TRANSCRIPTION BELOW. **NOTE** THAT THIS MAY CONTAIN GRAMMATICAL ERRORS DUE TO CONVERSION PROCESS.
COC: Good morning, Larry. It’s great to be with you!
LR: Nice to be here with you, thank you for the privilege.
COC: I’m humbled, the privilege is certainly all mine, it’s great to be connected with you and have these discussions many weeks before today, and basically come up with this plan of just be a natural with discussing culture and all the different things that weave off of culture, leadership communication, there’s so many sub-topics that roll up into the mother culture, but it’s very humbling to the talk with you, to speak with someone who looks at it in such a depth and has that keen understanding. This is awesome. It’s a breath of fresh air. For sure.
LR: I appreciate you saying that and just even before we get started here, what I love about these conversations that you’re having, is that in addition to all the great content articles, research, things like that, that appear on creator of culture, ultimately it comes down to conversations like this, so this is almost like leading by example and saying, “Here’s what a conversation about culture can look like”, and if you look across the totality of all the conversations you’re having, and will have, I think you’re showing people the way… So it’s terrific.
COC: Well, I felt the same way about you, that you had so many conversations to write… You recently came out with a book, The Rebel leadership. But all the conversations when I read it, and just how you wrote the book and what it took to basically obtain that research… All those conversations you had….. I was a little jealous. I was like, Wow, that is like 25 years past what I’m doing, and I kinda look up to your effort there as a model for where I kinda want to go.
LR: Well, really, so this is interesting, like just as we said, we’re gonna naturally follow the flow of conversation, but it’s funny when people write books, I think the author, while they do a lot to produce the book, to coordinate it and all that, they never really write the book all themselves in the sense that there’s so much that I learned from those conversations. You’re referring to the fact, among other things, that I interviewed a lot of people for this book and for the previous two books, but it’s even more than that, when I talk to those people, they’re thinking about who they have learned from and what they have learned, so even within a conversation with one person, they’re pointing me elsewhere, have you read this research? Have you read this book? Have you met so and so? So ultimately, you’re drawing from that whole community as you shape your thinking, and I think it’s a perfect example of there’s a culture around writing books, even though we log the author as the person who did it all.
COC: Yeah, that it’s very interesting for sure. I think that given all the input that you’ve taken, that they refer back to other inputs, so learning is continuous, and sometimes I find that when I research a book or I find a book that I really like or find a source, it ties back to another one but then it kind of circles around. I found that there’s a lot of common really smart individuals with great insight or some topic that’s new and thoughts get created after the cycle is around again, so it’s continuous it…
LR: There’s no question. And you know what, what I find really interesting, this kind of blends all of this together, the range of people that I spoke with, but also your comment of it circles back around. Even when I would find that several people reference the same source, or even more so even when I would find that everybody in every conversation referenced a similar concept, they all filtered it in a different way, so it wasn’t that they were necessarily out on the extremes of the bell curve in the tails and just nothing like anybody else. It’s that every experience is different, even within an organization, even when you have a culture of people around an organization, a product or whatever you’re creating, they come from different backgrounds and different experiences even within the organization, and they’re going to see things differently. So it just reinforced to me the importance of tapping that resource of people in your organization, tapping that range of perspectives to look at opportunities, to look at challenges, to look at everything, including what is our culture? What does it look like? How are we doing in that sense, not… If you’re not reaching out and actively pursuing that, then you’re probably falling short on what the possibility is for culture in some way, it’s not out
COC: Now, what’s interesting like too, is when you look at something, you mentioned how I said it comes back around, but maybe someone has a different take on it, they’re looking at it through a different lens and maybe reading something or interpreting something a little bit different, but say you read something or learn something at one point in time, fast forward in five years, 10 years with life experience, personal experience, whatever it is, and you go back and learn or read that again, or look at that again. You may take a completely different look at this different lens, just from yourself, you look at it with more of an educated and I am more of an experience, I… You might say Why? After experiencing this, I look at this a little bit different, so even for yourself, reviewing a lot of these things from way back or one different lens is super important as well.
