Are you working in the business or on the business? ft. Jim Canterucci | Ep 96

People seem to forget if you change today, today will change your life. To keep up with the latest episodes, make sure you subscribe to the Self Belief Chief podcast Facebook group. Download your favorite ones and get ready, because this will be another great episode for you. Hello, Jim. Thank you so much for joining. How are you doing?

Great, David. It's great to be with you. And I. I just love the international flavor, so. Yeah, it's great.

We were talking about the international flavor, obviously, from, you know, being on different sides of the pond, but also a similarity in terms of both our family having ties to Sicily and talking about just all, you know, all different types of culture and all different types of, you know, perspectives. And for the people listening, Jim, I'd love them to get to know a bit more about you, but perhaps even from those sort of early origins and what you picked up then. Then I'd love to hear more than what we were just talking about beforehand.

Sure, sure. All four of my grandparents were immigrants to the United States. My parents learned to speak English when they went to school, so my grandparents hardly spoke any English at all. And my mother moved all the way across the driveway to the house next door when she got married. So it was like an enclave. Right. And everybody was Italian. They had moved to the same area in Ohio in the United States to get those jobs in the steel mills. And so it was very much like an Italian village that I grew up in. I didn't realize until I went to school that there were other cultures out there. Right. So very ethnic and very working in the garden and working in the dirt. And that hard blue collar kind of a perspective was how I grew up. And, David, I think that when I got my first job, my first real job at 17 years old, I was a freshman in college. So I was going to school full time at Ohio State University and working full time. The company that I worked for worked with, did 38 acquisitions while I was there. And I was the person who went out and helped the new acquired company into the fold.

And.

And so I really naively thought everybody's job was like mine. I thought everybody had a job. I didn't realize that this was such a big, huge opportunity. So I've been dealing with organizational change really from the very beginning. And again, I didn't know any better. My second job was the second employee in a small consulting firm. And we implemented a huge $25 million computer system in the biggest banks in the country in the US and that was leading change as well. And so, again, naively, I was working 90 hours a week. I didn't realize there were academics about this or books about it. I was too busy doing it. Right. And so my perspective comes from a very practical viewpoint from the street of actually doing the work, what works, what doesn't work, throw out what doesn't work, et cetera. And the key point about that second job was I was the second employee in a small firm and I got that entrepreneurial bug. I knew I'd never have a real job ever again. And so when that eight years or so was up, I treated it as a laboratory and then really put out my shingle and started my business as a boutique advisory firm for executive advice around leading change, around leadership overall, and then innovation as well. And that was just the way it was going to be for me. And I think some of the entrepreneurs in our audience will relate to that. It's like just there is no other option. This is what we're doing, right? And so that's where we are today. And that time, from 1995, before maybe many people were born, Transition Management Advisors has been in place and we've had some evolution as well to this point now developing software and having an enterprise software tool. So now we're a software company. So that's. That's the story in a nutshell.

And quite a journey as well. And a lot of stuff, it sounds like a lot of surprises along the way. I. One of the things that I'm always really interested and fascinated by, I sort of remember going through this sort of, sort of phase, I guess myself, which is when you're working with, let's say, high performers, when you're working with leaders, when you work with business owners, people who clearly have expertise, experience that. When you first consider working with those people, when you first get the opportunity to work with the talented or the experienced, there can be that question for a lot of people, whether it's imposter syndrome or whatever, of, well, what allows me to step into this space as well, what allows me to give these people value. Now, of course, that's, of course recognizing that you've got a service that is of incredible value to them. But what I was going to ask, I guess, Jim, was that that initial experience for you, perhaps, and therefore, do you remember what that felt like? Because people listening will be thinking, you know what, maybe I'm going through that transition. And they're thinking, maybe I don't quite have the confidence to step up into that space. So I was going to say, you're about to join in.

Then yeah. Let me tell you a story to answer the question. It was probably my first big client potential client engagement, working on my own in my consulting firm. And I was sitting across from a senior vice president, happened to be a big bank, and we were talking about his problem and how I would help solve it. And that was the point. I was going to come on and help solve a big problem. And so he asked me the question, David, he said, jim, how will you solve this problem for us? And I took a beat, I was scared to death, right? And I took a beat and I said, I don't know. And he looked at me, he took a beat and he said, that's the right answer.

Yeah.

And. And you know, I wrote the book Personal Brilliance about I deconstructed some of the thinking, right. But what I know is that I can ask enough questions in any situation to be able to flourish through it. So that brings a level of confidence. And it's definitely not arrogance because, you know, like I said, I was afraid, I wasn't sure I should say that. Right. But a confidence that I could figure it out and I don't have to know everything first so I can learn through the experience and the journey and then accomplish high performance type outcomes because I'm working through it. And it becomes actually, the solutions become better and more refined because, because they're more relevant as opposed to, I read it in a book, I made a four quadrant model, you know, this consulting nonsense, and then I put that model in place that's different from let's Figure it Out together. I'm going to bring all of my experience to the table. You're going to have experience, I'm going to tap into. We both know that I don't have to be the expert with all of the answers. And we're going to have, we're going to have a great solution when we get through. And having that answer, I don't know what would my career arc would have looked like if he had answered differently. He would have said, you were supposed to answer that question, now get the heck out of here. But he answered appropriately and he said, that's the right answer. That's how we should be thinking about this. And, and first of all, it told me a lot about leadership, his leadership, his ability to be a leader. And he's become a friend my whole life as a result of that. But also for me as the business person sitting at that table, the salesperson in that mode was, I could be okay with not having all the answers. It's all right, I'm not going to be. There's not going to be an electric shock in my chair or anything if I. I don't have all the answers. But then you have a confidence that, you know, you can go figure them out.

