Latest / CLEAR Performance Coaching / Podcast #9 - CLEAR Performance Coaching - Improve Performance - LEVERAGE

Transcript

Podcast #9 - CLEAR Performance Coaching - Improve Performance - LEVERAGE · CLEAR Performance Coaching

0:16
SPEAKER_00: Choice by choice.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: This is where leadership meets performance practical.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: So you can step in and show up on purpose every day.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Kent Vaughn.
0:56
SPEAKER_02: I'm Sam Bracken, and I'm Rick Timlick.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: We want to welcome you to the next Clear Performance Coaching Podcast.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: And remember at Clear Performance, we're all about helping leaders become excellent coaches who create extraordinary results.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: So that's everything we're doing how do we help leaders get better, do better, achieve better things with their teams.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: The last podcast, we started talking about the category of improved performance.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: It's the blue category.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: It's one of the most used categories in the cards by a tremendous number.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: This and the resilience one are the most popular categories, but everybody needs this one because we're always needing to improve performance.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: In the last podcast, we talked about the first two part, or the first part of CLEAR, the acronym we use for improving performance, which is, remember the acronym is CLARITY for CLIAR, Leverage for Leverage, Engagement, Accountability, and Results.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: So last time we talked about taking clear action.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: Now we're going to talk about leverage, this idea of leverage.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: Archimedes said, give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: So Sam and Rick, when you think about leverage, what comes to your mind?
2:15
SPEAKER_01: Other than the popular TV show years ago, what comes to your mind?
2:20
SPEAKER_02: That's great.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: That's great you asked that question, Kent.
2:22
SPEAKER_02: Last time we talked about clarity around a goal or what you want to accomplish or what you wanted to accomplish.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of people fixate on what they want to accomplish.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: And that's fine and dandy.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: But in the end, we really need to get down to how we're going to accomplish it.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: So once you're clear on a goal and you have a gap, you're committed to it and you're excited about it, and you're just and it's in within your control, then we need to naturally ask ourselves, how am I going to accomplish that goal?
2:50
SPEAKER_02: The way we accomplish that goal is we behave ourselves into achieving the goal, right?
2:57
SPEAKER_02: So we have to usually, usually there's a mechanism where we have to do different behavior to achieve the goal.
3:03
SPEAKER_02: Now, we call this leverage.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: You know, leverage is leverage is can be a tricky thing because when you think about a simple goal like a weight loss goal, you can you think about, well, I want to lose, I want to go from 295 pounds to 260 pounds by June 1st, 2026.
3:21
SPEAKER_02: You know, there's your gap.
3:22
SPEAKER_02: That's a nice little wonderful goal.
3:24
SPEAKER_02: And but there are a million ways to to lose weight.
3:27
SPEAKER_02: You know, you can go on trosepatide, get the fat shots, you can diet and exercise to the extreme.
3:33
SPEAKER_02: You can do fasting.
3:35
SPEAKER_02: My son Bo does fasting.
3:37
SPEAKER_02: He's like a freak about fasting.
3:39
SPEAKER_02: Or you can just do a great fruit dry, you can do a great fruit diet.
3:44
SPEAKER_02: There are there are a thousand different ways to lose weight.
3:48
SPEAKER_02: But the question you need to ask yourself is what's the best way for me to lose weight?
3:54
SPEAKER_02: And as an older man with my metabolism slowing and not being able to run five miles a day because I just had any replacement surgery, how do I lose weight?
4:02
SPEAKER_02: Well, for me, it's a moderate amount of exercise, but it's really controlling my food.
4:07
SPEAKER_02: And especially the food I eat in the evening and the type of food I eat, and the water intake and the sleep I have.
4:13
SPEAKER_02: So leverage can be a specific one behavior, or it can be a process of behavior.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: But doing it and doing it with excellence, doing it consistently and doing it with excellence is the key to helping you achieve your goal.
4:29
SPEAKER_02: Now, this is tricky.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: It's tricky because, and probably Rick can talk about this more, but if we obsess about our goal, that's one thing, but that may not help us achieve our goal.
4:40
SPEAKER_02: It's what I like to say is you keep the goal in the back of your mind, but you keep the leverage in the front of your mind.
4:46
SPEAKER_02: You're maniacally focused on the behaviors that you need to do to achieve the goal.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: That's where your energy is spent.