LR: So I’m gonna linger on your point here, ’cause this is such an important point, you can say what you just did, right? About how, even if you’ve experienced something, read something, done something at a certain point in time, when you come back to it, you’re going to see something different or you’re gonna be informed in a new way because time moves on and experiences move on and things… And you can say that, and you know it’s true. And I’m sitting here, people might just hear the audio of us first, but I am actively nodding along, if you can’t see the video of this, but we say those things and then we leave them behind. And what is so powerful about what you’re saying is, can you remember that every single day… Can you remember that within every single project that you work on individually or as an organization, can you remember that you see things differently, other… See things differently as you bring in new people to the team or as other people exit, can you make that part of your habit across the people I interviewed, the ability to do that, to constantly re-open thinking, to come back and check assumptions, to check in with what is everybody’s perspective on, whatever it is, this material, this book, this project or so on, is probably the most powerful thing those organizations do is to create that habit and to keep coming back to it rather than every once in a while turning on a podcast and hearing isn’t that interesting, how we can see differently when it becomes their habit rather than just an observation, so I think what you said is so powerful, and that’s why I wanted to linger on it just a little bit more.
COC: All right…well, in the martial arts, you have the white belt, which is the beginning of your journey, the belt is clean, it hasn’t been dirtied up yet and soiled from the hard training, and then in the old days, it got so soiled that it became black. So therefore, the black belt is the advanced way of looking, it’s the lens, but I’ve often heard people say in that realm where the journey is so important that when you attain that level, you’re really kind of starting over, you’re looking back at the old material, the white belt, through a black belt, eye and refining and refining and continually refining, and I think that goes to your point too, about creating that habit, it’s so important, so it could be looked at as a skill that needs to be developed and honed in, and then basically, way of operating…: Really at the end of the day.
LR: So I love that analogy too, because if you think about the martial arts, even if you’re a listener and you really know nothing about the marsh Lars, it’s about laying, you don’t… Move on from a skill, you build on top of a skill that you build the skill into the next level, you learn in the next level, so you’re always… I think the Zen reference to it is you’re always starting with a beginner’s mind, so it’s coming back to those basics to build to something larger, and… So it’s interesting, in a way, we’re talking philosophically here, but we’re also talking about forming a habit, and you and I talked a week ago in this zone, and I brought up a story of… Well, how the heck do you do that? Right, so as a listener now, somebody could be listening to us saying… Yes, yes. That’s absolutely right. We should build that. How do I get going? And the story I told then I’ll tell again now for my second book, which was focused on creativity, I interviewed nearly 70 MacArthur fellows, so the MacArthur Fellowship is sometimes called the Genius Award, and it’s given to people who are exemplary in using their creativity, and one of the people I talked to was this woman, Deb Meyer and an education reformer, which means if a school is troubled and needs to be turned around in some significant way, she comes in, she and a team come in and they help with that process, there are the ones who innovate new schools and new school models, no matter what her assignment is at the time, no matter what the project is, no matter what the day is within that project, they start everything with what they call the five habits of the mind, and these are really usable by any of us, and the five habits happen to be five questions.
COC: So the first one is, how do we know what we know? And in a way, it’s like looking back from the Black Belt, we’re experienced in whatever we do at those basic white belt assumptions and saying, How do we know what we know? Let’s revisit the assumptions, not that we’re gonna change them or toss them out, but let’s remind ourselves of why we arrived at them in the first place, and how do they play in right now, ’cause sometimes they lose their importance over time, so how do we know what we know the second habit of the mind or question is, is there a pattern? So even when they’re exploring their assumptions, new old and so on, they’re not just looking for these outlier things that say, Oh my God, that looks different, we should change everything. No, instead they’re looking for where the patterns occur, not the anomalies, but the patterns that speak to something that is probably gonna last, and out of that comes this third habit, this question of what if in some form or another. So how do we know what we know leads to seeing these patterns leads to what if we address the problem this way, what if we pursue the opportunity that way, the fourth habit of the mind is, is there another way? And it’s this reminder to keep in that habit of that cycle of looking at Why do you see it that way, how does it play our work and let’s not fall so in love with our ideas that we never revisit any of this.
