Be More Strategic: Habits That Separate Direction from Busyness - with Charlie Curzon

Speaker 1 (00:02) Welcome to Building Your Leader Brand. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Charlie Curzon. Keep it simple, Bob. You know, A to B. Today is A. If you're working with anyone, whether it's an individual, a team, a business, public sector, a school, well, where are you trying to get to? You know, what is your B? And it's amazing actually how often people don't really know what their B is at all. You know, where it could be C or D, or people in the team have different opinions. So Clarity about actually what that ambition, vision, winning aspiration is, is, is really critical. Speaker 2 (00:38) Hi there and welcome to Building Your Leader Brand. My name is Bob Gentle, and every week I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing, and monetizing their expertise and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show, take a second, sit back, don't start doing anything else yet. And hit the follow or subscribe button. That way you won't miss anything. The next episode will just be nicely queued up for you and my numbers will grow. And numbers growing are my favourite thing. So today's guest is someone who's helping leaders move beyond busyness into clearer, higher level thinking. Charlie Kurzland is a coach, a strategist, an advisor who has spent more than two decades helping leaders, teams, and organisations think more effectively. I need a bit of that. Make better decisions. We all need that. And create stronger long-term outcomes. His latest book, Be More Strategic: 12 Essential Practises to Build the Life and Career You Want, breaks strategy down into practical habits and behaviours that anyone can develop. Challenge accepted, Charlie. Welcome to the show. Speaker 1 (01:49) Thank you so much, Bob. It's lovely to be here. Speaker 2 (01:52) So for the listener meeting you for the first time, what does the world look like for you? What is day to day? This is who Charlie Curzon is and what he does. It'd be a good place to start. Speaker 1 (02:03) Yeah, absolutely. I often say to people, no two days in my world look the same. I think that probably is quite important. Professionally, I spend my time doing a mixture of things for a mixture of people. So just let's say, take this week, Best example, I'm a coach, so I've had a couple of coaching sessions with different people, one in the UK, one overseas. I facilitated a couple of workshops and sessions for different— they were both businesses. Later today, I'm off down into London where I'm a little bit on the back of the book, actually, Bob, you mentioned. I'm talking for 20, 25 minutes ahead of a sort of private dinner, if you like, to act as the stimulus to a group of leaders who will then use that as provocation to have a conversation. And yeah, and outside of that, I'm an active dad of two, a lot of standing on touchlines, building Lego, that sort of age of children. So yeah, that's my life. Speaker 2 (03:03) It's a lot of work at that age. You don't want to walk through the house in the dark without shoes on, that's for sure. Speaker 1 (03:08) Oh no, the Lego is mine, Bob. Well, you can probably see it behind me. We'll come back to that. Speaker 2 (03:12) So, strategy. I think the obvious place for us to begin is the word strategy. And it's one of these words that when I hear it, it always triggers a sense of inadequacy. And I think that's something a lot of people experience. Being more strategic is such a misunderstood phrase. And a great place to begin is perhaps your definition or what's your personal mission in terms of bringing this book to the market and to the audience that you're bringing it to, which is business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders? Speaker 1 (03:46) Yeah, absolutely. I might split that into two if that's okay, Bob. So you mentioned the word strategy before we talk about sort of being strategic, if that's okay. So I think strategy, it's a word we hear a lot, right? Even glancing at the news this morning, you sort of scan through news articles, you'll see the word mentioned in a lot of places and people's job titles, Strategy is different to planning. I think that's the first thing. Anyone who works sort of running a business or running a team, often you see those phrases used. Strategic planning is a fudge. Strategy is different to planning. The way I tend to talk about the difference is that strategy is about choices. Strategy is about intentional choices and making those choices. Strategies about making choices in uncertainty. You don't have all the information, which is the bridge to leadership in many ways. Planning can provide— well, planning, firstly, planning is sequencing actions, right? Let's say, I'll give the metaphor of this. My father was a military doctor. And if you go to a doctor, if anyone's been to see a GP, I hope they're okay, but largely what you'll find with a GP, they're under a time kind of Corden, one of the things they often will do is they will suggest making a plan. Speaker 1 (05:06) And one of the reasons they will make a plan is because it helps the other person to feel a little bit less anxious, because having a plan lowers anxiety. Developing or setting or creating or setting down a strategy, because it's much more about making a choice, saying no to things, especially in periods of uncertainty, by its nature, often makes your anxiety rise, especially in the early days of doing it, or maybe doing it for the first time. Let's say you've been promoted and you're now in a position where, as an emerging or new leader, your role is to develop the strategy for X or Y. Quite often what happens is people don't develop a strategy at all, they just start to develop a plan. And the danger with a plan is it can give you a little bit of a I would argue a bit of an illusion of control, if that makes sense. So it's that sort of sense of certainty. But the danger is that it can lead you down holes and inefficiencies. I can come back to the second point in a moment, but you might want to— Speaker 2 (06:09) Well, yes, I think that a strategy is not a plan. A plan is perhaps the crystallised result of a strategy. How do we move through— I have a vague impulse that I want to see improvement. I want to be better. I want to have more. Whether that's a company or an individual, it's a vague impulse or a powerful drive. Before we leap into plan or before we accomplish plan, we have to move through a strategic process that If we're not simply making a plan, what does the process of developing a strategy as opposed to developing a plan look like? Speaker 1 (06:54) Yes, great question. At a sort of broad level, if you like, in a sort of 60-second version, and