Episode 416
Red Teaming, Critical Thinking & How to Stress-Test Your Strategy with Marcus Dimbleby
EP 416 - What if your biggest business risk isn’t the market .. but your own assumptions?
Former RAF Wing Commander Marcus Dimbleby reveals how leaders can use red teaming, applied critical thinking and pre-mortems to dramatically increase strategy success rates.
We cover:
Why most business plans fail
The hidden danger of unchecked assumptions
How to run a red team session (even in a small company)
The “pre-mortem” technique that exposes fatal flaws
How to build real psychological safety
If you lead a team, run strategy or make high-stakes decisions — this episode will change how you think.
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Transcript
Understand the psychology of your brain.
Speaker A:Your brain is out to get you, so you're going to have to override that.
Speaker A:Apply the critical thinking and red teaming your plan.
Speaker A:Then you're going to be able to proceed with confidence.
Speaker A:The whole thing that critical thinking is there to unlock is diversity of thought.
Speaker A:I think AI is great, but it's not the answer.
Speaker A:For me, the answer is AI plus CI, which we call collective intelligence.
Speaker A:The best thing you have is the thing you pay the most for.
Speaker A:It's your people.
Speaker B:What if the biggest threat to your business isn't your competitors, it's your own thinking.
Speaker B:Today's guest, Marcus Dimbleby spent 24 years in the RAF Stress Testing Military plans where lives were on the line.
Speaker B:Now he teaches C suites and execs and you how to stress test their own business strategies before they blow up.
Speaker B:From red teaming to applied critical thinking, Marcus breaks down the tools that turn chaos into clarity and why slowing down is the secret to speeding up.
Speaker B:Strap in.
Speaker B:It's full of hard earned lessons you will want to put into practice straight away.
Speaker B:Welcome to business without the alternative MBA with me, Andy Ourien.
Speaker B:Today's guest, Marcus Dimbleby is a former wing commander in the RAF who led air security for the London Olympics.
Speaker B:He now teaches leaders the exact operating system to deliver big things fast without burning out their teams.
Speaker B:Marcus, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker A:Andy, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker A:Loved the show before and it's so good to be on it.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Marcus.
Speaker B:Now your time in the military exposed you to concepts such as applied critical thinking.
Speaker B:You've taken a transform to help leaders in business.
Speaker B:In a nutshell, what is applied critical thinking.
Speaker A:Applied critical thinking.
Speaker A:So this is the sort of deliberate application of analysis and information gathering to allow us to make better decisions.
Speaker A:In a nutshell, very straightforward that normally we are quite intuitive.
Speaker A:We have something called system one thinking.
Speaker A:If you've read Daniel Kahneman.
Speaker B:Oh yeah, thinking fast, thinking slow.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker A:Thinking fast and slow.
Speaker A:So he came up with 95% of the time.
Speaker A:We are very intuitive, instinctive, which is what's kept us alive for hundreds and thousands of years.
Speaker A:And when we make those decisions at speed, we are highly error prone to.
Speaker A:So what applied critical thinking is, it's engaging system two.
Speaker A:So you literally have to engage your brain into a different gear to start thinking in a critical way.
Speaker A:And that's what applied critical thinking is.
Speaker A:So it's applying the critical thinking capability that is not a default setting of our brain.
Speaker A:Our brain is by default lazy.
Speaker A:It would rather Sip off, have a margarita and relax and let the biases or let the shortcuts kick in.
Speaker A:It doesn't want to be exerted.
Speaker A:So exertion of the brain equals system two.
Speaker A:So you're already fighting your brain if you want to do apply critical thinking.
Speaker A:So that's the first hurdle that you need to get over.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And if anyone's thinking, why is it such an effort to think?
Speaker B:That's why it uses a lot of energy.
Speaker B:I can't remember.
Speaker B:I think it's 30% of the body's energy.
Speaker A:30% Indeed.
Speaker A:And here's what's an interesting fact is 90% of people think they're critical thinkers.
Speaker A:10% Actually are.
Speaker A:So again, but that's your brain telling you to think that way so you don't have to do any thinking.
Speaker B:Very good.
Speaker B:There's also this term red teaming, that's sort of knocked about.
Speaker B:What does that mean?
Speaker A:So red teaming, I'll talk about the origin of that in a moment.
Speaker A:But that is the deliberate application of critical thinking to challenge the specific plan, problem or strategy.
Speaker A:So what it is is saying the red team think about the enemy.
Speaker A:So it came from the Prussians.
Speaker A:So they used to have their big military table where they have little order figures.
Speaker A:Prussians wore blue, they were fighting Napoleon, his army was red.
Speaker A:So you'd have these little red and blue pieces.
Speaker A:So it's the question, what's a red team going to do tomorrow?
Speaker A:So if we move our battle pieces here and there, the red team will maneuver here and there.
Speaker A:So you're taking an enemy's perspective.
Speaker A:So in the business world, we look at that from a competitive perspective from our people or customer, and it's used to challenge.
Speaker A:So if we've got a strategy, a plan or a problem, we would red team that plan.
Speaker A:And that means bringing a select group to group of people, applying the tools and techniques of critical thinking to analyze the plan, take it all apart, look at it from all different perspectives, get different viewpoints, put it back together.
Speaker A:So you're going to do divergent and convergent thinking to then get a better, stronger outcome.
Speaker B:Okay, so it's not about you need every piece on the battlefield.
Speaker B:You would take the key, some key representatives and is there a number of that?
Speaker B:You know, normally a good sort of.
Speaker A:Strong size scene would be 7 to 10.
Speaker A:7 To 10, keep it broad enough, but not too many.
Speaker A:So you don't have many, many individuals spoiling the broth, if you will.
Speaker B:Okay, those are some nice building blocks.
Speaker B:I think the what you sort of Talk about.
Speaker B:And you've seen leaders make billion pound decisions.
Speaker B:What, what changes when they apply critical thinking?
Speaker A:The first thing is confidence, as you said.
Speaker A:You know, leaders making these massive decisions, lots of money, lots of time and investment, and to make them is hard.
Speaker A:You know, when you start to look at what's the construct of making these decisions and putting these plans into place.
Speaker A:So if you apply the critical thinking and red teaming your plan, then you're going to be able to proceed with confidence.
Speaker A:You can have the confidence to sell it to the board, to get buying, to sell it to your customers.
Speaker A:And then as you proceed with confidence, what you've also been doing is what we call future foresight.
Speaker A:So as you're executing your plan, executing your rollout of whatever the product it is, you've already looked ahead.
Speaker A:It's almost like having a crystal ball.
Speaker A:You've looked at all the possible outcomes that could happen.
Speaker A:You've toppled the dominoes and seen where they've gone.
Speaker A:And what we call alternative futures analysis.
Speaker A:So you got multiple factors allowing you to see where we might go.
Speaker A:So when it does start to drift off down a certain way, you understand why that's happening.
Speaker A:You've got the indicators and warnings that are going to show you why that's happening.
Speaker A:And then you can literally affect plan B and divert back onto the main course.
Speaker A:So it's a real confidence boost.
Speaker A:And also then it allows in execution more adaptability because if you do the planning using red teaming, if you then hand off the execution to the delivery team, who've also been skilled in the capabilities of critical thinking and red teaming, while they're executing, they're thinking in that way as well.
Speaker A:So as things happen, they're already preempting it.
Speaker A:They've got the green light to just pivot and maneuver as they see fit, rather than hitting a brick wall and going, right, plan's failed.
Speaker A:What do we do?
Speaker A:Gotta wait for the boss.
Speaker A:Where's the boss?
Speaker A:Oh, is the next stirco, which is a margarita.
Speaker A:Margaritas, Happy margaritas on the beach in Panama.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So it allows that continued adaptability.
Speaker A:And this is why it stems from the military.
Speaker A:You can't just pause on the battlefield.
Speaker A:You know, bullets just don't stop when something doesn't work well for you.
Speaker A:So you have to be able to be adaptive, resilient, get back up and keep moving forward, but obviously avoiding the pain that's straight in front of you most of the time.
Speaker A:So that's what it gives leaders and executives looking to roll out.
Speaker A:And obviously the bigger the budget, the more you have to do this because if you don't, then it's a potential big hit.
Speaker A:When you.
Speaker B:And is this something small businesses would do?
Speaker B:You know, a business of 20 people?
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Five people.
Speaker A:We've done it with charities with six people in them.
Speaker A:Because it's all relevant, isn't it?
Speaker A:Whether you're a multi tier one corporate spending a 5 billion rollout versus a 50,000 small five person company.
Speaker A:It's all relative to the size of that company and it's adding that value to make that happen.
Speaker B:And how often do you come around this circle?
Speaker B:So what I imagine in my own experiences in business is unlike a battlefield where, well, they could go that way or they could go that way.
Speaker B:It's more like, it's more chaotic and you try and say, well if that happens, this happens.
Speaker B:But often it's all sort of graying in the middle and you're kind of like, oh.
Speaker A:And that's where the red teaming versus critical thinking comes in.
Speaker A:So red teaming is a physical act that you plan to do.
Speaker A: strategy, sales strategy for: Speaker A:So we're going to bring a certain number of people in with certain sets of skills and certain perspectives and we're going to take time, we're going to lock the door, I'm going to come in the room and red team.
Speaker A:So that's something you plan into your planning cycle and you've got to be.
Speaker B:Quite specific about the question.
Speaker A:Very every, everything you're focusing on.
Speaker A:What we would do, we'd understand what it is you're doing, what you're focusing on and then we'd recommend the types of tools you want to use and we'll talk more about the different types of tools to lead you.
Speaker A:It's almost like a flow.
Speaker A:You want to get to an outcome where there are recommendations and decisions to be made.
Speaker A:That's the clarity you're getting to by using these tools and techniques.
Speaker A:So that's a physical act that you'd build into your planning like you do big room planning or annual strategizing.
Speaker A:Critical thinking is something that you want to become an enabler in your organization all the time.
Speaker A:So you train people in the art of critical thinking so it becomes muscle memory every day, every meeting, when I'm out walking the dog at night, when I'm playing with the kids, at the weekend, on the sports pitch, when I'm planning my next holiday as well as in the office, I'm Using these concepts of critical thinking.
Speaker A:So I'm not allowing my brain to be reactive and thinking and being responsive, which is a very different outcome when you think about it.
Speaker B:I mean, must be tiring, critical thinking.
Speaker B:But how do you teach yourself to do it more often than behavioral change?
Speaker A:So we always talk about mindset shift and perspective, right?
Speaker A:That just doesn't happen.
Speaker A:If McKinsey promises it, they're lying.
Speaker A:What we can do is physically change our behaviors and by changing our behaviors that over time, depending how and where you do it, can make it very quickly perspective and mindset shift, or very slowly.
Speaker A:But for example, stop, Breathe, think is our first foundational tool.
Speaker A:So think about, you're out driving, somebody cuts you up, what do you do?
Speaker B:Because I'm a territorial animal, I get annoyed and I start breathing.
Speaker A:Do something.
Speaker A:What do we do?
Speaker A:The boss makes a comment or someone in the office say something and we react.
Speaker A:So system one kicks in instinct and intuition and you'll go, marcus, you're talking bullshit.
Speaker A:I might take that the wrong way or I might be offended or you might be wrong.
Speaker A:Whereas if we're engaging system two, we've said that's hard to do.
Speaker A:So we do what we call practice the pause.
Speaker A:So that is stop first.
Speaker A:So before I do anything, I'm just going to stop.
Speaker A:I'm physically behavioral change, I'm stopping my mouth engaging and I'm going to breathe.
Speaker A:It might just be a, I might go into a full box breathing session depending on the context of the scenario.
Speaker A:And I'm thinking, and all those things are almost happening sequentially.
Speaker A:So I've just paused and box, box.
Speaker B:Breathing is 4 second pauses of that thing, which just tells your little, little dinosaur brain down.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And now that instinctive comment, that's Andy is now down here.
Speaker A:And now I'm thinking what Andy just said.
Speaker A:Andy, I like what you said then I'm pretty confused by how it applies here.
Speaker A:Can you just expand on that a bit more for me?
Speaker B:Always start with the positive.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So straight away, now you're not on the back foot.
Speaker A:You're like, oh, Marcus is listening.
Speaker A:I'd love to see Marcus.
Speaker A:Here's what I'm thinking.
Speaker A:And then when you explain further, I'm going, I get it now, thanks.
