Leading Teams Through Uncertain Times

As leaders, we are being tested every day. The pandemic, shifting economies, and the demands on our people and by our people have really kept us on our toes. As leaders, how can we navigate through this incessant fog? And that's coming up next on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to Marc Haine Live. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them work on their business, not just in their business. I am your host, Service Expert and Master of Experiences Marc Haine. And today, my guest is the incomparable, incomparable, the fantastic Curt Steinhorst. And we will get to him in just a second. We will be talking about how we can drive our teams By uncovering the 4 C's to leverage collaboration, reduce stress, and build resiliency during this little thing that they call a pandemic. And we will get hooked in with Curt in just a second. If you haven't done so yet, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this podcast? I'd love to have you in my network. And I bring you all these incredible topics and the guests each week. And I want to make sure that you get notified when that happens. And while you're at it, feel free to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and of course, on Instagram. In past episodes, we've talked about the stress that remote working has had on leaders and their teams. It seems like we are inundated with more emails and more meetings than ever before. So that brings me to our Question of the Day. Throughout the pandemic and as restrictions ease, how are you and your teams adapting through this next phase of this crisis? Go ahead and share your experience. I'd love to see you post it on social media along with a link to this video. Go ahead and share this video. And of course, please make sure that you hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. That way, you can be part of the conversation and we can maybe connect and keep the conversation going. My guest today is the author of the best-selling book, Can I Get Your Attention? He is a regular contributor to Forbes on leadership strategy and is ranked as a top 30 global guru along with the likes of Michael Hyatt, Brian Tracy, Tim Ferriss, among others. Curt Steinhorst is a sought-after keynote speaker and coach and is the founder and CEO of FocusedWise. Welcome, Curt. It's so nice to have you on the show.

Thanks for having me on, Marc. I'm excited to be here and get to interact with you and your audience.

Thank you so much. Maybe we could start off by talking a little bit about what you do for your clients.

Yeah, there was no university degree that outlines the work that I've gotten the chance to do over the last decade. I really exist at this unique intersection in attention science. So, what is it that causes us to pay attention to one thing, not another? How do we create focused organizations, teams? How do leaders drive the capacity for focus at work? And then also trends in technology and demographics to understand really the shifting nature of the workforce and how do we make good decisions within that? And so, I've had this rare opportunity to listen more than anything to thousands of leaders and then compare that against what we see in research. in terms of understanding the human brain and what are people actually needing in the jobs that they're seeking. So, that's the unique place that I sit.

Nice, nice. And of course, the last 18 months has been a whirlwind. How have you fared as far as your business and your dealings with clients and that sort of thing?

Busiest year ever. No, for better or for worse, I was on the road 140 days in 2019. And so, so much of my work has had to massively pivot. And so that was between keynotes and then deeper dive strategy sessions and consulting projects. And really when it all hit, everything froze, but pretty quickly what ended up being nice is just the unique place that my work sits has a lot of distinct insight for the moment. And so I've been very busy on virtual And very occasionally doing in person. But spending a lot of time on Zoom and doing my best to move them to phone calls when they're not presentations.

My only thing with Zoom, I don't know how this platform knows how unstable I am. But it keeps telling me I am unstable. I don't know. It's rough. It's been a rough year. Hey, in dealing with your clients, what trends have you seen and that you are seeing in leadership that you think now is worrisome?

Yeah, there's a number. So, I think when we look at the very basics, we can see that there's some data points out there that are really, really concerning. So, one is there's a big gap between those in leadership's experience with thriving during the pandemic and frontline workers. There's actually about a 24% difference, which is a huge difference. And what that tells us is that leaders have visibility and autonomy and control and power. And as it gets passed down, We see younger and frontline employees that are really suffering. And in fact, there was a global survey that showed that only 2% of people would rate their well-being as excellent. So we have the highest rates of burnout on record. 62% are experiencing higher rates of burnout than they've ever experienced. And then the natural downstream from that is that we have a lot of people that are looking for new jobs. Like, you know, depending on the stat, you can look at monster.com, which says nearly 9 in 10. They have an incentive for that. And then we also see some more reliable data that would show nearly half the workforce. And so, these are really concerning. And the natural reaction leaders are having is how do we get people back in the offices? And I'm not sure that's going to do the job.