the process I've always sort of followed, whether you are running a session or doing a much more in-depth strategy piece, is I'd probably lean to someone whose writing I've always followed, been a fan of, Professor Roger Martin, right? Just to sort of nod to him and the work he does of making quite a complex subject very simple. And he talks about this idea of a sort of strategy cascade. And I'll just give you the first 3 of the 5 for the minute, because hopefully even just if people are listening to this, it's a really useful thing just to kind of hold in your head. And you could sit with some members of your team and have a good half-hour conversation about these things, which is why what I would argue is a part of what being strategic is. The diverse voices, the listening, getting the options on the table. And Roger talks about the first 3 stages of the cascade being, he talks about a winning aspiration. That's the language he uses, which is the ambition. Speaker 1 (07:52) Yeah, keep it simple, Bob. A to B. Today is A. If you're working with anyone, whether it's an individual, a team, a business, public sector, a school, well, where are you trying to get to? What is your B? And it's amazing actually how often people don't really know what their B is at all, or it could be C or D, or people in the team have different opinions. So clarity about actually what that ambition, vision, winning aspiration is, is really critical. And as someone who's worked a lot in high-performing teams as well, and as a performance coach, that isn't a nod to something that's fluffy and pretty on a wall. That makes a big difference to performance, full stop, and decision-making. And then in Roger's world, the sort of, to nod to him, but it's something I will use variants of and have done for 20-plus years in workshops and settings, is the next two steps are, where are we going to play? So let's say we take 18 months, 3 years, 5 years. That, by the way, depends on sector, not anything else really. It depends on the world you're in and what's most relevant to you. Speaker 1 (08:52) Where are we going to play? Where are we not going to play? So, you know, replace the word play with markets or sectors or spaces or customer groups or whatever you want it to be. And that sort of could be a conversation in itself. And then you get to number 3, and number 3 is, how are we going to win? And some people don't like the word win, but how are we going to succeed? How are we going to be successful? However we term success in the places we're choosing to play. And if I just pause there and you think, okay, imagine a room full of people having a proper conversation where people are listening to each other and there's some stimulus and provocation and it's safe, etc. Then When we start talking about, let's say, the third step of how are we going to win, that might be about our business model or the pace we're going to work at or what differentiates us. It will start to change the answer to number 2, which is where we play, because we might start to think differently about where we play. We might need to think about other options, or it might make us get a lot tighter on the definition and the focus of where we play. Speaker 1 (09:55) And that in itself will bring us back to Number 3. And I often see those 3 as, if you imagine, I'm doing this with my hands, apologies if you're listening, but I often just think of it quite simply as nothing more really than a little triangle. You're trying to guide a conversation between a group of people for the first time about, well, let's have a conversation about what your strategy is, which may already be in your heads or very clear. It's just rather been lost in translation before we get into planning. A conversation, if someone's listening to this now and you just think, spend a little bit of time thinking, Well, what is my winning aspiration? What is my ambition? Where am I going to play over that period of time? And how will we win? And you rotate between those three things. I think quite quickly you get into a space where your choices, your strategic choices become clear. And then strategy is about making trade-offs. So you need to start to rule things out as much as you rule them in. People often talk about A lot of strategy work is about subtraction as much as it is addition. Speaker 1 (10:56) I'm sure a lot of people listening, probably their working life and their personal lives are simply adding more and more things onto their to-do list. And yet actually being strategic quite often is not that at all. It's you've put all the options on the table and then with real clarity and you've been deliberate and intentional about it, you have made your choice. You're therefore putting some things to one side and then you start getting into planning and execution, fully accepting that we live in an uncertain, changing world and we may need to accept that we need to change course. Speaker 2 (11:29) This is going to sound really nerdy, but I've literally got goosebumps. You should not get goosebumps from this stuff. What's fascinating, I have a friend, Nick, who is a coach, and he was regularly talking about something called the Game Changer Index, which is a personality profile. You've probably heard of it. Speaker 1 (11:49) I've heard of it, yeah. Speaker 2 (11:50) And I said, I'd love you to come on the podcast and talk about it. He said, before I do that, I want you to take the assessment. So I did it, and it was fascinating. The thing I love about the Game Changer Index, and this is, I have no horse in this race, if anybody's listening, was most of these profiles, when you walk away, you walk away feeling like you've been seen buy a profile and you look in the mirror and you go, I understand what I'm looking at and I, I can see how I can perhaps operate in the world differently. You put the profile away, you walk away, and very quickly it's gone because it's very cerebral. The Game Changer Index isn't. It's a very simple profile. It's very easy to retain. And one of the things that it identified with me is I am a naturally very strategic person. However, being naturally strategic and understanding strategy are not the same thing. And the phrase that springs to mind— well, I'll come back to that. One of the things I noticed subsequent to that was in my interactions with clients, it was almost like The Matrix. Speaker 2 (12:55) I was overlaying the profile on them. Sorry guys, if you're listening, but I started to understand why some people struggled and some flew. Sometimes it was because they were naturally strategic, but they were struggling in the operational layer. That's not what we're talking about today. But there were others who just didn't see strategy the way that I saw