GA 487 | Picture Yourself a Leader with Elisabeth Swan

You may not have a title, you may not consider yourself a leader, but in your family, in your social circles, in your civic associations, at work with colleagues, you may be seen as a leader or just you're having influence.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Elizabeth Swan to the show. Now, Elizabeth has recently written a book called Picture Yourself A Illustrated Micro Lesson for Navigating Change. And so we talk quite a bit about the book, obviously, but it's not just a sort of an advertisement for the book. We really dig into some really cool stuff kind of talking about like just the big, I was very curious on like Picture Yourself a Leader, just the wording of that title, like, what does that mean to picture yourself a leader? And so that's kind of where we begin. And then we go through lots of different sort of areas of the book. And one particular area, we talked about our actions as leaders and the ramifications and even the words that we use as leaders, how the way that we speak is going to really dictate our success. And then kind of towards the end, probably my favorite part, because I'm just fascinated with this whole idea. We really get into the whole idea of habits. And Elizabeth is a big fan of like Charles Duhigg and B.J. fogg and James Clear, a lot of these folks who written about habits. And so she's sort of distilled some of that down into her own thoughts on, on the importance of like, the example she used is like having the habit of being able to sort of remember and recall people's names and how important that is. And so lots of interesting, lots of interesting things here in this particular episode. I think you're going to enjoy it. Now, show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 487. Again, gembapodcast.com, look for episode 487. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Elizabeth, welcome to the show. How are you?

I am great and thanks for having me, Ron.

You're welcome. Yeah, it's my pleasure. I'm excited to talk about, about your latest book, Picture Yourself a Leader. But before we jump into that, as you know, we like to get things going with our, our guest sharing a quote. So what do you have?

I love that you do that and I love hearing your guest quote. So I thought about this one and the one I'm going to give you is genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. And I'm giving you that for a Couple of reasons. One, it's a reminder, you got to do the work, right, that there's, there's, you know, great ideas or can be a dime a dozen, what do you do about them? But the other reason I'm giving you that is that through my efforts, because I use that quote, I misattributed it to Edison, which if you Google it, everyone does. And if you go a few pages in or you Google misattributions, you find out it is a female educator named Kate Sanborn from 1890s did a whole series of lectures on genius and talent and things like that. So I kind of. I like it because, you know, the Internet giveth and taketh away. We've got all this information, we just don't know if it's all accurate. Right?

Yeah, you just gotta ask ChatGPT, it knows.

Oh yeah.

Funniest story on that. Not to get completely, you know, squirreled here, but there's a. There's this funny thing. I saw it on like Twitter or something and then I tried it. And the difference between chat GBT that 3.5 and the 4, you know, is like the better one or whatever. And we're recording this here, right? And people are like, we're on 10 now by the time this one comes out. But it was something to the effect of like, hey, what's one plus five? Or something? I don't know, something. And maybe it was a little bit more complicated than that. And then it said, oh, it's six, you know, and. And then he said, no, actually I think it's four. And. And then hit enter and then it replies back, oh, I'm so sorry, you're right. One plus five is four, you know, and then when you did that with the GBT4, it. It doesn't fall for it. So I don't know. So you can go out there and see if it. Again, the formula was a little bit more complicated than that, but it was still like you could do it in your head and you're like, what, you can convince this thing that it's wrong?

Good test.

Yeah. Anyhow, well, hey, Elizabeth, why don't you tell us a little bit about your. About yourself, tell us about your background and how you got into this line of work and then what you're up to these days.

So my path is not straight at all. But I've been in the process improvement world for over 30 years now. And I think about early on I was working for a lot of consulting firms and working for other consultants. And then I just by accident, I saw an improv performance and I found out, you know, I had never seen improv before. And then I found out who was Improv Boston and I went and watched a show. And long story short, I ended up performing with them for years. Like, ended up taking a course and something about having done. Performed on stage with no script. I was like, oh, well, there's probably lots of things I could do. So I decided, hey, I've been working in this process improvement with other consulting firms long enough. Like, I think I could do this on my own. Right. So that sort of sent me out into the, into the universe. Coaching, consulting, instructing, designing, and so sort of a combination that launched that career.

Hey, have you ever heard of Mary Lemmer?

Mary Lemmer? No.