Well, it's interesting that you said this, the stats, because I just got a Gallup poll result this morning in my inbox, in my email. And so now, the burnout percentage has gone up to 72%. with 48% of employed Americans are actively looking for new jobs. And it's like, wow, that is just crazy. I mean, it's something. And I think you hit the nail on the head, this idea about trying to bring people back to the office. Do you think the challenges facing leaders now are stabilizing? Is it equalizing out a little bit now that restrictions are being lifted?

I think we're just at the beginning of knowing that. One of the biggest challenges that we do face is there's so much uncertainty and there's so many moving parts that I think it's hard for leaders to get their footing. And for us to say that we can see reliably that it's going to shift back or we're going to have this new normal that will be a permanent or longstanding normal, I think that's unrealistic. The more realistic perspective leaders need to have is that we are living in constantly changing conditions that we— the only thing we can reliably predict is that that's really here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Yeah, yeah. Talking about these stats about the levels of burnout and the fact that the attrition rate now, this great resignation as people have started calling it. What do you think the roles of leaders— what do What do leaders need to do to compensate for this?

I think it starts by really saying the ways that we led in the past cannot be the barometer and the baseline for how we're going to lead in the future. And that seems obvious because when everything shifted to the pandemic, there's actually counterintuitive stats. Culture remained high. People, whenever there's like a global focusing event, We can rally, but it's now this lingering effects that that if leaders don't say what people need when they work remote is different than what they need when they're in person. The idea that we're going to solve all our problems by just bringing people back into work is an absurd position, and the reason is because it wasn't like the office was this bastion of productivity and focus, right? So we're basically saying. Productivity improved while you were working remote. Culture and belonging, well-being challenges, but productivity improved. So we're going to bring you back to the place that you couldn't work very well. We're going to take 90 minutes of your day and commute, and it's going to solve our culture problems. People are going to be happy to lose 90 minutes of their day and be rewarded with productivity by waste. So I think We're in a really interesting moment if leaders think that they can respond by trying to move to pre-COVID conditions.

Yeah, it's really interesting that you said that because one of the things that's becoming really clear from the experts that I've had on the show is like we've had sleep experts. So, people who talked about— somebody who talked about what happens when you're an early bird versus a night owl and how did your work shift during the pandemic and how people were able to buckle down in their kind of time of genius and get lots of stuff done. And then of course, we had other people who talked about this idea that what's missing now with the Zoom generation of workers is that we're missing those collisions, those water cooler collision points where collaboration and constructive conflict would happen. And so now, I can absolutely see that the Leaders are pulling out their hair trying to figure out how do we balance this.

That's right. And when we think about what does an office give you and then what does virtual give you, I think one of the biggest misnomers that we face is this idea that technology is going to solve all our problems. But, and what I mean by that is this, I'm having organizations say, how are we going to make sure the people who work in the office don't have an advantage over those who work remote in terms of promotion and future opportunities. You can't. You can't solve for that. That literally— there is a long history of the way we relate to people when we're in the same room is going to be different. So there's going to be those consequences that are just going to be there. On the other hand, if we say, how do we bring people all back into work, then what we have to realize is we've just eliminated the most important lesson that we actually learned from the pandemic, which is When you give people space, when you create forced flexibility, we learn people work in different ways at different times in different environments to do their best work, and they're more equipped than we are to dictate that. So, you know, there's the productivity side of it. There's the requirement of employees now expecting to have more flexible situations. And then there's on the other side just the reality that culture wanes when we're not in the same room with people. So, these are going to be trade-offs. There's simply no way to have all of, to have our cake and eat it too. It's really the reality we have to face.

Yeah, yeah. And so, through the pandemic with the remote working now and people are actually talking about, let's figure out if there's even a hybrid model that we can play in. That we have you work on certain days. But then, on certain days, we expect people to come into the office so that we can have those face-to-faces. Have you seen Through the pandemic, have you seen an effect on things like productivity, focus, attentiveness, that sort of thing?

