KF #22. Nimble Learning Archives - Page 6 of 8 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Andy, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Andy Storch
Pete, thank you so much for having me. I am just so pumped to be here. I’ve been listening to your podcast for a while and just been really excited for this. So, thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, I’m excited too. And I understand you also have excitement for public transportation. What is this about?

Andy Storch
It’s funny that you ask those questions ahead of time. Yeah, I share this with some people – for whatever reason I am – I won’t use the word “obsessed”, but I really do love public transportation. And I don’t know where, when that started or where it necessarily came from. But I have had the opportunity to live in a few different big cities – LA and San Francisco, most notably – and I always took the bus to work when I lived in those places if I wasn’t walking.
And I’ve also had really the luck and the pleasure to be able to travel all over the world as a consultant for the last eight years. And when I get to a new city, one of the first things I’ll do is try to figure out the train or subway system and jump on a train and take it, instead of taking a taxi or an Uber like some of my colleagues. I love the efficiency that comes from having a lot of people going in one vehicle or one train at the same time, going places.
Maybe it’s the social aspect of it, even if people aren’t necessarily being that social. If you’ve ever been on a train in Japan, you know that nobody is talking to each other. But yeah, I don’t know what it is; just something about it has always attracted me, so I’m always jumping on buses and trains whenever I go to new places.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and sometimes when I chat with the folks who are working on the Amtrak trains – they’re all about trains. I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but it’s like their thing. They’re into trains the way some people are into sports. And so, even though their jobs might not seem that glamorous or fun to many on the outside looking in – they are living the dream, working on the Amtrak.

Andy Storch
Yeah. Well, Pete, your whole podcast is about how to be awesome at your job. And I would think that one of the most important factors is your mindset – do you like your job? Are you passionate about where you work and what you’re doing? And it doesn’t matter how much money you make; that’s going to be more important. So, if you’re excited about trains and you get to work for a metro transit company, then you’re probably in heaven and you’re enjoying your job and you’re a step ahead of most other people, I would assume.

Pete Mockaitis
Amen, yeah. And it’s a beautiful thing – people digging their jobs in different capacities. I know I would probably not be as much into that job, nor so much into accounting per se, but the fact that other people are and love it just makes me smile about the human condition.

Andy Storch
Absolutely. Yeah, it’s great.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s talk a bit about your job. You are a partner at Advantage Performance. What’s the company about and what are you doing as a partner there?

Andy Storch
Well so, Advantage Performance Group is kind of a unique company and model in that we get to work with a lot of different thought partners in areas like leadership development and sales training and strategy alignment. And we work with our clients, who are mostly large companies, to connect them with great learning solutions that really help their people do the best work of their lives.
So, I’m really running training and development for big companies in areas like strategy alignment, business acumen, as I mentioned, teaching finance and how a business works, a lot of leadership development and sales training. I get to work as an independent consultant, which means I get to run my business how I want to run it, work with clients that I want to work with and leverage a lot of great partnerships, as well as the brand that we have at Advantage Performance Group.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool, that’s cool. All right, so good stuff. I’d like to get your take, first of all, if you are running these learning programs or partnering with other folks who are delivering these learning solutions, what are some of the key things that make the difference? If someone needs to facilitate a learning session or choose someone from the outside to deliver some of the goods, what should we be looking for and what should we be doing?

Andy Storch
I think when it comes to setting up a learning program, if it’s a development program for your company, or maybe even something that you want to do as an individual, to go out and learn more and get better at your job – I think the most important thing is to start with the end in mind. Think about what are you trying to achieve and why are you really investing in learning and development?
So, I host a podcast on talent development and I get the opportunity to interview a lot of talent development professionals, who are essentially building these programs for a living, either internally or they’re hiring people like me to come help them. And one of the things I hear a lot that’s a pitfall is people getting requests for training: “Hey, we need training on negotiations” or, “We need training on how to be a better manager.” And they don’t take the time to really ask “Why”. Why do they want that? Because there’s probably some other underlying reason that’s driving that request, and if you start to ask why and ask more questions and think about what’s our ultimate goal, that’s going to allow you
So, I think the most important thing is to begin with the end in mind and start thinking about what are you trying to achieve and ask questions about, why are you investing in learning and development? Why do you want to invest in training or learning in the first place? Why do you want to set up this training class? Or even if you’re an individual and you’re thinking about reading a new book or investing in training for yourself, why are you doing that? Does it fit in with your overall goal?
So for a company, looking at the overall company strategy, does this fit in with that company strategy? Does it help us achieve more of our goals? And if it doesn’t, then maybe this is not necessarily the right thing for us to do. So once you’ve established that, I think that’s the most important thing.
The next thing, when it comes to designing effective learning programs is to make it really experiential. So this I’m a little bit biased in because all of the programs that I sell and run are experiential learning programs, but I can tell you most people learn through experience; they don’t like sitting around listening to PowerPoint presentations all day long. There might be a few that like that, but I personally don’t. I learn better through experience, through practice, through examples. And so, I think it’s important to build that in to any type of development program, to give people an opportunity to really experience the learning, what’s going on, and give them a chance to practice.
So if it’s a sales training, build in some roleplay exercises, where they get to practice having those conversations that they’re learning about. And when you think about the military or sports, which everybody watches all the time – those people that get paid a lot of money to perform at a high level in just a few games – what are they doing with the rest of their time? They’re practicing. They practice a lot. But in business, we kind of expect that we’re just going to go out and wing it and just do it in the real world and not worry about practicing at all. It’s kind of a weird thing. So, I think it’s really important to get that practice time in.
And then the last piece is, find some way to have not only ongoing practice, but some accountability. So, write some things down, commit to some goals as a result, check in with your manager if you have one, and let him or her know what you’re trying to achieve, what you learned from the program, and maybe even get a coach or have coaches for the participants of the program to check in with them on a regular basis, so that they are more accountable to the things that they learned and said they’re going to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Yeah, those are some good tips there. And I want to talk a little bit about the “asking why” perspective a bit there, because we had Stacey Boyle make a similar point when talking about becoming more strategic, in terms of, when you ask the “Why” sometimes you discover that what someone asked for is in fact a total mismatch for what they really need and what you should be offering and delivering. Do you have any examples of that occurring in your work?

Andy Storch           
So yeah, I had a client come to me just the other day actually who said, hey, we’re looking for some help with some type of negotiations training. And my first question, was, well, why do you need negotiations training? What are you trying to achieve? And we started digging down into the reasons, and the things that were being reported by people in her company, and what was going on with the salespeople. And it turned out that they were giving away too many discounts to their customers. And why was that case the case? When you ask why, again, it’s because they weren’t really having those consultative conversations with their clients where they were able to really establish a lot of value.
And what they really wanted was to be more of a partner with their customers, with their clients, rather than just a vendor or a seller. And so, at a higher level that was really the root cause and what they really wanted more help with, and so we have built something that is more geared towards that rather than something as narrow as negotiations, which wouldn’t really fix the overall problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm. Understood. Okay. Well thank you. That’s handy. So then, I want to kind of dig into a little bit of the content that you find yourself sharing over and over again. And this is kind of fun because you are in a position of delivering many programs and delivering those, to lots of different audiences. I just want to take all of the best stuff and learn it right here. So, you got a few topics at work. So, let’s talk about them. One of them is the influence capacity, you know. How people could be more influential at work. Can you share, what are some of your pro tips for how that comes to be?

Andy Storch           
Sure. And I appreciate as a podcaster the, how you could just take someone’s entire life and ask them to answer it in one question. Just take when I had you on my podcast, and I asked for all of your best tips for time management and productivity, right? And you gave it to me in one answer, actually, that was a good one.

Pete Mockaitis
Intrigued, what was that?

Andy Storch           
I had the honor of interviewing Pete recently on my podcast, and I asked him what is his number one tip for productivity, to be more productive at work. And his quick response with no need for extra thought was, get enough sleep was the number one thing. And I agree with you 100%. If you’re not getting enough sleep, if you’re not taking care of your health, then none of this other stuff’s really going to matter.

Pete Mockaitis      
I hear you, yeah. So after you’ve slept enough, and you’re showing up at work, how do you be more influential in your interactions with folks?

Andy Storch           
Yeah. How do you go about influencing people? Well, I think for me and my experience, and also from learning from so many other experts and running some of these programs, I think number one has to come back to, are you getting to know people? Are you actually building relationships and understanding what drives them, what motivates them? So many people want to skip this step and use some type of techniques to influence people or persuade them to do different things. The most important thing you can do is take time to get to know people, understand them, show them that you care about them, and show them that you want to do nice things for them, to add value to them, to help them achieve some of their goals. And they’re going to be a lot more likely to want to help you achieve your goals.
And then the added bonus to that is, figure out what motivates those people. So, some people are motivated by money, some people by recognition, some people by all kinds of different things. They’re trying to achieve a goal at work, or they’re just trying to get home on time. And if you can help them achieve that goal, get them out the door by 5:00 by helping them with something, they’re going to be a lot more likely to help you with whatever you need at work as well.

Pete Mockaitis      
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s great. So, I mean, you don’t know what they need until you’ve built that relationship, and so they feel comfortable enough with you to say what’s really on their mind. Like, you know what, I have been working late too many times, and I’ve got an adorable eight-month-old at home, and I’m tired of getting home after he’s already asleep.

Andy Storch           
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis      
Now I know where you’re coming from.

Andy Storch           
That could be it.
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis      
All right. Okay, cool. So now, you also teach a lot of leadership development programs, and I’d like to get your take on, when it comes to leaders—I’ve read a lot of, you know, the Korn Ferry Research Associated with the competencies, and the sort of what competencies are easy to learn and hard to learn and that leaders rank themselves highly upon and not so highly upon. So, since you’re sort of on the front lines there, developing leaders, what are some of the most frequently occurring skill gaps that you’re observing? And what do you recommend to folks when they find themselves with that gap?

Andy Storch
Yeah, so this is definitely a hot topic with a lot of companies I work with, and I think one of the biggest gaps, or the biggest issues, right off the bat, is that in almost every type of job, whether it’s engineering, or sales, or anything else, you have high performers who are being promoted into managerial positions and becoming “leaders” or managers when they don’t really have the skills or the experience of being a manager. And they’re not getting a lot of training on that because people kind of have this strange assumption that because you were good at selling that now you’re also going to be good at being a manager and helping the people under you sell. Or you were good at, you know, writing software code, the best actually. So now we’re actually going to pull you away from writing code and have you manage other people who are writing code. It’s a strange thing, and a lot of times they don’t even ask people if they actually want to be managers or not. They move into that. Now some people do … A lot of people do aspire to move into that position to become a manager, but they may not have that experience. And they are often not really given the skills that they need to understand how to do some fundamental things like coaching, giving feedback, that sort of stuff.

