241: Why 52 Countries Say Hope Is Your #1 Dental Leadership Tool

Gallup released some fascinating data. You maybe saw this. They conducted one of their largest studies looking at what followers want from leaders. And this was across industry, across size and scale of organizations. Doesn't matter if you had an office with five employees or 50,000 employees. The one thing followers are looking for in leaders today. Single word, hope.

Hi, I'm Emmett Scott, and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succe in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show, we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems, and get you the answers you need to face these challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DEO Grow Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and today I'm excited to have Seth Madison with us. He's a futurist, a researcher, an advisor, helping leaders navigate change at that intersection of people and technology. And I think we're at a time historically where there's never been a greater amount of change, whether you look at it from a political, technology, man, social component. And I think every generation kind of feels like, oh, man, this is a lot of change. But I feel like we're the ones that can say no, really, this is like the most amount of change, you know, ever, at least for now. So, man, great to have you here, Seth. And it's fun to bring people who are kind of outside our dentistry, you know, bubble, because at the end of the day, you know, we're still dealing with humans, we're dealing with technology, we're dealing with the reality of politics, et cetera. And we've had something really interesting in dentistry. In a lot of ways, we felt kind of, I don't know, sheltered, protected, because we always said, you know, dentistry, health care is recession proof. We never said it was inflation proof, though. And we figured out, you know, being in the US during the last five years or so and printing a lot of money, that when you push labor costs up but you don't push revenue up, it changes things a lot. And a little bit like oil prices going up, all of a sudden, electrical cars start looking interesting. I think where dentistry, you know, has always dabbled in technology more on the clinical side, we're now more interested in. In all aspects. And I think on a personal level, many owners are also looking at blockchain and crypto. And just generally, there's so many moving Parts. But I guess to jump into it, what are you seeing big picture generally as you talk to other leaders, of course, outside of dentistry, what are universal truths that everyone's grappling with and thinking about right now?

Yeah, it's a great question and. Well, first of all, thanks, thanks for letting me join you. I'm looking forward to the chat. You know, everything that, that My firm at FutureSight Labs focuses on really is about one thing. It's helping leaders in their teams prepare for the future of work. And we really intentionally use that framing as a way to sort of look around the corner, try to identify and spot big disruptive shifts happening in the world and then study and try to understand how do the most high performing leaders and teams respond to, to all of that change. Future of work was really just a lens, it was a framework to think and talk about change. And I, I feel like I was born to do this work. And what I mean by that is I grew up on a fourth generation farm in Minnesota. So my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, all on the property at the same time. And I don't know if people typically think of like farming or agriculture as being entrepreneurial, but it is. I mean, it's constant reinvention. You're taking risks, you're, you know, trying to make some predictions about where the world is going to go. And every move you make has big capital implications because it's not cheap to shift your operations. And so I sort of have two schools of thought running through me. One is kind of trying to spot futurist trends, but I'm also deeply entrepreneurial and it feels like it's been in my bones. And so you're right. While we're not exclusive in the dental space, my firm is industry agnostic. We work across industry. Certainly we get to spend time in this space. But what it does is it lets me see and hear what other folks are thinking and talking about. And you really nailed at the top of this. You know, everybody is navigating a tremendous amount of ambiguity and change. You can't go to a conference and not hear people talk about it. In fact, we're almost, it's almost nauseating to be honest. We're like, we get it a lot of change. And one of the things I've done with the team this year was to like try to ask a different set of questions. Instead of thinking about what's new, what's next, how do we prepare? Around the corner, I started to ask a question of more like what's timeless, what's eternal. What can we anchor into in this moment? And I'll tell you why that's been an interesting exploration I think for all of your listeners. Gallup released some fascinating data. You maybe saw this back in February, specifically as it relates to this like timeless attributes. They conducted one of their largest studies looking at what followers want from leaders. And this was across industry, across size and scale of organizations. It doesn't matter if you had an office with five employees or 50,000 employees. And it was fascinating what the research showed. 52 countries, one of the biggest gallups run. The one thing followers are looking for in leaders today, single word. I'd be curious where your listeners minds are going right now. I was surprised by this, but the word was hope. And if we think about it, you know, maybe that actually makes a lot of sense given the state of the world, you know, geopolitical environments, the economy, inflation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I think in this moment in time, for all of us as leaders who are responsible for stewarding people, humans through this moment of time, yes, you're trying to grow your practice, but you're also responsible for caring for human beings. This is a moment in time where given all of this disruption, people are desperate for a sense of hope. And so if you think about that idea of, well, what does hope mean? You know, in general, hope is a belief that tomorrow can be better than today. And I would have, you know, everybody who's tuned in right now sort of reflect is like, number one, would your team consider you a hopeful leader? When you enter a space, when you come into your clinic, when you're interacting with folks, do you exude a hopeful spirit about where the world is going, artificial intelligence, its impact? It reminds me. And then I'll come back to you, Emmett, on this. One of my favorite quotes comes from futurist Thomas Frey. And he said there's two characteristics of every successful person I know. One is that a deep belief that tomorrow can be better than and two, that I have the power to make it so. And I think there's a really important element to that. He's talking about hope, but there's a secondary element here. It's hope plus agency. I believe that tomorrow can be better than today and I have the power to make it so. And so. I think in this moment in time, one of the big themes and secondary actions I see leading inside of organizations trying to take is how do I help my people see a hopeful vision of the future, number one. But number two, how do we embed in our culture and in our people a sense that they have a power to influence that future reality, that they have agency and ownership to be a force upon the world and to help co create this thing that we're going to create next. So hope plus agency is sort of a starting place. In this moment in time are two big themes that I both see and I'm deeply passionate about in my own firm and with my own teams to move us through this moment.