Yeah, it's really interesting. So, static productivity has gone up. And let me define static productivity. People who were fully equipped for the work, veterans, they've been in the job for years. When they had the ability to move away and lose a lot of the waste that occurs by driving, by interruptions, by things that happen in an office, it shot through the roof. Now, here's the problem though, is the hidden pieces— onboarding younger employees really struggling. No one would have predicted that the generation most interested in coming back in the office are the 20-somethings who supposedly have never talked to a real human in their life, right? So like, it's just— we've seen, you know, mixed reports when it comes to what actually is occurring, but productivity has gone up by and large. And that's coming though at a cost of social capital and burn and people being more exhausted, working more hours. So, again, it's a mixed bag. We should be excited about what the pandemic did that in 10 years of billions of dollars in leadership development and technology investments and the latest and greatest practices couldn't do, which is move the productivity needle. And that's a really important important data point since I think companies are interested in more productivity.

Right, right. It's fascinating because it does. It took the— I worked for municipal government before a few years ago. And the perception was if you weren't in the office, you weren't working. And I always— and I've been in other jobs like this where it's like, why is it that you think because I'm not sitting at my desk that I'm not working? And then, it came to my thing. It's about control and trust. And the pandemic forced that hand and forced people to do it. In fact, I think the first few months of the pandemic was when we saw all this technology on Big Brother software to track what's on your computer and how much time you're doing. And it just got— it's like surveillance cameras. You can put all the surveillance cameras as you want around your property. But when will you have time to watch the footage?

That's right. That is well said. It's like we need more information and data that we can't actually comb through. That's right. And it's interesting because when I hear that, which that's a classic older generation perspective, is when responsiveness and seeing people is the measure of work. It's just what you've just done is you've just said we're going to be lazy about how we measure productivity and performance.

Yeah.

And instead of putting surveillance systems, actually, there's incredible technology, project management software, these things that mean that you can create visibility on what activities are occurring without having to waste people's time in reporting. Or on the other side, I think maybe perhaps the biggest mistake that I've seen is a 148% rise in the number of meetings and the time spent in meetings. So, it's like, we don't know if you're working because we can't see you, so we'll make sure you can't. So, there have to be better metrics that we're using and employing to say, how do we define if they're actually producing what we're needing them to produce? And when we give people that visibility and we measure that way, we're actually incentivizing the things that will drive work rather than waste time. And be rewarded for the waste of that time.

Right, right. This is fascinating. I'm looking forward to doing a little bit deeper dive and we'll do that right after this.

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I am speaking with FocusedWise founder Kurt Steinhorst. You know, Kurt, I recently spoke with a project leader for a Fortune 500 company. In the States. She is really concerned that her company now is ordering staff back to work. I mean, this is what we've been alluding to throughout the first part segments. She feels that her manager thinks everything will go back to normal once he can get them back into the office. So now, we talked about the fact that leaders are thinking about this. If I can do this, we can go back to our normal. What adjustments do you think now are you seeing in the workplace that you think leaders need to take focus on in order to make sure that they are maintaining the productivity, that they're maintaining kind of the health and wellness of their employees, and eliminating this high percentage of burnout?

Yeah, a great question. And We've kind of talked about it. My last Forbes article was actually on this subject, and I call it the work, the life sacrifice balance and missing that equation. And what leaders are wrongly thinking is that we can build culture if we just get people back. But after the time that people have had where— actually, let me just ask. 2 options, Marc. Which would you choose? Option A, you can wake up at 6:15 in the morning in order to get a quick workout in, in order to get the kids ready for school. You can rush through your day, barely get them to school in order to drive 45 minutes to get in the office for the first meeting of the day. Or, you can wake up at 8:45, roll out of bed, and take a Zoom call in your jammies. Like, which do you choose? Going out on a limb here.

Absolutely.

And so, yeah, and I think it's just a recognition you don't build culture by stealing what most— what people value. And so, I would just say that there have to be other ways that leaders are thinking about how they're going to create and facilitate and build culture rather than just bringing people back. Because if we just bring people back, into the same place that they're in, then what we're going to do is just create more of the outcomes that were coming before COVID And so what can they do? I would say, you know, number one is if you're going to use your space, make the space actually better than where they work, right? Like, how do you redesign? It doesn't have to be costly by freeing people up from having to waste cubes. Like, how do we create different types of spaces, more open coffee shop feel, along with private collaboration spaces and then true private spaces where people can work without interruption. Because if I were to put like one clear lesson here, it's that we've learned that when you give people the space to focus and do uninterrupted work, productivity rises and with it comes engagement and enjoyment of work. So how do we design the work so that people have the space they need to be able to do it without interruption?