Pete Mockaitis      
Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. So, we see it again and again. The high performer … You say, well someone who deserves this promotion to the manager, the one who is doing a great job at the thing that they’re doing.

Andy Storch
Right.

Pete Mockaitis      
So then, they find themselves in a position where they don’t yet have the skills. So what do you do if you find yourself in that spot?

Andy Storch           
Well, there’s a couple more gaps there that I think need to be addressed once you’re in that position. One is time prioritization. Are you actually making time to one, develop those skills. And hopefully your company is giving you some type of development, some type of training, or learning, classes, whatever it is to help you become a better manager. If they’re not, you may have to go out and read some books, right? Or take a class. Go on [Udemy 00:08:38] or something like that and take a class. I mean, there are dozens and dozens, thousands really of books on leadership. So, figure out how to make the time to go and learn how to do that. And then, time prioritization to actually spend time with your people.
The next challenge that comes up is that people often still think they have that job. They try to keep doing that job. They’re still selling, or they’re still wanting to write some code, or whatever it was doing that they were doing before. And not taking enough time to really check in with their employees and have those great conversations about what type of work that they’re doing. What goals do they have? What challenges are they running into? And find ways to help them move past that, give them feedback to help them with some of the things that they’re working on, and give them coaching to not only get better at their job, but in today’s working world especially. This is especially true for millennials and Gen Z, so the younger generation, people really want career development. That is, they want to know, how do they get to the next level? What does their long-term career look like? And how is the company going to support them in that? And if they’re not getting that, if they’re not having those conversations with their manager, then that’s the number one reason people are leaving companies now. So, they’re more likely to leave you, and then you’ve got to deal with turnover and all of that stuff. So, that’s another critical one.
The last piece I think that is a big gap that’s holding a lot of managers back is, it’s a number of things, but if I could group them all in one bucket, it’s fear. And it’s fear that you’re not going to be good at your job, that people on your team or that work for you are not going to be able to figure things out without you, and it’s going to be a poor reflection on you. And therefore you feel like you have to be part of everything because if they fail, it’s a reflection on you, and you lose your job. And the other side, unfortunately, is true. A lot of people fear that if the people on their team figure it out without them, then you’ll still lose your job because now we don’t need you anymore because you know Joe, who works for you, he has already figured out how to do your job as well as you. So, we’re going to go ahead and let you go because Joe is doing that job really well.
So, a lot of managers will become … They’ll start to act like tyrants, right? Creating stress for their team, and putting themselves in a position where they have to be there at all the time. They’ll act like know-it-alls because they feel like they, because they’re a manager, they’re supposed to have all the answers. And they’ll start acting like a micromanager as well, overseeing everything that happens. And these people really become diminishers of their people, holding them back, reducing their intelligence, their productivity because of that fear. Because they don’t have the confidence to let their people really take on challenges, try different things, have the freedom and give them the coaching to help them move along and believe that if they do well in that, that they’ll be rewarded for it and not fired.

Pete Mockaitis      
Yeah. And that’s really powerful. We talk about fear kind of on both dimensions. It’s like, I’m afraid that I can’t trust them to do this because they’ll screw it up. And I’m also afraid that if I trust them to do this, they’ll look so awesome that I look like a chump.

Andy Storch           
Yeah, and

Pete Mockaitis      
And at that point, what do you want? What is there to hope for? It’s like you’re just kind of paralyzed.

Andy Storch           
Yeah, it’s a tough spot. And I’ve been there. I mean, I try to embrace all of this stuff. You know, I’ve studied it. I teach it, right? I facilitate it. And in my last job, I had a direct report who was really good, and he learned fast. And I taught him everything, and I was very open and vulnerable. Here’s what I’m struggling with, here’s how you can get better, sharing what’s going on. And he definitely accelerated to a place where he was just as good, if not better than me in the job that I had been doing for a few years. And even though I embrace all of this stuff, I still felt a little of that, of like, man, he’s already better than I am. Is my job going to be safe? But people most of the time will recognize, hey, you put them in that position. Let’s go have you manage somebody else and get them to that position. You could be the all star manager that’s even more valuable to the company because you’re able to do that.

Pete Mockaitis      
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. In terms of it’s like, yes, please Andy, make more of these for us.

Andy Storch           
Right.

Pete Mockaitis      
You do that thing that you’re doing because … In actuality, I recall that with Korn Ferry work, the develops others and/or develops direct reports was one of the competencies that managers tend to rank themselves dead last in, out of all of the competencies. So, that’s a pretty good thing you got going for you if you’re a capable of pulling that off when most people think they’re not so good at it. So essentially, that fear is almost like a little boogie man that you can just unmask, and say, no, no, actually at least leaders who are slightly with it will recognize that that is an awesome thing that you’re doing there as a manager, and we want to see some more of that.

Andy Storch           
Yeah. My favorite book on this subject for anybody who wants to go learn more about how to be a great leader and avoid being a tyrant, some of these things we’ve talked about, is a book called Multipliers by Liz Wiseman. And in that book, Liz did research on dozens, not dozens, hundreds and thousands of managers around the world and found that those managers who act like that, who were really diminishing their people, do act like tyrants. They really believe that people won’t figure things out without them. And the best managers who were able to multiply people’s intelligence are known as multipliers. They have a core belief that people are smart, and they’ll figure it out. So if you give them the right resources, if you challenge them appropriately, you hold them accountable, but you give them space for thinking, and you listen to their ideas before you share your own, and really invest in your people, then they’re going to do great things. And you’ll be rewarded either by attracting more talent because you’re recognized as someone who is such a great leader, or compensated in different ways because you are able to create such great talent. Not to mention you’ll be rewarded with all the fulfillment of having created great careers for so many people who work for you.

Pete Mockaitis      
And we talked about the career development piece being a top reason why people choose to leave if they’re not getting that. So, if you are providing that sort of learning growth development stuff, and then your retention looks better, and if leaders are at all paying attention to the manager’s performance, like retention should be one of like the top things … Because not everyone seems to know this, but I mean when retention is terrible, it often comes about in clusters. This manager’s retention is terrible, and that manager’s retention is not. Then if you dig below the surface, it’s like that person is a terror. People hate working for them, and that’s why they quit quickly when they have to.

Andy Storch           
Right.

Pete Mockaitis      
And so—

Andy Storch           
Yeah. And a lot of companies put up with that for different reasons, you know? They’ve raised one star, or that person’s a star salesperson. I know that people don’t really like working for him. Or we just don’t want to have that tough conversation. But you keep having people leave who work for them, you’ve got to have that conversation. You’ve got to address it. You’ve got to look into it.

Pete Mockaitis      
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s talk about sales as well. So you’re also teaching sales programs. And most of our listeners are not professional salespeople, although we’ve got a few. But I still think many of those tips apply when it comes to being persuasive, being influential, getting folks to say yes, dealing with rejection, a lot of universal skills can be drawn and pulled from the world of the sales professional. So, let’s hit it again. You know, what are some of the top gaps that you’re seeing over and over again when you’re executing sales trainings? And what should be done about them?

Andy Storch           
Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that a lot of people can benefit from that because, like you said, not everybody … maybe not all your listeners are in sales, but if you follow like Daniel Pink, To Sell is Human, and these people who talk about the fact that pretty much everybody’s in sales if you need to influence people, right? We started talking about influence earlier, and so you want to have a decent grasp of what it takes to influence and inspire people. And again, as I mentioned, I think one of the big gaps there is not asking enough questions. So many salespeople, or people who get into sales roles, get excited about what they have to offer or trying to convince someone that they should buy their product or invest in their time and whatever it is they want them to do, and so they get to pitching. And they talk a lot about the product, and they don’t really stop and think about why would the other person care. Right?
So, I’ve been in consulting for the last eight years or so, which has given me a lot of practice in asking a lot of questions. So, when I have an initial phone call with a potential client or really anybody because I like to go out to a lot of conferences, and network, and meet a lot of different people, and I always start with asking a lot of questions. We talked earlier about asking about the objective. What is your goal? Asking about why are you trying to achieve something? And I think if you start with asking a lot of great questions, why is another big one, and the other thing is, think about your own why, your purpose. What are you trying to achieve? And why are you doing it? And are you able to really communicate that? You’re going to get better at sales externally as well as influencing internally, and you can really find out what people care about. You’re going to be able to influence them more.
Now, when you’re in a sales situation, one of the gaps that I mentioned, they’re not asking enough questions and they’re not even thinking about, okay, where is my customer? People always talk about where are you in your sales cycle, right? Where is my customer in their buying cycle? What are they thinking about? Because they might ask you for information about something, and you’re ready to sell it to them. But they’re actually just gathering information, and they’re not really ready to buy something for six to nine months. And it may be true for anything else internally. If someone asks you for something, and you’re ready to jump in and help them, but they may not be ready to take action for several months. So, think about where are they in their cycle as well as what they’re trying to achieve. And how can you help them achieve that goal?

Pete Mockaitis      
You know, we had a conversation with Michael [Fortin 00:19:14] earlier about the copywriting. And he just had a really helpful framework in terms of, he called it the oath formula in terms of seeing, where are folks with regard to their need? Are they oblivious … It’s an acronym, O, A, T, H. Are they oblivious to it? Are they a kind of aware: Oh yeah, that’s sort of a problem. Are they thinking about a solution? Or are they hurting? Like, this sucks, I hate it. I need something and fast. And I think that that’s so helpful just to kind of get oriented in terms of, okay, where should I be kind of pointing my messaging in this conversation?

Andy Storch
And one other thing that I like to remember a lot that I learned from friends and mentors, one of them is a guy named [Listin Witherell 00:20:00] who does sales consulting for a lot of consultants out there, is to serve, not sell. So, when I go into any situation, I’m thinking about how can I serve them? How can I help them achieve their goals? Versus let me just sell them on what I have to offer. And if you have that mindset, you’re less likely to try to force some type of solution just because it’s what you have instead of what they actually need. And a lot of times it might not be your product or solution that they need or want at that time, but if you help them find a solution to their problem, whether it’s a sales type solution or it’s just something internally there, you’re going to build a better relationship with them, a lot more credibility. And they’re more likely to do business with you in the future.

