Don't Be a Problem Solver

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Why are some companies hugely successful while others seem to ping-pong back and forth between success and failure without ever making much forward progress? Today's guest says we can view success or failure through the lens of structural dynamics, and under this lens, organizations either oscillate or advance. Oscillating organizations are dominated by structural conflict, and they're the ones who ping-pong back and forth between success and failure. They're running hard, but they're on a treadmill. By contrast, advancing organizations are dominated by structural tension, and they're able to relieve this tension in a positive direction and build success upon success. Hi everyone, I'm Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor. And welcome to Actionable Intelligence. My guest today is Robert Fritz. Robert is an accomplished composer, filmmaker, and writer, and he is also an organizational consultant for some of the largest companies in the world. Robert and I talk about how the underlying structure of your organization will determine its success or failure. And when you get the structure right, and you combine that with effective leadership, That's when the magic happens. So let's get started with Robert Fritz.

Robert, where I'd like to start here today is with some context. And one of the things that you've talked about in your work is this concept of structural tension and how that relates in your work in the creative process as a filmmaker, as a composer, but then the concept also applies to the business world in terms of we have a desired goal or objective that we want to achieve that's maybe 3, 5 years down the road or a year down the road. And then we have where we currently are today. So could you talk to me about this concept of structural tension and then how we apply that in a business or even in our own lives to help us move forward?

Structural tension is the basis of the creative process. And I'm not talking about creativity now, the subject of creativity is very different than the actual creative processes practiced in the arts. So I want to make that distinction, so those of you who have gone to management courses on creativity and lateral thinking and brainstorming and so on, that's not the creative process. That's a different subject entirely, that's idea generation. Now the creative process, let's say it's a painter, and a painter has an idea in his or her mind about the picture that he or she is painting, and the current reality, which is the current state of the painting. And then that painter will take action to more and more and more lead to the outcome that he or she is trying to accomplish. So to put it in a nutshell, we have an outcome, we have a desired outcome, what is it we want to create? Where are we now in relationship to that outcome? And what actions do we need to take to move from where we are? To where we want to be. And that is the essence of structural tension. The tension comes from the contrast between the desired state and the actual state, between what we want and where we are.

And then this idea of structural tension, you gave the example there of a painter, but that really applies to anything. So if we're thinking about our business, we've got a goal that we want to achieve by the end of the year. And then we also have to look at, well, where are we right now? So that's the framework. And then you also have these 3 insights that also apply to that. So tell me about these 3 insights and how they relate to the idea of structural tension.

The 3 insights I think you're talking about are the path of least resistance. It is that energy moves where it is easiest for it to go. So the underlying structure of anything will determine the path of least resistance. It's the riverbed that determines how the water flows. And the third principle, which is the most important in a way, is that we can change the underlying structure and thereby change the path of least resistance. Now, one of the obvious things that I really want to give you as an illustration of this is when we worked with many, many organizations and what we've done with them is to change their orientation from a problem-oriented organization to an outcome orientation. Rather than the managers running around looking for problems all day or being involved in problem solving all day, the real question is what outcomes are we trying to create? What are we trying to produce? And that's a very different question and it often leads to very different actions. So when we begin to change the orientation to outcomes, not to say that there aren't problems that exist, but they simply become part of the process to producing the targeted outcomes that we want to create.

So let's use a business example. So let's say I'm a company, I'm a financial advisor, and I want to grow my business 20% this year. So that's my desired outcome. That's what I want by the end of the year. And if I look at my current reality, I might say, well, the current reality is I've only been growing at 5% per year for the past 3 years. Or my current reality is maybe I don't have enough financial resources or whatever. So how could we think about this idea of structural tension where an objective is to grow a certain percentage, the reality is I've not done that in the past. What would we then do with that? And how do we then go from my current reality to this desired state? What would be some steps in between there to get to that desired state?