it. They didn't join the dots like that, and they didn't naturally see the way through. And the phrase that sprung to mind comes from sports, which is "Hard work beats talent where talent doesn't work." So you can be naturally strategic and you'll probably do well. Look at these foundational practises and frameworks. It will amplify your strategic capabilities. And we'll go much deeper into that, I'm quite sure. But if you're somebody who doesn't feel like they're necessarily particularly strategic, simple practises, simple frameworks, can immediately make a big difference. And I think that's what you've touched on today. This is outrageously important. One of the things that struck me in the shower once was you can have any future you want. And this sort of vision of how do we build a time machine, it came to mind, and it begins with a dream. Speaker 2 (14:15) If you don't have the ability to really think what could be, then immediately you rule out whatever future that might have been. Then if this comes down to vision, it could be, then we can either rule that in or out. You kind of touched on that at the beginning with the aspiration. And then we come down to actually making it happen. And I always used to jump straight down to projects, then tasks, then action. But this is where the strategy and then the plan come in, which for me is a real practical bridge between whatever situation you're currently in and whatever you can dream of. It really comes down to, well, can you dream of it? And then what does the territory look like between here and there? And how are we going to move through it? Which is just a fascinating way of looking at it, both organizationally but also on a very individual level. It's, um, Very interesting. Speaker 1 (15:18) Yeah, the sort of just, if I may, but there's sort of the— you're right, I like that you were sort of talking then about almost before or the layer above or before planning, whatever your sort of time frames, because people often talk about this, you know, there's no point in looking this far out and things like that. But we'll come back to that around sort of preparedness. If you go back, just keep the idea of like choices. What our choices are. So someone's listening to this at the moment, you think, you know, you're in a meeting later, you're in a conversation later, right? Could be with family, it doesn't need to be a work thing at all. How much time have you just had to just, you know, you might be discussing the most obvious option, you might not even be calling it an option, it's just the thing you're discussing, the route forward which is sort of assumed. And just allow 10, 15 minutes for two other things, which is, well, What are we assuming here? Just allowing that sort of space and time, however obvious, to get the assumptions on the table is incredibly useful and important for when you then, whatever choice you take, into execution. Speaker 1 (16:21) Because it's the assumptions and how assumptions change that are the thing you might start to track over time. And the other is even more simply asking, what if? You know, the Plan B, the Plan C, the Plan D. And allowing some of those options to come out on the table. And you may end up going with option 1 or A, but sometimes just that little bit of space and time to really consider your alternatives is, I think, a little nudge probably towards being a little bit more strategic than simply jumping into planning. Speaker 2 (16:52) So one of the things you talk about in the book is, I wrote it down here, the Strategy Mastery Framework. I love frameworks. And a guy, Mike Vardy, the productivityist— I mention him far too often— he coined the phrase "frameworks foster freedom." And often you look at frameworks and it's difficult to see what they're actually trying to communicate. This one, visually, it's very easy to see what it's trying to communicate. I would encourage people to buy this book just for the diagram. But I'd love for you to maybe talk a little bit more deeply than Bob thinks it's a pretty picture and likes what it's speaking about. Speaker 1 (17:32) Lovely. Yeah, I've actually just written down frameworks foster freedom. I love that. Yeah. So its origin is from doing this, right? I should add that. So over the years, coming from a sort of strategy consulting advisory world, but then also as a coach, 10-plus years ago, I started to be asked, hey, Charlie, can you teach my team to be more strategic, to think strategically, whatever? That's the origin of where that came from. And over the years, I started to learn myself, well, how do you break it down into ways which are teachable and practical and real? So that's the origin of it. And then as I started to put the book together, so I spent 2 years writing the book, and a part of it was playing around, iterating through what is it that I tend to have taught and what worked and in what sequence, if that makes sense, in order to get it. It was actually the book that allowed me to, for the first time, properly put it together in the image that you are describing. And thank you for your comments on that. So what the framework shows, if you are listening to this, it's circular, okay? Speaker 1 (18:34) And that's important. So they often talk about it being progressive. I would invite you to see it as a development framework. So you could be joining this. I work with people in their 20s. I work with people in their 60s. Again, it's as applicable anywhere as long as someone is coachable, if you like, they're sort of open to it, then that's what it's about. And at the surface level, it falls into 4 levels. So it sort of moves around in a clockwise fashion, level 1, 2, 3, 4, and then 4 joins back into 1. If you then dig a bit deeper, each of those 4 levels has 3 practises, which gives you the 12 you mentioned in the subtitle. Well, I'll just talk to the levels if that's okay and how they work together. So level 1 is self-awareness. It's about raising your self-awareness. State precedes strategy. In leadership work, leadership development work, there's an old, I think it's a fairly old adage. I've seen this in corporate life. I've seen this in, you mentioned sport. I've seen this in the military. I work with a military coach at the moment and they'll talk about this idea. Speaker 1 (19:33) When you do leadership development, it falls into these three kind of stages at a very broad level. You have to know yourself and then you need to know others, before you can learn to lead others. And so just focus on that first one of no self, raising your self-awareness. Level 2 talks to being more open-minded, which may sound obvious, but if you go back to the conversation about sitting in a meeting and asking a question, what if, just being willing and