I love that story. And I had someone, a client who I was just finishing with, she said, david, can I say something? And she. I said, yeah. She said, I really thought you just would have these, when we started, that you were just going to have these magic answers to all these questions I've had my whole life. I said, oh, my. Well, if that was your expectation, it's a massive disappointment. I'm really sorry to hear that. And so it's bit tongue in cheek. And she said, no, but I get it. She said, you know what, what sort of enabled you to know the question I needed to answer. So she said, you'd asked me the question and there would just always be a question that I didn't yet know the answer. But you gave me the confidence that the fact I didn't know the answer isn't a coincidence, that that affects how I feel. Put the two and two together. And I said to her, okay, but so do you feel like we built rapport during this time? She said, oh, absolutely. And I said, the reason built rapport is because I said the simplest way I can ever explain it to you is as a coach, I'm the person there who's going to ask you how are you doing? And want to know the answer.

Yeah.

And there's so for people listening, I think there's so often the case of, I think how many times we ask someone, how are you doing and how much do you feel like it's something you should do and how much do you actually care? And I think exactly to your story is the fact that if you even just take that moment to listen. And a quote I regularly use is people don't buy what you understand, they buy when they feel understood. And similar to what you're saying is there's no way to understand someone unless you're asking those questions. Unless you're. And just bring up my own story, which was quite humorous. So David Cameron, one of our former prime ministers, and when I was working in a corporate setting, he. One of his sort of. Can't think of his PR managers or his, sorry, his campaign managers, rather, who helped him get elected, he came to our company and he said, here's. Like you just said, here's this model of how you run a campaign. You do this, do this, do this. So he did this for an hour, quite smugly, to be fair. And the woman at the back put her hand up and said, didn't really work when you were trying to run that Brexit campaign, though, did it? And he just. Nothing. He had nothing. And then he tried to say his way out of it of why the model still worked, despite the fact that they basically lost out on Brexit.

Well, there were human beings involved. Maybe that messed up the model.

Exactly. But the fact, and the fact that he even tried, let alone suggest that there is a perfect model that sorts anything out when it's good to have frameworks, but to have a perfect model that sorts anything out, to then try and say, oh, it would have worked for Brexit, but we did it wrong, or we implemented it wrong, was just farcical, really. So we kind of get onto that part, which is that the implementation. And when I was doing my research, Jim, I love the aspect of implementation. I think it's just. That is often just such a big missing ingredient for people in terms of. In terms of that. So why is it so important to you? And what are the common mistakes you've been seeing with businesses where it's, maybe they have the right ideas, maybe they do know what they're supposed to be doing, maybe they do know the right path, but their implementation is really poor. In those examples, if there have been examples, which I'm sure there have been, why is implementation such a struggle? And why is it often. Why can often it be such a poor thing? And therefore, how are you able to help people go, you know what? Here's a much smoother way to do it.

Before I answer that question, though, let's pause for just a second to recap to this point, because I don't know if everybody listening really understands that we've wiped out a number of businesses, solopreneurs who started businesses to deal with imposter syndrome, because we just wiped it out. It doesn't exist anymore. We figured out a way that it's just not even a problem. So, yeah, I just wanted to make that point, make sure that we were clear on that.

Yeah, no, I think that's a very good point because we skimmed over that extremely quickly. I think the fact that basically speaking to people about imposter syndrome every week in some way, shape or form, and I'm sure we'll hear more stories in terms of your journey, where as good as the last story was, maybe other stories where it was a bit more of a struggle, or maybe you did question?

Well, yeah, we might just have to boil down to the advice of just cut it out, stop it.

We don't need this podcast. Let's just.

