Latest / Glovisor Podcast / Your Team Isn't Ready for Pressure—Unless You Rehearse It | Stephen Balzac [Ep 74]

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Your Team Isn't Ready for Pressure—Unless You Rehearse It | Stephen Balzac [Ep 74] · Glovisor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What if the secret to high-performance teams isn't working harder,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: but learning how to think, connect, and act differently? Welcome
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to the Globalizer podcast, where we explore business growth, communication,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and personal development through real conversations with people who make
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: an impact. Our guest is a consultant, author, and speaker.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: He is the president of Seven Steps Ahead, an organizational
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: development firm that teaches leaders how to develop strategy, surface
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: real decisions, and build teams that learn faster, act braver,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: and perform better. His latest book is The LARP Effect,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Creating Connection and Competitive Advantage Through Story, Ritual, and Roleplay.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Glowvisor welcomes Dr. Stephen Balzac.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Joe. It's a pleasure to be here.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's a pleasure to have you here today. Steve,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: let's start off with what specific problems do you solve
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and who do you help?
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: So I help leaders and teams perform better under pressure.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: One of the real problems in business, and it's best
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: expressed through a quote from the late novelist Terry Pratchett,
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: which is, When you do emergency simulations, what's the one
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: thing you always leave out? The emergency. And the problem
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: is that we're all really good at making the right
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: decisions when there's no pressure. No matter what topic you're
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: talking about, whether it's financial matters or how to respond
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: in a fire or dealing with a pandemic. I did
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: that in 2006, actually, a live simulation. we're really good
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: when we're sitting here calmly. There's no pressure. I can
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: pick up my coffee. I can take a sip. But
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: when you put people into a story and you create
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: some tension, suddenly all those perfect solutions fall, just disappear.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: And so what I do is I create simulations that
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: are narratively intensive and socially intensive and plot complex so
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: that people can't optimize their behavior and they get caught
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: up in the story. And they feel the emotions they
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: would feel if this were real. And because it feels real,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: they act more like what they would do in real life.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: And with practice, you learn how to manage that tension
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: and manage that excitement and make better decisions.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Wow, this is really interesting. And I'm going to move
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: some questions around here because now you just brought up
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: something that is so different. So now, who is the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: ideal client that you work with? So that way we
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: can get a little bit of the background of how
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: you would generate this process for people to be put
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: under that pressure and work through those processes and steps.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: So I work typically in tech, mostly because that is
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: where I've had most of my experience working. I actually
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: started out as a software developer back in the 90s
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: before moving into organizational psychology. And I've worked with teams anywhere, really,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: it can be very small up to arbitrarily large, but
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: in terms of the simulation activities, typically 20 to 40
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: people at a time. And what I do is I
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: put them in a pre-constructed scenario. Typically, the scenario is
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: you're all characters from popular fairy tales and you're all
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: gathered together in one place. So, you know, imagine taking
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: all those fairy tales, mixing them together. You know, it's
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: a little bit like what Marvel's does with the Avengers,
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: except with fairy tales and it's shorter and it's more fun.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: That's so interesting. Now, what made you change your career
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: and focus into this? aspect of it?
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Well, I'd like to say that this was a brilliant
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: plan that I'd had since childhood. But the truth is,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: I kind of backed into it initially. When I was
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: an undergraduate at MIT, I started writing live-action role-playing games.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: And I started doing this because I played a couple
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: of killer games, and killer gets boring really fast. And
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: so I started to add plot to it, a little
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: bit of a storyline, a little bit more complexity. And
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: over the course of several years and grades that probably
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: would have been better if I hadn't done this, I
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: developed this much more elaborate, much more complex story-driven game.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: And then when I graduated, I continued to run these
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: just for fun, for friends of mine, running them at
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: science fiction conventions, things like that. And I met other
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: people who were doing it and kind of learned from
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: them and sort of picked up techniques here and there.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: And it evolved my craft. And eventually, I was a
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: director of operations at a software bioinformatics company about the
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: late 90s, early 2000s. And a whole bunch of people
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: from the company came and played in the game, in
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: one of my games. And all of a sudden, I'm like,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: wait a minute. What I'm seeing here in the game
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: compressed into a weekend is what I'm seeing spread out
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: over months in the office. And I started to realize, oh,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: the person who really struggles to organize people in the game, yeah,
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: that's the type of thing he struggles with at the office.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: But when he has this other type of problem, he
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: does really well with it. Maybe that's what I should
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: be asking him to do. And so it was that realization,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: this connection, and how well the behavior translated that then
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: triggered me. my interest in going back to school and
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: learning the psychology behind it and in starting consulting and
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: working with companies to try to build this. And I
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: ended up doing doctoral research on the use of these
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: games for leadership development, or specifically leadership decision-making and working
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: with a team. And that's what led to my most
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: recent book, The LARP Effect.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Is this something that you have to have that gamer
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: mindset to really get into this? Let's just say you
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: come into a new company or an organization that needs
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: you to come in and now you have 100 people
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: sitting in front of you. Are they all going to
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: embrace this immediately or the non-gamers are just a little
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: bit on the outside of that?
