Current Job Reset: If I Could Go Back In My Time Machine #32

After all, all art is experience.

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Company Doctor. Get ready to jump in your DeLoreans because today we're encouraging you to go back in time and recapture the enthusiasm and energy you brought to the first 90 days in a new role and apply it to your current job. So buckle up and get ready for do-overs, early wins, Back to the Future quotes, and the magical power of 5. Gary? Over to you.

Gary Gamp.

Gary, hello. Hey, double whammy.

That scared me a bit.

How are you? Sorry. I'm very well. I'm fantastic. Terrific.

How are you? I'm awesome. But where have you been?

I know. It's been a long time. It's been a long while.

We've had lots of amazing guests, but not the George and Gary Show for a while, right?

I know, but it's back with a vengeance now. It's what people have been waiting for.

Well, it's back to the future, isn't it?

Whoa, it is.

Great segue. Great Scott. I know, I'm going to try not to do too many Back to the Future lines.

But why are we doing them? Maybe we should explain that.

Yeah, exactly. So the current, this episode is called Current Job Reset. If I could get back in my time machine.

Yeah, I was thinking about that title as I was loading it up this morning. It's getting back in your time machine. It does sound a bit Back to the Future-y, but anyway, yes.

And it presumes you've already got a time machine, I suppose, as well, right? Yeah, yeah.

Which I do, obviously.

Obviously. What sparked me on this one was a lot of people are talking to me about, you know, they want to think of changing jobs or they wish they could do better in what they're doing. Yeah. And there's quite a famous book called The First 90 Days, going back quite a long time, which I kind of like part of it. I like the idea of it, but it's basically if you're going to start a new job, then 'What's your planning for the first 90 days?' So you get off to a great start. And then it just got me thinking about, well, why can't you just do that with your current job without quitting? I mean, you could quit and go and do something else, and then you can use the same ideas, but why can't you use the same ideas and excitement that you have starting a new job with your current job? What do you think?

Yeah, I like it. So you're sort of getting back in the mindset of when you start a new job, you've got what is usually the probation period of 90 days-ish to sort of establish yourself. And also, as you say, you've got that excitement and sort of get up and go attitude.

Which kind of, yeah, but even more than that, it's a reset. It's like kind of like create new energy, forget what happened, let's do it again and do it better. I was listening to a song this morning, as you do, called The Time Machine. Okay. By the very famous Money Long.

I can't say I know that one.

No, you don't know that one? We should add it to the playlist.

We should. Yeah, yeah, let's do it.

Because it's very relevant to this episode. And it's all about that kind of, if you, it's actually about a relationship, but the principle is if I could go, if I could do my relationship again, would I do anything differently to keep it all going?

Yeah. Interesting. And it's a question that you ask a lot of the guests that come on this show towards the end. It's sort of, you know, if you had your time again, what would you do differently and why? Yeah, it's my favorite question. Yeah, and it's something which I think you should be asking yourself regularly. Exactly.

And anyway, Marty, where we're going, we don't need roads.

Just throw it in there.

Sorry, I don't know anymore. There's so many lines. So really straight, you know, basically in this podcast, weirdly, there are 3 parts.

Oh wow, it's like I've heard it before. It's like I've gone back to the future.

I think so. And the first one is someone gave me this line which I hadn't heard. I think it was actually My wife gave me this line, doing a do-over.

Oh yeah, the do-over.

Have you heard of a do-over?

It's an American phrase, yeah.

Is it? I've never heard of it before, but this is my do-over. Okay. Which is basically the first 90 days reset. If you get the chance to do it again, it's called a do-over apparently.

Yeah, we can do anything. If you make a mistake, you say, oh, can I have a do-over? As in, can I just try that again?

I've never heard of it before, but I like it. Yeah. So give a bit of credit to the wife. I think it's always a good thing to do.

It's healthier that way.

Certainly. So the first section is about the do-over. In the first 90 days. And so if you had the chance, think about this, like you're in your job, it doesn't matter what level you are, if you're a manager, you're not a manager, I know your bosses drives you mad, forget all that, just forget everything for a minute. But just think about if you did have the chance to freeze, there was a movie called Clockstoppers, I don't know if you ever watched it, but the idea of the movie was through this movie, this character, he had like a remote control, when he didn't like where he was, he just pressed pause.

