. So obviously you now work with Mark. So Mark, how did that come about from what Gary was doing and how you guys hooked up?
Mark: Yeah, I think as I said my I, I left my last proper job, if you like, 25 years ago and set up a firm. We very quickly became really busy. passionate about, about gender equality and supporting and helping women to succeed and flourish in their careers. But five years ago, as we were coming into lockdown, et cetera, I was getting increasingly frustrated at the pace of change.
It was clear that Actually, we weren't moving [00:07:00] forward very quickly as a financial services industry. There were in many instances, fewer women in top quartile earning roles in the sector in many organizations than there were seven, 15, 20 years ago. So despite all of the effort, all of the, the pressure from regulators and shareholders and all of the commitments from firms, we weren't making progress.
And I kind of, I suddenly saw it would actually quite often when we're talking about this, or more often than not, actually, if we were talking gender I'd be the only guy in the room. I'd be the only man in the room. If we were, if we were talking race and ethnicity, I'd be the only white guy. If we were talking LGBT, I'd be the only straight guy.
And I said, actually, where, where are all the men? Because we can't do this if only half the world are invited. We need everyone in the room. And then I started seeing, actually, backlash. You know, a lot of men, and hearing, you know, [00:08:00] the, you know, this had all gone too far, and it was against them, and etc.,
etc. And I, and I began to think, actually, why aren't they seeing all the benefits that I'm seeing? Why aren't they grasping the idea of freeing themselves from outdated male stereotypes? Why aren't they seeing the benefits of inclusive leadership? Why aren't they seeing the benefits of diverse workplaces?
Why aren't they, and haven't they, answered the question, what's in it for me? And so with that in mind actually sort of met Gary quite quite by accident, actually. I did a male allies search on LinkedIn and he, he came up, he'd won an award. He'd written a book. I thought this is somebody we need to get to know.
And Interestingly, Gary and I although we, we, we might look the same, talk the same, et cetera we're very different characters we're very different people and working together, we've been able to bring our, our combined strengths to, [00:09:00] to the fore. Which I think is another thinking about, you know, we need to think about diverse thoughts.
And it's not always because you're a different gender or you come from a different background. Sometimes actually people are just different. And let's make sure everyone gets heard.
Scott: Okay, Doug, and this comes back to say that there's, there's, we've been talking before online, the journey you've come through in a sort of broader aspect of it, although what Mark just said about getting everyone's voice heard is obviously living in South Africa and going through the apartheid and then the changes after apartheid, a journey for more inclusivity rather than exclusivity.
Douglas: No, thanks, Scott. And you, you're right. You know, I was, I was a teenager. I was at school when, you know, the apartheid regime was in place and we, you know, I lived through that. And then I actually, you know, once apartheid was abolished with, you know, which was absolutely the right thing for the country, you know, I lived through a transformation of what was in essence, a rainbow nation.
You know, I I [00:10:00] remember, you know, this is a country steeped in, you know, segregation. Yeah. Yeah. And in the 1994 world cup, rugby world cup final, when we won it everybody in that country, it was amazing that evening, every single person, no matter what color you were, you were welcome in anybody's home for a drink, no matter who you were, no matter what color you were.
So. You know, when I, when Nelson Mandela walked out to the field and wore the Springbok jersey, he united a nation in one single moment. And I think, you know, I love using sport as an analogy. I think Sierra Coliseum is our current you know, captain of the Springboks has the exact same philosophy. And so you know, that, that taught me so much around just the role that we as leaders have in our communities and our families, in the businesses that we are privileged to lead and or influence.
That we can make a real difference. And, and so for me you know, it was at the time you don't realize it because you're young and you're going through your career, it's only when you get older and you get wiser that you start to connect the dots of [00:11:00] prolific these moments in your life were in terms of living through these.
And, you know, I think Gary mentioned when you author a book. It's, it's a, it's a true privilege because you get to work with a lot of, you know, folks. And I was privileged to work with 65 folks, most of them smarter than me, quite frankly. But for me, that was one of the greatest things was to listen to such divergent views of, of subject matter experts around the world.
And for all of us to challenge and debate and what we learned from each other was, was amazing. So this whole Journey of authoring a book on innovation, the number one thing that causes a lack of innovation in our world that we live in is what we call dominant industry logic. And what's the number one thing to challenge dominant industry logic is to get diverse views and perspectives.
And and so the world that we're moving into swiftly requires us as a, as a, as a, as a need to bring in. The voices of everybody and to participate because [00:12:00] that's where the, the creativity lies. And, and it's, it's a, you know, having been through a number of diversity programs and inclusion programs, the greatest innovations I've ever been privileged to be part of has been when we have brought in.
You know, the diverse voices of, of of, of, and diversity has got multiple lenses. But that to me has been an amazing journey. One, which holds me to the center of, I think what I stand for, what I believe in and the impact that we can have on others is, is substantial. We don't even realize it half the time.
Scott: I dunno, but the, the how valid this stat is. But I read somewhere, I can't remember, it was a article I was reading, but as a leader, you have more impact on somebody's mental health than the physician
sometimes. If you think about that and then say what, what responsibilities that give us as in leadership roles about realizing that the impact we have.[00:13:00]
Douglas: I can actually bring that to life in a, in a, in a real life example, Scott of staff member that I had, and this was a female lady of color and And she was in my world and I was responsible for her and clearly we had some challenges with her performance and my team came to me and I said, listen, they've had the performance reviews and they're looking to exit her and I said, well, hang on a minute before we go that route, have you taken the time to understand what the challenges this person is facing in their personal life?
And And I said, no, no, that's not our responsibility. I said, well, I actually think it is. You need to understand the whole person. And so I sent my team away and to go and understand that world that this person is living in. And when we did, We started to appreciate the harshness of the environment that she was going home to every single day.
And we got professional counselors to help her to, to, to manage that environment better. And it was the most amazing outcome to see the smile on her face when we helped her in her life. [00:14:00] That she could blossom and she be, she went from being a bottom perceived bottom performer to being a top performer.
And it was just a one degree move that you can make positive in your life for that person. And so that, you know, it reminds me of an analogy that says in life, we must light the flame in one's heart, not under your butt. And I think when you can do that, you can see the amazingness of every single individual.
And and, and, you know, you learn a tremendous amount from these instances and experiences in your life.
Mark: Douglas, I think you bring up a really good point there. And I think one of, one of my fears with when, when we talk about diversity is we immediately start putting people in boxes. You know, we start off by putting men in one box and women in another, and then, you know, then we, we.
We go to socioeconomic, we go to race, we go to sexuality, disability, and I think some of those are useful to a point, but [00:15:00] actually, at the end of the day, as leaders, we need to take the time to understand. everybody as individuals, as individual people. And I think one of the challenges as a leader is you've got this thing called affinity bias and we see it all the time.
As we ask leaders that we're working with, you know, how much of your social time are you distributing evenly? Yeah. Are you, you know, those formal social events, are they always One type of event at one type of time of the day, those informal ones, but also, you know, are there people, are there people in your team who you rarely talk to who you don't go into a month up to on a Monday morning and, and, and ask them how they are, or start talking about the football.
Who do you lunch with? Who do you have those water cooler moments with? Have you, are you spreading [00:16:00] your, your social capital evenly across your team to ensure that you, you really know everybody and as individuals not only their strengths, their weaknesses, the barriers, the challenges that they may be facing because they're not all like you and you can't read it from a diversity script.
Really, really interesting how people then start to think about getting to know people as individuals in their team.
Douglas: I think, Mark, I think you raised, sorry, Gary. It
Gary: wasn't me, you cut a crack on Douglas.
Douglas: I'll be I have to warn you guys, I'm like a Kenwood chef because I'm super, I can't stop when I get in a passionate topic like this, but I'll be, I'll try to be concise.
But, you know, I think there's, it comes back to something we were chatting about earlier around self awareness and. You know, in the life that we live now with the technology that we have around us, you know, how often do [00:17:00] we reflect on the fact when somebody walks past us and greets us and we on our our phones and we typing and whatsapping or whatever, and we just, we just acknowledge and we move on and you don't realize that was a missed opportunity just to have that social capital that you could build for 30 seconds.
And we miss those opportunities all the time because we're on this frenetic treadmill of life. And And I think it's the ability to slow down, to speed up is an art. Yeah. Lots
Scott: of people jumping in, so don't
get
Scott: me really
interested. Come
Gary: on! Yeah,
come on!
Scott: Go for it. Gary, you go first. Go
Gary: on. I was just going to say, we had a really interesting story from someone who attended one of our workshops last week.
And she talked about one of the things she started doing On a really regular basis of making sure that when she comes into the office, she says, good morning to everyone's access in the office. It sounds so basic, right? But she said, you know, most people just come in, they kind of [00:18:00] straight to the same desk.
And obviously, this was a place where they had a hot desk in, but still, everyone goes to the same desk and sits next to the same person every single day. And she said, by the simple act of a, Making sure I was saying good morning to lots of people or everyone that was there in the office and B, not sitting at the same desk every day, which meant that I had a whole opportunity to interact with someone who I hadn't ordinarily kind of spent time getting to know, was just such a positive difference.
And it's a positive difference to her as an individual. She's just, I felt so much better. As, as an individual, but secondly, the level of response I was getting from my colleagues was just absolutely, you know, inspiring for her, right? And it's, it's a very small, simple thing. But that's what being inclusive is.
It's acknowledging that people, you know, people are there, right? The number of people that, the number of managers and leaders who simply ignore their people when they come into work. I mean, it's, it's, it's astonishing to me. [00:19:00]
Scott: There's an interesting book, I think, well, I found it interesting called How Full Is Your Bucket?
Which was written, I'm not going to say the right guy's name because I always get it wrong. I think it's Tim Roth or Tim Rath. Co authored it, he's from Gallup. And he says, and then they talked about the, the requirement for us as people to have like social inclusion or social, social connections is a really huge part of us because we're social by nature as human beings.
We are social by nature, so creating those socials but every inter, we have thousands of interactions a day, micro interactions with people. And I think being aware of those micro interactions and sort of the impression that leaves. of us in other people, then reflect on their reput our reputation with them, which will then reflect on how they will respond to us.
So as an example, like Doug was saying, people on the phone and you say, good morning, they just look up, you can either say, well, that's ignorant or that person's that. Now I've labelled that person as ignorant, which is going to have an impact on how I speak to them again. So very, very few, if any of our interactions are [00:20:00] neutral, very few.
And I do think it's important that we, In leadership roles or even just outside is have that consistency of and that awareness of how we respond to people, how we are in situations and because that builds our reputation. One of the coaching questions asked me is if I went into your team and asked them to describe you, what three words would you like them to use?
And then what are you doing every day to support that? And it's just as you said, Gary, sometimes just simple things, just saying hello to people makes a massive difference. Makes a huge and subtle changes we can make
Gary: and just saying thank you a bit more to people and, and, and, and I think another sort of tip we heard from someone else and I really love this one, not just saying thank you for people for their hard work, like lots of leaders talk about, you know, they do a big thank you to their team and thanks for everyone's working so hard and actually flipping it and saying thanking people for [00:21:00] their expertise.
Not just thanking them for sort of turning up and sort of working long hours for whatever you're trying to achieve. Thanking them for the value that they bring to the organization. I just thought that was such a huge tip. Thank you for providing expertise. As opposed to thank you for simply working hard, again, really tiny, small thing, but can make such a difference as you say.
Scott: I think it goes back to something you said before, it's great having these tips and these tools. And I'll give you an example, we were doing some training once and somebody said, it's really good to like appreciate your staff and you've got to build a system. Think about how you can, and this guy then went back and said, right.
I'm creating thank you Thursday. So every Thursday, I thank my staff. I said, you've just completely blown. It's all we said. They're a process of saying thank you to people. Please do it more often. So,
Mark: so, so Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, you're an absolute shit. Yeah. I love you [00:22:00] Thursday. And they just see all the stuff new.
Scott: It's Thursday. I'm going to get my thank you Thursday email. The actual impact of that behavioral change is minimum because there's no authenticity behind it. It's not authentic. It's not genuine. It's not, it's not steeped in anything of somebody actually hearing to care because they've systemized systemize it.
It loses its authenticity, loses impact.
There you go. I could do that.
Scott: Yeah, I probably could this. It goes back to your thank you as well. So I was talking to somebody, if you walk into a coffee shop and a barista makes you coffee, what do you say? Say thank you. Yeah. And then managers say, well, I don't thank my staff because they're getting paid for it.
I said, well, the barista is getting paid to make sure.
Mark: Yeah.
Scott: And you just thank this barista. You thank somebody holds a door open. You, we do generally thank lots. I said, why don't we just say thank you at work and doesn't have to be a big thing and a big, that is just that. Civility, isn't it? Civility, I think, sometimes has come out of work.
I was interested in a book called The [00:23:00] Trust Factor. And that's how we build trust. And a guy called Paul Zak done research like the impact of trust on the workplace and stuff. And he, he does a lot around the hormones it creates and sort of oxytonian and, and all that sort of stuff. And now he calls that like basically the trust hormone that we have.
And it could, it builds that connection as you were talking about, which is really important. And he said, but position of leadership can create. Higher levels of testosterone in people naturally, which then can create counterbalance. The tonin. Yeah. Yeah. Men and women.
Mark: Yeah. Do you think though, it's, it, it's, it, it it, it needs to, it needs to be further than just sort of a Hello and a thank you.
A hello is is the start you know. Hello, how are you? No, how are you? Really? Yeah. No. How was your weekend? Really? Thank you for doing that. How did you do it? What, what, what, what challenges did you get? How, you know, what was good about it? What I think [00:24:00] is, is otherwise we it's, it's just that American have a nice day missing you already.
Scott: Yeah,
Mark: yeah,
Scott: yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do. I mean, I, I likely put in there is the word, the word really when delivered in a curious tone and authentically. Adds a lot of power to a very simple sentence.
Mark: Yeah, yeah.
Scott: If you said to somebody, how are you? We don't actually expect them to say, I'm having a crap day.
You don't want them to say that because it's just a cult, it's a cultural norm, social acceptable. Hello. Yeah. You said to somebody and you're walking down, down the, in the corridor at work or whatever, and you actually stopped as well. And I think that's a good indication, stop when you talk, don't have it on route because it means now focusing on you because you're more, you're the focus of my attention.
And so how are you really, that people say management say, I've got no time, said you've got five seconds.
Yeah,
Scott: you have five seconds because if that person just says I'm having a crap day now and [00:25:00]it goes back to what you're saying Douglas about the other, the we don't, I think the days when I remember I was at work and I said to somebody I'm having trouble because I think it was my daughter's not very well, something was going on and the manager said, I employ you, not your family.
And I mean, that was like in the 80s and stuff. So they're very, the two, the two were never seen as the same. And I still don't like the concept of work life balance. I heard the phrase work life integration, which I think is much, much better. I have life and work as part of it rather than seeing it as competing.
So I do think we've got that duty of care to people who are with us and say, do you know what, this person's having a crap day. What can we do to make it better? How can we support this person through whatever it is they're going through? But we can't do that. As you said at the beginning, unless we really start to know people.
Yeah. And another phrase I ask when I talk about influencing, and it goes a little bit deeper from when you say, what's in it for me, why would that person want to? If we can't answer that, we're struggling. But the only way to [00:26:00] answer that is to really try to understand motives and the situation somebody's in.
So if we can answer the question or try to answer the question ourselves, why would that person want to do what I would like them to do? Then we start shifting from our perception to theirs. You start trying to understand them at a much deeper level.
Douglas: I think Scott, the other thing that we, you know, is in our various capacities in life, whether it's personal or professional, is this, you know, environment of psychological safety and that people feel safe that they can have an authentic conversation with you, that you
are
Douglas: open to authentic conversation, that you will listen carefully, that you will pause and stop.
And And I think, you know, we don't know all the, the power of the subconscious, but we know the subconscious is powerful and people can sense that they can sense is this, is my boss being authentic or is he, as Mark said, just doing the good old American, you know, coffee and coffee rounds, you know, and, [00:27:00] and people can sense that they, they, they, they know that intuitively and hence they will be guarded if if they sense that.
So it's, you know, the art of also having sincerity, authenticity. Meaning having a meaningful conversation that has purpose to it. And actually, you know, when we talk about trust, trust is the ability to listen carefully. And, and I think I sit in a lot of meetings and, you know, people like to talk over each other and you just sit there and listen and you actually think, well, what are we actually really achieving here?
And it's that ability to listen deeply. To, to each other's vantage points and that's goes and whether it's you know, meeting somebody in the street for the first time and having an engagement with him or actually you know, having a formal meeting, probably one of the most humble. You know, experiences of my life was the day I left off to 20 years.
And I as Mark said, I did pride myself in going around every morning. And greeting and having a conversation with each and every one of my staff, [00:28:00] but my most junior staff member. Came to me knowing that I was leaving the organization and he opened up and he told me about his life and he told me about how on weekends, he would see homeless people.
He would care for them. He would take them to doctors. He would pay for their doctors. He would pay for groceries. He would buy them clothes. And he was the quietest chap. You know, I would never have ever assumed that that often as a character. So for someone who was the most junior staff member, I probably respected him the most because of.
What he stood for in his life and how he helped others and my only reflection was, you know, why did it take me, what environment did I create that he felt that he could only tell me that after being together for so long, knowing that I was leaving. And that was something that, you know, I also took a massive learning out of but it, you know, we must never underestimate.
The power of each human being, they have, we all have different stories. We all have different impacts in our life and it's the ability to, [00:29:00] to, to, to ask deeply refined questions and to listen carefully. That's when you build trust. That's when you build authenticity. That's when you can make a change in someone's life.
And I've certainly you know, experienced that as well. You know, I think there's a great book called half time, which talks about, you know, in the first half of our life, we look for success. In the second half of our life, we look for significance. I've come up with a third one that says we come up with a third realm of stewardship of saying, how do we pass on our knowledge, experience and wisdom to the next generation?
And I think that's also something that's, that's really powerful, the ability to pause and reflect. Is a really powerful tool that we don't use enough of in our lives.
Mark: Douglas, and, and, well, everybody, I'm just wondering, and thinking back over the last half an hour or so that we've, we've recorded here.
It's all very nice. It's all, it's all very empathetic, and let's be nice people, and, and, and what have you. [00:30:00] But if, if somebody was, who was perhaps more traditional in their views, or maybe have felt that diversity and inclusion hasn't been good for them, what would you do? as men and felt that they were now just being discriminated against and the old fashioned traditional ways were, were the best.
How do we appeal to them? How do we, how do we change their minds? How do we change their views? How do we get them on side?
Douglas: Mark, it's a great question and it's there's no easy answer, but I think just from some of my experiences, having been in fairly deep immersion emotional intelligence training with executive teams, both as a leader and as well as a participant what I've really experienced, and it's quite interesting, it's quite consistent actually, is that your typical alpha male leader, very strong, you know leader, Tends to be when, when you look at an emotionally contained environment and [00:31:00] you start looking at the, you know, this person sharing their life story, they hold some significant vulnerabilities, but they've been brought up to realize, to believe that they can't share these vulnerabilities.
And so you're certainly not going to achieve that in a corridor conversation or coffee session, but I think it's to appreciate that we are all vulnerable and that we are make our makeup is designed by who we are and the experiences around us, our upbringing, whatever it may be a bad event, a good event to me.
And it's to, you know, To start to have conversations that are meaningful with each other that allows us to start understanding, you know, if we can just make a one degree move positively in someone's mindset today, then hopefully that one degree manifests some 10 degrees in, in, in three months time.
So it's, it's, there's no short answer for it, but I think it's about coming back to this whole authentic, meaningful. purposeful conversations that we can have with each other. We, we look at, we look at this through a, it's a great [00:32:00] lens. We look at it through a slightly different lens as well. And we point out historically how women have freed themselves over the last 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, even a hundred years freed themselves from complying with outdated female stereotypes.
Mark: And. They're no longer tied to the kitchen sink by their apron strings, if you like. And through cutting those, through throwing off those old fashioned stereotypes, they've given themselves a whole bunch of amazing choices and opportunities, such different outcomes from their mothers and their grandmothers.
And, and, you know, they're now in, in, in. Their lives are much richer, much more opportunity, much better outcomes for them than the men. As men, have we made as much progress? [00:33:00] You know, is my life very much different from my father's? A little bit, you know, a little bit in the fact that I was allowed to go into, I'm 60, I was allowed to, when my children were born 30 years ago, I was at least allowed into the, the, the, the maternity ward.
My father wasn't allowed in the hospital, and my son is going to get some paternity leave. That, that's small progress. And, and I think a lot of, a lot of those alpha male leaders that you're talking about are actually still living and constrained by living in that 1950s, 1960s, 1970s worlds. You know, guys, get rid of it.
Take the straight jacket off. Let, let's, let, let's, let's. Decide what, you know, what the definition of a man or let's throw that definition away and recognize that, you know, as human beings, we've got a lot more choice and opportunity. To be the real [00:34:00] type of people we want to be, and that changes mindsets.
So,
Scott: no, it's okay. I think, again, the question goes back to what Doug said, one of the key ways of changing somebody's mindset is to ask a really deep, powerful question. Then it becomes a self awareness journey. And one of the things I think about the trust model I've created right at the center of it is purpose.
And it's like, not, it's just like, what's the person you want to be? And what's, what's the things you want to achieve? And then how do you build trust around that to deliver that? And I think that's an important question. We don't ask ourselves very much at all is what's the legacy I would like to leave.
What would I like to be known for? And I think one of the questions I'll ask is if you were to win an award, what would it be for and who would nominate you? So that really helps. Yeah. About who do I want to serve? I think if we can start changing that with things about leaders, managing and doing stuff and more like serving, it kind of helps shift how we then perceive what [00:35:00] our role is, and then might shift about how we actually deliver that new definition of success or however we define success is what we tend to work towards.
So if we can help. Try to redefine what success looks like in leadership roles and whatever else it is. And then we can define that and we can look at the language we use around it and levels of awareness and language and our action. We can consistently, and I think the key word here is consistency, because when you do something consistency, you build trust in that what you're doing.
Inconsistency builds mistrust because we don't, we don't know what's coming. We don't know what's driving it. We don't know. We start to question the motives of somebody's actions. Yeah, I think dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. And Scott, do you think I mean, I see a lot of men now who perhaps retiring from their careers and looking back on them and they're thinking, well, yeah, I was, I was successful, but Could have I been more successful?
Mark: Did I leave carnage [00:36:00] behind me? Did I, did I really treat everybody fairly and equally? And did I get the best out of everybody? But also looking back at maybe the, I'm not going to use the word carnage, but actually the very different personal life they could have had, you know do they, by dedicating so much Mindset to career.
Have they really got the relationship with their children, with their wives that they would have really liked? Yeah. You know, maybe they put their kids through, through private school and they all went to, to a great university, but the fact that they never called their dad and haven't got a relationship with them is really important.
Scott: And I do. I think it's about question. What we see is success, isn't it? It's what we define as a success. Do we measure it by materialistic things? What I can provide to people. Yeah. Like family and friends and stuff, or is it measure it by what I can help people achieve serve people. So if we can just start working around some of those questions [00:37:00] and then asking people to go on that journey, because you can never make anybody do anything.
So it's all about trying to correct us. That's what you're saying about psychological safety. And there's a book called the four stages of psychological safety. I can't remember who wrote it, so I do apologize to the author. But the stage one is inclusion, because if we don't include it, then we don't feel safe.
It's a question. We don't see it was safe to challenge. We don't see it. So there's like the inclusion. There's something there's four stages and last one is the stage of challenge. But we need to feel safe to do that. And so huge. I think some ways also, if you want somebody, if you would like somebody to change, instead of just saying, Oh, it's about mindset, maybe provides a set of basic skills, come back to what you were saying at the beginning.
That you think, well, this is going to have a really positive impact on this person quite short term, quite quickly. So they can taste the fruit of success. Then once they know that there's a difference and actually these things I didn't think were working, if I just apply this one, two, three things, I can actually start to really quickly [00:38:00] feel a difference and an improvement.
Then you've got a level of momentum and they can actually feel what's in it for me. Why would I want to? Cause actually I quite like that. So I want more of it and why does it work? So I think providing really simple tools and maybe not worry too much about the theory behind it and why we should be doing it, but say, just do this and see what happens.
Then things start changing and then you can, they might say, well, why is it changing? And then you can do maybe the learning on top, because it's against the experience, understanding, and then it can create a new experience. So maybe just flipping it around a little bit.
Gary: I think there's another element to that, Scott, which is interesting going way back to something you said probably 10, 15 minutes ago now, which is, you know, when you suggest to a leader that they need to spend more time with their team saying, well, I don't have time to do that.
Right. And, you know time is a precious commodity. So therefore, how leaders prioritize time is a really interesting question, isn't it? And [00:39:00] frankly, I think if you and I think, you know, Doug, you were making the same point. If you look at the current landscape for business, it's an incredibly complex one, and one where you do need a lot of very diverse voices to enable us to solve some really tricky, complex problems.
And therefore, those diverse voices will not step forward if you haven't created the environment where they'd be listened to. So, I think for a leader, this is You know, you take it all of the personal cake. This is just basic business sense to me. Right? We have to find ways which will allow people to kind of have a voice to want to be part of finding solutions for some very complex problems.
And if we're not doing that, we're failing as leaders. You know, every time someone loses leaves our company, that's 100, 000 worth of recruitment fees. We've probably got to pay. It's also a massive, you know, loss of [00:40:00] investment that we've made into that. This is basic business sense in my eyes. So therefore, leaders need to be prioritizing, using their time to understand the people that they do have within their organization.
And to your point, You don't need to have the grand theory behind it. It just strikes me that there's some basic business sense around investing your time in trying to get to know those people. And actually, a lot of this is experimentation. I mean, you know, even what we do at Men for Inclusion, the type of workshops we run, I think there's a level of experimentation with it.
I can't promise you hand on heart if you do this thing, you know, your business profits are going to go up. I can't make that direct. Connection. But I do say, look, if you start working with people in this slightly different way, I think you'll begin to see through some very practical examples, the type of response you begin to get from the people in your team, right?
And maybe it doesn't translate to the bottom line immediately, but over [00:41:00] time, You know, all the research will show you that happier, more engaged people in your, in your business will translate into better products, happier customers, you know, better returns, happier shareholders, happier, you know audit committees, the whole nine yards, but it does require a series of very small repeated interventions.
Scott: And I think it's partly, I mean, I come from an Ops background and quite often Ops are pressurized. It's about delivering this today. This is the target you've got to get this done, this done, this done. And so the managers are driven. And even the whole rhetoric is around quotas, daily, weekly, monthly quotas.
So as organizations, you're putting a lot of pressure on your managers to say, yeah, it's great. I've had this, this is a thing that's been going on for years because you can talk about the ability to have coaching style conversations. I just don't have time. It's an investment. It's an investment of time that will repay his dividends.
But then we're talking about trying to influence [00:42:00] people's behavior. I think there's three things to consider. One is the immediacy of the outcome. Two, is it positive or negative? Three, is it definite or possible? So if we're looking at a possible negative, positive outcome, that's not very immediate, batting on very low influencing.
wicket. It's a quite sticky wicket to back it on. So it's trying to find ways of having that conversation. It's not trying to get people to give up smoking. There's a pretty negative outcome, but it's a long time in the future. It's not definite. So when you've got those three things, that sort of quota, you're saying, so again, how do we try to change the rhetoric around it to say, how can we get a more immediate response, positive response?
And we know it's not because we're talking about mindship. We're talking about attitude and we're talking about this. And then how's it going to be positive for them? So why would they want to? So I think sometimes just [00:43:00] changing that we can actually start helping people perceive because people do things for two reasons they want to achieve or avoid.
So we want to try and influence people we need to try and work out what is it they're trying to achieve or what they're trying to avoid and how can what we're asking them to do help deliver or avoid.
Douglas: Scott, I think maybe, you know I love connecting the dots from various lenses. And so there's a couple of things percolating right now.
One of them was around, you know, where do we look at professional executive teams, you know, where do they spend their time and You know, when we authored the book with 65 amazing people around the world on innovation, we really defined it on three horizon thinking. Horizon one says we run the core business.
Horizon two says we transform the core business and horizon three says we innovate brand new businesses. And it was actually McKinsey's that did a global survey and said actually 86 percent of executive teams focus solely on run the business. So we have a fundamental problem around transformation and innovation.[00:44:00]
Globally, 14 percent of executive teams are managing that portfolio on that basis. And, and so it comes, you know, what reflects in my mind was this thing of time and time. The other side of that paradox is what you were mentioning. Those three items is called, I sum them up. I call them instant gratification.
So what I mean by that, if I've got an app, that's a new app, and if it doesn't give me some instant gratification, it goes off my phone quite quickly. And we have been, technology is changing the way, the speed at which we have to work, the pressures on us, but as well as our own mindsets around gratification and, you know, this desire.
And I always say to people, the greatest thing we're fighting for right now, Is actually people's time, whether we look at marketing and how marketing agencies are evolving, et cetera, et cetera, we are trying to get into people's time and their mind to engage. And it comes back to this this busyness of running and we know executive teams.
Why do executive [00:45:00] teams run the core business only? Well, the incentive is 12 months cycle. You know, incentivize. So that's what they do. And do they have time to take what is a perceived underperformer, invest in them, turn them around? You know, not all of them do that, you know, so for me, it's, You, the more you can appreciate the investment in people, profitability is the outcome of that.
Many years ago, I was tasked with turning around a program which spanned 22, million of our customers, and it was failing horribly, it was, it was a collaboration program and a big financial services organization across the various silos, which you can imagine that size is, is, is siloed. We, it was never about me.
It was about, you know, empowering the team and actually saying, we're going to stop everything we do. And we're going to totally do this differently and empower a team and allow them to co create with the people on the ground. And it took us four years, but everything we did, we focused [00:46:00] on our people. We focused on giving them a supportive coaching environment, having coaches or coaches in the localized offices.
And most importantly, empowering them to make decisions on the ground. And the outcome of that was actually by pure default. The turnover went from 14 billion to 18 billion. And it wasn't anything special that we did. We just empower them. And so the model, this hierarchical pyramid leadership model is actually needs to be inverted in that it is actually we are there as leaders, whether it be in our community, our families or business.
We are there to serve. Others and to unlock the greatness in them. And you know, one of the things I'm, I'm super passionate about is, is is, is leadership development. And I designed it with a couple of us. We, we really scour the web in terms of looking to say, you know, what do we think the future skills and attributes of a, of an executive team on?
And there wasn't anything that was was that resonated with us. So we developed one [00:47:00] and we sent it to 65 CEOs and chairman's around the world for commentary. And we galvanized a set of patterns. Very detailed patterns in that, that we felt with all the input that was co created, what was really pleasing was that this futuristic set of patterns, at least 50 percent of it was around people.
And the influence that you have on people and these were very detailed patterns. And so for me, I think, you know, that is the, that's the blueprint. That's the blueprint on our personal lives, you know as well as our professional lives and the impact that you can have on others. But again, I think what happens is that we all get so busy.
We tend to let this by the wayside and we forget about it. There's a wonderful book that's I use when, when I've been blessed to coach some executives is called Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. And it's a true story of a, a Austrian psychologist who was Jewish at the time of World War II, and he had the choice of either going to America, [00:48:00] To become very successful or to go and join his grandparents in, in Auschwitz and the concentration camp, and he chose to go to Auschwitz and it was horrific as, as you can imagine.
And he wrote this book in memory of his grandparents, but also for the learnings that came out of it. And the key learning that came out of it was you can take everything away from me. You can take my clothes. You can take my right to food. You can do everything. But the one thing that no one can take away.
Is the love that you have for another human being. And I think for me, it is such a powerful realization that whenever we face difficulties in life, as we just always lean on that fact, that no matter how hard things get and how tough it is, you can unlock greatness through those deep interpersonal relationships and the love that you have for each other and the care that you have for each other unlocks amazing greatness and every business success I've ever been privileged to be part of.
has never been about one individual. It's about unlocking the greatness within each other. [00:49:00]And the belief, you know, is it is what creates that, that self confidence,
Scott: the collective wisdom,
the perceived wisdom. So, and we need that environment. So that's quite a powerful story to nearly. And so I think as, as to, to finish on I do love that, that you can never take away that hope's a powerful thing as well. Hope. It's a really powerful driver of human behavior and what we can do. So on sort of finishing this, this, this, this podcast, I would like to say thank you very much for all three of you for contributing to it.
It's been very insightful. So if you could sum it up in, 'cause members how might we, is the question. So we a question. So how might we, we would like to go first. I start being back at school. This isn't, it's like the end of it is like the end of term test. How might we construct? Shall I go first? Shall I try?
Mark: Shall I go for it? [00:50:00] Yep. And I'm going to put another thing on we're going to give it, try see if we can do it in 30 seconds each as well. 30 seconds to a minute each.
I think I'll do that. I think I'll do it in, I'll beat that. I'm a competitive, I'm a competitive male. Diversity and inclusion is your opportunity as well.
There's a better life, better career, better health, better relationships, better friendships, more opportunity and choice. Go free yourself.
Scott: Okay, good. That's put Gary looks pensive and thoughtful. Now you can't see this because I don't put this in any audio, but trust me, I could be, I could be one of these commentators on TMS.
I should do. They describe the test.
Gary: Scott. Yeah. How am I, how might we create inclusive leaders? I mean, I, I think it's fundamentally, we've got to have conversation. I mean, I think, you know, everyone made this point. We've got to listen. We need to listen more. We need to listen better. And [00:51:00] we need to understand that all of us have a unique set of capabilities and unique set of insights.
We are all bringing something amazing to whatever kind of shared endeavor we're trying to achieve. And I think our role as leaders is to find the ways of unlocking that. And to Mark's point, because actually it makes us better too.
Scott: So that's that comes back to that book, helpful is your bucket when you're actually have a positive interaction, you feel somebody else's bucket up and your own when you're negative you empty theirs and your own.
So it's psychologically damaging to ourselves to do this. Okay, thank you very much. Doug, you're not really going to beat your last one, are you?
Douglas: No, no, I think that's a hard one. Gary and Mark had really strong finishes there. So it's for me you know, in terms of inclusive leadership, it's, it's powerful.
It's being vision led, values driven in one's life, people centered. and to light the [00:52:00] flame in someone's heart is the most rewarding thing you will ever achieve. And it will uplift you, not only them, and it becomes positively contagious. And that's when you achieve amazing things.
Scott: Okay. Thank you very much, Jens.
I really can't, you can tell that he's got authors in this room and then there's me. Very much more industrially in my communication style.
You've done a great job, Scott. I don't think I could have navigated as well as you, so thank you. Oh, you're welcome. You
Mark: have the voice. You have the voice, Scott. You have the voice.
Yes,
Scott: I do. I do. Mine would be quite simple as a leader. The thing is, just be curious with care. Be curious with care. I think if you're curious, I think it's a catalyst for so many different things. Somebody asked me, what's that? I said, that's one thing I would develop as a leader is the ability, is my personal curiosity about myself and those around me.
I think it's important. Okay. So it was always just me today. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you very much for your time. It's been an amazing conversation. And [00:53:00] yes. All the details for how to contact the three guests will be on the
on the page. So just read it, connect with them. If anything, you want to find out more about what they do, the amazing work they do with leadership around the world to help us have a more inclusive workplace and world.
Don't we need it? And that's the climate we've got today. So thank you very much, gentlemen.
 