Pete Mockaitis      
Oh, certainly. Or to give you a referral if it’s not them, but someone else. Like hey, this guy is helpful and kind of sorting that out.

Andy Storch           
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis      
And it just makes you feel better in terms of, I imagine it’s more energizing to spend a day serving people than it is to, hawking your wares.

Andy Storch           
Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis      
Very cool. All right, so let’s hear about some of those questions, like what are some of the power questions? Or were ideal things to be thinking about and asking in order to be getting a better understanding of folks’ needs and serving them all the better?

Andy Storch           
Yeah. So, I mentioned thinking about the goal. What are they trying to achieve? I actually use and teach a very simple questioning framework called a ROPE. And ROPE stands for results, opportunities, problems, and execution. So results are … Is that big goal. What are you trying to achieve? Another one is, how will you know that you’re successful? Right? So Pete, you might tell me that you’re trying to become the number one podcast in the business section on iTunes, whatever that goal might be. And I might ask, okay, that’s a great goal. How will you know that you’re successful? Well, you’ll be able to log into iTunes and see that podcast sitting there at number one. Okay, so now we have a great way to actually measure that. What’s your timeline? When do you want to get there? So, you start asking the questions about the results. How can you measure them? Really get a good idea of where it’s going.
Now, you can move into opportunity. So, ROPE, R, O. The opportunity questions or like, what things have you already been doing to try to achieve that goal? Have you already … Do you have any projects or initiatives in place? Have you been doing marketing? Have you been talking to different people? What sorts of stuff … And then you can start to ask follow up questions from there.
And then a big one that is helpful for a lot of people is when you get to that P, the problems. You start to ask, okay, well, what challenges are getting in your way, Pete? I know you’re trying to become the number one podcaster, but what’s getting in your way right now? Are you having trouble booking the right guests? Or marketing to the right people? Whatever it is, if you start to dig into some of those challenges and ask follow up questions, that’s where you’re going to gain a lot of insights.
And then the execution piece is, you start to ask about resources, and timeline, what sort of things you’re working with. If you have multiple people on the team, who’s in charge of what? So you can start to really understand all the different components of the project, or the company, or whatever it is. So you really get like a full understanding of everything.
The other interesting component of that is that when you’re speaking with someone who’s higher level, very strategic, say like a C level executive, you want to focus more on the results and the opportunities because they’re not worried about the execution or the problems. They have people for that, right? But if you’re talking to someone in the bottom of the organization, someone who’s an executer, who’s out there on the front line getting things done, they don’t think as much typically about the strategy and what the results are trying to achieve. They’re thinking more about what problems are getting in my way? And how do I execute on this? What are my resources? What sort of stuff do I need? What’s my timeline? So you want to focus more on those things.
And then the other thing I’ll add about the ROPE framework, because I love this for sales, but it’s also really great for performance reviews as well. So, if you’re a manager, going back to our earlier conversation, and you are listening to this and saying, okay, I’m going to take more time to have those performance conversations with my employees, you can use this to ask them what goals are they trying to achieve? Where do they want to get to in their career? What opportunities do they have? What sort of things are they working on now? Do they have any side projects they’re doing to help them get to that next level? What challenges are they dealing with? Maybe they have a colleague or a coworker who’s really frustrating them. Maybe they’re having some issues at home that’s causing them to have to go home early or whatever it is. And then get into, okay, what timeline are you working with? Who else can help you with this? Maybe I can make some introductions for you.

Pete Mockaitis      
That’s awesome. Thank you. Well tell me, Andy, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Andy Storch           
I want to harp on that idea of really asking questions to both influence, to sell, to build relationships because I think that if you focus on curiosity, there’s so many interesting things we can learn from everybody out there in the world. I mean, that’s why I love hosting two podcasts. I’m sure it’s one of the big reasons why you love yours as well because you get to talk to people, and ask questions, and learn from them. And the more learning you do, the better you’re going to be, the more you’re going to grow and hopefully get better at your job.

Pete Mockaitis      
Well, yeah, and speaking of curiosity, I’m curious and I forgot to ask, so, you’ve had a lot of episodes now of the talent development hot seats and the entrepreneur’s hot seat.

Andy Storch           
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis      
Those right? Is that—

Andy Storch           
Yeah.
Pete Mockaitis      
Okay. All right. Want to make sure I get the perfect words for the searching there. So can you tell me personally, was there a guest, or an insight, or an episode or two that really was pretty transformational for you in terms of whoa, they changed the way you thought and you learn something that has been super useful for you again and again?

Andy Storch           
Yeah. I mean, there have been a few. I’ve done I guess about 140 interviews now. Not quite as many as you, but still interviewed quite a few people. And when I think about the entrepreneur hot seat podcast, I think back to episode 47, which was an interview with Jeff Hoffman, who was one of the founders of Priceline, as well as he actually invented those kiosks in the airport where you print your tickets out, which you may not use anymore if you have your airline app on your phone. But for awhile they were extremely popular, and he was, I think the first billionaire that I had on my show. And what really blew me away, first of all, I got that interview because I met him in person at an event the year before, and he actually didn’t show. I was so excited and nervous for it. He actually didn’t show up twice before we actually recorded, and it wasn’t his fault. The first time was because there was an emergency, and he had to take his neighbor to the hospital. And the second time his assistant forgot to put it on his calendar.
So, we finally got to record the interview, and he just blew me away with his humility and all of the amazing takeaways he had in that, which was all about the importance of knowing your purpose, how you define success, thinking about legacy, and the importance of learning every day. I mean, he really focused a lot on learning new things every day, and growing, and really thinking about where your position is in life, and how you’re impacting others. It was just one of my favorite conversations in the last year and a half from running that podcast.
And then on the other podcast, the talent development hot seat where I get to interview talent development professionals from big companies, it was actually an interview I just published a couple, about a week ago, episode 22 with Jessica [Amertage 00:28:06] because she was just so passionate, and interesting, and enthusiastic. About what she was doing. And really smart and strategic about how she’s setting up those programs.
You asked me earlier about some of the tips for setting up great development programs, and I mentioned thinking about the results and connecting that to company strategy. She’s so good at connecting those programs back to company strategy, really thinking about the results that they want to achieve. And so, that was a great interview, one of the best I had had up to that date, but the other thing that really showed me that this podcast is going to be something that’s gonna work, and it’s going to keep going really fast is because she was also so generous in introducing me to so many other fantastic guests that I’ve had an opportunity to interview since then. So I just really appreciated having Jessica on, and I hope people get a chance to listen to that.

Pete Mockaitis      
Cool. Thank you. All right, well now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Andy Storch           
So, man … You’ve mentioned this before, and there are just so many great quotes out there. One that I heard recently that really struck me, and it was actually, heard it for the first time from one of my guests on my podcast, but apparently it’s a very old quote. She said, “A ship is safe at harbor, but that is not what ships are built for.” And it just reminds me of my mission in life, which is to fulfill my true potential and help others fulfill theirs, which means I need to go out and try a lot of things. I got to do different things and really go after my dreams and my goals, and so I don’t want to be that ship just sitting there safely at harbor. I want to be out there trying stuff.

Pete Mockaitis      
Okay. And how about a favorite study, or experiment, or a bit of research?

Andy Storch           
Favorite bit of research? I will go back to, I mentioned earlier that book Multipliers by Liz Wiseman. She conducted a ton of research on managers all over the world, and I think it has just been so influential in thinking about how leaders lead, and how the best leaders lead, and how some people are diminishing their people, not really on purpose, but a lot of times they are. And I get a chance to go out and work with clients, using content from that, those experiments … Or, sorry, that study. And I think it’s just been so helpful. I love seeing the light bulbs go off when people hear about the different research that really those managers who are multipliers, who are doing those things, empowering their people, and giving them space, they get twice the intelligence out of their people as do a diminishers, diminishing manager.

Pete Mockaitis      
Awesome. Okay. And how about a favorite book? If there’s another one that’s you recommend?

Andy Storch           
Yeah, sure. There’s a few. I mean, probably the book that has had the biggest impact on my life is The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, and I don’t know if you’re familiar with that or if many of your listeners are. But he went out and did a study of, what are all the habits of the most successful people? And boiled it down to six things which are meditation, affirmations, visualization, reading, writing, and exercise. And ever since I read that book about two and a half years ago, I have adopted that habit. So if you’re going to ask about habit as well, of getting up early and practicing all of those things. And it has been an absolute game changer in my life.

Andy Storch           
And another book I want to mention, which I know has been mentioned on your podcast before, is the book Mindset by Carol [Dweck 00:31:44] has been an absolute game changer for me as well. Not only in running a business, and in working with people, and trying new things, and trying to have that growth mindset, but as a parent as well, it’s been huge in how I talk to my children, and how I want to raise them with a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset.

Pete Mockaitis      
Awesome. And how about a favorite tool? Something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Andy Storch           
My favorite tool is a little bit old school, and that is that I do carry a journal, a paper journal, around with me everywhere I go. And I write in that journal every morning and every evening, and it helps me capture ideas, plan my day, check in against my goals. And of course, I use a digital version as well, if you will. I have a couple of different Google Docs where I track a lot of different ideas of things I want to do, especially with regard to social media where I’m very active on Facebook and LinkedIn, and I want to make sure that I’m getting all those ideas and putting different things out there. So, I like to use a lot of Google Docs and sheets, but for me it comes back to that old school journal that I carry with me everywhere.

Pete Mockaitis      
Cool. All right. Well, we did talk about habits, so tell me then, is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks? They quote it back to you and retweet it, et cetera?

Andy Storch           
Yeah. I think that if you think about the goals you want to achieve, it’s so important to think about what habits are going to lead toward you being successful in those goals. And if you figure out what those habits are, you’ve got to take a consistent approach to developing those habits. So, if you want to get better at, say that morning routine, you’ve got to get up early every morning, not just a few days a week, but for at least 30 or 60 days in a row. If you want to get healthier, I think you’ve got to start with being a lot more consistent with going to the gym.
And if it’s something you’re trying to get better with at work, figure out what are those things that you need to do and try to develop a very consistent approach where you’re doing them day in and day out to really develop those positive habits that are going to lead towards you achieving your goals. I know that’s something that’s been really helpful for me over the last few years is really taking a consistent approach to doing all the things that I need to do, and finding accountability partners if I need it to make sure that I do keep doing those things, and really developing those great habits like the morning routine, and then using those to achieve the goals that I want to achieve.

