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Dec 21
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383: Driving Adaptability in your Organization with Michael J. Arena

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Michael J. Arena says: "You can't really have a breakthrough without something to break through."

GM’s Chief Talent Officer Michael J. Arena explores the idea of ambidextrous leadership to help lead your organization in its current state and in its future – at the same time.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Ways to positively disrupt the way you work
  2. Concrete ways to mine the ideas of your organization
  3. Why conflict is essential to the evolution of ideas

About Michael

Michael is the Chief Talent Officer for General Motors (GM), where he launched GM2020, a grass roots initiative designed to enable employees to positively disrupt the way they work, which was highlighted in Fast Company and Fortune. Michael is the author of the book Adaptive Space, which is based on a decade long research initiative that won the 2017 Walker Prize from People + Strategy.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Michael J. Arena Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Michael, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Michael J Arena
Thanks Pete. I’m looking forward to this.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh me too, me too. Well you’ve got what sounds to be to me like a pretty fun job as the chief talent officer at General Motors. Can you orient us a little bit to what does that mean in practice?

Michael J Arena
In essence it’s really about how do you optimize human capital across the overall corporation, so how do we bring in the best people possible. In short, I’d like to say, how do we bring in the best people possible and then bring the best out in those people. That’s all about human capital and how do we get those people positioned to be able to leverage what they know. Yeah, it’s quite fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Now in practice over the last few years you’ve been doing a lot of bringing out the best in people it sounds like. If you look at sort of the financial picture at General Motors in 2009, they’re filing for bankruptcy and now you’ve got some great profits. The business press would point to cultural shifts as being an essential part of making that transformation.

Could you give us a little bit of the behind-the-scenes or in-the-middle-of-things narrative for how this came to be and the human capital pieces play into it?

Michael J Arena
Yeah, absolutely. Just to clarify, I joined the company in 2012, so I can tell you – I can describe that journey from that point forward and more precisely around this role here in HR. I do think it’s about culture. It’s certainly – it’s been quite the journey.

I can remember when Mary Barra took over as CEO. One of her very first quotes and comments was this industry is going to change more in the next five years than it has in the last 50. What that means is you need to rethink everything you’re doing.

Culture is a core element of that. It’s not the only one. It is either an enabler or a stifler of what you want to do with things like business strategy and how you’re going to drive operational management, how you’re going to think about new consumers and new business models and all that sort of stuff. It’s been quite the comprehensive journey from that point to this with much of it still in front of us.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so could you give us a little bit of the particulars with regard to before the culture was more like this and now it’s more like that and here are some of the key things we did to bring about that shift?

Michael J Arena
Yeah, and again, I think it starts kind of with the industry. This was an organization and an industry that was all about driving execution, all about continuing to drive scale across the world. The game’s changed quite a bit. It’s now – we’ve got a – it’s now the future mobility.

We now need to think about what are customers demanding, what are customers – the best illustration I can give about that, then I’ll go back to the specifics of your question is people are moving to cities, just to put it in a real live external marketplace example. People are moving into cities and everyone’s becoming connected. The way you think about mobility inside of a city versus mobility in a suburban environment is very different.

We need to then get the business to start thinking about things differently. That certainly requires us to instill new sets of behaviors and to challenge everybody to think bigger than perhaps they had in the past. Again, to move faster as well because the world outside is moving super fast compared to what we’ve been used to.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, so it seems like we’re changing sort of the total focus in terms of what General Motors wants to be excellent at in order to succeed in a different environment with more people in cities and sort of car sharing and ride services, sort of a different landscape than it was in 2009. I’m curious to hear what does that look like in terms of day in/day out humans at GM interacting with other humans and how they’re doing it differently now?

Michael J Arena
Yeah, one of the big things we did to start to drive this transformation is we plugged in a program that we call Transformational Leadership. This was a partnership with Stanford. It’s a year-long cohort program with Stanford where we take the top of the organization, 35 people on an annual basis, go through this program.

The reason I call out that program is because it answers your question rather directly in that we’re not just shifting to the future, we’re thinking both about the current state of the business and the future state of the business in the same moment. We call that ambidextrous leadership if you will. That came out of that program.

Everything we talk about here is growth and core. We’ve got to be excellent at the core of the business. We’ve got to continue to be – operations, we have an operational excellence program. Operations have to be maniacally precise and everything we produce has to be durable and everything else, but at the same time, which is what makes it ambidextrous, we need to be thinking about the future. We need to be thinking about where is the customer tomorrow going to be and how can we get there sooner than anybody else.

There’s a lot of people talking about agility in the world today. The way I like to talk about it is most large organizations shouldn’t talk about themselves as being completely agile. They need to be agile in places. They need to be agile on the edge. They need to be agile in the growth side of the business because the growth side of the business is where the future is. They need to be disciplined and operationally excellent in the core.

In fact, one of the studies that I read recently that talks about this, and then I can share exactly how we’re doing that, was a Mackenzie study where they said organizations need to be both fast at times and stable at other times. About only 12% of the companies they reviewed were able to do those two things at the same time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense with regard to boy, if you think about sort of any organization, sort of what it can handle well and what it can’t, I even think about customer service interactions in terms of it’s like if you want to check your credit card balance or sort of get some basic information and sort of – or get a replacement card or report a stolen card or do some fraud stuff or change the credit limit, it’s like that’s kind of very basic.

But if you sort of go out beyond the edges, suddenly it gets really I guess confusing for the people in terms of what they’re trying to do. It’s like we’re really built up and tooled up to do these dozen things very quickly and efficiently and systematically.

But now I’m trying to get my private mortgage insurance canceled with my new insurer – my new mortgage holder because they transferred them over as they do. It’s been rather challenging. It’s like, “No, no, no, I understand your policy, but in fact if you looked at the original text, the original mortgage, this is kind of how it’s supposed to work, so can we do that?” They’re just so flummoxed, like, “We’re going to have to look into this, sir.”

I think that’s intriguing to think about it. In some ways you want to just be high-scale, high-efficiency with doing that thing repeatedly with, frankly no innovation because it’s working great and other areas where you really got to adapt and see what’s new and what are people starting to really ask for.

Michael J Arena
Yeah, 100%. 100%. It’s funny that you mentioned banking as your example because I grew up in banking.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Michael J Arena
I remember that exact question coming to me at one point in time when I was asked by the president, the company I was working for, “Michael, how can we become more innovative?”

I told the same story you just did a moment ago. “Are you really sure you want to be innovative where you’re driving precision and you’ve built expectations for consumers and you want to be reliable and you want to create a consistent set of interactions or are you asking if you want to be innovative on the edges?”

At that point in time, this was before mobile banking, so it’s a great illustration. When it comes to something like mobile banking before it had existed, you have to be innovative there because no one’s ever done that at that point in time. No one had ever done that. You have to be agile. You have to think differently. You have to move, shift, flux, understand the consumer, shift with the market. You have to do that super fast.

That’s where we are now as a company on things like car sharing and what we’re doing with Maven, what we’re doing with electification, what we’re doing with self-driving vehicles. You have to be completely agile and you have to manage that side of the business with a whole different set of muscles while continuing to keep an eye on the core of the business and making sure that you’re doing that flawlessly.

My analogy for this is every organization is both a super tanker, which is critical to getting stuff done precisely and at scale and a set of speed boats that are being sort of tossed out into the white water so that they can move fast and agilely shift with the environment and then ultimately grow themselves into what the next core of the business is and should be.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you talk a little bit about sort of the people practices that bring that about? I’d be curious to hear if in the course of having meetings or interactions one-on-one, you’d say whereas before at GM people more so spoke or interacted or accepted or challenged these kinds of things, now it looks different in terms of their interactions.

Michael J Arena
Yeah, so the first thing to know is that in that model the era of one-size-fits-all solutions is inappropriate. You’ve got to use different solutions for the different parts of the model. Some of the practices are – we use a lot of design thinking on the growth side of the business. We’re out talking to consumers. We’re out engaging consumers in Manhattan and San Francisco and places that we might not interact with on a day-to-day basis traditionally.

Then we’re thinking about how do we bring those ideas back into the business and connect up with other parts of the business, build bridges, if you will, to do agile design and to move fast. Amazon calls them small two-pizza teams, very small teams that can first of all build something, like a minimum viable product or solution and then ultimately the reason the bridges matter later is scaling. That’s the growth side of the business.

Now on the core side of the business, you just incrementally have to ask yourself the question, how do we make this better every single day. How do we continue to get more nimble and more agile even in the core so that whenever the new growth part of the business comes to fruition, that the core is already ready to sort of cast it up onboard and take it on?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so then in forming these teams, can you give us an example of something that you’re able to quickly react to and how it was done?

Michael J Arena
Yeah, so a couple different examples. The one that I can think of most notably off the top of my head is what we’ve been doing with Maven, which I’ve mentioned already. Maven is our car sharing platform. Maven by its very definition is access to a vehicle as opposed to ownership of it. We sell cars and in the core of the business we continue to and will continue to for quite some time.

But on the other hand just like there is Uber and Lyft, which are ride sharing applications, there’s a need to get from one point to the next inside the city. We found this sort of whitespace that no one was serving, which is how do get outside – how do you not own a vehicle, but maybe take that vehicle for longer durations than just from one of the end to the other end of the city.

Maybe you’ve got it for a couple hours. You’re driving it as opposed to someone picking you up and you’re actually deploying an asset – someone else’s asset – that may be sitting in the garage at some point in time.

This whole shared economy model, we went out – to be very precise – we went out and started interviewing people in the streets. It was in design thinking. What we found out was owning a vehicle inside of a city may be more of a burden than a benefit for some, but we can build a solution around that so that they still have access to a vehicle in such a way that they get the conveniences of it without the burdens of it. That’s where Maven really evolved from.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Now you were big in pushing a concept called GM 2020 throughout the organization. What does this mean?

Michael J Arena
Yeah, it’s, again, we’re now back in the core of the business. One of the things we want to do is we want to think about the core of the business in regards to how do we build the culture where people just can’t wait to show up to work the next day. People just really want to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Back in 2014, we launched this, I’ll call it a movement. We launched this movement where we invited – and this was back when we were really trying to attract young people into the organization. We were really just starting to as corporations as a whole create different environments that were, at that point in time, I would say were more Millennial friendly. I don’t believe that any more. I think that’s true for anyone and all of us.

But we launched this initiate where we thought about okay, if we were to recreate the culture or rethink culture or rethink the workplace, why not invite the people in the room that will actually be living with those outputs in the year 2020.

Literally using some design thinking methodologies and inviting 30 people into a two-day event, we went out, we took them out on buses, and we went and looked at all these creative workplaces first across Detroit. That movement, those 30 people, ended up growing into a movement that we call GM 2020, how do we positively disrupt the way we work.

They continue to grow into a much larger body of people. It’s thousands now of people that show up into these events, constantly thinking about how we can get better and all volunteers, but constantly thinking about how we can organically get better on a day-to-day basis.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. Then what have been some of the key adopted practices that have shown up in terms of doing work better and in a more enjoyable way?

Michael J Arena
The great part about this is that all kinds of ideas emerge out of this. One of the – perhaps my favorite story, there are plenty that I can share, but perhaps my favorite story was we were about ready to open up a new building.

It was a ten-floor building where generally what happens is you go in, you bring a facilities crew in. You bring in some architects. They look around the space and they decide what the footprint should look like. They plug in standard furniture and everything else. Well, rather than approaching it that way, what we decided was why not invite the people who are going to be working in that space into designing it.

We did what we called a two-day co-lab, kind of like a hack-a-thon, if you will, across two days. We invited in 35 people. We put them into teams of 5. We asked them to – we walked them through the space. We gave them the same parameters that any facilities team would have in regards to cost constraints and architectural barriers and all that sort of stuff.

We literally had these teams and teams of five build prototypes. After giving all those constraints and talking to individual users, which were their fellow employees, we actually had them build prototypes of what that space should look like. They competed against each other.

At the end of the – I said two days, it was actually 24 hours from beginning to end, from 12 o’clock to 1 o’clock the next day – at 12 o’clock the next day, they presented their working physical prototypes to a design team and the winning team actually created the design of the way that that building ultimately was created.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Then how did they like it?

Michael J Arena
Again, it was very different then perhaps what would have been designed for them. One of my favorite stories was the winning team actually cut a hole in the – they said if you want to collaborate, you need to be able to look up and down across multiple floors, so they actually cut a hole in the center of the building in their prototype three floors deep. They said “This is will be the collaboration zone. The two floors above that will be the concentration/deep work zone.”

Whenever they did that, well, of course they’re not architects, so they weren’t thinking about how sound this was, so there was all this push back on, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but architecturally that doesn’t stand up.” I’m thrilled to say that that team ended up becoming part of the overall design team.

They didn’t cut a hole in two floors, but they ended up – or in three floors, but they ended up cutting it in the two in order to make their solution work. They were thrilled, the short answer. They were thrilled at the end of the day with the new design.

That’s not a huge example, but there are all kinds of those everyday examples that I’m giving you now, like where people designed an onboarding app or people designed a learn and share so that they could do a career fair and all these little things that manifested throughout this community so that they’re able to move really fast and organically create these new solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. With the hole in the floor, you could – one person could stand on one floor, the other person stands on the floor above and they look down at each other?

Michael J Arena
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
You could accidently – if you weren’t paying attention, walk into a hole and fall down.

Michael J Arena
No, no, it’s not quite that way. They had the railings and all that stuff up. But it was really much more to illustrate that we’re not separating ourselves from different groups. If we’re going to collaborate, we at least need to have this sort of proximity to one another as opposed to hitting our floor button and showing up.

It’s, again, a small thing, but as you engage people in making those decisions themselves, they become very, very proud about those outcomes and they figure out how to iterate on it and make it better over time.

Pete Mockaitis
So people don’t speak to each other through the floors? It’s more of a symbolic-

Michael J Arena
Yeah, absolutely. They see each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Michael J Arena
So they can certainly correspond back and forth. I guess I’m just sort of the dispelling the safety myth.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you. The railings certainly, that makes sense. We’ve got the safety covered. They would in fact speak through the hole from one floor to another.

Michael J Arena
Completely.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s cool. That’s fun. Now, you’ve also got a book, Adaptive Space, that captures some of these principles that you put into practice. Can you sort of share with us kind of what’s the book all about?

Michael J Arena
I’ve talked around a lot of it already, but it’s this core concept of why are some organizations adaptive and are able to respond to the changing marketplace and the other organizations perhaps aren’t quite as adaptive.

As a researcher, this was even prior to my time I come into General Motors, as a researcher, four of us actually launched a research initiative, went out and studied 60 different companies, all Fortune, really, 100 companies, and asked that question, why are some adaptive and why are others not.

What we found, and this is the part that I talked around a bit already is that those were – every single organization had two things. They had these sort of core systems, we call them operational systems, which is the formality of how you get work done and they all had entrepreneurial pockets, even organizations that aren’t adaptive have innovative entrepreneurial activities happen within them.

What the adaptive ones had that the non-adaptive organizations didn’t have was what we ultimately called adaptive space, but basically it’s the bridge to get those ideas through the organization and pulled into the formal systems.

Think of it quite literally as how do you more intentionally mine the idea, everyday ideas throughout your organization, both big and small in such a way that it becomes part of the adaptive fabric of an organization that can respond differently to the outside market. That was a lot, but-

Pete Mockaitis
What are some of the – what was that?

Michael J Arena
No, I was just saying, so that was more than a mouthful for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh no, that’s cool. Then what are some of the practices associated with getting those bridges up and going in terms of these things make all the difference if you’ve got them versus don’t?

Michael J Arena
Yeah, yeah. The interesting part about this is it’s a social phenomenon. The interesting thing is the connections that you create inside an organization are more important than I think we ever believed they were before.

Think about it this way, we all want to think about who are the – how do we build a bigger network and how do we build our network inside of an organization. What we discovered was your network matters immensely, but your network needs to be different for different intentions.