How Might We Focus In Leadership

My guests this episode are Geoff Hudson Searle, Douglas Lines and Oakland McCulloch. During the podcast we discuss focus in leadership, trust, psychological safety amongst other topics.
 
Corporate leaders today are measured by a new yardstick. The supreme test of a CEO and board of directors is now the value they create not just for shareholders, but for all stakeholders.
The shift to stakeholder capitalism creates pressure for corporate leaders to try to satisfy a wide range of constituencies with different, sometimes conflicting interests and perspectives. Earning their trust is key to navigating this tricky terrain.
Research shows that trust is the key to success. Yet growing distrust, cynicism and misinformation are eroding confidence in corporate impact and Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) claims.
To prosper in the age of stakeholder capitalism, companies must actively cultivate the trust of employees, investors, customers, regulators and corporate partners: developing strategies to understand these stakeholders more intimately, implementing deliberate trust-building actions, tracking their efforts over time, and communicating openly and effectively with key stakeholder groups.
We have entered the trust era: a time where (mis)information is omnipresent, individual perceptions reign supreme, and digital security and data privacy are constantly threatened. Now more than ever, stakeholders expect organizations to do the right things and do them well. These expectations range from entrusting an organization to safeguard one’s private data to requiring a company to have a strong stance on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues.
Trust also drives performance. When stakeholders trust an organization, their behaviors will reflect that trust can affect more traditional key performance indicators that directly affect financial performance. Trust elevates customer and brand loyalty, which can lead to revenue. It enhances levels of workforce engagement, which can result in increased productivity and retention. And the data confirms it.
Trustworthy companies outperform nontrustworthy companies by 2.5 times, and 88% of customers who highly trust a brand will buy again from that brand. Furthermore, employees’ Trust in their leaders improves job performance, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organization and its mission.
Despite the data, however, many leaders and organizations still view trust as an abstract concept. Trust should be managed proactively because, when trust is prioritized and acted upon, it can become a competitive advantage. An organization that positions trust as a strategic priority—managing, measuring, investing in, and acting upon it can ultimately build a critical asset.
No heroic leader can resolve the complex challenges we face today. To address the important issues of our time we need a fundamental change of perspective. We need to start questioning many of our taken-for-granted assumptions about our business and social environments.
 
 
Leaders serve as role models for their followers and demonstrate the behavioral boundaries set within an organization. The appropriate and desired behavior is enhanced through the culture and socialization process of the newcomers.
Employees learn about values from watching leaders in action.
The more the leader “walks the talk”, by translating internalized values into action, the higher level of trust and respect he generates from followers.
To help bridge the trust gap we recognise that organizations need to work with each other and with wider society to identify practicable, actionable steps that businesses can take to shape a new relationship with wider society: a new ‘settlement’ based on mutual understanding and a shared recognition of the positive role that business plays in people’s lives.
To create such a settlement, businesses need to see themselves as part of a diverse, interconnected, and interdependent ecosystem – one that involves government, regulators, individual citizens, and more. Trust within and across this ecosystem is key to its long-term sustainability and survival. That’s why trust needs to be restored to the heart of the business world.
 

How Might We ReleaseTime In Our Business So We Can Go On a 6 Week Road Trip

The latest edition of How Might We is out.
In this edition Alexis Kingsbury talks to me about releasing time in business so you can go on a 6 week road trip. And this is not just theory, Alexis was talking to me whilst he was on his trip.
 
He shares insights and ideas on how to document processes and be able to delegate them confidently to others. How this documentation accelerates onboarding, increases performance and engages and empowers team members.
 
Alexis is an award-winning entrepreneur, with over 10 years of experience, currently running two SaaS businesses (AirManual and Spidergap) with a remote and global team. I also support others as a board member and consultant/coach (e.g. Sony Interactive Entertainment). He is an enthusiastic public speaker, podcast interviewee & facilitator, providing practical guidance to help business leaders to onboard and develop amazing teams — getting employees up to speed, reducing mistakes, and freeing up time.
 
Alexis LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexkingsbury/
Alexis Website: https://www.airmanual.co/
 
 

How Might We Guide Our Mind for Success

My guest is Adelaide Goodeve. Adelaide is an elite performance coach, who, within 10 years, went from nearly bedridden to Ironman athlete and go-to performance coach for some of the world’s best companies, leaders, teams and athletes.
In this episode Adelaide talks about her journey and how brain training helped her, and how it helps people change mindsets to become elite performers.
Adelaide's linkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelaide-goodeve/
Adelaides's website: https://www.adelaidegoodeve.com/

How Might We Learn From History To Make Better Decsions

In this Episode my guest is Brad Borkan. Brad has a great interest in how people and businesses build resilience. In this episode Brad shares his thoughts on how lessons from leaders of the past can help us make better decisions today.
Brad's first book was the award-winning book: WHEN YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT: Extreme Decision Making Lessons from the Antarctic. This book puts the reader right into the action of the life-and-death decisions made by early explorers. In it, we reveal unparalleled lessons in leadership, teamwork, and the sheer determination that can help all of us make better decisions in life. It won 1st Place in the Chanticleer International Book Awards for Insightful Non-fiction.Brad's second book, AUDACIOUS GOALS, REMARKABLE RESULTS: How an Explorer, an Engineer and a Statesman Shaped our Modern World, focuses on six epic achievements made by three extraordinary people, one of whom is Theodore Roosevelt and another is the great Victorian-era engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The book explains the mindset they each developed to make monumental impacts in their fields.
 