able to create an environment within which people can feel comfortable to share that and you will actually listen to those options is, of course, a part of being more open-minded. It's where something like critical thinking sits. It's critical thinking I find sometimes gets muddled with strategic thinking. I strongly believe it. I teach that just on its own, but it's a subset, right? It's a subset of being more strategic. And as you go around then into level 3 and 4, level 3 is sort of you're getting more into the strategic skills, almost like if someone went and did an MBA, the type of thing they'd be imagining they'd be doing on that. Speaker 1 (20:41) So being more future-focused, we come back to uncertainty, your relationship with uncertainty, managing uncertainty. And then you get into level 4, which is much more about, well, how do you bring others on board, making the decision in the first place, influencing others, collaborating, which is surprisingly rare. Which actually takes you back to level 1 and raising your self-awareness. I'll tell you a quick storey to that actually, Bob, if I bring this to life. When I had to do the rather daunting thing of getting testimonials before the book was published. So you're invited in that period, anyone listening who's authored books will know this process. It was my first rodeo. So the whole thing was a big learning curve. And you're invited, the publish date was set for for November, and around July I was invited, right, you've got a little period of time now to invite testimonials from people whose opinions will be credible and matter. That's quite daunting. That's quite a daunting process. And I, I sort of identified 12 people I knew who— varying levels of seniority and leadership and business schools, public domain, a few in military, sport— just to get that kind of rounded view. Speaker 1 (21:51) And the first 3 who came back to me were an executive chairman, a former CEO, and a retired chief strategy officer based in Australia. And all three, I was a little bit petrified of what I was going to hear back. And yet all three told me the same story, but I'll use one of them to bring this to life. He said, "I don't really read, Charlie. I'm not really a big reader." And I found myself, and he had printed it off like a manuscript and he was annotating, annotating, annotating. And he's got his wife and 3 grown-up daughters, and they were like, Dad, what are you doing? We never see you read, Dad. He was like, oh, this book, I'm reading this book for a friend of mine, and it's just gone inside my head. And he made, which in itself was lovely, right? The fact that he was annotating it so heavily. But he said the thing that really got him was he assumed, as did the other 2, that it was going to be levels 3 and 4 where they were going to get really interested, the sort of meatier strategy subjects and influence and collaboration and decision-making. Speaker 1 (22:49) But all three said, though they enjoyed those enormously, it was the Level 1 and 2, and especially Level 1, that really stopped them in their tracks and made them want to reread and reread. And the old friend of mine with the three daughters, the reason I mentioned that was he said how he sat down over dinner one night and he said, can I ask a question? He said, I've always thought as your dad, I was rather self-aware. And all three of his daughters like, 'Oh no, Dad, you're not at all.' 'Oh, well, what about listening? I've always thought I'm a good listener. Am I a good listener?' 'No, Dad, you're not at all. You just kind of go through the motions of pretending to listen.' So hopefully that sort of brings the framework to life a bit in a human way. But that's how the framework is structured. Speaker 2 (23:33) It does. It makes really good sense. And what's fascinating for me and equally frustrating for me is the difference that a good strategy can make. And sometimes strategy is intentional, sometimes— I'm not going to say it's accidental, but it just happened to be there naturally or organically. But you can take two people, equally skilled, equally competent, and thinking more in terms of solo practitioners or small businesses in this situation, one of them seems to thrive and fly and blossom. The other one kind of bumps along the bottom and fails to really accomplish much. And it's usually not because of ability, but it's down to the decisions that they make and the paths they choose to follow. Clearly, you could say it's down to strategy. I'd be interested in your perspective, or perhaps any anecdotes of somebody or an organisation that has been bumping along and where strategy finds a home in an organisation or in an individual and the subsequent release of the energy that was always there, but now that energy has clear direction and a clear north point on the compass and understands the territory and the monsters and the side quests a little better. Speaker 2 (25:03) Does that make sense? Speaker 1 (25:04) It does. And I'll mention 3 things. I think if this sort of talks to your question, answers your question, talks to it and to previous comments. I actually talk a lot about in my kind of day-to-day, we talked earlier about how's a typical day, week look. The book, of course, is quite individual. It's for an individual to sit and immerse themselves in it. In a lived experience, in my sort of day-to-day, I work a lot with and talk a lot to the idea of Quite often businesses, teams, organisations don't necessarily have a strategy problem, or maybe they do. It can be the planning point, right? But let's say it isn't necessarily a strategy problem, it's a strategic capability problem, especially under pressure. And most people are under pressure. They've got to get results, they've got to deliver something for a customer. But what happens in that environment is, you know, at a practical sense, the urgent overtakes the important. Which is a discipline thing, saying no, not reacting. So a lot of my clients will talk to me about, I'm too reactive, I firefight. A lot of people I work with are leaders, let's say, I say this respectfully by name, but actually they're still managing. Speaker 1 (26:13) Managing and leadership are quite different things, right? Speaker 2 (26:15) The strategy is to get through the day. Speaker 1 (26:17) Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And sort of people will talk endlessly and tell me about how busy they are and their inboxes and their Slack channels and you don't understand. But there are plenty of people who have got to a point where that is no longer a problem, And that hasn't happened by chance, that's happened through discipline and coaching and learning and changing their habits and behaviours, which is sort of what we talk about