Yeah, stop it. But. Okay, let's get to implementation. Yes, there are, there are proven approaches and techniques for implementing change or anything else. And the difficulty is that they're difficult to do. It's hard work and in a corporate setting especially. Think about it this way. Strategy is developed. The strategy creates some sort of change, something that must be implemented. And if it is implemented, then the strategy will, you know, engage and then we can move to the next strategic piece. And what we do is we leave the retreat where we did the strategy and we say there's a change, implement it and it doesn't get implemented. We go through the motions, but there's no adoption. Right. And so we then our strategy now is out the window. Right. So the damage that's being done is extraordinary. And why we don't have more focus on my area of topic, you know, leading change baffles me. Right. It's very frustrating because it's a direct hit to the bottom line of an organization. Let me give you an example. There's a process that I use called change readiness. Now we tend to do we go around the table, go. No go. Are we going to go live on Monday morning? Right. With whatever the change is and we go around the table and we ask things like is security? Okay, did we do testing? Did everybody go to training? Yes, yes, yes. Okay, go live on Monday. How about if we ask, are the all the key people ready to do their jobs in the new environment or not? Now the reason we don't ask that question is because we must have done work order to test that and we never did that work. So we're just winging it and hoping that on Monday morning that the world doesn't end. Right. One of my client companies refused to do change readiness. They said, we just don't have time, we don't have the resource. We're going to do what we need to do and we're going to go live and then we'll support it afterwards. They were implementing an ERP system. They couldn't. This is an over two and a half billion dollar company, global company. They couldn't bill their customers for at least two months because they didn't test for radio. There is a cost to this, right? It's not just the way it is. You know, it's always crazy. And you'll hear, you'll hear a frontline person answer the telephone to a customer and say, oh, yeah, we have this new computer system this week. It's crazy around here. We can solve for that problem. But it's hard. It's difficult. It's why I created the software to make those difficulties smoother so that we actually have a chance of actually doing those things right. But I think that's the bottom line. It's human nature, and we have accepted, institutionalized not doing the right thing. What I mean by that is nobody gets in trouble for not doing change readiness. Nobody expected anybody to do it. We quit telling people it's possible, so they don't even have an expectation that we should do it. And we don't get in trouble for not doing it. And so how can we shift that? And I think what we need to do is just have a clearer focus on adoption. So that's for a company. Let's take it down to then the individual. We go, I hire a coach. I hired David to help me out. And we put together a plan for what we're going to do. If I leave my call with you and I don't put any of that into play. That's just wasted time. It's just like, tell me, if you ask me the question, what are the top five books that you've read this year that I should read? I won't answer that question. I just won't. Because those five books that you're going to go off and read, that's you kind of procrastinating on implementing something. And I'd rather you go dive in and do it, mess up and correct and go through those iterations and learn through that whole process. And we'll sprinkle in the knowledge gap. You know, we'll figure out what you need to know. But you're moving forward as you're doing that, and that's so key. And so we do that as individual human beings. It's human nature. And then let's multiply it by the thousands when we put it into a corporate setting. So that's what we're dealing with.

It's interesting that you just mentioned that book example. Only the last week I had someone reach out to me on. Not clients, mine. Someone who reached out to me on social media and they said, I can't lose weight. And I said, okay. It was just a statement. I sort of said, okay. And she said, oh, so you know, is there a book that can help me? And sort of similar. I hadn't put the sort of. Wouldn't have. As I'm Struggling to articulate right now wouldn't have articulated it as well as you've just done in terms of the fact that, that it's an element of procrastination. But I guess it was a similar thought. And I said, well, what have you tried so far? And she said, I've tried everything. Okay, name them. I've tried hundreds of things. Name them. Okay, well, I tried this one thing and I did it for two weeks. It didn't quite work. Exactly. You find out that patronizing, patronizing, it's procrastinating, but it's also just an excuse as an explanation to say, well, this is why I can't do it. And that, that does baffle me all of the time of, you know, if you want to, if you want to lose weight, if you want to do this, if you want to do this. There's a science to most of these things where actually you just follow this and there's multiple ways to do it. If you just follow that line and you just stick with it, you will see similar to result, similar results to the person who also followed that straight line or who left that particular path. And yet, because it's almost that the only problem is that there are so many options. And when I do coaching, for example, someone said recently, you know, how do you know what to do here? And here I says, well, I don't. It's that there are 10 ways I could do it and I just pick one of them and then I stick with it and we commit to it and that's all it is. It's amazing that so many of these results are just readily available. Quite often people actually know the answers, but for whatever reason, they just need someone to go so you could do it. And you know, they need Nike's just do it slogan to encourage them to do it.

And you give permission, right, to go do that. Well, maybe I need a master's degree before I can turn the corner, right? Remember my story. I worked full time and went to school full time. Now I learned some people skills because I would travel for business, I would come back to class and they would be handing back a test I didn't know we had and I'd have to talk the professor into, so that was important. But also I knew things about school because I had already done them at work and vice versa. The active nature of learning is just to me so much better. I'm a reader, I read books, I write a lot. So I'm not anti education reading a book by any means. But we have to be careful that it's in the right perspective. And in fact, if I'm going to read a book about product management, I'd rather do it while I'm sitting with a product, product management guru, somebody who's really experienced in it. And we're gonna go back and forth on that material and I'm gonna learn product management as a result versus I read the book first and then I go look for some experience and then try to talk too hard. And we don't have enough lifetime for this. Right. So, so the, you know, I guess that's a tip. Can we be more active in our learning? That doesn't mean you don't pick up, you know, fill in the knowledge gap as necessary. But you know, if you get to chapter seven of the 20 chapters in a book and you've got it, you don't have to finish it, you can move on. So again, it's good. It's permission and breaking habit.

