#157 – Evan Unger: Scaling Elite Leadership, Virtual Training Systems & Building High-Output Teams

1
00:00:00,056 --> 00:00:04,858
The art of leadership is helping groups make the best decision, get into buy-in and go
implement.

2
00:00:04,858 --> 00:00:07,754
And that's really what we teach people and train people to do.

3
00:00:28,674 --> 00:00:29,935
Hey you all, welcome back.

4
00:00:29,935 --> 00:00:31,416
I'm pumped about today's episode.

5
00:00:31,416 --> 00:00:40,982
If you would have just seen the previous 10 minutes, Evan and I were just laughing and
bantering and beating up, I could tell from his engagement that he is going to share a

6
00:00:40,982 --> 00:00:45,976
tremendous amount of wealth and knowledge that we can integrate into our businesses.

7
00:00:45,976 --> 00:00:51,500
And it's not so often that I interview someone and talk to them and have a conversation
that I walk away.

8
00:00:51,500 --> 00:00:55,873
I always learn something, but I don't always take things away that I can implement in my
business.

9
00:00:55,873 --> 00:00:57,394
And I think today is going be one of those.

10
00:00:57,394 --> 00:00:57,838
So

11
00:00:57,838 --> 00:01:00,219
So I'm excited to have Evan Unger.

12
00:01:00,219 --> 00:01:07,942
He's someone who literally helps leaders and teams turn their meetings and leadership
culture from frustrating to high impact.

13
00:01:07,942 --> 00:01:17,475
Evan spent 25 years driving change across healthcare, pharma, and global teams, and now
brings that know-how into how we lead, collaborate, and get real results from our

14
00:01:17,475 --> 00:01:18,585
interactions.

15
00:01:18,585 --> 00:01:20,896
Evan, great to have you here today.

16
00:01:21,428 --> 00:01:22,919
It is great to be here, Mark.

17
00:01:22,919 --> 00:01:24,577
I'm excited to do this.

18
00:01:24,760 --> 00:01:32,931
The, said right before we started, really what I do is teach people how to collaborate and
now we're doing it more on screens than we do in person.

19
00:01:32,931 --> 00:01:34,132
What's that mean?

20
00:01:34,638 --> 00:01:37,158
Well, let me, let me give you a little background on me.

21
00:01:37,158 --> 00:01:38,657
Uh, got out of business school.

22
00:01:38,657 --> 00:01:44,098
I'm a little bit older than you, uh, in, in, in 89 when work for Merck giant pharma.

23
00:01:44,098 --> 00:01:44,658
Right.

24
00:01:44,658 --> 00:01:48,338
And back then there was, there was squawk boxes, right?

25
00:01:48,338 --> 00:01:55,138
We used to run meetings with squawk boxes and I didn't have email till 94.

26
00:01:55,138 --> 00:02:00,578
So back then we were teaching people how to collaborate sitting in rooms together.

27
00:02:00,738 --> 00:02:01,618
Decades went along.

28
00:02:01,618 --> 00:02:02,518
That's what we're doing.

29
00:02:02,518 --> 00:02:04,438
And all of a sudden technology came along.

30
00:02:04,438 --> 00:02:10,841
WebEx live meeting clients start saying Evan, we're leading things on global teams on
screens now.

31
00:02:10,841 --> 00:02:11,542
Can you help us?

32
00:02:11,542 --> 00:02:14,423
And I resisted in all honesty, sounded kind of tedious.

33
00:02:14,423 --> 00:02:24,418
Pandemic hits, everything went virtual and all we do now is teach people high stakes
collaborative facilitation on screens.

34
00:02:24,418 --> 00:02:24,548
Right.

35
00:02:24,548 --> 00:02:28,790
And that's really how the world's changed over my long career.

36
00:02:29,026 --> 00:02:34,868
So as we're going to get into that, right, talk about culture and change and collaboration
in organizations.

37
00:02:34,868 --> 00:02:45,640
But something just struck me that you resisted change, but then the pandemic came and you
were forced to, if you wanted to stay relevant.

38
00:02:45,640 --> 00:02:48,531
what, so what do you, what do you do with that?

39
00:02:48,531 --> 00:02:58,004
Knowing that even you having an MBA, working in pharmaceuticals and, you were actually on
the forefront of organizational change and helping people go through this in

40
00:02:58,004 --> 00:02:59,134
collaboration.

41
00:02:59,190 --> 00:03:04,670
And you subconsciously and consciously were pushing back until you were forced to.

42
00:03:04,910 --> 00:03:05,230
Yeah.

43
00:03:05,230 --> 00:03:16,830
Well, I started doing some, virtual facilitation, but the reality is when the pandemic hit
literally all my work, which was all face to face evaporated, just fell, just dripped off.

44
00:03:16,830 --> 00:03:19,310
And I and I was sitting there licking some wounds.

45
00:03:19,310 --> 00:03:24,710
was like, you know, at this age, a I'm not sure I'm even employable in a large company.

46
00:03:24,710 --> 00:03:26,830
I've not been in one for 30 years.

47
00:03:26,830 --> 00:03:32,210
B I definitely don't want to work inside a large company because I know the suffering of
being in a large company.

48
00:03:32,210 --> 00:03:34,502
And for a few little while I was like,

49
00:03:34,656 --> 00:03:36,367
I'm not sure I'm going to get through this.

50
00:03:36,367 --> 00:03:39,429
My wife said to me, you got to figure this out.

51
00:03:39,429 --> 00:03:45,513
You know, and so literally I was meditating and I was like, wait a minute, everything I do
applies virtually.

52
00:03:45,513 --> 00:03:51,627
I just, you know, on the almost back of a napkin time to thing, redesign what we were
doing and started doing it virtually.

53
00:03:51,627 --> 00:03:52,627
But I'm a human being.

54
00:03:52,627 --> 00:03:56,570
I resist the change, you know, but I, my hand was forced, right?

55
00:03:56,570 --> 00:04:00,822
Necessity is the mother of invention and I had to reinvent myself.

56
00:04:01,144 --> 00:04:07,646
So if we by default resist change, it must be solving for survival or something.

57
00:04:07,646 --> 00:04:09,896
It must be some component of the subconscious.

58
00:04:09,896 --> 00:04:13,998
um Why is it so essential?

59
00:04:13,998 --> 00:04:20,780
Because we're going to sit here and talk about maybe the founding of a company and working
with the entrepreneurs and establishing what the culture is going to be.

60
00:04:20,780 --> 00:04:29,002
But then I can imagine you also coming into these established organizations because you
just said working in a big corporation, you're like, that's mind numbing.

61
00:04:30,196 --> 00:04:41,902
So are those, those two complete from a consulting standpoint, two complete different ways
to weed and to teach collaboration that big company, cause we know they're gonna, they're

62
00:04:41,902 --> 00:04:45,524
gonna push against change versus from the outset.

63
00:04:46,572 --> 00:04:47,182
Yeah.

64
00:04:47,182 --> 00:04:57,348
I mean, I always have loved working with smaller organizations because you can change an
organization so quickly because if the leader of the organization offered and the founder

65
00:04:57,348 --> 00:05:05,272
gets what we're doing and sees it as a way to build the culture of their business, you can
make change so fast in a small company.

66
00:05:05,272 --> 00:05:08,734
Giant companies, you know, I used to work for Merck, Big Pharma.

67
00:05:08,734 --> 00:05:11,455
You know, you train people in certain things.

68
00:05:11,455 --> 00:05:16,302
You're not touching the culture and it's it's a much easier thing to do.

69
00:05:16,302 --> 00:05:20,610
And I'd always prefer to work with small organizations because you make change fast.

70
00:05:20,610 --> 00:05:21,861
Yeah.

71
00:05:21,861 --> 00:05:26,273
wonder, so then when you say that, I'm like, okay, then how would a big corporation
change?

72
00:05:26,273 --> 00:05:36,593
I found myself, I don't spend the money to buy these suites at sporting events, but I was
sitting in a suite for the MLS, um just the soccer league, professional soccer league in

73
00:05:36,593 --> 00:05:37,377
the US.

74
00:05:37,477 --> 00:05:39,058
They just started their playoffs.

75
00:05:39,058 --> 00:05:44,000
And one of my business relationships invited me, say, I got two tickets last minute and I
went to a suite.

76
00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:48,576
And in this suite were other people from significant sports organizations.

77
00:05:48,576 --> 00:05:55,392
and someone who is on the ownership side of owning a professional or not that team, but
professional in this country.

78
00:05:55,392 --> 00:05:58,815
And we were talking about this in a way that wasn't even intentional.

79
00:05:58,815 --> 00:06:13,877
And what he said was these sports leagues, whether it be the NHL, the NFL, the MLB, he
said, you can't get all of them to support culture change and making a significant impact

80
00:06:13,877 --> 00:06:17,896
on changing their business model unless every player

81
00:06:17,896 --> 00:06:23,722
on every team and then every team gets behind the idea of what you're going to do.

82
00:06:23,765 --> 00:06:26,120
That sounds like a big organization.

83
00:06:26,158 --> 00:06:27,238
Yeah, it does.

84
00:06:27,238 --> 00:06:35,878
mean, cause this is an example, you know, a number of years back, worked with an insurance
company and when I was a culture change consultant, the first people you got to get to buy

85
00:06:35,878 --> 00:06:37,618
in is the C team.

86
00:06:37,618 --> 00:06:38,018
Right.

87
00:06:38,018 --> 00:06:44,558
Cause if not everyone on the C teams bought in, there's not, you're not going be able to
change a large organization.

88
00:06:44,558 --> 00:06:46,718
And so that's the first intervention.

89
00:06:46,718 --> 00:06:50,758
And early on, we went after the low hanging fruit, right.

90
00:06:50,758 --> 00:06:52,938
Which is getting rid of the bureaucracy.

91
00:06:52,938 --> 00:06:54,092
I was trained.

92
00:06:54,092 --> 00:06:58,094
by my mentor was in the school of Jack Welch when he was at GE.

