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836: How to Drive Engagement to Get Your Project Done with Anh Dao Pham

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Anh Dao Pham says: "“What are the next steps?” It’s the most powerful question that you can ask."

Anh Dao Pham shares her battle-tested strategies for leading your team to project success, even without formal authority.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The one essential question to get any project moving.
  2. An overlooked skill that boosts project success rates.
  3. The two things you need for people to align with your goals.

About Anh Dao

Anh Dao Pham, VP of Product & Program Management at Edmunds.com, has successfully led technical projects for two decades at start-ups and major corporations. In her book Glue: How Project Leaders Create Cohesive, Engaged, High-Performing Teams, Anh vividly brings compassionate, positive, nimble leadership to life, demonstrating with actionable guidance, the power of caring and connection to inspire outstanding results.

Anh lives with her husband and two children in Los Angeles, California.

Resources Mentioned

Anh Dao Pham Interview Transcript

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

Anh Dao Pham
Thank you so much for having me here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom about project leadership and high-performing teams. But, first, I think we need to hear a little about your history of writing jingles and rhymes associated with team accomplishments. What’s the story here and can you give us some examples, please?

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, this is a really silly thing. A few years ago, when I was working at Opower, I was one of the more senior leaders on the engineering team and I was asked to give the quarterly update. And the first time I gave that quarterly update, it was so dry I think everybody fell asleep, including me if I could have. But the reason it was so dry was because when you work in product development and you’re leading an engineering team, the engineering team’s accomplishments are very similar to the product update. So, the product team gives an update and then you give yours, it’s almost the same.

So, the next time I was called upon to do a quarterly update, I decided not to give the general product update and, instead, decided to write, like, a tribute to the team in a jingle format. So, I got some inspiration from The Brady Brunch tune, and then wrote a jingle about our product managers and our engineers and how they had delivered on this website product, and then got folks on the team to actually sing it during the quarterly all-hands, and it was a really big hit.

And from then on, it became kind of a tradition at Opower, so every quarterly update, they look for the jingle. We’d get a bunch of people to sing and we had some great, great things out there. And so, since then, instead of just giving normal praise or an update when I have, like, a big team accomplishment or a big milestone the team has approached, then, oftentimes, I’ll write a jingle and then I’ll recruit people to sing it.

And so, as an example, this last holiday season, instead of having, like, a big party because everybody was remote, I ended up writing 17 limericks for everybody on the team.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, limericks?

Anh Dao Pham
And I read them out like in a toast format, and it was a pretty big hit. There’s something very novel about writing a rhyme or a jingle, and I find that it’s very memorable, people really appreciate it, it shows them that you care in a very special way, and it gives people just that special feeling when being on a team.

And so, I want to tell you, I have a surprise for you, because I decided before I got on the show that I would write you a jingle…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow, thank you.

Anh Dao Pham
…just so you can see this in action. It’s actually a limerick, so here it is.

There once was a host named Pete
Whose podcast was rather sweet.
He interviewed people with tips to share
For being awesome at work everywhere.
And on top of that, he gave it all away for free.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, lovely. Thank you. That is a first 830-some episodes, first limerick. So, thank you.

Anh Dao Pham
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. Okay, cool. Well, I’m excited to dig into those kinds of tidbits, your unique flavor and spin on project goodness. You’ve got a book called Glue: How Project Leaders Create Cohesive, Engaged, High-Performing Teams, which is a great title. We like those sorts of things here. Can you tell us any particularly novel, surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about this stuff over the course of your career and putting together the book?

Anh Dao Pham
I’d say the most surprising thing is that when I set out to write Glue, I didn’t realize how much of an influence books on social psychology and happiness would be and influence on the actual content in the book. And for a few years prior to writing Glue, I was doing a little bit of soul-searching, I read a number of books on the science of happiness and different social psychologists, like Adam Grant, Angela Duckworth, Sean Achor, just a bunch of very well-known authors in that space.

And it turns out that a lot of the work that supports the science of happiness, around how to make yourself happy ends up being really applicable content for how to motivate teams. And so, in my work and in Glue, I talk a lot about the science of happiness, social psychology, and how to motivate and influence people through those same mechanisms, which I think makes that unique. And, for me, it’s most important, when I’m a leader, to help teams not only deliver but do it in a way that makes them feel fulfilled and happy at work.

And so, I think a lot of that comes through and ends up being somewhat surprising or a novel content for a leadership book you don’t typically find as many studies around the science of happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we love those here, so it’s no surprise that we have found each other. So, that’s cool. Well, then I’d love it if we could dig into some particulars. Could you start off with sort of the core message or big idea or thesis behind the book?

Anh Dao Pham
So, Glue, at the end of the day is both a project management leadership book, and the main principle behind it is that I wanted to be able to express to people how you can both manage teams and lead people in a way that makes them productive so that they deliver but also makes them really happy and inspired with their jobs, and that in turn inspires me and makes me feel better about my job.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Well, so let’s dig in. Now, one thing that’s intriguing is you draw a distinction between a project manager and a project leader. What is the difference and why does that matter?

Anh Dao Pham
The main distinction between a project manager and a project leader is that you don’t necessarily have to have a title in order to be a project leader. Project leaders rise up through all parts of the organization because there is a need to have somebody lead a particular initiative or a particular team. And what I find is that people often, if they don’t have, like, an ordained title in some way, feel like they don’t have the authority to act in a certain way.

So, I wanted to make the distinction between somebody who has the official title of project manager, which has, like, a specific job description associated with it, versus a person who just may have risen up in the organization and is a leader of sorts but would likely need very similar tools and tactics to be able to make their team successful.

So, at the end of the day, you can be a project leader from any part of the organization. You just have to be a person who has stepped up to lead in some capacity on a particular initiative, and I’m hoping that this book is applicable much more broadly than just anybody with a specific project manager title.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then could you kick us off with a pretty inspiring…let’s see, I’ll do that again. Well, in getting a taste of what could be possible and at stake for us if we internalized some of these best practices, could you share a cool story of a project leader who was able to see a beautiful upgrade in the results they’re able to create by following some of these principles?

Anh Dao Pham
I wanted to start with an analogy from a different industry entirely, which is basketball. And I’m actually not a basketball fan, but one of the things that I realized as I was doing research for the book, was I was talking to one of my best friends who is into basketball about the book and about some of the principles that I was talking about, about being glue, and he said, “Oh, it’s like Draymond Green. He’s a glue guy. He plays basketball.” And I’m like, “Tell me more about this.”

And it turns out that there’s a phenomenon in basketball where there are players called glue guys who are extremely valuable to the teams but they are not the people who score the most points, so it seems counterintuitive. Like, typically, when you think about a star basketball player, you think about somebody like a Michael Jordan who scores the most baskets.

In this case, these players are most valuable not because they actually score the most points, but because they are true team players. And so, when they’re on the court, what happens is the teams have a much higher likelihood to achieve success and win the games than when they’re not on the court even though they don’t actually score.

And the principles around Glue are basically the same. So, it’s not about being a leader, being out in front, getting all the credit for something, or being the star player on a particular team. It’s about looking at a team and trying to figure out what you can do to actually bolster the productivity of the team and make them feel healthier, happier, complete the team where they may have gaps. And that’s what the essence of Glue is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that sounds like something we all love to be here in terms of listeners of How to be Awesome at Your Job. And now let’s dig into some of the particulars. I love your table of contents chapter titles. They’re so enticing and captivating, so I’m just going to go right through my favorites and ask bit by bit. First, how do we build rapport quickly?

Anh Dao Pham
There are a lot of ways to build rapport quickly. And, actually, you’ll notice that my book was endorsed by Robert Cialdini. He wrote a book called Influence, which is immensely popular.

Pete Mockaitis
We’ve had him on the show and we love him. Oh, he’s so good.

Anh Dao Pham
He’s amazing. He’s amazing. There’s all these tactics that you can use that help you understand how to build rapport with people and how to influence people without actually having authority. And so, a lot of the things are very simple. Like, in Robert Cialdini’s book, he talks about just making sure that you, when you speak with a person, you actually provide a reason for what you’re asking to do.

And when you do things like that, where you ask a person to actually complete a task for you, or make a request, and you provide them a reason for the work that they’re doing, it helps them understand why their work is important, and, ultimately, build rapport and helps them trust you more. So, that’s one principle.

Another one comes from Dale Carnegie, which is really simple. It’s just using people’s names. But in a multicultural environment, and, in particular, in a remote environment, it’s even more important that you use people’s names and that you also get their pronunciations correctly and that you know how to spell their names correctly. These are small things but they make a really big difference in building rapport with a particular person.

And then another type is, just make sure that you’re accessible and approachable. So, if you have a team that you’re trying to get know, maybe arrange some sort of social situation where you can get to know them better, take some time at the beginning of your meetings to pause a little bit, have some informal conversation to warm up, talk about their weekend. Make them feel like they’re people not just a person who’s actually completing a task but somebody you genuinely care about and are interested in. Those are the best things that you can do to start building rapport.

And then the final thing, which is something that I get quoted on a lot is I call the candy bowl, the magical candy bowl, and you’ll see this in the book title, or in the chapter title, where I always keep a candy bowl on my desk. And the reason that I do that is because it sort of embodies a bunch of these principles. It makes me approachable in the sense that it gives people a reason to actually come to my desk and talk to me.

Oftentimes, people actually come to my desk and then take candy when I’m not there, but it establishes me as a giver. So, even if I wasn’t there, they remember, “Anh has a candy bowl on her desk and I can come get it whenever I want.” And if I then talk to them later, even if we haven’t had a conversation, it actually creates a certain amount of equity with them, like I’ve deposited something in their virtual piggybank. And if I go talk to them later, they already have a warm feeling associated with me because I’ve given them something whether or not I know it.

And so, that to me is like a very classic trick, and I have always had a candy bowl on my desk since I can remember.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s lovely. I’ve got a couple follow-up questions there, Anh. One is what candies are the fan favorites, perennial, time after time?

Anh Dao Pham
Branded chocolate goes the fastest.

Pete Mockaitis
Anytime, like KitKat or Snickers or anything.

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, Hershey’s, Snickers, Reese’s Pieces, anything that’s branded. I would try generic chocolate, like Palmers, during the holidays, when you get the Easter eggs and things like that, they don’t go quite as fast. But anything that’s like, yeah, KitKat, Reese’s, M&Ms, chocolate M&Ms, those go really fast. And it’s kind of my own experiment over the years, that’s something you see, what type of snack actually goes the fastest.

And there’s something interesting about the amount of candy that you put in the bowl as well. This is such a random nuance. But if you put too much candy in the bowl, especially if, let’s say, I get a brand-new bag of chocolate, and I dump the whole thing in the bowl, it goes faster. There’s something about the idea that there’s just a lot of candy that people come and take a handful of it, but if I ration it and put it out in smaller segments, then it tends to last a lot longer. People will come and take one or two rather than a handful. So, very interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
I absolutely noticed this phenomenon with, well, I was thinking, like, just drinking water in terms of if I have a big vessel of water, I will take bigger gulps more frequently versus if I’ve got a bottle of water in my last thirst, “Ooh, we better be sparing,” even though there’s more not too far away. It just gets inside you. That’s good.

Well, Anh, my next follow-up question is, when it comes to using names, how much is too much? Sometimes I feel like I hold myself back more than I need to, Anh. And so, now I’m just going to try a little bit right now, and you tell me when it feels excessive. I’m thinking when you address someone, of course, it just makes sense, or when you’re wrapping something up, like, “Thank you, Anh.” I guess every sentence would be too much. Do you have a sense for how much is too much when it comes to name use?

Anh Dao Pham
There probably is a too much. Like, yeah, I’d say every sentence is probably too much. But if you go back to what Dale Carnegie said, and I reference this in the book, the sound of a person’s name is the sweetest sound to them. So, if you can use it tastefully, in particular, if you can use it to address a person when you’re prompting them for a question, so I think that’s really important.

Addressing a particular person, addressing or acknowledging something that somebody said so that they understand that you actually heard them, those two, I think, are the most critical times to say a person’s name so that they really feel like you’re making a connection with them.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good. And I’m thinking about my buddy and mentor, Mawi, episode number one, he will insert my name right in the middle of sentences, and more than most people I know, and I really like it. He’ll say, “You know what we discovered, Pete…” and I’ll be like, “Well, what? What did you discover?” It’s like you have galvanized my attention, and I want to know even more.

And if I happen to be drifting, I really do feel, like, “Oh, I should be paying attention. He’s talking directly to me even though, of course, he was. We are really the only two people at this lunch.” But it has an effect, it’s a good one. Thank you.

Anh Dao Pham
Exactly. And then I think, in particular, if you’re working in a remote environment, using people’s names is extremely important. A lot of times, people have their cameras off, and if you use their name, they know you’re speaking directly to them even if they can’t see you. So, I think it is an even more important tool to be using now than it has been in the past.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And another table of contents prompt so juicy, what is the essential question to getting any project moving?

Anh Dao Pham
“What are the next steps?” It’s the most powerful question that you can ask. At the end of every meeting, if you leave and you don’t ask that question, you’re going to find that you’re going to be less productive on all of your projects. And so, if there’s no other question that you ask, if you’re silent the whole meeting as a facilitator, in the very end you make sure to ask, “What are the next steps? Who’s going to be doing them?” and then capture that information, you will be able to move your project forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. This reminds me of David Allen, for individuals getting things done, “What is the next action?” And it’s just magic how it gets stuff unstuck. And sometimes it’s so simple, it’s like, “Oh, I guess we got to look at our calendars to see when these three people can get together.” Like, “Oh, okay. Well, that’s not so hard. Let’s just go ahead and do that.”

Anh Dao Pham
Exactly. And I think if you’re doing any sort of leadership, in particular, project leadership, your goal really is to always be making progress. So, even if it’s small, as long as you’re moving the project forward with something like, “I know what the very next step is,” it doesn’t have to be the next ten steps, just the very next one, you’re going to continue to move everybody forward and make progress against your goals.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Now, everybody asks you to teach a particular skill, which I would not have guessed – it’s notetaking. What’s up with that? Why does notetaking matter? And how can you do it in a way that is differentiated-ly excellent that matters?

Anh Dao Pham
I am very passionate about notetaking. This is one of the strange traits about me, and most people, almost everybody who’s encountered me even briefly at work, knows this about me. It’s something that’s actually, to me, a cornerstone of my success in my career. I take avid notes, I type very fast, I take avid notes almost on every call or meeting that I have, even if I’m not going to publish them, because it’s part of my learning process.

And the reason that people ask me about it is because I often publish those notes out. So, as a part of my learning process, when I’m learning more information, I tend to take them. And I don’t just sort of listen to things verbatim. I listen to things and then I rephrase them as I’m typing them, or I try to reorganize them. So, when I was in college, I learned, like, you could take…if you take notes in outline format, your retention of that information is so much higher than if you just sort of listen to something coming in one ear and then typing it out verbatim what people had said.

So, what I started to do was sort of reorganize the information, put it in such a way that it is summarized, and then send all that information out and broadcast it to people so that they know that they’ve been heard, they know whose action is next, what the next steps are, all of the things that were important as a part of those discussion get captured, codified, and then broadcasted.

And it is possible to be significantly better at taking notes than another person in the sense that if you take really good notes, in particular, in today’s environment when you’re managing a lot of projects, some things are moving very fast, a lot of things don’t get documented. So, oftentimes, a good set of notes is the document that explains what happened and ends up being a system of record for any decision-serving needs.

So, if you become that person who takes really good notes and people know that, you start to just have a certain amount of power because you hold this information and people see you as a person who has access to this information very readily. The other thing about it is, like I said before, if I take good notes, then I learn more than almost anybody else in the conversation. It just crystallizes my memory for it so that when people ask me about it later, I have much greater recall ability.

And when it’s summarized in that fashion, I once had a person tell me he went home after my meeting, and told his wife, “These notes were better than the meeting,” because a lot of times, meetings will meander back and forth.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Anh Dao Pham
But if you kind of like consolidate the information under certain bullets, you can read this nice summary, it refreshes your memory and you know exactly where to go after that. So, yeah, those to me are the big key traits around taking good notes, is making sure that they’re organized, making sure that they track, capture what’s most important as a part of the conversation, and that you share them out so that people know you have access to them and can refer back to them.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, we might have to do a full follow-up episode if you’re down to talking about notetaking, because if it’s your superpower, and no one else has brought that up as their superpower, and it’s yielding value, that’s certainly cool. So, I’ll just restrain myself to a couple follow-ups for this conversation.

Anh Dao Pham
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you’re not just verbatim writing all the things you hear, but you’re rather trying to get some organization outlined to it. So, when I hear the word outline, I could think of a very strict “Roman numeral one. Indent, capital A. Further indent, Arabic numeral one.” So, that’s like a very formal, like when I’m learning how to write a paper in grade school, outline. Is that what you mean by outline in terms of the transformation that you’re mentally processing stuff as you outline?

Anh Dao Pham
No, actually, it doesn’t have to be. If that’s really comfortable for you, or your word processing application automatically numbers things for you, I think it’s fine, but it’s more important that you sort of categorize information. So, if a topic meanders, as an example, sometimes, let’s say we talk about notetaking now, and then five more minutes, it comes back again.

What I would do is have a topic of notetaking in my notes, and then I would put a couple of bullets from the first part of the conversation, and then in the second part, I would move that up so that it’s in the same section. So, when somebody is skimming it, they can see all of the takeaways all together at the same time.

And it’s not so important that you have, like, a strict way of taking the notes. It’s that you’ve summarized the information. And what’s even more critical is that you summarize the information in your own words. So, don’t try to take notes verbatim as somebody said them. Try to restate them in your own words so that it comes out more naturally and to confirm that you actually understood what it was that was being said.

Because, oftentimes, when people speak, it doesn’t make for eloquent or concise writing, so if you’ve summarized it in a good way, then people can read it, get the takeaways very quickly, rather than trying to skim through all the uhms and ahhs that actually come out in a conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. And to give us a taste, can we find a sample of your notetaking somewhere?

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, in the book, I actually put a few samples, one of the worst notes or no notes at all. So, if you just take basic notes, it’s still better than no notes. The second tier up is, at least, capture the key decisions and action items and who’s responsible for them. So, there’s a sample of what that looks like, then there’s sort of the next layer of fidelity, which is capturing a few key decisions in a little bit more detail. And then there’s sort of a more robust version of those notes.

And the sample I gave is from, like, a home remodeling project, which may have been overkill for a home remodeling project, but at least gives you an idea of the types of things that you would want to capture. Some of the salient points in the conversation that you might want to have for context later, those are the types of things that you might want to capture if you were taking really robust notes.

And, in particular, the why behind decisions. So, if you’re capturing just the decision but not why, if you take those in your notes, it again helps you understand it, and then it also helps you convey that information to other people.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. And I imagine it might vary a bit, but just to give us a bit of reference, if there’s a 30-minute meeting, which might have a word count of 4,500-ish words – that’s a lot of podcast ads experience talking right there, 150 words per minute – how many words or pages might your notes end up being?

Anh Dao Pham
It really depends on how efficient the conversation was. So, it could be that you had a 30-minute meeting but you swirled around talking about different options and deliberating them and debating them. In the end, your summary may have been as concise as maybe half a page, you said, “We talked about option one, option two, option three. We made this decision and this is why.” It could be that concise. And so, it doesn’t have to be verbose, it just has to capture the most salient points.

Now, sometimes you have a meeting, like I had one with one of my managers this morning, and we covered 15 topics, and it was 30 minutes, and it was, like, “Bullet. Here’s what we discussed. Bullet. Here’s what we discussed.” And that one ended up being more than a page long just for me to sort of capture those points.

So, I think it really depends on how much ground you cover. It’s not so much what your word count is but what were the most important things that you needed to capture and what’s the most concise way to capture them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share with us the three levers to keep your project on time and on track?

Anh Dao Pham
Sure. So, this is actually the one thing in the book that does sort of follow classical project management. There are really three things: it’s scope, meaning how much you’re actually trying to achieve in a particular project; time, which is the amount of time it’s going to take; and then resources, which could be either money or the number of people working on a particular project. That’s like the classic triangle of constraints for any project management course you would see.

And when you’re managing a project, it’s really important for you to understand what levers you actually have available to you. And so, if there is something that ends up being a gotcha or surprise, which always happens, no project ever goes as planned, then you can look to see which of these constraints are movable. And the easiest thing typically to do is to increase your timeline but, oftentimes, if you increase your timeline on a project too often or too much, then people fatigue of the project and they feel like it’s not successful, so you want to use that very sparingly.

The next is resources. If you have any resources, you can throw at a project, or if you can clear things off of a plate of a person who’s on the project so that they’re not splintered, then you can get more capacity. That’s always a good way to go about doing things. And then scope is something that people forget is negotiable.

Because even if people say at the very beginning of a project the scope is not negotiable, the closer you get to launching your project, the scope gets much more malleable, and that’s for two reasons. One is that people are more or less willing to actually yield on things that they want very early in the process. And the second is that the closer you get to launching a particular project, the more clear you are about what you’re trying to achieve.

