Podcast Ep 86 | What is Productive Paranoia, and Why it's a Critical Leadership Tool

What is pro­duc­tive para­noia and why is it so impor­tant in leadership?

Many lead­ers think that opti­mists are the best peo­ple to lead com­pa­nies, but in fact the data says that opti­mists have a much high­er chance of fail­ing. Instead, the lead­ers who always ask ​‘what if, what if, what if?’ are the ones who build endur­ing great companies.

You can only learn if you sur­vive your mis­takes, and the only way to sur­vive your mis­takes is to be con­stant­ly on the look­out for things that can impact your plans.

In this episode, Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence talk about the con­cept of pro­duc­tive para­noia, and why it’s a crit­i­cal lead­er­ship tool.

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 00:12

Wel­come to the Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast where every­thing we talk about is about build­ing endur­ing, great com­pa­nies. That’s some­thing that Brad, my co host and I are very pas­sion­ate about. We spend a big chunk of our life help­ing peo­ple to do that. And we’re here to talk with you about it. So I’m Kevin Lawrence and I’m joined by Brad Giles. We’re on episode 86 — get­ting close to 100. Brad, how are you doing today?

Brad Giles 00:42

Very good. I seem to be in the win­ter, that does­n’t seem to end nor­mal­ly. Two or three months ago, we’d be hav­ing a change in the sea­son, but the win­ter just keeps on going.How you doing today?

Kevin Lawrence 00:55

I’m doing great. Yeah, we’re doing a beau­ti­ful white snow on the moun­tains across from us here. And you can see them on it. It’s just beau­ti­ful. It’s a lit­tle chilly, but I’m doing great. I’m insane­ly grate­ful. Today we’ll talk about as we get into the show. Today, we’re talk­ing about pro­duc­tive para­noia, a con­cept that Jim Collins has writ­ten exten­sive­ly about in his books, in par­tic­u­lar, his book, Great by Choice, some­thing that I live in breathe. And I was affirmed, by the way he wrote about it and has talked about it with us, and which has made me real­ize that my para­noia is a healthy thing, espe­cial­ly when you put it to work. So we’re gonna dig into that today. But we’ll get to that in a minute before that, what is your Word of the Day?

Brad Giles 01:38

It’s hir­ing. Hir­ing peo­ple. It seems like every meet­ing I go to, we’re talk­ing about hir­ing, we’re talk­ing about peo­ple who are leav­ing, we’ve got 2% unem­ploy­ment here now. So even the peo­ple who don’t want to work, actu­al­ly not work­ing if sor­ry, they are work­ing, if that makes sense. Even the peo­ple who who have no inter­est in work­ing are some­how been forced to work. Every sin­gle meet­ing, it’s about how can we get peo­ple? Some peo­ple have left? Yeah, hir­ing is absolute­ly front of mind at the moment. What about yours? What’s your thought or?

Kevin Lawrence 02:19

Well, mine is keep­ing strate­gic is sim­i­lar to the to where you’re com­ing from we are in an incred­i­bly boom­ing time where peo­ple are fran­ti­cal­ly exe­cut­ing, try­ing to keep up and many are so busy get­ting things done, they don’t have the time to zoom out and keep strate­gic when sit­u­a­tions, you know, even need to go into hir­ing one is some­one, one of the clients who work with one of his key lead­ers is like, we just need to hire peo­ple. Let’s just pay what­ev­er it takes. We just got to get more peo­ple. Yeah, well, that is a tac­ti­cal response, which may not be very smart in the long term. But you know, it’s not very strate­gic, poten­tial­ly. But you know, get­ting lost up in tac­ti­cal and pan­ic kicks in. So keep­ing strate­gic around hir­ing would be a great theme for today’s show. If we were to blend those two togeth­er. In day, we could do anoth­er one just on that. So hey, let’s jump right into today. We’re going to be a real, real quick episode here today. So let’s talk about this thing called pro­duc­tive para­noia a bit. And I’ll just maybe start off with an exam­ple. Just before you do. So of course, if you sit with and be wor­ried about things and para­noid and just cycle in cycle on those thoughts. Yeah, that is a real­ly bad thing, because you’ll dri­ve your­self absolute­ly insane. Although Collins talks those called pro­duc­tive para­noia, where you are, you could call wor­ried or scan­ning the envi­ron­ment and wor­ried about what could hap­pen. But then you could do some­thing about it. So instead of stay­ing an obses­sive wor­ry mode, you notice a risk, boom, let’s put this counter piece in there. We notice a risk, let’s put some­thing else in here. So it’s scan­ning and then active­ly doing some­thing ver­sus scan­ning and scan­ning and then scan­ning and scan­ning and not doing anything.

