Podcast Ep 57 | Stimulate Progress and Protect the Core

This week Kevin and Brad talk about a con­cept from Jim Collins about stim­u­lat­ing progress and pro­tect­ing the core.

The idea is that lead­ers must stim­u­late change, growth and for­ward momen­tum while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­tect­ing the core of their busi­ness. If an orga­ni­za­tion stops stim­u­lat­ing progress or pro­tect­ing the core, it runs the risk of slid­ing into mediocrity.

This is a dif­fi­cult bal­ance to achieve because once you’ve had some suc­cess, it’s very easy to slip into a groove of doing things the same way. How­ev­er, not con­tin­u­al­ly find­ing ways to evolve your orga­ni­za­tion can lead to whole new sets of prob­lems that need to be overcome.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Kevin Lawrence 00:13

Wel­come to the growth whis­pers pod­cast where every­thing we talk about is about build­ing endur­ing, great com­pa­nies, com­pa­nies that will be around for decades, gen­er­a­tions and ide­al­ly, some­how doing good things in the world that we can all feel proud about, or par­tic­u­lar­ly you feel proud of it because it’s about you. I’m Kevin Lawrence, and I’m here today joined as I am every week with my co host, Brad Giles, Brad, how you doing today?

Brad Giles 00:39

I’m excel­lent today. Thank you. I spent yes­ter­day on a boat in the sun. And you know, when you spend time on a boat in the sun, and you are absolute­ly exhaust­ed at the end of the day, and then you sleep real­ly well. Well, that was yes­ter­day. So I’m feel­ing quite refreshed and good today. Good. How are you doing?

Kevin Lawrence 01:00

I’m doing great as well. I spent a bunch of time in the sun rac­ing go karts for the last cou­ple of days and not your typ­i­cal rental kart cen­ter, go karts, but full blown com­pet­i­tive tag, go karts, which are fun and pun­ish­ing. So I had a great time of the

Brad Giles 01:20

scary ones.

Kevin Lawrence 01:22

The very scary and the very thrilling one. I I can only imag­ine it’s prob­a­bly what drug addicts feel like when they’re doing their things, the amount of ren­lund pump­ing through your sys­tem as your inch­es off the ground going incred­i­ble speeds and pulling mas­sive G’s to the cor­ner. So I am real­ly invig­o­rat­ed by I had a great time with some friends. And yeah, lots of lots of lots of good things. So let’s jump into today’s show. And before we get into our top­ic, what’s your word or phrase today, Brad?

Brad Giles 01:52

Well, I’m glad you asked. Last week, always. Last week, I was with a client been work­ing with him almost a year. And the own­er, the CEO of the busi­ness, he said, It’s been an amaz­ing kind of 10 months or 11 months. And he said, what I’ve come to real­ize is it takes time to under­stand this stuff to under­stand that under­stand­ing takes time. So I sum­ma­rize that. And this is my fros It takes time to under­stand that under­stand­ing takes time. Yeah, he was he said we want­ed to get every­thing done all at once. But it took us time to under­stand that it’s going to take us a long time to under­stand deeply all of the things that we’re work­ing on. And that real­ly stuck with me That was real­ly good.

Kevin Lawrence 02:52

Yeah, I love that and I know there’s I heard some­one say that you know in order to become a mas­ter of some­thing you know, if you read you know a book a week, it would take you 234 years to become mas­ter­ful at one thing I am read­ing a book is not the only way to mas­ter but there’s a lot of work into mas­tery. It’s very inter­est­ing. Awe­some. So my word of the day. Alright phrase the day is sore ribs. That is my Yeah, and not the types of ribs that you eat the kind of kind on my body as I men­tioned up front with a go kart­ing and, and it’s a feel­ing of great joy, that my ribs are sore, because that means I was hav­ing a lot of fun. And these go karts, you actu­al­ly wear rib pro­tec­tors like a shell you put around your ribs so you don’t break them. And I’ve got an ear­li­er injury from years ago from a race car that hurt my ribs. But it’s still a bit ten­der appar­ent­ly. But as sore ribs is kind of con­nect­ed to hap­pi­ness and joy because I had such a great time out there with my friends who were also you know, entre­pre­neurs and we were hav­ing a great time. But yeah, these things pull like three G’s in the cor­ner and all the pres­sure is on the edge of the seat dig­ging up so sore ribs is a proxy for good times mem­o­ries. laughs good fun com­pe­ti­tion, not always clean com­pe­ti­tion because there ends up being a bit of car­nage as you know, I crashed into one of my good friends and although I sus­tained the dam­age, and my oth­er friend slid side­ways into me and it was just a riot. So sore ribs is a proxy for great times good expe­ri­ences, good mem­o­ries, and, and, and hon­ing in our craft a lit­tle bit bet­ter. So yeah, that’s my phrase for the day.

Brad Giles 04:39

Oh, that’s great. Yeah, so

Kevin Lawrence 04:41

let’s jump into today’s show and what we’re talk­ing about and, you know, tak­ing kind of some of the things that we’re talk­ing about ear­li­er we were talk­ing about today is is you know why? why it’s so crit­i­cal to keep stretch­ing your­self. You know, when as I’m think­ing about even being And go-kart­ing Oh, gen­er­al­ly, that’s a sport that young kids do. And we’ve got a whole group of guys up at the track that are doing this, you don’t nor­mal­ly see guys in their 40s and 50s, doing this activ­i­ty, because of how intense it is, and like a lot of things, but But why is it so impor­tant to keep stretch­ing your­self and your team and your com­pa­ny, you know, you’re stretch­ing your­self leads to stretch­ing your team leads to stretch­ing your com­pa­ny, and the oppo­site is true. If you get stag­nant, then like­ly your lead­er­ship to your team will get stag­nant and like­ly have rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty your com­pa­ny could get stag­nant too.

Brad Giles 05:48

Well, I read some­thing recent­ly, and it spoke about peo­ple’s peo­ple’s aim may be dif­fer­ent to what their body wants, okay? So you may want to be hap­py in your life. But your body is what your body wants and does and craves, is your body wants to find com­fort, and it wants to find ease, like the brain is fun­da­men­tal­ly lazy, right. So if your body gets into a groove, it wants to stay there. It’s the, it’s the intu­ition of the brain to say, let’s find a way to have an easy and com­fort­able life where I’m not chal­lenged. And I like

Kevin Lawrence 06:38

a cat have curl­ing up on a blan­ket by a fire. It’s just a nice cozy place.

