Product Powers - Human Skills for Product Thinkers to Thrive in the Age of AI

Get ready for an eye-opening conversation in this episode as we explore the groundbreaking concept of Time Intelligence and its potential to revolutionise the way we work. In the episode Helen Beedham (award-winning author) shares insights from her book The Future of Time: How ‘re-working’ time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing.

We share research on cultural norms and traits that define time-intelligent organisations. Together, we dive into practical strategies and real-life success stories of companies that have transformed their work culture by embracing innovative approaches to working hours, meeting schedules, and team dynamics. Don't miss this captivating episode that will empower you to rethink time management and unlock the secrets to productivity, well-being, and a harmonious work-life balance.

Helen Beedham (Award-winning author)

Helen Beedham, MA Cantab, helps business and HR leaders create ‘time-intelligent’ organisations that gain a better return on the time their employees invest in work. She is an organisational expert, speaker, host of The Business of Being Brilliant podcast and Business Book Award-winning author of the Amazon bestseller The Future of Time: how ‘re-working’ time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing. Helen runs workshops to develop ‘time intelligent’ teams, coaches people on transformative time management practices, and gives talks on productivity, diversity and wellbeing topics. She comments on the future of work at conferences, industry panels and client events and is regularly featured in national, business and HR press including the FT, Financial News, Forbes, FastCompany, theHRDirector and HR Review. Helen has over 25 years’ experience in corporate workplaces and professional careers with expertise in organisation and team effectiveness, HR, Diversity & Inclusion, culture change, people management and time management.

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Transcription:

[00:00:52] Paddy Dhanda: Hey folks. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Superpower School podcast. I'm your host, Patty Dander, and on today's show I have an award winner.

Someone who is an organizational expert, speaker podcaster, and I mentioned award winner. She's literally just won an award at the Business Book Awards in the category of people, culture and management. She's the author of The Future of Time, which sounds like an amazing title. I'm really intrigued to know what it's all about.

Welcome to the show, Helen Beedham.

[00:01:28] Helen Beedham: Thank you so much for having me, Paddy. I'm really delighted to be joining you in the recording studio.

[00:01:33] Paddy Dhanda: Ah, thank you Helen. And I'm chuffed that I'm speaking to another Brit .

[00:01:37] Helen Beedham: Yeah, I'm delighted to add to the mix. As about as British as they come.

[00:01:41] Paddy Dhanda: Your english is quite proper, way more proper than one, so that's a good thing. Yeah. So Helen what superpower would you like to bring to this episode?

[00:01:51] Helen Beedham: I would like to bring the superpower of helping people and teams and organizations to grow what I call their time intelligence.

And I can explain a bit more about that as we chat.

[00:02:04] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, wow. There we go. Cliffhanger right there. Before we get into that you and I were just talking briefly before we kicked off, and I, I was really intrigued by your story of how you've got to this point because you've gone through a fair few experiences along the way.

I mean, I guess you didn't just wake up, at the age of 10 or 11 and decide you're gonna write this book and this was a thing you were gonna do. So what's led up to this moment?

[00:02:29] Helen Beedham: Yeah, weirdly, I have my English teacher from secondary school's voice still in my head, remembering when she told me not to take English A level because alongside French and Spanish, which I'd also chosen.

She said, oh, it's not your strongest subject, and I think you might struggle with all of those books. And so it's quite ironic now that I've ended up actually writing a book that is doing really well. But I have always had a lifelong love of books and a reading of all sorts. And I guess so career-wise I did languages at University, French and Spanish, which led me to know that I wanted to work in business, but that was about as much as I managed to narrow it down. And everyone always tells you languages, open lots of doors and, but it also doesn't help you decide where you really want to focus, perhaps the start of your career. So I applied to loads of different organizations.

Didn't hear back from a lot of them. Got a few interviews and ended up with a couple of offers and I ended up accepting a role on the graduate management training scheme at Harrods, the big retail, very famous retail store in London, mainly because I thought that would give me a really good introduction to business and I would get to rotate around different departments and learn different skills from shop floor to distribution, to HR to marketing and sales, et cetera.

And I worked there for two years and it was great fun. But my, I guess my career there took an unexpected turn fairly on when I was asked to go and act as an interpreter for the chairman at the time, Muhammad del fired on a buying trip to Cuba. So I went along to interpret actually one of his directors and had this very surreal experience for about a week out in Cuba, attending lots of very high profile meetings and sitting on yachts for debriefs and things and thinking, is this really what the world of work is like?

And then on the back of that, ended up working with that director for the remainder of my time there, helping kind of problem solve bits of the store that weren't working well and introducing some new initiatives. And that led me to realize that actually it wasn't being in retail that I loved. I was kind of tired of never having a Saturday off and it wasn't great pay.

So, I then moved into management consulting and started working for a big global organization called Taos Perrin at the time. And I spent the next 15 years there because I absolutely loved it.

It really stretched me intellectually, creatively. I had some wonderful work friends and some fantastic mentors, and I love the variety that consulting brought me. I got to work with all sorts of different clients, private and public sector, and in different industries, and just really grew my consulting and my business skills.

I even met my husband there. We started seeing each other and got married many years later and have grown a family together. So that was a fantastic work experience.

I really only stopped working there after 15 years because our daughter was born, she's now 11. And I'm also stepmom to two wonderful grownup children William and Rebecca. And have known them since they were seven and nine.

After taking a couple of years out in my new role, kind of New Parenthood life, I decided it was time to go back into the world of work. I was kind of missing that opportunity to use my brain a bit more much as I was loving the parenting side and ended up helping to grow a small professional network, which was called city mothers at the time.

As it happens, you get chatting to the person next door and discover you've got lots in common and professional background in common. And so I started helping her to grow this professional network for mothers returning to city careers.

And juggling home and work life. And at the time it was all very voluntary. No, there were no paid roles, but it was growing very fast and successfully. And I became the first employee and then a director and business partner and helped her run it for six years. And we basically organized tons of events, networking events for people on work, family, career and wellbeing topics, and they were hosted in and around the city and we had lots of different corporate members. So I looked after all those relationships and with our corporate clients and hosted lot of the events and sourced a lot of the speakers and loved that. Learned lots of different skills because I'd kind of gone from a big corporate environment that had also gone through a couple of mergers to then working for a startup.

So it was a very different experience and taught me a load of fantastic digital skills that in the corporate world, there would've been lots of other people doing those things. So, when you're, one of the joys of kind of being in a small company is you get to wear many hats and learn lots of different skills.

So I really enjoyed my time there and learned a lot from it. And then just before Covid hit, had reached the conclusion that actually I was ready to strike out independently and explore what the next chapter of my working life might look like, and it wasn't very fixed at that point. I spent quite a long time having conversations with people about career transitions and how you figure out what you might do next if you know you want to change, but you're not quite sure what that is.

One conversation in particular set me off, I guess on a particular part of my journey since then, which was becoming an author and I had always wanted to write a children's novel.

It was a conversation with this person who's also a speaker I know and had written her own business books where it dawned on me that actually. The thing I could far more easily write about was our world of work and people's experiences of our world of work. Because that's really what I've been doing all through my career, researching people's experiences of work, what helps 'em thrive, what gets in the way, how teams can work together effectively, how to build really strong organizational cultures.

And so the seed was sown and over the next few weeks, I was noodling on it. And I can tell you a little bit more as we chat, if you like, about how the book came into being.

[00:08:54] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, wow. There's so much there. I was thinking where do I start in terms of unpacking this? I'm gonna take you back to your your story that you mentioned about Mohamed Alpha and you just glossed over and went.

I just did some translation for this chairman. I mean, for many of us or for many people that are going through their careers when they're faced with meeting big leaders in their organization, that's quite a daunting task. I mean, for you at that age, how did you deal with that?

Because for me, I remember even talking to one of the most senior people that I worked with in my early years was really scary. I was like, oh my God, what if I make a mistake? I'm gonna get fired. And yet, as we know in reality like that's never the case unless you do something completely crazy.

But from your perspective, what did you learn from that experience and for anyone else who's in that situation? Any advice?

[00:09:47] Helen Beedham: Yes. And my first reaction when I was asked to go and meet the chairman, because I think he was kind of interviewing a couple of people that could potentially help with this bit of work, that was my first reaction to is, oh no, what have I done wrong?

What am I about to be fired? What have I done that I'm not aware of? But I would say that the experience taught me to actually say yes to unexpected stuff that comes up and opportunities where that maybe come your way that you're not sure where they're gonna lead, you're not sure what it's gonna be like, but you've got the inkling that it might be a bit exciting or it might offer something different or just a really interesting new experience.

And for me, what I'd loved was speaking French and Spanish i'd. I'd invested years in learning them, and that was one of the things I love most. So that was attractive to me already, that I was gonna get to go and do that. And I was gonna get to go to Cuba and I was gonna learn about things like how cigars were made in cigar factories and how the rum industry worked and go to meetings with heads of ministers of trade and industry and stuff.

So I knew enough to think this sounds a bit special, but different, and why wouldn't I give it a go? And it was, and I'm glad because I think it has. What I've learned since then in saying yes to other things is that even if that experience doesn't bring everything you'd hoped for or turn out quite the way you'd anticipated. It can very often open another door that wouldn't have opened had you not taken that leap of faith in the first place. So even now as an author I get invited to do lots of talks. Sometimes I'll say yes to one even though I'm not being paid for it. But because I really appreciate the organization that's asking me or the network that's asking me.

And I will always find something rewarding from that conversation and also something unexpected that might benefit me and the other party, like a really useful introduction or a really great recommendation for something that's gonna help me in something I'm working on. So I would always say yes to as much as you can and it'll open lots of doors.

[00:12:11] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, I love that. Whenever I'm on holiday, especially with friends. I've got this habit of talking to random people and they often laugh and say, oh, here he goes again. And often I'm talking to someone who's completely different to me. It could be, somebody who's a street seller, or it could be someone who does something completely different.

But I totally agree because you just never know where these conversations are gonna go. And what you might learn from them. And I've used that. Ethos as well in life, and I think it's a really valuable lesson for all of us, is don't be afraid to talk to people, especially those that are different because there's always an opportunity, lingering around the corner.

They come through those conversations sometimes, and even you and I talking earlier, as we started this episode, my brain was buzzing with ideas just from even that brief chat that we had. So yeah, totally love that. Right. I'm gonna get onto your book now because I'm super excited.

It's there in the background, so anyone that can see the video version of this, the future of time, so. You mentioned you started to think about the book and you started put putting together the brief. Tell us a bit more about that process of when you decided. You were gonna go and do this?

[00:13:26] Helen Beedham: Yes. So it followed a very particular process actually, because the person I mentioned earlier who had kind of helped this idea to take root in my mind, had already published her own books, and she mentioned her publisher to me.

Which is Practical Inspiration publishing led by the founder, Alison Jones. And she said, oh, have you thought about writing a business book and have you come across Alison because you know you can do her proposal challenge? So I thought never heard of that and went and had a little look online and thought, actually this looks fantastic.

And so what it is, it's three times a year that. Alison runs her business book proposal challenge where you participate, you pay a reason reasonably small fee to participate and every day for 10 days, she sets you a task to complete around building out a publisher ready proposal for your book.

And you get fantastic feedback from Alison, but also from your peers on that program as well. We will share kind of what our thinking and what we're doing. So I started off with the ambition of just. Just road testing. The idea for my book really I hadn't got, as far as a table of contents. I didn't know what was gonna actually fill the books pages.

I just had this idea and I wanted to kind of grow it and test it and stretch it and see if it had the potential to become a book. And I'm not gonna lie, it was a lot of work every day and some days were more meaty tasks than others. But I would say I did. Easily three months of thinking and researching.

In two weeks I just made massive progress on the whole idea. And you put together the. Title subtitle, which is How reworking Time can help you boost Productivity, diversity and Wellbeing. The table of contents, the back copy, you do competitor analysis and you think about the pricing and the marketing plan.

So it's a very comprehensive program and piece of work. And at the end of it I thought, gosh, this is, Sounding like it's got potential. I can see how this book could come to be written. I literally have my table of contents that I could then sit down and write each chapter, even if bits of it still had gaps to be filled in terms of research and stories and examples.

Completed proposals at the end of the two weeks period and offers them a full traditional publishing contract. And quite incredibly, she chose mine. So that's how I went very quickly from having an idea at the beginning to holding a publishing contract about kind of four weeks later really, and then spent the next nine months writing it in full. So, so that's how it came about. There are different routes for people. Some people can obviously self-publish, other people can go down what's called a publishing partner route, where you work with a traditional publisher, but you pay more of the costs upfront and get a bigger percentage of the net revenues from your book.

And there's lots of different publishers out there to go and approach. And often you need the whole proposal ready and maybe the introduction and a couple of chapters written as well so they can see how that's shaping up. So yeah, so it's the future of time and it's all about how the way we think about and manage our time at work is broken because it's not serving us well as individuals.

It's not helping us to be. Productive. It's damaging our wellbeing and the way we manage time is actually making it harder for certain kinds of people to get in and get on in their chosen careers. But I also make the point that it's not working very well for businesses either. Because it's damaging workforce wellbeing.

It's causing a lot of wasted time and they it's not helping organizations close some of their diversity diversity gaps, for example. And it, there's a real commercial benefit effectively to helping people invest their time that they spend in work every day, every week in more productive, rewarding, enriching ways, whether that's from achieving more, by working less hours, fewer hours, or by creating stronger teams, stronger communities, and more.

Satisfying, enriching work cultures. So that's what the book's about. And in it I talk about concepts like our time blindness, which is our inability to notice how we're spending our time at work and the fact we don't talk about it a great deal. And I give some examples of what I call our time norms, which are like cultural norms around time from the cult of busyness to not valuing downtime. As much as, valuing activity and time on a task. And then I set out the six traits of what I call time focused, time intelligent organizations. And I then get very practical and talk through 24 time solutions. So 24 different ways that organizations can. Use, invest their time much better.

And I think the big difference I would explain here is that I'm not talking about time management from an individual perspective, which is traditionally what people associate with the concept of time management. It's how I manage my day, et cetera, to be as efficient as possible. What I'm talking about is the wider context that we are all operating in because.

How I manage my time is yes, a great deal up to me, but I don't work in a little isolated bubble. Our work is so interdependent and so interconnected. We have to talk about the boundaries of what, how we interconnect with other people, and what we're all spending our time on, because otherwise we're missing a massive chunk of the picture.

And we're not fully in control of our time at work. In fact, a lot of people say they have very little control over their time at work. So I'm looking at it through a more organizational lens and saying, actually, how do you create organizations that are structured in a certain way that have certain work processes that are really smart about the tools and technology they use and whom really manage and develop and reward people?

In much better ways so that for every hour that people invest in work, they and the business are getting a far better return on it, on that time investment. So that's a quick cantor through some of the ideas and practical strategies in the book. And what, in the third part? There are three parts.

In the third part, actually, I get very practical and explain, okay. If you think you are suffering from some of these, challenges in your organization, then what do you do about it? And my answer is it's not a one size fits all approach. Much as you might love to take the answer off the shelf and say, here it is.

You have to figure out what's right for your business for your work culture, for your stage of maturity and for what it is you're trying to achieve. So I give people. Some frameworks and general approaches and lots of practical examples that they can use to then actually figure out, okay, how do we really make better use of our working time here in our team or organization?