Well, there's more to current reality than simply the percentage of growth. For example, why is that the percentage of growth? How come we're doing 5%? Who are our customers? What do they want? Are we reaching them and they're just saying no to us and yes to somebody else or saying no generally to the product or service that we offer? So we really have to understand what it is we're offering and who we're, you know, so we'd go through a list of questions. What's our offer? Who are our customers? What do they want? In other words, what motivates them to say yes or no to us? What do we want? And what's the match between what we want and what they want? We would also want to find out how they know about the match. That would be basically marketing and branding. We would want to know how they get it. That's distribution. We'd also want to know where we're going, you know, what's happening in the marketplace now and in the future, and how might things change within that context. So by answering those types of questions, you begin to get a greater insight. It's not a magic pill, how you broaden your market or create more business for yourself. There's real stuff going on. And the other thing has to do— a real focus, I think, that often is underemphasized is the actual product or service that you're offering. And how good is it? One thing that Steve Jobs said, And this is how he thought about it. He said, killer products bring killer profits. Now, when Steve came back to Apple, one of the first things he did was he got rid of the floppy disks. And everybody said to him, you know, Steve, you can't get rid of that. We have all of our data on these. Remember these floppy disks that we all had? You know, that we don't have many more. And that's thanks to Steve Jobs. He's— they said, Steve, you can't do that. He said, just watch. And he got rid of the floppy disks. And the next thing you know, he created the iPod. Now, the iPod was simply an MP3 device. And, you know, Sony had a terrific one. But Jobs understood that it wasn't just a piece of equipment, it was a music distribution system. And because he understood what the market wanted, what the customers would use it for, and thinking on behalf of the customers even beyond what they thought for themselves because they had no imagination about this to begin with. He set up iTunes, so he had— and he made deals with record companies at the right price point for distribution of music and so on because he really understood it wasn't just a gadget, it wasn't just a piece of equipment, it was really a music distribution system in which he created the entire system And that's what made that so incredible. And I heard one of the CEOs of Sony say, we got caught with our pants down. That's an example of really thinking through what's the offer. And in this case, he came up with an offer that was even better than the market had imagined. He did the same thing, by the way, with the smartphone and so on. And you can just see that I don't want to glorify it, but I think there's a principle there that's really quite important.

And that principle is to just really understand how to make this killer product or what it is that your clients want, even if they don't even know that they want it yet. I think that was one of the geniuses of Steve Jobs is that he said, you know, if we would have asked our clients, you know, what they wanted, you know, we would have never come up with the iPod because no one was asking for that. They didn't know it was available.

That's exactly right. To really never leave the fundamentals of good business practices. Which I keep emphasizing here in terms of the offer in the market and so on and so on. But it's that kind of thinking, and if we could get an organization to dedicate itself to thinking in those terms, they would have a higher rate of success than they probably otherwise would have. I also want to mention this in terms of the movement from a problem-oriented organization to an outcome-oriented organization. You can solve all of your problems and still not have what you want.

What do you mean by that?

Well, just think about it in your own life. You can solve all of your problems and it doesn't— creating is a different animal than problem solving. Problem solving, you're taking action to get rid of something, the problem. You can get rid of all the problems in life and all the problems in your business, and still you have not created what you really want. So creating what you want is a very different It's a very different mentality or mindset or orientation than the problem orientation is. The reason I'm saying this is because particularly when it comes down to through the management ranks of an organization, there's more time spent on problem solving than there is on acting on behalf of desired outcomes. So that's a lot of waste. There's a lot of waste that goes on.

And so as we think about this structural tension idea, this desired outcome, how important it is to get really clear on what that is. And it may, and it probably does, require you to actually create something. I think that's what you're saying with, say, the Steve Jobs example is that he had to come up with this killer product. He had to create something that no focus group was ever going to tell him that he should create. By really knowing his audience, by understanding human desires, he was able to come up with this. Even though he may not have used a structural tension chart, so to speak, he may have intuitively figured that out that I have this desired outcome. I know my customers so well. Then he also understood my current reality when he came back to Apple was we have no money and we're just a few weeks away from bankruptcy. He was very clear on what his current reality was and he had to do something rather fast.

Also, I mean, in the case of Steve Jobs, you know, he was a definite technology visionary. But take Jeff Bezos, particularly when he started Amazon, and he really understood what he was doing. He understood that he had an inventory distribution system. And remember, it originally was just books, but you got these books, you know, within a day or two at a lower price than if you bought them in a bookstore.. And for the longest time, people were laughing at Amazon because they didn't have any return on investment. I don't know if you remember those days where, you know, just systematically, regularly, people would laugh at Amazon for not having a profit. But what he was doing was he was reinvesting in the company so that the ability— you order something, make it easy to order, get the book within a day or two. Get it at a lower price, and then start to really have a track record of the types of books you liked, and would you also like this one, and would you also like that one? That became such an incredible self-repeating, self-reinforcing system. But that was another example of good business practice.