There are a few industries where being on-premise is essential. My background is in hospitality. There's no way you can be a front desk clerk or a housekeeper working from home. I mean, your husband will be happy or your wife will be happy because you're making the beds every day. But there's some jobs that it just requires that you're on site. This is a fact. However, this idea that Now, employees are demanding more. They've had a taste. It's like if you give your child a candy and say, don't eat it.

That's right.

Okay, now give it back to me. Right? The child's gonna have a conniption. And so, we've now turned around and say, during the pandemic, we trust you enough now to work from home because we have no choice because everything was locked down. But now, we're turning around and saying to people, well, no, we want you back in and we want to reset this. So, This culture thing, like you mentioned culture. Well, culture. We've maintained culture all through COVID-19. I mean, we had a work culture that was remote and that people were connecting on Zoom and that was our culture. So now, what is the next step now for leaders? Like you mentioned finding new spaces.

Yeah. But how does one start looking through the roster of people who we're working with and saying, okay, how do I cater So, in some ways, you answered one of the fundamental questions in the way that you asked that, which is not an assumption. And that's that you don't have a one-size-fits-all rule. It's like, this is what I'm hearing. Jeff has to be here. And so, that means everybody has to be here. It's like one person's miserable, so everyone should be miserable.

No.

Right? This is the kind of the model. And so I think number one is you've given people autonomy. How do you not— how do you make sure that they feel like they have a voice in the decision-making process? And so that means it's not just general surveys, but how do we actually know that like team leaders who are making decisions on the ground rules are actually listening to what these people need, right? And so there's no one-size-fits-all model. I think one of the most effective that I've seen is a an agricultural bank that I've had a chance to do quite a bit of work with their executive team. And they divided each role into 3 categories. One is you can work from remote all the time. One is a hybrid, meaning you need to be there, you know, some measure. And they let the individual team leaders decide what that meant for their teams in conjunction, in coordination with that team. They even gave a script to say, this is the dialogue we want you to have. And then there's a very small number of roles that just have to be in the office. And those roles, you know, no one can argue, like you said, that a housekeeper needs to be at the hotel, right? And so by saying we've not made it about the individual, but we've put you into one of 3 categories, here's why. Now you and your team have the autonomy to decide, are we going to come in on a Tuesday? Are we going to come in? Do you have to just choose? Like, and every team got to actually decide that. So guess what's happened? They've had— I talked to actually one of their— the Chief Experience Officer yesterday, and he said the last 2 positions that they posted, they've had over 100 applications for each position. And the reason is simple, because their people are saying they're being treated like humans and they're actually being heard. And so decisions are being made for what's best for the individual and the organization. I think that's really where you want to zoom in.

Very good. Very cool. You know, one person recommended to me that when we do the postings, for the jobs that we actually include in the posting a desire section that talks about what the conditions are and encourages people who would fit that to apply rather than trying to do this one-size-fits-all thing.

Yeah, that's right. And that's a really interesting point because historically, when we were doing a job description or posting resumes, it's like these are the job requirements. And it's just like 12 years of experience. You have to do this, this, Well, I think as we move forward, having a part of that be about the workflow and the flow of work and what's flexible versus what isn't is really going to be a good long-term solution for the retention challenges. Like hire people into the type of work that they want to do.

Yeah. I heard a phrase just recently about work-life balance now is not work-life balance. It's work-life inclusion or incorporation, right? Where now, it's like the balance. It's no longer just a balance. It's how do we take the whole person throughout the course of his 24 hours and figure out how this person is going to best thrive.

That's right. That's right. And I think work-life balance is an interesting one because we've seen it deteriorate in the sense that people are working longer hours than they were working before. And we've directly associated that with burnout, and I'm not sure that that's a correct correlation. I think there's just been this interesting misnomer as if the solution to burnout is more Netflix shows. Like, you need to work less, watch more TV, right? And in fact, I think one of the reasons people worked more during COVID is it's one of the places they can have power. They can have control in a world with so much coming at them. They're stuck. Like, and why I want to spotlight this is, um, work is one of the most pro-social, one of the, one of the greatest goods we can give people during these types of uncertain moments. Like, here's an area that you can make a real difference. This work really matters. Like, there's actually a lot of power in not feeling bad when people work more hours. The failure is if the way you're making them work is actually dehumanizing and unrealistic.

