Holly Green - Using Your Brain to Win (K2317)

Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Welcome to the Exit Coach radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach. For the day on exit coachradio.com and now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Welcome. Thanks so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you with us. We just wanted to remind you that we've interviewed over 600 advisors, authors, and thought leaders, and you can find all of their interviews in 35 different topic file folders at exitcoachradio.com. Uh, in our audio library and also you can get our app on your phone, just put in ECRmo.com into your browser. My next guest has been with us before. It's always a pleasure to have guests back. Holly Green is with the Human Factor Inc. in Denver, Colorado, and Holly is an author. She's written Using your brain to win and more than Using your brain to win. I'm going to stop right there. And but using your brain to be more effective is what she does. She helps people and their companies achieve excellence by creating clarity on what winning looks like. And determining how to get there and she can help you achieve alignment and focus your organization so that everybody is in the same race. How, how great would that be? Her unique approach to strategic agility, alignment, and engagement based on the approach pause, think, focus, and run provides the tools, techniques and skills companies need to reach their destinations and achieve their goals. Holly, great to have you back. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me again. My pleasure. It's, you know, it's always fun because the first go around we talk about more about your company and what you do and kind of the basic philosophies of what you do, but now we get to have a lot of fun. So let's talk, but first, give, give our listeners a little bit of a sense again about um how you got started, what the human factor does and and who you help. I I gave a little bit of overview, but tell us a little bit more about that. Sure, I have such a schizophrenic background, so that made it a lot of fun that I could pull from a lot of different sort of functions and um categories or departments if you will, everything from running companies to HR to marketing and sales and operations, etc. So we put all that together about 15 years ago. I, I again had the privilege of working for amazing organizations prior to that time. And we put all that together because uh what I consistently saw with organizations was, oh, people show up every day, they wanna do great, they wanna do a good job. And yet we look around as managers and leaders often time and we think, wow, that's not what they're thinking. And so where does that really sit and how do we address that using the basics of how the brain really does work instead of the, you know, logical rational approach that we all assume is at play, how do we tap into the illogical irrational human, which all of us are, and get that alignment, that focus, that clarity so that we are winning and the organization is winning in in the ways that it needs to. And that's what got us going and that's just turned into all kinds of exciting adventures and You know, I get to work with organizations, everything from the FBI Leadership Academy to pest control companies around the globe. Wonderful, that's that's a pretty diverse group there from. From FBI to bug patrol, so hey, you know, let's, let's talk about how the brain works and what you've learned along the way because the brain is such a, you know, obviously a sophisticated organism, but it's, it's got so many filters built into it and we have to these days because we're getting bombarded with these marketing messages. And what are some of the ways our brains have built in blind spots though? That's a great question. And boy, there's thousands and thousands of them. Um, what we say is that we all walk around with a lot of bubbles or pairs of glasses that we wear through which we view the world. And, and we are fairly certain. Now keep in mind everything I'm telling you could change tomorrow because we're in the infancy of understanding the brain. But we're fairly certain that we screen the world through those lens or those bubbles or glasses, um, and we're screening out much more data than we're screening in much, much, much more. And that kind of explains why 4 people can watch a car accident and describe it completely differently and all 4 be right, and our brain hones in on various things and screams in and out data constantly. And the one thing that we're better at than anything else in the world as adult humans is proving ourselves right and so. That's sort of the primary lens through which we view the world. What data proves us right. Well, see, I told you so we tried that once before. That's not the way we do it here. That won't work with our customers. Yeah, I told you if we hired someone from there, they wouldn't work out. So we're constantly validating what we already believe is so, and that's a problem in a world that's changing at a hyper pace. So we're screening out more than we screen in, which makes sense. Every morning I look at my emails and I take off about 99 of them before I get to one good one. So we're, you know, that's, I, I can relate to that statement, um, and then, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's interesting that um different people have different perspectives, but I've also heard from a lot of people that um people. tend to give up too easily, you know, they, um, let's try a different way, let's try it a different way. I guess that way it doesn't work. They don't turn it around one more time. That's why the Rubik's cubes never get solved, I guess. Oh, I love the analogy to the Rubik's cube. It's a funny thing. Listen, the notion of speed has trumped almost everything, including survival, by the way, for the adult human today. You know, how else do you explain why people text and drive when we know they're much more likely to be in a fatal car accident or run red lights or, you know, do other crazy things that on the surface are absolutely positively not logical, but we see them increasing. Um, speed has become so incredibly important to us. So not getting it right, but just going fast. You know, we'd much rather do it over today than do it right the first time by slowing down for even a minute to think. And so that's the same notion that you apply or can't apply