4:53
SPEAKER_02: And the key thing about that is to find the root behavior, the bottom behavior, the the basic behavior that if you do it with consistency and with excellence, right?
5:06
SPEAKER_02: It will produce the goal.
5:09
SPEAKER_02: And most people don't do that, they don't have the discipline, they don't put the routines in place, and they don't work and focus on the right levers.
5:19
SPEAKER_02: So today it's going to be all about how do we focus on the right levers to achieve our goals.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: Rick, what would you add to that?
5:27
SPEAKER_01: What's your thinking about leverage?
5:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I love that you talked about diet and exercise.
5:31
SPEAKER_03: I'm on the same journey.
5:32
SPEAKER_03: And it's funny, I had the gym membership.
5:35
SPEAKER_03: And like everybody, or like many people, I didn't go.
5:39
SPEAKER_03: And so I had to think like, what's stopping me from accomplishing, as Sam said, the goals that I want.
5:47
SPEAKER_03: And you've got to move the goals back because what you want to activate is your prefrontal cortex.
5:53
SPEAKER_03: And you want to start thinking of what are the things that I can operationalize that will help me achieve the goal that's deep-seated in my heart.
6:02
SPEAKER_03: And my goal is around longevity, and I know strength and muscle mass is an important part of that longevity.
6:08
SPEAKER_03: And so I had to engage with a personal trainer.
6:11
SPEAKER_03: Now, the funny part about that is many years ago I was a personal trainer, and I've exercised all over the years, and so it's not that I don't really know what to do, but that lever of saying you're gonna hold me accountable, and when I only want to give you eight and you know that I have another one or two in me, you're driving it.
6:33
SPEAKER_03: That was the lever that got me to start going, and now that all the rest starts to get activated, but I needed something to start to pivot it the other way.
6:43
SPEAKER_03: I use it, and it's funny we talk about our kids sometimes.
6:45
SPEAKER_03: I'll use kids as a good example of this.
6:47
SPEAKER_03: If I'm constantly chasing my child to do something, pick this up, do your homework, do that.
6:55
SPEAKER_03: By virtue of me chasing them, they don't have to activate their prefrontal cortex.
7:01
SPEAKER_03: So I'm not even utilizing the levers that we have in order to help them do the thing that I want them to do.
7:08
SPEAKER_03: And so I had to stop and say, hold on, I want them to be self-sufficient with this.
7:13
SPEAKER_03: What are the levers that I have?
7:15
SPEAKER_03: Well, if I help them learn to activate the prefrontal cortex, that operational thinking will happen and they'll be able to know the next step and then the next step.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: You know, that's awesome that you say that, Rick, because I think the best way to activate your prefrontal cortex is to make and keep a commitment.
7:34
SPEAKER_02: So that that's the secret.
7:35
SPEAKER_02: So you make and keep commitments around the levers, and that's to yourself and to others.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: And there's something that happens when you make a decision that you're gonna do something and you go do it.
7:46
SPEAKER_02: You actually get better.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: Your character grows, your trust grows, your capability grows, and you your personal power grows.
7:53
SPEAKER_02: And when you make a commitment and you don't do it, you actually diminish and uh your your trust diminishes, your character diminishes.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: So part of this kind of thing we're talking about here in CLEAR is the key ingredient to change, and that is to make and keep commitments around different behaviors that are going to give you a different outcome.
8:11
SPEAKER_02: And that really is controlled by your frontal cortex.
8:15
SPEAKER_02: That's where free will is found, right here, man, right in the noggin.
8:18
SPEAKER_02: And oftentimes we do things or we're exposed to things that put us in a crocodile brain and we react or we have trauma and we have triggers, and it it distracts us, it distracts us from the key important behaviors to be able to make and keep commitments around to make the progress we need to make.
8:37
SPEAKER_02: Now, here's how it applies to work.
8:39
SPEAKER_02: When it applies, when it comes to work, we're all busy.
8:44
SPEAKER_02: We're all we all have stuff to do.
8:46
SPEAKER_02: And um when you can slow down enough to make and keep commitments, to plan your day, to make and keep commitments, to do what you need to do, that's how you're gonna make the progress.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: And then to check in and check out with yourself and others around what they committed to do.