L E M M E R. I had her on episode 294. So she has this thing where she's this improv expert, does that all the time. And. But, but using improv to improve was how. What we named that episode. But she was all about, you know, the power of improv and, and how it can, how it can help, you know, with so many aspects of. She's not like your traditional sort of like lean thinker or anything like that, but she's totally down with everything that we're doing and all. She takes a slightly different approach to it, but it's still improvement. I thought of when you mentioned improv. It's such a cool concept. Like, scares me to pieces thinking about having to do that.

But, you know, you improvise all the time, right? I mean, you run a podcast. You are, you know, the conversation's going to go where it goes. You're. You're game for that. And I think that people don't realize how much improv is about being a really good listener and being in the moment and kind of collaborating. Right. And that's, you know, you've got, you've got some improv chops.

Well, thank you. I guess I was just talking about like, you know, they sing a song like that and then they get up and you sing a song like perfectly. I'm like, I don't know how they do that.

Oh, no. And it's not perfect either, but mistakes are where it's at, right? Thinking about the same our world. You know, you experiment, you make mistakes, you learn improv. It's about the mistakes. That's. That's kind of the gold.

Right, Right, right. Exactly. Awesome. All right, well, so yeah, as I mentioned a little bit ago, so your, your, your book, your Latest book is called Picture Yourself a Leader, Illustrated Micro Lessons for Navigating Change. And thank you for the copy. And I, in full disclosure, I have not read it yet. I've skimmed through it, namely because. And it's really kind of the first question I have for you is there's all these drawings in it, right? And hand drawings. And it seems as though. Did you do those?

I know I did. And it's funny because by. In the discussions leading up to publication, it was like, well, should I just say on the copyright page that I did the drawings? And I, you know, it was like sort of this discussion at some point. And my husband goes, why don't you write. Written and illustrated by Elizabeth Swan on the COVID Yeah, I saw that.

And I was like, really? Like, did she really? Or is it just some fancy, you know, author wording? You know, sometimes you never know. But really?

Yeah, thank you for that. And that I do actually have. I'm actually the redheaded stepchild in my family. I have people with that are serious artists. They. They sell it. That's their living. They have things in galleries. My father taught sculpture and art history at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston, and my mother, and you name it, every sister, a ceramic artist all over the place. And I was just, in my mind, a doodler. You know, I like doing stuff, but. And I this at the same time, you know, putting these stories out on the. On LinkedIn. I was like, well, it'd be nice to capture this in an image because, you know, that would push me to sort of really capture what is this about. And then the other aspect of it was, you know, some corporate clip art, even just more sophisticated graphics we can do now with programs like canva, there's often not expressions on people's faces. There's just, you know, you might get eyes and nose and all that, but you don't necessarily get fear, frustration, excitement. You know what I mean? And I felt like that's part of what these stories were about was the emotion behind them. And that's often also what we don't talk about in the, you know, lean or corporate world. Like, you know, the people are mad, happy, whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So. So why. Why write the book? Like, what. What's the inspiration behind the. Behind the book?

So one of the inspirations was Covid. And like, a lot of my colleagues and you probably, you know, we were, you know, what I call road warriors and traveling and working with consultants all over the world. And then suddenly we were not. Yeah. And so I Had a little more time on my hands, and I was. I like writing. So I thought, you know, what if I tried to capture all the things that have made a difference in my career, like things I figured out the hard way. And. And what are those stories? And I think the other thing, you probably have this where, you know, I would run a workshop and I would be, you know, teaching a concept and then getting people to use the concept. And. And I'd often ask, you know, at the end, what worked, what didn't work, what'd you like? And they. So many times I heard, oh, the stories. Yeah, you gave examples. You gave stories. And those. What. Those are what people remember. And that's very human. So I thought, well, let me put these stories out there where I learned something, and then let me ask the community, our community or beyond. I didn't restrict it. Say, what did you do in a situation similar to that? And some of the conversations got very big or heated or all over the place. And so when I. And then people started saying, hey, could you pull these together? Because there's, there's, you know, some people started just chiming in on. Almost every. Every week I'd have one of these and then pull them together. I thought, oh, that's easy. You know, there's this thing called blog to book. I read about it. You just, like, put all your blogs together. So not really that easy. You know, bigger deal than it. Because you had to think about, well, what. What is the format of these stories? What goes together? What's the underlying theme? What is it? Then include some of that conversation. So then I curated the. Some of the voices on those conversations. I take some tips, some stories people told about their own experience. Like, what struck me as the most helpful, interesting kind of shifting, like, your perspective, because people didn't always agree with me. And so that was. That helped too. So I. Those things, in fact, it's kind of improvised. It was kind of like improvisational in terms of the conversation, and that formed the basis of the book.