Well, and I think Amazon is a great example that can touch into this idea of structures and following along the path of, of least resistance. So one of the things that Bezos talked about was they had 3 core ideas or have 3 core ideas at Amazon that he said clients and customers will always want. One of them was, he said, they're always gonna want low prices. Another one was they always want fast delivery. And a third was they want a vast selection. And so Bezos said, hey, I know these are things that our customers are always gonna want, so I can create my organization around getting better and better at lowering prices, at delivering faster, and having a larger and larger selection. So I'd love for you to maybe expand on that. How does that apply to Amazon creating an organizational structure that was designed to deliver on those three things, and then how that rallies the rest of the organization around trying to do that, and then, quote, "That becomes the path of least resistance." Is that a fair way to think about that?

Any underlying structure will create a path of least resistance, whether it's a good one or a bad one, because energy will always go where it's easiest for it to go. To create that kind of distribution system is a lot of work. It's a lot of reevaluating. It's a lot of learning. It's a lot of trying things out and adjusting. It's a lot of perfecting. Certainly, it's looking at an entire system from A lot of organizations are fragmented, and that kind of an organization requires a real connection among the various parts of the organization to be able to get things to work right. In a way, a lot of Western management thinks that if you can just put people in little cubicles and have them do the only thing that they are supposed to be doing, it'll all work out if we design it right. But, you know, it's not quite true. You've got to really connect the parts. And that's also not only structural dynamics, but it's good system dynamics to make sure that you understand how the system itself works and can manage it properly. You know, certainly structural tension would be the prime structure we want to use. What is the outcome? Where are we now? What actions do we need to take to get where we want to go? Both the outcome, quality, and due date, you know, timing, all of those things become critically important to be able to design systems like Amazon has.

One of the difficulties that I find a lot of organizations have is you've got a founder of the company, or you've got an owner of the company who may have a pretty good idea of where they want the organization to go. They have a vision, they have a purpose for the organization. They know what they're trying to accomplish. But where the frustration comes in is when other people in the organization that might be one or two levels lower in the organization, they don't see how what they do contributes to the larger vision of the organization. And I find business owners oftentimes are frustrated with why don't they get this? Why don't they work harder? Why don't they be more focused on following up on the details? Why don't they give that discretionary effort to make sure that we deliver amazing service for our clients? Why don't they just do that like I do it? So in your work, is there a way to think about the structure of the organization or the system that you create, or how can a leader instill this sense of purpose or vision throughout the whole organization so that you get everyone feeling compelled internally to move forward in this direction so that we have this organization that is advancing as opposed to one that continues to oscillate. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. And you can't do it by mission statement or a vision statement. You know, I mean, that's been sort of like the old, you know, they get into a room and they hash out the vision statement and then they come out and they put it up on the wall and everybody says, that's not us. How you do it is you act in a way that's consistent with the vision and the values. I'm going to talk about two companies. One is Nike. Have you ever done anything with Nike?

I have not, no, but certainly familiar with them.