I really like that you just said that. Because I never finish a book ever. But now I've got a good reason for it. It's always because I'm implementing all the time. I'm being active with my learning. That must be. That must be it.

Yeah, exactly.

But that's exactly, you know, exactly why, you know, I do this podcast for no other reason that you know, to speak to someone such as yourself or someone last week, the week before, 20, 30 years worth of experience in particular area knowledge that I just in that particular area will never accumulate and yet that there's that person who can share their insights and you can bring that, and you can bring those insights and those insights together. It's just such an incredible thing. I like that you said sort of active education. I think that's a really sort of good way of putting it because sometimes I feel like people see education as a kind of very two dimensional kind of oh, I'll just let it kind of hit me type of thing. And you're right. If you seek it and try and find it, then I want to go to you said about education and work at the same time. Because I was someone who work in a corporate environment, but also building my business in the background. So I was, what's probably similar to you, one of those people that you get home when it's another eight or nine hours of, you know, for years doing that. And so I want to ask you what that period was like and at what period did you start to see almost obviously a bit different because you sort of education and then that finished. And then it's a natural progression to the next thing. But when, when you were sort of almost, I don't know, you burning the candle at both ends, if you felt like you were. At what point did you start to realize, feel the shift and start to go, oh, it's going, it's. Now I'm creating enough leverage, I'm going in the right direction now. When did you start to feel that right?

Well, here, here was a. I don't like rules, but I did set up a rule for myself and a little bit facetious, but I said when my, that old consulting firm, when we grow to the point where we have a human resources department, it's going to be time for me to leave. That was just an indication of getting bigger. And you know, and we were acquired and we had a human resources department. I knew it was time, but I owed my clients time. I needed to finish with my clients. And so it was, to me it was like a three year living laboratory. So I was doing the work during the day, but I was building then the structure for my business for how I was going to help people that deal with this kind of material, this topic area going forward. And so that's when I started looking for the examples and cataloging those examples, etc. All of those things that if I was just working a job, I probably wouldn't do. Right. But with the eye toward having the business again, education and working at the same time, right. You have a different eye, a different perspective on, on things. So if you don't have that natural scenario, I think you should invent it for yourself because it's so much more vibrant, it's so much more powerful. But I, you know, you do fun things. Like you come up with a name for your business. Right? You did that, but you also did.

The design the business cards.

Yeah, yeah, I want colors. You know, you do that fun stuff, but you also doing the real grunt work. How's it gonna work from this step to this step? And you're figuring those kinds of things out. But what's interesting about doing it simultaneously to working the, you know, eight to ten hour regular job is you're doing that work of that daytime work in a different context. It looks different. As a result, you're, it's more, it's, there's more depth to it as a result. So again, I think there should be a secret evil plan in the back of everybody's mind all the time. No even, you know, even if it's like, okay, I'm Gonna build a new tool. I'm gonna create a new process. I'm gonna, for me, generate a new speech, write another book. That kind of thing always in the background, because it gives a different viewpoint. It's like, you know, you buy a yellow car and all of a sudden you see everybody has a yellow car. You didn't see that yesterday. It's that viewpoint, that perspective that you get, I think very important. And that's evident in high performers, that quality, that scenario that they're in almost all the time. So there's always some. Their wheels are turning, right? And when somebody's, like, trying to be an entrepreneur, but they're not quite making it, oftentimes they're missing that little important ingredient. So you're talking about getting experience from 20, 30 years of experience. But isn't it interesting that it's these little tiny things that come out? It's not knowledge like you would get in graduate school. It's those little tiny things that people often miss. And it could mean years.

And it's always, you know, everything I try and do is find something that requires minimum time and effort for maximum reward, because you can find something else that has a much bigger effect. But if it takes more time and effort, it's not going to be adopted, whether it's an individual or business. So trying to find simplicity and exactly like you said, therefore, if someone such as yourself, who has that wealth of experience where knowing that complexity is the enemy, that they can start to go, oh, that's how simple it can be, and that's how you get the big reward, then it makes a huge, huge amount of difference.

The most difficult thing that I deal with every Saturday morning, I send an email out to leaders and I talk about something. It's a short email, but it kicks off their week. And I get back. So I chat with people all Saturday. They're responding back to me, but I get ideas from them. You should do a program on this. You should create. No, that's going to take. Take my energy away from my focal point. And what's interesting is I call it frustrating, but it's okay. If nobody else understands your plan, it's all right. But as long as you do, that's the key.

