#177 Transform Your Leadership: Mood, Mindset & Mastering systems with Chris Majer

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to let's Talk Transformation Podcasts. I'm Susie Lewis, your host, and today I want us to start by thinking about these impressive figures. Uh, $200 million in losses, 48 months, and, um, $3 billion in profit. Same company, same people, different way of leading. So my guest today, Chris Major, has been pulling off results like that for over 30 years for companies like AT&T, Microsoft, Allianz, and the US Special Forces. But not with new software, not with new strategy decks, but by changing how people think, how they feel, and how they show up. Chris, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thanks very much. Good day.

Speaker A: It's a pleasure to have you. Chris, you've been leading the Human Potential project for over 30 years. So your organization that's passionate about training top leaders to realize more of their potential, but also to unlock the next level of their performance. And you've also designed and delivered large scale transformational programs for corporate clients such as the ones I've already mentioned. Um, and also for military leaders and athletes. Um, you are also the author of the Power to Transform and a former rugby player who taught hand to hand. Come back to Marines. I'm going to leave the audience with that. Just hold that thought. Uh, so, I mean, today we're going to be getting into the things that, for me, most leadership conversations don't address overtly. So where are CEOs struggling? Honestly? Why are, ah, change programs probably failing before they started? And, um, what, um, is AI about to expose about organizations that never really fixed their foundations? So, Chris, you went from rugby fields and military bases to Fortune 500 boardrooms. Can you tell us about the actual connecting thread of all, all of that? How do you connect those three very different activities?

Speaker B: You're just going to start right in the deep end here, huh, aren't you?

Speaker C: Feel free.

Speaker A: Dive in, dive in, dive in.

Speaker B: So, well, the connector is really very simple. All of those areas, those different domains that you mentioned, all have one thing in common. They are populated by people who are high performers. And that's the thing that's always been of interest to me. Um, we started our business with a very simple mission. We just wanted to work with athletes and isolate and reproduce in others. The elements that led to consistent winning, performance and success there caught the attention of the military. Never part of our big master plan. But lo and behold, there we were. Uh, success there took us into the corporate world and we kind of dabbled in all three of those for a while. Uh, I'm at the point in life now. Um, I'm too old to go out and do PT with marines anymore. So I'm confining myself nowadays to the corporate world. And um, we have been, we're kind of your perfect sweet spot. We've been in the transformation business since, as they say, before it was a thing we were, we were doing. Transformation started back in the 80s. And um. So yeah, let me, let me stop there and see where you want to go with it.

Speaker A: I mean, yeah, so you were already dealing with transformation, which is essentially messy human problems. What made you believe. So you started working for high performance athletes and then with elite soldiers and then you moved into the corporate setting. So what made you believe, Chris, that what works for elite soldiers and high performing athletes would work in a corporate setting?

Speaker B: Well, it's simple. They're all human beings. It isn't any more complex than that. And if you come to understand how to pull the elements together that enable them to become high performers, that's mostly the thing. It's not that people, when I look at what's wrong with most companies, why they're failing, it's not like they've got bad people or poor technology or thing. They've got really bad practices, frankly, for leadership, management and mostly coordination. Um, I'll give you my little, my little rant here, which is that fundamental issue that we're confronting is that we're in a new historical era and most everybody's missed it. Right? We've transitioned out of the industrial era where the value generators in the economy were the factory and farm workers. They're the ones who made things. Right? Um, that's not the drill driving force in the, in the economies anymore. Right. The new workforce are what we call coordination workers, right? They don't make things, but they generate value out of their effective coordination with each other to produce customer satisfaction, whether the customer's internal or external. That requires a completely different type style, practice of management and leadership. And we're still turned. The basic breakdown is real simple. You're trying to lead and manage coordination era workers with industrial era practices. It doesn't work and it pisses them off.

Speaker A: And you say that transformation has for you three levers. So, um, mood leadership and systems.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: We know most people go straight to systems. So two questions, Chris. Why is that a trap? And, um, what can we do about it?

Speaker B: Well, good question. So let's back up. So yes, as I tell people, it's somewhat embarrassing. It took me five or six years to figure this out and about three minutes to explain it now.