Pete Mockaitis      
All right. And if folks want to learn more, get in touch, where would you point them?

Andy Storch           
Well, I’m really active on social media. I think the best place to find me and connect with me is on LinkedIn. Again, my name is Andy Storch, S, T, O, R, C, H. And I’m pretty active on Facebook and Instagram as well, under the same names.

Pete Mockaitis      
Mm-hmm. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Andy Storch
My final challenge is to really think about the things that you want to achieve, as I mentioned, and write those things down, whether it’s a physical journal or an online document. Write down the goals that you want to achieve as well as break that down into those different pieces, the different components. Think about, again, like I said, the habits that you want to form as well as the people that you want to talk to who can help you. Because I think about having a strong network, having great people around you is probably the number one thing that has helped so many people be successful, including me. And so you want to make sure that you’re really writing those things down, and thinking about what you want to do, and then talking to people about it, and get help because life is all about, for me, relationships and people helping each other. So don’t forget about that.

Pete Mockaitis      
Awesome. Well, Andy, this has been a real treat. Thank you. I wish you tons of luck with your podcasts, and your training, and selling, and all that you’re up to.

Andy Storch           
Thanks, Pete. Thank you so much for having me on. It’s been an absolute honor for me to come on your podcast, and I really do appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
Doris, thank you so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Doris Savron
Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into this. I understand something that really excites you are sports and that you’ve been to the World Series, the Final Four, Wimbledon, and more of the epic grand championship finals to come. What’s the backstory here?

Doris Savron
I’ve always grown up loving sports. I played sports in high school and actually had an opportunity to play in college and turned it down.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool.

Doris Savron
Because I wanted a really true college experience. But I love the competition and the feel of the energy and the buzz. I have favorite teams, so I try to attend those games, but any of those final matches are always exciting regardless of who’s playing.

Pete Mockaitis
It is. I get just a kick out of just extraordinary excellence in any field that I can appreciate. I’m not a hardcore sports lover, but when I just see something amazing that a human being has done, you can’t help but go, “Wow, look at that.”

Doris Savron
Yup. My favorite is just the never quit attitude, like the constant just pushing. You see that in those final games because everything’s on the line, so you just see people at their peak performance. It’s really exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, peak performance is what we love here. You help people get there with the University of Phoenix. Can you orient us a little bit? What is your role there?

Doris Savron
I serve as the executive dean of three colleges, the College of Health Professions, Education, and then Humanities and Sciences. Ultimately, my team and I are responsible for designing the different courses, certificates, degree programs that our industry leaders are telling us they need and want.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That sounds like a large span of responsibility.

Doris Savron
It is. Never a dull moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh certainly. Could you maybe orient us a little bit to see sort of what could be possible, maybe a cool career or story or transformation or big difference that emerged when someone went ahead and said, “You know what? I’m going to go pursue a certificate or a degree of sorts,” and kind of what that meant or the difference it made for them.

Doris Savron
Sure. One that actually immediately comes to mind is a young woman had started in one of our degree programs, finished her masters of education in administration and supervision with our online format.

She then partnered up with somebody else, who also attended University of Phoenix and they created or opened a tuition-free charter school that was specifically focused on disadvantaged kindergarteners through second graders.

They’ve been recognized for that work in multiple ways, including Forbes 30 Under 30. Then they continue to serve their community. They’re making a huge difference not just in what they’ve done with that school, but they engage and participate in the community.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. I want to first maybe get some terminology clear here. We talked about certificates and degree programs. What are the differences and the ins and outs of what constitutes each?

Doris Savron
Time is probably the biggest difference. Certificates really are focused on a specific area, for example, billing and coding is a specific area of health care, where degree programs are wider and more encompassing. A health care administration degree covers not just the billing and coding and understanding patient needs, but it could cover finance and leadership and management.

They’re more encompassing. They take a lot longer because there’s more courses you have to take. They are longer credits. It allows you to do multiple things in that industry, where a certificate really zeroes somebody into a specific track.

Information technology is another example where things move so quickly that somebody who has a degree might have to continue to specialize as technology changes. There’s certificates available for example in cyber security. Instead of going back and getting another degree, you go back and get a specialization or certificate in this specific area.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well that sounds pretty handy. It sounds like there’s a specialization there in terms of this certificate will kind of immediately, potentially, qualify you for a whole bunch of roles that I need people to do precisely that.

Doris Savron
Yeah. Depending on the certificate you choose, it will tell you which track or what’s available to you.

There’s some lower level entry level certificates that get you started in a particular field, like billing and coding to get somebody started in healthcare that maybe hasn’t had a professional job yet or hasn’t been in health care.

Then you’ve got some of the more advanced even post-graduate certificates, which get you specialized at a higher level in a specific space. We have post grad certificates in informatics, which really – if somebody’s already working in a healthcare field, is now going to specialize in a data analytics and looking at information and patient trends to determine how do we do better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you. Then also when it comes to the online or in classroom story, could you give a little bit of perspective on I guess maybe the primary pros and cons or if someone was trying to make that call, because I see it frequently, it’s like, “Oh, I’ve got a job right now. Do I want to exit for a timeout to go to school or should I try the online thing?”

What might be some perspective to put that person in good shape to make a great decision?

Doris Savron
First thing when choosing between a physical campus or online, you want to look at lifestyle and schedules.

You’ve kind of already referred to that if I’m working or I have children and they’ve got sports activities after school. What is my availability? A lot of times if they want to attend a physical campus, they have to go a specific night for a longer period of time not that night all the time. Their schedule may not allow for that.

Luckily, they could do that after work hours too because there are now programs that are offered in a variety of fashions even on campus. But online allows you to do it from any location as long as you have an internet connection and a device that allows you to connect to the classroom.

You could do it at night, at home, when kids are in bed. You could do it on the weekends if you travel a lot for your job. You could do it while you’re waiting for a flight delay or even on the plane that has internet access. You’re turning unproductive time into productive time a lot of times in that situation.

It’s really trying to understand what somebody’s trying to accomplish and what their schedule is like that really dictates what’s best for them in choosing between online or a campus.

Pete Mockaitis
Are there some cons on the online side?

Doris Savron
Frankly, I’ve taught in both and there’s benefits to both. It’s really dependent on somebody’s lifestyle.

Obviously, online you have to be more prepared in creating a schedule because you don’t have somebody there physically in front of you saying, “Hey, this is what we need.” You get a syllabus. You know what your deadline dates are and then you go deliver. You still interact with faculty members online and classmates.

But it’s a little different when you’re behind a screen versus when you’re in front of a person on that accountability factor. You have to be pretty self-driven and manage your schedule well to succeed in online.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d love to get some pro-tips there when it comes to doing so, what are some of the best practices or habits or things you’ve heard students do that really enable them to successfully complete and go the distance and find that sort of self-drive and accountability within.

Doris Savron
The biggest thing is finding an area that they’re really interested in. If somebody wants to explore where’s a job growing, what industry, but then they have to look at what their passion and interests are and align those too.

But then the second piece is, and this is probably the key and most important thing to do is really create a schedule and a plan.

We often tell students, “Hey, if you have a family that is counting on you for different parts of your day, make sure you sit down with the family and create a plan of what nights you’ll do your schoolwork, what days of the week you’ll do your schoolwork, and then create a plan and a commitment to that.” When you have a supportive group of people helping out along, that actually helps with success too.

It also helps with accountability. We’ve often found our students saying, “Oh yeah, I got reminded by my kids that I needed to get my homework time in.” It helps sharing what you’re trying to accomplish with other family members and friends.

The schedule is important, not trying to do everything in one setting. We’ve had in some instances where somebody is trying to cram everything in on a weekend and that becomes overwhelming because then you feel like you have no balance.

If you chunk it up and do a little bit at a time, then that leads to more success over time. People can start to see those accomplishments. You can check something off a list which keeps them motivated.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, then so thinking about different people or lifestyles and how things fit, I’d love to get your view in terms of you’ve been around, you’ve seen a lot of students do a lot of programs, who seems to be the kinds of candidates that just are fantastic?

They’re rocking and rolling and the online certificate or degree program is just the thing that is perfect for them versus maybe another segment that this isn’t quite the perfect thing for them.

Doris Savron
Well, we’ve definitely, I’ve seen just from my teaching experience that there’s some students that are just intimidated about the whole factor of going back to school. Then trying to understand how they learn best. Some people do better with the face-to-face interaction and visually seeing things. But with technology today, you could also get that in an online environment.

But it goes back to that are you committed to what you want to do, do you know what you want to do, and then have you created the plan. You do tend to see people that are busier and have more obligations in their work life, tend to be successful online because they’re already managing multiple activities and have learned how to prioritize really well.

You just have – some people just prefer the face-to-face interaction. Even with the technology and what’s available online, still would prefer being in a classroom space with somebody just that one day a week and getting the bulk of what they need that day and their schedule allows for it. Those individuals really do need more of that interaction.

But we’ve seen all types of learning styles and experience levels do really well online. It’s the commitment, and the time, and schedule, and putting the work in that really determines how successful they are.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you there. I’m intrigued. When you talk about the technology, sort of what’s hip and cool and new?

I remember back in my day, going back in time, I remember we had, I think this was Blackboard was the platform. I’m thinking this is over a decade ago. There wasn’t a whole lot to it. I guess you could submit quizzes and documents and have a little chat window. But what’s the cutting edge cool stuff you’ve got going these days?

Doris Savron
There’s a lot of technology that is available even outside of the classroom. We have students that work together on teams. We have space for them within the platform to work and engage with each other, create their profile, share pictures. But they could also use their phones and the technology they have already to FaceTime and do their meetings virtually so that they’re seeing each other in real time space.

A lot of those tools are available out there already to students based on the technology they already own. We see them communicating outside the class quite often and trying to connect and really put that personal touch to their interactions.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. I remember the favorite tools I discovered back in the day it was called Twiddla, T-W-I-D-D-L-A. It was just a shared whiteboard application.

Doris Savron
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Which was kind of hard to find actually. I looked at many options. We found it. That was pretty cool.

When I’m trying to explain some math concepts or working with a client in that kind of a way having that visual piece is good. Do you have any cool proprietary stuff that’s like, “Hey, on our platform you can do this?”

Doris Savron
We actually use a lot of what’s already off the shelf because it’s easier for students who already know that material, so it’s a slower ramp up time. We use tools like Office 365, and the group settings, and things that they can do and share documents virtually because it’s already available to them and part of the classroom.