here. So I think capability under pressure is really important. The ability to actually to pause, to simply pause, to reflect, to slow down, to speed up, I think they often talk about in the military. I think it's really important. And that's actually a great way to handle pressure, full stop. The power of the pause, the person who's able to stop and just take a breath and think about, well, what are they hearing? What are those options? Number 2, you said something early on in your point, Bob, that just made me think, which is I was at another event recently and I was sat next to someone and actually there was a kind of— the word strategy was in the kind of invitation, if you like. Speaker 1 (27:16) And I found myself sitting there thinking, oh, I'm being queued up here because I'm in a room full of people who are all CEOs, managing partners, managing directors, founders. And there was a bit of like an anti-strategy discussion going on, which I was smiling at thinking, oh, I'm being set up. But actually it did me a favour because what I started to realise was that what they were actually talking about was they saw strategy as a 5-year plan. Well, let me just burst that bubble. That's not what it is at all. And it helped me. And I asked the guy next to me who I'd been chatting to through through the evening, whether I could share his story. And he has run and he's worked for almost 40 years, a very successful business in a particular sector, quite a challenging sector. And he had been someone who'd said to me, oh yeah, without knowing who I was, he had said, oh, strategy is nonsense, it's just noise. I've been perfectly successful for 40 years without ever having one. But actually what I started to realise then, like I said, with his permission, I used him as my Case in point, a little bit later when I did have to speak, he did have a strategy. Speaker 1 (28:18) It was just in his head. He had made very clear choices because he told me himself when he gets a new member of staff, the first thing he does is he sits down with them and he tells them, 'Our business is very simple. We do this, we do that, we do that. We never do this, we never do this, we never do the following.' When he told me some of the experiences in growing that business and going through trials and tribulations, most of it came back to the fact that he did have a very clear strategy of what he was trying to do. He just never wrote it down, but it was clearly there. He was very clear on what they did do, principles they followed. He was very clear to what we said earlier on his aspiration. He'd always been clear, just changed over time. He was very clear on where they play, maybe a little bit less clear on how to win. It was more, that was probably slightly more retrospective, but it was a good example, I thought, of that. And the last thing I'd say is this, Bob, I often talk about how a lot of, especially this isn't just private businesses. Speaker 1 (29:13) I also work in the public sector. The language is different, but the idea is the same, which is they get stuck in a 12-month trap. They start getting into motion. They've got budgets, they've got some sort of forecast maybe, and some numbers in the spreadsheet they're working to, and they plod along. And before you know it, you're back round to months 8 or 9 and you start entering your budget cycle again and you're a little bit back into getting things signed off. And before you know it, you go again, right? And in that world, of course, what happens is you'll get to the end of the year and no doubt you would say that you've been incredibly busy. You're probably quite stressed and tired and you need a break, but you probably haven't achieved that much or anywhere near as much as you could have done if let's say you were working to a 3-year timeframe. And the best little anecdote, but I've got a few of these, but just bring this to life. It's a few years ago working with a manufacturer and The person who ran it, and he knows I share this story, it's completely anonymous, but he knows I share this story. Speaker 1 (30:08) He had been very successful in running this on that 12-month loop for a long, long time, and they had been very successful with it. And for the first time, he came to me because he was being told and heard through surveys and firsthand that people lacked clarity. There was a problem with engagement because people lacked clarity about actually what the vision was, where they were trying to go, what the direction was. What the strategy was. And so I said, that's quite simple. We could have a few sessions with your team. We could get much more clear. We did like 4 sessions with a whole wide group of people. We invited as many as possible rather than just his leadership team. And we got to a great result. And he got much clearer on 3 years, 2 years, 1 year priorities, what not to do, what can wait. So for things like culture change and transformation and implementing a big new system and fundamental changes, you need obviously a longer horizon. But longer horizons also allow for better judgement and perspective. And then he told me a funny thing. He said how he got to Christmas, his year runs January to December, and he took Christmas off. Speaker 1 (31:09) And his wife had commented to him, you're a lot more relaxed this Christmas. And in mid-January, he told me this comment and he said, it took me a while to work out what she meant. And then I started to realise that for the first time in 20-plus years, I probably was more relaxed because I wasn't feeling that come January 5th, whatever, I was going to have to start all over again. It was more of a, I'm actually laying the foundations and now we're going to move into phase 2 in year 2 and we can continue a journey. And I just thought there's a lot more in that, but I just thought it gives a nice example of why I think that element of being a little bit more strategic and shifting your horizons can also give you a lot more benefit as a human. Speaker 2 (31:56) I love it. Obviously, it's a very complex topic. And I think the one thing we can all be certain of is whatever's happening on the inside is what's going to drive what appears on the outside. And a lot of people think that strategy is all about, well, as you said at the beginning, planning. But Looking at the Strategic Mastery Framework, the majority of it's actually what's happening on the inside, both at an individual level if it's you on your own, but as an organisation and culturally as well, I guess, in many respects. One of the bullet lists, not bullet lists, one of the bullets that I saw on Amazon that intrigued me or triggered me a little bit was the phrase build a personal practise of strategic mastery you can use every day. Organizationally, I