Brad Giles 06:45

That’s it. And the ani­mal part of us wants to do that it wants to find a groove and nice easy groove and drop into that and stay there. But, but that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly give us the great­est sat­is­fac­tion in our life. And if you’d been in a groove like that, for 10 or 20 years, you can sud­den­ly think, what have I done? And so we want to try to avoid that by con­sis­tent­ly stim­u­lat­ing progress by say­ing, yes, it’s good to be com­fort­able, but we need to push our­selves out­side of our com­fort zone on a reg­u­lar basis.

Kevin Lawrence 07:22

And it’s and it’s a big, but it’s good to be com­fort­able. But not real­ly. Yeah, you know, it’s good to be com­fort­able. But it’s dan­ger­ous. You know, it’s good to be com­fort­able. But while we’re hav­ing a nap, some oth­er things might be going around that could real­ly hurt us or busi­ness or what­ev­er it hap­pens to be. Yeah. And we’d like to be comfortable.

Brad Giles 07:48

We go ahead run, it’s good. So Jim Collins, he put it best in the image of yin yang, you may be aware of the yin yang sym­bol, it’s a, it’s a cir­cle that’s kind of divid­ed in half with a squig­gly line. And on one side, he had pro­tect the core, and on the oth­er he had stim­u­late progress. So we need to always be pro­tect­ing the core. And we need to always be stim­u­lat­ing progress. And it’s the same in you, your busi­ness, your lead­er­ship team because we have seen many exam­ples where peo­ple haven’t stim­u­lat­ed progress. And sure, they might make a prof­it, sure, they might be going okay, but they can just be coast­ing along, and then they can become very unsat­is­fied, or things can change in the mar­ket that will then catch up to them.

Kevin Lawrence 08:41

Yeah, and today’s show is real­ly about look­ing at your ratio of stim­u­lat­ing progress ver­sus pro­tect­ing the core. And if you pro­tect the core too much, so for exam­ple, as com­pa­nies get more suc­cess­ful, there’s more of a ten­den­cy to want to pro­tect, it’s like, Hey, we got to fig­ure it out. Let’s hold it togeth­er and just keep doing more of the same. It’s kind of like a rinse, wash, repeat. Just you’re crank­ing up the han­dle on the sausage mak­er, let’s just keep mak­ing sausages. Just keep going, keep going, keep going. But that only works for so long, until what you’re doing is is mis­cal­i­brat­ed with the envi­ron­ment or it just you miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty. So you know, so you could be one depend­ing on your busi­ness and what’s going on. You could be 1% stim­u­late progress, and 99 pro­tect the core. Or maybe and I would say con­cep­tu­al­ly, as a CEO, you should prob­a­bly be con­cep­tu­al­ly 10% stim­u­late progress, progress. 90% pro­tect the core.

Brad Giles 09:43

Yeah,

Kevin Lawrence 09:44

that’s because it 1% for a lot of com­pa­nies is not enough progress right now. 90% progress is also dan­ger­ous. So real­ly, what I want you to think about today is if you look in your busi­ness, what is the only you know the right ratio What ratio should you as the leader have in your role? And if you’re not the CEO or your exec­u­tive leader, man­ag­er, what­ev­er it is, what should your ratio be between pro­tect­ing the core, like relent­less exe­cu­tion of all the things that mat­ter, and then stim­u­lat­ing progress, try­ing some­thing slight­ly dif­fer­ent tweak­ing a process, tweak­ing, uh, you know, look­ing at a dif­fer­ent mar­ket or dif­fer­ent prod­uct or dif­fer­ent cus­tomer. And, you know, it’s inter­est­ing, had one CEO that want­ed me to work with him. In the end, I had con­cerns about the busi­ness he was in I, he talked like he was a pur­pose-led CEO who real­ly cared. But it did­n’t feel like his busi­ness was real­ly good for the con­sumer, he tried to tell me what’s good for the con­sumer. I did­n’t buy it. And it was in the end here, it was prob­a­bly a mutu­al deci­sion. We did­n’t work togeth­er, I did­n’t feel right about it. He prob­a­bly felt that I did­n’t feel right for it, which means it was­n’t right. But the point of it is, you know, he would read like, 100 books a year.

Brad Giles 11:03

Wow. Yeah.

Kevin Lawrence 11:06

And as I’m talk­ing to him, he knew every book, I mean, I’m we’re pro­fes­sion­al stu­dents and teach­ers, right? Like, we con­stant­ly have to learn in our pro­fes­sion. He knew them all. Yeah. But he was­n’t doing any­thing in his busi­ness. So he could rat­tle off all the answers, but he was­n’t apply­ing him. So he was stim­u­lat­ing intel­lec­tu­al progress, but get­ting no trac­tion. And the core of his busi­ness, you know, may or may not have been great, but the point of it is, you know, too much of new ideas. And too much stim­u­la­tion can also be real­ly bad for the per­son, the point of it is, is you got to man­age this, this ten­den­cy to get com­fort­able and have the right bal­ance of stim­u­lat­ing progress ver­sus pro­tect­ing the core. And I would fig­ure out your start­ing point should prob­a­bly be 10 9010. Progress. 90 core is about right. And as your com­pa­ny grows as the CEO, you know, the oth­er mea­sure you look at is how far in the future are you work­ing? If you’re work­ing today, you’re not doing your job. That’s also anoth­er conversation.