So I want to break. The title is interesting, and I think it'd be easy for someone to just kind of just gloss over it without really taking some time to really think about it. But picture yourself a leader, right? Like, that's an interesting choice of words. And I'm wondering if we could just talk a little bit about, like, what do you mean? Picture yourself a leader.

Yeah. What struck me was part of what I learned in a lot of these stories was that I was having an impact. I wasn't aware Of. And so I'm writing to people to say, you may not have a title, you may not consider yourself a leader, but in your family, in your social circles, in your civic associations, at work with colleagues, you may be seen as a leader or just you're having influence, whether you recognize it or not. And my effort was to say, own that, you know, recognize yourself in these stories and see where you're having influence and where you could have better influence. You know, you might be having a negative impact, and you could have positive, or you're having positive, but it could be better. So that was part of the picture. And then, of course, the other aspect of picture is I'm drawing those images. I'm drawing the people I'm talking about or myself as the picture.

What do you find easier, drawing a picture or using words?

Interesting. I find what's nice about a picture and makes it easier is once it's done, it's done. And when you write something never done. Yeah, it's never done.

To be your proofreader and editor and all the rest of it. Right.

Or even yourself, you read it the next day and you go, oh, yeah, that's not a good word.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's interesting. Yeah. No, and that's a super great skill. I mean, I wouldn't call myself a great, you know, drawer or anything like that, but. But even just sketching out ideas, you know, whether it's maybe not a beautif picture, per se, but it's a. On a whiteboard, and you're just kind of jamming with someone and you're sketching ideas and on the back of the napkin, as they say. Right. I mean, I feel like that's where the magic often happens. Right. And we complicate things by trying to write a paper or something like that when it's like, sketch it out, sketch it out.

I think you're right. I think that is where the magic happens. And I also think you don't have to be a quote, unquote, good drawer.

Yeah.

And I think that's where people get hung up and. And you'll, you know, I'll hear that a thousand times. I'm not. I'm not good at drawing. And even I called my drawings doodles until colleagues were like, they're not doodles, they're drawings. Like, why? Like you're. You're discounting them and. And people have that fear. But, like, you're just saying something on the back of the napkin as you're trading thoughts and you're doing Imagery that strikes people. Right. That. That sparks some other emotion and reaction than, you know, some treatise or white paper does.

Sure, sure. You know, and obviously, you know, some people are perhaps more. More driven by the, you know, left hemisphere of the brain versus the right hemisphere of the brain, you know, so, you know, be you. Right. And whoever you are and whatever you're. But I feel like if you can sort of just, even if you're uncomfortable in that other hemisphere, tap into it every so often. Right. Because there's probably a lot of goodness that's going to come from that.

I agree with you. I agree with you.

So looking at the book, you've got it, you've done a great job again, of sort of arranging it and putting it into sections and parts and so forth. And as best I can understand, there's, I believe there's six parts. Is that about right?

Yeah.

So six parts to the book. And the first part, you called it. Consider your actions. Consider your actions. So you're picturing yourself as a leader and you're going to consider your actions. So what's that all about?

So it's about sort of classic ways that people put up barriers to their own problem solving, you know, and our tendencies as humans, you know, how do we help ourselves and others to overcome all these kind of just common stumbles. And like, I'll give you an example, one of them is our tendency to not just accept rework, but to try to get better at it.

Oh, yeah. Being more efficient at your rework. Right.