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Well, I think some people always feel a little bit
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: of what the heck is going on. This seems really crazy.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: But this is not an activity that requires a gamer
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: mindset in in the sense of oh i have to
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: really like playing you know tabletop games because the nature
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: of this type of game is that it feels a
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: lot like any corporate meeting you're at a big conference
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: you're meeting other people you probably have some objective for
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: being there whether it's making connections selling product checking out
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: what your competitors are doing Any of these different things
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: depend on the nature of the conference. So all that
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: we're doing in one of these games is taking a
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: very familiar scenario, but we're creating a story around it
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: and giving you a mask to wear, a character to play.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: And the advantage of playing that character is that it
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: frees you to experiment with different behaviors, experiment with different
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: ways of interacting with people, and experiment with different ways
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: of developing strategy to accomplish your goals. And because you're
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: wearing a mask, again, a character, things you do badly,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: or if you do something that feels really stupid in
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: the moment, you can blame the character. And when you
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: do something clever, you go, oh, that was me. And,
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: you know, you can look at that and say, oh,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: is that a cop out? Doesn't matter. It lets people learn.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: And that's the key thing. It creates an environment where
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: people can make mistakes, fail, get up again, and find
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: different ways of accomplishing goals without worrying about a quarterly
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: or annual review where your manager says, well, why did
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: you do something that stupid? Wasn't it obvious that you
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: shouldn't do it?
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I like that a lot. Because I mean, just like
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: you said, I think it gives the opportunity to have
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: everyone involved without feeling like you're probably selected the wrong thing.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Maybe I said the right thing or whatever, either direction.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: But the ultimate goal is still fulfilled. That's awesome. Now,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: can you share a client success story that shows the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: transformation that your work creates?
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: So I've got a couple of interesting ones. And I
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: mentioned this right at the beginning. Back in 2006, I
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: was hired to do a pandemic simulation. This was back
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: when the big news was all about the potential outbreak
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: of a pandemic bird flu. And so we're all looking
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: at the birds here. And And so I had played
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: in a number of tabletop simulations that purported to do
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: bird flu analysis, and they were just emotionally dead. You know,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: you went there, you sat around the table, you said, oh, yes, yes. Yeah, obviously,
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: if there's a big pandemic and people are dying, I'm
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: going to close the airport. You know, everyone would pretty
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: much agree. One of them added a little bit of, oh,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: you might die of the flu. But the way that
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: happened was that One guy walked around the room and
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: would randomly tap you on the shoulder and say, you
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: just died. And once you kind of figured out that's
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: how the mechanism worked, it's like you just avoided that guy.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: And then you never got the flu. So it didn't
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: have any real emotional resonance. So when I got hired
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: to bring in and develop a pandemic flu exercise for
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: the national capital region, I did a mix of some
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: people were in their roles. Part of this was because
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: I was brought in very much at the last minute,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: so I didn't have time to write a full 130-character story. game.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: I played off what we already had, which was business,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: government officials, local medical, and then I also wrote a
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: number of characters. to interject some of these different conflicting views.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: So you had businessmen who didn't want airports closed down
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: because they were preparing for a major conference that was
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: going to make a huge difference to the success or
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: failure of their business. You had doctors who were concerned
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: about whether or not they had adequate supplies if something
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: went wrong. And some of these players could play off
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: of the people who actually did these things in real life.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: But it meant that these different perspectives got interjected into
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: the story in a way that they didn't just get ignored.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: And so one of the things that happened is as
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: the pandemic starts to spread, the person playing the governor
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  Speaker 2: is suddenly hearing from all these different people, some of
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: whom are legitimately, this is what they do in real life.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Some of whom are in the game, but within the
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: context of the game, it all feels the same. And
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: he's struggling to make good decisions. And meanwhile, there was
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: a game mechanic where you could catch the flu by
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: being exposed to someone who already had it. And this
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: was a simple thing of, you know, if someone had
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: the flu and they spoke to you, they'd hand you
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: a sticker. And if you got a sticker, you'd draw
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: an envelope. And some of those envelopes told you to
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: start distributing more stickers and open another envelope. And so
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: your flu would progress over the course of the thing.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: And so part of it, the game went from like, oh,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: this is fun to this is real when the first
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: person died of the flu. Because they figured, oh, this
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: is cute, this is harmless. And then someone got through
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: and having done absolutely nothing to deal with their case
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: of the flu, ended up dying of it. And... which
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: was set up, by the way, it looked a lot
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: more likely to die than you really would. This guy
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: had to work at it, but he managed it. But
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: it changed everyone's mindset. And the game got much more
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: serious after that. And what came out of this was
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: a detailed analysis of gaps in preparedness, in how different
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: departments didn't have good communication, how messages to the outside world,
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: because we had players who were remote, who whose only
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: information was what people within the auditorium were posting on
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: an internal bulletin board, plus newspaper articles that would come
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: out about the progress of the pandemic. And they were panicking.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: So because of that, it became very, very real. And
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: these gaps in preparedness came out of it. And I
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: actually go into this in some detail in the appendices
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: to LARP Effect. looking at how we came up with this.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: And I will say that this was 2006. And then
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: when we had that swine flu epidemic or swine flu
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: outbreak early in the Obama administration, they followed the recommendations
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: that had come out of this activity. Obviously, I have
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: no way to know what was going on internally and
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: how much they looked at this and said, oh, this
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: is it. But it is Interesting that these are the
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: things we identified and those were the things that then
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: showed up later.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: This seems extremely involved. If an organization contacted you today
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: with 100 members or players, how long does that take
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: for you to organize and write all of these different roles?