Brad Giles 12:13

Yeah, the lat­er that you spoke about hav­ing not met him, it sounds like what he was­n’t doing was stretch­ing him­self or his com­pa­ny. He was read­ing and learn­ing and that was great. But you’ve got to have that stim­u­late progress. It’s fine. You’re stretch­ing your­self? Oh,

Kevin Lawrence 12:30

yeah, he was fill­ing his brain, but he was­n’t stretch­ing your­self. And that’s a great dis­tinc­tion, Brad, that’s what it was fill­ing his brain ver­sus actu­al­ly because the only way you stretch your­self is by doing some­thing. Yep. Like, you’ve got to apply it, you’ve got to put your­self in a sit­u­a­tion of dis­com­fort. And, and take your­self and lit­er­al­ly when you’re stretch­ing your­self, there should be a vis­cer­al reac­tion in your body. Like you should feel it. Like Yeah, some­thing some­thing, you know, your heart­beat should not always be reg­u­lar is some­thing is tak­ing note of your whether your the heat of your body is chang­ing, your heart­beat is chang­ing, you know, your brain is some­thing’s going on, because you’re shak­ing up the system.

Brad Giles 13:13

Yeah, yeah. So what we’re say­ing is you need to work toward mas­tery, but equal­ly find oppor­tu­ni­ties to become the stu­dent. So, so it is in mas­tery, it’s an ever it’s a goal that is always on the hori­zon, and you nev­er get there. But com­ing back and always hav­ing the stu­dent mind­set say­ing, How can I stretch myself around this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject? Or this item? or How can I push this part of my life or my busi­ness or my lead­er­ship team onto some­thing new? Peo­ple want to grow? And you know, growth is ten­sion and ten­sion is uncom­fort­able, but ten­sion and uncom­fort­able nurse makes us feel incred­i­bly reward­ed over time.

Kevin Lawrence 14:09

Yeah, and that’s hard. Like when you become a mas­ter, and you’ve earned your stripes, so to say, and you become real­ly good, and you become top of the peck­ing order, right? You’re the head of the team or the depart­ment or, or the com­pa­ny or what­ev­er, the divi­sion, what­ev­er it is. Our ego quite likes that. Yeah, right. You know, just doing some read­ing on a book about about about, you know, male, almost like is that alpha per­son­al­i­ties, dom­i­nance being in charge and how peo­ple want that a lot of peo­ple want that and when they’re there, they’re quite hap­py with it, and they don’t want to give it up and they don’t want to risk it. prob­lem is you become very irrel­e­vant very quick­ly, because peo­ple stop some not all some stop tak­ing chances and doing things and they’re not will­ing to go be the stu­dent again, because they want to show their dom­i­nance and their knowl­edge and all of these oth­er things. And I remem­ber, I joined this busi­ness was like a net­work mar­ket­ing thing I tried in my, in my 20s was it was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. There to being a major side ben­e­fit, the prod­uct they sold real­ly helped my mum, which was prob­a­bly one of the biggest ben­e­fits. But I met some amaz­ing peo­ple in this thing. And it was, it was at the age where I was try­ing every­thing. Yeah. And I was, I was­n’t yet a mas­ter. And I was try­ing to find my path and learn­ing every­thing I could, and tried a lot of stuff. But I remem­ber I remem­ber this new guy joined the orga­ni­za­tion. And my spon­sor, the guy that brought me into this busi­ness said, This guy is a world class riv­er kayak­er. Like, he teach­es the best peo­ple riv­er kayak, I’m talk­ing like the guys that kayak down you know, small to medi­um sized water­falls and go under­wa­ter and sit down all this stuff, right? Like, this guy’s a world class and he’s going the chal­lenge is going to be he’s the man in his world, he is the man he is the big dog, the top of the heap, what­ev­er mat­ter for you want to use. How’s he going to be with being the most you can’t can his Eagle allow him to go from being the man to being the most. And, and, and now I’m not going to talk about that per­son any­more. But the point of it is, is being the most is hard when you’re the man 24 sev­en or the woman you know 24 sev­en, to be have the humil­i­ty to go and look fool­ish, and to be in capa­ble. And at the bot­tom of the learn­ing curve ver­sus the top. It’s it’s hard. And some peo­ple can’t do it, some peo­ple can’t do it. And as a result, they kind of get stuck in being the mas­ter from his­to­ry, not the mas­ter today.

Brad Giles 16:59

So trans­lat­ing that, what we’re say­ing is, if you have a suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny, if you’re a leader, it can be real­ly hard to con­vince your­self to take a gam­ble on some­thing to push to stim­u­late, to stretch, it can be real­ly hard because you think well, I don’t want to look like a fool in front of these peo­ple. I don’t want to look like I don’t know the answers to every­thing. I don’t want to risk fail­ing, because if I risk fail­ing, then I will look like a fool in front of peo­ple. But the oppo­site of that, which is being in a group and becom­ing per­haps irrel­e­vant, or per­haps, you know, not real­ly cap­i­tal­iz­ing on your poten­tial less effec­tive, less effec­tive, less effec­tive is a good way to put it. Could he be your lunch worse? Yeah. Could be much worse. Yeah.

Kevin Lawrence 17:56

And it will be in time. But the oth­er thing is what I’ve seen in some of these peo­ple, is that they become fear­ful and risk adverse and rigid. Like, like they become they’re in a full grown adults body. But they become like a child inside. Yeah. Because in many ways that they’re the con­fi­dence is from things they did 20 years ago, not stuff they did recent­ly. And it’s great to have that his­tor­i­cal con­fi­dence. Don’t get me wrong. Yeah. But it’s like, what have you done recent­ly? Right? And how, how do you have recent con­fi­dence or just his­tor­i­cal con­fi­dence? And I think that’s a great thing to, for us to do to con­sid­er for our­selves. Think about your­self, where do you have recent con­fi­dence ver­sus his­tor­i­cal confidence?

Brad Giles 18:43

Right?

Kevin Lawrence 18:44

What is the thing that you’ve real­ly stretched your­self, like real­ly stretched your­self where you’re like, wow, this is hard. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this, or I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this as well as I would like.