So I got a chapter called do it right, Don't do it over. And I. I'll tell you the story behind it because it just struck me as so funny as it was happening in front of me. But I would. I went to. Drove to Cambridge. I live on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, so I'm about an hour plus from Boston and Cambridge. And I was going to see if my husband and I were going to see a friend's son in a play at the Harvard Theater, which is called the Art. And, you know, we had our emailed tickets and we were, you know, of course, dealt with traffic and then some parking issues, and we, you know, we got in in time. I was conscious of, you know, they put the curtain down and then you can't disturb the play. So we got there in time. You know, we ran up to the desk, handed this gal our emailed tickets, and she said, here. And she handed me this sheet of paper that was a street map of Harvard Square with a yellow highlighter through it. And she Said that the play is at One Arrow Theater. And I was like, well, where's that? She goes, One Arrow Street. I was like, oh, well, okay. And, you know, here, if you run now, they know what to do when you get there. So, of course, now we're running across the square and we're going find, you know, our way through this highlighted map. And we walk in and I see a line of people, six or seven people, all with the same map in their hand with the highlighter on it. And this lovely woman comes out and she greets us and she says, oh, come right over here. We'll let you in. We have seats open in the front, and as soon as the curtain goes up, which will in, you know, one minute, there's a lights whatever out, I will guide you into the front seat and, you know, you'll be able to see the play. Awesome. So I'm thinking, what, What? They have this down, right? This whole system in. We got front row seats, which was awesome. You know, I'm a little more, you know, the hair suffered from humidity, and I'm a little bit of a. We're a little bit of a wreck from running. But, you know, we got to see our friend's son, and it was. It was great. But I thought about what led us to the art and the rest of these people. And I saw in the email, art was in very big letters and their logo. And I'm used to that theater. I've been there a number of times. And down below in some fine print was something about the One Arrow Theater. And of course, me and the rest of these people didn't look at that. And I thought, oh, well, I think I know the answer to this, But I know that what they did was they got really good at handling the fact that people were misled, right? And that's what we do. We get really good at it. And so I wrote this, and then I've had two people talk to me that they read that one story. Like, one of the people I know, Lily Angelosi, she leads Lean Transformation at UC San Diego Health. So all the hospitals and the clinics there. And she read that story before a kaizen, right? Just to get people like, okay, all right, people, we are not perfecting this. Like, we are getting rid of this situation. So. And she said she's used a few other ones anyway. That.

Yeah, that's great. It don't automate waste, right? Is this maybe another. Another parallel to that. That same idea? Y.

Exactly.

I also also remember I did a presentation many, many Years ago for this, for this large company. And they asked me to kind of talk, talk about this, but this whole idea of like quit rewarding your firefighters, you know, like being great at firefighting, now you get promoted. Because I'm a great firefighter. It's like, how about we like focus on like not having fires, you know, and then, and then we can do other value added work.

But that is such a great line. We are definitely promoting firefighters. And I think about, I did a lot of work with hospitality, right? So Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Marriott. And think about when something goes wrong in a hotel and somebody comes to your rescue, right? And you are so happy and that person is like equal. It's like dopamine, right. I just solved a guest problem. You can see it. So it's really hard to take those things away when we solve like this recurring problem. There's another quote I've heard which is we're not just the firefighters, we're the unwitting arsonists.

Oh yeah.

Oh God, it's so true.

Yeah, a hundred percent. 100%. Okay, so the next, the next part then that I want to kind of explore is, is titled speak thoughtfully. Now pretty straightforward, maybe speak thoughtfully, but maybe expand a little bit more and maybe some examples. I mean it's clearly more than just holding hands and singing Kumbaya, right? So like what does that mean to speak thoughtfully? Are you ready to take the next step in your lean journey?

Now?

You can.

During one of our premier in person Gemba Academy workshops held at our training center in Keller, Texas, our certified instructors.

Guide you through the process of taking your lean knowledge and applying directly to.

Your industry with real actionable steps that.

Will benefit you and your organization.

Whether you're a seasoned lean practitioner looking for inspiration or just starting out, we.

Have the perfect workshop for you.

Sign up@gemba events.com that's gemba events.com like.

What does that mean? To speak thoughtfully.