So they’re also getting better at leveraging that technology because they’re now using it seamlessly to collaborate and communicate with each other virtually.

In work environments today there are a lot of people working from home, there’s dispersed teams. That’s a different way to work with somebody than just being able to sit down in front of them and talk. We’re trying to make sure we’re also using the tools that the employers are using out there so that they’re actually getting better even at leveraging that and becoming more efficient with those tools that way.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Great. Maybe I’d like to zoom out a little bit and think about sort of fundamentally the benefits associated with going after an online certificate or degree program. I think some motivated learners who have natural curiosity and listen to the How to be Awesome At Your Job podcast, like, “Well, yeah, I can learn stuff a lot of ways.”

Sort of what’s the magic or the benefit or the incremental goodness one gets when they go for a full blown online certificate or degree?

Doris Savron
Well, we all know how much industry is changing. We’ve looked at what’s happened in healthcare over the last three to five years.

Even somebody who’s been in the industry eight to ten years, find themselves – for example, nurses never had to use technology before. Today, they actually take in all the patient information and how they engage with the patient, a lot of them use iPads and laptops to capture the information.

That takes a different level of working and interacting so that you don’t use the human factor of how you engage with the patient, but you still leverage the efficiency of the equipment. We try to teach them on how to embed that into the work that they do so up-scaling and staying ahead of what employers want is extremely important. It allows you to differentiate.

You don’t wait until it already happens because then you’re behind the eight ball. Anytime you can differentiate yourself with a certificate, it allows you to get a leg up on everyone else who is looking for some of the same opportunities.

But just the opportunity to learn and interact with other people. For example, in an online format, there are people across the country that are in those classrooms, so you’re learning also from their experiences and how they’ve gotten to a certain career path.

That part of the learning, which is not necessarily directly tied to curriculum is also a value add because you’re learning from other people’s perspectives and appreciating the differences and how that could all create synergy.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. We’ve got the community, the human, the real world element and experience sharing and getting that element. As well as the differentiation because I guess it’s sort of hard to put on a resume, ‘I watched 30 YouTube videos about this topic.’ I’ve never seen that on a resume. Maybe it would look good. Maybe it would be well, okay. It doesn’t maybe have as much of a punch as something official.

I’d like to get your take on that when it comes to maybe if it’s like perception or from the employer value perspective on the, let’s just say the brand, University of Phoenix.

Because I’m thinking in some ways, I think there are some industries that are kind of concerned with pedigree in the sense of, “Oh, you’re not at a top 20 business school, well then move along,” and others I think maybe would find that favorable like, “Awesome. University of Phoenix, you’re hustling. You’re working hard. You’re a self-starter. You’re going after it.”

What are maybe some trends you’ve seen in terms of industries or employers who just think, “Yes, I love this brand and this stamp that I’m seeing on your resume?”

Doris Savron
Employers have multiple locations, so when they have to quickly upscale or find a way to get people ramped up, we have the capabilities of being able to do that pretty quickly because we already do that in an environment that allows you to do that no matter where somebody’s sitting.

For us, it’s really, it’s critical for us to understand what employers want. We spend a lot of time listening to employers.

Then we design curriculum and student learning outcomes that align to that so that we can measure to make sure that students are getting that component of what they need.

In addition, in every one of our areas, there are professional associations in those industries. Specific specializations might have even industry exams, where somebody could actually say, “Here’s the credential I’ve got. I passed the test.”

We try to in those circumstances align our curriculum and content to those specific expectations so that we know that they’re getting that level of exposure to the content. Then they can go sit for that exam externally as well. It gives them another differentiator.

For us, it’s critical to pay attention to what employers are saying regardless of the industry. We’ve done a lot in our healthcare partnerships, where we’ve actually run classes on those employer sites so that they’re in place after work …

Pete Mockaitis
That’s handy.

Doris Savron
Attend a class. It allows them to quickly then ramp up to a specific skillset that they need to move their specific organization forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. I’m curious a little bit about some of the trends here. We made some reference to healthcare, to cyber security, or IT things.

Doris Savron
Information technology, specifically cyber security space, because of – I mean I’m sure you’ve seen it – issues with systems being hacked into or people’s information being taken. There’s opportunities in really understanding well, how do you set up an infrastructure to protect people’s privacy in those organizations.

There’s some specializations there or certificates there, and even degree programs there that would lend people to be able to go into those jobs we’ve seen.

Even with education, there’s some markets and areas that have shortages of teachers. There’s some states that’s an opportunity area as well. Then anything around behavioral sciences/mental health is also some trends we’re seeing that have a need for people that are more prepared to do the jobs.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. Behavioral sciences and mental health, I guess I’m thinking of full-blown therapists or you know.

Doris Savron
Counseling, yeah, counselors, counseling. There’s a variety of specialties in that area, but there’s family counseling. There’s school counseling. You can do that level. Those usually require advanced degrees and some practice hours as part of their degree time.

But we all see what’s happening with the pressures of living in today’s world. There’s a higher need to be able to have people – to help people understand how to cope in challenging circumstances. We’ve seen some pick up there as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. I guess I’m also thinking, if folks are interested in this kind of an opportunity and they’re looking at the online path, so University of Phoenix is one option, what are some other tips or criteria you might recommend in terms of folks checking out their options and vetting and determining, “Oh, this is a good program versus one that maybe I’ll pass on?”

Doris Savron
First they want to make sure they understand what other support services might be offered outside the classroom. Are you assigned a specific counselor that can help you walk through your programs so that you’re meeting all the criteria? Do you have potential to do tutoring and workshops? What’s your ability to be able to engage and interact with faculty?

Those are all important parts of both inside and outside classroom support that’s important. Not all programs are offered 100% online, so they’d really want to take a look at the program area that they’re interested in and see if the entire program is offered online or parts of it are offered in almost a hybrid fashion where you so some classes online, some on campus, so they’d have to understand where that campus is.

In some cases residencies are required that they’ll have to travel in to specific locations once or twice a year to be able to fulfill that requirement, but then the bulk of their work is done online. They just really need to understand those expectations.

The biggest thing is really just understanding what career path you want to take, what are the degrees that align to that, so then looking for those programs and then making sure the format of how it’s offered really aligns to what your schedule allows and your lifestyle allows.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I’m curious to hear, we talked a little bit about the importance of the scheduling and good habits and whatnot to actually do the work and make the time.

Do you have any other perspective on how particularly folks who are kind of doing double duty or triple duty with the family and work and education at once, when it comes to the actual studying, learning, knowledge retention stuff, how can people really make the most of a given hour that they’ve dedicated to maximize retention and brain expansion?

Doris Savron
Sure, we always recommend look at first what the outcomes are for the week. What are the key things you’re supposed to be learning for the week? Then quickly scan what are the materials that will support that. Then you know what you need to get started with.

But chunking up the time is important because you can, especially someone who’s busy with work all day, chucking up the time is important and then taking notes because that’s how you retain, you’re rewriting what you’ve just heard and almost summarizing it.

But then for us too is because a bulk of our students are working, we tell them now go – what you’ve just learned, go pay attention to what you see at work and try to apply some of these things at work because putting it to practice is really another reinforcement of learning. They come back and share then that in the classroom through their discussions of, “Hey, I tried that. This is what happened.”

Working with people, other members on a team also helps because it’s reinforcing some of the conversations and learning. Each person picks up something different.

Then we always recommend try to share what you’ve learned with somebody else. Try to teach them, whether it’s another student or another person at work, so you’re reinforcing the information over periods of time.

But the biggest thing is chunking it up and then really trying to capture key messaging or notes. Some people do it on an iPad with a pen that they can write with and capture those notes. Some will do it on just pen and paper, traditional style of learning, take a notebook and a pen and write it down.

It just depends on how much time somebody has each day and what their learning style is. We’ve seen a variety of things work for students.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that when it comes to getting your own experience and applying the learning to that experience then bringing the experience back to the learning. I think Cal Newport said, and we’ll have him on the show one of these days, “Hey, if you can teach it, if you can explain it, if you can summarize it, then you know it.”

Doris Savron
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
By the process of pulling that back out of your brain, you are really making the learning stick and sink in all the more.

Doris Savron
absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we talked about a few tips here. I’d say if you had to prioritize or say as close as possible to the one thing or top tip or most leveraged thing learners can do to succeed here, what would it be?

Doris Savron
I would definitely go back to the plan and then setting maybe mini milestones because it can be overwhelming when you’re doing a degree program because it could take several years depending how many transfer credits you bring in.

Creating small milestones of things you can check off a list. Maybe it’s every course you do something specific to celebrate that. Maybe it’s grab a cup of coffee and celebrate one more class closer to graduation.

It’s the schedule and the plan that’s important. Then making sure you celebrate the accomplishments along the way because that keeps you energized and motivated to continue to move forward.

I would say the other one too that we often talk to our students about is balance. You still have to live your life. You don’t want to cram and take up every weekend and do your homework. You need that balance and that separation and reprieve to be able to take in more information.

We tell them it’s important to still do some fun things or things you’re passionate about in between so that they’re not just trying to work and then go to school and then don’t have any of that break from some of that time that your brain has to take to process and take things in. Those are probably the key ones.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that. The celebration, it can be a small one and it’s powerful. We chatted with BJ Fogg about forming habits and how critical doing a little bit of a celebration even it’s just, “Yes,” a moment that totally counts and is worth something.

Doris Savron
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Doris, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to highlight or mention or share before we shift gears and talk about some of your favorite things?

Doris Savron
I would say because I often hear from people, “I don’t know. I think I might be too old or it’s too late for me to go back to school or do something new or try to take another class,” I would say it’s not too late for anyone. We’ve seen a wide range of people from experienced to aged come back and explore different certificates or programs.

That’s important because things keep changing. They’re changing at a faster rate than they’ve ever changed. We’ve seen industries completely transform. Investing in yourself and really taking the time to learn new skills, try new things, take some risks is an incredible learning opportunity. You learn about yourself during that process too.

But the best thing is you’re prepared for some of those changes that are coming and it helps you stand out when you want to go take that next step.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on. Thank you. All right, well now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Doris Savron
Sure. It’s one that comes up often. I try to live this philosophy. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by things you didn’t do than the ones you did do.” It’s important for me to really – things that I’m passionate about just to try them. Don’t let fear get in the way. But it’s true. You only have so much time, so you’ve got to make the most of it.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Doris Savron
Anything around women and leadership. I feel like I’ve had a lot of women invest in me and help me get to where I am today. I feel like it’s my obligation to give back, so I read a lot about how to help and support women better trying to grow career paths. I’d say anything in that area. I don’t have one specific one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. How about a favorite book?