And so, things that seem like they may have been very important at the beginning tend to be more negotiable or more malleable towards the end. So, I like to lean on scope first, then resources, then time if possible.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. I’m familiar with the triangle and the constraints. I learned that in college, and it was an eye-opener, and I love, Anh, those extra layers and considerations and weightings that you put on them. So, handy stuff. I’m just going to keep rolling through your excellent table of contents. Chapter 13, how do we communicate what’s most important?

Anh Dao Pham
Through every medium possible.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Anh Dao Pham
And this sounds funny, this is sort of like your question, “How much is too much when you’re using my name?” How much is too much when you’re articulating a goal? It’s almost never too much. And the reason is because people are very focused on their individual tasks, and it’s very easy for them to lose sight of what’s going on for a bigger picture.

So, if you’re trying to orient somebody against a goal, then what you want to do is, first, make sure that the goal is clear and unambiguous, everybody understands what it is. Then, second, articulate it in writing, verbally. If you want to plaster it on a wall, like, do whatever you can to broadcast the goal and do it in multiple mediums, and to reinforce it almost every chance you get.

I had a very funny example where I was marching towards a big project, and every day at the very beginning of the scrum, which is the meeting that we had for everybody, getting together to check in on status every day, I had a slide at the very beginning before we actually went to scrum that said how many days were left to the goal, till the launch date.

And so, 15, 14, 13, counting down every day. And two times, very close to launch date, I think I remember it was like five days to launch date, somebody pulled me aside, and was like, “Wait, when are we launching again?” And I realized, and so I just very politely said, “We’re launching in five days. This is the date.”

And it’s funny because people learn through different mediums. Some people are audio learners, so if you say it to them, they actually get it. Some people are visual, so if you broadcast it visually in some way, that’s when they get it. Some people need those things reinforced and some people actually need to say it themselves.

So, if you really want to know if somebody has actually ingested and internalized your goal, you can ask them to say it back to you, and only when they’ve actually articulated that you know for sure that they actually understood it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. And I guess you have to be careful with that so that it does not seem, I don’t know, patronizing or condescending.

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, I think you have to just take the request and respond to them, and know that you’re going to be repeating yourself a lot but that it’s just totally expected. And as long as you’re always tying it back to work that people are doing, they’re not going to feel like it’s too much.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right, Anh, let’s hear Chapter 14. “When is your project done?” It’s not when I think. Do tell.

Anh Dao Pham
This chapter is actually about the principle of taking ownership on a project. And one of the things that I think is a big misconception is people put together a project plan when they start a new project, and there’s typically a launch date at the end, and that’s what you’re marching towards. So, let’s say you’ve got a three-month project, you’re launching towards the launch date.

And then at the end of the launch date, people feel like their project is done but that is not the case because, oftentimes, like I said, maybe you’re marching through that launch date and you looked at all these constraints because there were some sort of crazy surprise that happened, and now you’ve started to cut scope. And I like to call cutting scope very close to the launch date as roadkill. This was like roadkill on the path to getting to my goal. I started pushing things to the side, and saying, “Not critical. Not critical.”

So, once you’ve launched, there typically is, like, a number of things that still need to be happening in order for you to make your project a success. It can’t just be launch and sort of out on the ether. You need to go back and take care of all of the things that you don’t need in this roadkill along the way. Maybe you need to do additional communication to people who were stakeholders but maybe impacted after the fact.

So, a key example here is if you work in product development, or if you’re launching any sort of product or new thing, oftentimes, there are people who have to support that new thing once it’s out. So, it’s not just like making the feature available or the new product available, it’s also about making sure that the people who are going to need to support that are trained and have all the answers that they need to be able to do that in a sustained fashion, or there’s a place to ask later when there’s an issue with whatever that is that you’ve just released.

And so, all these things happen after a project launch date, but the project launch date is most commonly focused on as the end of your project. And so, in the chapter, I talk about this, it’s not so much that there are steps that you can do to say when your project is done. It’s more about an attitude. If you take ownership of a project as a project leader, and you think of yourself almost like the CEO of your project, then you don’t limit yourself to the scope of work that’s already been defined or what’s been defined to you by your title.

So, if you’re a product manager in my world, I might say, like, “Well, my goal is to define the product and get it out there.” But if I want it to be a success, I might have to do things that are beyond the launch date, beyond the scope of my role. And so, if you really think of yourself as an owner, and that you are paramount to this project’s success, then you will look to see what else needs to be done after the launch date. And until those things are completed, you’ll know that your job is not done.

The other thing is, always plan a celebration when you hit a big milestone. Don’t forget the tail end of a big project. It’s not done until you celebrate it with your team.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Anh, tell me, any final thoughts you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Anh Dao Pham
Sure. I’d say, at the end of the day, leading projects and leading people is not cookie cutter, and I think this is probably the biggest thing that’s not fully articulated this way in the book but, hopefully, is a big key takeaway for people. Most of the things that I do are very people-driven. I’m most worried about boosting productivity for the people on my team, and I do whatever it takes to make that happen.

So, every project, every team is custom, and you’re different, the way that you add your perspective to a team is different. And so, I would like to warn people against sort of blindly following checklists, and, instead, to think about ways that you can customize your approach based off the team’s needs and what you’re trying to accomplish, and the personalities on the team. And know that if you do that, you’re going to be a lot more successful than somebody who is just trying to apply some set of rules blindly without thinking them through.

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

Anh Dao Pham
Yes. From one of my favorite books on happiness, What Happy People Know by Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth, the quote is, “We don’t describe the world we see. We see the world we describe.” And I love this because it’s very telling about human thoughts, in the sense that we often think that things are dictated to us, but, in fact, we actually have a lot of power to transform our worlds based off of what we call ourselves.

So, if you call yourself a project manager versus a project leader, that makes a really big difference in how you actually translate your role and your sense of ownership. And so, I love that quote because every time I feel like I’m being limited by the way that I’m calling myself something or the way that I’m framing a particular scenario, I try to reframe it to see if I can change the way that the world is reacting to me.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I like that a lot. And I don’t know where I borrowed this phrase. I got it from a job description which I thought was funny. I think it said one of the requirements was to “Provide visionary leadership.”

Anh Dao Pham
Like it’s so easy.

Pete Mockaitis
And just like that, and I thought, “All right, what’s on my to-do list today? Okay, provide visionary leadership. Check.” But I found that when I say that to myself, like, “Okay, I’m going to write a bunch of emails to my team and the collaborators, right,” it’s like, okay, so one view is, “Okay, that’s a thing that’s got to get out the door, a bunch of emails. Check, check, check.”

Versus if I say to myself, and I’m kind of joking and I’m kind of being highfalutin for the fun of it, it’s like, “All right, on my to-do list is to provide visionary leadership on these course adaptations.” And then, sure enough, I really do feel more jazzed about it, and really do spend some more time providing useful feedback and direction that is more enriching for folks.

So, yeah, how I describe that to-do list item really does shape how I perform it even though I was kind of joking.

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, there are studies about this. It’s called jobcasting where you take your job, and you try to put it in a bigger context. So, for example, you’re a podcast host, you could say, “My job is to create podcasts,” or you could say your job is to put more information out in the world so that you can help people all over the world be better at their jobs. The second one is going to be so much more inspiring than the first, right?

So, the way that you frame what you’re doing has a very tangible impact on your perspective and how motivated you are going to be to do that job. So, I think that that’s so insightful, and the fact that you actually have the power to change your own perception by describing it differently, I think, is just phenomenal.

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

Anh Dao Pham
Now, this is a hard one because a lot of your prior guests have cited lots of great studies, and so I was trying to find one that I felt was unique. And I ended up landing on a study that Sean Achor, who’s the author of The Happiness Advantage, did to himself, which I think about all the time. And it’s a very novel study about what it takes to adopt new habits versus what it takes to deter yourself from stopping…or to deter yourself from continuing to do old habits that are not so good for you, and he calls it the 20-second rule.

And the experiment goes like this. He wanted to play his guitar more often. And so, he had a guitar that he bought, it was in his closet. And he decided to see if he removed the friction from playing the guitar by just buying a stand and then putting the guitar out in the middle of the room, whether or not he would actually play his guitar more often.

And it turns out, just the additional friction of getting off of the couch, going over to the closet, getting the guitar out reduces the amount of time that he would actually play on the guitar. So, he had a lot of success in just moving it from one location to another. And then he did another experiment which I thought was so funny.

He had a remote control that he typically used to leave on his couch so that when he watched television, it’s there. That’s what everybody does. Their remote control is right on the television, so you plop down on the couch and got it, and then you turn it on. But he wanted to stop watching as much television and, instead, read more books.

So, what he did was he took the batteries out of his remote control, and he put them in a drawer that was a few feet away, and he said he timed himself. It took him about 20 seconds if he were to get up out of the couch, go to the drawer, put the batteries in and close the remote control to start using it. And his goal was to see if he created that little additional friction if he would stop watching television as much.

And so, what he found was he did. He stopped watching television as much because he was sort of inherently lazy in that additional 20 seconds. The friction actually caused him to pick up the book that was, like, right within arms’ reach on the couch rather than watch television. So, I find that to be like a fantastic study. And in my real life, I use it both at home as well as at work when I think about why people are not responding to me or not able to complete a different task that I asked them to do.

I see, “Is there a way that I can make their job easier?” So, for example, if you ask people very open-ended questions, it’s difficult for them to answer because they have to craft a response from scratch. But if you give them statements that they have to react to, that takes a lot less brain power so you can be much more effective at getting responses that way.

Another example is in my home life. My husband is 6’2” and I’m 5’4” and so I love Post-Its, I put them…write things on them all the time as a reminder I want to give him. There’s one trick that I have done more recently and that is very effective. It’s when I have a reminder for him, and not me, I write it on a Post-It and then I put it at his eye level, not mine. And just by writing with it being right in front of him instead of right in front of where I would be, he has a much harder time missing it, and knows it’s for him.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And a favorite book?

Anh Dao Pham
A favorite book, this is really hard. I’ve just quoted What Happy People Know by Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth. That’s one of my all-time favorites in terms of happiness as well as The Happiness Advantage. And then in terms of non-self-help or happiness books, I recently enjoyed a couple of memoirs. I really liked Untamed by Glennon Doyle, and then also Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a particular nugget you’re known for, something that people quote back to you often?

Anh Dao Pham
Outside of notetaking and the candy bowl effect?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s plenty really.

Anh Dao Pham
I’d say, yeah, those are nuggets. The one thing about the book that’s actually been very controversial and has come up quite a bit is I do have a chapter about planning where I state that I believe plans are optional. And this is almost like sacrilege for the project management community, but it’s created a lot of controversy.

And it’s not so much that I’m against planning. It’s that, like I said before, I’m against people following things blindly and doing things for the sake of doing them, rather than doing things with specific intention. And so, I challenge the notion that every single project needs to have, like, a detailed project plan. Instead, if you’re looking for ways to boost team productivity, tailor a process to your team, plan when your team needs a plan, and be thoughtful about it. That, to me, has been like a really insightful takeaway that most people have come back to me and ask me about, and particularly controversial.

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

Anh Dao Pham
I’d love it if folks could find me at my website, it’s www.GlueLeaders.com. Pretty easy to find. You can contact me there, find everything about the book, and also a link to this podcast once it’s available.

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

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, actually. I was listening to your podcast, and I think it was episode 830 with Dr. Waldinger where he cited a Gallup quote that I also cited in my book about making friends and making best friends at work, and how that increases both productivity as well as enjoyment. And if you take nothing else away from all this, there’s a lot of little tactics and tricks that you can do to build rapport, be more organized, take notes. But, at the end of the day, to me, the most rewarding thing at work is when you make personal connections.

And so, what I would love to advocate people do is don’t just think of your job as a job. Think of it as a way to make meaningful connections with people, and to accomplish great things together, and bring part of yourself to work. And the reason that I started writing jingles is because I like to rhyme, and it’s silly, but it’s very uniquely me. And if you love to cook, maybe organize potlucks. If you love ping-pong, maybe organize a ping-pong tournament.

My husband and I like to play poker, and so now we’re thinking about combining my love of cooking Vietnamese soups and poker with a “pho”ker night. So, those are things that you can do to bring to your workers, and it makes it more rewarding when you actually create genuine friendships, and then accomplish things together. So, what I would say is find ways to connect with people at work, make friends, and in doing so, hopefully, both your job as well as your coworkers’ jobs will be more rewarding.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Anh, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much fun and good glue.

Anh Dao Pham
Thank you. So nice to meet you.

669: Making More Impact as a Middle Manager with Scott Mautz

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Scott Mautz returns with best practices for leading up, down, and across your organization.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The mindset for middle management success
  2. How to keep progressing with the 50/50 rule
  3. The trick to giving excellent feedback 

About Scott

Scott Mautz is a high-octane speaker expert at igniting peak performance and deep employee engagement, motivation, and inspiration. He’s a Procter & Gamble veteran who successfully ran several of the company’s largest multi-billion dollar businesses, an award-winning/best-selling author, faculty at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business for Executive Education, a former top Inc.com columnist (over 1 million monthly readers), and a frequent national publication and podcast guest. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Scott Mautz Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Scott, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Scott Mautz
Fantastic to be back. I’m hoping to help you be even awesomer-er, I guess. How many E-Rs is that? Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, Pete. Thanks for having me back, man.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Well, I certainly think you’ve got the goods to pull that off. And so, you’ve got a new work coming out, it’s a book Leading from the Middle: A Playbook for Managers to Influence Up, Down, and Across the Organization. Boy, that sounds very necessary. Can you tell us, maybe as you’re putting this together, any real big surprises or counterintuitive discoveries that came to light?

Scott Mautz
Yeah. Well, I have more than I could possibly share with you. I’ll do that by opening it up with a story, if that’s cool with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, please.

Scott Mautz
So, it has to do with why the heck did I write this book to begin with, why focus on middle managers when a lot of the publishing industry is so much more focused on C-suite, or if you just started, you don’t know what the heck you’re doing. What about these middle managers? So, I kind of fell in love with the topic, I have to do this, but based on this particular story.

So, I’m keynoting for a client, and I’m going to disguise the fact, to protect the innocent. Let’s say it was in Minnesota, Upstate Minnesota, I’m keynoting in the company’s headquarters and if you’re any good at keynoting at all, people will come up to you and want to talk to you afterwards. So I’m doing that.

And my handler comes up. He comes up and says, “Hey, Scott, I got to get you to the airport so I’m going to pull you away from the crowd. Come with me.” Okay, I follow him.

He winds me through this office he was taking me through a shortcut to get out the side door where the cab was waiting for me, and he says, “Okay. Oh, by the way, I got to grab one more thing. Just stay right here for a second.” We were right by his desk. And, of course, so what would any person do? I just decide I’m going to snoop while I’m standing there at his desk because, what else, I think he went to get water for me or something for the trip.

And on his desk, there’s literally nothing, Pete. It is blank except for three things: a piece of paper, I’m going to tell you about right now, a picture of a monkey, and the number five. So, when he comes back, I got to ask him about this, I mean, “What? Dude, you got three pieces of paper and no work on your table. What’s going on? Can you explain these things to me?”

So, he hands me the piece of paper, and it’s something I want to share with you now, he said, “This is something that’s been distributed to us that kind of encapsulates the spirit of what it’s like to be a middle manager here. I’m going to read it to you.” Actually, this was what they were handed from higher management in his company which shall not be named. It was directives. It said, Middle Manager Directives, “Lead but keep yourself in the background. Build a close relationship with your staff but keep a suitable distance. Trust your staff but keep an eye on them. Be tolerant but know exactly how you want things to function.” I’ll read just one more, “Do a good job of planning your time but be entirely flexible with your schedule.”

I don’t know how this list, of these things that just didn’t add up, these contradictions, I said, “Okay, so that’s what it’s like to be a middle manager.” He said, “Oh, yeah, there’s no doubt.” And I said, “Okay. Well, wait a minute. What about this number five?” He said, “Oh, that refers to a study that I got from Stanford University.” He handed it to me and I was flipping it through it, he summed it up, and he said, “The study shows, it’s actually a five-year study that’s why the number five, and the study shows that taking a middle manager that’s not very good and replacing them with even an average middle manager is more productive than adding a net new person to the team.”

So, the story reminded him of the value of middle managers on the day when it wasn’t going so well for him. And I said, “Okay, that’s great, dude, I’m getting a flavor of what it’s like to be a middle manager in your company. What about the picture of the monkeys?” We’re all waiting for that, the punchline. So, he hands me another study conducted by some researchers in Manchester, in the University of Liverpool where they were watching monkeys, a family of monkeys, or, actually, I think it was over 600 monkeys in total, across different families of monkeys, to study the hierarchy.

And they would study these monkeys and they would code their behaviors, just like either really, really aggressive, which would include like slapping behaviors and screaming and screeching, or nurturing behaviors like cuddling or picking the bugs out of each other’s hair. And then they collected the fecal matter of these monkeys, which I’ll leave that up to you, Pete. That’s not the job for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Fun job.

Scott Mautz
To measure the fecal matter for stress hormones, and here’s what they found. They found that the monkeys that were right in the middle of the hierarchy in the monkey tree, they weren’t the boss baboon or whatever and they weren’t the youngest little chimpanzee, the middle monkeys were the ones that were the most stressed out and had the poorest physical health by far because they had to manage in their hierarchy up, down, and across. And that really all summed up for me the net of what it means to be a middle manager.

It was surprising to me to learn this, you asked what was surprising, that, in truth, there’s kind of a stigma about it, isn’t it? It’s brought about by shows like The Office, the movie Office Space, the Dilbert cartoon. There’s a stigma to it and I’m surprised to find in my research how many people are yearning for inspiration to say, “Hey, it’s okay for me to be a middle manager,” and pound their chest with pride. That’s why I decided to write the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is powerful, yes, in terms of there’s contradictions, you’re getting pulled in many directions, there’s a lot of stresses associated with it, and then you don’t get respect at times.

Scott Mautz
You don’t get many respects.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what a combo.

Scott Mautz
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, then what is to be done?

Scott Mautz
What is to be done? So many things can be done here. The first thing I would say is, to help your listeners understand, and I talk in the book about this acronym SCOPE. It spells out the categories of unique challenges that middle managers face. The S stands for self-identity problems. The C stands for conflict problems. The O stands for omnipotence problems, the expectation of knowing everything. The P and the E are physical and emotional problems associated with being a middle manager.

I’m just going to pick out one of those because the book goes into depth. But, Pete, most people say, “Well, the difficulty would be in middle managers is there’s so much to do. I have so many hats on that I’m exhausted all the time.” That’s the most common answer of why people believe it’s tough to be in the middle, and there’s truth to that. That’s undeniable. But what people may not know, and I was very surprised to find out in my research, is back to the number of hats that we have to wear as middle managers, therein lies the real reason of why it’s so difficult.

And that’s because when you wear so many hats, it creates a self-identity problem and it creates a problem with micro-switching, what neuroscientists call micro-transitions, whereby, because you wear so many hats, you have to transition very quickly from a deferential stance to your boss, to assertive mode with your employees, to collaborative mode with your peers, sometimes all in the same meeting, and you have to jump into the roles you weren’t expecting to play. Your boss shows up and, all of a sudden, “Oh, I got to go into boss-managing mode.” And you move from these high-power roles to low-power roles back and forth all day long, and it is exhausting.

So, I’m going to tell you what you do about that in a second, but isn’t that surprising to you at all? It surprised me that that’s the real core driver of what’s happening, why it’s so difficult here to be a middle manager.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I imagine that is one issue, but what’s intriguing is when you get that clarity and that bullseye, like, “This is the thing,” so that’s hugely valuable to come to in the research. So, how do you deal with them?

Scott Mautz
Yes, so what do you do about it? So, here’s what we found. Our research of over 3,000 successful middle managers, Pete, we found that the most successful middle managers had a mindset for how to deal with all the hats that they have to wear that exhaust them because of all the switching. And what we found is the most successful middle managers, they kind of reframe it. They thought of the micro-transitions that you have to make not as segmented but as integrated into one job that you’re uniquely suited to pursue.

Or, here’s another reframe I heard of that I thought was brilliant, so brilliant I wrote it down and it made it in the book. One successful middle manager said, “God, all those roles I have to play, it’s a privilege. My job is to think like an engineer but feel like an artist.” And I thought, “Wow, that makes a lot of sense,” and he went on to explain this, like, “To be a middle manager and effectively manage up, down, and across, you really have to be skilled at being process-oriented and driven like an engineer with detail and follow through in plans and implementation. At the same time, you have to be able to feel like an artist and have empathy for people, and care, because, in truth, when you’re a middle manager, you’re at the intersection of everything horizontal and vertical in the company. And you have the opportunity to be an empathy engine for the entire company.”

And the best middle managers, that’s exactly what they are. Not only are they the backbone of the organization, something to take pride in, but they’re the centerpiece, the epicenter of empathy for the organization as well. I have other best practices and tips. I know on the show, Pete, that your audience really values best practices. Would that be a good place to go next or you want to go someplace else?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, absolutely. Let’s do it. And I just want to simmer with that a little bit.