think this is obviously going to allow energy to be directed and channelled much more effectively, much more enthusiastically towards vision and goals. And if those vision and goals are really clearly established and strategically supported, You can't see how this could but lead to an organisation that thrives both socially, culturally, but also economically. On an individual basis, build a personal practise. Speaker 2 (33:27) How can this work be translated to just my own personal journey? How can I live more strategically? Speaker 1 (33:38) Yeah, and can I ask you a question? You say you read like a bullet and it triggered you. Could you mind saying a little bit more about that so I answer your question? Speaker 2 (33:48) Well, being strategic in our work is something that we assume we either have to do or should do or do in practise. Being strategic in life is a little different. So it begins, I guess, with what's the vision and the aspiration for life, not just my business or my commercial enterprise. And then everything rolls back from there. I think a lot of people work to live rather than— it's almost a personal equivalent of firefighting. I get up to go to work, and in work I need to be strategic in order to thrive. But it's a knee-jerk reaction to, I need to make some money in order to live. Whereas if I were living strategically, I might have approached things slightly differently. Yeah, I hear you. Speaker 1 (34:45) Yeah, I hear you. So great question. And there's a lot in there we could unpack. Let me touch on that. So let me give you an example maybe of what that looks like. I may have mentioned this to you off air, so apologies, but I'll link it back. A lot of people I coach will, in a coaching capacity, most of them I meet professionally, but within 5, 10 minutes, naturally you start talking about life, relationships, background, childhood, which gives you a bit of a clue, I guess. And I guess over time I started to recognise that a lot of things— I'm not an academic, right? I'm a practitioner. I do this for real, day in, day out, different teams all over the world, different shapes and sizes, working with real people. I'm a people person. And I guess what I started to recognise was as I sort of post-qualifying to coach, as I through experience started to develop my own sort of coaching style and approach and philosophy and principles, I started to realise quite a lot of the things you might do where you're helping a business on a strategy offsite, of which I do thousands, a lot of it is about you're trying to surface more opinions and more voices. Speaker 1 (35:52) And this goes back to State. And a lot of the work as a facilitator is holding tensions in people and disagreement, and the boss might be slightly dominating the conversation, and there's a lot going on under the surface and the unspoken and da da da. And that over time is something I've become very comfortable at doing, and hopefully people listening, I do well. I'm sure I could get better. But the reason I say this, because then as an individual, to your question about in life, what might that look like and what's this sort of equivalent would be? Yes, you're right, having a vision, right? What is it you really want to achieve? Client of mine many years ago, I tell the storey in the book, it's just a lovely little example of it. We actually use Lego, right? I do this technique. I've got over 100 kilos of Lego in my office, and that's not for the children, that's for use in something called serious play. I've travelled all over the world with it. I've been through airports in India and South Africa and been quizzed by customs. Why do you have all this Lego on you? Speaker 1 (36:44) Are you selling it? The reason I say that is because He hadn't been coached before. Very, very experienced entrepreneur, but he was going through a few challenges, right? And one of the things that we discovered, not necessarily just through talking, but by getting him to build out what he wants in life first and foremost in this format of Lego, we did the sort of more obvious things around what's happening near and relationships and work and teams. And that was incredibly useful because you sort of tell storeys to what you're building. And over on the far side, He had built this little castle, right? And I went over to him and I said, by the way, there's something on this board that you've built which we haven't discussed. What's this over here? And, you know, long storey much shorter, he had built a castle because his aspiration was in life to buy and restore the castle and for that to become a kind of passion project. But he'd never expressed that before. It was the first time it had sort of emerged out of him into the open, and then he had actually told someone. Less than a year later, Bob, guess what he had bought, right? Speaker 1 (37:55) So that's sort of, that's an example. On the day-to-day, I think it can be things like, a little bit like earlier, the what-ifs, you know, allowing other scenarios. It can be things like perspectives. It can be your listeners today, it might be go and listen to a voice. Go and find someone whose opinion you wouldn't normally request and go and listen to them. You might disagree with them, but listen. Listen with, you know, be curious rather than judgmental. Go and listen to what they say. Do that with 6 people you wouldn't normally meet. Maybe you're a real optimist and pessimists Slightly grate you. Embrace them. Maybe you're a pessimist and optimists rather grate you. Do the opposite. It might be something like assumptions. Tracking assumptions. Actually, in strategy world, the most common thing I hear from leaders is, Charlie, how do we close the gap between our strategy and execution? Which is the problem with it being PowerPoint slides and town halls and nothing like reality. Well, closing that gap is a matter of discipline and the fact that you've created a good strategy and you have a clear choice and you've ruled things out. Speaker 1 (39:01) And then it's about disciplines and routines and tracking. And one of those little practises I would do with a business, which I think equates just as well into life, would be you surface the assumptions as we talked about earlier. What are the assumptions you're making when you're making a decision or considering a decision? Keep an eye on them because every 2 weeks or so on your own with other people, look back at the assumptions from 2 weeks ago. Look at the evidence you had, the counter evidence you had, the date. And just think, what's changed? How has the assumption changed? Maybe geopolitical, maybe a relationship has changed. Maybe you've now had a conversation, you've learned something, you've done something, you've tried