Why Systems Can't Solve Human Problems with Wayne Herring

Angie: Good Monday morning, everybody, and welcome to No More Mondays, the podcast where we believe that humans still matter, mediocrity is expensive, and ownership will change everything. I am your host, Angie Callen, and today's conversation is kind of about the heart of what this entire podcast is about, and that is why systems can only go so far when we're trying to solve human problems. Seems kind of relevant in this age of AI, huh? Today I am joined by Wayne Herring.

He is a business coach, entrepreneur, and also engineer, engineer, engineered. I almost said engineered, not wrong. Engineer turned human development pro. Who knew there was a male bald Angie walking around out there in the world?

Wade is the founder of Business Builder, a Business Builder Camp, where he works with entrepreneurs and leaders who want to grow successful businesses without losing themselves in the process, woo hoo, and what I love about his perspective is that he blends the analytical thinking of a former engineer with some of my also favorite things: self-awareness, perspective, connection, and most importantly, community. And so today we're going to talk about why systems alone don't solve human problems and why ambitious people and leaders often miss that fact.

So, tune in, because we're about to give you some wisdom for not just leadership, but life. Wayne, welcome to No More Mondays. Unknown: Thanks for having me. Angie: I am excited, because Wayne is from the Unconference Family.

For those of you that listen regularly, we travel in pods, and we initially bonded when we met in person at the unconference, and quick, because we were the two people probably wearing flannels in the room, because you were both outdoorsy people, and then we started realizing that we have, like, I live, and Wayne has love Colorado, even down to the very little place where I live, he's a Pennsylvania, lives in Pennsylvania, where I am from. And then we're like, wait, I was a civil engineer, he is a civil engineer, and now we both do coaching, so it is.

And here comes my first question, Wayne, because a lot of people, when I tell them I'm a former engineer who loves people and translated that into coaching, go, that's really weird. How does an engineer become a coach? And so, Wayne, how does an engineer become a coach? Unknown: It is funny.

I used to have.. I had, when I first started coaching, by the way, I.. because this is what I knew, I had some tablets made up with my logo on the top that were engineering paper, because I was just so used to writing on engineering paper, and it said on there, an engineer who loves people, that is a long time ago, but it is, you mean Angie: somebody coined that before me? I'm mad, but also I love engineering paper so much that I will only buy dot journals because they are the closest thing to it.

Unknown: They're close to it. Yeah, you'd have to get your own tablets from it. So, I got so excited about that. The question, how did..

how does an engineer become a coach? How Angie: does an engineer become.. people ask me this all the time. They're like, that's really weird.

How does an engineer become a coach? Unknown: I don't.. yeah, I don't know if I was a good engineer or a typical engineer. When I lived and worked in the town where you now live, in Glenwood Springs, I was working in construction, project management, sales, and so I worked with a lot of people.

I grabbed, I went to that very quickly. When I moved to Colorado, I got out of the office. I didn't want to be in the office doing calculations, so I became the guy out because I was willing to do that. I like it, and I embrace it.

And so when I came back home to Pennsylvania, here I, for family reasons, I joined an engineering consulting firm, and it was really hard. It was people there love doing their boring logs, because I'm a geotechnical engineer, soils rock, and I didn't - I just could not handle the not being out, not not talking to people. And so the intermediate step between engineering and coaching was, I went to go work for a family business. I worked with my dad, and he had started a business.

I came in kind of halfway through his journey with that, and worked with him for nine years, sold it, but I met a coach I had never heard of, coaching, I'd never heard of sales training. We didn't do things very much like that in engineering world, and so I met a Sandler sales trainer slash executive coach, success coach named Warren Lewis, and he is my mentor. I give him all the credit in the world for anything that I've done right, and if I did things wrong externally, because I wasn't listening to what he told me to do, and he became a mentor, Angie, and I fell in, well, I fell in love with personal development and.