Well, that's the thing that sort of the how is sort of almost at the beginning. Nobody at nobody's business at the beginning, the how is almost none of our business when we're creating it. Like, we don't know, but just the fact that you have a principle or an idea or something. That, you know, could provide value, then that's the place you want to start from. The one more thing I wanted to ask an implementation was I was listening to someone speak about the best of the best athletes, not just elite athletes, but sort of the greatest of all time, and how few of them necessarily become coaches, become, you know, in some way manage other people and the different skill. A different skill. But one of the things they said, one of the things I was hearing, which I thought, actually, I think there is some truth in that, is the people who are the cream of the crop, the very, very top people, is there's an element of it which is natural to them. And so they never study their own. Their own. Their own process. They go, well, no, but obviously I just. I do it. And the fact that someone has natural instinct to do it is obviously a huge part of what makes them great. But when you're trying to model success, and when I hear people talk about modeling success and just go through a process of, oh, why don't just ask these people questions all the time? There's also the part of process which is I just have to watch them, because as good as they are, they might not know how to articulate. So I've got to watch what they do as well. And I wanted to get a little bit on that in terms of you spoken about asking the right questions and building that wealth of knowledge, asking them questions that help open the door for themselves. But how much of it is also about just watching what they do, because maybe what's coming out of their mouth actually doesn't ladder up to what they're doing.

One of the best leaders I've ever worked with, a client of mine, and he's retired now, but this is an example of the watching, the observing that you mentioned. I noticed that every time I met with him, his desk was pristine. Now, you know, we could do a speech about making your bed every morning or cleaning your desk, and that's just so not the point. This isn't a Facebook meme, you know, but what that clean desk indicated was his total and complete focus on the moment and the present. So when I met with him, it was him and he and I, and there was nothing else. So we know how crazy busy our schedules are and how we're running from one meeting to the next. He was able to elevate himself. He lived in the same world we do, but he was able to elevate himself to be completely and totally in the moment and present. So that was something I observed. I don't know how to teach somebody that because I can. What they would might take away is you have to keep your desk clean. That's not the point. Right. It's the presence that he had that I would like to model, I would like to get better at, I would like to improve on. So it's dangerous for you and I to write books and articles and blog posts and do podcasts because people can interpret that as, oh, just, just clean your desk. Right. And I'll be a great leader. Well, not quite, but looking for, so observing, as you mentioned, but then looking for the underlying principles that are at play and the consistencies or possible inconsistencies with that and analyzing that. So there's an analysis part of growth as well, to be. Become a high performer. It's not just watching somebody and doing what they do, because some of that is that natural ability you talked about, and they don't even know they're doing it. Right. But.

And that. And it's something that works for them.

Yes.

Yeah.

Right. And so there's an analysis and then there's a translation to me. So it's localizing whatever that message is to my situation in my environment. And I like to think that I have, you know, I've picked and choose, you know, from, from different models that I've looked at, model in it as far as a human being that I'm looking at. But, but you have to internalize it and you have to translate it into something that will work for you as well. So I could ask him about his desk being clean, but that wouldn't have been valuable. You know what I mean? It might have been over a beer to say, how do you shut off all of the fires going on around you to be, to be present. Why do you do that and how do you do that and what made you. Those would be good questions. But the layperson might be asking about his desk. That's to me, the danger that we always have to be watching for. So when I read people books, articles, etc. I'm looking at it. What are they trying to. Are they trying to teach me the glossy surface or are they trying to give me the underneath and allowing me to figure out the underneath as I, as I learn from them? So I get you.

Yeah, I get you. And with all of that, I mean implementation, I mean trying to get all this knowledge together. We were talking about your software company before, but talking about that transition and lots of people going through this transition of how to make things more automated and actually how do you take your wealth of experience, but also keep up with the change of times and the culture to provide value in a service in the way that the current generation, the next generation, it serves them even better that every generation is looking to process information much quicker. They're trying to make it more digestible, more digestible. And I just want the answer straight away. And part of it is you have to. Well, hang on, slow down. You need to understand the why. But we were talking a little bit beforehand and it's something I would be very curious to hear. In terms of when you started creating the principles and the methodology back in the 90s is, at what point did you see that need to go? I need to find a way to automate this to scale. Maybe it wasn't a need. Maybe it was actually this is how I just do this on a bigger scale. But how have you managed to make that transition so that you could reach a bigger audience?