Speaker A:Whereas if I'd have just gone, that's bullshit, Andy.
Speaker A:Straight away I've cut you off, you're gonna like regress back and go, great.
Speaker A:And depending on who you are in the pecking order, that might shut you down forever.
Speaker A:You might.
Speaker A:Every time I do that, Marcus calls Me out.
Speaker A:Why am I going to bother?
Speaker A:So I'm just going to sit quietly, quitting and just do my day job and not give you the ideas.
Speaker A:And often then the best idea walks out the room because that poor person didn't have the opportunity to share it.
Speaker A:So critical thinking and these simple tools and techniques allow everybody to have the opportunity to share and stop read things.
Speaker A:Just that first pause for everybody and then we can go into the little, small behavioral changing tools that once you do them, you'll be using them tomorrow.
Speaker A:Every meeting you have, you'll be using them because you'll be like, why would we not?
Speaker A:When you see them, you're like, why have we not been.
Speaker A:Call it face palm coaching.
Speaker A:People are like, can't believe you're teaching me this.
Speaker A:Why do I not know this?
Speaker A:Well, if you just don't know, you don't know.
Speaker A:It doesn't matter how simple something is.
Speaker A:And that's the beauty of what the military did, was they took all these concepts and they've been around since Socrates.
Speaker A:He's the granddaddy of critical thinking.
Speaker A:And the military took them all and turned them into very simple to learn steps so that the soldier in the field can understand them, learn them quickly, then have them easily applicable in tension and high stress.
Speaker B:It's a sort of less haste, more speed, isn't it?
Speaker B:It's a sort of.
Speaker A:You know, one of my mantras is slow down to speed up.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Which is so hard in the busy, busy world we're all in.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I, I'm terrified of silences.
Speaker B:You know, in meetings, it's sort of.
Speaker B:I grew up in a family with constant noise.
Speaker A:Do you know how long the pause is to get someone to speak?
Speaker B:Well, for me, silence.
Speaker B:Milliseconds.
Speaker A:But eight seconds, if you've got a room, if you ask a question and nobody will speak or nobody's going to answer, if you wait for eight seconds, that awkward silence will force somebody to say something.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So if you're struggling with your team, like, nobody speaks up.
Speaker A:It's often because, like yourself, if they don't speak after two seconds, you're like, right, okay, here's what it is.
Speaker A:So people don't have the opportunity.
Speaker A:So you just have eight seconds.
Speaker A:Eight seconds is a long time.
Speaker A:If you just pause for eight seconds and let it roll out, it feels like an age.
Speaker A:If you're that kind of guy who wants to be speaking.
Speaker A:But if you let that happen in that time frame, people are also stop, breathe, think.
Speaker A:They cogitate in what's been said and it allows them that time to speak up.
Speaker B:So I mean, the other aspect of this is if you're going to try and do critical thinking, you've then got to make assumptions.
Speaker B:Effectively you do.
Speaker A:Everything in life is full of assumptions.
Speaker B:It's full of assumptions.
Speaker B:What do you think are dangerous assumptions to make?
Speaker A:That your assumptions are facts, which often is the case and I call it wishful thinking.
Speaker A:So it's like people will provide you a script, a strategy, a plan and they'll authoritatively talk about it.
Speaker A:And you're listening, you go, wow.
Speaker A:And it's all bluster, it's full of assumptions that.
Speaker A:But they are talking so authoritatively about it that you sense and feel that this is fact.
Speaker A:And then afterwards, and this is one of our tools called assumptions analysis.
Speaker A:You go through that document, that plan and look for all the both explicit and implicit.
Speaker A:So the explicit ones are those that are written and then the implicit are what are the ones that are between the lines that aren't stated but are there and will impact the outcome of this plan?
Speaker A:Because the whole point of assumptions is for that plan to execute, they need to become fact at some point.
Speaker A:So it's not that you can't ever have a plan without assumptions because that's just the nature of the beast.
Speaker A:We can't know everything, but we are always planning to say, right, these are the assumptions today for this plan to execute on day X, these assumptions have to have been validated and proven to be true.
Speaker A:Or if not, what is the risk if they don't?
Speaker A:Because it's often those single assumption in there that is the wishful thinking one, that will be the thing that will completely flip and cause the plan to fail.
Speaker B:And how do you manage the Dunning Kruger effect?
Speaker B:The effect of sort of, you know, I'm working with someone at the moment, you know, comes into my life as a professional.
Speaker B:But you know the concept that the people who know least about the subject are most confident so everyone drinks their Kool Aid.
Speaker A:That's what these tools are for.
Speaker A:That's what these tools, because I've seen it so often sit in the military and you're taught, leaders are taught to be that, you know, authoritative speaker.
Speaker A:And you know, and in the CEO world, they're smart, well dressed, golden tie, slicked back hair, they look the part, they sound the part, they're going to be believable, but then when you do the analysis, you see it's not.
Speaker A:So the whole premise behind these tools and techniques is that let them stand up and Talk as however they wish.
Speaker A:But then the team takes that plan script, whatever it is and does the analysis.
Speaker A:And for example, a standard sort of one page plan will have 20 to 40 assumptions within it.
Speaker B:Okay, so, so, so if the person who really doesn't know what they're talking about but is often the lead can often be the leader because they somehow got there.
Speaker B:The mat.
Speaker B:The, the mathematics would take over eventually.
Speaker B:You know, I know John, that you're absolutely convinced this is true, but we've what all spent time critically thinking about it and we just don't think it is true.
Speaker A:And, and the danger there is obviously challenging John's ego.
Speaker A:So this is one of the things we found.
Speaker A:Red teaming only works if you let it.
Speaker A:So you've got to have the leader, the executive on board with what's going to happen otherwise they're going to see this as a threat.
Speaker A:So the way I sell this is if you launch that plan, that is if you just stood up or if you go on TV tomorrow or convey this to your team tomorrow and launch that plan, it's got a 20 likelihood of success, statistically speaking.
Speaker A:If you allow your team to red teaming it and you can be part of that if you wish, it's going to have an 80% chance of success because we're going to take it all apart.
Speaker A:It's not going to be a different plan.
Speaker A:It's still your plan because I've had that before as Marcus.
Speaker A:Yeah, but it's just going to get the red team plan and mine's going to go in the bin.
Speaker A:It's not how it works.
Speaker B:Ego again.
Speaker A:Again ego.
Speaker A:So all we're going to do is make your plan better by the analysis.
Speaker A:So we're going to take it apart into 50 small pieces, analyze each piece, look at the data, the analysis assumptions, if they're there, put it all back together and again the sum of the parts is then going to strengthen that and it's going to be 80% likelihood of success.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And you know, within that how do you test these assumptions?
Speaker B:You're going to, you just, people are just going to think about it critically.
Speaker B:They're just, your team's going to go away and think about this problem and try whole set.
Speaker A:As I mentioned about the army, how they've done this, each one of these tools and techniques is super simple.
Speaker A:They've created a 1 through 4, 5, 6, 7 steps.
Speaker A:So for example, an assumptions analysis.
Speaker A:First, what are you analyzing?
Speaker A: Right Marcus, it's our: Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:How big is it.
Speaker A:It's 12 pages.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:That's our line of effort.
Speaker A:That's our focus for the analysis.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:Now I want everybody.
Speaker A:So we've got a team of 8 to 10 people first.
Speaker A:Take your time to read through it.
Speaker A:Just get the understanding of what it is so we're all aligned.
Speaker A:It's like the old Jeff Bezos memo thing.
Speaker A:Everybody reads the memo so we know what we're looking at.
Speaker A:So I'm not assuming that you've read it, because there's nothing worse than coming into a meeting, right?
Speaker A:Everyone dive in.
Speaker A:You all did the pre read.
Speaker B:Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker B:I like his point about that.
Speaker B:Yeah, nobody did the pre read, but.
Speaker A:Everyone sits there going, of course we did, boss.
Speaker A:Then they all sit there blank going, what's in this document?
Speaker A:And Marx is asking me questions and Andy's looking for answers.
Speaker A:I don't know what's on page two.
Speaker B:The one that really irritates me is people say, well, I can't contribute because I didn't get the information in time.
Speaker B:So give them the information.
Speaker B:Advance.
Speaker A:Do it now.
Speaker A:So first 10 minutes, everybody read the document right now.
Speaker A:Then we're going to go through and look for the assumptions in this document, and we explain to them what are explicit and implicit.
Speaker A:So an explicit assumption that is written.
Speaker A:You can see it.
Speaker A:So grab your red pen, go through, underline all the red ones right now go through again.
Speaker A:Look at the implied assumptions.
Speaker A:What's written between the lines here?
Speaker A:What's the boss saying when he reads this, but it's not written down?
Speaker A:What's he implying?
Speaker A:That people are gonna go, oh, yes, that's what he means.
Speaker A:Is that an assumption Highlight where you think properly.
Speaker B:Get to the.
Speaker B:Get to the bottom of it.
Speaker B:Is that the step one?
Speaker B:What's step is that step one of.
Speaker A:This is that step one, go through all of that, and then there's a set of questions.
Speaker A:So now we have those assumptions.
Speaker A:Now we go through the prioritization.
Speaker A:You could have 40, right?
Speaker A:Which of these now are going to be the number one priority to look at versus number 40?
Speaker A:Because not all assumptions are created so structured.
Speaker B:It's crazy meetings.
Speaker A:This is what I'm talking about, where the free thinking of the brain only gets to that point when you have the structure to begin with.
Speaker A:And this is why people don't do it, because they think they're doing it, but they're not following the structure.
Speaker A:And it's a structure that allows freedom.
Speaker B:But yeah, we crave structure.
Speaker B:I mean, I had a meeting yesterday.
Speaker B:I was just like, for God's sake.
Speaker B:Well, you know, just sort this out.
Speaker A:Meetings are the easiest things.
Speaker B:Is this not a meeting though?
Speaker B:We're talking about red teaming.
Speaker A:Oh, no, no, no.
Speaker A:Planning.
Speaker A:Planning and analysis.
Speaker A:Very different to a meeting.
Speaker A:So then there are a set of questions like, let's just pick.
Speaker A:We've got assumption number two.
Speaker A:Why does this need to be true?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So why does this assumption need to become a fact?
Speaker A:Just have that discussion because you might find out it doesn't have to.
Speaker B:Oh, does it matter whether this is true or not?
Speaker B:Yeah, they're wearing yellow.
Speaker B:Actually, it doesn't matter.
Speaker A:Who cares?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Right, so now you're starting to analyze the validity of the assumption.
Speaker A:Does it need to get to the full fact?
Speaker B:What are the critical assumptions?
Speaker A:So you think a 0 to 10, 10's fat.
Speaker A:0 Is wishful thinking.
Speaker A:All of these fat, the assumptions we come up with now, we need to have them on that scale to go.
Speaker A:Right, this needs to be 10, it's 4.
Speaker A:Then what does it need to move to that point?
Speaker A:And then there's questions like if the scenario changes, would that still be true?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:What needs to happen for this assumption to become a fat?
Speaker A:And then what you're doing, you're now creating the task list.
Speaker A:Well, for that, for them all to be wearing yellow, we need to have gone out and procured the material, we need to have crafted the uniform, we need to.
Speaker A:Etc.
Speaker A:But it starts to now give you the recommend we talked about recommendations and decisions.
Speaker A:For this assumption to become a fact, we need the following.
Speaker A:A, B, C. Because again, the assumption is those things are already there.
Speaker A:You get assumptions of assumptions.
Speaker A:Because I go right, we need the following.
Speaker A:And that's in procurement.
Speaker A:So Steve, in procurement, have we got that?
Speaker A:I'm assuming we do.
Speaker A:But you're here, Steve, because I need to ask you, because you're the expert, because if Steve wasn't here, I'd assume procurement do that by default.
Speaker A:But I can't assume that because it's so important.
Speaker A:We need validation.
Speaker A:So Steve's in the room to bring the procurement perspective.
Speaker A:Now Steve can say, yes, we have that and that will happen in two weeks.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:I can move that from four to a nine on that perspective.
Speaker A:And Steve will validate in two weeks.
Speaker A:Action, Steve to validate in two weeks from now.
Speaker A:Tick.
Speaker A:So it's so structured, it's frightening.
Speaker A:What we're seeking here is clarity.
Speaker A:Because without clarity, we're all off doing our own things and making assumptions.