something, which means the assumptions have shifted a bit, which may invite you to change course or to double down on the choice you made. So just as— hope that helps, hope that makes sense. But as an example, something like surfacing and tracking your assumptions is something that might feel a little bit more businessy. But actually it's a really useful thing you can also do in life to make sure that you are on course to achieve the things that you really want in life as much as in work. Speaker 2 (40:08) Through that, you can hear why practises like journaling, for example, can actually be very powerful strategic aids and not sort of little acts of whimsy. They are strong plays. Yeah. I'd like to take a handbrake turn. And before we get into your 3 amplifiers, whenever I meet somebody like you who, for the listener, there are people who talk about doing business and then there are people who do business. And I can tell you, Charlie has some big name clients. He's the real deal. Things are working for Charlie. When I meet somebody like you, I always like to understand how that comes into your world. Opportunity tends to come through one of four doors. It comes through relationships, it comes through outbound sales, it comes through content, content marketing, or ads. I think I know the answer, but I don't think there is necessarily one answer, but I think I know which of those doors likely dominates. But I'd love you to speak to that question. Speaker 1 (41:12) That's a wonderful question. No ads. Relationships, first and foremost. I'm a people person. Relationships, introductions. I learned at a young age in my career, but actually outside of work as well. I'm a real believer in generosity of spirit, paying it forward. I had a wonderful boss many years ago who just lived and breathed that. So I think I've always been that. When I transitioned out of employment into running my own business about 15 years ago, I saw another wonderful human, a man called Simon Devonshire, who said a wonderful bit of advice to me of— I wasn't quite sure what to do with where I was going, but I knew I wanted to do my own thing. And he said, I'll tell you what, Charlie, fill your basket for the next few years. Just say yes to everything. There's a great book, Luke Rhinehart, I think, The Yes Man. It's a bit like that of just saying yes to everything. And for a good few years I did. And the second part of his advice was, because then what will happen is over a period of time, you'll start to probably realise what you really enjoy doing and what you are less keen on and where your passion lies. Speaker 1 (42:14) And that's pretty much what happened to me. So I think relationships first and foremost, and then probably more recently, Bob, content. I'm not prolific with LinkedIn and things like that, but certainly having now written a book and on the back of writing the book, doing more, trying to get kind of content and ideas, simple ideas, practises into the world. On a bit of a mission to just, as you've very eloquently described today, getting more of these ideas out to the public domain so that more people have access to them, or maybe actually even in a business so that more mid-level, if you like, people, or even very junior people don't sort of wait to do this sort of thing when they get to the top. They're learning it much earlier because I think a lot of it isn't about learning how to use a tool that you learned on an MBA. You can do that all day long. It's about how you apply it. And to apply it well is about the way you think, is your metacognition. It's about, so it's about mindset. It's about taking action. It's about experimenting. And it is about communicating, right? Speaker 1 (43:18) You know, a big part of it is huge amounts of this is your ability to collaborate genuinely and to influence and to seek opinions. And then of course, to be accountable and to do something, take action, learn and go again and go again and go again, which is the sort of link between strategy and agility, if you like, which is a little bit different to planning, where that's a lot more about tracking something off. So yeah, I hope that's a good question. I hope that sort of talks to your question. Speaker 2 (43:49) It absolutely does. I think it's important for people to hear these things because the entire marketing industry would like us to think it's the inverse. That it's going to be— if you're doing well, it must be because you're spending a lot of money on ads, or you must have a whole sales team that's busy knocking on doors. That's just not the case most of the time, and it's a constant source of frustration. And when I meet somebody like you, on the one hand, quality recognises quality, but you have to be spending time with people, and you have to matter to people most importantly, because before they're going to refer to you. If you look at— and this is for the listener— if you think about anybody you've ever referred for anything, at the foundation, if they didn't matter to you in some way, you weren't going to refer them. And what you described there is you're perhaps strategic, perhaps it's innate, but you have systems and processes for mattering to people, and you cultivate a network and you invest in it. And I think that's Really important for me a lot of the time is reeducating people that our content a lot of the time is not for people who don't know us, but it's to stay present with people at scale. Speaker 2 (45:03) That's really where the magic starts to happen. Speaker 1 (45:06) Absolutely. Speaker 2 (45:07) Absolutely. So let's get into it. I've wasted— I haven't wasted your time. I hope I've taken an awful lot of your time. Let's get into the 3 amplifiers. So Charlie Curzon, Amplifier Number One. Speaker 1 (45:21) Amplifier Number One has just popped into my head in the last 5 seconds on the back of that very last conversation. They're always the best. To read a book that I am very new to, and apparently it's been around a long time, which is Go Giver. Speaker 2 (45:38) Yes. Speaker 1 (45:39) Which links absolutely to the very thing I realise now, I've only read it fairly recently, talks completely to the very people that influenced me in my younger days. The idea of generosity of spirit and being open, et cetera, et cetera. So Go Giver, read Go Giver. If anyone here is a fan of— there was a great book in my 20s I read called Who Moved My Cheese? You could have that as number 2, but Who Moved My Cheese? Like a little parable. You can read it in about 45 minutes. Go Giver is similar. It's a sort of fable parable type book. Very easy to read. So if you're not a big reader, it's very easy, it's very enjoyable, but it's quite profound. It will have quite a profound effect on you. Speaker 2 (46:19) We've had