Speaker A: But we're going to Take advantage of it. Of the three minutes.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So let's use that learning curve. So what we, what we finally sorted out was there's three essential variables that you have to pay. Have to is the key phrase you have to be mindful of as you attempt any transformation. And the first one, uh, and it's the one you have to start with, the one that's most important, the one that everybody ignores or misses is the mood. Right? Now. Mood. Everybody thinks, oh, mood, that's, that's that touchy feely stuff. I go take a deep breath. Now, mood, um, and emotions are not the same thing. They're distant cousins. A mood is a predisposition for action. So moods, uh, come in two flavors. Technically, we call them generative and degenerative. What they are generative of or not is the space that your future lives in.

Speaker A: I like that.

Speaker B: Okay, so generative moods are things like ambition, confidence, trust, esprit, resolve. Right. Degenerative moods, not shockingly, are distrust, resentment, resignation, cynicism, arrogance, entitlement, complacency. Okay? Now if you look at what the, what's, what's breaking down in most organizations is, they let the thing fall into dangerously negative moods. Now when the axiom that we use, uh, with our clients is mood is everything, it's not the only thing, but it's everything. Because if you don't get this right, nothing else you do is going to matter.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So we teach a whole body of work on what we call mood management. Right. And then when I say that, you know, all the old troglodytes, like, what do you want me to play, Barry White music? You know, you said, well, that, that, that is a mood, man, just not the mood we want. But you know, uh, that's, that's your Saturday night mood, baby. That's, that's not what we're looking for here. But, but you're on point. So if, if you can imagine a, uh, you know, graph with the three axis, mood, mood runs up the middle. Now the thing about moods is they're, they're not ideas. They don't live in your head, they live in your body. And if you want to shift the mood, you've got to shift people's bodies. And most every program, transformation. The reason they don't work is they don't recognize and don't do anything about this.

Speaker A: Yeah, in most organizations, we spend 95% of our time in a head that is not really connected to our body.

Speaker B: Right, exactly. Right. And so in, in, um, in days gone by you. You talked about these results we did at AT T. Right. The fundamental thing we did there was we would take m, uh, groups of managers 100 to 200 at a time off site for five days and everybody. Ah, yeah, but, but remember the part about the $3 billion in profit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what comes from this. So we did, um, a lot of ropes coursework, experiential things. Right. Get them to experience things that they didn't think were possible. And that's the whole point. So you, you get them into a mood of, you know, ambition and confidence and then anything's possible. So, uh, there's a lot of work to talk more about movement. Let's just hold that thought. So now we've kind of moved the needle out that mood axis. Then you go over to leadership and management practices. So again, we've got to, uh, install new leadership and management practices. So you're not thinking of management as supervision and all this input, output, throughput crap, which is left over from the industrial era. It's like, oh, God save us.

Speaker A: Which is still quite spoken about.

Speaker B: Exactly. Right. And then, you know, you've got, at the high end here are those people who really know how to constitute, lead and manage teams. M. Right. They know how to design what in our definition is a workflow. Right. And then at the bottom end of the scale you've got the old hierarchical command and control management equals supervision dragon. Right. Now the bottom axis is your systems and processes. And all too often, you know, transformational efforts fall apart because they weren't paying attention to that. Now the example here is simple. People come to us all the time. Oh, you guys are supposedly the best there is at, uh, creating high performing teams. Can you take this division, department, whatever it is, and get them to be a high performing team? And I'll smile and listen and I'll say, well, I can certainly produce the short term effect of that. Right. But tell me about your compensation system. Oh, it only rewards individual effort. Well then you could forget about having a high performing team. There's no incentive. Your system doesn't report, you know, reward it. And you know, you've got the old, well, we do our annual performance reviews. Well then you're a moron. Right. You know, I'm sorry, if you're not doing performance reviews at least once a quarter, you might as well not do them at all.

Speaker A: And how much shift do you see there, Chris? Because that's still installed in a lot of organizations.

Speaker B: I know, I know. And then they wonder why they're foundering.

Speaker A: Yeah. Is that what you mean when you say painting over old paint?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I love that. Sorry.

Speaker B: So the um, the analogy that he was trying to explain this whole thing about moods to people, I said, look, have you ever painted the outside of your house?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: No. I'm asking you, have you ever painted the outside of your house? No. Well, of course, you're a woman. They always have the men do that stuff because it's nasty. Right.