Doris Savron
I love to read, so I probably read about two to three books a month, but my most two recent favorite ones is Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah. Pat Lencioni.

Doris Savron
Yes. I’ve even done a study with my team because there’s so many nuggets of really good information there.

Then the one that I’m still in the process of reading is called Own It and really about how to embrace what you offer and really leverage that in your strengths to carve your path.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. How about a favorite tool that helps you be awesome at your job?

Doris Savron
I love my Kindle app because I can read on the go. I travel a lot, so I can read anywhere that I even find myself delayed, on a plane, waiting in line. But I also love any sort of app. I get my news from news apps on my iPhone, quickly get key nuggets of what’s happening in the world. I’m probably an app junkie.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. We had Laura Vanderkam on the show who said that she read all of War and Peace primarily from the Kindle app on her iPhone.

Doris Savron
Oh my goodness. I have not done that. That I have not done.

Pete Mockaitis
She said War and Peace is actually so bite-sized it lends itself to …, which shows that I did not know how War and Peace was structured and have not attempted to read it. But cool. How about a favorite habit?

Doris Savron
I would say – I don’t know if it’s a favorite habit, but it’s a habit. I have sometimes a hard time kind of getting my mind to stop. I keep a notebook next to my bed and some of my best ideas from come from what I’ve captured in the middle of the night because I just couldn’t sleep so I got it on paper. Then I was fine.

Then I took that he next morning, I’m like this is brilliant. Then I’d take it and apply it. I’d say just carrying a notebook all the time even next to my bed at night so I can capture any thought that comes up at any moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Is there a particular nugget or piece of Doris wisdom that you share often that really seems to connect and resonate with people when you do so?

Doris Savron
Yeah, I think this is one that my team would probably affirm to. I’ve heard them even repeat it is ‘assume right intentions.’ We work with a lot of different personalities and experiences.

Because we work at such a fast pace that things happen. If you assume right intentions, you get to the source of what truth is faster than trying to assume that somebody’s trying to get in your way or block what you’re trying to do. Everybody’s relationship wins as a result of that and you learn some things that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Doris, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Doris Savron
I would say LinkedIn is probably the best one. I’m starting to use Twitter more. But LinkedIn is probably where you can see some of the things I post or some of the things that are important to me, but they can also reach out to me in messaging there.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Doris Savron
I would say change is inevitable, so learn to embrace it and make the most out of life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Doris, thanks so much for this. Good luck with your vast spans of responsibility and pursuing your dream of attending all the sports finals and all you’re up to.

Doris Savron
Thank you. I appreciate the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Whitney, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Whitney Johnson
Thank you, Pete. I’m so happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me too. Well, I think we’re going to get into some really good stuff, but first I wanted to go back in time a little bit and hear in an earlier part of your career you were a winning, outperforming stock picker. How did you do it?

Whitney Johnson
That’s such a good question. I think the way I did it – I mean you have to build your financial models and you have to come up with your projections of what you think a company is going to be able to do in the future, but there’s an element of stock picking that’s actually very intuitive. The way I – I found that stocks, I mean, when I was analyzing them and studying them every single day of what they were doing, it’s almost like they had a personality.

One of the elements at least for me of being a good stock picker was sure I had to have the numbers, but also being able to analyze management, what I thought management would do, how they were thinking about the world, what was motivating them, and then also watching the stock and just getting a sense for when there might be momentum shifting either up or down.

I think a good stock picker has this element of being able to do the analytical work, but there’s also an intuitive – there’s a left brain, right brain aspect to stock picking.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s intriguing. One of these days my dreams is – because I’ve seen that there’s numbers and numbers of studies that show that certain kind of good people practices are linked to exceptional or beyond normal stock performance measures, if you look at maybe Good to Great or any number of those sort of studies that are out there.
Part of me thought on day I think it would be really cool to start a strategy in which I’m trying to snag undervalued stocks based upon having brilliant people and culture things in play because it’s like, those are not readily quantified, reported, sent to the SEC and digested by day traders the world over.

Whitney Johnson
Fascinating.

Pete Mockaitis
Some day.

Whitney Johnson
I love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, yeah. It’s worth doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, maybe I’ll pick your brain when that day comes because you’ve made a leap here into more of the realm of people and learning and development. You talk a lot about disrupting and disruption, can you orient us a little bit? What do you mean by those words?

Whitney Johnson
I’m glad that you asked that question because I think so many of us hear those words and we all think different things depending on who we are and the experience that we’ve had. At its simplest, a disruptor, in terms of disruptive innovation, is a silly little thing that takes over the world.

Quick examples are the telephone that took over the telegraph; the light bulb, the gas lamp; more recently Toyota disrupted General Motors; Netflix, Blockbuster; and then Uber has disrupted yellow cabs.

It has a very specific framework. The disruptor gets a foothold at the low end of the market. And think about Toyota in the ‘60s. At the very outset, its position is weak and their product is inferior. At that point in time, General Motors could have literally crushed them like a cockroach, but they didn’t because market leaders rarely bother because for them it’s just a silly little thing, the margins are low, it’s inconsequential, why should we bother, let’s just go after bigger, faster, better. In the case of General Motors, it was Cadillac.

The bad news for General Motors, of course, and the good news depending on your point of view, if you were Toyota, is that once you’ve got that foothold, you’re motivated also by bigger, faster, better, Lexus. That’s what disruption looks like. At its simplest, it’s low end, eventually moves up market and upends its better resourced, at least early on, competitor.

Pete Mockaitis
When you talk about an individual being a disruptor or disruptive or causing disruption, what does that mean?

Whitney Johnson
Personal disruption is how you take these ideas and make them meaningful to you. This is the big aha that I had. When I was working as an investor I had co-founded an investment firm with Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School and we were applying this theory of disruption to investing and to products and services.
The big aha, the big insight that I had, was that this framework actually applied to people. What it looks like for a person is think of a ladder, so you start at the bottom of a ladder, then you climb to the top of the ladder and then you jump to the bottom of the next ladder, like the children’s game Chutes and Ladders.

To give you an example of what that can look like for a person, because I think we talked about Toyota, General Motors, but what does it look like for you personally. Well, Lady Gaga. We all know Lady Gaga.

Think about how in 2008 she starts at the bottom of a ladder. She goes straight to the top. Then for an encore what does she do? Well she jumps to the bottom of a new ladder. Think about that ladder. She collaborates with Tony Benet on a jazz album. Then she does this Sound of Music tribute. We’re talking about Lady Gaga singing The Hills are Alive. Then she produces a country album.

You’re like, “Wow, hm.” But the jump it obviously paid off because her performance at the Super Bowl last year had the largest music audience ever. That’s what personal disruption looks like.

The real snag for personal disruption though is that when you’re at the top of the ladder and you make a decision to jump to the bottom of a new one, people oftentimes look at you like, “What are you doing? You’re giving up all this stature, all this money, all this notoriety. Why would you do this?” You do it because you believe that when you’re willing to disrupt yourself, that what you will get in the future, that step back will turn out to be a slingshot forward for you.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting because I’m thinking sometimes it works out great and sometimes it doesn’t work out so great. I’m thinking about Opera right now. I don’t know, maybe I’m just not in the know and the Opera Winfrey Network is rocking and rolling, but for a while there it seemed like she was sort of struggling with the rankings or the ratings, Nielson stuff, and is just sort of hanging out, whereas before she was the Opera with rocking and rolling.

Whitney Johnson
Right, right.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess time will tell what unfolds there or maybe Michael Jordan and baseball.

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, Pete. You make a really good point.

I think one of the important things to know about the theory of disruption is that the reason it’s so valuable is that the research says that your odds of success are going to be six times higher when you pursue a disruptive course and your revenue opportunity is going to be 20 times greater.  The thing that is important to understand is that when your odds go up by six times, that’s from 6% to 36%.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Whitney Johnson
There’s still a 64% chance that you’re on the wrong curve. It means that lots of things that we’re going to try are not going to work. That being said, your odds go up and most importantly, no S curve is ever wasted.

No matter what S curve or learning curve we’re on, we’re always learning something. Even if it turns out that this is not a learning curve that’s going to work fabulously well, like perhaps the OWN Network for Opera or even Michael Jordan and baseball, it doesn’t mean that he didn’t learn some really valuable lessons and she didn’t learn some really valuable lessons. Again, no S curve or learning curve is ever wasted.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. I’ve seen that in terms of just my own business adventures in terms of, “Oh, that didn’t work out. I’ve wasted some time and money on it, but oh wow, now I have these sort of extra resources, like great people to collaborate with, knowledge of platforms that I wouldn’t have had, skills that get put over to another place.” It’s hard to regret even most of those failures.

Whitney Johnson
Especially when it’s not about when you’re able to separate out the endeavor itself from you as a person, the worth that you have as a person. When you can separate those two out, you really can say, “Wow, I did this thing and it didn’t work, but look at everything I learned.” It starts to just be this accumulation of knowledge and understanding and experience that allows you to move up the next curve that much more quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s talk about some learning curve stuff in your latest upcoming work, Build an A Team. What’s this book all about and why is important right now?

Whitney Johnson
My prior book called Disrupt Yourself and we’ve kind of been alluding to it and talking about was this notion that we need to be willing to disrupt ourselves to jump from one learning curve to the next, so that your odds of success are higher.

One of the things that happened is that as I was talking to people, I would over and over and over again have people say to me, “Okay, I get it. I got it. I got it. I want to disrupt myself, but how do I get my boss to let me disrupt myself? Because I really like the company that I’m working at. And how do I get the team, the people who are working for me to disrupt themselves?” This book is a response to that.

Whereas Disrupt Yourself was for you, how do you decide when it’s time to try something new and then how do you move up your learning curve … to do that, this is about okay, how do you manage a team as a collection of S curves and how do you use this framework to onboard people, how do you manage people when they’re at the low end of their curve, in the sweet spot at the high end and what do you do when it’s time for them to jump to their next S curve.

With the idea that if your company is a collection of S curves, if you can manage the learning of each person on your team, you can actually optimize for innovation and avoid being disrupted.