Speaker A:Purpose.
Speaker A:What do I need to be doing by the end of this meeting?
Speaker A:What Am I stepping out of the building and doing because of this meeting?
Speaker A:That makes sense and that's the whole point of this.
Speaker A:Even meetings should be like that, but they're not.
Speaker A:So we have to get that real clarity, structure and flow.
Speaker A:Everybody's engaged as well.
Speaker A:Remember that.
Speaker A:As I said, everybody's looked at the thing, everybody's fed back their assumptions.
Speaker A:So nobody just sat there going, it's just Andy Marcus.
Speaker B:So there's five steps.
Speaker B:What are the assumptions?
Speaker B:Testing assumptions, looking to thing, putting the plan together, checking with people and you end up with a sort of right, we're going to do it.
Speaker A:Recommendations and actions and a narrative to go with it and go right.
Speaker A:And you can plot that on then a roadmap of timelines to say, right, this has to happen by then, this has to happen by then.
Speaker A:If this doesn't happen by then.
Speaker A:So this assumption we're making, and Steve said it's going to happen in two weeks.
Speaker A:If it doesn't, is that a showstopper?
Speaker A:Do we then have to delay the launch date?
Speaker A:Steve, yes or no?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Good.
Speaker B:From what you've explained there, I mean you would need bit more of a framework to do it.
Speaker B:So I mean you need to read a book or you need you there or whatever.
Speaker A:100% We would teach.
Speaker A:So that's how we do this.
Speaker A:So obviously you don't just go and do it.
Speaker A:We either come in and do what we call facilitation.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:So I am facilitating but we never come in and red team.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, the army used to try and do that.
Speaker A:They'd have a red team come in and red team someone else's stuff.
Speaker A:Who's the best person to know your stuff?
Speaker A:You.
Speaker B:But if someone wanted to do this tomorrow, I mean, I guess they could, they could just sort of Google it or whatever.
Speaker B:Download the book.
Speaker A:Download the book.
Speaker A:I'll send links on the podcast afterwards, go through the steps and follow it with the right people, it'll be good enough.
Speaker A:Yeah, certainly.
Speaker A:Open your eyes.
Speaker B:And this usually takes hours.
Speaker B:This meeting does it or no?
Speaker A:No, that's the beauty of this stuff.
Speaker A:You can do this stuff in 10 minutes to an hour.
Speaker B:Oh, wow.
Speaker A:That's the beauty.
Speaker B:Wow, that's beautiful.
Speaker A:For example, a five billion dollar strategy for a big company in the US five full days.
Speaker B:Five, four days.
Speaker A:But that's going through like three tools a day.
Speaker A:So it's like 10 to 15 tools, five full days.
Speaker A:Or we did one at an insurance company here last summer one afternoon to do a pre mortem with eight People in the room.
Speaker B:So pre mortem is imagining a failure.
Speaker B:Yes, Explain that.
Speaker A:Gonna get to that one.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So pre mortem, hopefully everyone knows what a post mortem is.
Speaker A:We've seen him in the cop shows where, you know, somebody's died, something horrendous has happened, and we are retrospectively looking at why.
Speaker A:Not a nice place to be.
Speaker A:So the pre mortems came up from Dr. Gary Klein, who lost a client and was sat with his team going, how the hell did that happen?
Speaker A:So they reimagined.
Speaker A:If we'd gone back two weeks ago and this failed, what would we have done?
Speaker A:Et cetera.
Speaker A:So what the pre mortem does is it takes our strategy.
Speaker A: ons challenge on our strategy: Speaker A:Now we're going to say, okay, we've got this.
Speaker A:This has now failed catastrophically.
Speaker A:This is like headline news in our local newspaper.
Speaker A:So first off, what does that headline say?
Speaker A:So everyone in the room writes down what's happening and what you're doing now.
Speaker A:You're shifting the brain psychologically.
Speaker A:You're moving your brain into a dark space and you'll feel it in the room.
Speaker A:The air will chill and people start to go, I don't.
Speaker A:This is.
Speaker A:This is really uncomfortable.
Speaker A:This is our baby.
Speaker A: This has to succeed in: Speaker A:Otherwise the company goes under.
Speaker A:And I'm now imagining the flames.
Speaker A:The headline news on my face is there and you can see, okay, have you all got your headline?
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:Now go around the room, put headlines up on the wall.
Speaker A:What are they?
Speaker A:And you a, you get to see people's perspectives.
Speaker A:Who's the warped individual?
Speaker A:Who's got the real sick mind?
Speaker A:Who's looking?
Speaker A:But it doesn't matter.
Speaker A:It's failure.
Speaker A:Okay, how we all feeling?
Speaker A:We don't want this to happen, do we?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:Right, then what caused that to happen?
Speaker A:This.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:So you get an array, 50, 60 different John Little things.
Speaker A:And just like the assumptions, one thing could be the thing.
Speaker A:That's the Achilles heel for the whole thing.
Speaker A:So you put all these things up.
Speaker B:There, and it might identify these sort of critical failure points.
Speaker A:Exactly that.
Speaker A:So you've got all of that.
Speaker A:And Gary and I did this a few years ago, and I think we had 65 different reasons of why this could fail.
Speaker A:And the group were like, it's too many.
Speaker A:How do we prioritize them?
Speaker A:So at the break, we came up with something called the triple filter.
Speaker A:So we said, right, first thing, what's the impact?
Speaker A:Okay, so if this failed happens.
Speaker A:What's the impact?
Speaker A:Catastrophic or a minor blip.
Speaker A:Second point.
Speaker A:What's the likelihood?
Speaker A:Because it might be massively catastrophic and it's all going to go awfully wrong.
Speaker A:Chances of it happening.
Speaker A:1%.
Speaker B:Lawyers.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And then what's the ease of fixing it?
Speaker A:Do we need a government sign off for a new policy for the UK or can me and Andy make it happen tomorrow morning?
Speaker A:So you then refilter those 60 things using that triple filter.
Speaker A:And you can just do it verbally around the table.
Speaker A:If there's a lot you can do on a spreadsheet.
Speaker A:And then it's a numbers game just to give you an idea of the order.
Speaker A:And then we now have a prioritized list.
Speaker A:So these are our top things that if they happen, this isn't good.
Speaker A:And they just sit around the room.
Speaker A:Did anybody think of any of these?
Speaker A:Would anybody assume this might happen?
Speaker A:Never saw that coming.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:So now we're surfacing things that could have caught us out, but now they don't because somebody in the room surfaced it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:It's funny how blind humans are to this.
Speaker B:So another one is we, we're very bad at planning for our demise.
Speaker B:You know, people don't do will find policies.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's strange, you know, especially as we, we don't like thinking about our death.
Speaker B:We don't like thinking about failure because it's.
Speaker B:When you describe it, it's extremely effective tools.
Speaker A:My margarita.
Speaker A:If I'm thinking of failure, I want to be sitting going, success.
Speaker A:My brain's going, no effort required.
Speaker A:Marcus, Andy, relax.
Speaker B:But I would have thought evolutionarily it's so, it's so helpful to.
Speaker A:Brain is the least evolutionized part of the human body.
Speaker B:Oh, that was interesting.
Speaker A:Hasn't shift.
Speaker A:It's like the shark.
Speaker A:It was created, it hasn't shifted since it was created.
Speaker B:You're right.
Speaker B:Because actually what is it?
Speaker B:You know, a couple of hundred thousand years we've been wandering around.
Speaker A:It's still there to keep us alive ultimately.
Speaker A:So it has to remain instinctive.
Speaker A:So if you think, if you dilute the instinct, how would that affect humankind?
Speaker A:Yeah, it's fascinating when we go into this stuff, it's.
Speaker A:It literally is mind blowing.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You've sort of, you, your, your, your mind is not to be trusted.
Speaker B:Your mind is not your friend.
Speaker B:A lot of the time it's not your friend.
Speaker B:You know, you've got to sort of overcome it.
Speaker A:I said earlier, the biggest hurdle we all face in any of this is our own mind.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Always.
Speaker A:And people don't get that or don't want to believe it.
Speaker A:And then when you do these scenarios and tools, you prove it.
Speaker B:Well, the tools are really helpful.
Speaker B:They give you a sort of structure.
Speaker B:It's like, you know, they give you a mirror.
Speaker A:And when you're doing it and when we get into this, people will.
Speaker A:You'll see them fighting themselves, literally.
Speaker A:And at the end of the day, they're exhausted.
Speaker A:And we did a session with a US Air Force research lab a few years ago.
Speaker A:So the rocket scientist type people, and it got to Tuesday, and they wanted to do it back to back for a week, which is intensive.
Speaker A:End of Tuesday, one of the ladies, she was like, thank God that's over today.
Speaker A:My brain is killing me.
Speaker A:I'm like, oh, come on, Susan.
Speaker A:I said, this isn't rocket science.
Speaker A:And she went, marcus, I'm a rocket scientist and I've not had my brain feel like this for a long time.
Speaker A:Trust me, because you've.
Speaker A:As you said, we don't do it.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker A:So when you force your brain to step into the ring and fight with you and 10 of the brains, it's.
Speaker B:Hard, you know, you say psychological safety is more than a buzzword.
Speaker B:What's one behavior a leader could model tomorrow to prov serious about it?
Speaker A:So what is psychological safety?
Speaker A:First?
Speaker A:Psychological safety is the ability to come into work and say your piece without fear of retribution, have ideas without fear of getting shut down, not be disrespected, not be belittled, and leave away feeling disgruntled.
Speaker A:So what can a leader do?
Speaker A:One thing.
Speaker A:You could have a weekly descent session.
Speaker A:So every Friday morning we're going to have a session where I want to have feedback from my team of ex people about how we could do things better here or what's wrong here.
Speaker A:What are we not doing that we should be?
Speaker A:It's all anonymous.
Speaker B:All anonymous.
Speaker A:It's all anonymous.
Speaker A:My good friend Steve Rockoff, who was one of the curators of the Army's Red Team in college, says there is no truth without anonymity.
Speaker A:You can ask people all day, send out surveys.
Speaker A:You want the truth?
Speaker A:It has to be anonymous.
Speaker A:So you asked 10 people, what could we be doing better in our business now if I sat in the room as the boss with 10 of us around the table and said, right, guys, what a great week.
Speaker A:Aren't we awesome?
Speaker A:Anyway, what is it we could be doing better?
Speaker A:How many responses am I going to get?
Speaker B:Yeah, depends.
Speaker A:But yeah, depends.
Speaker A:But you're not going to get 10.
Speaker A:And you're not going to get the truth, so you might get the phony, oh, nothing, boss, you're great, it's awesome, I love it here.
Speaker A:Or you might get the I'll tell you what, right, and then you get stabbed in the chest.
Speaker A:But that person is going to get very quickly shut down and ignored because it's the way they've delivered it.
Speaker A:Whereas if you say, right, what can we do better here?
Speaker A:10 Of you, here's the next tool.
Speaker A:First off, stop, breathe, think.
Speaker A:Here's my question.
Speaker A:What could we do better in the next month in our business that we're not doing right now?
Speaker A:Now I want you all to stop, just take a breath and think about that question.
Speaker A:Because initially your system one will give an answer.
Speaker A:There'll be an answer right at the front of your brain and you'd be like, tip of the tongue, don't do that.
Speaker A:Think.
Speaker A:And within a minute, put a clock, put a clock on it.
Speaker A:Have a think for a minute, right?
Speaker A:Everyone calm down.
Speaker A:Now the next thing is we're going to do stop, breathe, think, think, write, share.
Speaker A:So we're going to think about that question now, right?
Speaker A:Have you all got an answer in your brain?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Right, here's 10 postcards that are all the same in a Sharpie, here's 10 yellow post it notes, right?
Speaker A:Write down your answer, what you've just thought about.
Speaker B:I know everyone's handwriting, so I'll work it out.
Speaker A:All block capitals or your facilitator can handle.
Speaker A:So everyone writes block capitals.
Speaker A:So two things happen.
Speaker A:Now, the more you write things down, your brain is committing and even more focused on the answer you're providing.
Speaker A:Number one.
Speaker A:Number two, you're creating anonymity because no one's going to know who wrote what.
Speaker A:Number three, you've committed.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So written it all down, everyone.
Speaker A:Turn them over.
Speaker A:Think about in school.
Speaker A:Teacher asks a question.
Speaker A:Pose, pause, pounds.