Sounds great.

And then just kind of, you know, reverse back and do things differently. So if you could kind of press the pause button, what would you do? And so here's some ideas. The first one is to diagnose the business situation you're in. So it's like, it doesn't matter what job you do, what your role is, but what is it you're trying to do? And there's 4 types of business situation, just to help people that are listening. The first one is, you know, you could be in a startup, you could be in a turnaround, you could be in some kind of realignment or revitalization of some sort, or you could be just trying to sustain success. A lot of people are trying to get into growth or accelerate what they're doing, and they're the kind of 4 types, only 4 things really you're going to come across, and you're going to be in one of those. So starting point is kind of work out which one is it.

Yeah, find out which of those you are.

You like it? You're with me? So you're pausing as if I'm going to tell you something else.

No, no, no, I'm just, I'm going through it in my head. I'm just, yeah, exactly, trying to figure out which one of those I am.

Yeah, no, exactly. So anyone that's listening, if you're in a startup, it's about assembling people, it's about funding, it's about tech. If you're in a turnaround, you're probably in trouble, so therefore you need to get back on track. If you're on some kind of realignment, you're revitalizing your unit or your function, or you're reinventing yourself, the business or something. And if you're sustaining success, you're just preserving what I would call vitality of success. It's kind of what's already there, making it better, almost taking it to the next level. Marty, where are you going? We don't need roads. Nice. Yeah, so those are the 4 things. So the reason for doing that is there's different actions required depending how you are and how urgent it is.

Right, okay. So the most urgent of that sounds like the turnover.

Yeah, the turnaround. Turnaround, yeah. Turnover is something like you have with apple pie.

That's right, yeah, which I very much like.

I like it too. Yeah, so if there's a real sense of urgency, you can't kind of hang about. 'And actually, your do-over needs a bit more urgency to it.' But anyway, so I'm just kind of giving people the chance. And then the second part of that is what I would call kind of assessing your vulnerabilities. Yeah. Does that make sense to you?

Yeah, definitely. Well, it's knowing your weaknesses, isn't it? It's identifying what needs work, I guess.

Yeah, because if you're going to go to the trouble of resetting and doing your first 90 days again, then you kind of need to be honest and open enough that you don't want to rely on your— what happened in the past, because if you don't change, you don't change, right? So it's a chance to kind of reflect a bit, and, and I call it accelerated learning. But if I, you know, accelerated learning for me, if I take my own self in the middle of it, so I'm trying to improve on something, I'm looking to reflect, looking to be honest, and looking to be practical. So, you know, if you can do those things, then that's the starting point. So you've diagnosed what type of business problem you're trying to resolve, you know, the the startup turnaround, which is kind of resource intensive, I suppose, or the realignment, or sustaining success is about growth. And then me standing back and going, you know what, if I had the chance to do this again, what would I do? I do ask that question, don't I, a lot.

And is it more what would I do differently, or what did I do wrong the first time? Is it sort of a bit of both?

Yeah, a bit of both, really, because you might not have done much wrong. It's not all about, you know, failure, but it's actually about doing things better next time. And a good example is anyone who's a consultant gets the chance to do it better next time. Well, they don't always do it better next time. Yeah, in fairness, but they get the chance to do it better next time. So you go, right, I did this project, it looked a bit like this, and I've got another one like that, and I remember last time when I did that, made my hair go blue, and therefore I'm not going to do that next time. I'm going to make it pink next time.

Yeah, and I suppose you could do that with any, you know, consultant or whatever on a project-by-project basis. I suppose people You should be encouraged to do that all the time, you know, learn from mistakes almost, or not even learn from mistakes, as you say, but sort of figure out what you could have done better.

Absolutely. And because of that, so if you follow my process so far, so because you're willing to get back in your time machine, or you can move to another job or something, but if you decide you want to kind of do this again, then you're almost reverse engineering so that you can hit the ground running. Okay. Here's the classic one, right? You've recently started a new job. When someone starts a new job, they're full of optimism and excitement and they've got no baggage from the past.

Yeah.