Transcript
Scott: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of How Mike We, And on this episode, I'm pleased to welcome Brad Balkin and we are gonna be talking about how might we learn from history, make better decisions. So, Brad, welcome. Would you like to introduce yourself
Brad: please? Hi, Scott. Great to be here. Thanks for having me on your show.
I'm Brad Borkin, as you said, and I've written two books that have to deal with history in terms of looking at great explorers and great people in history and great endeavors that were occurred in history and ask what can we learn from this? Focusing on the decision making side of these people and these endeavors.
Scott: And I think, I mean, I like decisions cuz I think we've mentioned before when we're off air is decisions are basically the precursor to every action we.
Brad: Yes, they're at the heart of, of everything. And one of the things when it came to the early [00:01:00] Antarctic explorers was there's lots of books written about them as people, about the expeditions, like what they ate and how, where they traveled and the challenges they faced.
But actually up until the, the book that my coauthor and I wrote, no one ever looked at the decisions. And we looked at the life and death decisions, which were actually the most exciting ones because they all, they all came near death all the time, but they actually very rarely ever died.
Scott: Well, I can't, I suppose dying only happens once, so Yeah, that's it.
Brad: That's that's true. But, but they, but they came, they came, they faced all sorts of commodities and, and challenges and, and you know, these, these, you know, everything from frostbite, curvy to, to flowing, harasses and, and all sorts of things and that, but somehow they, they were sort of at one level sort of indestructible.
Yeah.
Scott: I think the interesting thing is, as I say, you make a, you make a decision. I think we've talked about this as well before, is, and basically you're trying to predict the future with a decision. Cause when [00:02:00] we don't know the outcome, until we actually make that decision and enact it.
Brad: That's right. Yeah.
And, and, and actually a good, good point is, is I retired from my main job in 2021 in, in July, 2021, which coincide with to launch my second book. And inflation was 2% and the stock market was slowly growing and the world was at peace. And a year later, you know, it seemed like a sane. Normal rational decision.
Inflations at 10%, the stock market is down 25%, and the war, you know, at least Ukraine and, and Russia at war. And it's, it's just a complete un perhaps not predictable, but it's, it's the, the outcome of a decision that you, you don't know until you look back many years later on. What's that? A good decision or a bad decision?
Scott: Well see, I, my view on decisions is I think the decision, we make decisions, and usually it's one of the, with the. Capabilities we have at that time, whatever they may be with the best [00:03:00]intentions for the outcome that we want this, that that's there. So I would say a decision either has the desire, Or unexpected outcomes.
Brad: Yes. And I think one of the things that's exciting about life and about looking, whether you're looking at explorers or you're looking at, at his great people in history, is that you can't, no one could predict the future. And even for them, like, just like we can't predict the weather that well, we really can't predict what the outcome is.
Whether you're heading to the South Pole and you're running outta food and you're trying to decide what do we do next? Or you're trying to build a Panama Canal and you're dealing with workforces, dying of yellow fever and, and all sorts of other engineering challenges and building the Panama Pinella.
It's like you just, you, you make. Best decision you can. But one of the things we learned, my co-author and I figured out in looking at these great decisions and great people, was that it's not about making the best decision, it's [00:04:00] about having the resiliency to recover from a bad decision.
Scott: Okay. And I suppose that's, especially when you're talking about the, the extremes in which they were doing the Panama Canal and the and the explorers is they are extreme.
And I imagine that a decision has an impact and you can see that quite quickly. And then you have to say, make a recovery decision or a
Brad: another one. Right. But that's true in modern life as well. I mean, in a sense like we all have to make the, we all make decisions about jobs and houses and cars and all the things that we do in our, in our day to day lives, relationships, all sorts of things.
And you can strive to make the perfect decision by, I've got a friend who tr want to buy a car, and he spent years, several years analyzing, looking at websites, trying to find the perfect car. as opposed to just going, buying a car and being like, Oh, if it's not the one for me, I'll just sell it and buy another one.
It's you can't it. We have so many tools at our disposal to make perfect decisions, or we think we can make perfect decisions that we're actually [00:05:00] better off making a decision and it might be the right one. As time will tell, or it may be not a good one, but there are many different ways to recover from, from a not good decision,
Scott: I suppose, making.
Well, the other thing I'll say is not, deciding not to do anything is a decision in itself.
Brad: That's right. That's right. Yeah. And, and there's some famous quote from Teddy Roosevelt about something like, you know, the something to the effect of the best thing is to make a decision, and the worst thing you could do is just not make a decision.
It's, it's that to make. The, It's better to even make the wrong decision than to make no decision. Cause at least then you're taking action that you're not being
Scott: on the path, aren't you? Something's happening. You've got momentum, right?
Brad: And if you're on that path and it's wrong, As happened with Panama Canal, you can start making, making the right decision.
So what? Yeah, the interesting thing with the Panama Canal was that the question was do you build a sea level canal? Basically you build a big trench and let the Atlantic Ocean of Pacific Oceans fill it. Or do [00:06:00] you build a, a canal with locks as the p Panama Canal exist today? And they started out with this idea, well, you just build a big trench and.
Dig across Panama and across all the swamps and the jungles and the rain forest and you big build this big trench. And, and it, and the problem was, it was the wrong decision. You just couldn't, they, the. The soil of the clay, the, the very wet, dense material earth that's there, that kept the more they dug, the more they had landslides.
I was just destroying the work they were doing. And they had, And what they found was that, So let's go back on the original decision and say that was the wrong decision. We try to the wrong decision, now we've gotta go to build locks. And they end up building 12 locks, each lock being like a thousand feet long and you know, three times bigger than any lock ever built in the world.
And they built 12 of them in 19, you know, in the years between 1910 and 19 four. . [00:07:00] So it's looking at a decision and saying, Okay, now we've got, make the wrong decision. Now it's gonna cost a whole ton of effort and money to to, to correct it, but we will correct it, and they were successful.
Scott: So in your view of all these, the, the people that you've done, they've all not been afraid to make decisions and actually enact on something and then say, Oh, that's not quite worked out properly.
And then made have say, the resilience then to make corrective.
Brad: Exactly, exactly. You saw that, we saw this in Antarctica a lot. Mm-hmm. that there's a wonderful decision that Shackleton had to make. He was, so this is his first expedition that he led in Antarctica, and it's lesser known than the expedition where the ship got sunk.
Ice and got crushed in the ice and, and sunk and, and called the endurance expedition. And this was called the Nero Expedition. And he and four men as part of this expedition left base [00:08:00] camp, and they were treking to the South Pole and they got to roughly from the coastline to the South Pole was about.
800, 850 miles. They got to within 103 miles of South Pole and realized they were running out of food and they were either, they had this choice, which is they had choice of either we go forward. And we probably dial all the way back. Almost certainly we'll die because we don't have any food together.
Sch back and we don't have any, There's no communication methods. There's nothing that they can call back the base camp and say, Hey, come rescue us. Or they turn around. And so two years setting up an expedition, checking out 700 something miles saying, Hey, we're 103 miles from the South Pole. We just need to turn back if we're gonna live to see it another day.
And he came to the decision and you'd think, Okay, this is a binary decision. This is either we go forward and we'll probably we'll hit our goal, but we'll probably die on the way back, or we go turn back at this [00:09:00] point. And he chose a third option, which was, he said, What we're going to do, I think it was January 8th, 1909.
And he said, What we're gonna do, we're gonna leave all you know on. On this day. We're going to leave everything. The tens, the food the sweeping bags. Everything that we've got, we're gonna leave behind. We're gonna walk south as far as we can for one day. We're gonna plant the British flag and that.
Then we'll turn around, head back to, to the camp site that we had, and the next day we'll start heading back. So the question is, why did he do that? And his reasoning was to cross the a hundred mile mark that it seemed a lot better to return to Britain being, Hey, we got within a hundred miles of South Pole than to say we got 103 miles to the South Pole.
And it's that ability to say, it's to make a decision, but to say, often we as human beings wanna find, make a binary decision. We wanna say, Is it A or B? Is it X or [00:10:00] Y? Is it Stop or go? Is. , you know, forward to back and he's was able to say, Look, there are third dis, there are third options. Yes, we have to go back if we're gonna live.
But taking that one extra day to plant the flag that much further meant to think it was sort of declare victory. It wasn't of, it wasn't a real victory, but it was a enough of victory that they go back to England and he could start raising money for another expedition.
Scott: So I think the thing for me is When your decision making is looking at the impacts of our decisions as well.
So and so we could stop here. It'd be a failure. We can go on and we can die. And you say there's, they see quite binary and he, he somehow picked up that third. And I think that's really important for how we're in business today and moving forward. Cuz the world is very ist binary.
Brad: Exactly. And I think this is the thing that, but it, But our human brains really like this.
We really like to. Make a decision. And I think when [00:11:00] you get into boardroom decisions, you find that, as, you know, as teams of people are analyzing things in big corporations that's trying to be like, Okay, I gotta get, you know, make, help the boss make the right decision. You've gotta go into the boardroom and be like, Here are your choices.
Your choices. A, your choices B. And often the choice is way more complicated than that, but it's been boiled down to A or B because that's easy to go to a boardroom and say, Here are your choices CEOs, cfo, whoever, and, and this way, you know, and, and here's my recommendation, as opposed to being, Well, what's search, searching for that third alternative that may be.
Not a, not B, but something that will enable us to plant a flag. And, and it, it may be a better solution. Cause you can't, like we were saying, we can't predict the future. Mm. So
Scott: even if it had gone to that day, somebody could have got injured or something that could have never made it back or whatever. So there was no guarantee of actually still being alive in the Arctic.
It would just reduced the risks. Of death. [00:12:00]
Brad: Yes, exactly. Everything's, everything's calculated risk, but it's, it's trying to say what, what gives you momentum? So it's, it's yeah, it, it's, it's fascinating. It's a fascinating study of when you're looking at people like Imbar Kingdom, Renell, like Teddy Roosevelt, like Gold Robinson, who was the first head of South Pole and first through the Northwest passage.
You looking at Shackleton or Scott or any of these people or any really anybody in, in, in history that, that they're just, they're one of, and one of the things we learned as well, which was interesting was none of them had an easy. Path. They, we look at people today and I think we often glamorize that, Oh, someone, you know, someone was successful because it was really easy for them.
And when you look at someone like Teddy Roosevelt, born into a wealthy family, could have he was very intelligent. He was very sickly as a young boy. He could have just put his feet up and. I just wanna indulge my, my fascination with the natural world and [00:13:00] collect rocks and insects and, and study mammals and, and birds and, and all the things that he was fascinated by.
But he decided that's not the life he wants to lead. He wants to live, lead a life that gives back to. To the world and went into politics. So it's an interesting thing. You think, Well then, yeah, but even for him, it must have been easy. And it was, you know, the press was brutal to him as, as a presser today.
And, and, and so people, we look at them and they be like, Oh wow, that guy had an easy, that woman had an easy, and it's not like that they had. Real, honest to God challenges that they, they overcame and all of them brunel allinson, all these people had real, real obstacles that they constantly hit. But what was different about them was that they were able to overcome them, or they saw them with a different mindset than, than most people do.
Scott: I, there's, there's something that, there's a guy called Astro Teller. He runs Google. [00:14:00]Google. It used to be Google X. And I think one of your things you are saying is we're gonna try something. If it doesn't work, that's fine. Because we are gonna learn on the way.
Brad: Exactly, exactly
Scott: we are. Well, and the story he talks is about is when Google were creating their drive driverless car and he's talk about the driver's car and he is having an, they're doing it.
And they came from this assumption goes, this goes back to what you're talking about, the pan maar. There was an a canal. Sorry, There was an assumption built into that. That we would have some level of control still as drivers. Like people say, You're not gonna, we're not gonna be fully autonomous. We're gonna have some level of control.
He said, But when they actually got to the point of testing people in the car, they realized that no people didn't do that. The, actually, the behavior of people was, I'm not driving this and now I, I will not stay alert cuz they just, they just won't do it. So they then had to go back to the drawing. And the key assumption that whole design ethos was built on was changed overnight.
And it's their willingness to say, Okay, doesn't work here. It won't work in its present format. And it's either, it's [00:15:00] too big an obstacle, so we do then have to learn to ditch, ditch it, or we still think we can overcome that obstacle by doing it this way.
Brad: Yes, yes. You can't, you've gotta bake human. Nature into these things and, and you can't just, just automatically assume that that people will always make the right decision.
And yeah. One of the things, actually, one of the interesting ar areas that I've gotten involved in is disaster. Response management and emergency management. So I've been writing articles for a magazine called Crisis Response Journal, which is for people who are the, when there's a flood, earthquake tornado, hurricane, whatever, that these are the people who set up the.
That either they're working for charities or working for government. They're working for private sector, they're working for nonprofits. They're, they're the people come in and try to try to support humanity and the, the masses of people who are affected by these, these natural disasters. And what I'm trying to do is draw the lessons from [00:16:00] people like Shackleton and Scott and SSON and, and Roosevelt and different people into helping crisis managers look at how these people are from history and look at crises.
And it's, it's an, it's a, it's a different application to, to decision making. You've gotta take into account how humans make decisions. And I got drawn into this area because when I was in graduate school and I was studying decision sciences, the, I got involved working for a professor, and the professor was doing a.
This is many years ago, and the study was about floods and earthquakes and saying, public policy is based on the idea that, and lets talking about America, that people may live in a flood prone area, but if the government offers low cost flood insurance, they'll buy it because there, if the house is risk of flooding, Well, it would make sense, Wouldn, if you know the flood insurance isn't too expensive, you think people living in front point areas, they know they're in the [00:17:00] flood front areas, they'll naturally buy the insurance.
The whole organization will work well because people are insured against this risk. And what our study showed was people don't behave rationally. And when we get down to these low probability situations and a flood and earthquakes, low probability situation, even a flood print area, The people don't behave rationally.
They'll, they'll take a low probability and, and discount it down to almost zero. . But alternatively, when you look at a lottery, people look at a lottery ticket and being like, Well, of course I'm, I could win when the odds are so much greater at not win. You know, the, the, the, when is a really, really low probability, for example, winning lottery.
Mm-hmm. , we up that probability. And so humans have this real mix of how we deal with things. So with the driver, less cars is, is the same thing, which is you might think, well, people behave rational. They'll always be looking out for their, their safety. And if everybody is, [00:18:00] is no, we're actually really good at tuning things out, or misjudging or saying, Well, the probability, the, the driver, the autonomous car will work properly.
Is enough that I can just tune out. So it's so, yeah, so it's, it's interesting when you're looking at human nature and looking at policy and looking at how do you deal with things, whether it's floods and earthquakes, whether it's adventure explorers and things
Scott: like, I think that's the question, isn't it?
Don't, don't do what you think people should do, but what people are actually gonna do. And there is a difference.
Brad: Yes. Yes. There great difference. And I think it's real. It's, and that's what's absolutely fascinating is that you and, and it is, it is often hard to predict. And that's sort what, what leads to trends and fads and, and different things when you think, I
Scott: think that as a game in psychology called the ultimatum game And I, I can't remember if I can get, I've gotta try and explain this to people who aren't, cause I can't draw it.
So imagine you're, you're in pairs, so you've got a group of pairs. So you might be B and rba, and I've got a hundred dollars and I'm a, And I say to you, I [00:19:00] don't say to you, You get an offer from me of how many. So I might say to you, I'm gonna give you so many dollars. Out of that a hundred. You have a choice, you accept it or don't.
Okay? So just automating me either gonna say yes or no. There's no negotiations. There's no communication. If you say yes, We both get what was agreed. If you say no, we both get nothing. So unless you were offered zero, logically you should say yes to everything because it's a, is financially beneficial for you.
Even if I say, Well, I'll give you $1, you say yes, you're gonna walk away with a dollar you didn't have. I'll walk away with 99, but you'll walk away with the one. But I believe it's a around about 35%. Once people drop below 35% of. Being offered. So anything under $35 out the hundreds, the, the amount of no expense goes up.
Wow. Okay. So that decision is based, I, I believe that decision is based on fairness. People saying, So I think in organizations, whatever [00:20:00] decisions say, Well, they should say yes, they can be a benefit from, they say, Well, if they say no, it might not, because they're not looking at the benefit, but they're looking, Well, I'm not letting you get away with it.
And if I have to suffer because of that, then that's fine. Great. Cause it's not there. And I don't want to be party to an unfair decision that I'm on end of mm-hmm. . Yeah.
Brad: Yeah. And we see this in business all sort, or in all sorts of different ways. I was talking with somebody the other day about, remember the Blackberry phones with the little keyboards on them and how Blackberry's like, Whoa, we're gonna focus on making the keyboard better and better and better because people are saying these long emails with our, with our phones.
And then all of a sudden the world just changed to text messages. And I think there was a story that. The person or the small team that invented text messages thought no one would ever use them. They're like, Well, we can do this thing, but probably never take off. And, and Blackberry went out of business because their, their focus was on something that was like, you know, e sending emails by phone was not as much fun as sending [00:21:00] by phone.
And you could do that without the fancy keyboard.
Scott: Yeah. I, I think there, there history litter didn't there with people who made decisions, they. Decisions based on information they had about predicts in the future. And those decisions turned out to be less than ideal. And it's then again, it's how quickly can that organization, that person, that then realize that they're on the wrong path.
Brad: Yeah. Surpri surprising. How many don't realize that? I mean, Google and Apple are very good at at, at realizing, oh, we're taking the wrong path and we they course correct. And then you look at places like Blockbuster. Blockbuster had a chance to buy net Netflix for $50 million and turned it down because at that point, they were opening one new store every 17 hours.
They were just going into every high street in the UK and the US and, and just you and, and they thought, who, you know, Netflix is just some online streaming service. We don't need this. [00:22:00]We, you know, it's, and, and, And then you look at, at other situations, whether it's you know, book sellers getting preempted by Amazon, whether it's but there's so many examples of, you know, even, even Kodak and Kodak actually invented the digital camera.
Which is sort of not always known because people are like, Well, Kodak was just doing film, but that was their focus. They were doing film and then a team within the Kodak realized they could make digital cameras, and the company was so focused on making film. They're like, No, no, that's just, that's never gonna take off.
Okay. But they never went back to it. They didn't go back to it quick enough or, or fast enough. But then other companies do, I mean, like Apple, hp, a lot of companies haven't made mistakes and, and of course
Scott: corrected. I don't, I don't think there's a journey where there hasn't been, Oops. Yeah, along the track, isn't it?
There's gonna be bumps along. So things happen that we don't expect or we say when we have got all the information available to us. And yes, we [00:23:00] say we, we, we believe we are good at decisions, but in some ways we are quite flawed in our decision making process. So there's a book called Thinking Fas, either Think Fast, Think so, or Thinking Fast Thinking.
Yeah. Think. Yeah. Right. And he talked about and the amount of information you said, like you said, we've got so much information we zone lots out and we kind of go into autopilot to make decisions. And sometimes these complicated decisions we simp. Then it's easier for us to make them cuz we like elections.
He talks about elections as a result and we kind of said, you like this person or that person. That's how we kind of make a choice, not really looking at the manifesto and the policies too much.
Brad: Yes. I mean, if there's playing out without getting too much into policy instead of playing out big time in the US right now with the Supreme Court decisions and the fact that people are like, Oh, I can't believe they just did this, you know, to returning Roe v.
Wade and. It was so clear that the, the, it was, but people wanted to photogenic or they didn't feel Hillary was photogenic enough or, or [00:24:00] it, it, she didn't have the right persona for, for television or whatever. It's, it's just, it's fascinating how you'll make decisions. They make decisions about, Things.
They vote on things, they do things, jobs they take, and we do this all the time. And relationships. Mm-hmm. , there's a fascinating book by Malcolm Gladwell and I'm trying to think of the name of it, but it's, it's about the idea that. We are actually, as humans are not, we think we're really good judges of character.
We think we meet someone, we can assess them, assess them, or assess them out within a few seconds. And what he approves in this book over and over and over again is we're actually terrible at that. And our ability to dilute ourselves, I think, Oh, that person looks like a criminal. That person looks like they're a good person.
That person looks like they'd be a, a kind, generous person, and they're trying to be, be a rat bag or a crook or a an evil doer. And, and, and it's, [00:25:00] but we're actually actually very bad at, at, at judging. Other humans and it's and I mean there are many, many high profile cases he go, There's one very interesting one about a CIA spy, a spy who was in the cia.
And he think all these people in the CIA would absolutely know. If there was a spy among, among them, and they didn't. The person was just so good at hiding it and everyone just assumed, well, she seems like a nice person. She does all sort of nice things and, and does her work, and she's really commended and she like commended by the president, one of the presidents this going back 20 or 30 years.
But, you know, one of the presidents will, you know, she got, gave her like some fast award and it's like, and yeah, at the same time she has a complete spy. For Cuba. It's like, you know, and, and you know, everyone just just assumed that, Oh, it's just you a nice person. It's, they must
Scott: be nice. And so we have these flaws.
All of us have these flaws in our decision making process. And you've looked at things in the past about people who, yes, they've had their [00:26:00] flaws and we've talked, they're not perfect characters, but they've created. Amazing outcomes through decision making process and their resilience. So what do you think are the key things that sort of maybe stands in the part or the key lessons that you've learned?
I think one,
Brad: one of them is that they're very good at building teams that have very simple goals. Mm-hmm. like a single goal. And that goal of, of whether it's Amison taking a team of, of seven people through the Northwest passage. Northwest passage is a was the sea route that has been desired for over 400 years.
And, and famous people like Sir John Franklin and all these different, Henry Hudson, all these different explorers and adventures, tried to find it, which is literally a sea route that goes from from Greenland across Northern Canada. To the top of Alaska, to Asia, and no one can see no one because they're all the little islands and all [00:27:00] these ice formations and it's very hard to, it was impossible for people to find a, a secret through and am is like, he studies it and studies it and go like, the secret to this is a small team with a single purpose, which is we're going sale a various, Everyone's like, No, you can't take a small ship through that sort of ice crusted, you know, all these islands, A lot of unmapped areas.
and yeah, there, there are places where this, the water is so shallow, you, you, that you only have a few inches of water that you're, you're, you know that. And so a small boat can sail better than a big boat. But it's, it's, it's just a fascinating story of someone saying, Oh, you know what the, the, the secrets A small team that's very focused with a mixture of, you know, typically these teams were all white males.
But he, the teams were diverse in that some people were naval people, some people were scientists, some people, they had all these different skills and he was able to form me Teams, Shackleton did the same, [00:28:00] kept us gotten into the same, He formed teams that are made up of multiple different types of skills and backgrounds, different nationalities.
Then and, and as we said in the Antarctic and. With Amison and the Northwest Ps there happening to be all white males, but within that structure, they were, they were quite diverse. And so diversity singleness of purpose was, were key, key elements.
Scott: So, so for leaders today, say, like, look at your team, say, how can you then bring those, that diversity, the strengths within that team, into that team to say, it may not be, Gender diversity.
You may not have racial diversity, but you do have cognitive diversity and skills based.
Brad: right now. What's interesting is that so, so sometimes we think of diversity as just being, well, we're just ticking boxes. Mm-hmm. So we've gotta have different people. And what our studies showed [00:29:00] is that it's not about ticking boxes.
And a few of, there are many other studies that by other people have done this as well, which is that that diversity gives you diversity of. Gives you diversity of reactions. So where one, one person, if you took a all people being very homogenous, they may all react in the same way as opposed to someone else saying, Wait a minute, what about this alternative or that alternative or, or what if we took this approach or that approach?
And so diversity gives you strength. It does is not just a box of tick exercise. The more homogenous the groups were, the more challenges they had. And we saw that you see this in some of the various Antarctic and Arctic expeditions. Like why the, the ones we studied there were six. There were two by Shackleton, two by Scott.
One by Robinson, one by Mosson that we studied in our first book. They were quite diverse in terms of, of being this, this mix of scientists and military people and, and other people as well. So it's what [00:30:00] Chap, you know, one of his exhibitions that still awake. So it's like, so then you got, there's like random guy, he just shows up because he's been starving in a closet for a couple days and then when they, they're heading down towards Antarctica.
This guy, this young man staggers out of, out of the, the closet being like, you know, I'm one still on the ship. And what's funny, the good Shackleton did say here, so this, that slightly over. Young man and Shackleton drags him up on deck when a friend of all the other men and says I'd throw you overboard if I could, but I can't.
But I'll tell you, if we ever get into trouble, you'll be the first one we eat. And ,
Scott: that's, that gives somebody confidence. Isn't that, Sit again, Please don't get into trouble. Please don't get into trouble. Right. Great. Cost quite high. Exactly. Okay, so we've got a diverse group and I, I totally agree with you and I'm, I'm a great fan of inclusion and getting people involved in.
If you want a system to change or a system to evolve, get the system involved in the conversation which comes from like appreciative inquiry and appreciate, appreciate those people around you [00:31:00] and sort of dig out their strengths and encourage 'em. Okay, And this singleton, of course, a very clear purpose.
What are we doing? What we're
Brad: trying to achieve? There was one other thing as well, which was they always had a second in command. Mm-hmm. . Even in a small team, sometimes even in a team with three people, you'd have a team lead and you'd have a person who was the second in command. Now whether that was designated as a second in command or whether it was.
Sort of just a facto based on the person's experience or knowledge or, or skills. And especially in situations where you had seven or eight people and you had a team and you had a second in command, you'd be like, Why do you need a second in command is such a small team. The what was happening, and actually I've, I worked, the company I worked for prior to retiring was.
German software company and so like a hundred thousand people in the company. But the, the team I was in was fairly small and I was reporting someone who was a second command and, but I often also report to his boss. And so I had this sort of strange structure, but I was very similar to [00:32:00] what was in the Antarctic was, was that you could go to the second command and say, I don't really understand this task.
Now, I wouldn't necessarily wanna go to my boss and say that the boss's or his boss or I wouldn't wanna go higher up in the company and say, I don't really understand this task I, but you might wanna say, Hey, I don't understand this task, or, I don't like this person I need to work with. Or, We've got this inter personal conflict that we need resolution on.
You can go the second in command. Without bothering the main guy. Mm-hmm. . And the main, main moment, and, and I think this is where this second command structure works really well in that it gives you the ability to take a grievance, take a challenge, take a problem, and resolve it without. Someone going like, So that's a ding on your mark cuz you don't know how to do that.
Or you're just a troublemaker or you're just, or you're just lazy or, or it's just not getting done and all of a sudden you, the person's procrastinating. Procrastinating cuz they, they haven't [00:33:00] been able to say to someone, I don't know how to do this. And all of a sudden the deadline hits. And it's not done, or it's not done well.
So it's just like a, it's a, So that's another, another criteria, another method that they used.
Scott: So have a deputy second in command, somebody that people feel comfortable talking to and approaching with. Some of the, I'd say maybe more operational day to day issues. They're, they're, they're facing. Exactly.
Exactly. And then, so then the person in the leads is, is doing the, say, the more leadership strategic type of stuff and not getting bogged down into that operational stuff. Right. Oh, and then any micromanages listening. Any micromanages listening today. Right. Okay. We're gonna add something
Brad: else. Right. And and one of the other things was, was never giving up.
I think it's not about, N not when you hit a dead end, it's not like saying, Okay, this is a dead end. [00:34:00] I'm going to stop. It's like this is a dead end. I'm gonna try something else. And so this never giving up. It's not necessarily saying You're gonna go on a straight line. I'm just gonna keep going, going, going, going to like collapse.
It's going to keep going. Then I'm going to hit obstacle and maybe I'll try to break through that obstacle, but maybe I'll need to go rounded obstacle or maybe I need to change, change course completely. And I think we, we saw this with some of the things Brunelle was doing. We saw it with some of the things Roosevelt was doing and, and the explorers that, that the, the main thing was perseverance.
It was, but perseverance doesn't mean just bang your head into a wall at time, after time, after time. It's trying to be like, Okay, I've tried and now I've hit this wall, and now I'm going to turn sideways and try to get another route through. and, and I mean that there are very real instances of that where you hit a CVAs field and [00:35:00] you're trying to go through a, a glacier and there are CVAs and you go like, Okay, we just need to start going sideways.
We can't go through, don't wanna fall on kvass. So we just need to start going sideways until we get by away from the kvass field. Mm-hmm. , which is sort of a visual way of thinking out, but those sorts of similar sorts of things happen in, in all rocks of life.
Scott: Okay, so we come a against something perhaps we weren't expecting or some challenges.
And it's not necessarily saying, Right, this is the path I on, I'm not gonna change. So we say, would it be something like sailing? So, you know, like I've gotta go over there and I'm here. That's the route we've picked, but the wind's changing or something's happened, so we've gotta attack and adapt.
Brad: Yes, exactly.
Exactly. But it doesn't mean you give up and it doesn't. And so even when we look at Shackleton's, Story of getting to, trying to get to the South Pole and saying, We're not gonna get there, but we're gonna, we're gonna plant the flag at 96, 97 miles from the South Pole. We're gonna go [00:36:00]back, We're gonna live to see another day.
We're gonna set another expedition. We're gonna try again. And it's like, you know, so, So, yeah. So we didn't make it this time. , but we achieved something and now we're gonna go back and, and try again. And it may be several years that we get a chance to try again. But it is that sense of, of constantly trying effect there.
There's a wonderful story of, of in the, from the endurance expedition where the ship gets crushed in the ice and the men end up getting stranded on it's long story to get them to the, where you've got 22 men stranded on Elephant Island, which is an uninhabited. Large well basically large rock in, in near Antarctica.
And Shackleton and, and five other men take one of the largest of the, of this lifeboat. And the largest lifeboat was only 23 feet long across 800 miles to the roughest seas of the world and sail at the South Georgia, which is an island that isn inhabited. They get to the island that isn't inhabited [00:37:00]after 17 days.
You know, terrible storms and, and terrible conditions. And they arrive and they arrive on the wrong side of the island, the uninhabited side. So they have to three of them, of the six men. Three. Stay with the, the small boat and three walk across the uninhabited, unmarked, uncharted mountains to get to the whaling village.
I think, Okay, well then everybody's saved, aren't they? Because you've got the 22 men on Elton Island. You've got the other three on the uninhabited side of South Georgia, and you've got the whaling Village on South Georgia, and the whalers can just sail around. They could easily rescue the other three men, but you still have the 22 men on Elephant Island.
So the whaler set off in a ship to go rescue the 22 men on the Elephant Island 800 miles away and they can't get near Elephant Island cuz all ice in they, So they and Shackleton goes, they go back and so Shackleton, so that's first attempt. [00:38:00] Shack gets another ship, tries again. They can't get near Elephant Island through of the ice.
Tries again, gets another ship. And he is going across like, he, he starts in South Georgia, then he is at, in the Falkland Islands, trying to get his ship. Then he is in Argentina and, and UA trying to get a ship. Eventually they do. It took four efforts. Before they rescued the men on Elton Island. I mean these, it's like, this is the, you know, just cure, keep persevering.
He wasn't gonna give up until he got his men rescued, but it wasn't gonna, it wasn't easy. It's like, and these sort of, you know, these sort things are sort of inspirational cuz, cuz we do hit obstacles. We, you know, the whole world hit obstacle with, with covid. Now we've been obstacle with, with Ukraine war in a way that, you know, our, our economies are suffering.
Our, we're dealing with inflation, we're dealing with all the, all these high costs of things and being like, Okay, well that's not really what I planned for, but we just gotta deal with it. You know, Just try again, Try something else. Try.
Scott: So, I think, I think one of the things that I, [00:39:00] it strikes me is that what they, that it comes across within the stories you've told is what they do is say it, I heard this so many times.
It is what it. We are where we are. The thing is, where do we go next?
Brad: Yes. They were very good at saying precisely that, which is not blaming. It's just this is where we are today. And how do we put one foot in front of the next and move forward in some way? And I think this is, you know, this was the, the lesson out of Covid.
Mm-hmm. was, you know what? We can look at the dreams and ambitions we had in 2018, 2019 and say, Well, we can't do all that. You know, can't, can't get back to the life we had in 2019. We're just freewheeling. Just, you know, everyone just traveling where they want and going where they want, not worrying about getting covid.
I know so many people who in the last two months have gotten covid and, and it, it's hasn't gone away. And it's just bit like this. You know, just persevering through and being, [00:40:00] I can't get the life I had, I'll just persevere through with the life I've got. Mm-hmm. , same with inflation. It's like, you know, Okay, sorry.
Cut that. You, the, the, for me, cuz now I'm trying to live off my income as an author. It's trying to say, Okay, now I need to reduce my spending. That's right. That, that's what me, it's a p. Decision, it's just temporary for well, inflammation's running high. And, and, and so it, so it's, we all have to make adjustments and I think it's just accepting that, that you can't always ha things can't go back to the way they were.
So you can't blame things. You can't say, Oh, I wish it was different. This is what it is here, Here we are in 2022. It is what it is.
Scott: It is what it is. What's happened has happened and mistakes have been made, and they probably will. Mistakes will be made. I think it's accepting. That big thing is it's about do we accept failure, learn from it, and move on.
So I think there's a lot within innovation, there seems to be a lot of sort of analogies about how these [00:41:00] men made these great impacts and wasn't an easy trip. And it was like perseverance, but also learning and then moving on. So from that lesson, what did I learn? How can, what am I gonna do differently next?
Exactly.
Brad: To try and make it. Exactly. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of great lessons to, to, to learn from, but it's very much that idea of trying not to focus on blame, not to focus on what could have happened and just be, okay, this is where I am today. How do we move forward?
Scott: The become changed the.
Brad: Yes. You can't change the past as we can
Scott: only influence where we go in the future,
Brad: right?
And we can't even predict that. And as we said the very beginning, we. , well, can't predict the future that well. So in a way you just have this present time and be answer a course correct and adjust as you go and just keep persing. And that was, that's probably the biggest lesson of all of it is this perseverance.
Mm-hmm. that that's resilience. [00:42:00] Perseverance and. And the World War and given, given my age we've seen cycles before. We've seen the, the economic downturn in in the 90. There was one in the nineties, there's one in 2008. These things were recurring and eventually the world Star gets through it and there are wars and people get through it.
And
Scott: So, Yep. I changed my job in 1990 recession. I went from a paid job to freelance in 2009. Recession. You thought I'd learn, wouldn't you? , Bit like you. Well it was just one of those things and then you just like, just, Oh, I could have chosen about time, I could have, I didn't. I'm here. Right.
Brad: Make it work.
Exactly. Exactly. And that's what, that's what makes life fascinating and, and. I mean, you've gotta see it as, as a, as a a game. Mm. And you've gotta see it as, as how do I manage within this, within these multitude of challenges and, and just keep [00:43:00] thinking positively and optimistically and, and
Scott: yeah, I think there's a cuz I do Clifton strengths and there's too strong, I've, I've got high positivity, which is always like looking at what could be rather than what has what. Not being, And also I've got high adaptability, which is, you know, I'm, I'm comfortable in the here and now. Mm-hmm. and this level of uncertainty.
So I do think one of the keys that perseverance and you say where we do is accept the level of uncertainty in which we actually do live. Yes. Been unusual in the last 10, 15 years. We've had a lot of certainty, which has been unused to say the cycles. We haven't had these cycles. Come back that used to be much more regular.
Yes.
Brad: Yes. And, and you, it's funny, when you look back at life and you think, you know, I know I was in America, my first mortgage was at 11% and the at that point you had savings and loans organizations that gave mortgages. And the banker there said to me, You'll never get a loan this low [00:44:00] ever again. And interest rates went all the way up to like 18.
and now they're down to like, you know, they, they came down to like 2%, 1% for mortgages at one point, and he was saying he was predicting their future. Like, you'll never see something lower than 11% and now it's gonna, and now sort of rising back up a bit. But there was something that I want to, to say that, that Shackleton was asked was, what are the traits of, do you need to be a polar explorer?
And he said there were optimism, patience, physical endurance, idealism, and courage. And I think that's sort of like a good sense of traits for, for 2022. Mm-hmm. .
Scott: So this is a question I've asked you before. And you were like, Oh, I dunno. Cause we can't predict the future. We've, we, So we, I'm going to ask this question on, I'm never gonna come back and say, this is what you said 10 years ago.
Okay. So we've, you've looked at great people in the past, people who have had a great impact and sort of shown all those traits. If you look back over the last five years or 10 years up [00:45:00] to today, who do you think might be, if you were to do this book again in a hundred years time, who do you think might be the people you would say, these are the leaders?
Of 20 20, 20 22, whatever this region, let's say, this level of uncertainty we've had that I would like to investigate, I would like to, to examine.
Brad: Great. There's, well, certainly Linsky is one of the most fascinating characters of someone who's, you know, not only transformed himself in the sense of being from a comedian to a dancer, to a an actor.
To being a president and actually being a statesman. And he actually moved this continuum and somehow commands the world's stage. It's, it's quite a remarkable transformation for a human being. And, and that, so he's, he's one I think definitely that. And certainly you see people like, I think Tim Cook at Apple is quite a fascinating [00:46:00] character because he's, he's not flamboyant and he is not out there as portraying himself as a visionary, and yet he runs a visionary company and I think that he's quite a, a sort of a soft spoken, enormously successful human being.
And, and I think that's that. And Apple's delves into all sorts of different, different avenues and, and everyone was predicting. In fact, I, I read a study once that said that at a point when Apple Stock jumped 80% in one year, No, probably 70% in one year, 80% of all the articles written about Apple were about how it's, it was fallen by the wayside.
It was not being innovative. It was so, a lot of people dis dissing Apple criticizing it, saying it was never gonna achieve anything. You know, after Steve Jobs died they lost their way. Samsung phones were better, whatever. It's like all these things. And, and yet Apple just kept performing and performing, [00:47:00] perform.
And I think the other is Elon Musk. I mean, he's quite a controversial character, but he's, he's clearly a visionary at one level and, and it's hard to assess him at this stage. I, he, I don't, you know, would he be like a brunelle? I'm not sure. The, I think we'd see, I think we'd easily say my last book was about an engineer explorer and a statesman.
Mm-hmm. . So you had almond sin as the Explorer and Brunelli engineer and Teddy Roosevelt as a statesman. Certainly you'd have zelensky as a statesman and perhaps Elon Musk or or Tim Cook as the engineer. I'm not sure who the explorer would be at this stage, but it's it's a fascinating, it's fascinating to look at at modern life in those terms.
Is there anyone that you'd, you'd,
Scott: I think quite controversial. I might go for some like Therea May. And why is that? I [00:48:00]think because she managed an extraordinary turbulent time in British politics coming in as only the second female leader of the party. Second. Prime Minister. And I think she kind of, and it might be controversial, I think she kind of got dropped in at the deep end big style because they said we're gonna have a referendum.
And as soon as they lost a referendum, then Prime Minister said, Right, I, I don't wanna deal with this. I'm off. And the party was split, so she was trying to manage a split part. But one thing I think about her, talk about the visionary and that stuff about the, and it being the perseverance and the, the sheer determination to do the right.
Yes, I, The circumstances in which she found herself I think would be quite an interesting thing, and how history might view her, I think might be slightly differently compared to how she was viewed currently. I
Brad: think that's interesting. That's very interesting. I hadn't thought of that. The yeah, certainly if they to look at, at Biden as and I think there's a lot to be commended about.
Biden is a very calm [00:49:00] reason approach with everyone saying, Oh no, you need to like take these knee jerk reactions to everything that's happening in the Supreme Court decisions and, and. Prosecuting Trump and all the different, different decisions and he's taking a very steady approach to, to things.
And I think there's some, Therea May was doing the same. I think she was trying to be a steady influence on something where people, where the press and everyone, everyone's asking for, for dramatic action. So it's interesting. It's, it's it's a fascinating. World that we live in,
Scott: I think. I think yes. I think that you could look back in this, this period of time, last 5, 5, 10, probably the next five years I sort, 10 years that decade.
Maybe the 2020s might be as such an interesting decade to look back on in the years. And I think there'll be, there'll be leaders or people who, as you say, Linsky came to the fall very, very quickly because of the circumstances, Ukraine war and how he, how he positively managed his. Way of [00:50:00] doing a very Churchillian, I think, in his approach.
And he is very, very good at Oratory. He can, he speaks well, we can engage with people and he says the actions he has is going down to the front line and actually being, being there at the front line with people.
Brad: Yes. See, I'm sorry. What he showed is some of what. Shackleton said was, you know, optimism and, and patience of physical endurance.
I mean, he just just showed this is bravery. When you look at him, look at Nial. These are people who are just so incredibly brave and we aren't used to seeing this level of bravery. We're used to seeing. People talking about being brave and you see adventures and mountain climbers and it's people doing adventuresome things, but in a world where there's communication in a world where there's, there's rescue and, and so a lot of these, yes, some, some, a adventurers and explorers do die in modern [00:51:00] times, but they do have And they do risky things, but there's a level of bravery that doesn't exist.
And I, and most of the people I've met, right, all of the, the people that have been Antarctic at. Adventurers today have said when I've seen them talk or I've talked with them, they said, We are, we are adventurous. We are not explorers in this Shackleton, Scott Robinson sense, we are not at pat risk.
And yet here we have in Zelensky, in the ney and some of the other people that here we have sheer honest to God bravery and is a fascinating thing just to see it in a world where we many. Haven't seen it in a while.
Scott: Mm. I think also the difference between leaders who say, and they, they do it from like, from a distance, from afar, Right.
This person is there.
Brad: Yeah. I mean, I, I seeing him, seeing Zelensky walk on the streets and, and of of the cities and in, in the Ukraine, it's just, [00:52:00] I'm always amazed. It's like it's, it's. Just very risky. It's, it's, Is bravery in
Scott: action, bravery, perseverance, a bit of patience, and he just keeps banging it.
He, he's and so's a very clear message
Brad: and yes, And one of the things, I think one of the lost arts is, or, or being a great order, and you saw this with, with Teddy Roosevelt, who always had these wonderful terms of phrase, and you had you see this with Zelensky, but with, and you had it with Churchi.
So the way we had Teddy Roosevelt in the early 19 hundreds, you had Churchill in the 1940s, and you've got Zelensky now. But this the, the terms of Frank Mike from Roosevelt with things like trying to achieve glorious triumphs, trying to kajo and encourage Americans at that time to say, The easy life is not what's desired.
The people who make a mark in, in the world are the people who are not sitting in armchairs. They're [00:53:00] people out there getting beat up in, as he would call in, in the arena. You're the, he wrote, he had this great speech called The Man in the Arena, but it's like the person in the arena, the person who's out there getting beat up.
It's not the critics who are criticizing them is the people who are out there and they may not succeed. And, and he had a great phrase called mu dare mighty things that you've just gotta keep going out and persevering, persevering and trying and doing things and, and daring to be great and, and you might fail along the
Scott: way.
I think it's great. I'm gonna try cause I can't remember. There's the, the film, The Darkest Hour, I think it's the Darkest Hour, which is about coming into 1939 and his speech at par. And it somebody, and everyone's like clapping and things going up and somebody says, What's he done? And he says, He's just mobilized the English language.
Brad: Well, that's precisely, and I think we don't have enough of that today. We don't have, we've got Lansky's trying to do it, but [00:54:00] he's But in the, in the western world, the in, in the world, that is American Britain. Where we don't have that great order today. There's no one that's, that is is that Churchillian person right now that And we need that.
Scott: Yeah. Cause that, that, that again cuz people who can articulate the vision and put it in the word and tell stories and do it in a way that resonates, gets people so much more. Yes. And yeah, we could, we could argue about possibly why a made this thing about soundbite politics. We talk about this and we could talk about that.
people still will, if somebody can get up and give arousing speech.
Brad: Yes, absolutely. I think that JFK was able to do this to some degree. Mm-hmm. and yeah. Cause it's, it's a, it's a rare skill and it's a skill that probably needs to be taught more to, to young people. That ability to, to to speak and, and to, to inspire.
Scott: And is it through stories? Well, it's been an absolute pleasure. Great. [00:55:00] Thanks. Pleasure. Just saying thank you very much for your time. I think that's a nice thing to finish on actually. The, the ability to actually articulate and speak and inspire people is probably something you've always got from the past and there are people currently doing it, but the few and far between, and it's, and it may be the way we communicate now with more text, more videos, more this, more that, and everything's the, the, we don't practice that skill as much, so that's maybe why it's less, it's less prevalent.
Learn from the past. Then from the past. Totally, yes. Right. Okay. So, but again, thank you very much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure. Well, thanks very
Brad: much, Scott. You're welcome.
 