to we give up because it just takes a little more effort. We have to look at a little more data. We have to consider what has changed and how do we play into that. And you know, some of my favorite statistics around that are when we look at the Fortune 500, 87% of the Fortune 500 companies since 1957 are gone today. They were people who were great at proving themselves right. Into bankruptcy think about Kodak, Blockbuster, you know, um, Hollywood Video. They have the technology and they have really smart people that worked there. The problem was they were so busy convincing themselves that the way they had done it and how they had become successful was what was going to continue to keep them successful that they screened out any contrary data. And and that's a big problem for us in every way and every day. You, you could say that all of those companies you mentioned had a good run, you know, they, they went, they, they were brilliant, they were innovative in their time. But then then time caught up with them pretty much and now we're now we're in an accelerating pace of time and technology development it seems I'm sure that's that's validated, but so how far out do you I mean that what you're inventing what you're inventing today is gonna be obsolete in a very short period of time so you really have to constantly reinvent yourself in just about every field, would you say? Absolutely. You know, we do strategic agility work for some of the world's largest and most successful companies, as I mentioned, you know, down to small organizations. We are doing strategic planning. In fact, I just came back from a wonderful organization late last night. Um, strategic agility right now or strategic planning, you're looking at about a 12 to 18 month runway with specificity. Because it is absolutely impossible to plan beyond that. There's just too much change, and there is game-changing technology happening constantly. Mostly technology is what's driving it, mostly, not all, but mostly. Now I hear over and over again that most employees are running at something like a 30% efficiency rate at work. So and how do, how do we, how do business owners, our listeners, and how do they, they teach their managers and their employees to use their brains more effectively at work? Well, I don't, I've not heard the 30% number, but you know, that doesn't surprise me. Um, the bottom line is you have to be clear on excellence or winning first. Otherwise, everybody's running in a different race. Everybody's running today. Right, um, I, there are no organizations that I see around the globe, you know, maybe some, you know, the United States Post Office maybe, but other than that, really, no organization out there today has a lot of excess resources. Everybody's working hard. They're stretched too thin trying to do too much. The problem is, are they working on the right things? Have they prioritize what needs to come first, what's most important in the day, right? So it's that pausing long enough, get clear on winning first and then run. So we take examples, we look around at, at, you know, things like Olympic athletes and premier level athletes and the world's best symphony orchestras and the United States Navy SEALs, and we say, what do they do incredibly well that enables them to be elite, to truly achieve, to act as teams when that, that's important. Um, and, and how can we apply that at work more effectively? You know, and one key difference is we don't get to practice 4 or 6 days at work and only play on the field one day, right? So you have to think about every single day at work is practice. Or something I always tell people when people go ahead. I was gonna say there it seems that the groups you mentioned they're they are mission focused. Mhm, mhm. So how do we create that work? That's what we call the clarity on winning, clarity on excellence. Whether it's on the project, whether it's about the meeting, whether it's about the next year for the company, every person has to be in the same game. We've got to be crystal clear. What are the metrics, quantitative and qualitative on what excellence looks like, what's our Super Bowl or our Stanley Cup or World Cup, right? Um, and we're not, we're not in those days. Leaders assume everybody knows. You know, leaders sit in a lot of different meetings and more meetings typically, and you know, they've got a lot of different information and they assume everybody knows what they know. The problem is that hasn't trickled through to everyone. We have all sorts of communication blockages in organizations. I only read 10% of the emails because I have too many, you know, there's all sorts of forces that contribute to this lack of clarity. But, you know, I always sit down with the CEO at the very beginning and say define for me what winning is a year from now. And if you can't define it for me with specificity beyond the financial metrics, which are critical, of course, and so are a lot of other things. If you can't define it with for me with specificity, then number one, you don't know what winning is. And if you don't know how in the heck can your organization know? And even when a leader knows, I say, all right, give me 15 minutes. I'm gonna go talk to 10 people in the hallway, and I'm gonna ask them, and how many definitions do I then come back with. At least 10 more. Interesting, yeah, yeah, can you imagine running a professional team, uh, an athletic team, a football team that way where everybody's not crystal clear. It was fascinating, fascinating how we haven't translated a lot of these things from many other sectors into what we do at work. We can go fast. Just not necessarily on the right things. And now in this in smaller businesses there tend to be less executives and more kind of spinning chairs I would call it, you know, where people are multitasking and yeah and they're they're trying to fractionalize and compartmentalize so you probably see a lot less effectiveness in smaller companies because of that there's. There there might be a goal, but there are, there's less resources and time to devote to all of the tasks that go into that. What are some of the ways that people can schedule their time more effectively so that they can, they can I mean some people will say, you know, I'll, I multitask all the time, and others will say, well, multitasking is just doing a poor job at a lot of different things at the same time. Well, it's a funny one that that word is not so common