Yeah, well, David, I knew when I wrote the methodology and it's a book called Change Project Management the Next Step. It weighs nine pounds, eight ounces. So it was like birthing a baby. So it's very procedural on how to do it. So it's very voluminous. And I would teach that to my clients when I do it. I create relational databases and so on. And back in the old days, they were relational databases that I strung together. And I'm not a technical person by any means, not a programmer or anything like that, but they weren't in a state where you can give them to somebody to use. They were very strung together. And it was always a gap for me, it was always a frustration. And I explained it away articulately by saying, every industry is different and you have to come up with your own. But what I knew for sure was that my clients weren't doing some of the things that I propose they do because they couldn't do them on a spreadsheet. It was impossible to do it in a two dimensional way. And so I always knew that I had to build this software. But you used to have to buy a building, you used to have to fill it with hundreds of people. You used to have to like press software onto CD ROMs and make big manuals and all things I couldn't do. And so as technology caught up with me, it was almost immediate. And I had a client who said, we want you to help us with leading change. It happened to be in Brazil, and I said, I'll do it. Of course it would just be like another client for me. Right. But I said, if we're going to do it, then we're going to build my computer system. We're going to build constituent hub while we're doing it, and you're going to have to deal with all the hassles that go with that. So I made it so that it would happen because I knew that I could be with them, doing extraordinary things, effort in order to get it done correctly. But I couldn't expect them to do it because they weren't as passionate about it as I am. They just wanted the results. And so I knew I needed to create the software. It was almost a requirement so that the word could spread farther and wider. Right. So it really was, you know, I talk of it, talk about it as a driving force. It was very purposeful. I have a purpose to make this so that you could do the right things. And so, for example, I was talking to a client yesterday and they don't have enough capacity to manage all the change in their organization. So they said, well, we're going to recruit people out in the different departments who are intrigued by this. We're going to train them a little bit and they're going to run their smaller things. I said, yeah, and you could do that because the software allows you to keep an eye on them and gives them some structure to be able to do it. Otherwise you would be saying, yeah, train them and see what happens. Right. And so now we're starting to see the realization of that vision of let's do it right further and wider so there's a better chance of it happening correctly. And our corporate life isn't as much of a Dilbert cartoon as it is today. And a lot of that comes from leading change in a dumb way is where the Dilbert cartoons come from. Right. And so can we fix that? And so that became a driving force for me. And it was always a niggling problem. Anytime I introduced myself, my methodology to people, taught them how to use it, it's like, well, yeah, I know that's hard, but you have to do it. It's manual. But it was always a problem for me and I finally just like stamped my foot and said, we're going to fix this.

And having done that, what are the changes of results that you said? So I understand that. I understand why. Have you seen the change that you wanted to see as a result of change? You know, you saw a need that, okay, I need to do it this way so that they actually understand it, so that actually that they are taking the steps required they're making a decision to do. So have the change that you were hoping for.

Yes. However, not as dramatic as you might think because realize this isn't like an app for your phone that you just, you download it, plug it in and oh, now your life is more efficient because you can schedule your meetings easier or whatever. It's, you know, you have to change your ways and it really is foundational and you have process change. So implementing constituent hub is a big change in and of itself.

Yeah, yeah.

So they have to do things different. Now an efficiency play would be you did this yesterday, you have the software now you do it more efficiently and it goes faster. Here's my situation. You didn't even do this yesterday. I'm going to make you do more work now. It's going to be very efficient when you do it, but I'm having you do more work. So it's not as direct as I would like it to be, but that's okay. I realize that going in, I know that's an issue and, but the fact that I'm doing change impact analysis for the first time, I actually know who the people are that are being changed for the first time ever. How did you do it before? So it's progress. It's probably slower than I would want it ideally, but yeah, we're making.

It's always slower than you want it to be, isn't it? But as long as it sounds like the needle is moving in the right direction, then it's making it.

You should always be frustrated.

Yes, exactly. I'm frustrated all the time. So one of the kind of principles that I really like because I can just so vividly go back to this period when I was working in a corporate environment is the kind of the 90, 10, 60, 40 formula. And I love it so much. So just for people listening who some might not be aware, so Jim, talking about 90% of our being, you know, our time, our thoughts, our actions that are being involved, focused on our departmental area and only 10% on the overall organization. Without naming sort of my background or the companies where post analysis reviews.

And.

It was a large organization, a very large, you know, well known organization in the uk who this stuff just didn't happen. This stuff didn't happen efficiently. So it's one thing that you're not actually working efficiently on the business of tomorrow, which there were meetings for, but they would always come out as okay. So we made some progress and then no implementation as per usual. But the actual thing that no one was actually learning from the Work that they were doing was, which was work we would have to repeat next year. It would be an annual thing and no one had written anything to talk about. Actually, why don't we work out what works and what doesn't work so we don't copy the same stuff next year. So the 60, 40 to try and bring that closer. My thing is when I speak to business owners is minimum if they're not working on the business of tomorrow. I mean getting everyone together once a month, that says a lot. And so I won't say anymore because you'll have a lot more obviously experience and expertise in this area. Want to talk about the concept even more and hopefully I've not butchered it. And secondly, to talk about how, you know, 60, 40, what does that 40 actually look like in terms of meetings, times per week, times per month, all of that stuff. So what does it look like to you?