Got it. Wow, that's

[00:20:51] Paddy Dhanda: sounds fascinating. I was just listening to some of the points you're making there and you mentioned there are some examples in the book about time intelligent organizations. Could you give us a couple of examples of those organizations and why are they good at this versus say, some of the more traditional organizations?

[00:21:11] Helen Beedham: Yeah.

I would say that there are very few organizations who are doing. All the kind of positive practices that I recommend consistently. Some do some aspects very well. Others do other aspects very well. Some organizations are being really creative about flexible working patterns, for example.

And there's a whole range of things. So here in the UK we've just had a very successful trial of the shorter working week, which is a kind of a working pattern that is the same for everybody. But what's great about it is it really forces teams and organizations to look at how are we spending our time at work?

What's getting in the way of being really productive and what's eating up our time? That's not worthwhile or rewarding in any way and getting much smarter about the way we work. So some organizations have had a lot of success with that. Recently, another organization, big engineering firm, Arab, has gone completely the other way and said, actually, we want to give our employees the freedom to manage their work in the way that best suits them across seven days. So you can choose to work Monday to Sunday, not seven days a week, but your contracted hours across seven working days. And I'm quite interested to hear how that's evolving. So a lot of this is about working hours, working practices, but also things like giving people autonomy and the ability to really focus on their work during their working hours. So some things that organizations are doing are freeing up. Working time at work because I dunno what your experience is like, but many people's experiences during the pandemic and since is that our diaries are just back to back with meetings the whole time.

And I'm consistently hearing that hasn't really gone back to pre covid levels. And so people are, starting their real work at the end of the day and therefore not really switching off. During the evenings and at weekends on, on holiday. So organizations are starting to wise up to this and say, we need to help people. Actually reduce the number of meetings they're in and reduce the distractions, whether that's physical distractions in our environment or virtual distractions, but messagings and stuff and help people focus for longer periods of time. So they do higher quality thinking and, and are far more productive.

So they're doing things like. Introducing meeting free windows. Maybe that's an hour every lunchtime. Maybe it's the first hour of the day. May even be for a whole day a week. Some recent research came out has been very powerful research showing that It looked at organizations that re reduce their meeting time. They either went to four, allowed meetings on four days a week, five days a week, three days a week, two days a week, or one day a week. And what they found is that two meeting free days per week was the optimum in terms of. It raised productivity by about 75% and really increased employee satisfaction by very high proportion and reduced stress as well.

So organizations are doing some interesting things like that around meeting time, around working patterns, but it's also about other aspects. It's about being really clear on what you're here to deliver. So being very outcome oriented. Also, looking at your structure of your organization and not having so many, perhaps standing teams, but pulling people together for.

Like pop-up teams and that, that disband when the work is done. So, lots of creative ways of thinking about this, but also thinking about how, what we're actually encouraging and rewarding people for as well. So, for example, around compensation and benefits, moving away from individual bonuses.

Particularly bonuses linked to overachieving or like for example, if you work in professional services environment, it's likely your, you've got targets around a certain number of hours. In the year that you have to spend billing to clients for income, you're bringing into the firm. Well, organizations are starting to say we are not going to give bigger bonuses to people for exceeding those targets because that is encouraging really long hours working, which is detrimental to people's wellbeing. And the quality of work that's being done. So instead we're gonna look at more team-based compensation where we're encouraging collaboration instead of internal competition. And we're re rewarding people around think teams around things they've achieved.

So it's really interesting. It's very multifaceted, is what I would say.

[00:25:57] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah. And again, some of the points you're making there were really resonating with me. Helen, like you mentioned about distraction, and I'm reading a book at the moment. I'm looking around, I think it's in the other room.

It's attention span by a lady called Gloria Mark. And she's she's an attention researcher and expert. And she quotes in her most recent research that the average attention span of a person is 47 seconds. That's 47 seconds of time that we're able to focus on one screen on our computers. And that could be a tab on a web browser, or it could be an app.

And you're right, there's just so much distraction at the moment that, people are constantly flicking between different things. And all of that has an impact on our productivity, which is really interesting. And I think, if organizations could put in some safeguards to enable people either to have that distraction time as being, you know what, that's okay.

You can have that and then you can have the balance of actually being productive would be super awesome. And I love the fact that you're talking there about different working patterns because I've not seen many organizations that I've come across really experimenting with this. So either the four day week or like you say seven days, like that would be interesting.

In terms of that research, like what have been some of the findings that you've seen there? What sort of improvement or benefits have people reaped from some of that way of working?

[00:27:28] Helen Beedham: Yes, I have seen research, but I also have heard people talking about this when I give talks and run kind of leadership workshops and things. I've heard leaders saying they've made a conscious decision, for example, to reduce the number of meetings they attend by 25%.

So they're being much more selective about. Which meetings they'll say yes to and why? And they're being much more demanding about, I need to see a clear agenda. I need to know what the purpose of this meeting is and why everyone invited is going. So I think there's some emerging awareness of really we, there are much better ways to use meeting time and we don't need to use as much meeting time as we think.

So, yes, I mentioned briefly the. Research into the benefits of fewer days a week where we have meetings on and the benefits of meeting free days. And I'm in fact interviewing myself one of the co-authors and researchers on that piece of work on my podcast coming up soon and gonna be, get, getting a bit more into the detail of that research.

But yeah, they found that, employee satisfaction shot up because. What people were appreciating was being trusted and given the autonomy to go away and or not to go away, but to use that time in whatever way they thought was most productive and beneficial instead of being tied to their calendar of meetings.

So, autonomy is a huge driver of wellbeing and satisfaction. So, allowing people more control over how they spend their time at work is beneficial in so many ways. We've got more freedom to concentrate, we can be more creative because as you said, we're not constantly switching between tasks and meetings, which is very detrimental to our cognitive functioning. There's something called the toggling tax, which is what it costs us to mentally switch between tasks or between apps. And yeah, every time we switch, there's a little delay for our brain to process that and catch up. So we lose this time. And some research researchers found that over the course of a week that adds up to four hours a week individually spent toggling. Well, if you annualize that, that's a significant portion of people's working time that is literally just being sucked away because of this constant switching. So I'm really encouraged that more organizations are starting to talk about overwhelm and cognitive functioning and looking after our brain's brain energy and brain performance as part of, mental health and wiser ways of working. But I think we do still need to have a lot more conversation about this. And this is really the whole notion of time intelligence that I talk about is actually becoming much more aware of how we're spending our time individually and collectively, and making much more thoughtful, conscious choices about that. Because for me at the moment, all the research and my own experiences of work. And listening to other people's experiences of work is we just don't really talk about that a great deal, and that sets up all sorts of problems.

[00:30:49] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah, and you know what, Helen, I wish we had more time, but we're fast approaching the end of this episode. Just before we go, could you leave us with a couple of resources that you'd recommend if people want to continue their journey and learn more about this topic? And also, I'd love to hear how people can get ahold of your book and find out more about you.

[00:31:11] Helen Beedham: Yes, sure. Thank you very much for asking that. So I can recommend a number of books if you are a book reader, a lover of books. One is Overwhelm by Bridget Schult. It's actually behind me. It's this yellow one here. And that's very good about the kind of the consequences of overwhelm on us and how to really cope with it as, as individuals.

Another wonderful book by Oliver Berkman is called 4,000 Weeks. I think it's time and how to spend it, which really looks about how we can. Make the most of the time we enjoy across our full lifespan. And if you're interested in the kind of the neuroscience, a bit of how our brains process time and what helps our brains to remember stuff over time and to process everything that's, Being thrown at it thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and Nobel Prize winning economist is just an, a fantastic book.

So lots of other book recommendations as well. If people want to get in touch and are interested in, exploring a different angle around this podcast. I'm a great podcast listener. Thoroughly enjoy listening to yours. Patty, it's been a delight to be tuning into your episodes regularly. And I, yeah, you mentioned I host my own, so I talk about this kind of topic a lot on my own podcast with a whole range of guests from business leaders, HR leaders business school professors, authors, and other workplace experts as well. And if people want to buy the book, then it's available on all major online book sellers. And there's some quick links to the various book selling sites on my website at helenbeedham.com/book. And you can also pop along to your local bookshop.

And if they haven't got it in stock, do ask them, mention it. A won an award this week and they might order in a few extra copies. But if you're thinking, actually, this is interesting and something I really do want to talk about with my team, or I think your, your leadership team or your clients might enjoy it.

Then if you want to buy a few more, do get in touch with me directly because I can arrange a bell order for you with a really attractive discount and if you want them signed as well, be very happy to do that.

[00:33:21] Paddy Dhanda: Awesome, helen. That's amazing. And hey, huge, congratulations once again for winning the award.

We hadn't planned this episode as a result of the award, so it's just great timing. I wish I could say like Helen agreed to come, straight after the award ceremony to come and talk to me, but it didn't quite work out that way. But I am very grateful that we got to talk about the book today.

So thank you so much.

[00:33:42] Helen Beedham: Thank you so much for having me. I've been really di I'm so glad we had this in the diary from some time ago and that we've managed to make it happen. So it's been a pleasure chatting with you, Patty. Thank you very much.

[00:33:51] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, you're welcome.

In this episode we delve deep into the fascinating world of habit formation and transformation. Join us as we explore the science, psychology, and practical strategies behind creating and sustaining powerful habits that can positively impact every aspect of your life. From building a regular exercise routine and healthy eating habits to fostering productive work habits and cultivating a positive mindset, we'll cover a wide range of topics to help you understand the mechanics of habit formation. You'll discover effective techniques for breaking bad habits, overcoming obstacles, and developing sustainable practices that align with your goals and aspirations.

Blaine Oelkers

Blaine Oelkers is a TEDx Speaker and leading authority in personal implementation and consistency. He is America’s only Chief Results Officer®. He’s a habit master with documented streaks of 1,810 days in a row and counting! As a top LinkedIn Connector he has over 27,000 1st level connections. Blaine graduated from Purdue University and Stanford University’s Social Entrepreneurship Program. He is powered by Selfluence, a personal development and training company. He is excited to share with you ways you can take control of your life by taking control of yourself.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chiefresultsofficer/

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Transcription:

[00:01:11] Paddy Dhanda: Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Superpower School podcast. I'm your host, Patty Danda, and on today's episode I have a guest who's from sunny Phoenix, and I'm really jealous because I know he'll be in a much better place than I when it comes to the weather, but he is a chief Results Officer, I believe he's the only Chief Results Officer in the whole of America. And he's a telex speaker as well as an author. So I'd love to welcome Blaine Okes to the show. Hey, Blaine, how you doing?

[00:01:42] Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, so thank you for having me on the show and yes, I am America's only Chief Results Officer, and I feel like I found my niche and so for me, I like to help people take control of their lives by taking control of themselves.

And I think I was born to do that, and when I figured that out, My life got a lot more fun and now I spend my days basically helping people with personal implementation. How do you get yourself to do those things that you know you should do, but also how do you get yourself to stop doing those things, you shouldn't do? I spend a couple decades doing that and I enjoy helping people kind of better themselves. Oh, I love

[00:02:17] Paddy Dhanda: it. So for this episode, Blaine, what superpower would you like to bring?

[00:02:23] Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, so I'd like to discuss the superpower of self fluence. So self fluence is the art and science of influencing yourself, or would I like to say the power you already have to influence yourself.

And by using that power, exercising that power, you can do things like create new habits in 21 seconds instead of 21 days. You can do something I call the 30 minute hour how to get an hours worth. Of stuff done in just 30 minutes or maybe perhaps even hack your head trash. We all have those kind of voices of doubt, those shadows in our minds.

But you can take control of all that stuff. And the nice thing about the, this concept of self fluence is that everything you need is within reach. You're already doing it. And if you decide, you can master it. So those are some of the, the backdrop to this superpower of self fluence influencing yourself.

[00:03:16] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, I love that. I definitely need the superpower blade, so I need to steal it from you somehow. So, really excited to hear more of your insights on just how we build the superpower. But before we do that, I'd love to know how you got into this space and your background, because your title was really intriguing and I'd love to know how you came up with that.

[00:03:38] Blaine Oelkers: I had a few moments of dawning comprehension, right, where we're kind of, you're never the same, the light bulb goes off and it's kind of that aha moment . And for me, The first aha moment actually came in college. And so I was attending per Purdue University which is in Indiana, and I saw this little ad.

Now, maybe like some of the listeners here, I've always been a seeker, like how could I do better seeker of knowledge and betterment? And I saw this ad that said I could send away for free. Audio cassette. Now I'm dating myself, so this is back in the eighties. Some of, you might have to look up what an audio cassette tape is.

But anyway, it was a little audio program you could send away for this audio cassette. And it was actually Earl Nightingale reading an abridge version of this book called Think and Grow Rich. So I got this audio tape. Listen to it. And I resonated with the concept. So I bought the book and I read the book.

And basically this book, think And Grow Rich. I created a little saying called Why tabba? What you think about, you Bring About. And that's what this book taught me, was that my thoughts dictate my reality and that now I couldn't change circumstance, but the way that I perceive circumstance and the thoughts that I carried around with me all day long kind of directed my mind not only my conscious mind, but my subconscious mind.

To be looking for those opportunities and those ways to bring those things about that I wanted to bring about. So that was a big one. Actually I met my wife, we've been married now 31 years. Met her at college and had a lot of success. So that was dawning comprehension moment number one. The second one came a little later in life I came home from a business trip.

And it was a rather long business trip. And my son, Beau, he was one year old, and I came home and he was like giving me the cold shoulder. And then I said, Beth, is Beau sick? Is there something wrong? He says, no, he's not sick, but you were gone so long. He kind of forgot who you were. And I was like, whoa.

Like emotionally that night. That hit me hard. And so that night I made this clarifying decision. I had kind of the moment of dawning comprehension. I said, you know what? You know my parents both worked. And so I would come home a lot of times to an empty house cuz my brother wasn't there. And I said, I'm gonna become a work from home dad.

Like no matter what, like whatever it takes now, it took me a year, but a year later I broke free. And I left my job. I had started two businesses at that point, and what happened then when I did that was 27 years ago. So now the kids are grown and gone. But what happened for me then is I took control of my life and I really was able to figure out, I.

Because I had so much more time figure out why I was on the planet. And it was to help people take control of their lives by taking control of themselves. I started a company called Self Fluence and I started helping people get results. And one of the mastermind groups, they said, Blaine, we're gonna call you the Chief Results Officer because we're getting results every week.

And this is a lot of fun. And so I said, I like that. So I went to the US patent and trademarked office and I said, the term was not taken by anybody. So I got the registered trademark, so meaning that no one else can use it. But me and that is now, the rest of the story.

[00:06:45] Paddy Dhanda: Oh wow. I didn't realize you'd actually patent the term, so that's amazing. I can't use that one now is it only in the US you've got the patent?

[00:06:53] Blaine Oelkers: Well, I think you may, internationally you may be able to use it if you want to but it's up to you.

[00:06:59] Paddy Dhanda: Awesome. I might do the same here in the uk.

No, I'm not joking. So, Blaine, for our listeners out there who might be interested in, I guess, building the superpower, like what kind of situation do you think, if somebody is in, would they need this superpower for, is it, for example, somebody who's looking to live a healthier lifestyle and they're may be finding it difficult to convince themselves to go to the gym?