Hmm, that's very cool. That really gives people something to think about. That really gives something. And you mentioned the extra hours and this idea that a lot of people are saying, well, of course, people are getting burnt out because they're overworked. And yet, I think there's a line in the sand where we could talk about overwork versus overwhelm.

That's right.

And so, for you, when you hear kind of that, can you create a definition of what each one of those would be in your eyes and what you see?

Yeah. So, very clearly, overwhelmed means I have too many data points, too much coming at me for me to be able to process and make sense of. This is a— when we get into attention science, it's the definition of distraction, confusion about what matters. We have such a high volume when you're talking about The simple amount of emails, 40.6 billion more were sent in the month of February 2021 than February 2020. The amount of data that people are being asked to be responsible for, we're consuming over 600%, knowledge workers are in North America, than someone in 1990. Then meetings, constantly interrupted, constantly need to be available, constantly responsive. And then we say, oh, that's because there's too many hours. So, here's what we're going to do. We're going to do no email hours or no meeting Fridays. And it's like, great, that's a perfect solution if the inbox wasn't still overflowing, right? Like, these are just— they're, they're not actually going to solve the problem. And, and so we're overwhelmed by the volume, which leads to us— our perception that we're overworked because we're just trying to keep up. But the truth is, what we're actually feeling is the futility of work that doesn't seem to matter.

We can't make sense of why it And so how does one go about judging that?

You know, the classics are engagement levels, right? But, you know, when we actually pull into the data, we can say simply, like, how many emails are being sent and received today? If you're getting over 100 in your inbox, which 121 is about average, then you're reading less than 5%— or you're responding to less than 5% of them. Right? 7 out of 10 people don't read company-wide emails. And so I think it's, it's a simple metric. Like, when, when you look at calendars, when you look at inboxes, when you look at Slack messages, um, how much time would it take to actually do handle those? Because if the number's higher than what we can handle— 2/3 of workers get to the end of the workday, can't tell you what they did, much less why they did it— then what you're going to do is you're going to— you're basically asking them to arbitrarily Look at emails. They're arbitrarily making decisions because they don't have the space they need to actually make them. So, you can see it in engagement numbers or you can actually just look in the raw data and see what's happening. And you'll find a pretty clear picture which will clearly be drawn towards where we'll see lagging retention rates.

Yeah. And I think it all comes down to those expectations as well. Like when it's intercompany communication and somebody's sending an email to somebody, Well, we now know that with email, we have an expectation that the response is going to be immediate. And if we don't get the response, people are then sending reminders. Oh, by the way, did you get my email I sent an hour and a half ago?

That's right.

Right?

And you get 7 messages like a text, a phone call, you get a Slack message, you get an email, a backup email. They're knocking on your door because it's been 6 minutes. Yeah.

Could you please check your junk folder because I sent you an email and you didn't respond 6 and a half minutes ago?

That's exactly right.

This is fantastic, Curt. Hey, could you just let everybody know how they can get in touch with you if this is resonating with the leaders out there?

Yeah, there are 2 places I would say. One is my email. We actually like email. It's still a system we use. And that's just cs@focuswise.com. cs@focuswise.com. The website is also the best place to learn about the work we're doing. We keep it up to date. Then, LinkedIn is always great. Social media is— I have a complex relationship with social media. But LinkedIn is a tool that we use for sure.

Nice, nice. So, people can reach out to you that way. We talked about trust. We talked about the fact that leaders were trying to put kind of surveillance equipment down. At the end of the day, how can leaders truly know if their people are productive? Like for those people watching this, they've heard this. They said, this is all really nice. But I want to know that Donna is doing the work.

Great. Well, first, you have to say, what are the outcomes that they're seeking that you need from her, right? So, and then what is the timeline that you need those outcomes to be achieved? And then are you giving them permission when the constantly changing conditions are having other things thrown at them to be able to have a filtering process for knowing how to prioritize that? And so, the great news is there's great technology that can allow for KPIs or shared workflow where you're not asking them to then report back to you at a check-in where we all meet for 30 minutes and waste everyone's time. You can actually literally see what they've been doing, and because that's where the work can take place. So that's what I would say is like, we, we, we have to start by saying like, I'm paying for outcomes. What are the outcomes? And then what are the ways that I can measure that on a tighter basis. It takes a small amount more work but it actually produces much better outcomes because it gives them autonomy. And it lets them have something measurable to define whether they're being successful. And then, if they're not, it's a much easier conversation as well.