Yeah, so this all falls under the umbrella. My umbrella label for this is, is the new leadership normal. Now unfortunately, COVID 19 has stolen those words. So there's this new normal is everywhere. So I hardly want to say that, but the idea is that we operate in 9010 and I'm being generous. Most people tell me it's more like 99.1, where 90% of your time is spent on your local. What I'm doing for my department, 10% on the overall company. I want to shift that to 60, 40, 60% of your time working on your department, no less. Because otherwise we're like on a self study program, right? That's different. I tried 50 50, it doesn't work. So 6040 is kind of the right spot and 40% working on the overall company. Now the basis for this, David, is crossing boundaries, not tearing down silos. We need silos, they exist for a reason. But I think we should cross those boundaries on a regular basis. So that's what the 40% of time is spent doing. So one executive that I work with and I start with the executive team and I tend to work with and I'm doing less of this work because of constituent hub these days, but work with the CEO in their direct reports of a company and usually larger companies, you know, in the 3,5000 employee minimum range. Right. So if I start at the top and we shift this thinking, it does trickle down. Not everything does that that way. I know everybody says go to the top, but it's not always true. But in this case it really does. I had one executive who said. I had our first meeting, Jim, with you. I Went to talk to my team and I said I'm going to be doing other things. I don't know what they are yet but I'm going to be doing other things and I'm going to leave you alone. That means you have to step up. And he said, I was so upset, Jim because there was this big sigh of relief from. He's like, leave us alone. But here's what the 40% is. It's looking for opportunities to cross the landscape. So it's marketing going to work with sales. And so the senior person in sales might say we need to get marketing involved in this earlier. So let's put a team together that's weird and different than we normally work to solve this problem because we need to innovate, we need to move forward. That stuff that typically doesn't happen. Marketing and sales fight with each other most of the time as opposed to working together. So that's the 6040 concept. In practice it's you have a need for a temporary like 6 month type employee and you ask for me for help. You're a vp, I'm a vp. I'm going to give you my best person in a 60:40 environment. Not the person that's most expendable. My best person. Why? One, it's for the company. The reason you're asking for this resource is you're going to do you're doing something important right? And I have to trust that. The second thing is I'm trying to grow my best resource. I have a growth plan for this individual and it's going to help them to go work with you on this special project. So I'm naturally going to do that and I'm going to ask you to help me backfill for losing my best person. Do you see how we're now crossing the boundaries of our typical silos and the company? The organization gets better as a result. So this becomes a way of thinking in everything we do. I'm looking for opportunities to cross those boundaries and work in a 60:40 environment. And what happens? Engagement happens. I'm asking people to step up because I'm not going to be spoon feeding you right. And so they get engaged, they get involved, growth happens, we start solving problems on a global scale as opposed to locally and replicating and having 10 different ways to do the same process right. We tend to start doing things right as opposed to how the structure tends to cause us to do the wrong things more often than not and not because we're evil, but because the structure forces that right so this is actively working against that structure and making a difference in the organization.

Maybe. My next question seems fairly obvious, which is then, I mean, there must be people who massively resist because they're going, how will I get everything done? And I can think back to situations where I look at something. I actually don't know how they could step away from what they're doing to be more involved, to be more engaged. But I can also speak to points where just so many projects, not just from my background, but seeing other people as well, so many projects get ruined. Because let's use the sales marketing teams, as you brought those up, is they get involved four weeks out, they get together four weeks out and they go, wait, hang on, you've already been doing this for four weeks. We've been doing this for four weeks. Oh, no. Then they spend the next four weeks actually problem solving rather than a solution. So I can understand both parts, but for the people who are resistant when that comes about, I was about to say, how does it get enforced? But that would be totally the wrong word. So how do they get on board? How do they get persuaded?

Yeah, I get you just, you know, as a, as a coach, I ask challenging questions. So, so here's, here's one that I might ask. When you have a conflict, when you're invited to a meeting and it's an important meeting, it's a new thing, whatever you're going to, where they're gathering people together to cash out the new thing and you have a conflict, what do you do? So you're doing something very important, that's the conflict. And then you're invited to something very important. What do you do? Surprisingly, a number of people will say, I just declined the meeting. Like, okay, this is why nothing happened. Never happens, right? How about this? As a leader, I'm growing my people. That's my goal. That's what I'm trying to do. So how about if I accept that meeting, that's a conflict, and I send one of my people and this is harder work, right? Because now I have to prep that person. They're growing as a result because they're learning more about the company. Two, they're going to have to come back and report back what happened. Three, they're involved in that and getting more responsibility as a result, and they're closer to the work, so they're probably going to do a better job in that meeting than I would anyway. All of those good things start to happen and it's just changing the mindset of something. Transactional like what do you do when you have a conflict in a meeting now? How do you, you're challenging then that person you're going to send to the meeting because they had work too that they're not going to be able to do. How do you make that work? Well, let's get together and arm wrestle over that and figure that one out. That's the holy grail of how we perform, how we get things done versus business as usual, day to day. Come in and punch that proverbial time clock and go home at night and then it'll still be here tomorrow. You know that, that mindset that might have us be a bit stagnant, we're jazzing that up a little bit now. And David, that's the only way I know it's not like you said, it's not an enforcement kind of thing. It's a solve problems along the way kind of approach that you would take to get over the hump. And you start changing habit. Right. You start doing it a little bit differently. And it's like, what do you mean? You didn't have a representative at this meeting, right? Yeah. And, and it's okay that you, the principal of your department weren't at the meeting. All the others around the table would see, oh, David sent somebody, got it. And we're gonna now take this person under our wing and make sure that they're successful here. That's working in a 60, 40 environment. Very different, isn't it? As opposed to, ah, I'm not going to share my notes with you because you're from a different department. Come on, that's, you know, that's playground stuff as opposed to work related mindset. So it's a big shift, it's a big different way of thinking. But we had one division of a Fortune 500 company and, and I only could work with their leaders. And they were the only division of five divisions that showed improvement in engagement throughout the thousands of employees below them. They were the only division that had and not me. But they said it's attributed to this way of thinking, this 6040 mindset. When US leaders do it, our people start to notice because they can't help but be involved in that. Yeah, it makes a difference.