Yeah, it's awesome. By the way, if you're in deo, Seth's going to be speaking at our event coming up October 9th through the 11th. We're thrilled to have him there. You'll get some one on one time to chat and he'll be talking through these principles. Our whole focus is on revenue and increasing the revenue piece and obviously being able to kind of think about and see and lead into the future is a critical part. So if you haven't signed up for that in deo, make sure you get

registered, get signed up. Let's go. I can't wait to see everybody there.

You know, one of the frameworks that we use and understand about the human experience of entrepreneurship is underneath it is really this intense desire for personal development. Right. I think of entrepreneurship as like the crossfit of personal development. You know, you're like, hey, you can do overhead press, but can you do handstand push ups? You know, it's just, it constantly pushes you. And in our industry you have a clinician, a dentist and a associate who's decided, you know what, I've reached the max of my capability. I've taken tons of ce, I'm, I'm treating patient patients really well. I kind of want to drive my own destiny here. And so I'm going to open a practice, I'm going to own that practice. And then they're in this really intense cycle of dopamine and cortisol where it's like there's all these shiny things, there's all these anxieties, et cetera. Yeah. And that becomes kind of their strategic plan. Like, and in the beginning it kind of works because there's bunch of crises to fix and to learn, and then it stops working and they hit the ceiling. And so the big thing at DEO is we're helping them get the tools to move from entrepreneur to executive. And as you were talking, when I, when I think about executive, you know, it's not just like the white shirt tie, you know, so forth. It's a confidence, it's a clarity. As McKinsey and Bain have studied top level leaders on the business side, they have one skill set which is they know how to prioritize and invest in the highest return on investment items. And I like how that ties into the emotional leadership part you're talking about. Hope is, you know, a leader who can sit in all of the different things that are broken in their company. Because if you're growing, you are broken and you have this potential and sit there and go, that fire can burn. That's actually not a big deal. We're going to get there, don't worry about that. Let's just focus on this. Let's execute on it. Well, let's get the return on investment. I'm not going to be the leader of like, oh, that, that happened on Tuesday, that ticked me off. I'm going to change everything and constantly whiplash you, but I'm just going to move forward in this methodical way. And it makes me think of Elon Musk was getting interviewed and someone is it really disappointing and frustrating when you see your rockets just explode and you know, you're like trying to do this and then they fall over and so forth. And I was really interested in how he was going to respond to that because I would think that would be like, these are millions of dollars, you know.