Yeah, and I can imagine that all the micromanagers out there are like, no!

Yes.

It completely strips. And I think this is where I see the The biggest conflict I think is in these leaders. And we talked before we connected today talking about kind of the baby boomers and kind of the old way that we used to do things. And they're the people who really have a challenge with this idea of they no longer can carrot and stick their way into performance.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. And they are, you know, at the end of the day, the problem with micromanagement in this environment is that you're basically replicating the work, and there's just too many variables, and there's too much happening, and there's too many needs that you— the idea that you would want to be doing someone else's job, it just ensures you're not able to accomplish all that can be done. So one of the questions we ask internally as a team and then work with clients is, you know, how do we reduce demands? And one of the biggest ones is through replication. You know, where are we doing something that I should be doing? Where are you doing something that, you know what I mean? It's like that, like, and a great way to know that that's occurring is in meetings. Like, if meetings are part of the core culture, what's occurring there is we're making decisions in groups, or actually we're really— one person isn't equipped or doesn't want to make a decision, so they gather the group together to not make a decision together, right? It's like, this is a really great way to make everyone busy, overwhelmed.

Did you just redefine the word dysfunction?

And what's sad is it's It's status quo dysfunction. But like, assumed baseline, just an incident of the way we work. And it mustn't be more than ever that that is the way we approach it.

Yeah, yeah. And that's great, great comment. I'd like to get into the 4 C's that can help leaders and their teams jumpstart their productivity. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I hope you're getting lots out of today's episode. We sure are uncovering a lot of gold today. But the real worth I think is leveraging the 4 C's. Curt, could you let us into a little bit of this framework with the 4 C's?

Yeah, so this is really the synthesis of all of our work for more than a decade. And the question started with, What does it take to drive focused work, which is, you know, by every measure, productivity, innovation, engagement is driven primarily by people's capacity to focus on the work, right? And so, especially as we move into uncertainty, it has had this really clarifying and clearing lens for organizations to be able to look at and leaders to say, am I providing these for people? And this is the 4 Cs. I'll go through them briefly and then you can engage on each or whichever is most interesting. But 4 things people need right now is one, clarity. They need clarity. And what that means is they don't need certainty about the future. You can't give it, but they need clarity about one, the value and purpose of their work is incredibly important when there's so many global events occurring. And then 2, how do we zoom really tightly to say today This is what is being demanded of me. I have clarity on what activities I need to be doing. Number 2 is they need capacity, meaning they need to have the ability to get to it. This goes into the whole number of meetings, number of tasks, amount of content, amount of emails. Like, do we actually alleviate— are we adding unreasonable burdens to people who already have more on their plate than they've ever had, right? And then number 3, my favorite, is Curiosity. Fascinating research that shows what's the difference culturally between those who find different is dangerous and lead to what researcher Geert Hofstede talks about as uncertainty avoidance versus those who see change as an opportunity. And it's really about cultivating a culture of curiosity around these. And then the 4th one is community. Which is what is the structure through which as we are increasingly isolated, fragmented, how do we create a community that actually supports and facilitates the work and also wants to keep being there?

Yeah, so powerful. Each one of those points I think are so powerful in their own. You mentioned the capacity thing. The one thing you didn't mention is this idea of You know, where are people at as far as their own personal development is concerned? We've had to go through like, what were the frustrations and the learnings that people had to do all of a sudden working from home and then trying to figure it out? I mean, we saw early on, we saw the minister in England who's in the middle of a debrief and the child walks in and you see him getting all frustrated. And then, yeah, and everybody laughed about that. And But then, it also told us something about the fact that we are all human beings as well. And the fact that you have a mother who has a child on her lap during a meeting, is that really a huge horrible condition in getting the work done, right?

That's right.

So, the 4 C's I think really resonate. Do you think through the next In this next phase of the post-pandemic world, if people can find those balances, do you think they'll be able to build a culture that will be more productive and more catered to the individual?