So one of the chapters I wrote about a quote from a really early mentor. He wrote a lot of best selling books. This is pre Amazon. He was like New York Times bestseller when I met him. And he had this quote that said the opposite of talking isn't listening, it's waiting to talk and think about that. So when you're, when someone is talking, we're often forming. It's not terrible. We're not, you know, we're not being, you might be thinking about whether we let the dog out, you know, or the stove on, but we're often, you know, trying to form Our next question for the person or a response to what they're saying, you know, it's not a bad thing. But I looked at some of the neuroscience behind it, and we speak at about 150 words per minute. But people, we can process someone's speech at six to 800 words a minute. So there's a gap, right? There's a gap between what, you know, we've already taken in what they're saying, like, got it. And now we have space, right? We have space to think. And sometimes listening is a casualty. Like, we've stopped listening to them. We're off in our own thoughts, coming up with something to say or something like that. And I remembered working in this consulting firm when I was in my early 30s. And I remembered it was a small group. It was like the principals came from mit and there was a small group of principals. And I remember at the conference rooms, when one of them was talking, he had kind. They all had the same stutter, like a kind of a formal stutter where they would have us. They'd say something and then they'd say and, and, and, and, and, and, and they'd kind of fill up the space knowing that someone else might cut in because they wanted to keep talking. They want to get their thoughts out, but they knew that the inclination was for us to jump in. So part of that is that we, we hear the person, we process the words, we're ready to jump in. And knowing that I just put out to everybody, obviously I, I have my own solution. I write down what people are saying to me, right? So that is just a habit. And I might not reference it. I often do reference it. Sometimes that's. I wear where I go to write up my notes of what we talked about, but I write down what people are saying. So I really am listening. Another person told me they wrote W A I T, the acronym at the top of the page when she was in a conversation, which stood for why am I talking? So. And that was just a constant reminder. Another one, I think Katie Anderson counts to 10 because she says she's got a real bad talking habit. So she counts to 10 when she asks a question and forces herself to do nothing while someone else speaks. But just, just a lot of people handed in their, their techniques because we all kind of struggle with that, I think.

I can't remember if it was last episode, one of our most recent episodes. We were talking about the idea of silence as well and being. I don't know if you know. Do you know Brandon Brown have you ever heard of Brandon Brown? He's, he's kind of in a lean world or whatever, but he, he's. He's sort of taught me many years ago, like, to sort of embrace the silence, like, be okay with silence. And so, like, if you ever talk to, to guys like Brandon, often you'll ask a question and he'll just look at you and he's not trying to, like, make you uncomfortable or anything. He just looks at you and he's just trying to. Just trying to process what he wants to say. He doesn't rush to a. To a statement. And boy, that's so powerful. And I am not especially great at that either. I try to be, especially doing this podcast because I can fall into the trap as well. I got my next question and just waiting for that pause to where I can jump in, you know, and that's no good. You just, you know, two years, one mouth, right. Use it in that proportion.

I like that description you gave of how powerful that is. And we forget that. We forget how powerful a silence can be at any moment. And recently I, you know, different groups you work with have different comfort speaking out loud. And some groups, you ask a question and you got ready contributors. Some groups, there's silence and I feel like they're trying to wait me out. They're so uncomfortable. They just want to hope I pass this question by and we can just move on where I talk again, and I just sit, like you said, in total silence. And it's taken a long time. You know, I've been at this over 30 years where I'm, I'm very comfortable, really. I got all the time. And they eventually speak, so it's great. But you, you don't necessarily know that early on.

Yeah, I remember taking many, many years ago, pre Gemba Academy in the corporate world, we HR team gave us a class on behavioral interviewing. You know, how to interview people on these behavioral interviews. And one of them was like, you know, basically to the point of reacting the question, you know, some weird tell me a time sort sort of question, and sometimes you'll stump them. And then, and then they're just sitting there and it's silent, you know, and, well, you got to sit there and be silent for a little bit. Although it was interesting, they did say, I can't remember the exact threshold, but there was a threshold where they said, when I get to this point and they haven't said anything, they are in pure panic mode now. And so then it's okay to sort of jump in, maybe or whatever. But, but, but, but, yeah, just being, being, being okay with silence and just allowing, allowing time for everyone to think. You know, I think it's a. Such a powerful idea.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right, so the third part and the one that I'm, I'm, I'm especially interested because I'm fascinated with this topic is this the whole idea of, of habits. And I know you are big Charles Duhigg and BJ Fogg and that sort of, those folks sort of the original thought leaders, I think, in the whole habit movement. But, but adapt your routines is the, the phrasing that you're using for this third part. So talk a little bit about, about your approach to, to habits and how important or unimportant they are to, to the leader.