I talk a lot about social capital. I’m in the talent space and spend a lot of my time talking about human capital, but I also talk about social capital. Human capital is what you know, social capital is how well positioned you are to leverage what you know. Remember, I said that every organization had entrepreneurial pockets, but not everybody was able to leverage that and that was because they weren’t connected appropriately.

A couple of the practices to get very precise with you is there are times where you need to create discovery networks. A discovery network is a network that’s actually going outside of the insular walls of an organization and finding out what the customers of tomorrow really need and want, like the Maven story I shared with you a few moments ago.

There are also times that ideas were too. Organizations, all organizations have lots of ideas. You’ve got to bring those ideas into the world. It’s important to have discovery connections because that’s how you stay relevant, that’s how you can move – you can keep pace with the outside market, but you’ve got to bring those ideas in and you’ve got to actually put them in the very small, tight, what Amazon calls two-pizza teams. We call that agile design in many organizations or scrum teams.

That requires a different set of connections. You want very trusted small groups of teams of maybe six that are taking ideas that were discovered and then bringing them into the world and iterating them, move them fast.

Then once they built a minimum viable product, this is where a lot of companies sort of fail, once you build a minimum viable product inside of a small pocket, you then have to start to think about how do I get that scaled on across the broader business. That requires yet a different set of connections that we call diffusion connections.

That’s – when you think about those different practices, it’s a different set of connections and a different set of practices for each of those steps, if you will, on any given product lifecycle or any given solution lifecycle into the business.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m really intrigued by the notion that you said that the ideas are a dime a dozen. There’s tons of them in a scaled organization. Boy, I imagine a critical lever that is really make or break here is effectively choosing, selecting, deciding which of these ideas are worthy of getting a two-pizza team to advance it and go after it a bit. What are some of the key ways that these decisions can be made optimally?

Michael J Arena
Yeah, you’ve got to be disciplined in that process. I’d say ideas are cheap. I say that somewhat tongue in cheek. They’re cheap if nothing’s done with them. If somebody just shares an idea and they don’t do anything with that idea to bring it to life, then who knows if that was a good idea or not.

An idea is nothing but an abstract, but if you actually take that idea and you build something around it and you go test that idea, which gets into your question, the best way to find out if an idea is worthy is to actually build some aspect of it, low-resolution prototype and get out and test it. Test it first with some friends inside the business, find out if some colleagues get excited about it. Then ultimately test it with consumers or would be consumers.

Then that’s not enough because it’s still this low resolution sort of fragment of an idea. It’s better than the idea itself I should say, but it’s still a fragment of a concept. You then have to decide, okay, what are the thresholds to know whether or not we can win with this idea or this is a real idea that would have real market impact or this an idea that’s worth our investment.

That’s a whole different series of practices and the only way to know that is to set up milestones around that concept or an idea and hold people accountable for getting to those milestones. If they don’t, you kind of decommission it and you say we can only take so many of these at a time.

Every organization has a finite set of resources, so you just simply decide how many people am I going to invest in this idea, how many people – what do they need to prove between now and the next milestone, whatever that is, and if they don’t prove it, do we have the courage to shut that idea down so that we can take those resources and reinvest them into something else.

In short, what you just heard me describe is there are parts of the organization where you need to act and think much like a startup.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. I think that’s excellent in terms of having that discipline and those clear thresholds that you’re identifying. I guess I’m thinking about backing it up a little bit earlier in the process. I imagine GM has thousands of ideas emerging. Then you may only pilot test out dozens at a time. Why don’t we say 1 out of 80, little ratio, shows up and gets the minimum viable product treatment.

How do you decide what hits that initial threshold, like, “You know what? We are going to spend some time, money, resources six people on this one.”

Michael J Arena
This is where I think it truly is a social phenomenon. I think our inclination – when you or I have a new idea, our inclination is to go take it to a leader and to go get it formalized. That may be the worst idea possible. That may be the worst step forward possible because you don’t even know if that idea’s good at this stage.

What I’m – and we’ve done this very much in the GM 2020 community, where we basically say, “If you think you’ve got a great idea, go find a friend.” That first friend is really social proofing your idea. That first friend – somebody who you trust, somebody who you respect, somebody who you think would get this – is your first litmus test.

Once you share that idea with that friend, if they look at you like, “Michael, this is really stupid. I have no idea what you’re talking about,” well, you might just be wrong and you might just decide that it’s time to shut it down. But if they’re excited about it, then our next step, what we talk about a lot is, go follow the energy.

If I share this idea with you and you’re excited about the idea, then okay, so who else might be excited about this idea. At this point it becomes more than it’s Pete’s idea, Michael’s idea together and we go find a few more friends.

This, what I’m describing to you, is much more organic than mechanistic, which is how we want to tend to think about innovation inside of a company. It’s much more social than process driven.

At some point, you need formal support. At some point once you know you’ve created network buzz and people are excited about this idea and they believe in the beauty of this as it’s co-created and it’s no longer just my idea, it’s all of our ideas and we can all find ourselves in it, well then the likelihood of securing support and resources is amplified ten-fold.

That’s the way that you get these, as I stated it earlier, these entrepreneurial pockets fired up and linked up across the broader organization for grander success.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Awesome. Well, any other kind of key practices you think the typical professional needs to know or do you want to move ahead to hear about some of your favorite things?

Michael J Arena
Yeah, well I guess one thing – because I haven’t talked about one – there’s one thing that everybody who’s listening to this conversation is wondering. Okay, that’s all fine. That sounds great. But what about the resistance? What about when somebody doesn’t like my idea? Then what do I do?

One of the things that I like to talk about is conflict sometimes – charge into the conflict. The conflict later – once you believe your idea is good, once we’ve got a band of a half dozen or so of us, then the conflict is really critical to the evolution of that idea. The conflict is essential to getting it scaled.

One is take that conflict as a compliment because you’re probably not doing anything innovative if you haven’t created some disturbance. Charge into it and start to think about it. Oftentimes what I like to say is you can’t really have a breakthrough without something to break through. If you’re not expecting some degree of resistance or some degree of conflict, then you’re probably not being so bold.

A lot of people ask me, “Well, what do you do with conflict? What happens whenever the antibodies kick in?” What I say is, “That’s awesome.” It’s about how do you pivot in response that that, how do you bring them in to the process so that you can pressure test those ideas, you can morph them and you can challenge them in such a way that you make them bigger and more scalable both within the business, but far more importantly outside into the marketplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Thank you.

Michael J Arena
I just would not want to underplay sort of the value of tension even more than conflict, I wouldn’t want to undervalue that, but what I will say is tension too early in the process actually prematurely kills ideas. Tension later in the process becomes almost like this pressure testing sort of amplifier, if you will, to get lift off sooner.

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

Michael J Arena
You probably have noticed even though I live inside of a human capital job that social capital is an area that I spend a lot of my time.

One of my favorite quotes and this will get a little bit into the conflict thing is it’s a quote by Colonial Picq. This quote goes like this, “Five brave men, who do not know each other well, would not dare attack a lion.” I know that’s masculine, so I’ll pivot it in the next part of the quote. “But five lesser brave men or women would do so resolutely.” I think this is a team activity. What I’m talking about, you have to have friends. You have to find friends. You have to have people who are in it with you.

One of the things that I know is that if you try to do this alone and you try to take all the credit for yourself and you try to hold onto an idea, you try to hoard it – this idea can be anything, any kind of solution – you will not succeed. But if you find and enlist friends and you work together as a team, you’re chances of succeeding are amplified significantly.

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

Michael J Arena
Again, this whole networking space, I studied a lot of network theory. I guess the one that just jumps out at me right off the bat is a professor over at University of Michigan, Wayne Baker, a good friend of mine, went out and studied – we didn’t even talk about this – but went out and studied energizers and people who bring energy into an organization, which is one of the core network roles that I talk a lot about.

What he found out was that high performing, agile adaptive organizations have three times as many energizers as average performing organizations. That’s a study, where in the HR space we talk a lot about engagement. My belief is we’re going to be talking much, much more about energy moving forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. How about a favorite book?

Michael J Arena
I guess in the last couple years books that I’ve read, the one that jumps out the most is Adam Grant’s Give and Take, like givers and takers. His whole philosophy, if you haven’t read it, is that long-term, givers, people who are constantly helping, supporting and lifting each other up are the winners in the long-term game. It’s a phenomenal book.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit?

Michael J Arena
I think it’s easy to live inside of an organization and become somewhat inculturated. One of the disciplines – I don’t know if this is a habit – one of the disciplines that I have instilled for myself is to – I have, on my calendar I have, literally this is what it says, ‘critical distance day.’

Literally once every six weeks I have a day on my calendar where I have prescheduled, I’m getting out of the day-to-day business and I’m going to go do something very, very different. I’m going to talk to consumers. I’m going to go to a conference. I’m going to a university campus. But I’m going to do something to refresh myself to think differently than I would if I were just managing the daily business.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and get quoted back to you frequently?

Michael J Arena
Yeah. I guess the one that I think of is we live in the era of disruption. We’re all talking about digital disruption these days. We want to talk about things like agile, but I personally believe that in the era of disruption, social is king. We’re going to be talking much more, much, much more about both energy and social capital as we move forward over the next decade.

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

Michael J Arena
The book, there’s a website for the book, AdaptiveSpace.net. They can certainly go on there. I’ve talked a little bit around some different network roles. There’s another website out there called NetworkRoles.com that they can actually go sort of take a self-assessment to better understand their own individual network role.

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

Michael J Arena
Stop talking about it and start doing it. Go find a friend. That first friend matters more than you can ever imagine. Find a first friend to partner with on whatever it is that you’re thinking about it is the first step forward. We oftentimes think of things and oftentimes don’t act on those.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Michael this has been a lot of fun. Thanks so much for sharing the good word. I wish you and GM lots of luck in all you’re up to.

Michael J Arena
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I’ve enjoyed the conversation.

Nov 19
0

371: The Keys That Make a Great Team with Don Yaeger

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Don Yaeger says: "Teams show up to work differently if they have that sense of who they're in service of and they know why it matters."

Nationally acclaimed speaker and long-time Sports Illustrated editor Don Yaeger highlights the key differences that make a great team.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How every organization is changing the world in some way
  2. Key practices that can bring your team’s “why” to life
  3. How great teams address dysfunction

About Don

Don Yaeger is a nationally acclaimed inspirational speaker, longtime Associate Editor of Sports Illustrated, and author of over 30 books, eleven of which have become New York Times Best-sellers. His messages focus on achieving greatness. He began his career at the San Antonio Light in Texas, and also worked at the Dallas Morning News and the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville before going to work for Sports Illustrated.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Don Yaeger Interview Transcript

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

Don Yaeger
I am so grateful, Pete, to join you. Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into some of your wisdom. And I got a real kick out of just the name of your company. My company is called Optimality; yours is called Greatness, Inc. So tell me, what does this word mean to you, what do you mean by it and what do you find so inspiring about the concept of greatness?

Don Yaeger
So, actually I chose “greatness” because I couldn’t spell “optimality”.

Pete Mockaitis
I always have to spell it on the phone. I mostly do business as How To Be Awesome At Your Job for that reason, but, yeah.

Don Yaeger
No, greatness for me was… I love sharing a little bit of the story because I’m so grateful to my father. But when I was graduating from college, leaving for my first job, I’m there with my dad, we’re in Indiana, I’m getting ready. My car’s loaded up, I’m headed to Texas for that first job out of college. And my father’s just sitting there in the driveway and says, “Don, because you’ve chosen journalism as your career, you are going to end up in the presence of some extraordinary winners, some people who have achieved things that all of us would love to learn from. And you’re going to ask them questions and it’s going to be great. And you’ll write the story and it’ll be awesome. But I hope that somewhere on this journey you’ll stop and ask each one of these people something that will benefit you. Ask them a question that you can learn and grow from.”
That was like Dad wisdom that sometimes you think is silly at 22, and then later in life you go, “Wow, I’m so glad that he said that and I took the wisdom.” So, I began asking the question of the winners and leaders and people of importance that I would study over the course of my time in journalism: “If you could name one habit that allowed you to become what your opponent couldn’t, what even some of your teammates were unable to become, what would that habit be?”
And they became the characteristics of greatness, is what they were called. And I kept a series of notebooks just on the answers that these great winners were giving. And then when I retired from SI a few years ago – I took an early retirement from Sports Illustrated – my first move was to grab those notebooks and start calculating out what answers do great winners give to that question.
And it was interesting how none of the answers were sporting. They weren’t about their physical gift, they weren’t about their knowledge of a game. It was about the development of disciplines that we can all learn from. And I thought that was really kind of cool, that these weren’t sports stories. These were lessons from great winners. Just as you might want to learn a great lesson from a Navy SEAL or a mountain climber, you don’t necessarily have to do those things to appreciate the lesson. That’s what I was getting access to as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is really cool. And so, you’re being humble and modest a smidge here. And we talked earlier about the audience is 50 / 50 sports fans. So, feel free to shamelessly name drop here a little bit. So, you’re talking about truly the tippy top of the great famous legends in their respective sports. So, could you maybe orient us to just a few folks who you spoke with and they said something that really stuck with you?

Don Yaeger
Sure. We’re talking about folks like Michael Jordan. I’ve worked with Michael for many years, and he’s a voracious competitor. He’s one of those people that just loves to scrap. And there’s just so much about him, whether you like him or don’t like him, that you should want to learn from, right? For me, the lesson that he taught me most openly, and maybe the lesson that probably sticks with me even to this day was, he talked about the idea of excuses, and how many of us have found excuses every time we don’t get what we want in our hopes to be something special. And we use those excuses to keep us from being able to achieve something better. He said once to me, “You know, Don, a loss is not a failure until you make an excuse.” And I thought, “Wow, that’s really powerful.” This is a guy who uses the mental strength that comes to him from losing to help make him better. Pretty powerful stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good, yeah.

Don Yaeger
Many of your listeners might be fans of the movie The Blind Side. I had a chance to write the book with Michael Oher, the player who was the centerpiece of that movie. And there’s Michael – this kid comes from nothing. One of 13 children to a drug-addicted mom, and slept outside because she would be on binges and would lock him and his brothers and sisters out of their apartment, their housing project apartment.
And yet, when he became successful, when he signed a contract worth millions of dollars – changes the trajectory of his life – the place that he was the very next morning at 6:30 a.m. was the workout facility that he knew, was the facility that allowed him to get there, to get to the top. He was there working out again the day after he signs the contract.
And the reason was because he is a complete believer that the second you start resting on your laurels and you get comfortable with what you’ve achieved, somebody passes you. And he didn’t want to be that guy. So, pretty awesome to have the chance to rub elbows, go eye-to-eye with some of these folks and learn lessons from them.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really cool, yeah. So, you’ve also written many books, and one of them is about great teams. And you mention things high-performing organizations do differently. We love high-performing over here. So, could you share with us what are some of the main themes and findings there?

Don Yaeger
Oh yeah. So, when I retired from Sports Illustrated, when I took that early buy out 10 years ago, I began doing speaking engagements for a number of companies. One of those companies that hired me regularly was Microsoft, and one of their senior executives said, “We love the discussion of individual high performance, but we want to know why sometimes can win year in and year out. Why are some teams capable of being regularly relevant?”
And so I went on a journey. I took five years to research this next book, which was about great teams. Just sitting down with the best businesses and the best sporting organizations in North America to talk about sustained excellence. And the number one answer that came up was that the best teams understand their “Why”. They have a sense of purpose. They know who they’re in service of, they know why it matters.
They don’t just know it generically; they can put a face on who they service. And when you can do that, your team shows up to work differently. And again, whether this is a sporting team or a business team, they show up to work differently if they have that sense of who they’re in service of and they can feel that person. And that’s a real driver; it’s a fantastic conversation. I love doing it with audiences, but I loved writing it in that book as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you talk about they show up differently, can you maybe paint a picture, in terms of when you’ve got a clear “Why”, what that looks, sounds, feels like, versus when you’ve got maybe a fuzzy or a lack of “Why”?