Speaker A: I've painted the inside. Not very well.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's different though, the outside. The first thing say, what's the first thing you have to do to scrape off the old paint? This is why women don't like to do this, because it's nasty work. You have to scrape off the old paint. You get the power washer and the scrapers and all that kind of stuff. And if you don't do that, like, if you didn't know that that was what you're supposed to do, or you just like, oh, that's too much work and you throw the new paint on top of it, what happen? It peels right off. It just comes right off. So you can have some really cool new systems and process, you might have some, you know, nice new leadership practice. But if you try and put that on top of resignation and resentment and cynicism, it's got no more hope than the new paint on the old paint. And m, that's again, that's why there's, there's a formulaic way to go about this. You know, we crack the code years ago and then you get into, well, people say, well, why, why do transformational efforts fail? Two main reasons. One, they don't understand that you've got to attend to all three of those things. They're, they're in a hurry. And the problem is by trying to be in a hurry, they end up taking way more time or failing. So yes, transformation can be fast, but as I explained, transformation isn't magic.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Uh, I don't have a magic wand. All transformation is, is a large amount of change in a short amount of time. Okay? Now to an outside observer, it'll look like magic. Yes, but it's not that way on the inside. So the things that are important are once you start one of these initiatives, you have to hit it hard, you have to hit it fast, and you have to stick with it.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Right. You can't have what is all too common in companies these days, you know, organizational add. Oh look, a pony. Let's go try that. It's like, no, this is, we're going to be at this for, you know, 12 to 18 months. Not, not the five years or three years you used to think it took, but it's going to be a 12 to 18 month effort. It takes consistent senior, senior leadership support. So when I do one of these projects, my customer is always, always the CEO.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Right. I'll, I'll coordinate with the HR people, but they're never my customers. Right. It's always the CEO because he owns the culture, she owns the culture, they own the culture. And that's what we're talking about is we're talking about a dramatic, fundamental shift in the culture of the organization to revitalize this thing. And it brings watch today, the big, the big bugaboos. Like, well, how do we get competitive advantage? Well, maybe we'll come up with a unique new strategy. Yeah, no, good luck with that. You know, our strategies are all fact based. Well, all the facts that are available to you are available to the guys down the street. And for the most part, you and your competitors, everybody in your competitive space is essentially following variants of the same strategy. Yeah, there's no advantage there. Uh, well, technology, you know, we'll, we'll get the new, latest, greatest. And now of course, the new, latest, greatest AI.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And what AI is fundamentally doing that I've been able to observe is just finding and creating chaos and disorder faster than we were doing it in the past.

Speaker A: Yes. And of course it creates homogenization because everybody has access to exactly the same thing.

Speaker B: Exactly the same thing.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Well then we'll, uh, my favorite ones, we'll reorganize. That's what we'll do. We'll reorganize. We'll streamline the organization. We'll reorganize. And you're just like, oh God. So anybody who's been through a corporate reorganization knows how it goes. For the most part, uh, everything stops while they do musical chairs at the senior level. And then the senior guys are spending X number of months trying to figure out how do we actually get anything done now that we move the boxes and lines around. And about the time they get that sorted out, the people below them start the process of trying to reorganize it. About the time that also settles out, they're going to do it again because it takes a couple years and all we've done is waste time and opportunity. And as I tell them, look, your only competitive advantage in today's world is your capacity to mobilize, coordinate your people faster than, and more effectively than your competition. That's it. You know, it is. In the end, it's all about your people. And so if you're going to, you know, throw everything into chaos by kind of blindly introducing AI, you know, AI has its purpose, don't get me wrong. AI has its uses, but it's never going to replace, quote, your people. It's never going to be intuitive, it's never going to create relationships, it's never going to do any of the things that actually hold and drive, uh, an organization.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: Let me get off my soapbox here.

Speaker A: Well, we're going to come back to that soapbox in a couple of minutes. But I want to go to senior leadership first, you know, particularly the CEOs that are your clients and that are the guardians of the culture and that create the culture. You make a distinction between caretaker CEOs and real leaders. Can you tell us what that difference looks like in practice, Chris?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I do a lot of CEO coaching and kind of my favorites are the new ones, the new CEOs, and uh, almost invariably they're promoted from within. So you've got a guy who's been executive VP or whatever, and now he or she is in the, in the corner office. And the first thing I do is I ask him a question. So what are you fundamentally responsible for? And every single time I'll get this long laundry list of, you know, shareholder value and uh, uh, relationships, I said, whoa, stop. Those are all managerial things. You're not a manager anymore, you're a leader.