Speaker A:Right, what's the capital of Botswana?
Speaker A:And you're sat there waiting for her to pick you.
Speaker A:And she does, she goes, andy, Botswana City.
Speaker B:I'll go with.
Speaker A:And Andy speaks.
Speaker A:But am I listening to Andy?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:What am I doing?
Speaker A:If he gets it wrong, she's gonna pick me.
Speaker A:What's my answer?
Speaker A:I've not heard a word you've said.
Speaker A:Yeah, so there's no active listening.
Speaker A:Whereas now I can listen to you when you pick yours up and read it.
Speaker A:But you're not gonna do.
Speaker A:I know what my answer is going to be, so I'm not thinking what I'm gonna say, I just pick it up.
Speaker A:But we don't do that because we want anonymity.
Speaker A:So we want to share.
Speaker A:Now.
Speaker A:How do we share?
Speaker A:Right, everybody collect them all in, shuffle them all, deal them all back out again.
Speaker A:So you pick yours up, could be yours again, could be Marcus's.
Speaker A:You don't know.
Speaker A:You're just going to read out what you've written things about that.
Speaker A:First off, anonymity.
Speaker A:I don't know who've said that.
Speaker A:Andy's talking, he's saying something.
Speaker A:I don't know where that came from.
Speaker A:Also, there's no bias.
Speaker A:Even if you've got psychological safety in a team and the boss is cool and no one cares about who says what, the fact I know that Andy's saying that and he's my best buddy and I go drinking with, whatever you say, dude, I'm going to love it.
Speaker A:And then Sophie is normally quiet and I don't really see him much.
Speaker A:She comes out with an idea because Andy said his thing, I'm voting for yours.
Speaker A:Hers was actually dynamite.
Speaker A:So the bias that the human brain kicks in with.
Speaker A:So we've done this with teams who are super high performing, super tight knit, super important, still do think, right?
Speaker A:Share Anonymous.
Speaker A:Because the biases can impact.
Speaker A:So now we've got 10 ideas.
Speaker A:Likely there'll be a couple of similar ones.
Speaker A:Likely the answer won't be there.
Speaker A:The likely outcome will be a hybrid of a several merged answers together.
Speaker A:So now we have a debate, right, the boss's question was, we've got this with that, can we merge any of these?
Speaker A:Can we kill two birds with one stone?
Speaker A:And what's happened is maybe we pick one or two.
Speaker A:Even if my answer wasn't the one that got picked, I don't care.
Speaker A:I'm happy, I've been engaged, I've been listened to.
Speaker A:The boss might go, they're all brilliant, let's have a backlog, let's prioritize them.
Speaker A:Triple filter impact.
Speaker A:Right, so next week, which one should we do?
Speaker A:What's going to have the most impact for the team right now?
Speaker A:Your choice, let's vote on that.
Speaker A:And then you can do dot voting anonymously as well.
Speaker B:It's great because you really break it.
Speaker B:You've got to break the ego all the time.
Speaker B:All the time, all the time.
Speaker B:And men particularly guilty of it, you know, Well, I mean, that's sexist, even that statement, but there's definitely something in that as a generalization.
Speaker B:But also it's really nice seeing other people do well.
Speaker A:So it's so lovely.
Speaker B:Oh, it's so nice.
Speaker B:The best job in the world.
Speaker A:Because when people do this and you see them, you know, come out of their shell or they get the boss go, well, that's the thing.
Speaker A:So the anonymity, anonymity thing, you do the thing and then the great answer, this is what we're all doing.
Speaker A:And some person sat there going, that's mine.
Speaker A:But we're anonymous, so I can't, you know, so what we used to do, go right at the end, okay, is anybody happy to own this?
Speaker A:Do you want to put your hand up?
Speaker B:Poor people put their hand up.
Speaker A:Maybe they do.
Speaker A:But handwriting check.
Speaker A:So you're starting to now look at afterwards when you're feeling confident and it's.
Speaker B:Been, that's really nice.
Speaker B:And do you see the juniors, most junior person in the room?
Speaker A:Normally the good ideas that win are the most junior because they think differently.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you've got the old crusties at the top.
Speaker A:And then someone comes off the wall.
Speaker A:Everybody thinks that's a great idea.
Speaker A:And it's normally the most junior individual in the room.
Speaker A:Cause they're seeing things from a different perspective.
Speaker A:And Ellie is one of our lead trainers.
Speaker A:She says, you know, what you see is where you sit.
Speaker A:And that's not metaphorically around the table.
Speaker A:It's from your background, your perspective, your life experience.
Speaker A:And the whole premise, the whole thing that critical thinking is there to unlock is diversity of thought.
Speaker A:Yeah, we all taught blah, diversity this, that and the other.
Speaker A:The only diversity a business needs is diversity.
Speaker B:100.
Speaker A:You can unlock that.
Speaker A:You are off to the races.
Speaker A:And that's what these tools do because you're going to get 10 answers.
Speaker B:And actually it's a way, engagement, it's a way too of bringing in that diversity of thought.
Speaker B:But it might help you ident.
Speaker B:You know, achieving diversity of thought is a, is harder, you know, than achieving making sure there's a black, white woman, whatever in the room.
Speaker A:You know, you've got to hear, so you have the thought.
Speaker A:But how do you extract that thought?
Speaker B:So before we crack on with the show, please consider subscribing to this wonderful channel and to our mailing list@withoutbs.com you get free weekly classes from the best minds in business and free downloadable resources that strip away the jargon and give you the real world lessons.
Speaker B:You don't get a business school.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:I, I've worked with my dad for, God, 25 years.
Speaker B:I've worked with my dear dad.
Speaker B:And being dyslexic, both of us, we both come up with ideas, you know, and I find this weird, you know, I mean, it's a weird thing, but we've worked out over the years, so we would often be in meetings together and end up clashing as father and son in a group scenario.
Speaker B:But actually, if we sat separately, we'd work out.
Speaker B:We both kind of had similar ideas, you know, but it's.
Speaker B:What's really interesting is.
Speaker B:And I said to him, ideas are possessive.
Speaker B:I remember saying into years, because it's like how I got to my idea.
Speaker B:Your brain does that little.
Speaker B:It builds a picture.
Speaker B:Certainly in a dyslexic brain, you kind of get this thing and you get this answer and you're like, oh, my God, that's.
Speaker B:That's an idea.
Speaker B:This could be really helpful.
Speaker B:I've come up with my.
Speaker B:I can see how it's structured.
Speaker B:And then he'd do that as well.
Speaker B:I mean, how do you deal with this?
Speaker B:Sort of.
Speaker B:Yeah, I would say they're very possessive ideas.
Speaker B:You want it to be my idea?
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker A:And we talk that through.
Speaker A:So when we start to get that next level, you do all this on, like, half a day.
Speaker A:So once everyone's got this basic foundation, understand.
Speaker A:They get it, they understand the psychology behind it, they understand what their brain's doing, they see the power of the tools, and then they've got that confidence that, hey, we're all.
Speaker A:We're all pretty savvy here, and we get each other.
Speaker A:We're here to achieve an outcome.
Speaker A:And the only thing that's going to stop that is our bias.
Speaker A:Now, it's not that I'm scared, it's that my bias might have affected.
Speaker A:So we've got that cupboard.
Speaker A:It's then when you start to see these ideas come out, and you'll see sometimes.
Speaker A:And we had one guy said, I'm not sure if I'd.
Speaker A:If I should write this because it's out there.
Speaker A:And I'm, like, worried that my brain's gone there.
Speaker A:Deep, dark sort of thought.
Speaker A:I said, write it.
Speaker A:No one will know it's you.
Speaker A:Or it might do when it goes up.
Speaker A:And I was like, it's that.
Speaker A:But that's what you often get because you get to see how people think differently.
Speaker A:Because it's like, okay, did anybody have that?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:Andy.
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:How did you get that?
Speaker A:Because that's really important because in next week we've got another session.
Speaker A:We need that type of thinking.
Speaker B:Well, it's important to work out how you got that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So talk to me.
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:I asked you the question.
Speaker A:What went on in your head for that to come out the other end.
Speaker A:Because I want to know how you think.
Speaker A:Because then what you're doing is now I know how my team thinks.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And we had one example where we had an engineer and a lady in hr.
Speaker A:And day one, by God, did they clash.
Speaker A:He was nit.
Speaker A:Noid detail.
Speaker A:Gotta go down to this level.
Speaker A:She was.
Speaker A:No, stop, stop, stop you.
Speaker A:Because she didn't do all of hr.
Speaker B:A nightmare.
Speaker A:She's confusing me.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Susan from HR and Kevin from engineering and they were clashing badly on day one.
Speaker A:And it was friction that you could see and sense in the room.
Speaker A:Okay, so we let it.
Speaker A:What we like to do is we let it play out.
Speaker A:We don't stop it.
Speaker A:We let it play just to see.
Speaker A:Then we can talk about it.
Speaker A:We go, stop before it gets too silly.
Speaker A:But you can say, look, do you see what happened there?
Speaker A:You didn't even know you were doing that.
Speaker A:And the other people were uncomfortable and nobody speaks up about it.
Speaker A:But can you see how that can be normally day to day behavior that impacts how people operate?
Speaker A:So here's what happened and here's what's happening.
Speaker A:Kevin, talk to me about how your brain's thinking when I put that question.
Speaker A:And he'll go off and explain what his brain does and how it goes down rabbit holes because that's how he thinks.
Speaker A:Susan, what about you?
Speaker A:I'm a big picture, big hand, small map thinker.
Speaker A:His stuff blows my mind.
Speaker A:Right, so what we've got now is a clash of thinking.
Speaker A:So what we do is go back to structure.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:What is the problem?
Speaker A:We're looking at highly detailed, analytical.
Speaker A:We need Kevin.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Susan, tie the rope to Kevin's ankles.
Speaker A:He's going down the rabbit hole.
Speaker A:You're the one who's going to pull him up when we need to retract and move to the next step.
Speaker A:So you're working as a team.
Speaker A:You both appreciate each other's ways of thinking.
Speaker A:And so next time we've got another problem.
Speaker A:I know in my group of people this is going to need Kevin's type of brain.
Speaker B:What do you think about the Miles Briggs and the personality tests?
Speaker A:And Brilliant.
Speaker A:We use and do all of those.
Speaker A:We use one called contribution compass, which is really about how people are at their best.
Speaker A:Flow, energy, strengths.
Speaker A:We'll talk more about strengths and shadows in a bit.
Speaker A:But so I want people who are going to be maximizing their strengths.
Speaker A:Yes, we know we've all got weaknesses, but, you know, don't waste time fixing your weakness.
Speaker A:Just make sure.
Speaker A:That's not a disablement towards what you're trying to achieve.
Speaker A:Focus on your strengths.
Speaker A:So if I know that you're a dyslexic and you've got dyslexic thinking, big thing Richard Branson's pushing, you know, you've got a very different way of thinking that I want in the room.
Speaker A:It's not, oh, don't bring him in because he's dyslexic.
Speaker A:Bring him in because he's dyslexic.
Speaker A:Bring Kevin in because he's a nerdy engineer who likes to go down rabbit holes.
Speaker A:Bring Susan in because she's going to stop us all going down the rabbit holes and take us back up in the helicopter to 5,000ft.
Speaker A:So you want this cognitive challenge.
Speaker A:You're creating friction with teamwork.
Speaker B:Because the main thing when I listen to all of this is remove ego, work as a team and sort of get tools to get you there that you feel like really you're not fighting, it's not friction.
Speaker A:Why did the CIA first fail when it got set up?
Speaker A:Because you walked in the office and you saw a load of young men from the same school with the same haircut, the same thinking.
Speaker A:What, what thinking?
Speaker A:You're going to get out of that.
Speaker B:Didn't the British help them set up?
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:And so saying we, we got called into an organization.
Speaker A:Marcus, can you come in?
Speaker A:We're going to do our strategy, but we want to do the ideation with you guys facilitating.
Speaker A:Great, we'll come in.
Speaker A:Who's doing it?
Speaker A:It's a strategy team.
Speaker A:So it's the people who are going to mark your own homework who are creating this, the topic.
Speaker A:No, no, no, we need everybody.
Speaker A:If you put 10 people from the strategy teaming, you're not going to get a good strategy.
Speaker B:I guess out of this you would see if you align too much, that's a problem.
Speaker A:A big problem.