Don Yaeger
Sure. I’ll give you a perfect example. One of the companies I’ve studied was a medical device company out of Minneapolis, called Medtronic. Medtronic makes devices that are implanted in people that keeps them alive. And during one of my interviews with the long-time CEO of that company, I was asking how the company grew from 10,000 employees to 40,000 employees.
So, as a consultant you know what happens when a company grows that exponentially – the culture of the organization fades, profit and loss seems to become the dominant theme and conversation. And yet, this company was growing at those numbers and still remained one of America’s great places to work. And I wanted to know how he did that.
And he said, “Yeah, I’ll tell you. There’s a number of things we did, but one of the most important was that we began a conversation that occurred every year at an annual company event, where for one hour we would take to the stage six families that are held together today because of Medtronic devices keeping one of them alive. And we would give the microphone to these families and let them talk to our employees.”
And he said every year there was some young woman who takes the mic and looks at the audience and says, “Thank you. Because your device did everything you promised it would, my daddy walked down the aisle this summer.” He said every year some young man did the same thing – he said, “Because your device is awesome, my grandfather was with us a Thanksgiving and they told us he wouldn’t be.” And he said at the end of that, they actually took the six families in the back of the room, they lined them up at table and they let all these folks come back there and they autographed pictures, just like they were rock stars. And those pictures hang all over the buildings at Medtronic.
And he said, “The reason this is important is that those people are our ‘Why’. It’s not about profit, it’s not shareholders. And yet, we don’t actually really sell to them.” Medtronic, they don’t sell to families. They sell to doctors and hospitals. He said, “But to know our ‘Why’, we had to find a way to get connected to it. And this event was how we connected.” And they did it every year, because they had turnover and the employees needed to be reminded.
But being connected, putting a face on the “feel it” moment that can occur for you when someone looks at you and says, “Thank you, you let my daddy walk me down the aisle” – it’s unforgettable and it’s game-changing. And they show up to work differently because that’s who they’re in service of. They’re not in service of some CEO or some manager or some bean counter. They’re in service of a young woman who got to walk down the aisle.

Pete Mockaitis
That is powerful and awesome. And so, it’s different six families each year? They’ve got lots of customers; I imagine they can keep bringing new faces.

Don Yaeger
Yeah, different six families each year.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. So that is awesome.

Don Yaeger
By the way, I hope I’m okay with the 50% of your audience that are not sports fans.

Pete Mockaitis
[laugh] Absolutely, very good. And what percentage is crying right now, while we’re talking segmentation? I’m tearing up a bit myself over here, in all candor. So that’s huge. And I’m thinking the natural response is, “Okay. Well, Don, I don’t work for a cool company that’s saving lives, extending lives. Our impact is maybe a little bit more subtle or less viscerally big-feeling, not so much someone’s going to be alive to walk a daughter down the aisle or to be at Thanksgiving.”

Don Yaeger
That’s where I disagree. I think that the only way you can say that, if what you’re arguing is you work at a company that offers no value to society. And my guess is all of us, if we really try to break it down, could argue that we’re engaged and changing the world in our own way. So, how do we create those moments, or what do those moments look like for us?
I’m telling you, Pete – in the last two and a half years since I’ve been doing this presentation and since we wrote that book – I’ve yet to encounter a company where when they give me 20 minutes of time, I can’t walk them backwards into finding that young woman that stands on the front. It might look different; it might be seen differently than that. It might not just be around your product; it might be about what you do corporately for your community. It wouldn’t occur if you organizationally didn’t come together and work together. It might be the way that you interact with each other as teammates.
I own a company in Tallahassee; we have 18 employees. Not very big. You could argue we’re not in the business of saving lives or doing anything else. Part of the company is involved in public relations, the other part is my book writing and my speaking. We’re not saving lives. But what we set out to do a couple of years ago was we actually challenged every employee in our company to name for me one thing that we could do for you collectively, so that you knew we cared about you individually. And every two months we take a Friday afternoon off and we go in service of one of the members of our team.
One of our guys – our IT guy… And by the way, anybody that’s ever worked with IT guys knows that first off, they can find jobs anywhere they want to find because right now everybody’s in search of a good IT guy. But secondly, they’re sometimes a little quirky, a little difficult. And so our IT guy said, “You know what? I’ll tell you.” And we all knew that his grandmother had passed away just a couple of months earlier. But he said, “My grandmother lived two amazing years at the end of her life at this unbelievable nursing home, where they cared for her in ways that were so cool. And I want to do something for the nursing home.”
And so, we took off an afternoon as a company and we went and we served meals to the entire staff of that nursing home. And in between meals, they told us stories about his grandmother. And he told us stories about his grandmother. And we know him better because we are part of an organization that feels each other. And in a zero unemployment world where he could find a job anywhere, I promise you, this guy doesn’t want to go to work somewhere else. He doesn’t want to show up different. He wants to show up here, because he knows we care about him. That’s the choice. That’s what this kind of conversation really has within an organization.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And so, the question there is, “Name one thing we could do for you.” Then one way that you’ve implemented that is every other month taking a day off. Mathematically, I’m thinking that’s six days in a year and 18 people at the company.

Don Yaeger
That’s an expense.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Don Yaeger
It’s not a cheap choice, but you know what? We have zero turnover within our organization. You know the cost of turnover, right? We have zero turnover within our organization, and we have high employee engagement. We work diligently at it, and it’s not something you do once a year. It’s got to be an ongoing part of the culture of the organization you’re creating.

Pete Mockaitis
So I’m loving the particular applications of the “Why”. So we’re getting a face to who you’re in service of, and that could be your customer, your end consumer, your colleagues, your community. And then you’re asking specifically, ”What’s something that we could do for you?”, and then putting that service into action. What are some other practices that bring this “Why” to life?

Don Yaeger
To that secondary piece, about your community – how many of us work at organizations that regularly are contributing to charities within your community? Awesome. But you know what? Do you really feel that? It feels good to read the newspaper that your company gave X dollars to something. What if instead of just giving X dollars to something, we said, “You know what? We want to meet somebody who’s the beneficiary of what we get a chance to do here.”
And if that means that instead of just giving money to Toys for Tots, you’re actually going together as a team to deliver gifts to a family at Christmas – those are the collected experiences that bond people together in ways that are really cool. They’re the ways that teams come together and they’re the ways that instead of just stroking a check, we’re allowing the organization to benefit, because of an effort we were already going to make. Now we get to feel it, right? We get to feel it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. So, I’d love to get your view then, in terms of the components of the “Why”. You can see it in practice by engaging with those faces. You spelled out some subcomponents – who we’re in service of, why it matters. Are there any kind of key questions that you suggest teams reflect upon in order to zero in on the resonant “Why” and to flush it out all the more powerfully?

Don Yaeger
In working on this exact program and after having worked with a number of teams both in business and sports that had made that sense of purpose a centerpiece of who they are… I live in Tallahassee, Florida, and a professor at the Florida State University College of Business who’s really extraordinary in this space of team building actually put some academic research work into helping me create a list of questions that you could ask your team if you wanted to try to get your sense of “Why”, if you wanted to understand what do they think, why do they think we matter.
It’s one thing for a leader – for me as the CEO of the team, or the president of the organization to say, “Here’s why we matter.” It’s another if we sit and we go around the table and everybody answers the question. But sometimes they’re uncomfortable answering it around the table, so we wrote out a series of questions. I’ll tell you, I wasn’t intending to do this, but I would be glad to. Pete, I can either give you my email address now, at the end, whatever you want, and anybody who’s listening to this, if they put your name in the subject line, I’ll send them those questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Could you maybe give us just a taste right now, in terms of one or two of them?

Don Yaeger
I think so. The first big question is that – if you were asked, “Who are we in service of and why does it matter?” I did it within my own company. When they go around the room and they answer that question, the variance that you get is really amazing, because then you start to ask yourself, “Gosh, if they don’t know who we’re in service of, then, man, it’s my job to do” – just like that CEO of Medtronic – “It’s my job to figure out how they get it. And if I can’t help them get to an understanding of that question…” But you have to start by finding out what they think.
Now, if you asked the question to 15 teammates and they all say the same thing – kudos! Seldom happens, but it starts by just getting there. Why does what we do matter? What happens to this community if we go away? And these are really insightful questions. If they answer them well, you really do walk away with an understanding that, “Man, I’ve got work to do.” But you know where you’re starting from as a team, if people are all over the place. Let’s draw for ourselves a picture of the person that we’re in service of. What does that look like?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I’m curious, in your particular instance, what were some of the range of responses you got, and then what do you do with that, in terms of, “Oh, I think this is the right answer”, or how do you steer or navigate that?

Don Yaeger
Well, what you do is you bring all the answers in, put them up on a big whiteboard and then we start talking about them. And I’m not calling anybody out. I’m fascinated by why we’re not on the same page. And I’m okay with it. We don’t have to all parrot each other, but it would be nice if collectively we believed, “This is the avatar of who we are serving.” So, what we ultimately realized is that…

Again, part of my business writes books. Part of my business speaks, either helps put me on stages. Part of my business builds virtual learning programs that I get a chance to teach. Part of my business helps other people tell their story through public relations. So what we realized was our commonality was that we want to be world-class storytellers. And we are in service of those who give us a chance to tell stories. And so, we want to be the best storytellers we can be, and to do that we have to be really good at what we do, but we also have to engage with people who have world class stories to tell.
And so, the further we got into that conversation, everybody gets this sense of purpose around, “Wow, you’re right, man.” Anyway, people began to get this sense that they’re working in a special environment. And you could argue that’s partially my fault that that wasn’t patently evident, just because they’re working for me. But at the end of the day, everybody gets caught up in doing their own thing, and sometimes they forget about the value that the team gets to bring.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome, thank you. So, the book has a subtitle: 16 Things High Performing Organizations Do Differently. We’ve mostly talked about one, and I’m fine with that, but I’d love it if you could maybe also share if that’s the big one – zeroing in on the “Why”, are there any that you would say offer just a big bang for your buck, in terms of a quick win, where it’s like, you know what, if you can just knock out this little annoying thing, it makes a huge difference?

Don Yaeger
The one that really stood out to me that kind of surprised me… So we have back-to-back chapters in the book and sessions in this program that I do, where the great teams aspire, strive to build camaraderie within the organization. That makes total sense. Everyone believes we should have camaraderie. First off, it’s important to define what camaraderie is – an understanding and appreciation for each other.
But then the second piece of that was, camaraderie sounds cool, but it doesn’t always happen. So, what’s the flip side of that? Which is dysfunction. And if we know that dysfunction is real… And it happens in any organization that’s high-performing. Any high-performing organization has dysfunction within it. So the big question is, how do we shorten the lifecycle of the dysfunction?
And the biggest piece of that is opening by, the great teams see dysfunction differently. Most of the rest of us put our hands over our ears or cup our eyes and, “Let’s see no evil, hear no evil. Let’s try to avoid this.” The great ones address it openly and see it as actually a sign of passion. We possess people that have passion, so let’s use that as a strength as opposed to a negative. And how do you manage dysfunction? The best teams do it; they don’t let it overtake the mission, and as a result they are able to get back on track more quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, so you just take a bright light to, “All right, what’s dysfunctional and how do we get out of it quickly?” And so those are your key questions. Any other prompts that make a big impact?

Don Yaeger
You mean another characteristic?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh no, I mean in terms of getting to the bottom of that dysfunction.

Don Yaeger
The key is that you have to have leaders who are willing to be uncomfortable, because addressing dysfunction in an organization is an uncomfortable position. And if you know that we have two people within the team who are regularly sniping at each other, that are regularly just taking backdoor shots at each other, talking about each other – you as the leader, someone, has to take control of the situation.
Pull those two people together and say, “Look, I get it. I don’t need you to hang out, but I need you to be respectful. What is it about her that you cannot respect? What is it about him that you cannot abide? Talk to me. We’re going to talk this out and we’re not leaving this room until we do. Or if we do, not all three of us will be leaving this room.” And you have to be willing to do so. That willingness to take it on, which most people do not want to do, because it’s nasty, it’s messy, it’s uncomfortable…

Pete Mockaitis
“We’re hoping it’s just going to take care of itself, Don.”

Don Yaeger
And it never does. It only gets worse, right? So, don’t be foolish. The best teams are not foolish. And so, it’s not about just shining a bright light; it’s about literally engaging in conversation.

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

Don Yaeger
Ah, no. The only one of these other characteristics on high-performing teams that really stood out was that the best teams have a mentoring culture within the organization. Not a mentoring program, but a mentoring culture. It’s that belief that those of us who might’ve been around a little longer are actively engaged in helping to raise up those who might not have been here as long, to understand. And those who might be younger might be teaching those of us who are a little older about ways to do things more efficiently. But it has to be a cultural value within those great teams, that allows mentoring to become a part of how you see each other.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, thank you. Well now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Don Yaeger
My favorite quote comes from a legendary basketball coach named John Wooden. And he used to love to say, “Make each day your masterpiece.” And that fascinated me because it’s such a simple quote: “Make each day your masterpiece.” It’s five words. But it’s the hardest advice someone can give you, because it means that in order for today to be a masterpiece day, I have to prepare well. I have to actually show up well, I have to deliver on commitments. In order to make today a masterpiece, it’s a lot of work, but if I do it and I string a few of those together, I’ve got a pretty good week. And so, focus on today and make today a masterpiece. Really incredible. My favorite quote.

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

Don Yaeger
Probably this research on great teams. We all see great teams and we know what they look like when we work for one or maybe we played on one. But what is it about the magic? And what do those who have been engaged in them say? That was probably my favorite thing.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Don Yaeger
It’s funny. This one usually surprises people when I get asked that, but I don’t read much fiction. But I had the opportunity a few years ago, I was invited to be part of a two-person book signing in Charlotte, North Carolina. And the other person was Nicholas Sparks, and he wrote a book called The Notebook that he gave to me when he and I talked about my mother, who suffered Alzheimer’s. And I still read it at least once a year, because it allows me to think about my mom, which is pretty awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something you use that helps you be awesome at your job?

Don Yaeger
Probably my favorite tool is… I’m an incessant thinker. I’m always thinking of some crazy idea or something. And so I have a quick recording tool on my phone that allows me to quickly capture and share crazy ideas, which I have often in the middle of the night divided them between the folks that get to work with me. And we are regularly trying to grow what we do and expand our influence. But anyway, it’s a neat way for me to be able to do it. No matter what’s happening, no matter where I’m driving or where I’m traveling, I could share things really quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s the name of it?

Don Yaeger
I was afraid you were going to ask me that as I was telling you about it, because I wasn’t prepared for that question. And I don’t have my phone in here so I don’t know the name. I literally have it as a single button on my phone, so I am embarrassed to acknowledge that I don’t know it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, no worries. If you could just let me know and I’ll include that in the show notes.

Don Yaeger
Awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
We’ll get that going. I use OmniFocus myself for that kind of thing, and it is awesome. I’ll find I have 100 plus ideas just randomly surface – anything and everything from, “Do they have nannies on resorts? Find one. Find such a resort, that’d be fun.” So, it’s cool. Great, and how about a favorite habit?

Don Yaeger
A favorite habit is, I love closing each day with trying to… I’m a man of faith, so a big piece of closing each day for me is a little reading of the Bible. And I’ve got a pretty good prayer sequence that I try to go through every night to make sure I’m covering that piece of my life and reminding myself how important it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’ve used two of my favorite words next to each other – prayer and sequence. So if you’re able to disclose, what are some of the components there?

Don Yaeger
Well, I begin by sharing my gratefulness and recognizing how fortunate I am for all that I’ve been blessed with. Then I try to focus on those I know to be in need and try to think about things I hope or pray for for them. And then, I always close with talking about my family. And it’s interesting, because I used the word “talking about”, because that’s kind of the way I look at it. You know what I mean? So, that’s the way I round it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you. And tell me, is there a particular nugget you share in your speeches or books that really seems to connect, resonate, get quoted back to you, retweeted, etcetera?