I am equally optimistic and pessimistic. I think the market forces are demanding that leaders and organizations finally adjust the way that we're working to actually incorporate what humans need. I think what has occurred in over really the last 25 years has been this slow, complex system that is largely driven by technology innovations without thinking about what is the human-tech divide. So like, for instance, the problem that tech communication or communications, like ICT, information communication technologies, have been solving for is how do we create easier access? How do we make more access, more access to more information and more? It's like, Great. Well, we can't process it, and now you've just overrun. So I think there's market incentives, and I know on a micro level I'm seeing great leaders rethink this radically. I also think there's a large history of we're just going to keep going the direction we're going, and and in that sense, I'm I'm I'm concerned because we're really. No organization can create a thriving, productive, innovative organization by ignoring the constraints that humans have and by not emphasizing what makes us strong.

And not what makes your people strong.

That's right.

That's right. I know that there's some people would watch this and they're thinking, okay, yes, now I'm aware that there's a problem. I know I have to do something. And so now, I'm just going to put some policies together. Are there any cautionaries that people should be aware of when they're looking at this challenge?

Yeah, I think policies are excellent if they're human. And if the people who are impacted by them feel like their voice is in them. Like I was with a colleague at another bank and This person is one step below the C-suite, and decisions were made corporate-wide policies without him even hearing or having any voice. And he's like, "If I didn't, what about these you know fifty thousand employees? What about the steps below it?" And so I would just say policies of any type at this moment more than ever have to be written to feel human. Like I'm a person talking to a person. This isn't corporate jargon. And two. They have to be done with every level saying, we've heard you. We're listening to you. We're wanting and thinking about what's best for you and us. Like, it's really how you're communicating it and how you're arriving at that policy that's critical.

Yes, yes. And so, essentially, we have to take the lawyers out of the room when we write policies.

Yeah. Lawyers and old-school HR, the Yeah. The least human department. And although there's some of the best leaders in the world that are in that now, but historically, the HR department was a great place for people to feel like they weren't humans.

Well, you know, on policies historically, you know, I grew up as a baby— I'm a late-generation baby boomer. So, I grew up in that carrot and sticking world where policies were written because of the lowest common denominator. It was because the behavior of one person, not because there was widespread abuse.

Yes.

Yeah, which is good luck with that.

Yeah, I know. That's true. As we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts? Is there anything that we've missed in our time together today?

Just, I think if I were to zoom in and say like, what do we actually need to be thinking about as leaders? I would say like, listen to your people. They've earned the right to be heard. And then number 2 is prioritize the conditions that let them have space to work, right? And so when we say clarity, like, what do they need to do? Capacity, do they have the space to do it? Curiosity, is it interesting? Do they want to do it? And community, is the community actually supporting their ability, or is it a state where interruption is the best indicator of being a part of the team? And so these are things that you can do, but they have to be relentlessly attacked because there is a culture across North American companies that has incentivized every bad outcome. And if you think you're going to be the exception without actively engaging it, you're unfortunately very misguided. But you don't have to be. There is a way to do this.

Yeah. And to me, when you, when you say those 4 C's again, to me it's like The picture that came to my mind is we're unshackling the people that are doing the work. Yeah, this is really fantastic. Could you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Yeah, email is cs@focuswise.com. focuswise.com is a great place to— I have a podcast, a weekly newsletter we send for clients, but also several more resources there. And then, if you're a social media person, LinkedIn, reach out to me. We'd love to talk about speaking or consulting or any of the works and challenges that you have and how we can help.

Nice! And do you publish your articles on your website as well?

So, we've just— we're launching a blog. But I do have a media tab that has my Forbes articles. And so, that's— you can click media and you'll see all the latest Forbes articles at least.

Fantastic! Curt, thank you so much. I really appreciate that you were here today spending time. I really appreciate that you're sharing your knowledge, passion and your expertise. Thanks so much for being here today.

Thanks for having me on, Marc. I enjoyed it.

As always, my offer stands. If you would like a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is down below. It's the one that's marked meetme.so/MarcHaine. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this feed. And go ahead and follow me on social media. I am so lucky and so blessed that I have people like Curt who come on this show to share their knowledge and their passion. And I'd love to share this with you. So, I hope you do go ahead, follow me. Remember to— you can always look up the hashtag #ExperienceLeadership. You'll see my blogs, my articles, and so on out there as well, as well as links to all the various different videos and YouTube. My name is Marc Haine. I hope that you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.