Speaker A: How do they react to that, Chris?

Speaker B: Oh, well, first they get a little offended because I interrupted them. Um, then they get a little huffy and I say, look, as a CEO, you only have two fundamental responsibilities. Two, count them. Um, one, two. One, you're the guardian of the mood, of the enterprise. And two, you're the architect of the future. And you cannot do either of those. If you're trying to keep your hands in all the little managerial things that you're used to doing, you've got make a break. And that tends to, um. It's the right phrasing sober them up a bit.

Speaker A: And what, what do you mean when you say a guardian of organizational m. Mood? You know, how does it, how does a leader or a CEO do that on Monday morning, for example?

Speaker B: Well, he. She has to have what I call a listening practice.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Right. You have to be able to listen to your organization. You don't do that by sitting in your office. So there's literally the Old style practice of, you know, walking around, listening, talking to people, engaging. Right. Being, being open. And then, uh, reading the world is the sense, the, the other practice I have, you've got to be able to read your organization, but more importantly, you have to have your head above the organization and be able to look out at the competitive space. What's going on in the world, what's going on in our industry, what's going on in the political climate. These are the kinds of things that CEOs have to pay attention to. And most of them, because they're not used to that either, don't do it because they're not comfortable. I have to nudge them into that. And here's how you do it and you build a practice and they take to it that they uh, well, not all of them, but most of them take to it and step up and, and they get like, okay, this is a new, this is a completely different game than what I thought. And when I look, I go, too many of our organizations don't have real leaders. They've got caretakers. You said that earlier.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And they tend to be the ones who come up through finance. Um, every once in a while they'll make a lawyer, you know, the CEO, and it's like, oh, please, no.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, there's nothing, it's not personal. But the way they're trained is not to make big bold decisions. They're risk averse.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, and you cannot be leading a substantive organization and, and be fundamentally risk adverse. Not in today's marketplace.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: Not going to work.

Speaker A: Yeah. Mhm. And I think this identity shift from manager to leader, you know, it's big, it's lonely, it's scary. And we don't talk about it. Chris, what can we do about that? What's your vision for unlocking what is essentially the key to positive advantage in today's world? Well, uh,

Speaker B: if there was just one key, it'd be so much simpler. But no, well, it's, it's, you know, you're right. Because the old adage, it's lonely at the top.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally.

Speaker B: And as I explained to people, I said this is one of the reasons you need a coach.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Right. Because there's just simply some conversations you cannot have with the people inside the organization. Yeah. Right. Uh, you have to be able to have some place where you have trust. And as I say to people, look in, it's in, it's in this way businesses are really stupid. Right.

Speaker A: So the sports world, um, well, yeah.

Speaker B: If you look at look at any, any, not just athletes, any arena, any other arena where performance matters, where it's really, you know, important. The further you get into your career, the, the higher your level of performance and, and play, the better and more frequent your interaction with the coaches. Right, right. The professional athletes spend every day with, with coaches. Right? With the world class athletes have a whole gaggle of coaches. And in business, we do just the freaking opposite. Right? Because, you know, we, we all, uh, we want to act like, you know, I was CEO, I'm, um, on, I'm omnipotent, I know everything. You know, I'm, I, I earned my way to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that's all true. And you're going to get your butt handed to you if you keep that mindset. You know, we've got to be constantly, constantly open to improvement. I, When I started off one of our, one of our big programs, I always ask a simple question. How many of you think you know everything you need to know to be successful over the next 10 years? I can't tell you how many people I've asked that question to. Thankfully, I've never had anybody raise their hand.

Speaker A: I was going to say, yeah.

Speaker B: Then I said, okay, how about over the next five years? I used to be surprised because I get somebody to raise, you know, I'd get people to raise their hand until I realized that it were the old guys who were going to retire in the next two or three years. So, yeah, okay, you're probably good. But other than that, okay, nobody here is delusional. All right, so what are you going to do? You're going to go back to school? No, because we're not interested in theoretical. You know, we've got to build new sets of competencies and, you know, that's where we show up, is it's not going to do you any good to get more skilled at things that are outdated.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. So thus this whole conversation.