Scott Mautz
Please, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Think like an engineer and feel like an artist. It’s beautiful and it rings true as something that is necessary. And the micro-switching, yes, that is tricky. And if you’ve got that mindset, I can see how you can do the switching all the more readily in terms of, “Oh, engineer mode. Oh, artist mode. Engineer mode. Artist mode,” as opposed to just a big mess of, “There’s a bunch of stuff I got to deal with now. How do I…? Oh, engineer mode, artist mode.” And so, I want to hear the best practices, and I imagine some of them have to do with, “Well, how do you identify when is the right moment? And how do you make that switch?”

Scott Mautz
Yeah. So, here’s what I thought I would do today, Pete, for your listeners because there’s so much in the book to share. I thought I’d first give a couple overall tips that just kept popping up over and over and over in the research for the most successful managers, then I’ll just share just my one best tip for managing up to your bosses down to your employees and across to peers, if that works for you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Scott Mautz
Two quick overall tips that kept popping in the research. Successful middle managers tell me about the importance of the golden question, which is this, to continually ask yourself, “Am I assisting success or avoiding failure?” because those two paths produce very different outcomes and behaviors, and we can forget. We can mean to assist success but fall into avoiding failure behavior.

So, for example, in the case of assisting success, what does that look like, Pete? Well, that looks like you’re helping people past the barriers, you’re removing barriers, you’re coaching them, you’re investing in them, you’re doing whatever it takes to help people succeed. Avoiding failure, that looks like micromanagement, indecision, conservatism, perfectionism.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, CYA.

Scott Mautz
CYA. And when you ask yourself that question of, “Okay, am I assisting success or avoiding failure?” it forces you to be very intentional and self-aware of the types of behaviors you’re engaging in as a manager of others and people have to manage up and across.

Pete Mockaitis
What comes to mind here is the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, about the chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, and he’s got his park coach and his fancy coach. And the park coach where he’s playing the speed chess wants, I don’t know why he’s stuck with me, but he’s sort of like yelling out to him, it’s like, “You’re not playing to win. You’re playing not to lose and it’s not the same thing.”

Scott Mautz
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
And it isn’t. And I think it’s quite natural with our human limbic system defense mechanisms to want to protect yourself and avoid a failure and looking like a fool, or getting into trouble, getting yelled at, and often those are the kinds of behaviors that aren’t creating transformational results that are going to make you promoted and have your team love you and have the rest of your team flourish as well.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, I think that’s very, very well said. And sometimes we don’t see it as avoiding failure behavior in the outset even though everybody else sees it that way. We think of it as, “Ah, I’m being smart. I’m being conservative. I’m making sure I have all the data before I move forward,” that’s really not what that behavior is helping along.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear maybe some potential words and phrases that indicate you’re in the avoiding failure mode. One that comes to mind is when you send an email and then you say, “Please advise.” And that’s fine sometimes. Sometimes that is fine, you really do need that input. But sometimes that comes across as, “I’m not going to stick my neck out to make a recommendation here. I’m not going to take ownership or make a decision. I’m going to do a little bit of a buck pass.”

And, again, that’s a broad generalization. Sometimes you absolutely need other people’s inputs on something, and you shouldn’t go full steam ahead before you get it. But sometimes it’s like, “I don’t know. I think you can probably push this a little bit farther before you pass it over to me to do the thinking.”

Scott Mautz
I think that’s exactly right, Pete. A couple other keywords to listen for – parallel path.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy.

Scott Mautz
If you’re using that word, that means you’re creating two ways to approach something which means you’re doubling the amount of resources you’re burning and, frankly, you’re just not making a decision. You’re running a parallel path of, “Should we go route A or route B?” And if you hear the key word of permission, “I’d like to do this, I got to get permission from my boss and see.” Listen, business builders don’t have to ask for permission on everything. Homeowners and homebuilders rather, homebuilders have to ask for permission on everything not business builders so you got to watch out. And you bring up a good point. You got to be really intentional about the language you’re using because that reveals which indications of when you’re engaging and avoiding failure versus assisting success.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, please continue.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, here’s another overall tip and then I’ll go into kind of up, down, and across, just one quick best tip. I hear this a lot, and I’m assigning the words to this concept. I never heard these words exactly but this is what a vast chunk of successful middle managers are doing. And, believe me, we’ve talked to well over 3,000 of what companies determine are their very best middle managers in their organization.

And I see them practicing the 50/50 rule, which is this. When things are at their craziest, Pete, when you feel like, “I’m overwhelmed and it’s so busy, I don’t even know where to turn my focus,” you practice a 50/50 rule which happens a lot to middle managers, that kind of busyness. 50/50 rule says, “In those times of chaos, spend 50% of your time on pragmatism, 50% on possibilities.” 50 plus 50, equals 100, which means you have zero percent of your time left for focusing on spiraling down and, “Pity, poor me, I’ve got so much to do.”

And here’s what so powerful about this. When you say, “Out of all my time, only 50% of it is going to be dedicated to pragmatism,” that means you now have a half of a half of your time to prioritize and focus on priorities, right? So, that means you can’t accept other people’s urgent, you can’t take in every single fire alarm that’s going off and put out every fire. Only half of your time now, half of half of your time, in some ways to think about that, could be spent on pragmatic choices.

The other half should be spent on possibilities, looking for the opportunities in the middle of all the chaos and all the input and stimulus that you’re getting, because research shows us, one of the most common traps we fall into in our busiest times is we tend not to focus on the possibilities and the opportunities right in front of us. Why? Because we’re so busy just trying to cross things off our to-do list, just trying to jump from everyone else’s urgent to everyone else’s urgent back and forth. 50/50 rule, does it make sense to you, Pete? Could you see that apply?

Pete Mockaitis
I totally can. And I’m thinking now, we had a guest from FranklinCovey talk about a mantra from an executive who said, he ran some in the hotel bit space, he said, “Hey, if you want to keep your job, just keep things running. You got plenty to do and you’ll stay employed. But if you want to get promoted, bring me an improvement. Like, show me a few points of lift on customer satisfaction or occupancy rates.”

And I think that there’s a lot of wisdom to that. It’s always more urgent to deal with whatever is in your inbox and whatever someone is yelling at you about but it’s less urgent but also important to see, “How are we getting better? How are we producing some results so that we stay relevant and we get to exist as a premiere hotel chain in a world of Airbnb and new disruptors and all that stuff?”

Scott Mautz
Yeah, you’re right, Pete. And if you look back on people that are great successes in their life, there’s a lot of data on this. This isn’t just my opinion and my personal experience, there’s a lot of data that says a core success factor is the ability, in the midst of chaos, to spot opportunity when other people are just running around taking care of their to-do list and answering everyone else’s urgent. So, I think that’s really powerful. The 50/50 rule is a really powerful thing to kind of take into your activities at work.

With your permission, Pete, I’d love to share with you one very quick tip for leading up, down, and across. Would that be good?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Scott Mautz
Let’s do it. So, here’s how I’m going to do it because Leading from the Middle is packed with so many tips. I’m going to focus on the most frequently asked questions to me on this front. And the most frequent question I get with, “How do I manage up to my boss? How do I do that well?” because that’s tricky.

The most important thing I can tell you on that front is to understand what’s asked of you, to get crystal clear on expectations. And I share that, Pete, at the risk of it being too obvious because, despite it being obvious, we’re not so good at it. Check this out. We conducted, we’re almost up to over 300 now, different boss-subordinate pairs that we’ve been interviewing in focused groups and through questionnaires and through all kinds of different datapoints, to find out, “Okay, with this boss-subordinate pairing, did they really understand what one expects from the other?”

And we are finding that, despite up front, those both sets of people, the boss and the employee saying, “Yeah, yeah, we’re clear,” in over 80% of the cases, it turns out there were material breaches in understanding, they’re understanding of the basics of what one expected from the other. That lines up with what Gallup research shows us as well. Gallup shows us that 50% of employees around the globe have no idea what’s really expected of them. So, how do you solve that?

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, that’s so fascinating and it rings true. Can we zoom in on some examples of, “Oh, I thought you expected this but, in fact, you expected that?”

Scott Mautz
Oh, yeah. For instance, a perfect example, there was one boss-employee pairing, and the boss said, “Okay,” it was a sales position and he expected his employee to engage in sales leadership in a certain way.

Pete Mockaitis
Sales leadership, okay.

Scott Mautz
Yes, sales leadership, that included…

Pete Mockaitis
You got a few ways.

Scott Mautz
“Okay, I want you to follow this selling process. I want you to teach your fellow salespeople,” because this was the number one salesperson he was working with, “I want you to teach your fellow salespeople how to employ the selling techniques that you’re employing as well.” And, yeah, he listed basic expectations. Then when I asked the employee what was expected of him, none of that stuff was on his radar screen.

He thought his job was to protect the secrets of how he was selling so that he could personally rise up the chain and continue to be the number one person and that his boss would never have expected him to share that knowledge. He thought that the way he had devote selling was the right way to go, and he had totally ignored the company-preferred method, and there was a darn good reason the company wanted him to follow this method, so he was doing his own method.

That turns out was creating some problems on the backend, some customers weren’t so satisfied afterwards given all the things this kid had promised because he wasn’t following the standard procedure. So, in something that’s basic is like, “This is how we expect you to sell at this company,” there was a gap in understanding.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And sales leadership can say, “Okay, got you. I’m going to continue to be a more rock star sales leader, a leader in sales, by selling more by the things that I’m doing that are working so well.” Certainly. So, what are the best practices then to surface those misunderstandings and get them cleared up?

Scott Mautz
Yes, so powerful. It’s to develop what I call a good-to-great grid. Here’s how it works. We’ve all heard that book Jim Collins’ Good to Great. This is a different kind of use of this. So, just picture this, I want your listeners to picture this. Imagine a simple chart and it has three columns in the chart. On the left-hand side of the chart, that column, that’s metrics that are important to you at your job.

So, let’s say you work in company XYZ, and leadership, risk-taking, and taking initiative are three really important things you get measured on. You put that in the left column. The next column is the good column, the next column is the great column. In the good column, you sit down with your boss and you define, let’s pick one metric, let’s use leadership, “Okay, boss, let’s you and I, together, write down on paper what good leadership looks like.” Then in the next column, “Okay, boss, let’s you and I agree to a definition of what great leadership looks like.”

And what happens is that you force your boss and yourself to get crystal clear on what just good is and what great is. And what happens is most often we get lazy when we set expectations and we just assume that everybody knows what our idea of great is and, in fact, they’re delivering good at best. And the person that’s delivering the good, they actually think, “Oh, I’m doing great,” and they’re not clear on what great really looks like, and you can’t get to that without specificity. You need tension. That tension is the difference between good and great, defining the difference between good and great. And when you could do that, it forces specificity and clarity, makes sense that it’s a powerful tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that is nice. And so, could you give us an example of something a boss-subordinate pair might agree to on a good picture of leadership versus a great picture of leadership?

Scott Mautz
Sure. Here’s one of prioritization. This is from an actual good-to-great chart that I developed with a team years ago. So, imagine you got this chart, and on the left-hand side you have prioritization, priority-setting as an important thing. In the good column, what if you wrote this? It’s called Trash Compactor Management, and what that means is, you know what a trash compactor is. It takes trash and it squishes it into a cube. Imagine if you thought of your workload that way, and what good would look like is you say no every once in a while, so your work cube gets a lot smaller. It gets squished down into a smaller, more doable work cube.

Frankly, Pete, a lot of us aren’t even good at that. We’re not even good at saying no to stuff that comes on our table. So, if you could start by saying no, that’s pretty good in priority-setting but that’s not great. Great priority-setting is not Trash Compactor Management; it’s Accordion Management. Accordion is a musical instrument that you play that you kind of move your hands in and out to play the instrument. It puffs wind out and you get different notes.

Imagine your workload was like that now. You contract it like an accordion at times when you know you’ve got a lot going on, you’ve got a big sales call coming up, a big presentation to the CEO, but then you contract it in between so people can breathe. You’re not always adding work and expanding the accordion, you’re contracting it so you can learn from a big meeting, so you can take training, so you can enjoy, so you can celebrate. Then you expand the workload back out again when things get busy. In and out all the time like an accordion. Now, that’s great priority-setting.

And the things is, for your listeners, Pete, I hope they don’t agree with any of those definitions, that they might say, “Well, yeah, yeah, Scott, I hear you. I think good priority-setting is this and great priority-setting is that.” Actually, I hope they don’t agree and that they come up with their own definitions sitting down with their boss because that’s the power there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah. It’s funny, as I’m thinking about this and the 80/20 Rule, I’m thinking, “Now, great prioritization is I can name for you the one, two, three things that I fully expect to be 16 times as valuable per hour of my time than the other things.” Like, oh, wow. Okay, that’s what great means. And I love that specificity. What’s coming to mind for me is back in the day, consulting at Bain & Company, there were three things that were important, and it’s probably the same today, and I’d say that Bain frequently does well in the Best Places to Work list, and I think this is one of the reasons.

So, they say, ‘Hey, there’s value addition, there’s client communication, and there’s team. These are the three things that really matter.” But then they break it down in like 20 something competencies. So, under value addition, we have, “Achieves expert status.” And this is what I expect from a consultant within the first six months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months that they should be able to do. And on your review, if you look like someone who’s been at the job for 18 months doing those kinds of things at six months, we’re going to go, “Wow, you are frequently exceeding, or consistently outperforming on our expectations.”

And I thought that was pretty cool. It’s like, “Okay, so you achieved expert status in the early days” might mean like, “Oh, I’ve got the Excel sheet and I really know the numbers and what’s in them. And in the latter portion, it’s sort of like, “I understand more about this thing than the client does and I can explain it clearly at the drop of a hat.” And so, you say, “Oh, okay, I see how that’s different.” And one of them is certainly elevated to the other, and that’s powerful.

Scott Mautz
It’s that specificity that sets you free, right, Pete? It forces you to engage in the discussion of what good versus great looks like which is why so many of us are not clear on what good or great looks like because we never had that discussion.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. Well, so that was fun with priority-setting. Let’s hear another one because I think this is so important, and people are like, “Yeah, I know, I know.” But I think there’s maybe another layer of specificity we need to drill into. So, that’s priority-setting. Let’s hear another example.

Scott Mautz
Let’s keep going. Well, this one, maybe it’s too generic or whatever. But it’s one that I hear an awful lot on, “What does good leadership versus great leadership look like?” You and I, Pete, could debate this all day long but this is an example from an actual client of mine who they defined good leadership was doing the right things, always making the right choices on prioritization. Then they said great was, and I thought this was pretty wise, doing the right things at the right time for the right reason.

And the distinction was, if you just say, “Good leadership is doing the right things,” well, that means is that, in your mind, what you think is right in that time, in a tunnel, in a vacuum, in an echo chamber, “Yeah, we’re going to do the right things,” and they didn’t mean like, “Do the right thing morally.” They just meant, “Prioritize well.” But when you add on “at the right time, for the right reason,” that brings two different degrees of specificity to the table.

For the right reason, what they meant was they want leaders to be acting according to the company values and principles. Doing them at the right time meant they don’t want them to get ahead of themselves, they don’t want them to be making ridiculous decisions without the proper data, or they don’t want them to be waiting around forever to jump on an obvious opportunity. So, that’s straight from a client, I thought that was a pretty powerful and simple way to discern the two things.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And as I think about the clarity, it would be awesome to have some particular examples from recent work, like, “Hey, for example, recently you did the right thing associated with this but it was not quite the right time because we were still waiting on this important thing.” And it’s like, “Oh, okay.” And so, then it’s extra crystal clear.

Scott Mautz
And the good news here, Pete, for today, is that I put together, I’ll mention this again at the end, I put together a toolkit for your listeners, and I’ll give the address for the toolkit at the end here when we’re done. But in the toolkit of free tools is going to be a completed good-to-great grid with probably 15 examples on different metrics of what good versus great looks like on leadership, priority-setting, risk taking, vision, you name it, that’ll be available for your audience.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. Beautiful. Well, let’s see, we’ve covered some great stuff here. I also like to get your take on when I think about middle managers, when there is that tension, that up, down, sideways, all over the place, like how do you really get something done in a big organization? What are some of the best practices, insights, takeaways, in pulling that off?

Scott Mautz
Yeah, maybe this one will surprise you, maybe it won’t, and it’s tied to…I also wanted to offer up the best tip that I get for leading down in an organization when you have employees, and this is tied to your question. And this is the question I most often get, by far, for people, new managers of others, I bet you can even guess it, Pete, is, “How do I give feedback and do it well?” And we know that also correlates with productivity in an organization because every manager knows they have to give feedback, everybody knows that. When you’re a boss of others, that’s part of the job.

We’re wired to not do it well. And the ability to get things done, if you don’t want to just do it yourself and burn yourself out, it has to come, of course, through others. But if you want to do that well, you have to be able to correct and mold that and do that through feedback. So, the two things are intertwined.

And what I always tell people is, “The rules are pretty simple.” And I go deep into this in Leading from the Middle. But if you want to master feedback, Pete, here’s a couple of simple rules. You got to be specific. My grandpa used to say, “White bread ain’t nutritious.” Feedback is the same way. Meaning if it’s generic and bland, no one is going to get any value from it.

Pete Mockaitis
Take more initiative.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, right. That’s right. Right. If it’s more like whole grain bread, your feedback, if it’s filled with nutrients and it’s specific and granular, people are going to appreciate that and grow from that. Your feedback has to be sincere. If it comes from the heart, it sticks in the mind. It has to be calibrated. When you give people that feedback, if it’s corrective feedback, Pete, they’re going to assume the worst from it if you don’t put it in context.

For example, let’s say, Pete, I’m giving you feedback on your podcast, and I say, “You know, Pete…” I’m making this up, “…your microphone levels are always too low,” which is not true. You have incredible sound but let’s pretend I’m telling you that. Now, I could just leave it there and then you, as a podcaster, what you most likely are going to do, like most human beings, is take that to the worst place possible, “My mic levels are too low, which means I’m a loser, which means no one will listen to my podcast.”

Like, if I don’t calibrate you on that and say something like, “Now, Pete, where you are in your life in podcasting, it’s very normal to have your mic levels too low. Lots of podcasters make that mistake, so just work on getting the mic levels right.” Or, if I really want you to get the message, I got to calibrate you and say, “You know, Pete, you got to understand, if you don’t fix this right away, we’ve talked about this before, you won’t have a podcast show anymore.” Those are two different ways to calibrate the feedback.

And if you don’t provide that context, people will go to the worst possible scenario. Another important rule…

Pete Mockaitis
And to that.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, please. Go, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And I love it, we’re talking about specificity, it could really be potent if you say, “Hey, man, negative 20 to negative 16 LUFS is the standard. And if someone’s listening to your show, and then another show, they’re going to have to be fiddling with the volume, and that’s not a great listener experience.” And so, I can really see, like, “Oh, who cares? You just crank the volume. It’s all good.” It’s like, “Here’s kind of the implication of what that means, why it matters, and why we are even bothering to talk about it.”

And I think that’s huge too in terms of really, really hitting that. And you’re right, we can take it to the worst place possible, and if we’re not feeling like an artist and solely thinking like an engineer, “Out of specification, hmm, rectify,” then you can totally blow right past that, and now you realize you’ve devastated somebody.

Scott Mautz
That’s exactly right. And even, by the way, the last point on giving feedback, even if you have to give that kind of harsh piece of feedback, it can be devastating, like you say, Pete, if you don’t put the right context around it. You also have to remember, kind of the last straw I’ll share today is being proportionate about it. Research is now showing us very clearly, Pete, that for every one piece of corrective feedback you give somebody, you got to have five pieces of reinforcing and positive feedback.

Now, the exception to the rule is if you’ve been working with somebody forever one-on-one, and you have trust to the gills, filled, and you can say anything to each other, you probably don’t have to follow the five-to-one rule but that’s not most of us. It’s a pretty powerful thing to keep in mind in influencing down.

I have one power tip for leading across. You tell me if you want me to go there next or if you wanted to take a pause.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear it, yeah.

Scott Mautz
Okay. So, because I promised I would give your listeners one tip up, down, and across, the final is across. How do you lead from the middle, Pete, when you don’t have authority over people but you want them to do what you want them to do? How do you do that with no formal authority? And to do that, I want to share the golden rule of influence, incredibly powerful. It’s what I branded it, and I first learned about the concept, the general concept from another author by the name of Dan Schwartz, and I took it and ran with it, and I think of it as a golden rule of influence because it’s so important.

And to teach that to your listeners, we’re going to do a little test with you right now, Pete. So, I want you, Pete, to think of somebody in your life that has been very influential, had a ton of influence over you, preferably in the professional range for now, but you didn’t report to them, they weren’t your boss. All right. So, let me know when you have that person roughly in mind.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve got him.

Scott Mautz
Okay. Let’s take a test now. Did that person, were they so influential because they did any of these four things? Did they care, listen, give, and teach? How many of those four apply?

Pete Mockaitis
All four, yup.