Brad Giles 04:19

And I guess the oppo­site of con­stant­ly scan­ning for some­thing bad to hap­pen is not scan­ning, and then not find­ing things that pop up,

Kevin Lawrence 04:32

which we would call the opti­mists in our soci­ety. And you would think that opti­mists would be some of the most suc­cess­ful peo­ple and they’re not. They’re gen­er­al­ly suc­cess­ful for short peri­ods of time. Yeah. Not endur­ing. No, because pure opti­mism and you know, and pure opti­mism is real­ly dan­ger­ous. It’s won­der­ful. And you have to have that opti­mism. But you also need to be look­ing at the oth­er side of the coin. In the right amount, oth­er­wise, you know, you’re going to get tak­en out by things that you tried to opti­mize think you just Opti­mal­ly opti­misti­cal­ly bounce over. Yeah, though it’s it’s that com­bi­na­tion, but pure opti­mism is cor­re­lat­ed with great tak­ing risks that often take your game.

Brad Giles 05:19

So the only way to sur­vive is to have an ele­ment of pro­duc­tive para­noia, or you can’t build an endur­ing great busi­ness, unless you con­stant­ly scan to use your word con­stant­ly scan­ning say­ing, Well, what if this hap­pens, or what­ev­er that hap­pens, because if you’re not doing that, and you’re an opti­mist, you can get tak­en out.

Kevin Lawrence 05:42

Exact­ly. And so for exam­ple, we were in a meet­ing, I’ll be a lit­tle bit gen­er­al about it just gener­ic, because it’s a pri­vate client issue. But we’re in a meet­ing talk­ing about a mas­sive move ahead for this com­pa­ny. And every­one’s excit­ed about it, and they get to do some­thing new, and they’re real­ly excit­ed about it, the bank is more than will­ing to give them the mon­ey for their aspi­ra­tion, all this stuff. I’m like, I can’t sup­port it. I can’t sup­port it. Because I haven’t seen the sce­nario plan­ning, where we come up with a list of all the bru­tal things that could take us out on this new expan­sion. And until we can see it, and to see that we can either mit­i­gate it, or we can absorb it. Um, we should­n’t do it. And it’s, it’s not that I don’t believe in this project, I believe in the project. But they haven’t done the work because they’re going to lever up the bal­ance sheet with a lot more debt. And, and they but they haven’t done the work to show is this gonna put us in a sit­u­a­tion where it could kill us? ie we, you know, we lose the com­pa­ny? Because we haven’t done that yet. So, but every­one else is all excit­ed and push­ing ahead. And I’m like, no bloody way. I mean, the CEOs also on this, and some oth­er peo­ple are there. But a lot of peo­ple don’t. And next thing you know, you do this big expan­sion. And next and you’re sit­ting there going, oops, we over planned it or over­built at or overestimate?

Brad Giles 07:08

Yeah. So imag­ine you’re in a lead­er­ship team that’s real­ly pos­i­tive, you’ve got an excit­ing big, hairy, auda­cious goal, a strat­e­gy that you believe in, and you’re not per­haps doing as well, we’ve spo­ken about the qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive aspects of employ­ee and cus­tomer sur­veys. So you’re kind of in an ivory tow­er a lit­tle bit, you’re kind of sep­a­rat­ed from the data, but you’re in this super pos­i­tive envi­ron­ment. That’s a great way to get knocked out. Because you’re not always say­ing, Well, what if this hap­pens, or what hap­pens if that hap­pens? And I come off a series of big wins.