No offense. So when you start your job, you're like, okay, here I am, I'm super cool. They've hired me because I'm really good at what I do. Yeah. And you do draw on your experience. No, I'm not going to pick on you, but anyone who started a new job will go, I've done this job before I got hired because I know what I'm doing, hopefully. And you kind of build a bit of a plan. You go, right, it might be a 90-day plan, it might not be. So therefore, if you weren't starting over. Yeah, yeah. But you took your mind to the place where I was, if I was starting over in my job and I'm not moving somewhere, what would I do? What would my game plan be?

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I mean, as you say, I'm in that position currently where I'm sort of, I'm a week into a new job. And I suppose what you're saying is in 2 years' time, If I'm still at the same company, I should look at what I'm doing currently and look back on these next 3 months and think, what would I have done differently? And try and give myself the same energy and flair that I've got now. Because you acquire baggage, as you say, don't you? Even over 2 or 3 years at the same company, you start getting bogged down with the company politics and all these other bits and pieces. But when you start somewhere new, you're sort of, as you say, flashy and fresh.

Exactly that. And, you know, I kind of talk about getting yourself out of the way. I think, yes, just someone's listening and they've been in a job for 10 years or 5 years or 1 year, it doesn't matter. What I'm saying to you is, you know what, why don't you just stop? Because you're working too hard. Yeah. And if you, if you were cutting down trees, you know, my analogy is go and sharpen your axe. Don't keep chopping down trees. Stop. And let's go back to the future.

Nice. I suppose it's also a bit of an alternative because we've talked in the past about, you know, if you're not happy, you know, just go find somewhere that's going to make you happy, find a role that will make you happy. But this is a bit of an alternative to that, you know, it's something to consider before making that move. It's actually, you know, why don't you try resetting yourself in the role that you're currently in, or the position you're currently in? And then if that doesn't work, then maybe— but then consider going on or go backpacking around Europe or something.

So here's, here's some ideas. So as always, I'm just kind of setting the context, but here's some ideas. So If you're with me on this thought process and you feel it's worth— whoever's listening feels it's worthwhile, the most important question you can ask yourself to go back to the future, if you're willing to do this, is what would you do if you had no constraints? Because constraints get in your way and therefore they stop your thinking and stop you advancing. They're kind of standing right in front of you and stopping you. You're getting yourself in the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, absolutely. It's easier said than done, isn't it? But yes, obviously it's a fundamental part of resetting.

Yeah. So I mean, what would you do if you had no boss limiting you, if you had no budgets holding you back, if you had nothing in your way, and including yourself, what could you do? So therefore, that's a great place to start. I appreciate that you might think, well, yeah, Gary, that's great, but I'm in the real world. And of course you are, but don't be in the real world yet.

So sorry, why does it help to think that way? Just out of interest, sort of what— why is it good to put yourself in a position where, you know, imagine you can do anything, what would you do?

Because I think it really narrows your thinking because there's so many problems in front of you that you can't see a way past it and you're not as creative as you could be. And that's why people hire consultants, because sometimes people think, oh, it's okay for them, they don't have to deal with it. It is okay for them, but therefore they can think in a slightly different way outside the box sometimes. I'll give you an example. I was coaching a leadership team, working with them. They were really good people, but they were a bit battle-hardened. They'd been really hard and they were managers. They supported lots of people. And one particular guy said, we were talking about advancing and getting his team moving. He said, you know what, I've tried so many times. My company, I won't mention the name. My company is just, it's just no point anymore. Now, he was really downbeat, normally a really positive guy, and he just kind of had enough. I kind of got why, I didn't disagree with him. Sure. That's not going to help anyone. And by the way, if you're a manager, you're responsible for other people. So stop sucking your thumb, you need to get on with it, right? Yeah. I asked him a question. I said to him, look, I understand. I won't even mention his name, but I said, look, if I hired you as a consultant to solve the problem that we'd articulated, 'Cause you're a really experienced guy. If you came in, which you have done before, what would you do? And he went, I would do this, I would do this, I would do this. I said, fantastic, why don't you do that?

Just do that, yeah, that's good. Just do that. Yeah, it's very difficult to get yourself out of your own brain, isn't it? But you just need the encouragement of someone else sometimes.