I can see it makes a big difference. And part of the, part of that sort of thing I've got in my head is thinking that depending on the size of the organization, people are looking out for the value that they provide or their best interest because that, you know, not at the very top of the Business but say a number of levels down, it's their performance that gets the rewards as opposed to maybe the businesses performance. If there is a difference between the two and then maybe shouldn't be. But. But I can absolutely get on board with what you're saying. And if there was a way that it can all be tied to why is a value to why as you as an individual worker, not just a leader, individual work within the business, that the business's value is of great reward to you. And so you're going to say something to that.

Well, David, remember I gave you my best person to work on your project. Your team is going to be more successful as a result.

Good point. Yeah.

So it's trickling. Yeah, yeah. It's really working in the depths of the work from a mindset standpoint.

So before we sort of start to think of bringing this to a close and firstly, thank you for sharing.

Oh no.

As much time and information as possible. Keep going if you've got time. We'll keep going. We've got any more questions.

I'm killing you.

The next bit I want to ask really is you would have had an idea when you, when you started all this stuff out when you were doing, you know, from Sicily, went to America, doing your studying, had this idea in terms of a way to provide added value to organizations. At that point you would have had an idea of what you were trying to do and also probably some sort of goal that was aligned to. I want to ask you at this point, however many years later, how, what does what, what does your success look like measured to that vision that you had and how have. You know, no doubt things have radically changed from the ideas you had at that point as they do for everyone, the picture looks completely different. But understanding what footprint you wanted to leave then and asking do you feel like you've left that footprint now?

I am not ready to be satisfied yet.

Yeah, good.

Maybe 20 years after I'm gone, maybe, but I'm not ready to be satisfied yet. However, I've wisened a bit maybe to say let's look at every single interaction and evaluate those. So have I made a difference for this individual and this company, et cetera and not bother myself with. There's a thousand other companies that I could be helping right now. That's always there. For example, that's why I built Constituent Hub because I want to reach more companies and not have to be there in person. Right. So it's a way to do that. So that's there as an undercurrent as a structure, but tying it up in my evaluation of my performance. Not. Not as much as I as might have happened 20 years ago. Makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think I'm sure that probably for people listening, that the generation. When you're young, you have that idea of everything being at a massive scale and then you realize that you can have massive scale in helping the few get incredible results so that they are even more of a positive influence on all the people in their lives. So when I listen to your stories, still probably a huge amount of businesses. But even from that point of view, it's the number of businesses is a sort of a small representation of actually, well, you're impacting thousands of individuals in each of those businesses. And isn't it great that you can help empower an individual organization to enthusiastically mobilize those people to provide greater engagement and performance and everything else? I think that's an incredible thing. And so sometimes people get wrapped up on I've got to help. I've got to directly do as much as possible for as many people as possible. And then when you start seeing success for people and you start to recognize actually when someone tells you that, you know, as a result that they've adopted a child or that they've met someone or that their business has turned around or that whatever, and then they tell you the stories, their stories, because those individuals say to that leader or that person or individual, whatever, you've done this for me. And then you get that sort of secondhand is amazing. And it's incredible. And it's not about we have to do all the help, but can we provide. I guess what you're saying, a big part of this is just unbelievable value beyond, you know, and like you've done in terms of automating the process as well is not being settled for this is, you know, this has worked and this works and this gets success is actually going, no, like you said, not being satisfied. I can do more, I can do more, I can do more. But not always having to do it at the massive scale that you spoke about. Can I ask you, Jim, for the people listening, what would be the sort of footprint you would want to leave on them?

Well, I think for the entrepreneurs in our audience, I want to hopefully fill you with some hope and provide some guidelines as we've done so far, for that. For those of you in a corporate setting, change the organization from the inside out, start operating 6040 and watch what happens. It doesn't have to be dictated from the top. So I think there's an attention and awareness to where your hook is in your world and, you know, take full advantage of that. So some of the ways that we might connect. I mentioned the Saturday morning message and if you go to jimcannarucci.com, you can sign up for that. It just allows us to talk and to go back and forth about what you're dealing with and very much like what you do with your clients. David, as far as just, you know, we're. It's insight and perspective that you provide, maybe from a different, different viewpoint. So I think that we can make a dent in the universe. Doesn't have to be at that huge scale as you described, but that's what I would like people to, to be comfortable with.

I love that. And on that is, again, thank you very much for your time. I know you had a. I would love to have you back on again in the future because I know you've got another. You sort of contributed to another book called Rock Solid Confidence, which, you know, with all the stuff in that, if you wouldn't mind at another point, there's loads of stuff which I'd love to get through because it aligns with a lot of the things that, that I talk about. Love to get your perspective on. But. But no, I just been a blast.

So I'd love to come back. That's great.

Well, I will. Thank you very much again, Jim, and I'll speak to you again soon.

Thank you, David.