 

How Might We Create Mutually Benificial Relationships

In this episode my guest is Melissa Boggs. Melissa helps leaders and employees design an intentional employee experience that bridges the cultural and generational gap between them, increasing engagement and inviting joy for all.
The key to engagement is not “fixing” employees or leaders, but enriching the relationship between them. I help design organizational structures and cultures that amplify the strengths of everyone, changing hearts and minds about what is possible at work.
Melissa shares her experiences and thoughts on creating mutually, trusting relationships that bridge the gap between leaders and employees.
 
Melissas website: http://melissaboggs.com/

How Might We Become Excellent

This episode is 'How Might We Become Excellent' and my guest is Joe Templin.
Joe, has led an eclectic life.
As one of six kids (the only normal one, he insists) growing up in a small town and spending time on the family farm, Joe’s parents (John and Barb) instilled a love of learning, the outdoors, and a healthy disrespect for authority while still simultaneously embracing traditional values of hard work and “love thy neighbour but mind your own dang business.”  This is Joe’s foundation.
He was severely asthmatic but through his work ethic and love of challenge has become a martial artist and ultradistance runner.  He had a speech impediment but has built a career around communicating.  This habit of overcoming limitations is a theme in his life and his writings.
Joe shares his tips and thoughts on everyday excellence.
 
Joes LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-templin/
Joes Website - https://everyday-excellence.com
 