Speaker B:It's a big.
Speaker B:So if you're thinking, well, this is going very well, we've all agreed.
Speaker A:Again with me, the formulation of a red team in the army got broken up after 18 months to two years.
Speaker A:Because even the fact you're doing this for a living, you still become highly like this normal team cohesion, tribalism, you start to, you know, you merge into each other.
Speaker B:A guy we had, he was explaining and it was, it's very true.
Speaker B:He's like, although you want, you want diversity of thought, but actually the best performing teams aren't necessarily the most diverse because there's an element at which you Know, a bit like, we've got a culture here.
Speaker B:We like a sense of humor here.
Speaker B:You know, if you're someone who's not so keen on that, I think you're mad.
Speaker B:But he was saying, within a team, you actually.
Speaker B:You can have a smaller diversity of thought, but they end up with greater diversity of thought because they're more comfortable, because they all joke or whatever, you know, which is an interesting problem.
Speaker B:If you.
Speaker B:If you sort of walk into a team tomorrow, is there a comfort habit that people always have that you should get rid of or.
Speaker A:I think leaders stop thinking.
Speaker A:You have to have the answer and speak so, you know, leaders speak last.
Speaker A:So another one Isobast.
Speaker A:Everybody speaks once before anybody speaks twice more.
Speaker A:And then the blend on that is leaders speak last, juniors speak first.
Speaker A:So we've got the table of 10 again.
Speaker A:So, right, everybody, we're now going to do Think Right Share.
Speaker A:And then when we speak on the topic Isobast.
Speaker A:What I don't want is Marcus and Andy giving me their opinion for 10 minutes and then the double alphas dominating the room and everyone else says he won't show up.
Speaker A:You see it all the time.
Speaker B:Well, you're eight seconds again.
Speaker B:Give it a long time, it'll feel like a year.
Speaker B:Someone like me, you're like, sit on.
Speaker A:Your hands, bite your tongue.
Speaker A:So everybody speaks once.
Speaker A:We're going to start today with the juniors who speak first now because we've gone through all the anonymity process.
Speaker A:Happy now, Speaking well, but afterwards they can do.
Speaker B:Yeah, okay.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you've used Think Right Share to get the unlimited.
Speaker A:Now we just want to talk about it.
Speaker A:You're all comfortable.
Speaker B:Oh, okay.
Speaker B:You've got to have done something like that.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's not like a meeting here.
Speaker B:And they just.
Speaker B:They just be like, well, that's it.
Speaker A:That's why we teach.
Speaker A:We teach stop breathing.
Speaker A:Then we teach ISA Bass.
Speaker A:But someone goes, but.
Speaker A:But I'm not going to speak up first.
Speaker A:I'm like, I know you're not.
Speaker A:Here's Think Right Share.
Speaker A:Oh, wow.
Speaker A:I like that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But when you get into the discussion, even if it's genius be.
Speaker A:Oh, just forget genius, right?
Speaker A:We're gonna.
Speaker A:We're now gonna debate about the top three things we've just come up with from Think Right Share.
Speaker A:Let's have the discussion around the room, right?
Speaker A:You know, that's just throwing it open to gobble.
Speaker A:Gobble.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Turkeys all shouting across each other.
Speaker A:But if you use ESA basket.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Anybody got a point?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So it doesn't matter who's senior.
Speaker A:Junior.
Speaker A:Yeah, I have my thoughts on that.
Speaker A:Are this.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:Thanks, Marcus.
Speaker A:Right, Anyone like to build on that?
Speaker A:But I've got.
Speaker A:No, no, no.
Speaker A:Marcus, you've spoken.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, sorry.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:And you only have to do that a couple of times.
Speaker A:So you're not.
Speaker A:It's like, shut up, Marcus.
Speaker A:Which is not normally what you're thinking.
Speaker A:But if you've got the tools and you've all been taught it, someone can just say, marcus, you just spoke.
Speaker A:We've got to go around.
Speaker A:And it doesn't mean everyone speaks.
Speaker A:It might mean Andy speaks, Tim speaks.
Speaker A:Anybody else got a point on that?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:Right, Marcus, back to you.
Speaker A:You had a point.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:Now the next point.
Speaker A:Andy's got a comment.
Speaker A:10 People might want to speak then.
Speaker A:So we all have a comment.
Speaker B:It's always probably better and of course you would probably agree with this, but to get a facilitator in and away because that third party can help.
Speaker B:But when you, you know, in the practical lives of business and also confidentiality.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Is that the leader?
Speaker A:You'd have a red team lead.
Speaker A:I would invariably never say it's the leader.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Ever.
Speaker A:So allocate someone as a red team leader to orchestrate the day.
Speaker B:Younger person, older.
Speaker B:But it doesn't matter.
Speaker B:Just someone you think who would have set up.
Speaker A:So everyone does it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:You know, if you're going to make this a core thing, mix it up so everyone gets to be that.
Speaker A:So it's not all right, the boss is watching me and I'm doing it all the time.
Speaker B:You get that.
Speaker B:We often get that.
Speaker B:Like you, you know, they find out they'll be doing it next time.
Speaker B:I'm not doing it.
Speaker A:So just.
Speaker A:It doesn't matter who's going to volunteer.
Speaker A:Well, you may as well because you're all going to do it.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:So doesn't matter whether it's today, tomorrow, everyone's going to get a go and the boss will do it last.
Speaker A:And then the boss can see how others behave with him.
Speaker A:And when.
Speaker A:We'll do it sometimes as well, when the boss is in the room or not in the room again.
Speaker A:Because what people.
Speaker A:If the guys know it's going to get revealed and the boss is in there, would they still write?
Speaker A:It is also a question.
Speaker A:And we'll ask that when we go and we do the real deep analysis with the bosses.
Speaker A:You tell me what the culture's like.
Speaker A:Are we going to get more value from you not being there to begin with versus you being in There, how is that going to curtail their thinking and willingness to speak up?
Speaker A:Because they might think you're a handwriting analyst and they know that I've said that.
Speaker A:Even if we don't disclose, they might go, the boss knows I did that.
Speaker A:I've got that awful feeling.
Speaker B:I guess the military is really, when they do the whole training and stuff, and I've done a bit of it, but really that is get rid of the ego, isn't it?
Speaker B:It's a real.
Speaker B:Like, we have this stuff.
Speaker A:Check your ego at the door.
Speaker A:Come on.
Speaker A:It does it.
Speaker A:It just deflates the ego.
Speaker A:You can't have an ego with these tools and techniques.
Speaker B:But it makes it better because I think as the workplaces become mixed with women, I think that's what I've sort of noticed is this sort of.
Speaker B:Women always have to develop an ego and it's like, oh, don't.
Speaker A:Don't they.
Speaker A:It's like women have to behave like men.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:No, women love this because it just means the playing field is level.
Speaker A:Even your diversity.
Speaker A:Tick, box hires.
Speaker A:We did a gig at the Cabinet Office a couple of years ago and they had a challenge forum.
Speaker A:35 People brought together from different walks of the business to challenge plans, ministers, etc.
Speaker A:So we went in to train them up and there was two Indian ladies in there, sat throughout the day.
Speaker A:Brilliant, engaging, all day, fun, chatty.
Speaker A:And at the end of it, we finished and they were, like, hanging around and they came home.
Speaker A:Can we just say what?
Speaker A:Really great session.
Speaker A:Loved it.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:We're like, good.
Speaker A:Glad to enjoy it.
Speaker A:No, no, thank you.
Speaker A:I'm like, what do you mean?
Speaker A:You don't understand?
Speaker A:I said, well, enlighten us.
Speaker A:She says, that's the most we've spoke in 18 months.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:I'm like, what do you mean?
Speaker A:She goes, we were hired as tokenisms.
Speaker A:Ticker box.
Speaker A:Diversity.
Speaker A:Higher.
Speaker A:Tick, tick.
Speaker A:We even had a seat at the table, but we didn't have a voice.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:I was.
Speaker A:I was almost welling up.
Speaker A:Just.
Speaker A:They were like, this is the first time.
Speaker A:And they were bloody good.
Speaker B:You know, the funny thing is, is a man, like, I don't.
Speaker B:I don't think I necessarily want it that way in terms of.
Speaker B:It's not like I enjoy having an ego.
Speaker B:It's almost like, oh, okay, there's a gap.
Speaker B:I better be a man.
Speaker A:I better.
Speaker B:I better take control and be strong.
Speaker B:And it's like the reality is, you know, it's that.
Speaker B:That the gentler side of your being a man, you know, the feminine Side, as some people may say, when you start embracing it, it's such a nice thing.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And you see, as you're saying, what you see is where you sit.
Speaker A:So where they sit in life and their experience and their perspectives was hugely different and they brought great stuff to the day and they input and same in any group.
Speaker A:Juniors, seniors, doesn't matter.
Speaker A:You're getting that diversity of thought, but you're unleashing diversity of voices.
Speaker A:And this is where.
Speaker A:Why does DNI fail?
Speaker A:Big D Little.
Speaker A:I been to organizations, on paper, they're the most beautifully diverse.
Speaker A:20 Of the I call it pick and pick and mix organizations.
Speaker A:5% Of them, 10 are exactly as the HR policy said.
Speaker A:I'm like, okay, can I go and speak to them, please?
Speaker A:What do you mean?
Speaker A:I just want to go and chat to them all.
Speaker B:No, no, they're in the cupboard.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:What value is the diverse workforce you have?
Speaker A:What do you mean?
Speaker A:Well, none of them speak up, none of them are listened to.
Speaker A:You tick the box on the periphery, but internally there's zero inclusion.
Speaker A:None of those people get the opportunity to speak up.
Speaker A:And then you get the blank look from hedgehog.
Speaker A:But, but fact, I've just spoke to 40 of them and they're not happy.
Speaker B:How do you deal with the tricky ones?
Speaker B:So like in any business, there's some people who speak up a lot and they bring up very controversial subjects.
Speaker B:It's difficult being an employer sometimes, you know, you can get this sort of like, well, it's not fair that we don't get more holiday or whatever, you.
Speaker A:Know that it's like everything is tool driven.
Speaker B:Okay, just break it down.
Speaker A:They don't get to speak up all the time.
Speaker A:And if someone brings up a point that's contentious, we'll go for it.
Speaker A:We'll go after that point.
Speaker A:It's like, okay, pick the one that we call it spicy question.
Speaker A:We'll say, right, what is a spicy question?
Speaker A:Right, so get them to write down the spicy question they'd like to ask the boss.
Speaker A:And the spicy question is one that's going to elicit.
Speaker A:You know, we're in a conference and someone puts their hand up and asks the question.
Speaker A:Everyone goes, I can't believe he asked that.
Speaker A:You wanted to ask it.
Speaker A:Loads of people are thinking it, but nobody dares.
Speaker A:So that question, when we ask that question and then what comes from that is what we go after.
Speaker A:Because you show them, if you can tackle those questions that you wouldn't dare ask yesterday, then the normal stuff, how easy is that going to be?
Speaker A:Downrange.
Speaker A:So tackle.
Speaker A:It's always do the hard stuff first.
Speaker A:Eat the frog.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Do you believe in that?
Speaker B:I mean I've wanted to implement it here.
Speaker B:There's some firm sort of San Francisco thing that, you know, you have sort of any questions.
Speaker B:So you have a sort of policy of, you know, once a month, you know, you're here, you can ask the Spice any question you want publicly and we'll try and answer it.
Speaker A:Won't work.
Speaker A:Never works.
Speaker A:I've done that with forums.
Speaker A:It's like, you know, oh, the boss is going to sat there with his beer on a bar still looking cool and everyone's around the auditorium.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Any open questions?
Speaker B:It's ego again, is it?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:A people aren't going to ask the question that needs to be asked.
Speaker A:They then said, right, we'll put them on a forum first.
Speaker A:You can add them anonymously.
Speaker A:They then didn't get asked.
Speaker A:You know, that really upset people because we put the question in and you didn't even ask it because it was too spicy.
Speaker A:But if you use these tools, right, we're going to put the questions out anonymously.
Speaker A:They're all going to open the board and we did this in bank of Scotland, had all the questions and they had a huge sprue fair in the Edinburgh office.
Speaker A:You can't miss it.
Speaker A:It's like the wall to the office covered in post its with all these super spicy questions on that by week, by week we're getting taken and answered.
Speaker A:You can't avoid it.