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hm. Well, you’re using a lot of words I like there: optimizing and innovation, learning, oh yeah. Let’s dig in a little bit then. What are some key practices that make that happen well in terms of some do’s and don’ts that you observe in the wild.

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, I would say the first thing to think about  is – let’s just talk about this S a little bit because I think for some of our listeners because we’ve been talking all about the S curve and  – I should say your listeners. They’re your listeners. They’re you tribe.

Pete Mockaitis
… share them now.

Whitney Johnson
Thank you for inviting me in.

If you think about this idea of an S, at the bottom of the S, you’re inexperienced, you don’t know what you’re doing, there’s going to be – six months to a year whenever you start anything new, a new role, a new project, where time is going to pass, time is going to pass, and it feels like nothing is happening.

But then you put in the effort and you start to move up the knee of that S. That comes the back of the S where it’s really, really steep and so you start to feel really competent and confident and you’re engaged.

Then you get to the top and now you become a master. Yay, you’re a master, but because you know how to do everything on your job, you start to get bored. Well, what you want to do as a manager is to
have about 70% of your people at any given time in the sweet spot, where they’re engaged, they know enough, but not too much.

You want to have 15% of your people at the low end, where they’re inexperienced, but they’re also, because of that inexperience, asking lots of questions like, “Why do you do it like this?” If you can get over the fact that it feels kind of pesky because they’re questioning the status quo, there are all sorts of nuggets of discovery that can come with that person who’s at the low end of the curve. You want 15% of your people there.

Then you also want 15% of your people at the high end of the curve who are on the top. Think of it, I’m talking about a curve, but also think of it as being on top of a mountain. There’s this vista, there’s this perspective that they have. They can also bring along the people who are the bottom and the middle of the curve before they then jump to a new one.

If you can optimize each of those respective stages of learning, it can allow you to be very innovative. In fact, if you, as an organization or a leader, are trying to figure out if you’re at risk of being disrupted, all you have to do is look at how many people are at the high end of the curve because if you’ve got too many people at the high end, that means they’re getting bored and bored people can either leave or worse they get complacent and bored and complacent people, they don’t innovate. They get disrupted.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. We’ve sort of laid out, “Hey, take a look at the mix right there.” Maybe I think it would be helpful – I guess in a way it really is a continuum as opposed to red, yellow, green, three firm, clear categories. Is that fair to say?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, it’s a continuum. But you want to dive into sort of how you manage people along the different parts?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yes.

Whitney Johnson
Or what would be helpful?

Pete Mockaitis
I’d like to go there in a moment, but first I guess I’d like to say, I’m thinking about so folks are in there in their six months, like, “Yeah, I still kind of don’t know what I’m doing, but I kind of do.” I guess where would you place them in terms of the three segments or would you just say, they’re more like the new folk than they are the mid-folk and just leave it at that or is there any kind of key questions or indicators you look to and do your categorizing?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, love it. Great question.

One of the things that we have is we have what is called an S curve locator. It’s the too that you can – if you actually go to my website at WhitneyJohnson.com/diagnostic, you can download it and see where you are on your current learning curve. If you wanted to, you could have everybody on your team download it and see where you are.

What I would say is that it’s definitely continuum. But here’s a quick rule of thumb, typically someone’s going to be at the low end of the curve. If you’re mapping against the 10,000 hour rule, for example, and working 40 hours a week, you’re going to be there up until about the time that you’re at six months.

That’s going to be characterized by you’re coming home from work and saying, “I have no idea what I’m doing.

I feel very daunted by what’s happening.” That’s how it’s going to feel, so you then go, “Okay, I know it’s supposed to feel this way, so I’m not going to get discouraged.”

But at some point after – from six to nine months and it may be a year depending on how prepared you were going into this new work, you’re going to start moving into this sweet spot. You’ll be in this sweet spot for, again, on average two to three years, where at the low end of the sweet spot you feel like you still know enough, but not quite enough and at the high end of the sweet spot, you probably know a lot and perhaps almost too much.

Then once you get to the top of the curve, that’s going to be three to four years in a particular role. You don’t really want to be staying at that place for longer than six months to a year. Again, this is doing exactly the same thing. There’s lots of different ways for you to extend out the sweet spot of the curve, but that’s a basic rule of thumb.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really interesting because that seems to roughly correspond to what we’re seeing with the horizon in which people choose of their volition to stick with a current role … “You know what? I think I’m going to move on now.”

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, and you know it’s so fascinating, Pete, is that when people hear about this framework they go, “Oh, that’s why I move every three or four years because I was at the top of a learning curve,” and it helps them understand that they weren’t just being flakey like, “Oh, I’m done with this job.”

They understand, “Oh, it’s because my learning had peaked and I needed to do something new because I was getting bored and in order for me to be most productive and most be able to contribute better to the organization I needed to be able to leap to a new learning curve.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, all right. Let’s say, now we have three different segments, what are some best practices within each of them?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, okay. I would say for people at the low end of the learning curve, you want to have a plan. I think there’s this tendency to thing that whenever you hire someone that they’re going to be there forever and they’re just not. We subconsciously do that weird thing.

You want to have a really clear plan of what you want them to do for the first month on the job, for their first six months on the job, for their two to three years on the job, knowing that three to four years from now they’re going to jump, assuming that they’ve been a good employee, going to jump to do something new.

The second thing you want to do is to just let them do their job. I think sometimes when people are brand new, for example, I know some of your listeners are fairly new managers, there’s this tendency to want to micromanage. Let me just tell you a quick story around that.

There was this really talented, high performer at Boeing who was promoted to be a manager and a few months in one of his direct reports, an engineer, announced that he was quitting. The engineer is like, “Why are you quitting? You’re doing such a good job.” The engineer said, “Well, it’s because you’re micro managing me. You’ve made 14 changes to my work. Your job is not to do my job. Your job is to help me understand the bigger picture, to plug me into the network and to advocate for me.”

The employee still quit, but Alan Mulally, who went on to become the CEO of Ford, one of the best CEOs of our time, apparently learned his lesson, I should say.

The third thing I would say for people at the low end is to recognize that they’re going to be slow. Sometimes you’re going to say, “Hm, I wonder if I should have hired this person because they’re not really quite delivering the way I wanted them to.” Just recognize that they’re going to be slow because they’re at the low end of the curve.

Then remember that because they’re not blind through familiarity, there are lots of things that they’re going to see. Make sure you – before they start to get blind, make sure you ask them what their insights are and what suggestions that they have for you and how you might do things differently. That’s at the low end of the curve.

Pete Mockaitis
I really like that, that notion that the new folks have – because they don’t know stuff, are a rich source of innovation.

I guess I’m thinking about it sometimes when we’ve had folks like just, “Hey, clean our home.” Sometimes it’s, “It’s gotten beyond us. We need a little help task rabbit or something on a number of occasions.” It’s sort of like I behold sort of what they’ve done and at times it’s like, “Well, that’s not where that goes. That goes over there.” It’s like, “But you know what? It makes more sense to have it over here.”

Whitney Johnson
Exactly. That’s a great example. I love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. At times it’s sort of like, “No, that’s not where that goes for a reason. I’m going to move it back here,” and other times it’s like, “You have sparked something really cool about how I should have been doing it all along.” That’s cool to have that flexibility, that humility to roll with it. What about folks who are in the midpoint or the sweet spot?

Whitney Johnson
People in the sweet spot, it’s a really interesting place because they are feeling really competent. One of the things that’s really interesting is when people are in the sweet spot, you start to them think of them as a high potential person. Fascinating research suggests that when people are high po’s, we actually don’t give them hard assignments because we’re afraid that they’ll fail.

The most important thing you can do for your people in the sweet spot is to give them constraints, to give them friction, to press them and challenge them. Give them real stretch assignments where there’s a real possibility of failure.

Then the second thing I would say is because they are performing so well, make sure you appreciate them. It’s easy sometimes when people are at the low end or the high end, you’re worried about them, etcetera, and you forget and ignore the people in the sweet spot. They’re not a problem child, so don’t make them one because you’ve ignored them. That would be my advice for the people in the middle of the curve.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very good. And those who are getting experienced?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, so the people at the top of the curve, there are a couple of different things you want to do.

First of all the way that you can best leverage their experience is to give them – first of all say to them, “Okay, you’re at the top of the curve. I know you’re getting bored. I need you to stay here from six months to a year in order to help set the pace for people at the low end of the curve, in order to convey the tribal memory, and also we just need to get your perspective overall.”

That’s how you want to manage people at the top of the curve is give them a specific role that they need to play for your organization. Then you need to come to their aid, so A-I-D.
Applaud what they’ve done. We tend to memorialize birthdays and anniversaries and promotions, but whenever someone gets to the top of the curve, applaud and say to them, “Look at what we’ve accomplished as a team because you were in this role.”

The second thing you want to do if you haven’t already is to identify what they’re going to do next.

Then the third, the D, A-I-D, is to deliver on the promise inherent in your contract that now that they’ve gotten to the top of the curve, they’ve delivered, they’ve performed well, they’ve now set the pace for the people at the low end, you identify some new role, some new opportunity, some new project for them to do inside of your organization so that they can continue to learn and as they learn, yes, they may leave your team and so there’s a short term loss for you, but you sub-optimize the present in order to optimize the future for them and for your organization.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting I think in practice – well, I don’t have any hard data on this, maybe you do. But my gut sense is that most organization don’t do this. It’s kind of like, “Well, this is the job,” and maybe there’s not clear-cut opportunities for advancement or other roles to be snagged, so then folks just kind of get tired of it and they leave of their own accord.

What’s your sense for how – what the proportion of folks who are doing things optimally viruses sub-optimally?

Whitney Johnson
I think the large percentage of people are doing it sub-optimally. It’s very difficult to do and yet we know – in fact, the data says it’s difficult to do. I’m trying to find – oh yeah, okay.

Professor at Harvard Business School, Boris Groysberg, he does this survey every year. I think he’s done it for about ten years of small, medium-sized companies and asks them about sort of how they build a great company and to rate how effective they are at a number of different HR practices.

For the 450 companies they surveyed in 2017, job rotations, which is basically what we’re talking about here, had the lowest, with high potential programs having the third lowest.

The key to maintaining this innovate workforce, they were the lowest and the third lowest. He said this is not unusual. It’s basically this way every single year.

If the organizations that are listening to this are struggling to do it, you’re not alone. But to the organizations that are able to do it, like for example, WD-40, who I talk about in my book, then you get things like engagement scores of 93%. You know that when you’ve got high engagement scores, you’ve got higher operating margins, your ROIs – you’re just a more profitable company.