93
00:06:58,094 --> 00:07:08,548
I go back that far and they did workout, which was the simple thing of just let's rip out
the unnecessary reports, the unnecessary approval layers, the unnecessary policies, and of

94
00:07:08,548 --> 00:07:10,509
course they're unnecessary mediums.

95
00:07:10,509 --> 00:07:11,109
Right.

96
00:07:11,109 --> 00:07:15,490
And so that's the first place you got to start in an organization with the C team.

97
00:07:15,791 --> 00:07:19,913
They've got to buy in and then you work your way down through the entire organization.

98
00:07:19,913 --> 00:07:23,974
And that's often what we did when we were doing large company culture change.

99
00:07:24,270 --> 00:07:24,510
All right.

100
00:07:24,510 --> 00:07:30,012
So to jump on the small side, cause you're really passionate about this on working with
that founder.

101
00:07:30,012 --> 00:07:34,134
so let's talk about 2025.

102
00:07:34,134 --> 00:07:43,538
If we can say, cause we're not trying to solve for the unique outliers, cause we'll sit
here for 10 months and try to talk about every individual outlier.

103
00:07:43,738 --> 00:07:52,932
Is there something that you see, whether it's 70%, 80 % on the majority of these founders
and majority of the companies that when you first show up, whether it's on screen or in

104
00:07:52,932 --> 00:07:53,560
person,

105
00:07:53,560 --> 00:07:56,460
that you kind of know what you're gonna walk into without knowing the company.

106
00:07:56,460 --> 00:07:57,854
Do you have a strategy?

107
00:07:57,854 --> 00:08:00,060
Do you have a uh template?

108
00:08:00,396 --> 00:08:06,839
Well, generally what the first thing we would do is contract with the founder and do an
assessment, right?

109
00:08:06,839 --> 00:08:10,340
Because the truth is the frontline employees know what's really going on.

110
00:08:10,340 --> 00:08:18,654
And so you would always want to do an assessment of that, you know, the founder and his or
her team, right?

111
00:08:18,654 --> 00:08:21,635
Because often they're not talking, people don't talk straight together.

112
00:08:21,635 --> 00:08:29,778
So the first thing you would always do is gather data anonymously, put it back in front of
the leader and say, this is what people aren't saying.

113
00:08:29,846 --> 00:08:30,076
Right.

114
00:08:30,076 --> 00:08:37,306
Because first thing we got to get people to do is have honest conversations and, uh, you
know, depending on the leadership style of the founder, right.

115
00:08:37,306 --> 00:08:44,488
lot of times people may hold back, withhold information she or he needs to actually make
good decisions.

116
00:08:44,488 --> 00:08:48,111
And so that's what we're trying to do is first grade, culture of honesty.

117
00:08:48,111 --> 00:08:51,624
Everyone has integrity or candor as part of their core values.

118
00:08:51,624 --> 00:08:54,296
But that's one thing to have on a poster on the wall.

119
00:08:54,296 --> 00:08:59,254
It's another thing to get the senior team talking to each other.

120
00:08:59,254 --> 00:09:02,354
in a way where they're giving real feedback to one another.

121
00:09:02,354 --> 00:09:07,974
And that's usually the first intervention, assess what's going on, get them to talk more
honestly amongst one another.

122
00:09:08,492 --> 00:09:09,866
What happens then?

123
00:09:10,476 --> 00:09:17,772
Well, then once we have the honest conversation, now we start talking about getting
alignment around their vision, right?

124
00:09:17,772 --> 00:09:18,633
Where we see it.

125
00:09:18,633 --> 00:09:27,130
Now the founder obviously often carries most of the vision and the people around them have
to execute against that vision, but they still have to get alignment around it.

126
00:09:27,130 --> 00:09:32,394
And often it's, you know, the founder may not always be as skilled at communicating the
vision.

127
00:09:32,394 --> 00:09:34,666
So we would then do that work.

128
00:09:34,666 --> 00:09:40,054
Then we would talk about their values because that's ultimately the culture.

129
00:09:40,054 --> 00:09:41,325
you know, manifest from the values.

130
00:09:41,325 --> 00:09:42,605
So that's the kind of work we would do.

131
00:09:42,605 --> 00:09:47,759
We'd do work around the vision, the values, which then leads to what's the strategy.

132
00:09:47,819 --> 00:09:51,642
But it really is about, again, alignment on those core fundamentals.

133
00:09:51,642 --> 00:09:53,823
What we see is the future of the business.

134
00:09:53,823 --> 00:09:55,434
What are the values to get there?

135
00:09:55,434 --> 00:09:57,025
And then our strategy for how to do it.

136
00:09:57,025 --> 00:10:02,029
And that's the work you would do with uh any team, whether it's a giant company or a small
team.

137
00:10:02,029 --> 00:10:04,550
That's the kind of work you have to do and get alignment.

138
00:10:04,856 --> 00:10:06,611
Give me an example of a value.

139
00:10:07,534 --> 00:10:09,475
Some people say integrity.

140
00:10:09,475 --> 00:10:12,816
Some people have the value of collaboration or teamwork.

141
00:10:12,816 --> 00:10:17,097
Some people have the value of diversity.

142
00:10:17,097 --> 00:10:18,047
Those are values.

143
00:10:18,047 --> 00:10:21,868
So the core values that a company wants to live by.

144
00:10:21,868 --> 00:10:26,340
Now, most companies have the value statement, but they don't live by them.

145
00:10:26,340 --> 00:10:26,760
Right?

146
00:10:26,760 --> 00:10:28,660
It's just we had to do the work.

147
00:10:28,660 --> 00:10:34,342
So what you have to do is figure out how do I build those core values and how I'm going to
assess people.

148
00:10:34,432 --> 00:10:34,802
Right.

149
00:10:34,802 --> 00:10:38,405
How I promote people, how I select and hire people.

150
00:10:38,405 --> 00:10:40,816
And it, you know, so that's what I mean by a value.

151
00:10:40,816 --> 00:10:46,600
It's, know, the fundamental tenets for how you want to do everything in the organization.

152
00:10:46,808 --> 00:10:49,803
Does the culture then derive from what the values are and how you act?

153
00:10:49,803 --> 00:10:52,426
Does a culture just show up based on who you are?

154
00:10:53,194 --> 00:10:59,857
It shows up, honestly, based on the leader and their beliefs about people and their style.

155
00:10:59,857 --> 00:11:03,178
An organization goes where to the founder is, right?

156
00:11:03,178 --> 00:11:09,987
If the founder says collaboration is important, but he doesn't really value it, it's not
real, then it doesn't show up.

157
00:11:09,987 --> 00:11:18,995
So honestly, the culture manifests from in a small organization, you know, the founder,
the leader, they're going to create the culture because it's really going to be a

158
00:11:18,995 --> 00:11:22,336
reflection of what they believe is important.

159
00:11:22,716 --> 00:11:23,770
in running a business.

160
00:11:23,770 --> 00:11:25,828
That's where it's going to generate from.

161
00:11:25,828 --> 00:11:29,067
Bigger companies, it's harder to shift the culture.

162
00:11:29,848 --> 00:11:36,017
So then if you need change, then the leader has to change or else there's a gap they don't
see that you have to fill.

163
00:11:36,017 --> 00:11:37,680
Oh, that.

164
00:11:37,950 --> 00:11:42,622
an organization is only going to change as much as the person leading it is able to
change.

165
00:11:42,622 --> 00:11:53,456
And a lot of times working with big companies, that's one of the reasons when you start at
the C team level and you put in place the values, the CEO, she or he, they have to be able

166
00:11:53,456 --> 00:11:55,737
to change if they really want to shift the culture.

167
00:11:55,737 --> 00:12:05,491
And sometimes when you start looking at the people below them, it's not just them
changing, you may have to well change the people because they're so acculturated to a way

168
00:12:05,491 --> 00:12:05,881
of being.

169
00:12:05,881 --> 00:12:07,554
And if you're trying to shift the culture,

170
00:12:07,554 --> 00:12:09,116
those people may never get there.

171
00:12:09,116 --> 00:12:14,802
When you've got people like me or 61 years old, we don't change that well at our age,
right?

172
00:12:15,884 --> 00:12:21,651
We've got ruts in the snow and getting those ruts, like sleds keep getting in those ruts.

173
00:12:21,651 --> 00:12:24,404
It's hard to get out of those ruts the older we get.

174
00:12:24,802 --> 00:12:28,764
Me being a centrist on so many things, I don't try to find the middle.

175
00:12:28,764 --> 00:12:31,566
I try to exist in the middle to say, hey, where's the truth?

176
00:12:31,566 --> 00:12:34,707
Not to be right, not to be wrong, to try to find the truth.

177
00:12:34,707 --> 00:12:43,712
But so often what we find is that that takes a lot of humility, right, to be willing to go
there where you're the leader and you're the one that's supposed to know.

178
00:12:43,712 --> 00:12:53,237
But I try not to make these really definitive big statements because it seems like out of
society, people are starting to, like this is right or this is wrong.

179
00:12:53,358 --> 00:12:54,508
However,

180
00:12:56,434 --> 00:13:05,883
Usually I see when people need to change, like in my life, the most painful things, what
they came with is me changing.

181
00:13:06,525 --> 00:13:13,902
And I normally look out here in the world and the people I'm leading or other managers and
leadership team in my companies all the way down to someone that starts out and they're

182
00:13:13,902 --> 00:13:15,634
not getting the outcome they want.

183
00:13:15,634 --> 00:13:19,998
What happens is they usually only change because of pain.

184
00:13:21,358 --> 00:13:21,618
Yeah.

185
00:13:21,618 --> 00:13:25,738
I mean, that's, that's one of the things you have to have felt need to change.

186
00:13:25,738 --> 00:13:29,038
And that's why some of the most successful organizations, right.

187
00:13:29,038 --> 00:13:34,178
When you go back and look at a lot of what the fortune 100 was in the 1900s, I can't
remember the stats.