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: So if an organization contacted me today with 100 players,
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: what I would actually do is take them in groups
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: of about 30. through the same scenario. So we have
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: three different groups. They go through the same scenario. Well,
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: what this does is produce some interesting effects. First of all,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: the people playing in a scenario get to experience the story.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: They create story with each other. And this is an
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: important part of this, is that they're creating a shared
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: experience and a shared set of stories. Now, because I've
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: just taken three groups through it, they will all come
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: away with a different version of those stories because the
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: game is not set up to have a particular outcome.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: So what players do changes how it goes. So then
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: the final step with this would be to then bring
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: everybody together to share their experiences. And so now people
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: start to connect, even though we might have played in
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: different runs of this activity, different runs of the game,
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: We can say, oh, in my version, this, oh, I
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: did this. Wait a minute, what did you, you did what? Oh,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: I never thought of that. And what happens is people
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: start to connect over their different versions of the story
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: and they start to recognize how much power each individual
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: has to shape the overall outcome.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Let's just say you divide them into those three different
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: groups and they complete their own segment. Do you encourage
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: them not to communicate with other people until you've done
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the other segments as well?
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It works best. It won't destroy it. It
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: won't break it. But it will work best if each
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: group enters the scenario essentially not knowing what is going
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: to happen or what the other groups have done. And
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: that's not always possible because sometimes people do this and
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: they talk about it and then I run it for
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: a different group in the same organization a year or
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: two later and they've heard stories. But even then, It
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: still works. And that's the beauty of it. Because even
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: when you think you know what's going to happen, it
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: doesn't always happen that way because different people make different decisions.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Now, let's go back to the book. I want to
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: find out what made you name it The LARP Effect.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Well, I was really trying to capture the idea of
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. And, you know, I was bouncing
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: a bunch of titles back and forth with Springer. And
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: they were like, oh, team building using live action role play,
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: parens LARP. I'm like, well, that'll put them to sleep.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: So I really wanted to try to capture what's happening here.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: And what's happening is it is live action role play
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: when you get a certain level of complexity produces just
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: a deeper reaction. It produces this deeper substrate of shared experience,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: shared story, shared connection. And when you start putting those
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: things together, that's where you start to really build your
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: company and build your culture. I don't want to go
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: off on corporate culture for a moment, but if you
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: think of what culture is, which is a set of
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: shared experiences, shared stories, successes, where we succeeded. Well, the
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: more we can create shared experience, the stronger and more
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: resilient our culture becomes. The more culture and the more
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: people are separate experiences, the more fragile the culture is,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: the more vulnerable it is to a sudden shock breaking
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: the cohesion of the company.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Have you found that there's a specific industry that this
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: will not apply to?
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Well, I have not found that. But again, I've primarily
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: focused in So it is entirely possible that there are
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: other industries where this wouldn't work. But I will say
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: that the thing that makes these games work is it's
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: based in the idea of human connection. So as long
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: as we're working with other people and we're interacting with
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: other people. then we're going to benefit from experiences that
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: help us connect and develop shared context and shared story
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: with other people. Now, if you have an industry where
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: they're primarily employing Klingons, I cannot make any promises.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: So now, once these segments, you've met with them independently,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: then you brought them together, now that's the end of
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the game.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Now we debrief it.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: You debrief it.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: How does that work after that?