Kevin Lawrence 07:43

Yeah. And the mar­ket is boom­ing. And there’s the demand and the cus­tomers want more? All that good stuff. You just got to keep look­ing over your shoul­der and not just blind­ly push­ing ahead.

Brad Giles 07:59

Yeah, so I, we were speak­ing before the show, and I men­tioned that before the Coro­n­avirus real­ly took hold at the end of March 2020. I sent out my first email on Feb­ru­ary the sec­ond, which was real­ly, I guess, six to sev­en weeks before it start­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly hit the head­lines, let’s say. And I was pri­mar­i­ly look­ing at it think­ing, if this is hap­pen­ing in Chi­na, if we’ve got this virus, what’s it going to do if it gets out of Chi­na, I obvi­ous­ly, but then be real­ly pri­mar­i­ly think­ing about if a num­ber of the peo­ple in your firm or get it or get the virus at once. It’s going to mean that you’re not going to be able to con­tin­ue to oper­ate for a month or two. And that’s going to have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences. Now, it obvi­ous­ly went on to do oth­er things. But that was absolute­ly born of pro­duc­tive paranoia.

Kevin Lawrence 09:03

Yeah. And Brad, we’re broth­ers in para­noia were sim­i­lar. You know, I was order­ing in addi­tion to addi­tion­al sup­plies from my place. I was order­ing in 95 masks. Yep. And it was late Feb. I believe I used to go back and look at my Ama­zon his­to­ry. I was I know I ordered six of the last n 95 masks avail­able on Ama­zon Cana­da. Yeah, I got the last ones that I could find. And they were the three M and 95. And I was already doing those things because he can see it com­ing. Yeah, but that’s my nature. It’s um, it’s inter­est­ing and even as we talked about ear­li­er, but in West­ern Cana­da, where I live, there’s been a set of anchors with a dev­as­tat­ing storm. There are four main arter­ies that can high­ways that take you from Van­cou­ver to the rest of the coun­try. All four got washed out on Sun­day night as I was dri­ving through them. It’s almost like in the movies, where the you know, the road is falling away or the bridges falling away and behind you We did­n’t see it hap­pen. But we can see that this was a real­ly bad sce­nario as we’re detour­ing. And even the main high­way, we take the cold, the Coca Cola was washed out. So we were tak­ing anoth­er one. And you know, with­in an hour or so after we went through it all, it all came up, flow came apart, and we were some of the last peo­ple to make it through. And, you know, the point of it being is that as that’s hap­pen­ing, and I and my son nor­mal­ly dri­ve back and forth between Van­cou­ver and a place called Kelow­na, every week, sep­a­rate­ly, but we also have we call emer­gency bags, we got a 72 hour bag in the car in the win­ter, because it’s a moun­tain pass. And, you know, that’s part of that pro­duc­tive para­noia. And I’ve talked about this in oth­er shows, not only do I have the best snow tires, on my truck that you can get, and they’re stud­ded. And I have sand­bags. And I have a 72 hour bag and a bunch of oth­er safe­ty emer­gency stuff in there. And if I go to a dif­fer­ent car, I just trans­fer every­thing up sand­bags that stays in the truck, but for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. But it’s because you know, you can get stuck in those high­ways for a long time. And some peo­ple just go there with, you know, with noth­ing. And that’s okay. All I know is if some peo­ple got trapped, we would have been fine for a cou­ple of days would­n’t have liked it, when we had all the sup­plies we need­ed. Because it’s unknown, and no one would have expect­ed this to hap­pen. You just expect in the win­ter bad stuff hap­pens on these moun­tain roads. And it’s being super pre­pared. And it’s a mind­set. And it’s a healthy mind­set. When you do some­thing about there are some peo­ple that would be so para­noid that they would­n’t dri­ve over a moun­tain pass in the win­ter. That’s a that’s that’s almost a debil­i­tat­ing para­noia ver­sus con­struc­tive­ly tak­ing steps to set your­self up to win.