And organizational health and business growth through working in that family business with Dad, leading the sales team, but a lot of it had to do with Warren being a mentor, and so when we sold the company, when we sold Dad's company, and I was at that time also had started an organic farm, and so there was more things going on, and I had traveled for many years, building Dad's business. I did not want to go on with the acquiring company, and I thought, what am I going to do to pay the bills?

And I thought, I really want to be like Warren Lewis, and I asked him, I asked him if he thought I could do it, was actually the first question, and then there were more how questions after that, but he became my mentor, and it was kind of a master apprentice kind of thing. Angie: So the short answer to that is it doesn't happen overnight. An engineer does not become a coach overnight, because in a way there's some similar.. there's..

I have some.. would say I have some parallels. First, a relocation really woke me up to the fact that engineering actually probably the real answer to how an engineer becomes a coach is we never should have studied engineering in the first place, but in a lot of ways I'm glad I did. Yeah, but for me, moving was a part of the wake-up call, and there was also a transition period in there that where I got exposed to small business and the entrepreneurial spirit started to spark, and I have long said something that I have yet to be proven wrong, and you very much prove right, and that is that people who go into engineering but are equally brained tend to make very good entrepreneurs, because there is the ability to analyze, problem solve, be good at numbers in business, but what we don't get in engineering is the creative, the connection, and the community and entrepreneurship often gives us that, and so I'm curious, where you've seen the engineering piece really shape your approach to business and entrepreneurship.

Unknown: Yeah, it's something I think about consciously very often, but what what you just said certainly makes sense about the right brain left brain thing, engineering and coaching, you and I were talking a little before we got started here before go time about an event that I just held, and I, I think that part of how an event like that comes together for me is following an engineering type process, like I'm thinking ahead of time of the project completion date, which is when everybody is leaving and waving, and I'm thinking about the experience, and I often know kind of from a sequence point of view what are the things I have to have in place by this date in order to hit that deadline, and then by this date, so in that way it comes in.

The other thing is, I, I use with my clients a, we have them create a plan, and I'm not the one who came up with the idea of having a one page plan, or having that in a place where you can see it, but we use a business builder plan, and it looks somewhat like a construction drawing, and I use that analogy a lot, like when you're building a business, it's a lot like building a building, or road, or whatever, it's just that you're using different tools in order to build it, right, so Angie: yeah, there's this idea of end in mind, and I think that that is relevant to business, right?

When you build a business, you want to theoretically, you're building with the end in mind, quite literally down to what is the succession plan? Is my goal to sell it, is my goal to own it and operate it forever, is my goal to pass it down, whatever. That, I think, is something that we lose sight of, but you said you had a little word when you were describing the rendezvous, that is what the event was called. Everybody, we are clear, we are fully, we are fully into shameless promotion around here.

Wayne, so rendezvous just wrapped, and it's the experience, and I think what's interesting is the ability to see an end, or the project management mindset allows you not only to work on the logistics to make sure it all is seamless from a coordination standpoint, but also thinking about the human experience that somebody's gonna have in the moment, and in a way, as weird as it sounds, engineering that, or curating that with enough intentionality, but knowing where the just the raw humanness needs to come in, and finding a little bit of that balance.

Unknown: Yeah, yeah. Well, sure. And actually, engineering now that you say it right, the reason to create engineering works to the human-built environment is for human experience. Like, you're right, very much so.

Well, there's no reason to build a bridge if it's not going to be used generally by humans to go from one side of something to the other, or to get animals from one side of the other, so that we don't hit them on the road, but Angie: it has those here, by the way. I bet it's what we Unknown: know. I know you do. That's what I was thinking of.

Colorado, and I, 70, and animal byways. Yeah, Angie: yeah, it has drastically reduced for. Would kill, we just took a morbid turn, but I like this point, because also random segue software, the software engineering industry missed that mark, right, because it is perceived to be cheaper to build software than it is a bridge, they'll just build for building's sake versus building with the human in mind, and this is it's a good point to start thinking about this idea that we can't forget the human within these systems, and to me, I feel like AI is not helping that situation, and in a way, especially like high achievers and leaders.