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: So now we have a conversation. And in a case
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: like you described, where I have three different groups, I
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: would debrief each group individually before doing a global debrief.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: But the whole point of the debrief is to reflect
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: on the experience, to pull out what happened. What did
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: you expect? What did you not expect? And again, I
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: go into this in a fair bit of detail in
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: the book with various types of questions I might ask.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: But for example, if I'm doing leadership training, I will ask,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: did you start out in a leadership role? What happened
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: to you in that role? How did you get people
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: to listen to you? When did they listen? When did
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: they not listen? If you didn't start out in the
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: leadership role but ended up in one, how did that
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: come about? What did people pay attention to? What did
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: you do? What experiences did you have? I ran this game...
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: very recently for a group and a group of kids
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: who were actually getting ready to start college. And they
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: had this very interesting experience because part of the whole
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: activity was to help teach them that they needed to
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: work with other people. These were very smart people who knew,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: who'd always, you know, like all high school kids, you know,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: you're always expected to do your work on your own. Well,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: one of the kids said there was a point where
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: a bunch of people came in and ganged up on me.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, where's my where? Wait, where are my allies?
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: And then I realized I hadn't made any. And this
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: was a real eye opener. But I've seen that same
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: pattern play out in business settings. where people suddenly realize, wait,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: where are my allies? Oh, I didn't lay the groundwork.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: I didn't find allies before I needed them. And so
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: they weren't there when the moment came that I needed
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: to call for help.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can see how extremely valuable that would be.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you think about how much being able
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: to ask for help is a critical part, especially in
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: this very complex world we live in, with very complex
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: tasks that one person cannot do by themselves. Frankly, even
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: with AI, you still, at some level, meet other people.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Whether or not we're talking about a fantasy scenario where, yes,
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: you might be attacked by a dragon, a golem, and
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: a djinn, if you don't have allies, or whether you're
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: just stuck and you need to be able to stand
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: up and walk over to somebody and say, hey, can
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: you help me with this? If you haven't laid the groundwork,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: if you haven't built the social connection, it's really hard
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: to do that.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Now, what would you say would be the most
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: important takeaway that you want listeners to remember from today's conversation?
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: That organizations don't rise to the level of their strategy.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: They fall to the level of their rehearsal. It's what
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: you practice that is what you're going to do under pressure.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Not what you imagine, not the best case scenario, not
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: your optimistic projection. It's what you've practiced. And if you
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: haven't practiced, you don't know what you're going to get.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: But it's probably not going to be good.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Before we share where people can connect with you, do
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: you highly recommend that they read your book first? Do
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: you think that that's probably one of the most important
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: things to do so they can understand the LARP process
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: first before they choose to move to the next step?
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Well, I do think reading the book would help a lot.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: The book goes into a lot of organizational development issues
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: in the course of explaining how LARP and organizational development
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: connect to each other. In a sense, this type of
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: LARP is applied organizational psychology. However, there is also no
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: reason why a business should wait. If they need to
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: build a stronger team, well, The best time to start is, well,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: it's always like last month, but the second best time
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: is now. If you want your teams to be better,
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: you want leadership to be more effective, you want better decision-making,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: the longer you wait, the longer it's going to take.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Because even once you've done this, you still have to practice.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: You still have to internalize the lessons. These are not
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: things that happen overnight. Any more than an athlete can
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: go out and learn a brand new technique and then
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: do it right the first time. That's why we need
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: to train, and that's why we need to practice, and
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: that's why we need this level of immersion so that
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: we're emotionally connected to what we do.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: As you said earlier, it's laying down the groundwork, not
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: waiting until the last minute.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Now, where can people connect with you?
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: So I can be found at 7 Steps Ahead or www. 7stepsahead. com.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: That's number seven. It should work even if you write
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: out the word, but you can find me on LinkedIn.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: If you search for Stephen Balzac on it's linkedin.com slash
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: in slash Steve Balzac. Those are the easiest ways to
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: get ahold of me. And then, you know, you can
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: find my YouTube channel has a couple of things on it.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: This podcast will eventually end up on there. You know,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: But the best thing, again, reach the website. You can
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: also find out information about my other books there. And
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: I maintain a blog called thinking. 7stepsahead. com where you can find
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: my latest thoughts and articles on organizational behavior and ways
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: to improve decision-making, leadership, and team building.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Steve, thank you so much for joining us. We really
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: appreciate your time and the value you've shared.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much, Joe. I've really enjoyed this.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: You're welcome.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Thank you everyone for listening. If this episode inspired you,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: make sure you share it with someone who needs it.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: And don't forget to follow the Glowvisor podcast for more
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: conversations that make an impact. Till the next time.