Brad Giles 19:00

And the biol­o­gy backs up what we’re say­ing you need to cre­ate new neur­al path­ways by learn­ing new things all the time. And it kind of applies into your orga­ni­za­tion as well. So over the COVID peri­od, I, I taught myself how to play the gui­tar in a very, very poor way. like to be able to, to make a noise is one way to put it. But the point being that I stretched myself to learn some­thing dif­fer­ent. And again, because as you age, you’ve got to cre­ate new neur­al path­ways. I actu­al­ly had­n’t. I’d been quite busy about a month ago, had­n’t picked it up, picked it up. And it was amaz­ing how eas­i­ly I got straight back into the groove because I had cut those neur­al path­ways of learn­ing before I thought, Oh, geez, I’m going to be so rusty. It’s not fun­ny but my point being the biol­o­gy He sup­ports what we’re say­ing you, you’ve got to con­tin­ue to stretch your­self and learn new things. Now I’m look­ing Okay, what can be the next thing that I can stretch myself on or learn. And I think that’s kind of what we’re say­ing here, you’ve got to find ways to become the stu­dent to keep stretch­ing yourself.

Kevin Lawrence 20:22

And it’s not just intel­lec­tu­al­ly it’s expe­ri­en­tial­ly as well. And that you know, you and I were chat­ting a lit­tle bit and I, I think some men­tors around me who’ve helped me and you know, one of the great ones was my moth­er via my grand­moth­er, my grand­moth­er, which I wrote about in your oxy­gen mask first Bet­ty how it at will and she was an entre­pre­neur, her my grand­fa­ther were entre­pre­neurs their whole lives, they owned restau­rants all over our great coun­try called Cana­da, piz­za places, burg­er places, and lit­er­al­ly across the coun­try. And it was inter­est­ing. And my I remem­ber going to my grand­pa and his place in his base­ment, he was doing hydro­pon­ics before it became pop­u­lar by the mar­i­jua­na grow­ers. He was mak­ing hydro­pon­ic toma­toes, you know, all this, it was he was there always up to stuff. But my grand­moth­er used to always say, are inspired by my moth­er would say is just just just go for it, keep going for it, go for it, go for it, go for it. My grand­moth­er at 81 went back to uni­ver­si­ty. She was curi­ous about the reli­gions of the world. And she went and stud­ied the­ol­o­gy Do you know, in many coun­tries, I know in Cana­da, you can go in and sit in or what they call audit class­es if you’re a senior cit­i­zen. So she had 81 was going to uni­ver­si­ty and hav­ing a great time learn­ing like crazy. So, you know, we all need to chan­nel a lit­tle bit of the peo­ple in our life that real­ly stretch them­selves. And that’s a you know, it’s a great role mod­el. I’m think­ing in my own world, I was think­ing about this, like, you know, read­ing anoth­er book, a book is a mas­sive thing, right? You know, you and I are work­ing on, we’re both work­ing on one indi­vid­u­al­ly and one togeth­er. You know, tak­ing my firm from being an indi­vid­ual con­sul­tant to build­ing a team. That’s a whole new learn­ing curve. I men­tioned the kart rac­ing ear­li­er in the show, like, my son was doing it, and I was help­ing him and I was play­ing around. But I’m doing it a lit­tle more seri­ous­ly with my bud­dies. Yeah, you know, that’s, you know, and that’s, it’s fun, and it’s chal­leng­ing. And there’s, there was a big piece of resis­tance, even with me doing it. If my bud­dies weren’t doing it, I prob­a­bly I would­n’t be doing it yet. Because it’s painful some­times. And it’s hard. It’s real­ly hard, but it’s reju­ve­nat­ing, and ener­giz­ing as heck. So now even talked about, you know, learn­ing to bar­be­cue. Brad, you were men­tion­ing that ear­li­er on?

Brad Giles 22:47

Yeah, same as the gui­tar. I like I yeah. I prob­a­bly a few years ago, now I begin, I bought and got into this con­cept of low and slow bar­be­cue, maybe because it’s been quite a bit of time in Amer­i­ca as well. But it was some­thing that was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent and com­plete­ly new. And it was, you know, to a degree stretch­ing myself and hav­ing to learn some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. So one of the things that we’re we’re talk­ing about here is this con­cept of home­osta­sis in the body, and how that trans­lates into an orga­ni­za­tion. home­osta­sis is the body’s mech­a­nism to reg­u­late itself, that is the res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem, the ner­vous sys­tem, all of the organs and sys­tems with­in the body, they work togeth­er to main­tain a sta­ble envi­ron­ment. And then when minor changes are detect­ed, all of the body quick­ly trig­gers a response to bring the whole body back into this reg­u­la­tion. And that’s what can hap­pen in our orga­ni­za­tions is that we can have this cor­po­rate kind of home­osta­sis that keeps us in the groove and works against this. This stretch­ing our­selves this con­cept of stim­u­lat­ing progress.

Kevin Lawrence 24:18

It works for pre­serv­ing the core it is per­fect pris­on­er and actu­al­ly think about a Brad good nice one. It pre­serves the core tem­per­a­ture home­osta­sis pre­serves the core tem­per­a­ture it does and so home­osta­sis is per­fect for pre­serv­ing the core. But if you let it become the only thing if, if if home­osta­sis is the oper­at­ing sys­tem on 99% of what you’re doing, the 1% might not be enough to keep you rel­e­vant. That’s where the stretch comes in. Right But we need home­osta­sis. We need sta­ble sys­tems, repet­i­tive process­es, things that pro­duce repet­i­tive but excel­lent. What­ev­er the cus­tomer wants from us, right that is crit­i­cal. But if we are cells get pulled into it too much will become part of that home­o­sta­t­ic sys­tem. And then and then and then we’ll it’ll slip into medi­oc­rity. So it’s a bril­liant func­tion of our body. It’s crit­i­cal for our com­pa­nies. But it that the one thing that is great for us is the one thing that can real­ly mess us up from a busi­ness per­spec­tive, in a lead­er­ship perspective.

Brad Giles 25:20

Yeah. And our body intu­itive­ly wants to fall into that com­fort­able groove, it wants to say our will, we’re real­ly in a good spot at work. But you’ve got to know like, the ene­my is with­in like, Yes, that is true. It’s real­ly fun­ny, because you’ve got this, this sense of, that’s what your body wants to do. And then in the mid­dle, you’ve got your, you’ve got to be con­scious­ly know­ing we’ve got to keep push­ing and stretch­ing and grow­ing our­selves and our com­pa­ny and our lead­ers and our peo­ple. But then on the oth­er side, you’ve got the dis­ci­pline of the hedge­hog, okay? So that is, you’ve got to, you’ve got these three con­sumer con­scious con­sid­er­a­tions that you’ve got to think about, we’ve got a main, we’ve got to main­tain this kind of Goldilocks zone, which is a dis­ci­pline on focus­ing on the right things, know­ing that on the oth­er extreme, that our body intu­itive­ly wants to set­tle down into this group. But if we don’t stim­u­late progress in the cen­ter, we’re going to have, we’re going to have a long term sense of pain. And I think about com­pa­nies like Kodak, or block­buster, some of these kind of famous case stud­ies, where they did­n’t stim­u­late progress, and suf­fered the ulti­mate consequence.