Totally, totally.

I told you guys to check that sensor, you know, whatever. But the way he responded was so amazing. He goes, well, we are trying to figure out how to go to Mars, right? Like it was just like, there's going

to be some rockets that blow up en route to Mars. You might expect a few rockets to blow up.

And you know, obviously not all of us are trying to accomplish multi planetary, you know, species. But what we're doing does feel like we're trying to get to Mars, whatever it might be, you know, whatever growth and you know, getting our practice to the next level, adding another practice, whatever it might be, it is for us the biggest challenge. And being able to sit in confidence, sense of like, it's okay, I have some turnover here, it's okay. And then reflecting on the self awareness of improvement without just totally going off the edge is just so important.

So anyway, I love that you said self awareness as you were sort of describing that. The word that came to mind, which has been an ongoing theme as of late with clients, is this idea of discernment and it needs to be activated for entrepreneurs slightly different than internal executives, but that, you know, that internal knowingness. And you mentioned self awareness. So like to know Yourself to trust yourself. Like, I made decisions. I got a piece of data back that, like, maybe makes me question, should I just throw it, like, knowing what that next step is. And I do think it's where organizations like DEO and yourself, folks that have been there, that have done that, you know, for leaders like this to have people to lean into. Right. Because trusting yourself is also knowing when you don't know. Right. It's having the humility and the openness when to raise your hand and say, I need a little bit of guidance here. When to listen to yourself and when to listen to those outside voices to move through this moment in time. Because you're right. I think it's true for all entrepreneurs, but particularly in this space and particularly in this time, you know, you can wake up and you can feel pulled in a million different directions. You know, should we, should we working on sales and marketing today? And like, should we working on our patient experience stuff like, do I need to be focused, focusing on reducing expenses? Like, and I'm all over the place. And, and you talked about putting out fires as an entrepreneur and a leader. I also know there's, there's that dopamine kick of like, running around and solving everybody's problems. And like, I feel great when I do it. And at the end of the day, you're like, you ran around and put out fires and solved problems. But, like, did you advance the business? And is that actually really where you're going to get the most torque and leverage is by you in that role versus Right. Coming up. And, and really thinking as an architect. So I, I, I, I total love where you're going with that sense and sensibility that we need as leaders today.

Yeah. We use a framework I call idope, which is every idea needs to be documented, then organized, then prioritized, then executed on as entrepreneurs, we go idea execute, idea execute. But it really is grounded in theory of constraints for highest return. Now, along those lines, you can't do a podcast without talking about AI anymore and the impact that this is having on leveraging workers. And, you know, to what extent is it a distraction? To what extent is it one of the most powerful tools ever? I'm curious how you think about that kind of using your framework of what's timeless too, and how those two worlds kind of come together.