Scott Mautz
That’s what we find out is usually the case. If you want to have influence over people, over whom you have no formal authority, Pete, you care, you listen, you give them something, you teach them something. I promise you that will be influential to them. And if you serve that, you don’t have to worry about the rule of reciprocity, that they will then give you what you need back, they’ll feel compelled. They’ll want to not on reciprocity, just out of the fact that so few people do those four things for their peers and for their teammates.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful especially in a world where there’s too much to do. And how do you choose? Well, if there’s someone that goes, “Hey, that guy is just awesome to me. They all look the same to me but it’s coming from someone who’s been great to me, I guess I’ll do that first.”

Scott Mautz
That’s well said, Pete. Well said. So, they have an up, down, and across, man. That’s just a few tips to help you lead from the middle.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Well, let’s hear a few of your favorite things now. How about a favorite quote?

Scott Mautz
Oh, my favorite quote is probably “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.” Love that from author Charles Swindoll.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Scott Mautz
My favorite book is, I’m not allowed to say my own, or I’m not going to because that’s just kind of ridiculous, but I have to admit I’m still a big fan of Good to Great by Jim Collins. It influenced the creation of the good-to-great grid I was talking about earlier, and I still find that to be a watermark, watershed book.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Scott Mautz
Oh, my favorite habit, by far, is actually killing an old habit, which is it used to be that I would compare, too often, Pete, to make irrelevant comparisons to other human beings. We know that 10% of the human thought goes towards comparisons most often to other people and to irrelevant comparisons that don’t matter that force us to beat ourselves up. So, my favorite habit now is when I catch myself comparing to others, I simply say to myself, “The only comparison that matters is who I was yesterday and whether or not I’m becoming a better version of myself.”

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

Scott Mautz
ScottMautz.com. And I mentioned before that I put together a toolkit for your listeners, Pete, to help them lead from the middle, to help them influence up, down, and across the organization. If they go to ScottMautz.com/freetools, that’s all one word, freetools with no space in between it, they can get that, all that valuable stuff – ScottMautz.com/freetools.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Scott, this has been a treat. Thanks so much for coming on back and good luck with all your leading.

Scott Mautz
Right on. Thanks a lot, Pete. Thanks for what you do. It’s a great show.

509: How to Become the Manager Your Team Needs with FranklinCovey’s Todd Davis

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Todd Davis of FranklinCovey says: Everyone deserves a great manager.

Todd Davis explains why people are bad at managing—and what to do about it. 

You’ll Learn:

  1. Where most managers fail
  2. How to overcome the fear of feedback
  3. A productivity hack to keep your week from spiraling

About Todd

Todd Davis has been with FranklinCovey for more than two decades and serves as the chief people officer. As the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work, Todd has delivered keynote presentations and speeches around the globe, including at the renowned World Business Forum. Todd has been featured in Inc. magazine, Fast Company, and the Harvard Business Review. He and his family reside in Holladay, Utah.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Todd Davis Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Todd, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Todd Davis
Thank you, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m such a big admirer of FranklinCovey and the work you guys do and several of your folks over there who’ve appeared in the podcast. I’d love to hear, what’s some of the newest, latest, coolest insights coming out of FranklinCovey over the last year or two?

Todd Davis
Wow! That’s a loaded question. Well, FranklinCovey, I’ve been here for, going on 24 years now, so lots of great things during that time. Most recently, and this has been maybe a little bit longer than two years but we’re still involved in it, a big business model change where we now have what’s called an all-access-pass model.

So, previously people that would engage with FranklinCovey would purchase our solutions or have our consultants come in for a specific solution, and we still do that, but now it’s more of a subscription model where people have access to everything and anything that FranklinCovey does. And we have, well, we call them implementation specialists that come into your organization or your team and help create these learning journeys. So, that’s probably the biggest, one of the biggest changes I’ve seen in my career here.

On a more recent change, the book that I believe we’re going to talk about, Everyone Deserves A Great Manager: The 6 Critical Practices for Leading a Team just hit the Wall Street Journal’s bestseller list today, it just came out today.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent.

Todd Davis
So, very excited about that. That was not why we wrote the book but it’s nice to see that validation of how it’s resonating with leaders and managers and others all around the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, let’s dig into that. I think that’s a beautiful vision statement put out there, everyone deserves a great manager. So, what do you say is sort of how well the world is doing right now, or maybe the U.S. in particular, that’s easier, in terms of what proportion of folks do, in fact, have a great manager and how are we defining that?

Todd Davis
Well, yeah, it’s such a great question. You know, I was talking with my group as part of our book launch last week, and we made the analogy, if you get on an airplane, you sit down in the seat, and you’re ready to relax for a minute, then the pilot comes on and she or he says, “Thanks for flying with us. I’m not really a trained pilot but I have an interest in flying and I may get my license one day. But, relax, welcome to Good Luck Airlines.”

Your immediate response, at least mine is, “I got to get off this plane.” And while that’s kind of an overly-dramatic analogy, this is what happens in the real world. We have good people, really good people, and according to a Harvard Business Review study, they’re put in their first manager role, on average, at about age 30 and yet don’t receive any management or leadership training until age 42, if ever, so there’s this 12-year gap where they’re like this pilot trying to do the best job they can but it’s kind of like, “Welcome to Good Luck Leadership.”

[03:02]

And our instincts, and what happens in reality, is we leave that company, we leave that manager. Yes, people need to be paid fair, they need to have benefits, they need to do challenging work, but study after study shows that people leave because of their leader, because of their manager, or they join or they stay because of that leader. So, not only does everyone deserve a great manager, if you’re going to have a successful team organization, you got to invest in and be one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’m sold. I’m convinced. And so then, I’d like to hear maybe just to orient kind of what that looks like when someone goes from not so great, haven’t been trained, to making that transformation, what’s that kind of look like in terms of the starting line, and then the transformation, and then what it looks like on the other side? And if there’s a particular client or manager that comes to mind, feel free to share that story.

Todd Davis
Absolutely. Well, when I asked groups around the world, “Who’s ever had a bad manager?” every hand goes up. And, again, I want to distinguish between a bad person and a bad manager, but a manager who really wasn’t qualified to lead people. And then I talked to them about why they felt this person, what was the person lacking, or what was the gap. Many different things, of course, but a large majority of them center around the person’s ability to really empathize and communicate. Communication is like the number one thing that comes up.

And so, I’m not just saying that, well, if you can become a great communicator, then you’ll be a great manager. But that seems to be where it all starts, or most of the time. And so, to your question, “What is it like to go from a bad leadership or management situation, where I don’t really have a lot of respect or appreciation for a manager, to a great one?” It starts there with someone who is real with me, communicates with me, and the feeling, as you asked, “What is the feeling?” it’s a feeling of validation, of acknowledgement.

Not that I’m perfect, but that the work I do matters, that you care about me as a person, not just as the project leader or the frontline person or whatever my role is, but you care about me as a person. You’re looking through a lens of a leader’s mindset versus an individual contributor’s mindset. So, I got to be careful because I’m very passionate about this, and I want to make sure we get all your question answered. But mindset is where it really starts. In fact, that’s the person we talked about in the book, is the importance of having a leader’s mindset.

Pete Mockaitis
Now that piece about they really communicate, I saw, it was a Harvard Business Review study another guest brought up, it said that the majority of managers are uncomfortable communicating about anything.

[06:01]

Todd Davis
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
I just couldn’t even wrap my brain around this study. I got to understand, hey, there’s some hard conversations, difficult to give some feedback or corrective, but it’s just like across the board. So, can you maybe paint a fuller picture in terms of not communicating? I mean, words are exchanged surely. So, what’s kind of the base level of communication that doesn’t really count, doesn’t get the job done, versus kind of an example of great communication, like, “Wow! Okay, this is what a great manager sounds like”?

Todd Davis
Great. Great question. I’ve been in leadership roles for about 25 years. I’ve been observing and coaching leaders during that time as well. And I think, to start with, there are many reasons why the communication is poor, we don’t communicate at all as managers, but those that I’ve worked with, well, I wouldn’t say the number one reason, but the top two reasons are they’re very busy, they’ve got a lot to do as a manager, and that’s caused by the fact that they don’t have the right lenses on, they don’t have the right mindset. And so, they view themselves as too busy to spend the time necessary with their team. That’s one of the first barriers to communication.

The other, and it’s really a close runner up, is when you say they’re uncomfortable communicating it’s because they feel like they have to have all the answers, “I don’t want to open up a conversation, and then my team member that I’m leading ask me something and I don’t know what to do.” And both of those are incorrect ways to look at things.

Number one, if I’m in a leadership role and I don’t have time to meet with my people, I need to get out of that leadership role. That’s what I’m thinking about. My number one job as a leader is to get results with and through others. And so, to have that kind of be a mental barrier, talking about communicating, is really what I need to address.

The second issue of having to have all the answers, again, wrong way to think about it. I don’t have credibility with you because I have all the answers. I have or intend to have credibility with you because I know how to facilitate an engaging discussion, I know how to go and find and pull in people who will help so together we can find the right answers.

So, “I’m afraid to discuss with someone because I don’t have the right answers or maybe I need to give them some feedback, and I’m uncomfortable with how to give them a feedback. I don’t want to offend them, or I just want the problem, if it’s a problem, to go away.” These are all things that get in the way of effective communication. And we can certainly go into some examples and some actual dialogue of what a communication should look like.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I think we may well do that. And so, when you say too busy to spend the time necessary, I guess there’s probably a lot of flexibility on that range, like just how much time is necessary. But do you have a sense in terms of, “Hey, this much time is not enough time”? Like, what’s sort of the minimum recommended daily allowance that we’re talking about here?

[09:15]

Todd Davis
Yeah. Well, it’s certainly varies with the industry we’re in, with the roles we’re in in those industries, with the number of people we have reporting to us. Practice number two of the book that we’ll get into is to hold regular one-on-ones. And so, specific to your question, whether I’m holding a 30-minute one-on-one with each team member every week, or every other week, or even once a month. While the frequency is somewhat important, it’s the consistency.

If I commit to say, “Hey, Pete, I’d like us to…we’ll see each other and work together on many things throughout the month, but I’d like us to meet once a month with the sole purpose of finding out what’s working for you, what’s not working for you, what can I do to help remove barriers. So, could you have that in mind? And as we get close to that time each month, I’ll send you a little form that I use, and you just…I want to make sure we get all of your topics addressed.” You make the meeting about them.

So, the frequency and the amount of time will vary with the number of reports you have, the direct reports you have, but the most important thing is the consistency. Once you made that commitment, if you cancel on that or you continually reschedule or move it back, it unintentionally, and I hope it’s unintentional, it sends a message to that person that I say I value you but I really don’t value you as much as I do this other thing that came up.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, yes. That completely resonates. And that’s, I think, reassuring in terms of there’s some flexibility there with regard to the scheduling. And if someone is frightened by the notion of, “I have 18 direct reports,” it’s like, well, 30 minutes once a month, mathematically speaking, it results in nine hours per month out of maybe a 160 work-hours. Doing real-time math here. Five or six percent of your day is one-on-one conversations. And that doesn’t sound so outrageous. As I imagine, you probably get some pushback, like just that, “I don’t have time for all these, Todd.”

Todd Davis
A lot of pushback. And, again, I go back to, “Are you really ready to be in a leadership role?” Again, going back to practice number one of the book “Develop a leader’s mindset,” I like to ask leaders and those that I coach, “Do you want to be a great leader or do you want your team led by a great leader?” And people will pause, and I’ve had a few people say, “Well, okay, help me understand the difference. Do I want to be a great leader or do I want my team led by a great leader?” And it is a very subtle difference.

And in my experience, if you want to be a great leader, you probably do a lot of really good things during the day. You add value to your company and all that, that’s fine. If you shift that mindset a little bit and, every morning, you wake up and you have the mindset of, “I want my team led by a great leader,” then I’m looking at everything through their lens. “What do they need? How can I help Aaron reach his full potential? What does Blair need to complete this project?”

[12:28]

And so, again, it sounds subtle but then it makes it not just easier, much more meaningful to say, “Gosh, nine hours out of my month, or 10 hours out of my month…” based on the numbers you gave me, “…to spend investing in making sure I understand what my team needs because I want them led by a great leader, I’m going to be much more effective, they’re going to be that much more effective and engaged. And time and time again, I’ve seen it. Our team is going to produce much better results and much more meaningful to the bottom line.” So, it’s not just a nice to have and it’s not just that everyone deserves a great manager, you’ve got to be a great manager to help your organization and your team stay in business.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. And I just think about retention, I think that’s sort of been my philosophy when it came to some of my early career decisions. It’s like, “I don’t…” I think it’s a fair statement to say that we cannot count on, in the vast majority of cases, a single employer being your source of income for a lifetime. Generally speaking, that is not the case for the majority of folks.

And, thusly, in a world where, hey, economic downturns often do result in layoffs, and where loyalty is not as strong on both sides of the table, that’s kind of was my takeaway, it’s like, “Well, I need to be in environments where I am maximizing my learning and skills development and growth in order to be employable over a lifetime. And if I’m not, then I’m kind of flirting with some risky business.”

And so that I think from a business strategic perspective, hey maybe you’ve done a study on this, I think there’d be just a gargantuan difference in retention and turnover stats for organizations that do this versus that don’t do this.

Todd Davis
And that’s so true. There was a recent study by Deloitte, it’s called their Global Human Capital Trends Report, cited that 30% of workers today are engaged, 52% are disengaged, and then the remaining 18% are actively disengaged. I like to ask people, “So, what’s the difference between actively disengaged and disengaged?” And it’s those actively disengaged, they are really a cancer within the organization, they’re going down bringing everybody else down with them.

[15:01]

But the main thing, and to your point, Pete, 30% are engaged, are excited about what they do, come to work with this creative, innovative mindset, adding real value. And so, if we, as leaders, aren’t focused on, “How do we keep those folks engaged? How do we raise the level of engagement of others?” they are going to go elsewhere, and we are not going to succeed.

I like to coach managers on thinking about their superstars, their top performers, and making sure that they know the answer to three questions on a regular basis, like at least once a year, maybe every six months, “What’s working for you? What’s not working for you? What would you like to do next?” And I’ll have managers push back and say, “Okay, well, I’ll ask what’s working for them but I don’t want to ask them what’s not working for them. What if it’s something I can’t fix?” I joke back and say, “Well, okay, so let’s ignore it and wait until the company down the street is able to provide that or fix that, and then we lose them.” Let’s address “What’s not working for you?”

Often, they’ll bring up something that you can actually influence or maybe do something about. And if it’s something you can’t, if it’s something you can’t fix that’s not working for that superstar employee, if you have been asking sincerely, and they know your intent really is to try and have a great career for them, or help them create a great career, just by asking that question will be a huge deposit with them and add a lot of value.

And then I really get pushback on the last question, “What would you like to do next?” And people say to me, “Well, I don’t want to plant that idea in my superstar’s mind ‘What do you want to do next?’ I want them to keep doing the exact thing they’re doing right now because they’re so valuable.” And, again, I would just share and remind people, superstars, talented people, they want to be challenged. You just referenced this. They want to keep learning and growing.

And so, if you don’t ask them what they’d like to do next, and they don’t have that opportunity, they’re going to go to an organization that offers it, so let’s find out what they want to do next, and maybe there’s a way to have them continue doing their excellent work in their current role, but also adding new learnings and dimensions onto what they can learn.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love those three questions, and you piqued my interest earlier when you said, “Fill out this form for our one-on-ones.” What are some the things that go into the form?

Todd Davis
Well, I say it’s more symbolic. It’s a very usable form. There’s a copy of it in the book. But we just want to create the idea of, look, your regular one-on-ones manager or leader, they aren’t a status check of how these people are doing on their projects. Yes, you need to have that, and maybe that can be a small portion of the one-on-ones or preferably in another meeting. The one-on-ones are their meetings.

So, the form is to get them thinking about the types of things they’d like to bring up with you as their leader. Now, leaders are hesitant to do this. They want to be able to control the conversation, where things go. And while that’s understandable and human nature, that’s not how you’re going to attract and retain top talents.

[18:15]

So, you make the one-on-one about them, they fill out the things they’d like to talk about, you fill out a couple of things that you want to see get covered in the meeting but make sure that theirs are the priority, and you tell them that, “We’re going to go through your list of things first, and then if we have time for mine, great. But this is about you.” And then you share those lists before the meeting.

And, really, what that does symbolically and practically is it shows the value that you are placing on them and their time and how important what their thoughts and their opinions are to you. That it’s not just, “Let’s get together. We’ll talk about whatever comes up,” but, “No, I, as your leader, am going to put some thought into some of the things that you want to discuss, and that’s why I’d like to know what they are in advance so that I can be really well-prepared to make the most, the best use of your time, and have given a lot of thought to the things you’d like to discuss.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. So, we talked about one of the practices, which is having the one-on-ones. Could you give us an overview of the other five, and then we’ll sort of see where we care to take deeper?

Todd Davis
Absolutely. So, just to kind of keep things in order in my head, practice one is develop a leader’s mindset, everything starts there, it’s the foundation of the way you think about your role as a leader. Practice number two, that we just talked a little bit more about, holding regular one-on-ones. Practice number three, setup your team to get results. Practice number four, create a culture of feedback. Practice number five is to lead your team through change. And then practice number six, manage your time and your energy. And I’m happy to talk about any or all of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, let’s talk about the culture of feedback.

Todd Davis
Great.

Pete Mockaitis
How do you do that?

Todd Davis
So, yeah. Well, let me ask you this, Pete, and I can’t see you but I see a picture of you. When someone says to you, some colleague or boss says, “Hey, Pete, have you got a few minutes? I’ve got some feedback for you.” What kind of goes on internally?

Pete Mockaitis
For me it’s like, oh, boy, all right, they’re going to bring it. Okay, and so I’m just like I’m already a little freaked out so I’m trying to calm down a little bit. It’s like, “All right, Pete, there’s probably some merits in what they say, even if they enrage you, be ready with your magical phrase, ‘Tell me more about that,’ when your brain comes reeling associated with what they have to say.”

Usually, if it’s unexpected, that’s it. If it’s sort of like the regular time we have where feedback lives, maybe this is where you’re going, it’s like, “Okay, it’s just what we do here. All right, it’s all good.” As opposed to, it’s like, “So, to be more succinct,” I’ve had a listener correct me on that a couple of times, “It’s pronounced succinct,” now I know. Thank you. It’s probably, “Uh-oh, I hope I didn’t screw something up too bad.”

[21:16]

Todd Davis
Well, thank you for your transparency and honesty. And I’m wondering if you could travel the country with me as I give keynotes on this because you just described what is going on in every one of us. I had a person in a presentation the other day and I said, “When someone says to you, ‘I’ve got some feedback for you…’” and this person said, “Oh, I love feedback.” And I said, “Great. And that’s what you tell everybody, and I’m sure you do. And what’s really going on inside?” And I wasn’t trying to embarrass, but they said, “Well, I am thinking, ‘Okay, I wonder what I did wrong?’” And that’s human nature. That’s what we all think.

We hear this word feedback and we think, “Oh, crap. What have I messed up?” And when I say it, when other people say it that, “Gosh, feedback really helps us.” Our initial reaction is, “I’ve messed up.” Well, feedback, if we think about, this is very elementary, but feed means to nourish or to sustain or to foster, and back means to support. Just that reminder, first off, is, “Oh, wait a minute. Feedback is here to help.”

So, creating that culture of feedback, where you said towards the end of what you were sharing, is the norm is really the goal here because we all have blind spots. Everyone. The most accomplished human being on the planet has blind spots. And if we don’t have a systematic approach to feedback, getting feedback all the time, well, then we go through life and through our careers being less effective than we could’ve been.

Now the way we go about creating that culture of feedback is really important. In the book, we talk about the importance of giving reinforcing feedback or redirecting feedback, and we’re not avoiding the word positive or negative feedback to tiptoe around something or not call something what it is. In fact, we’re trying to do just that.

Reinforcing feedback, I mean, for people who have raised children or nieces or nephews or whatever, the first day they can tie their shoe or they remember the word pants to school, and you say, “Johnny, way to go. You got dressed all by yourself.” And, honestly, not to sound condescending, we don’t change much as we become adults. That reinforcing feedback tied to a behavior continues to cement in our minds, “Oh, that was a good thing and that felt good having that recognized. I want to do more of that.”

So, I guess the first thing I want to say here is let’s remember that reinforcing feedback of great behaviors, great results, is equally as important as redirecting feedback, when the behaviors are not where they need to be. So, reinforcing feedback is critical. And something, just to dive a little deeper on this, while some people will think, “Well, reinforcing feedback will be, ‘Oh, gosh, Adam, you’re so awesome. We’re so glad you’re here at the company. You do a great job.’”

[24:07]

That’s nice and I’m sure that’s well-intended but, quite frankly, it means nothing. Versus, “Adam, I’m so glad you’re on our team. That report you delivered yesterday in the meeting, the level of detail you went to, it shifted the whole conversation. And I have noticed over the last couple of months that we’ve worked together how detail-oriented you are. And, boy, did that play out well yesterday. So, I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate that.”