9:02
SPEAKER_02: So in an in an organization, ideally, what you want is everything aligned, everybody aligned in their different positions to be making and keeping commitments around the key behaviors that are gonna drive the best possible outcomes.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: And the way we do this is through a mindset of an of constant improvement, quality improvement.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: You I love what both of you have said here.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: It's interesting if you read the card, which is what we create them to do that, right?
9:29
SPEAKER_01: It says leverage is how you're going to accomplish your clear goal, which you both said.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: And it's one thing, typically a new behavior, not always, but a new behavior, you will do to produce your clear goal.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: Keeping your commitments on your levers will ensure that you will accomplish your meaningful goals.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: And that's really the idea.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: But as Rick said, Stephen Covey used to say this: you say, if you bug people enough, work becomes the course of least resistance.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: And that's not really what we're trying to do here.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: What we're trying to do is as an individual, you know, identify the levers that we're going to focus on, and for a team that we are going to identify the levers.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: We had a client many years ago who mandated the levers throughout the organization.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: Fortunately, we said to them, hey, by the way, you probably got to give people a little latitude here, right, to identify how do they make the lever better for them or whatever else.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: And then what's fascinating is they had identified eight levers across the organization, spread it.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: It was a retail sales organization sent out to thousands of stores, literally, and thousands of people.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: But they did say, if you can come up with something that's even better, try it out.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the stores identified the lever that changed everything.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: It was not a lever that corporate originally thought of.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: But because they gave them the latitude, here's some examples of levers.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: You can find out something better.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: In fact, they liked it so much they actually created a commercial around this new lever, so you think that they were doing.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: And so that's really what is it?
10:57
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no buy-in, no commitment, right?
11:00
SPEAKER_02: It's no involvement, no commitment.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Sam.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: No involvement, no commitment, right?
11:04
SPEAKER_01: So we want to get people involved for a team.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: We can give them some levers.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: Here's some ideas of levers.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: But here's the funny thing: you never, you never know what great idea someone else is going to give you and where it's going to come from, right?
11:16
SPEAKER_01: And so the idea is we're looking constantly for how do we improve levers, how do we get better levers, what works for you?
11:22
SPEAKER_01: What works for Sam may not work for me, may not work for Rick, right?
11:26
SPEAKER_01: Everybody does it a little differently, and that's okay.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're building a McDonald's Big Mac, you want it done a certain way every time.
11:33
SPEAKER_01: We get that.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: There are certainly systems and processes.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: You're building a new Mercedes SUV or a Toyota Camry, you want it done a certain way, right?
11:43
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely we get that.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: And we understand that.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Rick's a six-sigma guy for decades, used to work for Toyota back in the day in Japan.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: So many times, though, there's some latitude that it doesn't have to be the Big Mac, two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame, eat bun.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: For not doing that, barring that, you know, maybe giving people a chance to be involved and come up and share ideas and insights.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: So what would you guys add to that if you think about creating the best levers?
12:11
SPEAKER_02: I would say, I would say, Kent, that if you share the same function, you probably need to share the same lever in an organization.
12:18
SPEAKER_02: So if you're a salesperson and the lever is activities that get two-way communications to be able to do a sales pitch, then that activity needs to be the same by everyone on the sales team.
12:30
SPEAKER_02: And if you if but if you have a different function, if you're a sales manager or if you're a receptionist or you're an operational leader, then you probably have different levers, right?
12:39
SPEAKER_02: We know that there are principles.
12:41
SPEAKER_02: There are five principles of leverage, right?
12:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:43
SPEAKER_02: The first leverage is it's usually a root behavior that produces the goal.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: The second lever is it's within your control.
12:51
SPEAKER_02: The third lever is that it's woven into your daily routines, right?
12:55
SPEAKER_02: You're doing it all the time.
12:56
SPEAKER_02: And that typically means you do it, you do it consistently, and you do it with excellence.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: The next principle is you're probably going to need to adjust it.
13:05
SPEAKER_02: And it's going to need to be refined.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: So it's not perfect right out of the gate.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: Right.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: And finally, the last thing here is that it may need to be uh continually uh refined and adjusted as the circumstances change.
13:20
SPEAKER_02: So those are some basic rules.
13:22
SPEAKER_02: But again, this is the counterintuitive process to goal achievement.
13:26
SPEAKER_02: If you do it and you do it well and you do it consistently, it changes everything.
13:32
SPEAKER_03: Let me give you uh a couple of fun examples.