Brad Giles 11:43

Yeah, that’s an excel­lent, excel­lent anal­o­gy. So the point here is that the only mis­takes you can learn from are the ones you sur­vive. Yes. Oth­er­wise, you get tak­en out. And so bad things or dan­ger­ous things hap­pen all the time. And by embrac­ing the myr­i­ad of pos­si­ble dan­gers, peo­ple with pro­duc­tive para­noia put them­selves in a supe­ri­or posi­tion to over­come danger.

Kevin Lawrence 12:12

Because they’re just more pre­pared. Yeah, that’s it. That’s all that it is. It was inter­est­ing, even I’ve got a guy I know fair­ly well, that it has his own heli­copter implies is one heli­copter. And I was­n’t sure the first time I want­ed that one. When I went up, he’s got one. He’s amaz­ing jet heli­copters. It’s out­stand­ing. But you know, when I went up with him, and I’m watch­ing how we do it, man, he’s full of para­noia. Yeah, he’s a fun lov­ing guy. Nor­mal­ly, when he’s in a heli­copter, he’s like, he’s all busi­ness. All con­cerned, Tom, watch out for this, you know, and it’s like, and for a recre­ation­al pilot, they’re not as expe­ri­enced. But if that’s what that para­noia helps you to the point where he’s tak­ing the course, where you can land a heli­copter with no engine, there’s a spe­cial tech­nique where you can put them on the ground fair­ly safe­ly. Any­way, the point of it is, is it’s a cer­tain attribute that’s very, very help­ful in busi­ness. And that’s it, we’ll talk a bit more. And so some of the main points, like one point main thing is, you know, you’re doing this when you’re ask­ing, you know, what if, what if, what if you’re look­ing at dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios? And what could hap­pen again, ver­sus just the bold blind optimism?

Brad Giles 13:23

Yeah. And being dis­tract­ed by oth­er things. Because what if this end? What if 90% of the time or 99% of the time you’re not? Right? It’s the 1% of the time that enables you to sur­vive. It’s okay. Peo­ple may think, oh, that per­son­’s always wor­ried about, you know, all these things, and noth­ing ever turns out until the 1% of the time that they do. And that’s, that’s a great way to kind of sum­ma­rize pro­duc­tive para­noia. What if? What if? What if, what if this cus­tomer fails or does­n’t pay? What if our prod­uct does­n’t get deliv­ered on time? What if our employ­ees, half of our employ­ees resigned, I had a lead­er­ship team that I know of where they’re in, I don’t work with them. But 40% of the lead­er­ship team and mid man­age­ment team all resigned with­in about a month because they were tar­get­ed by the com­peti­tors. That’s why one of the rea­sons my chick­en was was hir­ing. So what if that hap­pens? What if we have it’s the what if, what if, what if the plane crashes?

Kevin Lawrence 14:36

And that’s why we don’t have the whole exec­u­tive team play on the same plane? Right? Like all of these dif­fer­ent things, where peo­ple look at things and have plans to mit­i­gate unfore­seen, fore­seen and unfore­seen risk? Yeah, and that’s the idea. Like, I remem­ber, I was talk­ing with one CEO, he was like, you know, I don’t know when the next crazy thing is going to hap­pen in In our busi­ness or our econ­o­my, but I knew it, I do know that it will. I don’t know what or when, but I know that it will. And I want to be pre­pared for that.

Brad Giles 15:11

So there’s a real­ly sor­ry, tip, there’s a real­ly impor­tant thing that that’s between the lines of what you just said, Okay. And that is the dif­fer­ence. Jim Collins said that the dif­fer­ence between the great com­pa­nies and the good com­pa­nies in his stud­ies was that the employ­ees in the great com­pa­nies felt that they had a respon­si­bil­i­ties, they had a respon­si­bil­i­ty, where­as in the oth­er com­pa­nies that exec­u­tives felt that they had a job. And that respon­si­bil­i­ty leads to and con­nects to pro­duc­tive para­noia. Like, what if this hap­pens, what if that there’s a real impor­tant con­nec­tion there,