Speaker A:There's no like, no, we're not answering that.
Speaker B:I mean my favorite ever feedback in our anonymous feedback box is we need a feedback box which I don't, I still don't know so on.
Speaker B:It's just hilarious or.
Speaker B:But what I find is you're very busy.
Speaker B:These questions come in, 90 of the questions are we should get more holiday or you know, but so, but I'm always like, look, we need to talk about this as in like so we did a little bit the other day.
Speaker B:But then you don't want to get into specifics because you don't want to kind of, you know, read out people's individual questions or something.
Speaker B:But it can become a bit of just like, oh, there's all this sort of noise there which is mostly everyone just wants to work less, you know, that's life.
Speaker A:That's life.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker A:So use that as an opportunity for your red team to action it.
Speaker A:So you get the input from the masses and then you hand that to the red team and go, right, there's 40, 40 submissions.
Speaker A:Red team it.
Speaker A:So filter them.
Speaker A:Right, Come back to us with the right.
Speaker A:And this is what we did again.
Speaker A:Marcus, sort out the survey responses, will you?
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker A:Well, we started off in February, it was 75%.
Speaker A:Did it again in May and it was 50.
Speaker A:We did the one in August, it was 25.
Speaker A:I'm like, okay, when you got the survey and it gave you data, what did you do?
Speaker A:Well, we read it and went, we're not doing that.
Speaker B:Yeah, there'll be some mean comments in there.
Speaker A:But you did nothing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So what do we do again?
Speaker A:Simple.
Speaker A:You said we did board.
Speaker A:So again, you walked into the bank of Scotland, all the questions on the board and then on like a.
Speaker A:Your yellow wet floor things.
Speaker A:One of those you said we did.
Speaker A:You said, there's not enough microwaves at lunch for the hundreds of people.
Speaker A:We've just bought 12 more.
Speaker A:You said so.
Speaker A:Showing them.
Speaker A:Some kid went, that was mine, that was mine.
Speaker A:They're going home and telling the mum.
Speaker A:That night, my mum, I put this thing in at work and it got changed and they did everything because I said that again.
Speaker B:Okay, yellow team reward.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:75 Of you want more holiday.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker B:Sorry about that.
Speaker B:It's not happening.
Speaker B:But we'll have tomorrow.
Speaker A:There are things.
Speaker A:But again, you address it, you go, this is just how it is.
Speaker A:That's a fact.
Speaker A:That isn't changing.
Speaker A:If that needs to change, all these other things need to change.
Speaker A:But you can hand that off to the red team to have that as a training opportunity for them, but it's showing that the process, going back to what we said earlier, there's a clear structure of how we do business.
Speaker A:How do we do feedback in the company?
Speaker B:Has it ever backfired?
Speaker B:Has it ever gone wrong for you and.
Speaker B:And you've regretted it?
Speaker A:No, no, no, never.
Speaker A:Because I think people, and this is where it's different to doing the surveys.
Speaker A:People will do nasty things in blank feedback boxes.
Speaker A:They'll wait till everyone's gone and they'll put theirs in even.
Speaker A:So no one even saw them go near the box.
Speaker A:And then you'll read that and it's going to hurt and it's often inane and pointless.
Speaker A:It's just a jibe.
Speaker A:Whereas when you do it this way and everyone gets it and they understand that there's going to be an outcome and actually what I do right, could make it to the top three.
Speaker A:People are more concerned about what they put in because they know it's genuine rather than Just having a quick dig.
Speaker B:I think I almost feel the calmness already.
Speaker B:I mean it's this, it's this sense of needing to slow down and just be calm and take the ego, but also take the emotion out of it.
Speaker A:There's a great quote from Wyatt Earp, famous gun.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And he says, in a gunfight you need to take your time, but in a hurry.
Speaker A:I love the paradox of that statement, right?
Speaker A:So you got to be slow but fast.
Speaker A:And he says fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.
Speaker A:So again, we can all father gun 10 times, but if only one hits the target, what's the point of nine?
Speaker A:So for me, we translate that into slow down to speed up.
Speaker A:The Navy seals have slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Speaker A:So moving slowly, considered, thoughtful.
Speaker A:What we do in the brain, we're engaging our brain, be more thoughtful, rational, logical in our both.
Speaker A:Movement in our thinking will get a better outcome.
Speaker A:And the speed bit then comes once you start to move because it's.
Speaker B:So if you make a mistake, it slows you down so much.
Speaker A:And that's what I say.
Speaker A:So for example, take a, take the 5 billion project, right?
Speaker A:If you want to launch that 5 billion strategy next week without red teaming it, likelihood of success, slim, cost of failure or cost of diversion.
Speaker A:And I, and I say imagine you're your true north heading most projects, plans, you'll see them and they will go off 30, 40, 50, 90 degrees major tangent sometime because of what happens coming in, what's that costing you in time?
Speaker A:And then expense, let alone morale to people and demoralization.
Speaker A:If you're doing the red teaming.
Speaker A:So if before that you've worked out the issues, the potential pitfalls, you're saying meandering, you're going to go five degrees off, but then it's going to kick back.
Speaker A:That's all it is.
Speaker A:But you slow down at the beginning to take that time to think, and then you set off, you'll be able to accelerate, you'll be able to sustain the velocity you're at versus rocket speed out.
Speaker A:And then all the wheels come off.
Speaker A:At that point, you're looking at, you know, huge failure and costs.
Speaker A:And that's what happens.
Speaker B:I mean, how would you conclude this for someone, you know, in terms of the habits that they should try and think about tomorrow or practice this week?
Speaker A:So real simple, understand the psychology of your brain.
Speaker A:Your brain is out to get you.
Speaker A:It doesn't want to do the work.
Speaker A:It'd rather be off sipping a margarita, as we said.
Speaker A:So you're gonna have to override that.
Speaker A:So read up on System one, System two, Thinking.
Speaker A:Daniel Kahneman.
Speaker A:Very powerful, very simple.
Speaker A:So you have to engage your brain.
Speaker A:How do we do that?
Speaker A:Behavioral change.
Speaker A:So the first thing, stop, breathe, think, practice the pause.
Speaker A:So anything ever happens and you can do this in seconds, right?
Speaker A:I'm walking across.
Speaker A:Somebody say something to me.
Speaker A:I'm not going to shout across the room, I'm going to walk across to them.
Speaker A:It's going to take me four seconds.
Speaker A:So I've stopped my response.
Speaker A:I'm breathing as I walk over and as I'm walking towards Andy, I'm thinking.
Speaker A:And as I arrive, I've got a great response to him versus what I would have said four seconds ago.
Speaker A:So stop, breathe, think.
Speaker A:The first thing.
Speaker A:Use it all the time.
Speaker A:Driving with the kids out and about, very, very powerful.
Speaker A:Allows the brain to engage.
Speaker A:System two.
Speaker A:Then if we're in meetings, we're in discussions with people, you want everybody to speak.
Speaker A:You want the diversity of thought and therefore you want the diversity of voices to be heard.
Speaker A:ISO bast everybody speaks once before anybody speaks twice.
Speaker A:So allows everybody.
Speaker A:Not everyone has to speak, but everyone has to have the opportunity to speak before you speak again.
Speaker A:And then you can amplify that with juniors speak first and then leaders speak last or not at all, because again, their comment might influence the whole outcome.
Speaker A:So esobast.
Speaker A:But then there's no anonymity and people might not want to speak up.
Speaker A:So we use think, write, share.
Speaker A:So we pose a question, tell everyone to stop and think.
Speaker A:Take a time, 60 seconds on the clock.
Speaker A:Ask them then to write it all down anonymously.
Speaker A:Anonymously, using the same pen, the same marker, the same paper, the same post it and then we share it.
Speaker A:So we shuffle it.
Speaker A:If you're not happy that someone's going to read it, you can take it in as a facilitator and read them all out, put them on the wall.
Speaker A:If you're doing digital mural, Miro, whatever it is, you can use it fully automated and anonymous in there.
Speaker A:So just those three things.
Speaker A:Stop.
Speaker A:Rethink.
Speaker A:Isobass think right.
Speaker A:Share is going to allow you to start getting the maximum value from your people's thinking.
Speaker A:And as you said, you're going to calm down, you're going to naturally feel calm because the control is just the natural outcome of doing things that way.
Speaker A:And it takes minutes.
Speaker B:People like process underneath it, don't we?
Speaker B:We like it.
Speaker A:Structure, yeah, it's free thinking, but structured, which I love that.
Speaker A:Again, the paradox of letting that brain unleash.
Speaker A:But in a Structured way.
Speaker A:So you get that.
Speaker A:Because the whole thing, this is a journey, there's a flow to all of these and when we get into the deeper tools, there's a left to right.
Speaker A:That's where we're moving.
Speaker A:Because you always want forward momentum to get an outcome for that recommendation or decision rather than how many meet, as you said earlier, how many meetings do you go to where you go round and round and round around.
Speaker A:At the end of the meeting, we need another meeting because we got nowhere.
Speaker B:That's brilliant.
Speaker B:Really, really brilliant.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think, I think we could possibly add drink, eat, laugh to the, to the things.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, but thanks, Mark.
Speaker B:It's brilliantly explained so clearly too.
Speaker B:So moving on to different, different way of sort of approaching some problems in life.
Speaker B:So leaders think strategy is about certainty, you say it's about experiments, explain that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So strategy is a big thing, it's misunderstood, often done badly.
Speaker A:And as you said, it's, it's misconstrued that we do this and we get the outcome we want.
Speaker A:But the way you execute that strategy is the key.
Speaker A:We can all have a strategy, we can all have a plan.
Speaker A:As Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get smacked in the mouth.
Speaker A:Military.
Speaker A:No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Speaker A:So you can have all that great upfront stuff, but if you don't have a capability to execute effectively, then that strategy and plan can become for naught.
Speaker A:So our perspective is the experimentation.
Speaker A:So you are still doing things, but you are doing what we call safe to fail experiments.
Speaker A:So instead of thinking back to long term planning and project management, right, we've got an 18 month project, it's green, green, green, green for 17 months.
Speaker A:And the week before it's due to be released, project managers tell you it's all red because something came up, it's been red for 14 months.
Speaker A:Whereas if you do short term safety fail experiments.
Speaker A:So what can we do in the next week that we can try see if it works?
Speaker A:If it fails, we've only gone 2 degrees off, we're not 90 degrees right of arc again.
Speaker A:So take the strategy and plan how we can do experimentation to take us down that journey.
Speaker A:Because as we said earlier, this crazy world we're living in now, this VUCA world, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, you don't know what you're going to wake up to tomorrow morning.
Speaker A:It's that crazy right now.
Speaker A:And it's only going to get crazier.
Speaker A:So you have to be adaptive, resilient and able to pivot.
Speaker A:And the way you do that is by doing these small experiments.
Speaker A:So next week we're going to do this test that's going to allow us to learn, to iterate.
Speaker A:If we need to do or to repeat, hey, it worked great.
Speaker A:Do that again.
Speaker A:Share that with everyone else, tell them to do that same thing again.
Speaker A:That's how we get that duplication of effort.
Speaker A:And we're moving forward almost like a Roman legion.
Speaker A:Slow, measured, but methodical pace and we're moving continually.
Speaker B:Red teaming strategy is that.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:They're all interlinked.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And what do you think most businesses need to strategize regularly or as often as they need.
Speaker A:Yeah, Depending on this type of nature in the business.
Speaker A:But given the.
Speaker A:Given the fluidity of the world we are operating in, if you're doing Your strategy on the 1st of January for the year and you think that strategy is going to be the same by the end of the year, probably not.
Speaker B:Probably not even by the end of the week.
Speaker A:Exactly, exactly that.
Speaker A:So you've got to understand and therefore, do we need a strategy?
Speaker A:Do we not just need this fluid capability to be adaptive depending on the nature of our people, depending on the nature of our business product and where we're working?
Speaker B:Give me an example, just to give it a sense.
Speaker B:So how do I expect, you know, my strategy is, I don't know, let's go back to sales.
Speaker B:You're going to increase your sales.
Speaker B:So what would be the experiment?
Speaker B:You break out a little bit of that, would you?
Speaker A:Or do.
Speaker A:Let's do a slice.
Speaker A:Let's do right, one, increase our sales.
Speaker A:Where of what?
Speaker A:With who?
Speaker A:Because same as my business, right.