Take constraints out of the way, put them back later, take them out of the way, that's why. It really opens up your mind and magic happens. Nice. Yeah, you like it? Yeah, because what you're looking for is to show progress to yourself. So if you've decided to reset and get back in the time machine, You need to secure some early wins because if you don't, then your mind's going to tell you, I know why I bother to do this. Yeah, here we go again. I mean, I told you all those constraints are going to get in my way. So the first most important thing you need to do is have some early wins. And by the way, as you know, I'm a believer in telling people what you're doing, telling people your goals. So therefore you've put it out there. I'm resetting now with your team. You can, you can bring them all together with it. It's a quite an exciting team exercise, to be honest. And so therefore, by the end of this transition or whatever it is, you want everyone to feel that something good is happening. And therefore, early wins kind of create this excitement and energy and definitely build your credibility.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you can sort of, because there's a level of jeopardy, isn't there? If you sort of say, listen guys, we're doing this and here's why. And then you can show a couple of early wins to say, look, we're on the right path. But then inevitably, if it doesn't work out, you're accountable to the people that you've told They plan to.

I think that's the exciting part about it because it's almost like, because people will do it when they do a new job, they go, right, they don't talk about their baggage and what didn't work before, but they're just going, right, I'm really good at this, I'm so excited, we're going here, we have a team meeting and just do that now, do that in the moment. And then obviously you've got to take the business situation into account. So we talked about different types of scenarios. So, you know, you might need to be faster if it's in a bit of a turnaround, but definitely get those quick wins early and shout from the hills. And, you know, if you've got a team, give them the credit, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

The second one is it's really important to achieve alignment. I think part of the reason people kind of grind to a halt is, you know, I've talked a lot about alignment versus agreement, you know, get alignment, not agreement. People try to get everything to be green and everything, want to love each other and hold hands, but that's not life. And then you battle so hard that you kind of give up. It's too difficult, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the higher you go, the more important I think alignment is. Because if you stack part of this discovery, I'm going to give you a bit of a game plan, of course, later. But part of this activity is about collaboration. Yeah. You know, you can't do this on your own. And actually, part of our failings of the past might have been because we tried to do it on our own. Yeah.

Or you've tried to get everyone to agree rather than to align.

So, you know, we're in the 21st century. The key thing about being in the 21st century is collaboration. Whether it's analog or digital, it doesn't matter. But you need to get people on board. And if they can align to your way of thinking, then you've crossed the line because they may not agree with you. And that's okay. Yeah. Ah, scary. Nobody calls me chicken. That was a line from the film again.

Oh, really?

I thought you'd run out. That's my last one. Nobody calls me chicken, Scott.

Oh, wait, that's Buzz, isn't it? Or whatever his name is. I don't know well enough. So you need to be accepting of the fact that people may not agree with you, but as long as they align with where you're going, that's fine. And accept that. Yes.

Okay. Because if someone's willing to align, they're willing to go with you on the journey and give you the benefit of the doubt. So that's, that's part of that game plan. Yeah. And it's all about collaboration. So secure some early wins because psychologically for you, you're moving forward, but also with your team, they can see success in your peers. Achieve alignment. I'm going to show you the game plan to who you think you need to align with, obviously. And then you've got to build your kind of team and coalitions. So you're kind of almost like an architect or the chef. And you need your little ingredients.

So your team are your ingredients.

Well, and your peers, other collaborations or other parts of the company are your ingredients. And so if you want to be the the chef of your function or unit, there's 5 things to consider. One is, what's the strategy? The second one is, what's the structure? The third one is, what sort of systems are important? The fourth one is, what's the skills? And the fifth one's the culture. Those 5 things are the kind of foundations of your recipe. Yeah, those are the key— key ingredients, right? Nice.

What's the end result?

What's the meal? A nice meal, a nice 5-course meal that goes together. Yeah, so doing that, because again, you've kind of, you've stopped, you've gone off to sharpen your axe or reset your life a little bit, you go back in a time machine, and then most people are thinking, okay, that's great, well, what do I do? How do I do it? What do I do? And if you do it on your own, then you're misunderstanding what we're trying to cover.