Yeah, it's a great question. Obviously, super top of mind. I'm thinking about it. I was just this past weekend at an event, Zach Cass open before I went, he was obviously go to market lead at OpenAI when they brought ChatGPT to market. And fascinating getting to hear, you know, his take. If I were to summarize, what I appreciate about Zach is he really is. He's an optimist about the future, where it's going to go. I think his book comes out in January called the Great Renaissance. And you know, there's definitely things we need to be mindful of, but a combination of hearing him speak then seeing and I would guess you probably saw this, your listeners probably saw this. You know, MIT's report that came out 95% right of AI projects not, not generating a positive return on investment. And I think all of that just, it's like this is early days. Zach said it too. It's like we are way earlier than any of us realize. Where I'm at in this exact moment is most, and I'm in a lot of Fortune 50 organizations. Very few businesses have got to the place where they're actually leveraging artificial intelligence to reinvent and streamline business process and workflows. They're in the state of like trying to get individuals to use it, develop new muscle memories, memory, and they're individually using it to be more efficient, more effective in their individual roles. And they're just trying to get them to embrace that. And so I think for small, smaller operators, mid size operators, there's, there's real opportunity for us to get our people. Yes, if you can get to the step of actually thinking through workflow, reinvention and process and using new tools. You know, one of the great advantages for us is we don't have a huge compliance and IT department that shuts down every idea and we're uberly wor worried about like the next data breach. Like we're probably going to be okay. To me, for this group, this is a cultural thing of muscle memory, routines, rituals and habits where my whole team is starting to develop curiosity around these tools and like all things in culture. And I know you all talk about this too, it's like cultures, you know, of course it's rooted by values and behaviors, but it's routines, rituals and habits that reinforce those things that we said were important to us. And so I think if you're here and you're wanting to be an AI first, or at least an AI leveraged organization is to not just like encourage people to use the tools, but to develop it into routines, rituals and habits. Where we're talking about it, we're experimenting about it. Every Monday we've got some clients like every Monday, 15 minutes, a little roundup and people sharing. What did you experiment last week? Like, tell us about one thing you did that improved one process so we can learn from each other and then we celebrate the folks that are leaning into those things. So if I'm, I'm sitting in, in your listener's shoes, it's like I'm looking at a minimum step one of like, are my people, are they unafraid? Are they curious? Are they finding torque in interesting ways? And then step two, and I'd be curious, Emmett, y' all are probably supporting people in this. Step two is that real business process reinvention where we get real torque and real leverage. But I wouldn't, I don't want people to be freaked out, like if they're not there yet, because from my vantage point, very few of my clients are.

Yeah. For older people, we're in like 1995 of the dot com era, right?

Totally, totally, totally.

There's like a Netscape browser is kind of coming out and everyone's like, do you think this Internet thing's going to go somewhere and what's that going to look like? You know, I can't help but take concepts and put them in frameworks. And I love what you're saying. I almost see this, this pyramid, if you will, on the base is that term hope. Right. And then I almost see the next level up sitting on top of that. I loved your word curiosity. And then ironically, sitting at the very top is failure. And my thought is that if you're sitting on that base of hope and you build a culture of curiosity where people are trying things and then it allows for failure to happen where people are. And you can quickly replace failure with learning. Right. And then pretty soon that leads into some level of breakthrough and success. But it makes me realize that organizations that have so much anxiety, so much fear, they can't have curiosity because they have to be grounded in what is known and people are too nervous to make mistakes because of the potential for termination and those kind of things.

Emmett, can I give you that, Can I give you one quick idea on that?

Around the fear.

And again, like, and I'll give two examples right now. One, doing some work this past summer with State Farm and a group of their high performing leaders. Again, muscle memory, trying to use new internal tools. I use them as example because financial services, insurance, healthcare, defense contractors, there's a lot of fear around security. No one wants to be the Enron of AI. They don't want to be the first one. And so this might be a concept that could be Useful for folks. One of the things we talked about there was this, this, this concept of inside and outside the sandbox. Inside the sandbox terminology is like using internally approved tool. So whatever you've deemed with your operation, let's, let's assume you set up some guardrails, that's inside the sandbox for State Farm, that's their internal AI tool. But they're also then encouraging people to play outside the sandbox with their, in that case their own devices, their own tools using non proprietary sensitive information. Because there's always, every week there's a new AI application rolling out. And so instead of just letting people throw up their arms of like, well we can't because it's restricted or our internal tool isn't that great or we're not allowed break that by creating a safe space internally, but then create a playground externally where people can experiment and go wild in a safe environment. And why are you doing it? Again, it's because it's muscle memory. We're not afraid of those things if we get exposure to them. The last thing I'll say on this and you'll.

By the way, can I give an application?

Oh please. Yeah, please. There.

So to the extent that you're accessing phi data, things like that, you're going to want to really strong walled garden around that. You're going to want to do your due diligence. You're going to want to, you know, if we just had a large DSO group that was using AI for phone calls, which sounds, you know, very benign except what hadn't gotten thought through is that that's a recorded call. And in some states you have to say this is a recorded call. So they're getting sued for, you know, tap fraud or whatever. And so, and I'm thankful for the big groups that have the, you know, the arrows for us. Right?

Totally, totally.