So again, I’ll walk everybody through the pattern again, how do we know what we know, is there a pattern? What if… Is there another way? And the last habit of the mind is, Who cares what is this all directed at, and if you think about that, built into those five habits of the mind is really the way any of us operate any day, Why do we show up to do what we do what assumptions are we working off of, Where are we pointing ourselves and who are we pointing towards when we try to create value, so by just using these questions, dead is actually letting herself and anybody on her team gradually form that habit, the more you walk through those questions, the easier it becomes to look at whatever you’re looking at and say, Do I still see it the same way, Do others see it in a different way that I might benefit from… So I just, I love when there are tools that you can actually do something with, and that’s one night I just wanted to throw out, ’cause I think it makes it easier to say, How do we take some of these philosophical things and make them real every day?
COC: Yeah, you can have the philosophy, but let’s get down to applying it and having a strategy and then a game plan, it could be tactical, so actually tasks to do it every day, but constant reminders, and then having the motivation and the fuel to continue that. And I think you mentioned in the last habit, I took the interpretation of, well, who cares, that’s the caring part is the emotional part, and that is maybe when you realize Who cares and why should we be doing this, that’s the part that gives the fuel to keep it going, in my opinion. So this has to be repetitive and it takes effort to do that. So like any skill, it’s gonna be uncomfortable, like you mentioned in your book about being uncomfortable and when you’re learning new things and embracing that and explaining to everybody and really taking it in yourself that this is… It’s gonna be uncomfortable for a while. Right. But let’s stick it out, let’s stick out because this kind of method of operating, we’ll generate that culture of in that specific area of continual refinement, let’s go test, let’s go look back and that’s a really good way of operating or my perspective. Another thing I wanted to mention to you is we say culture, and I thought of this many years back is, how do you define that and you nailed it in your book, you asked that same question.
I had the same question. I didn’t see your book when I thought I had this thought and then I read yours. That’s really hard to define. And I think someone… It was Melissa hunt, I believe, from Airbnb that had a really good definition and my perspective that came close to… Well, how do you explain this? Yes.
LR: That was kind of what was interesting, just to pick up on where you’re going was… So we don’t often stop and ask what is the definition of culture, not what is our culture like within our team or whatever, but what is the definition of culture and General… Right, and I… Because we don’t… There’s a high tendency for people and organizations to conclude that culture is an output, like somehow it will appear at some point and we can call it that, or it’s an aspiration, we want to be like, X, this is our mission statement, these are our values and things like that, and both of those things are distant from what you do day-to-day, so actually for me, it was two people that I spoke to in combination that defined culture so well, the first was Russell Schaeffer, and wrestle is the Senior Director of Global Culture Diversity and Inclusion at Walmart. And isn’t that interesting, right? He’s at that point where culture gets a litmus test, he’s the director of global culture and diversity, so different people experience it in different ways, and inclusion, so I think it’s a perfect person to say what is culture? And what I asked him and he said something really simple, culture, is the things that we do and are doing right now, not what we did, not what we will do, but our words and values in action in this moment, and it sounds so simple, but most of us don’t slow down and say, Yes, that’s what culture is, it’s not the thing we’re aspiring to, it’s not the thing we did in the past that we’re just gonna hang up our crown and say we had a good day, and then Melissa Thomas Hunt who you pointed out, she’s the head of Global Diversity and Belonging at Airbnb.