Or is it some of the big habits that they're looking to build, like the bigger habits around maybe changing mindset at work, for example?

[00:07:38] Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, so all of the above. And so, these frameworks, like say the 21 second habit, will help you create new habits big or small, right?

And so we could kind of break down the framework but yeah, so if you wanna work out, start exercising, right? But you may also want to start something on the mental side as well, right? So you might wanna start a new habit of feeding your mind. Well, a lot of people, we all eat every day, right?

So unless you're, maybe you're fasting but most people you eat every day and you feed your body, right? But all, you're also feeding your mind, right? So I like to take a 30 minute mind meal every day, which could be Patty, like one of these podcasts that you do, right? But at the base of things, we are creatures of habit and most of the stuff that you do during the day is based on a previous habit that you either wired consciously or maybe subconsciously.

And so for you to be able to create a new habit instantly, basically in 21 seconds is pretty powerful. Now, neurologically it does take about 21 days neurologically for the pathways to begin to be created in your mind. For that habit. And it takes about 63 days to really fully hardwire that habit.

But there's a little bit of a hack here that we can use to create that new habit in just 21 seconds. So if you want, we can kind of dive into that and maybe run through some examples of that. I would love that.

[00:09:05] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah.

[00:09:06] Blaine Oelkers: Let's do it. So the first thing you have to realize is what I said at the outset about self fluence is that, everything you need is within reach.

You're already doing it and you can master it, right? And so I just wanna make sure people realize that their habit masters. So if I ask you, Patty, like in the last 24 hours, have you brushed your teeth?

[00:09:25] Paddy Dhanda: Yep. A couple of times.

[00:09:27] Blaine Oelkers: Couple of times. Nice. Okay. Now, how long have you had that habit?

[00:09:33] Paddy Dhanda: Well, since I can remember, I guess ever since I had teeth, so

[00:09:37] Blaine Oelkers: we're not gonna go we don't, we're not gonna ask you your age, but basically for decades, yes.

So for decades you've had this habit. So most people that I meet, unless you have dentures, you have that habit, right? So I want you to this base case of you are already a habit master. Don't let the little voices that tell you can't do it. Be there very long because you can do it cuz you did it already, right?

And so I tell the story, first story of how I discovered 21 second habits was through my wife. Now my wife, luckily this is past tense. She used to have nearly daily migraine headaches. And so the doctor said, okay, Beth, here's this headache log. You gotta fill this out every day. And it was like extensive, like, what are you eating?

What's the weather? What's the barometric pressure? All this data that they needed. And my wife could do it for a day or two. Then she'd forget. Then she would lose it. And she was getting really frustrated. I said, one night I'm watching her brush her teeth. And I noticed, I go, my wife Beth, she's like the official dentist recommended two minute brusher in the morning and at night.

And so the first key, there's three keys to the 21 second habit, but the first key is what's called habit linking. So habit linking is where you link the new habit to an existing habit that you're already a master at. No willpower required. So I said, Beth, look, let's take the headache log, put it underneath the toothbrush.

And now when you brush your teeth two times for those two minutes, you got four minutes of filling out the headache log. And you're never gonna lose it because it's always underneath the toothbrush in the bathroom. So she liked that idea. She started doing it, and she went for 90 days in a row.

90 days in a row of filling that thing out and the smile on her face when we went back to the doctor and she had that thing all filled out was priceless. Now she has a migraine only once every couple months, which is nice. But anyway, so that's the first key. Is habit linking and think about all the things you already do.

You wake up every day, you get dressed, you go to work, you have coffee, all these things that you can link to. So that's number one. So then I said, look, let me try this. This is all, it's gotta be practical and tactical. I don't want to talk about anything that's not practical and tactical. So I said, what new habits do I wanna start?

And there were two. One is I wanted to do this Bible app every day. And then the second thing was I realized that I took a physical shower every day, typically after I work out, but I didn't really ever wash my mind, so I wanted to take a mind shower. So I wanted to take a mind shower every day, every morning.

And I wanted to do this Bible app. And so I thought to myself, okay, what could I have it linked to? Like, what do I do every morning? Like, no willpower required, happens automatically. Don't have to think about it. And yes, it's the smartphone. I opened my smartphone without fail. One of the very first things I do.

And so what I did is on my smartphone, I moved all the apps off the homepage and I just put the two apps, this Bible app and an app called Headspace. Which is one you could use to take the mind shower. And so when I opened my phone, which happened every morning, I said I have to do those two apps before I'm allowed to touch anything else on the phone.

And that brings the second key is that one habit linking. So that, that happened every morning. But the second one is urge surfing. You have to surf. Some kind of an urge that you have a desire you have to do something to give you the energy, to push you through, to do that new habit. So for me, why did I open my phone every morning?

Well, my son lives in Denmark. He texts me in the middle of the night. I've got emails, I got orders that came in. I wanna know what's happening in the world, what's happening in social media, what's happening in my email inbox, right? All these things. I wanna know all that stuff. And I used that desire to push me to do that.

And today I checked right before our podcast here, and so today was day 1,807 days in a row that I did that habit. And I started it instantly just by habit linking to me opening my phone for the first time during the day. That brings us to the third one. So habit Linkings number one, urge servings number two.

And the third one is leverage to get a new habit to stick. Now, once you get past 21 days, it starts to form neurologically. 63 days. It's a little more hardwired, but to get it to stick, you need leverage on yourself. And so there's a few forms of simple leverage. One is what's called streak leverage. And once you get like, Three or four days in a row, you don't wanna break the chain.

You don't wanna break the streak, right? And so it's really kind of psychologically powerful to get that three or four days in. The second thing is that you can use rewards or penalties. So pain and pleasure both work. So rewards could be like, Hey, if I do this new habit for a week, then I'm gonna buy that book I wanted to read, right?

Just a little reward just a little something else to put out there. And then this flip side also works a penalty if I don't do my new habit, then I have to form some penalty. And a lot of times a spouse or a friend, they're happy to give you the penalty. No problem. They'll find it.

 so my wife she'll say, well, if you don't keep that new habit for the first week, you have to wash the garbage cans outside, which are these big garbage cans. She knows I hate to do that. And if she really wants me to do the habit, she'll say, If you don't do the habit, you have to wash the neighbor's garbage cans.

And they hate, they don't want you touching their stuff. So anyway, she can put a big enough penalty in there for me. So anyway you have some fun with that. But it's those three things. So it's the habit linking, the urge surfing, and then the leverage. I'll give one last example.

I was talking with an attorney friend of mine, Ann the other day, and she's like, Blaine, you always talk about next day planning. That's like my favorite thing is never let a day end without planning the next one. And she wasn't doing it. And I said, Anne, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Like, no willpower required. Automatically happens. She said I make a cup of coffee, have coffee. And I said, perfect. Take a pat of paper and a pen, put it on top of the coffee maker. You need a cue. Sometimes it's good to have a cue to remind you of, to have it. And I said, do you have that fancy machines that you know, grinds the beans and makes the coffee?

She goes, yes. I said, great. I want you to grind the beans, make the coffee, smell the coffee, but you can't drink the coffee until you start the plant. And so there, she's got the habit linking the urge to drink that coffee for her. And then I said, make a little reward.

So if you do this for a week, give yourself a little reward. So she's kind of, well on her way. So that is the 21 second habit framework. What do you think?

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[00:17:22] Shure MV7-2: Now let's get back to the.

[00:17:24] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, I love that. I was thinking about a few examples of how I could apply that in my own life and. One of the things I've struggled with, Blaine is making time to read.

I think for many years I've tended to shy away from reading because I just don't feel like I've got enough time in the day, or maybe there has been a lack of motivation sometimes, and I think subconsciously. I've been implementing a couple of those strategies, but without knowing it. So at night now when my kids start their reading just before they go to bed, we always make sure they have about half an hour or so.

I've tried to link my reading to their linking in a way it, so it prompts me to go, Hey, like since they're doing it, that's perfect opportunity for you to do it. It doesn't always happen, but I think. That's certainly something that's started to happen, but when you were talking that through there, I was just thinking in my own mind, what is the one thing that I do just before they start reading and it's actually brushed my teeth, so that might be a good one to

[00:18:37] Blaine Oelkers: link to that.

That's a good, those are good things to link to. And when you're starting a new habit. The other thing is that the more you can dial down the resistance to that habit, the more likelihood that you're gonna succeed. Now, I also say, I'd like you to win early and win often because, It's a battle of the brain chemicals here.

And if you can get on the other side, you can get the dopamine and the serotonin and the good happy brain chemicals going, which you get when you accomplish something or you do something that kind of gives you the energy to continue more, right? So if you said, look, I'm gonna read every night after the kids go to bed.

What I would tell you is make sure that you read every night. Even if you dial down the resistance to one, it's gonna sound ridiculous. One minute of reading. But that still gives you the win. And so a lot of people this works with like exercise, with any kind of habit that you fail at, dial down the resistance, right?

So some people will try to do exercise and they can't do 30 minutes, they can't do 10 minutes. I'm like, Okay, here's the deal. What's your favorite thing to do? Jumping jacks. Okay. Do five jumping jacks before you get in the shower. We're gonna count that as a workout because you've gotta win.

There's this biochemical thing that's happening that you, that as you start to win, then you can add more to it, right? So think about ways to dial down the resistance to that reading. And then again, any of those things. Search. So linking, you got the linking there, you have this desire. To read, why do you want to read, like kind of get yourself amped up to read, right?

And then also rewarded penalties, right? So you can put different, rewards or penalties in there to help you make it happen. And kids are great at penalties. Example is, I have this veterinarian surgeon friend of mine and I said, what new habit do you want? He says, I need to have the habit of going to bed before midnight.

And I say, how often do you go to bed before midnight now? And he says, like, once a week. And I said, okay, that's terrible. You're not getting enough sleep. And he said, you're right. And I just, start working way late into the evening. I said, okay, what's one thing your kids like that you don't like?

And he said, they constantly want to eat ice cream and I don't want them to eat ice cream all the time. And I said, that's great. So if dad stays up past midnight, the kids get to have ice cream. And so he told his kids that. So now it's automatic. Every morning the kids are like, dad, did you stay up past midnight?

Dad, did you stay up past midnight? They ask him every single day. And now he goes weeks without staying up past midnight, and he still stays up past midnight here and there. But it's dramatically different because that fun penalty. He's also teaching his kids, all about creating habits creating, contracts, honoring your word, and all that kind of stuff.

So, lots of fun ways to. To make this stuff happen.

[00:21:21] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, what a great story. I'm thinking. Should I try that? No. Better not blame, better not do that one. And do you think that there's a difference in terms of how effective these approaches are based on age? Like, are these principles universally applicable to any age or do you see that it's. Easier for certain people to form habits than others based on their youthfulness or age. Yeah.

[00:21:51] Blaine Oelkers: A great question. I think that neurologically, the wiring is there for everybody. And so typically the success rate comes down to the resistance or maybe a little bit of the pre-programming and the belief in people's mind.

But no, kids tend to do this stuff even faster and easier and better than adults because they don't have as many filters kind of blocking them or making them think they can't do head trash. I call it head trash. They have less head trash, but also, people could be dealing with different things, right?

 that's why I often talk about brushing the teeth so that people realize, yeah, I am already a habit master, right? But the opposite is true if they're telling themselves. I'm terrible at habits. I never keep a new habit. I never keep my New Year's resolutions. I never, well, what happens is what you think about, you bring about, and so them saying that to themselves over and over again.

Why is that in? And then your brain says, yeah, here, let me show you why that's never gonna happen. So I think you have to be careful. Now, we could I call this hacking your head trash. And there's two things with hacking your head trash. One, there's some tools you can use like in the moment.

When the head trash comes, and then there's tools that you can like proactively use long term. But my favorite tool of all is one that immediately. Flips your brain back around to the other side to start working for you instead of against you. Right? So if I say something like, I never have enough time, Blaine, I never have enough time to read Blaine and if I say that, then your mind says, you're right, Patty.

You never have enough time to read. You've got kids, you've got this, you got podcasts, you got blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So in that moment when you say that, yeah, I never have enough time to read. You wanna say two words? You wanna just say, yeah, but. And you Yeah. But yourself. And you can also Yeah.

But other people, you can, yeah. But your kids. But when you say, yeah, but, and pause now, your brain has to answer that. Yeah. But I am in control of my schedule. Yeah. But I could read it for just one minute, like Blaine said. Yeah. But yeah, but, and the answers. The flip side come to you, and if you start Yeah.

Butting yourself over time, it starts to happen automatically. Now in the beginning, it's a little hard for some people who've got a lot of head trash. You might have to ask someone else Yeah. But, and get their answers right. So now I'm a great yeah. Butt partner because I can quickly think of all these other sides of the equation.

But anyway. Butting yourself is a great way to kind of flip that around. But back to your original question. Yes. Good for all ages.

[00:24:20] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, fantastic, because I was just thinking like in the current age that we live in where everything's just so fast paced, where sort of our attention span seems to be shrinking, if I read a lot of the literature at the moment and there's so much distraction I look at my own kids and I think they have the attention span of a fly.

Like it's so difficult to get them to focus on something for a long period of time. And they probably don't have as much willpower as maybe I did at that age. I don't know. It's maybe a, an assumption I'm making here, but I just was thinking could it be more difficult for this new generation to really create new habits?

Because if they're not immediately getting some benefit from whatever the habit is, or they're not prepared to put in a little bit of hard work, then they may not continue with it. It'd be great to hear your experience of that.

[00:25:15] Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, I think I I see the both sides of that. Like today, it's a more distracted world than ever.

Right. And my phone can be a great tool, a great instrument of productivity and habits, like it is for me, but at the same time it can be highly distracting and it can be, there's social media and there's, there's different things there. So I think that though at the base case, people wanna take control.

Of their lives. And they can. And for example, I might do social media too much on my phone, right? So I have an option though leaps and little steps. I can take a big leap and I can delete the app, which I have done. Recently for this year. I deleted Instagram, sorry, Instagram now I can still get to Instagram on my computer.

If someone says, oh, I sent you something on Instagram, or look at Instagram, but it's not on my phone anymore. Right. So that's like a big step or little step is I do a lot on Facebook. Right. So Facebook and other apps that I feel like I don't want on the iPhone you can put apps together and put 'em in a folder.

So if I wanna go to Facebook, I have to scroll three pages, maybe four, can't remember. And then there's a folder. There's a folder that says, don't do this. It's inside that folder, right? So I've just made a little fun game out of it that I gotta scroll, I gotta find, I gotta go in there. So even that little resistance helps me to gain power.

But I think that, in this area of kids and the development, they're developing faster and technology is turning them into super kids. They're still as persistent as ever. They're still, when they want something, they are incessant. Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Are we there yet? And so as a kid I had that, and I wanted this. T r s 80 computer, and I just kind of badgered my parents till they ended up paying for half. I paid for half, they paid for half. But there's a persistence in there and there, there is a willpower for what they want.

Now, a lot of times kids don't know what they want, so you gotta kind of expose 'em to a lot of things to help figure it out. But then again, I think the same principles apply with kids. It's like dialing down the resistance, right? They can't hold their attention. Okay, so you can't hold your focus.

How long can you hold your focus for? We're gonna do a test. let's do meditation. Okay, kids, I'm gonna pay you to meditate and let's, we're all gonna meditate for one minute, and which typically they joke about it but the kids can do that.