Adam is going to remember that feedback for a long, long time. And, more importantly, Adam is going to continue to even strengthen his strength of attention to detail. So, reinforcing feedback tied to a behavior. I had a very wise manage many years ago who taught me that, and just said, “Todd, remember you’re always very positive with people and that’s a great thing. Remember when you’re giving feedback that, number one, it’s sincere and that it’s tied to a behavior not just that it’s, ‘You’re awesome.’” So, that has stuck with me for a long time till forever.

Okay. Redirecting feedback, things aren’t going so well. This is where a lot of managers, “Gosh, I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to offend them,” and they wait and wait and wait, hoping the bad behavior will just disappear or the person will disappear. Redirecting feedback, when given with the right intent, declaring your intent upfront, can be just the most helpful thing you can do as someone’s manager.

“Joan, I really appreciate you taking time to meet with me today. I want you to know how much I value your contribution on the team. I had, and I’ve had in my career managers and other people point out things to me that I maybe wasn’t seeing or wasn’t aware of, and it’s been hard to hear for me but it’s been a huge help in my endeavors to be a strong contributor. I want you to know my only intent as your leader is to do the same for you. You have so many good things going for you. There are a couple things I want to talk to you about that I believe are hindering your complete and total success. So, please know it’s with that intent that I share this with you.”

That’s how I begin every redirecting conversation. It’s got to be sincere. These aren’t scripts. This just comes from doing it a lot and it comes from the heart. It’s important to lower the person’s defenses. When someone feels defensive, they have a hard time hearing anything you’re saying. And I have found the most effective way to do that in a feedback situation, redirecting feedback, is to let them know I’ve received redirecting feedback before so that they’re not embarrassed or humiliated thinking, “Oh, I messed up.” “Well, no, we all mess up. We all need or benefit from this kind of feedback. And I’ve certainly been there before so I can really empathize with you.”

That helps lower defenses. And then making sure they know your intent, “Joan, my only intent is to help you be as successful as you can be. And I see great potential for you, and that’s the only reason I’m sharing these things.” So, that’s the way, the effective way, to receive redirecting feedback.

[27:10]

Now, a third thing, and I hope I’m not rambling too long here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, go for it.

Todd Davis
Okay. The third thing is some managers think, “Oh, I’ve reached my manager status, now I give feedback. That’s what I do. I give reinforcing/redirecting feedback.” Well, great, but you want to have a team that just reaches great heights and does wonderful things. It works both ways. You’ve got to seek feedback. “You’ve got to make it safe for your team to tell you the truth” is the phrase I like to use. Make it safe. Do you make it safe for others to tell you the truth?

And know this, by your title alone as manager or director, whatever it is, you, it’s not your fault, but it’s already a little unsafe to tell you the truth. And so, great managers realize that and so they go out of their way to seek feedback. And let me tell you a bad way to seek feedback is to show up in somebody’s office and say, “Hey, Pete, what did you think of the meeting this morning? How do you think I’m writing the meetings?” Well, what are you going to say, Pete, when you walk …?

Pete Mockaitis
“You’re doing great, Todd.”

Todd Davis
Exactly. And when put on the spot like that, we’re all going to say the exact same thing. Whatever she or he wants to hear, “Oh, awesome. You do an awesome job.” But a little bit differently, if I say to Pete, “Hey, Pete, I wonder if I could ask you a favor. I’m really trying to make sure our meetings are super effective. In tomorrow’s meeting…” so I’m doing this the day before, “…would you mind taking some notes, making some observations of things that you think I could do better as the leader in facilitating the discussion in the meeting? I mean, yeah, I’d love to hear what you think I’m doing well, if anything, but I really want to focus on those things that you think I could do better. Then maybe the next day or two after the meeting, we can get together and you could share your thoughts with me.”

That’s how a manager, a wise manager, asks for sincere feedback and makes it safe for others to tell her the truth or in the truth. And managers who do this and make this commonplace, the next time Todd or Pete hears, “Hey, do you have a few minutes? I’ve got some feedback for you,” we think, “Oh, great. I’ve got another opportunity here to learn something I might not be seeing.” And it becomes the norm, and nobody has that hair on the back of their neck stand up like we usually do.

Pete Mockaitis
I love those words, and it reminds me of there’s a speaker, we had him on the show, Justin Jones-Fosu, and at one time we both were doing a lot of speaking on college campuses. That’s how we got to know each other and so he’s a great speaker. And then I said, “Oh, hey, that was really awesome.” I saw him present in a conference. And he said, he was so sincere, and I love it, he said, “Hey, Pete, I really appreciate that. What I appreciate even more is if you could identify a couple of things that you think that I could do better because that really helps me grow as a speaker.”

And so, I was like, “Oh,” and first of all I was struck that I told many speakers, I told many people that they’re awesome in many ways, but it’s very rare that someone said, “Hey, thank you for that. What would be even more helpful for me is this.” I’m like, “Whoa!” And so, then I said, “All right. Well, this is one part where you’re telling this really emotional story about someone who is ill and then you actually had this music go, which is kind of emotional. And while I think that made it more emotional, it also felt a little manipulative.

[30:27]

And I don’t know if that’s everybody or just me but I think that it would seem all the more authentic if that just wasn’t there. And it’s like we’re not in sort of a TV drama, if you will.” He said, “Thank you. Actually, a couple people brought that up and I’m wrestling with that right now so it’s good to have sort of one more datapoint. And it’s awesome.”

Todd Davis
That is such a great example. I appreciate you sharing that because you just remind me. One reason why I’ve seen leaders and others hesitant to ask for feedback is they think they have to incorporate all of it. And I love what you said that his response was, “You know, a few people has mentioned that and so I’m thinking about that.” You don’t have to incorporate all of it. But, boy, I’m telling you, I get a lot of that feedback. I’m thinking I might want to tweak this so it doesn’t feel so manipulative.

So, I’m just glad you brought that up because, boy, don’t not ask for feedback because you think, “Well, if I don’t incorporate it then I’m disingenuous.” That’s not true. But you can always follow up with a person, say, “Gosh, Pete, I so appreciate that feedback you gave me. I’m going to be thinking through that. And I wonder if you’d allow me to come to you again in the future for feedback because I really appreciate you taking the time to share that with me.” That’s what you need to do when you get feedback is the follow up and the acting on it, but not incorporating every piece of feedback you receive.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And just to close the circle on that, Justin happened to be, for several years, sort of the top-booked speaker at the agency so, I mean, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. One thing he did very differently than the other speakers was this, and he was number one.

Todd Davis
Great example.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I think that is more than a winky-dink. So awesome. So, the culture of feedback. I also want to get to you talked about managing your time and energy. So, I think about this a lot when it comes to sort of, hey, I got my day, I got the impact I want to make from an individual workload perspective. How do you think about this in the management context?

Todd Davis
Well, and this is not news to anyone, burnout and burnout in the workplace is just certainly not going away and it’s increasing more and more. And with all of our wonderful technology options and bells and buzzers and whistles, it allows us to be working — allows us, I say — 24 hours a day. In fact, I remember when I was promoted to a certain position here at FranklinCovey, gosh, 20 years ago…

[33:04]

And I remember saying, “Well, if I did this, could I have a laptop and maybe work from home once in a while when the situation permitted?” thinking that would be such a luxury. And I just laugh now thinking how the very thing that we were thinking was kind of a nice treat has become this thing that has chained us to our work responsibilities 24 hours a day.

And so, burnout, because of our ability to stay connected and, again, it’s a choice we all make, and I can’t really complain about it because it’s a choice I make, but we are connected all the time. And so, because we choose to do that, if we choose to do that, we’ve got to really manage that time and that energy or we will burn out, and what we model gets modeled by our team. What the leader values gets valued.

And so, again, we could talk, I do talk all day on this, but managing my time, first of all, managing my time, I liken it to a pinball machine. If I don’t have a plan for the week, I show up Monday morning or whenever your week begins, and it’s like the pinball machine. The plunger is pulled back and I’m like that ball in the machine, bouncing from bells to buzzers to whistles, and I get to the end of the day or the end of the week, and I think, “Man, I’m tired. I have been busy.”

And when I look back and say, “What have I really accomplished of value this week? Maybe a few things but not certainly all that I could have.” Whereas, when I take, and it takes me about 30 minutes on a Sunday night, sometimes less, I look through my week, I go through my appointments, I go through all the things that I really hope to get accomplished that week, and then I force myself to think through, “Okay, if I could only get two or three things done this week, what would they be?” And I choose those things with the intention of getting 20 or 15 or whatever done, but I choose the top two or three things. And then I have this plan on how to get that done.

And then Monday begins, and the pinball game starts, and so we all get caught up in it, urgencies happens, nobody’s week goes as planned, but if I have a plan to come back to after taking care of this urgency, if I have a plan, a centerline to come back to, I can get back on track several times throughout the week. And I will tell you from years of experience, and I certainly had some weeks better than others, but I get much more accomplished. And if I model that for my team, well, I’ll get even much more accomplished. So, that’s what I’ve learned in time management and how to try and create and adhere to a plan for the week.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you say a plan, I guess to what extent, what sort of details or key things are identified with that plan?

Todd Davis
Well, and, again, I don’t want to have any emotional music playing while I say this, but I have written what we call a mission statement here that kind of identifies my values, what’s most important to me, and I reflect. On Sunday night, I’ll look at that just to kind of reconnect with what’s most important to me, both in my professional and my personal life, and the relationships in both professional and personal life that are tied to that. And that just kind of gets my mind around, “Don’t get too far off the path, Todd, of what really why you’re doing the work you’re doing and what’s important to you.”

[36:20]

And then with that mindset, I look through the week and I look through appointments that I’ve already committed to that are fixed in the week and then I think about, based on last week and the previous weeks, the urgencies that have come up — and I’m called the Chief People Officer, I have kind of a triage role — and have a lot of unintended or unplanned things come up, and I honestly try and block out time for those, don’t know what they are, but I think, “Okay, you’re being pretty unrealistic here, Todd. You’ve got these dates of back-to-back meetings. First of all, how are you going to get from one meeting to the next without any time in between? And as the urgencies come up, have you blocked…?”

So, I’ll block out some other time that’s not specific for a meeting, but because I know by this time of the day, I’ll have two or three things present themselves that I need to get answers back for people on. And so, maybe I’m getting too detailed, but that’s the level of detail I try and get to, to have a realistic week in front of me. And then I will look at, “Oh, that’s right. I told my daughter, Sydney, we’re going to plan this trip. I’m going to block out this hour that afternoon and see if she could talk then, and will schedule some time around that.” So, that’s just kind of an idea or a glimpse into my mind as I’m planning out the week.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, rather than your calendar having, hey, a few meetings and then some space that you’ve got to fill it in with whatever in the moment, you’ve sort of pre-allocated those spaces to what’s important.

Todd Davis
That’s right. And at FranklinCovey, we use a tool in 7 Habits called the time matrix, and there’s these four quadrants and there are different names for these. There are other models that are similar where you have these four quadrants, those things that are urgent and important, those things that are important but not urgent, and that’s what I was just talking about and you’re talking about where scheduling this vacation with my daughter is going to help me schedule. It’s important but because it’s not urgent, it keeps getting pushed off week after week. So, I make sure I’ve blocked time for those things that are important but not necessarily urgent.

The other two quadrants are urgent but not important, these are time robbers, these are other people’s urgencies. And then there’s the time wasters which are not urgent, not important. And you think, “Well, who would spend time there?” Well, I have, unfortunately. When I go home and turn on a sitcom thinking I’m going to watch it for half hour, and four hours later I get up off the sofa.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, man, it must have been a good one, Todd. What were you watching?

Todd Davis
Yeah. Well, one after another, the damage done by a remote control. So, anyway, of these four quadrants, just really making sure, if I could summarize anything in the week, “Have I blocked out time for those things that are important but not urgent?” And because they haven’t been urgent, they haven’t got my attention.

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

[39:05]

Todd Davis
Just summarizing, I guess, this principle or this idea or this important fact that everyone deserves a great manager. For those who are in or will be in a leadership position, just remembering the influence you can have in that role. I’ll never forget my 35th day of employment at what was then called The Covey Leadership Center, now FranklinCovey, it was 24 years ago. I don’t know what happened on day 34 or day 36, but on day 35, my boss at that time, her name was Pam, she walked me up to a senior leader in the company whom I have not met during the interview process and his name is Bob. And she said, “Bob, I’d like you to meet Todd Davis. He’s our recruitment manager.” That was what I was hired at 24 years ago.

And then she said, “Let me tell you what Todd has accomplished during his first 35 days of employment.” And I’m shaking this man’s hand, Pete, and my mind goes blank, and I felt like I’m going to throw up. I’m thinking, “I can’t think of what she’s going to say. I couldn’t think of one thing I had done in 35 days,” and it was really this uncomfortable feeling. And then Pam went on to say, “He filled this position in Chicago that was vacant for the last six months. He’s got a recruitment strategy for the next year. He’s got a relocation policy in place.” And this list went on.

And, please, I’m not sharing that to say, “Aren’t you impressed with what I did in 35 days?” I’m sharing this to tell you I remember that moment even as I’m retelling it to you right now, it feels like it was yesterday and it was 24 years ago. This leader, Pam Walsh, believed in me more than I believed in myself. A very famous quote from Dr. Stephen Covey, the bestselling author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People said, “Leadership is seeing in people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.”

And so, I guess if I could just wrap on this topic with that thought, it is just that, to remind all the leaders, whether in a formal leadership position or an informal one, whether you have the title or not, that true leadership is seeing the potential in others so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you.

Todd Davis
And I did that with no music playing in the background.

Pete Mockaitis
We might add it later. We’ll see.

Todd Davis
Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds like it might already be your favorite quote. But do you have a favorite quote you’d mention?

Todd Davis
That is probably one of my favorite quotes. I’ve got another one. Can I share two of them with you?

Pete Mockaitis
Go for it, yeah.

Todd Davis
Okay. One is from Abraham Lincoln. John Wooden, the basketball coach, used it a lot but it was from Abraham Lincoln, and he said, “It is better to trust and be disappointed once in a while than to distrust and be miserable all of the time.” And just that quote motivates me to see the goodness in others, to see the potential in others, to trust and not be so suspicious.

[42:12]

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Thank you.

Todd Davis
Another quote, because you said I could have two, and this one I’ve had, gosh, probably 30 years. And it was from an old actress by the name of Fanny Brice, and I don’t know that she was a mentor or anything, but the words have stuck with me. And the words she said were, “Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be because sooner or later, if you are posing, you’re going to forget the pose and then, where are you?” And I think in the realm of being authentic and really being who you are, those are things that I try and remember.

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

Todd Davis
Well, this is an old one but people are very familiar with it. There was the marshmallow study with the kids that were observed in the room when they were told if they didn’t eat the marshmallow. Do you know the study?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, indeed. Yeah, by Walter Mischel.

Todd Davis
Exactly. Very, very familiar. But I guess why it just came to mind when you said favorite study, I haven’t been asked that question before, but when you asked me that, it’s just a daily reminder, I think, for all of us. While I don’t think about the study exactly, I think about, “Todd, what do you want now versus what you want long term?” And just that quick fix and, of course, we’ve become, with technology and everything else that “I want everything right now” mentality, and it’s important for all of us, but certainly for me to remember, “What is it that I really want the long-term result to be versus the quick high or the quick fix?”

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, and tying that together with trust, I had a previous guest who shared another layer to that study which I thought fascinating, which was that the study was meant to sort of assess your ability as a child to sort of delay gratification.

Todd Davis
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
But what they discovered was one of the big drivers associated with whether or not the child waited was their historical experience of being able to trust the word of people’s promises.

Todd Davis
Saying you’ll get more if you wait.

Pete Mockaitis
Exactly. Instead of like, “You know what, I don’t buy it. I would take this now because I know it’s there. You may or may not be there.”

Todd Davis
You’re right. I remember reading that and, boy, isn’t that true.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, we talked about sort of trust in leadership and investing in people, I think that’s huge right there with regard to they can do more of that…

Todd Davis
Such a great point.

Pete Mockaitis
…if they have great experiences with you and, thus, multiplying all the more leaders. Ooh, good stuff. And how about a favorite book?

[45:00]

Todd Davis
Hmm, lots of favorite books. And did I mention that Everyone Deserves A Great Manager just hit the Wall Street Journal’s bestseller list?

Pete Mockaitis
I think that came up.

Todd Davis
A favorite book, right? I’ll tell you one that I refer back to both open and thinking back is Linchpin by Seth Godin. I don’t know if you’ve read Linchpin.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think I’ve read the Blinkist summary.

Todd Davis
Yeah. It was life-changing, sounds dramatic. I probably need music again by what I’m saying. But it really caused me to think about why I do what I do. The book is about…Linchpin is that thing that slips in to hold the pulley together.

And he likens it to just the linchpin at work, the linchpin in the workplace. And are you a linchpin? And why do you what you do? And those people, and we all know them in teams and organizations, who are really the linchpin, sometimes I just think of the heart of the team or organization that really keeps the team going.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Todd Davis
Wow! A favorite tool. I mean, when I say my phone, that’s nothing new for me, the iPhone…it’s really not a tool, it’s the plan that’s within it. We’ve already talked about this, but it’s how I plan out my week, how I try and live my life intentionally through the week with a plan, and I’m able to do that because of the technology. So, I’ll put my plan together on my computer, my Outlook, and then it syncs with my phone. Just to have to that plan, including my mission statement and all those things with me all the time, so the portability of that.

Don’t laugh at this but another favorite tool that comes to my mind. My kids tease me relentlessly because of I got a battery-operated leaf blower last year. It’s like the favorite thing I have. I used to take forever to rake the lawn. So, anyway, thinking of tools, that’s what first came to mind, and I wasn’t going to share it, and now I just did.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Appreciate it. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

[48:03]

Todd Davis
The one, and this may or may not be helpful for people, I think, again, back to communication, I have found that we put off important conversations because we’re afraid we’re going to say it wrong, not just in the realm of giving feedback, like we were talking earlier, but whatever. If I have a difference of opinion with one of my colleagues, or a family member, whatever, we sometimes put off that conversation, not sometimes, a lot, because we want to just get the right words, we want it perfect, we’re so worried about the outcome.

So, one thing that I’ve had people tell me time and time again was, “I really appreciated you being in a conversation by saying…” and this is what I say, “Hey, Pete, I need to talk to you about something or I’d like to talk to you about something, and I will probably use the wrong words. So, could I have a do-over? If I say something offensive or if I don’t say it exactly how I mean it, just know that my intent is to get this topic out on the table. And then if I could have a do-over, if I say it wrong, would that be okay?”

And that’s not scripted. I just said that from the heart. For many years, I’ve had many people say that kind helps set the tone for the whole conversation. So, maybe it’s back to the notion I have of you’ve got to lower defenses. If people feel defensive, it’s really hard to communicate. So, let’s make sure my defenses and their defenses are lowered so we can really get to the heart of an issue. So, I guess that would be the nugget, as you call it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so great because, then, if in fact, if it says, “Well, it kind of feels like you’re telling me that, I don’t know, ‘I’m a terrible provider’ or ‘I can’t be trusted with responsibilities.’” You can say, “Yes, see, that’s kind of what I was concerned about, but I really don’t mean that at all.”

Todd Davis
“Yeah, I’m sorry.” Exactly, Pete. Yeah, I would say, “Boy, if that’s what you heard, I really need a do-over because I want to say you are a phenomenal provider. But I have noticed, in my opinion, I’ve noticed that sometimes you put a priority on this thing, and it’s unintentionally, I think, offending some other people.” So, you’re exactly right. It gives you the language then to use in the conversation so that it doesn’t blow into something it shouldn’t be.

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

Todd Davis
Well, FranklinCovey.com, and the book launched last week, Everyone Deserves A Great Manager: The 6 Critical Practices for Leading a Team. You can purchase it at all major bookstores, but the easiest way to purchase it is on Amazon.com. And, again, they can go to learn more about our company or about me on FranklinCovey.com.

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

Todd Davis
Just, “Why do you do what you do?” I remind myself of it or I think about it all the time, “What’s my real intention?” You’re the only one that knows what your real motivations are. And I think those of us and those of you that check in with them regularly will have just that much more of a positive influence on yourself, on your teams, and ultimately on the world.

[51:02]

Pete Mockaitis
Todd, thank you. This has been fantastic. I wish you all the best in making more and more people have great managers.

Todd Davis
Well, I really appreciate you and I appreciate the time, Pete.

492: Making Meetings Work with J. Elise Keith

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J. Elise Keith says: "Every meeting is an opportunity. Seize it."

J. Elise Keith shares what makes meetings succeed vs. fail.

 

 

You’ll Learn:

  1. Signs of an ineffective meeting
  2. How the best organizations approach meetings
  3. When and how to opt out of a meeting

About J. Elise

Elise Keith is the co-founder of online meeting management platform Lucid Meetings. Known as the ‘Meeting Maven,’ Elise offers unprecedented expertise that inspires audiences, proving that meetings shouldn’t be fewer or shorter—but better and more effective. She is the author of Where the Action Is: The Meetings That Make or Break Your Organization, which contains eye-opening strategies companies can use to structure beneficial meetings, create a healthy workplace culture, and propel overall team momentum.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank You, Sponsors!