Transcript
Scott: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of how might we and today's Mike guest is Joe Templin all the way from over the pond in the us of a, and we are gonna be talking about how might we become excellent. So, Joe, would you like to introduce yourself to the guests please?
Joe: Sure. So I'm Joe Templin. I am a self-taught polymath in a lot of ways.
I say polymath as opposed to Renaissance man, simply because I can't draw a straight line even with a ruler. As you notice, I've got a little bit of an attitude and self deprecating humor. Everything's funny. I'm half Irish. So that's the way it is. And I am a human Swiss army. I am an ultra-marathoner a special needs parent, a martial arts champion and [00:01:00] author of the book every day excellence.
Scott: Okay. So quite a mixed bag of stuff in there and lots of experiences.
Joe: Yeah. You know, I have stuff to be able to pull out of the cabinet for almost any conversation I had with.
Scott: Okay, so that sort of flexibility is, is held you in good stead, like the experiences you've had.
Joe: Yeah. And also as some of my friends in used to say, I'm the most interesting man in financial services.
Scott: Okay. And not, not renowned for an in full of interesting people. I must admit financial services. No, not written out for you. Okay. So you wanna talk about how might we become. What do you mean by those?
Joe: So the first thing is that excellence is like happiness in that it is individually defined, but there are some consistencies across individuals about what it [00:02:00] constitutes happiness or excellence in a lot of ways.
So for example, Excellence is partially about, is the process of improvement because we all start off life as babies. Okay. We can't take care of ourselves. We cry, you know, we eat, we poop. That's about all that we do when we sleep, hopefully, and that is literally how every single human being on the planet has started.
Whether they become, you know, the most renowned martial artist on the planet, the greatest writer, you know, captains of industry, queen of England, they all started from the exact same position. So how do they determine where they wanna be, what they wanna become and go about the process of doing. That is the first critical component in discovering your own internal excellence, because we all have tremendous capacity that few of us even tap.
In fact, no matter [00:03:00] what I've accomplished, there's still so much more that within me that I could unlock if I truly invested the time to do so. And every single human being's like that. So first we need to start figuring out, okay, what does excellence mean to. And for the person who is sitting there trying to get their degree while raising three kids, it is being able to pass the exams while at uni and then be able to get that degree so they can build a better life to them.
That is the next step of excellence. And that is a very critical thing for other people. It might be, you know, winning that gold medal at the Olympics or, you know, making their first million dollars, whatever it. The first component of excellence is having a vision to be able to start working towards. And you know, that vision as says in the Bible, people without a vision will perish.
If you don't have something [00:04:00] really important that you're working towards, you're gonna found it. You're gonna, you know, find any excuse to not put on the running shoes and go running. You're going to sit there and eat Cheetos and watch the bachelorette. Instead of cracking the book, you're gonna find any excuse possible to avoid doing the difficult things become better simply because that is human nature.
It
Scott: reminds me a little bit. I saw somebody a quote and I can't remember who, who this quote came from. Not, I remember where I slow selling is where I saw the them talk about it. And it says those who have achieved in their lives or high performance they, their common thing, they think they they've identified outside of actually knowing where they're going is you mentioned it a little bit.
There is having or completing the habits that other people don't do.
Joe: Yes, there's a great saying from believe it's Ernie gray talk, they gave a hundred years ago, actually that successful people [00:05:00] do what unsuccessful people are unwilling to do. And that is whether it's, you know, cutting up vegetables and having those instead of eating crisps or it's spending five minutes, every single morning reading so that you expand your mind and spirit, it is.
Truly, as you know of CTM said, wellbeing is no small thing. Buzz made up of small things. It's those little decisions, the micro decisions, as I like to call them that over a day compound and determine whether you are better or worse over and how many good days can you stack up in a week, determines the path of your life.
Essent.
Scott: So go because what you said, it's not that these people do. That other people are unable to do is that they're unwilling to do. I think there's a big difference between those two isn't there,
Joe: there, there's a huge difference. So for example, I'm a martial artist and we all start as [00:06:00]white belts. We all start, you know, at the very beginning with no skills.
In fact, I being, you know, the CLTs that I am naturally, and I was highly, highly asthmatic. So I did not come on in with this immense athletic talent. But we all started and we all learned the exact same basic techniques. We learned about learned how to stand. We learned how to throw a punch and a kick.
And that's what they teach you in most places in your first couple of classes first week. What have you. And then the question is how often are you gonna practice that? So it's just like your basic language. If you're a sales person, how often are you practicing those basics? How often as a musician, are you practicing your scales so that you get that basic repetition and that basic first punch that I learned.
35 plus years ago, I still do that punch every single morning, a hundred times minimum, each hand. And I've done so essentially every day for 35 plus years, at this point, I've thrown [00:07:00] over 10 million punches with each hand. I don't have to think about it, but I go back to that fundamental and repeat and build off of it.
And that is how I've developed excellence in that space is starting with the fundamentals and then growing from there. And it doesn't matter what profession you're in. If you start with your fundamentals and master them, then build off of them. You can create excellence. And unfortunately, people don't wanna do that because it's too much work and it's not, you know, taking the quick pill and, you know, solving all your problems in 30 seconds.
Scott: Reminds me a little bit of what we said just before we came online, cuz this is totally unscripted and we've only just rocked up and even spoken before is say what could go wrong load to things you can't rewind life, but you can't fast forward it either.
Joe: Exactly. So, you know, you can't microwave the baby, as we say.
Scott: I've never heard that. I don't really want to microwave a baby to be perfectly honest, but so it's not really,
Joe: so it's a, it's a process, you know, it takes nine months essentially from the start of pregnancy until the time [00:08:00] that that baby pops out. So it doesn't matter what you do, you can't accelerate. So you need to just buy into that process.
Becoming a very good musician is a process become, you know, climbing the ranks at. Is a process. Yeah. There's things that you can do to make sure that you are doing it the proper way and sustainable comes out healthy and you're ready for the next step, but you can't jump from step one to step six.
Doesn't happen.
Scott: I would tell you what you might be able to do is accelerate through that process. But you can't, as you say, you can't jump. And I think sometimes it's, we, we look at these things, we've got like life hacks and hack your way to here. It's always like the quick fix that we seem to be looking at, or be given in our lives at the moment,
Joe: it can be quicker, but it's actually gonna be not easier.
So one of the things that we used to say is that somebody can be. Fifth year [00:09:00] agent or, or a third year agent in their first year or in their fifth year. It just depends on how many repetitions that they're getting. So if you're gonna have that consistent hard practice, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hour rule.
You know, you can squeeze that in, but you're still doing all of the repetitions. My TaeKwonDo master taught us that to do a technique. You have to execute a hundred times to understand it. You have to do it a thousand and to master it, you have to do it 10,000. So, you know, you can do it once a day for years and years and years and slowly get good, or you can suck it up and just do it and do it and do it and do it and repeat.
So like, let's say that you have a business where you are in sales and you need to reach out to like a hundred people to be able to get your sales quota for the. Well, you know, if you do that and it takes you to Friday to do it. Okay. But what if you could [00:10:00] find a more efficient way to do that same 100 quicker or you suck it up and you just pound it and go, and you do it on Monday.
So that either gives you the opportunity to reach the bonus round really quick, where you're making a ton more money, or you can take Fridays off and, you know, go to the pub with your mates or go hang out with your sweetie or whatever. So you get to, you know, discipline equals freedom is one of the things that Jackwell talks about.
And it's having that discipline to do the hard stuff over and over again quickly so that you're still gonna be doing hard things, but you're doing hard things at a higher level. And as such, you're getting the better results and that is one of the ways to get your excellence.
Scott: Okay. So we'll go, go back.
Cause we, I think we jumped around a little bit. So we started off with how might we become accident? And we said, and the first thing you said is that vision having that, that clarity about what it means to you. And so it's happiness. It's individualized there isn't yeah, there isn't one definition of success.
Yep. Success is contextual with that and is individualized. Okay. So you work with it, [00:11:00] you get your clarity on what does excellence mean for you? What is that achievement you are trying to get? Excuse me, is it then when you start working on, okay. How do I need to do that? What steps do I need to take?
Yeah,
Joe: because people. For example, join martial arts and they see the black belt and they're like, I wanna be able to do that. Or they saw a movie and they wanna be able to do all the cool stuff that they saw there, like in karate kid or what have you. So they have a vision, but then they start figuring out how to achieve it.
So in martial arts, it's like, okay, you come here and we tell you what to do. And we rank you up over time and you have to do the hard work, but we guide you. If you're an entrepreneur, it's a little bit different because you might have this vision of, okay, I wanna build this NCE. You know, company, that's gonna change the world, but people aren't giving you a playbook of do X, Y then Z, and all of a sudden you're the next unicorn.
So you have to figure it out on the fly. I think it was Peter the, who said that sort of like [00:12:00]jumping off of a cliff and building the airplane on the way down. So that is how life is in a lot of ways. So you need to. Figure out what you wanna do start taking the first steps. Even if that first step is right off of the cliff and you figure it out on the way and then doing what you need to, to build.
Whatever it is that gets you to then fly, whether it is cracking the books and having your study plan and doing the homeworks and all that to pass the test, whether it is taking the time to. Every morning, tell your significant other how much you care about them and having one night a week, that's set aside for just the two of you, no kids, and so that you can invest the time to have excellence in that relationship, whether it is taking the time to stand in front of a mirror and look like an idiot while you practice your.
[00:13:00] Performance or your speech, or what have you so that you improve in that capacity so that you can be excellent to do what you need to do there, whatever it is, it's having the vision, then figuring out the plan to get there and executing along the plan. And that comes back to what we started with with happiness is that one definition of happiness that I've heard is continuous progress towards something significant.
Okay. So if your goal is to build this huge organization and you fall in love with the process of building that organization and doing the grinding work and the occasional great success and setback you can handle, then. You're happier because you are doing something significant over time that could be running the ultra marathon that could be getting your black belt.
That could be, you know, mastering the guitar that could be writing your book. So having [00:14:00]something big that you're working towards, that's significant. And having your process that you're executing on buying into it, having essentially that face, that you're doing the right thing and getting your feedback along the way, that is one way to have happiness, but it's also the path to excellence.
Scott: Quite like what we said is we, we are clear on where we're going, but say fall in love with the process.
Joe: And, you know, the process sometimes sucks. I mean, you're gonna have setbacks all along the way, especially the bigger, the thing that you're trying to achieve, the more setbacks that you're gonna have.
But one of the things that we talk about within startup companies is de-risking how can we break it down to small steps? With short feedback loops that you can know either work or don't work, they either make you better or worse on a very small loop, you know, a couple of seconds, as opposed to a couple of weeks and hundreds of hours of work is one thing.
But if you can [00:15:00] get feedback under five minutes so that you can make the micro changes and have better micro decisions that ultimately is going to improve your outcomes overall, and you're gonna. A whole bunch of tiny little wins, and we actually remember more of our wins than our losses. So having more wins, even if they're tiny, they can add up and have a greater psychological effect than trying to get those couple of big wins.
And one of the things that I talk about very often is one of the ways to be excellent. Overall is a mindset and the mindset is that in any situation, in any decision or micro decision, cuz we make about 10,000 microdecisions every single day, you're basically gonna have two potential outcomes. You can lump, you know, a whole variety of things into these two buckets.
Essentially. One is the easy choice. It feels good in the moment. It's the lower energy [00:16:00]requirement very often. So it is the sitting on the couch playing video games instead of getting up and cracking the book I studying for the exam, it is avoiding the difficult discuss. With that significant other or with your boss or somebody that you need to have that talk with, you know, especially if you have teenagers like I do.
Okay. I see too many parents avoiding those difficult conversations. It is the, you know, eating the donut as opposed to the apple. I love donuts. Okay. Don't get me wrong. I'm a donut feed, but I haven't touched one in a while and I won't until after Easter. So it's that it feels good in the moment. But it leads to the worst outcome because if you have that cigarette and it feels good, guess what?
You just share your life by approximately nine minutes. Okay. You sit on the couch and don't work out and your waistline expands and you get diabetes and you have all the bad problems there. So the path that [00:17:00] seems easy, that feels good in the moment, typically leads you into worse and worse decisions.
Overall, the other. Group of decisions are the hard choices. Generally the right choices, they take more energy, they take more effort. The I'm gonna crack the book and study and pass the exam so that I get this degree and eventually can get a better job. It's the I'm gonna go run five kilometers, even though it's raining out.
And I know it's gonna suck, but it's gonna make me better and give me reserves that I can tap into on other bad days, the I'm gonna pick up the phone and call that one potential client that scares. Okay. So that moment of fear that I'm overcoming is gonna have better results, no matter what, even if I don't get that client, I've still faced that fear.
And that gives me more internal strength to be able to make harder decisions down the road. And that's the way that you build up essentially your mental muscles. To be able to do the more difficult things. So choosing the harder [00:18:00] path, as opposed to the easy path is leads to better potential choices that you'll make down the road.
You know, the problems of a successful individual and the problems of an unsuccessful individual, both of the, which creates stress in their lives, but the person who has $5 million in the bank, as opposed to the person who doesn't have a pot to piss in, guess what? They're making very different choices in life, even though they're both difficult choices that they're making.
And their current situation is reflective very often, not always, but for the most part of previous decisions that they made. So make the best choice at that point in terms of the overall that ends up increasing your potential for the future. So make the more difficult choice now to have better outcomes in an easier life down the road.
And so in bringing this back to excellence in the movie, Deadpool two clauses tells Deadpool four or five moments. Four or five moments is what it takes to [00:19:00] be a hero for us on an individual basis. It's those four or five micro decisions every day that end up determining whether our arrow is pointing up for the day or down for the day.
Scott: So there's a book it's slightly different, but the book about I think it's Tim Roth, Tim Roths wrote it from Gallop and it's about those interactions and how full is your bucket and everything we do has a consequence for us and the other people around us. So if we can try and have that positive, impact's better for us.
It's better for the, environment's better for the people. We react to. Very few of our decisions in.
Joe: Yeah. Like almost none of 'em it's constant, either improvement or decline. And so choosing to do the little things that make you better add up tremendously. You know, one of the examples that I use is that if somebody, through their daily choices, expands expenses a hundred calories per day, more than the, what [00:20:00] they consume.
So that's a combination of what they eat, what they drink, but also what they're doing, you know, are you taking the stairs instead of taking the lift? Are you parking, you know, a quarter mile away and walking in, are you walking to the store instead of driving all or taking the tube? All these little things that add up a hundred calories a day is roughly one pound per month, which is 12 pounds for a.
For the decisions that the microdecisions that relate to essentially a hundred calories a day. So that is literally four or five small decisions as to what to eat. And you know whether to sit on your butt or to take a five minute walk.
Scott: So again, it's all goes. It just seems that there's a common theme around here is, is accepted.
Say the mindset is the decisions I make now. Every single one has a, has a consequence further down the road. And it's about looking at those consequences over the decision you make now. [00:21:00]
Joe: Exactly. And so Conneman ended up earning the Nobel prize in economics for the, his research that led to thinking fast and slow and too often were making that gut reaction too often.
We're making the quick decision that seems easy. And the quick, easy decision generally is the wrong. And so slowing down our processes, which for somebody like me, who's high speed and has ADHD can be very difficult, but a moment of planning prevents an hour of unnecessary work, taking a couple of seconds to evaluate a situation.
Before bursting on in can help avoid a law of negative consequences. So thinking before you speak pausing, before you write that response email, these little things will help prevent the major negative events that will severely [00:22:00] interfere with achieving your excellence.
Scott: So, do you think an important part of what you are talking about there is the ability to create space to respond rather than react?
Joe: Yes. So one of the things that professional athletes talk about all the time is slowing down the game. And so we need to be able to slow down the game of life.
Scott: I think COVID, in some ways has helped people do.
Joe: Yes, because it eliminated a lot of the unnecessary. So for example, before COVID, I was doing a lot of speaking and so I would have three or four remote talks per week. And I was getting to the point where I was doing about two that per week that were gonna be scheduled where I'd be on the road, all of a sudden that disappears.
So I don't have to deal with the travel and all that. So even though that was a potential negative. In terms of lost revenue and opportunities. It [00:23:00] gave me time, you know, not having to have the kids to three different events, every single day created time that we could spend with each other and time that we could do things like, you know, teaching them how to cook a healthier meal, cuz I'd been doing all the cooking up until that point for them.
But I was then able to take the time to teach. So that they can do that sort of stuff now. And now that frees up a little bit more time overall because you know, my 15 year old can turn around and make a nice healthy dinner. So I don't have to do it every single night.
Scott: So again, that's another thing. One thing I, I quite like looking at for people is their capabilities and accepting their capabilities and say, do you wanna achieve this?
But also what team do you need around you to help you generate that outcome? So you, a lot of it we can't do on our.
Joe: Oh, absolutely. So that's one of the reasons why the first or the second day of the book for the [00:24:00] year, I have everybody do a SWOT analysis so that they understand what they're good at and what they're not good at.
And so I know the things I'm definitely not good at. And so I either eliminate them if possible, or I outsource them wherever possible so that I can have somebody else who can do it a lot better than me. Take care of it. And it allows me to focus my time on the things that either can bear greater results within the business or greater personal results, like spending time with the kids or being able to go out and run or take time to write.
And that then allows us to maximize the good in the world by allocating resources.
Scott: Yeah, cause I'm I'm I quite like the, the outlook of strengths for that's basically. Do you know what? We're all good at certain things and other people are good at other things. That's, let's lean into our strengths. Yep.
Instead of worrying too much about weaknesses can say, if you invest in your strength, the, it is like an exponential growth in that [00:25:00] area compared to time invested in areas that you're not so good at. Right.
Joe: I mean, if, if you're playing a complete game like golf, you need to work on your strength so that if you do hit in the bunker, you can get on out of there.
But people are really remembered for how they overcame weaknesses and turn them into something neutral. It is doubling and tripling down on your capabilities and becoming world class within one space. As Bruce Lee said, I do not fear a man who has practiced 10,000 kicks. Once I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
So is going back to that practice idea that I had earlier of becoming excellent within certain arenas, you know, find what you're good at, find your passion, find something like that, and really go with it. And that's how you can become truly excellent in one area. And the mindset of unlocking that excellence is a cross-disciplinary skill that you can apply to other arena.[00:26:00]
Scott: which I think is good. Cuz I think a lot of times we think we learn something in one place and we say, oh, I learned that here. And it just stays in this little box. And the way I look at it is I, I see much more the, the life as a sort of a.to.book. Mm-hmm so, and the dots of what I've learned, what I've experienced and I say, okay, which ones can I draw into this situation?
Which ones are gonna help me now? And which ones can I pull from? So I see learning as learning and it's, it's not compartmentalized into any aspect. It's. These are things I've learned, developed skills, whatever it is. I've experienced that as, because you are a whole being aren't you, you are not a person at work and a person at home, you are a person.
Joe: Exactly. And so, you know, is that a person who is highly conscientious about their work? Is that an individual who, you know, is known for going above and beyond, or for creativity? Because, I mean, if you're highly creative in terms of how you do one thing, then you probably bring [00:27:00]that mindset into other areas.
If you are very focused on being a good. Person in terms of your relationship with your significant other, you're probably going to bring that same sort of concept in some of the things that work in that space, into the work environment. Or into your relationships with your friends or other areas. So it's being able to build these skills that are cross-functional and applicable in multiple arenas.
And that is one of the key tools of excellence because. The discipline to be successful in one space helps out in a lot of ways, the mindset of breaking down to fundamentals like I did with the martial arts that turned around and assisted in being able to be successful in business because I used the exact same mindset.
Right. And then the [00:28:00] consistent practice, the doing the things every day, that was helpful as an athlete. That turned around. And I was able to use that in terms of writing to every single day, whether I felt like it or not sit down and write. And some days it was good writing and some days it was not quite so good, I threw most of it in the garbage, but it was that I'm showing up and doing it every single day.
And having that attitude that comes across and allows you to be successful in multiple
Scott: arena. I think was it, was it Jack Nicholson said the more I practiced the luckier I seem to get.
Joe: Exactly.
Scott: I think that's a good thing. So if you had to sum it up and say a couple, cause obviously you've written the book and, and helping people deliver this daily excellence towards what would you say sort of the key things would be sort of sort everything we've talked about over the last, like 30, 40 minutes we, you would put together and say, right, this is sort of your roadmap to delivering excellence.
Joe: The roadmap is [00:29:00] first figure out what you wanna be. Excellent. Get that vision that we talked about, build a plan, you know, and even if it's a loose plan, even as like star Lord says in guardians of galaxy, I got 12% of the plan. That's actually a good start simply because things are gonna change along the way.
As Mike Tyson said, everybody's got plan until they get punched in the face. And life is gonna punch in the face repeatedly. So you need to be able to take it and keep moving forward as Rocky ball Balla says, but also you need to be able to adjust and change how you're going about it because not getting punched in the face is better and getting punched in the face.
Quite frankly. So, you know, learning on the fly, but then it's the daily focus of I'm going to show up and I'm going to do my work and having strategies around that, whether you are using James Clear's habit stacking, which I'm a huge fan of whether it's applying Pomodoro method to be able to. Chunk [00:30:00] up small amounts and be able to crank through them, whether it's occasionally just removing yourself from the situation decompressing so that you can refill your tank so that you're more effective.
These are all little tools along the way, but they are ways to make sure that you are continuously executing on your plan to get to wherever your goal. Your vision of excellence is.
Scott: Okay. And it, and I, I like the thing about the, having that, that feedback look, which is important in business, but I think it's important for us cuz there's a guy called Elvin Turner wrote book called be less zombie.
And in that one of the chapters is experimentation is the rocket fuel of innovation. Yep. So, and that's what your plan is. We talked about yesterday. We was talking to Kara on a previous podcast. He said, your plan is where you want to go with a load of assumptions, built into it.
Joe: Yes, and you need to then be ready to challenge all those assumptions along the way.
And [00:31:00] remember, the river is going to cut through the rock. It's gonna get to the place that it ultimately wants to be, even if it has to take detours. And that's the way life is in a lot of ways. The analogy that I use with younger people that I'm mentoring, especially like teenagers, like my kids is if we look at life like it is a giant video.
Okay. And our goal in this game is to get to the castle in the end, save the princess, get the chest of gold and all that, you know, that is the main quest. We might have to make all these side quests along the way. You might need to go into the Tavern and talk to the crazy old guy to find some information you might need to, you know, go into this, you know, dark side area to get a resource, whether it's a person or a potion or something like that, you might need to go into the Tavern and sleep overnight to recharge.
Okay. If you look at life like that sort of quest all these side quests, whether it's, you know, the business that didn't work out, that [00:32:00] relationship that failed that class that you took in college, you know, this, you know, interesting conversation with somebody, this great podcast on how do we become, you know, these little side.
Give you the resources necessary to ultimately succeed in the main quest of getting whatever that treasurer is and saving whoever it is that you're trying to save. So being able to look at and say all I didn't waste this time, I was able to be successful in some capacity. And having that attitude is what makes it better off
Scott: overall.
So what did I learn and how can I feed that learning back into where I want to go?
Joe: I'm I'm sorry, I lost you there for one. What did, what
Scott: did I learn and how can I utilize that new learning? To help me move forward and whatever it's. And I think that's, I think businesses here, cause we don't look at that the successful businesses do that in what they do.
They don't look at it as a failure. They [00:33:00] said, yeah, it didn't work, which is cool because it, maybe it wasn't meant to work, but what did we learn? That's useful for the rest or in other aspects of the business that may help
Joe: us. Exactly. So as my father always said, it's, you know, that Pearl of wisdom or excellence that you find from every meeting or every seminar that you attend or book that you read or what have you.
So you find the Pearl, which very often you remember pearls. Come about from something that is annoying, the oyster mm-hmm . And so it develops something from it. So if we can find those pearls in every situation you get enough of those pearls, you can end up having a very rich life.
Scott: Indeed. So again, it's back to mindset.
Exactly. Mindset generates action.
Joe: Exactly. And so it's a feedback loop. So you improve your mindset, you improve your action, you do actions to improve your mindset.
Scott: And you keep that as keep that as fresh. And then you just keep it. You keep your true north, which is where you wanna be in the end. Just keep that you say [00:34:00] exactly.
Joe: And sometimes you might have to, you know, go over a falling tree or round to the ditch or whatever. But if you know where you're trying to get to and you keep going, eventually you end up there. It's like the sailing, isn't it.
Scott: They tack for the wind. Change. They still go that way, but that's the best way to get to where I want to go, even though it's not exactly cause the context and the circumstances and what's around us, that's it.
And the, the, the more experienced, better sailors can read those quicker, understand it quicker and make the adjustments better. E
Joe: exactly. And so, you know, ultimately we should all be pirates, try and get that, you know,
Scott: It sounds like I've never sailed in my life, but you know, I've talked to people who do sail, so I'm kind of using their experiences.
I don't, I don't, I'm not a great fan of getting too wet to be honest. So I, I, I love the water, but it's just too, too cold. As long as
Joe: it's over there.
Scott: No, I, I quite like being in it when it's not cold and I live in the UK, so that's not very often. So when I learned to scuba dive, it was, we dive in and it was like, I couldn't see anything, but I loved the experience cuz it, it was really weird seeing.[00:35:00]
Experience the thing about underwater, I really loved is you experienced life in 360 degrees. Yes. Whereas on the ground, you tend to experience it on the flats.
Joe: You, scuba diving is the closest experience that a human can have to actually fly.
Scott: I can. Yes. Especially if you hit a drift.
Joe: Yep. And so like you you're just there and as, as a scuba diver, it is beautiful because you're literally in this.
Alien environment. Your senses are completely different because I mean, you're hearing everything that's going on with the water. You have no sense of smell. Your vision is very different under there. And you are more in tuned with your breathing and the feel of the environment around you.
Scott: Yes, it's much.
Yeah. The sensory experience is different. Unfortunately, I've got I developed science problems, so I can't scuba dive anymore because of the changing pressures. Doesn't do me many favors, but it was an interesting, especially the drift dive. [00:36:00] The guy told us said, just imagine you're at the cinema and this is the movie reel.
And we just hit, just hit a drift and just followed it. And just whatever happened underneath us is what we watched was phenomenal. So basically it's a lucky dip movie reel. You dunno where you could be a romance. It could be a thing. You dunno where you're gonna get, but enjoy the experience along the way.
It's great.
Joe: It's probably as long as it's slot, not jaws. You're good. Yeah, I
Scott: did. I didn't want the horror movie to be honest. That's not the one I was going for to be done. That was, and the night dive was interesting as well. Cuz then you're massively deprive in your sensory. Even more diving at night is interesting.
So that was all the build up dives we had to do to get our qualifications. But yeah, it was good fun.
Joe: And so see, you know, those experiences. You, you can bring in and draw from, in terms of other things within your life. And that is one of the reasons why, you know, we talked about these side quests and also when you find somebody who has taken a similar side quest, you know, we can [00:37:00] have this couple of minute of deep discussion around a passion for a moment.
That is one of the things that, you know, all of a sudden I'm much more amped up than I was. 45 minutes ago before we started talking. And hopefully it's made you smile a little bit. And so we now have not only a shared experience, but also we both have a better feeling that we're gonna carry forward through the rest of our day.
So this is one of the things about. Doing creating excellence in the world is having these small interactions with other individuals where both of them end up better for it, because we're both gonna go on out around the rest of our day and I'm gonna interact with probably another half dozen people you're gonna interact with at least another half dozen people.
And so we're both in a slightly up pointing arrow for the day and hopefully that. Be shared with these other individuals and that then creates a multiplicity effect. [00:38:00] And that's one of the reasons for trying to make sure early in the day you're doing the right thing so that your mindset is proper and positive for the entire day.
Scott: Yeah, that's great. I mean, that, that really does resonate with that book. Helpful, lose your bucket. Every interaction you have is it's never is rarely, hardly ever neutral, but if it's a negative interaction, it impacts you and the other person. So if you're, so even if you shout at somebody, cuz you're frustrated, you, you, you empty their bucket, but psychologically also damaging your own.
So if you look, if you look at everything, so how can I fill my bucket in the people around me in every single again, it's that micro thing is in it's and there's another guy. Wrote a book about flourishing leadership and that's the same, get that spiral going upwards rather than the spiral going downwards,
Joe: right.
Or it's the concept of lighting other people's candles, because if I can bring light into your world, you know, and I can help light your candle in some capacity, it does not diminish my own. Does it, if I'm extinguishing my [00:39:00] candle for, you know, creating darkness or bad mood or whatever, then that carries over to other individual.
Scott: Absolutely. So there's a, there's a, these things are things we know that it's having that discipline. I think an important aspect, as you say, is that self-awareness as well. Where am I today? How can I create that space so that I can make the right decisions at
Joe: level? One of the things about that is I'm glad that we've had this conversation where we've brought in all these other authors and books and you know, ways of looking at it because the bigger your tool.
The more capability that you have to be able to find the right thing in that moment. So one of your listeners might take away something from our discussion about scuba diving. Another one might take away something about the martial arts. Another one might take away something from about the bucket and by giving an entire Schor.
Of different concepts that all ultimately [00:40:00] help feed the soul, feed the mind, then people will be able to walk away and be full in the proper. No matter how the, what their taste is in that situation. And so that is one of the cool things about exposing yourself to a whole variety of podcasts or books or people, is that it allows you to have a greater choice as to how to go about ultimately getting fullness in your belly and your.
Scott: Okay, lovely. I think that is a great place to finish. I think it's just, as you say, pick the stuff and that's really important. Pick the stuff that suits you and sits on your should as well. Cuz if all you ever ha if all you have in your toolbox is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Yeah, exactly.
Huge toolbox. Then you can choose the right one. That's one works for you as a person. And also then in the context for which you want to use. So the bigger it [00:41:00] is the better charge you have of choosing that. Right. As master Toman, have they have lots of tools. Mm-hmm and they've probably got one. They used the most cuz it's the most effective one for them,
Joe: correct?
Scott: That's it. Okay. Lovely, Tim. It was sorry, Tim, Joe, that where Tim came from. Hello, Joe. It's an absolute pleasure talking to you and thank you very much for your enthusiasm and talking about excellence and say, hopefully people will get ready and there'll be links. In. In the on the podcast from your information from you and your books, et cetera.
So people wanna find out more, just click on the links and you'll be able to do so. So Joe Scott,
Joe: this has been fun. I've learned a lot, be excellent and grow today. Thank you

How Might We Convert Strategy Into Action

My guest on this episode is Karol Papa, he is a certified Scaling Up coach and I uses Scaling Up Methodology™ to help entrepreneurs create mechanics for predictable growth in their business.If you grew your business vastly over the past few years, added new clients and employees, but you began to realize that current management methods are no longer sufficient, the chances are your company's reached the next level of growth and needs new mechanisms to fight barriers to scale.The Scaling Up system was created for mid-market companies to overcome these challenges and set the basis for sustainable business growth. Thus you need to attract and keep the right PEOPLE, create a truly differentiated STRATEGY, drive flawless EXECUTION and have plenty of CASH to weather the storms. Karol helps companies answer the following questions
- Do I have the right people in the company and would I enthusiastically rehire them all?- Is our strategy driving results and would anyone care if our business ceased to exist tomorrow?- How many months in a row have we reached or exceeded our monthly business goals?- Do we have consistent sources of cash to fuel the growth of our business?Karol can help you double your cash flow rate, boost your profitability, increase the valuation of your company relative to the competitors and help you climb to the top in a joyful and meaningful way.
 