Kevin Lawrence 26:42

Or they did­n’t do it enough, fast enough. Inter­est­ing. And one of the case stud­ies on Kodak, they were doing all the right things. They just start­ed too late and they ran out of cash. That’s a whole oth­er sto­ry. The point of it is, is that you have to do enough of it. And it’s not easy. Yeah. So you talked about that, that, you know that goalie logs on him right? To me, it was you’re speak­ing some­thing that call Jim Collins says is that good is the ene­my of great hope and like home­osta­sis is the ene­my of progress. Yeah, good is okay, some­times and great can be bet­ter, but home­osta­sis is good, but it’s also can hurt you so. So some of the things that that, you know, that that we talked about up front. And one of the oth­er things I know for myself is, is, if you notice, no way, how do I know that I’m on track. And the lead­ers that I work with are on track is that they’re look­ing for gems from mas­ters, like they’re on the hunt for things that would stim­u­late progress, right? ver­sus, you know, when the ego kicks in, and our brain is closed. I’m not say­ing it’s about just about ego, that’s a piece. But you know, keep look­ing and lis­ten­ing. So if you’re, if you’re lis­ten­ing, and you’re so I’ve got, you know, one of the founders that we work with is over 80 years old, he’s 81 or 82. Now, when we did lead­er­ship edu­ca­tion in his com­pa­ny, he would sit in front row, he would ask more ques­tions and take more notes than almost any­one in this cov­er­age. And he is notably suc­cess­ful. This is not a small busi­ness, right? He’s no, it’ll be built as he’s been very suc­cess­ful. But in his eight now, he also still skis 40 or 50 days a year. And he is he’s, we just had a strap plan­ning with that com­pa­ny. And he’s, he’s got as much ener­gy as any­body else in the room, maybe more. And he’s a riot and lots of things. But the point of it is, he con­tin­ues to learn and take risks and push the enve­lope. And so lots of lots of dif­fer­ent CEOs we work with, they’re always push­ing them­selves and chal­leng­ing them­selves in what­ev­er way is every­one is dif­fer­ent. It was inter­est­ing, in even for myself, is is that so if I’m around a mas­ter, and if I’m still curi­ous, I know I’m in the right zone. Yeah. You I met a young young young kid. He’s ear­ly 20s. At the, at the race­track on Sat­ur­day. And this guy’s name’s Zack. And he’s a you know, he’s raced all around the world. And he’s done. He has been a cham­pi­on this thing called Indy lights. Real­ly fast, spec­tac­u­lar dri­ver, and I’m always curi­ous, and I was talk­ing to some­one about this one cor­ner and uh, how I could go faster. I’ve been doing car and cart. I’ve been car rac­ing and relat­ed stuff for almost 20 years. And we’ve had I’ve had dozens of instruc­tors who have taught me so much. It’s been amaz­ing adven­ture. And in kart rac­ing over the last five I’ve learned a lot. This guy gave me one tip, which I’m not going to tell the audi­ence because I don’t want my friends to know.

Brad Giles 29:39

rac­ing on how to race bet­ter rac­ing tip on how to be okay.

Kevin Lawrence 29:44

I might tell my friends but I don’t want to dis­close it just he gave me a tip because we’re all we are. It’s fun com­pe­ti­tion. But what’s still com­pe­ti­tion. He gave me this tip. It was freak­ing bril­liant. It was bril­liant. It was a sim­ple, sim­ple thing. And I’m like, isn’t it amaz­ing when I said to him When you talk to mas­ters, you learn so much goes, Yeah, I’ve been doing it for years. Every per­son gives these lit­tle tid­bits, but you know, so he’s still look­ing for his lit­tle tid­bits and pass­ing them along. So the point of it is, now I hap­pened to have this kart rac­ing on my mind today. But any­thing in busi­ness when you’re around some­one who is mas­ter­ful when you’re ask­ing ques­tions, and curi­ous, you’re prob­a­bly in the right state of mind.

Brad Giles 30:25

You are, and, and that, that ques­tion­ing should help to get you to pon­der How can we stretch that ques­tion­ing like this? It may, how

Kevin Lawrence 30:41

can we push far­ther? Yeah, bet­ter? Yes, I

Brad Giles 30:44

feel a lit­tle bit bipo­lar. Today’s episode. But that ques­tion­ing that under­stand­ing should be help­ing you to under­stand how can we stretch the com­pa­ny, myself, our lead­er­ship team, every­one, with­in the dis­ci­pline of the hedge­hog con­cept and our spec recipe, so push­ing for

Kevin Lawrence 31:08

push­ing for it, because gen­er­al­ly orga­ni­za­tions want to, and we spend a lot of our time in exe­cu­tion mode, think about how we mas­ter what is. Yeah. And that’s why this is impor­tant. So, so some­thing for you to think about is, you know, who is a mas­ter that you are around? Or could be around that you could ask a bunch of ques­tions of, and let me be curi­ous and learn that would be one thing, or the sec­ond piece, which is one of my favorite strate­gies? If there is some­thing you want to stretch your­self with? Or in what Mas­ter? Can you get to help you?