Yeah, okay. So collaboration is key here.

Collaboration is super important. And the third thing is about getting yourself out of the way. Okay. And the way you get yourself out of the way is with the Power of Five. All right.

Is that a Back to the Future quote, or is that just one of your own?

No, I came up with it. I know you like these little words I come up with. I do.

I like the buzzwords.

Yeah, absolutely. The idea is basically the Power of Five. Hopefully you're going to ask me what the Power of Five is.

What is the Power of Five?

Wow, that's really interesting, George, that you should ask such a question. The Power of Five is kind of like a superpower, but having one power per day. Because what's the point of deciding I'm going to reset, I'm going to get back in my time machine, I do the thinking, reflection of all the things I need to do, and then I don't do anything with it? What's the point?

There isn't one.

So I know we give lots of advice on making things happen and providing action plans, and we've given loads of different plans. But I was trying to think of a way to really make this impactful and make sure that someone does it. Okay. And I came up with the superpowers. Great. How do they work? Looking worried about—

What's the deal? Yeah, well, I'm worried that you're going to ask me to commit to doing something and then I'm going to let you down.

I thought that's why you were looking worried. Listen, George, commitment is an internal thing. You don't have to do anything. That's true. That's the point, right? So you don't have to do any of this. But don't say— it's normally the reason is that you normally say, I love this, I'm going to use this tomorrow. That's why I normally ask. You're not going to commit to this now, are you? I really think you should. Okay. Okay, I will. By the way, before I go to the power of 5, the superpowers, again, for everyone listening, all this advice is just as relevant if you're starting a new job than if you're not. All I'm trying to do is reverse engineer your thought process and your energy and excitement and focus in a new job, in an old job. Yeah, that's it in a nutshell. What I'm trying to do. Yeah.

And it's worth, yeah, it's worth doing this regularly, isn't it? As we said. Yeah. Because there's no point in complaining and moaning that you're getting stuck or things aren't working without trying, at least trying this first.

So here comes the superpowers, the daily. This is just a 5-day thing. Okay. Everyone can do a 5-day thing, right? Easy. So obviously, again, for those listening, it has to be important enough to you. And if it isn't, then obviously then you won't do this. But if it is, and hopefully it is, you want to reset. I'll tell you what the 5 things are and then I'll explain what they are. So, okay. And these, these are one per day. So the next 5 will Once you've decided 5 days. The first one is to capture. The second one is to clarify. The third one is to organize. The fourth one is to reflect. And the fifth one is to engage. Nice. And basically I'm, I'm kind of using an adapted version of something called Getting Things Done. Anyone heard of that method before? You've heard of that? No, I haven't. GTD?

Nope, I have not.

Wow, cool. I've gotcha. Well, basically there's a book by a guy called David Allen. Called Getting Things Done. Okay. And it's a methodology for getting tasks done, really. It's like a to-do listy type of thing. It's quite a good method. I quite like the approach, but I want to use some of those ideas in reflecting and implementing this. Okay. So this is my version of Getting Things Done. So capture. Yeah, capture. It kind of conjures up, you know, there's a wild animal and I need to grab hold of it, but it's not that kind of capture. Okay. But it's basically a lot of people jump to the doing part. I work with a lot of operations people and they're always like, yeah, well, what's the game plan and when are we going to get it done by? Yeah, we'll get there, but just calm down a minute. This is about capturing all of the tasks, all of the ideas, digital or analog, all the appointments, anything that's going on in your world for that thing. I just want you to capture it. 'Cause a good example is you might have had an old presentation from somewhere or a meeting with someone or some ideas on a pad somewhere, I don't know. But the idea is to just stop, don't implement anything, and capture everything, get your thoughts together, and just capture it all on paper or on, you know, I keep things on iPad on GoodNotes, or some people use Evernote, it doesn't matter. Just try and capture everything in one place. Okay. It's a bit like if you're about to do, you're trying to do a presentation, you pull together all your documents and old presentations that you're going to cut and paste. Just do that. That's what the capture is. So you give your time a chance to look, to gather it, but you're not doing anything with it. I don't want you to analyze it. I don't want you to think about it. I just want you to collect it.

So all relevant info and data, get that all together. Yeah.