 And they build up to three minutes and then five minutes, and then all of a sudden now they have the superpower to slow the world down when they want to, when they need to. We used to take our kids to restorative yoga, which was, they'd call it adult napping.

You get all these bolsters and different things and you basically go to sleep there. But someone is guiding you through all this relaxation, but it's a skill that they still have today, in their twenties. So I think the possibilities are there. And it's the guidance and it's the starting small, right?

Win, early, win off, and, starting with the minutes and then build it up. Even like turning the roll off. One of my favorite things to do is to go into airplane mode now. Now the outside world doesn't like that. It's not just for airplanes. I turn my phone on airplane mode and one day I forgot that I turned it on airplane mode and I had this great day.

Like, cuz it was my day, right? Nobody called me. Nobody bothered me. And it was like six hours later I realized I'm an airplane at, oops. So I turned my phone on, what happens? It lights up like a Christmas tree, right? All this stuff, it took me like only 30 minutes to triage all the mess from the day. And a lot of those things people.

Figured it out on their own, which was great. So I tell people do it and they say, I could never do that. They say, well, you took a plane ride before. You can do it. Do it for five minutes, and then build up. But doing it just for five minutes, they feel like they won.

And when you win, it just starts this spiral of good chemicals, and then you do it for 10 minutes and then 20 minutes, and then sometimes you only have five minutes again. That's okay. But you build up and you build that success and things just start to get better for you when you do that.

[00:29:07] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, I love that. And just going back to your example of putting your apps in a folder. I've done that with WhatsApp and I have to say it definitely works because I now. Have to look through the phone and figure out where the app is, and it's almost like a game. And I've also turned off the notifications on that one app.

 Because I was just finding myself constantly, soon as I'd see something ping up on the screen, I was like checking it out immediately. But now, I'm much more sensible about it. I try not to just keep looking at my phone anymore. and I love the airplane mode as well.

That's a great tip. I just wish we had a human version of that. Like, I, if I could click something in my head and just. Turn on airplane mode, that would be super awesome.

[00:29:49] Blaine Oelkers: You can build that up as a superpower to be able to turn the world off. And on my phone, my family doesn't like this, but my phone has no rings, dings, or bings.

Like, it never makes a sound. So it's all off, all the notifications everything's off. Now if I proactive, I can go in and see what's going on, but if someone's trying to call me or reach me, sometimes they can't get to me. But you can begin to push the world back.

And the other thing I studied people at the end of life the last few weeks and they all said the same thing. They all said, I wish I had more memorable moments with the people I love now, the people they love. A lot of times it was family, but sometimes it was friends, sometimes it was coworkers, but just more memorable moments with the people they loved.

It wasn't about getting more work done. Answering more emails or even building bigger fortunes. It was memorable moments with the people they loved. That was it, that was the stuff that life was made of. So I often encourage people to have more of those moments and whenever they can and push the world back.

To do it is fine.

[00:30:49] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, that's such a lovely way of putting it. Blaine I really like that. Now you've worked with lots of people. Throughout your time and could you give us some examples of where these approaches have really worked? And if you could give us maybe one or two stories of people that have used these principles and how it's helped them.

[00:31:13] Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. Let me go back to my friend Phil. He's the veterinarian surgeon. And I've got some different programs but I have this one program called a Day Ahead experience. And basically what that program is, it's a program to help people move from and this is mostly for business owners, but anybody could do it, but most people and many business owners, they find themselves a day behind.

Or even more than a day behind. And so it's using all these frameworks that I talk about, 21 second habits, 30 minute hours, hacking your head trash to move from being a day behind, to just being behind, to being ahead Up basically then being ahead and then being a day ahead. And so, not a super easy process.

So this was something that took about two years for Phil to go from being behind to being ahead to being a day ahead. And he went from, working about four days a week. Now he works only two. So he got himself to where now he's a day ahead, and so this day ahead living, which is where I like to live and I'm there most of the time when I come back from a vacation.

Maybe I'm not there that those few days, but most of my life is live the day ahead. Meaning when I wake up, I might have some appointments like to do this podcast, but like there's nothing that has to be done for day. And I'm working on stuff for tomorrow or for next week. And so life is better a day ahead.

And so for Phil, yeah, that now he's got more time with the family he can control his sleeping habits better. He's getting a lot more done and he's just a lot happier because he made that transition. Now it's getting rid of some of the head trash and figuring out like, What is really important and urgent, there's urgency and importance but what's really important in life and how do you compartmentalize and reduce the urgency and the push on your life from other people so you can open up the important stuff in your own life and that takes some time to do and some wrestling with life a little bit.

And periods of out of balance. But that's an example of one of those journeys of doing the work, going in and moving himself from being behind to being ahead and then being a day

[00:33:12] Paddy Dhanda: ahead. Ah, fantastic. Blaine, we're running out of time, but my kids have convinced me to buy a dog.

And we'll be getting the dog very soon and I can just see me having to create lots of new habits. Things like waking up extra early, taking the dog out for a walk, all of these good things. Any advice you've got for me?

[00:33:34] Blaine Oelkers: Well, so my kids did that to me and when the dog came, I had no responsibility.

I paid for the dog, but I was supposed to do nothing else for the dog. And I ended up having to do many things for the dog. But I will say this what I love most, and we just moved into a new home, so we're about to get a dog. Once we kind of settle in What I like is the unconditional love of that dog.

And so what I did is, yes, I was the one that typically would take the dog out in the morning. But what I did is I have it linked doing this form of it's something called Chi Gong, which is kind of like a Tai chi, it's kinda like an exercise program with breathing and kind of moving energy around your body.

But I would go out with Buddy, our dog, and I would do that every morning with him, and he'd go around and do his business outside. But I haven't linked things that were good for me, with doing the stuff for Buddy. I would also use that as a break for me. Like, I work from home so taking Buddy out, taking Buddy for a walk, those are all great times for me.

I, have fond memories of that getting out of the office, getting out into the fresh air. So wherever you can that would be my advice for you would be to have it link stuff like that, but then also try to bring in the kids, try to teach your kids lessons, that are learned from the dog.

And when if the dog does something wrong, how do you handle that? I mean, there's a lot of life lessons that can be learned from caring for a pet. And I think you're about to embark on those. And it's gonna be fun. Not always easy but can

[00:35:00] Paddy Dhanda: be fun. Oh, thank you so much.

Some great advice there. Blaine before we wrap up, I'd love to ask you where can people find out more if they want to build habits and actually get to know more about these principles that you've talked about today? And how can they get in touch with you?

[00:35:18] Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, the easiest thing is just go to blaine tedx.com, so B L A I N E T E D x.com.

And there you can opt in. I did a TEDx talk all about white table, what you think about, you bring about, and you'll get a copy of that. And then we'll be connected. So you'll have my email address if I can help you or serb you in any way, be happy to do it. I do write a lot of articles and have a lot of kind of teachings and things like that.

So you'll gain access to all that by just going there. Blaine tedx.com. Oh,

[00:35:44] Paddy Dhanda: brilliant. Thank you so much, Blaine. I will be signing up myself because I definitely need these tips as I go forward with these new adventures with with our dog. And I'll let you know how we get on, but thank you so much.

It's been a pleasure to get such practical advice. I think this has been such an enjoyable episode for me because you've just shared so many golden nuggets that I think we could all do with. So thank you.

[00:36:09] Blaine Oelkers: Thank you so much, Patty, for having me on. I'll lead the listeners with this. The bad news.

The bad news is time flies the good news. You're the pilot. So pilot. Well, my friends pilot well. Oh, what a

[00:36:20] Paddy Dhanda: great way to finish. Thank you so much.

We delve into the concept of developing a professional edge. We discuss a practical framework to help you build your professional edge by looking at our Inside Edge, Outside Edge, and Leading Edge. Additionally, we touch upon the power of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) in understanding and shaping our subjective experiences, enabling personal growth and fostering collaborative relationships. Don't miss this insightful episode packed with valuable insights for building your professional edge.

Kerry Nickols (Chief Mischief Maker & NLP Master Practitioner)

Kerry worked within Banking in the Financial Services industry sector. Throughout her career she worked in the front office, middle office Finance, Legal, Operations and Technology. It’s fair to say she knows her way around a Corporate environment. She now inspires leaders to reach their fullest potential. She is an award-winning leader through her work in diversity and inclusion. With more than 20 years’ hands-on experience working in the financial services industry she understands these challenges and opportunities facing leaders in the Age of Digital. Her internationally-focused work designing and implementing bespoke leadership and coaching programmes has afforded her the opportunity to learn what the difference is that makes the difference for people and organisations. She is a mischievous explorer of hearts and minds and enables growth and positive change.

Website: KEPAGA

Email: [email protected]

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Transcription:

[00:01:06] Paddy Dhanda: Hey folks. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Superpower School podcast. I'm your host, Paddy dda, and on today's episode I have a special friend who I've been trying to get on the podcast for. Probably months and months, but we finally made it happen. She is an n l master practitioner, a trainer, a leadership coach, and a the co-founder of Kaga where her. Official title is Chief Mischief Maker, which I prefer rather than all those other fancy titles.

And she's someone who we always have a running joke, was probably Indian in her last life as well. And we'll reveal all on that. But I just wanna welcome the amazing Kerry Nichols to the show. Hey Kerry.

[00:01:54] Kerry Nickols: Oh, thank you, Paddy. Thank you. I was thinking about two things then just in those introductions.

When I first set up KEPAGA, I had another business just before then. But my background has always been, as an employee in a corporate environment, investment banking generally. And I never, ever, in all that time in my. I dunno, 20 odd years of working in investment banking, never got to choose my title.

It's always a title that's given to you. So as soon as we set up Kaga and we thought, well, we were once asked, what is your title? And I thought, actually I don't have fun and I can make it up. So, I would say that. More people connect with me on LinkedIn and just say, I love your title. Chief Mischief Maker.

It connects me with more people than I think anything else has.

[00:02:46] Paddy Dhanda: That is super cool. I love that. I know, again, you got my attention straight away when you said that for the first time. And I think more of us should do that, right? We should kind of, explore different titles. I was speaking to a colleague just recently and they were thinking of what title to give themselves and they were looking at a really grand title and I tend to agree with you, I think make it interesting.

[00:03:08] Kerry Nickols: For sure. There was some research done. And the idea came from a book that I read where it said that if we only look in our professional lives and the things that we do, if we only ever look at that in terms of the role that we do, we miss out on, on the mission that we're on and who we are and.

The kind of uniqueness that we bring to the table and that never gets explored because you have a corporate title. It might be VP engineering, you know that. But what does that doesn't really, that just kind of. Buckets you into something. And I get it. Matrix organizations, large, massive organizations, need some way in which to do that.

But I would also love to see that, if people were just explained a little bit about what they do or that, what they really bring that's the whole point for me is about professionals. And this human side of being a professional, you know that's where the future's headed. And I think these little things that we can do make all the difference.

[00:04:14] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah. Which brings me onto the superpower you'd like to bring to this episode.

[00:04:19] Kerry Nickols: I'd like to bring having an edge as a professional, so a real, like professional edge. I always felt in my career that there were certain things that I would. Learn like technical skills, domain skills industry skills, all of that great stuff and the knowledge that goes along with that, and the practical side of that and how you do it really well.

But the rest of the staff. Always seemed to me to come through the school of hard knocks, and that was the whole people leadership. Making connections, getting the best out of people your own resilience. All of that stuff was kind of left to chance and some people made it, some people didn't.

And I never really bought into that school of thought. And I guess that was really the basis of Kaga starting was the fact that. Especially now in the world of, AI technology, machine learning, we are all shifting and the VUCA landscape, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, all of that locked together to me is just showing a very clear path that as humans, The world of work can be really exciting.

So rather than a potential fearful approach of these things, that it just opens up a whole different set of avenues of how we work and what we bring to it. Which is why I think now the narrative of, the soft stuff being the weak stuff has just been blown out. The water which I'm loving because you know That's what we do.

I love the whole human side and untapped potential. And a belief that I hold is we're not our finished product. The fun is in the making. And so wherever we are on whatever journey we're on, it's, it doesn't end, there isn't an end point. It's this kind of, it is motion, it just continues.

[00:06:20] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, I love that. And. The mission of this podcast has always been about focusing on those human skills. So I think we're a perfect match for this episode, Kerry, and for those that don't know about your background, and I know you've alluded to some of your previous experiences there, could you give us more insight into that?

And if you could connect the Indian side as well for us in that story, that would be great.

[00:06:44] Kerry Nickols: Do you know what I have with me? I'm not sure whether it even gonna be on video, but I after your mum's lesson in chapati making roti making, I understand that chapati was the English word roti making.

Yeah. I have this and I also have, my filled little tin here as well. Of all my goodies. Oh,

[00:07:05] Paddy Dhanda: wow.

[00:07:07] Kerry Nickols: So let me connect those dots. In terms of background I kind of in a way stumbled across. Banking. I joined a Japanese bank as my first kind of foray into banking and I always believed that maths wasn't my strong point.

And I would like to say that's been blown out of the water, but it hasn't, maths still isn't my strong point. I actually, I joined banking in a legal department. I found that what I loved was being able to interpret legal language into something that could be practical. And if you think about a transaction or a deal, it would be about, well, we've got legal.

And we've got operations and we've got maybe finance and we've got, the front office and we've got all these different areas. And my job at the time was kind of to interpret everything that everybody said to get a deal out to market. I found myself being able to flex with all of those different groups.

In a way that I could understand exactly what each of them meant, to be able to put something together that could actually get out to market and be bought. And so I started that and picked that up really quite quickly. And then was headhunted to go to another bank. So I was there for two years and got headhunted and.

At the next bank was where I stayed for 18 years. And I think a couple of things happened in that. One was that I was asked to set up a new business within that the States it's so a completely different country. Secondly, I remember in the financial crash, kind of waking up one morning and thinking, actually I don't work for the same company anymore.

We've just been, we've merged overnight. And having the task of being able to bring like two really big banks together. And at that time I worked in the finance department and I think throughout. All of those experiences is where I started to really yearn for personal development.

It didn't seem to me like it was professional development. It was personal development that I needed in a professional setting because it was gonna be about, how I communicated or how I connected with others or, how I felt about different situations and whether that be from a psychology perspective, a philosophy, a sociology, a lot of it was about understanding my own values and beliefs.

How that would then make a difference, because those are really the drivers of our behaviors. So I think that I probably got really intrigued by this whole human notion of stuff and the world of work before it started to become a thing. I just had a natural intrigue in it and an interest.

And so, back in. 2015 I left a wonderful paid job where which I enjoyed. I really enjoyed my career in the city. Absolutely loved it. And I think I, I had some, really great experiences. And I left there knowing that what I wanted to do was to be able to offer the development opportunities to others that I couldn't find for myself.

And and that was really what led to us setting up Kaga. So that was a little bit about my background and how India came into all of this. I guess was a dear friend and a colleague back in my 18 year career at at Merrill Lynch. And she was a really wonderful woman. I really admired her.

She was born in the uk, her parents were from India. And we connected on lots of different levels. And she got into this thing called N L P. And she said to me at one point, she said, oh, Kerry there's some stuff that I really like how you do it, and I'm doing this thing called N L P. And within N L P, there's this element of modeling and I'd like to model you on some of the things that I see you do, and I just thought that one, I was blown away by the compliment when there's no bigger compliment is there than not just somebody feeding back to you to say, Oh, I like what you did there.