It's a great question. And I also want to acknowledge one of your guests, James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits. Then I learned just by listening to that podcast, some new techniques and got myself kind of spurred on a few habits that I had been stumbling on of late. And so using them as a backdrop. And I think I mentioned Duhigg and Fogg in the book, or someone else actually quotes Fogg. But you know, I use that, the neuroscience that they've made clear about, you know, the kind of the classic trigger habit reward that's, that's probably more doohickeg than anyone else. But. And then what are the habits, right, that we should be adopting? And I just address the ones that made the biggest difference to me. And one of the ones was people would say, oh, I'm not good with names. And I'm thinking not knowing a person's name is a really big detriment to leadership and relationships that if you don't put the effort into learning people's names, you're missing out. And people feel it, right? And even if you forget it, you can ask or if you want to make sure you got it right or you're pronouncing, pronouncing it right. I do that a lot. That's fine. People don't mind that. But to say that you're bad at names, it's a cop out because it's about intention. And the story I tell, when I learned this story big time was or this habit. I was working with a colleague, brand new to a consulting group, brand new to a client. We had a big off site retreat, big leadership, three day retreat. And the first night I got into a big circle with about 50 people. And my colleague, after, you know, introducing himself and asking everyone in the room to Introduce themselves, went around the whole circle. We introduced our end, maybe a little bit about them. Anyway, as soon as he was done, he said, okay, take your name tags off and throw them in the middle of the room. And everyone did that and laughed because they all knew each other, right? This is the leadership for a big insurance company. And I didn't know anybody. And he went around the room and he named every single person he knew, every single name of all 50 people. And I didn't know anyone. And I was just like, what have you done? Like. And the rest of the weekend, they. Or the week, they. Three days, they never put their name tags back on. And I had to go to him, my colleague Ben, and just go, okay, is that Vinnie or is that, you know, Mark? Can you remind me who. And just made sure I could, you know, get at least who I was in the group with. And it was. And afterward, you know, we're debriefing. I said, okay, so I hope, you know, you put me through a small piece of hell there. So can you tell me what you did? And so he described the first part, which is intent. He said, you have to want to know a person's name. That's where we make our first mistake. And he said, what happens is you ask someone their name and they tell you, right? So, hello, who are you? I'm Ron. Great, nice to meet you, Ron. And then you say your name. I'm Elizabeth. Now your brain lights up. That's me, right? So if I don't go back and remind myself and say your name again. All right, so Ron, you know, from here we're going to do xyz, then it's very easy for your name to go right out of my mind. So you have to be intentional. You have to repeat, might use their name a few times before you feel solid and you have that name. And the story that to me goes with this, to point out that reality that it's about intent is my husband always says, you know, I'm terrible with names. We go to a party, he goes, can you remind me who are all the people we're going to see? Who are people we might see? Just give me their names and make sure I know who they are. But he had told me the story about he used to be a bartender and one time he got rear ended and he looked in the rearview mirror and he went, oh, whiskey sour. Like he knew the person's drink, he knew that patron, he knew their drink, he knew their name because it mattered, right? It made a difference to him as a bartender in terms of tips and you know, his work and his livelihood. So I come back to it's intent and there's lots of different techniques. We can go over those. But I don't know, what do you do or how do you deal with that?

With names?

Yeah.

Have you ever heard this guy? I think it's forgot his name. Jim Kwik I believe his name is. And I think it's K W I K perhaps. But he's like this memory guru and, but he's got different, different techniques to remembering names. And it's almost like creating a story. You know, somebody has a particular look to them or he might just, I don't just, just weird things. And he assigns a story to that person. Right. And then that story is in what helps him sort of recall. Like he uses it like if you got to give a big long speech, you know, then break that speech up into the, there's 15 paragraphs. Well then each paragraph has a, as a, as a story behind it, an animal or something like that. And you go sheep, dog, pony, you know, and so you're just using those triggers, if you, those cues if you will, to sort of launch you into that thing. So I have tried to do that, you know, with names. But, but to your point, like I feel like it really is so critical to use their name as quickly as possible and then also not be ashamed to say, I'm so sorry, can you remind me what your name is? You know, and, but, but having a little contrition if you have forgotten, right, because you think about to Carnegie's work, right? And how to win friends and influence people. Like a person's name, you know, is very important to them. Foundational. Yeah, yeah. So, but even like the best sales people and obviously they, they know how to do that. Right? Like they know that if I forget your name, it's going to be very difficult to persuade you to do anything. Yeah. To do anything. Right. So, yeah, no, that's, that's so, so important. And I think that these habits and just little things like that are so important. It's just in the continuous improvement world, I think we, we underestimate the, the power of, of habit, as Duhigg named his book. Right.