Kevin Lawrence 15:52

there is add, but we also want to say the oth­er side of the coin is some­one who’s always wor­ried about every­thing, and just an absolute down­er, where they wor­ry about it, whine about it, but they don’t take any­thing to coun­ter­act it, we are not say­ing that no team should con­ti­nu­ity look exact­ly look for the prob­lems, and then have plans to mit­i­gate them, so that you can han­dle it. So the sec­ond point is be pre­pared for every­thing that comes up, and espe­cial­ly the things you can’t expect. And that’s why, you know, for a lot of com­pa­nies, now mak­ing sure that you know that they keep extra cash and Collins found in his research com­pa­nies that were in dur­ing the Great had fat bal­ance sheets, basi­cal­ly. So they could weath­er any storm, and still be good. And that’s the key piece. How do you weath­er any storm a once in 100 year storm? How do you weath­er it so you can con­tin­ue to build your orga­ni­za­tion going forward?

Brad Giles 16:47

I remem­ber I start­ed work­ing with a client must have been sev­en or eight years ago. And they were like, many small kind of to medi­um busi­ness­es. I mean, they were like a 20 $40 mil­lion busi­ness in that region. And, you know, they had cash reserves that were very thin, as is often the case. And I kept harass­ing them about build­ing their cash. And I said, Don’t wor­ry, just build it up, build it up, build it up. And then heav­en for­bid, let’s go two years into the future. And what had hap­pened is the indus­try changed some­thing big hap­pen. And sud­den­ly they need­ed those reserves that we’d built up. And it was, you know, one of the rea­sons just by say­ing what if,

Kevin Lawrence 17:35

like I said, we’re broth­ers in this, Brad, because I push peo­ple to build cash reserves like crazy, you know, and a rule of thumb I’ve been play­ing with is about 10% of rev­enue in cash, or equiv­a­lent 10%. So if you’re a $200 mil­lion busi­ness, that’s about 20 mil­lion bucks cash. Yeah. And that’s a range where it starts to be decent. Now, I had a whole con­ver­sa­tion about some of my clients cash, or 30 Day Cash or 60 Day cash assets that can be liq­ui­dat­ed. And one of my clients has a great strat­e­gy, he looks at some assets that the com­pa­ny has. Yep. And says what’s the 30 day price? In a bad econ­o­my? Hmm. And so he looks at it. So basi­cal­ly, if he’s got $20 mil­lion of equi­ty in this asset, yep. But the 30 day price in a bad econ­o­my, you know, he might have 12 mil­lion, let’s call it 10. So he looks at that’s a $10 mil­lion cash reserve sit­ting there because I can liq­ui­date that asset if I have to. Yeah, but he’s dou­bled, dis­count­ed it based on those fac­tors. But that’s again, that’s part of that pro­duc­tive paranoia.

Kevin Lawrence 18:43

And I’m going when I talk about cash reserves, peo­ple would say, Oh, we’ve got an over­draft or we’ve got some­thing else does­n’t count. It does­n’t count. Because in the bad times, the banks are not nec­es­sar­i­ly Yes. Or no, your friend. No. So exact­ly. Inter­est­ing­ly, yes. And a lot of peo­ple even when it comes to cash, I get very pas­sion­ate about this, you know, they might have, you know, if they’re doing real­ly well, they have $100 mil­lion of cash, but then they’ll go use the bank’s mon­ey to do what they need to do to keep the 100 mil­lion, because they won’t have access to it, it depend­ing on you know, how up and down a par­tic­u­lar indus­try is or what they’re doing, right. They’re in a fair­ly up and down busi­ness, and indus­try. So the point of it is, that’s anoth­er piece of pro­duc­tive para­noia. Yeah, um, you know, so the third point here is real­ly is all this great think­ing, but you got to act on them. You got to plan A, B, and C, and you don’t want to spend a lot of time obsess­ing over these risks. You quick­ly want to find a way to mit­i­gate them and know that you’re good. And then if you’re still good, then pro­ceed opti­misti­cal­ly. But it’s get­ting the mit­i­gat­ed up front and look­ing at all the ugly stuff up front. Again, that’s not rock­et sci­ence is key piece. And then the oth­er four were the result of this is you can gen­er­al­ly be more More aggres­sive and pos­i­tive because you know, the worst case sce­nar­ios are cov­ered. Yeah, already got it han­dled, and you’re good, almost no mat­ter what you think, could hap­pen, because you don’t want a lot of Col­in’s his research, he found a lot of these com­pa­nies are actu­al­ly were risk adverse and very, very care­ful hence this con­cept. So just for time, Brad, I’ve got an exam­ple here, maybe you want to share a cou­ple exam­ples you want if you want to share the exam­ple about growth.