This was, I like what you did there, and I wanna learn from you how to do it. That was the first time that I'd ever heard something quite as, as powerful in feedback. And so I was blown away. Of course, the next question that she asked for was maybe a bit of funding and some time off to do the course.

So I'm not too sure if the two things were connected. But we did this thing called modeling and we got on so well anyway, we ended up kind of going in different directions. And she invited me to her wedding, which was in India. And that was the very first time that I traveled to India for this amazing wedding.

And ended up traveling kind of down south and then mid to India. And I think in that time one I've always loved traveling. I actually took a sabbatical when I was at Merrill Lynch for quite some time to just travel the world. So through Russia, Siberia, Mongolia into kind of central Asia and then off to, gosh, where else did I go?

Anyway, lots of places, but basically Trav did around the world trip and In all of that, I have really got to love in a way, seeing how small the UK is. I really feel like I'm a. Global citizen. And now whenever I go to India, I feel like I'm going home. There's just something in me that says, yep, you are on route.

You know that warming feeling that you get when you are going somewhere that is just so culturally rich and. Colorful and people and food. Now I know how to make roadies. So, yeah and of course our work together, Paddy as well. And just spending time, together in India and being able to design, develop, and deliver the kind of courses that we did, which were all about mindset and humanness.

They were less about the technical aspects. I think if we can get people passionate about, a concept or a, or something that they're gonna be doing, if they feel like they've got a calling and a mission where they're headed, then the rest of it becomes easy. That's the bit that we need to kind of, that we need to work on.

So that was the connection with India and a bit my background.

[00:14:29] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, brilliant, Kerry. And I mean, that's a, that's amazing journey that you've been on, especially that corporate world and then being brave enough to take that leap of faith and setting up on your own and now you've set up and co-founded this great organization, Kaga and on the India side, that was quite interesting as well.

When you and I were there, I just remember coming down for breakfast. And as I love my Wier Bs for breakfast. And I think the rest of the staff in the hotel were quite shocked because across the table they see the English person with a whole array of different Indian dishes. And and there's me with my Wier Bs.

And so there's a kind of a contrast there of cultures and I think somewhere should have taken a photo of that would've made a great piece of art just even. That moment of seeing those two contrasting meals. I had a brilliant time, honestly, Kerry when you and I were out there and and I have to say, Kerry is the one person that I've met who can eat chilies.

Like she drinks water. That's just, dunno what you have in your blood there, Kerry.

[00:15:40] Kerry Nickols: And as you saw, my son is a tip off the old block, as they say. He loves his spice and really lucky when we were delivering some stuff in in India and. I was also going to a conference and it was about the same time as the holiday season.

So I was lucky to take Lenny to India and people would say, oh, would you like something else? And it's like, no. Breakfast was curry and doses

[00:16:09] Paddy Dhanda: Just when we were together he was perfectly fine with the spice, and yet my wife had tears in her eyes and I was just like laughing my head off because I knew I was coming.

She didn't, and she fell for it. Oh, no. Brilliant. So Kerry, talking about this kind of personal edge, tell me more about that, because. Initially I was thinking, are you gonna be talking about personal branding? But I don't think that's what you're getting at here. So could you lift the lid on that a little bit more for us so we get to understand what that really means?

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[00:18:13] Shure MV7-2: Now let's get back to the.

[00:18:15] Kerry Nickols: Maybe a way to explain it is if we think about our skillset, our minds might go into our specialism, the thing that we do, and we might place a label. On that thing. And then we might place a label on the, maybe the industry that we're in or the domain skills.

So basically we'll have like specialism, we'll have technical, we'll have domain skills, we'll have a whole load of stuff, which kind of places us. Maybe where we are today and and all of that is important, but it's the rest of the staff that gives us a professional edge. So if you saw a really great engineer let's take an example of a, of an engineer.

I've got somebody actually that's, is spring into mind at the moment. So you get somebody that's a great engineer and that is great technically, but they also have an ability to empathize with colleagues and customers. They also have an ability to maybe story tell. They seem to have a wonderful amount of resilience and I've gotta be careful with the word resilience here, because sometimes I think people think that resilience is, you take on more and you just don't crumble.

So you kind of creak at the thing, holding the weight of everything. I certainly don't mean that. I mean how do you re-energize yourself? What's the energy with everything else going on in life because. It's not just the work side of things is just one angle of who we are.

So I think that. All of these other things, if we take that one person and you think to yourself, wow, that's somebody that I could learn from or that I'm excited to be around, what does that take? If you are motivated in that way by somebody that you come across, that's how we would say that's a professional edge.

And so it's very different to a technical skill. We actually describe it on three levels. So there's the inside edge. How are we feeling about things? What's the values and beliefs that we hold? Where do we personally aspire to kind of head towards and, our own vision.

What mission are we on? What do we. Wants to bring to the table that's really gonna make a difference and helps us to feel fulfilled in the work that we do, rather than waiting for retirement. What's the stuff that kind of excites us? So there's a massive piece of self-awareness in there.

And being able to kind of understand maybe some of the, our own patterns and strategies and things that we run. So there's the whole kind of inner game, the inside edge. Then there's also the outside edge. So the outside edge is all about how we connect with others, the the rapport that we gain.

If we are in a team, what do we bring to that team that's outside of our specialism? What are those gifts that we can kind of gift into that? So the outside edge is all about, it's gonna be trust. It's gonna be how we interact. It's gonna be our style of communication.

And then the leading edge, which is the last kind of element in that professional edge is we don't mean leading and then there's a follower. It's about how we unlock potential in others. Everybody's got untapped potential. So, isn't our role as leadership to help others to fulfill that potential?

I just wanna kind of take a pause on that word leadership for a moment, just like I did on resilience because I think as we progress as professionals, I think there are some pretty big realizations that are happening and they're certainly only for me. Really have only happened in like the last five to 10 years.

So I think one is about resilience, whereas before it was stiff upper a lip. Now we talk about the energy difference and how we re-energize, what we might need to bring our best selves, that kind of thing. Leadership is similar. I think when the narrative between management and leadership started to happen, it was as if they were the same thing.

And now I quite like the definition, which I think it was Amy Edmondson. might be Amy Edmondson. Might, bere Brown, one of them. But they said that leader equals role and leadership is the set of behaviors thinking. Kind of feeling human sentient being that we are. And so when I'm talking about leadership, It's not the role that you are in, cuz we might think of that as being seniority.

I think of leadership as being at all levels. It's the professional edge, whether you are on a graduate scheme or whether you are kind of way up there. From a seniority and a maturity perspective in an organization. The leadership stuff is what we are talking about here. So three elements that make up the professional edge.

[00:23:35] Paddy Dhanda: I love that there's those different layers because when we use that sort of term it feels like, well, is it just about me? Is it about other people? Like where do I start with that? And so if somebody did want to analyze and I guess, start to reflect on their professional edge.

What's a good starting point for, say someone like me? I've got maybe a couple of things that I'm really passionate about that are my specialisms, and now I want to build these other aspects to my overall skillset. Where might I start?

[00:24:10] Kerry Nickols: Good question.

The first thing that's springs to mind is we've actually created a little school card for people if they are interested. So, because that question came up a lot, okay, I've connected, I know now what you mean by professional edge. Where do I start? What do I do? So we actually, we created a scorecard, I think a lot of these things give you some form of right or wrong answer.

And having a professional edge is so unique and subjective to the individual that there isn't a right or wrong. So therefore, the scorecard that we created was much more about being able to reflect on a set of questions that would lead you to consider some things in that space. So you're not gonna get, is this right or is this wrong?

It's a. What are you thinking? What's your current thoughts around, resilience or when do you notice that you are least resilient and when do you notice that you are most resilient and what is resilience to you? So therefore, I would say for sure take the score card because at least it will give you some areas in which to reflect.

But I also think that there, there is now some. So much out there in maybe little pockets of places. So I think, some wonderful books out there that are, really enlightening. I think TED Talks are something else that's really enlightening, but I think if you're gonna do some of this kind of reflective space just for yourself, I would probably break it down into those three areas.

So inside edge, outside edge, leading edge. So inside edge would be reflecting more on kind of who you are as a person and where you want to head to. So a great little technique for doing that. It's just to think to yourself, well, if I'm in three years time and then you find a spot somewhere in the room where three years time would be and just go and stand in that spot.

The physical movement of moving to somewhere. All of a sudden your mind starts to go, oh, so it's that, that I'd quite like, and you are not gonna get from that little exercise. You are not gonna get, my next career move my, where I'm gonna be living, you know what kind of relationship I'm gonna be in you.

You're not gonna get the specifics, but you might get a little bit of a flavor that says one. It's achievable cuz if I walked there, then I'm able to get there. But secondly, when you look back from a place in the future and you look back to now, your mind has to create a pathway as to how to get back. So it's a really neat little tool just to start exercising what you might want for the future by stepping into it now.

What you're seeing, what you're hearing, how do you feel about where you are in that three years on spot?

[00:27:19] Paddy Dhanda: I was gonna say that's a bit of a technique I use when I'm speaking sometimes if I'm talking about the past and the present and the future, and I'll actually physically move.

Across the room just to get the audience to almost visualize the past and visualize the present. But that's more of a presentation technique. But I can see how that would be super useful to do when you're reflecting on your own future really is what you're saying. So you are taking yourself into that space.

I know you're a N L P master practitioner, and for anyone who doesn't know what N L P is, it'd be great just to get your view on that, your quick summary of what it is and how can N L P help with the professional edge as well in building that professional edge.

[00:28:04] Kerry Nickols: Good question.

So N L P is neuro linguistic programming, not natural language processing. Although I say they're different things. The more that I'm learning about natural language processing, the more that I'm seeing the the synergies between the two. But let's stick with neurolinguistic programming.

So, There are many definitions and descriptions of N L P. The one that I have chose to stick to is that it's the study of the structure of subjective experience. Now that's gonna take a lot to absorb, so let me break that down a little bit. You and I we're gonna be very unique individuals with different thought patterns.

We would've had different experiences. We would've come through our careers in different routes. So therefore, what we bring to the table is a very subjective unique us, which is great. Now. Because we have these experiences, these subjective experiences we grow a real empathetic lens for each other because of the fact that we recognize that how I might come at something is not the reality of the world.

It's just my reality. And that is really freeing and empowering. But it's also, Safe to say that we are creatures of habit, and so the way that we do one thing is often the way that we do many so, Understanding ourselves is kind of rule number one. When it comes to N L P. We get to really understand ourselves in a kind of deeper way.

And because we can create so much empathy by holding the belief that we are all so unique. We can be curious about others and kind of unlock that intrigue as to, well, actually my way isn't gonna be the way is it? It's gonna be probably a collective of all of us together. That's gonna maybe shape something together.

So the ability to be collaborative comes I think comes from holding the belief that each of us are unique and therefore we'll all have a different take and can all bring something different to the table, whether that's our thoughts, our values, our beliefs, even our order of our values. What are we prioritizing at any one given time.

So going back to that definition the study of the structure of the subjective experience and the structure bit being that if we recognize something in ourselves that is familiar or something that we do fairly often, Like, I, I'll give you an example for me. So years and years ago, the thought of being on a podcast either on video or even just the sound would've been unimaginable for me because I had such a horrific fear of I can't even say it was public speaking.

It wasn't, a fear of being up on stage. It was just a fear of. Eyes on me, I would crumble. And it was horrendous. Now I knew that was something that I had formed over time. And, a set of experiences that may or may not be traumatic. We're not talking about kind of trauma per se here, but even.

A lot of people stem their fear of public speaking from things like having to put their hand up in school and getting an answer wrong. And from that point it's like, oh, I didn't like that. I've got the answer wrong. I'm really embarrassed. And you create these kind of string of things that finally gets you to this point that says, it's okay, Kerry.

I'm gonna keep protecting you. so therefore, you never put yourself forward for these opportunities because that's happened. So therefore that is a structure, that's a structure that's happened. It was very known to me. I was very good at it. I was very good at avoiding, speaking to people.

I was very good at avoiding eyes on me in any situation really. And I formed these kind of new strategies to avoid the thing that was painful. But I knew that for me to progress. I needed to change something, so my subjective experience had a structure behind it, and by studying it I could change it.

And that's N L P.

[00:32:44] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, brilliant. Thank you so much for that, Kerry. And I totally relate to that kind of anxiety you mentioned about putting yourself out there. I think I was exactly the same. What's been really interesting for me is as I've had to edit the episodes myself, You have to hear your voice in your ears again and oh my God is so cringey.

When, at first, when you're listening to yourself, and I can't even imagine me editing this part of the podcast now, and I'm gonna be like, oh, why did I sound like that? Why did I say that? It's amazing. And. I've talked to other guests as well, people who are enacting, for example, and I say to them like, so do you watch yourself on the screen, on the big screen or on the TV when you are in a movie or whatever.

They're shooting and they're like, no, I hate seeing myself. I hate watching myself back. And I'm like, why is that? Why are we as people really scared or not so confident of those things? It's just, Nuts. That's all I can say is it's just nuts. Why do we do that to ourselves? And even now I'm not fully confident about hearing myself back, but you kind of deal with it and you do get to get better with it, but it's still cringey for sure. Yeah.

[00:33:57] Kerry Nickols: And the choice point as to what you do with that, like for me I didn't do anything with it for a very long time, and I thought that it would either go away or I would just find a way of kind of dealing with it.

And that never happened for me. It got to a point where it just became so, Limiting that the pain of the limitation outweighed the pain that I was going through. And I thought, hold on a minute. I've gotta do something different here. So I think the choice point is always, I.

We can do nothing about it. We can immerse ourselves in it. And therefore the kind of repeatable action of it in the hopes that we feel differently about it and I think those things have been the go-to for a long time, but actually there's this whole other kind of realm of possibilities in which.

We can explore that in a different way. So I think one, the self-awareness, so, what's the secondary gain that we are getting from? Our response to that what is it that we are not liking about our voice? Is there a different frame that we can place on that.

And also that this thing of poaching, whether it's self coaching, and just the ability to coach yourself and that point of not feeling confident. Confident is a belief at its core is either a belief in a skill or an ability. Or it's a belief much kind of deeper than that.

It's the belief in ourself. So in any context that we are kind of dropped in, how do we feel about us? What do we believe in ourselves at that? Given moment. And I think exploring those types of things, either self-coaching or just thinking about the self-awareness around that.

Or getting a coach or going on things like N L P or and not just N L P. This is where right at the start of the podcast we were talking about this difference of professional development and personal development. And I think for so many years professional development has been the thing that organizations Have focused on, and that professional development might tell you the three golden steps of presenting in front of a audience.

What it will never do is give you the personal side of how your subjective experience of presenting. And so now with the world of work as it is what's required and what's expected and also. Not even just the heaviness of expectation, but just who, we want to be fulfilled as professionals and enjoy our working life and, make a difference and help others and do all the things.

Get great products out there, you know, be part of something really special. Most of us, I think, would like at least part of that, if not all of it resonates. So therefore, How our uniqueness becomes even more important in this space. So I think for many years, development has really missed a trip where it's just been about the specialism, it's just been about the framework.

It's just been about the domain expertise. And yet we've got these like wonderful human beings that could do so much for ourselves, for our mental wellbeing, for our own health, for our families, for the organization, when we do that level, I think of personal development.