Speaker A: M. And what, what do you think AI brings, brings to that? Because it's accelerating everything. It's also exposing things about leadership that are broken, that maybe we knew or we didn't know, but it wasn't as visible. Um, so how can CEOs use AI? Should they use AI? Does it replace coaches?

Speaker B: Well, no, it doesn't replace coaches. Should they use AI? Well, you're asking personally or organizationally or both? Both organizationally, yes. I mean, you, you almost have to. Nowadays the question is how you know, not, not whether, but how. Um, and, and as I said, right now we're kind of Watching this blind adaptation. Oh. Uh, because I want to get rid of all these people. You know, they're so annoying. It's like, well, okay, but they don't think this through very much. Right. This is what happens when you let finance people make decisions. Sorry. But. Okay, good. So you're going to eliminate, let's make up a number, you know, a thousand people. What do you think that's going to do to the mood in the organization? Oh, yeah. That's not going to really instill confidence and trust in you as the leaders. Right. It's not going to instill a spree. Right. It's going to instill fear and distrust. Those are not moods for success.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: No. So in my opinion, by and large, you'd be much better off investing in transformative processes, teaching people new leadership and management practices. One of the reasons that many organizations are in the grip of resignation and cynicism, as I said earlier, is because you're trying to manage coordination era workers with industrial era practices. It doesn't work. So what AI, as I said earlier, what, in my view, what AI is doing right now, you know, it certainly has its uses. I mean, if I can get AI to do computer coding. M. Okay, well, that's a somewhat mechanistic thing. Right. But I'm not going to get A.I. uh, and A.I. is never going to replace anybody as a coach because AI is not going to sit here like you and I are talking, look you in the eyes and go, yeah, okay, I heard what you said, and that's not ringing true. You're not. No, I don't feel it. Right. It's never going to do that. Right. So, uh, I'm not, I'm not worried about job security in that. In that regard, but that's a little, you know, infinitesimal sliver of the economy. So the question is, what is it? You know, what is it right now, you said it earlier, right now it's frankly kind of revealing fissures and breakdowns a lot faster. And, um, we're not queued up to cope with much of that.

Speaker A: M. And I think there are two things that I'm taking from your book. The Power to Transform. Now, I know it's more personal, but it's completely translatable into the corporate world. When you say it. Well, for me, you know, when you say, you know, awareness is the prerequisite to everything, um, and, um, calm is a trainable skill. So those are the two things I, I wanted to pick up. So, you know, what do you think most leaders don't see about themselves what's really holding them back in this CEO population that we're talking about. And, um, the second part of that question will be, how can you train to be calm? Because clearly AI can't help you with that either.

Speaker B: No. Well. Oh, boy. Uh, um. Well, now you're bumping up against, you know, our fundamental human nature.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Here for the most part, absent having a coach or a trusted advisor, observer. None of us, none of us can see our limitations. You know, we just, we live in that world. Right. And, and the normal human tendency, and this is dangerous for all of us, is to assume that our limitations are universal.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: All right, If I can't do it, that means nobody can do it. No, that doesn't mean that at all. All right? And, and to get out of that mindset takes concerted effort. I mean, it, it takes a lot of effort. I, I save it personally. You know, took me a while to write that book because I had to live it for, you know, I. Yeah, back in the 80s, I, um, I built an organization and all of my senior people were older than me, right. And so I lived in this story that, well, if I'm going to lead all these people, I've got to be better than them, you know, at everything. And, and for a while, I was, I was our best salesperson, program designer, program deliverer, knew the, the books and numbers, you know, better than the finance guy. And, and that was exhausting, by the way. And, uh, you know, it cost me a marriage. And I finally realized by my holding that attitude and approach, I'm the roadblock. You know, speaking of awareness, like, hello, you know, but, but it wasn't until somebody that I trusted took me aside and said, you know, come, you know, come here, sport, you know, let me explain a few things to you, you know, and you know, you have one of those, um, you know, there's, there's a piece that we teach about the phenomenon of learning. And it all begins with awareness. And the awareness that you need is. You've been a bull in the china shop, all right? And, and you know that that moment has arrived because we've all been there because there's a universal, universal two word declaration that announces the arrival of awareness. Oh,

Speaker A: yeah. Ah.