I'm curious, if you see this really fall into this, like over, like almost overly logicing their way into answers, or how to navigate something that's like otherwise a really human challenge, and this seems like a weird thing for two people with engineering backgrounds to talk about, but it almost feels like we need to trust our gut and our brains more so than sometimes we logic things out. Do you see that too? Unknown: Yeah, I think that so part of the work I do with people, especially when you're talking about business owners, is to help them get present to the other human, which is, I think, what I hear you doing.

We write, think so much about systems and processes, when really, if I could really get my head and heart engaged with this other human that's in a role in the company, when I like think of them, put myself in their place, then sometimes answers become more clear, or what kind of help they need to be able to do their job becomes more clear, so yes, I, I certainly think about that human often draws. I can't draw my daughter's an artist going to art school. I draw stick figures, right?

But so I draw a stick figure and label it with somebody's name, and then I say, let's think about them, like, and what are they doing right now, and where are they at? And what do you hope they're doing in your company? Angie: Well, and I think that you are, you just made the point that if I wanted to just say outrightly, a lot of, a lot more business problems are human problems than we give them credit for being, or than how we approach it, right? Even as a solopreneur, a lot of times we, as an individual, are the human problem in our business, but we don't triage things that way.

Unknown: Sure, yeah. No doubt about Angie: how do we get better at that. Unknown: Well, I was gonna, I was gonna say, except to the green, though, that here's where the thing AI chat GPT or Claude, and generating long thinking documents, I don't know that that is actually as helpful as it seems to be, because we generate these long documents of all stuff that our human brain can't even wrap itself around. However, I do think, like, it was just looking at something about lead generation, lead follow up, and some of these tools that are going to automate the follow up process, or make sure that things don't fall through the cracks.

Those are important, or those are those are important because they're available. I'm not sure that our world is better for them being available, but they are, and so those do actually Angie: save some time. Unknown: Use them, yeah, they save time, and I think they help things to not fall through the cracks, which then allows people to be more human and allows them to spend their time not trying to remember who I was supposed to talk to, or whatever, but actually talking to those people.

Angie: Yeah, you bring up, you bring up something that I talk, I talk about this a lot, and my phrase is like AI enabled human on purpose, right? We still want to be a purposeful human working in a purpose on purpose, but AI can enable us to do things as long as we don't hide behind it as a productivity trap, I think, is a good word, because as somebody who processes out loud, I have many of those things you referred to, Wayne, as the giant AI thought partner braid dubs that can easily become the loop to suck they want you to be in, or become this never-ending stream of ideas that you can constantly just be building instead of selling, or you know, or just constantly in strategy mode, which then flips us on the reverse of, were you working in your business or on your business, or y'all was just walking, working on your business, so you never get down to brass tacks, and so I think that's where we have to be cautious of not hiding behind some of these tools as a way to, whether it's conscious or subconscious, keep us from the real work and the real problem solving and the real human stuff.

Unknown: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Will come down, Angie: so I guess, like, so at the rendezvous. What is the.. what is the..

just because you were surrounded and with a whole group of business, you know, owners? What are the things that.. what are the kind of human problems you see us business owners really struggling with right now? Unknown: Yeah, and just paint the picture for anybody listening.

Shameless promotion, as you said, Angie: I was gonna make him do it sooner or later. Y'all, Unknown: it's more than that. It's just you want to see it. So, there's a..

I'm in a small town in Pennsylvania. I live on this 20 acre farm, and I love my area. I love where I grew up, and there's a. we call it the Sweet Arrow Lake, that's the name of this lake, and there's a clubhouse there, and the clubhouse reminds some people of, like, the Dirty Dancing Ballroom, if you've seen that, it's open timber roof, and it's a hardwood floor, and the windows look out at this very small lake, some people would call it a pond, and there's a stone fireplace, and we had nine round tables set up with five people, five business owners at each table, and there's a table leader throughout the event.