Then we're like okay, cool, thanks for doing that. But outside of that, I mean if you're building a job description, if you're running an ad, there's so many things that are non phi type stuff that people can, if you're building out like scripting to review for how maybe the phone call needs to do so many of these things that are frankly like a lot of copywriting, hard thinking work for, for many of us and AI can just spit out a version. And I always jokingly say like it's so much easier to edit and criticize than it is to write from zero. And in a lot of ways AI just does the zero to something. And then you're getting like, I hate that. I love this. And there's just so many applications, I've seen people use it in their emails of, you know, a patient requests something. This could be kind of like that middle ground where you're like, okay, give me a response, like a good executive assist and then edit it from there. So, so many applications that fit into the framework you just said.

I totally agree with that. And I think about, you know, I think about a sort of standard bell curve of like where folks are at in the process of adopting this stuff. Let's say you and I and a bunch of listeners are maybe earlier, we're early power users. What I say to folks, and you've maybe experienced this too, that are in that camp. I think the new thing for us to be aware of is, is be sure you don't give away all your critical and creative thinking to the machines. And I'm not suggesting you are. I've just noticed it with myself and I think it's a good red, red flag of like all of a sudden you're like, man, have you ever shipped a piece of work and it like you sent it out, what an email, a report, whatever. And you're like, do I really actually know what went in that thing? Like there's a difference between editing and co creating and handing over agency in the writing. And I. And there's leaders I've worked with right now that like, that hit pretty close to home home because we've gone there. So don't give away that creative critical thinking in the process of leveraging these new tools too.

It's always a challenge as leaders of. It kind of fits in the framework of delegation versus abdication. Right? And this is like if you think of AI as just another employee set, you just have to be careful where you're like, yeah, I've just given her power to do whatever. And you're like, you're not Leon anymore. You're just abdicating over. And you could fall into that trap with AI to Nailed it, nailed it, nailed it.

I think the last thing on this front is just. And Zach really spoke and leaned into this and a lot of my work is around this too is, you know, these tools, they're, they're going to create some commoditization because we all have access to them. And so it's like is that sort of frees up and takes a bunch of work. It opens up interesting questions of what parts of the work do we not want to give to the machine? What Parts do we want to keep? And I think for all of us, you know, folks that, you know, creating that exceptional patient client experience, thinking about where do we want the human to create a really unique and powerful experience? Because if all my competitors are leveraging all the new AI digital tools and that creates parity, the place where we win is going to be with our human advantage.

Totally.

Yeah, yeah.

Commoditize as much as you can the system so you can customize the connection. Right. I think that's super powerful, the, the one human component there. So a lot of people, you know, a lot of systems can go ahead and call the insurance companies and do insurance verification, but that person walking in the door and giving them that smile, like it just creates room and space totally for those kind of things. Um, as you think about the future and being a leader, I'm curious your thoughts maybe in closing here for many of our entrepreneurs, they're struggling with building the vision cuz they're feeling so overwhelmed, right? And I love the saying like I can give a man anything he wants. The hard part is for him to figure out what he wants. And I, I find that a challenge for myself at times when really, you know, pushed of. Well, Emmett, what's, what's the goal here? What's the vision? What are you trying to achieve as you think about developing that muscle as a leader, Developing out your vision? Are there some exercises, activities, places you can go and maybe even things to avoid? You know, like I, I find that, that being grounded in the news is not helpful for me developing out the future vision. Right. It just sucks too much energy and too much and creates too much cortisol concern and fear. So I'm curious as a, as a leader, maybe you've got a dentist who's like man, I didn't think of myself as a leader. I thought of myself as a healer and a perfectionist and I wanted to provide great care. But I've been so good at that that now I've got all these humans that are looking at me as a leader. You know, I, I jokingly say like if you're good at business, the universe rewards you with a bunch of crazy humans to lead. Right? And so it's true now, now they're sitting there and like everybody's looking at me like I know what I'm doing here. I'm making this up as I go as well.

Isn't that the truth? Isn't that the truth? This is a great question. Before I answer it, I know this com, this camera that I Have is going to do a reset. It's going to pause and click back on. And so I'm going to let it do that and then I'm going to answer this question. So it's going to take two seconds. Let me do this.