188
00:13:34,178 --> 00:13:35,478
Most of them are gone.

189
00:13:35,518 --> 00:13:35,958
Right.

190
00:13:35,958 --> 00:13:45,858
Because the more successful we are, the more we think what we're doing works and the more
insular we are, and perhaps the most certain we are that we have the way.

191
00:13:45,858 --> 00:13:50,978
And in this day and age, and you know, I don't know what AI is going to do to, I mean, you
know, but.

192
00:13:50,978 --> 00:13:53,199
Change is the one thing you can count on.

193
00:13:53,199 --> 00:13:55,961
Now use the word of humility.

194
00:13:55,961 --> 00:13:57,402
That's a value.

195
00:13:57,402 --> 00:14:05,576
And I think it's an important value because we all have a piece of reality, but we can't,
the world is way too complex.

196
00:14:05,576 --> 00:14:12,930
So if I'm a leader and I'm humble, then I understand my job is to know how to get the best
out of those people I'm leading.

197
00:14:12,930 --> 00:14:16,612
And that's where we try to help them learn a style of leadership.

198
00:14:16,612 --> 00:14:18,413
We call collaborative leadership.

199
00:14:18,413 --> 00:14:20,878
Some people might call it servant leadership.

200
00:14:20,878 --> 00:14:32,470
There's so much jargon around leadership, but at its essence, it's the art of knowing how
to engage a group of experts to help them make the best decision with limited information,

201
00:14:32,470 --> 00:14:34,121
get them to buy in and go implement.

202
00:14:34,121 --> 00:14:41,608
But humility, you've hit probably, that's probably one of the most important things for
founders is to just realize we don't know what we don't know.

203
00:14:41,710 --> 00:14:48,642
And unfortunately, you probably have to fail through some failure of leadership to get
there because you're the one that came up with the idea.

204
00:14:48,642 --> 00:14:49,492
You were the driver.

205
00:14:49,492 --> 00:14:51,653
You're the one that works seven days a week and you don't quit.

206
00:14:51,653 --> 00:14:57,335
And what you've had to do is you've had to be a force field against the world telling you
can't and as an entrepreneur.

207
00:14:57,335 --> 00:15:00,455
so then you have to disconnect from that and say, hold on, wait a minute.

208
00:15:00,455 --> 00:15:08,378
If I'm going to grow this thing and this is about people, I need to surround myself with
people that are go all in with me that are intelligent that I need to step back and say,

209
00:15:08,378 --> 00:15:09,778
tell me what you guys know.

210
00:15:10,114 --> 00:15:10,454
Yeah.

211
00:15:10,454 --> 00:15:19,737
I mean, think that's actually, and I'm sure that's the struggle for most founders is they
carry the vision up against the world that says, that can't work.

212
00:15:19,737 --> 00:15:20,457
Right.

213
00:15:20,457 --> 00:15:21,858
So they carry that vision.

214
00:15:21,858 --> 00:15:29,380
And then when they get successful, they do have to deal with the realities of, got to have
a payroll system.

215
00:15:29,380 --> 00:15:32,321
You know, I've got to have an, you know, a legal system.

216
00:15:32,321 --> 00:15:37,142
And it's some, think it's struggles for certain founders to make the shift.

217
00:15:37,218 --> 00:15:42,551
from being the entrepreneur to being the quote unquote manager because they don't like
managing.

218
00:15:42,551 --> 00:15:44,574
It's not as fun as creating.

219
00:15:44,638 --> 00:15:47,219
Did you read Ray Dalio's book, Principles?

220
00:15:47,980 --> 00:15:50,041
It's really dense.

221
00:15:50,041 --> 00:15:58,186
he has, mean, it is, I mean, you listen to the guy, he's really smart, but sometimes
really, really smart people are tough to articulate to the average mind on what they're

222
00:15:58,186 --> 00:15:58,906
saying.

223
00:15:58,906 --> 00:16:04,609
But he has this idea, you know, this word meritocracy has shown up in the past decade in
our society.

224
00:16:04,609 --> 00:16:09,332
And it's kind of just the best idea, the best performance, the best thing wins, whether
people like it or not.

225
00:16:09,332 --> 00:16:13,704
But he has this principle of, he ran his company on idea meritocracy.

226
00:16:14,294 --> 00:16:16,796
And it kind of goes in line with what we're talking about here.

227
00:16:16,796 --> 00:16:29,285
But what I love is, is he said, and I think I'm paraphrasing, but he stated that when
you're in a meeting and you're in a room of people deciding things, hopefully not just

228
00:16:29,285 --> 00:16:33,958
talking about things, deciding things, the best idea has to win.

229
00:16:33,958 --> 00:16:39,612
And what I took from that book was I said, let me frame this in my mind, how I go into a
meeting.

230
00:16:40,573 --> 00:16:42,766
actually personally, this isn't anyone else.

231
00:16:42,766 --> 00:16:48,700
But again, if the leader is the one, if it's top down, I have to go into the meeting and I
want to be wrong.

232
00:16:49,740 --> 00:16:50,711
Yeah, exactly.

233
00:16:50,711 --> 00:16:54,134
I want the pushback to help me make the better decision.

234
00:16:54,134 --> 00:17:00,769
And the problem is, you probably, I mean, this is big company jargon, but they're agile
right away to develop software.

235
00:17:00,769 --> 00:17:03,642
have a term called HIPPO decision making, right?

236
00:17:03,642 --> 00:17:11,569
And the HIPPO is an acronym for the highest paid person's opinion, which is the founder,
even though they may not getting paid cause they're running the whole thing.

237
00:17:11,569 --> 00:17:16,103
You know, they have a burn rate on the capital, but it has nothing to do with them.

238
00:17:16,103 --> 00:17:17,889
Just the nature of hierarchy.

239
00:17:17,889 --> 00:17:24,810
them being the founder or them being the most senior person, people are going to want to
not make themselves look wrong.

240
00:17:24,810 --> 00:17:32,571
So they're not going to be honest with the information that the founder needs to help him
or her make the best decision.

241
00:17:32,571 --> 00:17:34,772
But it is hard when they hippo.

242
00:17:35,112 --> 00:17:38,883
just, you know, people are, you know, they, want to keep their jobs.

243
00:17:38,883 --> 00:17:47,794
So often the entrepreneur or the senior person gets shielded from the information they
need to help them tell them you're wrong.

244
00:17:47,884 --> 00:17:48,174
Right.

245
00:17:48,174 --> 00:17:50,718
That's not really what's happening out there in the market.

246
00:17:50,718 --> 00:17:51,810
And that is the challenge.

247
00:17:51,810 --> 00:17:59,354
That's why I said, when we worked early, it was trying to get the comfort with giving
honest feedback, even when it's painful.

248
00:17:59,354 --> 00:17:59,912
Right.

249
00:17:59,912 --> 00:18:01,303
And that is the hard thing.

250
00:18:01,303 --> 00:18:04,814
Just the nature of hierarchy suppresses conversation.

251
00:18:04,814 --> 00:18:13,174
I mean, isn't it the leaders job to then create the environment, even if they find
themselves in an environment where, I felt that at times, like guys, I want the truth.

252
00:18:13,194 --> 00:18:22,194
I know I have this big personality, I'm coming at you and I'm very opinionated and stuff,
but I had to actually tell them like, I want you to push back.

253
00:18:22,874 --> 00:18:25,454
I want you to, or you're a smart person.

254
00:18:25,454 --> 00:18:27,054
That's why you're in the room with me.

255
00:18:27,054 --> 00:18:31,500
I want you to highlight if I have a blind spot and there's something I don't see.

256
00:18:31,500 --> 00:18:32,670
Here's where the room's safe.

257
00:18:32,670 --> 00:18:36,012
It doesn't mean you're gonna feel good about what we're gonna do in here while we're doing
it.

258
00:18:36,012 --> 00:18:42,955
It might feel crazy, but I want you to push back at a level, because when we leave this
room, we need to have the best decision.

259
00:18:42,955 --> 00:18:47,107
We need to have the best direction forward and the best that we can all come up with.

260
00:18:47,107 --> 00:18:51,068
Whoever that is and that idea, we need to walk out of here with the direction this place
is going.

261
00:18:51,756 --> 00:19:01,150
Yeah, mean, leadership, as I said, there's so many books, and I, and articles read on
leadership, but the simplest way we might think about our leadership is on a continuum,

262
00:19:01,150 --> 00:19:07,213
where on one extreme, you could run the meeting or the conversation where you're the
expert.

263
00:19:07,213 --> 00:19:10,975
You know more than anyone else about the business, right?

264
00:19:10,975 --> 00:19:18,988
And you're making the decision for the group and telling them this is what we need to do,
you know, which is classic hierarchical leadership.

265
00:19:18,988 --> 00:19:21,470
And there are times you may know more than anyone else.

266
00:19:21,470 --> 00:19:33,412
And there are times you may certainly won't be making the decision for them, except
wouldn't you rather first hear from the other people and invite them into a conversation.

267
00:19:33,412 --> 00:19:36,786
So they've told you what you need to know to make the best of it.

268
00:19:36,786 --> 00:19:44,172
Cause the other extreme, this is what we're teaching people, pure collaborative leadership
is understanding how to remain neutral.

269
00:19:44,364 --> 00:19:53,196
long enough by neutral, mean not influencing the decision by if I'm the senior person, if
I come in and tell people immediately, people are going to stop engaging.

270
00:19:53,196 --> 00:19:59,908
So know how to come in and ask questions, you know, in a way that allows the real ideas.

271
00:19:59,908 --> 00:20:05,660
You're talking about the marketplace of ideas to surface, have the honest, let's just hash
it out.

272
00:20:05,660 --> 00:20:13,198
And that's what we're teaching people, the art of neutral collaborative facilitation, even
if at some point as the founder,

273
00:20:13,198 --> 00:20:15,258
I'm going to get out in neutral and say, I've heard it all.

274
00:20:15,258 --> 00:20:17,418
This is what I think the best idea is.