It's two days long, and the idea is to use that room, but then also use the property, use the outdoors, go for a walk, take a break, go sit in the pavilion, journal, and I hand people very analog tools, and they, the cornerstone of the event is two two hour time blocks where you're masterminding with the group of five people, so you have a five hour time block on day one where you're getting to know them, and there's some context set for what you're doing, and then on day two you're doing more problem solving, and so I really, Angie, like the what problems do people have and what do they talk about?

It definitely normally comes down many times to people, it does come down to humans, it comes down to crucial conversations I should have with people. Why am I avoiding talking to them about their performance? Why do I talk to other people instead of actually engaging with that person? And there's there, and then there's a whole lot of people who are trying to get clear on their vision, for example, where am I really heading?

What are the next steps? So it's a lack of clarity stuff that you hear a lot of, Angie: and now we're talking. Now you took us to the outdoor component, the actual environment of the environment that you get to take advantage of the rendezvous, and oddly enough, in all of the parallels between your good friends, Wayne and Angie. Now, I had the first retreat here in Glenwood Springs at the exact same time the rendezvous was going on, which was very much about getting people out of their normal environment to put them in the environment as a place to find creativity and clarity.

And why do you think Wayne, the environment and nature has such an impact on people in that way? Why is that the place they open up and start getting honest about the conversations they're not having versus like behind their desk in their everyday life? Unknown: Yeah, gosh, I guess I'm not as much of a why guy, I know somebody who was an attendee at Rendezvous afterwards sent me an article about Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth does a lot of outdoor experiential learning for the students, and they probably have better answers for why and how.

Some of this is just.. I know it works, I see it. I think part partially why is we, we tend to loop on things, so you might loop in Chat GPT, or also we tend to work over and over again on the same problem or challenge, and a lot of times our brain doesn't even know exactly what we're working on, it's just knows it's like frustrated not finding an answer, and change of space, change of place, get into the outdoors. It's just different, I guess.

We're stimulated in different ways. We slow down and we don't, we quiet certain components of the brain that are that are noisy when we're when we're sitting, when we're grounded, when we're near a lake and a trail, or when we have a, like, a leather-bound journal in our hands, instead of a mini computer, a la phone. Angie: I was going to show and tell my leather-bound journal, because it just seemed appropriate. It's on the other table, on the other side of the screen, but I think the how I'm going to phrase that is like it's a way, in a way, it becomes a pattern.

Love it. See, it's a pattern interrupter, right? And I think we get so sucked into our worlds that the ability, you know, we in these events are plucking people out of the pattern and putting them just somewhere else, so it almost. Some extent wouldn't matter what somewhere else is, but nature just takes it over the top.

So, if you're not a why guy, I want to hear some of that, some of the how, and maybe the what you see when you take people out of their normal environment, disrupt the pattern, and you put them into both nature and an environment with other people who are thinking this way. What kind of magic happens? Unknown: Yeah, and I think that you just hit on a big part of it is the other people, a huge part of it is the other humans. There's a book by Nancy Clyne called Time to Think, and it's, it's about a lot of it is about time to think, but it's processing out loud with other humans and speaking to them, so yeah, the magic I see is people walked out of that clubhouse and they went down the little trail, and there's a very small waterfall with some picnic tables, and you say, okay, you got two hours and you're going to help each other, and part of the context I set is I want you to listen really closely to what other people are saying and make notes on what they're saying, so that when they ask for help with their problem, you're able to look at those notes, and you have people come in from those round tables, and they say things like, you know, I feel like I've not been seen in this way, or I haven't been heard in this way, at least not in a long time, and you, a lot of times, people will say something that was frustrating me just by giving voice to it, like I answered my own problem, or I answered my own question, or I saw it's not..