13:35
SPEAKER_03: When I was going to school to take organizational psychology, we studied a few famous behavioral changes that influenced market.
13:43
SPEAKER_03: And the biggest one was Betty Crocker.
13:45
SPEAKER_03: When Betty Crocker first introduced the instant cake mix, all you had to do was add water and bake it.
13:53
SPEAKER_03: And they didn't sell.
13:55
SPEAKER_03: And so they hired an organizational psychologist to kind of go out there and figure out why is this not selling?
14:01
SPEAKER_03: Like we know that the the stay-at-home wives are getting busier.
14:05
SPEAKER_03: We've offered something that allowed them to provide a dessert.
14:09
SPEAKER_03: What they realized through this study was there was no ownership over the cake because there was no participation in creating the cake.
14:19
SPEAKER_03: And so what they suggested was remove one ingredient out, which was the egg.
14:26
SPEAKER_03: And so now when you make a Betty Crocker cake, you have to just crack an egg and add it in and then mix it, and there was the feeling of ownership.
14:35
SPEAKER_03: So they sought what is the leverage we have, which is behavioral influence, and they realized we needed to add a step to increase ownership over what you were making and doing to feel like you're part of that process and you can feel better about baking that cake.
14:52
SPEAKER_03: And it was a great case study.
14:54
SPEAKER_02: That's a great story, you know.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: It really basically it really adds to the principle that it's better to co-create the levers with your people because of no involvement, no commitment.
15:05
SPEAKER_02: Uh but when they are involved, they're more committed.
15:07
SPEAKER_02: And when you co-create it with them, you have innovation, light, understanding, and you get all sorts of wonderful involvement.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: And that involvement improves the likelihood of keeping consistent commitments over time, which is going to give you a desired outcome.
15:24
SPEAKER_02: It really is part of the quick win and reinforcement in behavior change process.
15:31
SPEAKER_02: This is what we're talking about when it comes to really focusing on the lever, finding the right lever, and then moving it.
15:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
15:38
SPEAKER_03: I'll give you one more fun example.
15:40
SPEAKER_03: And it was true, there's a restaurant chain in Canada called the Old Spaghetti Factory.
15:44
SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure if it's down in the US or not, but the old spaghetti factory in the early days, they used to know that if they increase the tempo of the music around peak hours, they would turn tables faster.
15:58
SPEAKER_03: So again, it's an example.
15:59
SPEAKER_03: We've got to we want to turn tables faster so that we can get more customers in and out.
16:04
SPEAKER_03: What's the lever we have?
16:06
SPEAKER_03: Well, if we increase the tempo, they're gonna eat faster.
16:11
SPEAKER_03: That's fascinating.
16:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: So on the back of this card, card number 32, leverage.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: We've got some great things to consider here.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: First, find and commit yourself to the root behavior that will produce the goal.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: So you've got to identify that if you're working on your own goal.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: Or as a team, or if you're coaching an individual, right?
16:33
SPEAKER_01: What's the root behavior that we believe will produce the goal?
16:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, Sam talked about great examples with you know, diet and exercise.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: Rick talked about getting people involved, get them to add an egg and water, now they own it more, right?
16:47
SPEAKER_01: So identify that, and the more we can get people involved, the better.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: And then we've got some watch outs here, very important.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: The first one says levers can be tricky, so make sure the lever gets to the root behavior that produces the goal.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: And that is really interesting because so often organizations and individuals think, oh, if I do more of this, it's revive that result.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: And what we'll find is that can change over time.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: That may not be at all what works anymore.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: The world may have changed, the world of AI, all things that are going on.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: So you have to watch closely.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: And that's why step number four is step number four, consistent effort and adjustment in those five principles of leverage, right?
17:24
SPEAKER_01: So once you set a lever, don't set it and forget it.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: Set it and watch how consistently is everyone doing it, and do we make adjustments?