275
00:20:17,418 --> 00:20:20,078
This is what we're getting forward to now as the founder.

276
00:20:20,078 --> 00:20:24,498
I'd love to reach consensus with my team where everyone agrees.

277
00:20:24,498 --> 00:20:32,298
This is the idea we're going after, you know, but that is the art of leadership is knowing
how to hold space long enough.

278
00:20:32,458 --> 00:20:34,338
So that we've got the right conversation.

279
00:20:34,338 --> 00:20:35,098
We make the best decision.

280
00:20:35,098 --> 00:20:38,278
And it's not easy because most people are trained as experts.

281
00:20:38,278 --> 00:20:39,178
Right.

282
00:20:39,668 --> 00:20:40,439
job, right?

283
00:20:40,439 --> 00:20:49,066
It's, and that's why maybe the founder, you really have to change and evolve and grow to
then be the CEO because you have to go from the person that had the idea, that had the

284
00:20:49,066 --> 00:20:53,280
vision, that's through sheer force and believe and passion and culture.

285
00:20:53,280 --> 00:21:00,596
You built this thing, but then now if it's going to go bigger, you need five people that
were like you to come in and run the different parts and silos you're going to

286
00:21:00,596 --> 00:21:01,396
organization.

287
00:21:01,396 --> 00:21:05,880
So you now need to go into the room and you need to be the one that selects the best idea.

288
00:21:05,920 --> 00:21:06,601
yeah.

289
00:21:06,601 --> 00:21:07,861
That's it, right?

290
00:21:08,062 --> 00:21:11,445
the hippo may be the ultimate decision maker, right?

291
00:21:11,445 --> 00:21:20,974
But you want to make sure that your team has told you what's really going on so that you
are actually, do you use the term, you don't have blind spots.

292
00:21:20,974 --> 00:21:22,455
We may make the wrong decision.

293
00:21:22,455 --> 00:21:30,812
The world is a complex world, but I don't want to make the wrong decision because we
didn't have the conversation that could have helped us make the right decision.

294
00:21:31,352 --> 00:21:36,212
So make the decision and then be the person that gets everybody on board.

295
00:21:36,300 --> 00:21:36,540
Yep.

296
00:21:36,540 --> 00:21:39,271
And now that's the alignment because that's what we're teaching people.

297
00:21:39,271 --> 00:21:44,734
We always want as a leader, the best possible decision with maximum buying and ownership.

298
00:21:44,734 --> 00:21:45,984
Now you may never get it.

299
00:21:45,984 --> 00:21:55,979
If you have a team of 12, LL 12 online, but if you can get the right decision and have 10
people bought in, you'll deal with the two people who aren't bought in offline.

300
00:21:55,979 --> 00:22:01,645
But that's really the art of leadership is helping groups make the best decision, get into
buy-in and go implement.

301
00:22:01,645 --> 00:22:04,532
And that's really what we teach people and train people to do.

302
00:22:04,802 --> 00:22:07,975
You brought up Jack Welch and GE and their systems a lot.

303
00:22:07,975 --> 00:22:16,932
You didn't go into the HR piece of this though, because in, in sales, what we heard is I
was coming up through and before I even became an entrepreneur, started the company.

304
00:22:16,932 --> 00:22:22,357
There was this four tiers of performance of employees, this A, B, C, and D.

305
00:22:22,357 --> 00:22:23,098
Exactly.

306
00:22:23,098 --> 00:22:30,444
And, the, the thing that feels mean in this world we're in now is said, regardless,
correct me if I'm wrong, you probably know it better than me.

307
00:22:30,444 --> 00:22:33,686
I'm thinking I read this and studied it and was taught this.

308
00:22:34,392 --> 00:22:36,326
bottom 25 % go.

309
00:22:36,428 --> 00:22:36,758
Yeah.

310
00:22:36,758 --> 00:22:38,639
I mean, that's what I mean.

311
00:22:38,639 --> 00:22:45,304
That's if you tolerate the low performance, then you're diluting the bar for everyone.

312
00:22:45,304 --> 00:22:48,015
So I think welch had these isoquants.

313
00:22:48,015 --> 00:22:51,417
It was the A players, the B players, the C players, right?

314
00:22:51,417 --> 00:22:54,539
You want to develop the A players, reward them, promote them.

315
00:22:54,539 --> 00:22:57,291
Now they've got to model the values, right?

316
00:22:57,291 --> 00:23:02,158
And geez, values were speed, simplicity and self-confidence, right?

317
00:23:02,158 --> 00:23:06,758
And so you've got to make sure those A players are being rewarded, promoted.

318
00:23:06,758 --> 00:23:09,558
You're going to have B players there because they have to do things.

319
00:23:09,558 --> 00:23:13,678
But the C players, you know, usually they saw 10 to 25%.

320
00:23:13,678 --> 00:23:17,038
We manage them out, which sounds brutal, right?

321
00:23:17,038 --> 00:23:25,358
I mean, it does sound brutal from a human standpoint, but the marketplace is brutal and
you can't have that drag on your business.

322
00:23:25,358 --> 00:23:28,498
Now, when you're promoting C players.

323
00:23:28,536 --> 00:23:34,950
who might be A players from a business delivery standpoint, but C players from a living
the values standpoint.

324
00:23:34,970 --> 00:23:38,482
What you're saying to the organization is the values don't matter, right?

325
00:23:38,482 --> 00:23:41,114
It's only results and you have to have both pieces.

326
00:23:41,114 --> 00:23:47,558
You have to have people who get results, but do it in a way that models the values you'd
like to have in your organization.

327
00:23:47,558 --> 00:23:54,102
And it is tempting to just put the values to the side, but Welch was looking at both
pieces.

328
00:23:54,424 --> 00:23:54,738
So.

329
00:23:54,738 --> 00:23:56,134
um

330
00:23:57,656 --> 00:23:59,087
This is complex.

331
00:24:00,028 --> 00:24:03,380
And if what GE was talking about, if one of them is simplicity, it's just complex.

332
00:24:03,380 --> 00:24:14,999
So I believe that when Warren Buffett and Charlie, when they bought companies, who knows
if it's the complete truth, but they'd want to buy them on one and two sheet deals, not

333
00:24:14,999 --> 00:24:16,600
1500 page contracts.

334
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:23,845
So can Evan design for a new business and entrepreneur coming in from a consulting
perspective?

335
00:24:23,845 --> 00:24:25,736
Here's what you do in one sheet.

336
00:24:26,306 --> 00:24:29,855
To go from where you are to where you want to be or I see where need to be, it's one
sheet.

337
00:24:29,855 --> 00:24:32,200
Can we simplify that that well?

338
00:24:34,046 --> 00:24:36,948
I want to be straight at this point, Mark, in my career, right?

339
00:24:36,948 --> 00:24:38,878
For decades, I'm doing culture change.

340
00:24:38,878 --> 00:24:51,914
Now, at this point, I'm just training people how this style of leadership works because at
61, know, work-life balance is the most important thing to me for a founder, not very

341
00:24:51,914 --> 00:24:53,014
important, right?

342
00:24:53,014 --> 00:24:54,375
They're going to obsess.

343
00:24:54,375 --> 00:25:02,582
So to get it down to that simple, at this point, I'm not in that consulting arena and your
thinking's excellent in that.

344
00:25:02,582 --> 00:25:05,544
You should be able to, I'm trying to remember who the CEO was.

345
00:25:05,544 --> 00:25:09,426
You could, you should be able to present your idea in one PowerPoint slide.

346
00:25:09,487 --> 00:25:13,589
Right now what people did is they jammed it down and they got the font down to three
points.

347
00:25:13,589 --> 00:25:19,553
They had so many things, but the idea needs to be simple enough that you could articulate
it in one slide.

348
00:25:19,553 --> 00:25:21,644
And frankly, you shouldn't even need a slide.

349
00:25:21,644 --> 00:25:28,682
Yeah, it might've been Bezos or Jamie diamond or something, because those guys, what they
do, I want to get your idea on this.

350
00:25:28,723 --> 00:25:32,908
They actually do pre-writes for meetings so everyone can pre-read.

351
00:25:33,346 --> 00:25:34,056
Yeah.

352
00:25:34,056 --> 00:25:34,977
That's Amazon.

353
00:25:34,977 --> 00:25:36,797
They have a very unique culture on meetings.

354
00:25:36,797 --> 00:25:39,369
We've trained a few people from there, but it's very unique.

355
00:25:39,369 --> 00:25:42,610
It's really, you have to get your idea as the pre-read.

356
00:25:42,610 --> 00:25:45,751
You get in the meeting, you read that, right.

357
00:25:45,751 --> 00:25:47,172
And then they hash it out.

358
00:25:47,172 --> 00:25:54,565
It's a very different culture, you know, that Bezos has created, quite unique in how they
run meetings.

359
00:25:54,565 --> 00:25:57,786
It's all about, I think they call it the narrative, right?

360
00:25:57,786 --> 00:25:58,807
It's something like that.

361
00:25:58,807 --> 00:26:00,086
I'm trying to remember the name of it.

362
00:26:00,086 --> 00:26:01,934
It's very unique culture for meetings.

363
00:26:01,934 --> 00:26:10,174
Yeah, if you hear from him too, because what we do is we talk about these high flying
companies that have changed the world, but we don't actually talk about like how they did

364
00:26:10,174 --> 00:26:11,714
it in a simplified way.

365
00:26:11,714 --> 00:26:13,894
And I also heard this thing about him.

366
00:26:13,894 --> 00:26:18,438
Again, you don't know if it's completely true, but he'll respond to emails with one word.

367
00:26:20,076 --> 00:26:21,888
Yeah, that may be true.

368
00:26:21,888 --> 00:26:28,254
It better be a good word because I've got to make a lot of assumptions based on that word.

369
00:26:29,757 --> 00:26:31,512
It could be yes or no.

370
00:26:31,512 --> 00:26:34,779
Where it be what with a question mark.

371
00:26:34,779 --> 00:26:35,302
Right.