She added to that, she said culture comes from the way people behave, how they engage, what they give currency to, the markers of their language, what sanctioned what’s taboo, and all of this to the smallest parts and places. So I love that because she’s really building on what Russell said In saying, Yes, it is what we do right now, but it’s also what we do everywhere, and it’s what everybody does, so if the culture isn’t something that’s mandated from the top, it isn’t something we check in whenever we put the annual report together or the strategic plan or whatever it is, it’s living and breathing there in the smallest parts of the organization every day, and when you think about culture that way, all of a sudden it’s not this output, it is you in action in any particular data, words and values in action, as Russell would put it, I think that’s a very, very different way to look at culture, it’s also a very powerful way, and it ties back to things like, Wow, okay, how then do we think about culture in our day-to-day, well, we ask questions of ourselves like Deb put out there, so that’s…I’ve really come to define culture through the words of people like Russell and Melissa, who not only are in charge of it in two very important and very successful organizations, Walmart and Airbnb, but they’re really calling it out, they’re saying This is what it is every single day of the week for every one of us.
COC: That’s probably the two closest places I’ve seen to define what this culture is, and it’s not an output, like you mentioned, it’s a snapshot in time, what I found it can change, it’s organic, it could breed itself from one day-to the next, things could happen, which publicly or internally through an organization that could change people’s behaviors change, so it’s a changing organic thing that has to be tended to, not the output, but how are people feeling at a certain point in time, and what does an organization feel and what’s valuable at a certain moment, and it could be encouraged to go a certain way, or it could just go off on its own with uncontrollably, which just makes it even more complex, I think… But to set the tone, Airbnb in your book, and I wrote about this too, but when someone comes into an organization where it could be a company, it could be a volunteer group, it could be someone moving into a town, joining whatever group… It is a group of people coming together. The culture begins right away in the onboarding process, and that could be formal or informal, it could be a plan thing, or it could be just naturally occurring. Like if I go to a party, you, invite me to a party at somebody’s house and my family…
And you came in and were, well, hey, welcome is like great to see you, Hey, I wanna introduce you to this person in here… Please help yourself is where the beverages are, you informally onboarded me, and I know that the culture of that party is very welcoming, it’s… We’re having a great time and so forth. So in your book, you talked about the Airbnb example, again, we’ll harp on Airbnb as they mentioned that they made it a point to make culture and explain to people what they’re getting involved in, what we do stand for, what’s expected it in a way… And where we’re looking for you to make it better, to have your inputs be heard and so forth, can we talk about that from you, and then after that, why is so important to sustain it and why people tail off, and it kind of just fizzle out after a strong start…
LR: Yeah, I think that it’s a great direction to point and so before I dive into the Airbnb example and a really quote, Melissa Thomas Hunt, when we get to that point… Let’s put it in context. Right, so we’re talking about making an effort for culture… Like in introducing people to the culture. One of the people I spoke with for the book is a gentleman by the name of Brian Kropp, and he’s one of the senior researchers and Senior Vice President said Gartner. Gartner does excellent research, including an HR and leadership, and in 2018, Brian and his team at Gartner did this study of thousands of organizations, and they found that 84% of the organizations they surveyed, not only prioritized culture, like they said that they prioritize culture, but they took actions, they had various programs, some of it were related to onboarding, some of them were tied to performance review, some of them… They had things that said, Culture is important to us, so we’re gonna do these things actively, and the assumption was that’s going to make for a good culture, but in that same survey, a mere 31% of leaders… Remember, 84% said This is important and we have active programs, but a mere 31% of the leaders, say survey, said that they were even aware of or could articulate what the culture was, so this is a really interesting disconnect because there are programs that are supposedly introducing employees to the culture and then tracking it and communicating it over time, and yet the people who are leading those initiatives when asked, okay.