It benefits or benefits society, the globe.

[00:37:46] Paddy Dhanda: Everywhere. Absolutely. And talking about benefiting society. You must have coached plenty of people. And can you give us an example of somebody that is particularly memorable for you, who went through this journey and then out on the other side?

It's completely transformed their life. Without giving names, obviously, cuz I'm sure some of your clients want to keep that kind of quite sensitive and confidential. But can you think of an example of someone that really sticks out for you, that went through this whole journey around their professional edge and came out on the other side that you thought, wow.

[00:38:29] Kerry Nickols: Yeah I think without giving too much away, the person that I'm thinking of I had the pleasure of working alongside them for some time and I always thought of them being, somebody that certainly that, inspired me. I think what they already brought to the table was a real raw honesty and openness. And and they were great technically and from their specialism and all of that stuff was great. But actually we held a few coaching sessions. And in those coaching sessions, I think what became very apparent was that there was just so much more. I think sometimes people think that coaching comes from a space of There's a problem, coaching is a way to solve it.

And yes, of course that can be the case. But it also can be just the good to great. So she basically realized the limitations that she was placing on herself, and it partly, it was confidence, but there was a whole other load of stuff in there and now she's gone out on her own.

She's global stages. She has gone from kind of limited to infinite, and I honestly think that whatever you choose to do with that freedom sometimes I've had the privilege of seeing people. Go really big with the outcomes of coaching, but I think that where I get the most pleasure is not necessarily from the biggest outcomes.

It's from the most impactful outcomes. And seeing somebody that I know could make a huge difference to the world. Be limited by certain kind of beliefs and thoughts and thinking and feeling and experiences. To see them then be unlimited and the world's, their oyster and whatever they go on to do with that thing is, many people are gonna benefit from it.

It's massive. I think coaching brings freedom and clarity and those two things are so underrated.

[00:41:02] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, brilliant. Thank you for sharing that, Kerry. And we're fast approaching time, so I'd love for you to give us maybe some resources that people can go to for finding out more.

And yeah, would love to hear how people can get in touch with you as well.

[00:41:18] Kerry Nickols: Yeah, I think just like as fun little starters cuz I think. Well, the fun is in the making, as I said earlier, on my belief set. So the first book that I'd recommend is a book called Alive at Work by Daniel Cable. And the reason that I'm choosing that book is that's where I got the thing about.

Choosing your own identity, your own title. It was from that book. There were some really great tips in there and some understanding about what it means to be a professional in today's world of work. And he comes at that from a neuroscience perspective, but it did certainly open my mind to some new things in terms of Ted Talks.

There are plenty people like Amy Edmondson and Brene Brown. But the one that I would like to share is probably my all time favorite again, because it's just so fun. So Tim Urban did inside the mind of a master procrastinator and that I think is if you're not very good at reading books, watch that first and then he'll get you to read the book.

Don't procrastinate. So, so that's a really good set of kind of Ted talks as well to to consider. And then lastly to connect with us. It would be lovely to meet new people and to, hear their journeys and where they're at and their experience of. Being a professional in today's world of work.

And the way that you can do that is either email is [email protected] nice and easy or follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook. And on our website you'll find the scorecard, which I would say is probably the, if you are, if you're just looking at the moment for nothing else but to reflect, then that would be the starting point, I think on inside, outside, and leading edge.

[00:43:13] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, fantastic. And I do remember that. Ted talk because that's one where he has those little doodle images in the talk, doesn't he? Yeah. That's so memorable. I remember that. So, yeah, definitely check that one out for sure. And Kerry, thank you so much. We'll put those links in the show notes as well so folks can get access to you guys.

And yeah, I just want to thank you so much for for joining me today. It's been so fun. And. As always lovely to talk to you and catch up on things as well, so thank you so much.

[00:43:44] Kerry Nickols: Thank you. I'm off to make my rotis now.

[00:43:50] Paddy Dhanda: I'll have three please. Thanks Paddy. Oh, you're welcome.

As the world becomes more interconnected and projects become more complex, collaboration has become a critical factor in the success of any team. Whether you're working on a software development project or launching a new business venture, the ability to work together effectively is essential. In the context of agile teams, collaboration plays an especially important role in ensuring that the team can deliver high-quality results in a timely and efficient manner. In this episode, we'll explore the concept of collaboration and its importance for agile teams. We'll delve into the benefits of collaboration, the challenges that teams often face when trying to work together, and some strategies for fostering effective collaboration in your own team.

Brandi Olson

Brandi Olson is a best-selling author, organizational agility expert, and the founder of Real Work Done, a consultancy serving leaders through agile transformation, organizational strategy and team design, and executive coaching. She has spent two decades consulting with organizations — from nonprofits to universities to global companies like 3M and Mayo Clinics. An expert in organizational learning and change, she teaches leaders how to solve problems and adapt fast with high-performing teams. A sought-after speaker on agility and high-performing teams, Brandi lives in Minnesota with her two kids, four chickens, and one dog.

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3l7jQwCpdboli

Email: [email protected]

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Transcription:

[00:01:00] Paddy Dhanda: Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Super School podcast.

I'm your host, Patty Der, and on today's episode I have a fellow Agileists, somebody who is an expert in this topic. She is the founder and c e O of Real Work Done and the author of Real Flow Break the Burnout Cycle and Unlock High Performance in the New World of Work. Which sounds fascinating. So I can't wait to start this conversation.

So Brandy Olson, welcome to the show.

[00:01:31] Brandi Olson: Thanks so much for having me, Patty.

[00:01:33] Paddy Dhanda: You are welcome. I always ask I guests, where are they from? So where are you from, Brandy, because I sent an American accent.

[00:01:41] Brandi Olson: Well, today you'll find me in the Upper Midwest in the us, in Minnesota, in the Twin Cities. And it's nice and cold.

We've got some record breaking chilly temps today.

[00:01:52] Paddy Dhanda: Good because

[00:01:53] Brandi Olson: normally they can send me all of your love and energy. We need it to heat our homes.

[00:01:57] Paddy Dhanda: Ah, I say good because normally I have a guest who's from California or somewhere and they have baking hot weather and I'm stuck here with like British January weather, which is terrible.

And so.

[00:02:11] Brandi Olson: It's rare that you can feel a little superior about your own weather. So I'm happy to offer that to everybody. Oh, thank you. Wherever you are in the world, your weather is probably better than ours is today.

[00:02:21] Paddy Dhanda: We're in it together, Brandy. There we go. Look at that. Right? Good. So Brandy, tell us your background because I hear you are a bit of an agile list and I'd love to know your journey up until now.

[00:02:34] Brandi Olson: Yeah, so I lead a company called Real Work Done. We work with leaders to help them design organizations and teams, like we say, get real work done in reality, which we happen to believe is the only place that good work happens. And so we're pretty pragmatic about how we think about the work of organizational design and team design because it's all about the outcomes that we can deliver and the high performance that we're capable of.

And you know, it turns out we have to do that in reality. The reason though that I'm so committed to reality and being really pragmatic and how I even got into the work of agility is that years ago I used to be a teacher. So I come at this work from my background in public education, and I first discovered agility as a thing when I was teaching.

And even though. You know what I was reading and learning about that people were talking about software and products and digital stuff and some of that language was kind of foreign to me. I recognized pretty quickly that they were talking about solving complex problems when change happens unexpectedly and people.

Are involved. And that was the world that I lived in as an educator. And so I dove into that world and did a lot with agility in my in my classroom and scrum and the ways that I was teaching. And over time that led to doing that work with organizations and really looking at What has come to be for me, a really key I don't know, key principle, right?

A key essential ingredient for any high performing organization is how fast we learn together, how fast we learn to the change that's happening around us and can respond to it. That was important to me as an educator and is still important to me now, and I think it's perhaps the greatest competitive advantage that any organization can have is how fast they can learn and adapt.

[00:04:24] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, I love that because I'm certainly passionate about learning and encouraging others to learn, especially when I've finished an agile course. I think for me, when learners will then ask some questions about, well, what's next? And I say, well, time to learn some more, like keep learning. That's the whole approach.

So that's fantastic to hear. And Brandy, what superpower would you like to bring to this episode?

[00:04:48] Brandi Olson: You know, I was thinking about that and the superpower that I have been thinking about a lot lately is that of collaboration. We've been hearing a lot about advances in ai and we've been hearing a lot about the ways that organizations are shaking things up.

And I continue to come back to this really core belief that collaboration is the skill that will allow companies to thrive. In the next five to 10, 20, 50 years or die. And so collaboration is a superpower. Oh, as I think perhaps the most important of all.

[00:05:24] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah, I love that. So when we say collaboration, I guess that's people working with others effectively would that be the definition or do you have a different definition?

[00:05:38] Brandi Olson: I think about collaboration as. People working together to solve a problem or create an opportunity, right? People working together to do something. However, I think that the effective part is the aim. That's the goal. But collaboration exists whether we invest in it or not, because as humans we are hardwired to collaborate.

And sometimes we do it really and effectively, but I don't, I think it's one of those things that collaborative engagement just is. We either Really work with it and do it really well and effectively to great outcomes. Or we exist in a collaborative environment that's really defunct of purpose and toxic and really ineffective and broken.

[00:06:20] Paddy Dhanda: Why do some organizations really struggle with collaboration? Like what are the things that disrupt collaboration?

Because some teams really struggle with this. In Agile, they will say all the right things, but when you see the behaviors, they're not very collaborative.

[00:06:38] Brandi Olson: Gosh. Right. There's so many reasons why we struggle with collaboration. I think that one of the biggest reasons is in our, you know, modern era of working together.

We've, along the way believed some lies and myths about. How we ought to work. The idea that, you know, if our organizations are well designed like machines, if everybody has the knowledge that they need, if if we have these perfect systems and processes then the work will happen and that's all it needs, right?

Collaborative skills for a long time get talked about as soft skills or don't even make it into the conversation about the skills that are needed. And so they wind up being really devalued. You know, there's so many other human reasons why collaboration becomes hard, right? We could talk about trust and relationships and psychological safety.

The reasons that collaboration goes wrong are vast. Right? And and they can come at us from a lot of different directions.

What do you think, why do organizations struggle with collaboration?

[00:07:42] Paddy Dhanda: I think one of the biggest things that I see is sometimes the way we're incentivized in an organization, and I see there's the ground level where people are trying to do a good job, we're trying to get stuff done together, but then at a top level, we have these incentives that incentivize us to work as individuals and that then creates this tension. So for example, I used to be a business analyst way back in the day, which meant I used to write lots of requirements for technology systems. And the way I was as incentivized at the time was I need to produce lots of requirements and lots of documentation at the time, and in a way that was then my focus.

And so if I saw someone else, In the team struggling with something, there was little incentive for me to actually drop the things that I was doing and come over and support them. And if I didn't produce reams and reams of requirements, then I felt like I was a failure. So that was another incentive, was to make sure you produce lots of this stuff.

And I just think. We often do behave in a certain way based on the rewards that are dangled in front of us and the way we are measured. So that would probably be my big one that I have faced a few times.

[00:09:02] Brandi Olson: Yeah. You know, another thing that comes to mind is the adage that's often attributed to Edward Deming.

But that, you know, organizations produce the results that they're designed to produce. And so if you have an organization that has an effective collaboration, It is getting the results that it is designed to get. And so you have to look at, well, what's happening? Right? Look at incentives.

You look at the ways that people are organized, who they're asked to work with, and and we tend to overlook that a lot of times, right? We tend to see that like, well, if collaboration's not happening, that's an individual problem. It's an interpersonal problem. Which it is. And also it's an organizational design problem.

And it's a prioritization problem because we are the outcome of the ecosystems that we're a part of. And I think a lot of times leaders don't necessarily see that bigger picture. Right. And it's easy to look at problems of collaboration or an effective collaboration. Just at the micro and individual level, which certainly is how they show up.

But then we can also zoom out and see the many ways incentive structures are one of 'em. How we choose our work is another. How we organize our teams is another, the many ways in which the design of our organizations either enhance the possibility of effective collaboration or diminish it. And and so I think that's really interesting to start to look at and see it as a bigger ecosystem challenge and opportunity.

Yeah.

[00:10:28] Paddy Dhanda: So you've done a lot of work in the organizational design space that you mentioned there. So what are some things that organizations could do to design a more collaborative environment like. Is it having really cool offices with lots of games and whatever they put in there now, I didn't even know, like they used to put games, consoles and things like that to make everybody feel more relaxed.

Like what? What are the things that you would suggest an organization should look at? Yeah.

[00:11:00] Brandi Olson: Well, so one of the things that I think is very true, a lot of times when we start talking about having more collaboration or more effective collaboration, we start thinking about culture and the ways that we, you know the ways that we interact and the values that we bring.

And so we wanna tackle culture. But the reality is culture is an outcome of the work that we do together. It is not unnecessarily an input. And so if you're just trying to tackle. Team health or team performance or team cohesion or culture just. By looking at it as a culture problem you're gonna miss out on the opportunity.

That is the most effective way to build an environment of collaboration, which is to do real work together differently. But one of the things that I've seen happen a lot I tend to work with a lot of small startups and one of. Organization is new. Or even when a like division is new, you D tend to not have a lot of people and everybody is just working hard together and they're bringing all their skill sets in and they're communicating frequently and they're just all in working hard together.

And then as the organization grows, you need to expand. You hire more people and you need to figure out how to get more volume of work done with more people. And a lot of times what happens is as that's happening, We scale the wrong things, so we wind up scaling departments, right? So maybe it's, we were a small team and we had marketing and we had engineering and you know, we had our sales team and we used to all work really closely together.

But now we're gonna grow. And so we're gonna have our sales team exist over here and our engineering team exists here, our agency, whatever the work is that we do, and our marketing team, you know, is gonna exist somewhere else over there. And we wind up scaling silos. And divisions, cuz on the surface that sort of makes sense.

Well, it's more efficient to have all of our salespeople be on this team together. It's more efficient to have all the people who do the same kind of work together. But then as that happens, we grow and we scale into these. Divisions and departments and silos, and we find that, you know, you could have collaboration work well within one of those divisions, but the overall outcome is disjointed, right?

The getting value from an idea to a customer is slower. It takes longer. It's not working the way that you thought it would, and I think one of the things that gets missed in that is, Collaboration doesn't get scaled, right. The things that made that small scrappy team work really well together wasn't their divisions necessarily.

It was how they talked and how they communicated, and how they all knew what the priority was and how they were aligned. So that happens, right? We wind up scaling the wrong things and we don't really look intentionally yet. How do we scale the ingredients that are necessary for effective collaboration?

And then we have to undo all of that, and that's complex and it's challenging to do.

[00:13:41] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, I can certainly resonate with that. Where I've worked with organizations and in their own world, in their bubble, they feel like everything's going really well. But actually they have no idea what's going on in the department next to them.

And there could be lots of. Opportunity there for them to actually work together. And that's often missed because again the management of the leadership are so focused on their own metrics, their own objectives that people just don't feel they need to look beyond that, which is really interesting.

And something that you said there about startups I'm really intrigued by this because I've heard a lot of startups as they grow, they say, we've kind of lost that startup culture that we had and. Would you say there's a sort of a magic number by which when a company grows beyond that, it starts to lose that culture, that startup culture, and in turn that collaboration as well?