Don Yaeger
Yeah. It’s that phrase that I think I used earlier, when we were talking about some of the folks that I get a chance to work with. Michael Jordan, when he was sharing this lesson to me, saying, “A loss is not a failure until you make an excuse” – that comes back up often, because that’s really impactful. Even the great ones lose, but the great ones know how to keep losing in perspective, and they learn something from losing. And that’s a real game-changer for many people when they hear it, because a lot of times we don’t associate losing with some of those folks, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And Don, tell me – if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Don Yaeger
So, my website is DonYaeger.com. I’m active on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, so I regularly respond. In fact, I spent a good piece of this morning responding to different questions and requests that were on those four mediums. So those are probably the easiest place for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Don Yaeger
I think that the challenge… When I thought about the model of what you’re building here, Pete, and the question – the reason I brought up the Michael Jordan quote twice is because I think that’s the differentiator between the good and the great, especially at work, is a willingness to not go looking for an excuse every time something doesn’t go your way. And then if they’re committed to stopping the vicious cycle of excuses that seems to wave over all the rest of us – if you can stop making excuses when things don’t go your way, I think you’ll find a degree of opportunity that’s off the charts.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Don, thank you so much for sharing this. Your compassion and just caringness shines right through, and it’s powerful and it’s a real treat. So, I wish you tons of luck with your books and your speaking and your companies, living out the “Why”, and just all you’re up to!

Don Yaeger
Pete, thank you very much, buddy.

Sep 14
0

345: The Simple Solution to Disengagement with Dr. Bob Nelson

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Dr. Bob Nelson says: "Every employee's got a $50,000 idea if you can find a way to get it out."

Dr. Bob Nelson reveals the drivers behind disengagement–and what to do about them.

 

You’ll Learn:

  1. Just how critical recognition is
  2. Key reasons managers don’t give more encouragement
  3. Five ways to reward employees at low or no cost

About Bob

Dr. Bob Nelson is a leading advocate for employee recognition and engagement worldwide and the only person who has done a PhD dissertation related to the topic. He has consulted for 80 percent of the Fortune 500 as well as presented on six continents.  He has sold 5 million books, including 1001 Ways to Reward Employees of which 1001 Ways to ENGAGE Employees is his latest. Dr. Bob has been featured extensively in the national and international media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CBS 60 Minutes, MSNBC, ABC, PBS and NPR about how best to motivate today’s employees.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Dr. Bob Nelson Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Dr. Bob, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Pete, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into this chat in many ways, maybe 1,001 ways or reasons why I’m excited. First, not to be too self-serving, but I’m so curious, you have quite a sentence in your bio: 80% of the Fortune 500 has been one of your consulting clients. Wow. What’s the secret behind this?

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yeah. Have good services, good outreach and keep at it. I’ve been doing this 25 years. Along the way people see what you’re up to and they say, “We need help with that,” or “We want your message to go to all our leaders,” or some version of that.

It’s a lot of fun. I really love it, to be able to help someone, a company that maybe can’t see the forest for the trees and they’re in the middle of it and they’re being hammered by different vendors and they’re not sure – they lose their focus and I can help them get their bearings and go through the sea of choices and end up with really what they’re after.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. Not to turn this into a marketing podcast, but tell me about the consistent outreach part.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Oh, I think anyone knows that you have to keep at it for – regardless of how successful your business or your book or whatever you’re doing. I’m constantly promoting. Every time you speak, you’re promoting. Every time you’re consulting, you’re promoting. If you lose sight of that, then you’re going to hit a dry spot.

You hear about people, they’ve got a big consulting project for AT&T for three years and then that runs out and they’ve got no business. You’ve got to be constantly putting out lines. I believe that.

Another thing I believe that as a small business owner, I’ve got kind of a cottage industry in employee motivation and engagement, but within that there’s different strategies that you have to – you can’t just do one thing. You’ve got to be doing different things. I’m not sure – any given year I’ll do five or six major strategies. I’m not sure which ones will hit better, but two or three of them will and it will be – it will keep me busy and provide adequate funding.

I’m a believer in you’ve got to be promoting and you’ve got to be trying different things. You’ve got to be innovating because the market changes, tools change, technology changes. Now we have a whole new generation coming up, so they may not know the things that could help that – from people before them, from research that’s come before them. There’s a lot of – it doesn’t stay static. That’s makes it go a little bit exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
That is exciting. What I appreciate about that, and thanks for going there, is for our listeners who are not small business owners or marketing professionals, I was kind of inspired by what you said there in terms of you try five or six things a year, two or three of them hit. In other words, the minority or less than 50% by a slight margin. That’s just sort of encouraging in terms of trying stuff. Even super rock stars might miss more often than they hit.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yeah. You talk to anyone that’s had success and there’s a certain element of luck in there, but as Mark Twain said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

I think that for any artist, for a record producer, a song producer, a book producer, you take your bestselling product – or for any company, if any – I was just talking with Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40. They’ve got a fantastic product. It’s a 500 million dollar company. They’re in 300 countries.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s all of them just about. That is more than is represented in the UN I believe. Impressive.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re right on that, but there’s – that was a – but they’re all over the globe. They – talking to them, they’re not resting on their laurels. They constantly, “What are we going to do new this year? What are we going to do-“ They’re using their tax refund to do more on social media.

It’s just you’re constantly refocusing. You’re constantly trying to maximize because we all have limited time, limited resources, limited marketing budgets, so what’s the best position. Because no matter what you do, you’ve got to be doing a little bit of experimenting all the time to test the waters for the next idea.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool. Thank you. Now I want to dig in a little bit. Your company is Nelson Motivation. You’ve got a book called 1,001 Ways to Engage Employees.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That is a lot of ways.

Dr. Bob Nelson
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s kind of the main idea behind the book?

Dr. Bob Nelson
The main idea of 1,001 Ways to Engage Employees is the fact that we’re in a time where we need people engaged more than ever before, yet it’s at an all-time low. Since the field has come around in the last 20 years, essentially started by Gallup and their longitudinal research came up with what was called the Q12, 12, a dozen key variables that differentiate high performing companies from their average competitors.

Wow, great idea. They’re excellent at measuring engagement. This is the state of the field now that we have a good bead on it. We don’t have enough of it. We need more of it. It’s currently costing our country, our economy 420 billion dollars a year. Wow, bring it on. Although they’re good at measuring, they’re not so good at impacting it, at creating greater engagement.

I kind of looked at that and said, well, I don’t know much, but I know if 20 years into it we have the same number of engaged employees as 20 years ago, the same number of disengaged and actively disengaged employees, give or take one percent, then whatever we’re trying to do isn’t doing it.

I’m trying to bring a practical hands-on approach saying stop measuring and start doing it. Start focusing on the behaviors that gets you the results. This book is about-

Pete Mockaitis
…. Sorry, go ahead.

Dr. Bob Nelson
This book is about doing that. I took the research-based top ten variables, factors, if you will, that most impact employee engagement and systematically with each one of them I show the reader what it looks like through examples and practices currently being done by successful companies.

It’s just a book of practical positive wisdom that can help move the needle for your organization, whether you manage one person, a group, or have responsibility for the whole organization, you can start heading in the right direction where you can get better and better to have a more highly engaged workforce.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d love to dig into first the data piece for a moment. I – we talked about engagement a few times on the show. I’ve received more than 100 pitches from PR folk pointing to the crisis of low engagement.

Dr. Bob Nelson
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
And how so-and-so would be a great person to talk to. You made it in though. You passed the gauntlet. But what you point out, which is kind of interesting from a historical context perspective, is you say, “Hold up now. Gallup’s been tracking this thing for 20 years and it’s been just about the same for all 20 years.”

Dr. Bob Nelson
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
So this is not a new crisis that we are thinking about. It’s just sort of like the state of work for two decades.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yeah. Well, it’s a little bit the emperor’s not wearing clothes. It’s sort of like, if you want to measure it again this year and compare it to last year and look at each other and say, “Well, it really hasn’t changed that much,” and flip the page and look at the next variable, then do it for the next ten years.

But if you really want to change what’s going on in your organization, where you start to impact the behaviors of your leaders that impact how employees feel about working there, you’ll start getting different results, a different buzz, a different excitement that will be contagious.

Let’s go down that path and do that. Do that for a year or two and then measure. You won’t need to measure. You’re be able to feel the difference of what’s happening.

My book is intent on trying to make that connection. Less talk, less measurement, more here’s what is working now for people trying to make it happen. Here’s the results they got. You can probably do this one too. Give it a try. Not every idea in the book is going to work for you, but if that one doesn’t, flip the page, here’s another one.

The book just came out and I just saw someone yesterday, a head of HR for a large high-tech Fortune 500 company. She just got the book. It was like five days ago. I saw her copy. It had dozens of Post-Its, and tabs, and paper clipped, and folded ears. I’m going, “Yes.”

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yes. She’s in it. That’s – I write books that are meant to be used.

You can – I have managers that say, “Hey, I took your book I passed it around to my workgroup. I had people initial ideas they like in the margin. It doesn’t mean I have to do any of them, but if I want to do something to thank them, to engage them, to tap into their ideas – wow, here’s something that they checked themselves. I can make the connection a little bit easier.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah, that is handy. Kind of outsource a little bit of that decision making. Get that flowing.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Well, the best management is what you do with people, not what you do to them. I’m trying to share the techniques that you can be doing, not as a force people, not to surprise or trick them to working harder, but to say, “Hey, how would it feel around here if we – who feels we need to have more recognition?” If everyone says, “Oh no, we’re fine,” then forget about it, but I haven’t seen that happen yet.

Actually, if you’ve got any credibility with them, someone’s going to raise their hand and say, “Well, boss, I’ve just had it up to here with you telling me how good I am.” That’s not going to happen.

You’re going to find out about, “You’re quick to find mistakes. You’re kind of, truth be known, a little bit of a micromanager. You actually – through your behaviors you show that you don’t trust us. That’s why you get us very defensive trying to minimize our commitment, so we’re not the person that you find fault with.”

We’re spending more time KYA and protecting ourselves and emails to show that wasn’t our decision and stuff like that instead of tapping into improving processes and serving the clients and ideas for saving money.

It’s all around us. Which way – where do you want people focused? Well, if you want to lead the charge, you’ve got to start getting in front of them and catching them doing things right that are in line with the goals of your group, and the organization. That will naturally bring out more of that behavior.

The greatest management principle in the world is you get what you reward, what you thank someone for, what you inspect, what you acknowledge, what you incentivize-

Pete Mockaitis
Measure.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Which is the best way of telling them on the front end what you’ll do for them on the back end if you get the results you wanted. You do any form of that, you’re going to get more of that behavior. Not just from that person, but from other people that saw you do it or heard about it.

As you systematically send the message, “This is the type of thing that gets noticed around here. This is the type of thing that we’re talking about. The excitement about how Tony achieved the goals that we were after or the core value so important our company’s success.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s a great lay of the land there. I’m curious in your example there, you sort of spoke from the vantage point of sort of an individual employee sort of sharing with manager, “Hey, here’s actually what’s up and what’s going awry.”

I’d love to get your take to speak to that person first. If we’re talking about an individual contributor, who’s feeling disengaged at work right now, what do you think that one individual should do when they find themselves surrounded by a vibe that is not so engaging?

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yes. Well, that’s a great question. It’s very on point because the forward for my book is done by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, who’s the – considered the number one coach in the world. What he wrote about was who owns engagement.

It was fantastic because the way we have it – and again, going back to Gallup, if you ask people, “Are you getting enough recognition? Do you – are we giving you the skills you need? Do you have adequate authority? Are we doing the right things?” It’s very, very easy to say, “Mm, yeah, not really. Why don’t you work on that?”

You do some things. You come back. “Eh, it’s a little better, but work on it more. I’d like more money too.” They’re off the hook. Engagement needs to be owned by every employee.

If you’re not getting the recognition you feel you deserve, bring that up to your boss. Have a discussion in your group. Bring an idea for how we can start sharing praises to start our staff meeting.

I worked with ESPN and they had a manager that said, “Whenever we start a staff meeting we always start the same way. We start with listing, as a group, five things that are going well. Usually it’s pretty easy, but sometimes it’s not. We’re kind of struggling on some stuff. We still don’t skip that step until we name five things as a group because that’s our touchstone. That’s our homeroom that allows us to take on the next challenge.”

Or I worked last fall with NASA Johnson Space Systems in Houston, which is ranked the number one best place to work in federal government, by the way. Didn’t surprise me in the least because you could feel it walking into the place. You could see it on the walls, how people talked to each other. You could feel a culture that’s positive and people are engaged.

One of the things that they do that I loved is that whenever they have a manger meeting, here’s 20 managers and they always save, as is their custom, 10 minutes at the end of the meeting to go around the room and ask everyone to share something they’ve done to recognize someone on their team since we last have been together. Wow, ten minutes. They said you could just feel the energy and pride of the group rise.

They said they noticed something else that their leaders will take notes on each other’s ideas. “That’s a great one, Tony. I’m going to try that.” They’re constantly becoming better and better. They’re becoming – they’re a self-learning organization on the concepts that made them great to begin with. I love it. I love it.

There’s so many organizations that are kind of stuck in the mud and the problem is somewhere else’s and not theirs and everyone is pointing fingers at each other. It’s more of a blame game. You’ve got to get out of that – you’ve got to get out of that hole and start looking at the power of positive consequences and how to systematically bring them to bear in whatever you’re trying to achieve.

I’m talking a lot about what actually turns out to be, from the research, the number one variable that most impacts engaged employees: recognition. 56% of what causes engagement comes from people feeling valued, praised, thanked from their manager, from those they work with, from upper management, privately, publically, in writing, in emails, whatever.

It’s a constant. It’s a constant. It’s not something once at the end of the year at the Christmas party. It’s not, “Hey, I’ll praise you when I start seeing something worthy of it. Just assume that you’re doing a good job unless you do otherwise because I’m going to be all over you when you make a mistake.” That’s the natural tendency by management.

In fact, I worked with Ken Blanchard, who wrote The One-Minute Manager, for ten years. He used to say the leading style of management in America is – he called it ‘leave alone, zap.” We leave people. We don’t give them great direction or tools or support, but we let them have it when they make a mistake. We zap them and then we keep going back. We hardly ever use the tools that most drive, most pull the performance and those are the positive consequences, which are all around us every day.

I like opening people’s eyes to that. In my original 1,001 Ways book, 1,001 Ways to Reward Employees, I just had this epiphany that said this is the most proven principle of management. It’s easy to do the best forms of it. They have no cost.

I actually did my doctoral dissertation on a simple question: why don’t managers do this? I did a three-year study to try to … common sense notion, but common sense isn’t often common practice. As Voltaire said in the 17th century, so is the case today that the things that sound like common sense –

A lot of times I’ll talk to a group and I’ll say “The things I’m going to share with you, I know you can do. I’m not here to see – I already know that. That’s a given. I’m here to say, ‘Will you do them? How will you hold yourself accountable as an individual, as a member of the team, as an organization to this standard?’”

Now I worked with Disney organization for 15 years. To work there, they had a standard for leadership. They didn’t care how you were managed where you came from, what you bring with you in your own suitcase. “Yeah, yeah, that’s nice. Here’s how we manage here. If you want to be a manger, you’ve got to do these things.” Then they hire for it. They train for it. Then they evaluate leaders for it.

If someone doesn’t do it, they’ll call them out and say, “Hey, maybe you thought we were kidding about this or we’re just going through the motions, but we’re serious. You need to do these things. You need to be a visionary. You need to be supportive. You need to be a cheerleader. You need to be a career developer. Your job as a leader is to help other people be successful.”

Peter Drucker, my professor, defined the role of management as getting the work done through others, not doing – being a super worker and doing it yourself, not running yourself ragged, not chewing people out until they do it right, but getting the work done through them, which means helping them, which means showing them, which means encouraging them, counseling them, whatever it takes.

If we’re really stuck and we’re up against it, I’m going to take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves and dig in with you. We’re in this together. It’s wherever people are at, showing them what it looks like to get in the game.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. There’s so much I want to dig into there.