Karol's Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolpopa/
Karol's Website: https://karolpopa.com
 
Transcript:
 
Scott: Hello and welcome to the latest edition of how might we, and this episode is called, how might we convert strategy into action? Now, my guest is Karol Popa, who I met about 3, 4, years ago now. So Carol, would you like to introduce yourself, please?
Karol: Good to see you, Scott. Good to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Yes, my name is Karol Popa I'm. I'm here right now in Warsaw speaking. You di directly from sunny city. I'm a scaling up coach. I'm a certified gallops trans coach. This is where we've met with Scott. And what I do is I help entrepreneurs to build mechanics for predictable growth in their business. So you can, you can learn more about that on, you know, look for scaling up, scaling up certified coaches, scaling up community on the internet.
You can find a [00:01:00] framework there. It's designed at the MIT university for. Midmarket companies to be able to just grow faster, really how, how to scale.
Scott: Okay. And I think that's obviously a question that's quite at the forefront of most people when their business starts moving is how, how does this get better and bigger?
And I think we were before we came online, it's one of the things, isn't it? That is something to consider at certain points, the way you work, isn't going to work because your company's growing.
Karol: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like Marsha Goldsman said, what, what got you here? Won't get you there. Yeah. So depending on your growth stage of, of the, how big your company is you need to do things differently.
Like the old ways doesn't open that does not open the new doors. Yeah. So we really need to change and adapt to the new situation inside as well as outside of your organization.
Scott: Okay. And then we are [00:02:00] talking about how we convert strategy into actions, a conversation we had, obviously, before we came online, we deciding what we were gonna talk about.
So why did you sort of want to hone in on that aspect of it?
Karol: I think it's one of the biggest challenges out there when you wanna, you know, grow your company, go grow your company, or, or even achieve your personal goals. So you might know what you want. And then you might think you you've got a plan, but when it comes to the reality it'll oh, you know, always, oh, maybe not always, but very often happens that the reality takes all everything, and, and you actually are not able to achieve your goals.
At least as much as you would like to. So what's the what, what's the solution. Yeah. What's how can you how can you tackle this challenge? How can you be victorious about it? So I think it's a good, good subject to have a conversation around it.
Scott: Okay. So you've said it's more [00:03:00] often than not that people struggle with achieving their plans.
And it's about their say strategy interaction is planned into action. So what do you think are the things that. Cause issues where people actually achieving what they're trying to achieve.
Karol: Right. So like at, at the beginning. Yeah. So first of all, you need to know what you what you want. Yeah. And then you need to know why you want it.
So those two things are very fundamental for you and you, and if you. If you try to think what, what the strategy really is. So just to simplify as much as we can, I I'd say the strategy is how you get what you want. Yeah. And then this implicates, those two questions. So what do you want and why do you want it?
So you need to think about that at, at the beginning. And it's important because this is the one, one thing that. That may influence your [00:04:00] reaching your goals, because if you are not clear enough, what you wanna achieve, then you might, you know, it's impossible to achieve it. If you don't want don't don't don't know what it is.
So this is the starting point. Yeah. If you wanna hit your goals, you really need to be perfect. Clear on what they are. And then what, what helps is another step. So you think about why you want it. We we've just talked about a little bit about it before we started recording about the values and about the purpose.
Yeah. So it's, it's why, why, what do you want to change in the world if you think about your goals that way? So if you can tap into this higher purpose, Of why you want to reach your goals. It gives you more energy. Yeah. About, so you stay motivated, you don't need those outside motivators. It's just fire burning inside of you.
So this is something that moves your engine [00:05:00] toward your goal and, and it will definitely help you reach those goals. So those two things, and then there's this next. Which is, if you know what you want, you have a clear vision, you know why you want it, then you need to figure out how you want, how you will get it.
Yeah. So this is this strategic thinking about the situation. Yeah. So it's about what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What is the situation outside? Yeah, what's the landscape. And who do you compete with? Is there, you know, other people, other organizations, other companies they want the same as you, or are you alone there?
So basically what you need here is the deep understanding about yourself and about the outside landscape and other organisms there.
Scott: Okay. That's interesting. Cause obviously I'll do. When I'm in the middle east and talks, bigger companies. And one of the, some of the things that we talk about is quite the same as you understanding [00:06:00] yourself, like say the C I P D call it being business savvy.
So what's in the business, what's important in our business and what are we trying to achieve? And also the contextual savvy is understanding the context in which we're operating. So you think even, so those principles are applied for if you're a multinational company, or if you are a solo person.
Karol: So.
I think it comes down to, to your individual goals as a, as a person as well, because We know, and we use Clifton strengths and this methodology, or, or this assessment changed my life. Yeah. And, and I know that it has changed lives of other people. So if you know your strengths and you can design your life and your actions on a daily basis around your top five or 10 strands, and you can use it more, you are more efficient and more effective, and then it suddenly Becomes easier to realize your goals.
And it also goes the other way around [00:07:00] because when you know, what your, what, what, what are your strengths then sometimes, you know, your goals change because of that. Yeah. You suddenly realize that something that, that you thought you want it now, you don't don't need it really. There's something else that is more important to you.
Uh, Through the lens of your looking at your strengths. Yeah. So I think it it's, it works the same as for the big international companies, global companies local companies and, you know, down to the individual level.
Scott: It's interesting. You said that what you thought you wanted, you don't need and it's that difference?
What is the difference between something I want and something I.
Karol: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's a difference, but, but it also is a, it, it cha the, the awareness and understanding of yourself changes your perceiving the world, your, your lens, how you look at at the world around you. Yeah. And it might, you [00:08:00] know, influence you in terms of yeah.
What are your goals really? And what is important for you? That's why, you know, this understanding can change your wants and needs.
Scott: Okay. That's one of the reasons. So the first thing is people not really having that sort of level of insight about themselves, about what's important to me and what really drives and motivates me.
And I, I like the fact that you talked about the intrinsic motivat, this stuff that's inside that keeps our fire burning rather than relying on external things to keep you to keep you going. So what is it? I can never remember the guy's name. Oh, I, I can is the the philosopher. He's not philosopher or he was a psychologist and he talks about flow.
Karol: Bet. yeah, Nick,
Scott: but I'm gonna try and pronounce his surname. Remember? No, no, I think he was Hungarian. I may be wrong, but he talks about flow. So I think that could be a tip for people today. Say, what is it that really drives you? So [00:09:00] imagine you were a time where you were fully immersed in something and time just seemed to zip past said what was going on there?
What was it that was causing. Level of immersion in you that it was, it was challenging, but didn't feel like work type thing. That's a wonder, apart from obviously the strengths that you you and I are involved in is another way of people helping people to identify when is it when they are that productive.
And then start looking around that, that the context of that and say what was going on for me at that time. So I can start identifying potentially some motivators and desires.
Karol: Yeah. And it is also connected with, you know, achievement. When you achieve, you are more motivated, you are more happy, you've got more energy.
And if you don't achieve, yeah. If you struggle all the time, it makes you unmotivated. And then if you think about work, And people coming to work and, and they do things that are not, we're born to be doing. Yeah. And [00:10:00] they actually don't have any results. They don't achieve what they're supposed to achieve.
So it's demoing and suddenly they just come to money for, you know, nine to five and take the, take the money and you know, it's not good for anyone. For them or, and, and for, for the whole team as well. So this achievement is a very, very important also element of of staying motivated. Mm-hmm
Scott: okay. So we've got an idea of what we're doing.
We understand why we're doing like then the combination of that. What do you want and why do you want it two really important questions. And then who else is trying to do the same sort of thing as. So we've got that understanding, which is really, then we start developing the strategy is about how do you get what you want.
So what is it you think that stops that plan turning into reality or actually concrete action is delivering the results that we are expecting.
Karol: All right. Uh, So there's one more thing we need to stop [00:11:00] here before we go to, to what stops the execution? What stops the action. Yeah, really? Mm-hmm so we've, we've got the understanding, but now we need to think how to translate this understanding of the situation into our.
Action plan. So we need to figure out what we gonna do and probably what we gonna do differently than those other companies, teams, people. So we can find the fastest and the most effective route to our goals. Yeah. So this is this another element that you need to have. Complete it really. Yeah. To, to, to put it on paper.
So this is if you only got it, you know, just in your head, it probably won't gonna work as good as it can when you put it on paper. So this is another element and, and there is tons of research that tells and, and shows that once you put your plan on, on, on the paper, you've gotta far more bigger chance of realizing it because it, [00:12:00] until you put it on the paper, It's just your dreams.
Yeah. And then you need to, when you're putting in on a paper, it means that you were, you thought it through and you've got like some ideas you wanna. You wanna, you wanna try? Yeah, really. So it's like, okay, I know what's the situation now. What is the best thing I can do now? There are some, some possibilities out there.
Yeah. So you, you, you've got a list of things that you can do. Yeah. And that, that might be a starting point for your strategy planning and a strategy plan. So this is the another one. And then, then we can try to think how to bridge the gap between this plan. That you've, that you've just put on a paper and how to make it a reality.
Okay.
Scott: Cause I do think, and that, I mean, I, I jumps there as well, so I think we quite often jump to. There's a humanism. We wanna solve problems. So we just jump to action without having. And [00:13:00] so you've, you've, you've, you've talked about having a lot of thought before we even get to thinking about converting what we're doing into anything that's resembling action.
Karol: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, and it also comes down again. I mean it might come down to as well as for, for your strength. So when you look at CU strengths, there is this one called activator, and this is the one that you just, just. Tells you do do it. Don't wait. Yeah. So sometimes your strengths might be your a little bit of a, like an enemy in this situation.
Yeah. So it's good to think it through. And when you've got it on the paper you start, you think you've got a plan and now everything's gonna be fine. But then you know, I remember this, this, this quote, when Mike Tyson was asked by the reporter, whether he was worried about a vendor, holy foods, and his fight plan, he answered [00:14:00] that you know, everyone has a plan until they got punched in the mouth.
So basically what Tyson said is similar to the old saying that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Yeah. And this is something. People forget or are not aware of the, that you need a plan, but then there there's this thing called reality , which is often, you know, doesn't want us to. For our plan to be realized that easily and, and the way we thought it through.
Yeah. So this is another thing we need to remember, and this is, this is the, this is I think this is one of the biggest elements of why, why we don't realize our goals because of the, you know, plan and reality. And there's this gap. Yeah. So how can we bridge the gap is, is a question.
Scott: I think that comes down to, I mean, there's lots of research in it with people when they're planning is the biases [00:15:00] in our thinking that influence our planning because they, it is done in a, although we've done all the research it's still done.
As you said, in a relatively sterile environment of our minds, our thoughts, our processes, and not in the real world as it is where things are usually slightly different. Cuz I say, we look at it through the lens of our awareness, but the reality is can be completely different. So I think the good thing.
Maybe just thinking about what you've said is when you have your plan, before you go to action, it's a sit about, and I would say this isn't about converting this to action. I, I would say. And you think you, you alluded to it earlier when you said, try, this is a way of me testing my assumptions. What assumptions have I built into my plan?
Because they, they may be right. They may be wrong. And if they're wrong, how can I then adapt that new knowledge back into the plan?
Karol: Yeah. I think it's, [00:16:00] it's, you've nailed it. Yeah, because then how can we bridge this gap? It's like, so we need tools. We need processes within mechanics. Yeah. That will help us translate this strategy into action and really stay agile or be able to adapt quickly to the changes around us. Yes. So this process of.
Constant testing and the, the hypothesis we got and what works and what doesn't work and what are, what, what tools out there that could help us. And here comes, you know, those things that, that software programmers use and, you know, like using scrum and being agile methods. And this is really something that comes also from scaling up where, where we have these tools designed.
For the organization to stay agile in the situation and how they can execute and, and, you know, measure the progress and, and be constantly in the known how well we and, and if we are [00:17:00]on the right path to achieving our goals. Yes. So I will go through them in a second, but this is the, this is the one of the solutions to look at the, this problem, the way you've just said, how can we.
Our, our hypothesis about how to get what we want and then what tools can we use on a daily basis that will help us do it.
Scott: Okay. And you talked about agility and sort of that, and there's some techniques you've talked to, companies use like scrum and stuff. So do you think that's one of the key elements to helping you actually realize a plan is to say, yeah, your plan's an idea.
And it, parts of it, work parts. It won't work, but it's how do you, how do you test that and how do you, how do you measure it? And then how can you react quickly enough to adapt so that you can take that new learning? Cause to me, that's what it all is. A plan isn't is an idea, a concept and something happens, which creates new learning, which we need to feed back into our planning stage and adjustment.
So [00:18:00] is that, do you think that is one of the key elements that, where it falls down.
Karol: Yeah, I think it's one of the main elements how you can, how you can nail it, how you can be effective in execution and, you know, achieving your goals and also what is required from you to be able to do it and use those tools.
It's really also about being disciplined. Yeah. It's about the discipline. How, because you need to be doing it on a daily basis. It, it needs, you need to create habits around the way around this agile way of doing stuff. Yeah. So this is about working on yourself and the first starting point really is it's like, you need to be aware where your time goes.
Yeah. And, and it goes for the individuals as well as for the teams for the whole organization. So it's like, you've got a plan, you've got tools, and then you, you say, okay, let's do it. But then if you don't [00:19:00] know, at the beginning, at the start where your time goes, so this thing called reality will crash.
You really? I mean, the more, the more aware the, the, the person is about the time Where they spend their time, their, the, the, the bigger chance they've got for success. Yeah. So the first thing I would recommend is like, really use some tools and do the experiment like for, I don't know, two weeks or four weeks to, to really record your activities in life environment.
Like there's this, for example, toggle track. Application, which is a free desktop time tracker and you, you can use it to, and it's also, they've got, they've got a mobile app and it's very easy to use it. And then after two weeks or four weeks, you, you can analyze yeah. Where, where, what, what, what you did and where, where really your time had gone.
So it's very important to do [00:20:00] it like. To record your time live. It's not like, you know, it doesn't work if you see at the end of the day or at the end of the week and try to remember what you were doing. Yeah. It doesn't work that way. So the only way is to do it. Life do it at the moment of your action, which is really like starting to build, start, start, you, you really start building your habit.
Yeah. This is the first one, the first habit to be aware where your time goes and the, the, so you've got a application, you've got a desktop trucker which seems. Very easy, but the hardest way, at least for me and from my experience is really like remembering that you need to put, you know, push this button right now and change the project you're working on and really be be focused on that.
Because if you, if you like do it, like only in a 60% or 70%, the, the results of your analysis won't [00:21:00] be correct. Yeah. So this is the first time Ask yourself, where do my time go every day? Every minute. Yeah.
Scott: Okay. So the analyzing of that, so you're doing it live and, and again, that start building that discipline in that habit of having a, and I think what you're talking about is a much more evidence based approach as well.
It's data driven. So we've got this, we've got our metrics, we've got our testing, whatever you set up is data driven to help you make those informed decisions. So we've done this, we're doing so we've created our first habit. We've managed for four weeks to remember to click on the button to record our time.
So what types of, what sort of analytics would you encourage people to be doing on that information?
Karol: Yeah. And then, and then you can take a look at all your activities. You can. Group it into, into, you know, you, you can make groups out of them and think which things [00:22:00] are really the most important ones like which are the priorities.
Yeah. So this is the first thing, first things first then we go to, to the next discipline, which is working on priorities. So the funny thing is. Not many people know that, but the word priority came into the English language in the 14 hundreds. Yeah. And it was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing.
And it stayed singular for the next like 500 years and only in the nine, 19 hundreds. Yeah. 20th century. Did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities? So we. We, we try to we, we try to how you say . Mm. Trick the reality. Yeah. So it was to be a priority and now we've got priorities.
Yeah. And it means something. Yeah. Even, even, you know, when you think about it. So the first thing [00:23:00] first so you've got your list of activities that you really were working on and it's, it, it usually, it, it's usually something different that you would think you. Thought you were working on. Yeah. So this is the first thing, and then you try to think, okay, so I've got my plan, I've got my goals.
So what is, what are the, the activities that would give me the biggest results? Yeah. So there's this. Prior Al if you remember. Yeah. So 20% of our actions provide 80% of results. So if you look at your list and you, and you just try to figure out yeah. Which activities provides the, the greatest results.
And this is the one method for you to try to figure out what is the most important and what is the most important thing you, you should be working on? Yeah. So the idea of analyzing your time is really about what you should stop doing, what you should continue doing and what you should start [00:24:00] doing that you're not doing right now.
Yeah. And then you, when you, when you, when you figure it out, this is the. Level of your effectiveness. Yeah. Because you are now starting to work on the things that will give you the, the biggest results. And that means that you are becoming a more effective person, the more effective executive as you will.
Yeah.
Scott: Okay. So we are now here, we've got our plan. We know what we're trying to do. We've got some idea of the tasks we've identified our time. We're now utilizing our time more effect. And identifying our top priority singular. Okay.
Karol: What next? And the next step is you need to design your data and analytics and measurements.
So basically how will, you know, if you are on the right path to achieving your goals and here. The help of tools like OS [00:25:00] KPIs and you know, those, those indicators that help you track your progress. Yeah. So I use those two method KPIs, which is key performance indicators and OS, which stands for objective and key results.
So KPIs is like for, if you look at your team or your organizations, like you can use them for. Business as usual. So what are, what, what indicators so shows you, how well or how good your company performs and what should you measure in terms of you know, you're trying to realize your goals. Yeah. So thinking about it.
So if, if I wanna achieve something how can I measure my progress toward achieving the. And it, and you know, thinking about it on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Yeah. So when I, so, so just to give you an example for ex, let's say we are now looking at the marketing function in a [00:26:00]company. So if we know what is the goal for the year and what is the goal for the quarter, we should be able to.
Tell what the marketing function results should be. And let's say in our business, the, one of the most important indicators is leads. Yeah, let's say marketing qualified leads, MQs or SQLs sales qualified lead. So let's say the marketing function should provide like 30 leads, leads, sales, qualified leads in a quarter.
Yeah. So you know that monthly, 10 leads and it's around like two and three leads a week. So if you look at this key performance indicators, week after week, you can tell if you are on the right path to achieving your goals. Yeah. So if you've got every week, the marketing comes with 4, 5, 6 SQLs.
It's great. Yeah, but if they come what, like, like with one or, you know, zero, [00:27:00] then you. Quickly, and this is very important. You quickly can realize that something is not working. Maybe your assumption is not good, or maybe you're doing something wrong and you need to change your behavior quickly. Yeah. So this is like KPIs for business as usual.
And if it comes to OKRs, it's another framework or, or method for achieving your goals. Yeah. So I'd say that for me, the essence of the OKRs is like focusing and aligning your efforts or everyone efforts in the team on achieving the most important goals and stretching. For amazing, which is one, one essential part of OKRs.
This is stretch goals and also tracking the progress to stay on course. And, and I use OKRs for those. Those projects or, or those initiatives, there are more like stretch. So if you spot a spot, an, an opportunity [00:28:00] and you wanna, you know, grab it fast, you can put an OTR on, on that initiatives. Or if you spot that something is not working properly or correctly in your business, like for example this marketing function, you can put an OTR and try to fix it, fix it quick as As well as you can test your hypothesis with the OTRs.
So you've got data metrics and analytics, and which is the, the next habit you, you need to develop. Really? Yeah. So you, you think about how to measure the progress toward our goals and how to measure it on a daily or weekly basis to, to be informed if we are on the right.
Scott: I think it just a bit, I'd like to add that.
Just be careful of what you measure. Yeah. So be very clear what you measure and does that align with what you are wanting in your organization to grow? Cause one of the things I say, whatever you measure, and if you build your reward structure around those measurements [00:29:00] generates behavior, and really think if this is what we're gonna reward people on based on these metrics to achieve these goals.
How might they act and is that something we would really want in our business moving forward?
Karol: Thanks. Yeah. And that's, and this a really great point, Scott, you, you just mentioned about, you know, be careful what you measure because what you measure is get done. Yeah.
Scott: Peter drer, wasn't it? What gets measured gets managed.
Yeah. And right. I think it's Peter drer.
Karol: Yeah, it's bit trucker, but it's, what's get, what's get measure, get managed, but as well, what you measure gets done, which is a little bit different, but you know, when you start measure something beware that, you know, it might happen. Yeah. Uh, Faster than if you wouldn't.
So I've got this example of fast food, fast food restaurant, and it was like the management. So did this one. One restaurant was like they, they worked until the midnight and the every day they had a lot of [00:30:00] you know, Wasted food or, or, or like the food they, they would need to throw away because nobody bought it in the restaurant in, in, in the late evening.
So what they come up with was they put this indicator on this measurement that how much. Food we waste. Yeah. So, so the management for the, for the restaurant figure out that if they stop selling fast food, from 10:00 PM to, to 12:00 PM. They wouldn't have this, you know, wasted food. So when, when customers come to the shop to the restaurant, they would, they would need to wait.
Long minutes until they got the the meal, because you know, the restaurant stopped serving fast food from 11 P from 10:00 PM to 12:00 PM. Yeah. And they realized this you know, this goal, they, after like few months, they didn't have wasted food, but. The behavior that, that this, you know, indicator drove in customers [00:31:00] was that they realized that there is no, it's not fast food anymore.
So they stopped coming in. Yeah. And the result was that they lost customers because of this measurement. So it's really about the thing you said right now. Be, be careful what you measure.
Scott: Something I did. Cause it is, it's not what you want people to do, but what people might. What we want people to do and what they should do or could do is sometimes very, very different again. So, and I think sometimes we just see something, oh, we've got bad measurements or we've got eight, an indicator that's poor.
So we're just gonna put another metric in to stop that happening without really thinking it through. And that may be where you're. Okay. Okay. R's coming. That can stretch a different type of performance to rectify that part of the business, rather than saying, just stop having food wastage, which will drive improved performance.
Looking at really ways that we can behave better to achieve that, but not [00:32:00] damage. As you say, damage, the reputation we have with our customers and sort of the consequences, the knock on consequences. Okay. So we're measuring, we're really careful what we're measuring. We're thinking about the behaviors that that measurement was, is likely to generate.
And what's the impact of that. And is that something want, and then we reword one. I'll just go onto, go on. Can I just, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. Thing is one of my favorite KPIs. I've got introduced to this by a guy called LV terms on a previous podcast and this, I think it was from 3m. So this is off the top of my head.
So it might not be a hundred percent, right? So they've got a KPI that 30% of their profit have to come from product from every division have to come from products that are less than four years old. Now, if you just think as a measurement and think what behavior might that start generating an organization?
I think that's an extraordinarily clever KPI.
Karol: Yes. And it's all about innovation. Yeah. And
Scott: it's also because it's every division, it helps collaboration cuz I is every division's gotta be successful. So let's share what we know so we can help each other, but [00:33:00] also it stops holding onto products that stop falling off.
So some of this behavior that we've had in organizations about holding onto things that aren't driving sales and always, we need to innovate today for tomorrow's targets. I think it's a very, very clever
target.
Karol: Yeah. And if you think about the 3m purpose, which is solving problems in the innovative ways, it's all connected and it's all aligned.
Yeah. So it's great. And
Scott: who would've thought the stationary. So
Karol: I'd say it's how you design your your, your communi.
And having ability to work on problems in a collective way to use your brain, like you know collective brain power. So this would be the third element for, you know, just bridging the gap between [00:34:00] strategy and execution, how you design your. Meetings within the company. Mm-hmm so what do you do on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis?
Yeah. And how you design those meetings, who is in, in each of this kind of, of a meeting who is on daily list, who's on weekly, monthly, quarterly, and what's the agenda. What, what the results should be after each of the meetings. So starting with the dailies is, is just. 10 to 15 meeting minutes meeting for your team.
And it's basically about what is the most important thing for the day. Yeah. What's the daily priority and it's, it's about that and the communications. So everyone in the team knows what other people are doing. Yeah. And then you've got weeklys and this is about. Measuring and communicating the progress on quarterly priorities.
Yeah. So that everyone in the team knows if we are on the right track. We check our KPIs. [00:35:00]And if we are stuck somewhere, we've got, we've got time because this is like 60 or 90 minutes meeting. We've got time to solve one or two problems that that made us stuck somewhere. And you should think about it in terms of the year.
So you've got a chance to solve like 50 or 100 problem. In a year that helps you move forward, which is something great. Yeah. Mm-hmm and then you've got monthlys and quarterly, which are more like more strategic, really meetings with more people. And you can think in a quarterly actually you can, you can learn and you can think what went good.
What didn't work. In this period in this 90 days, what you can change to be more efficient and more effective in the next 90 days. And you can plan your next moves. Yeah. So, so this is this medium rhythm. Is this really like the heart rhythm or, or, or, or the beat for your company? [00:36:00] This is the place where you test your hypothesis.
Yeah, mm-hmm does it work? Does it not work? Is it still worth pursuing what we are doing or maybe we should stop doing it because it doesn't make sense anymore and you don't need to wait till the end of the year. To make this decision because of those tools and those processes, you can make it quick and, you know, you can stop doing stuff that, that are not necessary.
And if something has changed, you can adapt quickly. So we all been through the, the, the start of the pandemic here and in business, you know, it was like, like earthquake and companies that had those kind of processes and tools were more able to adapt quickly. To the new situation and the companies that work in the old ways stuck there and, and had bigger problems.
Yeah. So this is all about the communication about solving problems and about doing it in a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly [00:37:00] basis. And, and yeah,
Scott: I like the fact is that you, you've given a very clear definite thing of what a daily, a weekly and a monthly and a quarterly meetings are designed to do.
I think most people just have these meetings about that sort of clear agenda and. Clear understanding of what and why they're having these meetings.
Karol: Yeah. It, it's, it's really important. And you know, the greatest, I mean, maybe not the greatest, but the great thing about this design is also that when you introduce or when you implement such a design into your company, suddenly uh, it makes other.
Meetings irrelevant. And, and, and then that you, you suddenly gain lots of time for real work and working on problems and solving stuff. Then just going to the meetings that are unproductive. And this meeting rhythm one of the results of, of using it is, is this, you suddenly get, get more time. So the, the rule over time is that if you [00:38:00] are not a person, that your work is about meetings, like if you're not a salesperson.
Yeah. But you are, you work on different things and you look at your calendar and there is like more than 25% of your time is in the meetings. So something is wrong.
Scott: I think if, or in some big companies you gave them that they think 25% of my time is outside of meetings and 75% is in meetings. And you think, well, what are you doing about from meeting?
Unless the, and I mean, I remember you was talking to somebody who was a, there was, it was a relatively small company. I think there was about 15 people working in it. They had a weekly meeting, it went on for two and a half to three hours. And I said, what you doing? I said, we have this meeting, but you talk to people why they get us to know, just have this weekly meeting, it's boring.
It takes me and everyone realized it was add, just added no value. So they just swapped it. And they just said, I don't want to know. What's not what the update, just tell me, does anyone need any help? And that's when they changed the whole meeting. So go [00:39:00] around is, I don't wanna know where you are in all your projects you're working on.
Cuz it's quite a project based thing I said, but if there's anything you're not quite where you are, what type of help do you want? And then anyone in the, the else in the room. Can offer assistance based on that stuff that you are telling them. So it became much, much, much quicker, much more informed. And actually, as you say, started solving some of these issues and collaborating cuz every, every department was in that meeting.
Karol: Yeah. And here we are I suppose there's that, that that's the idea how to, how to do it. So, you know, the strategy. How you get what you want. So what do you want, why do you want it and what will you do to get it? And then you come down to, you know, being aware of my strengths, my weaknesses, about the landscape and the other competitors, and then putting my hypothesis into those habits of daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings, measuring our progress to our goals [00:40:00] and working on the most important.
Or the prior thing, which gives the biggest results at the end of the day. And here's the recipe, how you can be more effective in reaching your goals.
Scott: Sounds so simple. Doesn't. Yes, it is. Well, you actually put it in there. It says, and it just seems to make logical sense. Well, you actually do it. So that's bloody obvious.
Isn't it it's seems quite obvious. And then you look at companies, how do you run your companies and not like that, but what I was like, I was thinking also about the meetings. Obviously I work on my own and a working partnership with lots of other people as well is even those things you said about the meeting, you could do that for yourself at the start of every morning.
Okay. What's my priority for. At the end of the week, am I getting on against my key targets? I've got on my, and I know as you say, you've worked out your KPIs and your okays, you know, where you should be. So you're gonna say right, what's on target. What's not on target. And then you can look at what's working.
What's not working. And then, okay. 90 months let's have a more in depth review of what's happened over the last quarter and then planning to Q2 or the next quarter. So it's, even though you say they're meetings, I still [00:41:00] think it's. You can easily integrate these into very, very small teams or even individuals.
I think the whole process is it is quite interesting. Cause you say you're a scale up coach. The whole process is can work from one person to a huge organization. The recipe doesn't change does it.
Karol: Now you can use it for yourself. You can use it for a small team. You can use it for big company.
Scott: You just have to design it differently depending on the size of your organization.
And what's important. How do we measure, who needs to be on these teams? How, who needs to be involved in these decisions?
Karol: Yes,
Scott: that's it. That's amazing. I do. I've never done this. It just seems so simple to me. And I love it when people explain stuff and I go, oh yeah. So simple. So SIM, so it's simple. So, so simple.
There you go. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you, Carol. It's been an absolute pleasure. So as, as always, we always have a good chin wagon. When we get together talking about holidays and different parts of the country. And when you travel, you try to make me feel jealous because you're in somewhere it's hot [00:42:00] and it's not for me, but I think the.
Tables might be turned over the winter because you were still in Poland.
Karol: Yes, we were. Thank you. thank you for having me and I, you know, I keep your word for coming to the island. You know, I
Scott: will, I will come and say hello. No worries. It's it's a holiday and we're warm. I'll come and say hello. Yeah, I'll pop over no problems.
That will be, be my pleasure. And thank you very much for the invitation. So obviously if you wanna get hold of Carol or speak to him about anything he's discussed, his details will be in the transcripts on here. So please just get the details off him. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you young man.
And thank you very much for your time.
Karol: Thank you very much. It was pleasure. Thank you.
 