372
00:26:35,302 --> 00:26:36,488
Or go, no go.

373
00:26:36,488 --> 00:26:37,958
That's two words, right?

374
00:26:37,958 --> 00:26:39,161
And so...

375
00:26:40,076 --> 00:26:44,018
You get one of those responses back, you're going to be like, my gosh, what just happened?

376
00:26:44,620 --> 00:26:44,870
Yeah.

377
00:26:44,870 --> 00:26:47,671
I'm to remember was it Andy Grove and Intel?

378
00:26:47,971 --> 00:26:50,232
All these could be apocryphal stories, right?

379
00:26:50,232 --> 00:26:51,253
You never know.

380
00:26:51,253 --> 00:26:56,395
But I think they said, if you don't get to the meeting on time, you don't get in.

381
00:26:56,435 --> 00:26:59,206
Because time, you know, it was so important.

382
00:26:59,206 --> 00:27:02,237
It's like, if you don't get there on time, the door was locked.

383
00:27:02,237 --> 00:27:03,098
You're not in now.

384
00:27:03,098 --> 00:27:05,999
How many meetings do you think an Intel executive meeting in their career?

385
00:27:05,999 --> 00:27:06,839
One.

386
00:27:06,879 --> 00:27:07,299
Right.

387
00:27:07,299 --> 00:27:10,721
It's over because, and that's, you know, that was a value, right?

388
00:27:10,721 --> 00:27:12,942
It was like time is everything.

389
00:27:12,942 --> 00:27:13,502
Right.

390
00:27:13,502 --> 00:27:13,942
And.

391
00:27:13,942 --> 00:27:20,384
We are not going to accommodate, you know, people being late on meetings, let alone on
delivering products to the market.

392
00:27:20,844 --> 00:27:22,155
What do we do with all these studies?

393
00:27:22,155 --> 00:27:27,878
Cause then I, that's a question I ask and I have this issue that then I asked that
question and I'll ask another one.

394
00:27:27,878 --> 00:27:29,598
But what do we do with that?

395
00:27:29,598 --> 00:27:31,719
But I'm going to do this intentionally.

396
00:27:31,719 --> 00:27:33,350
One of the best book studies ever.

397
00:27:33,350 --> 00:27:40,864
love, I love biographies of that Walter Isaacson wrote Steve Jobs and he wrote the Elon
Musk one.

398
00:27:40,864 --> 00:27:42,545
He says he has some regret over the Musk one.

399
00:27:42,545 --> 00:27:45,432
I don't know if he would have said that if we weren't in the political times we're in.

400
00:27:45,432 --> 00:27:46,563
But he said it recently.

401
00:27:46,563 --> 00:27:48,465
He said, I wish I would have waited another 10 years.

402
00:27:48,465 --> 00:27:51,487
And so my response to that is like, then write another one.

403
00:27:51,708 --> 00:27:52,048
Right.

404
00:27:52,048 --> 00:27:54,860
But if you go to the Steve jobs.

405
00:27:56,556 --> 00:28:05,691
when he was run out of Apple and they brought in the Pepsi CEO and then jobs went and
started next and Pixar and all that stuff.

406
00:28:05,691 --> 00:28:10,014
And then he put himself in the, position where Apple was not performing well.

407
00:28:10,014 --> 00:28:15,336
He blames it on the CEO from Pepsi that came in on ruining the culture and running him
out.

408
00:28:16,237 --> 00:28:23,742
But then he had them buy next and Pixar from him at a crazy multiple, but he came back in
and saved the company.

409
00:28:23,742 --> 00:28:24,882
you talk.

410
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:28,133
how much of a maniacal crazy person that he was.

411
00:28:28,293 --> 00:28:33,418
So have you thought about this conundrum of thoughts about Apple and that whole story?

412
00:28:33,858 --> 00:28:35,838
Well, I mean, I know the story loosely.

413
00:28:35,838 --> 00:28:47,584
I think what happened to some degree is the bureaucracy probably got too thick and jobs
had to come back in, blow it up and just bring the value of innovation.

414
00:28:47,584 --> 00:28:48,044
Right.

415
00:28:48,044 --> 00:28:54,307
Because at some point, you know, we put these bureaucratic systems in and it can suppress
innovation.

416
00:28:54,307 --> 00:29:00,950
And so my guess is what happened is they lost the culture of innovation and needed the
ultimate innovator.

417
00:29:00,952 --> 00:29:04,476
back in there to re-encalcate that into the culture.

418
00:29:05,144 --> 00:29:10,397
So what does someone do if they find themselves struggling to go from entrepreneur to
professional manager?

419
00:29:10,397 --> 00:29:15,560
How do you evaluate if an outside professional manager that didn't come up through the
culture?

420
00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:17,601
How do you figure that out?

421
00:29:17,661 --> 00:29:19,162
Should you do that or not?

422
00:29:19,374 --> 00:29:29,282
Well, I think you should, but I have no idea how you do that because, you know, just using
the Pepsi as the business model for coming into a tech company, right.

423
00:29:29,663 --> 00:29:31,864
That's such a big culture shift.

424
00:29:31,864 --> 00:29:41,812
You know, it would take a very skilled person to be able to make that shift because, you
know, culture really is the hardest thing to change.

425
00:29:41,873 --> 00:29:42,223
Right.

426
00:29:42,223 --> 00:29:49,078
And if I come in from a Pepsi where it's probably about systems and precision, six sigma,
all these types of things.

427
00:29:49,078 --> 00:29:53,102
and bring that to a company that really has found an innovation.

428
00:29:53,222 --> 00:29:56,786
It may well, you know, potentially kill the company.

429
00:29:56,786 --> 00:30:02,192
So again, these are questions beyond my skillset in all honesty, Mark.

430
00:30:02,192 --> 00:30:04,967
You're getting at a very fundamental thing.

431
00:30:04,967 --> 00:30:07,713
But you don't evaluate these things?

432
00:30:08,162 --> 00:30:20,699
Well, when, when, when we were doing culture change, yeah, we would evaluate and put in
place, you know, systems to try to have selection based on both performance and values,

433
00:30:20,699 --> 00:30:20,959
right?

434
00:30:20,959 --> 00:30:31,915
Cause if I want to set a values to be inculcated, that has to be built into how I appraise
people, how I select people, the HR systems of the business who we promote.

435
00:30:31,915 --> 00:30:37,026
So yes, you do evaluate these, but you're talking about a very, probably one of the
greatest.

436
00:30:37,026 --> 00:30:46,264
you know, entrepreneurs of all time and Steve jobs and that situation, honestly, I wasn't
working at that level in that kind of environment.

437
00:30:46,264 --> 00:30:49,420
mean, that's, that's, that's as high stakes as it gets.

438
00:30:49,420 --> 00:30:49,691
Hmm.

439
00:30:49,691 --> 00:30:54,750
Um, when did you find yourself in life working at high stakes, the highest stakes you've
worked at?

440
00:30:55,052 --> 00:31:02,125
Well, I mean, the highest stakes I've worked at is with big culture change in large
companies, right?

441
00:31:02,125 --> 00:31:03,936
With it, and I'm talking large companies.

442
00:31:03,936 --> 00:31:13,520
Often I like working with companies that were five to 6,000 people, because if you're
going to be a, you know, a CEO, you're going to want a rock star to be your consultant.

443
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:21,613
You're going to want someone from Harvard or Stanford because they really are the ones who
are doing the innovative work on organization development.

444
00:31:21,613 --> 00:31:24,674
Someone like me, we're working with CEOs.

445
00:31:24,674 --> 00:31:28,356
who, you know, maybe aren't in the sexiest industries, right?

446
00:31:28,356 --> 00:31:35,599
They're not high tech, insurance, not as sexy, but the stakes are pretty high when you're
working at the level of the C team.

447
00:31:35,599 --> 00:31:40,001
And I've done that a number of times in my career and it's a challenge, right?

448
00:31:40,001 --> 00:31:42,502
It is a challenge to work at that level.

449
00:31:43,192 --> 00:31:45,278
This sounds like self-deprecation.

450
00:31:45,278 --> 00:31:45,696
uh

451
00:31:45,696 --> 00:31:48,884
I don't know if self-deprecation uh

452
00:31:48,884 --> 00:31:49,665
But here's what I'm at.

453
00:31:49,665 --> 00:31:52,497
So you went to Duke, right?

454
00:31:52,497 --> 00:31:54,698
You landed your MBA from Michigan.

455
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:59,603
I don't think like Sam Zell, he was a Michigan grad.

456
00:31:59,603 --> 00:32:01,424
He got his law degree from Michigan.

457
00:32:01,424 --> 00:32:05,037
That guy became, he sold his company for 27 or $30 billion.

458
00:32:05,037 --> 00:32:09,070
He built the biggest office, commercial office, real estate portfolio ever.

459
00:32:09,070 --> 00:32:12,633
So I don't think you have to go to Harvard or Princeton or Yale or MIT.

460
00:32:12,633 --> 00:32:14,174
I don't think you have to.

461
00:32:15,222 --> 00:32:20,984
No, I mean, I think Peter Thiel will tell you in some ways going to university makes you
dumber, right?

462
00:32:20,984 --> 00:32:29,988
I I suspect a lot of entrepreneurs because they fight the system as it is, probably
college to them is incredibly restrictive.

463
00:32:29,988 --> 00:32:36,002
And in this day and age with all the things that are out there, you know, that you can do
for free.

464
00:32:36,002 --> 00:32:43,276
I think you probably get self-educated and a normal entrepreneur college actually may not
be right for them.

465
00:32:43,276 --> 00:32:49,228
You know, I suspect we're going to see more and more people in this day and age, not go to
college, let alone cost so much money.

466
00:32:49,228 --> 00:32:50,852
There's not going to be jobs there.

467
00:32:50,852 --> 00:32:59,522
So, you know, I think the real entrepreneurs, you know, going to university credentials
are not nearly as important as just who they are as a human being.