So there’s a case to be made for it. But there are all sorts of psychological reasons why we don’t. Anyway, long-winded answer to your question, but I think the simple answer is very few do, more could and would benefit if done so.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Also, when you share those data, that also make some think of Korn Ferry had managers sort of self-assess where they fell on all the competencies and developing others and direct reports was dead last of all of them that they could choose in the stack order ranking, so it is challenging.

I’d like to zoom in then. If you were the individual who is wishing you had some enlightened leaders taking care of you in this way but aren’t quite getting it, what’s your advice for them?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, I would say you can’t necessarily change your boss. I think there are a couple things you can do. You can hire the right boss for you.

Because I think one of the things we overlook is sometimes it’s a good thing to help people leave and go to other organizations where they can become ambassadors, clients, etcetera for your company. I think that would be the first place I would start.

The second place I would go is to you, yourself. I think that if you can make it possible for the people who report to you to be able to learn and leap and repeat, you’re going to find that the people who are reporting to you are much more engaged. They’ll be all in and when they’re all in, when they’re learning, you’re going to ship more product and then you’re going to start to become a talent magnet and people are going to want to work for you and with you.

Then if it turns out that the boss that you happen to work for is not the talent magnet, then you’re going to have the ability to move to other organizations over time.

Pete Mockaitis
I also want to get your take on the – there are some employees who are not that interested, engaged or motivated by learning. They would kind of just rather sort of do their thing for a while with minimal interruption and maybe effort. How do you think about working with this sort of profile in the mix?

Whitney Johnson
With someone who just literally doesn’t want to learn, is that what you’re saying? They’re just not excited.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I think that you might call it less motivation or they would prefer just a bit more of routine. I’m thinking of Jerry Gergich from Parks and Recreation right now if you can bring that to mind. He just likes his government job because he can get home to his wife and family at a reasonable time and that’s that.

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, it’s such an interesting question.

I remember a few years ago, maybe two years ago, I was talking to a CEO of a company and he said, “90% of my people don’t have a learning curve. They just don’t care.” I could really feel how he felt. He was really frustrated.

My response was – I think it’s just not true. I think everybody is on a learning curve. It’s just … because everybody has the will for something. I think when we have someone inside of an organization who is not performing well, I think there can be a couple things going on.

I think sometimes they just don’t want to work that hard, but that means that this is not the right learning curve for them because I think everybody is willing to work hard at something, even if it’s playing video games ten hours a day or watching football for ten hours a day. There’s something that they’re willing to work hard at, but it might not be inside of your organization.

That’s sometimes where you’ve just got to have those difficult conversations and say, “This isn’t the right learning curve for you because you’re not excited about this particular curve.”

I do think sometimes that people are under performing not because they’re not willing to work hard, but because they are on the wrong curve. Part of the reason that that happens is because that we, as human beings, because we overvalue what we’re not good at, we sometimes get ourselves into the wrong roles because we worked hard at something so therefore, we should be in that role, when in fact what we’d be really good at is that thing that we don’t value because it’s easy for us.

A really great boss will be able to discern between the two and when they discover that there’s someone in the wrong role – and I talk about this in the book about a women named Jocelyn Wong, where she was at Proctor and Gamble. She was engineer. It turns out she was not performing well.

It’s not because she wasn’t good; it’s just that she was on the wrong curve, so they moved her into marketing and she’s now been the CMO of Lowe’s.

Again, I think everybody has the will for something. It may not be the will for the learning curve inside of your company, but sometimes when people aren’t performing it’s just that they’re not on the right curve.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Again, if there’s an individual who finds themselves bored and not sort of getting the proactive attention from leadership to kind of craft new things, do you have any tips for being proactive and how one might go about taking the initiative optimally to finding some new challenges within the current role?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, okay, so you’re saying, you’re a little bit bored. Okay, so a couple of things.

I would say number one is you want to talk to your boss and say to them, again, I understand that this might sometimes feel tantamount to getting pushed off the curve, which also gives you information. If you can’t go to your boss and say you’re bored, then you’re probably going to leave at some point anyway, so you may want to make the decision to be proactive.

But I do think that there are opportunities for you once you say that you can give yourself – you can create opportunities for yourself to stretch.

One of the things I recommend to my clients is to impose constraints because when you’re getting bored it’s because you don’t have enough challenge and challenge comes with friction and constraints represent friction.

They can include things like okay, we’ve got a target of X for this year, we want to see if we can reach our target in 0.75X, or sorry, we want to reach our target by September, not by December or what could we do if we had half the marketing budget or what would we have to do if we only had half the people. Start to really push yourself to be effective by constraining your resources and see what that can bring about.

But again, I think that that can at some level feel like busy work. You’re really best off by having that conversation with your boss and/or taking on interesting projects inside of the organization that engage and challenge you, which in a very, very large organization you certainly have the option of doing.

If you’re in a small organization, you can start a side hustle and see what happens there. But I think in that instance you’re basically saying, “Okay, this S curve I’m on isn’t fulfilling me. For whatever reason I’m not ready to jump to a new curve, it might be a financial concern, so I’m going to start a side hustle, start my own S curve over here and see what comes of that.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, Whitney, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, I think the only other comment I would make is that I think whenever you’re thinking about disrupting and this idea of learning, and leaping and repeating, and allowing – disrupting yourself in terms of how you’re managing your workforce or your team is always remember that when – because you’re creating a new market, you’re creating a new way of doing things, it’s going to be scary and lonely. So if you’re feeling scared and if you’re feeling lonely as you’re pursuing this, you’re actually on the right path to disruption.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. Well now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, so one of my favorite quotes is “Rings and jewels are but apologies for gifts,” I’m paraphrasing. It’s Ralph Waldo Emerson. “But the only true gift is a portion of thyself.” I really, really love that quote. It’s very meaningful for me.

Whenever we think about ourselves in the workplace or really any endeavor that we’re pursuing, I think it’s always important, at least for me, to find some way to bring myself into that, to really show up in some way, whether it’s professionally or personally.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite study or a bit of research?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, I read The Undoing Project not too long ago and I talk about it a little bit in this next book. I’m fascinated by this idea of behavioral economics and how sometimes when we want to encourage people to do something, we talk a lot about the carrot, but I think that when it comes to motivating ourselves, that the stick is not to be overlooked. I think that for me was really powerful.

Sometimes we need to just prod yourself by saying, “Okay, here are all the bad things that are going to happen to you if you don’t do this new thing,” because we want to be positive, but sometimes, we’re actually more motivated if we can tell ourselves that it won’t be good if we don’t do this.

Pete Mockaitis
Have you applied this in your own goal or pursuits?

Whitney Johnson
Yes, absolutely I have. Do you want an example?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, please do.

Whitney Johnson
Okay, a few – probably a year or two ago I had gotten off of a webinar and I just wasn’t very good. You know you have times, you’re just not very good. Afterwards, I was like, “I wasn’t very good.” I was psyching myself up about how good I was going to be.

My husband, spouses and partners are often truth tellers, he’s like, “Don’t you get it? You need to tell yourself how bad it’s going to be. If you tell yourself how bad it’s going to be, then you’ll prepare.” I was like, “Really? He’s right. He’s right.”

So now when I’m trying to prepare to give a speech or prepare to do a podcast like with you, instead of saying to myself, “This is going to be great.” I’ll say, “Okay, if you don’t prepare, if you don’t take a look at – think about what you’re going to do beforehand, it’s going to be bad,” then it motivates me actually to act, so powerful research to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, good, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Whitney Johnson
Oh, I am reading Brandon Sanderson. Do you know him at all? He’s a fantasy writer. He writes fantasy and he wrote this book called The Way of Kings. He’s just the most fantastic storyteller. If you ever read Ender’s Game, he takes Ender’s Game to the exponential power. He’s just that good.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. How about a favorite tool? Something that helps you be awesome at your job.

Whitney Johnson
Oh, Headspace app hands down. It’s so good. It’s really good. Did you have him as a guest on your show?

Pete Mockaitis
I haven’t, but we have a guest coming up who’s on the Simple Habit app. He’s coming on. Andy, yeah, he’s on the list, so maybe someday it can happen.

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, yeah. You could do the live meditation. Anyway, that app – I’m up to like 900 minutes. It’s really made a difference for me. I highly recommend it. In fact, I have recommended it to a number of people.

Pete Mockaitis
You said difference, what difference does it make for you?

Whitney Johnson
I think that when – I tend to get anxious or worried about all the 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 things that I need to do in the next hour or two hours, so I think the Headspace app has helped me say to myself, “Okay, that’s just a thought, just focus on what you have to do right now. Write it down. You can come back to it.” Just be much more aware of the chatter in my head and to kind of calm that chatter down. I found it very helpful for that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, very good. Thank you. How about a particular nugget you share that really seems to resonate with folks? They nod, they Kindle book highlight, they quote you back to yourself. What is something you share that really seems to connect?

Whitney Johnson
One is if it’s scary and lonely, you’re on the right path.

Another one that people really resonate with is that shame limits disruption, not failure. I think sometimes people conflate the two and failure and shame are two different things, but we conflate them. When I say to people shame limits disruption, not failure, I think that that’s really resonant.

Then I would also say that this idea, which I mentioned earlier, is that if you want to know that if you as an organization are about to be disrupted, just take the pulse of your workforce. I think that’s really powerful for people, like, “Oh, right. I don’t need to just worry that I’m getting disrupted, I just need to figure out where my people are and if I’ve got too many people that are getting bored, I’m going to be at risk because they’re dialing it in.” That’s really helpful for people as well.

Pete Mockaitis
If folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Whitney Johnson
As I mentioned earlier, you can go to my website to WhitneyJohnson.com/diagnostic if you want to take this S curve locator. The best way is to find me at WhitneyJohnson.com. You can email me at WJ@WhitneyJohnson.com or on Twitter at JohnsonWhitney.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Do you have a final challenge or call to action for those seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah, I do. I suspect that as you were listening to Pete and I talk, you had an idea, one or two or three ideas, some insight. I would encourage you to write that insight down now, this very second. Pull over your car and write it down and then act on it in the next two hours. That would be my challenge.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. All right, well, Whitney, thanks so much for taking this time. I wish you lots of luck with the book and all sorts of happy disruptions and A Team building in the future.

Whitney Johnson
Thank you very much, Pete. I appreciate it.