Brad Giles 20:27

Yeah, Andy Grove, any Grove, founder and CEO of Intel, the micro chip mak­er, or com­put­er chip mak­er. He was one of the exam­ples in terms of pro­duc­tive para­noia. So his quote was, he’s always look­ing for the black cloud in the sil­ver lin­ing. And if we go back to the opti­mist remark that we made before, the sil­ver lin­ing is dri­ven by opti­mists, they always see the sil­ver lin­ing, but there’s always some­thing else that we’ve got to look for. So that’s a it’s a real­ly, it’s a good way to look at it. And to think, yeah, there are sil­ver lin­ings, but there are also black clouds as well. And we need to know both.

Kevin Lawrence 21:15

Yes. And Andy Grove, you know, anoth­er thing I love from him is that he had his book, I think it’s called high out­put man­age­ment. You’re the one you’re talk­ing about from his book, only the Para­noid Sur­vive, but high out­put man­age­ment, he talked about, always hav­ing we call the help­ful Cas­san­dra. That’s some­one who would crit­i­cize his ideas in every team or project he was on. He want­ed the per­son that would speak up and look for the prob­lems and look for the gaps in the think­ing. And that was He’s nice, very, very, very suc­cess­ful CEO, Her­bert Keller is known for pre­dict­ing 11 of the last three reces­sions. That was in Col­in’s book, Great by Choice. Yeah, he’s the only bud­dy west, south­west air­lines, amaz­ing CEO, amaz­ing com­pa­ny. But he pre­dict­ed 11 times he pre­dict­ed reces­sions, but they only hap­pened three times, because that’s how his brain is wired. Look­ing at. There’s lots of oth­er exam­ples. I know I’m remem­ber­ing. And an amaz­ing CEO that I’ve had the chance to work with for more than a decade. I remem­ber I gave him a copy of Great by Choice Collins’s book, and we talked about this. And then he instant­ly grabbed his pen and put his name. And he wrote his name on the inside of the book, like, what are you doing? I was won­der­ing what some of the tick­et. So it’s a prime exam­ple. And the CEO who’s mak­ing you know, he’s mak­ing a sev­en fig­ure income, he’s not short of cash, but he’s writ­ing his name in the damn book, because he does­n’t want his book to get stolen. Right. And, and this guy was a great exam­ple of pro­duc­tive para­noia, and an out­stand­ing CEO. So there’s lots of dif­fer­ent exam­ples of book­keep­ing cash, you know, doing risk analy­sis, tak­ing small steps, like Jim calls, you know, bul­lets, then can­non­balls, and things like sup­pli­ers, you know, you know, hav­ing mul­ti­ple sup­pli­ers for a dif­fer­ent piece. That’s why some com­pa­nies don’t want one sup­pli­er to be you know, 70% of the busi­ness, they want to carve it up amongst a few dif­fer­ent ones. It’s just it’s risk management.

Brad Giles 23:12

So I actu­al­ly in my book, the fifth chap­ter was about suc­ces­sion plan­ning. And that’s not for your kids to take over the busi­ness that’s exact­ly around pro­duc­tive para­noia. And so I cov­er off with­in my Thrive this book that I’ve writ­ten, it’s about the roles, it’s about the prod­ucts and ser­vices that are at risk. It’s the sup­pli­ers that are at risk. It’s eval­u­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, new stuff against a set of cri­te­ria, and each leader in the busi­ness has a clear suc­ces­sor. So that’s anoth­er way to anoth­er angle to think about it. Yeah, is that it’s forc­ing your­self to say, what if, what if, what if?