Yeah.

Because life is a series of habits and many times to become unconscious, you don't even realize it. Like you have a habit for how you brush your teeth. You don't realize you do, but you do. You go to a certain part of your mouth first and then this part and you don't even think about it, right? These are habits. They're unconscious habits. And, you know, we've got bad ones as well. You know, oh, I pick up the cigarette and whatever. Whatever the habit is that. And you've got. If you want to not do that, you. It's very difficult, right? You have to undo that. That. Break that chain, so to speak. Whether it's the cue or the somehow.

Yeah, but the. Yeah, you're right. And it's. It. We are. We are a series of habits. And the. The one with. With names. I had a lot of people say if they were running a workshop, they would just form a sheet for each table. Five people are sitting at different tables and just block out who was sitting there and write their names. And they said often people never even noticed that their table had a sheet on it that could tell them who the names are with of the people, right? So just. That was a. That was a habit. First thing, every time do that. Or the habit of writing down what people are saying to me, right, that that is a habit. Or I remember another habit that it took me a while to learn. And this is probably, you know, how you start your day. So for some people, it's. It's immediately, I'm gonna read all my emails. And then you. You like that's a rabbit hole, right? Because that can lead into, am I doing everything I'm requested in each email? You know, like, you could. You could even say, all right, we're gonna do delete, defer. I might have a system for that, right? For my habits. But then I thought, wait a second. That is my best time. That's when my most creative. And I'm spending that time on emails. And so I said, no, I got to work out what's the main thing I want to get done. The thing that requires the most kind of thought process and creativity. That's first. So I blocked out. I formed a different habit for my morning and said, let me give that time over to the thing that matters to me. And then obviously, I'm going to get my emails done, but. But I'm also going to turn them off the other habit where they could just be on and interrupting you all day. And I was like, no, because we know from multitasking, even that momentary sort of hearing the sound, the audio cue, like somebody's trying to reach you, then your brain just disconnects for just that little bit. And then you got to get back into whatever you're doing. So turning that off and only opening it up like two other Times during the day, another habit. So those are the kinds of things I challenge people. Like, do you have that as your habit? Because, you know, then you can work with Doohig and B.J. fogg and James Clear on how to make that happen. Right. Make it digestible, make it, you know, something that involves, you know, a craving, things like that. Like, there's great neuroscience behind that. I love that stuff, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, gosh, this has been a great, great chat, Elizabeth. I appreciate you coming on. Is there any sort of parting thoughts or wisdom or anything that we haven't sort of explored out of the book that you wanted to share before we. We wrap things up?

I will share this because we're ending on habit, and that is that someone just posted on LinkedIn kind of a review of the book or how he was using it, and he was using it to read a chapter which he said, you know, took him five minutes. And then look at the prompt, because there's prompts after each chapter, chapter, and reflect on what he was decided, what he was going to experiment with, and then reflect on, you know, how that was going to work. So he was dedicating 10 minutes a day, which is quick. Which is a quick habit. Anyway, it just dawns on me that's part of what this is. What I had in mind was that something digestible, something you can manage.

Yeah, there.

There's my charting shot. A parting hat.

Great. If folks want to connect with you, Elizabeth, you're all over LinkedIn. I know that. But other. Is there other ways that folks can reach out to you?

Sure. You can reach me@elizabethlizabethswan.com right to my website. You can also reach me at Elizabeth at the Just in time cafe. That's jitcafe.com Tracy and I run. You know, we're a little. A little learning nexus with webinars and podcasts. Yeah. And LinkedIn. So I think those are good ways.

Yeah. And we're going to link to everything here in the show notes. But folks, just go to GembaPodcast.com this is for episode 487. Or just scroll down on the app, whatever you're listening to this on.

And.

And you'll see all the links there for. For Elizabeth. So. And that it's with an S if you're only listening. So anyhow. Well, thank you again, Elizabeth. It's been a lot of fun.

Absolutely, Ron. I loved it.

All right, take care. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or Perhaps you're just getting started. Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.