Speaker A:What we're doing is I've got the worst problem in the world.
Speaker A:Mine.
Speaker A:My thing is all things to all people in all businesses.
Speaker A:Someone called it the martini.
Speaker A:Anytime, any place, anywhere.
Speaker A:Anyone try marketing that.
Speaker A:I'm trying to sell something to everyone.
Speaker A:Therefore I'm selling nothing to no one.
Speaker A:So I'm going to go, right, I'm going to experiment and I'm going to go for heads of HR and L and D. So I'm focusing on that culture piece with them.
Speaker A:My messaging is culture people, engagement people retention, talent management.
Speaker A:And I'm going to trial that for a month with cold outreach on emails, warm leads on voice calls, marketing on paid ads on LinkedIn.
Speaker A:And I'm going to see what the income is from those people.
Speaker A:Turns out none of those have got a purse string.
Speaker A:They can't sign off and pay for it.
Speaker A:They want it, but they can't authorize okay.
Speaker A:Not wasted.
Speaker A:But I now know I need to go to the C suite level.
Speaker A:So the Chro.
Speaker A:Chief People Officer, or maybe the Chief Transformation Officer.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I'll now create a little strategy to go to them and see how that.
Speaker A:So it's just this.
Speaker A:But each one of these is taking a week, and then you run it for a month to see.
Speaker A:And you can run them in parallel, depending on your capacity, funds, et cetera.
Speaker A:And all of that is allowing you that flexibility to fail fast.
Speaker A:And failing is just.
Speaker A:I'm learning because it's the next thing I'm step two before the whole thing collapses.
Speaker B:I mean, in that example, or, you know, you've got to find the right people to talk to, the right people, persuade.
Speaker B:And ultimately you're trying to change the habits of people.
Speaker B:You know, So I mean, it's all about the people.
Speaker B:I mean, with A.I.
Speaker B:I mean, is that gonna.
Speaker A:I mean, that's another one of.
Speaker A:Our nemesis right now is convincing people that literally people now believe.
Speaker A:We don't need to think.
Speaker A:Marcus, My people don't need to think.
Speaker A:They've got chat.
Speaker A:GPT.
Speaker A:I've had that conversation.
Speaker B:Really?
Speaker A:That's another face Palm.
Speaker B:But it's.
Speaker B:It's another thinking fast, thinking slow.
Speaker B:It's just the brain has gotten.
Speaker B:I find my own brain.
Speaker B:You know, I asked a question last night, 7:30, I'm thinking I can't engage that bit of my brain.
Speaker B:So I was like, ah.
Speaker B:And then I was like, no, no, no, no.
Speaker A:Think, think.
Speaker B:You know, but we.
Speaker A:We teach to use AI as an augmentation.
Speaker A:So literally, that's another seat at the table.
Speaker A:So these are These.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:There's a movie called World War Z where they have the 10th Mountain concept.
Speaker A:You might have heard of it.
Speaker B:I've heard of the film because it's Brad Pitt, isn't it?
Speaker B:I've never watched it.
Speaker A:And in there, the Israelis talk about, you know, why didn't we get.
Speaker A:Why did we have the wall up instead and the zombies didn't get us?
Speaker A:Because we have the 10th man, where 10 people in a room, nine people agree.
Speaker A:This is what we're doing.
Speaker A:It's the 10th man's job to disagree and present a different argument.
Speaker A:So the devil's advocate, pretty much.
Speaker A:So we just say use AI as that.
Speaker B:As the 10th man say, tear this apart.
Speaker A:And here's.
Speaker A:So either tear it apart or when I'm asking for input, get the 10th input from AI and what's good about that?
Speaker A:Because we all think AI is great.
Speaker A:I don't need to do it.
Speaker A:I will.
Speaker A:Do it for me.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:I've gone through nine of you.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I've got your answers.
Speaker A:AI, what's your answer?
Speaker A:Did I give me anything different than the nine of you gave me?
Speaker B:What's your experience so far?
Speaker A:Nine out of ten times.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So that then gives the team the confidence that they don't need AI.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Use the team's benefit.
Speaker A:Use AI for other things.
Speaker A:Now I give me a different perspective.
Speaker A:This is where it's good for doing the competitor analysis.
Speaker A:You are now an employee at.
Speaker A:Given what I've just proposed, what do you think?
Speaker A: owing that their strategy for: Speaker B:It's got the ego stripped away.
Speaker B:Well, I think it has.
Speaker A:And it's just another perspective.
Speaker A:It's not an answer.
Speaker A:That's what I tell people when we do this.
Speaker A:All of these tools and techniques are not here to give you an answer.
Speaker A:They're there to give you something to talk about.
Speaker A:Because the answer has to come from the engagement of the brain and the debate of the common context of the topics you've surfaced.
Speaker B:And that's about removing comfort again.
Speaker B:Or don't make.
Speaker B:People shouldn't be.
Speaker B:People need psychological safety, but they shouldn't be comfortable in a meeting.
Speaker A:Correct it.
Speaker A:And this another great line is given the nature of the VUCA world, we have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Speaker A:Yeah, we have to get comfortable with ambiguity.
Speaker A:And you see this when you get these opposing.
Speaker A:It's the whole.
Speaker A:It's the highest form of intelligence, is to be able to hold two conflicting opinions comfortably.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:So I can say something.
Speaker A:You can say something completely opposite.
Speaker A:And D sat there.
Speaker A:Good.
Speaker A:I get that.
Speaker A:I can see both sides and I can comfortably align them.
Speaker A:And I'm working out how rather than going, no, Andy's right, Marcus, I don't get what you're talking about.
Speaker B:That's an interesting example of nuance, isn't it?
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:That things aren't zero sum, things aren't black and white.
Speaker A:What you're saying on the Internet earlier, that's what everybody is not doing.
Speaker A:It's polarization.
Speaker A:Is it?
Speaker A:It's black or white, it's left or right, it's blue or red.
Speaker A:There's very few people.
Speaker A:And you go out there and I put my foot in the gray a lot on LinkedIn just to see.
Speaker A:Oh, no.
Speaker A:I'm like, no.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:But you just validate.
Speaker A:As you said, people don't get nuanced.
Speaker A:They don't understand that's why training people to understand how this gray matter of ours actually works and how you can use it effectively is very, very powerful.
Speaker B:But comfort to you kills growth 100%.
Speaker A:There's nothing.
Speaker A:If you look at the big companies who have invariably gone overnight, it's because they've been, I call them fat, fat, fat cats, the big fat cats.
Speaker A:And you become complacent and lazy.
Speaker A:You don't see anything coming.
Speaker A:And then something comes out of left field like a wrecking ball that everyone else saw because they were looking, but you didn't because, hey, we're top, we're kingpin.
Speaker A:And then the nature of the business is today you can go down overnight.
Speaker B:Do you find the British?
Speaker B:I always find the British almost particularly like that, like they were only good with our back against the wall.
Speaker B:You know, there's some sort of piece.
Speaker A:Of us and that's what we often do when we go into organizations.
Speaker A:You create scenarios, same as the pre mortem.
Speaker A:You create scenarios where people are made to feel uncomfortable and put into that position and then the brain does react differently.
Speaker A:So as you said, it's putting people's back against the wall because if you don't.
Speaker A:And this is also why organizations sometimes will talk to them like, marcus, I don't need you.
Speaker A:I'm quite happy right now.
Speaker A:We're doing all of this.
Speaker A:I'm like, but what about this?
Speaker A:Oh, we're not worried about that.
Speaker A:We've got so much cash in reserve.
Speaker A:Or what about that?
Speaker A:Or are people happy?
Speaker A:That's not what your surveys say.
Speaker A:Well, they're not going to leave.
Speaker A:And then the competitor comes in and sharks all the best stuff off LinkedIn and they all suddenly leave.
Speaker A:Then you get a phone call six months later going, remember that thing I said?
Speaker A:Yeah, we've just lost 30% of our staff.
Speaker B:Comfort isn't necessarily how comfortable my chair is or how it's like every problem in your business.
Speaker B:Don't be complacent.
Speaker A:All's going well.
Speaker B:All sky well's fine, all's will be.
Speaker A:Fine until it's not.
Speaker A:And that's the thing with the VUCA world.
Speaker A:All is fine, all can be great until it's not.
Speaker A:And because a, the rapid shift that we can see in the environment and the landscape, if you're not prepared,.
Speaker B:You.
Speaker A:Know, military trainers, you fight, fight as you train.
Speaker A:If you don't train as you fight, when you come to fight, you're not ready.
Speaker A:So in a business, when you get hit, it's like disaster relief, isn't it?
Speaker A:It's business continuity planning.
Speaker A:Most business continuity plans sat on the shelf with a massive dust cover on it and never used.
Speaker A:And then when it happens, whack.
Speaker A:I did this when I was running in the military, running an air base.
Speaker A:The major accident and crash regulation plan.
Speaker A:Aircraft crashes on the airfield or in our vicinity.
Speaker A:What do we do?
Speaker A:And I got given this huge plan.
Speaker A:The boss said, this is yours now.
Speaker A:I said, when was this last used?
Speaker A:He goes, I don't know.
Speaker A:I've been here two years and I never used it.
Speaker A:So I just walked in, hit the buzzer, caused mayhem, said, there's an aircraft crashed here and we were abysmal, absolutely abysmal.
Speaker A:I mean, if it had been people who died, burnt, awful.
Speaker A:The ambulance couldn't even get onto the base because the gates were locked and no one knew where the keys were.
Speaker A:But we then trained hard for 18 months, rigorously and realistically.
Speaker A:We have the amputees who come along and make out that they've had their legs blown off.
Speaker A:There's a whole team that does that.
Speaker A:They come along with a theater maker.
Speaker B:Oh, wow.
Speaker A:So you love this.
Speaker A:I had the ambulance people afterwards tell me I had traumatized them because they got to the crashed aircraft site and there were people there with no limbs, blood everywhere.
Speaker A:I'm like, that's your job.
Speaker A:We then had two aircraft crash 18 months later in South Wales and we responded on rails.
Speaker A:Yeah, horrendous incident.
Speaker A:But we were.
Speaker A:We could not have been better, you know, Absolutely.
Speaker A:By the checklist, by the process that happened two years before.
Speaker B:Disaster is the one example of a comfort to give up first, as I.
Speaker A:Said before, as a leader, give up your position of authority.
Speaker A:So you are.
Speaker A:Because if you walk in a room, people expect that you're going to provide the answers.
Speaker A:You often feel that you have to provide the answers.
Speaker A:So if you stay at that, hey, I'm not doing this.
Speaker A:This is why we're all critical thinkers now.
Speaker A:This is why we've invested in each other.
Speaker A:Because you have a highly likelihood of coming out the better answer than I do.
Speaker A:Irrelevant that I'm the boss and you're not.
Speaker A:I think if you do that, the humility that comes with that and then the freedom to think and speak up for the others will remove that comfort.
Speaker A:Because then you're going to feel uncomfortable when people start to bring things up that you probably wouldn't have thought of either.
Speaker A:Because you're looking at things from a very different lens as the executive, as the leader than your people are, as you well know, in your position, you're going to hear different things that will make you feel awkward.
Speaker A:You're going to make you feel like, oh, that's a question.
Speaker A:I don't want to.
Speaker A:What's that question?
Speaker A:You don't know, but you're going to answer it, aren't you?
Speaker A:Do I have to?
Speaker B:A mistake I make thinking about this conversation is I like, I like, I like debate, you know, as in, like, I like going back because it helps me.
Speaker B:I'm, I'm actually very.
Speaker B:I'm delighted when I'm wrong.
Speaker B:But you know, from a logical point of view, because it's like, oh, great.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:No, it's not sort of, oh, I need to be right.
Speaker B:It's like.
Speaker B:But I want to get out of debate.
Speaker B:So I'm often asking people, like, I don't, I don't know.
Speaker B:I'm just, I'm saying this debate with me.
Speaker B:But that, that is too much of a challenge for people.
Speaker B:It's too much of a challenge because how good are you at debating?
Speaker B:Or.
Speaker A:And that's where the tools are useful, because you don't have to be good at debating.
Speaker A:And even where we've had, we've had problems where we've surfaced a problem and no one knew, Right.
Speaker A:It's just like, we don't know.
Speaker A:And it's called, like, the unknown unknowns.
Speaker B:So you surface an issue in the business, no one's got any ideas.
Speaker A:No one has an idea, Right.