Kevin Lawrence 23:55

Yep. And I will tell you, I share one exam­ple where you know, and pro­duc­tive para­noia is always good, right? It’s healthy. But some­times we relax around things and lose it. And that’s the risk, we get com­pla­cent. And I remem­ber one time we were with a group of peo­ple going on a dri­ve and one of my pas­sions is dri­ving. And we’re going on this amaz­ing dri­ve through the north­ern US and Cana­da and going up to the race­track. And my son and I are in a car that’s a very very fast car. We got to back for deal­er­ship, they did a ser­vice, it was all good to go. And we’re going at like we’re real­ly dri­ving past and at one point we start­ed to notice the car start­ed to feel fun­ny. And actu­al­ly my son was dri­ving at the time sort of feel fun­ny, we pull over well, the wheel was com­ing off. And, and the wheel nuts were already backed off. Like if you know if the bolt say would have been, you know, an inch and a half two inch­es stick­ing out with us not only Oh, it was already halfway out like the wheel, the wheel was destroyed and you know, as much as you know, when I’m gonna dri­ve like that and going to the One of the habits we have at the race­track is we check the torque on the wheel nuts before we go. Hmm. Yeah, you know, just to dou­ble check, because if some­thing comes loose, it can be dev­as­tat­ing. You know, and even though you take it to the deal­er­ship, which is the brand you bought the car from, which is one of the top car brands in the world, all these things, you should be able to trust them. But you should­n’t, you should still dou­ble check your torques and things like that. It’s just a good habit, and I did­n’t, and it could have destroyed the car or killed us, you know, if that will come off at high speed. And it’s just one of these things pro­duc­tive. If I was pro­duc­tive­ly para­noid, I would always check those things. And there’s a dis­ci­pline to this, ver­sus just get­ting com­fort­able and casu­al. And there’s one oth­er say­ing would be trust and ver­i­fy when my case I did­n’t ver­i­fy. So the ques­tion to leave you with is, what could you do to be more effec­tive­ly para­noid, pro­duc­tive­ly para­noid, hope­ful­ly para­noid? What could you wor­ry about in your busi­ness that could wipe your busi­ness out? Or, obvi­ous­ly, if it’s a safe­ty of safe­ty, and it could harm some­one, that’s a whole oth­er piece? But what could you do in your busi­ness to be more pro­duc­tive­ly para­noid? And then maybe what could you do personally?

Brad Giles 26:10

Yeah, indeed, it’s, it’s such a pow­er­ful con­cept. And I’m so glad that we’ve cov­ered it up today. So let’s have a quick review of some of the key points here in order to wrap up. So real­ly, the it’s about ask­ing what if, what if, what if, but the only mis­takes you can learn from oth­er ones use sur­vive, every busi­ness will go through an expe­ri­ence mis­takes, and this pur­pose is to help you to sur­vive. So as I said, first of all, it’s about ask­ing, what if? What if, what if it enables you to be pre­pared for every­thing that comes up, and espe­cial­ly the things that you can’t expect kept doing to take us on to three and four and onwards?

Kevin Lawrence 26:53

Yes and he basi­cal­ly you just act on his risks and how plan ABC or a plan to mit­i­gate it so that you can put them to the back of your mind and push ahead aggres­sive­ly, and as a result, be more con­fi­dent. Because you’ve stared the worst case sce­nar­ios in the face, you make a bet­ter deci­sion to start with. But then you have more con­fi­dence because your deci­sions are built on gran­ite, ver­sus, you know, float­ing on a ped­al on the water, exag­ger­at­ing a bit. And then you know the exam­ples we’ve talked about. And you know, just to wrap up the quote from Andy Grove, only the Para­noid Sur­vive. And as your busi­ness becomes big­ger, not always about sur­vival. It’s about your respon­si­bil­i­ty to your cus­tomers and your employ­ees. And your job is to make sure this orga­ni­za­tion exists, and is healthy years from today.

Brad Giles 27:41

Awe­some, good episode talk­ing about what is pro­duc­tive para­noia, and why it’s a crit­i­cal lead­er­ship tool. So we hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, as always, our pod­casts are avail­able on YouTube, obvi­ous­ly search­ing for the Growth Whis­per­ers and you can find Kevin at Lawrence and co​.com