468
00:32:59,522 --> 00:33:05,004
Yeah, the system person for Pepsi might benefit from that traditional education more
versus the innovator at a tech company.

469
00:33:05,004 --> 00:33:07,298
Yeah, I would say that's probably highly likely.

470
00:33:07,298 --> 00:33:16,474
Yeah, but you mentioned, cause you invoked that the, would work maybe at five and 6,000
employees, but then you were probably talking like a hundred thousand employee

471
00:33:16,474 --> 00:33:19,317
organization that was coming out of Harvard and Princeton and stuff.

472
00:33:19,317 --> 00:33:22,889
But why were they more positioned, well positioned to do it versus you?

473
00:33:22,889 --> 00:33:32,396
Because you're sitting in front of me and I'm just telling you that the way you're, you
solve problems, you understand things, you're a process guy, you have an engineer's brain.

474
00:33:32,396 --> 00:33:35,832
I don't think those individuals are going to outperform you.

475
00:33:35,832 --> 00:33:39,103
Was there something about their system or some environmental thing?

476
00:33:39,134 --> 00:33:41,666
Well, I mean, let's be honest.

477
00:33:41,666 --> 00:33:43,777
mean, there, there is a place for credentials.

478
00:33:43,777 --> 00:33:52,062
If I'm a CEO in a big, more bureaucratic company, not in a small startup, in some ways I
want a consultant, right.

479
00:33:52,062 --> 00:33:53,783
To tell me what I want to do anyway.

480
00:33:53,783 --> 00:33:55,724
And I want a brand name.

481
00:33:55,724 --> 00:33:57,715
So I either want McKinsey, right.

482
00:33:57,715 --> 00:33:59,266
Or some sort of brand name.

483
00:33:59,266 --> 00:34:00,351
Or Deloitte

484
00:34:01,134 --> 00:34:10,896
Yeah, because you know, those companies do add value, but they have a brand where if I
make a mistake as the CEO, I can blame it on them.

485
00:34:10,936 --> 00:34:11,637
Right.

486
00:34:11,637 --> 00:34:13,437
And I wouldn't, I would want that.

487
00:34:13,437 --> 00:34:13,707
Right.

488
00:34:13,707 --> 00:34:16,188
Cause they're at least road tested.

489
00:34:16,188 --> 00:34:23,049
And so, you know, and a lot of the great sort of organizational change thinking is to some
degree happening at the universities.

490
00:34:23,049 --> 00:34:26,780
Now my mentor was on faculty at Michigan.

491
00:34:26,780 --> 00:34:30,101
And, he, what he did is he went and worked for Jack Welch.

492
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:38,517
to build Crotonville, their leadership development university, because academia is one
thing you have to road test your ideas.

493
00:34:38,638 --> 00:34:44,724
And, you know, I think, but if I'm a CEO in a big company, I want to make sure I get
someone who's got a brand name, they've written books.

494
00:34:44,724 --> 00:34:46,977
um wouldn't want that, right?

495
00:34:46,977 --> 00:34:50,150
I wouldn't want some junior person who has no name to do that.

496
00:34:50,150 --> 00:34:51,541
I wouldn't hire someone like that.

497
00:34:51,541 --> 00:34:53,813
Just, it's not, it's not safe.

498
00:34:54,850 --> 00:34:56,979
entrepreneurs don't know safety.

499
00:34:57,407 --> 00:34:58,680
That is true.

500
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:08,716
So if you were starting something anew again right now, you've arrived at this place, you
are still very young in your mind and your heart.

501
00:35:08,716 --> 00:35:10,997
That's not me, that's not flattery.

502
00:35:10,997 --> 00:35:17,301
I talk to a lot of people and you are still very athletic in the way you're thinking.

503
00:35:17,901 --> 00:35:26,166
So if you were starting a new business now, even though you don't want that imbalance of
being an entrepreneur or a founder, if you were,

504
00:35:26,732 --> 00:35:29,604
and you're the collaboration, the culture guy.

505
00:35:30,184 --> 00:35:31,605
Where do you start?

506
00:35:31,986 --> 00:35:33,827
You're on that napkin, you're the one page.

507
00:35:33,827 --> 00:35:34,557
Where do you start?

508
00:35:34,557 --> 00:35:38,320
The product, the idea, or do you start how the company's gonna operate?

509
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:39,400
Where do you start?

510
00:35:40,270 --> 00:35:41,901
to have an idea, right?

511
00:35:41,901 --> 00:35:51,218
I mean, there's, you're going to minister around something, but you, would have to have a
great idea, which is the gem that you're going to wrap everything else around.

512
00:35:51,218 --> 00:35:55,180
But you know, if you don't have a great idea, right.

513
00:35:55,521 --> 00:35:57,042
What are you going to sell?

514
00:35:57,042 --> 00:35:58,202
What are you going to do?

515
00:35:58,202 --> 00:36:04,967
So I think the entrepreneur starts with a great idea, starts with a vision of what that
idea could be.

516
00:36:05,110 --> 00:36:07,599
I understands the current state.

517
00:36:07,599 --> 00:36:09,420
That idea is going to be.

518
00:36:09,420 --> 00:36:16,748
you know, push back on significantly because it's going to, mean, look, disruption costs
people jobs, right?

519
00:36:16,748 --> 00:36:20,292
When, when Uber came along, it costs jobs, right?

520
00:36:20,292 --> 00:36:28,510
Of people, that idea that you could have, you know, everyone's a, everyone's a driver, you
know, it started with an idea.

521
00:36:30,478 --> 00:36:30,738
Yeah.

522
00:36:30,738 --> 00:36:34,938
It's wild that what those tokens, those taxi tokens used to sell for.

523
00:36:34,938 --> 00:36:35,598
Yeah.

524
00:36:35,598 --> 00:36:39,818
In Chicago, were worth $250,000, $500,000.

525
00:36:39,918 --> 00:36:44,578
And almost overnight, they went to having no value.

526
00:36:44,578 --> 00:36:45,898
There was people that had those leverage.

527
00:36:45,898 --> 00:36:49,578
had built multimillion dollar empires on them and it went to nothing.

528
00:36:51,702 --> 00:36:54,678
Is it almost impossible to see change inside the bubble?

529
00:36:54,678 --> 00:36:55,619
Coming.

530
00:36:55,790 --> 00:37:03,222
I think it's very hard, Cause I mean, people have used the boiled frog metaphor when we're
successful, the environment around us is changing.

531
00:37:03,222 --> 00:37:05,193
The temperature is changing.

532
00:37:05,193 --> 00:37:09,014
And if the frog is in the boiling water, it's changing slowly.

533
00:37:09,094 --> 00:37:12,395
But by the time, you know, it hits boiling point, the frog is dead.

534
00:37:12,395 --> 00:37:14,535
I think it's the same principle.

535
00:37:14,535 --> 00:37:18,257
we talked about earlier when you're very successful, right?

536
00:37:18,257 --> 00:37:20,057
What you've done has gotten there.

537
00:37:20,057 --> 00:37:23,978
It takes the humility to realize nothing is infinite.

538
00:37:23,988 --> 00:37:34,028
And you have to have built real good feedback loops out there in the environment to try
to, to your earlier point, tell you you're wrong quick enough that you can do something

539
00:37:34,028 --> 00:37:34,198
about.

540
00:37:34,198 --> 00:37:45,060
But I think it's very hard when you're inside, uh, you know, the culture of an
organization to be agile enough to realize the whole, the whole world has changed.

541
00:37:45,060 --> 00:37:47,746
was, isn't worth anything.

542
00:37:47,746 --> 00:37:51,492
Yeah, maybe be not just being able to being willing.

543
00:37:51,614 --> 00:37:52,474
Yeah.

544
00:37:53,762 --> 00:38:02,689
Yeah, it is a willingness, but I think that human nature is to, for the most part, you
know, keep doing what's been, we've been successful doing.

545
00:38:02,689 --> 00:38:10,994
I've done, look, that happened to me as well for, for decades, I was, you know, training
people face to face, right?

546
00:38:11,075 --> 00:38:18,461
Not, not really paying attention to these technologies, WebEx, live meeting, go-to
meeting, we're early, we're coming along.

547
00:38:18,461 --> 00:38:20,696
And back when, early in my career.

548
00:38:20,696 --> 00:38:25,269
The most important communication part of a large organization was the mail room.

549
00:38:25,269 --> 00:38:31,343
And you probably don't go back far enough to where we put things in these envelopes, we'd
write names and the mail room got things out.

550
00:38:31,343 --> 00:38:33,114
This is pre email, right?

551
00:38:33,114 --> 00:38:35,466
No one was envisioning email.

552
00:38:35,466 --> 00:38:42,481
was snail mail and email when it came along, it was like, all of a sudden we don't need
all these assistants, right?

553
00:38:42,481 --> 00:38:48,615
We can go, we can, we don't have to worry about copying, you know, because we had to
photocopy things, copying too many people.

554
00:38:48,615 --> 00:38:50,402
Now you copy too many people.

555
00:38:50,402 --> 00:38:53,956
But just email changed the dynamic of communication.

556
00:38:53,956 --> 00:38:58,801
mean, back then I go back as as the fax machine, right?

557
00:38:58,801 --> 00:39:00,713
That was a major innovation at the time.

558
00:39:00,713 --> 00:39:02,989
Now it's very hard.

559
00:39:02,989 --> 00:39:04,918
The world's moving so fast.

560
00:39:04,918 --> 00:39:12,326
You know, it's a very difficult thing to be an entrepreneur because that idea may not be
relevant a year from now.

561
00:39:12,374 --> 00:39:12,554
Yeah.

562
00:39:12,554 --> 00:39:15,989
What do you, we're sitting here talking about it in our bubble of the current time.

563
00:39:15,989 --> 00:39:22,809
So now we're online after 2020 go-to meeting and WebEx, those went to zoom into other
things, right?

564
00:39:22,809 --> 00:39:24,771
You didn't invoke that word for some reason.

565
00:39:24,771 --> 00:39:26,193
It must be like the new thing.