Brad Giles 31:43

Yes, right. Like,

Kevin Lawrence 31:43

if you’re going to real­ly stretch your­self, like my thing is, who’s the best per­son in the world you can find to help you and learn from them, or best per­son in your world, what­ev­er it hap­pens to be, but ask them. So, you know, with that in mind, you know, the thing, and this is in chap­ter 16 of your oxy­gen mask first, and it’s you know, called, you know, keep going for it, as I men­tioned, inspired by my grand­moth­er. And we asked ear­li­er, like, when was the last time you did some­thing that you know, real­ly stretched you. We all have these ideas. There’s this thing called buck­et list, you know, things you want to accom­plish in your life. And I think it’s a great idea. And I’ve done it and I’ve done a lot of many of the things on my list. I still, you know, haven’t been to Egypt. And I haven’t been on an African Safari. Those are two things on my list. I do. I’ve done the hot air bal­loon ride and lots of oth­er cool stuff I want­ed to do. But Egypt and Safari then that will come post COVID when it opens back up. But But the thing is that I when I was read­ing a chap­ter book, I came up with this thing called it’s a stretch list. Yeah. What are these things whether it’s at work for your­self or in your life, that you feel com­pelled to speak again? For you it was bar­be­cue and gui­tar was on your list? Right? And for me, there’s been a bunch of dif­fer­ent many, many dif­fer­ent things and you know, cur­rent­ly it’s kart­ing and next learn­ing how to dri­ve a race car with a lot of down­force, which is a whole oth­er thing that that’s com­ing up for me. But it’s it’s what’s the list of things that you would you want to do that would stretch you and I go back in my ear­ly 20s when I took singing lessons, yeah, from a teacher who taught pro­fes­sion­al singers and dancer or pro­fes­sors or dancers and actors how to sing like yeah full blown right down to the mas­ter­class where you stand in a cir­cle with all these pro­fes­sion­al per­form­ers and I was just young sales guy and learn­ing how to sing Yeah, it was on my list because I got told us on like a dead horse every time it was some­one’s birth­days birth­day, it was time to sing hap­py birth­day. So the point of it is we have these things you got some­thing to remem­ber these things are

Brad Giles 33:58

kind of men­tioned that a day a dead horse sounds like a real­ly nice thing to lis­ten to

Kevin Lawrence 34:04

dying. It is not it was not a nice thing. It’s prob­a­bly a dying horse is prob­a­bly a bet­ter dead horse die dying horse like what­ev­er sound that would make. So but it’s like make a list of the things that you’ve thought about that you would like to do and maybe you haven’t for what­ev­er rea­son, what­ev­er sto­ry but make a list of those things. It’s already there. Like you already kind of know and if you believe in bril­liant or divine direc­tion are your inter­nal guid­ance, you prob­a­bly already know what you got to do. You know, I’ve got a you know, sign up.

Brad Giles 34:39

You know, I I remem­ber when I was about 30 I thought I need to exer­cise and so I got some shoes on and I decid­ed to run around the block. There might have been one or two sub­ur­ban blocks and I got back and I was that exhaust­ed. I lie on the floor just absolute­ly knack­ered. And then maybe a year or two lat­er, we were on a kind of we were liv­ing on kind of a main street. And I can remem­ber it was there was this event called the city to surf. So there will run from the city into the surf. It’s about 10 kilo­me­ters. And I got up that morn­ing. And it was, I think I went out to the bins or some­thing because we’re liv­ing in a com­plex. And I heard all of these foot there’s, there’s no sound quite like the sound of a run­ning event where all you can hear is hun­dreds and hun­dreds of peo­ple’s feet, shoes hit­ting the floor. And I nev­er for­get that sound. And I thought, wow, I could nev­er do that. And as soon as I said, I can nev­er do that. It’s it that was plant­i­ng the seed to think, Oh, well, I could maybe do like a 5k. And any­way, so then 12 months lat­er, when that event came around, I did it. And that was the begin­ning. And then I did a 21 kilo­me­ter run. And then I even­tu­al­ly did a 42 kilo­me­ter or 26 mile run. And then even­tu­al­ly I did the Boston Marathon and the Syd­ney marathon. And so you don’t think that you would it would be pos­si­ble, but you just have to keep stretch­ing your­self. And now I can very com­fort­ably run, you know, an hour with­out issue. Just just get up and do it. And it just the I guess that’s that’s a sto­ry of change. But my point is, at that point, I did­n’t even think it was pos­si­ble to run 10 kilo­me­ters or 11. And I just thought, well, I could prob­a­bly do a lit­tle bit. And, yeah, 12 months lat­er I was there.

Kevin Lawrence 36:46

And what we find is almost any­thing is pos­si­ble, if you ful­ly set your mind to it, and you real­ly want it bad enough, any­thing. There’s peo­ple that have had knee replace­ment, and they run like that, right and just they you know, there’s all kinds of things that but it’s, this goes back to your inter­nal guid­ance, I’m not say­ing stretch your­self, this is not like put your­self in the tor­ture rack and hurt, you know, do stuff you don’t want to do this is doing the things you actu­al­ly have an inter­est in doing. And stay­ing fresh with them. You know, and it’s maybe you want to learn how to do com­put­er ani­ma­tion, maybe you make want to make a short film, maybe you want to sing and, and pro­duce a song, maybe you want to pro­duce a song and only share it with your fam­i­ly. Maybe you want to pro­duce a song and put it on YouTube. Maybe you want to pro­duce a song and do it anony­mous­ly. I don’t care. Yeah, but you have some inter­nal guid­ance about things that would stretch you and just know it’s good for your spir­it. And it’s good for your lead­er­ship and which is a result good for your, for your com­pa­ny on what real­ly works for you. So with that in mind, let’s go to the next point that we talked about, Brad, which

Brad Giles 37:54

is, you know,

Kevin Lawrence 37:56

we’re talk­ing about doing this for you. So you stay fresh and rel­e­vant and com­fort­able with change. Right? Yeah, com­fort­able with being uncom­fort­able. And, and, and change and, and, and and tak­ing risks. But the thing to think about is also is what are expe­ri­ences that you can cre­ate for your friends and fam­i­ly that would do the same. So it could be friends and fam­i­ly. You know, it could be your chil­dren and part­ner. And it could be your col­leagues at work. But how can you be a cat­a­lyst for them because in our work we are cat­a­lysts for orga­ni­za­tion or many orga­ni­za­tions we come into are either in com­plete chaos, or home­osta­sis. Right. It’s fast, gross, the growth and messy and they’re try­ing to get a sys­tem to get Actu­al­ly you know what inter­est­ing. Either they need more home­osta­sis, or they need less. We’re actu­al­ly we’re like home­osta­sis adjusters, we need to get some, or they got too much. And we got to adjust the nee­dle on the homeostasis,