Okay. And then the second one is clarify. So clarify is where you're starting to review and process said information. And in order to process all this stuff you've got in, I want you to think about what does the end state look like? Again, no constraints. If I redesign this function or this activity, what does good look like if I'm successful? If there were no constraints, I want to keep thinking about no constraints, get those constraints out of the way. You need to deal with them in a minute, but not yet. And what are the high-level tasks that need to be done in order to get there. It's just to clarify, to process, to give yourself time to think. I actually think that people should spend 20% of their time thinking, planning.

I remember you said that before, and it's something which, yeah, and every time you say I'm like, yes, I must do that, and then I, and then I don't.

But, but, you know, I don't mean just sit at home staring out the window, sit in the office. Yeah, but that's a day a week, you know.

That's what you said. Yeah, and you do that, don't you?

You dedicate— I do. Yeah, I do it by— actually, a lot of the time I kind of go for a walk and I kind of zone out. Yeah, and that's my best thinking time.

Yes, that's good. A lot of creative people get their best ideas as well when like going out for a walk or in the shower or whatever.

I think it's great. I had a meeting with a customer and he said, let's go for— there was a lake behind his office and he said, let's go for a walk around the lake. I went, okay, is he going to push me in? But it was one of the best meetings I had because we were like normal people just talking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's something there anyway. So there's something in that. So the clarification is to think through some of those ideas, but to design the end state.

So you're sort of just whittling that down. You're getting rid of the irrelevant stuff and making sure you have all the stuff that's only necessary for that successful end state without constraints.

Yes. And you're processing the thoughts about how it might work. And bear in mind, we're thinking about, we're in our time machine. So we've got, because we're in our time machine, we've got the benefit of hindsight. 'cause we've done this already and we thought we can do it, but I'm not saying it was a disaster, but you know what, I think I might do it better next time. Improve, yeah, yeah. So you've got to be thinking, that's all part of that clarification is to learn from things that have happened and what did work and actually, you know what, what didn't really work? What if we could do that? And if there were constraints, what could we do about those sort of things? And then the third part is to organize. And what that means in the context of this is, Who do you need to help you? Not just in your team, but across the company, outside the company. I do a lot of stuff with business leaders, and I remember a few years ago I was just trying to get some ideas on better communication, and I kind of looked around me and I thought, you know, the younger generation are better at communicating. They might be more digital, but they're better at it. So I got some kids in a room with the business leaders. It was just an idea I had. And it was really open, it was really insightful to see. We got some really interesting ideas, we didn't implement them all, but there were some interesting ideas. So who do you need to help you? Don't be constrained by what you're doing today. What meetings do you think you need to have? You know, what relationships you need to fix? And how can you best kick this off? So if you kind of had a reset and then it culminates in an event where I'm going to do a kickoff or I'm going to get the team together and talk about the initiative together, but just get yourself organized in almost launching this. Okay. When you're ready.

Yeah.

You like? I like.

Yeah, yeah. Especially the sort of getting people involved from inside and outside the business. I think that's because, you know, again, having started a new job recently, I don't know people. So one of my things is trying to find out who can help with the mission that I'm on, you know, who from across the business, some people that work in completely different departments, maybe they can, they've got some insight or as you say, people from outside who might be able to shed some light on a particular issue. So yeah, I think that's very important.

Yeah. And you know, we've done a lot of episodes on purpose, but on, not on purpose, on the word purpose and on purpose. But the key thing that comes up every time is everyone wants to rotate around a common goal or not around a purpose. So this is your chance to do that, not just in your team, but across different groups.

Yeah.

Get people excited about what you're doing. So they want to help you. And then the fourth thing is to reflect. Now I'm not talking, we talked about clarification before that was reflecting on what you've done. This reflect is different, which is, As you're now going through your new world of doing this, and because you're in the real world, which means you're going to get busy, although you're excited about doing it, the real world gets in the way. I want you to put some milestones and checkpoints in for yourself so you can keep yourself honest that you're progressing in the way you want to. So it's your reflection on how you're doing rather than reflecting on the problem, because we've already done that under the clarity.

So this is reflecting on the process as it's ongoing.