566
00:39:26,193 --> 00:39:27,996
You're like, it's already been done.

567
00:39:27,996 --> 00:39:29,932
Stop acting like it's new guys.

568
00:39:29,932 --> 00:39:35,724
No, well, Mike, well, in some ways when you look back, that's why this style of
leadership, I think is universal.

569
00:39:35,724 --> 00:39:42,726
mean, I've trained people ah in all industries, small organizations, giant organizations,
done it around the world.

570
00:39:42,726 --> 00:39:47,247
I've trained doctors, lawyers, statistician, IT engineers, biologists.

571
00:39:47,247 --> 00:39:50,789
It does not matter what culture we're in.

572
00:39:50,789 --> 00:39:52,339
It really doesn't around the world.

573
00:39:52,339 --> 00:39:54,416
It doesn't matter the industry we're in.

574
00:39:54,416 --> 00:39:55,918
And it doesn't matter.

575
00:39:55,918 --> 00:40:00,921
Whether I'm a doctor, lawyer, IT folks, when I go from being a knowledge worker, right?

576
00:40:00,921 --> 00:40:06,094
To having to lead other experts, I am forced to know how to get other people to
collaborate.

577
00:40:06,094 --> 00:40:10,147
So it's very much independent and technology can support us.

578
00:40:10,147 --> 00:40:17,621
But at the end of the day, although AI may change all this, it's going to be human beings
who have to make the ethical decisions around things.

579
00:40:17,621 --> 00:40:23,192
The AIs are going to support them with a lot of business information and analytics.

580
00:40:23,192 --> 00:40:26,945
But it's still human beings trying to make decisions amongst themselves.

581
00:40:26,945 --> 00:40:29,256
And the reality is we're all dysfunctional human beings.

582
00:40:29,256 --> 00:40:30,367
We're all dysfunctional.

583
00:40:30,367 --> 00:40:36,532
So it is very hard to get a group of people to collaborate because we have egos, we have
politics, right?

584
00:40:36,532 --> 00:40:40,274
That is the hard part is the messiness of being a human being.

585
00:40:41,152 --> 00:40:48,470
Understanding human nature, boy, the closer you can get to learning that and seeing it and
engaging with it, the more capable leader you're going to be.

586
00:40:49,191 --> 00:40:50,684
Just seeing human nature at the basis.

587
00:40:50,684 --> 00:40:55,340
Before I look at the human, let me just see how humans in general act in this situation.

588
00:40:55,340 --> 00:40:58,304
And then let me stack on up my experience I've had with this individual.

589
00:40:58,304 --> 00:41:00,776
And then you can probably be a better leader for them.

590
00:41:01,390 --> 00:41:01,810
Yeah.

591
00:41:01,810 --> 00:41:04,610
And we, there are different leadership styles, right?

592
00:41:04,610 --> 00:41:12,830
For some people pushing very hard on them will be quite helpful for others that may put
them into meltdown.

593
00:41:12,830 --> 00:41:19,550
Um, and so there is situational leadership and entrepreneurs have situations that change
over time.

594
00:41:19,550 --> 00:41:27,250
But at the end of the day, leadership is about articulating a vision, mobilizing people
around that vision, right?

595
00:41:27,250 --> 00:41:31,030
And, you know, making the right decisions to.

596
00:41:31,030 --> 00:41:41,423
get, even if we get 80 % of that vision, you know, it may be good enough, but you know,
think entrepreneurs, that's what really, you know, regenerates this society because

597
00:41:41,423 --> 00:41:54,027
they're displacing businesses that have atrophied and really can't move with the times,
but it will, it's still maybe I say maybe human beings making decisions with support of

598
00:41:54,027 --> 00:41:56,150
AI's, but who knows.

599
00:41:56,150 --> 00:41:58,232
at the oh

600
00:41:58,232 --> 00:41:59,842
may all be irrelevant.

601
00:42:00,278 --> 00:42:01,499
Yeah, we might be.

602
00:42:01,499 --> 00:42:01,900
Yeah.

603
00:42:01,900 --> 00:42:13,059
I heard the other day that in two point, what the physicists believe now and
astrophysicists, what they believe now is that in 2.7 billion years, the earth is going to

604
00:42:13,059 --> 00:42:14,450
collide with the sun anyway.

605
00:42:15,928 --> 00:42:17,382
We won't be here to see you.

606
00:42:17,413 --> 00:42:18,497
But that's what I'm saying.

607
00:42:18,497 --> 00:42:22,712
And so if you want to go big and go out of this world thinking, it's like, what are we
doing anyway then?

608
00:42:22,712 --> 00:42:23,774
What are we doing?

609
00:42:24,940 --> 00:42:29,911
Yeah, we're a very small, small part of this universe.

610
00:42:30,892 --> 00:42:36,713
We all have egos and what's in front of us is the most important thing in the world.

611
00:42:36,713 --> 00:42:37,574
Right.

612
00:42:37,574 --> 00:42:39,634
And that's totally understandable.

613
00:42:39,634 --> 00:42:47,336
And an entrepreneur, what's great about them is they have a vision, they have passion and
they are obsessive about it.

614
00:42:47,356 --> 00:42:47,766
Right.

615
00:42:47,766 --> 00:42:50,997
They are going to do whatever it takes to get there.

616
00:42:50,997 --> 00:42:54,200
And at some point they will have to

617
00:42:54,200 --> 00:42:55,468
The ones who win.

618
00:42:55,468 --> 00:42:56,499
Yeah, the ones who win.

619
00:42:56,499 --> 00:42:58,320
mean, they are relentless.

620
00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:03,725
And at some point though, they do need some managerial structure around them.

621
00:43:03,725 --> 00:43:06,887
Once that idea has proven to be the right idea.

622
00:43:06,887 --> 00:43:11,991
And that's in many ways, what we're doing is trying to build a culture at the most
fundamental level.

623
00:43:11,991 --> 00:43:12,282
Right.

624
00:43:12,282 --> 00:43:19,297
I've asked questions, what two questions of leaders, I asked it 5,000 times last 33 years.

625
00:43:19,317 --> 00:43:21,799
How many meetings are going to take place in your organization?

626
00:43:21,799 --> 00:43:24,321
Of course that's based on scale in a small startup.

627
00:43:24,321 --> 00:43:25,522
There may be one.

628
00:43:25,632 --> 00:43:26,143
Right.

629
00:43:26,143 --> 00:43:32,348
Well, when I work with a big company with 200,000 people, they may say, I don't know, when
I think of the one-on-ones, a half a million meetings today.

630
00:43:32,348 --> 00:43:32,928
Right.

631
00:43:32,928 --> 00:43:34,539
Now that's going to based on scale.

632
00:43:34,539 --> 00:43:39,714
The second question I've asked him for 30 years, what's the average effectiveness of
typical meeting you attend?

633
00:43:39,714 --> 00:43:41,254
Zero to a hundred percent.

634
00:43:41,615 --> 00:43:45,929
I would say 90 % of the time people say 50 % or less.

635
00:43:45,929 --> 00:43:48,561
And I sit here with clients and I say, this is insane.

636
00:43:48,561 --> 00:43:52,844
From a business productivity standpoint, you're going to run a hundred thousand meetings
today.

637
00:43:52,844 --> 00:43:55,364
And you told me you're going to run them at 50%.

638
00:43:55,468 --> 00:43:57,079
This is a massive loss.

639
00:43:57,079 --> 00:44:01,443
Now, I don't know if you ever read Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of Teams,
right?

640
00:44:01,443 --> 00:44:03,514
His first book was Death by Media, right?

641
00:44:03,514 --> 00:44:07,688
Which I don't know that you need to read that one, but The Five Dysfunctions is great.

642
00:44:07,688 --> 00:44:09,590
His first book has a great quote though.

643
00:44:09,590 --> 00:44:10,931
We run bad meetings.

644
00:44:10,931 --> 00:44:20,098
It almost always leads to bad decisions, which is a recipe for mediocrity, performance
mediocrity, productivity loss, frankly, foul cratering in an organization if I have to be

645
00:44:20,098 --> 00:44:21,380
in all these awful meetings.

646
00:44:21,380 --> 00:44:23,341
And it's a recipe for something else.

647
00:44:23,341 --> 00:44:24,882
If I'm the one.

648
00:44:25,132 --> 00:44:28,294
running these 50 % or less effective meetings over and over.

649
00:44:28,294 --> 00:44:32,988
It's a recipe for people seeing me as a bad leader because I'm wasting their time and
people, don't hate meetings.

650
00:44:32,988 --> 00:44:34,749
The hate is wasting time.

651
00:44:34,762 --> 00:44:35,130
Right?

652
00:44:35,130 --> 00:44:38,522
And so as I build and scale my business, I'm going to need some meetings.

653
00:44:38,522 --> 00:44:41,875
They need to be run well and they cannot waste people's time.

654
00:44:41,875 --> 00:44:45,037
And they've got to deliver the right decisions and get by into the group.

655
00:44:45,037 --> 00:44:46,868
And that's what we do.

656
00:44:47,074 --> 00:44:48,678
High level, how do we run a good meeting?

657
00:44:48,678 --> 00:44:52,278
I know that's way more in depth, but just in general, how do you run a good meeting?

658
00:44:52,278 --> 00:44:54,919
I'll give you a couple of fundamentals here.

659
00:44:54,919 --> 00:45:00,202
Metaphor we like to use for running a project, a workshop, a meeting.

660
00:45:00,442 --> 00:45:04,564
Three parts, takeoff, flying, landing.

661
00:45:04,564 --> 00:45:06,735
Now, takeoff doesn't take a lot of time, right?

662
00:45:06,735 --> 00:45:08,116
You're in Cincinnati, I'm in Denver.

663
00:45:08,116 --> 00:45:09,997
Last time I was out at DIA, I timed it.

664
00:45:09,997 --> 00:45:14,129
From the time they hit the jets to wheels up, it was 42 seconds.

665
00:45:14,129 --> 00:45:17,012
If it doesn't go well, we're all dead, right?