Brad Giles 39:00

I kind of think of it like what we’re doing in orga­ni­za­tions is going in and and going back to that yin yang dia­gram. So we’re iden­ti­fy­ing and pro­tect­ing the core num­ber one and num­ber two, what we’re doing is we’re stim­u­lat­ing the right kind of dis­ci­plined progress. And that’s why we get such impres­sive results. I’d say so quick­ly. Yeah, it is. And

Kevin Lawrence 39:25

with this brand, we are iden­ti­fy­ing and pro­tect­ing the crit­i­cal parts of the core. Yeah, and a bunch of the stuff they’re pro­tect­ing, they should­n’t be in many cas­es, and stim­u­lat­ing the right kind of progress. So what’s actu­al­ly it’s like cat­a­loging and and and opti­miz­ing both the pro­tect­ing and the stim­u­lat­ing actu­al­ly. Yeah, awe­some, awe­some point. So So basi­cal­ly, if you need a home­osta­sis, assess­ment and adjust­ment, you know, we all know that that’s what we are and the peo­ple we work with spend our time doing but so the point of it is though, is When it comes to this stim­u­late progress piece think­able, what can you do to kind of open that up and make that hap­pen for your, for your team. And I’ll, I’ll give you an exam­ple. A CEO worked with auto Chica­go for many years, I’m proud to work with them. He’s like, my, my Greek broth­er’s name is Angela Mor­ris and a com­pa­ny called medics. He’s an awe­some guy, a very pur­pose led orga­ni­za­tion. And we would always do our annu­al retreats some­where else, you know, unfor­tu­nate­ly, there were plans last year to do it some­where spec­tac­u­lar. And it’s usu­al­ly tied to when we hit the num­bers. If we hit the num­bers, we do that and we go do some great strap plan­ning in a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment, which shakes up our think­ing. But one of the times we did it, we did­n’t know place called por­ta viar, toe Mex­i­co. And, you know, we went, we stayed in a nice place where we had our meet­ings, and we work hard, like some peo­ple think of these exec­u­tive retreats as just, you know, go and par­ty and that and we did do some fun stuff. But we would work, you know, 1012 hour days, like we would real­ly work hard and play hard, too. But one of the days, you know, Andrew arranged for us to go to an orphan­age. And so we all packed sup­plies that the orphan­age need­ed to take to the kids. And he changed our lives that day. Yeah, because going and work­ing at an orphan­age, I will just give you a 32^nd ver­sion of it. In the end, we brought a den­tist because they need­ed to kids need­ed den­tal work. So some peo­ple were hold­ing kids while they were get­ting den­tal work with­out all the west­ern stuff that we might expect peo­ple to have. But you were there see­ing kids, it looked like kids like your own chil­dren. Yeah, in an orphan­age. And it was it was a heart­warm­ing and a heart crush­ing sce­nario at the same time. The point of it is, he’s a pur­pose led orga­ni­za­tion, he cre­at­ed an expe­ri­ence that he got us doing. So we just did­n’t make dona­tion. We were there with the kids for the day. Yeah, hav­ing this expe­ri­ence that cre­at­ed a cat­a­lyst for us in lots of ways to have dif­fer­ent think­ing and a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. That’s just one tiny exam­ple. There’s many, many, many more it, you know, oth­er CEOs and oth­er SEO worked with in the Mid­dle East, was cre­at­ing a dig­i­tal start­up with­in their com­pa­ny. And he took a team that was plan­ning a one year time­frame to launch their first web­site under dig­i­tal start­up. Yeah. And he said, Okay, guys, you need to do it in three months. Right? And so he that the stretch he put on that team and any loud he says, Okay, we’ll do a sim­pler ver­sion. But it’s live in three months, because he want­ed speed. And he want­ed to build con­fi­dence in that team. So two very dif­fer­ent exam­ples. But how can you? How can you see the good in cre­at­ing those expe­ri­ence that shake things up and stretch people?

Brad Giles 42:45

through a cat­a­lyst? Like I think I think that for many peo­ple under esti­mat­ing the impor­tance of a cat­a­lyst, and in those exam­ples that you’ve giv­en, it was an inten­tion­al­ly cre­at­ed cat­a­lyst going to those types of envi­ron­ments. Cer­tain­ly what we do through going back and talk­ing about the, the yin yang sym­bol, where stim­u­late progress pre­serve the core of our role in those orga­ni­za­tions is to be the cat­a­lyst is to dri­ve that stim­u­la­tion, because some­times peo­ple can’t do it. And it is an exter­nal per­son that can real­ly dri­ve that the, the, that’s the kind of the pow­er of the rela­tion­ship, if you your wife, or the ben­e­fit of the rela­tion­ship, it can be quite impactful.

Kevin Lawrence 43:35

And some­times you have the pow­er with­in your­self to do it your­self. Yeah. Right. Like some­times that you know, peo­ple can pull it so the point of it is it’s got to hap­pen some­how. But there is a down­side of this stim­u­lat­ing progress. It does­n’t always work. You know, and as I can share with you in my in my adven­ture back into kart rac­ing, you know, with my friends, you know, I’ve bought a lot of spare parts over share with you before I got back into it last year and start­ed play­ing with it again, because my bud­dies want­ed to do it and my son has always loved to do it. But as I’m, you know, got my brand new card at the end of the sea­son last sea­son and I’m break­ing it in I’m sup­posed to be tak­ing it easy, but then my two bud­dies are ahead of me, and I want to catch them I can’t help myself. And I am dri­ving like as hard as I can. My son actu­al­ly pulled off the track because he did­n’t like what he was see­ing and what was going to come next thing you know, I’m try­ing to at the very last sec­ond I’m break­ing at the very last sec­ond and i and i braked a mil­lisec­ond too long and it did­n’t work and I went right off the track through the bar­ri­cade bent up the whole front of my go kart my steer­ing wheels bent for­ward I was wear­ing the bar­ri­cade and it hurt a lit­tle bit. And then I had to do the kind of the ride of shame back when I had to come pick up my card and take it in and and we laughed our butts off. Because it was you know, it was hilar­i­ous because I was try­ing and but the point is, some­times it’s messy. Yeah. And it does­n’t work and you fail. Yeah. And that was a pret­ty good one. I mean, they Oh, and we crashed into each oth­er a bunch and you don’t have to replace parts on our cards. But that was a that was prob­a­bly, you know, but I was try­ing as hard as I could. And I tried too hard. And I pushed too hard. It was a mis­take on my part. But you got to be able to cel­e­brate these now. This is why you also want to take steps and not you know, no bet that the farm but the fam­i­ly farm or what­ev­er your move is or is Jim Collins would call it shoot­ing bul­lets, not can­ni­bals. Yeah, you’ve got to be able to cel­e­brate suc­cess, because there’s always learn­ing or growth, or at least one hell of a great sto­ry. When things go up in a ball of flames. And you don’t make the cor­ner and you crash bad.