One thing about Nike, it just so happens that all the managers I've met at Nike were also athletes. And they really care about the vision of athletic shoes. And they're quite serious about it. And they spend millions of dollars in research that people don't really know about. For example, in women's basketball shoes, they spent a lot of money because women were using men's shoes and hurting their knees. And they developed a whole approach toward women's basketball shoes to protect their knees and so on. So they weren't just making fashion statements, they were really quite serious and are quite serious about sports because they see sports as a civilizing force. Now, there's another company which I will name, I think of them as Macbeth Incorporated. Okay. So they were developing some new technology and I was working with them on this thing. And they begin each meeting by reading their value statements. And there are about 20 or 25 value statements and they would go around the room and they keep, each person would read one of the statements. It would go around a few times until they read all the statements. And then they'd have their meeting and they'd use these value statements to beat each other up. Well, you weren't being open, which was one of the values, or you weren't being, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it was just unbelievable how the true values of that company were not the statements that they were writing down and reading, it was how they made decisions, how they worked with each other, the esprit de corps, the lack of professionalism. All of those things were really the values of the company. And I think that real leadership has got to manage that. So you've got to know what's going on in your organization. And by the way, it takes— it can't be a grassroots process. It's got to be leadership promoting by rewarding behaviors they like. And discouraging behaviors they don't like. By the way, have you read one of my books co-written with Bruce Bodachan, who was CEO of Blue Shield of California, called Managerial Moment of Truth? That's a book where Bruce came up with a group of leadership principles, and I said, you know, and they were very good ones. And Bruce is one of the best CEOs I have ever seen. And he asked me to start working with him a week after he became CEO of Blue Shield of California.. And I said to him, you know, no one's going to do these things, Bruce. He said, why not? I said, because nobody around here is telling each other the truth. Now it's not that they were lying, but they were being so nice about whatever they were saying that you didn't know what they were talking about. You know, it would be in there, but it would be sort of, you know, like hidden with all of the wonderful words they were using. And so I created this process that we began using there, and now it's been used all over the world. And it's a 4-step process, really. And the actual moment of truth is there's a difference between what was expected and what was delivered. The report was due on Wednesday, it's now Thursday. The second step is to analyze how it got to be that way, you know, a real analysis of what was the managerial decision-making process that led to that. And from that, the third step is to create a plan for next time. Now that we know that, here's what we're going to do differently. And the fourth step was to create a feedback system to make sure the plan was in process. And we put that first into, uh, the top 100 people at Blue Shield, and then the next number, and then eventually once to the entire company. And managers started to use that to really improve performance. What happened was people began to see that it was really important to tell each other the truth, not from a preachy point of view, but from the point of view of, look, we expected this, we got that, how are we to understand this? What can we do better next time? So, and there was no kind of, you know, make wrong or putting pressure on people or having a temporary conflict manipulation. To correct improvement and improve performance. It was actually a learning process. How are we to understand what happened? How can we improve it and create the outcomes that we want? And that's what that book's about. That has to be a top-down leadership dimension that leaders on top act that way. They have to be examples of what they expect to see in the rest of the organization.

Yeah, so they have to model the behavior that they want other people to exhibit as well. So I want to go back to something you said here a minute ago. I think you said something to the effect of mission statements and vision statements, you get people in a room, that doesn't really work. So if that doesn't work, and then you gave the example of Nike where you said they have this high aspiration that really drives the company. So if we can't sit in a room with some of our team and come up with vision and mission. What do we do to create this higher aspiration for our organization that we can get everyone to feel a part of, like the people at Nike do? How can we do that for smaller organizations?

Well, it's not about large or small. It's about having a real vision versus having a bunch of words. I mean, you know, you get a bunch of managers and in a very few words, they're supposed to describe the most organizing principles of the organization. And, you know, sometimes the discussion they have is very good, the outcome they come out with is not so good. And also, oftentimes you'll see that what they write is contradicted by the reality of the organization. Of course, that's not going to work because it's hypocrisy. What does work is having a real vision. Having a real— this is what happens in the arts. You can't make a film without a real vision of what the film is going to be. You can't write a song without having a vision of what the song is going to be. And you can't have a company without having a real vision of what the company is and is about. And that translates into the various decisions that they make. What do they fund? What do they what do they not fund? What are the policies? And what are the ways that they treat people? And so on and so on. All of those things speak louder than any statement could ever speak.

So are you suggesting that an organization doesn't, quote, have a vision statement, and instead they have a way of acting, a way of being, a way of standing up and showing up in the marketplace that clearly demonstrates what they believe. And take Nike again as an example. So when Colin Kaepernick had his difficulties, Nike stood behind him. And a lot of people thought Nike was going to get lambasted for that, and they did in some quarters, but ultimately their sales went up. Now, they didn't do it because they said, oh, let's do this because our sales are going to go up. They did it because that was part of their fiber.

They did it because they were being true to themselves. I thought that was amazing, by the way. I wrote a blog about that because I was so impressed by the guts and the fortitude and the talk about standing for your values that they had. And I don't think they were thinking about whether it would profit them or not. And there are some companies that are like that. It's not that they don't think about profit. It's that there's something higher. And yes, you have to make adequate— you got to look, you got to make more money than you spend. Otherwise, you're going to go out of business. I mean, it's as simple as that. But if you make more money than you spend, you'll stay in business. So percentage of profit, it just has to be acceptable. It doesn't have to be the highest profit ever made. And this is what, again, Bezos really showed us, that if you reinvest it in the company, eventually you get to a point of incredible profit. It's okay to talk about what the company stands for and so on. Just don't try to put it into a statement, but also that whatever you talk about in relationship to what the company stands for, you got to act that way. It's not just modeling it, it's being consistent, it's living it, it's being an example of it.