Speaker B: Uh, bing. You know, the light bulb just went on.

Speaker A: Yeah. And of course, you can't change what you can't see, so.

Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly so. And you know, and again, the hardest for any, the hardest thing for any of us to see is ourselves.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: As I, we talk about you know, this whole notion of the self, uh, wow, we'll go crazy here for a minute. Is one of the things that I point to people is that, you know, we're our linguistic beings. You know, we live as a story of ourselves.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: All right. And we don't see it as a story. We see it as reality, of course, but it's, it's a narrative. You can change the narrative. And in changing the narrative, you change yourself. You don't change yourself by what you think. You change yourself by what you do. So you take new actions, and they can be little steps, but that's how transformation works. You have to start changing what we do, not what we think. Right. Thinking is, you know, we can entertain ourselves that, oh, I'm so different now, I'm thinking this way. But if you're, you know, taking the same actions, you know, it's my, my favorite guys are these guys who read all the leadership books. Right. They've got a whole library of them, but they're still the. They're not doing anything differently, but they just annoy everybody at, uh, cocktail parties. Right. You know, that's, that's not it.

Speaker A: And I think we're back to your discussion around experiential learning and embodiment. There is a somatic, embodied version of self as well, which has multiple parts, of course.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: Allow us to be differently as well as do differently. And, uh, and I think that's, for me, that was the hardest.

Speaker B: It's an important, essential element to this. And, and, you know, I don't want to go down this road too much because I, I, I realized, you know, there was a moment in time that may have passed, and I hope not. But when we used to do these big programs, you know, Covid kind of killed our historical business because we did all this stuff live.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And we would take, As I said, 100 people to everybody. And one of the things we do is we take them and we do ropes courses with them. And the reason we did that was just as you said. I, uh, wanted to blow up their sense of possibility and self possibility. So one of the events that we did, we called it the Pamper pole, because many people wish they were wearing Pampers while they were doing it. So what you'd do is climb up this tree that we trimmed the branches off of. It was a little wobbly, but it had ladder like steps, and on top of it was a little round disc, and you had, uh, a parachute harness on and three belay lines, all of which were 1500 pound test. So as we tell everybody, you can't hurt yourself here, even if you're suicidal, right? But your body doesn't know that because they're all hooked into a D ring behind you. You can't see them, okay? So you don't have the visceral sense of safety, right? So you climb up there, we coach you in how to stand up on this little disc, and then, yay. And we teach a practice called centering, which is a somatic practice of being really present in your body. And you would watch because the first time they stand up on this thing, it'd be wobbling all over heck. And if we get them to center down, feel your feet, take your breath, the pole would become still. And then they go, oh, that's what they're talking about, you know, because before then we'd just been talking about it on the ground now. Oh, uh, I got it. I can do that. And then the way they get down is you leap off into space and there's a trapeze out there, and we could move it in and out. And as we tell people, which was true, we're going to set it out there a little farther than we think you can jump right now. So you'd get ready, go, and you dive and you either catch it or you don't. The goal was not to catch the trapeze. As we tell everybody, the goal of the day is not, you're not going to win anything. There's no prizes today. The goal of the day is to find out where your edge is. Where's the edge? Where's that spot where you think, oh, I can't possibly do this. No, that's it. That's the end. That's my limitation. And then take one more step. You do that, you've, you've succeeded, you've, you've accomplished what we set out for. You do that. Oh, and now that you took that one, why don't you take another one and another one. You know, people climb halfway up the pole and go, okay, I want to come down now. Well, you gotta, you gotta climb. You don't get to climb down. You know, you, you got to get up at least high enough to where when you lean back, the safety system can catch you. Right. Oops, sorry about that. And, um, I remember distinctly we had this, uh, this literally Nobel winning scientist, uh, from Bell Labs when we were working with AT&T, who came and look at this thing and was quite convinced that it was impossible. He was going to sit here, lecture Me, uh, lecture me on why that, why it couldn't be done, right? So while he's busy lecturing me, there's, you know, some junior person going up there and doing it. And he was absolutely flabbergasted. You know, I said, now you're getting it, now you're getting it. So you get somebody up there, they catch the trapeze, would they let go of it? Because that's how you get down, right? Uh, one way or another, you got to let go, right? So, and, and that letting go is a key element of the process. So they get on the ground and now this is going to sound a little strange, but having done this for years, there's a moment in time there. This is what was so great about this. There's a moment in time and it doesn't last more than a minute. Once they hit the ground, I've got to get their attention and looked in their eyes because right now they're kind of spinning. I said, okay, okay, look, look at me, look at me. Right? You told me five minutes ago that you couldn't do this. You were absolutely adamant that this, you couldn't possibly do it. We now have irrefutable proof that it's possible.