Tell me what the culture is. Can’t really answer the question. It gets worse. Of that 31%. Okay, so we’re now talking about the subset is minuscule number, only 13% of those leaders said they actually believed in the culture, if they knew what it was, and fewer still said they aligned it with their own behaviors, so it paints it… And by the way, after they went back two years later in 2020, survey the same people and expanded and the numbers actually got worse. So I think it’s important context to say this attention to culture is something that not only starts at the beginning, and that’s where we’ll go back to Airbnb and what their onboarding process is like, but it continues throughout… It should be there, not just in the whole life span of an individual employee at the organization, but in the life span of the organization, no matter which individuals are part of it, and this is how I asked Melissa, and she came into Airbnb. Why did she go there? Why did she leave a really nice job that she was in… What was the attraction to Airbnb? And this is what she said, she said, for me, I knew about the culture at Airbnb because it started at check-in, she said, you’re told directly what the culture is here, you’re shown images, you’re told lots of stories, you’re brought into a true narrative.
Isn’t just, Here are our values? It’s bigger than that. She said, all of it centers around our values, but also why the values are what they are, and what do they look like in action, she said they even talked about what things we still needed to work on, and ask me… Here she is, the new person, what I observed culture, she said is front and center from day one, and it keeps going every day, even the spaces we gather into work reflect the words, they’re largely open spaces, they’re more often less than office. And so she said, it’s what we do here, but we know from moment one, it’s bigger than the individual we work and market who we are as a whole, I mean… Think about how powerful that is. So she’s being not only told upfront what the culture is and that it’s important, she’s being given examples of where it exists everywhere, she’s introduced to a physical space that reinforces it, and she’s told that her job is not only to perpetuate it, but to help shape it. To me, that says that Airbnb is thinking a lot more about culture than just onboarding, they’re saying this is your invitation walking in the door, this is our expectation of you and your contributions to culture ongoing, and by the way, because we’re inviting everyone into this…
We are willing to test ourselves and to see when things are not working, that’s a very, very different view of culture than most organizations have…
COC: And from what you’ve told me is they are focusing on the things that they could control to the max and setting up the environment. The one thing they really can’t control sometimes is… With the Gartner study, is that some people don’t even understand what culture is to be able to explain it, but yet some people don’t believe it, or sometimes as much as what you can do to control it may not have the effect on other people’s feelings to a certain extent, if they don’t believe it, how can you become event people to become a believer in doing… And sometimes it’s not about what you can do, it is a part of it, but it’s about that individual person themselves…
LR: Absolutely, I would change it just a little bit to say, it’s not necessarily about what you can control, ’cause I think that’s an important distinction as a leader of an organization or existing employees, say you’re onboarding the new person… You know, things you can do, but if you’re only going to do things because you think that gives you control, then you’re not really understanding what that Airbnb example is saying. Part of what Airbnb senior leadership is doing is they’re seeing control, they’re inviting everybody at the organization to participate in this discussion, which is really interesting, right, because we don’t know necessarily what people think about culture, whether or not they get it, or get any sense of whether or not, they believe in it, if we don’t ask them to tell us, if we don’t ask them to show us in what they do, that’s how we know it, so those things that often go unobserved… Until Gartner comes in and does a survey, Airbnb among other organizations, is putting them out in the open and to many leaders that sounds terrifying, but it turns out that this expectation of, if we really open up culture to what it is and allow everybody into it, and to shape it, there’s this fear that it’s gonna be like going off a cliff and it’s gonna be chaos and the prisoners will be running the prison, to use that old analogy.