Let's say that we do have this vision or this aspiration or these clear values, and we've got leadership which is exhibiting those. Well, there's always going to be someone or some people who over time either they don't live those or they contradict those. So how do we think about things that can get in the way, things that might block an organization's ability to fulfill that aspiration?

Well, you know, you never see that in the arts, do you? I mean, you never see an orchestra where, you know, the oboist says, "I don't feel like playing today, I'm just gonna play some of the notes." Point is, there's a level of professionalism you see in the arts. In which your job really is to, no matter what the circumstances are, to make it work. And we don't generally have that same level of professionalism in organizations. But if leadership was very smart, they would create an atmosphere, an orientation of professionalism in which— and I talked about this before in terms of rewards and also things that are not acceptable and how that management system has got to be so closely both designed and managed, you should really encourage bringing out the best in people rather than to have it acceptable that people are less than professional.

Another thing that you talked about in one of your books was this idea of concepts versus conceptualizing. Could you expound on that a bit?

This is about understanding reality. Reality is not from speculation, it's not from theory. It's not from past experience, it's from looking at reality and seeing what you've got. And one of the things that inhibits people from seeing reality accurately is the concepts that they have. And these concepts can be conclusions that they made from early experiences they had, it could be theories that they've read, it could be other people's opinions that they adopt without actually looking. One of the examples I give in some of my books is Arthur Stern wrote a book called Color: How to See It and Paint It. He talks about taking some of his art students to the shores of the Hudson River and looking across to the Palisades and asking his students what colors they saw. They said, well, the brick building is red and the other building is white and that is over there, that's yellow. Then he gave them what he calls a spot screen and basically it's like an index card with a hole in it. And so he had the students hold up the cards against what they were seeing and he said, "Okay, now tell me what colors you see." And they got very quiet and then finally somebody said, "Blue, everything over there is blue." Now what Stern explains is the reason they were seeing red and yellow and white was because they were substituting a concept of what they should what they thought they should see, with what there really was to see. And he talks about how artists need to learn how to see what's actually there, because otherwise the mind will put a picture of a concept there, and they'll get it wrong because they're not observing reality accurately. This is just an illustration of the same point we have in life, is that we often substitute concepts we have from really looking at reality to see what there is to see authentically. And when you do that, sometimes you come out with different insights than you otherwise would have come out with. And so we really want to rid ourselves in a way of concepts that we have, so that we can actually look at reality and see it for what it is, independent of anything we happen to believe or think before the fact.

And how do we go about getting rid of these concepts? Is it something that an individual can say, oh, I've, I've got this concept of this and it's not really helping me, it's actually hurting me. Can I just be aware of that and then go through some process on my own? Or is it typically you're working with someone else who can help you examine that and see what the reality really is? Or how would we go about examining these concepts that might be preventing us from some outcome that we're desiring?

Step 1 is start with nothing, start without the presumption of knowing, that is to say. Sir Isaac Newton said, "Hypotheses have no place in science." Descartes said, "To really understand a set of phenomena, first rid yourself of all preconception." And this really is the true scientific method. It's not creating a hypothesis and checking it out. It's really not having a starting point, not looking through the lens of knowing something. All of our education says, know something and then look at reality and compare what you know with reality. This is completely different. This is looking at reality without the idea that you know what you're seeing before you look. And so if you start with nothing, what we recommend, and this is what we teach in our We teach one course called Fundamentals of Structural Thinking. Step 1 is start with nothing. Step 2 is, you would say, a client speaking and so on. But Step 3 is then to turn the words that they're saying into pictures. So you begin to have a visual realm, you're turning words into pictures so that you can really picture them like making a film in your head. And that then gives you a much more concrete idea of what you're looking at. And then you can check that against reality and see if it's accurate. So these are just— I'm saying this very quickly, but it's a real technique that takes months and months sometimes to master. But the point is that it's worth mastering, and it's worth beginning to look at reality without the presumption of knowing what you'll find.

I'd love to do another little segment here where I call it "You Said It." And so I've I looked at some of your writings and I pulled some quotes here, and I'm going to read the quote and I'd love for you to just make a comment on it. And this first one I have here, I think, is really a nice segue from what you were just talking about here. So you said, if you limit your choice only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise. What does that mean?