J. Elise Keith Interview Transcript

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

J. Elise Keith
I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, I’m excited to dig into this. And I want to get your take, you know, often the first question I ask is an icebreaker of sorts, and you’ve seen a lot of icebreakers, I imagine, in your day. Could you share maybe an all-time favorite or least favorite icebreaker and story that goes with it?

J. Elise Keith
Okay. So, I have two for this one. The kind of icebreaker you should use really depends on the kind of meeting you’re having and what’s going on in your culture. So, there’s all kinds of really good icebreakers that are also really different. But one I like to use when I do, like, say, workshop where I’ve got a group and maybe they know each other or maybe they don’t, but you’ve got to get them loosened up a bit, is, “What was your favorite band or artist in high school?”

Pete Mockaitis
That is fun.

J. Elise Keith
It is fun because you get a chance to get a sense of people’s culture and sort of their inner id when you find…I did this with a group of librarians recently, and to hear the number of them that were, you know, deep hardcore punk funs than old-school hillbilly rock was kind of enlightening.

Pete Mockaitis
That is fun. Well, and what was yours?

J. Elise Keith
You know, I was a big Midnight Oil fan in high school which I grew out of, but at the time it seemed appropriately edgy and world-saving and different enough to be special, yeah. How about you?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, it’s funny, I didn’t own a lot of CDs, because that’s what we had at the time, but I do remember I think that Blink 182 Dude Ranch was the album I played again and again. And I also went to a number of punk rock shows myself. I remember the band 15 with Jeff Ott was something in vogue with my people and myself. And then, yeah.

J. Elise Keith
See? I mean, like all of a sudden, you know, I like Midnight Oil. My first album was Pour Some Sugar On Me, Def Leppard.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, thank you. Well, I think we’re going to have some extra fun here talking about meetings and so meetings are often such a huge pain point for professionals. So, I’d love it if we could maybe you could start us off by orienting us to kind of the state of meetings today. Like, any hard numbers you have in terms of how much time professional spend in meetings, what proportion of those meetings are effective, how do you even define effective. Kind of where do we stand today?

J. Elise Keith
Yadda, yadda, stats, stats, right? So, in terms of the overall situation with meetings, our most recent and best research shows that there are somewhere north of 65 million meetings per day in the US alone. And a lot of us are not working just in the US, it’s an international economy now so that’s millions and millions and millions of meetings every single day.

Now, it’s a huge number so that’s not necessarily relevant to each of us personally, which brings you to the second question, right, like, “How much time are individuals spending in meetings?” And that’s kind of all over the map depending on where you are in the organization and what0 kind of organization you’re in. It can be somewhere as low as like, say, half an hour or less for some people.

But when you get farther up the chain, when you get into middle management, or C-suite, or VP suites in collaborative organizations, that’s going to be typically somewhere between 60% and 80% of their day they’re going to spend in meetings. It’s a ton of time. It’s a ton of money that we invest in these.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, because every one of those hours has dollars associated with it. All right. So, that’s kind of the time load. And how often are the meetings working? How do we even define working from a numerical perspective?

J. Elise Keith
That’s a really good question, right, because a lot of times the way that, there’s a fair amount of research into whether meetings are effective. And often the way that research is done is people would throw out a survey, lets a Survey Monkey surveys, which are like, “Think of your last five meetings and estimate which percentage of them were effective.” And there you get a number where people who say, “Half of them were effective.”

But when you dig into that research a little bit deeper, you do some actual investigation with the companies and people, talking about the specific meetings they’ve attended, “So, how was your last meeting? Would you rather have that been a giant series of email?” that kind of thing, what you find is that the equation flips. And it turns that folks, by and large, think meetings work a lot better than the alternatives.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s good to know. That’s good news.

J. Elise Keith
The thing about effectiveness is that what is that word even mean, right? And that’s where you get into sort of the more interesting tactics and tools because for a meeting to be effective, you have to be asking yourself, “Well, what is it effective at? Can you use that effectively to do?” And in that case, you’ve got to look at both, “Are the people in the room enjoying it? Do they feel it’s a good use of time? And then, is it producing results for your business?” So, those are the two angles on effectiveness that you can pull together, and then you can start to see, “Okay, now, regardless of what the big stats say, what’s happening in my world here?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Certainly. And so then, I’d love to get your take then, so what do some of the best in class versus worst in class organizations look like with regard to meeting performance on these dimensions?

J. Elise Keith
So, it’s often easier to start with the worst because that’s probably where a lot of people are. Meeting performance isn’t something that most organizations have taken seriously. And so, what they do is they wing it. Essentially, you leave it to each and every manager and project manager and leader and whatnot to figure out how to meet as they think best for what they’re trying to do.

And that kind of approach sort of assumes that, “You know, everybody’s been in a lot of meetings. They ought to know what they’re doing. Let’s get them in a room. Off they go.” So, that’s what most people are doing and it’s deeply, sadly ineffective most of the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And in what ways?

J. Elise Keith
Well, it turns out that meetings are different than conversations, right? And meetings are a skilled activity that you can learn how to run and then design to achieve specific goals. So, there really isn’t any such thing as a generic good meeting. There are really good sales calls, there are really good interviews, there are really good ways to keep a project moving, and each one of those is a different kind of meeting that should be designed to achieve that goal.

So, in the best organizations they do that. They get training for everybody and they design systems. So, they take their meetings and they stop them being habits and they turn them into systems that are designed to achieve the goals that they support.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, now you lay out 16 types of meetings that work and you’ve mentioned a couple there. I guess I’m curious to hear what types of meetings don’t work?

J. Elise Keith
So, the types of meetings that don’t work are the ones that are basically, you know, kitchen soup. Do you ever do that? Do you ever do like a kitchen-sink soup or a casserole where you’ve got a pot and you just kind of throw everything that you own in there before it goes bad, and that’s the soup you’ve got? Which sometimes works great but most of the time it doesn’t.

So, that’s what a lot of folks are doing with their meetings, “I’ve got a time block on Tuesday. We always meet on Tuesday. My whole team shows up and we decide, ‘Hey, what is it we have to talk about today?’”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, there it goes. So, it’s kind of like I’m hearing some telltale signs there. One, it’s recurring and, two, there’s not a plan in advance and, three, there’s multiple people as opposed to like the one-on-one. So, there are some ingredients, I guess, that may have a higher risk perhaps of not working out optimally in the course of having that meeting. So, everything is just sort of like, “All right. Here we all are now. So…” as opposed to a proactive, thoughtful, upfront design of, “What are we hoping to achieve?” and kind of planning from there.

J. Elise Keith
Yeah. So, it’s really about clarity of purpose, right, and what you’re trying to accomplish in the room. And if you walk into the room and you’re not entirely sure what you’re trying to accomplish or why everybody needs to be there, so you’ve invited all of the people because you’re not entirely sure who should be in and who should be out, then you’re likely to waste your time.

And, certainly, even if you do know what you need to accomplish, there are some things that just psychologically we’re not designed to do at the same time. So, let’s take, can we do a couple of examples?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes.

J. Elise Keith
So, the project status update. It’s a meeting most people loathe, right, but it’s designed to make sure that everybody working on the project knows what’s happening, gets an update about anything that’s changed that they need to know about, and has a chance to raise any concerns, like, “Hey, here’s a red flag. We need to work on this.”

But the underlying psychological thing going on there is you’ve all agreed to do something together and you’re going to make sure that you continue to trust each other and execute on that so that you can keep the work going. You’re doing momentum and energy and trust, right?

In a meeting like that, when we have already made promises in the past and we’re showing up to recommit to those promises and show that we’re good for them, it’s not a great moment to say, do something like, “You know what, let’s just go crazy and think of some wild ideas about what we might do now,” right? Or, “Hey, here’s a great problem. Why don’t we explore all of the different kinds of creative out-of-the-box thinking on how we might tackle this problem?”

The whole point of the project status meeting is to say, “Yes, we’ve defined a box and we’re in that box and we’re moving this box down the road.” When you ask people to step out of the box, right in the middle of that, you’re having them break from one mode of interaction to a completely different mode and you get the worst possible ideas ever because everything people raise is safe, right? And you don’t want safe when you’re doing brainstorming. You don’t want safe when you’re doing problem-solving. You want innovative, you want effective, so you got to break those conversations into distinct conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Certainly. So, you’ve got a clear purpose and a design, and that’s what you’re running with, and you’re not kind of mixing and matching in there. Understood. And so, I’m curious, with the project status update meeting, let’s talk with that example, so people often don’t like it. And so, what are some of the other things that they’re going wrong? Sometimes folks are sort of wildly go off script and enter a different phase. And what are some of the things that are going that also can go awry or indicative of, “Hey, this project status meeting is great”?

J. Elise Keith
So, what you’re looking for in terms of signifiers of great are energy, right? You’re looking for energy, you’re looking for some amount of dynamic, and in the case of a status meeting, which is probably one of the worst meetings to be using as our example, but in the case of that meeting, that energy and that dynamic might come from just keeping it really crisp and short and being very, very respectful of everybody’s time.

But in every case, one of the things that keeps these meetings from being particularly successful is that whoever is in charge of that meeting is probably frantic, they’re probably running from one thing to another with very little time to prepare, and they walk into the room believing that it’s their job to make that a fabulous experience, or an effective experience, or an efficient experience, or whatever it is that they believe for everyone else, and they do all the talking, and they set the agenda. And then they basically demand reports from everyone else. Well, that’s deadly.

It’s like you’ve shown up to the soccer match and you’ve got a sense of what it means to win the game so you get your team together and then you run the ball up and down and tell them what you’re doing. You don’t have anybody else participating, you don’t have everybody else bringing something to the field and helping you get that goal together. So, the best meetings are ones where everybody has got a job to do in that room, and they’re team sports. It’s not the leader’s show.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s a good thing to talk about right there. So, if there are folks in the meeting who say nothing, does that suggest that perhaps they ought not to be in the meeting?

J. Elise Keith
It either suggests that they shouldn’t be in the room because meetings are not a spectator sport, right? Or, they need some training, they need some education. So, they need education and the person in charge needs education because if you have people who are in that room who should be contributing and they are not, that’s broken. We don’t hire and have people work on our team so that they can absorb oxygen in the space. They’re there to contribute their perspectives and their ideas and the information they have that we don’t that helps us collectively get to a better result.

Pete Mockaitis
And would your view then be if they are just sort of receiving information that we should use a different format to convey the information?

J. Elise Keith
Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, sometimes that’s not practical, right? Like, sometimes you just can’t count on everybody to have done their homework in advance, so there are practices that companies put in place to help with that. Like, there are ways to get around that that are respectful of the fact that people don’t necessarily have time to proactively prepare. And yet you still don’t want to lead to them like they were in kindergarten because that’s disengaging and a little insulting, frankly.

So, one of the really famous ones is Amazon, in their corporate headquarters. They begin all of their meetings with 10 minutes of silent reading where whatever it is that they’re going to discuss, “Is it a proposal or the financial reports, or whatever it is?” it’s distributed in paper and everybody at the table has 10 minutes to read it through right there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. You know, I really like that maybe because, you’re right, as opposed to people just trying to fake it and not look dumb and sort of say expansive things, it’s like, “No, just do this right now.”

J. Elise Keith
Let’s just do it, yeah. And it’s also kind of a wonderful way to acknowledge that, like, you need people to come prepared but you don’t control their calendar outside of that meeting, right? So, that prep work is part of the work of the meeting, why not just build that time into the meeting itself?

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And especially if it’s 10 minutes, because that’s something that can be handy in the sense of you’ve maybe looked a lot of those bits and pieces over time, and, “Oh, here it is collected,” and you’re kind of up-to-speed or on the same page and we’re moving. I’ve actually had a couple of guests before, they’ll ask me, “So, tell me about your audience.” And I’m thinking, “Okay, this means you didn’t read all the things I sent you.”

J. Elise Keith
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
And I was like, “Well, hey, how about this? Let me send you this link and we can just sort of read that quietly for a moment and I’m going to go sort of get a glass of water, and we’ll reconnect?” So, I try to do that as respectfully as possible.

J. Elise Keith
But it’s maddening, right, because you only have so much time.

J. Elise Keith
So, you asked me earlier about both an icebreaker and then about meeting research, right? Like, the stats behind meetings. But when you dig into meetings and you see that what’s going on there is you’re bringing together a complex group of people to talk about work, which, in and of itself, is probably pretty complex too. So, it’s this really dynamic system of things going on, all kinds of things that can go wrong.

So, one of the reasons the icebreaker is such a great tool and why Amazon’s 10 minutes of silent reading is also a great tool is that the first tip to every successful meeting is to help people transition into the room because we’re all – and this is coming out of like the neuroscience and the social psychology research. We’re all dealing with up to like six different levels of distraction in our brain when we walk into that room.

So, our first job is to clear all of that and there’s a technique called clearing that explicitly does that, but you can do it a whole bunch of different ways, and get everybody focused on whatever is going on in that room and not the email they need to still write, or the fact that their kids might call, or their hungry stomachs, or any of those other things. How do you get people into the room? That is the absolute first tip to any successful meeting. And silent reading is one way to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love it. So, what are some of the other alternatives and clearing approaches?

J. Elise Keith
Yeah, so clearing approach, and actually several companies use this, is it’s explicit, it is you walk in and everybody takes a moment to say, “Hey, today I’m dealing with this, I’m feeling this way, but I’m ready to put that aside and I’m in.” And everybody else says, “Welcome.”

Pete Mockaitis
In other words, “I’m in.”

J. Elise Keith
Yeah, I’m in. And so, you go around the room and everybody says, “This is what’s going on for me but I’m ready and I’m in.”

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I imagine that could go quickly or not so quickly. Are there some guidelines there?

J. Elise Keith
You know, that’s really up to the team and the culture. So, in some teams they go real fast and they keep it fast and many people pass, right, because their values are about efficiency. In other teams, their values are about community. And this is another tip with meetings. Your meetings are absolutely the best place to design in the values you want to see your culture support and engage, right?

So, at lululemon, they do the clearing, and then they follow the clearing by the vibrations. And that practice is where they go around and they say, “Hey, is there anything you’re hearing that you think we should know about?” And a vibration might be like a rumor that’s going around the office, or something somebody saw in the news, or the weather, or it could be any of these things, whether just like, “Hey, we think the group ought to know about this.” And what they do in their teams is sometimes what comes up in clearing or in the vibrations is a big deal, and that’s what they talk about. And they take the rest of their agenda and they move it to another day.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And that is really handy because I think a lot of times there’s great information that just never has an opportunity to surface, and it’s like, “Oh, someone else launched a competitive yoga pant on Kickstarter that everyone is raving about.” It’s like, “Oh, I had no idea.”

J. Elise Keith
Right. Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
“That’s so cool and we have a moment for you to share that with us because that could change all kinds of things and maybe we wouldn’t have noticed this for another five months until maybe it’s a lot later for us to respond effectively.”

J. Elise Keith
Yeah. Well, it’s a huge deal. Like, I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the research that Amy Edmondson has done into psychological safety. It’s this bit where we feel like we’re in a group that cares enough about us that it’s safe to take risks. We can tell them things that may or may not fit the dominant narrative, right?

And one of the things that she points out when she explains this to people is that, you know, half of the time, people are afraid to speak out not because they have evidence that something bad would happen, right? There are people who are afraid to speak out in environments where “nobody ever gets fired,” right? So, nothing bad would happen to them, but just nobody does it, they’re not really sure.

So, one of the really important things we can do in our meetings is ask, just make time and space to ask the questions about what people are seeing and what ideas they have so that they know that those are welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Well, so I’m digging this. So, we said, hey, once you’re actually in the meeting, first step, transition into the room, could be some silent reading, could be some clearing, asking about the vibrations, what’s going on.
J. Elise Keith
Could be an icebreaker, all the things, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have a second step?

J. Elise Keith
So, then you need to connect with the goals and the purpose of the meeting, So, purpose is a verb, “We’re here to do this, to make a decision, to have a podcast interview,” whatever our purpose is. And then, at the end, “We’re about to achieve this.” So, those are your desired outcomes, “We’re going to have a decision, a list of next steps, and extra pizza,” whatever those outcomes are.

So, you kind of affirm that upfront and then confirm what your plan is for getting from, “Okay, we’ve gathered for this reason, for this purpose. We’re trying to get out with those outcomes. Here’s the plan for getting between point A to point B.” And most times people express that as an agenda. You don’t necessarily need an agenda but you do need a plan.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And you’re saying earlier that it’s best to perhaps not be the sole person who has that all figured out.

J. Elise Keith
Right. So, as the person in charge, there are multiple roles that you can bring to bear in a meeting. There’s the titular head of whatever that piece of work is, the leader, but you can have other people facilitate. And a facilitator’s job is to design that process part and then be the guardians of that process. You can have people assigned to take notes, you can have people assigned to be the vibes watchers, or the norms enforcers where they’re keeping track of everybody else, all kinds of different ways in which you can get other people involved in making that successful.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, that’s handy. And then what’s the third step?

J. Elise Keith
So, then the final thing you have to do for any meeting to be effective is you have to wrap it up, and that’s five minutes, maybe more, maybe less. At the end of every meeting where you stop and explicitly say, “Okay, let’s make sure we actually know what we did here, what decisions did we make, and what are our actions that we’re going to take away,” Like, who, what, when. “Specifically, this is going to be done by this date by this person.”

And, ideally, you want to do those in writing where everybody can be looking at them and committing that that is, in fact, what they thought the decision was because, way too often, people walk out the room all thinking they made the same decision but five minutes later you’re in another meeting, you’ve completely forgotten, it gets fuzzy. So, you want that in writing and you want to confirm it before you leave.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we’re talking about some form of like projection is present, or we’re visually looking at this wrap-up piece.

J. Elise Keith
Absolutely, yeah. And there are a bunch of ways to do that, there’s a lot of different software platforms you can use that are about taking collaborative notes on meetings in real time. You can do it on a whiteboard. There are a lot of different ways you can do it but you want people to be able to explicitly see that. And by having it be written, not only are you making it easier to get the notes out afterwards, which is a bonus, you’re engaging multiple parts of the brain, right?

We process information differently when we read it versus when we hear it versus when we speak it. So, you put all these things together and, from a geeky perspective, you’re encoding these promises deeper into your team, and that’s critical. And then, the last, last thing I think you should always do before you leave any meeting is to say thank you. Take a moment and express some appreciation.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And so, just say it like with their time for investing themselves, for thinking, for contributing, for not blowing it off. I guess there’s a lot of things in there.

J. Elise Keith
For something fabulous someone did. You can have people thank each other, “I really appreciate Sandy because she brought up that point and I wouldn’t have known about that Kickstarter yoga pants. She has saved our bacon,” right? The appreciation not only show people that you care and respect their time. It’s also a fabulous way to help everybody learn what the group values by being very explicit about what you’re acknowledging.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so in between the second step of connecting with purpose and the third step of the wrap-up, are there some particular practices that ensure that the actual conversations we’re having are effective, that they’re bringing us to where we want to go during the course of the meeting?

J. Elise Keith
Absolutely. There absolutely are. And the challenge is that they’re different depending on the type of meeting you’re in.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Gotcha.

J. Elise Keith
Yeah, which is why when you get into an organization that’s got really, really high meeting performance maturity. Basically, in our research, when we look out across the board, we found a number of practices that organizations establish as they’re putting their system in place from very basic, “We don’t have a system,” to, “We have this system that’s really locked and solid and really helping us drive our business forward.”

And one of those, as you get in there, is that as we’re talking about this, right, there’s the purpose and the outcomes and the different types of meetings and special ways you have to run each one. Well, that’s an awful lot of stuff to learn and have to try and apply in around the rest of what you’re doing. So, what these organizations do is they have standardized ways they do each of the different types of meetings that matter to their business that people are expected to learn, and then iterate and adopt and work with, but they’re not starting from scratch.

So, when you go to Amazon, you don’t just get to just guess how you’re going to start your meeting, right? They have their 10-minute thing. And when you go to an organization that’s practicing open-book management, you don’t guess how you’re going to run your weekly leadership meeting, “It works like this,” and you review the books. So, they have codified practices that shortcut the learning for all of those different things.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you maybe give us an example of a meeting type and some practices that are overlooked but make all the difference in the world when you’re having that meeting type?

J. Elise Keith
I think there are a whole series of meetings, we call that the cadence meetings. They’re the meetings about keeping momentum going on a project or keeping the team together where they can build trust, right? And a lot of the practices that are key in those meetings has to do with who speaks, who’s setting the tone, and how rapidly, how frequently you’re doing it.

So, let’s take a look at one-on-ones for example. So, the traditional approach in many companies is that managers know they better have one-on-ones so they schedule them once a month, maybe once every 90 days, something, because they know they have to, and they have the employees come in, and they say, “Okay, let’s look at your  30-, 60-, 90-day goals,” and the employee sort of reports on what they’re doing and they all check the boxes and off they go.