But in actual fact, these organizations who embrace culture in this way, find that it’s not a cliff, it’s more like a curb since stepping off it for the first time, so… Yes, it is unknown. Yes, sometimes it reveals flows, sometimes it reveals differences of opinion and conflict, but that act of engaging and allowing everybody to have some equity in it actually ends up making those organizations more resilient, more innovative, better able to adapt when circumstances out of their control change, like in the environment around them in their market, in their country, when COVID hits or something like that, they actually become more resilient when they allow a little bit of that noise rather than trying to control it in such a way that they hope their
COC: When I’m saying to just clarify my term of control, I would say deliberate, so it’s a deliberate set up to allow the openness of perspectives and feedback… Yes, that’s a deliberate choice that they made, that was a process, and that was a way of operating that they thought about, and if that is the right way to do it for us, to make the best growth opportunities and environment for everyone to work in, possible. So yeah, so control is not recommended. Certainly, it’s deliberate action on setting certain environments up like this…
LR: Right. Me calling out the word control was less to counter what you were saying and more to dig into that and say there’s a tendency even when we’re not conscious of it, to choose to do things or not to do things based on how much control we will gain from doing that, or we perceive we will gain and that the higher you go up the org chart, the greater the position of leadership, the more responsibility to hire, the tendency to want to have control, and it’s part… You’re responsible for those things and you don’t wanna blow, but it’s also part of this misconception that we have about leaders and what their role is and who they’re supposed to be, and that we continue to reinforce that the way I refer to it is it’s this hero image of leadership that that person is gonna have all the great ideas, they’re gonna have all the answers when there’s a problem, they’re going to be able to direct everybody, and it’s a false narrative, and it used to be that when organizations worked in businesses and markets in times that were less volatile where volatility happened, but there were gaps of time in between it, the environment was more forgiven, and so you could continue to pretend that that hero or leader equals hero thing was accurate, it wasn’t really, but it could look that way.
Well, now, now the environment is so uncertain all the time, and it has been for the last 20 years, the first 20 years of the century, and it will continue on. This isn’t just COVID, right. This is a growing uncertainty in general, growing complexity and speed of the environment, as Brian crawled say, the more volatile it is, the less that story of leader as Hero can even be possible, it’s untrue to begin with, but it’s not even possible, and so you find as a leader that, at least in these organizations that are doing this, this… Well, your job is not to have all the answers. Your job is to create an environment where the best answers rise to the surface no matter where they come from, guess what that means, your job is to create the culture and all the things around it that support it, that allow people to become leaders in their own right, that that’s really what this comes down to.
COC: I love it, Larry. One thing, actually two things. The first is, I love how you wrote your book during COVID19 and you state that… And that as I’m writing, this COVID is happening right now. Yeah, so what a milestone, I guess, if I could use that phrase of your thinking is being created as you’re putting pen to paper.
LR: Yeah, it’s interesting because as you also know, the book started almost three years before COVID, meaning I was doing the research and I was doing some of the initial and then COVID hit. And so you’re absolutely right, it was, Okay, this is a real example and a real test uncertainty that everyone can relate to in some way, everyone was touched by this pandemic, continues to be touched by it in some way, some lost family, others have their routines disrupted, but it was truly real. So that it was kind of interesting because in a way it was saying,
COC: Alright, Larry, you’ve done all this research about leadership and uncertainty, you’ve done all this research about culture, what does that look like when everybody’s world… So Larry..Here’s something for you. You mentioned Brian Kropp at Gardner, and he mentioned that she is… The environment is so fast, and you mentioned it to the past 20 years, things have been going really fast, the volatility, the VUCA environments are increasing and they’re not slowing down. Right. And we talked about how culture, Can it keep up with this pace? Do you have some suggestions as the world too fast for our brains, we take in information that’s happening hour to hour, minute to minute, or is that noise or do we use some of that as, I guess, information to make change or is it just noise that we have they had block out in a way, but how do you stay in the course coming down to the time, but I know given the complexity and speed of the environments, how do we sustain, in your opinion.
LR: Again, let me just add a little context before I answer that, so even when I say the words that this uncertainty and this uncertain environment that we’re in has been building over the past 20 years, they’re still in a media seat, COVID, and so… Most people’s heads go to… COVID is causing the majority of that uncertainty, that’s the way we kinda think right now, which also leads to this other thought, even if it’s under the surface of we can just get past COVID, the uncertainty will call or stop or whatever it is, but think about this McKinsey company did this study where they said in the latter half of the 20th century… So building up from 1950, building up to 2000, the average life span of a company was 61 years, and you can think of companies that have been around forever, names that we just all know and we assume they’re never gonna go away. Today, the average life span of a company is 18 years, less than 18 years, and it’s declining rapidly. In fact, McKinsey says that by 2027, so we’re talking just six years from now, by 2027, they predict that 75% of the companies that are currently quoted on the S&P 500 will have disappeared, not just from the S&P gone.