17:33
SPEAKER_01: The second watch out, Rick and Sam both talked about this, is co-create your levers with your people.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: No involvement, no commitment.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: And the third one is don't mistake goals for levers.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: I worked in an organization several years ago, and a new leader came in, and we both came at the same time.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: And he said, one of the problems we have is people think that setting the goal is the same as achieving the goal.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I set this goal to do X, Y, and Z.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: That isn't achieving the goal.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: The goal, he said, the goal is not to set the goal, the goal is to achieve the goal.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: So set the goal, and now let's identify what we're going to do to help us get there.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: There's no glory in having a tremendous goal that we don't achieve.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: A friend of mine used to own a bunch of men's stores, men's clothing stores, and he said that one of the best things he ever learned when he first got in that business was that the buyer and his boss said that there's no glory in 50% off sales.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: And what he meant was if you buy a product that you have to put on sale for 50% off to sell it, you didn't do a good job.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: You bought the wrong products, you didn't buy it in the right style, the right color, the whatever else.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: So no glory in a big sale.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: So if you're buying the right things and you're pricing them at the right price, people should buy them, right?
18:47
SPEAKER_01: So I love that idea of there's no glory in a 50% off sale.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: Rick, Sam, what would you add to the watch outside?
18:54
SPEAKER_03: I'll jump into a watch out from a manufacturing perspective.
18:57
SPEAKER_03: You talked about lean and six sigma.
18:59
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's interesting if you step back from all of the tools and the belts and all of that.
19:05
SPEAKER_03: There's a fundamental piece that we're describing.
19:09
SPEAKER_03: So if I identify a problem with clarity that I want to solve, and I figure out how do I currently measure progress and make sure my measurement system is right, and then we create some improvement activities, and then we move that project into a sustained phase.
19:27
SPEAKER_03: And what that means is we're monitoring the results to make sure that the benefit that we expected to get from the improvements happened.
19:37
SPEAKER_03: And that to me is a good example of you know making sure that the lever gets to the root behavior that produces the result.
19:44
SPEAKER_03: Because if we see flat or stagnant metrics, we've got to go back and say our assumptions on improvement were incorrect.
19:52
SPEAKER_03: And let's be okay to go back and revisit that.
19:55
SPEAKER_03: It just means we experimented and we tried and we learned some things.
19:59
SPEAKER_03: And so now we iterate and see did the improvement actually stick and are we gaining as a result of that.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's awesome that you would say that.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: Rick, we're on such the same page because what I say in the same way, you say it much better, is you got to keep hope alive by making sure that people see the impact of the effort.
20:21
SPEAKER_02: So doing the lever is not going to do you any good unless you see the impact of the effort.
20:27
SPEAKER_02: So if I'm on a weight loss journey and I do the work, and I do the work, I take the fat shots and I reduce my calories, and maybe I have, you know, or I've had gastric bypass surgery and I've done this stuff and I don't lose the weight, I don't get the quick win, I do not get the benefit.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: I don't move to self-reliance and self-enlightenment because I can't connect the dots.
20:49
SPEAKER_02: So what's what's really important here is that we're connecting the dots, that if I do this, I get that.
20:55
SPEAKER_02: If I do this, I get that.
20:56
SPEAKER_02: And then we don't have to micromanage so much anymore.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: So as we do this, as we do it and we do it well, it develops our people on the fly at the same time.
21:08
SPEAKER_02: But they need to see, they need to see the impact of the effort, good or bad.
21:14
SPEAKER_02: Because if you do a lever and you do it well, and you do it consistently with excellence, whatever, and it doesn't give you the impact, guess what it means?
21:21
SPEAKER_02: Wrong lever.
21:22
SPEAKER_03: Wrong lever.
21:23
SPEAKER_02: Wrong lever.
21:24
SPEAKER_02: So this this ability to continually improve yourself, right?
21:28
SPEAKER_02: To take the the great principles of lean and six sigma and the quality improvement and apply it to human behavior, this is really what we're talking about.
21:36
SPEAKER_02: This is really the uniqueness of what we do in clear performance coaching is we apply these proven principles to human behavior, right?
21:44
SPEAKER_02: And if we can't see the impact of the effort, we'll never believe and we'll never have the energy to keep it going.
21:51
SPEAKER_02: So that's a real critical part of this finding the right lever and moving it.
21:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:56
SPEAKER_03: Ken, you talk about when you were at Kimberly Clark and then Safety issues that were happening.
22:02
SPEAKER_03: I think that that story is a perfect example of this as well.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: Of you know, we can speak safety, but until we did it a different way and landed on the right levers, nothing changed.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: That's that's a great story.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: Many decades ago, I was at a Kimberly Clark plant that made diapers, the largest diaper plant in the world.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, my kids were young, it was a great place to be working, you know.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: Understanding about diapers, kind of funny.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: Where do you work?
22:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm a diaper man, okay.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: But what happened was diapers for decades in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s were a rectangular shape.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: And the problem is that it doesn't fit well around the legs of the baby, it bunches up, and so there was leakage.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: And so someone came up with this idea what if we cut the diapers into an allergash shape in the middle, so they're already naturally gonna fit around the baby's leg better, right?
22:48
SPEAKER_01: So the engineers tried all kinds of tools and resources to cut these out.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: They tried knives, they tried saws, they tried all kinds of things, and everything left a little bit, a tiny little bit of debris.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: And if there's debris, it's gonna agitate the baby's leg.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: So all these tests, and finally what they realized was water was the best thing and used water cutters to cut it out.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Now, now, a diaper is made of seven or eight or ten layers of materials and thick, thick uh cotton, really, and a supersorp material looks like sugar.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: And so you've got to cut through all that, and so we found that for them to cut through all of those layers and that material, the water had to come out of little jets, they were little tiny jets that looked like a hypodermic needle, and the water was at 20,000 PSI, pounds per square inch.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: Now, 20,000 pounds of water coming through a little like a hypertermic needle, a little tiny, tiny stream, you almost can't see it, it will cut off your thumb and cardirize it, and you won't feel it for almost a minute.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: The thumb's gone, there's no blood, and you don't feel it.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: And so when we first did this, we were losing thumbs all over the place.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you never bring, and we had, you know, 1,500 employees in this plant, 900, whatever, 1,500 employees, and the last thing you want is somebody lose a thumb or a finger, right?
24:09
SPEAKER_01: And we couldn't get it to people's heads because they were saying, well, it's just water, it's just water.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: Dude, it's not just water.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: That water would cut you in half.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: A nine millimeter bullet, I was a soldier in other life, a nine millimeter bullet hits you with about six or seven thousand pounds per square inch, and it will knock you down.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: 20,000 pounds, I mean, we're talking about three times that that pressure, that pressure.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: So we just couldn't figure it out.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: We just couldn't figure it out.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: We thought, what are we gonna do?
24:35
SPEAKER_01: What we're gonna do.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: So the guy that was over at safety, we moved in a different role and we said, Hey, what can we do?
24:41
SPEAKER_01: What can we do?
24:42
SPEAKER_01: We interviewed a lot of people, and we had a lead operator.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: He ran a crew of 12 people on a machine, been there for many years.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: He said, I have some ideas about what to do.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: And so he shaved the ideas.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: We actually promoted the guy immediately, put him in a special role for about 18 months, and here's what he did: he would show people when there were new hires, and he took every employee in the plant through this as well.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: We had a practice machine, and he got would get frozen chicken wings or thigh, I think it was chicken drumsticks, and he would hold them in a special tool and he would cut them, they were frozen, put them under water cutter, and would slice it immediately, and people go, oh my gosh.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, they had no idea that it was sliced through a, you know, think about a frozen drumsticks, very thick, very hard, tap it on the machine, nothing's happened, it's not breaking, but it would slice it clean as a whittle, right?
25:31
SPEAKER_01: And then he would take people into a training room and give them a triple X uniform shirt, and they were light blue Oxford shirts that had Kimberly Clark on one side and your name on the other side.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: He'd give them a triple X shirt, put it on, and then he would duct tape both of their thumbs to their hands.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: A couple things of duct tape.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: So their thumbs aren't going anywhere.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: He said, your assignment in the next 30 minutes is to button your shirt.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: Or if you can't button your shirt, button your neighbor's shirt, button your shirt.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: No one could button their shirt because without these thumbs, have you tried buttoning with no thumb?
26:09
SPEAKER_01: It's almost impossible.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: And people would be cussing under their breath, they'd be swearing, they'd be so upset.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm my gosh, this is ridiculous.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: And then he would say, you know, after about literally 20 or 30 minutes of that, he'd say, So what's the point?
26:22
SPEAKER_01: And then he'd say, Okay, let's take off one.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: Let's take off one.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: Now you have one thumb.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: How must it go?
26:27
SPEAKER_01: And people realize it still took, you know, two or three times as long to button the shirt if they only had one thumb.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: You could do it, it was better than no thumbs.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: And then he said, What's the point?