Brad Giles 45:54

Yeah. So what we’re say­ing cel­e­brate suck­ing cel­e­brate the fail­ures, the fail­ures cre­ate the ten­sion, that ten­sion cre­ates the growth. Hope­ful­ly, you don’t do that, again.

Kevin Lawrence 46:07

Try not to and it prob­a­bly will hap­pen in some form, but ide­al­ly dif­fer­ent­ly next time. Yeah. And the thing is, you know, it’s so impor­tant to cel­e­brate the mis­takes and the fail­ures. So it makes it Okay, so then peo­ple are more like­ly to take risks. And more like­ly, whether it’s a per­son­al risk or an emo­tion­al risk, or a finan­cial risk. It makes it eas­i­er for peo­ple to do that and almost D stig­ma­tizes mak­ing mis­takes. Because you’re gonna, like, you know, if you take singing lessons, and you’re sound like a dying horse, you’re gonna miss some notes, you’re gonna still sound crap­py at times, but you’re going to be bet­ter than you were before. And that’s, that’s one of the most impor­tant things is and what I have shared before on the show, but I have a goal every month to make a cou­ple of big mis­takes. No, no, gen­er­al­ly it’s it’s, I don’t usu­al­ly miss my quo­ta. Like I nor­mal­ly I nail it, some­times I hit it by mid month. But but but what I know is, if I’m not real­ly mak­ing some seri­ous mis­takes, then then I’m not push­ing hard enough, like I bought a new vehi­cle and, and when went for buy for­eign and usu­al­ly take peo­ple take old crap­py vehi­cles when they go up into the bush into the trails. And I did­n’t. And so I noticed scratch­es all down the side of my new truck. Oops, I saw I saw the detail guy today and asked if he could pol­ish it out, he fig­ured he get most of that. He said, Yeah, you got some deep ones, we might not get them all out. And again, it’s, you know, live and learn. And that and it’s some point, you got to be able to laugh about the ones, espe­cial­ly the ones that are the minor or not, not as con­se­quen­tial. You know, the bul­lets ver­sus, you know, if it’s risk­ing some­one’s life, or, or, or, you know, risk­ing your whole company.

Brad Giles 47:55

Awe­some. So let’s move to wrap this up. So what we’re say­ing here is you can get into a groove that can be detri­men­tal in your per­son in your com­pa­ny in your lead­er­ship team. And you’ve got to find ways to con­tin­u­al­ly stretch, we use the anal­o­gy of home­osta­sis, the home­osta­sis sys­tem con­trols the body, and it reg­u­lates all of the oper­at­ing func­tions of the body. And that’s real­ly effec­tive. And that is that can be the anal­o­gy for what we’re talk­ing about in your per­son­al busi­ness life or in your com­pa­ny. And so you’ve got to find ways to con­tin­ue to push against that, that align with the dis­ci­plines of the hedge­hog that we talk about. What can you be the best at What’s your pur­pose? And what’s your prof­it per x? Or how do you What’s the sin­gle way that you make mon­ey. And so, not stretch­ing can come at a great cost over time. So broad­ly, the things that we’ve dis­cussed, to wrap it up, it’s a bit like the first New­ton’s first law, okay, if a body at rest are mov­ing at a con­stant speed is mov­ing at a con­stant speed or in a straight line, it will keep mov­ing unless it is act­ed upon it by an exter­nal force. We did­n’t real­ly touch on that. But that’s real­ly you know, what we’re say­ing through there. Maybe one out of 99 or 10 out of 99, we’ve got to find a way to stim­u­late there’s got to be a con­stant con­sis­tent way to stim­u­late that progress. putting your­self in areas where you are the stu­dents and not the mas­ter and know­ing that that will be uncom­fort­able in terms of your ego, your pride, your brand, your com­fort, but that is what’s impor­tant. Also, mak­ing it the norm to stim­u­late progress. So I think that we’ve cov­ered off most of them all and the oth­er one series, know­ing that there’s a Goldilocks zone, know­ing that there is a zone that is not too far and not too lit­tle in terms of stim­u­lat­ing progress, any­thing that we’ve missed there, Kevin. At No,

Kevin Lawrence 50:20

I just sum­ma­rized it up Brad is is you know, what is some­thing you said it’s real­ly impor­tant to get into a good groove as a busi­ness and a leader and a per­son. But it’s equal­ly impor­tant to get out of that groove at some point too. If you get in a groove and stay in a groove, it’s com­fort­able, but it can lead you down the wrong road, you got to keep tweak­ing it and pop­ping over that groove every once in a while so you keep per­spec­tive and you stay fresh and rel­e­vant. Indeed. All right. Well,

Brad Giles 50:47

thank you very much for lis­ten­ing. My name is Brad Giles and joined as always by my co-host, Kevin Lawrence. My book if you are so inter­est­ed is made to thrive the five roles to evolve beyond your lead­er­ship com­fort zone Kev­in’s book, is your oxy­gen mask first, don’t remem­ber the sub­ti­tle. If you’d like to find me, you can find me at evo­lu­tion part​ners​.com​.au and Kevin is at Lawrence and co​.com. Thank you very much for join­ing us. We look for­ward to hav­ing a chat in a week and have a great week.