[00:14:41] Brandi Olson: Yeah. I mean, is there a magic number? Maybe we can start to look at things like relational complexity, right? There's a reason when we're talking about agile product teams that, you know, we wanna keep those teams. Small-ish, or we know that as they grow, there's a trade off because the complexity of relationships grows.

I see it happening when you wind up with 2, 3, 4 more teams. However, you wind up defining those teams when you grow to those teams. The logical thing that I think often gets implemented is this idea, well, if each team is. High functioning and performing, and they're doing their job and their part well, then the other team is doing their part Well, that should all add up to the goal that we have.

And that's based on this idea, right, that our organizations can function like machines. That you could take the whole and break it down into its parts. And if every part is working well and optimized, it ought to add back up together. But if you do any sort of work in a really complex environment where the solutions are unknown, where change is happening frequently, where innovative problem solving matters, you feel how quickly that breaks down.

And it breaks down really fast because humans aren't actually machines. Machines and organizations designed to be like machines. You know, a machine is designed to do one or two things really well. Machines are not actually designed to be innovative and responsive to change. And you know, I'd argue you don't really want innovation from your blender or your car, right?

But in human organizations we actually do want innovation and we do want to be responsive. And so humans tend to work together a lot more like an ecosystem where there's interconnected parts where information flows freely. And so when you get more than two teams, you either have to cultivate that ecosystem.

Or you wind up cultivating a machine. And the default that I think a lot of organizations and startups go to, because there's so much like modern management lessons on it is machine cuz it's more convenient, it looks a whole lot better on your org chart. If it worked that way, it would be a lot more convenient, be a lot easier to manage.

It just doesn't actually work in reality. And so, so I think anytime you get into that point where, The boundary of the team has grown and now you've got two or three. You're in a space where you have to choose how you're gonna design yourselves to enhance that collaboration or the def facto design is gonna get in the way.

[00:17:06] Paddy Dhanda: You've obviously worked with lots of clients and got lots of experiences in working with organizations. Could you share maybe one or two, either case studies or examples of where. You've perhaps helped an organization realize some of this collaboration that they were missing before you got involved?

Yeah,

[00:17:27] Brandi Olson: so. So many interesting ones to choose from. I'm working with an organization right now that's kind of in the biotech space, and one of the things that they do is they help collect cells from donors that can be used by labs. All over the world who are doing research to figure out how to turn those cells into therapies to treat really specific, hard to treat cancers and diseases.

And so they connect those labs and those donors with that cellular material and they move it across. The globe in order to do that. Turns out you can't FedEx cells and cellular material very easily. It's super complex to move, you know, those types of samples from the spot in the world where the donor is to the one lab somewhere else in the world that knows how to create the particular treatment that's needed for a rare form of childhood leukemia.

Right. So. It's a supply chain. They have created a supply chain and a logistics operation in order to provide this service. On the surface, it seems like they oughta be able to operate like a very predictable supply chain. And if they could, they would, their process would have worked very smoothly.

Right. They organized themselves to be, you know, Team here that deals with donors and a team over here that deals with like the supply chain setup. And then they've got their logistics team and they've got their documentation team. And if everything were really stable and predictable, the work could move through and it would all get done.

But what they were finding they were a startup couple years back, another, a couple years into it, what they've been finding is it never goes, this plant turns out. Everything always winds up getting disrupted. It's different things every time. And so I've been working with them over the last year or two, redesign themselves into agile cross-disciplinary teams so that they can be the stewards of that supply chain for that particular client or for that particular lab, and And that's been really revolutionary for them.

And they've had to wrestle with that trade off between the world that they would love, which is a really highly predictable world where the process works every time, which, you know, sounds nice on paper. And the reality that they live in, which is the technology even and the innovation of what's possible is emerging and changing by the week.

And and so they've had to totally reorganize themselves in order to be able to respond. To that. And so we've designed these, you know, cross-disciplinary teams of people who now can tackle those logistical challenges as a team rather than a long pipeline of multiple teams that are really siloed, doing just one thing at a time.

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[00:21:47] Shure MV7-2: Now let's get back to the.

[00:21:49] Brandi Olson: And

[00:21:49] Paddy Dhanda: what role does technology play in collaboration in an organization? Because we are seeing. More and more collaborative tools on the market. I mean, I was looking at a website the other day and they try and list out as many collaboration tools as they can think of, and the list just keeps growing day by day.

So would you say if an organization isn't investing in that sort of technology, then they're gonna get left behind? Or does it not matter?

[00:22:23] Brandi Olson: I think it's what drives first, right? Collaboration is really complex. Collaborative problem solving, collaborative decision making, collaborative ideation, right?

Because we can talk about collaboration, but it's really different if you're collaborating to, you know, go out on a picnic versus, you know, collaborating to figure out. How to keep cells at the right temperature as they travel across the world and figure that out, or build a really new complex software system, right?

That kind of collaboration is really different. So, I think the tools always need to follow the collaboration, right? Understanding how do we need to work together? And then how does the tool enhance our communication? How does it help us spend the time where we need it most? Right? So, Tools, technology that can help us move information and data way more useful than having people try to figure out how to move information and data so that the information and the data is where it needs to be when the people show up or when they're there so they can use it and make meaning of it.

Right. And I think that's where a lot of times we can get so focused on, again. Like the idea that we can have this machine and the tools can help drive it, and if we have the right tools, then we won't have the problems that we're having around decision making or collaboration. I think it. It has to be flipped on its head, right?

Technology and tools have a really important role to play, but the reality is that no matter how fantastic the AI is, right, and we're seeing that a lot in the news and some of us are even experimenting with what is possible with ai, no matter what AI exists in the future, no matter what the technology is.

The problems that matter most in our communities and in our world are still going to be solved in the way that people have always solved problems, which is showing up together, understanding, making meaning out of it, and experimenting and learning, right? Learning and adapting quickly. And I don't think tools will ever change that.

So we need to make sure that they have the proper place in our organization.

[00:24:25] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah, I was gonna say the whole conversation about chat, G P T and all of this fancy AI that's coming along, it's quite scary. I think a lot of people, when they saw this capability being released a bit like me, I was like, ah, this is cool.

It's a new toy. And I was really excited. It was kind of good fun. And then about a week later, realization hits and you think, oh, Now what if this thing can now do my job? And you know, what where do I now focus? Because maybe I'm in the wrong profession. Maybe I need to change and pivot because AI's now a threat for my job.

So it is quite scary, isn't it? For people because there's no clarity yet where this is heading. And we all hate the unknown. And so until we get that clarity, I think people are gonna be on edge. Like what's your views on that and how can collaboration help us?

Cuz you mentioned right at the start, this is a superpower we need for the future.

[00:25:30] Brandi Olson: Yeah. Well I think anytime, you know, there's really disruptive technology. The best opportunity is that we learn something from it and we learn something better moving forward. I think that's the opportunity.

Anytime there's any huge disruption. And I think it causes us to reflect on what. Do we find meaningful about communication? Is it just having all the right words together? So it sounds nice. Is it, you know, what do we value about art? What do we value about decision making? How do we understand and value our data?

And I think when you have something like chat, G p T and all the related technologies that I think we'll start to see Hitting the market faster and faster. I think it causes us to have, to really look at those things and say what is it about what we're trying to do? One of the things that I think gets us, gets in the way and can create a lot more fear is when we're in a culture in which performance is just defined as, you know, hitting the next quarterly target.

And I think so many companies are sucked into this cycle in which. Their definition of high performance is actually pretty shortsighted and pretty diminished. I think a better way to think about performance is the definition of high performance success. It's about sustaining better outcomes over time, right?

So the companies that are going to be around 50 years from now some of them are just getting started. Some of them will be companies that exist now, and I think those are the companies that will take these technologies and understand what it actually means for their long-term outcomes. And some companies will decide yeah, it's cheaper.

We're gonna fire our marketing department and we're gonna, you know, have an AI marketing department. They might have a better quarter, right when they do that. That might work for them for a little while. But. Those I don't think are going to be the companies that are thriving and really delivering and outcomes in a sustained way.

And I think as individuals, when we're looking at that, if you're looking at your job and thinking, huh, could AI do my job? I think it's a good cause for retrospection and saying, what is the value and the work that I do, and how might I not just be chasing this technology? But how might I be a leader in understanding the value from it and using it in that way?

I think there's a lot of opportunity and I think it's gonna cause us to, yeah. To go back to examine what are the values that we're bringing, what does it mean when we engage with a new technology like this? And how will we lead the change that is going to be shaped by this versus just.

Kinda living in fear of it.

[00:28:04] Paddy Dhanda: Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day actually, Brandy and I was thinking whenever we've had previous technological advances of some sort, I was thinking about a simple example of the microwave. When the microwave came out, I'm pretty sure a lot of people who are manufacturing ovens and, you know, other cooking appliances.

We're probably thinking, what does this mean? Does this mean no one's gonna buy cookers anymore? And and that's not been the case because the two coexist. Right. We use the microwave for certain things. We use these other appliances for other things. And if anything, I think it's probably sparked even more innovation in the cooking space.

Right. Because I, I see some of the things that we have now in our kitchen. And I think as these new tools and so applications are coming out, I.

It hopefully will make things better because we've got more choice now. And like you say, it probably opens up even more doors for us as people because no longer am I probably doing all of the archaic things in my job that I've always done. I can now say, well, The stuff I didn't enjoy. If this thing can do it, brilliant.

There you go. You do that and I'll do the good stuff That makes me happy. And what I love doing is engaging with people and connecting with people and that's the thing. That I really enjoy.

[00:29:29] Brandi Olson: One of the things I'm wondering about as I'm hearing you talk is, you know, so much you talked at the beginning about like, you know, so many of us wind up working in organizations where just the output and the busyness is what's valued. Producing more documentation, showing that you're moving your mouse enough and checking enough emails to be busy, and we equate busy equals good, right?

Or if I'm busy, I'm doing something important. Many of the companies that we work with are implicitly designed to reward that and to support that. So if we have technology tools, AI tools aren't able to come in and do more of that busy work. I wonder what happens when a company buys into that, right.

Hey, we don't need half the people that we have because all of that work can be done. What happens when that starts going on and you're still not getting the outcomes that you need when you're still not. Finding innovation you know, even AI and machine learning that's possible is still constricted to what's happened in the past.

Right. That, you know, how brilliant of an essay chat G B T can write is based on what's been written in the past and its ability to understand that and generate something equivalent or new. But it's still based on what we've known up to this point. And I think that's where the real opportunity for human potential comes in is Hu.

What humans are actually very good at. Is evolving into the future and is adapting. And so it'll be interesting to see in the companies that really leverage AI and think that'll increase productivity. What actually happens? Do they find that they're able to get the outcomes they want or do they find that they do all of that and then they're left?

Like, huh, what now? Right. Where Soto's kind of stuck doing the same old thing. And I think the, I think we'll start to see some of those things emerge. You know, in the 1950s, Peter Drucker coined the term like the knowledge worker, and he said that the knowledge worker will be the most important and valuable asset of any 21st century company.

As in contrast to the production worker, right? The manual labor. And I think he was right, but I also think he was wrong. And I think one of the things we're seeing now, and we will continue to see is what I would say is the collaborative worker. It's the people who hone their skills of collaboration because it's in that collaboration that totally new ideas are possible.

Totally new. Unthought of things before become possible. I think those are the skills that we're gonna continue to see become even more important, even as the technology kind of creeps in and makes us feel like maybe our jobs are at risk. So, skills of collaboration, cuz it doesn't matter how smart you are how much knowledge you have, what a great salesperson you are, how much scientific expertise you have, what a great coder you are, if that knowledge is just locked in your own brain.

It's gonna be limited. It's not nearly as powerful as that knowledge, plus the skills of interpersonal collaboration. And I think we're gonna, I think the AI technology will just accelerate that, and the technology we're seeing will just accelerate that push forward where we see even more clearly that it's those effective, collaborative problem solving skills that are even more and more valuable.

[00:32:42] Paddy Dhanda: There's a great book, the Wisdom of Crowds I absolutely love, and some of the examples in there are phenomenal where if we put people together who are not necessarily the experts, but they have very diverse perspectives, and as long as they're now coerced into.

Making a particular decision, we often find that those are the people that actually come up with the best ideas and sometimes the most accurate ideas as well. So yeah, absolutely. So how do we become really good collaborators? Like is there an art to this or any tips on that?

[00:33:17] Brandi Olson: Well, there's a lot of ways practice is one, right?

I we're not diving into the importance of trust and psychological safety, but I don't want to minimize how important that is, right? Because how we understand and how we know each other as humans is the foundation that allows our entire, like nervous system and brain to be open to collaboration.

I think a lot of it, right, if we're talking big macro picture goes to looking at how we educate ourselves and how we educate our kids. You spend time with little kids and you see what they're capable of and the creativity that they're capable of. And then a lot of schooling just slowly like, strips that from them.

When I was an educator, we taught a lot of social emotional skills and. As an adult now working in many companies, I work with many people who missed their lessons on social-emotional skills. In middle school and high school, those weren't very valuable, and now turns out they are. And they need those skills.

So I think it, it starts there. But then, you know, if we're looking at what do I do right now you know, I think it does it goes to looking at what are we incentivizing, what are we rewarding? When is collaboration happening with ease? When is it getting impeded and taking small, you know, very small next steps towards doing it a little bit better.

And, you know, there's a lot of great resources out there about, you know, team building and how to look at. Collaborating in, in teams. But I think the best way to get better at collaborations, to practice it and have it be rewarded and motivated. And if you're not at a company that values that have a hard look at that.

Right? There's also a case to be made to say that where you put your time and energy matters. And if you're not in an organization that values the skills of collaboration, maybe what's possible for you is gonna be underutilized. And your skills will be valued elsewhere, and you might wanna consider that.

[00:35:11] Paddy Dhanda: Often we stay in an organization complaining. And actually if we. Channel that energy into another organization instead. And made that move, then things could be very different for us and we'd move a lot further forward.

[00:35:25] Brandi Olson: If you lead a team, If you lead a team of teams, if you lead a division, you oughta be looking at the way that you, the outcomes that your implicit organizational design is producing, and question if that's what your organization and your division really needs for the goals that you have.

Right? And and you should look at that really differently. A very simple exercise that any team can do that I think is really useful to start to see that ecosystem is to map out the communication around a recent decision. And to map, like visualize it. Right. You mentioned when we were talking before, you're a visual thinker and I think visualizing and figuring out how to make some of these seemingly implicit and invisible exchanges visible on the wall goes a long way.

But to map out. Decision that got made, right. You could even map out, try to map out how that decision got made. That's a superpower for another time. The skills of good decision making, but see how the communication travels. How many different communication pathways, how long does it take to get the communication to the people who need it?

We start to look at communication patterns. We start to reveal collaboration patterns. And it can be just an interesting data point and exercise to start to see perhaps the ecosystem of your organization when you start to see how communication travels and how those decisions get made. If it is complex and complicated, that might be a good indication that you are not well designed for collaboration.

If it's fast and effective that might be an indication that you've got, pay attention to what's happening there and how can you amplify that more.

[00:37:03] Paddy Dhanda: That's a great little activity to try, I think for an organization to actually map those decisions out. There could be some interesting findings there that they probably had no idea about.