Dr. Bob Nelson
I know, you can ask me one question, I’ll talk for an hour.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Let’s-

Dr. Bob Nelson
I’ll try to keep it short.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to talk about – so recognition is the biggie.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yes. ….

Pete Mockaitis
You spent three years studying why don’t managers do it. I want to hit that on from two angles. One, in fact why don’t managers do it? And two, again, if you are that individual contributor and you’re not getting it, how can you have that conversation? What’s sort of like the best practice or script or means of asking for it well so you don’t seem like, “Oh my gosh, what a whiney, needy, whatever person,” so to avoid that kind of reaction.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Okay. Well the 20-second survey on my three-year study is why managers don’t do it. Number one, they weren’t sure how to do it well. Number two they really didn’t believe it was that important as the research indicates. Number three, they didn’t feel they had time. Who has time to do things they don’t believe are important to begin with?

They didn’t feel anyone did it for them, so when they start getting it, they’ll start giving it. They’re afraid of leaving people out. They didn’t feel the organization supported it. The list kind of goes on, a whole list of really excuses where, “It’s not my job; it’s HR’s job or the CEO’s job or corporate’s, any of them but me.” That’s – there’s a lot of people, that can’t. No.

For those leaders that use recognition, there’s just one thing going on and that is to a person, the common denominator, they internalize the importance of doing recognition. They felt that as a leader of a group that they’re in charge of the motivational environment for the people that work for them, not the CEO, not HR, not corporate, but them. It’s their baby. They believe that they have to impact that.

Their beliefs they started – our behaviors follow our beliefs. Their beliefs are not “This is a waste of time. I’ve got better things to do.” They go, “This is the most important thing I need to do.” To be a leader, you are a person that is inspiring others. Everything else is mechanical. Anyone can do that. Not everyone could be a leader.

They believe that to the point where it impacted their behavior. They actively looked for opportunities to recognize people when they did a good job. Not just be nice, but contingent. When they did a good job, displayed the proper behavior, the core values, got the results, finished the project, whatever it is.

They’re constantly in their day scanning for that, when they’re reading, when they’re talking to people, when they’re in meetings, when they’re in the hallway.

Then when they hear or see something about a good job that was done, they act on that thought. They don’t make a mental note, “Oh Jerry did it again. He’s one of my best people.” They actually say something to Jerry or bring it up at the meeting or jot him a note or an email. They do something to connect back with the person that did the performance.

There you go. That’s the long and short of it. They try to do that every day. Not every person every day, but every day someone. That becomes part of their behavior – they’re behavioral repertoire, I like to say, of how they manage. They’re constantly on the lookout and acting to make the connection.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. I like that notion that hey, every day there’s going to be some act of recognition. Your other book 1,501 Ways to Reward Employees, you’ve got many in mind. Can you share what have you found to be some of the most powerful and simple means of doing that, such as maybe the biggest bang for your buck recognition practices?

Dr. Bob Nelson
Sure, yes. Well, let me tell you and you’re going to love this because the most powerful forms of recognition and engagement for that matter, tend to be the things that have little or no cost.

When someone says, “We don’t have the money to motivate people here,” they’re assuming we’ve got to pay them more, we’ve got to throw a big party. Last year it was a buffet, so this year it’s got to be sit-down. They’re chasing this dream. Whatever they’re doing, they’re spending more and more money. Years of service awards. They’ll start doing stuff around people’s birthdays.

It’s like, no, that’s not where it’s at at all. Where it’s at is behavior. You’ve got to show people that they’re important to you through your actions and the things you say and do.

Number one on the list is a simple thank you, a simple praise. Be a leader that is quick to catch someone doing something right and to call them out for it in a positive way, one-on-one in front of others even when they’re not around, knowing that word will get back to them, etcetera.

Jot a note, send an email, text them on their cell phone, do a company announcement, call their mother and tell them what a great job their kid’s doing and thanks for bringing them up right. I know managers that have done that.

Let me tell you, there’s a lot of stuff like that “Oh, that sounds silly.” It’s not silly to the mother that got that call. The next conversation she had with her son or daughter, it wasn’t silly to him either. It made their month. It’s like, wow, what a cool thing to do. It’s not hard to tap into it. That whole recognition is a starting point.

Of course you can spend money. If you’re doing something, you can do something more. You can – a simple gift. I work with a company called Snappy Gifts that has just wonderful, unique products all under 20 bucks. You can’t get one and not be delighted by it because it’s just fun and it’s a celebration. On up to point programs and gift cards. A lot of companies do trips for top salespeople. That type of stuff.

There’s no lack of places where you can spend the money, but again, there isn’t – I haven’t found the correlation between the amount of money that is spent and the amount of motivation and engagement that’s going on.

My advice is to start the foundation be the behaviors that are most critical and then you can layer on other stuff as someone really goes above and beyond. That’s number one.

The other things that are truly engaging, again, all no cost, ask people for their ideas and opinions. If they’ve got a good one, give them permission to pursue it. It’s called autonomy. Give them the resources to make it. See if you can help them do it. See if anyone else wants to help them do it.

Having two-way communication is a big one, talked about in the book extensively. If you’re making a decision, involve the people that work for you in that decision, especially those that are going to be impacted by it.

Again, feels like common sense, but a lot of managers, “Oh, I’m the person in charge. I’m the decision maker here.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even say that, “You’ve got to make the final decision. That’s your responsibility. But you know what would be a better decision, if you get impact from your team. That’s why you wanted to ask”

In that simple action of doing it, you’re showing trust and respect. You’re being open. Wow, that’s the type of person everyone wants to work for, that is walking the talk of treating them as a partner on the team, not as a replaceable body.

If someone makes a mistake, already said the natural tendency is for people to jump all over them, embarrass them in front of their peers, prove that you’re the smartest person in the room. Bravo, bravo. They’re getting their resume ready because they can’t take it anymore.

But try this instead. The next time someone makes a mistake, take a breath, take a step back and say, “I don’t think I would have done the same thing, but what did you learn from that? That could be the best training we had for you all year. I’m glad you made that mistake.” Wow.

That manager through his actions is saying there’s something more important going on than something that happened in the last ten minutes or the last day. We have a long-term relationship. You’re important to me. I’m important to you and I hope that’s going to be true for years to come. I’m not going to dump all over you here because you did something wrong. I make mistakes too. Everyone does.

In fact, if you’re not making enough mistakes, you’re not pushing the fold enough. You’re not – it’s a little bit too safe. You’ve got to stretch. You’ve got to try things new. You’ve got to experiment. You’ve got to do something you’ve never done before.

Sometimes that idea can come from the newest person on the team, the person that isn’t biased by all the policies we have and how we’ve been doing it for years and “I’m just wondering, why don’t we try this?” Well, you take that person, new person, any person and you say, “Well, Sally, let me tell you why we don’t do that. We tried it two years ago. It didn’t work. It won’t work now.” “Oh, okay, I’m sorry. Sorry for – it won’t happen again.”

Pete Mockaitis
Don’t you worry. I won’t speak after sharing the ideas.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Right. We’re done. Now she’s going to check her brains at the door. How about saying, “Well Sally, that’s an interesting idea. Why don’t you check into that and see what you come up with?” What did that cost you?

Now because who’s got more energy for an idea than the person who came up with it to begin with. Now Sally may come at it differently than the last person that tried it two years ago. She might do an internet search. She might check with a dozen friends at other companies, “How do you guys handle this?” Who knows what she’s going to do? But she might come back and from her energy and her research do something that does work.

I was working with Johnsonville Food, the maker of great brats up in Wisconsin. They’re CEO, Ralph Stayer, told me that he had his admin once say, “Mr. Stayer” this was back a few years ago. She said, “We have such a great products. I’ve always wondered why we don’t market those more online.”

He said, his inclination to say, “Well, Betty, that’s why upper management is paid the big money. We make those decisions,” but he didn’t say that. He caught himself and said, “Betty, check into that. See what you come up with.”

Fast-forward 18 months later, now Betty, formerly an admin, is now running a new division on online sales, one and a half million dollar product line and growing much larger since then because she had the wherewithal and the support to make it happen.

Every company has that possibility. Every employee, I go so far as to say, every employee’s got a 50,000 dollar idea if you can find a way to get it out. It’s not by shutting them down. It’s not by saying, “Well, that’s not – that’s only a 10 dollar idea. We’re looking for the 50,000 dollar idea.”

Well to get that one or the five million dollar idea, you’ve got to develop a process, which means you’ve got to look for any ideas and acknowledge people for submitting those even if it’s not one we’re going to do or can do. But “I like the way you think. I’m looking for more from you.” Game on because they’re going to come up with them.

Let’s help them. Let’s help everyone on this. Someone in accounting, do a bag lunch next Tuesday, talk about cost-benefit analysis. Whoever wants to learn more about sizing up their ideas, come to the cafeteria. We’re doing a brown bag lunch. Give them the support and tools along the way.

I worked at a company in Connecticut, Boardroom Inc. They have five of the six largest newsletters in the country. They do these large books, hardcover books. They do a thing called ‘I power,’ where they ask every employee, every employee, to turn in two ideas every week.

Well, I talked to …. “Could you do that with your employees, your team, your …?” “Well, of course you can.” “How about next week? Can you do it again?” “Yeah, maybe.” “How about the week after that?” Well, how many ideas can someone have?

This company’s been doing this for 17 years. They ask every employee to turn in two new ideas every week about how can we be better, how can we improve process, how we can save money, how we can delight the customer, how we can get new business. It’s all around us every day. Allow people to grab on and run with it. That’s just one example.

I was there. They got a recent idea they got from the one guy, a shipping clerk, hourly paid employee, one of his two ideas one week was that he said, “Next time, this book we got, this big book that we ship, next time we get it printed by the printer, if we can trim the page size,” he calculated a 16th of an inch, “you’ll fall under the next postal rate. I think we’ll save some money in shipping.”

The CEO said well they looked at. He’s right. They cut up a book and he’s right. They made that one simple change, in the first year alone they saved a half million dollars in shipping costs because of that idea. Their chairman-

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. The 13 ounce threshold, I know it well. It makes a world of difference.

Dr. Bob Nelson
There you go. There you go. The CEO, Marty Edelston, he told me, he said, “Bob, I’ve worked in direct mail for 27 years. I didn’t even know there was a fourth-class postal rate.” But to the kid that’s looking at the chart day in and day out, he knew it. If we could tap into what he sees and what ideas he has, that’s the power.

Doing that simple thing. These are simple concepts, but doing it well. They had a couple false starts and they kept at it. They were able to increase their revenues fivefold in three years just by tapping into the power of ideas from their own employees. There you go.

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

Dr. Bob Nelson
Lay it on me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. How about a favorite quote?

Dr. Bob Nelson
Favorite quote. One of my favorite – I’ve got a lot of favorite quotes. One of them is from Bill Hewlett, cofounder of Hewlett Packer, he said “Men and women want to do a good job, a creative job and if they provided the right environment, they will do so.”

I love that quote because just in one sentence it says where we’ve come from, where we are, where we’re headed today. For the longest time managing in our country was basically telling people what to do. My way or the highway. I’m the person in charge. You take orders; I give them. We don’t need any creative thinking here. We don’t need your – that doesn’t work today.

Today we need everyone in the game because things are changing, environments are changing, competition is changing. Your competitors now might be from Thailand or from a different state. You’ve got to be on the game, which means everyone on it. That’s a keeper.

I want to go back to the other question. I think you’ve asked me twice and I haven’t answered. That is what can an individual employee do if these things – if they’re in a place where these things aren’t happening. My advice on that is to bring it up to your immediate manager and to make the case for it. Even if it’s like recognition that might sound like “I want my own horn tooted.”

I’ve had people tell me that they’ve talked to their boss said, “We’re doing a lot. I love working here. I love working for you. I’d be able to do it better and do more for you if you could tell me when I especially did something well because then I’ll know what to do more of and then – yeah, I could do that boss,” and start doing that. Sure enough, her performance rose accordingly.

It’s – tell them we’re in it together. You can be the employee that shares this with your boss or with the team. Say “I heard this interview, I read this book. It sounded like something that could resonate with us. Could we try some of these things?”

That’s how you get in the game and have the – all work – that same … in Ralph Stayer. He had a quote. He said basically all we’ve got is conversations. Let’s start to impact those conversations. Let’s start having different conversations and not ones where we’re complaining and griping about management and politicking.

Let’s talk about things that are working, and things that we’re excited to be a part of, and what’s in store for us for the future, and how much fun we’re going to have getting there. That all becomes very contagious.

If you’re working in a place where it’s very cynical and it’s negative and everyone’s kind of dragging into work and waiting for Friday and fortunately the commute isn’t too bad, you can shake it up. Anyone can shake it up. I’ve worked with companies that one person, not the CEO, grabbing hold, was able to change a culture.

True story. I was speaking in Seattle to 800 people. Five weeks later I was back and I look at the crowd I go – this woman in the first row I go, “You look really familiar.” She goes, “Yeah, yeah. I heard you speak five weeks ago. I wanted to come back and tell you what happened.” I was like, “Well, what happened?” She goes, “Well-“ she described what she did and it was fun because I said, “Well, what did you-“

She said, “I started using the stuff you talked about. I started doing more recognition with my group.” Oh, she said, “I left with seven pages of notes and one intention. I said I’m not going back and asking permission. I’m going back and doing this.” That’s what she did. She did it in her workgroup.

I go, “Well, like what? What did you do?” She said, “Well, we’re in downtown Seattle. We did a picnic up on the roof. That was kind of fun to celebrate something. We did a barter for meeting space for the company on the next block that had a limo company that didn’t have any meeting space. We let them use our meeting space and they gave us free limo rides that we give people for different things.”

Just on and on and on. Just went for it. As a result, she said a noticeable difference in her group: energized, fun, excited, to the point where other managers are saying, “Hey, what are you doing over there. You people are-“ “Well, hey, come to the next meeting. We’re not trying to hide anything. We’re making stuff happen.”

Literally, this one leader made it happen first in her group and then in her facility and then the company tapped into it. She helped to make it happen across the country to all their facilities. 18 months later, from the first time she heard me speak, they entered the list of best places to work in America, number 23, Perkins Coie, a law firm. It was really through the efforts of one person.

People say, “Well you can change a culture. It takes eight years. It’s got to start at the top,” and this and that. Well, it can do that, but you can also have – one person can change a culture, one determined, focused person.

I have examples – I use examples in my books where that’s done from the bottom, from the middle, from – there’s a lot of ways to get there. That’s kind of the fun of it too. You can create your own journey to being excellent.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Dr. Bob Nelson
I’ve been very influenced by, well, some people I’ve mentioned. Marshall Goldsmith wrote What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There. Brilliant book. Ken Blanchard, The One-Minute Manager. Peter Drucker, Concept of the Corporation. He’s – and on and on.

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

Dr. Bob Nelson
I’ve got a website. That’s probably a good place to start. www.DrBobNelson.com. Go figure, right? That’s DrBobNelson.com.

You can find out – I’ve got a lot of resources and articles posted for free. I’ve got all my books there at discounted prices. I’ve got information about all of my presentations, consulting, etcetera, etcetera, and my contact information, so you can call me, you can send me an email. I try to help everyone that comes my way, if it’s just answering a question or if it’s doing something further.

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

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yeah, I would say, again, as an employee if you want to be awesome, start – do some things different. Start asking your boss what you can do to help them. I probably have managed 30 – 35 employees in my career. I only remember one doing that. It was a breath of fresh air to say –

And something else she was good at too because I would come in and I would be all excited about stuff I’d need to have done and “Katie, can you do this?” She would listen and she goes, “Bob, I’d be delighted to do that. Let me show you what I’m working on now. You let me know which you prefer to have me do.” Then she would – I kind of, “Hm, okay.” Then she’d show me. Every time I’d say, “Oh, keep doing what you’re doing. This can wait until tomorrow or next week,” because she was on it.