How Might We Improve Relationships on LinkedIn

Welcome to the latest edition of How Might We. On this episode my guest is Phil Coley and I discuss how to build better relationships on LinkedIn. Phil shares his thoughts and experiences and some analogies with dating.
He provides some great tips and advice on using LinkedIn to develop relationships that can help grow your business.
Phil has over 30 years experience in direct sales both B2B and B2C Phil works with a number of different business sizes from solopreneurs to multi-million pound enterprises advising on the SIMPLE principles.SIMPLESalesInformationMoneyPeopleLeadershipEnergyHis business portfolio includes a sales & marketing agency, accounting practice, digital publishers and a number of website businesses.Phil has strived for a work life balance and now run my businesses from here in France thanks to my amazing team based in the UK and our dedication to process and people.
 
Phil's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-coley-business-plus/
Website : https://iplussales.co.uk
 
Transcript
 
Scott: Hello and welcome to the latest edition of how might we, and this edition, we're going to be talking about how might we improve relationships on LinkedIn and my guest this week, or this episode is Phil Coley. So Phil, would you like to introduce yourself?
Phil: Yeah, no lovely to be here today, Scott, thank you for inviting me yet.
So I'm Phil Coley from business plus group of companies. So we have a number of companies in our portfolio, but it's one of my key interests is sales and marketing. So we have a company called hopeless sales marketing, and we help our B2B clients get more engagement on LinkedIn, get more leads and help to grow their business.
Scott: Okay, so you are you as a field that you're very familiar.
Phil: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. No inside that. And I, I suppose I've been linked on, been on LinkedIn for many years now when I first started and stayed on it.
Scott: Oh, I I'm a [00:01:00] veteran no less.
Phil: Yeah, it makes me sound a little bit old, but yes, I would say I'm a LinkedIn, the
Scott: guy.
Okay. So it's interesting. You talked about the relationships with LinkedIn and I think when a lot of times you talk about people, we talk about engagement. We talk about the importance of relationships in business. So why do you want specifically want to talk about that in relation to LinkedIn?
Phil: So I think.
Maybe I'll just take it back a step. I think it's, it's, let's look at sales, but even before that is on my professional background, sports psychology has played a huge part of my life from university all the way through. So I've taken an active interest in people and I've certainly taken active interest in people in sales.
And there is that age old thing that, you know, people buy people and yes, I understand that. And I think that's, there's an element. And when I look at LinkedIn, I look at what LinkedIn is. LinkedIn is a networking tool. Is it a social media tool? I don't think so, [00:02:00] but I do think it's about people and it's about.
Probably people apart from a profile picture, that's very faceless. And to be able to make that work, then you've got to work on the relationship online and using LinkedIn in a way that's probably different. And you would know, you know, we've got those, those three key things of making that first impression, which is the visual or.
You got the auditory, how you sound, and then you've got the words, the words that you used and people then build a picture of it and that way, and actually that's probably how I relate it to link to.
Scott: Okay. So how important you think it is for that first impression that we have.
Phil: Oh, I think it's hugely important.
And I think what I can probably look at is I can look at those mistakes on LinkedIn and I can look at suddenly. Now there are LinkedIn gurus everywhere, LinkedIn, this and LinkedIn that, and the majority of those people are talking [00:03:00] about. Posts. They're talking about how to get your posting right on LinkedIn.
And I'm like, well, that's, that's fine, but you, first of all need an audience. So you need to reach out and start a relationship with somebody. And so I think that's where a majority of people probably get it wrong on LinkedIn. And I think in terms of how might we, I think, you know, I think about how might we start a relationship with somebody in a business.
That's not just, hi, I sell widgets. Do you want to buy them? And that's where I think too many people make those mistakes.
Scott: I made, I think most of us I've done it in the past as well. You've contacted somebody and you'd go straight into sort of trying to get something from them rather than giving something to them as well.
But the amount of my inboxes on LinkedIn is hi, thanks for connecting. And then about two days later, here's an email. Do you want to buy from me? Does it work?
Phil: No, no, it doesn't work at all. And I, I mean, yes. [00:04:00] Do do, do I, do we, as a company have a process on LinkedIn? Yes. Yes we do. But have I honed that over the years?
My sales training and LP trading sports psychology trading, probably. Yes. And to hone it into, let's just take a step back and go forget it's LinkedIn for a minute. If you were looking at, say the dating game, then there's a whole array of different. Strategy is one can use when you're dating, you know, you certainly bump into somebody in a, in a scenario and then you might ask for their number and you're a little bit coy about this.
And then you'll. Text them or ring them and they'll have a conversation. There's a whole array of different stages that you do to, you know, trying to date somebody or even just build a relationship, build a friendship. And for some reason, people seem to forget that on LinkedIn and they just forget those kinds of processes and they go out the window.
And that's where I think so many people become anti LinkedIn and active messaging because there's so many people doing the [00:05:00] same thing without.
Scott: So I quite like the analogy you had with dating. So I know when we were talking about what we were going to call it, there was a, there was some talk around dating, and I can't remember what it was, is like, don't ask for something on your first date, where you were starting from.
And it is, I mean, I've been to face-to-face networking meetings as well, and people have done the same say hi, I'm nice to meet you. You're new here. And it's like, okay. And then just straight into. 'cause I think if they've been around, they know everybody, and then you turn up as a new person and everyone was like, Ooh, you person let's go and not build a relationship, but let's go and actually sell to this person.
Phil: I think you're right. I think there's two scenarios there, which, which, which you paint and you paint really well is I think in those face-to-face networking. Yeah. Either people do prey on you as new, new, fresh meat and go, right. Let's pile on in, and let's try and sell to you. But I also think as well, I think, you know, people cluster, and I think a lot of people in those networks and scenarios will be chatting away with people.
They know cause they built the relationships and then somebody new comes in and a lots of the time you see a new person [00:06:00] just sat in the corner, just drinking their cup of tea, going, what do I do? And I suppose in a way LinkedIn takes away some of those elements. Cause it's, it is faceless and it's quite easy to.
To send a message, but you've got to realize why you're sending that message. What's your ultimate aim. And I think on LinkedIn, I'm sure people want to build networks and they want to build networks because maybe they're looking for a new job. Maybe they're looking to sell their products, but maybe they're, maybe they're trying to improve their brand awareness as well.
And I hate to use this phrase, but it's a phrase that's being knocked around all the time about personal. And I'm like, okay, there's this personal brand, but actually at the end of the day, we're all individuals and we just want to meet other like-minded individuals to create relationships, whatever those may well be.
Scott: Yeah. There is definitely a move in 19. I've seen about this personal brand and me personally, I, the wording you could possibly say. Is it [00:07:00] as, as true as that what's that make it quite false. But I do think the messaging across that is quite important. Is it everything you do in LinkedIn creates a reputation or perception.
So that's the way I kind of look at it and say, what's the perception you would like people to have of you. And then how do you, how do you ensure that what you do consistently is aligned to that reputation that you would like to have?
Phil: And I think for me, I think that there's two fold and. LinkedIn is, is morphing and changing all of the time.
And I think that down to people, to the feathers that is changing, that is that LinkedIn isn't a social media platform is a network networking or a relationship creating. Platform for business people, but business people are still human beings. And I think there needs to be a mix of your personality, who you are.
I don't think there needs to be a mix of, well, I'm going to have scrambled egg on toast and light with a bit of salmon that people aren't interested in [00:08:00] that there's other platforms for that. But I think people are interested in what you're, you know, you're a family person, you are, you're a sporty person, you know, w w you know, those kinds of things.
Understanding an individual I think are key, but I also think, and really resonates with what you talk about trust is for me, I, I tend to use the eat principle eat, which is you need to be seen as an expert. You need to be seen as an authority and through doing that and creating that, that then people start to have.
In you in your subject area. And that's, that's where I tend to look at LinkedIn and I, I, I hate using the word and I've already used the word once already in this podcast is Gury, I'm just like, come on, you know, just what, what a title to be, to be using, you know, you as a person, you need to represent you as an individual and who you are, but also, you know, in your business sector.
Are you an expert, you know, are you an authority? And [00:09:00] therefore people will, will trust you. And that's where I think is you need to understand both sides and you as a new, as an individual personally, and what you represent. And then also probably what you represent from a business.
Scott: So I think the interesting thing you've done those as this duality of it is a jet I do trust is something that I'm quite keen on and done a lot of work with.
And it is, and I think sometimes we concentrate on one and not the other, which is we tend to concentrate too much on building that credibility about others. I'm an expert in this field, which is important for people to approach you, but it's also the, I like about you. What you said is about that, the human element of that connection as well, which I suppose that comes back to that relationship.
You were talking. So
Phil: yeah. You know, I think he does. I mean, you know, let's, let's be realistic now 20 years ago, where were we with any of these kinds of social media online kind of platforms? You know, we weren't, we were human beings talking to each other. We were people who would sit, bring on a phone, you know, mobile phones, We're obviously very relatively advanced 20 years ago, but it's still [00:10:00] quite a new phenomenon.
So I think the art of conversation has changed and the way used to communicate has changed, but we're all human beings. And I think if nothing else, the last two years. I'm hoping people have appreciated human contact and, you know, humans conversing with each other to be there as a support. And that's why I think that you are dualities, as you mentioned, is so important now, you know, We've all been through something together.
Every single person has been, not necessarily touched by every single person has been impacted by what's gone on in the last two years and probably what's going on right now as well in the world. And we're all touched by that. And we're all human beings. And I think we can easily lose our personalities and morph into something that we're not something we're deemed to be.
And I think that's where things like LinkedIn, you can share who you are and you shouldn't be scared of.
Scott: And I think there is when you talk [00:11:00] about people that are, there is much more personal stuff coming on, but what you said earlier about do people really care about what you had for dinner? So do you think there's a line between where you share what you are or who you are as an individual on something?
I think too.
Phil: I think so. And I think. You have to be wary. Do you have to have a strategy? Not necessarily, but you have to have a conscience or or your own kind of level of how much you want to share and by sharing what will happen. And I think too many people post things up forgetting what the ramifications of it could be.
And I don't mean that in a really negative. But sorts of way, but you just got to think about, well, when you send some, what's your audience going to think about, and I think you do need to have a consciousness about what you send out, but I think there is a line and it's about. How much you want to expose yourself online to people seeing some of your strengths and some of your [00:12:00]weaknesses.
And I see lots of people do lots of raw things on LinkedIn and that's great, but I think there is also the time where you can show who you are and there's nothing wrong with sharing. A time in your life or sharing something about you or your family or your friends that, that may resonate with others.
And I think the sharing of people supporting causes or supporting friends or remembering friends, I think is important because that shows you have a caring side, but you do also just need to make sure that it's done in the right way. And it's not done for self publicity. It's done for a reason of, yeah, this is who I am and I'm quiet.
Scott: So there's a couple of things picking up on that. I like the word I would use is how it is relevant.
Phil: Yeah, relevance. And that's a really interesting question because [00:13:00] it might be relevant to you. Is it relevant to anybody else? I think relevance let's, let's look at it from another point of view on that relevance.
I think lots of people are. Using content calendars. So they are going, you know, today's pancake day, this Sunday's mothering Sunday, or it's going to be the Equinox. And I think that's great to give you some kind of guidance. Towards some kind of engagement or how sorts of comments, but actually so many people are doing the same.
So you occasionally need to look at things from different point of view. So is it relevant to your audience? Is it relevant to you and is it relevant to who you are? So if you're going to say, and I'll use a personal. If I'm going to comment on something to do with the deaf community, I am doing that from twofold.
I've become heavily involved in the deaf community and working with them to help them in the business setting. [00:14:00] And that's not come from a. A family connection in any way, shape or form. It's come from meeting somebody who was deaf, who came to a networking meeting. So six years ago and came with an interpreter.
And actually I've created a great friendship that person now over six years, and I, you know, we we've done walks together. We'd run together. I got to know his wife really well. And I count her as a friend as well. And they've got two amazing children who aren't there. I would pay something up about the deaf community.
Cause I like to promote the document you see, because I'm not there, but I really engaged with what they do. So to me, that's relevant and probably to some of my audience that's relevant, but that that's me highlighting a cause that's relevant to me and hopefully it's relevant to others. So that, that would be quite a good example of not jumping on a bandwagon.
That's just relevant. Yeah. Cause
Scott: I think for things that happened, don't you? So if there's an event, cause it is again, listen to what the people in LinkedIn said is make your posts [00:15:00] relevant and really what's happening in the world. If you got something major going on, everyone jumps on that bandwagon and everything is related to LA pancake.
How can I do what I do around pancakes? I think, I think if I was a bit creative, I probably could do something creative and probably funny, so slightly off kilter and just using the pancake as an analogy, but that's probably.
Phil: I think. Yeah. Yeah. But I, I think, I think with that, you, you know, probably you'd be clutching at straws to make it funny and would it be relevant to audience?
And for me, if you suddenly went out and, you know, there was something happening in the world and you were like, well, you know, there was this time where I was negotiating with terrorists, you know, people would go really. I didn't know that, although they can read it. LinkedIn profile. They could have an understanding what you do and that's probably relevant to your audience going.
I didn't know that. So when Scott talks about talking with people, it probably comes from a good, good area of what [00:16:00] he's on about. So I'd say concentrate more on what's relevant in your past that people is pick up and go, gosh, this guy really knows his stuff. He's an expert in it, rather than trying to see how you can negotiate making the right pancake.
Scott: Oh, we could do that. Can we negotiate? So the pancakes and everything else, there's a good debt negotiation. So I've got all the titles coming up, they're all over the place and see what we could do. It'd be all over the place. So it's quite interesting. I think also in, in relationships, we'll go back to how we can build relationships or what relationships should look like in LinkedIn, or could look like, I don't know the word should, because it will be different.
Yeah. I do think sometimes that we put we're encouraged to put posts out that relevance and everything else, and it kind of bays like it's again, a phrase I'm not so keen on using, but I am going to use it. Cause I can't think of another way of saying it is like clickbait or like bait is another thing.
How can I get, oh, that's whatever. So I get hundreds and hundreds of likes and the metrics I use about my success in LinkedIn is about how many people see my posts [00:17:00] or what likes they have, et cetera, et cetera.
Phil: I think for me, you know, clickbait and all those lead magnets and all those kinds of phrases.
Who are you actually trying to hook? You know what, what's the whole reason for doing it now on LinkedIn, you've got your first connections and you've got your second connections. So if some, if I put something out there and you like it, you share it, then your audience sees and goes, well, what, what Scott shared?
And then they could, that gives me some views. And then do I get any people from your audience like it? And the second connections then do I connect with them? So, you know, that, that kind of spider's web of, of engagement and, and use. It probably just says, well, Scott likes what this guy likes. Let's have a look at it and see if there's any relevance.
Will you pick up something from that baby? But for me that I go back to what I said at the early stages of this was it's not necessarily about posts. It's about. Creating connections and your posts are predominantly [00:18:00] keeping your first level audience engaged, which is great. And it depends how many you've got in your connections and followers.
But for me, the real essence of how I use it in and how you should use LinkedIn is who do you want to be? Connect? Who is your audience? What do you want to do with that audience? You know, do you want to create more business contacts? You want to create more, more friends? Do you want to create more consumer type connections as well?
And I think a lot of people forget that element and say for me, I know. That I will probably have a 12 to 16 week period developing a relationship on LinkedIn, somebody, and that's, that's a very conscious way of connections and that will involve some messaging and the messaging is done in a certain style.
It will also be some liking sham share. [00:19:00] And also some commenting alongside that as well. So it's taking that step from seeing somebody in the pub and go on, look quite nice to, oh, I've got their number two. Maybe we'll go for a meal or maybe we will go to an event. Maybe we'll go away for the weekend. Who knows?
So it's that back to that whole dating knowledge, you know, and I think, you know, if nothing else, people just realize that it takes time to build relationships online and often. And actually, if you understand that, I think you'll get a lot further than using LinkedIn to create a thriving community online.
Scott: Just a question then, how keen are you on these automated processes? People have in like building connections and building relationships.
Phil: If I'm honest I've looked at them and I've dabbled with them in the past. And I think for me, where that whole area has now gone, it's now gone [00:20:00] back to the whole human elements.
And I took a business decision 18 months ago, where we do telemarketing and we do a lot of tallymarks in B2B that actually we completely stripped down and I'll tell you marketing. He said, everything's going to be on LinkedIn. And within that strategy, We are manual. Connecting talking messaging with people.
We have no automation anymore. And the reason we've done that is how can you build a meaningful relationship through automation? It would be like what's the dating thing. Tinder would be like that Tinder thing where you swipe right or left on. I'm just not down with youngsters on that, but you either swipe one way or the other and actually in a way it'd be like, Can you build some AI that would say, or are you going to build, you know, are you going to swipe back though?
Right? That to me is where the automation, I think that doesn't work. This, the beauty is still in the eye of the beholder, so, and that's the same on LinkedIn. You can make a better [00:21:00] conscious decision to connect with a person, then any piece of AI or software.
Scott: Okay. So, I mean, I know why they sell this. These solutions get started time-saving is that you can have this, you can do.
And again, I think is that funnel process, isn't it. As I get somebody who's meets your target audience, do this, do this. But even though I've seen stuff that I think this definitely sounds like it's automated and I still think you can make that interesting to a degree.
Phil: Yeah. I mean, you can, to a degree, you can only make it interesting on the first.
Because the next attempt. So you have no idea what some of this coming back to say. So if somebody comes back with a thumbs up or good to me, or, oh, by the way, I was looking to sort of naturally to buy what you sell the automation. Can't take that into account. So on that first, first connection, and you send a message.
Yes. Automation can play a part, but after that, definitely not because how, how can the [00:22:00]automation decide what. Would want to say and do with that particular person
Scott: within how they've responded to you? It's how they respond to you, how you're going to speak to them. Correct? Absolutely. They're. So to me, I agree with the automation to.
Because again, it's just time-saving, you can help, you can target who you need to target. Once you've worked out who your target audience is, you can put a message out there that will get them possibly, hopefully for safe, as written well, peak their interest and encourage them to contact you. And then once they do that, then you can take over and sort of start building, as you said, that relationship.
I think it's interesting. You say that we can build relationships on multiple different levels in LinkedIn. So it's about the instant messaging liking somebody's post sharing. Commenting on things they they've written and you say that's a conscious effort you have of building those relationships with people, utilizing all that.
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. I think you've got, you've got all of that available to you. So, you [00:23:00]know, and again, I, you know, I won't keep using the dating analogy, but it's true. You know, if you're doing a, like in a way it's a bit of a week, it's a bit of a week to some of it, just see if you can get their attention.
Whereas if you share something or comment on it and by sharing and commenting, it's a very similar process. You're actually going a really light court and you say, and I think, you know, you're really good at what you're doing. And I really want to share that with my audience, because if you know who you are and what you are.
And I think, again, that's where I think a number of people get it wrong. And, you know, I could talk for hours on the LinkedIn algorithm, but it, outside of the algorithm, you know, alike is a very small token. Whereas a share, but in particular, a comment or share with a comment, actually, you're taking the time to engage for a reason.
So either you're flirting with that person because you want to try and do business with them, or you genuinely want your audience to go, do you know what? You should have a look at this? Cause I think it's really interesting.
Scott: I quite like the other thing is [00:24:00] interesting for me in what you're saying again, or go back to trust is one of the aspects of trust is to be selfless in building relationships.
So I think if people see what you're doing as only to benefit you, so yeah, I'm new to you. So as I'm new, we're going to see lots of comments and lots of shares. If that happens, then I'm just going to drop off and ignore you. And I think people will see through that as a. Your entire way of doing it has only to benefit you as an individual.
So the thing you said that was interesting about that, being genuinely thinking what your, what this person is saying is going to be interesting to my, or.
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I, I do a lot of networking majority of that now online, but I've always, I've always looked at networking and I've probably networked NAF or easily 25 years and across networking.
Always sticks with me. You know, I think many people in business will have done BNI as a networking way. And I have I don't do boat BNI anymore, but I have, and I [00:25:00] know others have this happen. One of the things that I always remember is they all say that givers game and that's something that stuck with me and it's, it's always something that.
Within any networking or any business community that I'm in. I'm always looking to see how I can help others or introduce somebody because ultimately we'll come back to you and that's, that's just about relationships. And that's just probably takes me back to, you know, even current day let's, let's say, you know, if a neighbor.
I haven't, I'll give him a hand. I don't expect anything in return. So, you know, if they want something moved or the car's broken down and they pushed that you just do it. Cause that's the nice thing to do. And you're not ever looking for anything back, but you never know they might in the end, return that favor.
So I look at it the same way in terms of on LinkedIn. If somebody is looking for something I'll, I'll try well, go and speak to so-and-so and it's not me trying to sell anything. It's just going, well, I know somebody in my network or I'll share it in my network. That to me is [00:26:00] probably probably about that whole trust things.
You know, if you just curse, you're so nice, you know, but that's, that's one of the first things we can ever do in building trust is just be courteous, respectful to others. And you can go from there
Scott: as simple as that. Yeah, it is. It is not complicated and it really is not complicated. I think before we came online, I just said the tagline I could neck, but you want, I'm going to give you some kudos for this conversation.
Simple flight simplify, the CA the complexity. And I think and this goes back to the automation and the thing is, as, as people we are motivated to do something either to achieve or avoid simple as the complexity is what we're trying to avoid, or what we're trying to achieve is. And I think that comes down to your relationship.
If we don't try to work out what that is, how can we build that relationship?
Phil: Yeah, you're right. It is all about that. And I don't think anything has changed or [00:27:00]nothing's for me is really changed you adult. And, you know, I recently was talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and everybody's got needs, you know, from that the basic needs of, you know, heat and food and water and shelter all the way through to a feeling.
Self achievement and accomplishment, the everything else in between. And we can overcomplicate. Building relationships. And I think today it just gets over complicated because there's so many different ways to build a relationship as you and I both just said, it's simple. It's just simple. You know, you just go back in time and look at how did you build those relationships in years gone by and nothing's changed.
You know, we haven't changed as human beings. Just the tools around us have grown more complex.
Scott: The principles are exactly the same. Let's strip it back. So how can you get to know somebody online and be able to, we could do this, you could do that. So we'll just find out. And again, it depends on what you do and where you are [00:28:00] cause then LinkedIn gives you, as you say, it gives you multiple ways.
You can do videos now called you can do video calls. You can actually, you don't have to type, you can actually send, leave a voice message for somebody and those types of things. That, again, it's, it's just those simple things that. Individualizing that approach help you stand out because so few people do it.