You know your technology.

You know, I do. I've done it enough to know. And it's usually like, right as I'm giving a beautiful clothes and the camera will do a reset and be like, damn it. So it's a great question. You know, I think, listen, this, this all comes back to knowing yourself and getting to the core of what's most important to you, what matters most and. And what I believe to be true, based on sociology, psychology, the neuroscience of it, is that it ultimately comes back to our values. What you value determines what you do. And I know y' all do a bunch of work around this. And so it's like first and foremost is reconnecting and answering back to that. Like, what matters most to me? What are my values? What are the values that are driving the decisions that I make? Do you know what those are? A good place to start is like, there's tons of great values assessments that are out there. I really appreciate the work of as a Canadian researcher and bestselling author named David Allison. He coined the term value graphics, so conducted over 2 million surveys around the world conduct like essentially build one of the largest models of what we as humans value around the world. Of that work, 52 core values surfaced out of the research. It's one of the ones I recommend for every leader of. Like, where do you start? One, understanding. Knowing what my core values are. And I'm moving in the direction when I move and make decisions in alignment with my values, you feel it in your body. That's one too. If I'm trying to galvanize a group of people. Leadership. You. You've gone from practitioner to leader. What is leadership about? Leadership is ultimately about influence. I know you know that it's like this is about influencing outcomes, moving people in a direction. And if what we value as human beings determines what we do, then my responsibility as a leader is to understand what my people value, what are their core values. And what I want to do is I want to be able to understand what I care about, cast a vision that's in alignment with. With it, and then I want to help people see themselves in that vision that's in alignment with what they value. And so when what you value and what I value come together towards a vision, now we have movement. Now we have action. But you brought up a good point of like having the space and the capacity to do it. One of the themes I'll talk about briefly when we're together is the idea of regenerative performance and regenerative work. It draws inspiration from the theme of regenerative agriculture I mentioned. I grew up on a fourth generation farm. You know, I saw the impacts of traditional industrial farming practices, what it does to the land. And what I mean by that specifically, and I'll close with this is, you know, for a long time when we didn't know better, the market essentially drove what we put in the ground. So if corn or soybeans were high, that's what you put in the ground. And you did it over and over and over again until you've extracted every last ounce of nutrients out of that soil, until the soybeans soil is barren. And the truth is that's exactly what we've done to ourselves and to our people. We've been in this idea of like extracting performance, extracting productivity, extracting engagement. I really believe that the future of growth is human expansion, not human extraction. We have to expand people's ability to do more with less without burning out and maintaining their well being. We need to do it for them and we need to do it for ourselves. And so we'll talk about a couple of concepts of like, what would it feel like to regenerate your capacity to feel and whole and nourished, to be able to go build that vision and then help your people find reserves with small tweaks in the way they work and connecting to their whys and their values so that the work feels meaningful, important, they understand their why and it keeps your patience at the center of everything that you do. We get more out of our people and we grow our practices, which is what we're all trying to do.

And awesome.

I'm really looking forward to the time to get together.

Hey, thank you for being so generous on this. I mean the principles are, are, are truly, you know, eternal in nature and apply not only to entrepreneurship, but probably like every mom and dad out there as well, and husband, wife, and every relationship, right? That's grounded. You know, to, to summarize too, I think if you ask yourself the question, maybe this combines both that hope, that vision, that servant leadership is like, who do you want to be a hero for? For. Right. Like, what would really make you excited if you were solving their problems. Another great Elon Musk is you're compensated for the level of problem that you're solving and I think it creates an unselfishness when you start thinking that way and lead that way. Seth, this has been awesome. I'm so excited to be with you in Dallas and appreciate it. For those who have not signed up, get signed up. We'll see you there. If you haven't checked out DEO, go to deodentalgroup.com and set an appointment. You can learn more about us. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to deo's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook group and meet other dental leaders. Get questions answered and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join deo's group Growth Secrets group on Facebook. And until next time, keep smiling.