26:35
SPEAKER_01: The point is, if I lose my thumbs, I'm out of luck.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, I guess after I pull over shirts the rest of my life, people would joke and have fun, and he'd say, This is why you have to beware of the water.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: Because you lose a thumb, you will miss it for the rest of your life.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: We want you to go home.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: All of us spent many years in manufacturing, and it doesn't play any, it applies any role.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: You want you to go home the way you came, right?
26:56
SPEAKER_01: And so that story, sorry, I was kind of long.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: Strick's like, dude, you give him a tell him a have Vontel story and it never shuts up.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: But that so those were completely new and different behaviors.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: As you can imagine, almost instantly it went across all the plants, Globe, Clemmer De Clark, Kimberly Clark, you were making diapers, and they're saying, Water's safe out of a water fountain, you know, out of those little cutter water cutter.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: We call them water cutters, would cut anything.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, that was it.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: We had to figure out new and different behaviors and had to figure out a new way to train around as well.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: Because people just said, it's just water.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is water.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: But at 20,000 PSI, it'll cut a building in half.
27:33
SPEAKER_02: You know, as you say that story, Kent, I'm reminded of a principle that how likely was that with that great example you used, how likely would it have been to work if you would have had six levers you were trying to teach at the same time or trying to do at the same time?
27:49
SPEAKER_02: So that's another final watch out here on this idea of leverage, is that you you you want one behavior, max two.
27:57
SPEAKER_02: One or two behaviors, because across ten people and four functions, if they have ten behaviors each, you can't manage it, you can't track it, you can't make lasting impact with it.
28:08
SPEAKER_02: So the rule is you narrow the focus around the best lever and you monochically do that, and you get everyone to do that and adopt that in the same function.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: And then that way it really gets more powerful.
28:21
SPEAKER_02: Just like your manager, you know, he just said, We're gonna do this new behavior so we don't cut appendages off, and we're gonna really focus on this one thing, do this one thing, and it's gonna make the biggest difference.
28:32
SPEAKER_02: Oftentimes, you know, we look for one thing, everybody's good at looking for one thing.
28:37
SPEAKER_02: What's the one thing we can do?
28:38
SPEAKER_02: Well, the best way to go about finding the right lever is to go through a prototyping exercise where you say, Okay, prototype one, prototype two, and then look at each of the trade-offs as you're co-creating these levers and look at the look at the trade-offs and then pick the best one.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: As you do that with the right data, the right information, the right people, the right input, what happens is you get innovation.
29:01
SPEAKER_02: This is how you build innovation.
29:02
SPEAKER_02: And it works, it works every time.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: It's a fabulous thing.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: I just want to add something about that, Sam.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: Is this needs to be speedy too?
29:11
SPEAKER_01: We'd say at most weekly, reviewing the levers, reviewing the behaviors, is this getting us the results?
29:18
SPEAKER_01: It may take a little longer to get the results, but it's very quick.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: You don't set it and forget it.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: You go off for three months, people aren't even doing it three months later.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: We've got to first get people in the habit of applying the new lever, using the new lever, but we need to do speedy, speedy, speedy checks to say, is it really working?
29:33
SPEAKER_01: Is it really making a difference?
29:34
SPEAKER_01: Like your weight loss example.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: If you're doing all that junk, cutting back on calories, not eating ice cream at night, which I love to do, going to the gym three or four times in the week, if you haven't lost a couple pounds the next week, you're like, forget about that, right?
29:46
SPEAKER_01: You've got to have quick results.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: May not be big, but you've got to see at least directionally we're seeing some positive things happen.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: And that's why we that's why some other parts of this are really focusing on are we getting the results or are they making a difference?
29:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, it reminds me, one of my favorite Zig Ziggler stories was around this prototyping and behaviors.
30:06
SPEAKER_03: It was when he was in an airport getting his shoe shined.
30:09
SPEAKER_03: And the shoe shine person was phenomenal, good interacting, asked great questions, you know, how long you're gonna be away, what are you doing?
30:19
SPEAKER_03: And and shined a great shine on the shoes.
30:22
SPEAKER_03: And then he said, Mr.
30:23
SPEAKER_03: Ziegler, you said you're gonna be gone for a week.
30:27
SPEAKER_03: I bet knowing how well you dress, you've got a second pair of shoes in that bag.
30:32
SPEAKER_03: And and Zig said, Well, in fact, I do.
30:36
SPEAKER_03: He said, you know, and I appreciate how you said to me how well these shoes look shined up.