666
00:45:17,012 --> 00:45:19,484
Most of the flight is getting to Cincinnati airspace.

667
00:45:19,484 --> 00:45:21,316
Second place I got to pay attention to is landing.

668
00:45:21,316 --> 00:45:23,047
But here's the simplest thing.

669
00:45:23,047 --> 00:45:26,600
We teach people and your listeners, they could write it down as an acronym.

670
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:28,031
It's called the POPROMO.

671
00:45:28,031 --> 00:45:30,193
P stands for the purpose.

672
00:45:30,193 --> 00:45:31,384
O stands for the objective.

673
00:45:31,384 --> 00:45:33,416
Second P stands for the process.

674
00:45:33,416 --> 00:45:34,637
R stands for the roles.

675
00:45:34,637 --> 00:45:36,478
A stands for the agreements.

676
00:45:36,538 --> 00:45:46,210
Most meetings should never be allowed out of the hangar on the tarmac because whoever
called it did not get clear why we have in the meeting and what are we trying to get done.

677
00:45:46,210 --> 00:45:48,631
which means they are guaranteed to waste people's time.

678
00:45:48,631 --> 00:45:57,256
So if someone can't answer why we're here and what we're trying to get done, you shouldn't
be allowed to have a meeting because I can't design the flight plan if I don't know the

679
00:45:57,256 --> 00:45:57,907
destination.

680
00:45:57,907 --> 00:46:01,439
If I don't get clear I'm going to Cincinnati, right?

681
00:46:01,439 --> 00:46:11,505
I'm gonna end down in Austin or somewhere because the process now follows the clarity of
the why and the what, the vision, the purpose, the mission, the what.

682
00:46:11,505 --> 00:46:14,038
And then I have the flight plan, which is the process.

683
00:46:14,038 --> 00:46:19,242
If I don't know what we're trying to get done, I can't make good decisions who should
really be there.

684
00:46:19,302 --> 00:46:24,226
And also who should not be there because there's too many people in our meetings and the
roles I need them to play.

685
00:46:24,226 --> 00:46:27,739
One of the roles being who's the ultimate decision maker, right?

686
00:46:27,739 --> 00:46:32,794
Who is going to ultimately decide if we can't reach consensus once we've surfaced all the
ideas.

687
00:46:32,794 --> 00:46:37,257
And then the last day is the agreements, which is how do we need to interact?

688
00:46:37,257 --> 00:46:37,707
Right?

689
00:46:37,707 --> 00:46:43,318
Stay focused, you know, have these honest conversations, push back on ideas.

690
00:46:43,318 --> 00:46:45,500
not necessarily people, the agreement.

691
00:46:45,500 --> 00:46:48,602
that top remodel, that's the start.

692
00:46:48,602 --> 00:46:50,124
Takeoff is everything.

693
00:46:50,124 --> 00:46:52,386
And most meetings should never be allowed to happen.

694
00:46:52,386 --> 00:46:54,837
The when we let them happen and now need to be well run.

695
00:46:54,837 --> 00:47:01,653
So inside the meeting, the key to getting on this conversation is knowing how to hold
space so people weigh in.

696
00:47:01,653 --> 00:47:03,054
And that's what we're teaching.

697
00:47:03,054 --> 00:47:06,297
The tools of asking before telling, knowing some simple thing.

698
00:47:06,297 --> 00:47:09,049
Now I'm to give your listeners one of the simplest tools.

699
00:47:09,049 --> 00:47:09,890
People don't do it.

700
00:47:09,890 --> 00:47:13,052
I don't know why, but we call it a simultaneous chat.

701
00:47:13,486 --> 00:47:15,126
We're all on these virtual needs.

702
00:47:15,126 --> 00:47:15,946
We have the chat.

703
00:47:15,946 --> 00:47:18,226
What happens is the same thing that happens in the room.

704
00:47:18,226 --> 00:47:25,626
The same people are always weighing in in the chat and they're often the senior people or
the extroverts or the fiery red styles.

705
00:47:25,626 --> 00:47:29,066
What a simultaneous chat is, is slow things down.

706
00:47:29,066 --> 00:47:32,366
Pose the question you want the group to answer.

707
00:47:32,506 --> 00:47:35,266
Don't let them hit enter on the chat.

708
00:47:35,266 --> 00:47:41,208
Make them all prepare their answer in the chat and then say, all right, we're going to
submit these ideas simultaneously.

709
00:47:41,208 --> 00:47:43,919
So that they're not looking at what the hippo is going to say.

710
00:47:43,919 --> 00:47:48,470
They, and they all of a sudden, and we usually use hand raise reaction emoji to say, you
have to have something in here.

711
00:47:48,470 --> 00:47:50,781
We're not going to submit to everyone's hand raise.

712
00:47:50,781 --> 00:47:56,002
And then you say, all let's put a banner and streaming in all of a sudden you're hearing
from the junior people.

713
00:47:56,003 --> 00:47:57,202
Maybe they're people of color.

714
00:47:57,202 --> 00:47:57,572
Who knows?

715
00:47:57,572 --> 00:47:58,763
Maybe they're introverts.

716
00:47:58,763 --> 00:48:03,945
Maybe they're speaking English as a second, third language, because it often can be that
most junior person.

717
00:48:04,265 --> 00:48:05,265
Right.

718
00:48:05,505 --> 00:48:07,890
Who might be an introvert, analog.

719
00:48:07,890 --> 00:48:18,399
Analyzing style, working English, and third language who has exactly the expertise to help
the hippo make the best decision, but we can't create space to weigh in.

720
00:48:18,399 --> 00:48:20,841
So that's the, the other thing that's key.

721
00:48:20,841 --> 00:48:24,003
And then the other place you got to pay attention to meetings on landing.

722
00:48:24,104 --> 00:48:24,544
Right.

723
00:48:24,544 --> 00:48:28,047
We have all these plane crashes and landings because we don't leave time for it.

724
00:48:28,047 --> 00:48:30,108
People drop out of the meeting and we're not clear.

725
00:48:30,108 --> 00:48:30,829
What do we do?

726
00:48:30,829 --> 00:48:32,470
Just agree on what are we doing next?

727
00:48:32,470 --> 00:48:33,361
What's the action plan?

728
00:48:33,361 --> 00:48:34,812
Who's going to do what by when?

729
00:48:34,812 --> 00:48:37,344
So at the beginning though, to your question.

730
00:48:37,400 --> 00:48:41,673
Just make sure you're clear why, what, how, who, in what way you're gonna run the meeting.

731
00:48:41,673 --> 00:48:44,380
And don't have meetings if you can't answer those five questions.

732
00:48:45,528 --> 00:48:46,841
This guy's brilliant, y'all.

733
00:48:46,841 --> 00:48:53,704
I could sit here and talk to you for another hour or two, but unfortunately, he values the
balance of his personal time.

734
00:48:55,662 --> 00:48:58,343
Um, Evan hunger, this is awesome.

735
00:48:58,343 --> 00:49:00,945
I, I, I appreciate all the experience you've shared with us.

736
00:49:00,945 --> 00:49:07,988
I'm listening for the past five minutes and I'm connecting that with the things I've done
well and the things I haven't done well.

737
00:49:08,349 --> 00:49:11,530
And I couldn't poke one hole in what you just said about running meetings.

738
00:49:12,546 --> 00:49:14,087
Most meetings shouldn't be allowed to happen.

739
00:49:14,087 --> 00:49:15,267
They really shouldn't.

740
00:49:15,267 --> 00:49:21,629
They're just, need to meet and too many people show up because you know, everyone says
FOMO, there's a fear of missing out.

741
00:49:21,629 --> 00:49:25,800
And so we have all these people at the meeting who could be doing something more useful,
right?

742
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:27,661
And that's, and that's what we're teaching people.

743
00:49:27,661 --> 00:49:33,593
The art of high stakes workshop type facilitated meetings, real decision making, right?

744
00:49:33,593 --> 00:49:38,794
We're deciding how we're going to roll a product out or how we're going to allocate scarce
capital, major decisions.

745
00:49:38,798 --> 00:49:40,058
And there is an art to that.

746
00:49:40,058 --> 00:49:49,918
is an art of leadership and most people are never trained in this and founders may not
need to worry about this early, but as they start getting to the place where I got to

747
00:49:49,918 --> 00:49:53,078
start building the culture of the organization, that's the place.

748
00:49:53,078 --> 00:49:59,518
This style of leadership is fundamental to inculcating a culture where the great ideas
come to the surface.

749
00:49:59,518 --> 00:50:01,422
So Mark, it's been my pleasure.

750
00:50:01,422 --> 00:50:02,775
I'm going to go back and listen to this myself.

751
00:50:02,775 --> 00:50:03,866
I'm serious.

752
00:50:04,409 --> 00:50:05,671
no, this, this is good.

753
00:50:05,671 --> 00:50:07,054
This is going to be so many good tidbits.

754
00:50:07,054 --> 00:50:11,604
So, Hey, what, what's the one place you want them go to your website or go to LinkedIn or
where do they come in?

755
00:50:11,604 --> 00:50:12,728
oh

756
00:50:12,728 --> 00:50:15,291
they could go to either our website landing page.

757
00:50:15,291 --> 00:50:18,153
assume you'll put it in the show notes or my LinkedIn page.

758
00:50:18,153 --> 00:50:22,878
There's only six Evan Ungers and I probably am the one with the goofy grin and the blue
check shirt.

759
00:50:22,878 --> 00:50:24,389
There's only six of us out there.

760
00:50:24,389 --> 00:50:30,695
oh And so either way they can get to my website through my LinkedIn page or go to our
landing page.

761
00:50:30,695 --> 00:50:32,076
I'll send you that.

762
00:50:32,076 --> 00:50:36,856
And Mark, this has been a pleasure privilege and I so appreciate the time.

763
00:50:36,856 --> 00:50:37,240
Thank you.

764
00:50:37,240 --> 00:50:38,397
This was awesome.