I remember working for an organization where just to be able to travel, so for me to be able to go on business travel, there's a whole process. It was like it ju, it wasn't just, I send an email and then I get approval and then I book. They were like a bunch of steps, and one of the biggest sort of blockers I remember was you had to pre-plan your trip at least three weeks in advance.

Any business travel three weeks in advance, you have to plan it and then it would go through a bunch of approvals. And we were trying to be agile as an organization. And I was like, oh, where's the agility in being able to go and meet my colleagues? Or being able to go meet a client, like there's no agility in that. If I've gotta wait three weeks every time, like that's just slow. So it is really interesting you start mapping things like that out.

[00:38:07] Brandi Olson: Okay, if I could tell you, share one story cuz that brings to mind something that happened in an organization that I worked with a few years ago that really highlights this challenge.

So this is an organization that had been really working on fostering collaboration, and this was pre pandemic. So bringing people together every once in a while was on the table. It's on the table for some companies. Again, they didn't have the tools to make it work super well without that. So anyway, they were gonna bring their Engineering team together with some of their marketing team and their sales team and do some planning together around kind of a new feature bill that they wanted to do, new market problem they wanted to solve.

And so they were really excited about that. At the same time, the organization was also facing some budget cuts, and so the ask was that every division cut 10% of their budget division leaders were given free reign to figure out how to do that. Some. Reasonable that, you know, I don't wanna micromanage division leaders can figure this out.

Just cut 10% of the budget. The assumption being that if every division cuts 10% of their budget overall, we will decrease our operating expenses by 10% and be in good shape. So what happened was the technology leader actually decided to cut 10% of the budget by eliminating travel. So travel wasn't gonna be allowed in the next quarter.

The marketing team decided to cut 10% of their budget and they let some people go. And each division did it differently, however, come around to this quarterly planning event that they had been working towards, and none of the engineers were allowed to travel. But it happened anyway. The engineers called in and they listened in, but it was not super well designed to help for collaboration, and I think many of us have experienced, even now, hybrid collaboration where some people are in person and some people are not as challenging, even more so challenging five years ago.

Well, the outcome was that some ideas started to move forward, and because it wasn't super easy to engage their engineering team, they didn't really catch some of the feasibility challenges of it and some questions that would've emerged. They invested in this new idea, and it was about nine months later as they weren't making progress and they weren't making progress that they finally surfaced.

The problems, right? And and we did some root cause analysis kind of circled back to, oh, we could have caught that right much earlier. And so this decision to cut 10% of the budget and let everybody choose how to do it and prioritize differently, resulted in diminished collaboration. And it was so much more expensive for the company in the long run cuz they wasted about nine months of time and energy and investment going in the wrong direction.

And I think that happens so often and it, those types of decisions that seemingly are unrelated to interpersonal skills of collaboration set in course this motion set in incourse a motion that resulted in a lot of damage and harm and loss. Those are the things that as leaders, we need to be watching for and paying attention to and connecting the dots towards.

[00:41:08] Paddy Dhanda: Oh, great example there,

[00:41:09] Brandi Olson: We need to see collaboration as a core business capability.

And when it's a core business capability the enablement of collaboration becomes a rigorous financial planning conversation, a strategic investment, not. Happy accident or outcome of a team that's working extra hard to be great collaborators. And I think that's missing in a lot of organizations cause we don't see collaboration and we don't invest in it as a core business capability.

Those organizations that do will thrive through whatever. Comes up and whatever happens. But we need to connect the dots more. We need more leaders to see the connections and understand how it is a core capability that will either enhance performance and outcomes or diminish them and it's not neutral.

[00:41:57] Paddy Dhanda: We are running fast out of time. I'd love to know any resources that you would recommend if people want to know more about this topic as well as more about your book as well.

[00:42:07] Brandi Olson: Sure. Well, I would love you to come find [email protected] or check out my book Real Flow. You can get more information about it at the website.

I've also got some resources there to kind of uncover some tools to kind of uncover and start to see how these. Patterns are at play in organizations. Another book that I just love, and it's not a book at the surface about collaboration, but it has shaped so much of my thinking. It's called Shift, how to Change When Change Is Hard.

It's by Chip and Dan Heath. And it is just a phenomenal look at human behavior in a way that. Shines a light on some of these challenges and then really how to start making change going forward. So that's, it's an older book, but I love it and I highly recommend it. If you're grabbing real flow, grab a copy of Shift at the same time.

I also am on LinkedIn, so come find me on LinkedIn cuz I'm having a lot of these conversations with leaders across sectors and would love more people to be part of that as well.

[00:43:06] Paddy Dhanda: So, thank you for that and providing those details.

Brandy, it's been a pleasure to spend this episode with you. I feel like I've become wiser as a result, so really appreciate you sharing your insights. Thanks

[00:43:19] Brandi Olson: so much for having me and making space for this conversation.

🔥 Our Sponsors: How do you know where to invest your efforts when helping your Agile teams? You could simply ask them, but what if you need a more scalable and robust approach? One platform that I personally use and recommend is Comparative Agility. It has the world's largest Agile maturity index with over 4m data points from over 14,000 organisations. You can try it out completely FREE at the following link, and be sure to let me know your thoughts:

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In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

⚡️ Building Better Habits and Boosting Productivity in Daily Life

We all have habits that we would like to change or improve upon. Whether it's waking up earlier, exercising more regularly, or simply being more organized, building better habits can have a significant impact on our daily lives. By adopting new habits, we can boost our productivity, increase our focus, and achieve our goals more efficiently. In this episode, we will explore some practical tips and strategies for building better habits and improving our productivity in daily life. 

Erik Fisher (Podcast Host / Productivity Expert)

For over 10 years, Erik Fisher has been the producer and host of the long-running Beyond The To-Do List Podcast. For over 450 show episodes, Erik has spoken with productivity experts on how they implement productivity strategies in their personal and professional lives, with the mission to explore all aspects of productivity as a means towards the true end goal: living a meaningful life. In the summer of 2005, Erik was working in a data entry position when he noticed that iTunes had an update, with a tab on the left-hand side entitled Podcasts. Checking it out, he instantly knew that this new magic of radio and TiVo mixed together was a breakthrough, and he knew instantly that he was going to create his own podcast one day. By 2007, Erik and a friend had a comedy podcast that was named by iTunes as one of the top 10 new comedy podcasts. During this time, Erik began interacting with the podcast community online and began cohosting on other shows as well. When one of those shows stopped being produced in January 2012, Erik knew it was time to start his own show. Erik knew two things: 1) needed to be something focused on productivity, and 2) he wanted to talk to people about how they did the great work that they did, but be able to approach it from various angles. Having struggled with ADHD, Erik had been on a productivity journey his whole life; creating systems and learning from others who had done the same helped him to not just function, but thrive when it came to getting things done and finding work/life balance. This led him to decide on the appropriately titled podcast, Beyond The To Do List.

https://www.beyondthetodolist.com/

👉 Podcast Website: https://www.superpowers.school/
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🔥 Our Sponsors: How do you know where to invest your efforts when helping your Agile teams? You could simply ask them, but what if you need a more scalable and robust approach? One platform that I personally use and recommend is Comparative Agility. It has the world's largest Agile maturity index with over 4m data points from over 14,000 organisations. You can try it out completely FREE at the following link, and be sure to let me know your thoughts:

👉🏽 https://bit.ly/3Zi5OXw

In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

⚡️ Beyond the To-Do List: Productivity Tools, Tips and Books

In today's fast-paced world, productivity has become a key factor in achieving success. Whether you are a student, a professional, or an entrepreneur, being productive is essential in meeting your goals and deadlines. However, with so many tasks and distractions fighting for our attention, it can be challenging to stay on track and accomplish everything on our to-do list. In this episode, we will explore some of the best resources available to help you go beyond your to-do list and maximize your productivity.

Erik Fisher (Podcast Host / Productivity Expert)

For over 10 years, Erik Fisher has been the producer and host of the long-running Beyond The To-Do List Podcast. For over 450 show episodes, Erik has spoken with productivity experts on how they implement productivity strategies in their personal and professional lives, with the mission to explore all aspects of productivity as a means towards the true end goal: living a meaningful life. In the summer of 2005, Erik was working in a data entry position when he noticed that iTunes had an update, with a tab on the left-hand side entitled Podcasts. Checking it out, he instantly knew that this new magic of radio and TiVo mixed together was a breakthrough, and he knew instantly that he was going to create his own podcast one day. By 2007, Erik and a friend had a comedy podcast that was named by iTunes as one of the top 10 new comedy podcasts. During this time, Erik began interacting with the podcast community online and began cohosting on other shows as well. When one of those shows stopped being produced in January 2012, Erik knew it was time to start his own show. Erik knew two things: 1) needed to be something focused on productivity, and 2) he wanted to talk to people about how they did the great work that they did, but be able to approach it from various angles. Having struggled with ADHD, Erik had been on a productivity journey his whole life; creating systems and learning from others who had done the same helped him to not just function, but thrive when it came to getting things done and finding work/life balance. This led him to decide on the appropriately titled podcast, Beyond The To Do List.

https://www.beyondthetodolist.com/

👉 Podcast Website: https://www.superpowers.school/
👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/
👉 Contact Paddy at: pardeep_dhanda (at) hotmail.com

★ BUY ME KO-FI ★
If you enjoy the podcast, then you can donate a small amount here as a token of your appreciation: https://ko-fi.com/paddydhanda

🔥 Our Sponsors: How do you know where to invest your efforts when helping your Agile teams? You could simply ask them, but what if you need a more scalable and robust approach? One platform that I personally use and recommend is Comparative Agility. It has the world's largest Agile maturity index with over 4m data points from over 14,000 organisations. You can try it out completely FREE at the following link, and be sure to let me know your thoughts:

👉🏽 https://bit.ly/3Zi5OXw

In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

⚡️ Speak Like a Pro: Learn the Secrets of Confident Business Public Speaking

Public speaking can be a daunting task, especially when it comes to presenting in a business setting. Whether you're pitching a new idea to your boss or presenting to a group of investors, the pressure to deliver a flawless performance can be overwhelming. However, with the right tools and techniques, you can learn to speak like a pro and exude confidence in any business situation. In this episode, we will explore the secrets of confident business public speaking and provide you with the tips you need to become a master presenter. Don't let the fear of public speaking hold you back any longer – it's time to take your communication skills to the next level.

Andrea Pacini (Presentation Coach)

Andrea Pacini is a presentation coach and Head of Ideas on Stage UK. He specialises in working with business owners, leaders and their teams who want to become more confident presenters. Since 2010 Ideas on Stage has worked with thousands of clients around the world, including companies like Microsoft, Lacoste, The World Bank and over 500 TEDx speakers. Andrea is on a mission to stop great ideas from failing just because of the way they are presented. His vision is to help hundreds of thousands of business leaders share their message so they can grow their business, increase their influence and make a positive impact in the world.

https://www.ideasonstage.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/apacini/

👉 Podcast Website: https://www.superpowers.school/
👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/
👉 Contact Paddy at: pardeep_dhanda (at) hotmail.com

★ BUY ME KO-FI ★
If you enjoy the podcast, then you can donate a small amount here as a token of your appreciation: https://ko-fi.com/paddydhanda

🔥 Our Sponsors: How do you know where to invest your efforts when helping your Agile teams? You could simply ask them, but what if you need a more scalable and robust approach? One platform that I personally use and recommend is Comparative Agility. It has the world's largest Agile maturity index with over 4m data points from over 14,000 organisations. You can try it out completely FREE at the following link, and be sure to let me know your thoughts:

👉🏽 https://bit.ly/3Zi5OXw

In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

⚡️ Embrace Your Greatness: Secrets to Personal and Professional Success

As humans, we all have the potential for greatness within us. Whether it's achieving personal goals or excelling in our professional lives, we have the power to reach new heights. However, many of us may struggle with unlocking our full potential and embracing our greatness. That's why we're here to share some secrets to personal and professional success. By understanding these secrets and implementing them into our lives, we can unleash our full potential and reach the success we deserve. So, let's dive in and explore the keys to embracing our greatness. 

Vamsi Polimetla (Leadership Coach)

Everything that you’re looking for is outside your comfort zone. Act Before You’re Ready. Don’t wait.

https://www.vamsi.coach/

👉 Podcast Website: https://www.superpowers.school/
👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/
👉 Contact Paddy at: pardeep_dhanda (at) hotmail.com

★ BUY ME KO-FI ★
If you enjoy the podcast, then you can donate a small amount here as a token of your appreciation: https://ko-fi.com/paddydhanda

🔥 Our Sponsors: How do you know where to invest your efforts when helping your Agile teams? You could simply ask them, but what if you need a more scalable and robust approach? One platform that I personally use and recommend is Comparative Agility. It has the world's largest Agile maturity index with over 4m data points from over 14,000 organisations. You can try it out completely FREE at the following link, and be sure to let me know your thoughts:

👉🏽 https://bit.ly/3Zi5OXw

In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

⚡️ Referrals: The Ultimate Tool for Growing Your Business

As a business owner, you're always looking for ways to boost your growth and increase your customer base. While traditional marketing methods can be effective, there's one strategy that often gets overlooked: referrals. Referrals are a powerful tool that can help your business grow in ways you never thought possible. In this episode, we explore the power of referrals and how they can benefit your business. 

Graham Eisner (Author & Referrals Expert)

Graham Eisner has spent 30 years understanding the mindset and methods behind asking for referrals. He is a world-renowned speaker focused on doubling your business, by asking for referrals from your clients and network. He has delivered over 1OOO talks in the UK, Europe & the United States. His seven-step plan helps sales professionals understand their own reluctance, change their mindset, and apply practical techniques so they can ask in a way that’s both natural and effective. Graham became one of Goldman Sachs’ most successful sales professionals by developing a powerful referrals methodology, and he now teaches his system to clients worldwide, including Barclays, Julius Baer and Deutsche Bank as well as smaller businesses.

https://www.graham-eisner.com/

👉 Podcast Website: https://www.superpowers.school/
👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/
👉 Contact Paddy at: pardeep_dhanda (at) hotmail.com

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In each episode, Paddy Dhanda deep dives into a new human Superpower and practical advice on how you can apply it immediately.

⚡️ My Escape From A Religious Cult: Tips To Design Your Life

There are experiences in life that leave a deep impact on us, shaping us in ways we never imagined possible. Some of these experiences can be positive, while others can be quite challenging. In this episode, Shana shares her experiences of being a part of a religious cult. Rather than letting it define her, she used it as a catalyst to help others. Now, she spends her time helping people to design their lives, drawing upon her unique experiences and insights to guide others towards a brighter future. 

Shana Francesca (Interior Design & Life Design Expert)

Shana Francesca is a  speaker, writer and entrepreneur. Shana has been interviewed on more than 60 podcasts worldwide and has been published in Medium, Authority Magazine & Shoutout LA and emotional intelligence + magazine.  She helps people live more joyful and connected lives through the principles of life design.  Shana believes our present and future are transformed when we infuse our lives with intention, we design our lives and realize the power in accepting ourselves as the author of our story.

linktr.ee/ShanaFrancesca
linktr.ee/Concinnate
https://www.concinnate.world/

👉 Podcast Website: https://www.superpowers.school/
👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/paddydhanda/
👉 Contact Paddy at: pardeep_dhanda (at) hotmail.com

★ BUY ME KO-FI ★
If you enjoy the podcast, then you can donate a small amount here as a token of your appreciation: https://ko-fi.com/paddydhanda