That was – basically I’m making the point that whoever your manager is, they’re trainable. You can be the person that trains them. If it’s not working for you, start trying to do something different, starting with talking to that person and give them some input for how they can help you be more effective. More times than not, I think you’ll see a positive response to that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Well, Dr. Bob, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing the goods.

Dr. Bob Nelson
It goes so quick, doesn’t it?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I hope that there’s lot of engagement and rewarding going on for you and your employees and clients and everybody.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yeah, well anytime you want me back, I’d be glad to continue the conversation in all its different forms.

Aug 22
0

336: Building the Mind of a Leader with Jacqueline Carter

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Jacqueline Carter says: "All we have is our mind... That's how we perceive the world; that's how we do great things."

Jacqueline Carter reveals the three qualities of a good leader’s mind and how to build good foundations for those qualities in yourself.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What the American workforce looks for in a career and leader
  2. How to avoid power corrupting you as you rise
  3. The distinction between compassion and empathy–and which one is more helpful

About Jacqueline

With a Master of Science in Organizational Behavior and over 20 years of experience supporting organizations through large scale change, Jacqueline has held a wide range of leadership and consulting roles across a range of industries including transportation, oil and gas, insurance and government. Jacqueline has many years of personal experience with mind training and over the past 10 years has focused on embedding mindfulness practices into daily corporate life.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Jacqueline Carter Interview Transcript

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

Jacqueline Carter
Thank you so much, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to get oriented a little bit to what you’re doing. The Potential Project is a really cool name. What’s it all about and what do you do there?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, thanks so much. So, The Potential Project is a global organization and our passion is helping leaders and organoizations enhance performance and creativity and resilience through understanding and training the mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that sounds awesome. So then, what do you do in there?

Jacqueline Carter
I am a partner with the organization. So as I said it’s a global organization and I work internationally, as well as oversee our operations in North America.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we’re talking about the mind – your latest book is called The Mind of the Leader. What’s the big idea here?

Jacqueline Carter
So, Potential Project – we’ve been in operations for over a decade, and we’ve been very much focused on helping organizations, as I said, enhance performance. And specifically a lot of our work has been on training mindfulness. And I can define what that means, but just really simply it’s training the mind to be able to be more here, now. Less distracted and more focused.
And what we found about two and half years ago is that we were seeing with a lot of the leaders that we were working with that mindfulness training alone wasn’t enough. And we were just seeing that so many leaders we were working with were experiencing such a degree of pressure, they were feeling overwhelmed, there just weren’t enough hours in the day for them to be able to be successful.
And in addition to that, as many of your listeners know, and as I’m sure you know and you’ve had other speakers talk about – but the changing nature of the workforce today. And what we really saw is what we came to call a “leadership crisis”. And we wanted to put our research hats and get into it and try to understand more about what are the challenges that are facing leaders today, and what do they need to be able to be successful, to create more healthy, happy, productive organizations? So that’s the big idea behind the book.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued. So the mindfulness trainings weren’t quite getting the job done. And what was the root behind that? You said there’s just the sheer volume of stressors, or what wasn’t clicking and connecting for folks?

Jacqueline Carter
So the mindfulness training – and for those of you who don’t know, as I said, I can define it just to make sure that we have a common language – but it really is about training the mind to be able to be present. So it’s about being here, now. And what we found was that was critical. If you I aren’t both here, then we might as well not be having this conversation. So, mindfulness is really table stakes, especially for any leader. And certainly for any employee – if you want to be effective you have to be able to be present.
But what we found was certainly with the changing nature of the workforce today is that workers today were looking for more meaning and for more purpose. They were looking for a place where they felt more connected. And when we started looking at the engagement scores, only 13% of the global workforce is engaged, 24% actively disengaged. There was a survey that said that 65% of employees would forgo a pay raise to see their leader fired. And we looked at things like that.
Another survey – a McKinsey study – looked at, 77% of leaders thought they were doing a great job as leaders, but 82% of their employees, not so much. So what we saw was that more than just mindfulness, leaders also needed to look at qualities of being more selfless, and I can also define that, and also brining more compassion into their leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, so that’s intriguing, some of those figures there. So 65% – almost two thirds of people would not take their 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% annual bonus if they could have their leader fired.

Jacqueline Carter
Yes. I’m sure nobody listening was part of that study. But it’s very depressing.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it their immediate boss or the CEO?

Jacqueline Carter
Their immediate boss actually, which is really interesting. But when you talk about CEOs, that’s the other thing that we looked at. The trust index shows consistently that our faith in leaders, and specifically in CEOs, has gone significantly down over the past years. So it’s combining all these things and saying, “What’s going on? What’s happening?” And that’s really what we wanted to find out and that was what our research was all about.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So you’ve identified these three forces there – mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion. So let’s discuss a little bit, in terms of, how does one develop each of these, and what are the benefits and results of deploying them?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, absolutely. And maybe just for a little bit of context in terms of our research, just to give it some weight, as it’s not just me and us folks at Potential Project with some great ideas. We interviewed over 250 C-Suite executives, we surveyed over 35,000 leaders from 72 countries, we engaged with leading researchers and did field work with companies including Accenture and Marriott and Cisco. So I just wanted to give it a little bit of context before I dug into it, because some of these concepts may seem soft or flaky, they may not seem like hardcore business. But what we were really inspired by is how the leaders that we spoke to saw these as being absolutely critical to being successful as a leader today. So is that a good enough backdrop?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, thank you.

Jacqueline Carter
Okay. So, to start off, as I said, with mindfulness. Maybe just one other backdrop – you said how can they cultivate these? So I think the other starting place to look at that is what we know about the brain. And so we’re very much interested in looking at things from a scientific perspective. And what we know about our brain is that it is plastic, so we can actually develop new skills, because of something called neuroplasticity. And so I think that’s the really exciting thing. What we know is that for example even though we may feel distracted all the time, or we may feel stressed or overwhelmed, we can train ourselves to be able to be more relaxed, to be able to be more focused, to be able to be more calm. And there are specific training tools. And that’s really the starting point; that’s what mindfulness is about. And mindfulness training is training the mind to be able to manage your attention.
So one of the things that science tells us is that our mind basically wanders 47% of our waking hours. So what that looks like, just to make it practical for anybody that’s listening – during the time that Pete and I have already been talking, you might have found that you started thinking about what might happen next, or a meeting that you were just in. And basically that’s normal, that’s the way our mind naturally works.
And the key thing about mindfulness training is whether we can be aware that our mind has gone off on a little journey, and whether we have the mental fitness or attentional muscle to be able to say, “No, I really want to listen to this podcast. I’m going to manage my own attention. I’m going to be here, now.” So that’s mindfulness. It sounds simple. For anybody who’s practiced it, it’s simple. It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s training the mind to be able to be more here, now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, what are some of the best practices for building that muscle?

Jacqueline Carter
So you can go to the mental gyms, and that’s a lot of what we do at Potential Project, is we introduce 10 minutes of daily mindfulness training. Just like you would go to a physical gym to be able to develop better, strong physical muscles, you can go to the mental gym to be able to develop basically better attentional muscles. And 10 minutes a day has been shown from a research perspective to significantly help in terms of overcoming the mind’s natural tendency to wander.

Pete Mockaitis
So when we go to the mental gym, what does that consist of?

Jacqueline Carter
Well, in our work, the way we introduce mindfulness training is we like to keep it very, very, very simple and stripped down, because we know that most of us already have enough complexity in our lives. So actually our method is called ABCD – just as simple as you can get. And the A is basically to be able to look at your anatomy and make sure that you’re as relaxed as you can be. The B is about simply focusing on your breath. And again, that sounds simple but it’s not always easy. The C – we invite people to count. So they count their breaths 1 to 10, and then count backwards, 10 back down to 1. And the D is for distractions, and we know that our mind naturally wanders. And in mindfulness training when your mind wanders, it’s actually a good thing because it gives you the opportunity to flex that attentional muscle, to bring your mind back to the breath, and then just simply start counting from 1 again.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. And so, with that counting to 10 and then back – is that synchronized with breathing, in terms of one’s on the inhale, one’s on the exhale, or how does that go?

Jacqueline Carter
No. It’s simply you breathe in, you breathe out, count one; breathe in, out, two. Up to 10, and then count backwards. And one of the things that’s really key about the counting is, it’s not about… People, especially high potential, high achievers feel like, “I want to get to 10 and back down to 1”, and become almost competitive or put themselves under pressure. The key thing is the counting is just a way to make sure that your mind just isn’t wandering as you’re sitting there focusing on your breath and you start to daydream. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t get to 10.
They key thing is, how many times can you notice that your mind has wandered, and bring it back. Every time you do that, that’s really when you’re flexing your attentional muscle. And the cool thing about that is then when you’re sitting in that meeting and your mind starts to wander, because it does, you can bring it back, because you’ve got a stronger mental muscle. And so that’s the other thing that we look at, is not just the practice of mindfulness on its own and going to the mental gym, but how to apply it to practical things like being in a meeting and being effective, or apply it to emails, or apply it to priorities or to being more creative.

Pete Mockaitis
So, how might we apply it to email?

Jacqueline Carter
So, a couple of things. One of the things – such a simple tip, is to turn off all email notifications. And the reason for that is that we know that every time we get a pop-up on our computer or a pop-up on our device, it’s a distraction to us. And basically we know that from an efficiency perspective when we get distracted, it can take between a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes for us to bring our attention back to whatever we were doing. So we think that it’s helping us keep track of what’s going on in our day, and it’s really just losing you time, because you’re basically distracted throughout the day. So it’s such a simple little technique, but it can actually save you minutes, and those minutes add up. It can actually save you even an hour each day to just turn off those notifications. And only do emails when you want to do emails, as opposed to just being always on with them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. So then, where does the “selflessness” piece come in?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, absolutely. So, selflessness – a simple definition is basically not letting our natural egoistic tendencies to get in the way of us being the best leader we can be, or even the best human we can be. And a fundamental way to look at it is that one of the things that we know is that – again, from a neurological perspective – we have a natural tendency to be self-referential. Everything that we are experiencing, we experience in terms of how I experience it. And that’s natural – like, “I am doing this right now” or, “I like this. I don’t like that.” And that is natural and normal.
But as a leader, if it’s all about me, it’s actually not very effective, it’s not very helpful. So, leadership is really about making sure that we’re looking at others and what is important to the team, and how can we actually support all of us be more successful? And it really is critically important. It’s trainable as well, but especially in leadership, and this goes back to what we found in the research. What was so important about cultivating selflessness is a lot of the research shows that as we rise in the ranks of leadership, our chances of becoming more rude, becoming more unkind, become more unethical, actually increase.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing.

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, exactly. It’s intriguing, and frightening. But it’s really interesting when you think about it. I’ll even say from my own personal experience – I do a lot of talks and presentations and I’m standing up in front of crowds of maybe hundreds of people. And I can feel that natural tendency of my ego wanting to say, “Jacqueline, aren’t you special?” And I need to constantly remind myself, no. I mean I’m not not special, but it’s not all about me. And so it’s just that natural tendency for us to start to get a big head as we rise in the ranks of power. And it’s so critical to bring that selflessness into our leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, now I’m just so intrigued. I guess we could spend hours talking about the “Why”. But what do you think it is? Is it just because they are accustomed to being treated well, and then it’s like you think that you’re special and you deserve it maybe? It’s sort of natural pattern-putting together there?

Jacqueline Carter
Well, it can be that, but it’s also how people start to treat us. One of the great stories that we just loved… We had so many great stories from the interviews that we did, but one of the CEOs explained it to us like this. He said, “When I became CEO, what I noticed is that people started to laugh more at my jokes.” He said, “I don’t think I’m any funnier. I can assure you, I don’t think I’m any funnier.” But we are social beings, and we look at how’s in charge, who’s the leader, and we treat them differently. And especially the research on power and how power corrupts us as we rise up the ranks. But it’s even simple things, like a leader is more likely to not clean up after themselves when they’re leaving a room. It’s simple things like that, but they can really end up… And you think, “That’s okay. They don’t have time. They’re busy.” But it’s about, are we out for ourselves? And of course it can lead to the ultimate, which is real corrupt behaviors, which we saw a lot in the research.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s funny. I remember back in the day, when I was in high school we had our congressman, our U.S. House of Representatives. I don’t want to name names, but you can do the research if you want to, from Danville, Illinois, back when I was in high school. He visited, and I don’t know I was sort of fascinated, like, “Okay, let’s take a close look at this guy. How is he operating? What’s his deal? What was the key to his rise to success and fame or whatever?”
And I remember he requested tea. Why do I remember this? He requested a tea, and he had a teabag and some hot water and a cup, and he was steeping while the conversations were happening. And there was a napkin right next to the cup, and I noticed he did not place the teabag onto the napkin, but rather onto directly the table. And I was like, “Why would you do that? Someone’s got to clean the table now. You’ve got a barrier between the table and the teabag inches away that you could’ve easily utilized and you opted not to.” [laugh] I guess it made an impression. So, there you go – rising to power and not cleaning up after yourself.

Jacqueline Carter
It’s a great story. But what was so interesting about the research, and I did not know this until we got into this research – is that it can happen without you being aware of it. So that leader may not have even been aware that that’s a power play. That’s like, “You know what? I’m so important, I can put garbage on the table. But this is the thing – it was that it may not be intentional. And I think that that’s the space of where looking at you may become a jerk and you don’t even mean to. That’s I think a key message that we found from the studies.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so you can get sloppier and not even notice that it’s happening to you as you rise to power. So, what are some best practices for cultivating selflessness?

Jacqueline Carter
I think the first thing, and that’s one of the things we did try to do with the book is to create awareness. I think all of us should know that power can corrupt our minds. I think that’s just critical for all of us to know. And once we know that, we have to make a choice. What kind of leader do we want to be? And one of the simple ways to overcome it is to really practice humility and gratitude. At the end of each day, just think about all of the people that helped you be successful today. And one of the key things that we encourage is to look for the people that are unseen. So it could be the things that didn’t go wrong because there was a team of people that helped make sure that you didn’t even notice that nothing went wrong.
So look for those and really make sure that you have that sense of gratitude and appreciation. And a simple thing, and it’s a great thing, and actually the neuroscience around this says that a simple gratitude practice of every day thinking of, is there one person you could send a little note to say, “Hey, thanks. I really appreciate whatever you did.” It’s actually self-serving, because not only it’s great for them, but it actually helps us to cultivate a more selfless mind. So there’s great benefit in it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. So let’s talk about compassion then, and how would you distinguish and define selflessness from compassion?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, absolutely. So compassion then is the intention to be of benefit to others. And this was also really exciting, and maybe just to give a context – when we originally set out to write the book, we talked to our publisher, who we love – Harvard Business Review Press – fantastic organization to work with. Originally it was just going to be on mindful leadership. And so I want to say one of the things that was really exciting to us is, through the journey of our research, it was really through that that we kept on hearing leaders talk about the importance of selflessness, talk about bringing more humility and gratitude, and also talking about compassion. And that was really exciting to us, because for years we had always known that compassion was beneficial and important, but often times you don’t hear a lot of leaders talking about it. Especially in hardcore, tough business-minded people compassion is often seen as soft.
And what we really saw and what we heard and what we experienced, and then we again pulled back the research on, was compassion isn’t about being nice to everyone. It’s really about bringing a true intention to be of benefit to others. So just to give you a story of what that looks like, let’s say you and I were colleagues and I walked into your office and I saw that you had a heap of paper and you were just drowning because you had so much. Or a help of emails; maybe most people don’t have paper anywhere. But just like you were really under a lot of pressure.
And if I was just being empathetic, I might sit down and be miserable right alongside of you. That wouldn’t be helpful to you and it wouldn’t be helpful to me. But a compassionate approach is, what can I actually do to help you? And there are a couple of things. What I could actually do to help you might be nothing at all, because you’ve got to figure this out for yourself, and that’s going to be the best way to help you. Or it could be to help you look at your priorities. Or maybe if I was in a leadership role, maybe it would be to make sure that I haven’t been creating too much stress and overload for you.
So it’s really having an ability to step back, look at the person, look at the situation, and ask that question: “How can I be of best benefit?”, and doing it with wisdom. So it includes things like giving really tough feedback, which can be challenging, but really beneficial. Or even letting somebody go, because they’re just not performing, they’re not a good fit for whatever reason. But doing it with compassion, doing it with a great deal of care.