Speaker A: Wrong.

Speaker B: That you could do it.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, you did it. Now, right now, while it's fresh in your mind, I want you to think about your life in a global sense. Where else are you living in a story that something is impossible, that something can't be done. Right. And understand that the limitations that you are thinking are real, only exist in your mind. You know, then there's a little poof as the smoke comes out of their ears, right? And that's, that's the point. And there's no amount of talking is going to produce that effect. No AI is ever going to produce that effect because that's the somatic experience of transformation now. Their world just changed, period. Yeah.

Speaker A: And just talking about that, people's realities. What's the best advice, Chris, that you've ever had that you initially ignored? Because that process you're talking about is a human process.

Speaker B: What's the best advice I ever got that I initially ignored?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Oh Lord, that's, that's a whole nother interview. Uh, oh boy. Let's see. Well, this is going to sound a little strange, I think, but I used to live in a story that it was my job to, try and quote, fix everybody.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Not, not everybody in the world, but at least people in my organization. Um, you know, because they're mine. And, And I, I actually got this advice from a customer, customer of mine. He says, you know, when I find this was him talking, when I find that there's. There's somebody in the organization that I just don't and can't trust, once I've come to that realization, they're gone that afternoon. You can't have that inside the company. And I'm thinking, oh, that's a little harsh. And,

Speaker A: um,

Speaker B: and then after getting, quote, bit in the butt a couple times by these, you know, reclamation projects, I realized, wow. Yeah, he's right. Uh, there's. There's just some people that I, I can't reach. I can't, you know, I can't get to. I'm, you know, part. Part of me. I take it as like, you know, we're in this business, for heaven's sakes. How can I fail at transforming, ah, my own people? It's just, if nothing else, it's embarrassing. But, you know, that proved, uh, to be a not so effective position. And that's the, um. So I learned and made a couple changes, and my organization was much better off and is often the case, you know, once you. You get rid of the bad apple, everybody's like, what took you so long?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: That's what a brilliant leader I am, you know,

Speaker A: but. And, and I think we do. And the more stressed we are, the more we sort of go into our own blind spots in our own reality. And yes, you know, that's what's created quite a lot of leadership myths and inverted commas in organizations. Um, what is one leadership myth, Chris, that you would love to kill once and for all? What do you think is the most, um, inhibiting myth that exists about leadership from the industrial era that we are still adhering to today?

Speaker B: Well, uh, I call it the Lone Ranger or the noble hero. I'll forge ahead. I can do this all by myself. I'm the champion. I'm the knight in shining armors. Nobody ever did anything worth note by themselves.

Speaker A: Um.

Speaker B: M. You might invent something, but nobody built a great company. Nothing by themselves. What the great leaders are great at is building teams and developing people.

Speaker A: Yeah. And you can't do that on your own, as you said.

Speaker B: Uh, no, but we still have these noble champions who ride around. And, you know, uh, in some big organizations, there's the imperious character. It's like, oh, uh, I, you know, somebody pull the plug on this gas bag, you know,

Speaker A: and if I look at that which exists and, um, the sort of system to come right back to the beginning of our conversation, Chris, system perpetuates and rewards and recognizes things that keep, uh, these myths going. Um, time is running. But if you had one practice, just one practice that you could give to our listeners that they could start tomorrow to start thinking about how do I navigate transforming, um, in a world that is having AI poured into it, what would you say?

Speaker B: Oh, boy.

Speaker A: Um, well, you can have two practices.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: It doesn't have to be only one. But I mean, what would your call to action?