I, we don't.. I don't think we have huge breakthroughs. Epiphanies is a word that gets used a lot in personal development and coaching. I don't know if people really have a lot of epiphanies, like they..

it might feel like that, but they certainly get a lot of like small next steps. What, what's a crucial conversation I can have with somebody? What's a request, you know, that's a big thing. What's a request I can make from somebody else to get some help, so they see possibilities in a lot of that.

And I think so often we feel like we have to shoulder everything ourselves, and when you are outside and with other humans like that, it becomes obvious, like I should hire somebody to cut my grass, like that's that's the answer that had nothing to do with business. It's just I should hire somebody, cut my grass, and then leave will give me more time, for example. That's that's some of the stuff I see happening. Angie: Oh, a lot of the times it's simpler than we make it.

We like to complicate things, and I love what you just said about an epiphany, because in a way, I think in professional development, and even in business and entrepreneurship, we put this pressure on the on the unlock, what's the aha moment, and it isn't necessarily any of those big things, it's more the permission to notice the small things that could actually stack up to the difference, and that to me is what the hive mind can do, is allow you to notice something you probably already noticed, you just didn't either want to, or it was subconscious, or to vocalize something that just needed to be spoken to be true, and that place gave you the permission to do it, and that's what's so cool.

The power of the group is amazing. No matter whether you're in business or you're leading a team or just kind of in life, we're not really meant to do any of this alone. Humans are curious community-based creatures, and if there's one thing I think we want to give you permission to do, it's go find the communities that allow you to open up and have these small realizations that can stack, Unknown: yeah. Oh, for sure.

Angie: Yeah, doesn't always take an epiphany. Small changes is usually stickier. What's that whole cold turkey thing back in the day about smoking? You know, it's interesting here, and it's, you know, we're both, we were both talking so, so soon after these events that it's what's fresh in our mind, but I also think it's kind of cool because it's a unique thing that we both just got to do.

I was fascinated. There was also a sense of pride, but I was, I was fascinated with the speed at which people got comfortable with each other, and we're willing to trust the environment and the space to have those open up conversations. Unknown: Yeah, for sure. I, I've been gathering groups like this.

Angie, 2018 is the first time we did one of these gatherings, and that particular gathering was at a house in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I had eight business owners around a table, and I had put together like a three ring binder of the stuff I wanted to teach and like exercise, and how Angie: much of it did you use I. It page one, Unknown: I may, yeah, maybe the name, so as soon as they started talking and they understood that they are in similar situations, I just had to like help facilitate a little bit, but but everything just went, so there's I think there's a transference of trust, you gathered, Angie gathered those people together, Wayne gathered the 45 people that were together, and they, they've talked to me enough that I'm grateful for the trust they put in me, and they quickly put that in each other too.

Angie: Yes, and I actually want a side note on what you just said about content. You would be surprised how, when you have the right group of people together who build that quick rapport and trust, because of the reason they're all there and the common trust they've given to the person organizing it, you actually don't need a lot of content. The container will create the content, and if you try to force it or curate it too much, it can actually get in the way. I learned this a couple years ago, I did my like first big team facilitation with a group of like an actual like corporate team of seven executives, and I had every..

I didn't have a.. I didn't have a, you know, a giant binder, but I had the whole schedule curated. We were going to do the marshmallow toothpick things for an hour and 20 minutes, and then we were going to do this activity, this activity, this activity, and then we're going to come back on day two and do this activity. We didn't get past marshmallows and toothpicks before I had to burn the whole plan and rework and really adapt.

Is as a facilitator, I think something you have to really look out for is to respond to where the group is taking things versus having to force the group into what we want them to, because that's a conference, it's not bad, that's a conference, this is like that retreat experience where people get to kind of create and drive it themselves, and that's where the transformation becomes so amazing, so there was my, there was my, that's why when you said I had the binder, I was like, how much did you use, because did the same thing, engineers, Unknown: be prepared.