Pete Mockaitis
Got it, thank you. Could you maybe share a story or a case study that kind of ties it all together, in terms of an organization that had not a whole lot of the mindfulness, not a whole lot of the selflessness, not a whole lot of compassion, and then things got turned around in a cool way?

Jacqueline Carter
I would love to say that there was one organization that brought it all together, and I can’t say that. I can certainly say that what we’ve really seen and the experience that we’ve had, organizations that focus on these qualities, really enables them to be more effective, more kind, and actually lead to bottom line success. So, just maybe to name a couple out – Accenture is an organization that has really embraced mindfulness; it’s become core to their leadership development and they’ve got a whole program that’s around helping them be more focused.
Organizations that we really admire in terms of selflessness – LinkedIn is a great example, where it’s really not about “me”, but really about, “How can we bring more of a global perspective?” And you can see that in some of the things that they do. An organization that we love working with around compassion is Marriott. They have a very simple business philosophy that they’ve had since they were a nine-stool pop shop in 1927. And that business philosophy is, “If we take care of our people, they will take care of our guests, and business will take care of itself.” And that’s been their model since the early days. Now they’re the largest hotel chain in the world, over 700,000 people worldwide. And when we spoke with CEO Arne Sorenson and CHRO David Rodriguez they said that whole idea of taking care of their people, bringing compassion, is still the cornerstone of their philosophy, which is great.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And we talked about a few things that we should start doing, in terms of going to the mental gym and putting yourself in other people’s shoes and seeing how we can best be of service to them. But are there some things that we should stop doing right away in order to excel on these fronts?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah. I think that one of the things you should stop doing is stop multitasking. It’s just a really bad idea; it’s kind of the mother of all evil, in terms of being effective and having good relationships and being kind to others. There is just a ton of research and studies that shows it’s just a really bad idea. Another thing to stop doing is working late at night. One of things that we know is that most of us simply do not get enough sleep, and so we should all put a greater value on making sure that we get a good night’s sleep. And again, there’s lots of great research on that. I could go on, but I’ll let you see if those are good tips.

Pete Mockaitis
Good, thank you, yes. Anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Jacqueline Carter
I think maybe one other thing that we found really inspiring and it was really important to us is just an idea of creating more people-centric cultures. It just came up again and again in our work, this idea of bringing more humanity, brining more of our true selves and being more authentic. So I think maybe one of the things that I would say is that a lot of these qualities are accessible to all of us; in some ways they just make good inherent sense. And what we’re really hoping and what we’re seeing is organizations and leaders that embrace them. It’s actually nice to be present with people; it’s nice for it all to not be about “me”; it’s nice to be able to bring more kindness and compassion into organization. And guess what? It also leads to better results. So yeah, that’s just the other thing I’d like to add.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jacqueline Carter
One of probably my favorite quotes is by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He says, “Compassion is my religion.” I think that’s a good universal one for me.

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

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah. One of my favorite ones, because it was just so shocking – literally shocking – was research where they gave people a little electric shock and they said, “Does that hurt?” And people would say, “Yes, that hurts.” And then they put them in a room with no stimuli whatsoever – no phone, no technology, nothing – just white walls. And the only thing that they had in that room was that same little electric shock.
And what they were looking for was whether people were so uncomfortable being alone and so unable to just sit with themselves that they would actually shock themselves to entertain themselves. And they actually asked people, “Would you actually shock yourself on purpose?” People said, “No way.” Well, it turned out 67% of men and 25% of women would shock themselves, rather than just sitting there and being still and being alone. One guy shocked himself 190 times. That was really interesting and a little bit frightening about human behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild. How long were they in there?

Jacqueline Carter
I can’t remember exactly. It was about five minutes, so it wasn’t a long period of time. Yeah, it’s really fascinating. One of the other things that I find so interesting is that all we have is our mind, basically. That’s how we perceive the world, that’s how we do great things. And if we’re that uncomfortable with sitting and just being alone with our thoughts that we would actually electrocute ourselves… I could look at it positively – there’s a lot of good work that we could do about making us more comfortable being alone with our own mind.

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

Jacqueline Carter
That is such a tough question. There are so many that I love. I think from a business perspective one of the books that I really, really enjoyed was Great By Choice by Jim Collins and Morten Hanson. Just wonderful stories, great practical examples, and just very inspiring form an organizational and leadership perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite tool?

Jacqueline Carter
Well, one … that I love is actually something that we introduced as part of helping people to remember to be more mindful in their communications. And it’s basically when you’re about to engage with somebody, just … and STOP, standing for – S is just to be silent, because you want to make sure that you listen. And not only not talking, but actually try to silence your mind so that you’re not playing over too many things in your mind. The T standing for tune in. The O standing for being open to really listen and to try to hear what the other person is saying. And then to be present. And then when you do speak we use the word ACT as an acronym. And to make sure that it is appropriate, the C is for compassionate, and that it’s well-timed – you don’t say too much or too little, and it’s at the right time. So those are tools that I love to use in all of my communication.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite habit?

Jacqueline Carter
Well, that is easy. It’s my daily mindfulness practice. I would not start my day with anything else.

Pete Mockaitis
And is that using those ABCDs, or you do something different?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, I do something different. I sit for longer than 10 minutes, but I do find that basic practice, I do basic breath awareness practices, focusing on my breath. But I also do specific practices around selflessness and compassion, which are also extremely beneficial, and again, just usually require taking a little bit longer time.

Pete Mockaitis
And as you think through your writing and speaking and working with folks, is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks and they repeat it back to you frequently?

Jacqueline Carter
I think that probably the resonant nugget is around being more truly human. And this was one of the quotes from one of the leaders, senior executive with Audi-Volkswagen. He said that leadership today is about unlearning management and relearning being human. And I thought, “That’s a good nugget.”

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

Jacqueline Carter
So our website is www.PotentialProject.com. And you can find not only information about us and our work, but also we have information on the book. And as part of that as well we actually are creating a global leadership network. So if you’re at all interested in these practices of mindfulness, selflessness and compassion and brining them into your day-to-day work, your day-to-day leadership, there’s more information that you can find on the website.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for those seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, I think it really is. Let’s all start a movement of being more present with each other, being less about us and being more kind. I think the world today needs it desperately and I think that not only will it help us be more awesome at our job, but I think we’ll be more awesome in our societies and have a more awesome world. So, that would be my call to action.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you. Well, Jacqueline, this has been so much fun. I wish you tons of luck with The Mind of the Leader book and all that you’re up to!

Jacqueline Carter
Thank you so much. It was really great to talk to you today.

Jun 29
0

315: Leading with Speed with Alan Willett

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Alan Willett says: "Go beyond mad good skills."

Alan Willett shows how to lead with speed by measuring and tracking yourself, working smarter rather than longer, and having purpose. All the things that are need to stay competitive.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to work faster and smarter rather than longer
  2. Approaches to accelerate the decision making progress
  3. Why and how to let people “add an egg”

About Alan

Alan Willett is of the rare species who is an expert international consultant, speaker, and author. He has worked with companies ranging from 1 person to some of the giants such as Microsoft and NASA. Alan says that his passion is helping people and organizations transform their friction points into profit points. Alan defines a friction point as “the space where the business needs and the implementation reality collides.” There is always heat generated! Alan is the expert who transforms organizational friction points to produce positive results for the business and the people.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Alan Willett Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Alan welcome back to the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Alan Willett
It’s awesome to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m really looking forward to digging into some of your latest thinking. It was way back in episode 114 that we had you. It seems like you’ve had a few new thoughts since then.

Alan Willett
Indeed I have. What episode are we up to now?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh boy, we are past 300, which is wild.

Alan Willett
Wow. Congratulations Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Yes, it’s been a fun ride. People are into it. Yours was one of the favorites. It seems sensible to come on back.

Alan Willett
Really, it’s great to be back. It’s a lot of fun before. I look forward to fun today.

Pete Mockaitis
First, I need to hear, speaking of fun, you have a Guinness World Record to your name. Tell us all about this.

Alan Willett
Okay. Well, yes I do. I did end up in the Guinness Book of World Records. It was called that back then.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it different now?

Alan Willett
Yes, now called the Guinness Book of Records.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Alan Willett
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I didn’t know that.

Alan Willett
Yeah, it’s a recent change I believe.

But yes, so I remember back when I was at Rochester Institute of Technology. In my sophomore year two weeks before Thanksgiving break, two weeks before finals, our cross country coach came to us and said, “Hey, I have a great idea. For RIP’s 150th anniversary let’s run across the county.” Being 19 and young and vigorous, I said “Sure, let’s do that.”

Two weeks later I finished my last final after my last all-nighters getting ready for finals we drove non-stop to California, dipped our feet in the Pacific Ocean, turned around and started running all the way back to the Atlantic Ocean.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. The record then is the distance or you were the first or what’s-?

Alan Willett
Good question. Well, our goal was to beat the Pony Express, which I’m told we did which is very cool. We also beat another team that had set a record previously of 20 days. We did it in 14 days.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh boy.

Alan Willett
14 days 4 hours and 8 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well that is quite – does it stand to this day or did someone have to get up on that record and shatter it themselves?

Alan Willett
Oh somebody – actually subsequent RIT, Rochester Institute of Technology, team did it I think for RIT’s 170th anniversary. They beat us. Shame on them.

Pete Mockaitis
Everyone wants to surpass the previous generation.

Alan Willett
Yes, ….

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Let’s recap for folks who didn’t catch it the last time, you’ve got your company is called Oxseeker, Inc. What’s the company about and where did the name come from?

Alan Willett
Well, that name came from – two things. One is when I looked for names five years ago, six years ago, all the ones I thought were great were already taken, so I went back to an old standby which I coined the word oxseeker back in the ‘80s.

Zen poetry has ox has a symbol of enlightenment. I always thought seeking enlightenment was a cool concept, so I used that word to really now mean seeking excellence because what I really have been doing with my work all along is trying to make organizations constantly better, constantly seeking a higher level of excellence. That word really just sort of captured what I was about.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so interesting. I did not know that the ox had that association prior to chatting with you.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of an ox in the context of intellectual stuff is I think Thomas Aquinas, his nickname when he was doing his studies was called like the ox because I guess he was just really big and didn’t say much and they kind of made fun of him, like he was dumb, dumb ox.

Then one of the teachers scolded his pupils the legend has it, like, “When this ox bellows, the whole world shall hear.”

Alan Willett
Ah, oh, I like this story as well. That’s good.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, add some layers to it. That’s good.

Tell us your latest fascination has been the need to lead with speed. I added the ‘need’ myself. I had to triple the rhymes there.

Alan Willett
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Why is it so important to you right now?

Alan Willett
Well, I realized a lot of my whole work has been about that. For example, my previous book, which we talked about before, Leading the Unleadable, was really about how to unwrap the gifts of those magnificent people who sometimes cross the red line, like the mavericks, cynics and divas because those people can really propel an organization forward at great speeds.

If you just fire them, you lose that fire. If you let them run rampant, they destroy the organization, so you’ve really got to manage them well.

As I keep going into organizations, I keep hearing about the increased need for speed. This almost feels cliché because around the 1990s seems like things were picking up. Now they’re really picking up speed.

To stay competitive, you’ve got to constantly be learning, constantly upping your game, constantly providing better value to your customers or to your organization and you’re just working more. Regardless, you’ve got to be there. To me it’s even more than speed, it’s acceleration.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so you’re saying just because in the nature of competition and globalization and sort of technology and these forces that we hear a lot about, is that kind of what’s behind it to put the extra necessity these days?

Alan Willett
Yes, absolutely. There’s a second part too which is I have seen too many people just burn out, really creative, smart, fun people that couldn’t take the pace.

What I’ve really been trying to help a lot of people do and organizations do is not just survive, but thrive, to learn to love how to handle this pace and how to handle this pace in a sustainable way so that they get plenty of rest, have plenty of fun but are still setting the beat, setting the pace that is right for today’s competition.

Pete Mockaitis
Then that sounds like a little bit of a tension there in terms of being speedy and also not burning out, so what are some of the pro tips to accomplish both?

Alan Willett
Ah, well, here first let’s talk about that balance. If I may go technical for a minute, do you know I was also a software engineer for a while? I actually wrote software.

Pete Mockaitis
I do. The software people love you because you sort of speak both the languages that connect with the software developers and those who love and manage them.

Alan Willett
One of the things – here let me put a couple things together here with this story. This is about the balance and learning from this.

Some of the things that I mean by leading by speed for example is one, we really want to hit speed to value. It’s not about just furious activity signifying nothing, the sound and the fury. It’s about speed to value. You’ve got to have a purpose, a place to go, something that you want to provide.

In the next part I want to note is that you want a speed dashboard. In other words, like a car has lots of different odometers, speedometer, is it overheating or not, all those kind of warning lights. That’s what you need too. Meaningful, useful set of data that answers the question, “Am I going faster?”

One of the things I did as a software engineer when I was writing code is I learned some techniques to really track my own data so I had that useful data. One of the things I did was tracked how fast I was going, how many objects per hour I was producing of good quality code. The other one I was tracking was how much rework I was doing, how many defects.

I stayed up late one night until like 4 in the morning to finish a program. It sounds like a good idea, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Pros and cons I’d say.

Alan Willett
Well, I thought I put in this extra 10 hours, I’ll be farther ahead.

Here’s what happened. When I tested the program the next day, it was full of errors. I repeated this exercise a few more times just because I was a scientist, curious. I found out when I worked extra hours late at night, my defect injection rate went sky high. I made way more mistakes.

Those defects took me longer to correct than had I went to bed and came up the next day and just wrote a couple of hours of code the next morning when I was well rested. Really, working harder actually made me dumber. Working longer made me stupider.

One of the really things I really kind of worked with organizations and people is not about the long hours, it’s about really smart hours. It’s about making sure you have this major set of data so you actually know you’re going faster and know how to go faster. You have the data to improve.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. I’ve read some studies along those lines with regard to a number of different environments and industries.

I think it was similar. It was video game development. They talked about when they have rush mode or whatever the term they use in the industry, like when they work real hard because they’ve got to make sure to deliver the thing on time as the deadline is coming in. They saw a similar pattern across. It’s not just you, but it’s many folks who are doing intricate knowledge work.

When you push hard and sleep less, sometimes your – it’s really quite disheartening to put all that effort in and discover you would have been better off having enjoyed some sleep and rejuvenation and being sane and actually getting a better result on the other side.

Alan Willett
Absolutely. Now there’s exceptions to this, I’ve got to note. But really when you’re doing that type of work, the intricate things where little mistakes cost you a lot of time, be well rested. That simple.

But let’s scale it up. Overall what I’m talking about when I talk about the sustainable speed of leadership, it’s really looking at this as a more of a marathon than a sprint or a series of sprints. It’s really looking at yourself and saying how do I continuously improve and I stick to it for the long term.

I’m planning – I grew up on a farm. We don’t retire on farms. We just keep working. I’m in this for the long term. I want to keep continuously improving and I don’t want to get burned out, tired out while I’m doing it. What’s my engine for improvement? To stay relevant, to stay competitive. How do I keep that balance?

One of the things I’m working on in the book I’m working on is called the four-dimensional balance, which is really about four key concepts: the center of speed, how to keep your eye on the true prize, owning the speed of the game clock, and four-dimensional balance.

Those are some of the big concepts I’m playing with of how to really keep people focused on how to achieve this intricate balance as you put it.

Pete Mockaitis
Now so how does one keep the eyes on the true prize and what are some of the distraction prizes that tend to lead us astray?