Speaker B: Well, there's a couple of things. So I don't know how many hundreds of big company meetings, you know, senior, senior people meetings or, you know, so you'll get, you know, the, the top people, then the next layer down, the next layer down, and we'll be here trying to cook up new ideas. And what almost invariably happens is all the senior people start pontificating and gas bagging and, you know, carrying on and carrying on. And all the junior people sit and quietly either pay attention or roll their eyes. And what I found is if you really want to get what's going on in the organization, don't listen to the senior people. I'm not saying ignore them, but in a meeting like that, you, you, I'm the CEO. I tell all my senior people. I don't want you talking first. I'll call on you when I want to hear from you. I want to hear from the junior people because they're the ones who've got their fingers in things. They're the ones who are more in touch with what's going on in the organization. It's not a slam on the senior guys, but it's the nature of the beast. You know, innovation doesn't happen in the boardroom. Never. You know, it happens down on the shop floor. And it's the same thing with where did new ideas come from. Now, that said, if you're going to transform the organization, it does have to go top down because it'll never get percolated up because of the way that, you know, we think of management. Management, you know, we have to avoid, you know, disruptions and this. Well, that's what innovation is. That's what change is. It's disruptive. It's not pretty all the time. And if you don't have it being driven, accepted and expected from the top, it's never going to happen. And that's back to once you start a process, you've got to stay with it, you've got to have focus, you've got to have Critical senior management support, uh, from start to stop. And you got to get critical mass if you want to transform the organization, whatever it is you're doing. As I told everybody, we've got to get at least 20% of the population through this process. Once you can do that and do those three things work on the mood, the management practice systems and process. Get the new systems and process in place. Put in place the systems for rewards, recognition, compensation, that reward and point to the new behaviors that we want. Because if people don't get compensated for it, they're not going to do it.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you. I'm going to leave our listeners with that and also, uh, come back to. My biggest takeaway is this idea around mood, but also orchestration. So, uh, my job is not to do, it's to orchestrate and create the conditions.

Speaker B: Bingo.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your insights, your experience, your stories. Where can people find out more about you and what you do?

Speaker B: Oh, well, yes, there's that, isn't there? Uh, you can go to our website, humanpotentialproject.com that's pretty simple. One, um, you can go on Amazon and get the. My book, the Power to Transform. We used to sell them, but the blunt truth is Amazon does it faster and cheaper. So we just let them, you know, that's their business and they're good at it, so let's let them do it. Um, I do speaking engagements@chrismajor.com and that's probably enough. You know, we're launching two new programs actually this week. Two new online programs. And you'll be able to find information about them on our website. What day is today? Tuesday. Certainly by the end of the week, I would hope it'll be up and announced and running. One's on leadership and the other is on the. The methodology that we teach for getting things done. It's called into action. It is shocking to me how many people don't really understand the rudimentary process of taking something from concept to idea to implementation.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Okay. And I'll put all those in the show notes and I would, I invite our listeners to go and actually check them out and get things done. Thank you. Thanks for a great conversation.

Speaker B: Thanks. Glad to have, um, been able to join you.

Speaker C: So to come right back to the beginning of our story. $200 million in losses to $3 billion in profit. Same people, same company, but a different way of leading. That's not a strange story about strategy. That's a story about leadership. And, uh, we are deciding to actually change something's story. So what I'm taking away from Chris today, and honestly, what I think every leader needs to sit with is this. You can't paint over old paint. You can pour all the AI, all the reorganization, all the shiny new strategy decks and models that you want on top of a culture. If that culture runs on resentment and resignation, the paint will peel off. The work starts with the mood, the energy. With you as a leader, with whether the people around you are in a space where the future is even possible. And the practice as ever, simple but not easy. Listening to the people closest to the work, not the loudest voices in the room. Creating the conditions and orchestrating the way things get done and the way things are delivered. If today's conversation sparks something for you, go and find chris@humanpotentialproject.com and grab his book the Power to Transform on Amazon. The links are in the show notes. And if you're sitting with this conversation thinking we actually need to work on this, on our leadership, our team dynamics, on the mood in our organization, that's exactly what I do at transform 4 value. Come and have a conversation. The link is also in the show notes and if this show is useful to you and enjoyed this episode, share it with one person in your world who's navigating change right now. This is how we grow the conversation. Looking forward to seeing you. Next time on let's Talk Transformation.