Yeah, because, because we recognize the real world will get in our way., and therefore we can overcome that because we know that we're going to put some milestones in there. And then the final one is obviously to engage. So it's like, you know, the 4 things engagement is around the context. What is it you're trying to do and how does it translate to people? You need to translate to people what you're doing for them. What does it mean to them? Yeah. Time available. Everyone's so busy being busy that they can't get anything done. Plan your time so that you know what time you've got available to do it and book it in your diary. Book a meeting with yourself, whatever you need to do. The third thing is energy. Yeah. You know, concentration periods. Everyone knows everyone's different, but I'm better in the morning than I am in the afternoon. Okay. And you, you're good all the time, George, you know?

Yeah, I have no downtime really.

But find the time, you know, find your sweet spot, what gives you the most energy, and then use that time as a priority for this because it's really important. Yeah. And then the final one is priority, you know, keep prioritizing. Because the world changes, so that was the most important thing, but maybe there was an organizational change and therefore it's affected what you should be doing, and then change it. Yeah, I like that.

I like the context one especially, because I think so many times I've been presented to, and no one's made any effort to sort of explain why this is important to me or why this is something to be excited about. So I think the context side of things especially is, from a personal perspective, Very useful.

Absolutely. Context is the most important thing. I do a lot of change stuff, and when companies bang on about where they're going in direction, most people don't care.

They don't tell them that. Glaze over, don't you?

They glaze over. But if I can translate what that means to you, yeah, it has more chance. It doesn't necessarily guarantee it, but it has more chance, I guess. Yeah. Nice. And then obviously, finally, take action. You know, you've, you've done— you've got back in your time machine. If you don't take action, then have a nice trip, but it's gonna get you anywhere. Yeah, yeah, because basically where we're going, we don't need roads. Nice.

I'm a little bit embarrassed that I don't have any quotes of my own from this film, but anyway.

I only have 3, I keep reusing them. Anyway, should we do the takeaways?

Let's do the takeaways, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, you can sum up those in a time machine kind of way, or—

yeah, I can do some sound effects perhaps, that'll help.

Can we add them?

We add them to later? You can add them in the edit. Um, but yes, also if we could sum up those 5, because I think those are very useful, those 5 the Five Powers.

Absolutely, I will do that. In my— strangely, I have them in my takeaway and you haven't even seen my notes. So here's my takeaways. Takeaway number 1: when you're not happy with progress, you can either get bitter or better. So if you want to get better, reset, get back in your time machine and make the change. Reflect on, on what you're doing. Number 2 is, if you're going to reflect, look through the lens of the situation without any constraints. And think of it this way, if you were advising someone else as a consultant to do what you needed to get done, what would you recommend? And obviously you're going to learn from what worked and what didn't work in the past. And takeaway 3 is get yourself out of the way and remember the power of 5. One superpower per day. Yeah, superpower 1, and you asked me to recap these, George. One is capture, so collect all the tasks and everything that You've got the data you've got from the past, analog and digital, into one place. Superpower 2 on day 2 is to clarify. So this is your chance to review and process everything, think about what works and what you do better next time, and think about what the end state looks like if there were no constraints. That's the important thing. Get those high-level tasks together. The next day is the organize. So who do you need to help you? What meetings do you need to have? How can you best kick off this initiative? The next one is reflect. So because you're in the real world and that the life gets in the way, what are the key things you need to do to make sure you progress through it? And finally, engage. And there was a couple of sub-bullets on there. What's the context for people so they can relate to it? What's your time available? Make sure you've got the right energy at the right times and prioritize everything you do. But overall, absolutely take action. Excellent. Boom.

Interesting. Wow, love it. And I'm not going to commit to doing it, obviously, because I've made that mistake before. But I do think that this is incredibly useful advice, and I think, you know, especially considering my current position, this is something which is personally very, very useful. So thank you very much, Gary, as always. And we hope that everyone out there found it useful as well. I'm sure you did. I'm going to go off and watch Back to the Future now because— Great Scott! Great Scott! I know that one. Yeah, I should have pulled that out of the bag. Thank you very much, Gary. That was fascinating as always. And I will see you next time, and we'll see you all next time.

Bye. Bye.

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