Bob Burg on the show about a year ago. Wonderful. The Who Moved My Cheese? I've seen that book many times. I haven't read it. I've got to look that one up. What's amplifier number 3? Speaker 1 (46:30) Well, yeah, I've cheated there. I'm going to give you number 2, actually. Something we've not talked about would be I'm a real believer in managing energy, not time. A little bit like to the point about, well, making time for people and relationships, just to that little part of the conversation we can relate to others. In my 20s, again, I was introduced via the British Olympic team and a wonderful coach we had at the time called Simon Scott to this principle of managing energy, not time. And Simon introduced me to a book that was actually written in the '80s by a wonderful human called Jim Loehr, I think it's L-O-E-H-R. I'm sure you can include this in your show notes. And his book is called On Form. And On Form is all about managing your energy states and the idea of we as human beings are complex energy management creatures. And it taught me things like keeping an energy diary. So over a 3-day period in your phone, just track every little thing you do which may give you a little energy boost. Or a little energy sap. You monitor that for 3 days really accurately. Speaker 1 (47:34) You'll start to see patterns in behaviours from when you wake up to hydration to emails that annoy you to whatever. And it just allows you to sort of improve your energy capacity, which normally everything else tends to then follow. Speaker 2 (47:49) That's a really interesting way of looking at things. I've been paying attention for the last couple of months on what causes frustration and what causes enjoyment. This is very similar, but taking it a state up, I think. It's a really useful idea. I will have to look that one up. Amplifier number 3. Speaker 1 (48:08) Number 3, you know what? You mentioned this a moment ago, and I'll say this as my third, which would be journaling. I think I do it myself. I do it myself twice a day in a certain way. Under pressure, go back to that point, people developing through their career, all the things we spoke about today, the practises and disciplines of pausing, and in this sense, then to pause and to just capture your thoughts however you want to do that. And there's loads of wonderful ways you can do that, from just a scrap of paper to your phone. I would actually invite people to write. I think I'd go back to pen and paper. I think there's now a lot more evidence about that, which is— I love, because I always get my clients to get a pen and paper journaling through. If you want to take that on a step, maybe, maybe you're sort of already aware of it, You may journal through what we might call a values lens. So, for example, about the values you live and the values you want to live more or less and what your beliefs are around those values. Speaker 1 (49:02) So there's some great material out there. Again, I'm sure I could send you a couple of things which you can pass on. So I think, yeah, I think journaling even a couple of minutes a day, I think can have quite a profound effect on people's states and their calmness and breathing. So it relates to breathing and therefore clarity of thinking. Which I think sets you up well for the day to come. Speaker 2 (49:24) I echo that wholeheartedly, and I think something I found with, with journaling, and actually many practises, is when it's in the physical environment rather than digital, your nervous system interacts with it completely differently, which means your subconscious is working on things completely differently. And everything that's beyond that, that we can debate what that is, but when it's digital, it's such a narrow band of our attention that's focused on it. It just, it works on us completely differently. So I agree. Completely agree. Paper is your friend. If people want to get a bit closer to you, if they want to find out more about you, if they want to get into your world, what's the best way for them to do that? I know you have a an assessment on the website, which I've had some fun with. Everybody should go and play with that. I'll put a link in the show notes. Speaker 1 (50:18) Wonderful. Speaker 2 (50:19) Thank you. What else can they do to experience Charlie? Speaker 1 (50:22) Thank you. Well, thank you, Bob. Yeah, if you're able to pop that in show notes, people can have a little play with that. Actually, we've been running a few free masterclasses about actually this idea of the neuroscience and the cognition and what being strategic looks and feels like. We've done 4 through the last month and we're going to book we've just booked in two more. I think it's May 11th and 12th. So if people want to sort of experience that firsthand on a live session, it's 60 minutes. We're very true to time. Promise we won't overrun. Maybe you could share the link to that and people can register to join one of those two sessions. Speaker 2 (50:57) Absolutely. Speaker 1 (50:57) If not, get in touch, book a call with me. I think on my website and things like that, there's a link if you want to grab 20 minutes just to sort of explore more, understand more, And then actually later this year, actually in June this year, we're launching on the back of the success of the book, an accelerator programme, which is absolutely focused on this, where we're putting together our first cohort and we're looking for people, a really diverse group of people from different walks of life, different worlds. We're just starting to take registrations for that in the last— actually, it's open in the last 24 hours. So if people are just interested to learn more a little bit about that and the lived experience of this and being part of a group who's going through that sort of transformation together over the second half of this year, then again, Yeah, get in touch and I'll, I'll share more with you directly. Speaker 2 (51:40) Awesome. Well, I've had a lot of fun today. I've got a lot of, a lot to think about and I love it when I have this on an interview. But that does bring us to the end of another episode. Thank you at home for listening. If you did enjoy this, you will love the Personal Brand Business Roadmap. Everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. 100% free as a gift from me. It sounds like I've got this written down. Visit amplifyme.agency/roadmap. Again, if you did enjoy this, you will most certainly want to take a moment, take a breath and give me a 5-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. That's 5, count them. Be diligent when you count them. Every one of those counts. Thank you at home for listening. And Charlie, thank you so much for your time. Speaker 1 (52:28) No, thank you, Bob. I've really enjoyed it.