Angie: It's right, overly prepared, isn't it? Nice to, like, you know, you can be analytical when you need to, but also fly by the seat of your pants a little more than most engineers do. Unknown: Yeah. Oh, totally.

Yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't go back to doing that. I don't think. Angie: Oh, I could not.

I love this. Is so fun, and in what I want to bring together here is this idea that we love systems. We have more availability for systems and technology and AI thought partners in all the things in this world. However, when it comes down to it, what most of us need is just another, just a little more time with another human, Unknown: yeah.

And systems can be simple and not complex technology things, and systems can be very human. Kind of last thing about all this is, we, we, you said we were at the unconference, right? And one of the things that the unconference that I loved is that there was a directory that had people's faces, names, and like where they were from, and when I, and we had name badges, and so in the past I've not done either of those, but a system that we had at this event, which worked really well, was a directory, a photo directory, and name badges, and so there are simple systems that help us to relate to other humans, for sure.

Angie: Yeah, and memory, right? But that's also the thing, is sometimes I think, like we said earlier, we like to over engineer things. How much do engineers like to over engineer things? And sometimes the solution is just simple and sitting right next to you, Unknown: for sure.

Angie: Yeah, and if you need simple and somebody sitting right next to you, call Wayne and I. We create places where you can sit next to someone who thinks like you and can encourage you, and you'll have a wonderful experience with probably a little nature adventure at the same time, inspire you to inspiring you to remember that not only do humans still matter most, but getting outside will totally change your perspective. Wayne and I are big fans of it, and I appreciate you being here for just a thoughtful, very human conversation with somebody who very oddly thinks a lot like me.

That's also nice to know that there's another odd duck like this out there, and that we're both here helping humans be humans. So, I appreciate you, Wayne, for being here, and everybody out there should appreciate what you're doing on the Humans Still Matter front, too. Unknown: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for including me, and yeah, thanks for listening and participating.

Angie: Yeah, so find Wayne. Oh, wait a minute. I have to ask you, where did they find you? Unknown: Business Builder camp.

com So my little thing, if you smush the words that are on my tagline, my name Business Builder camp.com is to find us, and I love LinkedIn, so I'm. I'm on there too. Angie: Yeah, so if you're watching here on LinkedIn, find Wayne, we're connected.

He should be easy to track down, and also check out Business Builder Camp - it has the word camp in it, that means you should all know how much I already love it. And as we say goodbye to everybody, Wayne, I'm going to put you on the spot one more time. And we've already dabbled in a little AI chat, so I think this is going to be not a stunner of a question, but as we think about just the future of work in the world, what's it look like to you, and how can we stay human while navigating Unknown: it?

I think that, yeah, without a doubt, there's a lot of professional mid-level or entry-level jobs that will be replaced by AI. How do we stay relevant? I think we, I think we, you know, get.. don't get too..

don't don't put our head in the sand, but don't get too much anxiety about the whole thing. We have to.. our mental, spiritual, physical health, so that we can be flexible and prepared for whatever is going to come next. Angie: Yep, be a human, right?

Lean into your human skills, worry more about who you are, what you value, and what your purpose and impact is in this world, and the rest will fall into place. Look at that, we even simplified that. Unknown: Nicely done. Angie: There you go.

It is that easy. Everybody leadership perspective and growth, it's not always about a better system. Sometimes it's just about being a better, more intentional human. Wayne Herring.

Thank you one more time for joining us on No More Mondays, Unknown: for sure. Angie Callen, Angie: and if this conversation resonated, be sure to follow us, share it with somebody who may need a reminder that success and self-awareness aren't mutually exclusive, they're just very human. As always, thank you for being part of the No More Mondays community. And until next time, here's to fewer Sunday scaries and No More Mondays.

I'll see you next week, Unknown: you.