Phil: Oh, absolutely. When you say so few people do it, you know, currently to date, there's over 800 million users on LinkedIn, but when you look at the statistics of those who are regularly active on a daily basis, you know, you're looking in single figure percentage. And that just says, there are so many people who are voyeurs or lurkers on LinkedIn.
And I think there's about there's about 35% of LinkedIn users will pay something once a month. But then everybody else is really active is, [00:29:00] is around the one or 2%. So when you look at the same, much more people could be doing. And yes, there are loads of tools on LinkedIn, but you know, for me, it's like, well, just get out there, start connecting with a few people, you know, start to build your network slowly, say hi to a few people.
Like what they, like, what they talk about. Maybe have a zoom coffee with them, or actually have an hour of physical coffee with them. Find out what they do. You know, just, just some real simple way. We can do it, but for me is LinkedIn is just a goldmine of opportunity to create, I mean, funnily enough, I had a message come back through this week and we'd connected with somebody and, and sometimes the people have got common names.
Sometimes you can connect with them cause they cause they write and I manually connected to somebody and I didn't actually see where they lived and I just flipped the name and the name was a very common name and he came back to me. Nice to connect again, Phil, we used to sit next to each other in business stats.
And so I was like, [00:30:00] right. Okay. Nice to see you again. So anyway, but that's a great example in the suit that we, we suddenly we chatted again, but that just shows, you know, it's people do remember you. And I suppose I'm lucky in one way, I've got an unusual surname and there's not too many of us apart from a country Western singer in this.
It was called Phil Coley. So he's probably just a little bit more famous than me, but it's, it's, it's interesting. You can easily trip back onto people and restart relationships as well as make new ones.
Scott: Again, I was doing a coaching session with somebody the other week and they were talking, I know they were talking about looking for opportunities and, and say, who have you worked with in the past has had a good connection with them.
I said, when's the last time you connected with them? I said, then I can go and ask them if they've got a job. I said, when's the last time you spoke to them? I know two years ago, I said, I just want you to run. I just want you to think about this. Imagine you're sitting in your office, somebody you haven't seen for two years knocks on the door and says, excuse me, if you've got a job, how are you going [00:31:00] to respond?
And he's like, oh, it's not very good. Is it? I said, no, because you're demonstrating here. I'm only talking to you because I want something from you. And it's amazing how, even in normal conversation, because. We do that quite often. We, we, we, cause we, we do know a lot of people it's about when you connect and how do you keep that cadence with people?
That's going to keep it fresh, but still keep it. I'm just talking to you. I'm not in it for anything. I just say, Hey, you're getting unfilled. Where's it going on? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's it. It's just a five minute. I said done dusted, just touch base with people as well. I think that I'll be taking tips here to actually improve my LinkedIn, because I'm not great at this because I I've been on it for a week.
I'm one of these, I just post stuff. And then just talk it, talk to a few people. So what's your view on numb? So again, you were talking about metrics and because obviously you're into sales, you're into marketing. So metrics are really important aspect of what you do to measure success. So what types of things would you be looking at it within how successful you are on LinkedIn, sort of in that relationship?
Phil: It depends what it depends, what you use LinkedIn for if I'm honest. So say from my [00:32:00]perspective, I've got many thousands of connections. I haven't got tens of thousands connections like others, because for me, it's about. A lot of the time it's quality over quantity and others will have a huge quantity that you're going well, what are you actually going to do with safe for me that the key metrics either, I don't necessarily look at likes and shares of my posts.
So I'm not, not that worried about those. It's nice occasionally to see views come up. I get really good views when I pay some kind of family or some kind of nature or whatever kind of image. And I know I can get rid of thousands of views for that, but again, it's like, it's nice to have, I don't do all of the time.
So the key metrics for me, and this does come from a sales perspection is I look at my connection requests, my messages that then turn into. And for me, I'm not into thousands of those. I'm into tens blocks of tens [00:33:00] that I go, right. I've connected with those people. We've had a meaningful conversation over a three-month period and I've actually spoken to them.
We've actually spoken. So for me, that's a real key metrics for me because I want to. To folded. And again, it's still resonating with very much your words. It's it's about trust. So I want to a spoken to somebody for them to trust me and me to trust. So for them to say, they're an expert in cybersecurity and for me to chat to them, go, gosh, you really do know your stuff so that if anybody ever says to me, do you know anyone in cyber?
I know this person, then that's that's for me as a metrics because then I can share somebody to them. And actually then some business might come from it or I might, might put them.
So for me, that's, that's the metrics, but also as well with what you were saying to me, we did speak a little bit about clickbait with magnets and [00:34:00] things like that, but it's also having a purpose and a reason to message somebody or to speak to somebody is you have a great podcast and talk to some really interesting guests.
And actually that's a really good way for you to engage is you can offer people the opportunity to come on your podcast. Even if they didn't want to come, they were like, oh, that's really nice. It's got to think of me and ask. And that's a great way of building a network and not being intrusive to anybody.
It's just going, Hey, I think what you do is really great. I'd love to have a chat with you. And so that's a really nice way, way to build. And now. You know, for me, I'm, I'm lucky we've got a business owner platform that we can interview people on. And for me, it's, we always have free content on there, and it's always great to talk to other business centers and go, we'd love to interview on that.
So it's a very software. I've talking to somebody without being some kind of hard sell, so have a reason. But for me to answer your question, the metrics for me is not about likes. It's not about views. It's about actual [00:35:00] conversations that probably you can't see on LinkedIn because they're in the messaging or they're actually on a zoom call or a fake
Scott: are quite yet.
It's interesting. Listen to your metrics because it is, there's a process there isn't I I'm going to find my audience. I know why I want them on linked. Because I want to build my network so I can, and the space listening to things like that, you're a part of the business owner group is that if I can find people that can add value to another part of my business, I'm not trying to sell something to this person.
I'm just saying, can these people add value to other parts of our business, but to do that, I need to get to know them. And this is how I'm going to measure that.
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that's why for me, it's been so. Over the last two years of having the right strategy on LinkedIn, we've picked up a number of new clients from LinkedIn.
And some of those actually just from LinkedIn, you know, we picked up a cup of, couple of. 20 million plus turnover companies from [00:36:00] LinkedIn. I didn't know who they were. I mean, one of them is a household household name for one of their divisions and that's not me, Greg. And that's just me going well, you know, I know how to use LinkedIn.
And that was probably all you could use when we were in the midst of lockdown is. There were some online networking, but actually just reach out to people. Everyone was scrambling around and I think everybody was happy, quite happy to talk to anyone. You just make the opportunity, but you still needed. I still iced.
It needs to have a process. And I think anybody using LinkedIn properly, you need to have a process.
Scott: Yep. And I think you just care about the relationship. So we'll go back to what you said. And I think the, the ma he's right at the beginning, he said, what are you in LinkedIn? Yeah, what you're trying to do, are you trying to sell, are you raising awareness?
Are you doing, are you doing what are you doing for, and then that helps you identify that audience you need. And then from there, okay, well, do I need them to do, to help me achieve my goal? And then how do I measure how successful I am being in what I'm trying to achieve and helps them look at the process.[00:37:00]
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. You have to have a process. And as I said, you know, in mid part of this was, you can have one or two different aims of LinkedIn and that's fine. There's no, there's no reasons that you can't. And what's really interesting to me is senior executives and CEOs. Larger organizations, be those charitable, be those footsie one hundreds or blue chips or whatever you want to call them.
How many of them have a poor presence on LinkedIn? Because they don't have the time. So that's not a criticism of them, but they don't have a time. And actually they don't have a process of how to make that work. And that can also be set the same on other social media channels for celebrities and personalities.
Cause you know, it's not the. Posting, they've got a media team or a marketing team because they got no strategy. They're just putting stuff out. And then there's, there's one or [00:38:00] two really good examples of that recently where organizations were individuals have put something out that was completely not their view.
Because they don't communicate with their marketing team or the person running their thing is not, I have nothing against people running it. We've got a number of clients. We actually do all of their they're posting and they're sharing and they're connected, but we work with them really closely to understand who they are, what they like outside of work, you know, what they do so we can speak as an authority as them.
But I just see so many people get that wrong in big organizations and they got a lot of learnings.
Scott: I think it's part of what we said about that personality. Isn't it. And everything you say is can indicate a view and an opinion. And it's about to me, it's about that consistency as well. So if it is a person talking about their views and as a consistency that builds credibility in them, and you want to get to understand them, but if it's other people [00:39:00] without understanding where that person's coming from, then their personal views will aren't suppose to some, they might just do it in a corporate language.
But it's saying things that perhaps are not. And I think we look at it also, one thing I think is an important aspect of what you've raised there is about using other people, but for me, and is one of the activities I do with people. And it's about really understanding the impact, which goes back to what you said earlier.
What is the impact of relevance, of what I'm about to say? Okay. So one of the activities I ask people to do is just, just imagine you are just about to type something up you're just about to hit, send, how comfortable would you be saying that in open court? Just say my Lord at the end of that statement, or your honor, or whoever is in your jurisdiction, wherever it is it globally and say, how comfortable would you be in an open court?
Say no in front of a judge with a barrister and the person you're talking about with the [00:40:00]people you're talking about, sat in the same room,
you got any ounce of uncomfortable nursing thinking about that. Delete what you're going to say or rephrase it.
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. I agree entirely with you. And I suppose that also texts on to a common question or a common mistake. People make. Is when you post or how much you post them and, and all of that.
And the, the key for me is, you know, sometimes, you know, less is more, definitely less is more particularly put some thought behind something. And it's very easy to take a picture and add a sentence, but it's actually a lot harder to. Have a good image and probably write 200 words on LinkedIn and post it out and think every part through.
So I think it's not only that, but also as well. The, the, the other thing is the seems to be particularly on other social media channels, but LinkedIn is start to get the same where people seem to think you have to keep [00:41:00] creating new content. And when you're trying to build an audience and you're trying to do a bit of brand awareness, or even look at that whole.
Is, there's only so many ways you can rehash something. And, and I take people back to, I grew up in newspaper. Appetizing days is one of my first jobs. And that, that was, you know, cutting face it, trying to bring people, getting to take adverts. And actually in those days, a lot of big appetizers carry the same ad for a period of time.
You know, they don't change the actor. They keep the same ad because repetition. Builds to engagement because you see the ad so many times and the same hours on that television ad, you'll see the same ad for a period of time. And too many people on LinkedIn constantly trying to change stuff. It's like, well, actually just reinforce what you do and actually sharing the same post.
Not every single day, of course, but maybe the same post once a week for seven or eight weeks. [00:42:00] You just don't know when somebody is. LinkedIn. They're not on LinkedIn at the time you post waiting for you to post. I can guarantee you that
the cup of coffee. Well, I'm sorry to shatter your illusions. Sadly. They're not.
Scott: Well, I've never thought of that. It's it's again, it's if you, if you step back and think it just makes so much sense. And again, it's the principles, isn't it. Advertising has been around brand awareness has been around for eons. And it is that repetition about sending that message off and then getting that message drummed into people.
And I think it's the old thing about marketing, isn't it? As you got seven connections before, or was it seven times we've got to see something or whatever it is,
Phil: 77 touch
Scott: points, seven touch points before. So do they, if the risk is, as you rightly say, if they're all different, they say, well, what you, what you say.
Yeah, whereas that [00:43:00] consistency in what you're doing. So one of the things I could ask you now, as he, this, this could be feedback on what I was doing and whether it's going to be good or not. So I might, I might take it as a free consultation. So I started thinking about what I was trying to do it obviously I'll talk a lot about trust.
And one of the things I thought I tried to create an avatar on LinkedIn, as I talk about this. And according to Alex, cause I thought it was important because that's all about leadership that I had a name that was both male and female could be used by men of women. Cause I didn't want to be one or the other was in too much it's about Marilyn and or I can't really talk about female perspective for too much authority.
So I wanted somebody, I could say I'll Alex and one post will be shame on paste. It might be here. It doesn't really matter, but it's about, so Alex is a leaders of what I talk about is why doing it. So and then talk about Alex in that experience, then the sort of aspect around trust I want to do. And put into that person.
So the consistent thing is this person. Yeah. That's an idea that I'm playing around with at the moment.
Phil: Yeah, I think, I [00:44:00] think in essence, those kinds of things work and it probably takes me on to how people use LinkedIn in terms of kind of case studies. They tend to, you know, in case that this can be really, really nice, but a lot of people, I actually had this conversation yesterday is a lot of people think when you say something like case study or try and put yourself in the shoes of the personal, trying to reflect that, or as you are with an avatar.
It's not, well, it's not necessarily just about an individual as a case that it's about where did you make a difference? So where did you make a difference for somebody is, is sometimes the better way round or how did I make a difference versus sector? What I potentially would say for what you're doing with the avatar?
I think it's, it's, it's a great way of doing it, but actually it's it's sometimes if you're going to change the. Sometimes somebody will go lung short, Alex was a she last time and now it's a heat. So people might just go, did I miss them? So in some ways it's quite good. Cause it makes them think, was I reading it right or not?
So, [00:45:00] so I think the avatar side is good, but it's only if you're comfortable with that kind of way of looking at it. I mean, there's so many different ways you could do. There are so many different ways you can take
Scott: it. I get just, I dare, I cannot this. I is something consistent. And I've got to say like, like a lot of things I talk about is expert.
Just experiment. Does it work? Doesn't it work? Does it. And if it doesn't work, when you can change it and do something else, what would be lost is that at least the messaging is still consistent in that.
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. I think the one thing that's changed over the last 5, 10, 15 years is you can test lots of people now talk about, and there's principles come from engineering and manufacturing and research and development to be fair, but it's, it's all testing say.
And B split testing. There's so much of that now, so you can test, you can test and see how. Things go. As long as they're not too contentious, you can test a number of things on LinkedIn and you can test messaging, can do batches and messaging and just tweak it a little bit and see, does that engage with somebody?
And you can do batches of 10, 20, [00:46:00] 30, and 40 to get some kind of feedback in it and a feeling on it. And I think. Yeah, it was just worth playing around. But I just want to go back to what we were talking about in terms of the advertising message. And one of the, and again, I date myself slowly. The younger audience would have no idea what I'm talking about here, but an audience for certain age would be one of the most memorable advertisements is of a cowboy with a cigarette, with an iconic sort of background mountains in the background and the black and white one.
And that's one of the most iconic attributes of its era. And. For me, when you look at that, then the majority of people know the small group, it was a mole graduate and they really didn't change their cigarette advertising away from that for many, many years. And that's just an iconic one because they used it time and time and time again, because it was all about brand awareness.
So, you know, It's there in history that don't always have to keep changing it. You don't have to keep changing content. [00:47:00] And that's where too many people mistake and they don't get on with LinkedIn because they go, oh, I just can't keep creating content. It's like, just get three or four and stick with those for a while.
You don't have to be a marketing.
Scott: I think we'd not marketing as a lot of people are like, somebody like me, I just work on my own, my own company and say, there's lots of things we have to do to try and do that. And there is there's learning from marketing is about sales is all these aspects. And we are, if we are honest with ourselves expert in what we know and kind of floundering in the other areas as we're sort of splashing around in the water, trying to just carry on swimming.
So it's quite nice to say, to be successful. You don't really have to be an expert. Just these principles that you say that you can run with.
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. And I think. You know, I I've said yes, we handle people's social media and we do LinkedIn and those elements. Yes, yes we do. But actually the bulk of what we look at is just trying to engage and start creating relationships, you know, can we, can we send [00:48:00] a series of messages and caught somebody that turns into a telephone conversation or a zoom meeting or actual physical meeting and they go, do you know what?
You might be able to do something together, you know, just keep the whole thing simple. But I think every time. Not everybody has a majority of people or a large majority of people think if I do amazing posts, it's going to go viral and I'm going to be a millionaire by using LinkedIn. That is completely the wrong platform.
You've got the, you got the wrong thing, but the one thing you have gotten LinkedIn is your audience is really easy to define and really, really easy to find. The biggest make mistake you can make is get that first moment. Because you only get one chance on that first impression.
Scott: I'll go back to that.
This is important for you. I think you said about trust and this is what I think with the automation is key. That that first message is really important and how it works. And I'll go back to it because I talk about trust. You don't know somebody, and you said at the beginning, [00:49:00] people bypass. Yeah. So if anything else you do off, listen to this podcast, please don't smell on your first or second message.
Phil: No, no, I'm probably never sell on LinkedIn. Just use LinkedIn to, Hey, it's going to have a, do you fancy a call? You'll never get, you're never gonna, you're never going to sell something genuinely and I should know.
Scott: That's what you do for a living, not settling. You build a reputation and you say the sales come.
So I'm assuming that you've talked about, you've got clients on LinkedIn is not because you're going to approach them is because if they've engaged in your content and then they've come to you and say, Phil, I'd like to work with you.
Phil: Yep, absolutely. Yep. One of the ones in question was they were shifting their marketplace significantly in COVID.
From the entertainment and hotel industry cabs and they needed to get out and they came straight in and go, we want to do telemarketing campaign. You see you do it. Can you help us? Yes, we can. So yeah,
Scott: so [00:50:00] taking the ends and I think this is, again, goes back to these networking meetings as well. Don't try and sell in a networking meeting, actually just network with people, say, who can I help?
How can I, how can I become some somebody. That helps other people, but if they need somebody, who's got my expertise, they'll come to me or they can refer people to me other than my three thousand four thousand five thousand, 10,000 connections and sell them something.
Phil: Totally. Absolutely. You know, that, that's the key thing.
And I will say as well, I think just get back to physical networking. You don't walk up to somebody tapping them on the shoulder. Oh, I'm here to sell you a photocopy and like, who are you? They would just look at you and go, who are you? But actually, if you just went up, shook their hand and said, hi, I'm new here.
What do you do? You'd be amazed. It's lap principle. We're trying to take into LinkedIn is just shake some of this hand, ask them what they do.
Scott: And an interesting question. Again, it goes back to selflessness and I heard this from somebody else. I thought it was really great when somebody connects. They might send a connection [00:51:00]request and just say again, I think it's always worthwhile writing why you want to connect with this person as well.
It's whatever it is, either we go to the same networking meeting or we work in the same area or I've, I've seen some of your posts, I think to really interesting. Yes. It takes time, but again, there's that quantity over quality over quantity approach. And then when they say yes, can I say great ticket? I think somebody I spoke to that might be Jack said, well, he says back, which I think is really, really nice.
He says, thank you for allowing me to join you on network.
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of the time there's people that they don't even send any kind of message. Just let it hang there. So for me, if someone's. Going to connect with me and they accepts my connection request. I'll certainly message them and say, thank you because that's key.
And for me, most of the time, it's a thank you. How can I help you? Who can I introduce you to my network? That's that's where I will, will take, as part of my processes is. [00:52:00] To use that. But if you just Willy nilly out, connecting with people, cause it's back to the dating game, it's back to somebody. Somebody is, somebody is like, I really liked you.
And then you just go, you're not there. They're like, what did I say? What did I do wrong? Why do I bother absolutely negative impact or later. That
Scott: is just, again, it's that first impression. So I, and I liked what you said earlier is just have a reason as well. So the advantage as you say for me, and I've never really used it, although interestingly enough, my podcast has enabled me to get connected to some amazing.
Yep. And it normally is. I might be doing, especially when I started, I'd have a guest and I say, oh, fell out of a filter. Okay. And they say, oh, I know somebody, you might want to talk to who you might find an interesting person on your podcast. And it's amazing just by doing that, the amount of people I've had the great fortune of having conversations with.
And I would never have got it without reaching out and just talking about.
Phil: No, and, and to be intimate, [00:53:00] to be fair, right. Because you'll ask me the same question. Anyway. I've already got two. That would be amazing for you to speak about. We'll obviously talk about that after
Scott: we finished it. And there is another option.
Another thing I learned many years ago as well is if you give something to somebody and again, so you might give something to free. Cause I was going to write a program for somebody else say right there. It is. Have it as a, if you think this is useful, who else in your network do you think this would be beneficial to.
Okay. Pass the details on to them. So it was not even coming through me. It's helping people choose who they think what you've got would be beneficial and I'm introducing it to that freebie. So it's not, again, driven by me being all salesy. It's all about help, help, help, help, because you've found it useful.
Who else do you think may find it?
Phil: And that's back to relationships that if, if you said to somebody, oh, I think you should talk to Phil, the person, you know, trust you and goes Scott, most trusted. So yeah, I'll chat to him. So it's all about relationships. It's how you can build relationships that are long-term [00:54:00] relationships.
And it doesn't matter if you built them online, you can still be really strong relationships online as much as you can face to face.
Scott: Absolutely. So I think it's trust relationships, reputation, and eventually.
Phil: Yeah. And probably the one I would add to is repetition,
Scott: repetition, because that builds it. Yup.
Yup. Okay. So if we were to say we've nearly done it so far, I want to sum up what we've been talking about, about how do we build, how might we build those relationships, improve our relationships on LinkedIn. What would you say to somebody who does it as part of their job and is very successful at doing it?
Phil: I'm going to go with a really old fashioned sake because it is so apt today, just treat others the way you'd like to be treated yourself,
Scott: says about yep. So treat people how you would like to be treated. So again, that's that consideration, is it think about what you're going to do and what would, how would I like that happening to me?
And if it's a no, don't do FSEs feel free to.
Phil: Absolutely. And so, so [00:55:00] I allowed a little bit and Nissan, so that is, you know, if you're going to message somebody, do we all hate getting these sales messages first off? Absolutely. So make sure you don't send them in the way that you don't and then equally, if somebody does connect with you, would it be really nice if somebody, when they can access?
Thank you. Well, why don't you do the same as say thank you. And then also, how can I help you? How can you, how can I help you? Is a very underused.
Scott: Because it's normally, how am I looking for you to help me, correct? Yep. Yep. So again, it goes back to that selflessness, isn't it? It's how can you serve your network?
I think is a good way of looking at it. Yes, absolutely. And as people join in and see them as people, it's been an absolute pleasure that hour flew by.
Phil: I didn't know. I loved it, Scott. No, it was really, really nice chatting to you. And again, I think work you're doing is, is amazing on that whole thing about trusting.
We can't lose sight of. It's the basis
Scott: of everything,
Phil: isn't it? [00:56:00] Yeah.
Scott: Okay, lovely. Thank you very much. I feel for your time and absolute pleasure and all the links to everything we've spoken about on your various details will be in, in the transcripts underneath this, on wherever you're listening to it, but definitely where we publish it.
Okay. So thank you very much for your time.
Phil:
Pleasure. Thank you again, Scott. You're welcome