Speaker A:But then you red team it as a collective.
Speaker A:So you take that problem through a set of tools and techniques, break it down, and the analysis of that group, looking it from different perspectives, the answer or solutions surface by default.
Speaker A:And it's crazy.
Speaker A:People like, wow, we never saw that.
Speaker A:No, you didn't, and you didn't, and you didn't.
Speaker A:But your fusion of brains with the techniques and the processes, something you morphed because you're pushing each other.
Speaker A:Like, say you're going to push your brain to do something different, to go down a different rabbit hole.
Speaker A:And I, I call it rabbit holes and helicopters all the time.
Speaker A:So, right, right now you're all too far down the rabbit hole.
Speaker A:You go in the live room, you got 10 guys in the noses to the board.
Speaker A:I'm like, come step over here, see what I can see.
Speaker A:Change the perspective, change your position, get in the helicopter.
Speaker B:Like, literally physically change in the room.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, literally, yeah.
Speaker A:Because they're all so engrossed in something and they're so close to it, you can't see you've got a pullback step over here.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:What does that do to that over there?
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, I couldn't see that.
Speaker A:Could I know, because you were stood where, you know it's two feet from the wall.
Speaker B:No, so literally it's stuck on the wall.
Speaker B:The post it notes.
Speaker B:Yeah, literally.
Speaker A:Because when we do this properly, this whole room's covered.
Speaker A:Butcher paper, string, post it notes.
Speaker A:When you do it live, right.
Speaker A:Or online with your murals and boards.
Speaker A:But yeah, it's just like, is it.
Speaker B:Better in person always?
Speaker A:I love it in person.
Speaker A:Just is my absolute.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Dream.
Speaker A:It's brilliant.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's great.
Speaker B:I mean, actually it's helpful in my own mind because, you know, in.
Speaker B:In a what?
Speaker B:In a two, you can debate.
Speaker B:So in a one to one.
Speaker B:So actually you can do the red teaming and stuff.
Speaker B:And then as I'm thinking to myself, yeah, but then that's good if there's someone you like debating with because, you know, they think really differently to you.
Speaker A:And that's another thing we do.
Speaker A:We'll have like 10 of you in the room and Andy will say something, okay?
Speaker A:No one else but Andy's come at this point.
Speaker A:And then D comes in and says something completely different.
Speaker A:I'm like anyone else.
Speaker A:And they go, no, I'm like, right, you two, red corner, blue corner, come out fighting.
Speaker A:Okay, Debate.
Speaker B:Not in front of everyone.
Speaker A:Everyone, right, everybody shut up and watch.
Speaker A:Listen and see what neurons are firing when they start.
Speaker A:And Andy's going to come out now.
Speaker A:Andy's just said his thing.
Speaker A:He's now going to come out and back that thing up with some data, some thinking, some evidence, some dyslexic thoughts.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:But he's going to come out now and amplify what he's just said.
Speaker A:What does that do to your thinking, your brain and your perspective?
Speaker A:And you're going to finish and everyone's going to.
Speaker A:We're all on Andy's side.
Speaker A:And then D comes out.
Speaker A:Bang.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Red hook from the right.
Speaker A:And everyone swings across because your brain's fickle.
Speaker A:Oh, we're on D side now.
Speaker A:Right, stop now.
Speaker A:Calm the brain back down again.
Speaker A:Fuse the things you've heard.
Speaker A:There might be a third outcome between the two.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:There might be a conclusion that no D is completely wrong.
Speaker A:But why did you say that D?
Speaker A:Because everyone could then say, now you said that.
Speaker A:I see where you were thinking, Dee, you're completely wrong.
Speaker A:Am I?
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker A:Because of this.
Speaker A:Oh, mate, really?
Speaker A:I didn't get.
Speaker A:Sorry, I totally misunderstood that earlier.
Speaker A:I thought it was coming from this perspective.
Speaker A:That's why I said what I said.
Speaker A:So it's just the complete freedom of thinking and allowing people to spar in a safe environment.
Speaker A:But that sparring, you watching, that will trigger you to see things differently as well.
Speaker A:It's amazing when it happens.
Speaker B:What do you think's the main blind spot that could derail most projects then most big projects?
Speaker A:The lack of appreciation of how inclusive it is or should be, but isn't most projects are you guys down there go and do that and deliver that thing rather than.
Speaker A:This is a holistic.
Speaker A:It's, you know, we don't have to change up here.
Speaker A:You guys going to the change down there.
Speaker A:And it's like transformation.
Speaker A:We're talking organizational transformation, we're talking people transformation.
Speaker A:With digital transformation, that's not just changing a few laptops and software products.
Speaker A:You are transforming the company.
Speaker A:And so often we see you've heard it's two speed agile.
Speaker A:When we go in, it's like the bosses at the top are doing what they always did and the teams at the front are trying to go fast.
Speaker A:They then get frustrated because the company isn't keeping up with the pace of change at the front line.
Speaker A:I think that's the biggest blind spot.
Speaker A:I don't think people get holistically truly understand what change and transformation means for their business.
Speaker B:It means everybody's going to everybody and now more than ever.
Speaker B:I mean I would have thought with.
Speaker A:The speed more so the top.
Speaker A: iness agility institute since: Speaker A:The number one every year except from 21, which was change fatigue because of COVID every year, ineffective leadership and management.
Speaker A:The number one, not agile, not tools, not culture, not people, not everything.
Speaker A:Leadership and management because they don't get it, because they're sat up here doing it as they've always done it and everyone else is progressively trying to evolve and change the way of thinking.
Speaker A:So it's almost project management at the top, high speed, agile at the bottom.
Speaker A:And you get in this drag away but these can't pull, they get pulled back.
Speaker A:And the frustration is therefore high at the front.
Speaker B:It's quite sort of historical that, isn't it huge?
Speaker B:It's like, you know, British cult.
Speaker B:I mean you could put it into class or into sort of, you know, the military is the obvious example, isn't it?
Speaker B:You know, wow.
Speaker B:And what about resilience then?
Speaker B:I mean, keeping it up because these things always sound great and then you start Doing.
Speaker A:That's the thing, isn't it?
Speaker A:They all start as a huge.
Speaker B:I'm going to go to the gym every day, you know, that's why I.
Speaker A:Said it's behavior, right?
Speaker A:So transformation is continuous.
Speaker A:Think about Toyota and Kaizen, continuous improvement.
Speaker A:So a transformation isn't a one and done.
Speaker A:This is our company and this one I go back to.
Speaker A:Do we need strategy?
Speaker A:The way the nature of the world is today, we are continually evolving because we have to.
Speaker A:We have to look outside what's going on.
Speaker A:We have to be adaptive, we have to be responsive and we have to be resilient because we're going to get hit in the face and we have to keep getting up and moving forward.
Speaker A:If you just think your plan that we put in place on the 1st of January is going to get you there continually for the next 12 months or five years, because this is how we operate here, it's just not going to work.
Speaker A:Fact.
Speaker A:You have to be clearly understanding that.
Speaker A:And this is where the shift is the behavioral change of your people at what's going to keep you at the front and moving.
Speaker A:How do they change?
Speaker A:They have to be delegated responsibility down from the top, so the control needs to move down to them.
Speaker A:They have to be upskilled.
Speaker A:And what's happened, why this has failed to where we are today?
Speaker A:Think back in the old school days of project management.
Speaker A:It used to be people, process, platform.
Speaker A:They were the three elements of quality project management.
Speaker A:So the right people, trained, processor, now it's platform tech.
Speaker A:AI is number one.
Speaker A:Processes.
Speaker A:How many processes are there out there now that Deloitte and everyone else is selling?
Speaker A:And where's people?
Speaker A:People have become an afterthought.
Speaker A:It's like we don't need them anymore.
Speaker A:They just do what the processes tell them to do.
Speaker A:And now we're seeing that shift in.
Speaker A:No, no, we actually need people because they're the solution.
Speaker A:They always are, always have been.
Speaker A:We've forgotten them and they're so far behind the drag curve now that we need a massive inject into training, competency capability to get people up before AI runs away with it.
Speaker A:Because I think AI is great, but it's not the answer for me.
Speaker A:The answer is AI plus CI, which we call collective intelligence.
Speaker A:So AI, robot thing plus your people thinking together gets the outcome you want, right?
Speaker B:Like collective intelligence, wisdom of the crowd, all those sort of things.
Speaker A:So you plug that with AI, you're off to the races.
Speaker A:Well, you.
Speaker B:It's also, you're kind of equal.
Speaker B:I mean, you know, suddenly I was amazing.
Speaker B:It's like, well, I'll tell you, the 10 of us should still be able to kick its ass.
Speaker A:Still, it's yet to be proven.
Speaker A:It's not that clever compared to the collective wisdom.
Speaker B:I mean, let's, let's just summarize this.
Speaker B:I mean, I think you did just summarize it, to be honest.
Speaker B:You know, I, I don't know if there's a sort of anything final you would add to that.
Speaker A:I think if you're out there, whether you're struggling or not, whether you're just concerned and aware of what is going on in the business world around you, if you're not going get concerned, then do some reading up first.
Speaker A:Understand you'd be amazed how many people aren't and sort of walking around blinking or blind into some of these things and getting caught short.
Speaker A:So start to get aware and appreciate what's going on and then really look at the number one resource that you have.
Speaker A:We all know that headcount is the biggest cost for any company.
Speaker A:Use it.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:Don't rely on some wonderful it whiz bang thing that's going to come and save the day.
Speaker A:It's not.
Speaker A:The best thing you have is the thing you pay the most for.
Speaker A:It's your people.
Speaker A:And if they're just sat coming in doing something that an AI bot could do, what's the point?
Speaker B:Is this our productivity issue?
Speaker B:It's funny listening to you talk because having just had our German friend Manfred on talk about the Germans won't have a meeting list as an agenda, how structured they are mentally.
Speaker B:And that's why they build companies like Mercedes who produce Mercedes Benz and we're like sticking a turbocharger into some dodgy thing.
Speaker B:But you know, it's all sort of in the shed with my mate.
Speaker A:Clarity, purpose, structure and the ability to see it working.
Speaker A:You know, you can tell me this all day long we've seen so many leaders out there preaching, but when the guys hit the ground and they're trying to do it and it all falls apart because it was just a briefing full of assumptions.
Speaker A:You know, test and learn.
Speaker A:Let the, let the troops, let the people on the ground test, validate, create it for you to then sign off and go, yeah, this is great now, but they built it.
Speaker A:So then you're going to get, rather than having done to, you let people create it themselves because then you're going to get ownership, you're going to get adoption and you're going to get some pride.
Speaker A:I think you're going to get pride in.
Speaker A:We've created this, we've built it, this is working.
Speaker A:These outcomes are coming because we did this and we were allowed to do this.
Speaker A:We were unable to do this.
Speaker A:We got trained how to do it.
Speaker A:Our bosses, gamers, the control to do it.
Speaker A:We are now leading this company.
Speaker A:We're not being led.
Speaker A:We are leading the company with our innovation, our resilience, our adaptability and the growth is coming from us.
Speaker A:And when you see organizations that are doing that, away you go.
Speaker B:And the leader could have a few margaritas.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker B:That's what you should be doing.
Speaker A:And then you're observing higher level strategic perspective, how having conversations, aware, looking ahead.
Speaker A:That's what you should be doing.
Speaker A:Where now most of them are heads down, panicking and micromanaging, which isn't good.
Speaker B:You've been absolutely brilliant, Marcus.
Speaker B:I think there's so much in there for people, you know, loads of these things already.
Speaker B:I'm going to apply to my own life.
Speaker B:It's been such a pleasure.
Speaker B:Thank you for sharing all these things you've learned over your illustrious career.
Speaker B:I mean, where could people find you or what would you recommend people to check out?
Speaker A:So feel free to connect on LinkedIn.
Speaker A:There's only one Marcus Dimbleby.
Speaker A:It's quite an unusual surname, so I got an even more unusual first name as well.
Speaker A:So I'm easy to find.
Speaker A:Effective Direction.com, that's our main website.
Speaker A:And then BigThings Fast.com is for the book and it's available on Amazon as well.
Speaker A:So they're the three places you can find me.
Speaker B:Fantastic.
Speaker B:Thank you, Marcus.
Speaker B:This has been this week's episode of Business Without Bullshit.
Speaker B:You'll find us next week.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker B:Ciao.