because as, as human creatures, we're actually not able to multitask on thinking activities. So we can do one cognitive and one more physical or non-cognitive activity. In other words, I can talk to you and walk at the same time. Right, but I can't actually do two thinking activities at the same time. There is no evidence to suggest that I can. What I'm doing is switching back and forth between the two, and there is a high switching cost. So I'm actually less effective and taking more time, but again, it feels like I'm moving really fast, and that's what I value more than anything is that speed. So, first thing we got to do is really try to minimize the multitasking. Now, I've run several um companies and you know, I know that's much easier said than done. So my technique is the 1st 3 minutes of every single day, 3 minutes, that's all, 3 minutes. Sit down and say of what I do today, what will progress us most effectively towards winning, and organize your day around that because everything else is irrelevant. Are you going to have interruptions? Absolutely you are. Will you get off track a little bit? Of course you will, but if you constantly come back, does this contribute to getting us closer to winning? It is your best decision making and time management tool you could possibly apply. That's great. Have I talked about winning? Have I communicated effectively today? We have, you know, monthly assessments we use with clients on criteria of how we communicated effectively. Did we use multiple channels? Did we, you know, bring the goal to life in ways that mean something to the individual? There's all sorts of ways then you can, what we said, you know, bring things to life in an organization and you have to be obsessive about talking about winning. Because there are more distractions and more clutter than we've ever faced before. We can't just do this one. This is an everyday constantly. Very, very good points and uh when we're so so is this one of the ways we can set ourselves up to be successful and and what are some other tips you could give our listeners on setting themselves up to be successful? Well, you know, uh, one thing we find almost everybody's in too many of these days is meetings. So get great at having really effective meetings and, and again the way that we do that it uses the same basic principles um from the beginning, get clear on why are you having the meeting, what's the purpose, right? um what do you want to achieve out of. That time together, talk about that at the beginning of the meeting. And if you just started the 1st 4 minutes talking at a meeting and saying here's the purpose of this. How will we have been successful? Let's talk about that for just a minute. At the end of this hour, how will we have achieved what we needed to have achieved. You'll be stunned at how the effectiveness that meeting goes up because it does a very quick reset on everyone's brain on what's what's important, right? Make sure you provide the appropriate materials beforehand, you know, um, talk about winning always follow up on outstanding actions and commitments, um, that's, that's comical to me how many meetings I observe and sit in with clients where no one talks about what they met about the 42 times before, right? And nobody's followed up on anything, so it all just falls off the plate and we just add more stuff. Um, you know, it's another big one that we talk about a lot is exposing our thinking process. So being able to share with other people to slow ourselves down enough to understand why we think the way we think, right? How do we get our decision? What are our biases and assumptions that we applied? What data do we have? What do we believe the data means? Is it possible it means different things to different people? So all of those types of simple, there's such logical and such simple behaviors and questions or prompts to our brain. It's all been stripped away. We're not pausing to think. We're just running. I always, I always uh tell people start to thinking, you know, and stop to doing all the time. Great, great tips and great points and you know it it comes back down to your your approach, uh, pause, think, focus, and run, and your book is called Using Your Brain to Win, and it's available at Amazon and Kindle and via website more than a minute.com. What's, what's behind that website's name more than a minute.com? Well, that was the first book that I wrote. I ran the Kenn Blanchard company for a number of years for for those of you in the audience that know Blanchard, I ran that company for a number of years, and of course he wrote the One Minute Manager about 30 years ago, and that book revolutionized the way we managed in organizations, you know, the problem was it was 30 years ago and we really needed to update that just slightly different, you know. The boss sat behind his desk with his feet up on the desk, no computers, uh, you know, it's, it's dramatically different, um, and so those three secrets then, you know, are not going to serve you well today. Um, they really haven't withstood the test of time. One of them has, which is, you know, 1 minute praising, uh, if you will, or, you know, positive feedback, but the rest of them have not. And so we, I really stepped back and said, what is it today? What is an effective manager or leader today? So we did more than a minute and kind of just grew from that. And then using your brain was the latest book that goes much more to my neurophysiology background and and the neurosciences and what we're truly learning just in the last 5 years so much about how the brain really works. Holly Green from the Human Factor in Denver, Colorado, and her website is thehumanfactor.biz B I Z and again you can find her book Using Your Brain to win it on Amazon and Kindle and at the website more than a minute.com. Holly, it's so much fun to have you back on the show. I unfortunately our time's up, but I really enjoyed having you back and uh again, you're welcome anytime. Come on back anytime. Thank you so much, Bill. All right, we're gonna take a short break and we'll be right back, so stay with us. Hi everybody, this is Spike Riel with the Exit coach. Business owners, can you name the eight key value drivers that you and your manager should be focusing on to increase the value of your business? Introducing the Sellability score index. 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Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.