Wow, so think of 75% is huge. So what they’re saying is, this has been a trend line, just another point of reference, there are these leadership surveys out there where they ask leaders about the environment in which they’re working in over the past 20 years, these annual leader surveys survey, surveying thousands of leaders across sectors and industries, it’s like… And four out of five of them say that the environment is unpredictable in every way, what kind of resources they’re gonna need, including human resources, where technology is gonna plan, where their revenues are gonna come from, but what’s even more astounding is that four out of five have been saying that for more than 15 years, so this isn’t just COVID that’s creating this uncertain environment, but when you come full circle to your question is saying, Gosh, if it’s that uncertain, if so many things are out of control, what is it we do to stay on course, not just as it relates to culture, but as it relates to the business of that culture, whatever that is, a non-profit, for-profit, it doesn’t matter. And one of the key things is to understand why you do what you do.
Drucker used to call it the question of, what business are you in? But the way that Peter Drucker would use it is he would say, Once you give me that answer, what business you’re in, I want you to answer it again. Keep drilling down five layers. Until you get to the core of what it is you do and why you do it. So in some ways, Mike, it’s this idea of shared purpose, why do we exist as a team to do this, but it’s using shared purpose rather than kinda like culture waiting for it to just happen. It’s using this shared purpose to guide decision making every day, it’s doing the things we’ve already talked about, inviting others into the discussion of What is that shared purpose and what does it mean in everything we do? It’s a point of reference. And what’s interesting is that those organizations that have, what sound like these relatively simple points of reference, but they actually attend to them and use them in what they do, and they invite everybody into the process, those are the organizations that have been the most successful, regardless of the uncertainty that has occurred in the last 20 years…
Yes, it’s Airbnb. Yes, it’s Walmart, it’s Microsoft, it’s the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It’s smaller companies like Reese Witherspoon’s, Hello Sunshine Production Company. It’s sports teams, certain sports teams, it goes across the board, and what they have that is their key advantage is this sense of direction, these little True North points that they not only point to, but they embed within an active culture. That’s what really makes the difference.
COC: So people first, a direction, vision and coming together, because there’s so many things that are fast and volatile that it’s about coming together, and you mentioned that in your book to about overcoming insurmountable obstacles when you share the load and you come together in certain ways that’s… I think what people have to rely on in today’s environment, and then to add to that point, you mentioned about Coach Terry Malone is a great example of a sports coach, and you can go into it, is to make sure that everyone understands the direction and where we’re going and coming together. Well, that kinda has to be a way of operating, and you’re talking to… It’s a big organization with many layers and tens of thousands of people, the concept of, Well, first, can you explain the time alone is but also, what if we had many Terry Malones saying the same messages, these three simple things, people, the direction and why… What would happen in organization really… What would happen to an organization or a group or a community, this was… If this actually happened?
LR: Yeah, it’s a powerful example. And the short story on Terry is, Terry is a football coach. Terry is not and never has been the head coach, however, he’s been with some of the most successful football programs in college or the pros in history, he was at the University of Michigan and there during the time when he took a date as a coaching team took them to most of the titles that they’re known for, he’s usually in charge of the offensive line or something related to it. He was in New Orleans. And part of that team when they won the Super Bowl. He’s done the same at Bowling Green and other places. So what’s fascinating about Terry’s story is he plays such a pivotal role in their overall success, and yet he breaks with the stereotype, because guess what, he’s not the head coach, he takes his role within the offensive line, or sometimes his role is even smaller than that, he’s in charge of the tight ends, if one position is a position coach within the offensive line, and he says, Okay, what does this team stand for, what have the senior leaders set out as what we wanna be, why we wanna be that what the culture is here, and then he actively pursues it, so does Terry do it like every other coach on that team? Probably not, but he’s focused on his interpretation of what their shared purpose is, what the culture is supposed to be, and then making it active, and he not only makes it active in himself, like how he coaches, he invites his players into it, so you could think of Terry, like being a good Coronavirus it.