Well, Cisco just did a big study with 15,000 teams on how to run effective one-on-ones. And what they found was very, very specific and it was this. First of all, you’ve got to flip it. So, the manager doesn’t go in and ask the employee to report to them. Instead, the employee says, “Hey, here are my priorities and here’s where I need your help.” So, the employee is driving the agenda, and they used those two questions, that’s the way they start it.

And the second key thing they found is that it has to be at least every week because, otherwise, they’re talking about work that isn’t related to what they’re actually doing on a detailed basis. And the idea that the manager could possibly care about what you’re working on when they only check in on how they can help every 90 days, nobody buys it. So, once a week, employee-driven, and engagement on those teams goes up pretty dramatically.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, that’s striking. So, that’s what Cisco does, and then one-on-ones every week with every direct report, that could really add up.

J. Elise Keith
Well, so that’s where they’re looking at team sizes. So, one of the questions people get asked all the time is, “How big can your team be?” And the boundary of the size of a team that you can lead is your capacity for those touchpoints, like, “How many people can you dedicate time to showing them that you care and helping them out every week?” That’s the number of people that you can lead.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, so I guess I’d love to hear then, you talked about norms at one point. What are some of the norms that tend to be helpful across all meeting types?

J. Elise Keith
I think it’s really awesome when a company or an organization finds norms that are meaningful to them and their values, right? So, in some organizations that’s going to be things like every voice is heard, everyone speaks before you speak twice because diversity inclusion and voice is really important to them.

In other organizations, it’s going to be things like, “We start and end on time and the agenda sent out two days in advance,” because efficiency is really their thing. In some groups, something like Chatham House Rules, or Vegas Rules matters a lot, right? Like, what happens in the room stays in the room. My favorite that applies to all meeting types and that I think applies in every organization is a norm around having every meeting be optional.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so nice.

J. Elise Keith
Well, if you think about it, they already are, right? You’re a grownup, you don’t have to go to any meeting. But when you make it explicit, you’re saying that opting out of meetings won’t have “Hey, you’re fired” consequences.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I actually want to talk about opting out of meetings. I think that it’s a common occurrence that folks, when they are inviting people to a meeting, they don’t want to be rude, and so they want to include folks, and so there’s a miscommunication that happens often. So, someone invites someone to a meeting, and the recipient thinks, “Oh, they expect me there so I’m going to show up,” and then they think, “Why did I even come here?” So, do you have any preferred scripts or verbiage or master ways to diplomatically decline the meeting?

J. Elise Keith
Well, first of all, you need to know that you deserve to have your time respected. So, it is both respectful for you and for the people doing the inviting to speak up when you think that you can’t contribute well to that room because every person sitting in a meeting that isn’t contributing is dragging down the energy and the potential for everyone else there. So, you are doing a service if you opt out of a meeting that you shouldn’t be in.

And the way that we approach that is we just say, “Hey, I actually am working on some other things that day. I don’t have much to contribute here. I’d be happy to send in any information you need in advance and will look forward to seeing the notes afterwards.” And you just opt out.

Pete Mockaitis
There you have it. I’d also want to get your take on what are some of the best means of accomplishing some meeting goals that are not meetings?

J. Elise Keith
Oh. Well, let’s take brainstorming. Brainstorming is something that we often pull a lot of people into a room for, and we say, “Hey, we’re going to come up with a whole bunch of new ideas for next week’s marketing campaign,” or whatever it’s going to be, tends not to be the most effective way to do it. That’s something that is really well-handled asynchronously, which means you post up the question and you ask everybody to contribute their ideas in advance.

And there are a lot of technologies you can use to do that. And, frankly, you can also have a box in the office where people throw in sticky notes. So, brainstorming, getting that first blush of original ideas out, much better handled outside of the meeting most of the time than it is in. Same thing for anything where they’re digesting large pieces of information, so reading reports, coming up with strategies.

One of the tactics we recommend and that we use ourselves quite a lot is we’ll have a meeting to make sure we all understand a problem. We’ll get together and we’ll say, “Okay. Well, what’s going on here? And what are our options?” and start to get our heads around it. And then we’ll schedule a follow-up meeting within a week to talk about what to do about it so that that time in between where we’re processing it has some bake time.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, Elise, I’m curious, are there any sort of final thoughts you have with regard to meetings or overlooked master strategies or tactics that could make a world of difference?

J. Elise Keith
You know, I think the real key is to understand that every meeting that you walk into is an opportunity. That’s the place where your culture becomes real, where the team understands what everyone cares about, and the value that you can bring. It’s the place where you get an opportunity to provide and show care for the people around you, and where you get to be a part of making the decisions that make your business or your organization really successful.

So, once you shift to that mindset and you look at meetings as the opportunity that they are, then you can start to be in a place where you can learn about the different types and the skills that make it so that you can take advantage of that opportunity.

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

J. Elise Keith
So, I have two. I’m not a huge fan of favorites and to key to just one thing because there are so many wonderful things out there. But there are a couple that I put together that work for me, and one is, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” which is from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day.” I love that.

Like, what is your plan for your one wild and precious life? And then when I look at it from a business perspective and from a personal performance perspective, I pair it with another quote, which is, “Discipline is simply remembering what you really want.”

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

J. Elise Keith
My favorite book, holy moly. How about “Time and the Art of Living” by Robert Grudin?

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And a favorite tool?

J. Elise Keith
You know, time blocking and scratch paper.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

J. Elise Keith
A favorite habit, hmm. You know, listening to audiobooks while cooking large batches of food.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And is there a particular nugget you share that you’re known, people quote it back to you and re-tweet it often?

J. Elise Keith
The one that gets re-tweeted the most, beyond the basic stats and things, is that, “You can’t have a meeting of the minds if the minds aren’t in the meeting.”

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

J. Elise Keith
They can visit us on my company’s website which is LucidMeetings.com and on my personal website which is JEliseKeith.com depending on what you’re looking for.

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

J. Elise Keith
You know, we’ve kind of covered it but my challenge to you is this. Every meeting is an opportunity. Seize it. Your challenge is to shed any negative beliefs you’ve got about your meetings and step into those opportunities.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Elise, thank you for this meeting, and I wish you all the best with all you’re doing in meetings.

J. Elise Keith
Hey, thank you so much.

434: Building People and Killing Policies with Guy Pierce Bell

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Guy Bell says: "Every business has one thing in common when it fails. And that's too many policies to correct behaviors."

Turnaround artist Guy Bell shares hard-won wisdom on why and how to establish the right number of rules for teams.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How modern businesses value processes over people
  2. The problem with budgets
  3. Guy’s process for people building

About Guy

Guy Bell is an executive with decades of experience turning around struggling businesses. He’s also started up new businesses, acquired and on-boarded companies and led green field growth. He has held leadership roles in a wide variety of organizations, including equity-backed investments, public-traded companies and family-owned businesses.

In each of these situations, Guy challenged himself with one simple question: “How can I empower my team to meet their full potential?”

Guy is the author of Unlearning Leadership, which was named one of 10 leadership books that should be on your radar in 2019 by Inc Magazine.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Guy Bell Interview Transcript

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

Guy Bell  
Thanks for inviting me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis  
Oh, I’m excited to dig into your good stuff. But first, I want to dig into your background. You were previously a singer-songwriter. What’s the story here?

Guy Bell  
I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and my big dream, as a kiddo, was to get on stages and sing around the world. But ultimately, at that time, it was Minneapolis. And that was the world I was living in. And I had a real fun experience getting a chance to sing and record out at Paisley Park, Prince’s Studio, and you know, playing his bars in town or his bar at the time and other places, and really enjoyed that early experience. And it really has been oddly foundational for my business experience.

So that was a definitely an early kind of love that I figured at 18 years old. What do we know, right? But I knew then I was going to be a singer for the rest of my life. And here we are.

Pete Mockaitis  
Well, I’m intrigued. And in what way was that foundational for the rest of your business?

Guy Bell  
You know, I kind of started off writing about this when I was getting into management. And I just look at the business world through the lessons of jazz, like there are no such thing as mistakes. You just play off of whatever kind of note you’re bending, if it’s not quite as you thought your finger was. And you learn to unlearn.

So in jazz, and when people become the best at their craft, they no longer play scales; they play the feeling, the mood, they know what a key they’re in, they understand the games, the rules of the game, and then they let go of that, knowing if that makes any sense. So that applies to business beautifully, in my experience.

Pete Mockaitis  
Well, so now, what I love about this, is you’re sharing some things that might feel a little softer, there. But your credentials are pretty smashing when it comes to your work as a turnaround artist. Can you tell us, what do you do there? And what are some of the coolest results you’ve generated there?

Guy Bell  
Yeah, it is. It is strange, and it does feel soft. In fact, when I first got into managing, that’s usually the feedback I got: it was too soft, and I cared too much. And I needed to learn to toughen up and all these silly things that didn’t make any sense. Because over the years now, as you said, I’ve run publicly traded, privately held, equity-backed companies. And I’ve done it from taking these businesses that were run by people with the school of thought that said, “It’s not personal, it’s just business.”

And I came in at that one, though, it’s wildly personal. And it’s not just business, right? And so, you know, most of my turnarounds really, in this concept of the premise of who’s going to turn this around, but the people doing the work, and what are the common threads of what businesses miss, because they overmanage, they over-process out of fear

and out of a desire to manage risk, kind of overcontroling behaviors, and actions and they create policies to correct behaviors, and all these things that feel normal, because we have a good hundred years of doing this silly overreach for good reason.

Because people do make mistakes. People do take risks that are unwarranted. But what I’ve learned, I guess, Pete, and to kind of put it into a few bite-sized chunks, is I’ve learned something called Four Rules of Flight. And if you look at it from a business perspective, there are a certain number of rules that would relate to if you were flying a plane. So as an example, the four rules in flight are weight, lift, thrust, and drag.

If you take off, and you don’t have four rules, but you put together three rules, you have a car that looks like a plane. And if you’re there, and you add a rule—a fifth rule—you will crash. So when you look at business on a micro, and then on an individual level, and you understand that process matters, that there needs to be enough structure, enough of everything, but no more. What happens when we decelerate or we lose control of our business is, we don’t have enough rules.

And then conversely, which I found to be true in almost every turnaround, is people were over managing out of fear. When we start failing, we start judging. We start judging, we start applying more rules and regulations and structure, and we lose that ability to say when people are unleashed to reach their full potential, to give outstanding service, to come back and authentically say, “This process stinks. It’s not good, it’s not effective. Can we do it this way?” We don’t have those conversations anymore.

So that was one of those signature lessons that are pretty much universal. Another one quickly, and I’ll use what I’ve found to be one of the more controversial companies in America today, and for me, it’s a great lesson, and you could be controversial and still do it, right? And that is Amazon , “Day 1, Day 2”. He said 20+ years ago, if we don’t run this business every day like it counts, “Day 1” thinking, we will eventually become a “Day 2” company, which means at some point, it may take longer for a large company — and shorter for a small company — but we won’t exist because we’ll be managing out of fear. We’ll be keeping people from people.

And those kinds of philosophies have governed for better or worse, depending on how you perceive their culture, but it’s one thing above all else. And that is authentic. He knew that then, and he’s applied that year after year after year in his growth, and it’s a signature to his success.

I’ve found the same things to be true in every business that I work in, where we get caught up in belief systems that are unproductive, but they keep us from undue risk. And therefore we keep trusting that process more than we do the people, and that equation doesn’t work.

Pete Mockaitis  
Wow, Guy, this is riveting stuff. And it really feels like you’ve got your finger on something quite real and important and sensible in terms of just the reactionary with, you know, failures and mistakes leads to judgment, into fear, and to rules and processes and policies.

And so could you maybe share with us a story of a turnaround you went to, in terms of where were they, kind of in terms of financially, and the lay of the land? What did you do? And then what did they end up with financially in terms of results afterwards? Just because I think there’s some listeners who think this sounds almost too good to be true. Yeah, so add a dollar sign to this, please.

Guy Bell  
Yeah, so if you don’t mind, I’ll give you a bite of a couple of different situations. So one of the turnarounds—I was brought in was equity-backed investment. They were losing money and didn’t know to what extent. I was brought in to help them grow the company. And as it turned out, within a month or two, they weren’t ready to grow; they were actually ready to fold. And so for the first six months in that business, what we did is we got our arms around, “Do we have the right people in the right seats? Are we working on the right marketing strategies?” and you just go through the nuts and bolts of the business.

And we made adjustments to include the CFO, who was unwilling or incapable — probably a bit of both — to give us timely penals. And we were missing, you know, elementary parts of the business. So it’s really very tactical in that way, where you just kind of look through all the systems processes, you ask the question of, “What are we missing?” What are you missing that you need to get from us as an investment to improve or as support to get the right information at the right time, accurate, complete, decision making-ready?

So we did that. We turned it around that time. I won’t name the equity firm, but they were managing $3 billion, we were a small investment, they were ready to leave it and walk away because it was frustrating. It was losing money. As I mentioned, we turned it around and sold it for $64 million within two years. And so the keys of that, you know, turn around, our signature. And I’ll give a couple of examples that play out the same way.

I was asked to turn around a nonprofit university, 150-year old university based out of San Francisco. And when I came in, at first, it was a nonprofit looking to sell or exit out of being a nonprofit, because it was not having success. And for whatever reason, they believed that somehow selling would magically make it successful, as opposed to getting the right management team.

So I came in to that organization, after several interviews, and same thing, we couldn’t make payroll. We were a $75 million company, couldn’t make payroll. And so I went to the board and just said, “Look, nothing personal. And it’s not my ego saying this; it’s really just true. I need to have control of your marketing right now.” And at that time, I was hired to help turn around the company, but it was a role as a vice president or Senior Vice President of Operations.

Anyway, fast forward, we got the front end fixed, which is usually one of the problems, getting the marketing right-sized and getting the sales process in place. That was required to improve results. And in both cases, we got a better cost per successful acquisition. And we improved performance broadly over the 10 businesses, and specifically by individual, because we just looked at the darn data, right? And we didn’t go after chasing numbers.

We actually built into every person, which is a real shift in in most businesses, is they start managing to a number which is by itself stupid. They’re nice people and smart, but they’re making a stupid decision. As I learned over time, there’s some of the smartest people I’ve worked with that use a budget to kind of “drive performance”, as opposed to understanding the input, what is happening by individual salesperson to be effective. And how do we, as professionals, help each other, in that case, individual, improve their performance?

If there’s five kind of points of workflow, do all five work for that person? Are they effective at all five? And that is the work. And so we have to look at that accurate data every single day — sometimes, throughout the day, to ensure that we’re coaching, developing, understanding our business at the incremental level.

So fast forward, all of that to include kind of rebuilding into the talented people that were at that particular model. And actually, this is true, in almost everyone: the people that were kept from being effective leaders, whatever the work could be, just above an individual contributor, all the way up to running a business unit, what usually kept them from their potential was threats.

People were afraid at the executive level, of the critical feedback or whatever that caused this disruption, this ease of relationships. And so you just went back out and met everyone and re-engaged on a human level, rebuilt some trust pretty quickly, and unleashed them, you know, just said, “Look, I trust that you’re going to get this done the right way, let’s just do it transparently. And together. And there’s no judgment.”

And you know, 18 months later, we sold it. 18 months after selling it, they sold it again, for $275 million, I believe. And when I started it, it could have gone bankrupt in the next three months. So, really good outcome there, in both fronts, and in terms of the first sale and the second sale.

And I guess I could go on for a few more. But ultimately, I could even tell you a story where it didn’t work, if you like, but when it does work, the basic elements are, you know, pretty common.

So it is very detail-oriented, it is very kind of, what is in the weeds of every individual. I use a concept called “Every person counts, every day counts”. And when they don’t count, you have one too many people. Or you have the wrong person. So don’t hire one too many people. I don’t care how successful you are. Everyone wants to count. So therefore, for crying out loud, why not set the scene to make damn sure they do? Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis  
Yes, that’s good. That’s good. All right. So that is well-established in terms of reporting to some true results here, from these perspectives and philosophies. And so then, I want to hear a little bit about that perspective of not managing to a number, but instead of building into a person. Can you unpack that concept for us a bit more?

Guy Bell  
Absolutely. I mean, one of the crimes was—I was working in a publicly traded company. And there was — and this is common, but I’ll just use this example. So there was a board budget that had cushion. And then there was a top upper management executive plan that had a little less cushion. And then there was an operating budget that had no cushy. And in some cases, if we wanted to drive, “the result”, we made it really difficult to achieve their goals, which by itself, is one of the fundamental flaws of why budgets are nothing other than predictive ways of understanding the cash flow for investment.

But having said that, that kind of mindset of doing that makes it virtually impossible and demoralizing to an operator, often not always. But when it does, that, by itself is a really silly model to use as a performance model. So I say just all that crap away, and work on every individual, every single day, on whatever those process, key elements of success are, whatever the sales process is, and stay with them. You will get the outcome that you earn by the activities that you produce. You will come to those activities you produce with a kind of on-fire, more excited approach, when you’re coached on getting past the routine of memorizing a script, or doing what I tell you to do.

But instead, taking what we talked about, that is important because we know what works and making it yours. And that just takes more investment. It takes a little more time, it takes really good listening and studying that person to say, “Gosh, they stink at the memorized script in their voice. Their approach isn’t going to work the way I want it to work.” So let’s figure out another way to approach this part of that sales funnel communications to ensure that they’re authentic, coupled with they’re getting the right result for them.
And then ultimately, I’ve learned, I show people the budget, I talk about our goals, and then I teach them how to throw them away in a sense of what the baseline is. Now go after every single person, every single one…that we were off 20% over our budgets or routine basis, when they were decently laid out. And I would fight hard in those situations where I wasn’t the one making the decision, to ensure that it was rational, so that we could actually overachieve when we do what they don’t see, because that’s not how they think about budgets and performance. But we do. And we would outperform them routinely.

When it was my decision, I didn’t purposely give a lay down in the budget. I just said, “Here’s what we need to accomplish, we need to see some growth in these areas, and then we train into the fact that we want you to be successful. We want you to exceed what we need to invest, to reinvest what we want to see out of our growth this year based on macro data.”

So I hope that’s helpful. But budgets have a whole host of problems that we need to kind of unlearn and relearn the real value so that we can incrementally build into talent, into the business process, into authentic engagements. And I found that to be difficult to do when people feel like, “Dang, I gotta hit my number, I’m getting on a call every day or every Monday and getting beaten up, because my people are not performing the way that they should.” And it’s all driven around hitting a number versus kind of building the individual up.

Pete Mockaitis  
I see. And so then it sounds like if you’re focused mostly on the number, that’s not really helpful in terms of having a person improve. So I guess if it’s like, “Hey, I need you to have, I don’t know, 40 new customers.” “Yeah, got 31.” “Get better!” That isn’t quite as handy.

“Okay, so here’s the five activities you need to undertake in order to acquire these customers. Well, let’s take a look at each one of them and see how it’s going.” So could you maybe give us an example of how it’s done in practice? Maybe it’s with sales, or maybe it’s with another type of contributor, but I think I get a taste for a breakdown and the process of doing some people-building in that way.

Guy Bell  
Absolutely. So I’ll give you a couple of examples. And I’ll stay with sales for now. One is I took over a company that was losing money. We ended up selling for six times EBITDA, which was a nice exit for a group.
They were losing money, we turned it around pretty quickly, we did it on the back of this exact idea. So we were converting an inquiry to revenue, basically help it be agnostic. So any model can apply their own kind of metrics. But we’ve converted, we’re converting at about 5.3 or 5.4%. And in this business model, there are five numbers, and you can play games with them all day long.

But ultimately, you can’t play games with as you spent this much money, and you have this outcome. And so what, with this money…

Pete Mockaitis
This outcome we’re talking about, like a marketing investment, correct?

Guy Bell
Correct. Yes, this investment of $20 million earns 9,525 new customers. So there is an equation there, and then ultimately, in this case, it turns out to be about a 5.4%-ish conversion rate. So that wasn’t great. Maybe even, you know, weak. Then there’s another factor where we’re buying, you know, eyes and ears and interest. But we also want to earn it through relationships, right? So we built a model quickly, and we trained on it, to talk about the keys to making kind of this process work better.

And we budgeted to say if we don’t get any better at that equation, meaning the conversion from a cost of acquisition, to meeting a customer, new customer and marketing, to a revenue, we made the decision to say, “Well, let’s keep it at the 5.4.” We may have put in two tenths of a percent, whatever we did, but something small when getting the 7.6%, purely on not focusing on 7.6%, or hitting a number.

What we did is we shifted the entire process. We weren’t using the data, right? So we put the exact data in, we understood it on an individual basis. Throughout the day, throughout the week, every call we had, we reviewed it, we’ve talked about the building blocks. We didn’t talk about… we had them learn to, say, if your funnel of five key metrics are working the way you want, or aren’t, what are you doing about them? And what are you doing them about them by individual?