Alan Willett
Oh, that’s easy. For example – great question though. Your eye on the true prize. First, true prize for me is a lot of things, like just simply doing good in the world, making sure that you’re really truly providing value to your customers. Some of the false indicators can be, “I need to make a profit for this quarter,” “I need to have double digit growth.”

I know actually some CEOs for example that really focused on this double digit growth. They focused on it so hard that they started to fire people that weren’t achieving it. Later that CEO was convicted for keeping two sets of books. I actually believe he didn’t actually know that people were keeping two sets of books but the only way to stay employed was to have double digit growth, so they gave it to him.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. That’s kind of pushing it so hard that you’re cheating and then in a way it’s kind of like, well it’s so intriguing in terms of the details, that juicy, scandalous situation. But I guess it’s my understanding that people really do feel a great sense of temptation toward cheating when it’s kind of absolute, the only way this must be or it’s just … everywhere.

Alan Willett
Right. I forget the exact quote, but one of the quotes I really like is something that was along these lines. “Chase wealth and it will flee from you. Chase wisdom and wealth will follow.”

Pete Mockaitis
Sounds so wise. Chasing wisdom.

Alan Willett
I believe it is. Back to the true prize. It’s really, really being focused on what you really want to achieve for yourself in your organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. When it comes to dashboards, can you give us some examples of all the more precisely great metrics or things to track versus suboptimal things to track? You mentioned quarterly profits can lead one astray. What are some superior things to track?

Alan Willett
Here, let’s talk about an individual for a minute because I know your audience is mostly individuals. Then we can talk about the larger one.

Let’s look at individuals and just say you’re doing knowledge work like many of us have to do these days. Well, a couple of things I try to track is how much value we provide for the effort we’re putting in. Now that’s a really tricky thing to do, but it’s worthwhile doing.

Like you noted in software development, some of the things people use is function points or they can even use lines of code per hour, things like that. Those can be tricky but what you really want is a good proxy for value that makes sense.

Another thing you can measure actually is how much cost equality it takes to get something out the door.

Quick definition of that. Basically you do two weeks of development and eight weeks of testing before you can free it. You have 20% cost equality. If you have eight weeks of development and two weeks of testing and it works great and your customers love it. You have a 20% cost equality.

Productivity is inversely proportional. The better your cost of quality, the better your productivity. That’s a couple things personally one can track to really keep an eye on the prize. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Alan Willett
Absolutely. For a business, what you really want to be tracking to me I believe is customer loyalty for example. Are you keeping the customers that you want, the ones that you truly prize? Are you growing in the right direction, bringing on the customers you also want and really want to grow in that space?

I don’t think it’s about how big you grow, but I think it’s about having enough and being able to sustain that growth in a way that’s good for your organization.

I know an organization that I work with that was very happy being at 50 people in the organization and sustaining that. When they grew up to 350 people, which the leader at the time said he never wanted to do, they ended up blowing up. He got distracted from his true mission to go after something bigger.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s helpful. Thank you. You mentioned you had four – is it four part would you call it? Four part balance?

Alan Willett
Four-dimensional balance.

Pete Mockaitis
Four-dimensional balance. Can we unpack these components?

Alan Willett
Sure, I can give you another example. Owning the speed of the game clock. I love that when – I like sports. You watch some of the greatest athletes. In my day it was Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, folks like that. Today it’s LeBron James, Steven Stephen Curry for the National Basketball Association.

But you watch these people, the best, they seem to be playing on a different pace than everybody else. I don’t mean faster. It seems like everybody else is kind of has frenetic energy around them and they’re just walking down the court and hit the right person at the right time. They just seem to be playing in a slower pace than everybody else with more results. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Alan Willett
Another one – there’s a lot of elements to that, how you can own the speed of the clock as a leader. Part of that is the center of speed.

One of my favorite Superbowl stories is where Joe Montana, San Francisco, they’re down by a few points with a few minutes – just a minute left on the clock or something like that. He’s in the huddle and he says to the whole – his team, he says, “Hey, isn’t that John Candy on the third row there?” Everybody looks up and says, “Yeah, yeah, I think it is.”

Joe was so cool, calmed everybody else down and then just calmly threw a touchdown pass to win the game. To me a lot of the center of speed is really this inner calm that everything will work out.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Now inner calm can be easier said than done. What are some of your perspectives for arriving at such a place?

Alan Willett
Learning that failure is seldom fatal and that you can learn a lot from it. If you’re not afraid of failure, you’re not afraid of winning either. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Alan Willett
That’s one of the things I think really people have to overcome. I go on a whole rant about our school system, but I believe our school system sort of embeds fear in people, fear of getting a bad grade, fear of getting something wrong, things like that. Really what we have to learn or unlearn in some ways is to overcome FUD.

Pete Mockaitis
FUD?

Alan Willett
Fear, uncertainty and doubt. One of the questions I’ve often been asked is what slows leaders down. There’s a lot of things that can slow leaders down, but the number one thing is FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt. That’s what makes people for example, set up a committee to bring … to answer a question that should have been obvious.

Pete Mockaitis
The fear of I am scared to look really dumb and get this very wrong and have my sort of name and reputation attached to it, therefore I will go about sort of dispersing responsibility by assembling this committee and in the process of having the committee you’ve got all those extra people and decision steps and meetings that kind of slow it down.

Alan Willett
Right. There’s time and places for doing things like that. But too often that’s just a delaying tactic to avoid making a decision. Fear causes people to delay decisions until it’s obvious what the decision should have been.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to talk about decisions there when it comes to decision making rules or approaches or what are some great ways to accelerate decision making. One is I guess being courageous and not convening a committee when it’s not necessary. What are some of your other approaches?

Alan Willett
I would say there are three critical things to accelerating your decision making process. Number one, and these are, by the way, before you start the decision processes what you should be doing. Be clear about who’s going to make the decision, how the decision is going to be made, and what risk level is acceptable. I’ll unpack that a little bit more if that’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Alan Willett
There’s actually basically three – four decision making styles. Leaders that are really clear about this at the start do far superior.

They can say this, “I’m going to make the decision. I’m not taking any input. I just want you to know that.” It’s clear. Or, “I’m making the decision. I would like everybody’s – I would like these people’s input to make sure that I have all the data I need, but I’m going to make the call.”

By the way, if there’s a crisis in the cockpit in an airplane, that’s the number one decision making style. You don’t have time for consensus. Somebody’s got to decide, but collecting input greatly improves the effectiveness of pilots.

Number three is we are going to decide together. We’re not going to do this unless we have consensus. We’re all holding hands and leaping together.

Number four is you can delegate and you can say, “It’s up to you. Here’s your budget. Here’s your timeline. You make the decision. Here’s my input.” If you’re clear about those things at the start, you’re really going to accelerate the decision making process.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think where things really get fuzzy and so annoying and unpleasant is when it’s very unclear in terms of the decision making process. Like, “Okay, we all know this thing needs to get done.” It’s a proposal or a product or an initiative or something. “We all know this thing needs to get done. We kind of know the players sort of who are involved,” but then beyond that it gets a little fuzzy.

I chuckle sometimes because I’ve heard listeners ask for clarification associated with decision making and the answer they get in terms of who has a decision is, “Well collaborate,” which is really a non-answer.

Alan Willett
It is a non-answer. I’ll give you a situation even worse than that, where the leader implies however vaguely that it’s up to the group to decide. Then the leader themselves makes the decision without any input.

Oh, that slows an organization down for weeks or longer because the level of anger is worse than if they said, “Hey, my decision. I’ll take input maybe, but I’m going to make the decision,” so much clearer, so much better, no anger.

Pete Mockaitis
This reminds me. I had a situation where I was trying to help out with a committee that just sort of planned some of our fun in terms of, “Hey, a few times a year we’re all going to get together. We’re going to have some camaraderie, some team building, some good times, so here are the activities.”

I thought, “Okay, this sounds like an interesting project.” I talked to some people and gathered a bunch of ideas, like, “Hey, what do you think would be fun for everyone to do.” We come up with all these ideas. “Okay, perfect. Now we’ll do a survey and see what everyone’s thinking.”

I recall one of the options was sailing. I was like, “That sounds really cool. I haven’t done much sailing and that might be really interesting. Heck, we’ve got some budget. Let’s live it up.” Then I presented it to sort of the senior person in charge of the committee who really did make it kind of seem like, “Oh yeah, you know what? Just see what everyone wants to do and yeah it’s just fun so go do it.”

He just – I said, “Hey, looks like the results are pretty strong on the survey for sailing.” It was intriguing because he didn’t admit to it but he kept saying, “You know what? I have a hypothesis that if you segment the data in this way, we’ll discover that in fact sailing is not the optimal choice.”

It was like, if you were committed to this activity why did you kind of say that we were going to do it this other way? It is like and what do you have against sailing is what I really wanted to know. It just didn’t seem honest.

Alan Willett
No, absolutely. That’s really problems come. By the way, if that leader really wanted to do that activity but wanted people to really be committed to that activity just say this, “Hey, this is the activity we’re doing. I want the group to figure out how to get people really involved, how to make this activity really sing, how to make it better.”

Absolutely leave people room to add an egg to that cake, but you can point the direction and say what cake we’re going to bake.

Pete Mockaitis
That is a nice metaphor there ‘add an egg to that cake.’ Is that the legend? Was it Sara Lee or one of those companies that they had the cake mix and they could have had it all encompassing but they wanted to make people feel like they had a part in the cake making process so they said, “And you add an egg,” so it’s like, “Oh, I did this.”

Alan Willett
Actually the legend is this. It’s true actually. That they were selling a cake mix without adding an egg. This is at a time when people made cakes from scratch. It wasn’t selling at all. As soon as they had people add two eggs, which changed the taste not a bit, people started to buy the cake mix like crazy because people really need room to add an egg.

I really believe that in my consulting work as well. I have learned over and over again that when leaders hand you something that’s done, they do not get the same level of involvement or quality when they leave enough room for people to add their own creative juices to it. When they do that, it gets better and people are more committed ….

Pete Mockaitis
What’s really cool about that notion of adding an egg is it’s really not all or nothing. You have a whole continuum of things from you figure out the activity to this is the activity but you figure out the food before or after or the snacks during or the refreshments or how we’re going to promote it.

There’s any number of ways that folks can have some decision making authority and involvement in doing that. It’s kind of fun that you get to kind of choose hey, how much is mine versus how much is others and what are kind of the ground rules.

Alan Willett
Absolutely. Going back to what I said, your question, “How do we improve the speed of decision making?” Let’s also say how do we improve the impact and results of decision making.

This is where leaders can constantly learn. They have to learn which of these styles to learn when because sometimes you may have a group of people that you really want to own the outcome and to be committed to it for the long term.

Perhaps this group of people, they need to go plant the wheat, grind the wheat, and all the steps to make this cake. If that’s the case, you should send the people to do this. Have them make it from scratch. Again, you point the direction, you say, “I want a cake,” but you let them figure out how to make it.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny. I’m imagining from sort of like a corporate speak perspective. Another way that there can be a misalignment there is either you’re using jargon like, “I need you to craft a baked solution that will be a culinary delight.” In a way there are many baked items that could fit under that purview but if a person really has in mind a cake, they should probably say a cake just so that that’s what you get is a cake.

Alan Willett
Absolutely. That’s where I say really to me leading with speed is really about constantly learning how to have the best impact not just for yourself but for your whole organization. It’s learning, if you will, the best language to present these things, the best style to get people on board, and what style is appropriate when.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m curious if we are talking about individuals in a workplace and this person wants to see some more speed right away, what would be some of your prescriptive tips and tactics for right here right now do these things and you should see a speed boost happening promptly?

Alan Willett
Okay. The quick answer of course is to listen to Pete’s Being Awesome At Your Job or reading my books. That’s fun to say. Actually that is true.

But my real answer is I encourage people not to look for immediate speed pumps because to me it comes back to what I said before. This really isn’t a marathon. The running metaphor kind of breaks down because you can’t constantly accelerate when you’re running. You hit these limits very quickly.

But from a leadership perspective, a self-leadership perspective, I really believe what people should focus on is creating their own, if you will, leadership acceleration engine. That is how do you constantly improve, not necessarily every day, but can you improve 1% a day.

Alan Weiss, one of my mentors, said if you improve 1% a day, you’re twice as good in 70 days. Just think if you keep that going, you can hit light speed leadership.

I think of leaders that had such great impact without any political power or position. Gandhi, for example, Martin Luther King, these are leaders that really had a dramatic impact without being paid for it, without being given a title. They’re able to constantly improve, constantly learn, and constantly improve the impact of their leadership force.

What I really encourage people to do is figure out what is the best methods for them to learn how to learn how to accelerate their ability to learn.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely, thank you. Well, Alan, tell me anything else you want to make sure to cover before we hear some of your favorite things?

Alan Willett
There’s one big thing I wanted to mention, which is this. This is one of the new things I’ve been working on, which is we’ve coined the word ‘embrace friction’ at embracefriction.com. Let me explain what I mean by that. Have you heard a lot about the frictionless workplace? Things like that?

Pete Mockaitis
I know about your take with friction points and collisions, but I’m not quite sure I know precisely what you’re referencing here.

Alan Willett
I’ve seen a lot in books and podcasts etcetera talking about how to reduce friction at work or how to make the frictionless workplace. I think that’s rather silly because friction is natural in nature. Without friction you’d skid off the road. There’d be like an icy road, you’re in the ditch. Friction, you need it.

What I’m finding is too many organizations are actually trying to manage friction away, trying to get rid of the conflicts.

What I really believe is one of the biggest boons for speed we can have as leaders and people in organizations is figure out ways to embrace friction, to take those points where the heat is really hot and it’s like destructive and be able to transform those destructive friction points, the heat of those into the heat of innovation. How can you take those boring ideas and make a better idea out of them.

That’s one of the big things I’m working on now. I just want to encourage people to think about is when you hit those hot points, how can you change them? How can you change the way people are talking about it, engaging in it to put it to a higher level of better value.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Alan Willett
One of my favorites comes back to Winston Churchill, “Do not do your best, do what is necessary.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right, thank you. How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Alan Willett
One of my favorite experiments that I encourage people to do is help people. Just see what happens. By the way, you should follow the Red Cross rule: don’t help people that don’t want to be helped. But do help people. Do good in the world and you’ll be surprised about how much good karma it does for you and others.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Alan Willett
One of the books I have really been liking lately is called The Essence of Value by Mario Pricken.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s that all about?

Alan Willett
By the way, I believe you can only get it in hardcopy. It’s fairly big, sturdy book. It’s because it’s well-designed. It’s really about why do people pay extraordinary money for some pieces and objects. How do you actually determine what is valuable of a thing, a service, etcetera? I find it fascinating on a number of levels, both historically and for running my own business.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Thank you. How about a favorite tool?

Alan Willett
My iPad with my Apple pencil has been delightful lately. It has showed me new ways to take notes and to really do art.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. How about a favorite habit?

Alan Willett
One of my favorite habits now is when I go on long trips with one of my kids we listen to audio books and that’s just been a delightful way to connect.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell me, is there a particular nugget that you share when you’re teaching some of this stuff that really seems to connect and resonate and get folks nodding their heads and taking notes and retweeting?

Alan Willett
Oh that’s good. Absolutely. Go beyond mad good skills. It’s great to have good skills, but one of the things that we really work on is that good skills is nothing without other element, like the ability to make other people better, the ability to give feedback to other people that makes a positive difference and have them say thank you and you don’t get shot in the process. Mad good skills are great technically otherwise, but having a whole picture is dramatically cool and it takes you to the next level.

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

Alan Willett
You can go to AlanWillett.com.

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

Alan Willett
Absolutely. Learn to own the game clock, which is if you’re feeling panicked and stressed, learn how to look up in the stands and say, “Hey, isn’t that John Candy?”

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Thank you. Well, Alan, this has been fun once again. I wish you lots of luck as you’re continuing to illuminate and expand upon these ideas and just keep on doing the great things you’re doing.

Alan Willett
All right. Thanks Pete. A pleasure to be here.