He is just in fill, trading everyone around him, including other coaches, including coaches that are more senior to him, with his example, with his actions, and encouraging them to do the same. Now, some leaders in some organizations say, I don’t want a guy like that at a lower level who has free rein to interpret what it is we’re trying to do here, and yet organizations love Terry because he’s the exact opposite of that thing they fear instead he’s the guy who takes the baton and actively pursues achieving what they all say, that shared purpose is gonna help them deliver on… That’s what a Terry Malone is. And so, I absolutely agree with you that Terry Malones need to be everywhere in an organization, because when they are, instead of the chaos ensuing that you think would ensue, they actually raised the power level within that organization to accomplish the mission, to achieve the shared purpose. They’re carrying the load along with the most senior leaders like a Sean Payton for the New Orleans Saints or whoever the head coaches. Anyway, that’s the power in a Terry Malone. And what makes Terry so powerful is a combination of what he does individually, but also how that organization creates an environment that invites him to do that rewards him when he does it, and doesn’t punish him when some of the things he tries doesn’t work out, so it’s that totality that makes the Terry alone so powerful.
COC: I think when you said the word rewards for doing something like this, you know we talked about the term control and deliberate of setting up the onboarding for sustainment, of doing things like this, a deliberate action to either publicly or privately, whatever is appropriate of celebrating people acting like that, carrying the baton of the message, rewarding that… Making that a habit. It’s probably a good idea for this. Leaders at all level of the organization.
LR: No question, it’s one of two ends, by the way, because the other side of that is, when a term alone does something that doesn’t work out according to plan leads to error or leads to a loss, we’ll put it in sporting terms. Do you punish the guy… What is your reaction? How do you use that momentary failure or loss to point back towards the thing that’s larger, and the wisdom out there would say, You don’t punish him, you learn from this, you fail forward, if you wanna put it that… What’s the lesson in it? And what will we do different the next time, so it’s that combination of not just reward, but taking away the stick and turning it into a lever instead…
COC: Oh for sure, for sure. That’s a great point. That’s the other side of the token. Yeah, thank you, Larry. I think we’ve come through our time, we’ve blew through through 50 minutes… Wow. Very, very easily, didn’t it? I just wanted to tell you that the book… I’m gonna recommend this. I loved it. Your heart and mind are unbelievable. I think that there was more like Larry Robertsons, like Terry Malones. This is where I think the individuals, organizations, I think even large groups of the community could really get a lot of insight from your thoughts, and the thoughts of others that you’ve captured…….. and then their thoughts… that they’ve learned it along the way.
LR: I so appreciate that, Mike. And really, I think about the book as a way to get conversations like this started in an organization among two people, among 2,000 people, so I appreciate you’re recommending it, and I hope that’s what people find in it.
COC: Yep, we know that it’s hard work, the culture aspect is hard work, and you state that, and we know that… I know that. But it’s worth it. It’s worth the fight, and I say that in finding a good way.
LR: Yeah, I think it’s the chief competitive advantage of any organization, especially in uncertain times.
Larry Robertson is an innovation advisor who works, writes, and guides at the nexus of creativity, leadership, and entrepreneurship. He’s the author of two award-winning books: A Deliberate Pause: Entrepreneurship and its Moment in Human Progress, and The Language of Man. Learning to Speak Creativity. His third book, Rebel Leadership: How to Thrive in Uncertain Times, was released June 2021 to rave reviews. As founder of Lighthouse Consulting, he has for over 25 years guided organizations and their leaders through uncertainty, change, and growth to lasting success. A popular columnist and speaker, he has a unique ability to bring his audience into the story, and help them craft and realize their own success story. In 2021 he was named a Fulbright Scholar, a rarity for non-academic professionals