And it’s just that process of learning to talk about that engagement at a deep level. And as you do that, people are kind of learning new muscles, learning to practice in a little bit more concrete way, versus, as you jokingly said, Pete, but it’s the truth. I’ve seen it, unfortunately, too many times where people are like, “If you don’t hit your number, we’re going to have to let you go.”

And so what kind of training have you been doing? And most people insist, “Well, I’ve done a ton of training,” and they said, “Well, let me sit on the next one.” And they think it’s trading, right? But they’re not really getting into the weeds of sitting down and listening to that part of the process. So let’s say it’s a phone call converting to an in-person, converting to a “I’m in” and they sign a piece of paper saying I want to do this.

And then it converting into, you know, revenue, which is there. They’ve stayed for five days in our business, and they’re excited to be with us, right? So in that business process, we get caught up in in too many things that are trying to get to that number, because I’ve got to make sure that 8 out of 10 of them show up, and that they stay for whatever number of days are for the requirements to hit their number.

So getting out of that mindset to, say, when you set the right stage, you do it the right way. You sit with people individually, and you understand how this works, and you get them excited about doing it right. And when they do, — and I know — the results improve. They may not improve the same for everyone. Of course, they never do almost. They improve for that person because you’re helping them get better. And once that success happens, which in most sales cycles, if you’re unlucky that your sales cycle is a year, then it’s pretty difficult.

But if your sale cycle is daily, weekly, in a month, you can really see shift in the thinking quickly, just by the evidence alone. But usually, people at first resist a little bit, because they’re the smart person and they want to do it their way or they feel like they’re a little vulnerable, because they’ve never really gotten into the weeds and sat down with an individual and had to shift their thinking of what should be done because they were good at it before. “You should be doing what I tell you to do, not with naturally you’re coming to,” right?

So it’s just going to help them do that over and over again, you know, measuring how they do it, saying, “Hey, it looks like you haven’t really made any improvements here. Let’s talk about it,” and you kind of go through it again. And then when they have a success, then you give them the praise. And you tell them, you know, they deserve to be here. And that is it’s working.

So stay the course and they get a couple wins. And now they’re heroes. A few cases. One case in particular, there’s a guy in Ohio that was mathematically successful, and yet, just under his number, because he was managing two numbers. So he wasn’t my direct employee. But I brought a team out to sit down with them. And we walked through each of his team members and their performance.

And we talked about, you know, what’s working and not working. And he felt threatened at first, because he felt like, “Well, gosh, I can see what the company does. Why are you coming here and talking to me?” And so after we get done, he had his numbers for the next six months. So it wasn’t about hitting the numbers. It was about, don’t stare at the number, because you just miss it all the time. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis  
Oh, yeah. But what’s so intriguing here is that… but this doesn’t sound like revolutionarily brilliant. It’s not. Like this is sort of what we’ve always should have been doing. But soon enough… it really is cool. This brings me back to one of my favorite cases when I was consulting at Bain and Company.

I didn’t think it would be a fun case, but it really was quite fun. There were call centers, and they had a problem with attrition. The call center representatives were quitting way too fast. Now, attrition is high in that industry, because that’s not a really fun job for most people. But it was way higher for our clients and even sort of the industry norms and standards.

And so we found a lot of the same steps in terms of, first, we had to clean up the data. Like we didn’t have reliable attrition data. It was it. So no one believed it or trusted it or regarded it. So it could always be sort of just put to the side, like, “Oh, you can’t trust those numbers.” It’s like, “Well, let’s make it so we can trust them.” And so that was kind of my roles. Like we were just getting down to these details. “Alright, day by day, every day, someone is going to tell me, ‘I need these six call centers; how many people quit?’ ‘Month by month, this is what the attrition numbers look like.’”

And then all of a sudden, it’s like, “Hey, you had a great month, what did you do?” “Oh, well, we tried this incentive thing.” It’s like, you know, what, we realized was that we had some supervisors who were just real nasty, and quit way faster than the other supervisors. So we noticed, and we replaced them. And yeah, it was just sort of like, there wasn’t like one magical silver bullet we discovered in terms of, “Oh my gosh, people love candy Fridays.”

But there’s just lots of little things, like, “Hey, what are you doing? Oh, that’s a good idea. Maybe we should do some of that. It’s a great job.” Those numbers are really moving somewhere. And they trusted it. And they had visibility, because more and more people, it was kind of fun that they kept asking to get added to my list. It’s like, “Oh, sure, thank you. I am the keeper of the attrition numbers,” which is funny because we’re an outside consultant. Like, they didn’t have their own attrition numbers they could trust.

And so, it’s amazing how I hear you. I guess the resistance is, one, it’s a little bit more time, it’s a little bit more detail that you’re getting, maybe an executive doesn’t feel that he or she should have to get into this level of weeds or whatever. But you’re saying, “Yes, in fact, you do.” That’s how it’s done?

Guy Bell  
Yeah, you have to. And what everyone has in common, even the smartest of the companies with PhD analysts and people that you used to work with, and probably are just fantastic at gathering data. But are we getting the right data in the right way? Are we testing? Are all the other links broken? Are they not broken? And can we not do it? Does that person know where to go when someone’s watching, to say, “We’re pulling data from 15 sources, inevitably, and every 90 days, if you don’t test it, something breaks, and all of a sudden, you have to visually catch it,” versus having some way of making sure that your data is your life?

And when it’s accurate, it does change radically. So it’s not a very soft thing. But it is the beginning. You have to make sure you’re looking at the right information exactly to your point. And you said something that is just absolutely the truth. And what I find to be kind of fascinating is we over engineer, we overthink so many things to the point where, “Well, we got to figure out a way to save on costs and get a better process. And let’s go analyze,” we brought in, you know, companies like your old company, and we spent 10 million bucks.

And we learned the same thing: some of us already knew not to say that it wasn’t smart. It was smart, but you can’t decentralize a few things. But you can on the numbers, meaning, if it’s a high-touch business component, the business process, you’ve got to know the difference on some level, you got to make a bet on something. And I would say that’s where we lose traction.

Often in business, around efficiency is when we overthink the power of the human potential, the power the human being. And we try to find a kind of a Tayloristic Ford Model back 100 plus years ago that, now, is agile workflow. And all the amazing feats we have now is just outstanding process analysis and distribution of this great wisdom. But it only goes so far, if that makes sense.

And at some point, you have to be human again, to kind of really understand the power of that detail showing up in a conversation, in a kind of a lengthy understanding, of you know who we are and this and that, then it’s very easy to discern. Do you fire someone? Do you say goodbye? Do you move them somewhere else? Or do you stay the course?

Pete Mockaitis  
And to that story with that 5.3% go into the 7.6%. So were there was it kind of the same kind of a concept? Like there wasn’t one or two silver bullets? Like, “Aha,! We just have to do this.” But rather, maybe dozens of tiny discoveries associated with when you follow up. Don’t say this, but you say that it wasn’t like that?

Guy Bell  
Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, you know, I replaced a few people, as you know, often happens. But in this case, one of the most brilliant minds I’ve ever worked with, because he could do all the coding, he could study all the data, he could go in and write code, he could get into the back end of the website. All these things that were important, but I couldn’t do it myself, I don’t have all those skills. But he did. He would trust the data at the cost of the people.

And then I had a salesperson that would trust the people at the data. So yes, it was a dance, and we all learned, in a very fun way, when we kind of respected each other’s gifts and talents. We learned that this dance of it all matters. If you take any one of these things out, it does hurt the business. And you know, in some cases, I know how they perform after I leave. And I know a little bit, not always, but often, about what happens once they move on.

We stay the course of getting better and better at that. There’s been multiple exits since I’ve left some companies, and that’s exciting. But often, what happens is they go back to the behavior that is all data, or all hitting a number, or all kind of one-dimensional, because what should be this way? “There it is there. Therefore it should be here.” And they oversimplify, and then God only knows why they come to those conclusions. But it’s wrong. It does take a whole host of different subtle elements, and the data will point. But it will not do as you know. But you gotta get good data points, because it does help with time.

Pete Mockaitis  
All right, well, so given this thorough backdrop, What are the four rules of flight?

Guy Bell  
Yeah, weight, lift, thrust, and drag. Yeah, that’s the flight in business. If you look at it at a micro and macro level, every business has one thing in common when it fails. And that’s too many policies to correct behaviors. Free people up. And the only way you can do it, there’s only one way, is you have to trust that people are going to make mistakes, and that the mistake isn’t going to kill the business. That therefore it can be one less, until it’s that business killer. Again, back to there’s no one solution; every industry will have different rules. But if someone doesn’t pay attention to that, it is the beginning of the end.

So I would argue, one of the most important positions possibly in business is not someone that’s an executive, or a manager, or even an individual contributor. They’re all important. But maybe the most important thing to learn about four rules of flight is someone needs to say, “I give a shit—” excuse my language, “—about four rules of flight, and our business model, of whether it be oil and gas or education or retail, and it’s digital and ground.”

Some of them ensure that we’re staying true to the fact that we want to make the biggest decisions possible at the closest point to a customer that we can. And if we stay true to that someone, better yet, say, we’re going to tell the lawyers that are saying, “No, no, no, we had that risk. And it cost us X number of dollars because we had three lawsuits based on that behavior. Therefore we’re creating a rule, and then we kill the potential of making a mistake,” for sure.

But we also kill the potential of changing a customer situation, for sure. So to me, we measure the wrong things. It gets ridiculously complex, when you try to measure all of this additional kind of wonder state of what happens when you don’t know the unintended consequence. You may take your 55 lawsuits, which is usually what I walk into, and bring them down to zero, but at what cost? And 55 lawsuits came from, in their minds, too few rules. Not always the case, but often, there are too few rules, or they’re not the right rules. And perhaps they’re just simply bad training.

Perhaps you’re not setting the right stage to say when you have the freedom to make that decision, individual contributor working on a customer engagement, and they say, “As a customer, I’m not satisfied with this experience.” And you say, “Well, let me help you resolve it.” When you have that power, do you really know how to resolve it? And the answer is often no, but don’t give up on it; get better at resolving it, so that the customer gets a just-in-time answer.

The employee gets to expand their talents and contribute at a higher level, and therefore feel really good about solving something. This day and age, we often say, “My manager needs to talk to you,” and then no managers there. You know, all the goofiness that takes away their power? That’s just crazy.

Pete Mockaitis  
I hear you there. All right, so the four rules of flight then is not rather, “Hey, here are four key principles,” but rather the concepts that are in flight, they’re exactly four rules. And obviously in your operation, you should have exactly the right number of rules, correct? Not too many, not too few. Okay, most have too many. So we talked about budget troubles, what are some other rules or policies or traditional practices that you often see, just need to go?

Guy Bell  
Don’t create a culture; there’s no such thing. There are people that have PhDs in some form, and they consider themselves to be culture experts. What I’ve sadly learned, because I’ve made that mistake more than once, is a culture is a reflection of us leaders. And this is ultimately, even on a macro scale, a reflection of all of us. So we co-create culture. Culture is primarily driven in companies by behaviors at the top. And the irony of those four rules, kind of lessons, the four rules of flight, it would be, you know, one, too many policies. Two, your thoughts need to match your words, need to match your actions.

And when they’re misaligned, your business will fail. It may not fail tomorrow, it may not fail obviously, but you need to be aligned. And most companies choose to have a boardroom mentality, meaning what we think, and in the boardroom, most executives are less than kind. But you know, the kind around results that are positive, but not always. But they get down fire about, hitting our numbers, hitting our quarterly results, whatever these things are. And then we go sell the customer on the other side, a story of our business that…tries to make everyone feel good.

And then we go tell our employees a story that an HR department or an OD group comes in and says, “You know, well, they’re not too happy. Let’s go create a happiness poster.” That’s not the way it works. And it may be, you know, a good selling point for a minute or two years or five years or 10 years. But ultimately, either don’t have any of that crap and, you know, walk your walk, meaning if you’re an owner of a company, get a stable top management. It starts with them. They need to be able to say, “You know, what do we believe firmly?

“What are we communicating to our team? And so they can believe in it with us. And it’ll inform our execution, if we do that beautifully, elegantly. Regardless of if we’re kind of driven and we’re dehumanizing or not, the greatest people in the world, then damn it, stay the course.” Be who you are, as a company, as an individual group of owners, leaders, whatever that structure is the top. And then I would say, conversely, another really big mistake is not empowering everyone to become an expression of what that is, once you have a clear definition of, you know, by practice of how you look at your customers, how you’re kind of looking at one another and interesting in the conversation and empowering or not, right?

So whatever those variables are, that is the culture. And then from that place, really, how do we get into the individual contributor, a way that they can relate to it, however they are, wherever they sit, whatever they do? They matter, they have to matter. As I mentioned, if it’s one too many people, then don’t have them there. But if they’re there, they matter. So the culture is their expression in that exact same way with a different impact, but an impact all the same. So that’s one of those rules where I routinely… I’ll use an example.

I write about this, you know, you look at a company that everyone would have bet that 20 years later, Whole Foods would have been the most lovely place to work and the most beautiful culture because of how it began. It was the first of its kind, too unskilled to do what they did. And then you look at Amazon, who purchased them, was not known for being the most interesting guy to work with in terms of, you know, happy culture, and you know, feeling good about ourselves, but he’s executed at a very high level. And for better or worse, to my knowledge, they’re pretty well-aligned.

And so, two years ago, when I was watching this acquisition go through, and I kept thinking, because I know a lot of Whole Foods folks and I’m a consumer of both products. I quit consuming from Whole Foods, because it just became an experience that I felt, as a customer, was out of alignment. And I consumed more, frankly, from Amazon, who I felt like, you know, I read the articles, and I knew some of the backstory about what it was like to work there and stuff.

But it was authentic. No one walked in wondering what the experience was going to be like. And I remember reading an article that the founder and owner at the time of Whole Foods, said he met with Jeff Bezos, and we’re excited to come aboard. And he said, “Really, the difference I learned from Jeff and his company, was that I cared too much about people.” And I thought, “Dude, you have it totally wrong. You just you had it on a bunch of posters that you cared about people; you didn’t actually care about people.” And I’ll give you one more example of that exact lesson, I was running a publicly traded company.

And the CEO was an executive. The CEO came up in front of everyone in the management team and said, “You know, guys, we’ve got to get this turned around. We need to get people to feel like we care about them.” And I said, “Then just care about them.” And he said, “Well, what’s the point? What point do you want to you make?” And I said, “You said you want them to feel like we care about them, then don’t say that you don’t care about them. But if you really want to care about them, just care about them.” And he looked at me like, “Who are you?”

And we got to know each other well after that, but what’s happening is, I want you to feel like you have a voice. Do you want to have a voice? Do you really want respect? Either way, you don’t get to choose it. So that kind of thought process crops up, and then all of a sudden, it becomes you know, Whole Foods failing miserably. Because the thousandth time you say you care, but you don’t care, people trust their limbic resonance. Their body screams, “Man, this dude is not here for me. He’s not the person that created this company. I’m sure he’s a fantastic guy on a personal level, but he got caught up in something that was a concept not embedded into the fabric of that company in a way that everyone learns over time to trust the truth beyond our words,” right?

So aligning our thoughts, our words and our actions are critically important, too. Everyone counts; not some people, everyone. If you leave that, you’re in trouble. And then another one, it always starts with you. Always, not sometimes, not most of the time. So that means every janitor, every kind of entry level employee, everybody counts. And starts with you. You can change a company, you can change an experience, you can change a process. You’ve developed ways, but ultimately, you have to come in and say, “I’m not going to blame anybody. If I do that, I’m going to leave. But if I’m going to be here, I’m going to invest fully in what I have control and power over. And then I’m going to try to influence what I can see, feel and experience. And I’m going to do it in the most positive, affirming way. But I’m going to do it.”

If we can get to those four points, you know, four rules apply to many policies. Our thoughts, words and actions match. And then two, everyone counts in. One, it starts with me. That’s probably the closest version I can get to using that four concepts to simplify it.

Pete Mockaitis  
That’s good. Thank you. So when it comes to the caring, I’d love to get your take on it fundamentally, what is your top tip or suggestion when it comes to caring?

Guy Bell  
Wow, I love that. I would say the worst thing we can do is create the candy days in the lunches, where we go take a bunch of pictures and post them and make everyone feel happy, and that concept.

I think show up as you, and invite other people to show up as them, and let the messiness of life play its role. People are messy; we have bad days, and we don’t have separate lives, whether we like it or not, we’re not a husband, a wife, you know, a spiritual person, and you know, in this bucket, and then a dad in that bucket, it doesn’t work that way. And so what does it mean to truly invite other people into their fullness? To include you know, some of the mess and in that you earn some trust and that people start to kind of live into their fullness in a way that does matter and does get results. But ultimately you’re doing it to humanize the experience. You’re doing it because you care. And when you give a damn, and you authentically give a damn—or if you don’t—practice caring, practice listening, practice hearing everything, and then shift it if you want to go to business and say, well, let’s talk about a business process. I saw What’s going on? What do you think? And you’re four levels above them walking around the office? And they say, Well, I don’t know until Oh, yeah, I really do want to know, let’s talk about a little bit and never said they tell you their thought. And once in a while, you just get totally blown away by something that’s not in their backyard and you earn some trust, because you care enough to say I’ll bet you have an opinion. I’ll bet you see this from a different angle than I do. And then ask and let goofiness and silliness and stuff get in the way. But ultimately, you’re freeing people up to be everything to include transformative to include

You know, passionate, caring person toward the customers towards each other for the good of the company and the good of the community.

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

Guy Bell
Boy, I don’t have a list. So no, I’m good. This is fun. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Guy Bell  
Geez, I like Buckminster Fuller’s quote, and I am not going to get it exact. But it’s something to the extent that to really change how something is working, you have to start over. You can’t just add on. And so I use it a lot at the end of my speeches. Of course, I didn’t memorize it. I think Buckminster Fuller, pretty much everything he kind of has come to and shared, that we’re now aware of his lexicon of ideas, is helpful.

I don’t tend to use too many quotes, though. Having said that, because I do like the idea of more expanding into kind of what is the complexity beyond the quote’s point, but I like the rich complexity to that end. I wish I had a better ones to share with you, but I do find the ones where it’s teaching us to free up our thoughts. You know, there’s all kinds of wonderful thinkers that have, over the years, over the centuries, talked about what does it mean to be a free thinker. So I enjoy any one in the field of philosophy and or economics that talk about free markets and free thought.

Pete Mockaitis  
Cool. And how about a favorite book?

Guy Bell  
A couple of them, I recently I read The Innovation Blind Spot. And it’s really a fantastic read. I also read a book, Utopia for Realists, which is from a fascinating young guy from Europe, who is looking at sociological history and kind of challenging modern thought through data. Very smart guy. And then I’ve read a couple books, one called Sapiens and Homo Deus, they’re are all fascinating reads.

Pete Mockaitis  
And how about a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome a job?

Guy Bell
I go to bed, ensuring that I free myself of the day. I used to stay awake all night, when I had challenges at work, or whatever the case would be, and it became a practice of letting go and playing in that field. And then waking up in my first hour, half an hour of every day is a practice of, you know, quieting and reflecting on the on the joy of the day, and I walk into it, then converting that into kind of more mantras and thoughts throughout the day that support the kind of day I want to have.

Pete Mockaitis  
And was there a particular nugget you share with clients or readers or audience members that really seems to connect and resonate with them? And they repeat it back to you often?

Guy Bell  
Oh, you know, I think the message of learning to let go of what you know is such a rich and complex story.

But when I get into the details of let go and know, people began to resonate. And yeah, so I get feedback on that message. Another is, very specifically, when people ask for concrete approaches, I talk about policies from the lens of if it’s a rule, make sure everybody knows it’s non-negotiable. If it’s a policy, make sure you’re writing it towards something you want to accomplish, not away from something you don’t want to see happen. And if it’s a best practice, put it out there and don’t make it a point until you need to. And I’ve had lots of groups that are HR-centric, like how simple that is.

So that one’s red, meaning if you want to call it color coded, so that you know those are non-negotiable, they’re laws by governing bodies, whatever it may be. Yellow is our policies; they’re meant to be broken, you need to learn how to break them no more than, you know, whatever your rule is, 5% of the time. And if you do have a conversation, and three, we put out great ideas that your peers have used over the years. And we keep refreshing that it’s a nice, simple way to kind of put some meat on the bones of how to simplify the business without dumbing it down.

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

Guy Bell  
guypbell.com. It’s my website, and you can reach me at my email at guypiercebell1@gmail.com.

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

Guy Bell  
When you get people right, you get business right. It is really the critical reminder: we are in a time of the fourth industrial revolution; let’s do everything we can to make that work for us. And I’ve seen it both ways where it’s been transformative around working for the company and for the people. And I’ve seen it actually used improperly. So, you know, look at the people, even through the lens of these outstanding AI solutions and deep learning, and we’ll get the best both worlds.

Pete Mockaitis  
Guy, this has been a treat. Thank you so much for taking this time, and good luck with the turnarounds you’re doing and the adventures you’re having in the future you’re touching. This has been a real good time.

Guy Bell  
It’s been a pleasure, Pete. Thank you. I appreciate it.