30:41
SPEAKER_03: It sure would be a shame if your other's pair of shoes weren't as shiny as those ones are.
30:47
SPEAKER_03: And sure enough, he's like, You're right, and pulled them out and got them to shine those.
30:52
SPEAKER_03: But it was something that shoe shine person had learned.
30:54
SPEAKER_03: Hey, if they're gone for more than three days, they probably have another pair of shoes, and I can quickly double my revenue.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
31:03
SPEAKER_01: Probably doubled his tip too.
31:05
SPEAKER_03: Double his tip too, yeah.
31:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's a great story.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: That's a great story.
31:09
SPEAKER_02: Well, Rick, do you got any final words of wisdom to take us home on this concept of leverage and why it works so well?
31:16
SPEAKER_03: You know, the only thing I would add, because I think we've covered it all really nicely, is really narrowing down to that right behavior.
31:23
SPEAKER_03: And when we talk about prototyping, the behavior we land on at first, it's okay to let it go.
31:30
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes we get so stuck on holding what we think we've landed on.
31:35
SPEAKER_03: If it's not producing the result, it's okay to have a countertype to that.
31:39
SPEAKER_03: It's okay to then iterate.
31:41
SPEAKER_03: And so we want to keep trying to find what the right behavior that produces a result is, and don't get stuck on one.
31:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:49
SPEAKER_02: The only thing I'd add to that is don't abandon it too early.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: So this idea, you have to give it a chance to work.
31:55
SPEAKER_02: And that usually takes 30 to 60 days to doing it and doing it with excellence to see if it's gonna work or not.
32:02
SPEAKER_02: So don't be like, oh, that lever didn't work, this lever didn't work, that lever didn't work.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: Give it a chance.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: And then once you know that when you do it and you do with excellence, the new behavior, and it doesn't work, then you move on to the next and you cross it off, sort of like Edison did with the light filaments and the light bulb, right?
32:19
SPEAKER_02: Yep, that's not gonna be the right lever, so we're gonna move on, but we have to prove it, we have to prove it to ourselves first.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: We were we were working with a very large law firm years ago, and the one of the things they were trying to create some really new behaviors, and we said, we love this idea of 90-day challenges, 90-day sprints, is the first many five, six, seven weeks are all about doing the behavior with consistency, right?
32:44
SPEAKER_01: Getting consistency around doing that behavior, pulling that lever.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: And then after that, it becomes doing it with excellence, right?
32:50
SPEAKER_01: But first you got to create the habit of doing the behavior, and then you need to do it with excellence, right?
32:55
SPEAKER_01: So that's the second part.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to jump straight to excellence.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: I said, they're not even doing it.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: Let's focus initially on let's just get people to do this behavior, and then once it's ingrained, it's become what we do, we've done six, eight weeks of this, ten weeks of this.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: Now we're gonna focus on the quality.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna get quantity first, then we'll worry about quality.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: If you start worrying about quality and quality all at the same time, you're gonna have some real issues that happen, right?
33:19
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes people give up initially too fast.
33:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, I can't do it well.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you just start it.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: It takes some time.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: Let's worry about first the quantity of consistency of doing, then we'll worry about quality.
33:30
SPEAKER_02: This really helps adoption in any kind of change initiative as you do it this way.
33:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: So just to remind you, on the back of the card are two powerful questions.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: Do you have the right lever in place?
33:42
SPEAKER_01: As we said, it takes them a lot to figure it out.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: And what is the root behavior that'll drive the goal?
33:45
SPEAKER_01: So, just questions that you ask when you start talking to your team or the individual, ask them, hey, do you have the right lever in place?
33:53
SPEAKER_01: And what's the root behavior that will drive the goal?
33:55
SPEAKER_01: That's how you get started with all the things we've talked about.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: Those two simple questions.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: On the back of every card are powerful questions to begin a conversation.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: So good luck with those conversations.
34:07
SPEAKER_02: And there's a short video here to remind you of the principles we just talked about today.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a QR code with a great video with Sam, two minutes or less, probably 90 seconds, about how to do this with your team.
34:19
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna get tired of me.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: Nah, you're gonna like, oh, the guru.
34:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:25
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's good spending time with you guys today.
34:28
SPEAKER_02: Thanks, everybody.
34:29
SPEAKER_02: See ya.
34:30
SPEAKER_01: Have a great day.