Well, it's the way that people limit themselves, just as the quote says, through what they think is possible. If we separate what we want from what we think is possible, we can actually see what we want. Now maybe it's possible, maybe it's not possible, but we won't know to begin with. And a lot of things are more possible than we thought they were, but we have already censored ourselves so we won't even go towards them or try to strategize how to create them. And that's what that means.

Yeah, another one here that I'd love you to comment on is, and we touched a little bit on this, this was in your book, "Your Life Is Art." You said, "Your highest aspirations and deepest values are your truest desires. When you act in ways that are inconsistent with them, you can feel as if you are not being true to yourself," end quote. And so what I like about that is we did talk a little bit about this idea of the aspirations, the values, the vision,— and I'll just stop there and let you comment on that, if you would.

Well, it depends on how we organize our lives. And for most people, they organize their lives not based on their highest aspirations and deepest values, but on a compromise. And the compromise might be a legitimate one in the sense of, you know, you got 2 kids in college and you got a profession and you got a mortgage and you want to pay the bills, and then you go to your job and you don't like it. But you're doing it on behalf of supporting these other things that you do want. But still, it's not the same kind of, you know, you feel that there's more to life than what you're experiencing. Now, it's not that you can run away and join the circus, but you can make a transition from where you are to where you want to be over time, particularly if you understand what your aspirations are and what your values are. Because those are the— I mean, if you're not organizing around your aspirations and deepest values, what are you organizing it around? Paying the bills. Yeah, circumstances, not your choices.

Yeah. Another quote here, and it seems like I've picked a lot of these that relate to the vision for whatever reason, but you said here, "More often than not, you will find yourself inventing your vision rather than discovering a vision." And that comes from Your Life as Art book as well.

Yeah, this is such an important point, because especially in this day where, you know, we have so much about find your purpose and the whole notion of that somehow there's a purpose out there you need to find it, or there's a vision out there for you and you need to go and find it. And it's not a matter of discovery, it really is a matter of invention. Very few people in life have a calling. You know, there are a few. Mozart had a calling. Very few of us have that kind of calling. If you really had a calling, you would never have to go and search for it because you couldn't miss it. It would be right there. And so if you don't happen to have a calling, the next understanding is that you can invent what you want. So rather than look around and hope for the best, you really make it up. You invent it.

That's a different action. And what I like about that is many of the folks listening to this are financial advisors, and financial advisors are in a position to help their clients, I think, guide them through that invention process. They can be this trusted resource, this trusted guide that can help them invent what that is. And I think another thing that I read in some of your books is that just like Michelangelo would create sketches or any artist creates sketches before they actually start chiseling away on the marble, that is how we can also sort of invent our life. Like if we're going from our career to quote retirement, and we could have a whole nother conversation about what retirement means or doesn't mean, but it's helping you sketch out and try and invent what it is that you want to do going forward.

Yes, and it's good the way you describe that. It's good to do that in phases. So you have a phase 1 and a phase 2 and a phase 3. So there are transitions. So because you create a foundation, you then can build something on that foundation for the next step and the next step after that. And that just makes a lot of sense. Now, if you have an overall outcome or an overall vision or desired end result or specific goals that you want to create, that then becomes the organizing principle. And again, if you create structural tension because, okay, I know I want to end up here and I'm over here and I'm going to do this thing, phase 1, to get to this point on my journey. And now once I've reached that, I can now start to do something that's a little more complicated or a little bit more challenging, but I have the foundation for that and that's my phase 2. That kind of thing really does, in fact, without guaranteeing, it certainly ups your chances of success. It certainly stacks the cards in your favor and your probability of creating the outcomes you want are much higher. Excellent.

Well, I think we'll go ahead and wrap up there. So is there anything else, Robert, that you want to share here that we haven't talked about yet?

Well, of course, I recommend my books to folks and you can find them on Amazon, strangely enough, Robert Fritz, and there's a number of books I've written. Also, we lead a number of workshops, both personal and organizational workshops. You can reach us at www.robertfritz.com.

It's our website.

Excellent.

All right. Well, Robert, I appreciate it. And thank you for the time and just really enjoy all the great body of work that you've created.

And I'm sure there's much more to come.

Thank you. Pleasure. My key takeaway from my conversation with Robert is the importance of getting the structure right in your company. People within your company will follow the path of least resistance, and this path is defined by the underlying structure in your organization. And when you design the structure to generate your desired results and you combine that with the structural tension tool, it's almost impossible for you to fail. All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platform. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast.

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